Monday, July 14, 2014

AuthenticLand!


Splooge Estates, and our sister winery, The Linoleum Project™, are proud to announce the opening of our newest and most exciting project to date, AuthenticLand! Located in Los Angeles, California, AuthenticLand isn’t just a winery that focuses on Natural, Real, Authentic and Certified Sensitive® wines, AuthenticLand is also Southern California’s latest amusement park! Bring the whole family! While Mom and Dad sample the latest releases from The Linoleum Project™, the kids can experience the thrill of AuthenticLand’s most fearsome roller coaster, Shittin’ Brix! AuthenticLand promises to be all-natural fun for the whole family.

Those of you who love wine may be asking yourselves, Why Los Angeles? Why start a new winery in the Least Natural City in the World, a city where the movies are reel but the tits are fake? Splooge Estate’s Director of Winemaking Seaman Samples explains:

“We’re running out of weird old vineyards in Northern California to exploit. Every damned vineyard planted to Trousseau or Negrette (and if you haven’t had our co-fermented Trousseau and Negrette, you owe yourself a bottle of the The Linoleum Project™ “Trou Gret”—look for John Wayne on the label!), Chenin Blanc or Furmint (come on, haven’t you had our Furmint and Chenin Blanc combination, The Linoleum Project™ Chenin de Fur?—it’s our version of overpriced Night Train!) is overrun with creepy young winemakers looking to make names for themselves by producing Natural Wines from orphan varieties. These young winemakers are all over these orphan varieties like the sex trade on runaways. Pimp ‘em out, slap ‘em in some fancy wrapping, and sell ‘em to mouth-breathing perverts. At Splooge Estate, we saw this coming. We knew there were vineyards in Southern California, and we knew they were old. That’s all we needed to start lining up investors to build AuthenticLand. Are the vineyards any good? They’re old! That’s all you need to sell Authentic wine. If we say they’re great vineyards, well, we can take that to the bank, regardless of whether you can. And, besides, once we’re done with the fruit, hell, it doesn’t really matter how good the vineyard was.”

Once we decided to build yet another winery focused on producing fine wines that express the character of the land, even if that character is primarily pavement (which the first releases capture perfectly, having been fermented in cement eggs—not winemaking cement eggs, but eggs harvested from very old termagants), we then decided to make AuthenticLand a Southern California must-see tourist destination, like Disneyland, Sea World, and Kim Kardashian’s ButtBonanza. (What’s that brown mark on your forehead? Must be Ass Wednesday at ButtBonanza!) At AuthenticLand, there’s our Certified Sensitive® wines for the adults to taste and purchase. Remember, The Linoleum Project™ makes only Certified Sensitive® wines. Leave your critical faculties behind when you taste our wines! Judgment has no place in AuthenticLand, any more than quality control does. Don’t say anything negative about our wines, no matter how bad they taste! They’re right there, right in front of you, and they’re Certified Sensitive®! Have some human feelings, for fuck’s sake, the wines do. They’ve been crushed once, don’t crush them again. Even a dirty look can render them dumb, and ruin them for everyone. Just drink ‘em and praise ‘em, even if you don’t understand their reason to exist. It’s what the “wine critics” do.

While the adults are enjoying the wines, the kids can explore all of AuthenticLand’s worlds. Our aim is to make it both fun and educational for the kids.

FANTASYWORLD!
What reflects the philosophy of Authentic Wines better than Fantasy? Kids will line up to experience “It’s a Small Lot World,” where singing and dancing dolls that bear remarkable resemblances to major wine reviewers (Look, isn’t that Jay McInerney dressed as a little Dutch boy about to put his finger in another dike!) teach the kids that wine made in small lots is better than wine made in big lots by definition! Unless, of course, as Thomas Mathews in his Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit (an exact replica of the one he wears to Wine Spectator Grand Awards!) reminds the kids, they’re major advertisers! “It’s a Small Lot World” is fun for all ages, but don’t let that catchy jingle get caught in your brain for the rest of the day! Mommy and Daddy are drunk in the tasting room, and even Certified Sensitive® can make Daddy belligerent. In 2016, look for the newest FantasyWorld attraction to open. It’s “Alice in Wonderland!” Ride magic earthworms as you follow Alice Feiring down the Rabbit Hole of Self-Delusion, dine with her at the Tea Party and Drink the Kool-Aid table with the Mad Hatter Randall Grahm and the March Hairless Terry Theise! Oh, the fun you’ll have!

