Category:Wine humor

The Wine Curmudgeon’s 100-point scoring system

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

100p-point scoring systemYes, it’s silly, but is it any sillier – or any less accurate – than the rest of the 100-point systems?

The Wine Curmudgeon’s antipathy to wine scores is well known – they are often lazy, even more often too subjective to be worthwhile, and even biased.

But since I’ve been told I need to be more than merely negative, please consider the Wine Curmudgeon’s 100-point scoring system:

• Is it wine? If yes, 75 points.

• Is the wine red, white, pink, or sparkling? If yes, 5 points.

• Does it have a screwcap? If yes, 5 points.

• Does the wine cost $12 or less? If yes, 5 points.

The total? 90 points for most of the wine I buy.

Yes, this might seem silly and not even particularly accurate. Which is the point.

Is it any sillier than the scores used by the Winestream Media, where price, varietal and region seem to have as much to do with determining the score as the quality of the wine? And is it any less accurate than a system without any standards, and where one critic’s 94 can be another critic’s 87?

Of course not. The only way to determine whether you like a wine is to taste it. You can take suggestions from me or Robert Parker or any of the hundreds of us who do this. But in the end, the decision is yours. Or, as I was told all those years ago when I started doing this: “If you don’t like chocolate ice cream, and someone tells you that chocolate is better than vanilla, would you go out and buy chocolate ice cream? Of course not. So why would you do that with wine?”

Cartoon courtesy of Bob Johnson, using a Creative Commons license

Winecast 30: Arty, the first artificial intelligence wine writer

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

artificial intelligence
Arty, the first artificial intelligence wine writer

“Wine drinkers want to be reassured that what they are drinking is worth what they paid for it. That’s the goal of the post-modern wine business and premiumization, and I was created to do that.”

Computer-generated wine writing has arrived, if this interview is any indication. I talked to Arty, the world’s first artificial intelligence wine writer, for this edition of the podcast.

Arty and I discussed why he was created, his goal as a critic — “We’ll always need quality wine writing, human or otherwise. But I think I can offer consumers wine criticism that they can’t get anywhere else” — and why his kind may be the future.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 3 minutes long and takes up 2 1/2 megabytes. The sound quality is almost excellent.

A tip of the Curmudgeon’s fedora to the Mary Text to Speech system, which made it possible to create this interview. Maybe what I’m joking about is more possible than we know.

The wine diet will solve all of wine’s problems

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine dietThe wine diet is my mea culpa for suggesting that a Gallup Poll about wine’s decreasing popularity might be accurate

The Wine Curmudgeon stands properly chastised after this week’s post asking whether Americans are turning away from wine. My tiny part of the Internet went crazy – two-thirds more visitors to the blog than normal, comments and emails, and posts on other websites questioning my credulity and sanity.

Because, of course, Americans love wine. What does Gallup know about polling?

So I must hang my head in shame. Who cares that one visitor emailed, “You hit the nail on the head regarding why wine sales have slumped. I never was a beer drinker until all these great craft beers began appearing on the scene and the price of a ‘good’ glass of wine at restaurants kept going up. Why should I pay $12-$14 for a glass of wine when I can have a really good craft beer for $6?”

Or that another left a comment, saying, “A lot of people are turning away from activities, purchases, and lifestyles that seem to be an integral part of anything associated with snobs and pseudo wealth. Wine falls into that category.”

Because, of course, Americans love wine, and anyone who disagrees with that isn’t a real wine drinker. As one very critical visitor suggested recently, I am entirely too negative about wine, as well as a coward. That the visitor apparently used a fake name is probably my fault, too.

Hence this post about the wine diet, which is my way to make amends for any damage I have done by writing honestly and sincerely about the wine business. Because, of course, Americans love wine, so what need is there for me to do what I do?

Women’s Health magazine reports that “Any diet that tells women to eat chocolate and chase it with wine certainly has our attention. … That pretty much explains why the ‘sirtfood diet’ is blowing up right now.”

So forget about varietal correctness or value or quality or fake oak or Mega Purple or letting us know what’s actually in the wine we drink. That’s all curmudgeonly foolishness. All we need to know is that drinking wine will help us lose weight, and we should spend as much money as possible to buy all the wine we can so we will lose lots and lots of weight.

Sigh. And even writing that probably won’t be enough to please the wine business, which considers anything other than Winestream Media-style affection for its products to be disloyal and subversive. Because, of course, Americans love wine, and who am I to argue with that?

