Inebriated Press

In a stunning reversal of unwritten policy, the wine industry’s most powerful critic, Robert M. Parker, Jr.  and his fellow staff members at the publication he founded, The Wine Advocate, held a press conference earlier today to “apologize for our recent boorish, bullying behavior.”

“We at The Wine Advocate have, in short, been terribly, terribly wrong in our actions,” admitted Parker to a packed crowd of seven wine industry veterans gathered near his home in Monkton, Maryland. “My god, our behavior has been so infantile and vile that I don’t even know where to start, quite frankly. Oh, are those cookies over there? Could someone pass those?”

Parker began by extending a virtual vinous olive branch to Jon Bonne and Eric Asimov, wine writers for the San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times, respectively. Both men were publicly derided by Parker as unprofessional in a post in the online bulletin board of Parker’s website. “Really, that was totally uncalled for, and bitingly ironic considering that only a few days before I had, in their presence, publicly called for more civility among wine writers. I mean, dang, I’m making the whole profession look like a bunch of douchebags when I do things like that!” He then slammed his open right palm into his forehead, temporarily shaking the stage and causing microphone feedback that delayed the remainder of the press conference for several minutes. The normally recalcitrant Parker had been referring to statements he made as the keynote speaker at a wine writers conference, given only a short time before his remarks about Bonne and Asimov, both of whom were in the audience during Parker’s keynote address.

Parker was followed by several The Wine Advocate staff writers and critics in offering public apologies, including Master of Wine Lisa Perrotti-Brown, who referred to her mis-identification and lambasting of Bonne’s and Asimov’s “new California wines” session at the 2014 Professional Wine Writers Symposium in Napa, California (in which she mistakenly referred to wines that weren’t actually poured during the session) a “real fuck-up.” On the bulletin board, Perrotti-Brown called the wines “vaguely interesting,” “neutral,” “dilute,” and “flavorless, without vibrancy and texture, not unlike most of wine writing itself these days.”

“Well, what can I say, I just balled that up big time,” she told reporters and industry insiders…

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Dispatch from The Inebriated Press

Cellar masters – those who toil in the barrel cellars of wineries everywhere – are being urged to exercise extreme caution when entering their workplaces, as reports of several deaths and disappearances of cellar workers continue to flood municipal law enforcement offices worldwide.

The fine wine region of Rioja – where nearly 60% of all of the deadly cases have been reported to date – seems particularly susceptible, though dozens of cellar workers in winemaking areas throughout the globe have disappeared without leaving a trace, usually after going to work in their dark cellars alone. Others (though a much smaller number) have been found dead with their necks snapped violently.

Barrels in the crime scene areas have excessive amounts of wine missing from them, an extreme case of what winemakers call “the angel’s share” – a portion of wine thought to evaporate during aging in wine barrels, requiring them to be periodically “topped up” with additional wine to keep the barrels nearly full. In many of the reported cases, sightings of life-sized stone statues of weeping angels among the barrels have been reported, only to later unexpectedly disappear without any physical evidence of break-in or other theft.

These strange events took an even more fantastical turn when the Spanish Ejército de Tierra, called into Rioja to assist local law enforcement in the ongoing investigation, installed motion-detection cameras at various points in the subterranean crime scenes near Rioja Alta…

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Special Report from the Inebriated Press

Pennsylvania Governor-elect Tom Corbett today issued a public plea to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to “immediately and indefinitely suspend” its plans to expand grocery store installations statewide of its new wine kiosk dispensers. Corbett wants all activity on the PLCB kiosk machines shut down “until allegations of the kiosks are abducting grocery store shoppers can be properly and thoroughly investigated.”

Corbett’s plea was prompted by several recent reports of missing persons last seen at three Pennsylvania grocery store locations where PLCB wine kiosks have been installed. At first, state police investigations of the alleged abductions were moving slowly, but recent eyewitness reports from the grocery stores involved have turned the tide of the investigations towards the bizarre.

“I know what I saw, and I know it sounds crazy… but strange blue laser beams came out of that thing and totally vaporized the guy trying to buy wine!” reads one anonymous eyewitness testimony describing events that happened to one of the missing persons, who was last seen purchasing wine from a PLCB kiosk…

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