Gustave Lorentz, Pinot Noir 2008

This wine reminds me of being an altar boy, stealing wine from the priest's closet, just to loosen up a bit for the Sunday performance, etc.

I forget how much this bottle of wine costs, but it was about $2000, maybe a little less.  A little pricey, for my tastes; just a poor altar boy from the outback, patentless, patient, educated by Jedi's.

But it is the type Pinot I enjoy, as if it is from another time, and I don't mean 2008, I mean from my childhood.  It tastes like the wine I used to sneak/steal from my friends parent's houses, though in all honesty that was probably only Me, and Ernest and Julio, down by the schoolyard.  Who knows, it was perhaps a 2 liter plastic "bottle" of wine cooler, and not even wine at all; some vile carbonated soda with alcohol mechanically swirled into it, for sales.

Wait, it was Bartles and Jaymes, I remember now, it is all coming back to me, like a court testimonial.


I once took a bet.  The year must have been 1984.  The bet was that I would drink a 2 liter bottle of wine-cooler in less than 10 minutes.

I did.


It took much less time to forever purge my body of the vile liquid.  It happened towards the rear of the Ponderosa steakhouse parking lot on S.R. 436, in Altamonte Springs, for those interested in checking the facts....

There were many witnesses, though none reliable, other than your faithful wine critic, of course.

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Bourgogne, Pinot Noir 2006

I have made it out of Sonoma Valley, once again.  There is a wine shop here that specializes in wines from other areas.  I believe I've mentioned it before, the Valley Wine Shack.  I go there when I want to develop a comparative basis for my tastes, to become more international, continental, etc.


Recently I was accused of being impoverished because I didn't share the tastes of another.  It was strange.  I won't bore you with all of the details but the essence of it was that a woman thought that a model that my friend had photographed was beautiful.  I found the image to be beautiful but not the model.  I found her to be oddly proportioned, positioned, which she was.  I went on to explain that in all beauty there is some strangeness of proportion (I believe it was Bacon who uttered this sentiment, though I am not sure).  This elicited the reply that if I could not see beauty in this model then I am suffering from a form of poverty, she then went on to bolster support for her forcefully demanding aesthetics with the contention that she would have sex with the model before she would with "any young little chicken, for sure!"

Oh, fuck it... here is the whole dialogue, for anybody interested.  It can be found in the comments section.  I suppose that I will bore you with all of the details....


I started thinking about the idea that in all beauty there is some strangeness in proportion, and why this is not as true with wine, perhaps not at all.  Do we seek strangeness of proportion in wine?  Mostly not. We seek balanced flavors, not extremes.  Hints are preferable to arguments.  Partially because we are ingesting it to enjoy, not to be challenged by it, to tussle with its many oblique wonders.

Wine is only external for a few moments, mostly it is enjoyed internally, or during the brief interval of transition on the palate.  Once on the inside it can conduct the most hideous felonious disgraces and we mainly forgive it, re-seek its friendship. We damn only ourselves for its cascading misdemeanors and lingering loss of balance.

Enjoy.

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LaRochelle, Pinot Noir 2008

This wine sucks, at almost any price.  It's my birthday and I went to the wine store and chose one that I've looked at many times, and have wanted a few times in the past, but passed it over for other wines, for whatever reason.  I was sucked in by the clean design lines of the label.

It is far too acidic and leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  It lacks the pleasurable complexities of other wines in the same price range and from the same region.

What really pisses me off is that it was very close to the price of the Frei Brothers wine posted earlier.

(brb)....

Ok, problem solved. I just went to the wine store and bought a bottle of the Frei Brothers Pinot, shown below.  Same image from earlier, different bottle.

Ok, I'm being cheap with the images, here is a different image, a more expensive one:

I love this wine.  It is delicious and open and has much to taste.  

It is a metaphor for what the wine drinking experience should be.

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Frei Brothers, Pinot Noir 2007

I must be honest, I drank this wine weeks ago.  I have lost some of my fervor for writing about wines.  I kept the picture up on my web browser, occasionally looking at it, hoping to guilt myself into writing about it.  I felt bad for not writing as I really liked the wine.

