Monday, January 25, 2016

Puckette's Charge: Wine Folly


Are you new to wine? Do you want to learn about wine from someone who knows only the teeniest bit more than you? Isn’t that the way you prefer to learn, from someone just a little bit smarter than you? What if you wanted to become a surgeon? Medical school is so expensive, and the teachers there talk way over your head! Surgery doesn’t have to be just for brainiacs! Why not just learn from the local butcher? Surgery is just knives and meat. Start there. But you don’t want to be a surgeon, you want to learn about wine. That’s why Wine Folly is here! No brainiacs allowed! We’re Wine Folly. We’re the knives, and you’re the meat! Let’s get started.

I’m Madeline Puckette, and I’m just like you. I like to get drunk and make videos! And I figured out how to create a wine empire for people just like us, people who want our wine knowledge to be shallow, but good enough to make our craft beer drinking friends think we’re cool. I make wine simple because I know you’re simple. I even use a really large typeface for Wine Folly so that it’s easier to use your fingers to read it. I never take the intelligence of my fans for granted. I just assume you’re reading Wine Folly because you don’t have much. And, dammit, that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying and understanding wine! Other wine websites use all these big words that are confusing. Not here. I make wine simple. And I never forget that my fans are like privileged white kids with powerful attorneys—I always give you really short sentences.

You’ll find lots of neat graphics on Wine Folly, too! At first, they might not make sense. But stay with it, maybe read along with a friend who has a high school diploma. The graphics are a way to make wine easier to understand. For example, you might read in one of those hard wine books with hardly any pictures that wine is about 85% water, 14% alcohol, and 1% minerals and acids and stuff like that. I know, that’s not easy to understand for me either. What exactly does that mean, 85% and 14% and all that? So I made a pie chart! Don’t you love pie charts? I like them almost as much as I like real pie (oh, yes, I forgot to mention that I’m really funny, too). If you don’t know what a pie chart is, you will! I’m all about pie charts. A pie chart is a chart in the shape of a pie. We call it “round.” A wine can be “round,” too, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves! That’s advanced wine talk. On my “round” pie chart I divide the circle into three parts. The biggest part is the 85% part, and it’s labeled “water.” This would be the part of the pie Robert Parker eats! Another part, a lot smaller, says “alcohol.” This is the little part of the pie that I might eat, and maybe throw it up later when no one’s looking. Finally, a little sliver is the “minerals, acids and other junk” part. Give that little piece to the wino downtown. See! That’s so much easier to understand. Simple, right? Wine is mostly water like Wine Folly is mostly empty space.

Now hop on over to Amazon and buy my new book, “Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine.” Don’t be scared that it’s 240 pages! You can read the whole book in about 20 minutes. Well, maybe not you. It’s jampacked with pie charts, and graphs, and the sorts of illustrations you find on absolutely the finest cocktail napkins! Many of them took several minutes on the internet to research. Look, you can buy 50 different beginner wine books on Amazon, and they all say the same things. There’s absolutely nothing new here. Not in those books, and sure as hell not in mine. But “Wine Folly” has all my pie charts and graphs! They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Oh, don’t let that intimidate you. My pictures are only worth five or six!

You’re going to learn so much about wine from my books and videos! For example, I help you understand how to taste a wine. First, you need to smell it. This is from my book:

“Hold your glass just under your nose and sniff once to ‘prime’ your nose. Then swirl your wine once and smell again. This time, smell the wine longer and slower but just as delicately. Switch between sniffing and thinking.”
 

This is how even MWs and MSs smell wine. You can’t be expected to sniff and think at the same time! No one can do that. It’s why we hold our breath when we’re trying to figure out the crossword puzzles in “Highlights for Children.” And it’s important you just swirl the wine once. Wine can get dizzy, and then it gets all confused. Hey, you haven’t even bought my book yet and already you’re a lot smarter about wine!

I don’t like to brag, but what sets me apart from the other people writing about wine is that I don’t feel the need to be right all the time. Wine isn’t about facts. You get that. The whole reason to have a wine blog and to write a wine book is to show people that none of that stuff really matters. Facts, in fact (oh, I can’t help it, I’m just pixieish and funny), are just like wine. Pick the ones you like and just ignore the other ones. I try to make it into a game. See if you can figure out what facts are actually facts, and which ones I’m ignoring. Smart people get bogged down in details, which is just so stupid. But when you read Wine Folly, don’t worry, there’s no smart people here!

