Tag Archives: wine humor

Three (more) ways to save the wine business from itself

women dr4essed as Brefoot wine bottles
“Pick me… pick me!”

Once again, the Wine Curmudgeon offers top-notch marketing suggestions to bring the fun back to wine

The Wine Curmudgeon, always willing to help the wine business work itself out of whatever mess it finds itself in, has come up with three ideas that, frankly, are beyond magnificent. The only catch? We have to hold off on them until the writers’ strike is settled. Solidarity, after all.

So here are three ways the wine business can leverage current pop culture trends to make wine fun again:

• A dating show called “Wine Love,” loosely based on all those dating shows (“The Bachelor” and so forth) that TV loves because they’re cheap to produce, slightly titillating, and reinforce sexual stereotypes. We rent a Napa chateau, hire 30 or so incredibly beautiful people who know nothing about wine, and spend 10 weeks watching them sip, spit, and fall in love. It can’t be any worse than Fox’s “Farmer Wants a Wife,” can it?

• “The Next Wine Superstar,” because if Gordon Ramsey can call himself a chef, CEO, and mogul, then why can’t someone in wine? We get a fabulously successful wine executive (and you know who you are) to host the show, in which the executive will pick from a dozen incredibly beautiful people who know nothing about wine, but will curry favor in all sorts of ways so the executive will anoint one of them as wine’s next big thing.

• “The Masked Wine Geek,” in which a panel of always screaming Winestream Media types try to guess which contestant is dressed in which wine bottle costume. So someone might come on the show dressed as the legendary 2000 Cheval Blanc; someone else might wear a Barefoot Strawberry Moscato outfit. The panel’s job will be to ask the sort of incredibly wine geeky questions that annoy the rest of us in order to identify the contestants.

Churro, the blog’s associate editor, contributed to this post. He suggested doing the dating show as “Chihuahua Love,” so he could frolic with a bunch of Hollywood starlets.

 

Have dog, help destroy grapevine pests

Churro, a Chihuahua
“If I sniff out the damned eggs, do I still need to wear this stupid hat?”

Churro, the blog’s associate editor, is well suited to help save grapevines from the spotted lanternfly

Churro, the blog’s associate editor. resident Millennial, and free speech advocate, will now be able to do one more thing to help save the wine business.

He can be trained to find the eggs of the spotted lanternfly, another of the many pests that destroy grapevines.

We’ve noted the danger from the spotted lanternfly on the blog, and that chemicals aren’t always effective in killing them. Hence, researchers at Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are deploying teams of dogs — and their owners — to help detect the lanternfly’s eggs before they hatch and they destroy the vines.

The project, which started at Texas Tech in Lubbock in Texas’ High Plains wine region a couple of years ago, aims to use dogs to sniff out spotted lanternfly eggs. Dogs, with their keen nose, can smell the scent the eggs apparently give off. I asked Churro about this, and – like the Millennial that he is – he gave me one of those looks.

“Of course I can smell the eggs if I want to,” he said. “That’s not the question. The question is: ‘Why should I?’ “

The Virginia Tech researchers anticipated this, and dogs are trained by rewarding them if they sniff out the eggs. If the dogs find the eggs – which are usually laid on the underside of plants – the dogs get a treat.

I should mention here that Churro, who is a Chihuahua mix, is a fine scent hound; he can unearth old fast food wrappers, bird droppings, and clumps of fresh grass without any trouble at all. So I don’t think nosing for lanternfly eggs would present a problem.

Rather, the biggest difficulty would be – as one of the researchers noted – that scent training may lead to “positive behavioral changes.” And, if anyone knows anything about Chihuahuas, that’s the last thing they’re interested in.

Restaurant wine: “No one at the table knows anything about wine, including the waiter”

Comedian Michael McIntyre’s take on ordering wine in a restaurant

This, from the British comic Michael McIntyre, is both funny and terrifying — because it’s all too true: “We know red color and white color, but we pretend we all know a great deal more. … Ignore all the words, and focus on the prices.”

And, as he points out, the restaurant staff, wine list, and all the rest isn’t much help. Not that the WC has ever experienced that.

Video courtesy of Michael McIntyre via YouTube

 

 

April Fool’s wine post 2023

Wine shoppers standing at counter
“I hope you haven’t run out of that natural, plant-based wine.”

Big Wine consortium will launch a line of plant-based wines

The three biggest U.S. wine companies, which control almost half of the American market, will announce on April 1 that their consortium — The GalTrinWine Group – will launch a line of plant-based wines.

Said a consortium spokeswoman: “We have done the studies and we have the data, and we can see that the U.S. wine consumer wants to drink healthier – and what’s more healthy than wine made with plants?”

