What Seems Like An Eternity Decomposing with Andy Rooney

Yes, I know you’re all sick of it, which assumes I write this blog for anyone aside from myself and the sad little alien who lives in my mailbox, W. Blinky Gray, but Andy Rooney won’t leave me alone. He has a lot of opinions about wine and the wine business, and now that he’s not broadcasting any more, because HE’S DEAD, he has asked me to communicate his thoughts and grievances. Be grateful. I could easily be channeling other dead guys, like Chester A. Arthur and his wife Bea. Or James Suckling. We are at a turning point in the world—there are as many dead people to talk to as there are living people to talk to. But the dead all speak a universal language. Insanity, in which I am fluent.

ON ALCOHOL LEVELS

There’s been a lot of discussion in wine chat rooms and on wine blogs, you know, places where really sad and lonely people hang out to try and impress each other with their knowledge of a subject that is deeply and genuinely meaningless, about how much alcohol is appropriate for wine. They never say anything that makes any sense. Wouldn’t it really be for the best if wine didn’t have any alcohol at all? Then we could get rid of that stupid warning label on every bottle of wine, and pregnant women could start operating heavy machinery again. I’d like that. A woman in a hardhat arouses me, maybe because it’s been a long time since my hat was hard. And if there weren’t any alcohol in wine we could drink a lot more of it. Wine wouldn’t be about quality, it would be about quantity, which would eventually bring down the prices of even the most expensive wines. Imagine a 2009 Chateau Lafite selling for twenty dollars. Without the alcohol, it’s probably not even worth that. In fact, Lafite is utterly worthless without alcohol. Yet this is the thanks alcohol gets. People want less of it in their wine. These hypocrites who run their mouths off about alcohol levels pretend they don’t drink the wine for the alcohol. They say they care about “balance.” Like you’d rather date an anorexic gymnast than a nice drunk girl. Just drink the wine and stop reading the alcohol percentage listed on the label. You sound like an idiot.

Yeast work hard to create alcohol, and then they die. Those people babbling in chat rooms should do the same.

ON MERLOT

I wish everyone would stop talking about Merlot. Merlot is a subject more tired than Madonna’s vagina. I can say that, I’m old and dead. Remember when Merlot was the most popular red wine in America? Every restaurant offered Merlot by-the-glass. I started to think Clos du Bois was Blanche’s other sister. “I have always depended upon the blindness of strangers.” It wasn’t long before every wine writer and expert was complaining about Merlot. They said it was ruined by its success, it was planted in all the wrong places, and only inexperienced wine lovers were dumb enough to order it when superior wines like Syrah and Sangiovese were available. But people kept on buying it.  It’s easy to understand why the wine experts were upset. Merlot had become popular even though wine critics hadn’t been pushing it, in fact, it was popular despite them. Sommeliers hated it, but it outsold everything on their esoteric, ego-driven wine lists. Wine experts don’t like it when the public ignores what they say and order what they enjoy. Wine isn’t actually about drinking what you like, though that’s what they always tell you. It’s about drinking what they like.

Then Merlot became unpopular. Most people think it’s because of one line in a bad movie called “Sideways.” Paul Giamatti, who I think is the Merlot of actors, I just wish he’d go away, he’s starting to seem cheap, says, “I won’t drink any f***in’ Merlot.” This line supposedly ruined sales of Merlot. It didn’t. Hollywood likes to take credit for everything. Except “John Carter.” And Fatty Arbuckle.

But once Merlot was declared dead, the critics decided to resurrect it. Now everyone is trumpeting the virtues of Merlot. Merlot is underrated, Merlot is making a comeback, Merlot should run for President on the Green Tea Party ticket. Many of these are the same people who couldn’t wait to see it die--wine journalists and sommeliers. For some reason, they just like to yammer on about Merlot.

I wish they’d find something else to talk about. Maybe if I say, “I won’t drink any f***in’ Moscato,” they’ll talk about me.

ON WINE GIZMOS            

I have a fondness for wine gizmos, I think all men do. Women don’t really like gizmos as much as men, they’re more practical and more intelligent. But they buy gizmos for their boyfriends and husbands, like how you buy chew toys for your dog. Give him something to do. It isn’t really a bone, but it sure seems like your dog thinks it is.

I have a bunch of those wine gizmos here. This one is a grey rubber valve that goes into the neck of an open bottle of wine. Then you take this white gizmo and pretend you’re pumping all of the air out of the bottle. I’m sure they got this technology from NASA. I’m not sure what kind of boob thinks this works, but pumping this thing up and down makes boys happy. I don’t have to tell you why. They all want to do it at least once a day.

