The Legend of Justin Appleseed

HoseMaster Note: This tall tale inspired by recent events chronicled, among other places, here:

Billionaire Resnicks' Justin Vineyards Bulldozes Forest of Old Oaks, Sparking Uproar


Howdy, pardners! I’m goin’ to tell you about the great Justin Appleseed, and how he done shaped the West. Now most of ya ain’t goin’ to believe my tale, and I cain’t say as I blame ya. But it’s all true, and you can look it up on your goldarned phones if you want. Hell, in my day a “search engine” was what we called the proctologist’s index finger. Ain’t much different today, I guess. Diddlin’ around on your phone is exactly like puttin’ your finger up your own butt. Feels like you’re doin’ somethin’, but you’re really just stirring around some shit.

Anyhow, we’re here to talk about ol’ Justin Appleseed. Now that weren’t his real name, but that’s what folks called him back in the early years of the 21st Century when his legend began. His real name was Justin Fijiwater, and he was one of the richest men on the planet. Yessir, he had a lot of money. In them days, people with a lot of money could do anything they wanted. You could sell two cents worth of water in a nasty plastic bottle for two dollars! Mostly just to yokels, mind you, the kind of folks who think nothing of homeless vets eating out of trash cans so long as their own drinking water comes four thousand miles in a plastic bottle from a tropical island’s aquifer, but there's a lot of stinkin’ ignorant yokels in the world. Yep, you can get mighty rich off folks with no class and imaginary phobias. And Justin Appleseed did just that!

Well, sir, Justin Appleseed had a hankerin’ to make wine. You see, Justin Appleseed believed that all the water in the world was his to do with as he pleased. Now, you own all the water in the world, see, you pretty much own everything. You are God, and you don’t have to answer to nobody, and if ever you do, you have lots of people to sacrifice. That’s the thing about rich folks, they always got people they can toss under the ol’ bus and blame for what their money does. “‘Twaren’t me,” they can say, “I didn’t know nothin’ about it. But, hell, I guess I’m sorta to blame, so, here, take this human I own and do what you want to him. I can buy another one. Hell, they’re cheap right now.”

But I’m gettin’ ahead of myself. Don’t matter, you all know the legend. I’m just tryin’ to set you straight, get to the truth behind the legend. Not the facts, but some truth. What happened done happened, you can stick that search engine up your ass and look it up. The truth can be a lot harder to figger.

So Justin Appleseed starts walkin’ the world looking for a winery to buy. Why didn’t he just start a new winery, what with all the money he had? Well, that takes talent and skill, and he just had money. Money from selling water to people who think their lives are better cuz they drink water out of plastic bottles instead of faucets and drinking fountains like the rest of us. Justin Fijiwater was just like that rancher who fills up the trough with endless water so that the cattle live long enough for him to slaughter them. Only in his case, the cattle done paid him for the privilege.

Well, everywhere Justin Appleseed went, all’s he noticed was trees that was standin’ around doin’ nothing. Suckin’ up his precious water and not givin’ nothin’ fer it. It made him madder than a billionaire with a cellarful of fake wine. He wanted to whip his Koch out and screw everything and everybody. Why, the trees he owned, them beautiful fruit trees, guzzled amazing amounts of his water, but at least they made pomegranates. Johnny Appleseed could sell the pomegranate juice by makin’ up tall tales about how it helps prostate cancer and fixes a limp dick at the same time! And yokels believe that shit! Now that’s a tree that’s worth somethin’! Nothin’ like a hard wood tree, and having hard wood is what folks want. But those other trees, just standin’ around, doin’ nothin’, well, they were gettin’ on Justin Appleseed’s nerves.

Now when Justin got to a little place called Paso Robles, he found the perfect winery to buy. Now, you have to understand, Paso Robles is dry! Paso Robles is drier than a sommelier fart in a service exam. Is that mercaptans, or are you just nervous to see me? So when Justin Appleseed bought his purty new winery, and lots and lots of land around it, he knew he needed lots more of his water to grow them grapes. It waren’t no big deal. He’d just take more of his water, the water he’d been lettin’ the other winegrowers use for a long time, but now he needed for himself. Hey, what’s an aquifer? Fer stealin’! Yeah, I wrote that joke. It’s a knee-slapper.

