WE ARE -- WE GOT THE BLUES WINERY™

Dedicated to Furry Lewis, Guitar Slim, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Otis Spann et al.

We here at We Got The Blues Winery™ want to congratulate the good folks at Republican Red Winery for its sparkling wine winning platinum and best of show at the Monterey International Wine Competition, and gold for its Vino MAHA Cabernet Franc. We are not ashamed embarrassed or even envious to send this – believe it or not – real winery our mazel tovs. Maybe we can talk some time and even share our glasses of wine.

It also means, with the next harvest – which will be just one or two months before the midterms – we here at We Got the Blues™ -- got to do better. And I promise you, we will not only win platinum and gold, we will be the Best in Show. And we’ll show the world how democracy and preserving the constitution really works.

But it won’t be easy folks. So, we can’t get complacent just because the current administration already has its heads halfway down the golden toilet.

For instance, when Republican Red Winery (RRW), which is a real thing, uses as its myriad slogans, “Freedom in a Bottle” and “Join the Elephants in the Room” and names one of its wines, Drain the Swamp Chardonnay, we gotta go to the mattresses and bring our punchdown paddles and come up with pithier sobriquets.

Such as: “Well Being in a Bottle” and “A Pox On the Oakland/Sacramento/Vegas Elephants in the Room”; and release wines such as Refill the Gene Pool Refosco and Good God Godello? And Let’s Be Frank Cab Franc.

“ … American sourcing, and wines tied to cultural moments and shared values, the winery has identified a distinct niche that continues to support growth even amid broader industry headwinds.”

Of course it has.

We must point out that RRW’s above strategy is precisely the game plan promulgated for more than two decades by some folks among us who have been incredibly adept at turning things around; and on its head. Take this gem in that winery’s press release announcing its achievements, which BTW, should garner them the Struggling Wine Industry’s Gold (of course) Septic Trophy (SWIGS)™:

That’s why we must talk to everyone and really tell them – at last the emes, the truth. No more bullshitting. No more beating around the bush. And I hate to say this: Let’s redact that wonderful New Yorker cover of March 29, 1976, drawn by Saul Steinberg, which depicts New York and San Francisco and nothing in between. It not so subtly shows the flyover states as a vast emptiness. We reveled in it at the time, but holy shit, let’s get over it and fly down to Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska et al, and once and for all talk to those good burghers. And tell them we will try with everything we’ve got in our souls to truly understand you, aid you in getting you and your families back on your own two feet, and help you thrive. If it’s the last thing we have do. Because it might be.

But I think we have a chance to put the United back in the name of our country. Maybe the good people at Republican Red Winery and their constituents – who seem as though we may be able to come to some sort of détente -- will meet us somewhere in the middle. And hope then that the middle holds.

It’s worth raising a glass over, don’t you think?