I am drinking a different bottle (LaRochelle) now, and one that I don't care for nearly as much. Perhaps it only needs to open.  I was brought under the spell of design, I liked the label.  You will see it in my next post, which might be in just a couple of minutes if I decide that I REALLY don't like this one.

Yes, I used all capital letters for emphasis, such is the strength of my feelings on the matter.

I strongly suggest this Frei Brothers Pinot. I believe it was around $18 and worth every hard-earned dollar.

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Sebastiani, Pinot Noir 2009

Ok, more poetry....
 to describe my very brotherly feelings about wine

Is there any other time, Welles,
or any way?
anyhow.
ok.
que?

-Qrson.



In fact, tonight I might do an interpretive jazz dance to reflect my innards, feeling.


In a previous life, about 4 years ago, there used to be this semi-annoying kid that was vaguely dismissive about anything that he hadn't done himself.  He was a self-proclaimed avant-garde dance enthusiast, or so he claimed.... in utter unhypnotic hipster denialism.

Hold on, let me see if I can find his digitally preserved moment of public obscurity:
Well, here it is, sort of....

The video doesn't seem to want to play for me, but the comment: "I get it...the "art" isn't what's on the stage, but the anger that it causes in me. And the strong urge I have to slap that tubby bitch in the face."  

This insightfully accurate comment serves the purpose of my point perhaps better than I ever could.

One morning I wrote freely on an open community chalkboard: "Avant-garde dance is neither."

I liked the circularity of the statement, almost solipsistic, but in open opposition rather than in the usually self-serving way, yet entirely self-serving in its humor.

The sentiment reigned.

Avant-garde wine is also, either.

Well, the wine above has nothing at all to do with what I am writing about.  What I am writing about has very little to do with what I am writing about.

Tomorrow I will write about another bottle,
to not do so would be un-animatedly inauthentic, as conceptual dance.

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"It's a Head Snapper", Pinot Noir, 2009

I didn't want to sleep.  I do not want to sleep tonight.  

I have an October Hare running clumsyjack inside of me, 

Lepus as a Hatter, sadder made, never mad..... 

some few people I know I get stricken,

the marble-touched bounce in Spring, 

some fall, some wicked.       

hardly stepping; 

all.ways: always calling.

picked. chosen. 

Tonight I am catholic half-kidding, 

half-falling, along the awful augur of Autumn,

soon frozen. 

I opened a split-second, stalling, another bottle of wine; after some minor deliberation, a sudden frenzy of impatience. . .  the seconds passed, wine barely lasts, and even less does time. 

with time, we are all in, and usually dozing.

I decided to back-up my computer and then update the system software, a menial task; something I strongly advise the dangerous to do,... while drinking, heavily and slow. 

through n' through.

I work at a bar,  iShould know.

and u shud 2 

So often I have problems; though I have not had difficulty in some time sleeping.  

Night falls here in this valley with a deadening unheard chime, and away we go breasily... 

slumbering along with the timber-ghost of London, tumbling away, tussling, 

with endless Chinese echoes in the night, a handful of racist ghosts in flight.

It is true, that all moral judgments of the past are strictly and currently right.... 

But, c'mon London.... you great white trIpe.... 

your tightness impaired you far too young, 

genius or none, pedestaled or hung, 

or perhaps your westward hype has been re-sung, 

by dung, by night.

"To Establish an Inferno lite...." by Jack-Ass, 

(not a donkey, not a mule, mostly horse, of course...)

#ftards

#nowords

#slite

Otherwards....

These days have emboldened us all to tempt the stars, to challenge the clouds, 

the celestial clocks, ever ticking inwards....

... just tonight have I sat in this living room, 

at some dull computer, in silence, 

yet heard the distant doppler of automobiles both distant and in distance, 

and motor-heart cheered., set thusly 

See,thingly.

I've followed the red shifts above, 

the antithetical unknown voice inarticulate, 

the ever-fading of going, 

cars never slowing, 

towing along my failing ears, 

glowing with the steering stars. 

failed years.

