One Last Thought About the Wine Country Fires, and How You Can Help

It’s been so beautiful in Sonoma County the past couple of days. It rained Thursday night, about half an inch. Blue skies returned. Fresh air filled my lungs when I went outside yesterday. It was like tasting a bright, fresh Muscadet. And I felt like shit. Bone weary, as though I’d endured a prolonged beating at the hands of an angry Master Sommelier. And I was one of the lucky ones. How must the real victims of these terrible fires feel? There’s optimism on everyone’s lips wherever you go, but reality is sinking in.

The wine country wildfires were the worst wildfires in California history. By a lot. We’re Number One! We’re Number One! In the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa, the sort of middle class neighborhood that reminds me of where I grew up in Long Beach, more than 1000 homes were destroyed. And I mean destroyed. A thousand homes! The neighborhood is still closed to the public to allow the residents who survived the chance to sift through the remains of their homes. I don’t know about you, but I can’t get my mind around that. And that’s just Coffey Park. There’s Fountaingrove, well, there was Fountaingrove, and there are several trailer parks, where the same scenes are taking place. And that’s just Santa Rosa. I’m leaving out Glen Ellen and Kenwood and Napa and Calistoga, all towns with fire stories to tell… People searching through the rubble for what remains of their former life. Everywhere they look is like a Salvador Dali painting, things melted in the remains of trees, the landscape filled with grotesque and surprising shapes created by the fire and its awful heat.

When you visit wine country, though, you don’t go to those places. Driving around Healdsburg, where I live, you wouldn’t even know there had been a fire. You’d just wonder why it was so quiet during such a busy time of year. This is true up and down Napa Valley, too. When I’ve spoken to people from other parts of the country the past week, they were all surprised at how beautiful Sonoma County looks. They’d been led to believe that visiting was crazy, that they were endangering their lungs, that the wineries were devastated. So many irresponsible narratives promoted on television, in the press, on the internet. It literally makes me sick.

There’s not going to be any big smoke taint issue in the 2017 wines. The only smoke taint you’re going to get is from the morons blowing that smoke up your ass. There will be isolated cases, but very few. And, hell, you’re worried about smoke taint? There will be more Brett than smoke taint, there always is. Corked wines are more of a problem. Only stupid, irresponsible people are talking about smoke taint.

Wineries are open, and are deserted. This was entirely predictable. I lived in Los Angeles working as a sommelier during the Rodney King riots. After the riots, business vanished. Where I worked went from 250 dinners on a weeknight to 20. It took years and years for business to return. But this is wine country. Everybody loves damn wine country. If you’re one of those whiners who complains about how crowded and terrible tasting rooms are, you should get on a plane and get out here NOW. I walked into a winery a couple of days ago at about 1:45 PM to pick up my wine club shipment. I was the first human they’d seen all day. And I barely qualify. Some of the few visitors I’ve spoken to said that they were worried, from news reports, that the wineries wouldn’t be open. But for those that burned down, and they are very few (I think the number is seven—out of about 900 between Sonoma County and Napa), everybody is open.

Vineyards didn’t burn down. A few suffered some damage. A few were destroyed. But you don’t drive around wine country and see fried cabernet everywhere. In fact, the vineyards are beginning to go to sleep, the fall colors just starting to appear, the vivid yellows and reds of the season. It’s simply gorgeous right now. The prettiest time of the year. It’s a little hard to appreciate it if you’re one of those who lived through the wildfires, it’s hard not to keep thinking about the events of the past couple of weeks, but nature goes about its business whether we’re rebuilding or not.

I spoke to a woman on Thursday who was here working for the insurance companies. Her job is to find places to stay for people who lost their homes. She’d been in Houston not so long ago, and then she was in Florida after Irma, and now she was in Sonoma County. You don’t want to be on her travel itinerary, that’s for sure. So many disasters, and all of them worthy of your charity. All of them. I think we’re all weary of the death and destruction from natural disasters this year. She was a lovely woman, bought some wine, joined the wine club. Someone who gets it, understands natural disasters in ways we can only imagine, deals with the people whose lives have changed in astonishing ways and with astonishing speed. She understood. She opened her purse and not just her heart. Too many just open their mouth.

I’ve already written about the great events of Winemakers and Sommeliers for California Wildfire Relief. I’m going to drop off some wine this weekend for the Bergamot Alley event in Healdsburg. Some damned nice wines, too. Saxum, I think, and Cayuse, and, well, stuff that might generate real money to help. I hope you sent wine, or that you’re planning to attend. I’ll see you there. The other events, in San Francisco and New York, look amazing, too. If you love California wine country, you need to go. Donate wine, or go there and buy something great. This isn’t to help wineries, this is to help people in our community who are suffering because of these mind-boggling fires. It’s about wineries and wine people helping others. We need your help. One more time, here’s the website:

www.wscwr.com

And if you can get to Healdsburg on Sunday, tomorrow, the 22nd, you should attend the great “Pinot on the River” event. It’s one of the coolest events in wine country. 100 wineries pouring their best Pinot Noirs outdoors in the Healdsburg Town Square! Drive up from San Francisco, or Sacramento, or Oakland (you’ve had fires, you know what it’s like) and spend the day in the wonderful Healdsburg Town Square tasting Pinot Noir from some of the best producers in the world. Stick around and spend some money in a local restaurant afterward. Shop at the stores around the square. Everywhere I go, tasting rooms and restaurants are cutting shifts. They have to. There’s no business. Come up, have a blast, do some good for wine country, help someone keep their job in this terrible time. I promise you, this is a fantastic event. I know it’s last minute. I know you haven’t had time to plan. So what? Fires don’t give you much notice either. That’s no excuse. Here’s the website for “Pinot on the River.” I’ll be there, too. Who wants to buy me dinner? A portion of the proceeds from “Pinot on the River” go to the Boys and Girls Club of Central Sonoma County, and they need the money now more than ever. Lots of kids up here who lost their homes.

www.pinotfestival.com

Indulge me one more time. There’s another great Pinot Noir event that you should attend. “Pinot Days” is another chance to taste some of the best Pinot Noirs on the planet. It’s being held on November 11th in San Francisco. Go, taste a bunch of great wine, then sign up for the mailing list and buy wine from every Sonoma County and Napa County winery whose wines you like. This isn’t hard. You can do this. Try not to ask too many of them how they did in the fire. We’re all a bit weary of that. Both “Pinot on the River” and “Pinot Days” are having attendance problems. Just like wine country. You can help by going. Get a bunch of friends together, buy some tickets and attend. For once, you can feel good about yourself for wanting to go get drunk on Pinot Noir! You’re doing it to help wine country! I’m so proud of you. Don't hurl on my shoes. Here’s the “Pinot Days” website. I’ll be there, too!

www.pinotdays.com

Finally, I’m sorry I’m not being funny when I post lately. I spent eight years writing HoseMaster of Wine™. I managed to create a voice that reaches more than 13 people! First, Kelli White reached out to me to plug the Winemakers and Sommeliers event, and I thought, why not? I reach a few people, maybe it will help. Maybe I can use my bully pulpit to do some good. Then it was Eric Hall from “Pinot on the River,” and Lisa Rigisch from “Pinot Days,” asking for a plug. I never do this. I get way too many insipid, insulting, stupid, poorly written marketing emails asking me to, but I don’t plug events. But this is different. And this just might be the last time. Thank you for indulging me. I try not to bother you with this kind of thing. But I will be personally grateful if you’d do something for wine country right now, and in the coming weeks. Donate money, donate your time, visit us in wine country, buy our wines, whatever works for you. Post this on FaceBook, tell everybody you know, get the word out. Please.

Thank You.

Even More Thoughts on the Wine Country Fires, Especially How You Can Help, and Maybe Even Meet the HoseMaster

My wife and I had planned a nice dinner at home for my 65th birthday, last Friday the 13th. At the last minute, I had a change of heart, and decided to, instead, evacuate. And not just my intestinal tract, but the house we live in. I’d always wanted to have an evacuation for my birthday, and this seemed like a good year for it. “Memorable” doesn’t begin to describe my birthday.

We were able to return, somewhat cowed, somewhat sheepish, somewhat every other farm animal, the next day. My beautiful wife made dinner, and, for the occasion, I decided to open a very special bottle of wine.

I chose a bottle of 1999 Chateau Rayas. It was, predictably, a great bottle of wine, though I have almost no sense of what it smelled or tasted like. I didn’t really care. Don’t get me wrong, Rayas is one of my favorite wines on the planet, and I’m lucky to own some still. But I chose the wine because that bottle has great meaning to me, as did being able to have dinner in my still-standing house with my still-tolerant wife. We were married in March of 1999, and sharing a bottle from that vintage had great emotional power. Beyond that, my wife Kathleen had given me that bottle of ’99 Rayas for my 50th birthday, back when we lived in South Pasadena. She had inscribed it to me in a gold pen, “Happy Lth birthday, Ron.” I always hated “50th,” so I insisted on using Roman numerals that year. When people asked how old I was in 2002, I responded, “L.” Yeah, I know, stupid.

We spent much of the meal talking about where we’d been, what we’d shared, all that we'd been through the past 15 years together, Kathleen and I. Our week of evacuating, of euthanizing, of sleeplessness and anxiety had brought us closer together, even after 18 years of marriage. We spent 24 hours a day together for 7 days in a row, and it only made me miss her immediately when she left. That’s not really a silver lining, just a wonderful reminder that I was lucky when I married her. That my live has been blessed.

I am often asked if wines really get better with age. Most of us would agree, I think, that from a strictly objective standpoint, wines don’t so much get better with age as they get different with age. “Better” is so subjective, so personal. Yet, in this case, drinking the 1999 Rayas with my wife on the day after my 65th birthday, the bottle itself represented life and time and the pathway of our marriage. It tasted of joy, and of heartbreak. Of both our passion for each other, and the passion of the winemaker. Drinking it felt like a sacrament, and I wasn’t raised in any religion. It was profound and moving to share that bottle with Kathleen. And if you ask me, the ’99 Rayas was far better with age. It wasn’t just wine any longer. It was something so much better. For that meal, it was a reminder that even with all of its trials and pain and loss and grief, life is also a gift.

