Wine and bars have never been comfortable with each other. There are wine bars, of course, terrific ones, and fern bars, where women sip white wine, and even hotel bars, where anything is possible.

But wine and bars – the joints and taverns and neighborhood locals that are the essence of what a bar truly is – have traditionally been as mismatched as a Frenchman at Euro-Disney (where it was also once difficult to order a glass of wine).

There are number of reasons for this, including hundreds of years of tradition, primarily Anglo-Saxon, in which wine wasn’t sold in bars (and still isn’t, in some places). Consider, too, that bars are seen as places for hard-drinking men to do hard drinking, and that holding a wine glass by the stem so as not to warm the bowl is rarely thought of as something hard-drinking men should do.

This paradox raises all sorts of ethical and moral dilemmas for anyone who likes bars and wine. Should you order a glass of wine in a bar? More importantly, how do you order a glass without getting side-glances from the other patrons? Most importantly, how do you order a glass without getting the rolled-eye look that bartenders use to strike fear into the hearts of their customers?

For it is proper to order a glass of wine in a bar, despite all of that tradition. It’s true that there are bars where it wouldn’t be advisable to order a glass of white zinfandel, but there are also wine-oriented restaurants where it is equally as unsafe. Wine drinkers are some of the biggest snobs in the world, and most are quite proud of it. And there are things you shouldn’t say in a bar, like “toasty vanilla finish of a well-oaked chard,” but you shouldn’t use that kind of language in any kind of polite company, be it in a bar, restaurant or the safety of your own home.

Which brings up another reason most people are leery of ordering wine in a bar. Too many are intimidated by wine, and they have bought into the idea that wine is some exalted, mystical elixir anointed by the gods, instead of something to drink with dinner. Sadly, in the last 10 or 15 years, the wine snobs have trained an entire generation of Americans to believe that taste is not the most important quality in a wine, and that anyone who enjoys something the snobs disapprove of is a failure as a human being.

Which is silly. Wine is not about the price of a bottle or its rating in the glossy magazines or whether one vintage is more to die for than another. Wine is about enjoyment, and drinking wine should bring pleasure. This, more than anything else, makes wine acceptable in a bar, since good bars are about the same thing. When’s the last time you spent more than 15 minutes in a bar that you didn’t enjoy? When, God forbid, was the last time you went to a bar because it was trendy?

It’s true that some bars are not conducive to wine, but that’s because the selection is limited or the prices are unduly marked up, not because it’s some sort of crime to order wine. If you’re in the mood for a glass of red wine, and the bar has something that doesn’t taste like it was made last week by three guys named Gus, then order it.

And let’s dispel, once and for all, the myth that wine isn’t manly—or that it needs to be. The wine universe includes much more than the stuff that all those smirking models advertise on television, flogging product at a culture that drinks Diet Coke with dinner (which is the real crime, if anyone really wants to know – mixing artificial sweeteners and man-made chemicals with a perfectly seared piece of beef or a superbly roasted chicken).

Know that there are leathery Italian red wines that can make grown men stagger as if they had ordered the most powerful tequila; powerful California cabernets that are as subtle and sophisticated as a single-malt scotch; and inexpensive French imports that are as much fun to sip as any award-winning microbrew.

So the next time the bartender looks askance when someone orders wine, be brave. Persevere. And offer to buy them a glass as well.

It’s time to start a new bar tradition – one that includes wine.

– Guest columnist Jeff Siegel, despite growing up in the suburbs, has overcome that handicap (to say nothing of a youth wasted on wine coolers and Coke and Southern Comfort) to appreciate a great joint when he sees one. Along the way, he has written for some of the country leading magazines, including Sports Illustrated, Gourmet, Travel & Leisure, and Forbes. You can contact him at Jeff.Siegel@att.net.

By Jeff Siegel