Joe Dressner
Joe Dressner
The following episodes are reprinted with the generous consent of Captaintumorman.com
My Apologies to the Madoff Family and the Wine Industry
I've been out of things since I had a major seizure on November 10th and subsequently discovered I have cancer.
So I'm only first catching up on the Madoff story and find myself astonished that the Wine Industry has not drawn any lessons from two decades of speculation based on Parker/Wine Spectation scoring and notations. We've all allowed ourselves to be sucked into the same Ponzi scheme which has been running this country over the past 20 years and no one seems to want to call a stop to his insanity.
All of a sudden there are stocks of wines that are absolutely unsaleable because they were bought on a Ponzi Promise of points, easy money and quick sales. Madoff was not the exception, he was the norm.
Madoff got customers by appearing influential and important. We sell a lot of wines because they gets big scores somewhere making the purchase of that wine seem legitimate and important to everyone in the wine industry.
What nonsense! Why call them Parker Points, why not just call them Ponzi Points, even if that was not the intent of Mr. Parker. Functionally, that is what this style of wine marketing has become.
Cuve Reagan/Bush/Bush/Madoff
Our country has been trading worthless paper against worthless paper ever since the Ronald Reagan administration. The popular anticipation was that everyone could be rich, everyone could buy a home, everyone could send their kids to insanely expensive colleges if you just had the right piece of paper acquired from the right consultant. All this has collapsed into one horrible mess that threatens great human suffering throughout the world.
It was pure and simple greed which drove this country to tank out. Around this time, the wine industry became converted into yet another commodity based on points, scores and commodity exchange and speculation.
To look around the wine landscape is profoundly depressing -- you see people continuing to sell highly scored labels for millions of dollars. Labels that have no land, no value, no meaning. People who come out of nowhere to make wine that comes out of no place and tastes like nothing continue to ride a trend of money making with the same old worn out points on paper certifying their bottles can be taken directly to the bank.
This is not going to last. At Louis/Dressner, at Kermit Lynch, at Peter Weygandt, at Neal Rosenthal, at Jenny & Franois we offer wines that have never heard of Bernie Madoff. Some of the best regional importer/distributors (Polaner, Bowler, Chadderdon, Beaune Imports, Triage, Farm Wine Imports, to name a few) also specialize in real/natural wines that express history, pride, love, work and a future based on something real. The fruit of the earth.
It is a turning point for the wine trade. Lets bail out of the old style of riding some cynical consumer fad (Where have all the critters gone) based on Parker or some other fad and proudly sell the beauty of that rare intersection of time and place that only the vine can express. Madoff is in jail....let him rot and let us learn the lessons.
Yes, there are only a small amount of wines made this way, but there still remains plenty to sell, drink and enjoy. Lets not confuse all forms of fermented grapes as being in the same family.
It is time to draw some limits!
Our Vignerons Are Unqualified!
I'm fascinated by the Vine Connection people I met at the Polaner Tasting. For some inexplicable reason, they combine Argentine Wine and Sake. Why not call it the Vine and Rice Connection?
I'm totally confused about this company but they seem wildly successful. Great reviews, lots of attractive young people, wine industry excitement and partnering with such innovative wine/sake companies as Youngs Market.
I was just looking through their web site and came across the first producer listed and realized why they have so much success. Their producers are super qualified. No country bumpkins need apply.
Take the Ben Marco brand, for instance. According to the Vine Connection web site:
Owner/viticulturist Pedro Marchevsky has degrees in Agriculture & Enology and Agricultural Engineering, and is a Professor of Irrigation and Drainage at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. He has managed vineyards in Mendoza for almost 30 years as well as his own vineyard in the district of Los Campamentos in eastern Mendoza, and he is widely considered the top viticulturist in Argentina. His philosophy is a simple one gained from experience: using grapes farmed using
"precision viticulture", make wines that are true to their place. His wines express the wonderful, powerful fruit flavors, the ripe tannins, the incredible length and balance that can only come from this one placeMendoza.
