Frank Buck, Natural Wine Hunter!

It's the first Monday of the month, so today's piece is at Tim Atkin, MW's blog. It's in England, so many of the jokes get lost in the translation. I think you'll enjoy today's piece. It's written by the great natural wine hunter Frank Buck, a man who risks his life ferreting out natural wines from what are usually dangerous places. Feel free to comment, if you're so inclined, here, or across the virtual pond at Tim's.

FRANK BUCK, NATURAL WINE HUNTER!

Join the NRA Wine Club Today!

Fellow Gun Lover,

I’m writing to invite you to join the National Rifle Association Wine Club. Because, really, what goes better with loaded weapons than drinking? Wines in the NRA Wine Club have been chosen especially for our members by leading wine authorities who don’t just like high caliber automatic weapons, they like high caliber wines as well! Each month you’ll receive six bottles of the finest wines the world has to offer at amazing low prices. Our prices are so low, you might think we’d threatened the wineries to get them. Prove it.

For new NRA Wine Club Members, there is a limited time offer we think you’ll be unable to resist. Six amazing bottles of fine wine whose retail price is normally $180 retail for only $69! That’s six bottles of liquid courage for just a bit more than $11 per bottle. And look what you’ll get!

From My Cold Dead Hanzell 2010 Chardonnay—A special bottling from one of California’s premiere Chardonnay producers, with a likeness of Charlton Heston on the label. Don’t drink too much or you’ll Ben-Hurl.

Newtown 2009 Unfiltered Chardonnay—One of the great California wineries sold us the last few cases of their legendary 2009 vintage Chardonnay, with a portion of the proceeds going to fund a new school project in Connecticut, the Kindergarten Firing Range, where toddlers learn how to be comfortable firing guns in close quarters. Is it naptime, or was there a stranger in here? An armed child is a safe child.

Chateau du Gabby Giffords 2009 Canon Fronsac—Robert Parker called 2009 “the greatest Bordeaux vintage of my lifetime…worth holding up a bank to obtain.” We couldn’t agree more. The 2009 Chateau du Gabby Giffords features the former U.S. Congresswoman's photograph on the label, a lovely head shot. That may be a poor choice of words.

Kosta Freedom 2010 Pinot Noir Russian River Valley—A few deaths here and there, and what is that, gun lovers? Yes, it’s the Kosta Freedom. Another gun massacre got you down? Open this silky, smooth Pinot Noir and let it wash away your better instincts.

Gunlock Badshow 2009 Zinfandel Sonoma—Background checks at gun shows are like checking ID’s at liquor stores—totally unnecessary, and bad for the small businessman. Here’s an old vines Zin that everyone can enjoy—from the mentally ill to your high school freshman. It’s killer Zin.

Sonoma-Cutrer 2010 Chardonnay “La Pierre Vineyard”—Named for our beloved CEO Wayne La Pierre because it’s white, it’s powerful, and when you’re done, you’re loaded. Bottled under screw, slightly loose.

How can you resist this introductory offer? Six great bottles of wine for a fraction of their value if you join the NRA Wine Club today.  This is a six-month trial offer, and if you’re not fully satisfied with each month’s selections, just give us a call, see if we give a rat’s ass. Yes, that’s right. We just don’t care! It’s the NRA attitude; it’s why you’re a proud member.

And there are more benefits of being a member of the NRA Wine Club! Here are just a few:

•    Recommendations of gun-friendly winery tasting rooms. Show up with a weapon, and taste for free!

•    An automatic vote in the annual NRA Award balloting, the award given to the outstanding member of society who has done the most to promote guns in society, the Bullet Surprise. Previous winners of the Bullet Surprise include Mark David Chapman, John Hinckley, and Junior Seau.

•    An NRA Wine Club Membership Card good for discounts at gun shows, 7-11’s, and MW exams. (Bullets with MW names on them require an additional charge.)

•    Free subscription to the NRA monthly wine magazine, DUCK!!!

•    Your personalized Second Amendment corkscrew—just twist it to suit your purposes.

Won’t you act now? Whether you’re a proud gun owner for sport, or hunting, or even if you’re just contemplating suicide, these six bottles of wine are guaranteed to enhance your life, no matter how much longer you put off ending it.

At the NRA, we believe that the two things most precious and valuable to the American way of life are shooting stuff and getting shitfaced. And that those two pursuits go together like the other great American rights—unprotected sex and getting shitfaced, driving without a seat belt and getting shitfaced, and carrying a loaded weapon and getting shitfaced.