I think close enough is good enough. Like I’m close enough to a wine expert that you should buy my book. Like in one of my informative videos I compare an Oregon Pinot Noir to a California Pinot Noir. Which was fun because I had no idea what I was talking about. So the California Pinot Noir was a William Hill Pinot Noir from the Central Coast. I don’t know what that means. Central Coast? That’s vague. A Coast is really long, and a Central is really small. WTF?  So I mentioned that when a wine label says Central Coast the grapes could come from anywhere from all the way up in Mendocino to all the way down to Santa Barbara. See there! Close enough! If you don’t know that’s way off, then your stupid Millennial friends won’t know either. And, come on, Mendocino is only a few hundred miles off! And it’s not like I didn’t know Oregon was near Canada somewhere.

My book is the top-selling wine book on Amazon! Suck it Jancis and Karen! You spend years and years writing your books and I write mine over the weekend. I guess we know who the best wine writer in the world is now. Ask Geoff Kruth MS, or“The Washington Post,” or all the other really smart people who put my book in their Best Wine Books of the Year lists. Those hypocrites. They know. Facts just don’t really matter.


46 comments:

  1. I just checked their website; it's pretty frightening actually. Epecially all the handy tips.

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  2. I had an exchange with her on the folly website about if southern Rhone is comparable to GSM blends from Australia (she contended that South Rhone is essentially GSM and should not be thought of as different).
    The graphics are annoying but it's the blatantly incorrect information or info that is only just "barely correct and verifiable" that annoy me the most.

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  3. ReportMonkey,
    Valid point. Though, honestly, I also know a lot of stupid Democrats, and a couple of lousy Whigs.

    Matthew,
    I think what annoys me the most is how uninformed and essentially stupid many of her thoughts about wine are. Like mine probably were at her age. But when your wine book is the #1 wine book on Amazon, and it's filled with laughable wine "facts," I just find that kind of sad.

    Scott,
    Wine blogs are filled with misinformation, I'm the prime example of that, what gets me is that somehow otherwise intelligent people see her site and book as a great resource for novice wine drinkers. It is if you want to be wrong all the time.

    Those wine pundits who put the "Wine Folly" book on their list of best wine books of 2015 ought to be ashamed of themselves. There are at least a dozen books available that are far better for a beginner, and there were at least fifteen books published last year written by highly qualified, thoughtful wine experts that should have been listed instead. It's emblematic of the stupidity of the internet age, this Golden Age of Wine Writing, that people, the Washington Post, for example, would rave about the book.

    In hindsight, I was far too kind in this piece.

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  4. "Medical school is so expensive, and the teachers there talk way over your head! Surgery doesn’t have to be just for brainiacs! Why not just learn from the local butcher? Surgery is just knives and meat. Start there."
    You had me glued to your post after that gem.
    If I had ANY thought about buying this book, you have squashed it!
    Again, Ron, thanks for brightening my Monday morning.
    Don

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  5. Could somebody list the better books? I read the Wine Folly book and I thought the first 30 pages told you 95% of what you need to know to have a clue about wine. The infographic style plays well with the younger "I don't have time to read I have to get back on Twitter mentality". Challenge: List a book that does a BETTER job of instructing a newb in 30 pages!

    Regarding Scott and his GSM comparison: What is the difference if the varietals are the same (beyond terroir)?

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  6. In the process of learning more about wine, I happened to purchase a couple of Madeline’s wine posters. If you’re an idiot savant and can remember everything you read in a wine book and retain it forever, good for you. Some of us want to fill our brains with something else besides wine facts, like what’s a good position for better sex (one of your favorite subjects), or which type of chocolate is more luscious than the rest. Or maybe even something really important like who is most qualified to be the next President of the US. Books and seminars abound trying to lure Millennials to drink wine so all the “old white guys” can keep their snobby wine jobs. Here’s a millennial doing her best to turn her peers into winos, has apparently succeeded in getting them to buy lots of her books, and you guys are giving her sh*t? I would like to write a whole article lampooning you guys for lampooning her. I’m married to wine chemist. I don’t need to know the molecular make up of wine to be able to drink, enjoy it and BUY it. Isn’t that really what’s most important?

    You guys are starting to sound like the wine snobs you make fun of!

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  7. How about restricting comments to wine and wit, and leaving the political stuff for somewhere else. Just a thought.

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  8. Peter,
    Start with Hugh Johnson's World Atlas of Wine. Kevin Zraly's Windows on the World Wine Course. There are many others. That said, I'm glad you got a lot from the first 30 pages of Wine Folly. How sure are you that what you learned was, in fact, right?

