Failed Master of Wine Dissertations

Stuff I think about...


The Paris Tasting of 1976: Who the Fuck Cares

The Effect of Climate Change on BevMo’s Five Cent Sale

Vineyard Dogs: Their Effect on Sales, and Why They Do That Thing With Their Legs When You Scratch Their Stomach Just Like Angelo Gaja Does

Natural Wine: Does All That Hair Get Stuck in Your Teeth

Sommeliers on Tinder: Always Pick the Second Cheapest One

Champagne: How They Missed the Boat on the Charmat Process

Do Sexually Suggestive Wine Labels Sell More Wine to Stupid People, Drunk People or People With Serious Signs of Traumatic Brain Injury

If Tastebuds Were on Your Nipples, Would Wines Smell Better Cold

Are Wines Really All That Different: I Can’t Tell Them Apart and Neither Can You

Women in Wine: Is Three Hours Enough Time to Marinate

Is Every New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc Under $25 the Same Wine With a Different Label

South African Pinotage: Is it Better or Worse than Apartheid

Case Study: Slurping or Gargling, Which More Effectively Annoys Fellow Judges at Wine Competitions

Blind Tasting: Party Trick or Desperate Cry for Attention

Variety or Varietal: The Predictability of Lower I.Q. in People Who Use Varietal as a Noun

Swartland: Where Swart Comes From

When Austrian Wines Were Considered the Best in the World: What a Day That Was

Is a Penis Effective for Bâttonage. No, I’m Just Happy to See You

Rich Prick Wants a Lower Score

Dear Ms. Erin Brooks,

In the most recent issue of Wine Advocate you rated my estate Pinot Noir 97+. Thank you, but that’s a stupidly high score. I don’t want a score that high. Is there any way you can lower it? If I want an inflated score for my wine, I’ll buy one from James Suckling like everybody else.

While I’m thinking about it, what the hell is the “+” for? I don’t want the 97, so I sure as hell don’t want the “+.” I don’t even know what that means! You’re the damn critic. Is it a 97 or isn’t it? You think maybe my Prick Family Vineyard Pinot Noir is better than 97? MAYBE? MAYBE? You’re using cold, hard, objective numbers to rate wine. Critics claim their numbers have value and meaning. Where does MAYBE come in? “MAYBE I underrated it?” Now you’re feeling insecure? You put it in your mouth, swill it around, call on your decade of unaccredited expertise, pronounce it, “97,” and then you think, “Oh, it might be better than that.” Then give it 98, fer Chrissake! You’re assigning numbers, Ms. Brooks. “+” is NOT a number. It’s a symbol. I have a few more suggestions for your scoring system:

    97#—It might do better on Twitter
    97:—I may have smelled butt
    97&—It seems like it was grown in ampersandy soils
    97…—Bob Parker just likes us to throw in an ellipse now and then.

See how stupid that is? Stupid+.

I’m certain that most winemakers write to you to complain about their lousy scores, or to gush over you for having the talent and wisdom to see that their wine is, indeed, a near perfect 98. Trust me, Ms. Brooks, most of these winemakers have IQ’s that are a perfect 100. When I submitted my Pinot Noir for your consideration, I was hoping for a more realistic score. Believe me, I’ve tasted a lot of great wines in my life, and that Pinot Noir is by any measure about a 90. That’s all I wanted. A lousy, stinkin’ 90! 97+ is a terrible score. I don’t want it! Please, lower it. Would it help if I told you I added raspberry Jell-O to the fining agent? Yeah, I know, like I’m the only one.

The problem is, you’ve raised expectations for my wines going forward. It’s like listing my penis size as 11 inches on Tinder. Wait, as 11+ inches on Tinder. I can’t live up to those expectations! Yes, that will come as a huge relief to my date, but it’s really embarrassing to me. She’s expecting a big mouthful of Pinot and I end up with a lot of explaining to do when it’s tired and thin. No one is happy. Now, if you’d given my wine a 90, bang!, I over-deliver. I’m a hero. Like if you’d said I was hung like a travel blogger! That I can live up to, with an extra testicle thrown in.