Who knew you needed a lock for your wine bottle?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

But don’t forget the combination, or you’re in trouble when you need a drink

The Wine Curmudgeon, in almost four decades of drinking wine, has never had anyone steal his wine. But what do I know?

That’s because the wine gadget marketplace is flooded with wine bottle locks, since so many of us have “have a roommate who helps herself to your wine.” Or we need to “protect our cellar from thirsty thieves.”

The video, courtesy of Munawwar Rabbani via YouTube, shows how the silly things work. The good news is that most of them are inexpensive, about the cost of a cheap bottle of wine. The bad news? When I wrote this, Amazon was almost sold out the wine bottle lock in the link. What does it say about our culture that people are spending money for a wine bottle lock instead of wine?

10 signs that you’ve been writing about wine too long

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

writing about wineHow do you know you’ve been writing about wine for too long? When you notice any of these 10 things:

1. Auto-complete on your phone fills in words like sauvignon and terroir when you’re sending a text.

2. You send text messages with words like sauvignon and terroir.

3. You know more about the brands that PR people are trying to get you to write about than the PR people do.

4. The PR people who used to try to get you to write about those brands are retired and living in Maine. Or Napa. Or Burgundy.

5. You realize you’re not the youngest person judging at a wine competition – and you haven’t been for several years.

6. Younger people want to judge with you at wine competitions because you have more experience than they do.

7. You remember when people drank white zinfandel – lots and lots of white zinfandel – instead of rose.

8. Eight retailers where you bought wine have gone out of business. And three of them were big local chains.

9. You need to check much more often to make sure you’re not writing the same blog post that you wrote a year ago.

10. The same crappy wines get the same 92-point scores, and you still can’t figure out why.

Photo courtesy of the Falstaff Wild website, using a Creative Commons license

More about wine writing:
• The metaphysical challenges of wine writing
• 8 signs you’ve been writing about wine for too long
• The 10 things an author worries about after writing a wine book

Follow-up: John Cleese/Fawlty Towers guide to restaurant wine service

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

restaurant wine serviceMany of you who read the post agree: Nothing much has changed with restaurant wine service in 42 years

Last week’s post, featuring the infamous Fawlty Towers restaurant wine service scene, elicited not just huge traffic but a variety of comments and emails from visitors.

So my friends in the restaurant business need to do some soul searching. Why does a 42-year-old video where John Cleese opens a wine bottle by holding it between his knees, and where he doesn’t get all of the cork out on the first try, and where he refuses to acknowledge that the wine – an expensive red Burgundy – is flawed, still matter?

Yes, some of it is because John Cleese is funny. Yes, some it is because this a well-designed website that deftly uses Google’s search algorithm to attract traffic.

But the real reason? Because this stuff still happens – four decades after Cleese made fun of it. And how frustrating is that? Consider that:

• The Big Guy reported last week from Bar Harbor, Maine – hardly a shot and beer kind of town – that the waiter left half of the cork in a bottle of pricey white Burgundy. He had to finish taking the cork out of a bottle of wine, which is inexcusable.

• A regular blog visitor from Texas emailed to say that not only did a waiter try to open the bottle between her knees, but couldn’t do it even then. She had to run to the bar to get it opened. Which is also inexcusable.

• A blog visitor from Califormia emailed that Cleese left out one other restaurant wine service aggravation: “Six people sit down in a restaurant, are given menus and one drinks or wine list. First words out of the server’s mouth, “Would anyone like something to drink?’ ”

We pay three and four times retail in restaurants for what are often crappy wines. What does it say about how little they care about our money that they can’t even give us decent service to go with the overpriced wine?

The John Cleese Fawlty Towers guide to restaurant wine service

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

The really funny part? That Cleese’s 42-year-old bit is still sadly accurate when it comes to restaurant wine service

A waiter opening wine by holding the bottle between his thighs? Yep, have had that happen. A waiter unable to use a corkscrew to open the bottle? Yep, have had that happen. A waiter arguing about whether the wine was flawed? Yep, have had that happen.

This scene, from the Hotel Inspectors episode of Fawlty Towers’ first season in 1975, is as relevant today as it was then. And, in his comic genius, John Cleese may know why so many us have given up on restaurant wine in the second decade of the 21st century. Not only does it cost too much, but too many restaurants still don’t care one way or another about wine service.

Video courtesy of holmleighnyd via YouTube, using a Creative Commons license

More about restaurant wine:
• Restaurant wine prices explained: Follow the money
• British restaurants to customers: Sod off
• Restaurant wine prices: A better way