The M.S. Conspiracy

A HoseMaster of Wine Pulp Fiction Classic

Chapter 12 With a Madman Behind Me

I woke up thinking that the sound of the gun firing had reminded me of the sound made by a 1975 Salon Champagne opened by an incompetent M.S., its precious contents spewing into the white napkin he had wrapped around the bottle like a llama horking at an innocent bystander at the zoo, at the first anniversary dinner my first wife and I shared at a snooty restaurant in Los Angeles, if that isn't redundant. But then I remembered that Salon didn't produce a Champagne in 1975, and that I didn't make it to a first anniversary with my first wife. In that vintage, Salon didn't need a cage, and neither did I. I'd been spewing into white napkins ever since.


I checked myself for gunshot wounds. Luckily, I hadn't been shot since I was a sommelier and refused to put Rancho Zabaco on my wine list. But that had been worth it. This was a stupid case that had somehow turned violent and deadly. Once again I wondered why I'd ever become a private dick. I'd had everything when I was a sommelier. A ten-year-old car, a drinking problem, a liver the size of a Wurlitzer organ, bad breath, a luxurious apartment above a crack dealer and prestige. What sort of a fool gives that up to be a private dick? No wonder everyone wanted to earn an M.S. There's real glamour in it, the glamour of imaginary accomplishment, the glamour of knowing the bottom of a spitbucket better than your partner's face, the glamour of free trips to romantic far-off lands with other drunks and losers, the glamour of knowing about obscure varieties of grapes and boring the crap out of everyone extolling their virtues, the glamour of wearing a brightly polished tastevin around your neck like you're Sammy Davis, Jr in whiteface. I'd given that prestigious life up for the life of a dick. Why? I guess because people like dicks. Women, especially, like dicks. Where would the world be without dicks? It's a dick world. I like saying dick.


I had a lump on the back of my head the size of Lance Armstrong's remaining testicle. Great. Someone had whacked me on the back of the head again. Only this time the gun had gone off. The jerk hadn't had the safety on, apparently, and the gun's impact with my beleaguered head had caused it to inadvertently discharge like a guy with P.E. at a Women in Wine conference. I was getting tired of this. I'd had my head banged around recently like I was an NFL lineman, and I wasn't excited about the idea of spending my last days drooling like a Saint Bernard and calling everybody Deacon. This case was getting to me.


I was alone in my office. I must have been out for a while. Damn. I'd missed the midget running. I could have used the laugh. And Tiny was gone too, though the floor was still warm where he'd been posing as Fugly's divan, warm enough to have made a fine Madeira, though if I wanted oxidized wines I could shop at Trader Joe's. Larry Anosmia, M.S. was gone too, but there was blood where he'd been standing. Seems the bullet had grazed him, maybe even caught him. I thought about calling Chief of Police Jokes, but I had a feeling I shouldn't. She was probably still comforting Veronica.


But who had hit me? It couldn't have been Fugly, Mr. Teebagger, I'd been hit from behind. The only explanation was that there had been another person in my office when I'd arrived, someone hidden in the coat closet slightly behind me and to my right, someone who'd been hiding there in order to assault me and who'd used my rant at Anosmia as the opportunity to sneak up behind me and use my head as a gong. Whoever it was had been nervous, an amateur, and no doubt part of the M.S. Conspiracy. Though accidentally shooting Anosmia wasn't going to score many points. Except with anyone who'd ever dealt with an M.S. before. They'd give him 100. With a bullet.


When the phone rang it scared the Temecula out of me. I was getting jumpier than a wine writer with ethics--well, if there were any they'd be jumpy. I didn't recognize the voice on the other end of the call at first, but then I realized it was Avril Cadavril, Butcher/Coroner.


"HoseMaster, I think you'd better get back here to the morgue. I've got something for you."


I was pretty sure she meant a drawer.

14 is the New 98

It's been noted just about everywhere that the economic downturn hasn't slowed down the pace of wine drinkers, it has only led to them drinking cheaper bottles. I think this conclusively demonstrates that humans, for all of their interminable wine descriptions and snobbery, drink wine to get drunk. Not to taste the terroir, about as stupid a concept as exists in the wine business (OK, factor in about 43 elements to "terroir," swirl the glass, and then let your pathetically human olfactory senses and pedestrian tastebuds pick them all up, add them together, and come up with, Oh, this must be from the fucking Jura!), not to savor the purity and vividness of finely balanced, single-vineyard, highly allocated, David Abreu-managed, Philip Melkanized, Pope Michel Rolland-canonized grape juice, not to perfectly complement their exquisitely produced meal ("It's Shake and Bake, and I helped!"), but to get inebriated, to alter their mental state so that they don't have to think so much about their unemployment, their failed marriage, their stupid blog (OK, I'll cop to two out of three). Suddenly the only points that matter are the ones before the decimal point in the price. 14 is the new 98. We drink wine to get drunk, but in a classier way than just bellying up to the bar and drinking man shots of distilled whatever-the-hell-is-cheapest.