Wine critics often say that wine scores aren’t inflated these days, it’s just that wines are better now than they’ve ever been! Bite me. Let’s say that’s true. I don’t think it is, but let’s just say that’s true. Then why don’t you wine critics get together and raise the goddam standards? Look, it wasn’t long ago that gymnastics judges began giving out perfect 10’s in the Olympics, and other international competitions. Notice how they don’t do that anymore? Why? Because they raised their standards to account for how much better gymnasts are these days! They stunt gymnasts’ growth at a much earlier age now. You gotta love science. How else can we get mutant athletes to perform for us but with high-tech drugs? Anyway, my point is, why don’t wine critics decide that 90 is the new 100? The 100 point wines of 30 years ago just wouldn’t make it in today’s world as 100 point wines. Can we just raise our standards? I’m volunteering to begin the process by taking a 10% cut in my score. I’ll bet you an awful lot of wineries would volunteer to do the same.

You’re probably too young to remember when 90 meant something. It doesn’t mean diddly-squat any longer. It’s sad to see 90 fall into irrelevance. It’s the Brian Williams of wine scores. No one gives a shit about 90. 90 is second runner-up in the Miss Leprosy pageant. Yet 90 out of 100 is amazing! People get MWs for lower scores. You’re young, Ms. Brooks, and you’re the future of wine criticism. Wine scores are the next Venezuela. Hyperinflated and run by tyrants. Maybe you can do something about it. Though I’m guessing it’s too late.

Sincerely,
Rich Prick
Prick Family Vineyards

On the Island of Lost Master Sommeliers

It's been many years since I've been on a wine junket. I can't even remember the last one. I can't even remember the last time I was invited on a free trip anywhere, not counting jail. The same eleven bloggers go on every trip anyway, and, believe me, this is not a good-looking group of humans. Their liver X-rays are even worse. I paid my own way to the Island of Lost Master Sommeliers for this exclusive peek at what happened to the poor souls who were stripped of their MS pins, and what was left of their dignity after the Practical Exam. For the startling exposé, you'll have to jump over to my Home Away From Home timatkin.com. Oh, it's well worth the price.

Feel free to leave your thoughts and witticisms and threats there, or hop the first cargo ship back and bless me with your wisdom.


You can’t find it on a map. Believe me, you don’t want to. It’s one of those God-forsaken places in the world we all do our best as a civilized society to forget. Places like leper colonies, massive Brazilian garbage dumps, death row prisons, and En Primeur week—horrible places populated with the very worst of the unfortunate. You might be able to get in, but, like the inmates, you’re unlikely to get out. There is nothing you can do for those who live there. You can feel sorry for them, but your tears won’t end their exile, their shame, or their struggles with blind tasting. Allow me to take you to the Island of Lost Master Sommeliers.

TIM ATKIN MW

The HoseMaster of Wine's™ Report on the 2018 Bordeaux Vintage

After reading the authoritative and exhausting report on 2018 En Primeur by Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW...


For the 30th consecutive year, I failed to attend En Primeur week in Bordeaux. My unparalleled consistency is, I believe, a major factor in my unquestioned objectivity when it comes to each vintage in Bordeaux. Too many other critics enjoy the wines of Bordeaux, and especially enjoy the sycophantic bacchanal that is En Primeur week. This must necessarily color their scores and opinions. Alone among my colleagues, I review each vintage without the handicap of actual attendance. Indeed, I believe that an honest and impartial judgment demands staying home and not letting those weasels influence my powerful opinion.

2018: The Vintage

What am I, the Weather Channel? I’m going to say what is always said every year by winemakers in Bordeaux. It was a challenging vintage. Because God knows it’s really, really hard to grow Cabernet Sauvignon!

Early in the year, it rained. It rained a lot. It rained so hard that all the cigarette butts in the vineyards decomposed. Wow. This doesn’t happen much in France, but it may explain the presence of tobacco leaf in the aromas of many of the 2018 wines. I’m just hoping not that many smoked menthol. I hate that in wine.

