Aspen
The Guy du Vin contingent returned from the Aspen Food and Wine Classic last week. Battered, bruised and beaten from a long four days and nights of eating, drinking and carousing in the name of research for you, our ever so beloved customers and readers. (Would that more "readers" become "customers", you would be then even more "beloved".) All in all, Aspen was beautiful, the wine was terrific, and the food was great. It is a good event for us at Guy du Vin as we get to see some people that we really like and admire, we get a little business done, and we get to have considerable fun. Next time, we will have a little surgical work done around our eyes and chins and maybe a "tummy tuck" so that we fit in a little better with the locals. Looking like you are a perpetual 28-year-old is easy if you can afford it, as so many in Aspen seem to be able. For a while we thought that we had gotten on the wrong plane and landed in a remarkably hilly section of L.A.
 
"Before Buddha or Jesus spoke, the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion, the nightingale will still sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing." D.H. Lawrence
 
Spin the Bottle
by David Holstrom
There were a lot of wines to taste in Aspen. Most of them pretty good. None of them bad. A couple - outstanding. Whenever I go to these tastings, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer number of wines available. How does one taste them all? How do you put them into perspective? How do you evaluate them properly and fairly? Not all of us in the wine business are endowed with the supernatural powers of Robert Parker and his unconvincing ability to taste 80 to 100 or more wines per day and give each a precise score with unfailing accuracy and confidence.  It is simply amazing how many producers and distributors depend on wine scores from Parker and others to lend their wines credibility and to move product. There is enough paper at these events sporting the latest reviews and scores to supply a small ticker tape parade. It doesn't take long before you realize how meaningless the numbers are.

I am of the opinion that the more well done the promotional material, the more the wine it markets will be unexceptional. When I am tasting wine and the first word from a salesperson is the score it received from a wine magazine or writer, I look at that wine with a great deal of skepticism. The wine trade provides all kinds of information regarding their products. Folders full of beautiful pictures (usually of stacked barrels or of sunsets overlooking the vineyard), quotes and vintage facts from the owner or winemaker, etc. The amount of money spent on this material is astounding. But it doesn't make the wine taste better. The really great wines just jump out at you and don't need a score or marketing guru to tell you what to think.

In the meantime, amidst all the glitz, the obvious is overlooked time and again. I was at a table that was offering tastes of one of the most well known and greatest Italian wines available. The representative from the winery was talking about all the attention given to detail in producing this great wine. I tasted it with anticipation. It was corked! Badly corked!! And the bottle was nearly empty. How many people tasted that wine and thought that was how it was supposed to taste and left wondering "what's all the fuss"? And how many tasted it and left thinking that it was fantastic because that's what was expected? The gentleman behind the booth didn't believe me when I told him his wine was corked until he opened the next bottle and tasted them together.  And this sort of thing happens all the time! YOU WONDER WHY GUY DU VIN IS JUST A LITTLE BIT CYNICAL? Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, just read the shelf talker.

Can we no longer accept a world in which a wine is simply beautiful? Unscored; unspun; unassessed; unanalyzed; unmarketed; "unparkered"; and "unmaster of wined"? Is simply being beautiful to drink not enough?

It's not just wine. TV channels proliferate with personality-focused programming, star chefs, star designers and now even star gardeners. Brand building provides excellent grist for cross media income. A book publishing opportunity neatly follows on the back of a readily created and recognizable brand or chef. Do you really believe the chefs on the Food Network are anything special beyond being celebrities? This all leads us to question whether we drink what we drink and eat what we eat and read what we read because we are told to through the promotions budgets of some media corporation, the marketing of some wine magazine, or simply because there is no choice. Who is going to publish the next Camus or Kafka? Will we ever taste the likes of a Bricco dell' Uccelone 1985 from Giacomo Bologna again? The age of writers that have something to say, that tell a story with some original thought, that could expand the understanding and telling of the human experience is probably past. And I fear that if we are not careful the same thing that has happened to the publishing industry will happen in its own way to the food and wine industry. Welcome to the world of self-obsessed media stars, media wines and media critics.  For most consumers of wine, greatness has been suppressed by economics of scale and an obsession with marketing.

I sound a little disheartened. But don't lose hope yet. The good guys are still out there.  I take heart from the fact that tucked away between the "megawineries" of California in the big tent in Aspen was a small table with none other than Terry Theise behind it. Terry speaks and writes about wine better than any other human - living or dead. And next to him, some wonderful Austrian producers: Heidi Schrock and Johannes Hirsch. Nearby were wonderful Champagnes from small grower/producers. Across the tent was Chester Osborne from d'Arenberg in Australia, one of the funniest and nicest people you would ever want to meet and as excited about his wines today as the first time that I ever met him in 1995. There are scores of producers that march to their own drum; that are in touch with the soil and the grapes they grow; that produce wines that are agricultural products and NOT industrial wines; wines that reflect individuality and place. These are the folks that I am trying to support at Guy du Vin. Producers that make wine that actually is great and that was great before anyone scored it, reviewed it, spun it or turned it into something other than simply what it is.

All you have to do is taste it - and just like the nightingale - it sings.

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