Now walkin’ around his property, Justin just couldn’t help but notice all these ol’ native oaks just standin’ around suckin’ up all the water and givin’ nuthin’ in return. Acorns. What the hell are acorns? What a-holes get on their feet? Justin walked and he walked around his Paso Robles property, an old sauce pan on his head to protect him from the sun, and because he’d heard it stopped radiation so’s he wouldn’t get brain cancer. And then one day he figgered it out. A perfect plan. It was almost too perfect!

Justin Appleseed called on his ol’ friend Paul Bunyan (he called him “Paul Bunion” because he was an a-hole with acorns) to come to Paso Robles. “And bring that goddam blue ox of yours, Paul, so it can leave big blue piles of fertilizer behind. Them piles of crap look like Smurf remains, but they’ll help my grapes grow! I hear blue wine is the next big thing.” When Paul arrived in Paso Robles, Justin Appleseed tol’ him, “Paul, now go on out there and chop down all those good-fer-nuthin’ oaks, the ones drinkin’ up all my precious water, and don’t tell noboby it was my idea! Hell, might as well just clear everything out while you’re at it. I want to hear my voice reverberatin’ when I walk around after you’re done. Yep, fuck Nature, I’m creatin’ my own kind of echo-system!”

And mighty Paul Bunyan done just that.

Now when Justin’s neighbors complained about all them oak trees being chopped down by some giant Village People guy in a plaid shirt, Justin Appleseed was astonished. “Why it was just a mistake, and I had every right, and, besides, I had no idea it was happenin’.” Now this was a lie, but Justin Appleseed knew that lyin’, and lots of money, work in your favor. ‘Member that Pom baloney ‘bout making your dick hard? Some kind of strap-Pom, I reckon. “But I’m gonna make it right,” he told his angry neighbors, “just you wait and see.”

And when Justin Appleseed pledged to give the folks his now treeless property to make up for destroyin’ the place, the legend was born. Oh, it cost him a little money, and by little, I mean like takin’ a flake of gold out of Fort Knox, and it cost him some embarrassment, but you know what? Them oak trees was gone forever. I guess they learned a valuable lesson. You take legendary Justin Appleseed’s water, you have to pay. It ain’t about the environment, stupid. It’s about money. And hubris. And having plenty of fall guys bought and paid for and ready to toss on the Smurf dung heap you left behind.

And, oh, them yokels is still buyin’ the water, and still buyin’ the fruit juice, and still in the wine clubs. And Justin Appleseed? Well, sir, if you walk around that ol’ property, you can still hear the echoes. The ones of him laughin’ all the way to the bank.

The Cautionary Tale of Hairy Vaynerchimp

Hairy Vaynerchimp

He was the most powerful wine critic in the world for a time. The numbers he assigned made winery reputations that exist to this day. His lousy scores destroyed wineries, drove winemakers to despair, nearly obliterated entire wine regions. Everyone hated him, though most had never met him. But even with all of his undisputed clout, he never changed. His tasting regimen when he began was the same as his tasting regimen when his world came crashing down around him. He never tasted blind (he didn’t have to), he never wore pants, and he never spit into a bucket, preferring to spit at his handlers instead. He was the epitome of a professional wine critic. So why would he change his routine? And how could he change his routine? He was a chimpanzee.

I hope you will read this as a cautionary tale, though apes have only vestigial tales. The wine business is fickle. One day you rule the wine world, and the next day you’re a laughing stock. You’re courted by the wealthiest and most talented people in the business, then they won’t return your hurled excrement. It’s a story as old as human civilization. But it holds a lesson rarely learned. This is the story of one wine critic, an unusual wine critic, I concede, but it echoes across the careers of every wine critic working, and should serve as fair warning to those who aspire to the position. Enjoy your influence while it lasts. But don’t expect it to last very long. It’s only a matter of time before you suffer the same fate as Hairy Vaynerchimp—masturbating in front of kids at your local zoo.