Again, once only

I want the sound of cars to be triumphant, 

as it was when Bruce Springsteen was here, 

dear, lonely, Boss,

It is midnight time for the Bosses to fuck off.

If not, 

then I guess 

we'll just accept 

the sleepiness 

of the 

Occupy kids...

tossing off.

getting teared,

both here and thear'd

fueled,

we slog on

for two plates of

macaroni 

and some 

stale bologna.

the mind knows mostly shit.

minds don't occupy, minds inhabit.

inhabit it....

git it?

.

Rex-Goliath, Pinot Noir

Again no vintage printed on the label.  I suppose when you're naming your wine after an infamous 47 pound cock you really don't have to provide much more information. The Gallus gallus  was apparently a circus attraction near the turn of the century.  This fowl behemoth apparently drew them in from far and wide.  I imagine a 47 pound cock would really scare the kids, perhaps even mom... money well spent. One wonders if they ever let the thing get drunk and run through town late at night.

His sobriquet was His Royal Majesty.... the label on the neck of the bottle reads "Lush and Velvety"

Indeed.  The bottle is no thicker than any others were on the shelf, perhaps this Giant 47 is made up of only legend and whispers.....


Enough about cocks, royal or otherwise.
We all have work to do around here.

.

pro-mis-Q-ous

This wine was $10, and that's exactly what it tastes like.  They didn't even bother putting the vintage year on it, meaning it was likely made from the harvest of a few different years.  It's the type bottle of wine that is cute to bring to a dinner party and slip in with all of the nicer wines, hoping that nobody will notice, or if they do, only that they'll think the label is cute, or provocative, fuck-worthy.

I suppose you can't blame them.  I mean, it is clearly advertised as only being "california red table wine" and that's exactly what it is, though not bad by that standard alone, table wine.

To be perfectly honest this is what I was referencing in my last post.  That I am fast becoming an ignorant wine snob.  I very well might have thought that this wine was vaguely wonderful a few years ago.  My taste for wine has increased in the last few years and I can feel the sense of savor suddenly raising its expectations of self, since Sonoma... alliterally....

I don't mind.  I could use some change in my tastes, even if they are for the worst, and semi-permanent..... It is called preference promiscuity, intercourse inclination, a danger dive.

It is also called other things, based on chance circumstance, the accidental dance, drunken wine rants.

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Francis Coppola Pinot Noir 2009

I am on the precipice* of snobbery,  I've been practicing my exaggerated sighs, etc.  It's becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy cheap wines.  I try to keep the price of the wines I'm buying under $20, and that is usually easy to do, while still getting some very good wines, but if I go below $10 I often suffer.  I used to be able to find, and enjoy, many wines for right around the $10 range.

People warned me that this might happen and it is to be fought.  It is difficult to regain simple joys.  I know.

I've had this ubiquitous Pinot before, many times.  A good friend back in New York stock-piled the stuff and I would come over to his loft and drink his wine whenever he would let me.  It is a good and easy wine to agree with, not great, but very drinkable and consistent.

I rushed the picture of it... I used a flash.... something I rarely do.  It was getting dark when I got home and I couldn't seem to get a stable shot of it.  So be it.

Because the second "P" is washed out from the flash it looks like "COP OLA"... I was going to write about the entire thing as if it were cop wine, a Pinot made especially for cops, but I got bored with idea before I even started.


* I considered using the word "verge" but it didn't seem good enough for the new snobbery, me.

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Dashwood Pinot Noir 2009

Ok, I've learned my lesson.  

Readers Against Writing Drunk contacted me.  R.A.W.D. has spoken....

I will try harder next time, or softer. whatever.  But no more 

There was a Pinot from New Zealand (Villa Maria) recommended to me from a good friend. I wasn't able to find it but I was able to find this Pinot from the same region, Marlborough. So here goes....

I like it.  

We drove around today enjoying the country.  Here is a pic to give you an idea.

Yes, it is a beautiful place to live. This is the view from the Arrowhead tasting room. I preferred their wines to those of St. Francis, the tasting room we visited just before this one.  It was a decidedly Catholic experience, St. Francis. 

