Anyway, according to Geddy Lee, the most recent auction raised over $50K (not sure if that’s Canadian or U.S. dollars…):

I would like to take a moment to thank all those fans and friends who participated in the GRAPES UNDER PRESSURE eBay auction to benefit GRAPES FOR HUMANITY CANADA. With your help we managed to raise over $50,000 dollars! When combined with monies raised in our other G.U.P. events we will be able to significantly improve the lives of disadvantaged and injured people around the globe and more immediately will aid THE HALO TRUST in establishing a pilot project in Savannakhet Province, Laos, to address the urgent problem of casualties caused by cluster bombs. Alex, Neil, myself and the entire G.U.P. Team,  thank you from the bottom of our hearts!
~Geddy

Geddy’s wine-related endeavors have been covered on these virtual pages before, but this recent news got me thinking about how and why the world’s greatest beverage can – and often does – serve as a catalyst to bring out the best in us (well, there’s that, but it also got me listening to Distant Early Warning, like, a dozen times)…

Wine – As A Food – Is Both Civilized And Primal

Food occupies a special place in our lives, being at once both an essential source of life energy and existing as a means of pure pleasure.  Few things are really like that (no, your iPhone is not like that so don’t even try it) – being both primal/essential and civilized/luxurious simultaneously.  I think having wine occupy such a special place in our lives means that it can help make even a mundane situation – meeting others, having a meal, stuff we do every day and take for granted hundreds of times a month – seem special.  And when a moment seems special, we are more receptive to what that moment can offer us.

Wine – As Social Lubricant – Makes Best Friends

It’s just hard to dislike people – and humanity in general – when the booze is flowing.  I like to make a joke about Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc, primarily to Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc producers, which means that I end up laughing and they end up looking at me like I’m a doofus: NV SB might be some of the most overblown SB made on planet earth, but if on a hot day in wine country you greet me with a cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc at your door, you might just make me your best friend (at least for a few dozen minutes).  Aside from explaining how so much NV SB gets sold at tasting room doors, I think this example points out something fundamental about wine: the right wine at the right time makes us feel good, and much like music the context of how we enjoy it can add so much value to a moment that it becomes part of the soundtrack of our lives. We remember those moments – and we remember them more fondly, and resonate with them more deeply, because wine was involved.  Certainly the subtopics of wine geekism (biodynamics, anyone?) can be (extremely) polarizing, but wine itself is rarely so polarizing.  As in “Like wine? Of course I like wine! You have some? AWESOME!”

Wine – As Barrier-Destroyer – Sets Our Receptivity Receptors Into Overdrive

Sure, the alcohol helps – but it can’t artificially add feelings that weren’t under the surface of our consciousness to begin with.  As social animals, wine greases the skids and lets us open up and become more receptive to others – and, probably, to their needs as human beings as well.  There’s also the good old Catholic-grade-school-level guilt of enjoying a bit of hedonism and then thinking about the plights of those in less-fortunate situations than ourselves, but I don’t think that’s playing a major role in getting people to help others and rallying around wine as the catalyst.

Can We Make The World Better One Glass At A Time?

So there’s my hare-brained thinking: Wine puts us in the right mood, and in the right frame of mind, which when combined with the right circumstances raises are awareness, which could raise our compassion.  Net/net, good for us, and good for the world.  Buddhists are often quoted as saying that our intention shapes reality, and that the only good that can be done can only really be done one person at a time, starting with their receptivity and intention.  So… maybe we can really make the world a better place with each moment, which includes each glass that we drink…

I know it sounds new-agey and lame to us jaded Americans, but I for one am game to give it try…

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Zen Wine: Why Wine Brings Out The Best In People (Grapes For Humanity, And Making The World Better One Glass At A Time) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

The discussion was around how we might define wines of “true character,” and it ended with a bit of a challenge from Olivier:

“…[It] would be nice to dig into detailed info (taste/aroma/flavors) that differentiate wines of true character and C+/B- wines. I have my own idea, but listening to others and getting examples would be great and very educational.”

That’s the kind of request that often sends me so far down the wine world rabbit hole that I’m seeing Jules Verne style dinosaurs.  In other words, the really fun kind.

We are certainly rabbit-hole bound, because in the course of thinking about this question, I had to get deep into the very heart of wine ratings.

And I’ve determined that all of them (mine included) kind of suck, even if they do provide value to a lot of people (and they do), and even if they help sell wine (and they do).

Once again, don your miner’s hat, the one with integrated flashlight bulb and intercom link, because you’re gonna need it where we’re going…

Here’s the first thing I came to realize in addressing Olivier’s question (which we can rephrase – I hope, without stepping too far out of line – as “what sensory aspects differentiate wines of true character from wines that are, in your view, more pedestrian?”): it has no real answer.

It has no one real answer, that is.

If you start getting technical, then you’re faced with having to put together a long list of possible attributes based on grape variety, or on typicity of grape/site/climate, or on style and/or what one might consider allowable winemaking modifications; and several of the latter items on the list can trump the former.  If you assume that some of it can be boiled down to objective qualities verses subjective ones, then where do you draw the objective/subjective line?

