Cork Dork: A HoseMaster of Wine™ Book Club Selection

I’ve been wondering for a couple of years when a book like “Cork Dork” would come around. It seemed inevitable to me that an enterprising journalist would one day decide that writing about what it takes to become a Certified Sommelier in the world of fancy schmancy restaurants would make for an interesting book. I’m glad that journalist was someone as talented as Bianca Bosker. This could easily have been a dreadful book, just as “SOMM” was a dreadful film for me to watch. Instead, it’s a wonderful read. I especially admire Bosker’s prodigious research about wine, and about our senses of smell and taste, and her unflagging sense of humor. I rarely laugh when I read, but Bosker made me break out into noisy smiles quite a bit. I blamed the dog.

In her acknowledgments, Bosker mentions Susan Orlean and John McPhee as inspirations, but reading “Cork Dork” made me think more about the late George Plimpton. Plimpton, founder of “The Paris Review,” and quite the literate raconteur, may have reached the pinnacle of his popular fame with his book, “Paper Lion.” “Paper Lion” is about Plimpton’s desire to find out what it’s like to be a quarterback in the NFL. He talks the Detroit Lions into allowing him to train with them for a season, and takes us along. Plimpton is a writer with a gift for the extraordinary and telling detail, and his misadventures in the NFL are very funny and surprisingly poignant. The book made Alex Karras, a defensive lineman for the Lions, into a star. It’s Karras who famously knocks out a horse with a punch in “Blazing Saddles.” Bosker shares Plimpton’s keen eye for detail, and she also sports the exuberance of youth. In a business as stuffy as the wine business, these qualities serve her wit well. Bosker also echoes Plimpton’s editorial game plan. Plimpton, of course, takes a beating as a quarterback, has to win over the skeptical pro players who slightly resent his presence, yet he triumphs in the end. Bosker is often humiliated in her attempts to understand wine and work the floor as a sommelier in exclusive, service-oriented restaurants, she is warned by many Master Sommeliers about the folly of her task as she gives herself a year to accomplish what has taken others many years, but, of course, in the end, well, you know… And she’s worked pretty tirelessly to make Morgan Harris, a young New York sommelier, her Alex Karras, though Harris struck me as less horse pugilist and more horse’s ass.

The book is really eleven set pieces organized into a whole. You may have read parts of “Cork Dork” already, one chapter as a “New Yorker” piece, “Is There A Better Way to Talk About Wine?,” and part of another chapter served as a piece in the Opinion pages of the “New York Times,” “Ignore the Snobs, Drink the Cheap, Delicious Wine.” The latter piece stirred up the hornet’s nest of natural wine’s alt-right. The eleven chapters stand on their own, you’ll learn a lot about your senses of smell and taste, and how sommelier’s brains are different than yours (I’m a prime example of that), but it makes for a very clunky ride taken as a whole. A chapter about working the floor in a fancy New York restaurant, a visit with Ann Noble in California, a brain scan in South Korea, a wine exam in Virginia… All of it’s interesting, but most people trying to become Certified Sommeliers don’t have expense accounts that cover their curiosity. Much of that serves to make Bosker less sympathetic to the reader, harder to identify with, which works against her. And yet her talent is so great, she wins us over and makes us glad we signed up for her journey. I may have a crush on her.

Bosker has talent, and, apparently, a great agent. (So, really, it doesn’t matter one iota what I think about her book.) “Cork Dork” is a stereotypical work of participatory journalism. Poor man’s Plimpton. The risk in that kind of journalism is that the work can eventually come to be about the writer, and not the subject. John McPhee is the master at this sort of creative nonfiction, and clearly someone Bosker (among many others) idolizes. McPhee has a talent for knowing what to leave out in his work. In his work, you always sense his presence, his intellect, but he is very much in the background most of the time. You see through his eyes, but you don’t think McPhee is his own subject. In the end, “Cork Dork” is very much a book about Bianca Bosker. Don’t get me wrong, she seems like someone I’d like to know, though there’s fat chance of that (though, I, of all people, understand that a voice should not be mistaken for the actual person writing in that voice). Wine transforms her, though I’m not sure I cared. It’s certainly not why I decided to read the book.

I want to be clear about a few things because I ramble like Professor Irwin Corey with head trauma. Bianca Bosker is a flamboyantly talented writer. I could read her work all day long. She’s genuinely funny, and wit is a precious asset that’s absent in most wine writing. She does have McPhee’s work ethic. She doesn’t want to just understand a subject, she wants to master it, destroy it, and perform an autopsy on it. “Cork Dork” is a great glimpse into obsessive personalities, especially Bosker’s. I’d read it for that, and be grateful I’m not one. If I have issues with the book, it’s not about the quality of the writing. I’d go on any journey to which Bosker invites me. I’d already been on much of this journey long before Bosker could hold a pen, so I bring an old and odd perspective to the book. But I loved the book for its youthful bravado, and for Bosker, especially when she stops to think about what a stupid obsession wine can become.