This is why I cellar wine. The only reason I cellar wine. Marketing people endlessly talk about how stories sell wine, and there’s truth in that, but it’s a cold truth, a truth one uses to sell a product. You sell life insurance the same way. But over time, individual bottles of wine, bottles purchased from love or on vacation or received as gifts, create their own stories. About what year they were born, how they were born, where they were born, and how they entered your life. That story is just for you, the one who opens the bottle on a special occasion, or to create a special occasion. It has no meaning to anyone else. So, the night of October 14th, the 1999 Chateau Rayas, rated 92 by Robert Parker, was a perfect wine. Perfect. I can’t think of a wine that has tasted better to me in one particular place at a very particular time.

As you read this, the fires in wine country continue to burn. They’ll burn for a while yet. If you don’t live in Northern California, I’d guess you are hearing less and less about them on the news. Now that feared orange glow is just President Bozo’s bouffant. New tragedies will cross your radar, God knows the world is filled with them. But wine country is having a very hard time right now, and as the shock wears off and reality sinks in, we are beginning to see how much help we need to rebuild and, for so many, those far needier than I, to simply survive.

If you love wine, and if you love visiting Napa and Sonoma, and if our glorious vineyards have given you the endless joy and pleasure that they’ve given me, and you’d like to return the favor, I’m happy to pass along an interesting and wonderful way to help.

Take a few minutes and go to www.wscwr.com. Go ahead, go there now. I'll wait. It's cool, you want to know about it. And I need to take a leak...

These are going to be GREAT events, and if you can attend, you should! But even if you cannot attend, take a minute today, grab a shipping box, pick out a couple of wines that have some value, some meaning, and donate them to the cause. Don’t wait!! The events are next week, and the wines need to get here! I know you have old shipping boxes laying around, use one. Send that bottle you bought from Dr. Conti--those damn sommeliers won't know, I promise.

Better yet, come to Bergamot Alley, buy some wine, share it with some of the best winemakers in the county, share it with a great group of sommeliers, and, yes, I’ll be there, too. I’m sure that meeting the HoseMaster of Wine™ is on a lot of bucket lists. That they’re from KFC is no matter. I’ll be at Bergamot Alley, Kelli White will be there (Kelli is the woman who asked me to promote the cause, and I’m honored to do so), and a lot of other famous and talented Sonoma wine folks will be there. Look at the stellar list of participating wineries on www.wscwr.com! It will be a blast, and the hope is to raise a bunch of money for those most in need.

You have way more wine than you need. We all do. I’m planning on donating some damned fine bottles, maybe even a Rayas, or some older Saxum, or, well, come and find out! Donate! Do it because I made you laugh for the last six years for free. Whatever motivates you, please do what you are moved to do.

I don’t think I’ve ever plugged anything like this on HoseMaster of Wine™. I may not ever again. But using your wine to help wine country is simply repaying the gift that wine has been in your life. Chances like this come around very rarely. Go for it.

www.wscwr.com

More Thoughts on the Wine Country Fires

Evacuating

In the coming days you will see countless press releases and articles that will talk about how the malevolent fires in California’s wine country this past week have, for the most part, not ruined the wines. This is true. As I write, the fires still burn; and parts of the vineyard up the road from me, owned by Simi (Constellation), were being picked this morning. There were grape trucks everywhere as I drove into town. Yet it’s true that the vast majority of vineyards, estimates run around 90%, were harvested before the fires started on October 8th. Wineries here are nervous that the wines produced this year will be written off, or devalued. This seems stupidly paranoid to me. And the constant nattering of pundits and marketing types talking about how the fires had little effect will probably have the opposite of the intended effect—the constant repetition will make people, in the long run, skeptical. Like when they told you there’s no way Trump can win. This isn’t exactly the Age of Truth-Telling.

From my own personal point of view, 2017 is a cursed vintage. Let's not forget the year started with Inauguration Day. Then there was an astonishing Labor Day weekend of back-to-back 116 degree days here in Healdsburg. And now the wildfires. All season long, as they do every year, visitors have asked me, “How’s the vintage look?” I always say the same thing, “Anything can happen. It’s not over till it’s over. Everything about growing grapes hinges on luck and weather.” We’ve had little luck and bizarre weather. But the wines will be fine, in some cases, damned fine. Emphasis on “damned.”

I think this is the first important vintage of Climate Change. I mean that from a psychological point of view, not a factual point of view. I’ll never think of vintage 2017 as anything but cursed and prophetic. And not just here in Northern California. Before their harvest, Chile damn near burned to the ground. As I write, there are uncontrolled wildfires in Galicia and in Portugal. Bordeaux suffered terrible frosts in the spring. I haven’t smelled fresh air in a week here in California’s best wine country. The punishment we’ve given the planet the last hundred years is coming back to haunt us. Some of the best winemakers in the world have been running for their lives the past week, and that’s not because they got lousy scores in Wine Advocate. Pieces I’ve written in the past year, I’m thinking of “Climate Change Cellars” and “Wine Critics in Hell,” as well as a few others, aren’t that funny anymore. Well, if they ever were.

Above all, let’s remember that these sepulchral fires affected the residents here far more than the vineyards. To put it bluntly, more people here burned than vineyards. Who cares what the vintage will be like? Oh, goody, Harlan Estate didn’t burn down! Wouldn’t want their mailing list to be upset, maybe not have a vintage for their vertical. Yes, I know, wine is big business here, employs a lot of people, generates monumental amounts of tourist dollars. But it’s the people who are employed in the business who are now suffering, unable to find a place to live, without much money, without much hope. I promise you, not a single one of them is thinking about how the wines will turn out. And this is now the way of the world. Please come here and visit! Or go out and buy a bottle of Sonoma County or Napa Valley wine. Buy a case! Hey, I know, buy a Natural Wine from here, it was, after all, a Natural Disaster. We need you, we need your money and your support. As New Orleans did, as New York did, as Houston does. As your town will, too, one day. Think we’re not all in this together? You’re an imbecile.

It was breathtakingly gorgeous here today. Some smoke around, as there will be for weeks, but it was warm and beautiful. But I wasn’t where the fires had been. I don’t have the heart. I nearly lived there.
 

Thoughts on the Wine Country Fires

Standing outside at 4:00 AM Wednesday morning, I was inordinately thrilled to see Orion’s belt just above my head, through the trees that overhang my house. It was my turn to get up, go outside on a blessedly calm morning, and smell the air for smoke, glance at the horizon behind me and pray there wasn’t an ominous orange glow signalling disaster, like the cotton candy hair of our President. There wasn’t, and I suddenly recognized the irony of being happy not to see fire anywhere near me while I gazed at the heavens and stood in awe of the indescribably gigantic orbs of fire in Orion’s belt and the rest of the universe, from which we are all descended. Wildfires humble you nearly as much as the heavens.

I live outside of Healdsburg, nearly equidistant from that quaint tourist town and from Calistoga in the other direction. The Tubbs fire (Is that really the most intimidating name they could give such a destructive and death-dealing fire? It sounds like it’s at Bed, Bath and Beyond. If only.) is about two or three miles south of where my wife and I live. Perhaps six miles to the north of us the Pocket fire is burning up Alexander Valley near Geyserville. Yeah, I’m scared. Though at the moment, safe and optimistic.

We began to pack our cars with valuables on Monday morning after our landlord awakened us and told us the ridge behind where we live was on fire. It’s forest from the ridge to our house. It was going to burn towards us. Gathering valuables and putting all of our animals in travel cages, I struggled with visions that most closely resembled Heironymous Bosch paintings. Yet a wildfire quickly brings one great focus. My wife Kathleen was the hero. I was more like Daffy Duck bouncing off the walls and repeating, “Woo Hoo, Woo Hoo, Woo Hoo!”

There was time. The winds had vanished. It was very still. We were outside, cars nearly packed, watering down everything like a bartender on a cruise ship. The smell of smoke makes you crazy. At about 10 AM, my landlord said that, “if I were you, I’d leave.” Kathleen and I drove into town to stay with friends in Healdsburg. Less than a mile from our house we had to pull our cars to the side of the road so that about five fire trucks could roar past us, on their way to fight our little fire up Young’s Road. I felt like applauding.

Our house survived that Monday night. The firefighters extinguished the fire about half a mile north of us, and the winds didn’t return. Tuesday morning we returned, and we’ve been here ever since. The cars remained packed. It ain’t over yet.

I haven’t been out to see the destruction in my community. I haven’t had the time or the desire. It’s been five days of sleepless nights and vigilance. I’ll see plenty of that destruction in the coming months and years. I don’t need to see it to know how terrible it is. I can smell it in the air. I can see it in the faces of folks at the grocery store, in the dozens of cars in the parking lots filled with belongings and pets. I can hear it in the planes and helicopters that are constantly flying overheard. I lived through four major earthquakes in Southern California. This is far worse. Earthquakes are the wedgies of natural disasters. A wildfire like this is a brutal beating.

There will be countless stories about these fires. Mine are trivial, but for my wife having to euthanize her beloved Arabian mare Lorian who was tragically injured when she reared and fell, refusing to be loaded into a trailer to be taken to safety, breaking her hindquarters. A three-legged horse has no chance against a wildfire, and a veterinarian, who had lost everything to the fire, her home and all of her belongings, rushed to help. Dr. Tere Crocker’s courage and compassion made all the difference in this horrible incident. Kathleen lost a loved one in this fire. So many have. The death toll is going to be staggering. 

But I’ve been lucky. I’m only writing this because many people have reached out to me, worried about me, and concerned I hadn’t posted here in a while. Maybe not my most avid fans, but, nonetheless, concerned. All is well.

