Getting Moody + Rap On
Good for what? he mocked. Good for steak? Good for oysters? Good for sex?
That was Kermit Lynch, a little over 25 years ago when one day, standing in his shop, I asked him if a certain vintage was good.
It’s a question I’ve never asked anyone again.
First, because I’ve come to see discussions about vintage as inherently exclusionary. I was at an event recently and I swear to god the person said: “The 2006s remind me of the 2012s and neither are as good as the 2016s.”
Really? A discussion like that is not a discussion. It’s wine narcissism—a way of showing off. Especially if you know full well that half the people in the room have no idea what the 2006s, 2012s, 2016s or 2000-anythings taste like.
Falsely asserting authority by keeping other people out certainly doesn’t help the wine community grow.
On a less carpy note, the other reason I never ask about vintage is that I don’t believe it’s a binary good/bad issue that needs an assessment.
To me, vintage is the mood of a wine. In this, it’s like a person. If you like someone, you probably like them in all sorts of different moods—when they’re introspective, when they’re outgoing, when they’re secretive, when they’re lively. I find that if I really like a producer’s wines, then I like seeing those wines when they’re in, well, different moods.
“To me, vintage is the mood of a wine.”
One last thought: When people have to know something to know something, they often simply give up. So maybe we who talk about wine should never make knowledge conditional? Just saying.
Ok, on a totally different note, last week, I couldn’t believe it when a friend sent me a hysterically funny rap video in which The Wine Bible makes a cameo appearance. Check out Sam the Somm. Sam, I want to meet you someday.
If you happened to have read my WineSpeed blog, Is Wine in the Alcohol Business?, you know that philosophically, I don’t think it is. Writer Nic Stevens wrote a great piece on this topic in Slate. In Wine Against the New Prohibitionism, Stevens quotes the investigative reporter Felicity Carter, founder of Drinks Insider, as saying, “When I talk about wine as alcohol, people [in the wine industry] literally flinch. They don’t think of themselves as being pushers of ethanol. They see themselves as offering a cultural product. The issue is that, at a lobbying level, the governing health bodies do not see it that way.”
Which makes me wonder how many people, on hearing the World Health Organization’s statement that “no amount of alcohol is safe,” thought: but that’s not me; I drink wine.
I admit that’s what I think. But wine’s failure to radically separate itself from spirits and beer may have dire consequences. After all, this happened once before. As Stevens writes: “Begrudgingly, wine is still commonly grouped into this big, indiscriminate bucket of booze.” He goes on to point out that that bucket has “roots in the original temperance movement, which culminated in the 1919 ratification of the 18th Amendment, ushering in a decade of Prohibition.”
Moving on to the safe haven of wine for a minute, recently my “Indulgence” in WineSpeed was a wine I think of as ‘baby Screaming Eagle,” because the owner of winery is also the owner of SE. The wine I wrote about is savory and wildly delicious; pure and precise; vibrant and alive. At nearly $100 a bottle it’s not inexpensive, unless you consider it in the context of its Screaming sister, a bottle of which now averages about $3800 or more.
It’s an indulgence to drink an Indulgence like that. But in our office tastings, (check them out on Instagram @karenmacneilco), we also taste a lot of good wines that maybe aren’t extraordinary, but they are satisfying and honest. In fact, this week’s Wine to Know is a Pinot Noir that costs just $10 a bottle. It’s the best $2 a glass wine(!) I’ve had in a very long time. Maybe ever. You can catch it this Friday.
Write me! winespeed@karenmacneil.com
Karen, great stuff…I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, whenever I say it everyone nods…”The wine industry has done a really bad job of bringing on the next generations to enjoy wine. You’ve heard it before I guess, but if you have been brought up with wine on the table you are more likely than not to migrate from Babycham to the real stuff eventually. Maybe not at 25 but certainly by 40 and to hell with all that questionable health rubbish. But if it’s new to you and across a table you think about offering your new date a glass or better still sampling a bottle…what do you order, there are so many and then there’s red white and pink…ask the sommelier, very intimidating. And there’s that other thing, have you ever seen a somm’ offer the wine list to a woman if there’s a man around? There are so many millionaires at 25 now (wonderful) who would be only too happy to spend $1000 on entertaining their friends and other millionaires with a great bottle, it’s just that…they don’t know what to order and asking the sommelier is so demeaning, surely you should know what you would be appropriate for the evening…and so on.
I believe that broad general ignorance is holding a whole generation back from enjoying one of the greatest pleasures you can have with your clothes on. We need to stop accepting the situation and do something about it…but what. We could start by shipping bottles with something that explains what is often relegated to the back label generally unreadable or in some funny wine speak foreign language or an actual foreign language. That won’t get us very far. It really does need a campaign that is staffed up and funded with subscriptions or assessments. Luxury marketers are coming out of college all the time and they are usually very quick to catch on to a new opportunity. How about an attempt to get something going…I don’t hear anything new on this subject when I meet colleagues. Or is this all in hand and I have just missed it I wonder? Best wishes, Pete.
Love this post. If I got a nickel for everytime over the past 40+ years someone asked me "what is your best vintage" I would have been (and subsequently lost it being in the wine business) a wealthy man. Since they are either existing customers or potential customers I don't get snarky on them (but will have to remember Kermit's reply) and usually say, "It depends". And it mostly depends on what kind of wine they prefer and not the vintage. Tell them I tend to prefer the cooler vintages where the grapes ripen more slowly and retain higher acidity, but they might prefer the warmer vintages with more fruit and lower acidity.. I then tell them if they find a vintage of Peterson wines they really like to buy more of it, since the next vintage will be different, that we don't try to make the same wine very vintage. The consistency is the vineyard and our farming/winemaking, but mother nature gives us somewhat different grapes every vintage and we want to capture that time along with the place (vineyard). Big believers in "consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds".......Keep up the good work.