Here’s one of my favorite gizmos. It’s an aerator. See, you put the wine glass underneath it, pour your favorite Pinot Noir through it, and the wine bubbles and froths and goes into the glass filled with oxygen. This is supposed to make the wine taste better. All the science says it doesn’t, that you get the same result just pouring the wine directly into the glass, that the effect of oxygen on wine takes an hour to happen, but this is fun. It’s like being a mad scientist. Or maybe Fatty Arbuckle. And people actually believe it does taste better immediately after going through an aerator, but these are the same people who think assigning numbers to wine is science too. We need to be nice to them.

I don’t know about you, but when I go to a wine lover’s house and he has a bunch of gizmos, I wonder if he actually knows anything about wine. Wine isn’t about toys. Sex is.

Another Few Minutes Decomposing with Andy Rooney

I spend a lot of time communing with the dead—and I don’t mean wine tasting in the Finger Lakes. Some of my best friends are dead. Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time talking wine with Andy Rooney, joined by his other dead friends, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, and Charlie Rose. Rooney, at least, has the courtesy to admit he’s deceased. Andy has interesting opinions about wine and the wine business, and he asked me to share a few more with HoseMaster of Wine readers. Remember, the opinions expressed are those of a dead guy. They certainly smell like it.

ON THE THREE-TIER SYSTEM

I hear a lot of people grousing about the three-tier system, mostly malcontents who don’t have a piece of that lucrative pie. I wish they’d just shut up. It’s the three-tier system that makes this country great. I mean aside from baseball, and those really tiny vibrators that attach to your finger. I love those things. I found one in Leslie Stahl’s dressing room one time. They’re great for stirring your martini and trimming your nose hair. I don’t know why God gave us hair in our nose, do you? Maybe because toenails wouldn’t fit there. I’d hate to think about a nostricure, wouldn’t you? I think the polish would give me a headache.

Our great country runs on the three branches of government--the judicial, the executive, and the whores. Those are three tiers. And think about wine itself. It relies on grapes, winemakers, and marketing. “Marketing” is just a marketing word for lying. I like to call lying lying. Marketing is when you push a cart around in a store. So even wine has three tiers. Everything runs better with three tiers. Think about insurance. It’s a three tier system, and everyone loves it. You pay a premium, the doctor sees you, and the insurance company pays the doctor most of the bill. I don’t hear anyone complaining about insurance. Except the people that don’t have it. It’s the same with wine. It’s the little wineries, the ones who think they’re better than the big wineries, that complain about the three-tier system because they don’t have it and they think the fact that it exists gets in their way somehow. I think they should stop trying to end the three-tier system, and, more importantly, stop whining about it.

I hope we never lose the three-tier system. If we do, the terrorists will have won.

ON CORKAGE FEES

I went to my favorite restaurant here in Hell the other night, it’s a really cozy little joint that serves only Prosecco and Gold Medal Reds from the California State Fair competition. It is Hell, after all. I don’t understand why people like Prosecco. It smells like the bathwater at the “Biggest Losers.” I brought my own bottle of wine to the restaurant. When the bill came there was a charge for Corkage. It was $35. Corkage is a funny word, don’t you think? If you brought your own eating utensils would they charge a Forkage fee? Or if you brought Harvey Steiman to dinner would they charge you a Dorkage AND a Porkage fee? OK, Harvey’s not here in Hell yet, but he will be. It’s no coincidence he’s blind to the smell of sulfur.

$35 is a lot of money, but I understand why restaurants have to charge Corkage fees. You don’t go to JiffyLube with four quarts of Pennzoil and ask them how much it costs if you bring your own lubricant. They need to make money. The best restaurants employ sommeliers, and they don’t work for free. You know who the sommelier is, don’t you? The sommelier is the person whose job it is to sell wine to people he’s never heard of, from wineries they’ve never heard of, at unheard of prices. Sommeliers are like pitchmen for infomercials. Fast-talkers selling drunks stuff they don’t really need. You also don’t take your own rubber gloves to your proctologist. I tried that once. He left them where he put them.

Next time you go to dinner, don’t complain about corkage fees. Just be grateful the sommelier isn’t trying to sell you Ginzu knives.

ON TASTING ROOMS

I don’t understand why wineries call the place where they serve wines to the public “tasting rooms.” No one there is tasting. They’re drinking. When you taste something you only put a little tiny bit in your mouth in case it doesn’t taste good, like when you taste some exotic food you’re not too sure about, something made from a tarantula or served at Olive Garden. Olives don’t grow in gardens, by the way, they grow in orchards. You’d think they'd know that.

