Newsletter Archives > Wine Industry / Wine Marketing

SATYRICON, or,

Amuse Bush, to Start?

By Harry Peterson-Nedry

The public media and trade presses have been awash in recent wine-related breakthroughs about which you might be interested, since they promise to change the wine industry radically over the next decade. We’ve recapped the tastiest bits of news below, and, as in all things at Chehalem, there is a nugget of truth or principle imbedded here within a hard-surfaced rant or cotton-candy billow of frivolity. Please Note: Read at your own risk—we know we may not have gotten everything quite right!

FOOD-AND-WINE PAIRING BREAKTHROUGH!

Representatives of this newsletter, dressed as dental hygienists in marshmallow shoes and lift-and-separate undergarments (they aren’t as comfortable as females let on, by the way), have successfully counted and characterized taste organelles in the mouth of taster-savant Robert Parker in a pre-dawn cellar raid. The feat was tantamount to finding another prime number or measuring the gravitational deflection of light as it passes by the sun to prove the physicality of the photon. In other words, it was, like, cool.

The Tasting Palate: As seen in this news-breaking photo of the taster-savant’s palate—his taste organelles just bristling in their many forms—it’s obvious why he has such refined taste and we are dumb as stumps. But, he has to live with all those road-map arrows and dots on his tongue, we don’t.
(© Andre Johnson Photography)

Literally bristling with taste buds, gifted tasters like Parker taste vividly in all five taste dimensions: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and unagi. Through careful study of the mother lode of taste that is his palate, it was determined that the fifth dimension had earlier been misidentified, a little like the planetary gaffe that Pluto became. Those less skilled than us understandably confused umami (pronounced yo-mama in the South where I grew up), a Japanese concept that permits MSG and soy sauce to be included in the USDA food pyramid in a cosmically unified and balanced way (a little like a food feng shui), with unagi, fresh water eel. It all seems so reasonable now that unagi has taken its rightful place in defining what perfect taste is all about. Follow me to Fuji’s Sushi, and you’ll see that all I order has unagi: python, caterpillar, unagi nigiri, and probably even miso soup—it is the Japanese bacon! Once you’ve found and reached peace with your personal unagi, perfect matches are easy, everything beginning to taste a little like chicken, resonating with Chardonnay or with Merlot. Follow your unagi, and it will set you free, or maybe that will be caused by the sausage you found in the back of the refrigerator.

Novel Sensory Regions in the Human Body Discovered

A PAULING SEXUAL FINDING: Funded by a consortium that includes Consolation Brands, the American Chemical Society, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate in association with Rupert Murdoch, Chehalem (an Oregon winery), Dow Chemical, and Hustler magazine, research from the California Linus Pauling Vitamin Si Institute has identified a zone adjacent to salivary glands in 90% of humans that reacts to specific trigger compounds and stimulates orgasm-like autonomic responses. The response compounds that volatilize upon tasting include certain flavonoids found only in red wine varieties such as Pinot Noir and Syrah grown in cool climates.

Although counterintuitive that cool climates can induce hot responses, some theoretical researchers from Germany and Ontario have deduced that it is either an unexplained uber-coolness of Pinot Noir at work or global climate change inverting world orders to where Republicans are protecting the rights of immigrant farm workers and Democrats are balancing budgets and protecting family values. Spin-off research is focusing on scratch-and-sniff technologies as a delivery mechanism for concentrated versions called Pinot Noir-Noir. Trials are planned for the spring of 2009 in both the Wine Advocate and Hustler.

The U.S. government has all trials under intense scrutiny, including those involving tertiary derivatives called Pinot Noir-Noir-Noirs, which are being investigated for intelligence uses in Washington D.C.–area laboratories and escort services. Applications are rumored to include interrogation and photographic aids for CIA prisons like Abu Ghraib, foreign service cocktail kits for the Middle East, and executive branch indoctrination therapies to humanize inevitably dull U.S. vice presidents. Former President Bill Clinton reputedly was subjected unknowingly to some of the earliest trials of Noir-3, but the trial response range was not great enough to show statistically significant differences over his elevated background libidinous levels.

Short News Items from the Trade Pubs

KUDOS TO THE OREGON WINE INDUSTRY for bringing worldwide reputation, long-awaited scads of tourists, and a blossoming of the tax base! And in thanks, how about additional onerous taxes by counties in successful areas of the state to pay for extra highway patrols for all the drunks and to maintain roadways from all the wear and tear tourists inflict? Such taxes were proposed in the Oregon State Legislature this year by wine-country senators who take little care in covering their prohibitionist leanings, but who have no problem selling personal property at all-time record-high prices.

