Tag Archives: wine humor

Halloween wine tale 2022: Star Trek: The Wine Generation

headhots of Captain Kirk and Captain Picard
Kirk? Picard? Just different — the result is the same, and when it comes to saving $10 wine, that’s what matters.

The WC’s Halloween wine tale returns after a five-year absence: The USS Wine Curmudgeon must cross the three-tier zone to rescue a shipload of $10 wine from the clutches of the Imperial Distributor Empire

Captain’s log, Stardate 3554.1: Just six hours ago, the USS Wine Curmudgeon crew was enjoying some much deserved shore leave with Gascon whites and Spanish roses when a message from Admiral McMillan sent us to the edge of the three-tier zone.

“Captain, a New Orleanian trader named McNally claims he has a shipload of quality $10 California red and white wine, and he is willing to sell it to us. But we have to meet his ship on the Imperial Distributor Empire side of the three-tier zone to get it.”

“Admiral, with all due respect, and I understand that a shipload of quality $10 California red and white wine is among the rarest things in the Federation. But this sounds like a trap.”

“Agreed, Captain. But if we can bring that wine into the Federation, it will change the balance of power in the quadrant. So WineFleet has agreed to take the chance. Meet McNally and bring back that wine.”

•

“Captain, I know McNally has helped us out in the past,” said my first officer, Cmdr. Bratcher. “But cross the three-tier zone? That could start a war. And the Imperial Distributor Empire has enough lawyers to fight it – and to win it.”

“True, No. 1. But orders are orders.”

Dr. Marmon signaled from sick bay. “Captain, is it true? We’re crossing the three-tier zone?”

“Yes, Bones.”

“Well, Captain, I hope you know what you’re doing. I’m a physician, not a winemaker.”

The tension on the bridge was as thick as a 15.5 percent Aussie shiraz. Lt. Tish, at the helm, looked at me.

“Mr. Tish, set course for the rendezvous coordinates inside the three-tier zone. Lt. Carter, ready phasers and photon torpedoes. Mr. Bileti, engage – and let’s see if we can find some quality $10 wine.”

•

Three hours deep inside the three-tier zone, but no sign of McNally’s ship.

“What do you see on the sensors, Mr. Tish?”

“Not a thing, Captain.”

And then we didn’t need the sensors. Four Imperial Distributor Empire winebirds uncloaked around us, and we were surrounded.

“Lt. Carter, shields up. Go to red alert.” I signaled engineering: “Mr. McIntyre, we may need those warp engines at any second. Be ready.”

“Aye, Captain,” said Mac. “I can give you any second, and maybe a wee bit more.”

“We’re being hailed, Captain.”

“Put it on the screen, Lt. Carter.”

“Greetings, Captain. I am Chief Operating Officer Markup, commanding the Imperial Distributor Empire flagship Monopoly. It’s an honor to meet you – we’ve heard so much about the USS Wine Curmudgeon. May I ask what you’re doing so far inside the three-tier zone?”

“Thank you, Chief Operating Officer. We’re answering a distress call. … from a trader named McNally.”

“Ah,” said Markup. “Yes, poor McNally. I’m afraid you’re too late. He had a mishap with too much smoke-tainted Napa cabernet.” And then Markup smiled, but there was nothing pleasant in the way he did it.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” said Markup. “Captain, you will lower your shields and surrender. And the Imperial Distributor Empire will never have to put up with your foolishness again.”

I motioned Carter to cut the transmission.

“Options?” I asked.

“Fire the phasers and photon torpedoes,” said Carter. “They have no honor.”

“Maybe we can negotiate with them, Captain,” said Bileti. “That’s better than getting blasted.”

“True, Mr. Bileti. But I don’t relish the prospect of spending the rest of my life drinking $45 pinot noir that doesn’t have much pinot noir in it.”

Then Bratcher raised his eyebrows, and I knew we might have a way out. “Captain,” he said, “I seem to recall a similar situation on planet Lubbock, when we ran into a little trouble with the local authorities.”

“We did indeed, No. 1, we did indeed.” And then I grinned.

•

Markup was no longer smiling when we resumed the transmission. “Well, Captain?”