When Bosker travels to Virginia to take the Certified Sommelier Exam she meets Annie Truhlar. I found Annie’s story to be the most interesting, and the most revelatory, in the book. Annie is the one “sommelier” (she isn’t really) in the book who loves wine with a passion, and not obsession. I got tired of the obsessed sommeliers in the book who give up what’s actually important in life, love and family, for a life in wine. I know a lot of people like that in the biz, and I feel sorry for them. (I wish Bosker had spent a bit more time talking about the rampant alcoholism in the trade, but I get that she didn’t.) It seemed that Bosker’s view of wine, and of being a sommelier, changed after her time spent with Annie as they endured the Certified Sommelier Exam together. Annie can barely afford the money to take the test. She’s never been able to go to a La Paulée kind of event, which is Bosker’s subject in one of the chapters, or even taste any Champagne tête du cuvées before she’s tested on them. She’s never dined at Eleven Madison Park, and probably thinks it’s the name of a Korean M.W. Annie just loves wine. It’s her story that holds the book together for me. She’s a breath of fresh air amid all the fetid breath of too many yammering young sommeliers. Annie Truhlar is the one person in the book with whom I’d like to share a great bottle of wine, aside from Bosker herself. Annie, you’re ever in Sonoma, call me!

I cannot imagine this book will have much resonance for those who love wine but don’t live in New York. It will teach you a lot, but won’t speak to you. It’s a very New York-centric book. I found that tiresome. There were endless and casual dismissals of California wine throughout the book, which is very New York somm. In her quest to learn about wine, Bosker learned far too much elitism, despite the chapter excerpted in the “New York Times” about how Treasury manipulates cheap wine to taste good, which she defends to a degree, but which, of course, takes place in California. Reading the book made me grateful to have grown up in the wine business outside of New York. So much of what Bosker writes about on her path to becoming a sommelier was foreign to me. I wasn’t unaware of it, as I’m not unaware of the behavior of dung beetles, with which sommeliers have a lot in common, but the book reads like this is how the wine world and the restaurant business works everywhere. That’s certainly not true. I found myself disliking almost everyone in the book, aside from Bosker herself and Annie Truhlar. Ah, but that’s me. However, if you’ve never been a New Yorker, or worked in the New York wine trade, you might be rather perplexed by much of “Cork Dork.” I actually wondered why Bosker would want to be part of that group. They read more like Swiftian fools to me than wine lovers.

If you read this stupid blog regularly, I think you’ll like “Cork Dork.” I wouldn’t hesitate to buy it. It’s in paperback, it’s cheap! Buy Bosker’s book! I mean it. It's not even ten bucks on Amazon. She’s such a great young writer. She deserves our support. I’ve had my say here, but this is a book easily worth reading and recommending to friends that love wine. All my reservations aside, it’s terrific work.

I’m obviously not a professional book critic. There’s a very vapid review that the “New York Times” published (it’s a good review, which the book deserves, but it’s emptyheaded, and I get the feeling the reviewer might even know Bianca, though I don’t know that). And there are some of the most transparently fake blurbs I’ve seen on a book cover in a long time. For example, late in the book Bosker recommends “Wine Folly” to her readers for their summations of grape characteristics. And then there’s a blurb on the back cover from Madeline Puckette calling “Cork Dork,” “The ‘Kitchen Confidential’ of wine.” That’s pretty shameless. It’s more the “L.A. Confidential” of wine, really. Jay McInerney, whom Bosker meets at La Paulée, has a blurb proclaiming her a “gonzo nerd prodigy.” So you know he grabbed her ass. The blurbs are completely FAKE NEWS! Sad.

Bianca, I love your writing. “Cork Dork” shows the wisdom and the foibles of youth. With no added sulphur.

Newer, Better Wine Critics You Should Be Reading

It’s entirely possible to pursue your wine education reading the same old critics over and over again, but that’s the equivalent of only drinking Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Sauvignon Blanc while ignoring the other eight thousand varieties. For the most part, let’s face it, you read the critics who reinforce your own opinions and tastes. It’s what humans do. Yes, it’s obvious the folks who support Trump are assholes for believing everything he says and not seeing through the constant lies, but there’s absolutely no reason to doubt that what Alice Feiring says about natural wines is true because it just feels right. This is how we think. Keeping an open mind is for other people, mine’s only open every other Tuesday. Don’t tell me Zinfandel can make great wine, I just told you I don’t like it. I am completely open to your opinion, except when you’re wrong, which is always when you disagree with me. Zinfandel is too jammy, like that smegma between my toes. But have you tried this Trousseau? It’s natural wine, only lightly fined with placenta extracted from a sheep. I watched it happen on Ewe Tube.

