What Not to Publish on Your Stupid Wine Blog in 2014

Oh, for God’s sake, don’t interview your pets. They cough up furballs. They eat their own shit. They lick themselves endlessly. May as well interview Jay McInerney.


Stop calling them “somms.” You use that because you’re stupid and can’t pronounce “sommelier” properly. You also say cute and nauseating words like “peeps.” “Hey, those somms are my peeps.” Now even Sommelier Journal has been reduced to The Somm Journal. Yeah, that’s respectful. Maybe we’ll soon have “The New England Journal of Quacks.” Sure, bartenders, stinking BARTENDERS, are now “Mixologists,” like they have a degree from Harvard in Mixology—the study of Mix—but sommeliers are now the diminutive “somm.” Mixologists are just BARTENDERS that put weird fruit in your cocktail and charge you quadruple the price. They’re not mixologists, they’re fructivores. Let’s call them dumb “frucs.”


Lists are over. Lists are just lazy ways to kill a post. You haven’t posted for a while, you have “writer’s block,” which is astonishing considering you’re about as much a writer as Raj Parr is a winemaker, so you make up a list of your favorite wines, or your favorite wineries, or your favorite lists. No one cares. Believe me, not one single yutz who reads your blog cares about your asinine list. Here’s MY list of my favorite wines of 2013:

5. Oh, shit, what was the name of it? I had it in that Italian restaurant, it was made from Aglianico, I think, or Refosco, maybe. Started with an “A.” I’ll think of it.

4. That wine from the Cabernet tasting we did. You know, with the animal on the label, what was that? It was a natural wine, I remember that. Smelled like that time you had stinkfinger from your cousin Annie.

3. The label was mostly gray, and it was Pinot Noir, either from the Williamette Valley, or could have been New Zealand. For sure, it was 2010.

2. It was some awesome Rhone from Kermit Lynch. Had like a thingie on the bottle. Really good.

1. I could have killed three bottles of this stuff! I mean, Wow. I can see the label, but I can’t quite remember. I’ll know it when I see it again, I mean, fuck, it was awesome.

See? Stupid. Just stop. Don’t be so goddam lazy. Think of something interesting to say.


Let’s just be frank. There are no great wines under $15. Stop pretending there are. There are perfectly fine wines under $15, there are wines you can enjoy and be happy you tasted under $15, but there just aren’t GREAT wines under $15. Blow me. Stop selling wine short. You criticize Parker for exaggerating, you badmouth Wine Spectator for inflating scores, and then you write about GREAT wines under $15. Shut the hell up.


We know Steve Matthiasson is a great winemaker. You’re the 150th person this year to tell us that. Wow! How insightful. Can’t wait to read that.


There’s nothing left to say about social media. Nothing. There wasn’t shit to begin with, now there’s nothing. It doesn’t sell wine, it sells social media. What isn’t social media? Telephones sell more fucking wine than social media. Oh, but phones are social media, right?! If it sells wine, chumps, it’s social media; if it’s social media, it sells wine. It’s the classic huckster logic. Stop talking about it. No one cares. Wineries really don’t care. Wineries that can’t sell wine have one problem—they make crappy wine. When social media makes better wine, let me know. Otherwise, bite me.


They’re just dogs. That they live at a winery, what kind of idiot cares about that? Post pictures of service dogs. They help blind people, and veterans with PTSD (not “vets,” OK, they deserve respect, like SOMMELIERS!). Winery dogs? Glorified door mats.


Terroir. Stop trying to figure it out. You can’t. Terroir in wine is like a soul in humans. You look for it every time, but, most of the time, it ain’t there. And, honestly, no one believes you when you say a wine has terroir anyway. First of all, you pronounce it as stupidly as you do sommelier. And second of all, you say things like, “Oh, that’s the terroir talking,” like that means something. There must be 20 billion microclimates in the wine world. One assumes they all have terroir. So who gives a crap? Oh, but this guy knows how to express the terroir! Maybe to you, blowhard. The guy next door to him thinks his wine sucks. I just don’t care. I want the wine to taste good, I don’t need it to slip me its address.


Stop posting pictures from your glamorous wine junkets. You suck at photography, and I didn’t come here to look at your adolescent scrap book. Plus, who are those dumpy people you’re with? For the most part, your colleagues have the doughy complexion of the overdrinking endomorphs they are. Leave that crap on FaceBook where no one will see it.


Just stop spouting your usual mindless blather in 2014. You know you’re doing it when you do it. Promise yourself you’ll stop. You’d be doing us all a favor. Truly. We're all just laughing at you.