What If I Stop Writing This Crap Again

What if wine competitions had 4236 judges and 50 wine entries? If a wine received a Double Gold (meaning every judge awarded it a Gold Medal), would douchebags still declare the results worthless? If 4231 judges decided a wine was Gold, and one self-important judge decided it was Bronze, who would be right? If none of the 50 wines entered won a Gold Medal, would any of the judges be invited back the next year? Even the winemakers? What if all 50 wines were the same wine? And what if it received ten Golds, fourteen Silvers, eight Bronzes, and the rest didn’t receive any awards? Which medals would it use in its advertising? What if the winery put all three medals, a Gold, a Silver, and a Bronze, on the award-winning wine bottles? Would three times as many stupid consumers buy it?

What if the Master Sommelier exam had four parts, and the final part was a personality test? Can you name one who still would have passed?

What if Pierce’s Disease was spread to vineyards by winemakers with nipple rings? Would there be any healthy Ribolla Gialla vineyards? And what if the women winemakers with nipple rings also spread it? Would wineries be spraying for nipple rings? I know I might.

What if when yeast fermented grape juice, it created alcohol and released N2O? Would you drink Champagne before serious dental work? Would cellar workers suffer even more from brain damage? Would Champagne tastings be filled with people laughing uncontrollably and wetting their pants? How would that be different? Would every wedding toast make people laugh for a change? Would everybody in Reims fall down a lot? Äy bet they would.

What if someone trained a dog to smell the presence of MegaPurple in wine? How many Napa Cabernets would pass the sniff test? And how many would blame “that bitch” for low scores, not even meaning the dog? And what if the dog got excited and indicated a Natural Wine had MegaPurple added? How would you know it was MegaPurple and not that the Natural Wine smelled like dog butt? How would the dog know?

What if wineries were forced by the United States government to add a warning label that reads “Contains Esters?” Would people think every wine was kosher? Would morons complain that, “Esters give me headaches.”? Would the wine experts with blunt force head trauma who patronize every wine shop in America declare, “You know, when I was in France, none of the wines had esters.”

What if wine clubs required intelligence tests? Would there be any?

What if famous, highly collectible wineries decided to produce their own fraudulent wine bottles for auctions? Wouldn’t that be smart? Cash in on the stupidity of auction buyers from countries that start with “Ch.” Not Chad. They could print up extra labels, buy some juice on the bulk market, slap it in some magnums, and make a killing. Who would know? For eight bucks, they can get Acker Merrill to sell it. Perfect provenance, immaculate condition, and bingo, the wines are just like Falun Gong members—stuck forever somewhere in a Chinese cellar. And, really, aren’t many of them already making fraudulent wines? They just don’t bother to use fake labels.

What if corks were made from the bark of willow trees instead of oaks? Then after you got really drunk, you could just boil the cork and make some aspirin for your hangover. This is genius, so, remember, I thought of it first. I don’t think there’s such a thing as an Advil tree.

What if, instead of ancient Egyptian kings, large format bottles were named for war criminals? “Hey, I just bought a Hitler of ’09 Lafite!” “Yeah, well, I’m drinking my Pol Pot of  ’75 Caymus Special Selection tonight.” “I can top that—I’ve got a Rumsfeld of ’85 La Tâche.” Perhaps magnums would be referred to as, “A bottle in the hand is worth two in the Bush.”

What if you made wine in space? Would wine writers describe its mouthfeel as weightless? Would it be a Zero Gravity flow winery? If you made an orange wine, would you name it Tang? If you made sparkling wine and popped the cork, would you be able to hear it? Would they make a movie that had a tagline, “In space, no one can hear you disgorge?” Would it have to be about wine, or could it be about bodily functions?

What if they had named the movie about four narcissistic bozos trying to pass the Master Sommelier exam for the effect it had on people who viewed it, would it have been called “UniSOMM?”

What if tomorrow everyone stopped reading wine blogs? How would we know?

What If I Quit Writing This Crap?