Stand up for your rights! Join the NRA Wine Club today!

Void where prohibited by law. Yeah, right.

Quiddick the Critic--The Best of HoseMaster

I had a terrible flu last week. So today is a rerun. I call it Best of HoseMaster. A low bar to get over. Anyway, from February 2012, here is Quiddick the Critic.

For My Gorgeous Samantha

Alone in his parlor, his nose at the ready

Quddick the Critic can’t hold his hand steady.

“I’ve spit and I’ve spit like a short-tempered camel

I’ve got very few teeth that have any enamel.

“My liver has grown to the size of Bulgaria

And my blood vessels look like a map of Bavaria.

My gut has grown huge, I’m immense for my genus,

It’s been several years since I last saw my penis.

“But I’ve got all these bottles, these bottles galore

And with nose and with tongue I must give them a score.

Reputations and lives all depend on my skills.

For my hands to stop shaking, I’ll wash down these pills.”

Quiddick the Critic is the King of all Wine,

His power unquestioned, his gift deemed divine.

One sniff of a wine, one mouthful or two,

A number emerges! Like you squeeze out a poo.

“Cassis and vanilla! White pepper and thyme!

Berries and cherries and girly parts’ slime!

Fresh green tobacco and other parts herbal!

The definitive scent of Tom Cruise’s gerbil!

“Muscular, brawny, with elegant tannin!

A sulfurous note as if shot through a cannon!”

Now Quiddick the Critic is ready to score,

“It’s brilliant, it’s classic, it rates 94!”

Thus Quiddick the Critic has ruled wine supreme.

His followers drank up his every wet dream.

With just one simple score he made up in his head

He can banish a winery to Land of the Dead.

But Quiddick the Critic has seen better days

Subscriptions are canceled, he gets no more praise.

His star has been fading, his flock has dispersed,

He was once the big cheese, but now he’s the wurst.

“I have to do something, I must regain my power,

Or I’ll end up like Verjus, incredibly sour.

Maybe I’ll pack up and travel to China,

Maybe I’ll pray that I grow a vagina.

“Everyone knows when it comes down to palates,

That women’s are better, that men’s are like mallets.”

Quiddick the Critic, at this point, was hammered,

He babbled, he dribbled, he droned on, he yammered.

When suddenly there was a knock at his door.

He reached down and picked up his pants from the floor.

“I rate the wines naked and make my selections,

It’s better than blind, and I get more erections.”

Like every wine critic, though Quiddick was King,

His sex life was barren, he played with his thing.

For a woman might want him because of his clout

But that thing in his pants was most like a dead trout.

“Who is it?” he cried, “Who’s there at my door?”

But his queries were answered with silence, no more.

His instincts were shouting, Don’t answer the knock!

It could be a winemaker armed with a Glock!

But Quiddick the Critic could scarcely ignore

His longing to know who was banging his door.

He opened it slowly, his nerves were atwitter.

But instead of one bitch, he found a whole litter.

For outside his door there were hundreds of Poodles,

Short ones and tall ones, all kits and caboodles.

“We’re here to replace you,” they said as a chorus,

“You’re over and done with, you cannot ignore us!”

“You’re Bloggers!” cried Quiddick, “the spawn of the Net!

You’re posers and douchebags and lovers of Brett.

You cannot replace me, don’t you know who I am?

I’m King of the Critics and you clowns are Spam!”

The Poodles were growling, their barking intense.

They gaped at his size, then said, “Let us flense!”

The first to attack him, he thought he had balled her…

But the one with no punch, he knew, “That was Alder!”

They all were upon him. The nuts and the fruity!

The Blake Grays, the Jim Budds, and even WineDoody.

They cut him and bit him and left him for dead,

And felt proud of themselves, at least that’s what they said.

“Now we’ll be the experts instead of that tub.

Our ignorance though, well, Ay, there’s the rub.

But you don’t need knowledge to start your own blog

You don’t need credentials, you just have to slog.

And you don’t need talent, not even a little

You just need a keyboard upon which you piddle

Your underthought thoughts, your impulsive twaddle.

Your useless descriptions of what’s in the bottle.

The world is much better with endless opinion

With more mindless noise from each mindless minion.

We’ll dazzle the wine world, we’ll learn it much faster.

And screw that damn Quiddick and fuck the HoseMaster.”

With poor Quiddick dead all the Poodles seized power.

Consumers were baffled, the wineries dour.

“They all want free samples, they all own the joints!

Old Quiddick, we miss you, your misleading points.”

But critics were dying and bloggers ascendant.

