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