“I have a deal to offer you, Chief Operating Officer. We have a shipment of rare red Bordeaux, worth thousands of dollars a bottle, and rated 101 points – and by two critics. How about a trade? Our wine for McNally’s $10 wine? Who on your side of the three-tier zone is going miss a little $10 wine? And imagine how much you can inflate the margins on that Bordeaux – and how pleased the Imperial Distributor Empire will be.”

“101 points? Really? And from two critics?”

I named the critics – and Markup looked like he was going to drool through the screen.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t know. …”

“Then I guess you’ll just have to blow us up,” I said, and motioned to Carter to cut the transmission.

“Go ahead, No. 1, you know what to do.” And Bratcher headed off the bridge toward No. 2 transporter station.

Then I signaled Mac. “Commander, we’re not only going to need that extra second, but you’ll have to time a transporter exchange perfectly and then give us warp 7 faster than anyone has ever done it.”

“Aye, Captain,” he said. “Faster than anyone has done it, and maybe a wee bit more.”

•

“All right,” said Markup when we resumed transmission. “It’s a deal. But I want to see the goods first.”

“No. 1, transport a bottle of wine to the Monopoly.”

Markup was handed the wine. He took out a corkscrew, struggled a bit, pulled the cork, smelled the wine. “Is that a tobacco humidor? Is that savory red licorice? Is that – and I can’t believe this – is that barely ripe black currant?”

“It’s all yours,” I said. “We’ll drop shields at the same time, transport the wine at the same time, and each go on our way.”

“Done,” said Markup, and he made hand signals to several crew members on his bridge.

“Now, Mac,” I said. “Now, because if you don’t do it now, it’s too late.”

The transporter flashed, and then the ship seemed to lurch for a split second – but went to warp almost before the lurch ended. And as we headed out of the three-tier zone, there was a blink in the distance.

“Something on my sensors,” said Tish. “No, it’s not there anymore. And the Monopoly. … it’s not there anymore, either. It just vanished.”

“Indeed,” said Bratcher, who had returned to the bridge. “Captain, how could that happen?”

“Well, No. 1,” I said, “could there have been something wrong with the wine? Anything that scores 101 points isn’t going to be very stable, is it? And especially if some of it is laced with anti-matter that we’ve been saving since that incident on planet Lubbock. Try to transport it, and who knows how big the explosion will be?”

“That’s all well and good, Captain,” said Carter, “and I understand they would have destroyed us regardless, so you had to use the anti-matter. But how did you know Markup would go for the trade? The Imperial Distributor Empire is supposed to have the savviest business executives in the quadrant.”

“Well, Carter, it’s like you said earlier. Show them 101 points and inflated margins, and they forget about everything else. That’s when happens when you have no honor.”
Cue theme music

A tip o’ the Curmudgeon’s fedora to Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry — because, frankly, he knew what he was doing. How often do decades-old TV shows still matter? I had pretty much given up writing a Halloween parody for the blog when this came to me. And the names of the crew? Purely a coincidence if they sound like the names of anyone I know.

More Halloween wine tales
• A Halloween wine tale 2017: Dr. Who
• A Halloween wine tale 2016: Kolchak: The Wine Stalker
• A Halloween wine tale 2015: I am Legend
• A Halloween wine tale 2014: Frankenstein
• A Halloween wine tale 2013: Dracula

Wine gambling to the rescue

sports gambling location
“I don’t know. I just can’t see the Tariquet at +800. It’s better than that, yes?”

Want to pay wine writers a decent wage? Then let’s legalize wine gambling

The ethics and quality of wine writing are in the news again, and the cyber-ether and social media have once more been filled with people calling each other names in defense of their various positions.

The Wine Curmudgeon long ago stopped writing about wine writing on the blog. This was not because there aren’t problems, because there are an infinite number. Rather, it always seemed like the only thing that happened was people called me names on Twitter and the blog’s numbers were goosed for a day or two before returning to normal.

This time, though, I’m going to make an exception, because I’ve solved the problems that caused such a ruckus this time. Let’s legalize wine gambling.

Yes, I can see sense that some of you are a bit confused. But bear with me.

I come from the newspaper business, where the term “ink-stained wretch” applied not only to our personalities but our social and economic standing. So what do I see these days? Newspaper reporters earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year; some are in as much demand as movie and TV stars.

The reason? They’re writing for sports gambling sites – as one site executive put it: “a new content strategy that we’re layering into our existing content operation.”

