Dr. Conti Pleads Insanity

Dr. Conti enjoys Le Montrachizzle

Hello, Rudy. May I call you Rudy?

Call me Ishmael. I’m hunting the Great White Whale. Anybody seen Shanken around here? My first week in this hellhole, I can tell you, there was some serious Shanken going on. Thar she blows!!!

Rudy, I’m Dr. Bernkasteler. I’m a psychiatrist assigned by the court to help determine if you’re mentally competent to stand trial.

You’re a doctor?! Wow, what a coincidence. I’m a doctor, too. My friends called me Dr. Conti. Wanna know why? Because Dr. Romanée-Conti sounded too much like a gynecologist for gypsies.

I see. Well, Dr. Conti, are you aware of the charges against you?

Yes. They think I bilked a bunch of people out of money by selling fake bottles of very rare wines. It was fun. I’d open a bogus bottle of ’47 Cheval Blanc, pour it for these wealthy bozos, and then watch them ooh and ahh over it. So, here’s the cool part, when I get caught, rather than admit that they don’t know shit about wine, they all start to praise me for what a great palate I must have had to have been able to blend such convincing fakes! Yeah, that’s it. I’m a genius, you’re not a sucker. It’s like if you caught someone screwing your wife and instead of killing the guy, you ask him how he gets his tongue to do that.

Did you feel any guilt about selling fraudulent wines to people?

It depends, Dr., on how you define “fraud.” These days all wine people do is talk about Authentic Wine. Whole books are written on the subject by Authentic Dissemblers. According to the proponents of Authentic Wine, apparently very little Authentic Wine exists. Which means that all the rest of the wine sold, billions of cases, is Fraudulent Wine. Stuff is either authentic or fake, right? So why single me out? Why not go after Trader Joe’s, or Fred Franzia, or the really slow kid working at the 7-11? It’s just an economy of scale. I sold a few hundred cases of fraudulent wine for profit—they’re selling hundreds of thousands. The result is the same.

But didn’t you have any sort of remorse knowing that the wines you were consigning to auctions were complete fakes? That people, collectors and restaurants, were paying obscene amounts of money for what amounted to vintage wine tofurkey?

What sort of remorse does one have for an action that doesn’t hurt anyone involved? I made money, the auction houses made money… And the status twerkers who bought the wines? Hell, most of them still don’t know that their aged Burgundies are essentially microwaved Meridian Pinot Noir with some RC Cola added to give it some actual flavor. And they won’t know when they drink it one day either. No, their friends will mouth platitudes about what an honor it is to drink a wine made before they were born, which is every minute, by the way, the host will somehow mention, at the risk of sounding pretentious, that what he paid for the bottle would easily put his trophy bride through the finest private high school, and everyone will proclaim at the end what a mystical experience the whole evening has been. Everyone wins.

Not everyone. What about the wineries whose wines you faked?

You’re kidding, right? It’s simple. When auction prices for a winery’s product rise, the value of the winery rises, too, right? And maybe people will even pay more than usual for their wines when they know the wines came directly from their own cellars. No, really, it’s just like quality fake tits—there are no losers! Though I recommend you don’t do them on the installment plan. Both at once is the way to go. Really. I mean, look at Jay Miller.

Did you know you were breaking the law?

I used to have really expensive lunches with auction house “experts.” We’d talk about old wines, and, inevitably, the subject of fraudulent wines would come up. I’d ask a couple of questions, and these “experts” would spend the rest of the meal telling me, in minute detail, how they could always spot fake wines, tell me all the mistakes they looked for. I took notes. I asked more questions. Did they think I was writing an article for World of Fine Wine? They, basically, taught me Wine Forgery 101. “Hey, officer, so what is the gate code for Fort Knox? Just wanted to see if you knew it.” And, then, mind you, I’d call them up a couple of months later with another six Jeroboams of Domaine Ponsot for them to sell. I didn’t think I was breaking the law, I thought they were recruiting me.

Did you honestly think you’d never get caught?

I’m a wine geek, Dr. Bernkasteler. Deep down, we all think that one day we’re going to get caught.

I have to say, Dr. Conti, you don’t seem the least bit crazy to me.