My uncle went to his local bar three times a week from 11 AM until 5 PM. He was a drunk. If he’d gone wine tasting, he’d have been a connoisseur.

Why don’t they just call them what they are? Bars. The Bar at Robert Mondavi Winery. I think that has a nice ring to it. It’s not wine tasting, it’s bar hopping. They even have a “tasting room” at Castello di Amorosa in Napa Valley. A guy in Napa Valley built a gigantic Italian castle and makes wine there. At least he’s more honest about his tasting room. He calls it the Torture Chamber. 

A Few Minutes Decomposing with Andy Rooney

I’ve been in touch with the late Andy Rooney recently. It may surprise you to know that I speak with many dead people—Jess Jackson, Robert Mondavi, Robert Parker, Ron Paul, Gabe Kaplan, Richard Dawson… There is a wisdom in dead people that I find compelling. Andy Rooney was kind enough to allow me to publish his posthumous thoughts about wine and the wine business. So if you don’t like the opinions, don’t blame me. I’m just channeling the old fuck. Pardon me, dead fuck.

ON BLIND TASTING

Every wine critic and wine publication these days claims to taste wine blind. I don’t understand this. They say that tasting wines blind takes prejudice and subjectivity out of the equation. First of all, I don’t know about you, but I simply don’t believe they’re tasting the wines without having any idea at all what the wines are. These are professional wine critics, or so they’d have us believe, you’d think they’d have a pretty good idea all the time what they’re tasting, whether it’s in a brown bag or not. And they’re human, well, all of them except Matt Kramer who’s actually a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon, and humans cheat, or leave themselves loopholes. But let’s say, tongue in cheek, that I believe that they taste the wines blind. Why do they think that makes their ratings and scores more legitimate? By the way, most of them score on the 100 point scale and say they know what a 94 tastes like at least as well as the other guys who know what a 94 tastes like. I think Oliver Sacks wrote a New Yorker piece on a man who thought he knew what numbers tasted like. The guy had brain damage.

I think it’s stupid to pretend objectivity when you’re a critic of anything. We know that the critics we like have prejudices. We might even admire his taste in prejudices. A movie critic doesn’t go to a movie and not know who the director is. They don’t have special films made without the credits for a movie critic to view. They don’t send book reviewers galleys that don’t have the author’s name on them. They don’t blindfold Hugh Hefner and give him foldouts that only have Scratch ‘n’ Sniff.

Let’s grow up, wine critics, and forget the blind tasting claims. I think we’ll get numbers that taste better.

ON WINE BLOGS

I read somewhere that there are more than a thousand wine blogs. Isn’t “blog” kind of a stupid word? It sounds like something you hork up when you have a nasty chest cold, or you’ve been smoking unfiltered Camels for 30 years. Or maybe it’s what camels hork up. A thousand wine blogs sounds like 995 too many to me. Isn’t there something we can do about there being too many wine blogs? Yes, I know, we can simply not read them, and, let’s be honest, even the most popular wine blog gets fewer hits than a YouTube video of a cat using my balls as a scratching post. I miss that cat. I love a good subordinate claws. But even if no one reads wine blogs, it bothers me that they exist. I don’t have anything to do with wine-of-the-month clubs, but it bothers me that they exist too. Are there that many jackasses to support that many wine-of-the-month clubs? It bothers me that there are.

I think wine bloggers should voluntarily start removing their blogs from the Internet. I don’t mean stop writing them, I mean deleting them. We love the Internet, it’s a modern miracle, let’s not leave all this crap just laying around for someone else to clean up. Let’s start with that HoseMaster of Wine. I don’t know about you, but I think he’s about as funny as leprosy.

ON NATURAL WINES

There’s been too much talk lately about natural wines. Some people even call them naked wines, but that seems counterproductive if you like them. I think most naked things are disgusting, don’t you? When critics and winemakers talk about natural wine I start to get nauseated. Just another wine term no one can accurately define, like “terroir,” and “Meritage,” and “profit.” They make it sound like natural wine is better. These are people who wear a lot of makeup and carefully groom their body hair. Apparently, wine is better when it’s natural, but people are not. I think I’d trust the people who promote natural wine more if they had eyebrows like mine, and abundant nose hair, and unshaven legs. They mostly wear too much unnatural makeup.

I’ve tasted a lot of natural wines and too many of them are terrible. A lot of unnatural wines are terrible too. Can’t we just call crap crap and leave it at that? Crap is a word I can define. You’re reading it.