Monday, August 12, 2013

What If I Stop Writing This Crap Again


What if wine competitions had 4236 judges and 50 wine entries? If a wine received a Double Gold (meaning every judge awarded it a Gold Medal), would douchebags still declare the results worthless? If 4231 judges decided a wine was Gold, and one self-important judge decided it was Bronze, who would be right? If none of the 50 wines entered won a Gold Medal, would any of the judges be invited back the next year? Even the winemakers? What if all 50 wines were the same wine? And what if it received ten Golds, fourteen Silvers, eight Bronzes, and the rest didn’t receive any awards? Which medals would it use in its advertising? What if the winery put all three medals, a Gold, a Silver, and a Bronze, on the award-winning wine bottles? Would three times as many stupid consumers buy it?

What if the Master Sommelier exam had four parts, and the final part was a personality test? Can you name one who still would have passed?

What if Pierce’s Disease was spread to vineyards by winemakers with nipple rings? Would there be any healthy Ribolla Gialla vineyards? And what if the women winemakers with nipple rings also spread it? Would wineries be spraying for nipple rings? I know I might.

What if when yeast fermented grape juice, it created alcohol and released N2O? Would you drink Champagne before serious dental work? Would cellar workers suffer even more from brain damage? Would Champagne tastings be filled with people laughing uncontrollably and wetting their pants? How would that be different? Would every wedding toast make people laugh for a change? Would everybody in Reims fall down a lot? Äy bet they would.

What if someone trained a dog to smell the presence of MegaPurple in wine? How many Napa Cabernets would pass the sniff test? And how many would blame “that bitch” for low scores, not even meaning the dog? And what if the dog got excited and indicated a Natural Wine had MegaPurple added? How would you know it was MegaPurple and not that the Natural Wine smelled like dog butt? How would the dog know?

What if wineries were forced by the United States government to add a warning label that reads “Contains Esters?” Would people think every wine was kosher? Would morons complain that, “Esters give me headaches.”? Would the wine experts with blunt force head trauma who patronize every wine shop in America declare, “You know, when I was in France, none of the wines had esters.”

What if wine clubs required intelligence tests? Would there be any?

What if famous, highly collectible wineries decided to produce their own fraudulent wine bottles for auctions? Wouldn’t that be smart? Cash in on the stupidity of auction buyers from countries that start with “Ch.” Not Chad. They could print up extra labels, buy some juice on the bulk market, slap it in some magnums, and make a killing. Who would know? For eight bucks, they can get Acker Merrill to sell it. Perfect provenance, immaculate condition, and bingo, the wines are just like Falun Gong members—stuck forever somewhere in a Chinese cellar. And, really, aren’t many of them already making fraudulent wines? They just don’t bother to use fake labels.

What if corks were made from the bark of willow trees instead of oaks? Then after you got really drunk, you could just boil the cork and make some aspirin for your hangover. This is genius, so, remember, I thought of it first. I don’t think there’s such a thing as an Advil tree.

What if, instead of ancient Egyptian kings, large format bottles were named for war criminals? “Hey, I just bought a Hitler of ’09 Lafite!” “Yeah, well, I’m drinking my Pol Pot of  ’75 Caymus Special Selection tonight.” “I can top that—I’ve got a Rumsfeld of ’85 La Tâche.” Perhaps magnums would be referred to as, “A bottle in the hand is worth two in the Bush.”

What if you made wine in space? Would wine writers describe its mouthfeel as weightless? Would it be a Zero Gravity flow winery? If you made an orange wine, would you name it Tang? If you made sparkling wine and popped the cork, would you be able to hear it? Would they make a movie that had a tagline, “In space, no one can hear you disgorge?” Would it have to be about wine, or could it be about bodily functions?

What if they had named the movie about four narcissistic bozos trying to pass the Master Sommelier exam for the effect it had on people who viewed it, would it have been called “UniSOMM?”

What if tomorrow everyone stopped reading wine blogs? How would we know?

14 comments:

Charlie Olken said...

Your Google counter would tell you, and hari kari would be the result.

What if every one of your one-liners become a blog topic? Would that help you reach your life goal of 10,000 blogs? (Hey, I just past STEVE! for number of posts)

Daniel said...

wine clubs do have an intelligence test...if you sign up, you failed.

Thomas said...

Did Wark do another one of these or are you just bored?

What if the answer to your questions were yes, and no, and maybe, and who cares?

Ron Washam, HMW said...

Puff Daddy,
Hari Kari was one of my alltime favorite baseball announcers.

After two blistering posts, I thought I'd go back to silliness. I like the "What if" format. I stole it from Wark, so that makes it even more satisfying.

I'll never get close to STEVE! numbers of posts. He doesn't either.

Daniel,
There you go.

Thomas,
I'm bored, but I'm not as bored as guys wasting time reading wine blogs.

Steve Lay said...

If wine weren't called "Chewy" what would it otherwise be called? I had a chewy once and swallowed it by accident and puked for 3 days. In private, do wine judges pick their noses or scratch in irreverent places like everyone else. Do these folks really think intelligent people care what they think? If you like wine ads read Wine Spectator at the library; assuming they subscribe.
Oh, holly'er than thou.

Marcia Macomber said...

What about Aunt Esther? What would we do without her?

What if bottles really opened from the bottom like all those Wine Woot photos?

What if we couldn't get our Monday morning guffaws from the HoseMaster? (Mon Dieu!)

And what if we couldn't leave inane comments in this comment section???

Thomas said...

Inane? Bored?

Are you people reading my mail???

The Sommeliere said...

Ron,this cracked me up (which I REALLY needed today--poodle/doodles both sick today and this was hysterical: "What if wineries were forced by the United States government to add a warning label that reads “Contains Esters?” Would people think every wine was kosher? Would morons complain that, “Esters give me headaches.”

When I teach my wine classes, I discuss aldehydes and esters, telling them,"that's not my Aunt Esther" (who REALLY gave me a headache)!

Den Master said...

OK, I have one too: What question in the original post doesn't have a question mark after it?

Unknown said...

What if someone had to actually know how wine was made before they could claim to be an expert? Would there be like 5 sommeliers on the planet? And 2 wine bloggers?

Ron Washam, HMW said...

Hey Gang,
Wow, quite the amateur group of comedy writers I have here. I know that I have the smartest and funniest group of common taters of any wine blog, including Pallet Press. Thanks for that. Truly, I get a real kick out of reading everyone's contributions.

This sort of piece is a version of my old exercise of writing a bunch of jokes just to warm up. A few work, most stink. But if it gets a few chuckles, I'm fine with that. The question format just gives it a structure, though very loose. Knock-knock jokes without the knockers.

The wine biz needs more silliness, less pontification and polemics (something I'm never guilty of). And less alliteration, too.

Samantha Dugan said...

Ron My Love,

Well I've got a pair of un-Pierced knockers should you need to borrow them.

Unknown said...

hey jose, did you read the latest Oregon wine news? If not, you should google the latest news on Troon Vineyards. Let's just say they've been a little to generous serving their white...

Ron Washam, HMW said...

Gabe,
Thanks for the tip (that's what she said), I hadn't seen that report. Wow. Oral sex on a plane trip from Las Vegas? Well, it's not the first time. I heard Buddy Holly went down in a plane.

Sometimes the crap just writes itself.

At least now a few people will be talking about Oregon wineries.