Oh, I’m fucking nuts, alright. Spending long hours printing up fake labels, figuring out how to make the capsules look right, scrounging valuable empty bottles from sommeliers, mixing up formulas for wines to taste like old Burgundies or old Bordeaux, and for what? I can’t tell you how many times I went to a restaurant, my rich friends ordered an old white Burgundy, a ’64 Le Montrachet or something, and I knew it was one of my bottles. Kinda funny, but a lot like being adrift for eight weeks in the middle of the ocean and being forced to drink your own urine. Which it was. But at least I didn’t pay $1000 for it and drink it with a smile on my face…

“Wow,” they’d always say, “great minerality.”

Hot New Winery Death

I always get a kick out of feature articles in wine publications that herald “Six Hot New (Cabernet/Pinot Noir/Zinfandel) Producers to Watch!” Inevitably, it’s six new producers doing the same damn thing everyone else is doing. It’s exactly like when the major networks premiere their new Fall television lineups. Robin Williams returns to television! Fire up the laugh tracks, Ma, Grandpa’s riffin’ again. Better yet, another Michael J. Fox sitcom. It’s just a damned shame he has Parkinson’s, because Tourette’s would be so much funnier! In wine, hey, it’s another $150 Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley! Amazing! David Abreu returns to environmental degradation! Andy Erickson phones it in! And the label and packaging, well, it’s downright decadent, and, guaranteed to burn 50% more fossil fuels in the shipping! And here’s another “Can’t Miss” Pinot Noir producer with a stunning lineup of wines from, well, all the usual sources—Gap’s Crown, Pisoni, Sangiacomo, Hirsch, Keefer… This is wine’s version of “From the producers of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and ‘Two and a Half Men.’” What it guarantees is that it’s the same old formula but in a brand new package. You’ll be dazzled by the single-vineyard Pinot Noirs from Terroir and a Half Men.

Those wine articles primarily serve to glorify the magazine’s power, not to serve its readers. Parker was famous for proclaiming that a winery or winemaker was a Producer to Watch, and then, an issue or two later, rating all their wines in the upper 90’s, guaranteeing it was now a winery to watch. It’s a little bit like rigging a horse race. You already know the outcome when you place the bet. But you still feel smug doing it.

I always wonder where those wineries are ten years later, when they’re no longer a Producer to Watch. Where once they were the Academy Award Winner for Best Actor, now they’re part of the Death Montage. So, at last, we arrive at the premise…


DEEP PUNT VINEYARDS AND WINERY

Deep Punt’s first few vintages of Pritchard Hill Cabernet Sauvignon scored more than 98 points, and the winery had a waiting list longer than a David Schildknecht wine description, and far more interesting to read. Collectors loved the wine, and loved the stylized and heavy bottles with punts deep enough to have their own microclimates. The vineyard was the first vineyard in Napa Valley to be planted underground and utilize solar panels to power the grow lights, guaranteeing a perfect vintage every year. The vines are six feet under and planted upside-down in order to give the vines better access to the unique soils of Pritchard Hill, and to make them really easy to pick. “Cabernet Sauvignon thrives underground,” proclaims Deep Punt’s consulting winemaker Phillipe Melka, “and we never have to worry about frost, wild boar or erosion. But it does rain fucking gophers in here all the time.” Once a Winery to Watch, Deep Punt has fallen on hard times, as indicated by a review on NothingsBiggerThanMyHead. “Yeah, we’re sending samples to bloggers now,” says Deep Punt’s owner Ray Guy, “I guess I’ve just thrown in the towel.”

Recent vintages of Deep Punt’s Cabernet have scored in the low 90’s, the death knell for cult wines. Mailing list members, once allocated three bottles, can now buy as many as they want, as long as they pretend they got the rest from the winery Wish List, and buy a truss for their UPS driver. Deep Punt’s innovative underground vineyard is reportedly for sale, ironically, at a rock bottom price.


