Tag Archives: wine humor

Wine is apparently causing our political gridlock

drunken politicianWonder why government doesn’t seem to work anymore? The Wine Curmudgeon, after poring through hundreds of news stories (and yes, that pun is fully intended), has discovered the answer: Our leaders are drunk, often from wine — call it the drunken politician conspiracy theory. Where’s

The latest development comes from Calgary, in the Canadian province of Alberta. The mayor told a city council meeting: ?I have received multiple complaints about council members getting blotto at community events, ? and that he has received reports of his peers being ?totally drunk ? on wine.

Frankly, if this happens in Canada — where politics is much more convivial than it is in the U.S., and where we know they drink beer — then we’re on to something. And this is not an isolated incident. It seems to be going on everywhere and at all levels of government:

? The California state senator who told state police he only had three glasses of wine when they pulled him over for drunk driving.

? A Google search for “Congressman drunk driving” turns up a quarter-million results, questioning the sobriety of everyone from house speakers to U.S. senators, and from every party imaginable. Imagine if I had used Congresspeople.

? A Memphis city councilwoman, who may have been drunk at a council meeting.

In fact, once I discovered this pattern, the CDC’s anti-drinking crusade made perfect sense. The federal health cops are trying to save the government from itself; how else can it assure its funding unless someone is sober enough to vote?

And scores now make sense in a way they never have before. If you’re getting loaded, what’s the easiest way to figure out what to drink? Check the score. Who wants to get trashed on a 73-point wine?

Nine silly wine facts

wine factsNine silly wine facts you probably didn’t know — or didn’t know you needed to know:

1. Two tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk has as many calories as one glass of wine, around 125. Knowing this, I expect the federal Centers for Disease Control to propose higher taxes and more regulation for sweetened condensed milk, as well as strategies to wean us off the stuff.

2. The Romans, the world’s second great wine culture, had wine writers (which no doubt hastened the collapse of the empire). Pliny the Elder, one of the most famous, wrote that second-rate wines “cannot properly be termed wines.” It’s a good thing he didn’t know about scores.

3. That no one but the super-rich can afford the best French wine is nothing new. In 1845, Fraser’s Magazine quoted a Bordeaux wine merchant, who complained that the leading French wines were not only too expensive, but that he wasn’t able find any to buy.

4. The French, whose wine industry was almost destroyed by the phylloxera pest at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, probably discovered phylloxera — though they didn’t know it. French colonists in 16th century Florida were never able to grow grapes; the vines always died, and the descriptions of what happened seem to have indicated phylloxera.

5. The U.S. attitude toward regional wine — “I don’t need to drink it to know it isn’t any good” — may have its roots in 19th century English wine. Wrote Punch, a popular humor magazine: English wine needed four people to drink it: One victim, two to hold him down, and one other to pour the wine down his throat.

6. It sounds like an urban myth, but there does seem to be something called oenophobia — a fear of wine. Symptoms include anxiety, nervousness, embarrassment, or slight perspiration. In other words, everyone who drinks wine has probably suffered from it at one time or another.

7. The Code of Hammurabi, generally acknowledged as the first written set of civil law (around 1800 BC), included penalties for shady wine retailers: they were to be drowned. Maybe the three-tier system isn’t so bad after all.

8. The Greek philosopher Plato seems to have had the Wine Curmudgeon in mind: He said wine in moderation was important until 40; after that, you can drink as much as you want to cure the “crabbiness of old age” and “soften the hard cast of mind.”

9. The most important fruit crop in Napa Valley after World War II was prunes, and its cash value was higher than grapes as late as 1960. You may make of that what you will, given Napa’s standing as the epicenter of U.S. wine snobbery.

Winebits 368: Wine terms, wine retailers, winery buyouts

wine terms ? I’m so tired of that: Amanda Chatel at the Bustle lifestyle website says she’s tired of being picked on by beer drinkers, noting that it’s a scientific fact that cheap wine tastes better than cheap beer. She posts 21 questions about wine she doesn’t want to be asked anymore, and if some of them aren’t especially clever, her heart is in the right place, and especially with screwcaps. And because it’s a lifestyle site, there’s a picture of “Scandal’s” Olivia Pope with the post, and the site has 127,000 Facebook likes. Which is something for wine sites to ponder.

? Corporate buyouts: One of the world’s great cheap wine retailers, Cost Plus World Market, could get a new owner this year, if analyst speculation is worth anything. They think World Market’s parent, Bed Bath & Beyond, may be in play since it has underperformed the market. Don’t worry if you don’t understand that sentence; financialspeak can be as obtuse as winespeak. Know that the companies that do leveraged buyouts think they can make money buying Bed Bath & Beyond, stripping its assets and cutting costs, and then selling it again. Which usually means that the company becomes a shell of itself and underperforms the market again, setting itself up for another leveraged buyout. In this, World Market could suffer as well, a cheap wine horror too terrible to contemplate. Hopefully, the analyst speculation isn’t worth anything.

? $40 million, anyone? Those of us who wonder why cheap wine doesn’t get enough respect always overlook the economics of cult wines. California’s Kosta Browne, among the cultiest, was sold for what reports are saying is more than $40 million. Which is a nice return for a 20,000-case winery that makes mostly pinot noir and owns just 20 acres of vineyards. Which means that he deal was almost all about the brand, demonstrating how powerful the allure is for a cult producer. That’s a lot of money for a name, but in the high-end wine business, name is all.

Do-it-yourself New Year’s wine resolutions for 2015

New Year's wine resolutionsWhat better post for the day after New Year’s than the Wine Curmudgeon’s second annual Do-it-yourself wine resolutions? Just click on the drop-down menus and select your wine resolutions for 2015. Those who get the blog via email or RSS may have to go the website to use the menus. The 2015 $10 Hall of Fame will post on Monday.

In 2015, I’m going to drink:

In 2015, wine scores will:

In 2015, I’m going to buy wine:

In 2015, the most important wine trend will be:

New Year’s resolution image from Mayor Gia, using a Creative Commons license

Great quotes in wine history: The Prisoner

WordPress, the blog’s platform, is blocking TubeChop videos, so you can’t watch this clip. Sorry for the inconvenience.

No. 6’s reaction after being told that he has to taste each wine, in order, in the 2014 Wine Spectator Top 100. Unless he tells why he resigns.

A tip o’ the Wine Curmudgeon’s fedora to the Dedoimedo website; this post is based on his “My reaction to — ” series. The video is courtesy of The TruthWealthFreedom Foundation via YouTube, using TubeChop.