1 Wine Dude » wine publications

Guitar Aficionado’s Winter 2011 Issue Takes On Wine And Rockers

1WineDude — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Looks like I’m far from the only one with a penchant for interviewing rock stars about their vinous habits: the Winter 2011 issue of Guitar Aficionado has been dubbed “The Wine Issue” with interviews with wine-making and wine-collecting rockers – and it prominently features a (pretty cool) guitar-shaped decanter on the cover (see inset pic).

According to the GA website:

“In Guitar Aficionado’s Winter 2011 issue, we bring you the rockers, vintners, and oenophiles that celebrate the grape. Rush’s esteemed guitar and bass duo, Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee, discuss their decades-long love affair with the world’s finest wines; the Police’s Andy Summers talks wine and guitars; celebrated vintner and guitarist Paul Gargiulo says there’s a little music in every bottle that leaves his idyllic estate; and Tool’s Maynard James Keenan and Daytona drive’s Scott Pruett tell tales of their winemaking ventures.

The issue also features articles on the wine tourism opportunities in Chile, as well as wine-and-music pairings by celebrity restaurateur / vintner Joe Bastianich (whose line-up of wines are generally pretty darn good, by the way).

Might just have to go get myself a copy of that, even if it does celebrate an instrument with at least one too many strings on it…

By the way, if you’re looking for rock star wine-related interviews, we got some right here:

Maynard James Keenan (of TOOL, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer)
Geoff Tate (of Queensryche)
Les Claypool (of Primus and Fearless Flying Frog Brigade; a written interview and also a backstage vid)
Grammy-winning soulful crooner Boz Scaggs

Cheers!

A Search For The Soul Of North American Wine Writing (Via South American Wine)

1WineDude — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:00:00 +0000

I think traditional American wine-writing may have totally jumped the shark.

Yeah, I am actually going there. And yeah, it will probably take around 1100 words.

You see, last week marked my (extremely) long-overdue second contribution to Nomad Editions’ iPad wine magazine, Uncorked. The long-overdue part is entirely my fault – things have been busy, as in senator-on-the-campaign-trail-trying-to-hide-his-mistresses-from-the-press level busy, enough so to keep me from contributing weekly.

The Uncorked story is titled “My Andean Adventure: One wine dude’s search for the soul of South American wine” and it’s core topic is more-or-less my bout with the Chilean version of Montezuma’s Revenge (you know the title isn’t mine, because I would have called it “Joe’s Colon Vs. The Diabolically Banal South American Budget Wines” or something similarly tasteless), and includes photos of mine as well, taken on a camera that costs less than $200, and so marks one of the few times that I’ve also been a contributing photographer (cue eye-rolling from any serious photographer reading this). You’ll have to subscribe to read the article, but at less than $1 per month for a weekly wine mag that includes regular contributors like Tom Johnson (of Louisville Juice) and sommelier / award-winning author Courtney Cochran, you’d have to be a pretty hard-ass cheapskate wine lover to pass it up.

The thing that got me musing about wine writing jumping the shark was that my first draft of the Andean wine travels article was rejected summarily by Uncorked’s editor, (writer and winemaker) Stephen Yafa. Stephen’s words from the Editor’s Note of last week’s issue:

“When Joe Roberts sent in his article on wine-touring in Chile and Argentina, the piece was wrong for all the right reasons. It was objective, balanced and unemotional. It wasn’t Uncorked, or Joe.”

Stephen is an excellent editor, and like all good editors he has knack for being right…

I’m pretty sure that people don’t read this blog for a balanced and unemotional take on wines and the happenings of the wine world. Objective – or at least as credible as possible within the context of Op/Ed writing – maybe, but balanced and unemotional? No way.

That’s not by accident. Why read a blog – any blog – if not for the character and opinion of its author(s)? In my view, it’s the “personal-ness” of any blog that makes it compelling enough to warrant spending my increasingly-limited free time reading it; if I wanted anonymous, scrubbed-squeaky-clean coverage, I’d go look for it on CNN.

Stephen knows all of this, so when I gave him an article that would have worked for a more traditional outlet, he stopped editing it at the second paragraph and basically said (paraphrased and reinterpreted) “WTF is this? Because it’s not you.”

So I wrote about my gut instead, and managed to weave in my quest for trying to find wines with real soul and character from a region (South America) that is arguably better-known for its near-endless parade of banal, value-for-money selections – and resubmitted it to Stephen. The result was… well, it’s unique. Let’s put it this way: if you could wait for the universe to expand, collapse, and recreate itself over several trillion years while somehow remaining around all the while in disembodied form to read wine coverage, you are still never going to find this kind of story printed in the major wine glossies. I give Uncorked props for having the guts (pun intended) to “print” it.

And in thinking in retrospect about the search for true “soul” in wine in South America – for flawed-but-more-colorful and characterful standouts among a sea of the polished, slightly-better-than-average but ultimately forgettable – I drew a parallel to the wine writing world that seemed… eerily familiar.

