Like a Gumball Machine for Grown-Ups — Wordless #WW

For All Those Winers Out There… Wordless #WW

A Tasting Room Nightmare

This is my first attempt at video, animation and satire (well, I may have tried satire once before). Watch the world's most obnoxious tasting room guest as he drives the staff crazy!

The Future of Wine Writing… Forget Poodles & Blobbers - Wordless #WW

Fantasies and Oenoloompas

I love to imagine this… it’s really one of my greatest fantasies. No, it’s not a naughty fantasy—well, this one’s not anyway. The story goes like this.

Once upon a time, there was this man, Mr. Willy Wineka, who was fed up with the evil politics of commercial competition and wine scores, so he escaped society and had been secretly making exceptional wine for years behind the locked gates of his castle-cellar. Rumor had it that no one had ever seen him, or anyone else, come or go and people speculated about how he was still producing such amazing wine after all this time. One year, Mr. Wineka sent out an invitation to a few select people around the world and I was one of the lucky few who received that rare purple ticket to attend a tour and tasting of the most famed wine producers of all time. Here’s a glimpse at some of his best-kept secrets and what went on behind the castle gate.

The man, the myth, the legend himself opened his gates and greeted me and the other anxious and excited guests and then proceeded to escort us into what could have been one of the Seven Wonders of the World. After Violet Beaujelais, Augustus Gulp, Charlie Dumpbucket, Veruca Sekt, Mike Winelibrary Teevee and I had our ID's checked, we each signed contracts stating we wouldn’t divulge any of Mr. Wineka's secret formulas to Mr. Whatsitworth or anyone else, the cellar doors were thrown open to reveal a most magnificent site. There, before our eyes, was a river the color of wine running right through the middle of the castle. Recognizing our surprise, Mr. Wineka told us that not only is this the only winery in the world to do punchdowns by waterfall, it’s also the only winery to blend their wine by river. “It’s the only way… if you want it just right”, he said. I started to question him, “But what about the exposure to oxygen?” and like he himself had trained Cesar Milan The Dog Whisperer, he shushed me with a firm shht sound and quick snapping of his fingers as if imitating a duck’s beak quacking.

Looking around, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Located on bars all around the room where little Riedel crystal wine glasses filled with liquids of all colors, ranging from the color of sunshine to the darkest night. Mr. Wineka recommended the snozberry port, said it was a very good vintage for snozberries. While I was sampling the array of dessert wines, Augustus Gulp got it in his head to taste the wine in the river and of course, proceeded to topple right in. Unfortunately, he couldn’t swim and wasn’t handling the waterfall well when we last saw him. Mr. Wineka assured us not to attempt a rescue and said everything would be taken care of before fermentation.

Slightly alarmed, we walked with some trepidation until he took us on a tour of his barrel room where we forgot all about big, old Augustus. Mr. Wineka showed us how each barrel was in fact a giant keg, and ideal for on-the-spot pours or custom blending, and then we all played winemaker for a bit while he told us about his Everlasting Corkstopper. Mr. Wineka has designed a new closure that permanently removes any possibility of cork taint, virtually guaranteeing the integrity of the wine like the world has never before known. Apparently, this is one of the products Mr. Whatsitworth has been trying to steal, so Mr. Wineka was quite emphatic about making sure we had given him back all his Corkstoppers. When he came up one short, he didn’t waste any time and immediately sent out the corksniffers who discovered Mike Winelibrary Teevee was packing more than just his hands in pockets. Mr. Wineka blew a little whistle, and out of nowhere came these little purple men who gave Mike the boot. Who were those little purple men,” Violet asked. “Haven’t you ever seen an Oenoloompa before? They come from Oenoloompaland, surely you’ve been there. They do a lot more around here than just provide security”, replied Mr. Wineka. And then I heard her say it, the words that would eventually do her in. “I want an Oenoloompa!” Mr. Wineka pretended not to notice and continued on with the tour.

