There She Is, Myth America

Time for another mythbusting edition of HoseMaster of Wine! In this occasional series (see "You're Mything the Point" from the June 15th edition) I debunk myths about wine and the wine business for your edification. No need to thank me. Just doing my job.

Myth #1 New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is made from grapes.

This is a common assumption with no basis in fact. Most of the world insists that "wine" be produced 100% from grapes, except in Austria where you're allowed to use petroleum byproducts. But New Zealand's climate is lousy for wine grapes, so their Sauvignon Blancs are actually fermented Tasmanian devil urine (which is also used for most Australian Chardonnay). Oh sure, there are vineyards in New Zealand, but they're just a front, sort of like how MacDonald's pretends their hamburgers are made from actual meat. The grapes never ripen in those vineyards, they're just for show. And, as it turns out, there are only two producers of "Sauvignon Blanc" in New Zealand and they produce all of the Taz Blanc for the couple hundred labels you see in wine shops. This is easy to confirm. Conduct a blind tasting of fifteen "different" New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs and try to tell them apart! You can't. Because they're all from the same marsupials!! New Zealand "Pinot Noir" is a different story--it's made from sheep dung.


Myth #2 Wine Tasting is Subjective.


I love this one. This is what wine experts say to people who don't know shit about wine in order to avoid making them feel like their opinions are stupid. But nothing could be further from the truth. Most people's opinions about wine are, in fact, stupid, and only made worse by the fact that they think they are entitled to their opinions. There aren't three correct answers to a question on your driving test, there aren't six answers to a geometry problem, and, really, there aren't any real disagreements about wines. We wine experts just say wine preference is personal taste all the time because it's way too much work to teach you ignoramuses about the fundamentals of wine. We know what wines are actually perfect, fantastic, amazing, and when some imbecile says something like "It's too bitey" we just say, "Well, everyone's different. Just drink what you like." Which is essentially our way of telling you, "You're stupider than a Tim Fish 'Wine Spectator' feature." Don't believe it for a minute. Every wine has an objective and iron-clad rating. You're just not privy to it.


Myth #3 Robert Parker is still alive.


Just as Scientologists, who just lost their great champion in Eunice Kennedy Shriver, still profess that L. Ron Hubbard is alive, Parkerbots claim that Robert Parker is still alive. It's not true. RP died in 2004 when a 100 pound scale fell on him. But his death was covered up, mainly by the French and Australians who knew their sales and prices would plummet without his inflated ratings to sell them. A Parker impersonator was hired, a man equally skilled in butchering the language, who attends charity tastings where he is provided with a script ghostwritten for him by Rod McKuen. Many in the business who are aware of Parker's demise worry what will become of the wine industry when consumers become aware that the great man is dead. Where will they turn for advice? How will wine shops sell wine without the "RP" POS signs? Will they have to resort to actually knowing the wines they sell? And how far will the price of Bordeaux fall without the Wine Pope's blessings? Will they become as unsellable as high-end Australian Shiraz, which even with Parker's wholehearted endorsement people recognize as Bardahl? Who will decide the next California cult wine? Steve Heimoff? James Laube? Alder Yarrow? A different undiscovered industry suckup? It's going to be scary.
The late Mr. Parker getting a snootful of a TCA.



Myth #4 Corked wines are faulty.

There are a couple of myths rolled up in this one. First of all, the idea that a "corked" wine is caused by contamination from the cork. This is a lie cooked up by the folks who make and advocate screwtops, and has no basis in fact. The off-aroma that is defined as "corked" is caused by a chemical compound known as TCA, which is short for Tightly Clenched Anus. It's a result of the bottle of wine having been stored too close to a septic tank. Aside from that, there are actually many wine connoisseurs who prefer corked wines and actively seek them out. They love the specific quality of a corked wine, that alluring aroma of wet blogger, and feel that the corked bottle is superior to the noncorked bottle. Most of the time it is hard to disagree with them.

Wine With Clothes

As HoseMaster of Wine, I spend so much of my time here hosing all the fools and hypocrites in the wine blogosphere and the wine world that I don't often get to show off my impeccable taste in wine. And you know I have impeccable taste in wine. It's easy to tell. I mean, really, how many other people out there can stick their nose in a glass of wine, take a small sip, swish it around in their mouth and then come up with "89 points!?" This takes years of experience! It only sounds ridiculously easy, but, trust us, we who review wines, it ain't. You may disagree with "89 points" after you buy the wine and it sucks like a bucktoothed lamprey, but I'm the expert, my friends say so, and I have a blog and a keyboard to prove it. And numbers can be confusing for novices. They ask stupid questions like, "What's the difference between an 89 and a 90?" Forgivably ignorant question, but ignorant nonetheless. The standard answer is "I liked the 90 slightly more than the 89." The actual answer is "Ad revenue."


