To be continued...
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
PARKENSTEIN!
To be continued...
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Dysfunctional Family Winemakers
If there's one tasting I look forward to the most eagerly each year, it's the American and International Dysfunctional Family Winemakers tasting ("AInt Dysfun?, as it's known in the trade). There's an electricity in the air unmatched at any other event in the wine biz, except maybe the annual Capital Punishment affair held by William Foley in the majestic ballroom at San Quentin when he executes the staff of a new winery he's purchased. And he spares no expense on the food--it's Last Meal for everybody! But there are so many wineries represented at AInt Dysfun? that it would be impossible to taste at every table. (Unless you're Alder Yarrow. But he has a distinct advantage over ordinary humans. Just ask him.) I usually try to visit a few of my favorite Dysfunctional Family Wineries, after all, who can pass up a chance to visit with Gina Gallo and Jean-Charles Boisset, the poster children for AIn't Dysfun?, but spend the majority of my time tasting at Dysfunctional Family wineries that are new to me. I don't spend a lot of time here at HoseMaster of Wine reviewing wine, mostly because you babies whine when I do, but I came across some extraordinary wines at AInt Dysfun that I thought you should seek out.
There's something really inspiring about the wines from Overly Affectionate Family Vineyards. First of all, I don't think I've ever seen so many people working at one table before at a tasting. Seventeen members of the Overly family were present to share their wines. They had formed a long daisy chain of holding hands, so only Tricia Overly, the matriarch of the family, who was standing on the end, had a free hand to serve their wines. I was curious about how such a physically affectionate family got into the wine business, but Tricia's answers were constantly interrupted by her children kissing her repeatedly on the mouth. That didn't bother me. But breastfeeding at a trade show is crossing a line! Though I was curious why her son's beard stubble didn't irritate her. I was impressed with the Overly Affectionate 2009 "Come Here and Kiss Me" Chardonnay. When I asked Bennett Overly what made it so distinct, he looked up from where he was nuzzling his eldest daughter's neck and told me that the secret to Overly Affectionate Family wines was "skin contact, and lots of it." I don't come from an overtly affectionate family, so it was refreshing to see a family so openly touching and kissing and sharing physical comfort, so obviously proud of their family and wines. "There's a little bit of me in all my wines," Bennett told me, "and a little bit of me in all my kids too." Yeah, I guess.
After the Overly Affectionate Family wines I rushed over to wash my hands, then taste at the table where some friendly guys were serving My Sister's Underwear Drawer wines. You just can't get more dysfunctional than that! Each label features a lovely engraving of a different pair of the Bagg brothers', Scum and Doosh, sister's panties. Reminiscent of the Harlan Estate labels, except Harlan Estate's Scratch 'n' Sniff smells like money. I asked Doosh where the name of the winery originated. You don't want to know. First, I tasted the My Sister's Underwear Drawer 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon "Edible." The nose was slightly fecal, and the flavors were distinctly earthy, so I might have mistaken it for a Santa Barbara Cabernet. The My Sister's Underwear Drawer 2008 "G-String" Pinot Noir was my favorite. The wine simply glides between your cheeks. Doosh told me the wine is 100% Pommerde clone grown in very chalky soil. "What I'm really looking for in these wines is the same thing I look for in my sister's underwear drawer," Doosh told me, expression of soil..."
As a person who thinks the whole wine and food pairing culture is stupid, it was refreshing to taste with the folks at Domaine Eating Disorder. Siblings Ann O'Rexia and Bill Emia were candid in their views. "Food, in general, is disgusting," Ann told me, "and has no place at the dinner table." As dysfunctional family members, you would expect Bill to disagree with his sis, "Well, I love food, and lots and lots of it. Anyone who doesn't eat his weight in trans-fats a day is just not enjoying life. But wine with food? Don't make me puke." Hard to argue with winemakers who make such remarkable wines. The Domaine Eating Disorder 2009 "Kate Moss" Sauvignon Blanc was predictably lean and acidic, though Bill admired its bounty of grapefruit, melons and Fig Newtons on the palate. Actual Fig Newtons. In every bottle Bill was able to add a yummy cookie due to a loophole in the TTB regulations that allows Nabisco products in certain wines. (There are Oreo cookies in the Eating Disorder Zinfandel from Lodi, but you can't really tell--it's Lodi Zin, after all.) Bill's favorite is the Domaine Eating Disorder 2006 "The Vomitorium" Gruner Veltliner. "If this doesn't make you Smaragd up your dinner, I don't know what will."