We took a wild boat ride that delivered us downriver to an entirely new section of the castle where we learned we’d be touring the bubble room. Um, did he say bubble room? He opened the door slowly and as he did, I could see the whole space was teaming with bubbles. Oh, I thought he was talking about Champagne. As if he heard my thoughts, Mr. Wineka said “Bubbles, bubbles everywhere and not a drop to drink…” and then spinning on his heels, he turned, pointed his finger at me and said “yet”. “This is called Champagne Fizzy Lifter—it’s a sparkling wine I’m working on that actually lightens the mood and elevates more than just your spirit. But, it’s still in R&D, we’re still trying to work out some of the bugs.” Veruca said she wanted one, but it was Charlie who was hanging around the bubble room a bit too long—and when I saw him sneak a sip of the Champagne Fizzy Lifter, I knew there was going to be trouble. Charlie immediately started to float upwards towards the ceiling and the fans above and though Mr. Wineka was aware of Charlie’s dilemna, he just turned to us and said “Three greedy little boys gone, three sweet girls remain.” We wondered if Charlie was with his Angels now.

Veruca, Violet and I looked at each other scanning the other’s faces for a sign, any sign we should leave before we got into trouble too. The suspense was terrible, but we hoped it would last. No matter how afraid we were, in the end, we were dying to know what other surprises lay around the next corner and what other brilliant covert projects he might be working on, so we stayed.

For his next act, Mr. Wineka decided to show us the golden eggs. “Have you ever heard of a fish that lays golden eggs,” he asked? When we entered the room with three fish tanks, we had no idea what we were in store for. Mr. Wineka was keeping three rare albino sturgeon that produced the most magnificent and exceptional golden caviar, the perfect complement to his sparkling white wine (Surf and Turf Bubbles). When Veruca and Violet heard the words golden eggs, Veruca said she wanted one now and Violet said she was so tired of hearing that. The two got into a hissing match and cat fight until Veruca really showed her fangs and bit Violet’s ear off. Violet’s face was turning violet and when the two rolled over and hit one of the fish tanks, a security measure that was in place released a lever in the floor, dropping both girls into the unknown depths below. Mr Wineka quietly smiled an eerie smirk at me and said, “They were both bad eggs.”

Just the two of us remained. Mr. Wineka and I took the Winekavator, and as if drunk on our experience, I could have sworn we were going sideways and slantways and longways and backways and frontways and squareways and any other ways that you can think of. Mr. Wineka confessed to me that he was getting old and realized he couldn’t go on making wine forever. He knew he needed someone he could trust when he left the business, someone passionate about wine, someone who would take care of the Oenoloompas, so he sent out the invitations and used the tour as a test of character. He put his arm warmly around my shoulder and said, “Tamara, the winery is yours. You can move in anytime.” And as the tears filled my eyes, he looked at me and declared, “But don’t forget about the girl who suddenly got everything she ever wanted… she lived happily ever after.”

Unitl we sip again…

Cheers!

It's So Much More Than Just a Score

While out wine tasting one afternoon in Oregon’s awe-inspiring Willamette Valley, I drove past abundant fruit and nut orchards positively bursting with spring life, so much so I could practically feel the innocent white and nearly neon-green colors, full of life and energy, oozing from the dead, brown limbs as the pristine blossoms and brand new leaves took hold, veritably spreading themselves onto the canvas. Even in Oregon (“the Green State”), winter marks the land with a barrenness—empty as an infertile womb— creating a longing for growth which only spring can fill. No matter how many times I drive these same stretches of rolling pavement, the seasonality creates a colorful landscape whose scene is ever-changing, like I’m looking at a whole new painting each time I pass by. I thought to myself, wow, if only everybody, everywhere could see this. Could a photo capture even a hint of the color or a glimmer of this mood?

I recently read something in a comment stream from Palate Press’s article about why people don’t read wine blogs. Jeff Siegel of The Wine Curmudgeon said this: Nobody wants to read about your drive up to the winery.

This remark didn’t really get me stirred up at first—not until the next time I was actually driving up to a winery. Then, I couldn’t escape the voices in my head as they taunted and teased me… Really? No one wants to hear about this stuff? People don’t want to have the scene dramatically set with an intricate depiction of the wineries, their vineyards and the countryside elaborately painted for them using only the power of creative imagery and the written word?

My fear is that next, I’m going to hear someone spouting how no one wants to read about anybody’s personal journeys through wine either.

One of the many things I’ve discovered along my travels thus far is in order to really learn about a wine, you must immerse yourself in more than just the look, smell, taste and score of the fermented fruit beverage. This immersion requires engaging all five senses, visual included of course. But I’m talking beyond what color the wine is in your glass and how viscous or thin it appears. It’s certainly a whole lot more than how that label looks and whether it’s a classic Old World or funky, kitschy or colorful modern design… and it’s clearly more than the shape of the bottle. All these things together though, along with a million other unknown influences as well, do flavor our experience; hence the argument for blind tasting (meaning you cover up the bottle so you can’t see the producer, label, varietal, etc… when you taste it).

