The Wine Curmudgeon’s Lunch for Literary

In which I’m offering my services to raise money to benefit literacy education — because, if Robert Parker can do it, why can’t I?

Parker, the man who popularized the 100-point scoring system and was the most powerful person in wine for decades, is donating his knowledge, his time, and exclusive wines from his cellar to raise money for heart disease research. All it takes is $25,000 — which is well and good, but more than almost everyone in the world can afford.

Which is where I come in. I’ll donate my knowledge, my time, and $10 wines from my cellar.

All I need is a literacy group to take me up on this offer, and I’m willing to work with one in any part of the country. Literacy has long been one of my causes, not only because I write for a living, but because we can’t have a functioning democracy unless we can read and write. So pass this post along to a literacy group near you, and we will make this work.

We can do it the same way Parker is doing his, but charge less money to make it more accessible to the vast majority of wine drinkers. The idea would be to raise awareness as much as money, and what better way to do that than to teach people about the joy of cheap wine at a wine lunch (especially given my fondness for wine lunches)?

Frankly, raising money for literacy by introducing wine drinkers to Gascon whites, Sicilian reds, chenin blanc, cava, and all the other wines they’re not supposed to drink would be more fun than any curmudgeon is supposed to have.