TOMORROWORLD!
We know that the great wines of today are Natural, Authentic, Real and Certified Sensitive®, but what will the future bring? We know that orange wines are the best wines, that sulfites cause brain cancer, and indigenous yeast have the highest yeast IQ’s. So what’s next? You’ll get a peek at the future as you tour AuthenticLand’s “Winery of Tomorrow!” Do you love those skin contact “orange” white wines? In the future, Natural Winemakers will make white wine using only the skins! Yes, peeling each Torrontes grape by hand is hard work, but it’s an ancient tradition passed down from Roman prostitutes—who are replaced in the future by wine bloggers. Then the skins are crushed, left unattended while the winemaker is serviced by the wine bloggers (a tradition handed down from today), and when fermentation is done, the resulting wine best expresses its site—it’s really brown and smells like cellar rat butt. And it’s got hardly any alcohol at all! Can’t wait! We don’t want to give all its secrets away, you’ll have to visit AuthenticLand for that, but also look in the “Winery of Tomorrow” for grapes harvested by mouth (“Hands off” is our motto!), wines aged in cactus (climate change will have made oak forests extinct), and corks that say “Shit!” when you put the corkscrew in.

FRONTIERWORLD!
FrontierWorld is all about nostalgia, about the long lost days of winemaking, when wine was intentionally, if wrongheadedly, made to taste good. Your and your family should spend a few minutes in “Great Moments with Mr. Mondavi.” A lifelike robot, think James Laube, that is a perfect rendition of Robert Mondavi talks about his love of fine wine, his love of Napa Valley, and his life dedicated to making wine part of everyday gracious living. It’s pathetic. We know now that the crap Mondavi spent his life promoting isn’t real wine, isn’t authentic wine, that it’s for indiscriminate suckers, and you leave feeling sorry for this California pioneering giant. What an idiot! Fun for the whole family. Spoiler alert! That’s a dummy of Fred Franzia in the background flippin’ ol’ Bob the bird! You and the kids will love FrontierWorld. Mom and Dad, don’t miss the old-fashioned tasting room where you can sample old favorites from the past like Mateus, Blue Nun, Mouton-Cadet, Green Hungarian, and Wente Brothers Blanc de Blancs! Then go back to The Linoleum Estate™ tasting room and, bingo, now the wines taste good!

There’s something for everyone at AuthenticLand. As we always say here at Splooge Estate and The Linoleum Project™, “If it’s taste you’re after, you’re in the wrong place.”


18 comments:

Francly Speaking said...

Can you by a 'one for all' pass?

John M. Kelly said...

I love it that we can always count on Splooge Estate for the Peter North-quality money shot! -> "These young winemakers are all over these orphan varieties like the sex trade on runaways. Pimp ‘em out, slap ‘em in some fancy wrapping, and sell ‘em to mouth-breathing perverts. At Splooge Estate, we saw this coming... Are the vineyards any good? They’re old! That’s all you need to sell Authentic wine."

Unknown said...

Great job on the Blog awards! It's articles like Splooge Estates that allow you spread your seed of wisdom and humor!

John M. Kelly said...

Ahahaha! You got another Poodle! I'm sure you are so very proud. But seriously, congratulations?

Ron Washam, HMW said...

Hello Common Taters,
Yes, I won a Poodle again. Not my fault. I didn't campaign, and only mentioned it in the guise of Lo Hai Qu (who is mightily cheesed off she wasn't even nominated). No need for congrats. And no need for scorn either.

AuthenticLand was inspired by Crazy Abe Schoener's plans to open a winery in Los Angeles focused on vineyards in Southern California. I thought, why not make it an amusement park, too? After that thought, the piece almost wrote itself.

