I am humbled by all of the support I've received through the years. Without Dirty South Wine, there would be no Dirty and Rowdy Family Winery- Without you, there would never have been Dirty South Wine.
Again- Huge thanks to the crew at Wine Enthusiast for including me with such an amazing group of people.
(Warning: Before reading this, please note that this post is satirical)
Last week almost a dozen people gasped when Richard Betts, wine guru turned Mezcal Marauder, declared on Forbes.com that orange wine completely blows.
If in print, the article would have been easily glossed over in thousands of physicians waiting rooms in retirement destinations across the US (primarily in the Southern regions where the elderly mock god and refuse to bear witness to the changing of the seasons). Instead, in a most surgical strike, the article was published and shared online, where only people who work in the wine industry would ever truly digest it-- Because who in the wine industry has $4 any more for a friggin' magazine?
To sink his cold steel deep, Richard's major assault included a dogpile of "taste makers"- The wheels behind the wheels we say-- Including a restauranteur / wine guy that loves Italian wine so much that he makes it from Colorado. To distill his words down- "Orange Wine is all bullshit sold and ordered by di*shits"- "You know what would go great with that Petra Sole? Some F'n Tecate and a shot of Mezcal." BoooYAHHHH! he cried as he unexpectedly swept the leg from one of his line cooks-- "Stay down!!! I play for keeps!!!!!" Someone in the background could be heard saying "Get him a body bag!"
The spirit of the West- Jon Bonne, was perhaps less or more direct. Noblely both assaulting and defending Orange Wine like a man at war with war itself!
"Orange wines can suck. I said it back in 2009. Well most, do, but shit, I just spent a weekend writing a chapter about Orange Wines and I didn't see this coming..." In JB's Orange Wine hits a wall post, another Italian wine guru in a trendy-ish restaurant that was the former location of an offensive wine bar that kept an incredible arsenal of orange wines had something to say that I'm not sure I remember, but was more or less-- "They now pour this stuff in the Marina, THIS SHIT IS OVER!" Reading into it, I think he is more upset that Mission hipsters wearing ironic sweaters still stumble into his spot trying to order Orange wine while saying "Dude, where's Jeff?"
But true credit goes to the Spankmaster. He- the one who shot down Crispus Attucks, and in doing so included a reference to the Kardashians- not to the traits of Kim which engorge both the loins of Lion and Lion tamer, but to the whole turd-burgling family that in itself is worthy of a drone strike to preserve our freedoms. Penned from a hole in the deeps of Dry Creek Valley, the butterfly's wings of the storm of war...
So now after we try to pick up the pieces and contemplate the extent of the carnage of last week's all out blood bath-- If in fact these stories reached and were comprended by the millenial wine consumer base, this past week may have been Orange Wine's online equivalent of the Sideways effect on Merlot.
So while we wait and count our dead, dying, and wounded, the winter sun still rises in Georgia, Slovenia, Forestville, corners of
the Loire, Healdsburgundy, and in filthy cellars uncounted and forever
unknown...Rest assured that even if Orange Wine falls, somewhere brave men and women will still be playing outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes (and most likely be wearing skinny jeans and a t-shirt with a kitten or baby seal on it)....
Also- As I mentioned a few months back, most of my "social" activity has been on Instagram over the past year. We were thrilled to be Instagram's "featured user" last week on their site.
(The winemaker selects the speakers and adjusts the volume)
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Just something going through my head for the past few weeks. I have been thinking a lot about "varietal correctness". Some of the wines we''ve made, might be a stretch of typicity, but are they still what they are? (If not, did we let them off the hook?)
But that all gets me thinking about this in terms of music-- I think of jazz banjo, something that on paper sounds nuts, stupid even. Until you hear Bela Fleck
Now the words "jazz banjo" still sound funny, but whether you like it or not, there is something already there- A music that is simply expressed by the instrument rather than created by it. At it's greatest, banjo stops being banjo, and becomes music.
We are a long way from Bela Fleck, but these are the things that keep me up at night when I start thinking of 12.2% semi-carbonic Mourvèdre.
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