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+--- Thread: Stuart Pigott on Why _I_ hate most wine... (/thread-12422.html)
- Botafogo - 05-16-2005
It is always the guys who import / write about German wines who have the most to say on Terroir (see Terry Theise!):
The latest issue of Slow, the Slow Food Movement's magazine, has THIS wonderful musing from Stuart Pigott:
.... The borderline between enough and too much is a crucial aspect of the wine drinking experience. Today it is not at all uncommon for wines to make a pretty plausible and superficially attractive impression in the first moment — sweet and fruity aromas, then a soft, round taste — but after only a glass it starts to tasting like unbearably gooey kitsch. The wine has not changed, rather the drinker has realized that the liquid in his glass is all make-up and silicone, possibly lacking any real body beneath these cosmetics. I call this taste 'fluffy white bunny' because this type of wine appeals to our BABY-TASTE. Unlike adult-taste which is culturally-determined and therefore a serious obstacle to trans-cultural wine brands — the undeclared goal of the handful of huge companies who today dominate global wine sales — baby-taste is the same the world over.
The truth is though that hardly any wines naturally have a 'fluffy-white-bunny' taste. Nearly all of them acquire this in the cellar where the technical possibilities for the manipulation of wine are now almost unlimited. Only computer-generated virtual reality is more completely malleable, which means that in these corporations' industrial production facilities the taste of vine biodiversity, of place and of regional wine traditions all become part of the COLLATERAL DAMAGE in the global wine sales war. WAR really is the right word, because, currently, the global over-production of wine is around five billion litres; currently, the big wine corporations are in the process of finding out how hard it is to make big money with wine in an over-saturated market.
There are other descriptors for this NOWHERE-PLANET-WINE taste which is determined by marketing plans and quarterly figures. Reinhard Lowenstein of Heymann-Lowenstein in Winningen/Mosel calls it 'Plastico-Fantastico-Viagra', making clear how the enormous success of this wine style is based upon artificially stimulated desire. The strategy of the big companies is: 'nobody needs wine, but we can persuade anyone whose not anti-alcohol to want it by hitting the right buttons in their nervous system'. It is all about shifting units through tapping into the lowest common denominator of human taste; a policy shared with the food industry that is leading to a global dumbing-down.
Of course, there are people who genuinely prefer the cosiness of security-blanket flavours, just as some people actually prefer the Pamela Anderson-type sexuality to more exciting but challenging alternatives like the Julianne Moore variety: sadly my sexual imagery is too obvious to stand a chance of qualifying as poetic, but that doesn't make it less appropriate a description of the situation. I wish them every happiness in their Brave New Wine World with their SOMA-BAY-WATCH-WINES. But I also feel sure that the reason many of them are still consuming this infantile kitsch-goo is because they've not experienced the vinous equivalent of Julianne Moore; wines with the bold originality and haunting eroticism of the dry whites from Heymann-Lowenstein which reflect the remarkable places where they grew and the remarkable people who crafted them. Many consumers have simply been unlucky to get caught in the net of global wine marketing and are stuck in it. If only I could help them escape!
— Stuart Pigott, “Professionally Drunkâ€
- dananne - 05-16-2005
Wonderful, Roberto -- thanks for posting this.
Oh, and I love Julianne Moore. My wife knows about this and is fine with it, so long as I tolerate her thing for Jude Law.
[img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/smile.gif[/img]
- Botafogo - 05-16-2005
Now I would have used Rene Russo as in the following example from OUR manifesto:
The Zen of Shibui...
While reading Bravo (a VERY highbrow Brazilian culture magazine that weighs in on conceptual art, modern dance and avant garde classical music but also finds the music of Prince and Morphine worthy of mention), we found a wonderful article by the linguistics columnist praising the English language (and encouraging Lusophones to follow suit) for its ability to assimilate words from other languages that express precise concepts with no English equivalent.
Examples he thought would be useful for brazilians included Drachenfutter (German for a guilt gift that an adulterous husband buys his wife, sprechen sie Deutsch, Kobe?), Mokita (from New Guinea, signifying a truth that everyone knows but no one has the courage to say) and, most especially in a land replete with exuberantly youthful beauties, Shibui (the Japanese word for that deep beauty that can only come from age and experience: the patina on a fine wooden table, Rene Russo being ten times sexier than Brittany Spears or......an aged bottle of wine).