    And there are a lot of differences between GSM and Southern Rhones. Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre are three grapes allowed in the Southern Rhone, and the grapes in GSM, and that's about all the two wines have in common--like how Brad Pitt and I both have blue eyes.

    Lynn,
    Well, in my case, idiot savant is half right.

    I don't really have a choice about being an old white guy, so I won't defend us. In case you hadn't noticed, Lynn, I give lots and lots of old white guys shit all the time on HoseMaster. I don't discriminate. Madeline joins the ranks of bestselling wine authors, puts herself out there as an authority, she gets the same treatment from me as everyone else. If your husband makes as many mistakes as a wine chemist as she makes as a wine writer, well, he won't be employed for much longer.

    Lampoon away! I'm all for lampooning. Old white guys, old white women, Millennials, any fools of your choosing. Send it to me, and I'll publish it here. You'll show me!

    Obillo,
    Yeah, HoseMaster is certainly half-wine and half-wit.

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  9. Hose,

    I'm a huge fan of yours. I know your style of writing. You don't need to get personal! My PhD husband is sitting here at home with 3 fractured ribs after passing out trying to do too much (like taking care of one his wine customers) after working all day at his full time gig. All while taking chemo. If you want to pick on someone, let it be ME. P.S. He's an old white guy, too, trying to retire. His company can't find anyone qualified enough to replace him. I don't think he needs to worry about losing his job. Oops, am I taking this all too seriously? I'm not the only one. There was a bit of satire mixed in with my comments, as well.

    Did you dare me to send you something to publish? I may take you up on it...

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  10. Ron My Love,

    The world of wine was woefully in need of a Rachel Ray, wasn't it? I've been to the site once, when someone sent me a link because they knew it was going to drive me batshit crazy....but I did learn which wines to drink with the doughnut cheeseburger I'll never eat and peanut butter cups. Can we stop dumbing it down all the fucking time? That how we end up with Sarah Palin and her ilk. Why do you have to learn wine in 30 pages?! If you love it, put the time in and learn it, let it teach you. Cramming shallow and oft incorrect information is NOT going to help anyone....aside from the one making money on your lack of patience and commitment. I just don't get it. You on t he other hand, you I get. I love you!

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  11. Well, I was sucked in. I went to the site.

    Silly me. I always thought Asti is a place in the Alps and Spumante is the Italian word for sparkling. Now I know it means "sweet wine."


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  12. Well, Asti is at the foot of the Alps, anyway...

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  13. Lynn,
    Go for it. I can always use a week off. See how you like it.

    My Gorgeous Samantha,
    Oh, Wine Folly is almost designed to drive you nuts.

    Like you, I think you do your readers, and those you might be trying to teach, a disservice when you dumb it down. But Madeline seems to be a whiz at social media, she created a successful website, and sells a lot of books. I, on the other hand, get lawsuits. That the book is useless, and filled with pretty stupid tips and info (Hey, Love, she suggests, I kid you not, that you serve Champagne "ice cold"), but it's a best seller. Helped along by the endorsements of folks trying to capture part of her Millennial audience. The blurbs about her book (on Amazon) are very disingenuous and damned funny. Sadly, they're written by some influential folks who should know better. And who want her fans to like them.

    I just thought it was time to have some fun with the whole thing.

    Thomas,
    I didn't put a link in the post so that, if my common taters did go to Wine Folly, she wouldn't see where they're coming from. I'm sneaky that way.

    Oh, don't read too much. You'll find out how little you actually know.

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  14. I dig Wine Folly. I've sent her video on "How to open a bottle of wine" to a few friends that were just getting started in the service industry. I've used her charts on "How sparkling wine is made" to educate my co-workers. And I've learned a fair bit about Austrian wine through her website.

    All that said, she's been incredibly successful by appealing to the same demographic that is buying adult coloring books, so I get why she would end up in the crosshairs of the Hosemaster. I gave up getting offended by the HMW after spending a year arguing about natural wine. But I will echo the sentiment of people who enjoy Wine Folly. If we're going to make fun of everyone for taking wine too seriously, then we have to allow a space for people who don't take it too seriously.

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  15. I might be mistaken, but based upon her writing approach I think that Puckette's day job is running a Presidential campaign. You certainly don't want facts to get in the way of your message.

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  16. Ron -- ol' Blue Eyes himself?

    I thought your eyes were jaundiced (like your humor) . . .