I'll only be publishing here occasionally from now on. Lots of people thought I'd written that I'd retired a few posts back. I merely said I was seriously considering it. Hard to say which is worse in the wine blog world, the writing or the reading comprehension. Anyway, I'll post when I'm moved to do so. I'm still trying to write regularly, but publishing is a different story. I'm less inclined to do that.

Samantha Dugan said...

Ron My Love,
I'm holding out for NeverNeverLandWorld, a place where we all get to never grow up pretend that wines like Caymus are still good. Snort a big line of "pixie dust" and we are all transported back 20 years.
Nice to see you here again Love. I do love you so!

Ron Washam, HMW said...

My Gorgeous Samantha,
Wait, I thought we were already living in NeverNeverLandWorld--it even has a wine publication, Wine Spectator. The boys there never grow up.

Oh, I'll be here on occasion, Love, just not sure yet when or how often. Just keep up that expensive subscription.

I love you, too!

Marcia Macomber said...

Damn! That was a hoot. The only one missing from FrontierLand is a cardboard cutout of Orson Welles repeating his Paul Masson tagline over and over and over again (getting drunker and drunker and drunker).

AuthenticLand sounds like a blast. The new Alice ride hits just the right (and expected) level of sarcasm. You can send your Poodles there! Perhaps you should give Natalie, "Ms. MacLean's Wild Ride"?

Samantha Dugan said...

Oh hells no! If he's giving anyone around here a wild ride it had better be me. Dammit.

Charlie Olken said...

Let me see if I have this right. First you said you were going to retire (again) and they you didn't. And now you say you are going to publish again but you don't know when. I guess we will just have to hope that our expensive subscriptions don't run out.

Oh, and welcome back from not retiring.

Ron Washam, HMW said...

Puff Daddy,
See, this is what I mean by "reading comprehension." I did not say I was retiring. I said, "This isn’t a farewell piece. Or it might be. I don’t know." No matter. I've earned the reputation of constantly retiring.

If I do publish, it won't be on the old Monday and Thursday schedule. I'm weary of that. And don't feel I have anything to prove any more. So I'll write, and then I'll publish when the urge hits me. I write now more often than I publish. That doesn't mean what I publish is better than before, but it does mean it's more fun for me.

Charlie Olken said...

Reading comprehension? Hell, there are days when I have trouble with writing comprehension.

But, I am once again confused so let me see if I have this latest bit of writing read right.

You are going to write more often. Right? But you are going to publish less often. Huh?

Who is going to laugh if you don't publish? And what is comedy without laughs or pain or both?

And you are not going to publish on Mondays and Thursday because that was a drag. OK, I do get that.

But this thing about having something to prove? I have something to prove--like I am still breathing--but after that, do I give a rusty rats ass as long as folks keep up their expensive subscriptions? Which, by the way, I have already promised to do for HMW, and I am sure that Sam and a few others will do as well.

I am beginning to worry that I don't know who is on first anymore.

Ron Washam, HMW said...

"I am beginning to worry that I don't know who is on first anymore."

Who is on first.

I don't know.

Third Base!

Simple.

Charlie Olken said...

Well,then who's playing first.

Yes.

Samantha Dugan said...

(Strapping on the pads) Did someone request Third Base?

Thomas said...

Charlie thinks he has troubles. I'm too poor to afford a subscription to this blog.

Unknown said...

the poet Kahlil Gibran once said, "if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine". The comedian Bud Abbot once said, "What's on second, Who's on first". Writers, winemakers, poets and comedians sometimes get lost looking for themselves.
For what it's worth, you're one of my favorite wine writers. I'm obviously drunk, so feel free to delete this in the morning. Just wanted you to know I miss your lighthouse for wine misfits.
Cheers

Ron Washam, HMW said...

Gabe,
Oh, man, I love the drunk common taters best of all. Thanks for the kind words. I don't really think of myself, or the HoseMaster, as a wine writer--not most of the time anyway. I'm more of a gadfly. Wine is my subject matter, but only as it reflects culture and the times. Tim Atkin is a wine writer, I'm a baggy pants comedian.

Stay tuned, Gabe. I'll be around now and then.