Maybe you only read Robert Parker because you like the reassurance that your cellar full of very expensive and highly rated Cabernets from Napa Valley is well-chosen, the envy of wine lovers everywhere. Well, you’re a different form of idiot—ask anyone with a little lapel pin that subtly notifies you that they are foolproof when it comes to wine knowledge. The only Master Sommeliers who confess to loving Napa Valley Cabernets are the ones employed at wineries there, or who lie on behalf of Constellation or Jackson Family Wines for a living. Which turns out to be most of them. They’re the laughing stocks of MS’s. It’s like being a wine writer and your main credit is “PUNCH.” Which is to wine writing what Apothic is to wine—it bears only a vague resemblance.

Reading every issue of “Wine Spectator” is the wine lover’s equivalent of the movie, “Groundhog’s Day.” It’s the same issue every fucking time you pick one up. The editorial content is more tightly pinched than Sean Hannity’s sphincter. And why is the magazine itself so goddam large? “Wine Spectator” is like wine’s answer to IMAX films. Its only reason to exist is that it’s ridiculously big. The content is utterly unimportant. The only thing glossier than an issue of “Wine Spectator” is my eyes when I’m reading the magazine’s columnists. Who the hell reads Matt Kramer? Eye charts make more sense, and are far more irreverent.

It’s time that you begin to read other wine critics. Get out of your comfort zone. Broaden your wine horizons. Wine lovers who only drink wines under 13% ABV, or only drink 100 point wines, or refuse any wine that isn’t a natural wine, I hold in equal contempt. “Natural wines are the only ones that taste good to me.” “What score did it get?” “I don’t like Napa Valley Cabernet.” Hard to decide which sentence is the most ignorant. Is there a 100 point scale for ignorance? Those are all 95+. The “+” because I may have underrated the ignorance. And the same is true for wine writers. Try someone new! Parker is Parker, Galloni is baloney, Puckette is Breitbart News (if you ignore that first syllable), strictly truth-adjacent. Find a new wine writer to follow, someone with a new axe to grind, wearing a different set of Virtual Reality goggles than Asimov, Feiring, Laube, or Jefford. I have a few suggestions…

TouchMyJunket—Talking about integrity and standards in wine journalism is a lot like the debate surrounding the use of condoms in the porn industry. It might be the right thing to do, but nobody in the industry wants them. It just doesn’t feel right for those participating. We’re consenting adults fucking each other. It feels best this way. Mind your own business and watch. Which is why I value the opinions of Frank Payola on his blog TouchMyJunket.com. Frank goes on more wine junkets each year than Jamie Goode, Elaine Brown and Joe Roberts combined! It’s his tireless pursuit of wine knowledge on our behalf that inspires me. And, like all the wine journalists I can think of, he’s never been to a wine region he doesn’t love. And, honestly, on top of that, when it comes to wine reviews, objectivity is highly overrated, though happily extinct. Everybody’s so damned critical, so opinionated about wine. Not Frank Payola! Free trip to Uruguay? Why Frank can write a thousand words about the glories of Uruguayan wine that more than offsets the cost of his hotel mini-fridge bills. See his piece, “I’m Devoted to Tannatural Wines.” Oh, it’s the kind of pay-for-play journalism that makes America Great Again. You should make a habit of reading TouchMyJunket. It’s refreshing to see that wine journalists are not nearly as expensive to buy as the wines they travel to write about.

Ted Frasker—Syndicated in several hundred newspapers around the country, Ted writes about all the industrial plonk you can’t afford to miss in the sort of language normally generated by random word programs. The good thing about Ted? He really believes there are great wines under $20! So sweet. Like those people who believe building a wall will make their life better. Because that always works. Ask any Berliner. Now, we all know there are no great wines under $20. None. Zero. Only an idiot thinks there are great wines under $20. But it’s so frustrating that major wine critics don’t rate the hundreds of wine labels of manufactured grape juice available—unless, of course, the corporation that makes them pays for advertising. Hell, we’ll take an 86 as long as the label photo we paid for isn’t blurry. Ted, though, he only tastes those corporate wines. “Sure, they all taste about the same. I have standards, though,” Ted told me. “I only review wines made with indigenous chemicals.”