The literal translation carries the meaning of the puckery and astringent qualities of the green persimmon. This meaning is symbolic and carries the idea of something not sweet in nature but rather one that is reserved, elegant, multidimensional and somberly austere in its effect, leaving the consumer in a state of contemplation and gratitude....
Thirteen days till Rio, Roberto
- winoweenie - 05-17-2005
Good having youse back there Robo-Baby. I'll call and talk to you before you leave. BPR, WW
- wondersofwine - 05-17-2005
I'm one who doesn't get the attraction of Jude Law. Refused to see the remake of "Alfie" with Jude in the role originated by Michael Caine. I do remember going on a date to a movie years ago where my date was gaga over some Italian beauty but I was equally enamored with George Peppard (in his younger days).
- stevebody - 05-20-2005
I'll probably regret having written this but I think this kind of thing - while I agree with most of it - is why a lot of people don't like - too strong; maybe "lose patience with" - us wine-weenie types. Yeah, wine with a sense of place and less manipulation is better...to us. Not to every wine drinker who loves the grape. I had a whale of a lot of customers at Esquin who were rapturously engrossed in their wine journeys but simply preferred fruit-forward wines.
I was asked last week (and accepted) to write a regular wine column for the King County Journal newspaper chain, here in the Seattle 'burbs, and wrote the first piece on my faves, Amarone and Ripasso. The featured wine was Allegrini "Palazzo della Torre", a wine that shows a whopping character of its terroir and less fruit than most Valpos. I included a warning that it wasn't for everyone and explained that, to people who really know wine, this is what a bottle of good wine is like. I'd just rather keep trying to steer people who are inclined to get outside the box into wines that will nudge them along toward understanding Wine Beyond Fruitiness. While I see Stuart's points, I think that making them publicly seems to set up an Us vs. Them division that can only leave "them" feeling resentful and excluded.
- Botafogo - 05-20-2005
Steve, your average Baseball geek is ten times geekier than any wine geek and those guys use acronyms, statistics and poetry to talk about something MUCH less intersting. Yet, all of that has entered the national vocabulary.
I find that using musical, architectual and anatomical comparisons helps folks to relate as well....
PS: I got over 500 personal e-mails about The Zen of Shibui article, it really struck a nerve in a lot of folks.
"While I see Stuart's points, I think that making them publicly seems to set up an Us vs. Them division that can only leave "them" feeling resentful and excluded"
Steve, he made it "public" in the magazine of Slow Food which is going to an audience who eat stuff like that for breakfast.
Go yee and preach the Gospel that the heathen may be saved.... Roberto
[This message has been edited by Botafogo (edited 05-20-2005).]
- stevebody - 05-21-2005
Berto:
I'm that dreaded double-whammy, the baseball geek/wine weenie, so I get what you mean. I'm sure I induce snoring with that kind fo stuff; fortunately, it's usually my family that catches the brunt. As for Slow Food, having been a sometime visitor to them and full-time sympathizer, I know that some of those folks around here are exactly the sort of "them" I wrote about. They're terribly opinionated about dining but don't know a lot about wine and tend to drink what Stuart would call his White Bunny. One of my best friends is one of those and he gets a bit prickly about that subject of being told what's good and mediocre in wine. I dunno, I just try to stay away from airing my own thoughts about what constitutes a good winebad wine, anymore. Even some people I expect to understand get a little offended at having their habits/tastes questioned.
- Botafogo - 05-21-2005
Steve, when I reference Slow Food I mean the REAL Slow Food in Europe (people who go and protest and / or throw cow feces on McDonalds) not the wanna be wine and foodie socialites who have co-opted the organization in the states.
I was once called by a big wheel in the local chapter who wanted to put on a wine tasting with us and, when I said we would love to as we feature scores of organic wines, his reply was "Organic wines! Why would we want to pour organic wines, they suck!". I just hung up the phone....