But I do have kind of a soft spot for what is known as the monthly Wine Blogger Wednesday. I enjoy this like I enjoy Jay Leno's Jaywalking spots--it's like wallowing in a warm ocean of human imbecility and misinformation. Nothing but laughs. Like someone will propose writing about wine and music pairings. And, can you believe it, they all do! It's not enough to just match wine with the appropriate food, now you have to pick the right music to accompany the wine. What about clothing? I know, let's blog about how what you're wearing affects the wine!


I opened a bottle of Frei Brothers Reserve Chardonnay. It was pretty good with my stonewashed denims, and maybe even a little better with Lederhosen, but when I put on my merkin and a codpiece, the wine just sang. In a falsetto, but it sang.


It's not enough you display your poor taste in wine, you have to mix it with esoteric music too? Oh God, I can just see it now. These dorks taking not only their own wine into a restaurant, not only their appropriate Riedel stemware (Riedel--the MG of wine glasses), but also their iPod with the music best suited to their 96-point Australian wine (A Flock of Seagulls, or Olivia Newton-John, which is more gooey?). Yeah, yeah, music affects your brain waves, but these folks don't exactly have the stuff of tsunamis in their skulls. They've barely enough to drown a mosquito.


Like most of you, I drink a bottle of wine every night. I try to drink interesting wines. After so many years as a sommelier, there aren't very many wines I don't have some appreciation for. I don't get free samples any more. I don't get tasted regularly on expensive Napa Valley Cabernets or flashy Burgundies or esoteric Italian wines, but the upside is I also don't have to taste all the manipulated and manufactured crap that desperate wine reps hope will end up by-the-glass so they can make the payments on their bar tabs. Now I just drink. Here are my impressions of a few of the wines I've tasted in the past week or so. Remember, friends, comedy is easy, wine descriptions are hard.



LONE MADRONE 2005 TANNAT GLENROSE VINEYARD PASO ROBLES


I have this thing for Tannat. Don't know where it started, with some bottle of Madiran I had a long time ago, but now, I seek them out. For me, it's To be, or tannat to be, that is the question. (OK, new Wine Blogger Wednesday idea--wine with Shakespeare! To paraphrase, What fucking fools these mortals be.) Neil Collins is the winemaker at Tablas Creek in Paso Robles, but Lone Madrone is his own label. Neil also has a thing for Tannat, there is even a bit planted at Tablas Creek thanks to him, so when I stopped at the Lone Madrone tasting room on HWY 46 W a few weeks ago (his were some of the best wines I tasted that trip--Paso has a lot of wineries, but very few actually worth tasting at) I was hoping there would be a Tannat to taste. And here it is, Tannat, in its gigantic glory. Man, this stuff is darker than Dick Cheney's soul. Darker than a spelunker's wet dream. Darker than the negative of a Johnny Winter photo. I love good Tannat (and Tannat is a pedigreed grape--Tannat is to Uruguay as Malbec is to Argentina, as Carmenere is to Chile, as Gruner Veltliner is to the Land of Stupid Sommeliers). Tannat is like Petite Sirah with some actual complexity. The 2005 Lone Madrone begs to be decanted, but there isn't enough oxygen in Scarlet Johansen's lungs to open this baby up. I gots Scarlet fever! Inky and brooding, very late in the evening it starts to get blueberry and cassis flavors, dark chocolate, a bit of briariness. And always the tannins. This wine is about as subtle as a lie from Sean Hannity's lips. And don't miss Lone Madrone's 2006 Roussanne! Fantastic example of this wonderful grape.



BREGGO 2007 GEWURZTRAMINER ANDERSON VALLEY


"Breggo" means sheep in the strange lingo of Boontling. As the farmer said to the lonely shepherd, "Leggo of my Breggo!" Breggo is a relative newcomer to the Anderson Valley scene, but, wow, are their white wines good! I stopped at their tasting room on HWY 128 to get some of their Pinot Gris, but it was sold out. I bought this Gewurztraminer instead, and now I wish I hadn't been so damned tight and bought a few more. You can list the Gewurz worth drinking in California on one hand and still have enough fingers left over to give me one. Navarro, Fogarty, Arista...now add Breggo. This '07 Gewurz had everything. A beautiful nose, filled with lychee and apricot and peach and flowers, a sensational, slightly oily texture (there may be some residual sugar here, but it only added to the impression), and a long, almost Vendange Tardive finish. I know Breggo is sold out of this wine, and they should be. I'd be wary of buying the '08 because of all the wildfires in Mendocino that year. Every wine up there has the possibility of smoke contamination. And when there's a fire in Mendocino, even the Breggo get the munchies. Break out the Fritos and sheep dip!