He is a hard imaginary saint to hate, but I'll give it my Catholic best.

Robert Mondavi Pinot Noir 2008

I watched a "documentary" called Mondovino.  It was the "Super-Size Me" of the international wine business, sort of.  Nearly the entire time that I was watching it I wanted to throttle the filmmakers, other times I was bored and might have pleasured myself, by sleepfulness.  If not choke them then at least slap them, perhaps a throttling is, how do you say in continental smugness.... extreme, no?

They trotted out the same old tired dogma that everybody wants to hear:  the world is changing, and for the worse, globalization is destroying everything that is precious, the only authentic people are the aging underdogs, silly americans can do nothing right,or only by accident, they are to blame for most, if not all, of the world's problems, they say stupid things, just watch, etc.

Some of those assertions might be true, but coincidentally those same observations work when changing the national proper nouns.  I learned it from YOU FRANTZ....

But when watching the film I couldn't possibly help or stop myself from feeling that they used the very best hard-wrought footage of the poetic Frenchies wandering their vineyards, waxing poetic about the meaning of tradition, the love of earth, terroir.... but when others are on camera not only did they use the worst possible footage, the questions were leading, if not accusatory.  It is difficult to imagine any American agreeing to another interview after their portrayal.  Though if that turns out to be wrong then I simply assert that there are stupid people everywhere, they are conditioned to love cameras.

They might notice the razor, but they're looking at the mirror.
Most people do.

And that's just how they treated the people, the "talent," as it were.

The geographic bigotry that was going on was even worse, and much more up front, out in the open.  The message of the film is that the rest of the world has ruined France by making wines.

In Vino Veritas.

There is one scene where they seem to blame the foreman of a vineyard for the fact that Mexicans work for him but they do not own the vineyard that they're standing in.  They act as if it is the iniquity of the Americans that has prevented Mexicans from making great wines.  I suppose it is also our fault that they don't have a space program.

How naive and very French of them; those who invented the potpourri moon....oh, scents..sational....


I'm getting so tired of people trotting out this same tired and assumed dogma.  They seem ever refreshed by the same sentiments.  If I were doing what I truly loved then I would not care, but I reduce myself down to petty differences, and take pleasure there, a broken man



That's why I bought the Mondavi wine tonight.  Because their treatment of him was unfair and even vaguely cruel and accusatory...  a self-made man who only seeks to make good wines and share them, how crass.  The same love of the more provincial examples the filmmakers use against him.  Who knows, perhaps Robert Mondavi liked to eat kittens on his free time.  I don't know and I don't care.  The wine is pretty good.

I do like Pinot's and this one is a good one.  I just took a swig straight from the bottle just to check.   It's good.  You can always tell by swigging.  Poor wines really reveal themselves in that way.  Interestingly the Mondavi wine that I'm drinking tonight seems to embody the old-world winemaker description of wine. I forget the exact words that he used but it seems to possess the very essence of what he described.

Oh, but for a blind tasting between them, instead of that shoddy mockumentary... documentard, fartce.



I was meant to start a one-week detox today but my instincts told me not to, three times, like Charles Dickens and the Doubting Thomas.  I kept fighting my inner voice out of blameworthiness, but finally I came-to and realized that every time that I don't listen to my inner voice I suffer... when I do listen to my inner voice things go along very well for me, even swimmingly at times, but my inter-personal relationships suffer.  As I get older people have shifted their efforts to control me from outright looks of disappointment and stern words to concern for my health.

As if....

My health is as sound as it ever was, just before the other times, perhaps even more so, perhaps less... but in the best of all possible waze.

My health makes lots of sounds, for sure... signs, symbols, hints, secrets, emblems, stains, confidants, rug burns, manifestations, double -agents, breakouts, promises, omens, threats, marquees, logos, intimations and sleeping drugs.  My health is intact, prudently both savoir and laissez faire... and that's a very tact fact, kids.


Just (1 fair, fair-minded, equitable, even-handed, impartial, unbiased, objective,neutral, disinterested, unprejudiced, open-minded, nonpartisan; honorable, upright,decent, honest, righteous, moral, virtuous,principled. Kids.....

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