It all began as a joke, but, really, isn’t that how all wine reviewers start? Publishing hopelessly amateurish reviews of wines while sporting imaginatively embellished credentials? There are hundreds of these naked apes in the world, most of them talentless and hopelessly self-delusional. But all that ultimately matters is that consumers begin to believe you, have faith in your integrity and the indefatigability of your palate. Then marketing departments catch wind of you, shower you with free wine, ask you to travel on junkets with other wine writers to far away wine regions in exchange for your glowing recommendations, lavish money on you for speaking engagements—shit that any self-respecting chimpanzee would have nothing to do with. But wine writers and wine bloggers don’t have the integrity of chimpanzees. Many don’t have the grooming habits either. Hairy Vaynerchimp walked, with unopposable thumbs, into a large wine reviewing void. And became legend.

It took some time. Hairy’s is anything but an overnight success story. I raised Hairy from a tender age, shared great wine after great wine with the great ape. He was only a pet, at first. Then I realized he had a remarkable palate, better than most of the “experts” I’d judged with at prestigious wine competitions. Hairy had a more sensitive nose. Once I trained him to ignore wines that smelled like female chimp genitalia—mostly orange wines, and the occasional Vignoles—his judgments were flawless. Chimps aren’t capable of speech, though they can do wonderful impressions of Congressional filibusters, but I had trained Hairy to communicate using a Ouija Board. Over and over he’d point at the letters and spell words familiar to all wine reviewers, words he didn’t understand any more than those fools did when they used them—“minerality,” “terroir,” “authentic,” and “complex.” It wasn’t much of a jump to get a large board with the numbers 80 to 100 painted on it, and teach Hairy Vaynerchimp to point. To my surprise, it didn’t take the chimp long to point between two numbers. Hairy wanted me to record a score of 89+! (Interestingly, Hairy showed no interest in the 20-Point Davis scale—just like everyone else.) So I began to write down Hairy’s reviews. And one day, I started to publish them on a blog.

Hairy was tireless and incorruptible. He could taste and rate 300 wines in just a few hours—he was a hirsute Alder Yarrow! As fast as I could open bottles, Hairy could review them. I rigged an iPad so he could log his descriptions and numbers into the iPad’s memory. I quickly learned to glance at his new reviews before I published them after an embarrassing incident where Hairy described a bottle of 2009 Chateau Margaux as “Tickle me, tickle me.” Though he did give it 100 points, and Paul Pontallier sent him a lovely engraved vibrator (though, mysteriously, it was engraved, “You know where to put this, Molesworth.”). Hairy Vaynerchimp, unexpectedly and quickly, became the wine critic’s wine critic. He smelled bad, he was given to horrible temper tantrums, he would scratch his butt and sniff his finger, he had abominable table manners—he was born to the job.

Soon Hairy Vaynerchimp and I traveled the world tasting wines and publishing reviews. Regional wine associations set up tastings for Hairy. I would walk him into a room full of the best Burgundies, perhaps two hundred wines, and he would be done in an hour and a half. No need for the wines to be served blind. He couldn’t read. Most wine critics can’t write, but Hairy couldn’t read. This was his distinct advantage over them. Hairy Vaynerchimp could not be swayed by a label. I could take him to any winery, taste with the most famous winemakers, and he was absolutely objective. (Though he did once have a man crush on Angelo Gaja, and may have overrated his wines.) Hairy was never tired, never wavered, never became intoxicated. And he could spit into a bucket twenty feet away with an accuracy that would make Monica Lewinsky proud. His scores, his expertise, his objectivity were unassailable. He ruled the wine world, and he couldn’t be bribed--he worked for peanuts. The initials “HV” after a wine review might move several thousand cases. He was Top Banana.

And then it started. How we like to see the mighty fall. Jealous competitors began to chisel away at his reputation. Wine Spectator put Hairy on the cover (many subscribers mistakenly thought it was Marvin Shanken, a stupid mistake seeing as it’s easy to tell them apart—Hairy didn’t like cigars), and published a scandalous and misleading story entitled, “World’s Most Powerful Critic—Does He Pass the Sniff Test?” The British press relentlessly excoriated Hairy, even linking him romantically with J.K. Rowling. Several Burgundy producers filed a lawsuit against Hairy, claiming he’d defamed them when he wrote that he believed several had given him misleading samples—the famous Barrel Samples of Monkey Scandal. Everyone was out to get him. But it didn’t bother Hairy. He was oblivious. He was a chimp.