Isabel Sans Clapper MW—“I don’t think making Natural Wines is enough,” Clapper proclaims. “We need to focus on wines of a higher consciousness. I won’t recommend any wine that hasn’t been Certified Enlightened™.” Unenlightened wines are a product of modern technology, or a poor upbringing. They not only ruin the Earth, they can harm your aura. Clapper has begun a movement, one that’s catching on among all the young sommeliers (or “somms,” because knowing how to speak French is giving in to the Man), that supports only wines that have been Certified Enlightened™. “A Certified Enlightened™ wine,” Clapper tells me, “is a wine that lives in the moment. Some call that a short finish, I call it awareness.” Clapper’s followers assure me that Certified Enlightened™ wines will not give you a hangover because they listen to you, they hear you, and then they talk you out of a second glass. “There’s something deeply spiritual about Certified Enlightened™ wines,” she insists, “so you can’t trust objective realities like smell and taste. What kind of a monster are you? Certified Wines™ don’t just reflect terroir, they reflect all sorts of other imaginary concepts. Those who drink anything less are not only harming Mother Earth, they’re killin’ my vibe.”

EPHEMERA: 1969 Chappellet Cabernet Sauvignon--"ITS ALIVE!!"

You never know when the next great wine will appear in your life. “Great” is one of those words that gets bandied about endlessly when it comes to wine, and has become nearly meaningless. I’ve been fortunate enough to have tasted more than my share of what I consider great wines. I’ve never counted how many. That’s a bit like guys who keep a list of women they’ve slept with. I remember them all, but I don’t lump them together as trophies. Not all three women! Great wines, to me, are wines that simply knock you off your feet, leave you virtually speechless, fill you with gratitude that you’ve lived long enough and well enough to put them in your mouth. They are only rarely encountered, and they are never forgotten. They’re true loves, not one-night stands. I recently met one.

I was invited to Chappellet’s 50th Anniversary tasting in February. I haven’t the vaguest idea why. Most of the other attendees were far more illustrious than I. Among the attendees were Esther Mobley, the supremely talented wine writer for the "San Francisco Chronicle," Karen MacNeil, Kevin Zraly, the last name in wine writing, Kelli White (speaking of supremely talented), Laurie Daniel, Elaine Chukan Brown, and me. I felt like John Waters at the Director’s Guild Awards. I don’t belong here, I tell people to eat shit. However, I’m a longtime fan of Chappellet, and always bought their wines, especially their late-lamented Old Vines Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon, for my wine list, so I was excited to be there. Yet I had no idea I was going to meet a true love.

There’s something magic about an old wine that is still vibrantly alive. Very few are. Most begin to show their faults as they get older, many just get weird, an awful lot are dead but don't seem to know it. We have families like that. And then there are the blessed, the ones who age obscenely gracefully, a Molly Chappellet (the loveliest matriarch of Napa Valley, especially since the recent passing of Mary Novak of Spottswoode), and the 1969 Chappellet Cabernet Sauvignon. The Chappellets were kind enough to offer us the ’69 at their 50th anniversary tasting, and when a wine can dazzle even the jaded palates of countless wine “experts,” and the ’69 was the talk of the room, it has to be extraordinary.

What’s magic about an older wine is that it takes us on a journey through our memories, through our lives. Nothing else we consume does that. OK, maybe mushrooms. I was a junior in high school in 1969 when Donn Chappellet and Philip Togni were harvesting this wine, and it must have been bottled when I was a freshman at Occidental College—the same year my wife Kathleen was born, 1971. Imagine that. I had no idea in 1969 I would end up a sommelier married to a woman who wasn't yet born. I’d never tasted a single wine when this wine was bottled. Not one. Nor had I met anyone not yet born. And if I had tasted this wine when it was released (I would have been underage, but, more importantly, under-qualified), I would no doubt have hated it. We both needed to evolve.

I won’t bother to attempt to describe it. Esther Mobley did that beautifully in her SF Chronicle column about loving older wines (she said it was maybe the best wine she’d ever tasted). My tasting notes begin, “IT’S ALIVE!!!” I was channeling Dr. Frankenstein at that moment, amazed at the electricity in the wine, and falling in love with it at the same time. Wines like that are ineffable. Like being asked what I love about my wife. It’s both impossible to express in a meaningful way, and too personal. I was an unhappy kid in 1969—lonely and confused, angry and reclusive. And yet somehow I managed to live a wonderful life filled with amazing loves, and end up in 2017 happy to be alive. The ’69 Chappellet was like a message in a bottle from that miserable kid living in that miserable time. A message of hope. A kind of congratulatory experience, a reassurance that sometimes, and maybe more often than we think, if we just hang around long enough, things can work out. Drinking it felt like, despite all odds, I’d had a great life, and, as a reward, ended up drinking that great old Cabernet among my peers. It was humbling. Great wine always humbles anyone with a heart.

