The Linoleum Project™ from Splooge Estate

Splooge Estate is proud to announce its newest, some might say thickest, releases yet under our proud new banner, The Linoleum Project™. Who knows how high the ceiling is for great wines? Many wineries strive to find that out. At Splooge Estate, we thought we’d try to see where the linoleum floor for wine lies, and so we named our quest, The Linoleum Project™. The Linoleum Project™ is designed to showcase wines from unusual grapes grown in unusual places and pretty much just made however the hell we feel like making them. These are wines of Intention, Pretension and Lack of Attention. We think you’ll like them, but, really, Enjoyment is not the idea.  The idea is to take an ancient beverage designed to deliver Pleasure and make it an Intellectual Journey. Frankly, many wine lovers will just be too stupid to understand these wines. Too many wines today are about Hedonism; the wines of Splooge Estate are about Onanism; with The Linoleum Project™, we focus on Masochism. We’re not just after the denial of Pleasure, we want to satisfy the wine lover’s feelings of self-loathing and doubt. Perhaps not that hard to achieve, but no other winery seems to even try.

As you would expect from a Splooge Estate project, the wines of The Linoleum Project™ are Natural, Authentic and Real. To take it even further, the wines of The Linoleum Profect™ are also Certified Sensitive. Certified Sensitive wines are acutely tuned in to what you say and feel about them. We ask that you not talk about their flaws while drinking them. THEY’RE RIGHT THERE, ASSWIPE! They can hear you. How would you like it if one of our Certified Sensitive wines talked about that big red thing you always pick at on your nose? Certified Sensitive wines want you to try to understand them even if you don’t really like them at first—think Neo-Nazi Skinheads. With some time and patience and compassion, you might just discover that you actually do like them, or at least understand them. And that’s the point. Any well-made wine can deliver happiness. A wine from The Linoleum Project™ challenges your brain, your sense of smell, and your ability to forgive yourself for spending fifty bucks on creatively packaged crap. Please remember our motto: You Might Be Too Stupid to Understand Our Wines. Chances are this applies to you.

We started The Linoleum Project™ ten years ago when we stumbled upon an ancient vineyard planted to German Colombard. German Colombard is a rare grape known as a “conquering grape.” It conquered French Colombard and Green Hungarian to become German Colombard. Don’t try to figure this out. It’s grape eugenics performed by a higher grape intelligence. The two grapes were forced to cross breed. In viticultural terms, it’s referred to as a Cluster Fuck. But never mind that, the point is that we discovered these old German Colombard vines, which probably originated around 1939, in an untended vineyard behind an abandoned Best Buy. We knew we had stumbled upon destiny. We tended the vineyard and, in 2003, we harvested a mere 50 pounds of fruit from the six acres of vines. We’d have harvested more but homeless people kept eating them. (We recently planted two acres of German Colombard at the Splooge Estate from seeds we sifted from the homeless people’s excrement. Sadly, the vineyard seems to be afflicted with a rare mold, Hobotrytis.)

The 50 pounds of German Colombard were fermented on their own skins and were not destemmed. Basically, we forgot they were even in the winery. After six months, the grapes were pressed (by the local dry cleaner) and the resulting juice was placed in eleven handmade Whoopee Cushions for extended aging. We did lose one container to an unfortunate birthday prank, but, damn, it was funny. We named the wine POOT, which is the German word for “hopeless,” and is taken from the work of Schopenauer. If you don’t know Schopenauer, You Might Be Too Stupid to Understand Our Wines. The 2003 POOT is now available for purchase to Splooge Estate Ejaculate™ members. There is a 1 bottle limit, and we’d like to assure you that, yes, POOT is the shimmering color of Despair. There were no added sulfites at bottling, and one of the bottles must have a fart whistle in it because one’s missing.

In 2005, a neighboring winery, who knew we were on the lookout for vineyards no one else thought were worth anything, turned us on to an old, head-pruned vineyard that we discovered was 80-year-old Frappato. The vines were not in great shape. They had more suckers than a cult wine mailing list. We decided to let this old and distinguished vineyard, located at 3200’ next to a waterfall popular with suicide victims, express itself without any interference from us. Besides, it was way out in the Boonies and a pain in the ass to get to. We harvested two tons of Frappato from the seventeen acres, most of it from twenty really happy vines.

As part of The Linoleum Project™, we love our Frappato! And, in one of those weird synergies that the Universe provides us if we’d only listen, when you say “Frappato” in a really loud voice, it sounds just like the Whoopee Cushion full of German Colombard did when Susie plopped her big ass on it on her birthday! At The Linoleum Project™ we spend way more time thinking about that kind of stuff than actually making wine.

After harvest, the Frappato was gently crushed, one berry at a time, between the butt cheeks of teenage virgins. This is the traditional way Frappato was made in Sicily a few hundred years ago, though there is not much Frappato left in Sicily, and certainly no teenage virgins. Our cult following for The Linoleum Project™ allows us access to many virgin interns who flock to Splooge for reasons only known to them. The Frappato was aged on the lees from whatever was in the barrel before the Frappato for 60 months. It was pretty good after 16 months, even had the pretty red fruit aromas of Frappato, so we figured after 60 months it would be almost four times better! It’s not, but oh well. And, please, remember that our wines are Certified Sensitive, so keep your opinions to yourself as you drink the wine—Frappato is a notoriously thin-skinned grape, and is Sicilian. You wouldn’t be the first person to die from drinking wine from The Linoleum Project™.