So much wine writing is too “safe.” It’s formulaic, and as talented as the contributors and editors may be in terms of their writing and tasting skills, their genius is being lost in following formulas. Formulas are not what you use when you’re going for unique expression – they’re better suited to other tasks, like helping robots make cars. And yet we encounter formulaic writing at nearly every turn in the wine world; I feel as though most winemaker profile pieces could be swapped out of one major wine pub and plopped into any another, and over 90% of the readership wouldn’t even notice any more.

I’m not saying that I have unlocked the Rosetta Stone code of soulful English-language wine writing here, folks. But I am saying that I think the chances of hitting that jackpot it in the major wine publications in circulation today are a lot lower than in the alternative media sprouting up in the spaces in between those pubs.

Wine blogs, and new, edgier beverage publications are, in part, a reaction to the banality of wine coverage. Some of them, of course, ironically fall into that same sea of banality, but the ones that don’t… well, they really don’t. They are a joy to read – in large part because of their passion, originality and breath-of-fresh-air-ness. Like the most interesting wines I encountered in South America, the authors and editors of those publications have character and real f*cking soul. They take chances. Sometimes, like the inevitable X-games-level competition wipe-out, they fail spectacularly – but when they win, they do it in equally spectacular fashion, garnering hundreds of comments or reactions, and continuing and evolving the discussion in myriad unpredictable ways after-the-fact.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll forgive the embarrassing wipe-outs for the big wins, for the two-way evolving conversations, any day of the week. They’re small payment to endure for enjoying the occasional perfectly-executed surfing of the 70-foot wine writing wave. In some ways, it takes the surfers with a ton of courage, talent and intensity to make us even notice the sea, and to remind us how difficult it is to rise above it. Those are the writers and publications that inspire me to take chances and infuse an much “me” into the wine writing mix as I can – the ones throwing caution to the wind, getting back on those boards after each and every time that they fall over, all in the name of pushing for the vino coverage equivalent of a glorious 360-dismount.

Here’s to those chance-taking surfers of the wine writing world – long may they not take things too safely!

Cheers!

On The Road, Off The Beaten Path (A South American Wine Wrap-Up At PalatePress.com)

1WineDude — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:00:00 +0000

I know I’m risking turning this blog into a South American wine coverage outlet recently (and there are at least two more posts yet to come from my recent jaunt there). BUT…

Just in case you’re not yet sick of hearing about the wines and wine-related stories I encountered in Chile and Argentina (or if you’re looking for a sort-of Cliff Notes version), I’ve got a featured article running up at PalatePress.com (with corresponding wine reviews) focusing on the off-the-beaten-path, outside-of-the-bargain-bin gems I found during my S. American travels (and travails).

The article also makes me feel good, mostly because it (hopefully?) resets the counter on keeping the “contributing” part of my “contributing editor” title at Palate Press. Anyway… here’s a run-down of the vinous S. American gems reviewed at PalatePress.com as part of the article:

Cheers!

Sedimental Journeys, Touchscreen Style (The Wine Mag Hits The iPad)

1WineDude — Wed, 25 May 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Nomad Editions Uncorked might not be the first iPad-designed electronic wine magazine to hit the virtual iStore shelves (that distinction belongs to the relatively-expensive-when-it-comes-to-these-things $4-a-pop publication By The Grape, whose first issue seems obsessively preoccupied with Jancis Robinson), but as far as I’m aware it’s the first one to mention dog’s sniffing each other’s butts.

I contributed an article to Uncorked’s “Sedimental Journies” section for the May 6, 2011 preview issue of Uncorked, titled “Sippin’ And Sniffin’ With Fido (Wine tips from a true connoisseur: your mutt)” which you can now check out for free (I didn’t write that title, by the way – you can tell because it doesn’t explicitly mention doggie butt-sniffing). You can subscribe via iTunes for $0.99 a month, which seems a reasonable price to me (but hey, look who’s talking, I don’t even own an iPad). I think what’s supposed to happen now is that you read the article, then write to the editor to tell him how talented and good-looking I am (and we’re both comfortable enough with each other that we can lie that way, right?)…

The publication of Uncorked comes at a timely moment for me, since I am currently in the processes of rehabilitating Brunello, our recently-rescued, ridiculously-oversized, pitifully-anxious Cane Corso / Doberman mix. Rather, I’m in the process of watching in awe as my wife rehabs Bruno. Anyway, for those of you playing along at home, things on the rehab front are going… well, okay…

Our huge pup is gaining weight like a champ (over 90 lbs already!), is already housebroken, and is great outside, good with people, and well-socialized with other poochies. But poor Bruno suffers from a very bad case of house-destroying separation anxiety and is capable of unintended wanton destruction when he gets playful. So the jury is still out for us but we’re trying! Okay, before this doggie update thing turns into the on-line equivalent of the "picture of the two kids on the desk of the used car salesman," let’s get back to wine…

How does the topic of wine translate to the pixelated iPad page? Probably better than it translates to immature analogies involving dog-butt-sniffing. But I’ll need you to tell me, because I’ve steered well clear of the iPad productivity roadblock myself. I’m not saying that the iPad isn’t an amazing content consumption device – it’s the best content consumption device I’ve ever seen; but I am saying that I do way more content creation these days than content consumption, and there’s no way I’m going to spend extra coin trying to turn an iPad into something it’s not (namely, a laptop PC running Windows 7, which is what I bought with my $550 iPad fund instead) just to suit my lifestyle and workflow.