The bloggers not knowing they were codependent.

Without critics to harp on they had little to say

And slowly but surely they all went away.

The silence is welcome, like when you use Bean-o.

No Heimoff, no Alice, the late Dr. Vino.

And everyone’s happy, from shop to consumer.

Wine tastes so much better sans numbers and rumor.

And what is the moral of our tragic story?

For stories need morals like bloggers need glory.

Well, there’s not much to glean from this Seussic disaster—

Except that the sickest is our famed HoseMaster.

The Wine Writer Classification of 2013

It’s bound to stir up some controversy, and the results will be fiercely contested, but I’m rather pleased with the new Wine Writer Classification of 2013. Now wine consumers have a guide to the voices in the wine writing world that have meaning, and those that are basically bus stop ads. It has taken several years for the classification to become final, and a lot of bickering and insider politicking went on behind the scenes, but I think the committee, overall, did a wonderful job. From the First Growths down to the Fifths, wine writers have been assigned their level, and the wine buying public is better off for knowing it. It’s a nice bit of irony that the men and women who have made their living assigning imaginary values to wine now find themselves in a similar situation. A wine might be forever branded an “89,” but now, at least, the critic finds himself forever a Fifth Growth Writer. Admit it, it just feels right.

You may notice a few wine writers who were omitted. Perhaps because they lack any significant influence. Or perhaps because they’re just unpleasant people, pushy and demanding to a degree directly inverse to their actual clout. The committee was overwhelmed with pleas from wineries and winemakers to add a sixth level, Cancerous Growth, but this became unworkable when every single wine writer’s name was nominated.

The committee, whose work was done in anonymity for their own safety after repeated threats from Natalie MacLean to “cut their balls off and feed them to Guy Fieri in a nice tomato sauce with a whisper of oregano” if she wasn’t at least a Second Growth Wine Writer, spent long hours assessing the scope and influence of the greatest living wine writers. When they finished with those two, they slapped together the rest. In the time it took for the final classification to be decided, a few of the writers had died. Death does increase popularity, of course, and the committee urged wine writers unhappy with their ranking to strongly consider it.

You may disagree with the Wine Writer Classification of 2013, but it is done. The classification will be revisited in ten years, at which time the committee hopes the writers will have finally found gainful employment in a field at which they actually excel. At that time they will also establish a Veterans Committee to acknowledge wine writers they may have overlooked, or, like Oz Clarke, they were unable to translate into English.

Wine writing is important to the popularity of wine. The committee expressed its sincere wish that it might, one day, also be important to its enjoyment. Wine writing has its roots in man’s love for wine, and his inability to shut up about it. The Wine Writer Classification of 2013 celebrates those who educate and enlighten us at the expense of entertaining us.

Each category, or Growth, represents a different level of influence, talent and longevity. A First Growth wine writer is one whose every word can move wine markets, cause buying frenzies, or ruin family businesses forever. Think Bernie Madoff, just hasn’t been caught yet.

A Second Growth wine writer will have valuable name recognition and a discerning palate, like Monica Lewinsky. Not as influential as a First Growth, this causes a distinctive bitterness to the tone of their work.

A Third Growth wine writer is particularly knowledgeable but has the communication skills of Koko the talking gorilla. They often simply point at kitties.

A Fourth Growth wine writer hasn’t had an original idea since he pulled the chair out from under Harry Waugh at a Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin meeting and said, “Ever mistake the floor for a chair, Harry?” Irrepressible Harry dutifully replied, “Not since lunch, asshole.”

A Fifth Growth wine writer is utterly convinced he is a First Growth because his blog gets over four hundred hits a week, and two wineries sent him free wine that had been refused by their wine club members and was sitting in a UPS warehouse for three months. Wine writers who also play in bands are automatically Fifth Growth because almost everyone hates them.

Here then is the Wine Writer Classification of 2013, the undisputed list of who’s who in the wine writing world. Next update: 2023

First Growth

Robert M. Parker, Jr.

Second Growth

Jancis Robinson, MW

Third Growth

James Laube

Fourth Growth

Hugh Johnson

Fifth Growth

Everybody else…

Now get over it.

The 2013 Lodi Professional Wine Writers' Symposium

Welcome to the 2013 Lodi Professional Wine Writers’ Symposium. We hope you’ll enjoy your stay at the Lodi Bed or Breakfast Suites—you choose! Sorry, no free WiFi, but there is an Etch-a-Sketch in every room.

