Mark Criden
Mark Criden
Joe was a giant. This is a terrible loss. Condolences to those who mourn him.
Rest well, Joe Dressner
- Thread starter Mr. Doghead
- Start date
Vincent Fritzsche
Vincent Fritzsche
Probably fitting I've been offline all day. Who wants to hear this news.
We knew this was coming. We know he'd be pissed at people getting weepy. God help anyone praying for him.
I just can't help thinking how important he was, how important he remains to my work and love of wine. And I'm glad I told him before it was too late.
We knew this was coming. We know he'd be pissed at people getting weepy. God help anyone praying for him.
I just can't help thinking how important he was, how important he remains to my work and love of wine. And I'm glad I told him before it was too late.
Christian Miller (CMM)
Christian Miller
RIP, I'll certainly never forget you. My best wishes to Denyse and the rest of the family.
CMM
CMM
Mr. Doghead
Robert Callahan
About getting weepy, Joe was a bundle of contradictions. He was almost obnoxiously against - well, at some points not "almost" - displays of sentiment in some connections, as he was with his illness. But he was a deeply sentimental character himself and one moved by displays of sentiment and tenderness toward others.
Let me tell you about his reaction to his diagnosis, three years ago, as it manifested itself in relation to his friends and relatives, and while he was as yet in the grip of the fear that he would die imminently so soon after his father and leave his family and many others in the lurch. His approach was in the first instance to protect his wife and kids from as much as he could and to make practical arrangements as quickly as he could. That was the cocooning, mother-bear Joe. But he took a deeply pessimistic and self-indulgent hard line with everyone else, at the surface. He quickly formed a set of rules about what people should and should not say about the illness, he did not want to have to endure the emotions others might have, and he referred close friends and relatives to a blog post when they expressed curious concern. And some of his relatives came in for serious and public - and richly deserved - abuse.
At the same time, he patiently interviewed a long stream of friends who came to see him at his office. When I heard the news, Carolyn and I came to New York as quickly as we could. Joe had already seen some locals at the office and had developed a routine of taking people to his "conference room" in the stairwell of the building. This allowed his officemates to avoid the repetitious explanations and emotional reactions and let them get on with work. So once we had our hugs and greetings with Kevin and Denyse and Sheila, out we went to the stairwell.
Joe gave us his rigid, schematic summary of his coming doom, referred me to his blog post for detail, as he had on the phone, he deflected any effort to engage on a normal level, and he noted that while I suffered with years of degradation and mystery, he at least had certainty that he would not linger and drain his family of resources. Hearing Joe go on in this mechanical and borderline narcissistic way didn't surprise me, since we had already had the awful phone call, but to get this news this way, from Joe, my comrade, had me feeling I was talking to one of his theoretical constructs rather than to the person I knew.
I squirted tears, a lot of them, at first slowly, about the time he referred to his blog post to answer a question he did not consider there, and then in torrents as he chided me for making his news into something about me rather than him by crying. I asked, when the subject of his doctors came up, what the next step was in dealing with the cancer. He said "there is no next step", and I said as gently as I could that I understood, but that the doctor didn't just turn him away to go die, there must be at least some palliative things they had in mind.
He just repeated himself, quivering, suggesting that I thought I knew better than his doctors how to proceed. Game over. I just said, through my snot, I've been sick a long time, I'm weak and broken down, I know how these things work, I have watched others die, and I care. I ask because I care, I came here sick myself because I care, I ask because you mean so much to me, certainly not because I want to match wits and to untangle your latest dogma ("what's wrong with dogma?"), but to connect with the person I love.
Major sentiment. Within a minute or so we were joking about our illnesses and communicating as normally as could be expected, and I stopped crying. Joe wound up living three more often beautiful years, at times seeming, but for a bum leg that had been the prime clue as to the presence of his tumor, well recovered.
Joe was an amazingly lucky man who got screwed on the longevity front. But he wasn't easily categorized on very many issues.
