Latest Marcassin mailer
- Thread starter Jay Miller
- Start date
Keith Levenberg
Keith Levenberg
1. Boy, it wouldn't be a Parker missive without a non-sequitur praise of Manfred Krankl, would it?
2. Otherwise, he starts out sounding reasonable. He seems to get the fact that the Marcassin folks committed a foot-in-mouth and if he wants to mitigate that by pointing out that they come from a highly knowledgeable position, well, nobody can argue with that.
3. He is of course wrong when he says that the Burgundians have refused to change "certain aspects of Burgundy's pruning, hedging, and trellising systems" "for several hundred years." They changed these things when they adopted Guyot pruning in the 19th century and when they were forced to switch from provignage to row planting after phylloxera.
4. He is quite right that DRC has an unfortunate amount of misses relative to its hits. The winemaking there is cutting edge; risks are taken with respect to harvest times and stem inclusion. When it works out it is transcendental, but it doesn't always. I suppose the question is whether you are going to advocate they do something differently. I think it's rather hard to taste their successes and come to that conclusion.
5. If I want to decide which of two vineyards is a better place to grow pinot noir, I will decide that by tasting the wines, not by looking at the berries and leaves a few weeks before harvest. (FB of course nails it when he points out that a vineyard producing table grapes will always look healthier than a vineyard designed for marginal ripening.) It never ceases to amaze me when these New World supremacists set forth these highly technical rationalizations of why their vineyards are superior but can't offer any answer to the question, "OK, if that's true, then why do your wines suck so much?"
2. Otherwise, he starts out sounding reasonable. He seems to get the fact that the Marcassin folks committed a foot-in-mouth and if he wants to mitigate that by pointing out that they come from a highly knowledgeable position, well, nobody can argue with that.
3. He is of course wrong when he says that the Burgundians have refused to change "certain aspects of Burgundy's pruning, hedging, and trellising systems" "for several hundred years." They changed these things when they adopted Guyot pruning in the 19th century and when they were forced to switch from provignage to row planting after phylloxera.
4. He is quite right that DRC has an unfortunate amount of misses relative to its hits. The winemaking there is cutting edge; risks are taken with respect to harvest times and stem inclusion. When it works out it is transcendental, but it doesn't always. I suppose the question is whether you are going to advocate they do something differently. I think it's rather hard to taste their successes and come to that conclusion.
5. If I want to decide which of two vineyards is a better place to grow pinot noir, I will decide that by tasting the wines, not by looking at the berries and leaves a few weeks before harvest. (FB of course nails it when he points out that a vineyard producing table grapes will always look healthier than a vineyard designed for marginal ripening.) It never ceases to amaze me when these New World supremacists set forth these highly technical rationalizations of why their vineyards are superior but can't offer any answer to the question, "OK, if that's true, then why do your wines suck so much?"
Florida Jim
Florida Jim
So how is not deciding for yourself working out?
Best, Jim
Jay Miller
Jay Miller
And if i was awake when I was reading it I'm sure it would have been as obvious as it is now. If only there were some way to know for certain when someone was joking, perhaps a symbol of some sort. Alas, no such thing exists.
U
Unknown
Guest
as rahsaan points out, when i get too carried away with my own decidin', i end up saying and doing things that are plain fucking wrong, even in irony. after twenty odd years of watching the mindless pigfuckers shilling their wine decisiveness to the newbs, i have come to realize that this attitude will forever preclude fatboy's quarterly hooch review and almanac from reaping the huge crop of zlotys that i had hoped to pull in from it.
the free drc samples and the odd stuffed envelope from the heirs of manfred krankl are a compensation of sorts, and hey, there are far worse fates. so, by and large i've resigned myself to it. but every now and then it helps to vent my spleen here on what-the-fuck-this-place-is-supposed-to-be-called-now-anyway; it's therapeutic, so thanks for asking.
fb.
Lou Kessler
Lou Kessler
Where, and how much will it cost me to sign up for the Hooch Review? Being ITB I have to read everything that influences the fine wine market.
Ian Fitzsimmons
Ian Fitzsimmons
No doubt, but the thought that I'd pissed off Jay made me panic.