SKIPSTONE 2005 OLIVER'S BLEND ALEXANDER VALLEY


There's been a lot of buzz about this estate nestled in the hills above Alexander Valley. The owners are certainly throwing money at it like Obama at a banker's convention. They hired Ulises Valdez, Phillipe Melka, Emily Wines, and even a winemaker! I call this the New York Yankee approach to the wine business. Looks great in the preseason predictions but can all this overpriced talent create a winner? For years folks have tried to make a sensational Cabernet based wine in Alexander Valley. Jordan made the appellation famous and graciously set the bar very low. If it were limbo no one could beat them. In recent years it has been Huckleberry at Stonestreet and Verite attempting the feat (Robert Parker aside, Verite is about as interesting as a James Laube column, only easier to buy, if you can afford it), as well as Lancaster, whose wines have definitely improved under David Ramey's consulting. But Skipstone just might be the real deal. The 2005 is damned nice wine, 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot and the rest split between Petit Verdot and Malbec. This is still one of those work-in-progress wines, but for a first release it's pretty impressive. It already seems to have an identity, a nice seamlessness, a vividness to the fruit, a loamy richness that speaks of the vineyard. I liked it very much, and it was worlds better the second day, which is always a good sign. If the wines improve over each vintage, Skipstone just might be the Bordeaux blend that puts Alexander Valley on the map. Or maybe they could trade for Michel Rolland and a player to be named later.

Two Buck Chucky: The Movie

With the success of "Sideways," piece of crap that it was (Does anyone actually buy that those two guys are friends, or that those two women would have anything to do with them? Probably the same people who think young actresses want to sleep with Woody Allen, or be adopted by him, which amounts to the same thing), and the other recent independent films that prominently featured wine, Hollywood has quite a few new wine films on tap for the coming year. Here's a preview of some of them.



TWO BUCK CHUCKY


A nightmarish film about Fred Franzia (a stirring performance from Tom Arnold) terrorizing, torturing and terminating Napa Valley vintners. In the film's most frightening scene, a desperate Robert Mondavi (Wilfred Brimley) is forced to sell off his best vineyards for cash to satisfy his back-from-the-grave Zombie shareholders in the wake of Two Buck Chuckie's disemboweling of Woodside wines. Forced to eat his own young, the tortured Mondavi is also cruelly forced to tour Copia. Other scenes that depict Two Buck Chuckie's relentless and pitiless torture of his hired immigrant laborers may be too much for a sensitive person to watch. Rated PG-13.



RUDY


The charming story of a lonely and crazy Austrian philosopher named Rudolf Steiner (Arnold Schwarzenegger in a thrilling return to the screen after his Oscar-nominated performance as an addlepated Governor) who convinces the wine world that Biodynamics is essential for great vineyards. Something of a cross between "A Simple Mind" and "The Sound of Music," director and screenwriter Oliver Stone shows us the inspiration for Biodynamics, Steiner's love of bullshit, and then takes us up to the present day and Nicolas Joly's (an impeccably accented Carrot Top) infatuation for the great man. Oscar buzz already for Jennifer Lopez's portrayal of Steiner's true love, Bessie the Guernsey.




INDIANA JONES AND THE LOST CAVES OF MAMMON


Lucas and Spielberg set their latest Indiana Jones flick four thousand years in the future. Indy (Larry the Cable Guy) and his gorgeous sidekick Mary Tage (RuPaul) have unearthed the Lost Caves of Mammon, the recently rediscovered wineries of Napa Valley. Much like the Pharaohs, Indy discovers, early 21st Century Napa Valley Vintners spent fortunes building shrines to themselves, ludicrously expensive monuments where ignorant people came to worship them and drink of their mystical beverages. In cave after elaborate cave, Indiana and Mary uncover the horrors of the era and battle the ghosts who had long lain dormant under the rubble. They barely manage to escape all the devious and evil booby traps left behind by the wineries--wine clubs and allocation lists and nightmarish hidden filter pads. And they try to understand what killed this lost civilization, try to understand the culture's obsession with Mammon. In a pivotal scene, after being forced to eat Mammon tartare, Indy flashes back to the 20th Century and hallucinates that he is Bill Jarvis and he nearly dies of terminal cave envy. Mary saves him by showing him her cave doesn't really exist (a brave RuPaul).