So many things run through your mind in these situations. I’m reminded that people we should genuinely admire—firefighters, first-responders, volunteers and law enforcement officers from all over California and Oregon and Nevada—don’t have letters after their names. Should you? Frankly, it’s embarrassing to see WSET after a name, or CSW, or MS or MW. Earn the degrees, follow your passion for wine, but stick the initials where they belong—up your box canyon. This is the kind of chatter that goes on in the brain under stress.

I came home from work Sunday evening late, angry at how crappy my weekend had been, how ridiculously screwed up the job conditions were those two days—essentially feeling sorry for myself. Now I can’t remember why I was so angry. I haven’t given work a second thought. Where I work didn’t burn down like so many wineries have. And speaking of heroes without initials after their names, what about the CalFire helicopter crews who ferried trapped vineyard workers on night pick out of the fires? Trump would have fiddled while those brown people burned.

I’m grateful for the network of friends who checked on us, for our close friends in Healdsburg who took us in without hesitation Monday night and fed us, housed our menagerie. How do you repay that kindness? 

All of us will be talking about these wine country fires for a long time. Today is my 65th birthday. I won’t ever have to struggle to remember what I did on my 65th. I’m not celebrating. How could I amid all the loss and grief and pain and fear? It’s just my birthday. I’ve never felt smaller or less important than standing outside at 4AM gazing at the stars, happy to see them so bright and intense, burning into eternity.

The HoseMaster of Wine™ Short Listed for a Louis Roederer International Wine Writing Award

On the rare occasions I read wine blogs, I usually wonder what motivates the person behind the blog. Notice I avoided using the word “writer.” It’s a word thrown around far too casually in the wine world, much like sommelier, or authentic, or award-winning. None of those words seems to have any real meaning anymore. It’s painful to read most of the wine blogs out there if you love the written word, or love wine. I recently read a blog that seemed to be aimed at being funny, but was tragically witless. Then I realized it was mine. So what motivates all these folks to review utterly contemptible commercial crap they get for free and rave about it? Why do they think it would be interesting for us to join them on their “journey to discover wine?” They’re the dullest companions imaginable, why would I go an a journey with them? Do they hit “Publish” and really believe they have influence outside of their little circle of other crappy blog owners? 

Or do they publish a blog for the community they find online? I think that’s probably the answer for the majority of folks. It’s a perfectly lovely answer. Over the years, I’ve met dozens of bloggers. Most of them don’t like me. Maybe because when they tell me they write a blog, I reply, “No, you don’t write a blog, you type a blog.” I confess, I’ve never been a wine snob, but I am a tiresome writing snob. The human need for self-expression is a wonder to behold, but few possess much talent. But if their self-expression leads to community, that’s a powerful drug. It’s an emotional Opioid (which I mistakenly thought was a rectal problem for a young Ron Howard).

I’m something of a recluse. My idea of a good time is knowing that others are not having a good time. I’m uncomfortable with groups of people. I live in my head, which makes sense if you’ve seen my body. (I found it on AirBnB. It’s a dump, but it’s cheap.) I write because I love wandering around the place where I live. I think it’s pretty obvious that I don’t write in order to find a community. As painful as it is, as personally challenging as it is, as utterly worthless as it is, I love to write comedy and satire. Yet despite my best efforts, through writing this blog, I found a community. Just stop and think about how frightening that is.

Last year, I won a Louis Roederer International Wine Writers Award. Out of nowhere. It meant a great deal to me, for personal reasons having to do with my late mother always wanting me to be a writer, not a worthless sommelier (is there any other kind?). Over the Fourth of July weekend, I learned that I am again on the short list for a Roederer Award as the Ramos Pinto (without question the finest producer of Port) Online Communicator of the Year. I’m thrilled, and humbled. It’s a short list of great wine writers. And me. Last year’s win, for me, represented satire being given a seat at the wine writing table. This year, I feel the shortlisting on a more personal level. It’s more about acceptance.

I don’t expect to win. Look at my fellow shortlisters: Tim Atkin MW, Julia Harding MW, Richard Hemming MW, Andrew Jefford, and Wink Lorch, who I thought was a game show host. I’d say that I’m happy to be on a list of wine writers with these five talented people, but, hell, they’d all say they’re happy to be on a list with four talented people, and a clown. I want to win, I want to win very much. The Roederer I won last year looks so lonely when I set it down in front of me wherever I go. I need one for my other hand. But I won’t win, and I’m perfectly content with that. This is the first list I’ve ever been on with five people whose work I can honestly say I admire. Not that they give a Trump what I think about them.

We love to give awards. Boy, do we love to give awards. I always try to remember that awards are for the people giving them, not the folks receiving them. That was hard to remember when I won a Roederer last year, which didn’t make it any less true. I’ve toyed with giving HoseMaster Awards, but it’s sort of what I do anyway. A black eye is a kind of award, I think. If there were awards for awards, I think the Roederer, at this point, might win the award for best wine writing award. I tell people that the Roederer International Wine Writing Award is the MacArthur Genius Grant of wine writing—if you ignore all three of those words. There are the Wine Blog Awards (the Poodles), which are a joke and utterly worthless—the Barefoot Moscato of wine writing awards. I think I’m the only person left in the restaurant and wine business who hasn’t won a James Beard Award. Honestly, I think the number of Beard Awards would have embarrassed James Beard. That’s sort of sad. Yet it speaks to our love of awards, ingrained in us as children, symbols that we are loved when we so often doubt it. Winning an award is reliving childhood moments when a parent expresses pride in your work. You glow, you feel loved, you gain self-esteem, and then you ask if there’s money attached to it.

What amazes me the most about the entire experience of writing HoseMaster of Wine™ is that I sit in my room in my rented house in Sonoma County, all alone, in front of the hated blinking cursor, gazing out at a vineyard, writing the kind of foolishness and dreck that I used to write all alone at a typewriter for eight hours a day when I was young, which almost no one would read. Now, because of the astonishing existence of the internet, at least fourteen people instantly read what I write. There’s an entire generation that takes the internet for granted, who don’t know life without it. It changed my life in ways I don’t completely understand. But the most amazing change of all is that because of the internet and this stupid blog, a recluse found community. I didn’t think that was possible.

The winners of the Louis Roederer International Wine Writing Awards will be announced on September 12th in London. Wish me luck.

The HoseMaster of Wine™ Wins a Roederer International Wine Writers' Award!

Every now and then, something happens that makes you feel great. An unexpected love letter from someone you have feelings for. Praise from someone for whom you have great respect, and who praises an example of your work for which you too have great fondness. A stray dog walks up to you in a park and curls into your lap. You feel great.

I won a Roederer International Wine Writers’ Award. Imagine that.

Hell, maybe Trump does have a chance. And don’t bet against the Cubs now. It could be that kind of year for Losers.

My category was the Ramos Pinto Online Communicator of the Year Award. I think it’s abundantly clear from my work that I believe the universe has a sense of humor. Irony is not a rare and precious mineral, it is as common as the fetid air we breathe. I laughed out loud when I read the list of previous winners of the Online Communicator Award. Three names in particular gave me some perspective on the prestige of having won—W. Blake Gray, Alice Feiring, Natalie MacLean. Life does have a way of keeping one humble.

I have often remarked here that awards are more about the group handing out the awards than about the recipients. Yet I’m damned pleased to have won, if not outright astonished. The Roederer Award becomes a permanent part of my resumé, and I am honored. Is it tasteless for the winner to demand a recount?

Is it at this point that I praise the others on the short list? Why do I have the feeling that not a single one of them was that thrilled to be on the short list with the HoseMaster of Wine™? No matter. Andrew Jeffords has won six Roederers now. I think that means next time he gets the free buffet and car wash. Mr. Jeffords is a far better writer than I, I think we can all agree on that. I expected him to win, though I hate betting the sure thing. Jane Anson is a wonderful writer as well, and I had the great pleasure of meeting her at the Napa Valley Professional Wine Writers’ Symposium in January. She was my sentimental favorite to win. And win she did, luckily for me, in the Features Writing category. Well-deserved. Andrea Frost also writes a monthly piece for Tim Atkin MW, and, while her style is the sort I love to lampoon, I admire her writing ear, her ability to turn a strikingly original phrase. I don’t know anything about Yolanda Ortiz de Arri, but she has the coolest name. And Alder Yarrow and I go back a long way.

I do believe that it’s important that wine writing be recognized in a serious fashion. The Roederer International Wine Writers’ Awards are doing exactly that, and I commend them. Hey, you’re going to make mistakes, but the concept is bulletproof. There are not any other awards that only honor wine writing. (First clown that brings up the Wine Blog Awards, welcome to the Go Fuck Yourself Club®!) Most awards throw in the wine category as an afterthought, a way to bring a few more eyes to their ceremonies and results. Wine writers as Miss Congeniality. In the event Miss America dies, we go to your house for the wake. It’s insulting. So I hope that the folks at the Roederers stay the course, focus solely on wine writing. Any of you who have tried to write about wine on a regular basis know how difficult it is to be thoughtful and original about what is at heart a very narrow subject. Yet it’s a beloved subject to millions of people in the world, and the people who endeavor to make it more accessible and entertaining deserve recognition. My sincerest thanks to the people at Louis Roederer. Yours is the only wine writing award I wanted to win. I never once expected I would.

And a very big thank you to the five judges. Maybe I'm wrong, but I have to think that selecting me as the winner had to feel like taking a risk. My profane and often controversial writing for Tim Atkin MW's site (all the pieces I submitted for review were originally published there) is a long way from the traditional wine writing practiced by the others on the short list. Perhaps that worked in my favor, but, nevertheless, I very much appreciate the support of the judges who had the courage, or the whimsy, to vote for me. It's a distinguished panel of judges, which makes the award that much more meaningful to me. Charles Metcalfe, Tim Atkin MW, Fiona Beckett, Sara Jane Evans MW, Bill Knott--thank you, one and all. I've never had the pleasure of meeting any of you, which also worked in my favor, I'm certain.