It’s enough to make your head spin faster than one of those spinning cone, reverse osmosis doohickeys.

Then I realized something profoundly simply: wines of real beauty and character, wines that artistically rise above the mundane, are a lot like pornography – you know “it” when you see it (or in this case, drink it).

A wine of real substance makes you notice it, even if it’s a subtle speaker.  It presents itself so genuinely to the Universe (and to you) that you have no other choice than to accept it for what it really is.  They are like people who, to us, seem unique, and they run the entire range in that respect from those who are simply charismatic or eccentric all the way to those who carry themselves with so much grace through our world we might as well call them enlightened.

As Pete Townshend wrote in People Stop Hurting People, “For that is what true beauty is: Time’s gift to perfect humility.”  He was talking about the beauty of people’s souls, but it works for wine as well, I think.  In fact, it’s probably in us feeling that a wine has enough artistic uniqueness to say it has a “soul” that we would consider it a wine that really has true character.

This is why we should say “screw you” to wine ratings, at least when it comes to telling you about a wine’s soulfulness. Ratings serve a purpose, and they often do try to (at least partly) assess a wine’s future potential… BUT…

When we rate a wine, we give it a stamp at a single moment in time; yet a wine with some real soul to it is for sure going to change on us, sometimes years from now, sometimes hours from now in the same glass.  We can only ever mark a particular period in wine’s life, and so maybe we can get close but we can never, ever nail the measurement of a wine’s true character with real precision.  It would be like grading a person when they’re a teenager, giving them a “B” or an “87” on their life lived so far, when one day they might become the world’s greatest psychiatrist or something (in which case I could use their number, because after this post I might need to speak with them).  What would we have graded Hitler, for example, when he was eight and a star student (and singer in his church choir), versus how we think of the horrors he engendered as an adult?

Overly-dramatic?  Probably.  But totally wrong? I don’t think so.  Also, Hugh Johnson is of the same opinion, and that’s gotta count for something, right?

While I can say with a fair degree of confidence that the vast majority of wines that I felt had real character have been given a B+ or higher rating from me, I can also tell you with equal confidence that I have probably gotten a fair number of wines “wrong” in terms of ascertaining their true character, because I’ve only ever experienced them in “snapshot.”  And I’m pretty confident that goes for any rating system and any wine critic out there.  And true character is one of  the most difficult things to think about objectively, because you may hate what I consider amazing, thought-provoking art; if you think I’m off-base here, I invite you to check out this, one of my all-time favorite pieces of visual art, and tell me if you think I’m insane for liking it so much (I promise some of you will).

And real fine wine is real art – sure, most wine is more industrial craft than fine sculpture, but if you think that fine wine doesn’t have the potential to be true artistic expression than I think you’re demeaning the craft a bit too much (and not paying attention – shame on you!).

So, sorry, Olivier – I can’t really answer your question.  I might as well try to give you a handbook on how to fall in love, or how to react to a Picasso, or how to choose a style of clothing.  What I can tell you is that when you taste enough wine, you will know the ones that are worth speaking to, because they are the only ones who actually have something interesting to tell you.  The assumption is that every time you pick up a glass, you’ll be spending a moment or two to listen to them.  Just don’t look for ratings to be anything other than a rough guide to those vinous conversations.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at The Hopeless Quest To Define Wines Of True Character (Or “Screw The Ratings, Even Mine”) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

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!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Welcome Bruno: What Dogs Can Teach You About Wine Appreciation, Redux from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

That generosity was on full display at the recent Pro Wine Writers Symposium in Napa, when Doug busted-out some vinous gems at one of the post-post-prandial (PPP?), informal gatherings (a.k.a., after-after-parties), the most brilliant and multi-faceted of which was a wine whose existence on Earth slightly predates my own, a 1971 J.J. Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese from the Mosel.

The wine was, in a word, amazing: honey, flowers, orange rind, nuts, beeswax (yes, I actually know what that smells / tastes like, not because I’m a beekeeper – though I think beekeepers totally rock – but because I play didgeridoo, which uses beeswax as a mouthpiece); basically, a delicate and pure example of everything that Mosel Riesling stands for and to which the best examples should aspire. Alder Yarrow, who was with me at the PPP, summed up the sensory experience of that wine recently on Vinogrpahy.com so I won’t repeat it here.  By the way, it was fun to watch a normally poised Alder about lose his sh*t over some of those wines.

Anyway, what I do want to talk about here is why the wine was so glorious – and what was in the bottle is only partly responsible for that…

When it comes to PPP wine imbibing, just as it should when good company is gathered over good wine, most of the thinking about day jobs and even of the world of wine should go right out the proverbial fenestra.  Geeks will be geeks, and I’m no exception, especially so when it comes to wine.  In those moments, it’s wine that matters, but also the enjoyment of it that matters, and the sharing of ideas that matters, too.  And if I had to chose between the wine and the sharing, personally I’d put the emphasis on the latter.