If you go to a wine tasting event at your local wine shop from one in the afternoon until five o'clock, you're a connoisseur, you're pursuing your newly discovered and oh-so civilized passion for wine! If you go to your local watering hole from 1:00 until 5:00, you're a stinking alkie. But the result is the same. You go home for dinner already drunk. Your passion for wine is most certainly a passion for the altered state of being pissed. I have no problem with that, in fact, I play a drunk on TV, but why all the pomp and circumstance that surrounds wine? Sure, when folks were paying $100 for a bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet, it behooved one to ooh and ahh about its aroma, its texture, its terroir, the beauty of its balance, how it opens up with air--you're trying to slow down the pinheads you stupidly opened the bottle for from guzzling more than their share. And it's so much cooler to get drunk on expensive wine! It actually does taste better. But right now folks are going for that solid 8.00 point wine instead of that stodgy old expensive 94 pt masterpiece. Why? Well, if we were so spoiled and our palates so easily offended by wines that only scored 82, wines we'd have turned our noses up to before we all had to chip in and bailout AIG, we'd give up drinking. But we don't really care. We drink wine to get drunk. Who cares about the score? What's the price?

And what will this do to point inflation in the wine media? There is point inflation, you know. It wasn't very long ago that 90 points was seen as a breakthrough score. 90 points now is threshold undrinkable. You wouldn't give Paris Hilton's vagina 90 points. (See photo--just kidding) Not in every publication, but in all of the ones that accept advertising, 90 points just doesn't cut it any more. Especially when my wine, which I heavily advertise in your magazine, is still languishing in its distributors' warehouses. I need more goddam points! You don't like it, fine! But if it used to be a 90, these days you'd better give it at least 95! And, as a bonus, all the shelf talkers in inept wine shops will carry your name and not your competitor's! Hmm, Connoisseurs' Guide gave it 88 points, worth a star, that's pretty good, but Wine and Spirits gave it 95...which score should I display? That's a headscratcher.

Wine publications don't just exist to please their advertisers, though that is the main reason. They also try to pander to their readers (if only so that they can charge higher advertising rates). So more and more inexpensive wines are going to get higher and higher scores, whether they deserve them or not. Scores mean nothing anyway, why not inflate them a little, give our readers a little ego boost? They can't afford the 95 point wine that costs $50, why not throw them a Beaune, a nice little Burgundy that sells for about $20? Two years ago it might have merited 86 points. But, hell, it'll sell more, we'll get our name in all their promotional material, our easily influenced, insecure readers will be happy, if we give it 91. But, we must not forget to repeat, over and over, ad nauseum, that our scores are strictly objective and fact-based--like in figure skating.

So the scores of cheaper wine will continue to creep up while the scores for luxury wine will stay about the same. Won't we all feel better? Of course we will, we'll be drunk. I can imagine the cover articles for various wine publications.


Wine Spectator

90+ Point Wines Under $15!
We're Still Hopelessly Inept, But We've Adjusted Our Scores Just For You



Wine Enthusiast

You Don't Have to Spend a Lot of Money to Get Drunk!
WE's Crack Editors Have Bonus Points For All 87 Subscribers!



Wine and Spirits

100 Wines Under $15 That You've Never Heard Of!
It's 90 Points If We Say So!


Mutineer Magazine

10 Ways to Get Your Girlfriend to Drink Cheap Wine
Hey, We'll Give You a Subscription and You Don't Even Have to Read this Junk!

Coming Soon! More Useless Blogs!

I feel kind of confined by HoseMaster of Wine. Sure, it's brilliant comedy and, well, there's not a lot of that out there in the wine blogosphere, though LusciousLushes is hilariously inept. And sure I've won the Nobel Prize, a Pritzker, several Humanitarian awards, a People's Choice, an NBA MVP, and a coveted Psoriasis Society Biggest Flake Award, but I'll be honest, there are so many other bloggers I want to be, so many different kinds of blogs that I admire and want to emulate. So I'm thinking of starting a few more wine blogs. Hey, I'm basically unemployed, I've got the time, and, besides, as so many so aptly demonstrate, they don't take much work or thought.


WineBottomFeeder

I love the blogs that just review the stupid and virtually worthless samples that are sent to them. Listen, friends, here's a clue: When the cost of shipping the bottle exceeds the bottle's price, don't review it! It's crap, and the winery is fishing for a fool to slap their label on their wine blog, and you're the bottom feeder they've hooked. But I love the concept. Post after post about truly mediocre wine, every one praised as though it's the Second Coming of Yquem. I get the wine for free, I steal descriptions from the marketing material included with the bottle, and then I match it with a poem or a song or a porn movie, and, voila, I have a successful wine blog. One thing about the Internet--no shortage of stupid people reading it.