Or, in English: Gambling sites are hiring talented writers to explain what’s going on so they can attract sports bettors. And, since there’s so much money in sports gambling, the sites can afford to pay the best writers lots and lots of money.

Hence, wine gambling. Can’t you see the wine magazines falling all over themselves to get in on this? They can cover winemaker injuries, tendencies to blend too much (like a football team that run the same plays over and over), and the other foolishness that makes a gambler’s eyes roll in his or her head.

And how about these bets?

• The 2019 Lafitte is -400 over the 2018 Rothschild, which is too high, so look elsewhere for value.

• Parsing the analytics, we find that the 2017 Silver Oak has an expected score of 93.7, while the over is 93. So bet the over.

• And, of course, props. Which will be the first wine to get a 100 this vintage? I like the Opus One, at 12-5.

That’s gambling-speak, for those of you who don’t recognize it, and it can be as confusing as toasty and oaky. Is it any wonder wine gambling would be such a good fit?

Photo: “Sports betting” by Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

 

 

Can USB Wine solve all of wine’s problems?

It would – if it was anything but a very clever wine parody

Sadly, this is a joke – but a damned funny one at that, as well as something that would solve of of wine’s many problems, from glass bottles to three-tier to availability. Just turn the knob on the USB faucet, and no more corks, heavy bottles, distributors, Trump tariff, and all the rest.

Would that life were so easy.

Because, in a perfect world, it might even solve wine’s generation gap. Imagine young people using USB Wine to pour a glass or two as they thumb through Instagram and TikTok. Of course, anyone using an iPhone would have to wait for Apple’s bespoke – and much more expensive – variation. No doubt it would use Bluetooth.

One note: A version of this video ran a long time ago on the old blog, but the video I used then has vanished from YouTube. So, I figured, why not do an updated post and give us all a giggle when we need it the most?

Video courtesy of flas4you via YouTube

WC health alert: Beware the Pumpkin Spice Latte

Researcerhs standing at computer screens
“Oh my God, just as we feared — evidence of latte use disorder!”

Don’t the Neo-Prohibitionists know that the coffee drink could be even deadlier than wine with dinner?

Dear Neo-Prohibitionists:

Your argument, in trying to bring back abstinence, is that any amount of alcohol is unhealthy and that we’re addicted to booze as if it was heroin or Oxycontin – Mommy Juice and all of that.

So my question: If you’re so concerned about our health, why aren’t you doing studies and issuing warnings about something that is even deadlier than wine?

The return of the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Because, frankly, that thing scares me to death:

• One serving contains 390 calories, about three times as much as a glass of wine.

• It also has almost half of the recommended daily allowance of saturated fat, about one-fifth of the cholesterol and carbohydrates, 1/10th of the sodium, and more than a third of a day’s safe intake of caffeine.

• Wine, by comparison, contains no fat, no cholesterol, no caffeine, and almost no carbohydrates.

And, since you are so concerned with health, I am sure you know that fat, cholesterol, sodium, and too much sugar (carbs!) are the quickest way to heart disease. Which, as I am also sure you know, is the leading cause of death in the U.S., some 700,000 people each year.

No doubt this has been an oversight on your part, and that we can soon expect studies that say drinking one Pumpkin Spice Latte is the equivalent of smoking a couple of cigarettes, or that two lattes a day is the equivalent of binge drinking. Perhaps you can even coin a term like latte use disorder, based on the wonderfully terrifying “alcohol use disorder.”

So please ponder this the next time you’re in the Starbucks drive-thru, engine idling (and killing the planet), waiting to order your Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Sincerely,
The Wine Curmudgeon

Is spitting the dirty secret behind wine’s generation gap?

wine spit bucket
Maybe spitting isn’t as hip as the wine business thinks it is.

Let them swallow, and maybe they’ll figure this wine thing out

The Wine Curmudgeon has solved wine’s generation gap. It’s spitting.

This came to me the other day after reading Alisha Miranda’s piece in Pix.wine, when she detailed the difficulties in learning to spit wine: “I couldn’t fathom spitting out good, free wine.”

Cue light bulb moment.

Wine is telling young people, who see a $20 bottle of wine as something to be respected and savored and appreciated, that they have to spit it or they really aren’t wine people. Is it any wonder they think wine drinkers are crazy and move on to something else?