Writing is a peculiar compulsion. I’ve written that I do this simply to make people laugh, but that’s not entirely true. I do it primarily for myself. I publish it to make people laugh, but I write to open that door in my mind where the voice now called the HoseMaster dwells. I’m not an interesting person in real life. I’m not well-traveled, I’m not especially brilliant, I’m deeply insecure and often withdrawn. Yet I can find this part of my mind that makes people laugh, that is able to see the farce that is every day life, that is fearless and quick-witted, unafraid to tell truths that others will not, that appeals to intelligent people and attractive women. I’m only that man when I’m here writing in that voice, and that requires I be alone a lot of the time, and lost in my thoughts much of the time otherwise. I live in my head. So often the rest of the world is a disappointment. You don’t want to be me.

I most certainly did not begin HoseMaster of Wine™ in order to become an award-winning wine writer. I had no aspirations when I began, and I still have none. I’m not a journalist. I write about wine, but wine isn’t my subject. Human foible and folly are my subjects, with wine as a mirror. I’m not really sure what it is I communicate online as Online Communicator of the Year. Maybe that wine and the wine business are not above satire any more than any other subject is above it. Maybe that wine isn’t just a terrible financial investment, but it’s also a terrible emotional investment. Maybe that knowing a lot about wine doesn’t make you important, or valuable, or admirable. We all take wine too seriously. Yes, it’s a miracle, but so is pizza. Maybe we should stop lying so much about wine.

I’m very flattered and extremely proud to have won a Louis Roederer International Wine Writers’ Award. Thank you to all the judges, and to Champagne Roederer and Ramos Pinto, the finest Port producer in the history of Port producers. Suck it, Fonseca.

I’ve been at this for a long stretch now, and the rewards have been immeasurably life-changing and rewarding. Awards recognize past accomplishments, and are fleeting. In the real world, you’re only as good as your recent work. The people I’ve met because of my work are the real reward. They are too numerous to mention, but you all know who you are. A writer writes alone, but lives among those who read his work. Being unread is death to a writer. A voice unheard is no voice at all. Thanks to all those who have heard me.

I know I offend people. I intend offense. Satire is intended to outrage and offend people. I measure my own success by who it is I’ve offended, who I’ve driven to outrage. I judge myself by that list of people, and I am content when everyone on that list is a fool, an idiot, or an asshole. So far, so good. Most have been all three. But satire is more than that. It spits in the face of false authority. It questions the establishment (oh, yes, I grew up in the ’60’s). It makes us laugh while it makes us think, and that is a rare kind of doubleheader. I am not a great satirist, or a comic genius. But if I’ve somehow paved the way for that kind of talent to emerge by being recognized with a Roederer Award, if I've made satire seem more vital to the wine business, then I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

Thank You, Louis Roederer International Wine Writers' Awards. I feel great.

Last Post of 2015--You're Welcome

There’s so much I want to say after another year slogging through HoseMaster of Wine™. The holidays are not only a time to celebrate, they’re also a time to reflect. If a psychic had told me last January what my 2015 would hold, I wouldn’t have believed her. If I had believed her, I might have put down my poison pen for the year.

I certainly managed to offend an unusually large number of people this past year. I know it seems hard to believe, but offending people isn’t my actual goal. In fact, I don’t even have an actual goal, not when it comes to this blog anyway. Well, maybe to meet hot chicks, but that hasn’t really played out like I’d hoped. It turns out that satire offends people. It certainly seemed to offend Georg Riedel. He had the grandest over-reaction of the year when he had his lawyers threaten to sue me for libel. But he wasn’t the only one who took offense at my shenanigans. The folks at Le Pan were a bit peeved, as were many sommeliers, Master and otherwise. More than a few wine bloggers had harsh words for me, in public or in private. And the truth is, I never insulted the people in the biz I’d really like to insult. There are many I studiously avoid lampooning simply because I don’t want to mention their names, for reasons of my own. I will one day, I’ll get to them, but I need the right vehicle, the right moment. I thought I went pretty easy on folks this past year. Yet I still managed to piss off more people than usual. It’s a gift.

In their own mind and heart, no one thinks they deserve to be satirized. Especially those who believe everything they do is a craft—which they believe simply because if they do it, it must be a craft. More than once, I’ve had emails from wine people asking me to lampoon them. There seems to be some sort of badge of honor associated with being the butt of a HoseMaster column—though a butt is just a butt, and rarely honorable. And there have been several occasions when I’ve skewered someone who asked me to, and nearly every time that particular person took great offense at what I wrote and stopped being a fan. We rarely see what’s genuinely funny or hypocritical or foolish about ourselves, even after it’s been pointed out to us. Satire aims to shine a light into all of our dark places (making us the butt, I guess), to spotlight inadequacies and frailties, faults and hypocrisies, using laughter as a weapon. And there is no more powerful weapon. Laughter is the Force. May the Force be with you, because when it’s against you, it can be painful. Combine laughter with truth, and amazing things happen.

And terrible things. This has been a banner year for massacres—an abundant vintage. But it began with Charlie Hebdo. All year when tiny wine people harangued me, I thought about those poor dorks (and satirists are universally dorks, myself included) being murdered. You see, I don’t mind the least bit being insulted on chat rooms or on blogs or even to my face. That comes with the territory. I have it coming. But bullying, or threatening, that’s a much different story. It doesn’t take courage to write what I write here. Not at all. Don’t kid yourself. Comedians are not brave people, even if they speak hard truths. We’re cowards for the most part, we’re afraid of physical confrontation. And we certainly don’t welcome intimidation or threats. But I welcome critics, and I don’t mind that people hate me. I care who the people are who hate me. I’m happy to say that I’m damned proud of my list of people who don’t like what I do here. A more distinguished list of idiots would be hard to compile.

There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t want to quit. Yes, I know, I threaten to quit all the fucking time. But I mean it every single time, too. Yet it seems like every time I decide, for the last time, to stop publishing HoseMaster of Wine™, something happens to make me go on. So you have only yourselves to blame for this travesty of wine blogging. This year it was many things.

I won’t ever forget the response to Georg Riedel threatening me with a libel suit. The support of the wine writing community, as well as the wine community in general, was amazing, and personally overwhelming. After all of that, I simply couldn’t walk away from the blog. It would have seemed like a victory for Riedel, and I couldn’t let that happen, not after all the kindness and generosity and support that was thrown my way. I’m not used to feeling affection for the wine business. But those weeks, when wine people far more influential and important than I stood behind me, changed my life. I know that, for the most part, they were simply standing up for a cause, and not really for the HoseMaster. It wasn’t really about me. It was about freedom of expression, and standing up to bullies. I knew that almost from the start. Yet the support, its vehemence and rectitude, filled me with pride and purpose. Thank you.

During the course of the past year, I received a lot of kind letters. Many of them, especially those from people in the trade, expressed the same sentiment. That what I write here on HoseMaster of Wine™ expresses thoughts and truths about the wine business that the letter writer wishes he/she was able to express, but doesn’t, for fear of losing a job, or being somehow blackballed. I like to think that I’m expressing truths in a comic manner, but, honestly, it’s hard to know. When peers tell me I have it right, it makes me happy. Thank you.

I also received a handful of personal letters after my piece about “Wine, Memories and Massacres.” People shared their own stories of tragedy, and of how wine has helped them through life, and of how they endured. I don’t usually get that kind of mail, as you might have surmised. Life turns out to be very much about loss, and about how gracefully and honestly we endure it. I endure through laughter, and by attempting to make others laugh. When I inadvertently touch them as well, I’m astonished. I’ve known from a very young age that words have power, that language matters, and that abusing language with sloppiness or ignorance or prejudice is a horrible wrong. My answer for all of those circumstances is satire, is laughter, is lampooning. That I offend the people I aim at never bothers me in the slightest.

I was also invited to speak at the Napa Valley Professional Wine Writers’ Symposium in February. If this doesn’t ruin its credibility, I don’t know what could. I’ll be sharing the spotlight with people far more talented than I am, many of whom don’t like me. So that should be fun. But Jim Gordon’s willingness to include a satirist in the mix is heartening. And that has kept me writing to an extent, too. Satire should always be present at the table. Maybe not as an honored guest, but, at the very least, as the drunk uncle. If anyone who writes about wine hears the HoseMaster’s footsteps as he writes pretentiously about wine, then my work here is worthwhile. I’m not vain enough to think that ever happens, but I can hope so.

Yes, 2015 was an interesting vintage for the HoseMaster. I’m not at all important, as wine writers go, I never appear on lists of Influential Wine Bloggers (inevitably published by industry nobodies), nor do I have much ambition to be. I just love to write, and wine is my muse. For every single individual who reads my work, I’m very grateful. I know that my work is hit and miss, with miss ahead by a wide margin. I know that it’s foulmouthed and scatalogical and crude. Nothing about its tone or approach is accidental. The HoseMaster, and Lo Hai Qu, are fictional extensions of me, voices in my head that scream to be heard. I don’t need an audience, not really, but there isn’t a day goes by that I’m not astonished by having one, and by your love and kindness.

May your 2016 be filled with a lot more Peace, and a lot more laughter.

Happy Holidays!
From Your Friends, 
The HoseMaster, Lo Hai Qu, Larry Anosmia, Avril Cadavril, Loqueesha, Shizzangela, Splooge Estate, the makers of Boner in a Can®, the members of the Go Fuck Yourself Club™, and, of course, me.

EPHEMERA: Wine Blogging--Just Another Kind of Sad and Lonely Exhibitionism

I was a judge in two wine competitions in June, the California State Fair Wine Competition and the San Francisco International Wine Competition. That explains why I was absent for so much of June. Well, that and apathy.

I spend a lot of time wondering why I do what I do now, considering where I've been, and considering the big wine picture. It seems to be out of some sort of need for attention. Which is pathetic. Writing HoseMaster of Wine™ was originally a way for me to see if I could still write satire. But after five years and more than 400 pieces I think I’ve answered that question. No fucking way. However, I have received an awful lot of attention, much of it negative, and, like the flasher in a battered trenchcoat who lives for the reactions, I keep waving my weenie around hoping for applause for my limp apparatus. Maybe wine blogging is just another kind of sad and lonely exhibitionism.