"The Ironstone 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon would be perfect with Vivid's 'The Hurt Licker.'"

If cyberspace can be said to be wasted, this species is the Cheech and Chong of wine blogs. I'd model mine after WineHarlots (please, for the love of God, I'm begging you, believe me, you MUST believe me, do NOT go there), which, if there were any justice, would be ground up and put in cow horns and buried in a BioDynamic vineyard. Here two sisters, equally ignorant about wine, review samples that seem to have been sent to them instead of The Dollar Store. Not only do they wax rhapsodic about these dogs in prose that is surely computer generated and stiffer than the lead actor in "The Hurt Licker," they feel the need to tell you what closure the bottle sports (no doubt because you wouldn't want to rush out and purchase a fraudulent bottle of this unmitigated piss), and they match the wine with music. So I'm supposed to believe that two women with very little in the way of discernment when it comes to wine know music? And, hell, am I supposed to chug the bottle in the four minutes it takes to play your crappy iPod selection, or do I just play it over and over until the wine is finished and my sanity deeply injured?

There are countless blogs out there like WineHarlots. I see them as the Special Olympics of Tasting Notes. I want in. I think WineBottomFeeder will be a huge hit.


ImReallyImportantInTheWineBiz

So this would be my blog where I list lots of events going on in the wine world and act like I'm doing a public service by writing about them, tweeting about them, and posting them on my Facebook page, so I am generally responsible for their success. This gives me great feelings of self-importance. I get an email from someone putting on a wine-related event, I jot down the info on my blog, make it sound like it is of critical importance for everyone who loves wine to participate or read about it, and, there, I've got me a blog! You can do these posts in your sleep, and lots of bloggers do. The lastest conference on Social Media and Wine, you should go!! (Hey, if Social Media is so powerful, why do we have to have a conference? Can't we just do it from home, at our computers, on our iPhones? Do we have to go to some dumpy hotel to listen to Alder and Andy and Joe and Steve tell us how much influence they have? I already know how much influence they have--look at the dumpy hotel ballroom they're speaking in.)

Of course, a blog like this demands that you post five days a week. So keep those PR notices coming! Otherwise, I might actually have to have something to say. Have a stupid wine event? I'll publicize it! And then I'll tweet about it so that my 674 followers on Twitter can feel like they're important, that they're the very lifeline of existence without whom information simply does not exist, and I'll post it on Facebook because, well, that's where I go to reassure myself I have friends, really good friends, friends who would do anything for me. All of this proves I am important in the wine business, and, as we all know, importance translates into expertise. Not the other way around.


MyWineJourneyofLove

OK, I'm a little old to start this blog, but I can pretend. I play the part of a frustrated writer (my friends always tell me I'm so good at writing I should start my own blog! I wrote for my high school newspaper, you know) who has discovered his passion for wine. Join me on my journey of discovery! Why? Well, because it is so interesting and I have so much to say. Together we'll explore wine. And none of that icky European stuff, and nothing that costs much money. Frankly, tasting all of those expensive and great wines just ruins your palate and you can't really enjoy the kind of wines you can afford, so why bother? I've had lots of wines under $15 that I'd rate over 95 points! Why? Hell, it's easy when you don't know anything. That's why they call it a journey. But wouldn't you much rather enjoy a $12 bottle that gets 95 points than a $125 bottle that gets 96? And you can! Just join me as I discover the amazing world of wine! Here are just a few of the things you'll learn along with me:

Did you know Pinot Grigio and Pinot Gris are the same grape! They mean "old pinot" in Italian and French.

Did you know not all Gewurztraminer is sweet? I know! Neither did I? And the "w" is pronounced like a "v," just like in Der Wienerschnitzel--and they're a perfect wine and food match!

Did you know professional wine people spit wine out when they taste it?! Not me. That's just stupid.

Vornography

Every January the Zinfandel Advocates and Producers (ZAP) throw a tasting in my honor at Fort Mason in San Francisco. I'm honored that they do this for me, I don't see myself as worthy of the honor, I'm just a humble blogger who is frequently given accolades, awards, free trips, free wine and inexplicable admiration from an industry that deeply admires sycophants. The theme of this year's ZAP tasting in my honor was "Alder Zin You Can Drink," and, as I do every year, I agreed to allow others in the industry, as well as every day people, to attend. I don't have to do this, but I feel that wine is best when it's shared, and, besides, it's really lonely being the best blogger in the country.