It seemed appropriate to end the AInt Dysfun Tasting at the most sought-after cult wine table with dozens of fellow wine bloggers clamoring for a taste of Personal Failure Wines. Personal Failure's concept is to bring together people who have never been successful enough to have pleased their parents under one roof to make wine. Each bottle has a back label that briefly explains how the winemaker disappointed his mother or father, or both. For example, here's what it says on the back of Personal Failure 2007 "You Married That Slut" Cabernet:
2007 was the year I married my wife Betty over the objections of my mother who told me I was marrying Betty because I was inadequately endowed and Betty was the first whore who said Yes, and that Betty was certain to take many lovers and a mockery of me, and that I shouldn't even think about running back home when Betty dumped me because she'd already be dead after turning the shotgun on Dad first, What was there to live for? This is my tribute to her. I hope you enjoy it. And, thanks, Betty, it was fun.
The stories are compelling, and so are the wines. It seemed that each blogger had a Personal Failure wine he could identify with, and this, along with the astounding quality of the wines, made under the supervision of personal failure Tim Mondavi, is what creates the historic demand for these wines. Here's another, this from the back label of Personal Failure 2008 "You'll Never Amount to Anything" Chardonnay:
I dedicate this wine to my Father, Leonard, who, from the time I was a little girl, told me I would never amount to anything. And now, after a stalled career as a surrogate mother for endangered Amazon River tribes, five failed marriages, three failed suicide attempts, and one failed souffle, I want my Father to try my 2008 Chardonnay, which was aged 10 months in Ethan Allen oak and was bottled unfined, unfiltered and sadly unloved.
You can understand why the Personal Failure table was so busy. Personal Failure speaks to us all.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Ethics? Ethics? We Don't Need No Stinking Ethics
Ask any wine blogger what the biggest roadblock to success in the wine business is and he'll undoubtedly answer, "Ethics." Stupid, useless ol' ethics. And not because he believes in ethics, that's clearly a waste of time, much like reading wine blogs published east of the Mississippi, but because there are not guidelines to these imaginary ethics. Just where are the lines that one isn't supposed to cross? And where are the lines one is supposed to obey? And the ones they promised me I could snort? You start a wine blog for purposes of personal gain, get a little bit of notoriety, and, BANG, someone goes and ruins the whole thing by bringing up ethics. You win a Wine Blog Award, an achievement equal to passing your driver's license exam without the actual driving test, and some ethics cop, some self-appointed moron of morality, some pompous penis of principles, comes along and points out you were a judge in the competition. All because of ethics! How stupid is that? What does it matter that you were a judge? You won fair and square! There are no ethics on the Internet. The Internet wasn't created so that the cretins of conscience could ruin it for everybody! The Internet can't survive if you expect ethical behavior. What sort of an idiot thinks that? No, the Internet was created so that we can do anything we fucking want to do and not have to answer for it. Christ, it's so obvious.
Nonetheless, ethical guidelines are sorely needed in the wine blog world, if only to know what to ignore. It's tiresome to go to all the trouble of writing a wine blog yet not get the satisfaction of knowing that you're absolutely unethical. I've been giving this issue a lot of thought. OK, I'm actually just making this up off the top of my head, but that's what you're supposed to do when you're blogging--make shit up as you go along. It's what all the top bloggers do. It's how they got to the top. Once again, it's the Internet. What does it matter whether what I write is thoughtful or original or, God forbid, accurate? Only the addlepated, dimwitted, thunderstruck and the anencephalic believe what they read on the Internet. Though that is the core group that reads Palate Press. Anyhow, I have given this issue great thought and now present the core set of Ethics for Wine Bloggers. I'll thank you to follow them.