The other nine Cabernet Sauvignons Chappellet served us were interesting and variable. Many were top-notch. I’ve never been to a vertical tasting where that wasn’t the case. How did the ’69 turn out so miraculously, so much more compelling than the rest? No one seemed to know. Everyone was guessing, everyone had a theory, but no one actually knew. A bunch of decisions were made, most of them irrevocable, many of them guesswork; the wine was paid attention to, nurtured, but could easily have been undone by any one of those decisions. We’ll never really know how it made it to 2017 so alive and remarkable. And the same could be said for all of us in that room that day, not just the ’69 Chappellet.

The truth is, we don’t have to know how it was made. No wine, no one’s life, can be replicated anyway. Some, inexplicably, just turn out to be miracles.

Wine's Deep State is Wiretapping My House

The first thing they did was they wiretapped my house. You’re going to hear a lot about this in the next few weeks, believe me. I only caught on when I was talking to my wife in the kitchen and the microwave suddenly said, “Excuse me?” It wasn’t long after that I realized they were watching me through my electric shaver. I was trimming my eyebrows when I heard a guy sneeze, and I felt something wet on my forehead. My dryer has been going through my pants’ pockets looking for evidence. Every last Kleenex was sampled for DNA, and I’ll never get another use out of the condoms. Oh, they’re thorough alright. Even the lint screen is squeaky clean when they’re done. I know what they want, but I’m on to them. They’re trying to silence me.

Most of you wine writers don’t have to worry about them. You write pablum. You write empty paragraphs that conform to what they want. You write the worst sort of self-serving shit, absorbed in your own imaginary importance in the wine world, convinced we care about your opinions on the latest set of designer wines sent to you by the czars at Constellation. You toe the wine line. You never write anything that isn’t regurgitated marketing lies. You feign wine knowledge, and feel every invite to every tasting and every junket validates your importance when, in fact, you’re just a pawn, and an untalented pawn at that. They don’t need to wiretap your house. They don’t need to have drones following your every move like they follow mine. You’re no threat to them. What you write is just the same old tired wine business bullshit. They love you.

Right now there’s someone watching me through my computer’s camera. I know who it is. I just gave her the finger. I don’t care if they watch me have Skype sex with a Master Sommelier. It’s why we do it blind. He told me it’s part of the Service Exam. If they want to spy on what goes on in my work room, I just don’t care. At first, I put duct tape over the camera. But you can see through duct tape. I bet you didn’t know that. You can see through duct tape. Put some over your eyes and try it. Well, maybe you can’t see through it, sorry about your eyebrows, but they can.

I know you’re wondering who “they” are. God, you’re stupid. It’s wine’s Deep State. The Deep State is conspiring against me. They’re afraid of me. They’re afraid of the changes I’m bringing to wine writing, and the wine world. The Deep State is worried because I won a Roederer Award. They’re really scared because the Deep State usually controls who wins a Roederer Award, and last year one of those awards went to me. It wasn’t supposed to. They fixed that this year though. They made Guy Woodward a judge. Yeah, I know. That’s like a Labradoodle judging the Westminster Dog Show. The Deep State wants wine writing to stay the same. You know, “Wine Spectator” same. Trade one old white guy critic for a middle-aged white guy critic. Pull off the Jesus trick: turn oafs into Tim Fish. The Deep State of wine controls everything about wine. Everything.

Think those natural wine people are rocking the boat? Oh, please. Like Alice Feiring and Eric Asimov aren’t embedded agents of the Deep State. The Establishment of wine has infiltrated wine writing up to its highest levels. Who do you think are the Elders of Deep State? Yes. Say the names. Jancis, Robert, Hugh, Marvin. They make all the decisions about wine. They decide what you drink, what you write, what you don’t write. Oz, Antonio, Jamie, everybody with letters after their name. All of them. Can’t you see it for yourself? They’re all the Deep State. And unless we take wine back from them, and it won’t be easy, folks, wine will be the same corrupt and dishonest business it’s always been.

Just remember, when people criticize me, that’s just the Deep State trying to destroy my career. I don’t need their help destroying my career. I’m perfectly capable. The Deep State tries to make me look like a liar. I tell you they’ve wiretapped my house and you ask for proof? Proof? I just said it, didn’t I, what further proof do you need? The Deep State doesn’t like me because I tell you the truth. I’ve been saying for years how specific wine glasses for specific wines is a scam. It’s Deep State propaganda. You really think you need an Oregon Pinot Noir glass? That your Syrah doesn’t taste as good in a Zinfandel glass? You’re a sucker. You’re a chump. You probably think aerators work, too. What’s wrong with you? These are all lies. Deep State lies. You can’t even tell it’s a Syrah in the first damn place. What difference does the glass make? It’s like thinking you smell better because you’re wearing the right sweater. You don’t! You smell like goddam mothballs, and I’m not talking about naphthalene, I’m talking about actual hairy moth testicles. God, you’re an idiot. A Deep State sycophant.

