Is it any wonder I continue to worry about the future of the wine business?
The Wine Curmudgeon is old enough to remember when the easiest way to “score with a chick” was to get her drunk. So you can imagine my consternation when an alert reader sent this story to me.
Sigh. What’s next, leisure suits and Nehru jackets?
To wit: “R&B artist Jeremih has teamed up with Napa Valley winemaker Russell Bevan and music company LiveOne to launch a Chardonnay brand named Birthday Sex.”
The wine, says the story, “is one of the new brands that LiveOne is launching under LiveOne Brands, a new division featuring celebrity-backed and branded products.” And to think that I stopped updating the dumbest celebrity and pop culture wines post because I thought the fad had passed.
Sigh.
It’s also worth noting that the album of the week on the LiveOne website is the “Barbie” soundtrack. Somewhere, Joey Ramone is spinning and spinning and spinning some more.
The WC has nothing against sex, birthdays, or any combination thereof. But doesn’t the wine business have enough problems without something like this? We may disagree whether the wine’s name and concept is offensive (though I think it’s offensive in oh so many ways), but one thing we can agree on: It’s dumb.
Birthday Sex wine and its tagline — “We believe that a little teasing can improve the experience” — sounds like something from a National Lampoon parody, circa 1973. Which means we’ve circled back to leisure suits and Nehru jackets. And who wants to go through that again?
Finally, perhaps the most annoying thing about all of this: Nowhere, not in the story in the link or on the Birthday Sex wine website, does it say how much the damned thing costs. That should tell us everything we need to know about the wine, yes?