    The late Canadian wine writer Andrew Sharp wrote a wonderful consumer guide titled “Winetaster’s Secrets.”

    http://www.amazon.com/Winetasters-Secrets-Step-Step-Winetasting/dp/1894622472

    Backgrounder on the author:

    http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20000411.OBSHAR/BDAStory/BDA/deaths

    Quoting one of Ron's favorite punching bags:

    “An extremely well written book with the most informative and perceptive chapters on wine tasting I have read. This is the finest book for both beginners and serious wine collectors about the actual tasting process — lively, definitive and candid." ~~ Robert Parker

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  17. Gabe,
    My self-appointed job is to not take anyone or anything too seriously. Satire is black and white. It's driven by a clear vision that doesn't allow for nuance. It screams, it opposes, it points fingers. It doesn't waver. Ultimately, it's supposed to foster argument. And, I hope, squeeze a laugh or two out of everyone involved.

    I have a simple question. Does expertise count for anything?

    There's not a single piece of original thought in the whole Wine Folly concept, in the entire book. It's information you can find with a simple Google search, and then it's made into graphics. OK. Fine. You pick it up, you know only a little about wine, it's the first book you've ever read about wine, yes, you'll learn something. Does it matter if there are egregious mistakes in her work? I guess it doesn't matter, as long as you like it, right? What matters is you know what you like--which is what pyromaniacs and pedophiles say. We'll worry about the details later.

    I don't ever intend to offend specific people, not Madeline and not you. I do intend to burst bubbles. Being able to defend your thoughts and opinions is an important part of discourse, though social media makes this an afterthought. As HoseMaster, opinion is my weapon. As myself, I try to be thoughtful about my opinions. I'm not always successful.

    I'm glad to see a few defenders of Wine Folly. Good for you! It doesn't matter what I say here. It won't affect the success of Wine Folly. I have no illusions that I'm any sort of influential wine writer. Or that I'm even funny. Her book will continue to sell, and her site will continue to be successful. More folks enjoy her than enjoy HoseMaster, by a factor of a hundred, probably. She can comfortably ignore me.

    I know I would.

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  18. Ron,

    The problem of course is that old white guys like you have this crazy idea that dumbing down is the path to idiocracy. You also don't know how best to use the Internet, which is to simply pull the godamned plug!

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  19. Gabe,

    I think we all agree, there is loads of room for people that don't take wine too seriously, love those folks in fact but....maybe it shouldn't be those that speak as authoritarians? Just a thought. Any wine professional suggesting a wine pairing for peanut butter cups is engaging in the lowest form of pandering. I'm not saying, or suggesting that people can't drink wine with the chocolate covered peanut butter cups, don't care if they do, but suggesting a specific wine is not only stupid, it misleads the consumer. Take it from someone that is daily on the other end of questions like, "Which one of these super rich Cabernets is going to be better with my oysters?" or "What is your best Merlot for cupcakes?" because wine writers write these bullshit articles, so there has to be a perfect wine pairing for everything right? There is dumbing down and there is simply stupid.

    Pieces like that one I read are damaging and dishonest, you think she tasted that doughnut cheeseburger with Pinotage as she suggests you do? C'mon. That was the first post I'd read and because of that it will be the last. That said, it sounds like the site is popular and I'm all for people doing well in the wine business, just irritated when they snob up the place with junk like that, and believe me, putting wine in situations where it has no business (breakfast cereal and peanut butter cups for instance) is the epitome of snobbery.

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  20. Donald,
    Yeah, me too. I have a house account at the House of Pie Charts. I like them so much, I'm crusty. While Madeline is rolling in the dough.

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  21. And what wine goes with pie chart?

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  22. Thomas,
    Cupcake Chardonnay of course.

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  23. Thomas,
    I was thinking Vieux Tele-Graph.

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  24. What wine goes with pie chart?

    This, 'natch:

    http://bnawinegroup.com/humble-pie/

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  25. Ron,

    Certainly expertise counts for something. I haven't noticed any major factual errors when reading Wine Folly, my biggest criticism would be oversimplification. I certainly don't give it the amount of consideration that I give blogs like yours or STEVE's, and I really don't consider myself to be the target demographic. But I do recommend it to service industry friends who want to learn more about wine. It might not be the most original website for wine newbies, but it is certainly one of the best. And I understand and appreciate the value of your satire, and the conversations it sparks. It's why I choose to chime in so often.