Ah, but we won one over the Deep State. Asimov conceded that the idea that different sorts of wines require distinct glasses is “nonsense.” This in the Newspaper of Record! It’s like FOX News admitting Sean Hannity is an inflatable sex toy. I mean, look at his mouth! And the hair. Asimov’s admission is amazing. Maybe it’s the Deep State just throwing us a bone. The Elders got together and threw Georg under the bus. No one really knows. Maybe the truth is making them nervous. But what next? Alice Feiring concedes biodynamics is mystical Hoo-Hah? The "Dianetics" of wine? Parker concedes that the 100 point scale is stupid? People like it, sure, it’s simple and easy to understand, but so is “Wine Folly,” and we know how worthless that is. Nah, the Deep State will never surrender the 100 point scale. That would be like Tiny Tim throwing aside his crutches.

My phone just rang and there was no one there. Deep State. Just keep saying it whenever you read a column in the “Wine Spectator,” whenever you read about the latest wine junket taken by Jamie Goode, whenever you buy a wine book by Jancis Robinson. Deep State. A “New York Times” opinion piece about wine. Deep State. The lastest vintage report from Bordeaux in “Decanter.” Deep State. Wine competition results. Deep State. What are Master Sommeliers drinking? articles. Deep State. Yet another piece about the superiority of natural wines. Deep State. Every press release from every marketing company and every winery. Deep State.

Resist.

The Corkage Policy at Restaurant Gougé

Remember when corkage fees were a hot topic on wine blogs? We do dwell on the trivial. I wrote this piece about legendary Restaurant Gougé way back in May of 2014. Restaurant Gougé is shuttered now, but this piece lives on.


Recently, there has been some grumbling in the press about the corkage fees here at the World Famous Restaurant Gougé. While we do not feel that we need to justify the $150 corkage fee, Restaurant Gougé is the proud recipient of Three Michelin Tires as well as the prestigious Just for Men® Beard Award after all, we did feel the need to clarify our generous corkage policy. Just so you’ll shut the hell up.

First of all, Restaurant Gougé is under no obligation to allow any patron to bring in his own bottle of wine. What the hell is wrong with you? We’re trying to make money, and you’re bringing in some poorly stored, overpriced trophy wine from your own collection? We have an award-winning wine list filled with poorly stored, overpriced trophy wines! We don’t need yours. And then you expect us to charge you only $25 for the privilege of serving you your own bottle of wine as some kind of thank you for choosing us for your special occasion? How about this? We take $25 off the cost of your meal and then we get to open your “special occasion” wine and pour it down the sink. That’s pretty much what you’re doing anyway when you serve it to your idiot friends, only now, at least, you get $25 out of it. That works for us. Hey, $25 is two martinis that cost us $6 in ingredients—we’re fine with that.

Our generous corkage fee helps us to employ the many sommeliers who work here at Restaurant Gougé. Many have initials after their name, like M.S., or C.S.W. or LOL. These men and women work for virtually nothing so that one day they'll be able to add Restaurant Gougé to their résumé. It’s really cool. We get to pay salaries far below industry standard just because we’re such a famous restaurant and these clowns hope our misplaced good fortune will rub off on them. We’re proud to be known as the industry’s premiere Sweat Shop of Sommeliers, and your generous corkage fee contributions go a long way to sustaining this indispensable form of sommelier slavery. When you pay the corkage fee at Restaurant Gougé, you can sleep peacefully knowing that somewhere a sommelier is being vastly underpaid thanks to your reverence for our dining establishment. Surely, there is no way to measure in dollars what that’s worth. At Restaurant Gougé, we solemnly promise that not one single penny of your $150 corkage fee will see the inside of a sommelier’s pocket! It goes straight to our bottom line with no regard for the folks serving you, just as it should. You have our word.

There are enormous costs involved in having a great wine list. When you are widely acknowledged as one of the great dining establishments in the world, you simply cannot serve pedestrian wines. Not unless you’ve gone to the trouble to find them encased in bottles with very fancy and famous labels. At Restaurant Gougé, we promise that every great bottle of wine on the list is authentic enough to fool any auction house expert regardless of what’s actually inside it. Can you say that about your own wines, even the ones you bought at some shady New York auction house? And even if you don’t care about that, what about us? We’re running an upscale restaurant, world famous, patronized by some of the biggest food and wine fame fuckers you could ever imagine, do you think we can afford to have those bozos see us opening your lame old bottle of Sterling Cabernet and setting on the table?! Are you nuts? Might as well just fart the opening eight bars of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