I was fortunate enough to hang out with a convivial and varied cast of wine characters the night I tasted that 1971 J.J. Prüm, and their shared reactions, wit, commentary and sharp insights made that wine taste better than it ever possibly could have on its own.  Not that I’d refuse another opportunity to taste it even if I was by myself, mind you… in fact I’ve had no fewer than three dreams about that wine since that party… but you get the idea.

Doug, Alder, Jim Gordon, Jon Bonne, Claudia Perry, Ben Weinberg, Dave White, Blake Gray… there were others there… the point is that it doesn’t take a large stretch of the imagination to picture the camaraderie that develops when you’re geeking it out with the geekiest of wine geeks over especially tasty, geeky wines that get geeks geeky all over. And I loved it.  I loved the geeking out  more than I loved the wines, I think.

Because wine, as they say, is the ultimate social beverage, and nothing makes a great wine (or even a not-so-great wine) greater like great company.

The moral of the story?  Stop and smell the petrol once in a while, people, and make sure you do it with friends.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Zen Wine: 1971 J.J. Prüm And The Greatest Of Wine’s Gifts Outside The Glass from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

You see, the thing is, time is relative.  Which means that your future may be predetermined; which means that you might not actually have the freewill that you thought you had, but it doesn’t matter anyway because you need to fulfill the destiny of the present moment because that’s the only moment that truly matters because it’s immutable.  So if you’re drinking a glass of wine right now, give it your full attention because as far as that immutable moment is concerned, you will be appreciating that wine for eternity.

Don’t worry – it will all make sense in a minute or two.  Or several.  I think.  Let’s start at the beginning.

Time is relative

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the sense that time is the same for all of us is an illusion, though happily the relativistic nature of time only manifests itself when dealing with extreme circumstances, like, say, traveling in a car at almost the speed of light (sorry, speed demons – even the latest Yahama crotch-rocket motorcycles can’t even come close to that speed).  But the fact remains, proven scientifically with astounding accuracy: time is not the same for all observers in the Universe.  Which results in interesting phenomena like the Andromeda Paradox.

Your Future Has Already Happened.  Sort Of.

In the Andromeda Paradox, "when someone is moving towards a distant point there are later events at that point than for someone who is not moving towards the distant point. There is a time gap between the events in the present moment of the two people." 

Let’s look at it this way – let’s say you’re on vacation in the Andromeda galaxy and are planning on enjoying some kick-ass Andromedean wine.  Back on Earth, one of your wine-loving friends is looking to the sky via telescope to see how your Andromeda wine-vacation is coming along (let’s ignore the fact that it would take about two million years for the light to reach her telescope).  If your friend is at her house (stationary, in Earth terms), what she might see is you contemplating what wine to buy and where to drink it.  Simple enough, right?

Let’s say your friend then calls one of her friends via cell phone.  That particular friend is in a car, moving very fast (like, almost light-speed fast) in the general direction of the Andromeda galaxy, and also has a kick-ass telescope.  Ignoring the rules of good road safety, he decides to look into his telescope while driving to see how you’re coming along on your vacation, now that your first friend has piqued his interest by mentioning that you were vacationing in Andromeda. 

But what he sees is not what your other friend sees.  He sees you already at an Andromedean restaurant and drinking the wine that you’ve not even yet decided on trying according to your other friend.  Your stationary friend?  She sees you still deciding what wine to try.  And both of them are right.

Hence the paradox: "…two observers observe the same events – two million year old events in their telescopes – but the moving observer must assume that events at the present moment on Andromeda are a day or two in advance of those in the present moment of the stationary observer."

And the freakiness has only just begun…

Every Moment – Including Your Wine Appreciation – Is Forever

To get really freaky, consider what this means: you’ve already made your choice of wine, from someone else’s standpoint.  Not only that, but if you’re friend’s friend drove in a direction away from Andromeda, he’d see events in your past.
This suggests two things:

1) You are predetermined, destined, to make that choice of wine.

2) Each and every moment in the history of your Universe is immutable, and accessible to an observer under the right conditions.  The Universe "remembers" every moment.  Every moment is, was, and always will be.

In other words, the passing of time might also be thought to be an illusion, with the arrow of time moving forward primarily because of the laws of entropy.  Maybe the present moment is the only one that will ever matter.  Buddhists and Taoists knew this, though they reached the conclusion very differently – hard science backs them up.

What the hell does this have to do with wine? 

Everything, but only in so much as wine has to do with everything else in your life.  If the present moment is all that really matters, then your next moment with wine ought to be thought of as kind of special, even if it’s just a simple sipper that you’re cracking open with your grilled salmon burger on a sultry Summer evening.  So open that bottle of wine and give it your full attention – because in that moment it will be the only thing that matters.  Really smell it, really taste it, really savor it, because you’ll be doing it forever (so try to pick a good bottle, okay?).  And know that be doing so, you’ll sort-of be fulfilling your destiny.

Pretty heavy for a Monday, eh?  I think Einstein would have prescribed a glass of wine to help with that…

Cheers!

(images: cienciakanija.com)

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Wine Appreciation, The Andromeda Paradox, and The Forever Present Moment from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!