Actually, I should have realized this years ago because I’ve seen it dozens of times – in my classes at the old Cordon Bleu and Dallas College, at wine seminars at the State Fair of Texas, and almost anywhere I’ve done a wine tasting. When I get to spitting, everyone starts laughing (and laughs even harder when we get to sniffing).

In fact, I can only think of one other thing that requires spitting, and that’s chewing tobacco. Which, frankly, is not the comparison wine needs to make.

So how do we get around this spitting thing?

How about we let young people drink wine the way they want to? Yes, revolutionary, I know, and especially for a top-down business like wine, where our betters not only tell us what to drink – scores! — but how to do it.

And this might even work. One of my Cordon Bleu classes was particularly young and male, lots of caps on backward kinds of guys, and they thought it was pretty funny when I said they should spit when we did our first big tasting.

So many of them swallowed, lost their train of thought (to be polite) and came to class the next day feeling a bit off (to be polite). Said one: “I guess there’s a reason for spitting.” And they did, too, for the rest of the class – without the need for me to be snotty about it once.

Experience is often the best teacher, yes?

Photo: “Hip to Spit Bucket” by jamesonf is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Signs you’ve been writing about wine for a long time, post-pandemic edition

man typing at typewriter
I wonder: Can I can find a new typewriter ribbon for this machine?

Once again, and after some 4,200 blog posts, the WC realizes he has been writing about wine for a very long time

1. You recognize the wine being used on a cooking show even though you can’t see the name on the bottle. How come? From the shape and design of the label – and what’s worse, you remember the last time you tasted it and whether it was any good. Like the wine on this show.

2. You walk into a local retailer, go to where the wine you want to buy is, and it’s not there. And when you ask where the wine went, the employee gives you one of those, “He’s a weird old dude” looks.

3. When someone asks you how much a wine costs, you launch into a long, detailed (and probably boring) explanation, listing the price at a half dozen places in town as well as on-line. Like for this wine.

4. Restaurant wine prices make you even crazier than usual. This happened the other day, when I was doing a story for the local alternative weekly about the wine list at a trendy and high-end Italian place. The list had a bottle of $10 Italian rose – but since it was trendy and high end, the restaurant charged $40 for it. I think everyone in the dining room heard me gasp.

5. Someone mentions a wine they recently tasted, and you can’t help yourself: “Oh yes, that’s a nice wine. I know the person who made it.” Like for this wine.

6. You find yourself trying to explain – yet again – what the three-tier system is and why we have it. And, yet again, the person who asks looks as if they want to run and hide. And, yet again, you don’t blame them.

Photo: Zakhar Vozhdaienko

More about wine writing:
• The metaphysical challenges of wine writing
• 10 signs that you’ve been writing about wine too long
• Ernest Hemingway, wine and writing about wine

 

Planet of the Grapes

“You maniacs – you finally did it … no more cheap wine!”

The Wine Curmudgeon has a soft spot for Charlton Heston’s science fiction trilogy, of which 1968’s “Planet of the Apes” is the most interesting (1973’s “Soylent Green” has its moments, while 1971’s “Omega Man” is just cheesy). In fact, I’ve tried to sell several freelance stories about it, but editors are a hardhearted bunch.

So, instead — bring on the WC’s “Planet of the Apes” wine parody, focusing on the final scene. Because, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best.

My apologies to Heston; director Franklin J. Schaffner; and most especially to the great Rod Serling, who co-wrote the screenplay and – by most accounts – is responsible for the final scene. Frankly, anyone who ever watched a “Twilight Zone” episode would know the final scene is Serling’s work.

A tip o’ the WC’s fedora to Movieclips on YouTube, where I found the original. And all silliness like this owes a debt to WineParody, whose Robert Parker epic is the standard by which these things are judged.

Finally, this effort is possible only through the work of Aaron Bratcher, film editor extraordinaire, who pieced my idea together. That’s why we have voices this time instead of subtitles, which has been the case for the previous parodies. Meanwhile, my long-time friend John Bratcher takes on Heston and is superb. It was worth waiting 20 years to hear him act again.

Churro, the blog’s associate editor, contributed to this post by barking at Lady Liberty while Heston was beating the sand. I’m not the only film critic in the family.

More wine parodies:
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Enter the Dragon
• 2001: An Expensive Wine Odyssey