There are some restaurants that will list all the expenses involved in running a great wine program—the cost of storage, the ridiculously costly inventory, the expensive stemware, the salaries of the sommeliers—and say those costs justify their exorbitant corkage fee, but that’s just a smoke screen. It’s like saying the food is expensive because we have to pay for all those goddamned plates we serve it on, and have you seen the cost of knives and forks! The Chinese are right! No, here at Restaurant Gougé we make no claims that our corkage fee is based on anything other than greed, vanity, and contempt--the very qualities that personify our best, most regular clients. Sure, we could charge a lot less than $150 to open your wine, but what sense does that make? You didn’t make a reservation with us to get a bargain! You dine with us for the ambience, for the experience, for the bragging rights. The big dinner tab at the end of the meal is critical to your enjoyment, and you know it. Tacking on a mere $25 is a slap in the face, and that’s not how we treat our clients. We respect you, and your ability to cough up $125 for the privilege of having our sommelier turn up his nose at your measly little wine. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Your needs always come first at Restaurant Gougé.

If you are mortally offended by restaurant corkage fees, we encourage you to vote with your wallet. Sadly, those of you who complain about our $150 corkage policy have little girls’ wallets and no one here gives a tasty Samoa’s sphincter how you vote. There are countless restaurants with countless corkage policies, but they’re not Restaurant Gougé. Go ahead, write a scathing review about us on Yelp. OOOH, we’re shaking. Yelp is just pinheads talking to other pinheads, a carnival sideshow of sadly deformed humans making a public spectacle of themselves. We’re Restaurant Gougé, we’re review proof now. The more the little people complain, the more the 1% want to be here, away from your lousy table manners and sentimental cheapass celebratory bottles. They don’t want to see you dining in their restaurant, they want to see you busing the tables, washing the dishes, and carefully fetching their Teslas from the valet lot. So please gripe about our corkage policy, gripe as often as you like. It’s exactly what we want.

We hope to see you soon at Restaurant Gougé! Remember, we're not happy unless you're not happy!

News, Reviews and Meretricious Persiflage

I wish I had more time to devote to HoseMaster of Wine™. Writing is hard work, and best avoided. My desk has a pile of ideas, tasting notes, business cards, clippings—some from newspapers, most from toes—and various and sundry experiments in contamination. I publish nonsense and tomfoolery on Mondays, but now and then I want to write about the rest of my life in wine, if only to keep a record for myself. I don’t know about you, but I find me fascinating. When people tell me to go fuck myself, I actually consider it. This happens a lot. If you don’t find me interesting at all, it’s not too late to leave. Maybe I’ll see you Monday.

I’m something of an idiot. I don’t solicit wine samples, or publish my address so that marketing geniuses can send me wine. Of course, I’ve heard many marketing types say they’d never send the HoseMaster wine. Cowards. Yet every now and then someone will contact me and offer to send me their latest releases. I don’t always write about the wines I receive (it isn’t very many or very often), but not because I don’t want to. It’s a combination of laziness and time. I need more time to be lazy. I’m going to try to correct that, starting with a couple of wines I received from a winery I was unfamiliar with, Gamling & McDuck. Yeah, that’s the name. Kinda rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Like George W. Bush saying, “Nukular.”

“Gamling” is Gabrielle Shaffer. Adam McClary is “McDuck." Not to be confused with “MacDuck,” my favorite play by Shakespeare. (Classic line: “Something wicked this way waddles.”) I don’t know Gabrielle or Adam, but they sent me a bottle of Chenin Blanc and a bottle of Cabernet Franc—and a comic book. The comic book is cool. Adam has some comic book chops, and in this era of graphic novels, it’s a nice piece of work. It talks about their courtship, as well as vineyard sources, winemaking techniques and inspirations (Nicolas Joly, for example, a definite McDuck of a different cloaca). You have to admire the sense of play in these two winemakers. One of the things I like about the younger winemakers I meet today is that many of them, especially those with their own brands, refuse to take themselves too seriously. A few fall in love with their own press, but not that many.

But let’s talk about the wines. The 2015 Gamling & McDuck Chenin Blanc Mangel’s Ranch Suisun Valley is delicious. It’s obvious these two love the wines of the Loire Valley. This wine reminded me of a Francois Chidaine Chenin Blanc, a Montluis-sur-Loire maybe. They might have been going for a Nicolas Joly Savennières, I don’t know, but this ain’t that. It’s gorgeous, though. I love that Chenin Blanc is finding a place in the heart of young sommeliers. And there are some fantastic California Chenin Blancs being produced by the likes of Sandlands, Leo Steen, and Habit. The Gamling & McDuck belongs in their company. The Gamling & McDuck Chenin Blanc has wonderful, deep, rich fruit that’s right in the Chenin Blanc wheelhouse. I thought of baked apple, lemon curd, a ripe peach… There’s a very sure hand behind this wine. And it finishes with a sea breeze kind of saltiness that's breathtaking. All this for $26. I couldn’t stop drinking this. Buy some Suisuner rather than Luhlater.