    Samantha,

    I know how much you hate blogs about pairing wine with junk food. You are certainly not wrong about that. All I can say is that I've never seen an article like that on Wine Folly, and I'm sure it represents a small percentage of what is on there. I also don't know how I became the flag bearer for Wine Folly. It's a perfectly good website, but it ain't "One Hundred Years of Solitude".

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  26. "Switch between sniffing and thinking" - Had me laughing as that describes my Labrador exactly.

    The often misquoted "10,000 hour rule" doesn't really apply to wine appreciation, but I hardly see how 30 or even 240 pages (with pictures)is going to turn me into anything approaching an "expert".
    Even with my California Public School education I know that there is no substitute for experience. Drink as much as you can, responsibly, and learn by doing.

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  27. Ah Wine Folly. So much good groundwork, ruined by massive factual errors. Just ripe for the skewering really.

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  28. William,
    At least your Labrador has the excuse of having 50 times the number of cells in his nose that sense smell than a human does. That would make me think. Plus, you'd think he'd be less inclined to sniff butts. Then think.

    Andrew,
    I don't begrudge her any success, but her work is mindless, derivative, unsophisticated, and often dead wrong. I'm sure she's read my spoof, and I'm also sure she thinks I'm just being an asshole. I'm fine with that, lots of people think I'm an asshole. But I'm an honest asshole, not exaggerating my qualifications and knowledge, and not recycling facts I've looked up on Wikipedia.

    Contrary to what folks say, it's not about being an old white guy. There are old white wine women who should also be offended by the emptyheadedness of Wine Folly. What galls me is the people who endorse her book and her website who should know better, people I know are very wine knowledgeable, people, in some cases, I even admire. Or used to. Either they didn't read her book, and they never read her site, or they just want to be associated with her and don't give a crap. I read about 15 pages of her book on Amazon, and I've cruised her site, and, as you say, it's filled with mistakes. What's even sadder is her sycophantic fan club who encourages her, thinks her some kind of wine guru, and to quote one of them, thinks the comments on this post of mine are "drivel."

    In a real sense, when we cede her some authority, we mock the love of wine, we devalue knowledge and experience. She'll be an old white woman one day. I hope she reflects on the quality of the work she's pawning off now and wonders how she got away with it.

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  29. From a historical perspective, we're breeding out literacy once again. That's why the pie charts sell. We tend to swing from literacy booms to image devotion and this is the age of the image, ushered in by tv and culminating in snappy graphics, giant font, and few words on social media. The problem with this is misinformation promoted by someone who's good at graphic art which degenerates into horrors like ice-cold Champagne.
    For a cool yet deep book on the historical pendulum of literacy and its effect on society check out the book the Aplhabet vs. the Goddess by Leonard Shlain. It's a little (lot) tougher than Wine Folly and has nothing to do with wine, but is a vital read for anyone who loves history and communication. http://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com.

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  30. What wine goes with pie chart?
    Any of these of course
    http://www.bumwine.com/
    An MS said to me once all wine education is good even bad education.

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  31. I was disappointed by her book but anything that makes wine more accessible to tentative enthusiasts furthers the cause.

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  32. Deborah,
    I don't agree with that. Wine is completely accessible to anyone who wants it. Those who seek out more information about wine deserve resources that are better written, less derivative, more accurate and not so damned juvenile. We don't write wine books for teenagers, which is how her work reads. In my view, it's just not enough to "further the cause." What cause? If I want to learn about a subject, I certainly do not want mediocrity as my guide.

    Ah, then, but what do I know?

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  33. Ron,

    You know as much as any MS--or is that not a compliment?

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  34. Agree with Andrew Graham. Fantastic platform and visuals, let down by some very narrow and often incorrect content. All which shows the sign that a topic being discussed has been researched or experienced by the author for this article and over the past couple of years, not with long term depth and real understanding.

    My take?

    If you were looking for directions across a nation from one city to another, Wine Folly will give you either incorrect or overly generalised directions but leave you much closer to your destination in a fairly short space of time. In other words, an intimidated beginner may find Wine Folly easier to take in, with the added benefit that they are far closer to the right basic knowledge (with the need for a few tweaks) than they would be if they tried to plough methodically along the perceived "perfect" nerdy full blown path the whole time.

    I'd rather coach somebody whom has followed Wine Folly, as one can steer their occasional generalisations or factual misunderstandings as they arise.

    The light hearted nature of the Wine Folly site and the book is something many people are far more likely to absorb than so many other resources. No harm, no foul.