The nominees for the Poodles were announced (the winners having just been announced) and I ill-advisedly perused many of the nominees. Ouch. I don’t know who the judges were, but theirs must have a terrible task, the equivalent of judging the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest and having to drink the hot dog water afterward. Yet this year I felt some compassion for the nominees. Most must have felt gratified to have been nominated. I lobbied hard not to be nominated, I hate meaningless awards, which is another kind of pathetic. I didn't vote for the Poodles, but I certainly hoped that Chris Kassel would win for Best Writing on a Wine Blog (he didn’t, but he won for Best Blog Post of the Year, ironically, for a post that had nothing really to do with wine, but with Robin Williams' suicide--Morgue and Mindy) because he’s smarter and funnier than I am, and comedy is so much harder to write than tepid wine prose. That said, I’m sure Chris doesn’t give a crap that he won. I never did.

I ask myself all the time, what am I trying to prove by writing HoseMaster of Wine™? I don’t know the answer. Maybe I’m not trying to prove anything. But it feels to me like I am. Only I don’t know what. If anything, it’s to prove that I love wine. Not particular wines, not the romance of wine, just wine. And like any great love, I can’t explain why. I can only say I know my life would have been empty without it. That my love for wine is what led me to everything good about my life. So I feel protective of it, and I dislike those who merely use it, those who talk about it thoughtlessly, those who pretend to love wine, pretend to know more about wine than they actually do, but are merely using wine to benefit themselves. And they are legion.

I’ve always hated the pretentiousness that surrounds wine. Smart people can be pretentious, which is shameful. And stupid people can be pretentious, which is laughable. Wine writing these days seems guilty of being both shameful and laughable. Not all of it, not every single instance, not every single writer, but far too much. On the cosmic scale of being human, knowing a lot about wine barely ranks above being good at pinball. The endless debates that surround wine elevate trivia to heights equalled only by TMZ and pledging sororities. Yet chat rooms and blogs are filled with the kinds of wine frauds that would make Rudy Kurniawan proud, and only because wine is deemed important. I love wine, but I’d never, in the grand scheme of things, attribute it much importance.

In 2014 I judged in six wine competitions. This year I’ve judged two, and I’m probably done for the year. I know why I attend competitions. For the simple joy of being around a bunch of interesting wine folks, many, if not all, of whom know more about wine than I. It’s kind of like attending Bible Study, only everybody’s nuts and drinks too much. So just like Bible Study. Judging reminds me over and over again how endlessly fascinating wine is, and how it unfailingly outmatches us, humbles our feeble senses of smell and taste. Wine isn’t about those senses, though in a strictly objective sense it is. Wine is really about camaraderie, congeniality and laughter, the simple joy of intemperance. Or it’s supposed to be. Too often that is missing from wine judging, and from wine writing.

Truthfully, it’s also flattering to be asked to judge a prestigious wine competition. Not getting asked to return can be disheartening, a kick in the old grape nuts, but when you’re the HoseMaster, well, you never expect to be invited to the cool parties in the first place. Satirists never are. Getting invited even once is pretty cool, makes me feel accepted and appreciated. So, again, we’re back to pathetic.

Pardon my little rambling essay. EPHEMERA has always been about sitting in front of the fucking blinking cursor and just expressing what’s been running through my twisted mind. I do wonder why I do this. I don’t need to; it isn’t keeping a roof over my head. It isn’t a path to fame and reputation—not the way I do it anyway. It’s not even very good, not a repository of wit or insight that the world will some day honor and read. It seems to be some sick way of caring about wine, some way to repay what I owe to wine. As if that were possible.

Some Christmas Thoughts from the HoseMaster of Wine™

I’m pretty lucky to have had a career in wine. I’m not sure what else I could have done with my life. It seems like the wine business attracts those without the talent to have chosen a genuine career, or those completely lost and confused about what to do with their life. A career in wine is like having been a lifetime Psych major. I just couldn’t figure out anything else to do. And isn’t that probably true of most of the major wine figures of our time? Parker might have spent his life as a low-level attorney at the firm of Extract, Premox and Brettanomyces, LLC had he not found wine as his calling. And what line of work would Matt Kramer be in? Maybe holding a chair at a prestigious university. Not a professorship, just actually holding a real chair. Laube would be a life model for a wax museum. Though one would have to admit that Eric Asimov would still be writing science fiction.

It’s Christmas week, and society forces us to be grateful. We’re not, but there’s a lot of peer pressure to try to be grateful for all we’ve been given. And to give generously to those who have less. I have a perverse fondness for the Christmas wine gift suggestions that are published everywhere. It makes the people who love wine--your Dad, your crazy uncle, the waitress you’re trying to screw--seem so petty and materialistic and, well, stupid about wine. Does anyone really need a Coravin? I don’t care if it works. It’s just an expensive, high-tech, wine Pet Rock. Cool for about a week, then gathering dust in that wine junk drawer we all have, alongside the aerator, the stupid sleeve that wraps around a bottle and tells you the temperature (by the way, it’s great for taking the temperature of your anaconda, if you get my drift), and the Vac-U-Vin. These shopping lists also always include glassware. Really? I need a $60 wine glass to appreciate my Natural Wine? Shouldn’t I just use Natural Glass, like the crap that washes up on shore after a hurricane? And, anyway, I’m a wine lover. I have 50 wine glasses. I need wine glasses like a fat guy needs forks. The current rage is a wine glass by the rather Norse Goddish name of Zalto! I’ll give Zalto credit. They out-bullshit Riedel. The Zalto, they say, is designed so, “The curve of the bowls are tilted at the angles of 24°, 48° and 72°, which are in accordance to the tilt angles of the Earth.” That’s pretty fucking stupid. I serve my wine at 65°. I like a nice wine glass as much as anyone, but the whole wine glass fetish for Riedel and Zalto makes wine lovers look like assholes, assholes tilted at 90° so that glass makers have easy access. Drinking wine out of expensive wine glasses is the equivalent of snorting cocaine through hundred dollar bills—you do it to show that you can, but, in truth, you’re still just a common addict.

But I digress.

I’m grateful to have had a long and undistinguished career in wine. Wine is still a mystery to me. I’ve found that over the years the greater my wine knowledge became, the greater the gaps in my wine knowledge grew. So that when I began my career in wine, I knew a lot more than I knew after thirty years of studying it. There was so much I didn’t know I didn’t know at the beginning, that I knew a lot. As I learned more, I began to know far less. Now that I’m forty years into a life in wine, I’m completely ignorant. I’ve lost the certainty of the beginner, the certainty that dominates the wine blogosphere, the certainty that is represented by the fatuous 100 Point Scale. When I was young and knew a lot about wine, I used the 100 Point Scale mercilessly, followed it faithfully. Now that I’m more experienced and far stupider, I just don’t see how it adds anything to the enjoyment of wine. It’s a crutch, but, dammit, it’s a crutch everyone likes, like Tiny Tim’s, so it has to be good! I’m so stupid about wine now that I no longer believe in the 100 Point Scale. Sad, really. When I was young and deeply informed about wine, I could also tell you which wines were better than others. Natural wine was better than whatever you call the other stuff. Wine with lower alcohol was better than wine with higher alcohol. Cheap wine was just as good as more expensive wine. Balance was so easy to define and every wine I loved, every great wine, had balance. Duh. Everybody knows that. I was certain of it. Now I’ve been tasting and studying wine for so long, I no longer know shit about it. So, really, if I were you, I’d follow those who are certain of their wine opinions. They have the blessing of certainty, the gift of having tremendous insight into wine through that tiny little window they know, the window that reflects their own image back to them. I prefer the mystery of wine, so I’ll pass. My ignorance has become my bliss.

At least in my memory, wine has never been more interesting or more diverse. I’m grateful, this Christmas, for that. I no longer taste 7000 wines a year as I once did (yes, in fact, I did keep track). I taste about 365. I no longer lead the sommelier life. I haven’t had a unicorn wine in years, and don’t give a fuck. I had my share. It’s no great achievement to have consumed rare wines, just as it’s no great achievement to be a sommelier. It’s certainly a gift, and a wondrous gift. But to brag about gifts you’ve been given to those who cannot afford them, to post pictures of the empty bottles like you'd post nude photos of your ex-lovers, well, that’s a monument to human thoughtlessness, stupidity and conceit. Glad you enjoyed the wine. Now welcome to the Go Fuck Yourself Club™. You know where you can put that Zalto.

I am feeling very grateful this Christmas for my long life in wine. I was lucky. I never really had the talent for it, was never a gifted wine taster, or particularly smart, but I had passion and tried hard. I’ve been called the Pete Rosé of wine, which makes me blush. And that passion is what also drives HoseMaster of Wine™. A passion for wine, and, in the words of Sabatini, being “born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.” I’m grateful for all of you who are common taters, and for those of you who send me private emails to express your thoughts on my work here. I’m also grateful to all of you who hate what I do here. It’s often you who drive me, your scorn that I crave. Thank you. And welcome to the Go Fuck Yourself Club™. And I am grateful for the support of folks far more talented than I for my work on HoseMaster of Wine™, folks like Tim Atkin, Robert Parker, Charlie Olken, Lettie Teague, Dan Berger, Mike Dunne, and STEVE! Heimoff. Your support has been extremely gratifying.

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you. Or Happy Hanukkah. You choose. Have one of each. May we all have an interesting year in wine in 2015, and the health and happiness to enjoy it.