As far as I know, we don't work with viticulturists, let alone one who specializes in "precision viticulture." Why do you need a Professor of Irrigation and Drainage (I never knew this was an academic field!} to make wines that are "true to their place."
This is Madoffesque talk.
Madoff: Taking the New York Shtetl for a Ride
Thinking about Bernie Madoff invariably makes you think about the imbeciles who invested with him. In many ways, Madoff brings to the mind the old adage about Adolph Eichman, the banality of evil. As someone who also grew up in Queens, New York, let me assure there were no lack of contenders but very few winners.
Madoff's particular genius seems to have been to trade into the same popular sentiment that makes people imagine they are living out a Shalom Alechem folk story when they drive their BMWs to the synagogue on Saturdays.
I came across an insightful article in Vanity Fair on the Madoff phenomena. They author, Marie Brenner, writes:
Great con men always understand the vulnerabilities of their victims. Madoff's clients trusted the fact that he invested money not only for such important Jewish institutions as Hadassah but also for his closest friends. "If you had asked me, 'Do you want to invest with the guy who makes the money for Yeshiva University and Steven Spielberg's foundation,' would I have signed up in a heartbeat?" a friend of mine said. "You bet I would." Madoff's history as a scrappy, rags-to-riches success struck so deeply into the psyche of many of his Jewish victims that they put aside their common sense for him. No computer access to an account? No chance to ask a question about due diligence? Oh, fine. Someone close to one hedge-fund manager who lost a billion dollars believed that Madoff had reminded his friend of his father. "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations," many of his investors had been told as children. The essence of Madoff's genius was his ability to invoke the romance of grandparents and great-grandparents coming to America and making good. Madoff tapped into his clients' innocence and their grandiosity. A not inconsiderable part of his victim pool came from a group who thought of money with a complex tangle of shame and attraction, as if they believed that understanding money would drag them back into the stereotyping of their immigrant roots.
My Apologies to the Madoff Family and the Wine Industry
I've been out of things since I had a major seizure on November 10th and subsequently discovered I have cancer.
So I'm only first catching up on the Madoff story and find myself astonished that the Wine Industry has not drawn any lessons from two decades of speculation based on Parker/Wine Spectation scoring and notations. We've all allowed ourselves to be sucked into the same Ponzi scheme which has been running this country over the past 20 years and no one seems to want to call a stop to his insanity.
All of a sudden there are stocks of wines that are absolutely unsaleable because they were bought on a Ponzi Promise of points, easy money and quick sales. Madoff was not the exception, he was the norm.
Madoff got customers by appearing influential and important. We sell a lot of wines because they gets big scores somewhere making the purchase of that wine seem legitimate and important to everyone in the wine industry.
What nonsense! Why call them Parker Points, why not just call them Ponzi Points, even if that was not the intent of Mr. Parker. Functionally, that is what this style of wine marketing has become.
Cuve Reagan/Bush/Bush/Madoff
Our country has been trading worthless paper against worthless paper ever since the Ronald Reagan administration. The popular anticipation was that everyone could be rich, everyone could buy a home, everyone could send their kids to insanely expensive colleges if you just had the right piece of paper acquired from the right consultant. All this has collapsed into one horrible mess that threatens great human suffering throughout the world.
It was pure and simple greed which drove this country to tank out. Around this time, the wine industry became converted into yet another commodity based on points, scores and commodity exchange and speculation.
To look around the wine landscape is profoundly depressing -- you see people continuing to sell highly scored labels for millions of dollars. Labels that have no land, no value, no meaning. People who come out of nowhere to make wine that comes out of no place and tastes like nothing continue to ride a trend of money making with the same old worn out points on paper certifying their bottles can be taken directly to the bank.