This may sound silly to some, but studies have shown that something as simple as the color of the room will flavor your tasting experience. So unless you’re actually blindfolded while tasting that wine, your impression of a wine is even bound to be influenced by where that wine’s consumed. Think about it this way, will that glass of Archery Summit Pinot Noir taste the same if you were to drink it at say Chuck E Cheese’s as it would if it were slowly sipped from fine crystal stemware on the elegantly casual wine country deck perched high atop the Red Hills of Dundee overlooking the fertile Willamette Valley with majestic views of Mt Hood that may very well take your breath away? I doubt it.

The reason a wine sometimes tastes so much better at the winery (perhaps Robert Parker is onto something?) seems obvious, but really it’s not. It’s not simply the color and lighting in the tasting room, or that the wine has been stored properly (at its source) and hasn’t’ traveled by unrefrigerated trucks and then displayed on warm, well-lit shelves for months. It’s not just the emotions evoked when you were driving up to the winery, passed neatly spaced rows of old vineyards dripping with ripening grape clusters or that you’re drinking it with Mr. McSteamy- or Mrs. McDreamy-Winemaker, absorbing some of their passion as they divulge the deepest, darkest secrets about that wine in your glass. For instance, as you remark about the forest floor aromatics you pick up on the wine, the winemaker heartily laughs as he tells you a story about the clumsy Kiwi harvest worker who would tromp around the muddy vineyard each morning measuring the brix and then return to the winery to do punch downs without changing his boots. Well, after slipping and falling into the fermenter twice, they found another job for him, but admitted that vintage seemed very earthy.

All kidding aside, it really must be a combination of the factors I mentioned, and more, because for most, the wine tasting experience is quixotic—involving elements of romance, ideals, impracticality and mysticism that aren’t as much physical as they are mental and psychological, yet all individually unique and precisely unpredictable. And it’s all of these ingredients, which come together to create, and image and construct a more powerful memory of wine, one you’ll sincerely take to heart. Can a blind tasting or numbered score do that?

In article published on Palate Press called Wine Writing in the Time of Technology, Ben Simons of Vinotology eloquently said, "Ultimately, those of us who write about wine are looking for the best way to describe an experience that is inherently personal and subjective." I couldn't agree more. My job, and greatest challenge as the chief and only writer for Sip with Me, is to convey the complete experience to my readers so they can have a genuine appreciation of a producer, help them develop a profound relationship with that wine by understanding the setting, the history, the background, the people, the hardships…, because (and I’m going out on a limb here, though I am firmly braced so bring it) a glass of wine is sometimes more than just a glass of wine and how it tastes blind. Oh shit, Yes, I said it—publicly.

Don’t get me wrong, while I support wine rating systems on most levels, I also feel that taste is always entirely subjective and even a perfectly balanced, well made wine may just not appeal to even the most knowledgeable and/or educated wine drinkers and might even taste and score differently to that same person depending on how green the room was, their own body’s pH level, what they ate for breakfast, who is sitting next to them or what past memories they might bring to the tasting table.

I’m certain there will always be those on either side of the fence; some want analytical reviews while others will seek personal accounts by someone whose passion allows them to explore a deeper, more intimate relationship with wine and values the complexity of information as much as they value the complexity of the wine they imbibe. I write for those looking for personal anecdotes, an escape from the everyday, some interesting historical morsel that makes a wine or winery more relevant or perhaps that sumpin, sumpin that just makes that wine a bit more sexy, because in the end, I believe it’s these genuine connections that enhance the wine tasting experience and make that wine utterly unforgettable.

Next time you open a bottle, pay attention to the evocative sound of the cork pop, listening to the age and the passage of time as it slowly leaks from the bottle. Pour yourself a glass, both watching and hearing the wine as it splashes against the bottom and begins to fill the glass. Hear the thick glug, glug, glug sound change in pitch and timbre as the glass fills up, triggering a sense of excited anticipation. (Mmm, did I just see you lick your lips?) If you perceive any of these things when you open a bottle, you can certainly relate to and must appreciate the enchantment each and every glass conjures up; just a little something to think about. Until we sip again…

Cheers!