What if Jesus had turned water into a nice gin rickey? Ooh, wouldn’t that have been refreshing? Maybe with little umbrellas in them, or, I know, a little red crucifix. That would have been festive. Then maybe every dimwit who starts his Journey to Discover Wine would stop referring to wine as some sort of miracle. It’s not a miracle. A miracle would be Robert Mondavi coming back from the dead. I mean the winery, not the man. A miracle would be a wine faith healer who could touch wine barrels and cure them of Brett, like an Oral Roberts of wine only without his fingers in the bungs. A miracle would be getting on the Marcassin mailing list and understanding the newsletters. Wine’s just fermented grape juice. A gin rickey is a miracle.

What if it turned out terroir was caused by sulfites?

What if sommeliers had to wear bells around their necks so you’d hear them coming? Big ones, like cows wear. And they could never take them off and had to wear them to wine tastings? And what if we issued supercharged cattle prods to restaurant customers so they could use them on the sommeliers as needed? Wouldn’t this enhance the restaurant experience and guarantee more people would want to look at the wine list? Wouldn’t it motivate sommeliers to be less arrogant? A wine list with seventeen German red wines? BZZZZZZZZZTT. Should have thought twice about all that Spätburgunder on the wine list, genius. Sommeliers would achieve new heights of popularity, and, as a bonus, receive the outpatient shock treatment therapy they need free of charge!

What if Stelvins were made like child-proof medicine bottles? Would Tim Fish still have a job?

What if you could go online and buy an MS for a day? Like you can register to legally marry couples for a day? You could print up some cards that say “Ron Washam (or your name might be preferable), MS” and you’d know everything about wine for a day. Like when The Scarecrow gets a diploma in “The Wizard of Oz.” You could buy it before your trip to wine country and walk into every winery and say, “Hello, I’m an MS.” just like the real ones do. You could drop it into conversations. “Does anyone know where the Court of Master Sommeliers is? I think I’m on jury duty.” Or what if you could buy a WSET for a day? Why would you? You remember what happened to the lepers.

What if spitting caused cirrhosis?

What if Robert Parker had decided to use SAT scores instead of the 100 Point Scale? You know, what if he’d thought of us as college material rather than junior high dumbshits? Then nineteen 2009 Bordeaux would have received 2400 points! 800 for aroma and complexity, 800 for overall quality, and 800 just for showing up. Sure, everyone understands the 100 Point Scale, but only brainiacs would understand the SAT scale. Though the highest score for a legendary 1982 Bordeaux back then would only be 1600. This still makes sense when adjusted for score inflation. Only wines with high scores would be allowed in college coeds.

What if Roundup worked removing winemaker tattoos? Would you carry some in your car? Even in Sicily?

What if smell were connected to bodily functions in your brain instead of memory? So every time you smelled Merlot you had to whiz? Would that affect the sales of Merlot? Or would it just come in wider-mouthed bottles? And what if smelling a nice Argentinian Malbec made you belch? Ever eaten in Argentina? I think it actually does. And if smelling Prosecco gave you the hiccups? No problem. The taste will scare them away.

What if a passion for orange wines is the perfect predictor for early onset Alzheimer’s?

What if grapes were the size of cantaloupes? Would you need migrant Samoans to harvest them? Or would you hire illegal aliens? Space aliens.

What if a winery could ship wine legally to any state in the Union? Wouldn’t that be entertaining chaos!? How would consumers know what wines to buy without a bunch of inept, barely wine literate middlemen to decide what wines are available and where? What would state legislators do without electoral money from the liquor industry? Win on merit? What if we treated wine like guns and didn’t worry if children or the mentally ill sign for the delivery? What if wineries weren’t allowed to sell their wines anywhere but the winery, and we didn’t allow exports from Italy, France, Greece and other third world countries? Limit choice the old-fashioned way—build monopolies! What if we passed an Amendment to the Constitution reinstating Prohibition so we could then pass another Amendment to the Constitution ending Prohibition, but then craft alcohol laws on a Federal level rather than each letting each individual State make a jackass of itself?

What if they let anyone write a wine blog? And then gave awards? How stupid would that be?