By all accounts, the is past Saturday’s Twitter Taste Live! event, featuring selections from Napa Valley stalwart St. Supery, was a big success.  Some estimates on the event put the number of twitter event posts at greater than 700 (I’ve not seen any definitive statistics yet), which would likely make it the biggest TTL event to date in terms of raw participation.  Undoubtedly the wide availability of St. Supery wines helped to send this event over the top, in twitter terms.

No matter how you look at it, 700 tweets is a lot of exposure for St. Supery – especially when you consider that the participants needed to have the St. Supery wines in order to get the full TTL experience.

During the event, I was pleasantly surprised by St. Supery’s Sauvignon Blanc-based wines.  This is because I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc.  Which is to say, I almost love to hate Napa Valley SB because in my experience they’re way too bloated and flabby to compare with the best efforts from New Zealand and France.  I was beginning to wonder if NV SB was a fad that needed to die, sort of like Napa’s questionable experimentation with Sangiovese-based wines.  Wine geeks often refer to SB’s pungent aromas as “Cat pee,” a term I tend to avoid when describing any wine that other humans might actually want to try, but I made reference to the term during Saturday’s TTL event, when I expressed surprise at how enjoyable the St. Supery SB’s were:

I suppose I expected some measure of challenge to that statement.  I just didn’t expect it to come less than 24 hours after I’d made it…

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LODI ZINFANDEL ATTACKS TOKYO!

Crowds flee for their lives as “Gluttzilla” menace destroys theme park.
Tokyo defenses “only stir its already considerable anger.”

July 8th, 2009 – Tokyo
Inebriated Press

A powerfully alcoholic wine emerged from the basement depths of downtown Tokyo wine and liquor shop Tanakaya today, breathing fire and staging a level of destruction not seen in the city since 1954, when the lizard-like menace Godzilla attacked the city and died (along with all other nearby sea life) under mysterious circumstances in Tokyo Bay, reports the IP (Inebriated Press).

Hundreds of local residents are reported missing, and damage to city buildings, public transportation systems, and electrical infrastructure reportedly will “easily reach into the several billions [of dollars]” said  Japanese Defense Minister Hamada.

The rogue wine has been positively identified as the powerful and highly potent 2006 vintage of “Gluttony” Lodi Zinfandel from California wine producer Michael~David.  It’s unclear at this time if the monstrous wine bottle was angrily disturbed from its slumber by the passing of trains at nearby Mejiro station, or if it became enraged at receiving a 77 point rating in the June 30 2009 issue of Wine Spectator.

What is clear is that at approximately 1:35 PM Tokyo time today, the enormous Gluttony Zinfandel emerged from Tanakaya and began to destroy nearly everything in its wake, leveling buildings with ease and burning down an amusement part en route to the bay nearby, where “Gluttzilla” (as it has been dubbed by the local press) seemingly took refuge beneath the waves and has not been seen since…

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Those of you playing along at home last week probably noticed the attempt to hold a Twitter Taste Live event meant to coincide with the culmination of Pinot Days.  The idea was to taste four California Pinot Noir wines, and (of course) ‘tweet’ about the experience of tasting them live on twitter and… ah, c’mon, do I really need to explain the TTL concept again at this point?  It’s wine, on twitter, it works, and it’s taking off like mad.

Anyway…

The Universe had other plans that day, and the unfortunate passing of Michael Jackson (r.i.p.) nearly dragged twitter to a grinding halt and caused us to abort the scheduled formal tasting.

[  I should note at this point that I’ve nothing more to add to the multitude of tributes to MJ that have flooded the ‘global interwebs’ over the last week, except to say that he was of course a member of the Jackson 5 which automatically makes him awesome. At least, it made his childhood stardom persona totally awesome.  Especially when he hit the high notes at the end of One More Chance (alllll I WANT!… All I NEEEEEEED!).  That stuff is THE BOMB, baby! ]

Anyway…

We did manage to hold a bit of a less structured tasting of the same Pinots the following day on twitter, during which I noted that while the wines on the whole were tasty, maybe they just weren’t meant for me:

Which got me thinking… if those Pinots aren’t my style of Pinot, then what is my style of Pinot?

Those of you who aren’t interested in knowing (way) too much about 1WineDude may want to stop reading at this point.  Because things are about to get a little… risqué.  Maybe even odd.  Maybe even oddly risqué…

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Will a lack of diversity hurt the winemaking industry in the future?

Hey wine lovers and winemakers – Let me tell you a little about you.

Chances are, you’re white.  Or, I should say, chances are you’re not black – especially if you’re a winemaker in the U.S.

In fact, if you’re an American winery owner, there is a 99.9% chance that you’re not black, because African American winery owners represent roughly 1/1000th of the total number of wineries in the U.S.  That’s a staggering misalignment with the diversity of the American population.  If American winemakers held a dance party tomorrow, it would be a clinic in the world’s worst overbite-sporting dance floor moves, because it would be lilywhite.

Based on the numbers above, it’s not a stretch to say that the state of African American representation in winemaking is pathetic.

And frankly, given the racial divides that have been crossed in recent years, the American winemaking community should consider that an embarrassment.

It’s an embarrassment nearly on the same level of the U.S. space program, which spends billions sending people into Earth orbit (using a craft that is run by three 286 CPUs) to conduct experiments, circle the Earth a few times and come back – which one could argue is a huge waste of money and people potential when there is so much more we could be doing in terms of space exploration than basically duplicating what Sputnik did in 1957.

As for why we’re in this situation, I blame the winemakers – black, white, and every color in-between…

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