CITIZEN MARV


A fictionalized version of the life of Marvin Shanken (Divine, in his final role) and the rise of his publishing empire. Marvin takes a failed newspaper, Wine Spectator, and with the clever theft of elements of Gourmet magazine, Robert Parker's (a nice set piece by John Candy, also in his final role) Wine Advocate, and the vocabulary of Dr. Seuss, creates a wine reviewing dynasty. But his ultimate downfall at the hands of bloggers (great to see so many Little People in a film) leaves him gasping this final mysterious word on his deathbed, "Payola."
Divine, as a not yet housebroken Shanken on original Wine Spectators

The HoseMaster Becomes the BlogMeister

Many thanks to Tom Wark for turning me on to yet another wine blog in his recent post, A Glass After Work. Though I confess, I thought he wrote A Glass After Wark and it was a blog about hemlock. I perused A Glass After Work on Tom's recommendation and was utterly captivated by yet another complete waste of time. There is something oddly pathetic about reading someone's tasting notes for Frei Brothers Reserve Chardonnay (so much superior to their regular Frei Brothers Chardonnay--or else they couldn't call it Reserve could they?) that end with knitting and Harry Potter. But if Tom says this is a good wine blog, who am I to criticize? But it was a lot like spending ten minutes with your elderly aunt with halitosis. But to her credit, Alleigh, the creator of A Glass After Work, learned very quickly to beg for samples, but, hell, yarn ain't cheap, my friends, and wineries are plenty stupid, so it's a win-win. Looking forward to posts on St. Supery, Hahn, Murphy-Goode and all the other dull as W. wines in California.


But I'm a little sick of Tom Wark being the designated Blogmeister. He's not the only guy who discovers new wine blogs. Your HoseMaster has been surfing the net in search of new and thrilling voices in the wine blogosphere and I've found some great new sites. Do yourself a favor and check these out.


Sex For Wine

Corky Screw (a pseudonym? Nah) has a fantastic new blog with something for everyone. She writes fantastic tasting notes. And she willingly has sex with anyone who gives her a decent bottle of wine. Unlike most blogs where tasting notes are dry and unimaginative, Corky's notes are very clever and creative, and hint at all the fun she's having writing her blog. Here's an example:

"On my scale of 5 Orgasms, 1 being I faked it to 5 meaning it was great served alone, the 2006 Cakebread Chardonnay was a 2. Man, I've done it fifty times if I've done it once. Same old crap. I took a sniff, I put it in, hell, been there done that. Yeah, it's fine, but this is the kind of style that is best done cold, and I mean I just found out you had sex with my sister cold."


Corky writes that her cellar is rapidly filling up. I'm hoping this isn't a metaphor. I think she means that folks are lining up to give her wine in exchange for sexual favors. Sadly, I couldn't find out whether that's her real name. Or where she lives. Sorry, Hardy, I tried. And that's "good" wine, without the "e." And you need some balls.


Fox News Wine Blog


It might seem odd at first glance, but, really, who can you trust more than Fox News? Come on, friends, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh? There aren't three bigger assholes in the Ringling Brothers elephant compound, but they know their wines! And they are not afraid to speak the truth, they're not big old liars like those Africans running the country. (Warning: You do have to have a link to your birth certificate to enter this site so if you are a person of color or are from a Muslim country you might want to go to their alternate site first, www.wehopeyoustarvetodeath.com, to save some time. And if you're Muslim, why are you reading wine blogs? Hell, if you're not Muslim, why are you reading wine blogs?) Here's Rush on his favorite Bordeaux:


"Ladies and gentleman, I know it's French wine, and the French, well, they're cowards and their President would have sex with an eclair, but if you haven't had Chateau Margaux, well, your life is shabby and miserable and you'll never have health care if I have anything to say about it. Nothing I like more than a big glass of Margaux from a good vintage, say 2000 when Bush was elected, matched with a prescription pain killer, a big dose, Oxycontin from around 2007, with a gorgeous fake prescription label. Friends, this is the kind of pleasure a man is grateful to have had. Just isn't the same with some crappy Third Growth and a Midol. Ask Ann Coulter."


Add Hannity and O'Reilly to the mix, the Twin Towers of Human Waste, and, well, this is wine writing at a level of prevarication only the best bloggers, the AWBA winners, can achieve.