Free Stuff
This is simple. You're entitled to it. You've got a wine blog, you work at it every day, you're on your journey to discover wine, wineries are supposed to send you samples. And if they don't, wineries can be incredibly stupid about not sending out enough free wine to the people, wine bloggers (duh), who will determine their very existence, just call them up and ask them for it! It's your ethical responsibility to ASK THE GODDAM WINERIES TO SEND YOU YOUR WINE. And don't make the egregious mistake of not telling them your shirt and hat sizes--they'll want to send you swag and can be very pouty if you don't seem to want any.
You are not obligated to report to your readers that the wines you review on your blog were sent to you for free. Who made that up? If you're using them, get rid of your stupid disclaimers. It's no one's fucking business where you got the wine from! The only things that matter are that you liked the wine, that it paired well with the lavish dinner the winery treated you to, and, above all, what kind of closure it had. No one needs to know you didn't pay a nickel for it. What kind of a lousy world would this be if we had to reveal every goddam thing we get for free? The whole country would devolve into anarchy. The IRS would be buried in paperwork. Hookers and pimps don't report their income! Explain to me the difference between wine bloggers and hookers and pimps! Yeah, pimps drive nicer cars, but other than that. Sure, unlike wine bloggers, hookers spit, but other than that. It's outrageous. Your ethical obligation is to say nice things about the wineries that give you free stuff, and only nice things. First off, you're not really qualified to judge wines, so why would you risk appearing stupid and ridicule that Moscato d'Asti for having some sort of chemical problem that makes it fizzy? Just say something nice, you got it for free, didn't your mother teach you to say thank you? This is so obvious, I wonder why it has to be said. Sheesh.
Posts
Again, this is simple. Everything you can think of, especially you, to say about wine has been said before and said far better than your miserable vocabulary allows you to say. Oh, goody, you discovered Aglianico, a wine that's been around for thousands of years but you're the first one to notice it's pretty good wine if you like that Southern Italian crap even though the ones they're starting to make in California are sooo much better. Great. Fascinating. I'm quivering with excitement. Believe me, everything you have to say about Aglianico, the grape and the free bottle of wine you're talking about, and every other wine, has been said more articulately and more eloquently. And yet, it is your ethical responsibility to bring the level of discussion down to where the kind of dolts who read wine blogs can understand it. Your job is to educate the poor slobs who know less than you about wine, the fools who've only been learning about wine for eight months when you've been reading Lettie Teague for years, the sad group of humans who don't know what to buy when they're shopping at BevMo and someone has torn down the Wilfred Wong recommendations and put up pictures of kitties instead, though the kitties would be more useful than Wilfred for explaining the crap BevMo sells. Your job is to say, in very simple phrases and poor English, what has been said before. This is how wine blogs work. Don't go trying to be original. Really. This is important. Just look at the top wine blogs. See anything original? No. Take a hint. Figure it out. Genius.
And when you're not reviewing wines or writing about your annoying children or filling your pointless blog with more links than a Jimmy Dean warehouse, you can always plug local events. After all, your eleven readers really want to know about the $150 per ticket Insipid Producers of Oregon Tasting with music by Celine Dion impersonator, Celine Dion. It it your ethical responsibility to post as often as possible without regard to meaningful content. Try to see your wine blog as spam. The meat, not the junk mail. You call that meat? You call that writing?