62

The Young HoseMaster with Karen, 1975

On special occasions, I used to take my college girlfriend Karen to Hungry Tiger for dinner. (Are there Hungry Tigers still? Aside from those in Detroit? Are there Victoria Stations? Those chain restaurants seemed special when I was in my 20’s.) In those days, it seemed every restaurant in Los Angeles had the same wines on their wine lists: Mateus, Lancer’s, Wente Bros. Blanc de Blancs, Charles Krug Chenin Blanc, Mouton-Cadet, Weibel Green Hungarian, Blue Nun, Soave Bolla and Valpolicella and, for house wine, Inglenook Chablis. But it was at the Hungry Tiger that I discovered a much finer wine list, and Karen and I often ordered the Callaway Chenin Blanc—a boutique wine from the up-and-coming region of Temecula. We were connoisseurs.

Today is my 62nd birthday. Does anyone ever believe they’ll live to 62? Not at the Hungry Tiger in 1974 I didn’t. But it wasn’t even on my mind. Karen was on my mind. I was crazy in love for the second time in my life, and, little did I know, I was also falling in love with wine. I haven’t seen Karen in more than 30 years, but I’m still happily married to wine. We have no children.

I am often asked how I first “got into” wine. “Got into” is an ugly phrase, but it’s the phrase that seems to always be part of the question, a very poorly turned phrase that is tiresome but ubiquitous in our inarticulate society. I always think one should ask, “How did you and wine meet?” One doesn’t ask, “So how did you get into your wife?” There might be a good story, but it’s rude.

My parents didn’t drink. I never saw my father drink any alcoholic beverage. My mother only rarely drank. This may be hard to believe, but I never drank alcohol until my 21st birthday. I tasted a beer once—I think my wayward cousin Allen let me taste his beer when I was about 12—but other than that, all through high school and college, I didn’t drink. I was working in a restaurant when I turned 21, and after my shift that night, everyone bought me drinks. I was a waiter, and at that steakhouse, the waiters wore rugby shirts. Very trendy back then, though I’m not sure I knew rugby was even a sport.

I got insanely drunk. I don’t remember much of that evening, except I was the center of attention for several sexy cocktail waitresses I wanted, in my imagination, to bed (I had no chance, but their flirting with me on my birthday was important to me and my fragile ego), and I just kept drinking what they put in front of me.

I woke up on October 14th, 1973, magically, in my own bed. I was naked and alone, with no idea how I’d made it home. I knew I hadn’t driven—someone had wisely taken my car keys early in the evening. My clothes were neatly folded on a chair. I had had about as much chance of folding my clothes neatly as a monkey has of passing the MW exam. Only happened once. I think he works for Diageo.

Obviously, I’d never had a hangover. Yet I knew exactly what one was, as though humans are genetically predisposed to recognize a hangover like they instantly recognize a snake as dangerous. I got out of bed and puked. In that order, luckily. Then I grabbed my work rugby shirt, folded so nicely on the chair, and put it on.

I was wearing a dress. I looked like the ugliest transvestite in the world, if you don’t count Jean-Charles Boisset. My rugby shirt was suddenly five sizes too big. I thought that maybe all that alcohol the night before had caused me to shrink, like Alice in Wonderland eating part of a mushroom. I had no idea what was going on, waking up naked and losing four inches of height in the same morning, but I was too hungover to care.

That is how alcohol and I met. I ended up naked and a transvestite. If that isn’t love at first sip, what is? I later found out that my friend Pete had, at one point late in the evening, dumped a screwdriver over my head, soaking my rugby shirt in orange juice and vodka. One of the other waiters, a football player, a guy about twice my size, had an extra rugby shirt in his car, which he kindly loaned me so I would be dry. One of the sexy cocktail waitresses, Kristy, a genuinely beautiful woman, had driven me home and undressed me. It sucks when your fantasy comes true and you’re not even there. Though Kristy kindly, and dishonestly, did tell lots of women I had a cute butt.

I’ve never really been much of a hard alcohol drinker. At 62, I have even more trouble with hard alcohol, or hard of any kind. Alcohol and I were love at first sight, but wine and I grew together slowly, almost invisibly, as the great relationships always do. But how we first met, I cannot honestly recall.

It seems as if wine has always been a big part of my life, that there was never a time I knew almost nothing about it. But, reflecting on it here on my self-indulgent birthday, I can recall the first time I had 1974 Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon, the Estate Bottled. I can recall the first Ridge Geyserville I tasted. I signed up for Ridge’s wine club. This was in 1976, I think. I’m still in their wine club almost 40 years later. Interesting that Ridge Geyserville is still one of California’s great wines, while Caymus has become a sad parody of itself, the Jerry Lewis of wine—all slick and bloated. I can remember my first taste of ’74 Heitz Martha’s Vineyard, given to me by a sommelier at a restaurant where I worked. I’d never had wines like these before. And I only lived a few hundred miles from where they were grown. I was smitten. Wine had driven me home, removed my clothes, and taken me to bed.

We spend our youth passionately pursuing hobbies that we think we’ll never tire of—skateboarding, slot cars, surfing, shoplifting. So I always believed I’d eventually grow weary of learning about wine. Even when I was a sommelier, I believed that. Maybe I still believe it. I am certainly weary of the wine business. But I’m more in love with wine now than I ever was. I can’t wait for wine to get home at night. I think about wine, study wine, try to impress wine. I wish I were more like wine. I adore wine. And aren’t those the signs of a healthy romance?

Wine, for me, isn’t just linked to memory, it’s actually most of my memory. Were it not for wine, nearly every significant person in my life never would have entered my life. I doubt accountants say the same thing about keeping books. I’m trying to think of a significant memory in my life after about the age of 25 that isn’t somehow linked to wine, and I can’t think of one. Even the tragic ones are linked, somehow, to wine. When wine and I met, wine became a significant and immutable fixture in my life. And I am deeply in love.

Wine, what would I do without you?

I’ve spent a lot of energy on HoseMaster of Wine™ the past five years mocking, parodying, flaying, insulting, and satirizing anyone and everyone that has much to do with wine. I feel some need to protect wine from all the buffoons, pretenders and wannabes that she has also seduced. And they are legion. It’s a foolish, Quixotean, pursuit, but it brings me an odd kind of satisfaction. Maybe all of us think our relationship to wine is the most intimate one she has, that we know her better than anyone else. So while we want everyone else to understand how remarkable she is, to honor wine and treasure wine, we also want it known that we understand her so much better than anyone else can imagine. It’s simple and foolish pride.

Birthdays seem more precious to me now, though less cause for celebration. Wine has given me an interesting and wonderful life. And I am deeply grateful. I’m also grateful for all the kindness and generosity and love I’ve received from so many of the people who read HoseMaster of Wine™. Thank you for allowing me this silly little reminiscence today. I know you come here to laugh, or to be angry, or outraged, but it’s my birthday, I get to do what I want.

I’m sure I’ll drink something old and rare tonight in the company of my brilliant and beautiful wife and a dear friend. I’ll think about all the people I’ve loved who wine brought into my life, some who wouldn't live to see 62. I’ll wonder how many more birthdays I’ll see, like people who seek answers and reassurance for how long they should keep a bottle of wine, “How long do you think it will age?”

“No one knows,” is the answer.

Thoughts on an Earthquake

My first thought after awakening to the news that the 6.0 earthquake in wine country was centered in Napa? Sounds like all those falling bricks will delay harvest…
***
Earthquakes are a reminder, if we really need one, that we’re rather insignificant beings on this colossal planet. If we see Earth as a berry, humans are a kind of botrytis, an Ignoble Mold. We’ve spent a couple of hundred years of our Industrial Revolution trying to destroy Earth. It only makes sense that Earth is going to fight back once in a while. It’s the movements of its tectonic plates, like the minor movement that dismantled downtown Napa early Sunday, that created the beauty and diverse soils of Napa and Sonoma, the soils that make them such wondrous winegrowing regions. An earthquake is like your father saying to you when you misbehaved as a child, “I brought you into this world, I can take you out.”
***
As a lifelong resident of earthquake country, I recognized the rolling movements of my bedroom in Healdsburg as a sign that I wasn’t near the epicenter of the quake. Near the epicenter, an earthquake is sudden and explosive, only, unlike an explosion, you don’t know which direction it’s coming from. When the Whittier Narrows earthquake struck Los Angeles in 1987, I was in the shower. I have never been more grateful for shatterproof glass. I had shampoo lathered in my hair and suddenly my apartment was trying to move in next door. I grabbed a towel, even in a crisis we cover our dicks, and ran down the stairs. In the distance I could see sparks from a transformer of some kind shorting out, and I remember the cacophony of the ubiquitous car alarms of the times was very annoying. My girlfriend was screaming. She knew what was behind the towel. And then, in the way of quakes, it just stopped. There is an amazing silence after an earthquake. Even the birds are holding their breath. Dogs are woofless. Had it not been for the fucking car alarms, it would have been like standing at the dawn of time.