I thought of this comment today reading the section in Carl Zimmerman's Microcosm on creationism/intelligent design. The C/ID advocates surround an ultimately substanceless argument with a lot of sophisticated, sciencey vocabulary that gives it a fake-authoritative technical gloss. It seems like the folks who can explain a subject in the simplest terms are those who understand it best.
Without data, though, I guess - paraphrasing Andreas Schleicher - she is just another person with an opinion.
Do note that "photohormones" is a misquote, and that "phytohormones" are very well established in mainstream plant biology. F'rinstance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_hormone
Sharon Bowman
Sharon Bowman
Who told you that?
Ian Fitzsimmons
Ian Fitzsimmons
Yep, checked this out after you mentioned it earlier in the thread. Thanks for your ceaseless vigilance, comrade.
So I guess it's wrong, strictly speaking, to draw a parallel between her writing and "sophisticated, sciencey vocabulary," but the idea of dressing up unclear points as sciency ones was similar enough to remind me of the Nathan's comment here.
Mr. Doghead
Robert Callahan
Some things never change. How do they fit through their doorways?
U
Unknown
Guest
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
you know times are tough when someone thinks to point the goat sign at the sky. who knew it would actually work.
fb.
you know times are tough when someone thinks to point the goat sign at the sky. who knew it would actually work.
fb.
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
My experience is that the longer someone is tenured, the funnier he or she (but especially he) is. If you don't find someone who has been tenured for longer than ten years so funny that you can't catch your breath, there is indeed no hope for your sense of humor.
The same, I find, is true of those who manage to stay teaching in the University system for more than ten years on a non-tenure track position, by the way.
Mr. Doghead
Robert Callahan
Times be tough, to be sure. My discontente indeed gave me the sense I could use a little of the reliable banter of the old therapy chain gang. The caprine glare from this thread I could hardly ignore. Even if the gang's chain would not be the subject.
No one reading the present thread should fail to note the testes apparent in the parent pdf-link subtext. It seems the division of labor between the signatories at this winery remains the same as in the old days. One finds Johnboy flogging the general plutocracy with performance-onan ad copy while his meal ticket whips up support for what they love from the local members of the target class by doing "consulting winemaking", which, to hear say, involves no hosing or pumping save the metaphorical kind.
While the gooey insights of the note hold no interest they intend to send (is it at all helpful to read that "the Burgundians" screw up their vines with over-row tractors, butchering their leaves at all, while quoting some plutodolt to the effect that they have been obstinately doing so for hundreds of years without reflection or self-examination, with false drivel about comparative vineyard practice the quoted guy still frames in terms I set for him almost twenty years ago and still gets them wrong? And is the idea that DRC could do better and be more consistent somehow helpful, if patently and dumbly correct? When their customers, like the flogger's own, deserve no better and should be getting docked in quality for wasting so much money on wine that could be put to far more honorable purposes), this mind behind looks most distracting for the failure of years of lottery-level good fortune to soothe the cauldron of unconscious, raging ego once again set to text for a pinot offer sheet.
Given what has happened to wine and the world since I first met these people, long before I heard anyone refer to one of them as the "best" winemaker, I can't help but to see the sort of self-absorption on parade in this document and the plea for yet more money quick to support more of the same can serve as a barred window into the ways of living heavily on the world that suck the life from everything and everyone outside a minute yet weighty and oblivious group. To overstock the lavish lifestyle the still-angry dude rides like a tick, the poor go hungry, the sick go untreated, the old get eaten, and emasculated governments quiver with toadies.
All the same, it's soothing to note your disgust, blubberoid, runs afoul of towels notwithstanding. If not Berkeley, where has the chub landed for the near future?
SteveTimko
Steve Timko
It's tough for all the winemakers out there, I think, except for those favored by Asians with deep pockets and empty cellars. I wonder if Marcassin is having problems selling its wine so it has to resort to this kind of over-the-top rhetoric.
Have they done this before?
Could they be targeting Asians with this kind of language?
Have they done this before?
Could they be targeting Asians with this kind of language?
Steve Edmunds
Steve Edmunds
I am so much reminded of the tea party in Alice in Wonderland!