So there you have it: dog butts, iPads, and wine. And Windows 7. Right – I definitely need a drink now…

Cheers!

Welcome Bruno: What Dogs Can Teach You About Wine Appreciation, Redux

1WineDude — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:00:00 +0000

WARNING: This is one of those “it’s-my-blog-and-I’m-gonna-get-personal-if-I-wanna” posts. And it’s probably also a blatant appeal to pet-lovers everywhere. Proceed with caution!

Presumably because my life isn’t insane enough already, my family (read: Mrs. Dudette, the “boss-of-all-bosses”) decided the time was right for us to adopt a new dog. Frequent 1WD readers will recall that our previous pooch, Samson, had to be put down last Summer while I was in Walla Walla at the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference. We’re dog people at Chateau Dude – no offense to you cat people out there, but I am not down with cats; cats will eat you if you die and that kind of freaks me out.

Anyway… bear with me, this will come back to wine… eventually…

Presumably because just getting a dog itself isn’t anywhere near challenging enough, we picked up a rescue case: an 18-month-old, just-had-lots-of-surgery, not-housebroken, kept-outside, never-really-been-walked, underfed, under-weight, and under-loved rescue that is part Cane Corso (Italian Mastiff) and (we think) part Doberman Pinscher. His new name (apparently, he has had several) is Bruno, short for “Brunello,” because he’s big and Italian, after all…

Much like his vinous namesake, there is nothing small about Bruno. I think his head and paws alone probably constitute several dozen pounds of lovable-lug, raw power.

I have actually met ponies that are smaller than Bruno.

When I mention “under-weight” above, technically I’m correct, but he’s still a massive 80+ pounds of canine, and he needs to get somewhere closer to 100 pounds to really be in the healthy zone. He has little idea how to behave, but he’s a quick study and I sure hope he keeps up the current pace, because he is so huge that if he continues to go potty inside and suffer separation anxiety, he will likely destroy my entire house faster than a troop of wild baboons.

In other words, Bruno needs a lot of work. But that hasn’t stopped him from teaching me some things already.

Having Bruno in the house and dealing with his (currently quite numerous) issues, and trying to love, medicate and feed him back to health (and to some semblance of doggie normalcy), has forced our entire family (our toddler daughter included) to employ levels of patience that we previously didn’t know that we possessed (or at least, I didn’t know that I possessed).

Getting back to you frequent 1WD readers, some of you may also recall that a dog’s approach to life can help us all to better appreciate wine – a topic inspired by Sam in his heyday, and one that had been on my mind lately as I wrote an updated version for the upcoming pilot issue of the soon-to-be-released, iPad-targeted e-magazine Uncorked .

The addition of Bruno to Clan Dude has reinforced for me the importance of patience in all things, and has underscored one of the key lessons in that dog-meets-life-meets-wine-appreciation Zen Wine mash-up: namely, Patience is everything when it comes to appreciating life (and wine).

Patience is the non-Bretty-yeast in the fermentation of our lives, the secret sauce in our life’s appreciation and gratitude recipes, the Zamboni on the hockey rink of our Consciousness that clears the way and smooths out the path for pretty much everything else worth keeping. Patience allows us to employ all of the other techniques that get us closer to understanding the true mystery in anything – wine included.

Last week, during a quick jaunt to Chicago, I had dinner with a friend at (you saw this one coming) a downtown steak house; he had been following the updates about Bruno from me and Mrs. Dudette on Facebook and the dinner topic included a run-down of Bruno and Bruno’s history and issues, and how he was coming along as a member of Clan Dude. We ordered some wine (you saw that one coming, too), and the dinner topic moved towards wine and how my friend, in his words after taking a sniff, “could never really taste wine; I just smell ‘grapes’”

“C’mon man, that’s bullsh*t,” I responded; “you’re not smelling what’s in the glass because you’re just not paying attention to what’s in the glass. You’re drinking, not focusing or really tasting. If you were, the rest would be easy. Anybody can do what I do when it comes to describing how a wine smells and tastes, it just takes patience.”

Of course, you don’t need a rescue dog to teach you the levels of patience needed to really “get” wine: you can take a much less expensive and saner shortcut by reading about that stuff here (or elsewhere). But when it comes to really appreciating fine wine, there are no real shortcuts; you need to consistently exercise your patience, and that part is actually hard – that’s the bad news. The good news is that doing it consistently is really the only thing about wine appreciation that’s difficult.

The rest, in comparison, is really quite simple – in fact, even a dog can do it…

Cheers!