When reviewing wines that you don't really understand or you are incapable of describing, it is
perfectly ethical to simply quote from the fact sheet the winery provided, or reword the back label. There's no need to try to make up descriptors when the correct ones are right in front of you! The only ethical responsibility you have is to make certain no one knows you've borrowed from someone else's work. That would be misguided and can only lead to uncertainty and chaos. Better yet, why not just skip the stupid description and simply assign the wine a score? Scores cannot be questioned, and make lovely graphics besides. Lately, wine bloggers have begun to use badges instead of scores. I am completely in favor of this trend. Poodles becoming badgers. After all, both wine bloggers and badgers are in the weasel family.Best New Wine Blog Nominess 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The Tweet Smell of Excess
I am frequently asked why I don't have a Twitter account. I don't have any use for Twitter. Twitter is like an Ionesco play--140 characters searching hopelessly for meaning. Twitter is hundreds of thousands of minds without a single thought. It's the viewing audience for the Super Bowl with keyboards. Twitter fills the universe with mindless chatter, allowing everyone to be Maury Povich or Jerry Springer or a troop of baboons. It reflects the culture in ways that aren't especially flattering; it's a funhouse mirror that distorts reality and makes small minds seem large and the trivial seem important. Aside from reading HoseMaster of Wine, is there a bigger waste of time than Twitter? Sure, there's watching "Eat Pray Love," two hours of comma-tose (I preferred the Japanese original "Eat Play Rove"), and there's reading Lettie Teague, but not much else. Twitter is vuvuzelas played rectally. So don't expect to see the ol' HoseMaster on Twitter any time soon.
But if I were on Twitter, this might be what I'd Tweet...
@JayMcInerney Hmmm, JLoBrow, glad you loved Inception--not sure how much Cab Phelps put in it in '07.
DrinkNectar has something really important to say--"He's important!"
Love the new look over at Catavino! Like putting lipstick on a corpse!
WS admits mixup, put Meg Whitman on cover of "California's Greatest Winemaker" issue.
@HelenTurley I know! I can't believe WS insulted you. You're the Greatest Winemaker in The WORLD!
@JLaube I think she's buying it. I'll take a case of Marcassin Pinot Noir. I use it in my Prius every 5000 miles.
Can't wait for my new issue of Mutineer Magazine! Love how they never use words with more than three syllables.
@JayMcInerney Gamay is the grape used for Beaujolais. Camay is soap. Ellie May was on Beverly Hillbillies. Nitpickers!
Burying cowhorns in a vineyard to make better wine is like putting manure in a toreador's pants for a better bullfight.
@MarvinShanken Is that a Cigar in your mouth, or do you just really like racehorses?
Just loved the Vegan Wine Tasting today, sponsored by Natural Gas. You are what you eat!
@StephenTanzer You have a magazine???! Did you hear Parker's dead? Dr. Miller attending physician.
Catavino nominated for European Wine Blog Award in category Best Judges to Win European Wine Blog Award.
@LettieTeague Yeah, I know, he's pompous, but look at it this way, he makes you seem knowledgeable!
@JayMcInerney Yeah, I know, she's dull, but look at it this way, she makes you seem
knowledgeable!@GaryV Sure, I do remember your grandfather. Madman Muntz! Shame you don't have his class.
@HuckleberryJackson Just because "Matanzas" means "slaughterhouse" doesn't mean...
William Foley has announced his purchase of Wine Enthusiast magazine for $100 and a Fred Furth bobblehead doll.
@WilliamFoley Oh, well, easy mistake to make. He's the same size as a bobblehead doll.
@HuckleberryJackson Suggested brands to buy and ruin--Caymus, Silver Oak, Steve Heimoff.
@HuckleberryJackson Sorry, hadn't heard about STEVE! Congrats. "Heimoff" means "homeless" in German.
@SteveH Really? As in "Heimoff to see the Wizard?" Loved the "Lollipop Guild!"
@JayMcInerney Rupert called. Wants you to write expose of Free Radicals in Wine. Excoriate the liberal bastards!!!
@JayMcInerney Means "denounce"
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The Faint Aroma of Goat Bladder
FROM THE HOSEMASTER OF WINE VAULT
The first incarnation of HoseMaster of Wine, the one with the nudie cuties, has vanished into the great Internet Cloud. But I saved a few of those posts. Here's one from more than two years ago, without the photos...
I'm not really used to predicting trends, I usually set them. I am so often credited with creating the whole wine blog concept that it has become somewhat embarrassing, especially given how out of hand the whole wine blogging thing has become. I recently read a frightening statistic:A new wine blog is created every 15 seconds and the word "splooge" appears in them an average of twice. But 2008 is coming to a merciful close and so I'd like to highlight some of the year's top stories and emerging trends. This has been done to death on other wine blogs, but splooge on them.