This is not going to last. At Louis/Dressner, at Kermit Lynch, at Peter Weygandt, at Neal Rosenthal, at Jenny & Franois we offer wines that have never heard of Bernie Madoff. Some of the best regional importer/distributors (Polaner, Bowler, Chadderdon, Beaune Imports, Triage, Farm Wine Imports, to name a few) also specialize in real/natural wines that express history, pride, love, work and a future based on something real. The fruit of the earth.
It is a turning point for the wine trade. Lets bail out of the old style of riding some cynical consumer fad (Where have all the critters gone) based on Parker or some other fad and proudly sell the beauty of that rare intersection of time and place that only the vine can express. Madoff is in jail....let him rot and let us learn the lessons.
Yes, there are only a small amount of wines made this way, but there still remains plenty to sell, drink and enjoy. Lets not confuse all forms of fermented grapes as being in the same family.
It is time to draw some limits!
Our Vignerons Are Unqualified!
I'm fascinated by the Vine Connection people I met at the Polaner Tasting. For some inexplicable reason, they combine Argentine Wine and Sake. Why not call it the Vine and Rice Connection?
I'm totally confused about this company but they seem wildly successful. Great reviews, lots of attractive young people, wine industry excitement and partnering with such innovative wine/sake companies as Youngs Market.
I was just looking through their web site and came across the first producer listed and realized why they have so much success. Their producers are super qualified. No country bumpkins need apply.
Take the Ben Marco brand, for instance. According to the Vine Connection web site:
Owner/viticulturist Pedro Marchevsky has degrees in Agriculture & Enology and Agricultural Engineering, and is a Professor of Irrigation and Drainage at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. He has managed vineyards in Mendoza for almost 30 years as well as his own vineyard in the district of Los Campamentos in eastern Mendoza, and he is widely considered the top viticulturist in Argentina. His philosophy is a simple one gained from experience: using grapes farmed using
"precision viticulture", make wines that are true to their place. His wines express the wonderful, powerful fruit flavors, the ripe tannins, the incredible length and balance that can only come from this one placeMendoza.
As far as I know, we don't work with viticulturists, let alone one who specializes in "precision viticulture." Why do you need a Professor of Irrigation and Drainage (I never knew this was an academic field!} to make wines that are "true to their place."
This is Madoffesque talk.
Madoff: Taking the New York Shtetl for a Ride
Thinking about Bernie Madoff invariably makes you think about the imbeciles who invested with him. In many ways, Madoff brings to the mind the old adage about Adolph Eichman, the banality of evil. As someone who also grew up in Queens, New York, let me assure there were no lack of contenders but very few winners.
Madoff's particular genius seems to have been to trade into the same popular sentiment that makes people imagine they are living out a Shalom Alechem folk story when they drive their BMWs to the synagogue on Saturdays.
I came across an insightful article in Vanity Fair on the Madoff phenomena. They author, Marie Brenner, writes:
Great con men always understand the vulnerabilities of their victims. Madoff's clients trusted the fact that he invested money not only for such important Jewish institutions as Hadassah but also for his closest friends. "If you had asked me, 'Do you want to invest with the guy who makes the money for Yeshiva University and Steven Spielberg's foundation,' would I have signed up in a heartbeat?" a friend of mine said. "You bet I would." Madoff's history as a scrappy, rags-to-riches success struck so deeply into the psyche of many of his Jewish victims that they put aside their common sense for him. No computer access to an account? No chance to ask a question about due diligence? Oh, fine. Someone close to one hedge-fund manager who lost a billion dollars believed that Madoff had reminded his friend of his father. "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations," many of his investors had been told as children. The essence of Madoff's genius was his ability to invoke the romance of grandparents and great-grandparents coming to America and making good. Madoff tapped into his clients' innocence and their grandiosity. A not inconsiderable part of his victim pool came from a group who thought of money with a complex tangle of shame and attraction, as if they believed that understanding money would drag them back into the stereotyping of their immigrant roots.