    To those who bemoan that Wine Folly can be this popular, perspective is needed. Many of us commenting here are hard core hobbyists or industry professionals. The average consumer of information is someone whom often just wants to be armed with the information for their next bottle or wine night, and to be able to "visit" wine as a conversation topic rather than arming themselves with incredible depth. Live and let live.

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  35. Thomas,
    I'd say that's a backhanded compliment, but it's more underhanded. Which is how a sommelier solicits tips.

    Tony,
    Thanks for chiming in, I appreciate it.

    I like your evenhanded thoughts, and wouldn't strongly disagree, though I'm not ever a big fan of lowering standards and dumbing subjects down. If I were advising a novice wine drinker where to find good wine advice and wisdom, I wouldn't send her there. If she found it on her own, then, yes, it's better than nothing.

    I write satire and comedy here (there's some differences of opinion whether it's any good). A balanced point of view doesn't work with satire. I'm certain that I offended many people who admire Ms. Puckette's work, and perhaps Ms. Puckette as well. It's the nature of the game. Satire is only funny when it's not aimed at you and your friends.

    Anyhow, thank you for joining in the conversation.

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  36. Damn, Ron! Pee in your pants hilarious!

    Bill

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  37. +1 for Tony's comment.

    I'll make sure to not dumb down any of my explanations on fixing computer issues to old white men (AND women!) in the future as they don't appreciate it.

    Keep up the great work Ron, I like the fact that you rail on everyone, even if I don't see the issue for every one.

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  38. Hey Unknown,

    The difference, I'd like to assume, is that you actually know what you're talking about before you then dumb it down to us old white folks. That is a difference, after all.

    I cannot tell you how many people send me suggestions for what or whom I should lampoon, subjects they feel strongly deserve it, but I cannot see their issues. So I just do what moves me, and makes me happy.

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  39. So what are you saying Ron? People should learn something before they teach it.

    What are you some sort of progressive lefty who thinks facts matter???

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  40. I'm late to the discussion, but want to commend Tony T on the clarity (and accuracy?) of his post.

    Of course, as Ron says, if he featured even-handedness, he wouldn't be a satirist, would he? Keep baking those pie charts, Mr. Washam!

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  41. Well written, Ron, and funny on so many levels. Ran across this that just seemed appropriate....

    "An opinion should be the result of a thought,
    not a substitute for it." --- Jef Mallett

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  43. Hi Ron,

    I just discovered your site and strongly feel that you've REALLY overworked yourself into a frenzy about nothing. I've been a wine educator for years training waitstaffs, conducting wine dinners, etc. I've worked at the restaurant, distributor, and supplier sides of the business meeting all types of people that teach about wine from A to Z. I won't get into my credentials past there, since, from all the posts I've read so far, you could care less about that.

    You're completely taking Wine Folly's website and book out of context and, for some odd reason, you're offended by it's simplicity. The thing is, it isn't meant for you!! It's a training tool that is for a novice to slightly more knowledgable beginner, and that's what the website and book cater too. I would think, from what I've read so far, you specifically should want people to be more informed and drinking more wine? How many more times do you want to suffer through statements like "Well, white wine isn't really wine," or "I asked for Chablis and you gave me Chardonnay," and one my favorites, "I only buy wines that Parker rates 90 points or higher." (I didn't make these up and I'm sure you've heard them too).

    Her site and book have been an invaluable teaching tool, and I think you're taking it's style of content a little too personally. Now that could be because (and I know I'm poking the bear here), she's become very successful with her site and book. And yet honestly, I've been in "the business" for almost thirty years, and I just discovered your site today (and yes, I know the internet didn't exist for a good portion of that time period).

    I get the susbstance of your website and who it's catered too, and it ain't the crowd Madeline's site is for sure, but please try to show some sort of respect for the ideas of the younger generation. The amount of condescension in your "article" and the comments is pretty severe and really insulting. I sincerely hope this isn't a result of jealously of the popularity book and site (again, I know I'm poking the bear), cause that would be a real shame.

    The most important thing I say to my students is that wine is "subjective. Everyone gets something different out of it." I myself sometimes put down my "Oxford Comapnion to Wine" or "World Atlas of Wine" and refer to the Wine Folly website or book, because its just simplifies things. Especially when my brain is on overload learning about the intricacies of "geology" and "soil and wine quality" for days at a time.

    Lastly I quote a line from a favorite movie of mine; "Young minds, fresh ideas. Be tolerant."

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