As quickly as he rose to fame and power, Hairy Vaynerchimp disappeared. He may have been our finest wine critic, combining the work ethic of Robert Parker and the mane of James Suckling. But, as will happen to every wine critic, eventually people tired of him. When he was tasting, everyone said nice things about him, carried him around as he clung to their necks, gave him small treats--in other words, treated him exactly like Steve Heimoff. But when he left the room, people began to badmouth him, impugn his skills, make fun of his porkpie hat, exactly like they did with…you get the picture.

Where is Hairy Vaynerchimp now? I’m happy to say, he’s better off than he’s ever been. He works a lot less, and lives very comfortably. Yes, he’s no longer the most powerful wine critic in the world, but I think he’s OK with that. It all sort of worked out.

I sold him to a bunch of Singapore investors.

Little Jimmy Steward, Child MS

I confess that I was very surprised when the sommelier approached our table and he was only nine years old. It was an expensive restaurant with an extraordinary wine list, and I’d heard that the MS who was the sommelier had one of the best palates in the world. Rumor had it the food wasn’t that spectacular. It was a notorious knockoff of a Thomas Keller restaurant, most of the recipes stolen from him. So when I showed up with reservations for two at the famed Poached Per Se, I was there to learn about wine from the finest, and already legendary, sommelier on the planet. He was picking his nose.

Jimmy Steward MS was born to be a sommelier from the first moment he emerged from his mother’s womb. That first time he stuck his head out, Jimmy quickly pulled it back inside, and didn’t reappear for several hours. Sound familiar? He had already begun to master his calling. He was already a cervix professional.

As an infant, Jimmy refused to nurse out of just any bottle. He preferred only the finest Champagne, the Grower Champagne Tit-du-Cuvee, and turned his nose up to baby formula or Veuve Clicquot, which are indistinguishable in a blind, or nearly unfocused, tasting. His mother, Jancis Steward, was astonished that little Jimmy could ingest so much Champagne and not seem drunk. “I never knew he was wasted until he asked for a cigarette.” Doctors were amazed that Jimmy didn’t die. And, now, after years of medical research that began due to Jimmy’s amazing life, doctors know that an MS is born with an astonishingly large and high-functioning liver, which compensates for the associated brain damage. Whereas people with large brains and normal livers know enough to stay out of the wine business.

Jimmy was holding a wine list and pulling at his Johnson. No, he didn’t have to pee (I don’t think), he was simply carrying around a Hugh Johnson book that he was editing for mistakes. He was wearing a little tiny tuxedo, I later learned it was a Tom Cruise hand-me-down, and a miniature tastevin, which had a Miley Cyrus sticker in the bowl. “Miley reminds me of great Napa Cabernet,” Jimmy told me, “at about 20 they go down really easy.”

When most children start attending kindergarten, Jimmy was already studying for his MS. A couple of times every week, Jimmy and four other candidates got together to taste and study together. At first, the other four were distracted by Jimmy’s constant questions. “Does the tooth fairy live on the moon?” “Do dogs go to Heaven when they die?” “Can Parker even smell Brett?” But they soon discovered that Jimmy was already a valuable resource, and had an uncanny nose, if slightly snotty, like Larry Stone. Though those four study partners of Jimmy’s have yet to pass the MS exams, to a person they all credit Jimmy with teaching them more about wine than anyone else in their lives. “Jimmy is an idiot savant,” one told me, “and as an MS, he doesn’t need the savant.”

It wasn’t long after he learned his ABC’s that Jimmy could recite all the Grand Crus of Burgundy. “That was easy,” Jimmy said, “it’s Italian DOC’s that suck. Those laws make about as much sense as a Matt Kramer blog post, though they’re better written.” Jimmy had traveled to every major wine region by the time he was eight. He wasn’t usually allowed to taste, except in Greece, where they have the sense to worship young boys, but just being in the great vineyards and wineries of the world formed lasting memories. “I’m proud to say,” Jimmy remarks, “that I’ve been in the lap of almost every great winemaker in the world. Most of ‘em smell like butt mercaptans.”