Sorry for rambling a bit, but I'm very tired.
Oh, and it meant a great deal to Joe that I reconnect with my community online, particularly in the form we now reconvene here on the new site. It was one of his projects to protect the people close to him. He knew very well I had tumbled into isolation and he knew I suffered from that condition and he nudged me repeatedly to get back online, to the point that he typed in my board user information and password to get me started while we were on the phone.
Well, all those years ago it was me who prodded him to get out of the house to meet his winegeek fan base. Small as it was back then. I brought him to offlines and people didn't know the wines. But that changed, didn't it?
So I thought it was appropriate for me to come out early, here, with this horrid development. Thank you all for being there. I value you patients more deeply than I can say, and I for one do not mind the sentimentality involved in human contact.
Let me tell you about his reaction to his diagnosis, three years ago, as it manifested itself in relation to his friends and relatives, and while he was as yet in the grip of the fear that he would die imminently so soon after his father and leave his family and many others in the lurch. His approach was in the first instance to protect his wife and kids from as much as he could and to make practical arrangements as quickly as he could. That was the cocooning, mother-bear Joe. But he took a deeply pessimistic and self-indulgent hard line with everyone else, at the surface. He quickly formed a set of rules about what people should and should not say about the illness, he did not want to have to endure the emotions others might have, and he referred close friends and relatives to a blog post when they expressed curious concern. And some of his relatives came in for serious and public - and richly deserved - abuse.
At the same time, he patiently interviewed a long stream of friends who came to see him at his office. When I heard the news, Carolyn and I came to New York as quickly as we could. Joe had already seen some locals at the office and had developed a routine of taking people to his "conference room" in the stairwell of the building. This allowed his officemates to avoid the repetitious explanations and emotional reactions and let them get on with work. So once we had our hugs and greetings with Kevin and Denyse and Sheila, out we went to the stairwell.
Joe gave us his rigid, schematic summary of his coming doom, referred me to his blog post for detail, as he had on the phone, he deflected any effort to engage on a normal level, and he noted that while I suffered with years of degradation and mystery, he at least had certainty that he would not linger and drain his family of resources. Hearing Joe go on in this mechanical and borderline narcissistic way didn't surprise me, since we had already had the awful phone call, but to get this news this way, from Joe, my comrade, had me feeling I was talking to one of his theoretical constructs rather than to the person I knew.
I squirted tears, a lot of them, at first slowly, about the time he referred to his blog post to answer a question he did not consider there, and then in torrents as he chided me for making his news into something about me rather than him by crying. I asked, when the subject of his doctors came up, what the next step was in dealing with the cancer. He said "there is no next step", and I said as gently as I could that I understood, but that the doctor didn't just turn him away to go die, there must be at least some palliative things they had in mind.
He just repeated himself, quivering, suggesting that I thought I knew better than his doctors how to proceed. Game over. I just said, through my snot, I've been sick a long time, I'm weak and broken down, I know how these things work, I have watched others die, and I care. I ask because I care, I came here sick myself because I care, I ask because you mean so much to me, certainly not because I want to match wits and to untangle your latest dogma ("what's wrong with dogma?"), but to connect with the person I love.
Major sentiment. Within a minute or so we were joking about our illnesses and communicating as normally as could be expected, and I stopped crying. Joe wound up living three more often beautiful years, at times seeming, but for a bum leg that had been the prime clue as to the presence of his tumor, well recovered.
Joe was an amazingly lucky man who got screwed on the longevity front. But he wasn't easily categorized on very many issues.
Sorry for rambling a bit, but I'm very tired.
Oh, and it meant a great deal to Joe that I reconnect with my community online, particularly in the form we now reconvene here on the new site. It was one of his projects to protect the people close to him. He knew very well I had tumbled into isolation and he knew I suffered from that condition and he nudged me repeatedly to get back online, to the point that he typed in my board user information and password to get me started while we were on the phone.