I had just started as a sommelier. I was about a month into the job. I drove to work that night and found a dozen large trash cans filled with broken wine bottles. The busboys had piled the shards with labels still intact in a separate place, trying to create an inventory of what had been lost. Cristal, Yquem, Lafite, Gaja, Rayas, Jayer… They were just names then, the carcasses of dead wines, stacked up as if in a graveyard. And you know what? They didn’t matter. Wineries have stories, marketing folks spend hours and hours crafting those Authentic stories, but when real life happens, when we’re taken away from our silly eno-illogical passions by genuine tragedy and heartbreak, it’s not the spilled wines’ stories we care about, it’s the human stories. Wine is only wine.
***
I couldn’t help but reflect on how Natural Wine might be affected by a Natural Disaster. Or is an earthquake an Authentic Disaster? A Real Disaster? The terminology is so confusing. Someone call Alice Feiring. She'll know. When I think wine and disaster, I think of her.
***
When I was a freshman at Occidental College, the Sylmar quake struck. Funny how we feel the need to name Natural Disasters. We name hurricanes, we name earthquakes, we name big fires, we name wines from Cornellisen… The Sylmar quake was around six in the morning, and I was unceremoniously thrown from my cheap dormitory bed. I did the exact wrong thing—I ran to the window. Across the street from my dorm was a large grassy area. In the dawn’s early light, I could see the grass moving in two foot swells, a small ocean disturbance. Grass isn’t supposed to be doing the Wave.
***
An anchor on CNN was speaking to David Duncan, whose family owns Silver Oak, and she was calling the loss of so many bottles of his wine in the earthquake a “tragedy.” Moron. The poor woman who lost everything when her trailer park home burned to the ground? What about her? Who cares? What’s she ever done for every restaurant chain in the country?
***
I was wondering if earthquakes have anything to do with balance, or terroir. Wouldn’t an earthquake right before harvest change the terroir? Will you be able to taste the difference in Trefethen Cabernet’s terroir beginning with the 2014 vintage? I would think so. Some of the vines are several feet east of where they used to be. And wouldn’t a 6.0 earthquake change a wine’s balance? It changed mine. Though I’ve always been unbalanced. I wonder about these things. This is the minutiae that makes wine interesting.  The shit we dwell on while the ground beneath our feet disappears. We are trivial beings so much of the time.
***
We live in constant denial of our insignificance and mortality. For a few minutes, earthquakes change that. In those remarkable and unforgettable handful of seconds that an earthquake lasts, we simply don’t know what to do. We run in circles, we scream, we pray for it to end. It’s like reading Palate Press. And when it does finally end, for a few days, at least, we’re a little less certain of our place in the world. The ground beneath our feet is no longer trustworthy. Our priorities are highlighted for their emptiness. I didn’t even check my wine cellar after the earthquake. I didn’t care a whit about the progress of the 2014 vintage. I wanted to hold my wife. I wanted to laugh with my friends. I wanted to remember what mattered in those frightening seconds the quake shook my little world.

To Be or Not to Be

I’ve been struggling lately with whether I want to continue writing HoseMaster of Wine™. First of all, let me just say that this is not a plea to those of you who care to flatter me to chime in and tell me how brilliant I am, and how the wine world needs me. I’m not particularly good at accepting flattery. I do much better with vitriol. Rather, this is simply a peek behind my peculiar curtain, about how weary I am of this self-imposed gig, and also how I fear I’d miss it if I do quit. Those of you uninterested in this kind of navel-gazing, leave now. I’m sure there’s something really stupid to read over at PUNCH, the online drinks magazine for the dumbstruck.

I started writing HoseMaster to see how it would feel to write regularly again. I stumbled onto wine blogs, gazed upon their splendid mediocrity, and decided to jump in. So many wine blogs proclaim that wine is too pretentious a business, all the while adding layers to that pretentiousness with their own brand of solipsistic babbling. And in the seven years I’ve been at this, nothing has changed. Worst of all, HoseMaster hasn’t changed much either. Reading the “popular” wine blogs regularly is like eating the same damned food for lunch every single day. It’s depressing that you never get sick of it.

There are a lot of different motivations for writing a wine blog. For many, it has been a way into the business. The most successful of those bloggers have learned that self-promotion, social media skills, parroting disingenuous marketing stories, passing off Wikipedia entries as personal knowledge, and relentless buttkissing are a quicker way up the ladder than actual wine experience. These are the wine bloggers the trade adores. They are overwhelmed with wine samples and offers of free junkets. They’re the equivalent of the “reporters” for “Entertainment Tonight,” who pose as insiders, but really simply spew the copy handed them by actors’ press agents. It’s twaddle, it’s far more harmful than good for the wine business, but that’s what the Internet does best—give you the opportunity to lie about who you really are.

Then there are those wine bloggers who turn a one-sentence thought into an eight hundred word essay with a misleading blurb as a title. Most of these folks think of themselves as “journalists.” Because, hey, this is a journal, right? They climb the blog rankings with a talent for writing headlines, and nothing else. You click on the link because of the headline, you read the piece, and you think, “Fuck, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve read all day.” For them, you’re a stat, an endlessly stupid moth self-destructively flitting around their headline flame. Their contribution to the wine conversation is, “Me, Me, Me.” Though they think they’re really smart, and feel their contribution is, “Meme, Meme, Meme.”

There are aggregate blogs, the cheesy, overrated wine clubs of the genre. Why, every day our panel of experts sends you the finest dozen posts available at club prices! You’re free to cancel at any time, we’re just happy you’ve fallen for it for as long as you have! There are the sad little wine blogs started by people who just want to tell you about really good wines they’ve tasted. Oh, I know I’m not a wine expert, but I know what I like! And I think this has value. They’re like Poodle puppies leaving little puddles for you all over the house. Hard to hate them, but you wish they’d grow up.

All of them make me want to quit.

I’ve not been a popular guy with a lot of folks in the wine business. That doesn’t bother me in the least. I don’t see myself as a truth-teller, some kind of superhero dedicated to cleaning up all the hypocrisy and dishonesty I see. I write comedy. Where I succeed or fail is if I make you laugh—that’s my only criterion. I rarely choose my targets, my targets almost always choose themselves. The wine world is no different than the real world. It’s filled with buffoons, cowards, pretenders, blowhards, pinheads, idiots, stuffed shirts, sycophants, and assholes. I don’t use those words when I speak of them individually. I use satire, mockery, jokes, parody and ribaldry to make my points. I don’t have an agenda, except laughter. I’ve clearly screwed that up today.

I feel like I’ve run my course on HoseMaster of Wine™. I’m not out of ideas, far from it. But I may be out of motivation. Many days I fantasize about how nice it would be to never look at a wine blog again. Hell, I often fantasize about how nice it would be to never look at the Internet again. There’s a kind of peace in the very thought. No more wine blogs would be like moving to the country and discovering just how annoying and stressful all that fucking traffic noise was where you used to live—you were able to tune it out to a degree, but now that it’s gone you see how much it detracted from your life. I think about that. Which seems to imply that I’m ready to move away from the virtual world, all that incessant and meaningless noise, gain some peace and quiet.

I love wine, and I love the wine business. It’s why I write about them both. Out of love, not disdain. But maybe my passion for wine is better served in the privacy of my own thoughts. There’s nothing new to say about wine that hasn't been said more eloquently many times before. Wine outclasses us, and our feeble imaginations and vocabularies. I've tried to bring an interesting voice to the discussion, but it feels like that voice has worn thin. At least it feels that way to me. Oh, I’m still angry. I’m still angry about how we humans manage to trivialize, ruin and degrade just about everything precious in the world, wine being just one example. I’m angry that I’m a part of that myself. But comedy is about anger, its Creator is anger, it needs anger. But it can be tiring to channel all of that anger twice a week. I’m tired.

This isn’t a farewell piece. Or it might be. I don’t know. I’m wrestling with why I do this in the first place, and for what. For those of you who come here for the laughs and are still reading, my heartfelt apology. Every now and then I feel the need to be self-indulgent. From a career standpoint, wine has been my life. For too much of the past three years, HoseMaster has been my life. There’s the rub.

Gratitude, It's the Gravy for This Thanks Giving Turkey

Writing HoseMaster of Wine™ has been a remarkable and, for the most part, gratifying experience. I have much for which to be thankful. I’m not the only wine blogger who’s primary goal is laughter, but I’m one of very few. (And here I tip my cap to Chris Kassel, who has far better comedy chops than I.) Writing satire is something of a lonely endeavor. It requires a certain amount of distance, and a great deal of time alone at a keyboard. The work itself is, most days, drudgery. But when it’s over, and I’ve written a new piece, there’s elation. That is the feeling I seem to endlessly chase. For no apparent reason.

When I look back at my body of work here, I usually wonder what the hell I’ve been trying to say all these years. Aside from, “Somebody help me!” In some measure, this entire experience has been about my mother. She died in 2007, a few months before I began this blog, but she always wanted to think of me as a writer. I was, for a while, and she was very proud of that. When I left the writing profession and ended up a sommelier, she was still proud, of course, it’s what mothers do, but it isn’t especially easy to be proud of a son who is a sommelier. In the grand scheme of things and by any measure, it’s a meaningless occupation, ranking somewhere just above 7-11 cashier and just below serial murderer. Whereas a writer, in her world, was something to brag about. Maybe all of this, this ridiculous work I’ve done here, is about pleasing her. Of all the things in life there are to be grateful for, is there anything more important than to whom you were born? It’s the only lottery that ever really matters.

Unlike most of the dunderheads who prattle on about social media and blogging, and they are legion, and they are boring, I don’t throw the word “writer” around lightly. Writing is a noble craft, and a difficult one. I certainly make it look difficult. I am offended when people say that we should stop using the words “wine blogger” and instead say “wine writer.”  I think I’m being generous when I say that maybe 1 percent of the people blogging have any talent for writing. And, no, you’re probably not on that list. (You are on that list, Samantha, and you are astoundingly gifted.) Great writing, in fact, just good writing, should convey meaning and excitement, should gift the reader with insight and a love for language, all the while entertaining. There is precious little of that in wine blogging. I wish I could say it better than I said it five years ago, but I can’t. Wine blogging is the attention-barking of lonely poodles.

The writing process is very hard for me. No, I don’t ever have writer’s block. I don’t even believe there is such a thing, but, then, I say that about female orgasm. Comedy comes from a place of anger and self-loathing, at least for me it does. Not all comedy, not every time, but, in the human heart, that’s where it dwells. I created the character of the HoseMaster a very long time ago, though he didn’t have a name then. I know his voice, and I know what lines he will cross and what truths he will tell. He has far more courage than I do, and also far more insecurity. I have to be very careful not to let the HoseMaster into my everyday life. He can be toxic. Yet it is easy to keep him from my daily routine because I am married to the kindest, smartest, most compassionate woman alive. Her love for me, and for the angry, petulant little child who is the HoseMaster, allows me to write. Because I know that when I’m done writing for the day, I can put the HoseMaster away and simply spend my life loving her. How does one express the kind of gratitude you feel for a lifetime of unconditional love? Every day, in some manner or deed, and several times a day, that’s how. And yet it can only fall short. I love you, Darling, and everything I do, I do for you. “I do.” Words I am very grateful to have spoken to you.