A Couple of Bottles A Night


I love this guy. Ralph Chunks writes a blog about his habit of drinking two bottles of wine every night, and the funny consequences that follow. Always a great story when Ralph's around. In one recent post, Ralph writes about drinking a bottle of great Chablis and following it with a bottle of Clos du Bois Chardonnay. When he's driving home he gets stopped by a cop who asks him what he's been drinking. Ralph tells the cop, "A great bottle of Raveneau and your mother's piss." Hilarity ensues as the cop beats him senseless and Ralph wakes up in jail with some guy groping him. But is there a better description of Clos du Bois Chardonnay than that? In another yarn, Ralph drinks a bottle each of two different Siduri Pinot Noirs but then goes on a drunken rampage because he's convinced it's the same goddam wine in both bottles! His email exchange with the folks at Siduri is hilarious, as is his conclusion about the two wines, "These two Pinots are about as different as my left nut and my right nut tasted blind in my bag." Yup. Ralph Chunks nails it again.

Vinography: Hardly Worth It!

I didn't know what to expect upon first meeting Hardly Walleyes, Social Media Director for Murphy-Goode Wines, but I certainly didn't expect flowers. It's not like I'm a bigshot blogger feigning humility or anything. And it's not like I expect something for free, like wine samples, airline tickets, front row seats for my favorite concerts (oooh, I hear the Captain and Tennille are making a comeback) or unmarked bills sent directly to me at Vinography: The Wine Shill, 1313 Puffpiece Lane, SF. (Let's say I did get some free stuff, I certainly always put a Full Disclosure statement at the end of each post, which is more than any of those New Jersey rabbis did at the end of their Saturday services.) But the flowers were a nice touch. And to think Hardly had gone all the way to the Healdsburg Cemetery to get them just for me!

It's hard to imagine any of you reading this don't know, but Hardly Walleyes was the lucky winner of the Murphy-Goode Social Media Position. Murphy-Goode's original idea was to pay a person $1000 for every point of their IQ over the course of the six months that blogger/tweeter/podcaster/poseur worked for the winery, up to $120,000. The stumbling economy forced them to set their sites a bit lower and when Hardly scored a dazzling 60 on the IQ exam, it was a win-win situation. After spending an afternoon with him at the personal request of Jess (call me Huckleberry) Jackson, tasting the wines and helping him tie his shoes, I can say that I believe they made the right call. Hardly Walleyes is Murphy-Goode wines. And I wouldn't be surprised if he stays on after his six months have gone by. The little guy makes the perfect pet.
Jess and the Murphy-Goode gang livin' the lifestyle! A Vinography Image


Hardly comes from our own wine blogosphere having written a never-nominated wine blog called dirtymouthwine for the past several years. Like so many of our finest wine bloggers, Hardly makes no claim to having a wide knowledge of wine, and it shows in his posts. I find it refreshing in this day and age of so-called "experts" that a person with so few qualifications can successfully make a name for himself in the wine business. I know how hard that is. And I was flattered that Hardly confided that he looked up to me as a role model in that regard. He told me that as I was positioning the flowers on an old fence rail in front of a vineyard at sundown for one of my patented Vinography Images that proves how sensitive I am. (I'll be posting that image the day after tomorrow, right after my scathing commentary on the great Rieslings of Oregon--a hint, only 24 of the 28 scored 9 or higher!)

Hardly's experience as a marginally talented wine blogger will serve him well in his new capacity. Casting an uncritical eye on the wines of Murphy-Goode is exactly what Huckleberry was hoping for, and it's hard to imagine even a dozen more IQ points would have changed that, but here is Hardly Walleyes hard at work writing and tweeting and blogging about the Sonoma County lifestyle. Oh, it's a big adjustment moving to the sleepy little town of Healdsburg after the bright lights of Atlanta, the town Sherman should have burned. But Hardly is nothing if not resourceful and he's filled his new digs with things to remind him of home--little no-skid flowers on the shower floor, Flintstones vitamins in the cupboard and all of his Jonas Brothers posters! In just a few days Hardly has made Healdsburg his home, and Healdsburg is better off for it.

Hardly and I strolled over to the tasting room in Healdsburg so I could sample the fine wines of Murphy-Goode with Walleyes as my guide. We got a little lost, but Windsor is lovely this time of year, I took another trademark Vinography Image of the Windsor Square, so captivatingly abandoned as always. When we finally arrived at the tasting room and I'd helped little Hardly zip up, the wonderful Murphy-Goode hospitality team had more flowers waiting for me, and a new Prius, which was thoughtful, and oh so Sonoma. But it was the fantastic wines that I had come for. These fine Sonoma County wines sourced from so many different vineyards are such a treat to taste, and so easy to write about with none of those long and bothersome single vineyard names all over them from appellations I think are so confusing. The Murphy-Goode wines are simple, like the great Hardly Walleyes, the little guy all wrapped up in Tweeting and Blogging and Facebooking and the Jonas Brothers, but give them a chance and they'll make great pets.

Full Disclosure: No animals were hurt in the making of this post.