Well, all those years ago it was me who prodded him to get out of the house to meet his winegeek fan base. Small as it was back then. I brought him to offlines and people didn't know the wines. But that changed, didn't it?
So I thought it was appropriate for me to come out early, here, with this horrid development. Thank you all for being there. I value you patients more deeply than I can say, and I for one do not mind the sentimentality involved in human contact.
Karen Goetz
Karen Goetz
Thank you, Robert.
Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
+1
U
Unknown
Guest
After I once liquid catered a party with four cases of Pepiere and five cases of L'Ancien, Joe would introduce me to people as the "guy who took half of our New York allocation". For about two years.
Karin Campbell
Karin Campbell
Thanks Mr Doghead.
I didn't know Joe very well, seeing him at tastings and occasionally bumping into him on the street but you could see that he was the man you describe. He and Denyse opened up to me wine that is alive, that jumps inside you. It was a revelation. I will always be so grateful for his and Denyse's generosity.
I didn't know Joe very well, seeing him at tastings and occasionally bumping into him on the street but you could see that he was the man you describe. He and Denyse opened up to me wine that is alive, that jumps inside you. It was a revelation. I will always be so grateful for his and Denyse's generosity.
Mr. Doghead
Robert Callahan
I always used to say to people Joe and his family are beautiful people - particularly when he had rubbed someone who did not know him the wrong way. With the greatest beauty comes complexity. Sometimes our imperfections are infuriating, to others and to ourselves, but when we're patient enough with each other we sometimes find our shortcomings are just what they are and not signs of monstrosity and that the things that best characterize us aren't the ones that bite the hardest or bark the loudest or or look the best or sound the worst. With Joe, the tenderness and devotion, loyalty and charity, commitment to do good work, illiness and absurdity, and kindness and irony are some of the things his wife and his kids and his dogs and his dogheads and Kevins and Connells and Lillies and Kanes and Texiers and SFJoes and on and on saw and from which we benefited.
Blah blah blah.
Joe stayed after me longest when I went down into illness and electronic assault, never giving up on me, calling to find out about me long after everyone else assumed I didn't want to hear or had died. That persistence and spirit meant and mean everything to me. The wine stuff is entirely secondary.
Blah blah blah.
Joe stayed after me longest when I went down into illness and electronic assault, never giving up on me, calling to find out about me long after everyone else assumed I didn't want to hear or had died. That persistence and spirit meant and mean everything to me. The wine stuff is entirely secondary.
Luis Gutierrez
Luis Gutierrez
I'm very sad to hear the news. I'm not much around here these days, but I met Joe, Robert and some of the old timers, certainly online, when I really started in wine at the WLDG. I met Joe at Vinexpo one year, and went to a couple of tastings with him, and we drank some Cornalin. I have to say that you guys made the world a little bit better. And it's a big deal for me.
Eden Mylunsch
Eden Mylunsch
I first time I met Joe was at a Wine therapy jeebus in NY sometime back toward the end of the last century. I’d brought along a bottle of Donnhoff auction Auslese that sent Joe reeling out into the street, yelping about sulfur or something. I opined that maybe he was taking the natural wine thing a little too far but was assured by Coad and Jay that the natural wine movement was still at least half-a-decade away but that he was just a sensitive guy and that he should probably have known better than to even try the stuff (IIRC, Kane was later sent reeling out into the street by the mere thought of the Aussie wine I brought, but he’s a sensitive guy too I suppose). Joe didn’t blame me for bringing the Donnhoff and I didn’t take it personally (it’s not like I made the wine or anything), and we continued to correspond via the interweb wine boards and I’d see him when the LDM circus passed through town.
Quixotic and prickly though he may have been, knowing Joe inspired me “to walk it like I talk it”, “give suckers a more-than-even break”, “lead by example”, not to mention “when in doubt, spit it out”. He may not have been the first guy espousing the concept that a specific wine should come from a specific piece of ground or that a vigneron should be nothing more than a minimalist conduit to translate the specificity of place from the vineyard to the glass, but he certainly foist upon the world an inspired cadre of evangelical wine-terroirists (not to mention forcing some old-dog wine biz schnooks to ponder some new tricks). Thanks to Joe, the world now a safer place for hipster wine bars and the beverages sold therein.