One trend that hasn't changed--Parker followers line up for wines scoring more than 95 points. What the flock, these sheep dips have mutton to lose.
William Foley Buys More Famous Names
After acquiring Firestone and Sebastiani (Wow, way to go after mediocre wineries, Bill, what, was Korbel not for sale?) billionaire William Foley is about to announce the acquisition of another famous name. HoseMaster of Wine has learned that Foley has purchased James Laube. The price is rumored to be somewhere in the neighborhood of eleven dollars but may be as high as seventeen. Negotiations have been under way for some time now but the downturn in the economy sealed the deal. "I was going to purchase James Suckling," Foley was quoted as saying, "but, frankly, I didn't want to take on all the little Sucklings. I think James Laube got out at the right time and I'm happy to have acquired him. These kinds of critics only come up for sale every so often and I think it's imperative you own a couple when you're in the winery business." James Laube will be fully refurbished; his column in Wine Spectator, always for sale, was included in the deal.
Wineries Turning to Biodegradable Farming
First it was Organic, then it was Biodynamic, now the trend that appears to be the next logical step in viticulture is Biodegradable. Created by a cousin of Rudolf Steiner, Henny Steiner, the fundamental tenet of Biodegradism is that vines grow healthier and produce better grapes if you constantly degrade them. Vineyard managers spend a few hours each day belittling the vines using eight basic "tease." "You call that fruit, you piece of mutant genetic material," one such tease goes, "I've seen better set on a twelve-year-old girl." Followers believe the vines respond to these jibes, that it adds to the plant's stress, and they then feel the need to produce better fruit. "It's amazing," says famed vineyard manager Phil Oxera, "just weeks after I told my vines, 'You louse-infested pieces of garbage wouldn't even make a bonfire good enough to warm Robert Parker's ass,' the little shits started producing the most gorgeous clusters." Biodegradism also believes in using a lunar calendar to determine what days are best for insulting the plants. "It makes no sense," writes Henny Steiner, "to give the vines the finger during a new moon. No, a new moon is when you urinate into a cow horn and pour it over their fucking heads."
Wine Vessels
Bottles are so last year! Corks are so last year! Last year is so last year! In their never ending search to improve wine quality and figure out ways to fool Alcohol Control Boards in non-reciprocal states, wineries are experimenting with many new and different containers. "Most consumers, frankly, are sick of the problems glass can cause in their expensive wines," says consumer expert Frank Lee Bloated. "Once you've had a bunch of 'glassed' wines you start looking at alternatives." Aside from the jejune boxes and cans, wineries are looking at several other possibilities. A couple of French biodynamic wineries will soon be packaging their wines in goat bladders. "At first we just made the goats drink 750 ml of wine then butchered them and, voila, the wine was in its vessel," says winemaker P. Chevre, "but then we figured out it was easier to kill them first." As a bonus, the bladders are reusable as party favors. Other wineries are looking at giant latex condoms. "My wines smell like mercaptans anyway," says longtime winery owner Kult Winery, "so the condoms make it seem normal." One drawback--they always burst when you least want them to--ain't that how most of us got here? Look for wineries to keep looking for new vessels for their wines in 2009, perhaps even cloth bags similar to the ones all the self-righteous people haul into supermarkets!
Wine Bloggers Continue Self-Deception
I call it the Blogger Bubble. As wineries become more and more desperate to sell wine in a struggling economy, even the most ridiculous ideas take hold. Hoping that wine blogs will one day actually sell wine rather than solicit it, winery marketing directors have encouraged bloggers to believe that their recommendations, based essentially on their stupid opinions, have commercial value. This in turn convinces bloggers that what they've long wished for may actually be coming true, which leads to endless posts about the power of the new media (roughly equivalent to the power of gerbils in an exercise wheel), which makes wineries nervous that it just might be true so their marketing people pay even MORE attention to bloggers...and, well, that's how the Blogger Bubble inflates. Watch for this bubble to get bigger than Gary Vaynerchuk's stubbly head in 2009, but disappear in a resounding crash in 2010 that will make the 45,000 wine bloggers and their 38 accumulated readers gratefully vanish.

