While discussing the protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in American cities, David Marcus wrote in a Fox News Opinion piece last week that “organized gangs of wine moms” were using “antifa tactics to harass and impede” ICE agents. He also referred to those mothers as “self-important white women,” a comment echoed by another Fox News personality, Will Cain, who spoke of “a weird kind of smugness” among them.

“Wine moms” conjures up ludicrous images — women holding babies in one arm and brandishing bottles in the other, legions of them marching forth in zombie lock step.

The term, an update of the old “moms who need wine” stereotype,popped up on social media during the pandemic to refer to mothers stuck at home with children and self-medicating with wine. But a few short years later, the phrase has been repurposed. Rather than referring to mothers who appreciate a little break, “wine mom” has now taken its place along other wine-related tropes used to flag self-righteous elitism.

Wine may be a beverage cherished by humanity for thousands of years, but in the United States it’s a handy signifier for snobbery. For decades, political conservatives derided the “Brie and Chablis set,” presumably liberals who, over their wine and cheese, sneer at ordinary beer-drinking Americans.

Any wine-drinking American politician knows better than to be photographed with a goblet in hand. Wine may be served as part of a dutiful ceremony, trotted out with the monkey suits at a state dinner. But at home? In a restaurant? At a campaign event? Never.

That’s never been an issue for President Trump. Though he owns a winery, he is probably the most famous living teetotaler. His administration clearly understands the economic power of the wine industry, and he has used the specter of wine tariffs to negotiate with European leaders. On Monday, he threatened to impose 200 percent tariffs on French wine, including Champagne, if President Emmanuel Macron of France declined to join his proposed “Board of Peace” for Gaza.

President Barack Obama, whose perceived gaffes as president included wearing a tan suit in the Oval Office and preferring mustard to ketchup on his hamburgers, knew better than to enjoy a glass of wine publicly. In 2009, as an effort to bridge the racial divide between Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Black historian who was arrested trying to enter his own home, and Sgt. James Crowley, the white arresting officer, Mr. Obama invited both men for a “beer summit” at the White House. Just a few regular guys hashing things out.

If real men drink, the thinking goes, they drink beer or spirits. In the 2010s, wine was a frequent beverage of choice among women in popular culture. It played a major role in TV series like “Scandal,” “The Good Wife” and “Homeland” where the women turned to wine to ease their troubles. In “Cougar Town,” wine was used to comic effect as its women characters filled tankard-size goblets and chugged it down.

With rare exception, the men in these shows stuck to beer or a glass of Scotch. Wine was effeminate. Not the sort of thing one drank after an afternoon clearing brush on the ranch. The only men who really enjoyed wine were those of dubious moral character, like Olivia Pope’s father in “Scandal.”

In the pop culture of an earlier era, the beers were already being poured when Norm and Cliffy, the barroom chorus in “Cheers,” arrived to take their seats. The impossibly snobbish Crane brothers of “Frasier” were of course wine lovers, pouring their sherries like fussy vicars and competing to become “corkmaster” of their snooty wine club. Their reality-check father, Marty, a retired police detective, naturally preferred Ballantine beer.

What do wine lovers know, anyway? Every few years, a study is published purporting to demonstrate that wine experts can’t tell the difference between cheap and expensive wines. The point isn’t the lack of a relationship between price and quality, but that wine expertise is a sham, a fraudulent attempt to demonstrate superiority — a critique akin to the current skepticism of expertise in general.

To many Americans, wine reeks of intellectuality and contemptuous Europeans, the sort of know-it-alls who will correct your pronunciation of Musigny and point out that you’re holding the glass all wrong. Wine people seem to speak a foreign language that breeds a smug superiority.

Wine itself is simply a beverage, delicious and haunting to some, uninteresting to others. The cultural freight it carries indicates a society at war with itself, resorting to the convenience of tried-and-true verbal weapons. Wine is just one more cudgel.

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