LOWE STANDARDS WINES

Larry Standards and Alison Lowe met in college. Larry majored in Plant Massage, while Alison was earning her degree in Underage Drinking. “I was rubbing my pistil one day,” Larry recalls, “and Alison fell head first into the room. An hour later we were lovers, and two hours later she emerged from her coma.” Larry and Alison decided to pursue their dream of making great Pinot Noir, so they moved to Sonoma County. Alison worked two harvests at Williams Sonoma before she realized she wasn’t at Williams Selyem. “But I did learn a valuable lesson there,” she reminisces, “how to overcharge.” Soon, Lowe Standards Wines became a reality. Larry used his extensive knowledge of plant fondling to impress local vineyard owners, who love having their eco’s massaged, and soon he and Alison were buying Pinot Noir from several dozen notable vineyards. “The truth is,” Alison says, “every vineyard has unique terroir. Duh. How could it not? That’s the fucking definition of terroir. So we vineyard designate every one of our Pinot Noirs. When it comes right down to it, there’s a really good reason for this--we can charge more. Plus, blending vineyards into an appellation-designated wine cuts into my valuable drinking time.”

Once one of 2002’s New Pinot Noir Producers to Watch, Lowe Standards Wines is no longer the darling of Pinot Noir cult wine buyers. Perhaps it was the 45 different Pinot Noirs in their portfolio that soured the wine geeks. Or maybe it was that the Lowe Standards style went out of fashion. Their Pinot Noirs had more added enzymes than a Bill Clinton intern interview. Or was it because ordinary folks get weary of yet another, and another, single-vineyard Pinot Noir that tastes eerily like all the other single-vineyard Pinot Noirs? No, most likely it was that Lowe and Standards sold their label to Diageo. “Lowe Standards?” said Larry. “It just seemed a perfect fit.”

The Official 2013 Bordeaux Vintage Report

California wineries may be as good at making wine as their French counterparts, but they lag far behind when it comes to the more important part of the wine business--the selling of wine. The French are the Masters of Whinge, but when their marketing departments get busy, they can turn a poor vintage into a desirable vintage in just a few paragraphs. Today's piece is, as always this first Monday of a new month, across the Atlantic at Tim Atkin's blog. Tim Atkin's blog was recently named the International Wine Website for 2013 by the Louis Roederer Awards, no small achievement considering he publishes the HoseMaster. It's like winning a Best Picture Oscar for a movie with Chevy Chase.

Take a look at The Official 2013 Bordeaux Vintage Report at the Award-Winning Tim Atkin.com, and please feel free to comment there. Or, if you prefer, you may leave your comments here. Don't forget to save the ticket stub so you can reclaim them later, and leave a small gratuity.

TIM ATKIN, MW

The A.C.A. is Socialism!

I don’t know about you, but I am outraged. The A.C.A is an ill-conceived disaster. The time to stop it is NOW, before it’s fully implemented. It’s not too late. I know, I know, it feels like the battle has been lost, but we mustn’t lose hope, we mustn’t abandon our ideals, our very way of life. We have to fight it with every ounce of our being, make sure that our children, our grandchildren, won’t have to carry the burden of this terrible travesty of the business we hold so dear.

I’m speaking of, if I can get the dreaded words unstuck from my craw, the Affordable Cab Act. It will destroy the wine business if we don’t stop it NOW.

I will concede that the prices for Cabernet Sauvignon are insane. The system is definitely broken, I’ll give them that. Wineries with no track record charging $150 for a first release of Napa Valley Cabernet? Who buys those wines? The same people who hire Dennis Rodman for a makeover? The people who hire Anthony Wiener as their Social Media Consultant? People who religiously follow James Suckling? Those morons?

Cabernet Sauvignon prices are like Mel Gibson’s cars—driven by ego. Every overhyped, expensively packaged, new “cult” wine says the same thing in its marketing materials. “We tasted our first release of Mammon Worship Cabernet blind, alongside Harlan Estate, Screaming Eagle, Scarecrow, and all five First Growths, and our wine finished first! And, at $200/bottle, it was the cheapest wine in the tasting!” Who dreams up this crap? How stupid do they think people are? Wow, you mean the wine you made to your own taste, the one you taste every day, actually won your “blind” tasting? Remarkable! Here’s an idea! Try Mammon Worship blind alongside a bunch of wines that cost $40. You’ll still win, and you can charge $50! That makes more sense, doesn’t it?

Bordeaux is no better. Speculation drives the prices up on the best Cabernet-based wines in the region. Bordeaux is no longer a wine, it’s a commodity. Like gold, or corn, or African orphans in Hollywood. The rich have most of it cornered, and, for them, money is no object any more than good taste is.