The new brand is called Grape Juice, which the spokeswoman said emphasizes the wine’s natural-ness. “What’s more natural than wine made with grapes?” she asked. “This is a concept that really resonated with our focus groups.”

The Grape Juice wines will carry a suggested retail price of $18 and include most of the major varietals, plus red and white blends. They will be vegetarian and vegan, contain only 125 calories, and focus on low sugar and low alcohol.

“The price is the sweet spot for the lifestyle wine drinker, someone who cares about what they put in their body but knows that they need to spend more to drink better,” said the spokeswoman. “And the calorie count, as well as low sugar and low alcohol, are what makes the Grape Juice wines unique.”

Reaction from the wine industry was swift and enthusiastic. Several leading wine marketers applauded the new brand, saying it was just the thing to connect with younger consumers. Said one: “Who needs ingredient labels when you have forward-thinking producers like GalTrinWine hitting a home run with a product like this?”

And the Winestream Media was even more enthusiastic. One leading website made a special podcast to praise the new product. “If we like this new wine, and we’re so hip and cool,” said the host, “then everyone will like it, won’t they?”

Legendary wine blogger Jeff Siegel, the Wine Curmudgeon, declined to comment. However, a person close to Siegel said he was sitting in a dark corner, mumbling something that sounded like, “Now you know why I worry about the future of the wine business,” over and over.

Photo: “The state-run wine shop” by James Cridland is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Do-it-yourself New Year’s wine resolutions 2023

Man hugging woman
“It’s OK. We’ll find a way to get ingredient labels on wine.”

The Wine Curmudgeon’s 10th annual Do-it-yourself New Year’s wine resolutions. Let’s start 2023 off with a few giggles.

Just click on the drop-down menus and select your wine resolutions for the new year.  And, as always, thanks to Al Yellon, since I stole the idea from him — and he has never once complained (and still has to write about the Cubs).

In 2023, I will:

In 2023, I will try to learn:

In 2023, I will buy:

In 2022, I will try to support:

In 2023, I expect wine prices:

More New Year’s wine resolutions:
• Do-it-yourself New Year’s wine resolutions 2022
• Do-it-yourself New Year’s wine resolutions 2021
• Do-it-yourself New Year’s wine resolutions 2020

Photo: Gus Moretta via Unsplash

It’s a Wonderful Wine Life 2022

The WC rolls out the holiday traditions, both video and literary

What does one acquire after writing the blog for 15 holiday seasons? Holiday tradition, of course. So enjoy:

• The video is the WC’s epic holiday wine advice video, made with the legendary Michael Sansolo for the Private Label Manufacturers Association. This was supposed to be a series, but then the pandemic happened. The original post ran here. The video is age-restricted, since it’s about alcohol, but click the link to watch it on YouTube.

• The WC’s take on “It’s a Wonderful Life” — not quite as wonderful as the original, but it has its moments. And, no, my version of “White Christmas” isn’t coming any time soon.

• The first two holiday parodies — A Wine Curmudgeon Christmas Carol and ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas: The cheap wine version. Frankly, pretty classic stuff.

Win the Powerball lottery jackpot — save the wine business

Students looking at computer
“Wow. Give the WC a billion dollars and look what he’ll do.”

The WC’s very modest plan to use $1 billion to fix some of what’s broken in wine

The Wine Curmudgeon does not buy lottery tickets, even when the jackpot is $1 billion. I’d rather take my chance on a $10 bottle of wine; the odds that I will enjoy the wine are much, much better than the odds I’ll win any lottery prize.

Having said that, this week’s Powerball jackpot was in the billions. Which made me wonder: What would I do if I won the lottery and had enough money to force the wine business to change some of the ways it did things? Since, of course, not even a billion dollars can end premimuization or get us ingredient and nutrition labels.

So, perhaps:

• Require all sweet red wines to say sweet red wine on the label, no matter how much they cost.

• Require that every bottle of wine list the wholesaler markup; that is, a price tag with the retail price — $12 – and that it includes $3 for the wholesaler. That will get rid of three-tier, won’t it?

• Require that the Winestream Media take local wine seriously. Or I won’t let them use scores anymore.

• Screwcaps, baby!

• No more castles or chateaux on wine labels. The exception would be wineries that actually are in castles and chateaux. Since hardly any are.

• No more YouTube tasting videos with guys sitting around sniffing and swirling and talking like they came out of the wine movie that is not mentioned on the blog.

• No more high alcohol wines made not because growing conditions require high alcohol, but because the winemaker knows that’s the surest way to get 92 points. I mean it. Or else no more scores.