There were fewer wineries this year, which I was not happy about and someone will pay, believe me, but the good news is that it meant I only had 740 wines to taste so I'd have an extra hour to come home and post pretty pictures on my blog. I'd really like to post pictures of kitties, I love kitties, especially in ribbons, but that wouldn't be right so I post trite photos by Andy Katz--get it? Katz? I post pictures of Katz! And you wonder why I win wine blog awards!

I was honored by the 220 or so wineries who chose to pour me wine at ZAP. Part of the enjoyment I get out of this annual event (last year's theme was "We All Live in a Yarrow Submarine") is the time I get to spend with all my many friends that produce Zinfandel all over the state, and even the world! People even come from Italy and South Africa to pour wines for me, hoping for a coveted 9.5 to 10 score, which I only give to 40% of the wines I taste so they are really going against the odds. This year I was honored to spend 11 seconds talking to Joel Peterson, the heroic producer and founder of Ravenswood, 8 seconds tasting with Larry Turley, and a full 15 seconds reveling in the stories of Kent Rosenblum. Did you know he's a veterinarian? When Dr. Rosenblum tells you you're a horse's ass for claiming you can taste and rate 740 wines in a day, you know he knows what he's talking about!

I was also asked to moderate a panel about Zinfandel and Social Media the Friday before the ZAP tasting. I am often asked to sit on panels because I'm the most respected wine blogger in the country and I can answer many questions that prospective bloggers constantly ask. For example, I am often asked what has made my blog so successful. It's not that big a secret. What makes Vornography so successful is that most people can't tell the difference between being prolific and being good. Choose prolific. And, always, they want to know how to get wineries to send them free samples. Here's where my journalism background comes in handy. Puff pieces. Wineries love puff pieces about themselves and I do that better than anyone else blogging today. You can't go wrong writing fluff, being a fluffer, about a winery owner fulfilling a dream. They eat it up, they post it on their website, they tweet about it, and they send me every release of wine they ever produce hoping I'll flatter them again. It's essentially like taking candy from trust fund babies.

Tasting 740 wines in six hours is no big deal, but, obviously I'm not superhuman enough to also take tasting notes. That would be ludicrous and, frankly, arrogant. Besides, no one reads tasting notes, tasting notes are just filler, like the white stuff in Twinkies, it's just there to distract you from what really matters, the delicious cake outsides. And it's all Zinfandel anyway. You already know what Zinfandel tastes like, it tastes kind of like berries. All you need to know is what I think about the wines as reflected in my scores. You already know my taste in wine, you've been faithfully following my blog for more than six years now, and if you're new here, well, take it from all of my regular longtime readers, my scores are valid and meaningful and come from my astonishing seven years of experience tasting wines. You can tell how valid my scores are by all the winery people kissing my butt in the comments section. I list the 740 wines grouped by my vague scores in such a way that it enlightens you as to which Zinfandels are worth your hard-earned money. The ones at the top. They tasted the best. Trust me.

Wine Trivia For Dummies

When it comes right down to it, wine is trivial. Like just about everything I else I really love, from stained couch covers of the stars to merkins. One of the ways wine geeks demonstrate their superior wine knowledge over the average, everyday dipsomaniac is through trivia. So, as a public service (as opposed to a merkin, which is a pubic service), HoseMaster of Wine is providing these interesting and factual lists of wine trivia that will stump even the most pedantic wine snob.


Winemakers with Hooks

Paul Hobbs
Angelo Gaja
Helen Turley
Maya Angelou


The Appellations of Napa Valley

Cult District
Overpriced Mountain
Cave Envy Hillsides
No One Cares Peak
Vanity Valley
Left Bank Foreclosure


German Wine Designations

Kabinett
Sweetlese
Aspartamelese
Fokkinsyruplese
Fokkinstickyscheisselese


Failed Wine Closures

Portugese Tampons
Homeless People's Earwax
Nipples from Bad Breast Reduction Surgery
Goat Tongue
Barbershop Sweepings
Your Sister
Recycled iPods
McCain/Palin Buttplugs


Unobtainable Cult Wines

Domaine de la Roman Polanski (only underage drinkers)
Kosta Fortune
Screaming Orgasm (call me for info)
Harlequin Estate (only clowns on the mailing list)
Manson Family Reserve (formerly of Polanski)


Sexual Activities Named for Wine

Warre and Cockburn
You Punch Down, I Pump Over
Napa Valley Wine Train
Spelunking Your Jarvis
Lafite Job
Blue Nun and the Negroamaro


Defunct Wine Publications

Bordeaux and Beaver Monthly
M.S. for Dummies
The Wine Proctologist
Wine Ecdysiast
The Wine Catheter
Mutineer Magazine


Other Names for Sangiovese

Brunello
Brangelina
Caruso Juico
Atlas Puke
SangioPod
Lady GaGa


Important Wine Blogs