At Poached Per Se, we opted for the prix fixe menu with Jimmy’s wine pairings. In most restaurants, this would be a big mistake. More often than not, wine pairings in restaurants are bizarre. Ordering them is like wearing a turban in your JDate photo and expecting good results. But Jimmy’s were spot on, genuinely inspired. But he’s nine, and his senses of smell and taste are still unfettered by age. So I didn’t mind that around ten o’clock he threw a tantrum when a waiter used the wrong Riedel glass. “That glass is for Syrah, Poopyhead! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…” It was a little ugly, worthy of a W. Blake Gray blog tantrum, but I understood. He’s nine. And so's Jimmy.

Jancis Steward had some trouble convincing the Master Sommeliers to allow Jimmy to take the MS exams when he was only eight, but they finally agreed. He’d applied for, and received, a WSET spot—it was on the front of his pants. While they were extremely reluctant to pass Jimmy on his first try at all three separate exams, his knowledge and tasting skill were unmistakably superb. It was the first wine exam written in crayon, at least since Doug Frost. Jimmy identified all five wines presented to him blind by variety, vintage, region and even producer. The sixth wine he knew immediately wasn’t really wine, “It’s Cornelissen Rosé from Mt. Etna.” The judges were impressed.

Some allowances had to be made for the service part of the exam. The examiners were kind enough to sit at a very low table so Jimmy could serve the wines, which he did impeccably. Then, as now, he had the ability to pair wine and food perfectly. “It’s not that hard,” Jimmy has said, “any child, or sommelier, can do it.” Though his presentation wasn’t perfect, Jimmy thought the cigar cutter was for circumcision, the examiners all agreed he was MS material. He passed. Jimmy was exuberant.That night, he and his friends closed down the Chuck E. Cheese.

Jimmy might be nine, but he’s still a sommelier. He’s currently infatuated with orange wines and Austrian Riesling. He thinks California Cabernet is overpriced and that the real bargains are in the Loire. He talks about balance like he invented it. (Though the night I was there he fell down twice and skinned his knees.) And he’s a big spoiled baby.

But despite his fame and position in the wine industry, Jimmy is humble. “Really,” he told me, “any eight-year-old can become an MS. I think that’s pretty obvious. I was just the first one who actually tried.” 

The Legend of Parr Bunyan--Greatest Sommelier Who Ever Lived

Now I know you’ve all heard the tall tales about Paul Bunyan, greatest woodsman to ever live, able to clear a forest the size of Montana with one great sweep of his mighty ax. But I’m guessing you’ve never heard of his half-brother, Parr Bunyan. Parr went a much different way with his life than his legendary brother. Parr became a sommelier. Well, not just any sommelier, but the Greatest Sommelier Who Ever Lived. Paul never talked about his brother much, seems he was embarrassed that Ma Bunyan had conceived Parr out of wedlock, though Ma claimed Parr wasn’t conceived with a man, but with a sex toy. “Why just talk to him,” she’d say, “and you can tell he’s mostly dildo.”

Parr had all the size of his older brother Paul, but where Paul was all massive thighs and immeasurable barrel chest, Parr was mostly head. Parr had the biggest head the world had ever seen. His head was so big, Parr had to strap three sheep to a log to use as a Q-Tip. His hat size had more “X’s” than Larry King. And to get his tastevin on over his head, he had to have a chain so long it had more links than a Lindsay Lohan sex tape. He hadn’t been born with a big head, for which Ma Bunyan constantly thanked the Lord, but once he became a sommelier, his head just never stopped growing. This can happen to ordinary sommeliers too, but not on the scale it happens to a Bunyan.