My condolences to Denyse, Jules, Alyce, Kevin and the rest of the extended family (except maybe those he detailed in various blog posts who he might not want me to condole).
-Eden (opening a 2006 Dard et Ribo Crozes-Hermitage this evening in celebration of Joe)(and also because it’ll go good with the meat on the grill)
Quixotic and prickly though he may have been, knowing Joe inspired me “to walk it like I talk it”, “give suckers a more-than-even break”, “lead by example”, not to mention “when in doubt, spit it out”. He may not have been the first guy espousing the concept that a specific wine should come from a specific piece of ground or that a vigneron should be nothing more than a minimalist conduit to translate the specificity of place from the vineyard to the glass, but he certainly foist upon the world an inspired cadre of evangelical wine-terroirists (not to mention forcing some old-dog wine biz schnooks to ponder some new tricks). Thanks to Joe, the world now a safer place for hipster wine bars and the beverages sold therein.
My condolences to Denyse, Jules, Alyce, Kevin and the rest of the extended family (except maybe those he detailed in various blog posts who he might not want me to condole).
-Eden (opening a 2006 Dard et Ribo Crozes-Hermitage this evening in celebration of Joe)(and also because it’ll go good with the meat on the grill)
Joel Stewart
Joel Stewart
As far as I know, I never saw a wine in Japan with an LD label, but it was thru this bored, and thru Joe's posts here and on the website that a whole new world of handcrafted, food friendly, unique and memorable wines have crossed my palate. Not having ever met him, I nonetheless got the sense that he himself had both found (and shared) his passion with as many people as possible. God bless him (or whomever he prayed to.) He was not one to suffer fools, so maybe it's better we never met, but I'll never underestimate the great wines he brought to my attention....nor will I forget his humor while looking death in the face. Long live the wines and the winemakers he discovered for the world at large. Thanks and bravo, Joe. Bravo.
I post this with a little hesitation, because I just met Joe in passing a few times while he was visiting Seattle. I am really sorry to those of you who knew him well, and for all of us as a community, and to his family.
A couple of memories came to mind of those encounters.
At one tasting I was getting a little over enthusiastic with my photo taking and I took a photo of Joe. He absolutely freaked out, and I was really worried I had offended him. He then told me that he believed when his photo was taken it took a small part of his soul away. At the time, I thought I had completely offended him, and while I'm not completely sure now, I'm pretty sure he was pulling my leg.
I once was at a tasting at a local shop and was enjoying some 05 Briords from a magnum poured by Joe, and a guy walked in off the street. Of course, he was in for it. The guy just asked for some red and Joe took the guy very seriously, saying, "sir, I'm conducting a tasting, and if you want the wine, you'll taste it in the order I pour it". The was a back and forth for several volleys resulting in the gentleman scurrying quite quickly from the shop.
It's a shame, because he was in the hands of the master.
A couple of memories came to mind of those encounters.
At one tasting I was getting a little over enthusiastic with my photo taking and I took a photo of Joe. He absolutely freaked out, and I was really worried I had offended him. He then told me that he believed when his photo was taken it took a small part of his soul away. At the time, I thought I had completely offended him, and while I'm not completely sure now, I'm pretty sure he was pulling my leg.
I once was at a tasting at a local shop and was enjoying some 05 Briords from a magnum poured by Joe, and a guy walked in off the street. Of course, he was in for it. The guy just asked for some red and Joe took the guy very seriously, saying, "sir, I'm conducting a tasting, and if you want the wine, you'll taste it in the order I pour it". The was a back and forth for several volleys resulting in the gentleman scurrying quite quickly from the shop.
It's a shame, because he was in the hands of the master.