The Affordable Cabernet crisis was avoidable. If people would just use the brains God gave them, many of them factory seconds, to be sure, but brains nonetheless.  The Cabernet crisis is a conspiracy, people! It exists because Americans are ignorant and believe the mainstream wine media! When they are blatantly and unashamedly lying.

Just look at the recent Wine Spectator issue on California Cabernet Sauvignon, reported mostly by Establishment lackey James Laube. In the issue, Laube rates the 2010 vintage for Cabernet Sauvignon in California a ridiculous 98 points! 98 Points! And why? Because the weather was nice. That’s how you rate your fucking vacation, not wine. Laube rates the vintage 98 points, but the highest scoring wine in the report received 97 points. How does that work? The vintage was better than the wines? Apparently. And why did the vintage only get 98 points? What knocked it down from 100? Laube was pissed off when it rained on his birthday? It was overcast for the Vintage Auto Show? It was too hot at the Napa Valley Auction to wear their fur coats?

If the folks who could afford the best Cabernets just kept their wits about them, stopped believing the Establishment media when it hands out meaningless numbers, and refused to pay more than $50 for a great bottle of Cabernet, there wouldn’t have to be the Affordable Cab Act. Soon, if we allow this insidious law to be instituted, our great Cabernets will be in the hands of poor people, illegal immigrants, the unemployed, or, worse, Millennials!

In principle, the Affordable Cab Act is simple. You can understand why folks would vote for it. It guarantees affordable Cabernet Sauvignon for everyone. Not just the rich, who can afford it. Not just sommeliers, who claim to be busy, so could you just drop a bottle off and I’ll taste it when I have time? (In wine country, everyone knows Spring is flea, tick and sommelier season.) No, great Cabernet would be available to everyone. Sounds good, right?

But look more closely at the facts. It’s socialism. Wake up! Our great democracy is in serious danger. The Affordable Cab Act punishes the talented and hardworking people who buy the great wines of Napa Valley and Bordeaux—bankers, hedge fund managers, people with billions of dollars in offshore investments. That isn’t fair. Democracy isn’t about helping the little people. Where does it say that in the Constitution? Democracy is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But, if you’re poor, if you’re middle class, hey, you get one of those, and be grateful you get that. You get life. Happiness and liberty? Don’t be such a sap.

The Affordable Cab Act would create a pool of money. Every time one of our finest citizens bought a case of Margaux, or a six-pack of Screaming Eagle, or just a bottle of Lafite, the money would go into that giant pool. The winery, or the broker, or the auction house, would get a percentage of the money for their wine. The rest of the money would be doled out to less successful wine lovers in the form of credits, which they could use, in turn, to purchase Cabernets they can no longer afford. It would all be based on your income, and your ability to appreciate wine.

Yes, it sounds good, and only good would come out of enacting the A.C.A., but don’t let that fool you. It’s a simple fact, but, like health, great wine is meant to be appreciated by the people who earned it, not to be shared with those less fortunate. As Senator Ted Cruz so eloquently put it, “I got mine. Fuck y’all.” Or was that Bill Koch?

Mis(s) Feiring

This particular satire of a controversial wine writer appeared on HoseMaster of Wine™ in May of 2010. The reaction to it was bigger than I had expected. I hadn't read a single word of Alice Feiring's work, but she was a polarizing figure in wine, so I spent an hour or so reading her blog, The Feiring Line, just to try and pin down her voice. Then I began to write, and this is what appeared. I heard from several friends who know her that she was unhappy about my piece. A few of my regular common taters felt it was harsh as well. You can decide for yourself. Satire doesn't need defending, and it has always been my goal to walk up to that imaginary line one isn't supposed to cross, and make everyone fear I'll actually cross it. Kind of a hobby...

So, here, from May 2010, is the legendary (sort of) Mis(s) Feiring:


What am I looking for in wine?