The legend of Parr Bunyan began when he passed the Master Sommelier exam, all three levels, in twenty minutes. He’d identified five wines served to him blind perfectly, down to the vintage, the producer and what time of day the wine was poured. “It’s a 2010 Trimbach Cuvee Emile that was opened 57 minutes ago by a guy who didn’t wash his hands after he urinated.” An embarrassed Larry Stone skulked from the room. Parr also wrote a thousand word essay on the subject, “The effects of Linne Calodo soil on flavor and tannin in Grenache,” that was subsequently published by the UC Davis Press and outsold their legendary soil book, “Fifty Shales of Gray.” When everything he recommended during the service part of the exam was the perfect match for the foods, causing one examiner to say, “These are the best pairs since Scarlett Johansson,” the legend of Parr Bunyan was born.

Why Parr Bunyan, the Greatest Sommelier Who Ever Lived, can tell the quality of a vintage just by sniffin’ the air. Parr strides his mighty stride, his gigantic head precariously balanced above his paunchy body, his tastevin jangling out the theme from “The Exorcist,” across San Francisco Bay, using the Golden Gate Bridge to relieve his itchy hemorrhoids, up to Napa Valley. His giant bean looming over the puny people of Napa, he inhales deeply. Trees are uprooted, trophy wives scatter willy-nilly, winery dogs are deloused, as are winery marketing departments, but Parr gets a good strong whiff. “A classic vintage,” he declares, “rivaling any I can recall, though Howell Mountain wines will take some time to come out of their shell.” On Parr’s proclamation alone, prices rise like souls ascending to Heaven, to an unseen place where no mortals will ever see them again.

From there it’s just a small step to Sonoma, a much bigger county, but no match for the size of Parr’s giant dome. One deep inhale, his head tilted slightly right to favor that nostril, the residents of the county experiencing a partial solar eclipse as Parr’s head comes between them and the sun, and Parr declares, “An excellent vintage here as well, though the alcohol levels are too high in much of Dry Creek and the Russian River and must be lowered, while the True Sonoma Coast has made wines of great distinction and balance. And, believe me, with a head like mine, you need to know balance.”

Around the globe Parr Bunyan strides, declaring the vintage in every famous wine region. Wine writers hang on his every word, winemakers dazzled by his knowledge and nose, and all of them astonished at the size of his head. There is nothing he doesn’t know about wine. He is the Greatest Sommelier Who Ever Lived.

But the Greatest Sommelier Who Ever Lived is still a man, and a lonely man. He broods. Some say that it’s the thousand wines he tastes every morning that affect his personality. Perhaps all that alcohol would affect a normal man, but it’s foolish to think it affects Parr Bunyan. Why, he can taste and spit a hundred wines in the time it takes an ordinary sommelier to pretend he knows what Nerello Mascalese is. Parr can recite the list of every known wine grape in less than five minutes to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Major General.” One lazy afternoon, Parr sequenced Jancis Robinson’s DNA. Turns out she’s nearly indistinct from Eiswein.

Perhaps, some folks believe, Parr is a sad and lonely man precisely because he knows everything about wine, and being the Greatest Sommelier Who Ever Lived. There is nothing left for him to do but try and teach the human race about wine, about the right wines, wines that are wine as God intended. But not everyone will listen to Parr Bunyan. He fears it’s the size of his melon (often mistaken for Pinot Blanc in California). He speaks at symposia, he stoops to interviews with the ignorant, he lectures wineries and winemakers—and all for naught. For although Parr Bunyan is larger than life, a living legend, a wine god among men, people still insist on drinking what they like. They nod their head during interviews, they nod off at symposia, they praise his almighty head at wineries, they acknowledge his superior knowledge and truly gigantic body cavities, but then they just keep on making wines they like, drinking wines they like, ignoring his dictum of higher acid and lower alcohol, forsaking his wisdom in favor of their clearly inferior senses encased in their pathetic pinheads. Poor Parr Bunyan—it makes him lonely and sad.

When a head that size cries, the whole county smells like Manzanilla. Vineyards are flooded and precious top soil erodes. Parr Bunyan, therefore, is not allowed to cry, and this is what makes him sad and lonely. He wants to cry for us, to purify us of our wine ignorance, but he mustn’t. Instead, he must keep on talking, keep on preaching, keep on reminding us he is the legendary Parr Bunyan, Greatest Sommelier Who Ever Lived.

It turns out, that legend thing ain’t what it used to be.