Many years ago, when I wrote comedy, I often wrote for an audience. Now I do not. But I can feel you out there, reading HoseMaster of Wine™ on your laptops, your tablets, your phones. I can’t hear you, but I’m accustomed to silence when it comes to my work. It is not false humility to say that I am amazed at how my readership has grown. I am dumbfounded. Those of you who have taken the time to write to me personally have given me constant inspiration, and the desire to continue writing. That goes for the fan mail and the hate mail. Most humans are born with a burning desire to be heard. To be singled out by the people who read HoseMaster of Wine™ from the cacophony that is the Internet is an honor, and one I don’t take lightly. On the rare occasion that I go to the column to the left of this babbling, the portion labeled “What the Critics Are Saying…,” and reread the kind words that famous wine folk have said about me, it seems surreal. They exaggerate my talent, and I am deeply grateful. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate everything I write. My biggest fear is that I will be found out, exposed as the talentless, humorless schlub I really am. It’s the final quote that speaks to me the loudest and clearest. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

To everyone who subscribes, to those who take the time to write me, to my illustrious and talented common taters, Thank You. I’d get counseling if I were you, but you have my sincerest gratitude. Your enthusiasm for my work, the way you have spread the word, it’s all been incredibly gratifying. I hate Twitter and FaceBook and all the other forms of social media. They dehumanize us. Yet word about HoseMaster of Wine™ has been spread by the generosity of you who have tweeted about me, linked to me, or posted me on FaceBook. You all have my gratitude. But, really, get more of a life. Put down your damned iPhone and live.

Wine has been my career, and it has been kind to me. Though I’ve tried, tried my damnedest at times, I’ve never lost my passion for wine. It trumped my other passion—writing comedy. I’ve never been very good at either, but I’ve had a helluva time chasing them. I like that the word “passion” derives from the Latin for suffering. Passion is a kind of aching, an emptiness that you try to fill but never can, a painful yearning for satisfaction of something that can never be sated. Wine has always been that for me. I think I’ve forgotten 90% of what I learned about wine in my life, but I can’t unlearn the remarkable sensory memories of all the great wines, and the not so great wines, that I’ve drunk in the company of too many extraordinary people to name here. After all these years, it feels like every new wine I taste takes me to some sort of memory, perhaps of a better time, perhaps of a time I’d rather forget. Or to a place I’d forgotten I’d been, or to a person I was lucky to have known, or to somewhere in my heart I’d been afraid to visit for a while. What makes our tastes in wine personal isn’t that we all have different palates and sensitivities, though that’s true. What makes our taste personal is that we all have different memories, different lives, different reasons we live. And when I drink wine on Thursday I’ll be grateful for my memories, and for my life in wine, and for one more day to live in this world.

Three Hundred

According to the stats on my Google Blogger dashboard, this is my 300th post for HoseMaster of Wine™. A few of them were reruns--“Best of HoseMaster,” an oxymoron if there ever was one. But I also wrote more than fifty posts on the original incarnation of the blog, now expunged from the Intergnats, so 300 is a fair number. And a big number. It’s my excuse for a bit of self-indulgence. Consider yourself warned. This will be dull.

I have some regrets about my work here. I wish I had taken it more seriously. So many of my pieces were written in haphazard fashion, and are painfully sloppy to me in retrospect. When I go back through my Archives (a fancy word for what amounts to a compost heap), I am usually embarrassed. There are pieces I’m proud of, but, for the most part, my work has been driven by the need to just get it done, get something posted, keep up with my gluttonous blog. My excuse was that I was writing for free. The truth is, I was lazy.

Writing satirically about wine, and the wine business, combines the two things I have loved most in my life—comedy writing and wine. I began writing jokes around the age of 10. Once a week, at Lowell Elementary School, children in the fifth grade spent an hour at “religious studies.” Amazing, right? The Catholic kids went to one classroom, the Jewish kid (yup, one kid) was in another, the Christian kids yet another. I wasn’t of any denomination, had never attended a place of worship of any kind, unless you count Dodger Stadium. So I was allowed a free hour to do whatever I wanted in the classroom, as long as it was quiet and harmless. I wrote. I wrote jokes, and I wrote science fiction stories featuring the amazing Dr. Cucumber. Yes, Freud would have had a field day with Dr. Cucumber. Thanks to not believing in any God, I became funny.

Writing is serious business to me. I think about it often, and I care about it deeply. I write, at some level, because reading takes us out of time. When you read, as you are reading these words, time recedes to the background, and, for those hours or minutes you are reading, you step outside of time and live in your memory, all by yourself, in places where time no longer matters. Nothing else does this. When I write for HoseMaster, I write to take folks away from their lives for a few minutes to laugh. I know what it’s like for you. You read my crapola with a growing anticipation of when your laughs will come—sometimes, they never do. You aren’t thinking about your marriage or your job or your toothache, you’re hoping a laugh will come by soon. And even if I don’t make you laugh, even if I make you angry, or squeamish, or disgusted, you’ve stepped out of time for those moments and, I hope, become yourself for a bit. You choose what you laugh at here—my cruelty, my silliness, my absurdity—but you choose to come here, of all the places you might choose, to escape time for a few minutes, and I’m deeply flattered.

I don’t get writer’s block. There’s no such thing. It’s as imaginary as Gold Medals and perfect 100 point wines. My father worked in factories his entire life, and he never once had “assembly line block.” Writing is work. Avoiding it is easy, and has its pleasures. I can go on writing HoseMaster until I reach 10,000 posts, though I won’t. And I won’t ever have writer’s block. There are ideas around us all the time, right there, right in front of our eyes and noses. We have only to give them voice to give them life. I don’t believe anyone walks away from their blog because they’re out of ideas. They walk away because it doesn’t seem worth it, or because they have no audience. In many ways, it’s not worth it. I want to walk away at least once a week. But then I’ll write a joke that seems lovely, even perfect, and I want to feel that feeling again. Where the joke comes from, I don’t have even the slightest idea. The best ones seem to arrive on imaginary stone tablets, handed down from a comedy God. I simply proclaim them. And when those jokes are delivered to me, it’s a unique experience. It’s rare, it’s always unexpected, and it’s addictive. So I keep writing. Writing has always been worth it to me.

Writing comedy and satire comes from a place of anger and self-loathing. When I was much younger, this caused me no end of pain. I’d write comedy for ten hours, and be filled with sadness and rage for no readily apparent reason. With age, I’ve learned how to channel all of that, use it, control it, and not suffer from it as much. Yet I often worry about how my words might affect the people I lampoon. Satire requires fearlessness, but that doesn’t rule out insecurity or worry. I try never to pull punches, but I also try never to throw sucker punches. I believe that my targets have earned my weapons, though I’m too often guilty of using a grenade launcher when an arrow would have been adequate. The worst sorts of people in life, and I’m referring to the Rick Perrys and Sarah Palins and Ann Coulters of the world, are still human (the wine biz doesn’t really have the equivalent of those sorts of cretins). Like everyone, they deserve forgiveness, yet they also invite scorn. It’s my lot in life to deliver scorn. I leave forgiveness to people better than I. 

Wine has always been seen as a gentleman’s sport. Like any sport, it’s often filled with scoundrels, liars, posers, hypocrites and charlatans. Only in the wine business, one is not supposed to point all of that out, at least not in public. I’m not a crusader, not by any means. I’m merely the Fool. But I try to choose how I approach my subjects carefully, try to go after the scoundrels, liars, posers, hypocrites and charlatans with the sharpest razor, while gently prodding those others I make fun of who just don’t know any better. I think the responses I get to my pieces tell an interesting story of how accurately I accomplish this. When I seem to have hit a jugular vein, the reaction is usually a kind of collective cringing. When I miss, perhaps cross some sort of line, the reaction is often a stunned silence. I learn from those reactions. Satire only works when the tone is right, gentle on one occasion, ferocious on another. Get the occasions confused, and it falls flat. I’ve fallen flat too often for my own liking. Yet more regret.

I have no illusions about my reach. My audience has grown over the past couple of years, but it’s still meager. Nothing about wine or wine reviewing or wine writing will change because the HoseMaster was here. There are inmates on death row with more fans. I don’t write HoseMaster to become famous in the wine business—that’s a fool’s errand, one being pursued by no end of nitwits who comment on STEVE! to boost their recognition. I don’t write it to get free wine, which is lucky because I’m pretty much a failure at that (though I have been gifted by regular readers who make wine, and it’s a lovely gesture to exchange my creative abilities with theirs). I don’t write it for money, though Tim Atkin is kind enough to pay me a bit for my pieces on his blog. I think I write it to see what I’ll say next. Or, more accurately, to see what the HoseMaster will say next.

Most of you will agree, I’m certain, that there is so little worth reading on wine blogs. The vast majority of the ones I’ve looked at are dismal—tired, talentless and trite. A collection of journeys meaningless for their collective banality. When I began HoseMaster of Wine™, three hundred pieces ago, I spent a lot of my time making fun of wine bloggers. I have no idea why. It’s the wine business, the marketing people, the professional wine writers, and the celebrity sommeliers that deserve more scorn. And so my focus has gradually shifted in their direction. Not that it matters. Yet no matter how cruel or insulting or demeaning my pieces can be, I have great fondness and love for the wine business, far more than almost anyone I know. My only talent of any kind, superficial as it might be, is writing jokes, satire, comedy, meretricious pantagruel… For me, every one of my pieces is a love letter to wine.

300 down, who knows how many more to go. I wonder, all the time, how much longer I can channel the HoseMaster. I wish people understood that the HoseMaster is not me, and I am not the HoseMaster. But wishes are the dreams of the hopeless. Meanwhile, thank you for allowing the HoseMaster into your heads twice a week. I don’t hear from very many of you who regularly read this blog, but I know you’re out there. I have no idea why, but you’re out there. I guess, just like me, you’re wondering what the HoseMaster will say next.