Our Symposium is dedicated to providing three days of nonstop immersion in the worlds of wine and wine writing. You bring us your dreams, your ideas, your talents, and we do you the favor of crushing them like hundred-dollar-a-ton Zinfandel—quickly and carelessly. We’ve invited some of the most famous names in professional wine writing, all of whom were busy. Instead, we have a lineup of second and third tier writers who you may have heard of if you carefully read the magazines left in your Bed or Breakfast suite. Many have been published in some of our most prestigious wine magazines, but more likely Wine and Spirits, Mutineer and Juggs.  They may not be the cream of the current wine writing crop, but they’re certainly the Reddi-Whip.

There are many exciting seminars, workshops, tastings and road trips for you to participate in. Look over the lists carefully and make your decisions. We guarantee that by the end of the 2013 Lodi Professional Wine Writers’ Symposium you’ll have a much clearer vision of your lack of talent.


EXCURSIONS

Tuesday  The Great Wineries of Lodi
To be honest, we came up with the name of the road trip before we really thought about it. We had to visit all 80 Lodi wineries. So Tuesday is a free day!

Wednesday  You Know, There are Some Damn Nice Wines in Lodi
Join Tim Fish, Mister of Wine (it’s Master of Wine Lite) as he takes you to his favorite Lodi wineries. Learn how to tell the difference between Lodi Zinfandel and Hershey’s syrup, not that easy since both come in squeeze bottles. (Hint: the syrup flows faster.) And, as a bonus, Tim will demonstrate how to taste with a helmet on.

Thursday  Lodi Cult Wine Producers
Again, we just brainstormed ideas and this came up. We probably should have done some research first. We meant to, but we were busy. We had all these applications to read from wannabe wine writers. Jesus, they’re just awful. So Thursday is a free day! 


WORKSHOPS AND SEMINARS

Tuesday  “Writing Effective Wine Reviews”
Ever wonder how today’s finest wine critics write such fascinating descriptions? We do too! So we’ll have a few other critics taking some pretty good guesses. A few of them actually know those famous wine critics! Join moderator Jay Miller, disgraced former critic for The Wine Advocate, Natalie MacLean, Canada’s Distinguished Wine Scholar and James Beard Award Winner for Cut and Paste, and Gary Vaynerchuk, in a rare appearance, but we promised he could wear a Nat Fright Wig, as they discuss how to make your wine reviews memorable. Special emphasis will be placed on meaningless words that can be placed in reviews when you have no idea what you’re smelling and tasting—Asian spices, brambly, unctuous and terroir among them.

Wednesday  “Make Shit Up”
Want to get published in today’s best wine journals, like Saveur, Food and Wine, and Juggs? You need to have an unusual angle, you need to tell the editor something he doesn’t know, you need to do what every successful wine writer and blogger does these days—Make Shit Up. Yes, plagiarism is easier, though you didn’t hear that here first. But making shit up is the future of wine writing. It’s called blogging.

Thursday  “No One Cares if You Have Talent”
A fascinating seminar on how you don’t need talent to be a wine writer, you just need to be pious. Not about wine, but about wine writing. Irreverence and wit are the enemy of wine writing, and our esteemed panelists will prove they have little of either. Join Mother Superior Alice Feiring, Jamie Goode, Greatest Living Wine Blogger Other Than Alder Yarrow, and Alder Yarrow, Greatest Living Wine Blogger Other Than Alder Yarrow, in a spirited, if lifeless, discussion of the power of piety and self-absorption. Remember, it’s not journalism, it’s wine writing. Only say nice things. You catch more flies with honey than with Authentic Wine.


TASTINGS

Tuesday   “Blind Tasting the Way the Pros Do It”
There are many ways of tasting blind, and we’ll explore them all at this tasting. Taste wines “double blind,” “single blind,” and then the way professional wine critics usually taste, “kinda blind.” It’s what they call “Ray and Roy.” People think you’re tasting blind like Ray Charles, but you’re actually pretending to be blind like Roy Orbison.

Wednesday  “Kinda Blind Tasting of Varieties”
Practice identifying many different varieties of grapes using your new kinda blind technique. Once you know it’s Cabernet Franc, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you can identify it kinda blind! Once you’re an expert, you can do like all the pros do and refuse to try and replicate your results. And why not refuse?! They’re bogus in the first place.

Thursday  “Stuff That Was Donated Tasting”
Local wineries want to get their wines in front of the future wine writers of America, but they’ve settled for you.

Thank you for participating in the 2013 Lodi Professional Wine Writers’ Symposium. Somebody’s making money in the wine writing profession thanks to hopeless folks like you!