Then it got really hot because it’s summer. This was a common theme among the winemakers with whom I talked via Skype. “Summer is often hot in Bordeaux,” one told me, “hotter than winter and spring. I don’t throw my butts in the vineyards then.” There wasn’t any expectation of rain reaching even into October, so it was hot and dry. This affects the grapes, but no one knows why. You can taste that uncertainty in the wines. It tastes like that weird metallic thing you taste after taking opioids. It may be the signature of the 2018 vintage—the bitter aftertaste of opioid abuse.

Bullet Points About the 2018 Bordeaux

• The vintage is not as consistent as other vintages like 2009, 2016, and 1855. It is as inconsistent as other inconsistent vintages, and, thus is consistently inconsistent in keeping with all the other inconsistent vintages that we consistently avoid.
• At its best, the wines will be worth buying in ten years when the prices plummet.
• Hail in July wreaked havoc on a few producers. A quick shower in August would have benefited an awful lot of the winemakers, I thought. Luckily, and this is something of a surprise, nearly everyone escaped the huge potential damage of September’s sharknado.
• Many of the wines are approachable early, while others will perhaps reach their peak in fifty years, and still others are weak and lame as scrofulous wine writers on deadline. Still, they’ll all be overpriced.
• Organic and biodynamic vineyards, as well as other vineyards that you should pretty much just ignore because they’re not very evolved and don’t give a shit about the state of our beautiful, lost, utterly doomed world, had some mildew problems. Turns out Lysol is fine with Demeter.
• Really, you’d think somebody would make a goddam Rosé. 

Can you spot the hole?

Conclusions and Recommendations

I don’t know anyone who buys Bordeaux anymore. OK, maybe in England they do, but with Brexit, that’s going to pretty much condemn them to bending over and kissing their Ausoneholes goodbye. I wonder who is going to buy all the 2018 Bordeaux primeurs. The Chinese? Hell, good luck with that. You’d be better off just selling them very expensive labels at a big profit to cut out the middleman on the fake wines. So I’d expect primeur prices to be rather stupidly high because it doesn’t make any damn difference what they want for their precious red wine, so they’ll try to make it seem like they’re still in big demand when they’re not. Sort of like tickets to see Celine Dion.

I’d recommend not giving a second thought to the 2018 Bordeaux. Others might disagree, but, remember, they want to go to En Primeur again next year and get their Ausoneholes kissed, so they’re really just shills for the whole shebang.

Next, my assessment of not attending VinItaly. Which I believe was held in Italy this year.

Reasons You Failed Your Master Sommelier Exams

During the service exam, you stuck your tongue into the neck of the wine bottle you’d just opened and moaned, “Oh, God, I love you, Lettie.”

In your description of Grüner Veltliner, you used the word “taint” without mention of cork.

Mistakenly wore your diaphragm around your neck instead of a tastevin. Made the wine smell funny.

May have been overheard calling Fred Dame MS, “Wine’s Donald Trump.”

When asked by the examiner if you thought a Duckhorn was good, you said, “Yes, it’s perfect for when you have a really tight duck.”

Forgot to bring the answers you found in your email to the blind tasting exam.

Your answer for a question on soil samples was 1000 words on Depends.

You mistakenly identified “sommelier” as the primary grape in Sauternes, and declared Barsac a venereal disease contracted from stools in natural wine bars.

During the blind tasting exam, you spit each wine into your hand and yelled, “Baby needs a new pair of shoes!”

Beyoncé is not a variety. It was not crossed with Kanye to make Pinotage.

When asked for a wine to accompany Hamachi, you suggested Yellow Tail.

You wore clown shoes.

Identified all six wines in the blind tasting as “kinda bitey.”

When asked to identify the seven subzones of Chianti, you left out Sneezy.

When finished serving a bottle of Grower Champagne, one is not supposed to spike it and yell, “In your face, cocksuckers!” That’s only allowed after serving Dom Perignon.

You thought part of the service exam was blowing a balloon animal in the shape of your MS mentor. Where did the balloon animal figure in, stupid?

You misunderstood the word “proctor,” and asked to have your prostate checked. Luckily, it was fine.

When asked what is your favorite German TBA, you said, “The winner of the Angela Merkel lookalike contest.”

You have a vagina.