Gabe (may I call you Gabe?) and Adam also sent along a bottle of 2014 Cabernet Franc from Pickberry Vineyard on Sonoma Mountain, a vineyard made famous by Ravenswood. I had mixed feelings about the Cab Franc. It felt like a wine trying too hard to be a Loire Cab Franc while wrestling with its California ripeness. It’s very intense. It has great energy to it, but it never stopped feeling clunky to me. Whatever sensuality Cabernet Franc might have, and I always think of good Cab Franc as being rather seductive and sensual, seemed to be hidden behind the density of the wine. OK, so you’re wearing lingerie, but it’s under a heavy coat. (A look only a few of us can carry off.) I will say that as the wine unbuttoned it became more sensual and inviting, it flashed me some greatness, and I liked it with the herb roasted chicken I was eating as I tasted it. It’s a wine that’s on the savory, meaty, earthy spectrum rather than on the overtly fruity spectrum, which is a plus in my Franc book. So where does that leave us? The same mixed feelings I began with. It’s very well-made wine, I feel completely comfortable recommending it to Cab Franc lovers, $36 is a more than fair price, and it may blossom into greatness one day and make me look stupid. I think it’s worth a shot for the Cab Francophiles out there, and I think that Gamling & McDuck is a brand that deserves your attention and support.

I’d drink their Chenins any time. www.gamlingandmcduck.com


I met a very knowledgeable wine friend for dinner last week at Farmstead Restaurant in St. Helena. We always bring wine to share. She brought an absolutely fantastic sparkling wine from New Zealand, Quartz Reef NV Brut. Wow. You can’t get it in the US, I believe she told me they only produce about 400 bottles, but it was thrilling. I brought a Premier Cru Chablis that was outstanding, and I also brought a South African Tinta Barroca made by Sadie Family Wines in Swartland. I wonder if they have Swartphones there. No matter. The Tinta Barroca was buried beneath Brett. It smelled like a really fat guy wearing leather pants and no underwear who's been sitting on a Naugahyde couch watching porn. So, your uncle Larry. It was undrinkable.

The Tinta Barroca received 95 points from Neal Martin in The Wine Advocate. Not why I bought it, but notable. Now, it may have had an acceptable level of Brett when he reviewed it (if you believe, as I do, that there is an acceptable level of Brett). If Sadie Family Wines didn’t filter the wine, and I suspect they didn’t, it’s the only explanation that makes sense, then the Brett, over time, would get worse and worse. That's almost certainly what happened.

Here’s what I’m wondering. Why is it that if the wine had been corked I easily would have been able to return it to the shop where I bought it, but when it’s covered in Brettanomyces, I probably couldn’t have? That seems backward to me. The winery isn’t really responsible for corkiness—the cork producer is. The winery is absolutely responsible for Brett contamination. It’s very simple to get a wine tested for the presence of Brett before you decide to bottle it unfiltered. It’s irresponsible not to, really. Giving Neal Martin the benefit of the doubt (and he clearly likes Brett), this might have been a 95 point wine when he tasted it. Now, let’s say on the basis of that score you buy a case. Years later, when you begin to open those bottles, you find a nasty, chemical soup that smells like NFL lineman butt. Whose fault is that? And isn’t that every bit the waste of a good wine a corked bottle represents? Wineries kill themselves trying to prevent TCA. What about Brett bombs?

So corked, and I get a refund or a replacement bottle (I wouldn’t want a replacement for a Bretty bottle). Incompetent and negligent winemaking? Eat shit. I never thought I’d say this, but, damn, I wish the bottle had been corked.

How the Russians Are Secretly Destroying the Wine Business

Solid evidence has been slow in coming, but there is little doubt that over the past decade the Russian government, under the direction of Vladimir Putin, has been tampering with the wine business. The tampering has taken many different forms, but it all seems aimed at destabilizing the credibility of the wine business itself—not such a difficult task given the unstable nature of its most famous figures. No one is quite certain what Putin’s motivation might be other than he’s just a meddling, power-hungry dictator, which makes it rather astonishing he failed his recent Master of Wine practical exam.

I'm sort of the Seymour Hersh of wine bloggers, if you don't consider research and credible evidence a must. And who does nowadays? I've published a blockbuster report over at Tim Atkin's amazing site detailing the Russian plot to destroy the wine business. It's both shocking and awing, and it's free as soon as you make the jump. As always, feel free to leave your witty remarks on Tim's site, or leave them here, along with a bit of Putin's traditional radiation poisoning.

TIM ATKIN MW