I'm looking for the Gertrude Steins, the k.d. langs, the Dizzy Deans. Wines that have a nasty screwball. Which I can relate to. I want my wines natural. Think pubic hair. Think armpits. Makeup is OK, only a little, but no animals tortured. Unless they're my critics who don't get it. I write only for me, about wines for me. But I'm driving a bandwagon. Under the influence, but a bandwagon nonetheless, and I want everyone to be on it. Except Parker. He'd have to sit on the left side and everyone else would have to sit on the right. Balance. Like wines. I seek balance. Think tightrope walker. No balance, they're dead. Naturally. So I'm a wine cop. With no authority. Except my own. I'll write you a nasty ticket if you make wines that aren't natural. I'll throw the book at you. My book. I wrote a book. You have it. It changed you. It changed everyone. I'm a wine messiah. Follow me. I know people. I'll mention all of them. Most are famous. Others should be. Who cares? I'm famous, I'm a wine cop, I'm a messiah. I'm so lonely.


Posts


I was asked to speak at a seminar. I'm the leading authority on Natural Wines. No. Make that I'm the Only Authority on Natural Wines. I'm asked to speak often. I changed the world. Like Gandhi. Like Martin Luther King. Like the Exxon Valdez. The only disasters I like are natural too. Earthquakes. Tsunami. Gamay.

I don't like giving speeches. I like giving commandments. Thou shalt not sulfur. I remember Jesus said, "Sulfur little children..." That was wrong too. Where was I?

In a room, issuing commandments, signing books. Michel Bettane was there, he's a wine critic also. He's French. I like the French, they're so natural. He had nose hair like a wire brush. I wrapped my fingers in it. He asked me to sign my book for him. My book. You have it, I know, it changed everything. I was happy to sign Bettane's book but the pen was filled with synthetic ink. Not ink from an octopus or a squid or pasta. I could not sully the book. I pricked my finger and signed in blood. It felt good. Natural. I thought of Carole King. Maybe it was Bettane's nose hair that reminded me of her hair. Jewish hair. Natural hair. "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman!"

I probably shouldn't have sung it out loud.

I signed the book, With Love, Alice. Bettane smiled. I'm so lonely.

Others were there too. Mostly famous people to hear me. Maybe not famous to you. Not yet. But famous to me, and I assign fame only for myself. To myself. I'm a fame cop. Always copping the famous. Many great winemakers were there. Did I mention this speech was in France? I love France. I surrender to the French. No one's ever done that before. Usually the other way around.

I hope that doesn't offend my French friends. But I speak the truth. Someone has to. The wine world is filled with liars and cheats, and, well, then your wine is filled with lies and cheats. Is that what you want in your stool? Shit, I said stool.

Yet another lie. Another commandment. Thou shalt only use wild yeast. I almost typed wild Yeats. He was a poet. And a good one. He was at my speech. But he's dead. Ironic. He often wrote of the dead. I signed a book for him too. "To Bill" I wrote "you were far too cultured for my taste."

No wine can be natural if it wasn't fermented by wild yeast. Though yeast all over the world has been infiltrated by cultured strains and there is no more wild yeast. I don't care. I have my standards, my commandments. Pick out the cultured strains like they pick out illegal aliens in Arizona. It can be done. I can tell when I taste. I know when a wine was done with cultured yeast. It speaks to me. In an English accent. I hate the English. The accent is fake, like my writing style. The wines taste fake. You just know. You do. Ask anybody who agrees with me.

Francois Ghitaine was there at my speech from Domaine Hornswaggle. His wines are natural. When I visited Francois he proudly showed me his cement vats for fermenting. Cement vats are making a comeback. Why? They are better for the wine. There is concrete evidence. Get it? Concrete evidence! Funnier in French. Francois even goes so far as to ferment the wine in the vats before the cement has even set. The flavors of the ground, the rocks, are in his wines. His Petit Manseng is wet cement in a glass. It's perfect. I took a finger and wrote my name in it. "Alice" I'm so lonely.

I was last at Hornswaggle when only Francois' wife was there, Brigitte. She cooked for me while I spoke to her in short sentences. Very short. I asked her about their biodynamic lifestyle. She was blunt. Francois is a pig. She told him to bury his damned man horns in the vineyard stuffed with the manure he'd brought into their lives. I spoke more short sentences to her. She cooked. Eggs, from a virgin chicken. Over easy. Just how I wanted them. And her. She left weeping. The eggs were runny, like her nose. But the wines are brilliant. I'm brilliant.

I'm so lonely.