Vinicultured: A Wine Blog

Metaphors are not life, but they go far in approximating life.  If we are talking in metaphors, then, wine is an excellent metaphor for life.  Wine is made, and wine is drunk; we are born, and we must die.  Wine collectors eagerly lay away bottles from different vintages–the ’83, the ’84… the ’99… the ’09–to open up some far-off gray day.  Vintages are metonymic–they are years, and as they add up and the bottles gather dust they remind us of our own passing seasons.

In the news I read about the recent passing of Marcel Lapierre, 60, known as the “pope of natural wine,” a man who helped prevent Beaujolais from utterly disappearing into the inanity of nouveau.  He died on October 11 of melanoma, leaving behind his family, who will continue his tradition, and his life’s work in the form of wax-sealed bottles.  There’s not much about him out there, but he seems to have been a humble man: “I’m just making the wine of my father and grandfather,” he told a magazine in 2004, “but I’m trying to make it a little better.”

In September I had purchased a half-case of wine for my mom on account of her birthday, and among them was a bottle of Lapierre’s Morgon.  My family just opened the bottle a few days ago, not knowing that its maker was dying.

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One of the good things about Wilmington is that being here forces me to read.  I don’t have regular access to internet here, I don’t have very many friends here (awww), and I don’t have a car.  All those mean that my joys here are eating lunch, working out, drinking (usually by myself–awww), and reading magazines that I purchase from the Amtrak newsstand.

One of the bad things about Wilmington is that I’m pretty much limited to purchasing my magazines at that newsstand, which is small.  Thus, I’ve already read this month’s Esquire, GQ, Atlantic, Men’s Health, and Details magazines.  Unless I want to delve into, say, Cosmopolitan or People, I’ve pretty much gone through all my options.

Merits of Wilmington aside, Details had an interesting spread on the artisanal movement and how ubiquitous it’s become.  As stated by the author:

What’s new is the astonishing ubiquity of the aesthetic. Small-scale has hit it big. Farmer’s markets sell artisanal cheeses— and so does Costco. Suits available in midwestern malls have machine-made details that mimic the hand stitching once found only on a Neapolitan tailor’s eccentrically rolled lapel.

Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong per se with this newfound appreciation for craftsmanship.  Indeed, I think it’s great that we can purchase exceptional items made by small producers.  I recognize, however, that just as with “biodynamic” and “organic”, “artisanal” can be co-opted by large corporations (or even by small producers who don’t necessarily use the best ingredients, components, or methods and are simply coattailing on the efforts of others) for their own benefit. 

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Check out my newest article in the Palate Press!  It’s about my five days managing Ansonia Wines, which is a newish small boutique wine shop in the North Dupont neighborhood of DC.

http://palatepress.com/2010/04/from-connoisseur-to-entrepreneur-five-days-as-a-wine-store-manager/

You’ve probably done it.  You’re researching for a term paper and you get engrossed in the Golgi apparatus or the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.  You start talking about it to your friends to the exclusion of almost anything a normal person would find remotely interesting.  Then, somewhere between the cisternae and the endoplasmic reticulum you realized that you’ve developed tunnel vision.  The more you specialize, the less you interest the average human being.

There’s an excellent post on the Palate Press that explores the topic of why no one reads wine blogs.  The author, Tom Johnson, looks at the utterly abysmal readership numbers–citing, for instance, the fact that “the top 100 wine blogs combined would be the 280th most popular blog in the country”–and offers two reasons for this phenomenon.

First, he observes that most wine blogs only offer wine reviews, leading to a “recipe for insignificance.”  I would tend to agree with Tom.  Wine reviews are useful but not intrinsically interesting, and they are available through a whole variety of sources such as wine magazines and review databases.  I personally dislike wine blogs that are 100% review-driven, although I do recognize that some people create such blogs primarily to keep track of what wines they’ve tried.  Nonetheless, as Tom writes, the best blogs are those that provide context and and tell stories.

Second, Tom points out that political blogs are nine times as likely as wine blogs to link to other related blogs.  He writes, “Wine bloggers in general are failing to use the defining characteristic of the worldwide web: the ability to link.”  Linking more often would create conversation and increase readership for all concerned.  I recommend that you read Tom’s article, which is well-researched and provocative (if the ninety-two and counting comments are any indication).

That being said, I would like to elaborate on one of his observations.  His article states the following:

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