Or, how about county commissioners denouncing charities in the heart of wine country for accepting wine, and prohibiting them from receiving public funds if they run any auctions that involve donated wine products? These same officials permit wineries donating money to charities (and their campaigns), but suggest not asking how the wineries get it. (Although funny to imagine, this is true and so not very funny. Just funny-strange. Funny-ironic and funny-I-feel-like-a-criminal.)

Grape Bonsai
Small vines, tiny vineyards, and miniscule AVAs are a possibility now, with big bucks a possible result. Small yields are of course another result. But, like bonsai, this is a hobby for many anyway. (Kenny Lam and Bay Island Bonsai)

EVEN SHORTER NEWS ITEM: Small grape plants developed by bonsai consultants to a group of Oregon wineries have been introduced to a secret vineyard site in what vintners hope will be designated the smallest AVA in the United States. The plants were designed to take bona fide small-lot ego wines a step further. Counting on microscarcity driving the commercial viability of the project, vintners told reporters they plan to aggressively pursue the Mini-Cooper, Japanese, and dollhouse-crafting markets, using miniature bottles and corks. They have approached vendors to supply temperature-controlled wine cabinets for desk drawers. And, of course, they need tiny corkscrews. Not a big wine, but refined!

Discussions continue with the U.S. Treasury's TTB seeking a novel "mobile AVA" status permitting movement of vines regularly to follow good weather, wine tourists, and NASCAR races.

Grape Cloning Offers Potential for On-Vine Winemaking

FROM GRAPE PLANT TO WINE PLANT: Australian biotech researchers have simultaneously successfully integrated cloning and nanomachine technologies to create what ostensibly is winemaking in situ, or full-complement red wine production ON the vine. Grape vines have been modified genetically to stimulate production of a growth hormone at ripenesses of 27 brix, which then activates heretofore-passive yeast blooms on grape berry surfaces. The result is a spontaneous fermentation on-vine, timed to begin at a specified level of overripeness.

AND BARREL ANYONE? In addition, genetic sites have been identified on grapevine DNA that are responsible for flavor and aroma compound precursors resembling barrel vanillins and other spices, as well as lactic notes found after secondary fermentation. Again, not only can they be turned on and off in digital fashion, but they can be adjusted to give varying degrees of artificial flavoring. Algorithms have been programmed, controlling both parameters in concert and allowing an unnaturally strong joint extraction to customize wine sizes. Parker constants have been calculated for ready correlation of product to price points and resultant near 100-point quality levels. In an attempt to logically extend these breakthroughs, nanomechanical designers at Japan’s Ishikawajima Heavy Industries have in collaboration devised and successfully transplanted machines only two microns in size into grape clusters that clean the resulting fermented product, yielding an acceptable but slightly turbid wine for bottling. The bot mites have been given the name Zamboni by Canadian members of the research team. Beer and organ music accelerated cleanup in early trials. This suggests that the Industrial Revelation is not over yet.

RUSTICA CELLARS STRIVES FOR AUTHENTICITY

A new communal Oregon winery’s founding principle is veneration of the natural, emulating the way it used to be done: Field blends of intermixed grape varieties (reds and whites) make up Rustica Cellars’ vineyards. Pigeage au naturel is their preferred method of punchdown for red wine ferments. Fermentations are exclusively native with American Indian shamans officiating at the beginning of ferments and rabbis conferring the Jewish tradition on special bottlings known as "Indian Kosher," designed to be drunk with Hebrew National franks. Olive oil and paraffined rag closures have been reinstituted as wine bottle seals. Laissez-faire viticulture is practiced; communal maharishi, family member, and pharmacist T. M. Goldberg was quoted as saying "biodynamic protocols are too technical and rational, dude," proceeding to describe all the things commune members (their neighbors call them communists for short) don’t do to their vines.

Rustica is seeking LEEDS certification for its teepee winery building. The structure's features include passionate heating and cooling linked to members' biorhythms, with CO2 and hookah recycling to a mini vineyard greenhouse; a burro-powered water pumping wheel; and a child-size carbon footprint with burro compost between the toes. Rustica receives only bicyclists and hikers at their tasting room, with trade sales utilizing a one-tier local system and wine deliveries limited to Portland and Salem vegan and organic restaurants. Deliveries are made with a mule-drawn wagon during cool times of the year, so long as Country Faire isn't happening in Eugene.

SCREWCAP UPDATE

Ohmigod, apocalyptic warnings just in from the cork industry suggest that screwcaps, not winemakers, are responsible for "reduced" wines; that there is a dangerously short supply of helixes in natural reserves, caused by their use in making the curvy thingy in the screwcap; and that data now correlates screwcap use to low Parker scores and even to body counts in the Iraq war. Closure is difficult in many arenas.

NEW RIEDEL GLASS

George Riedel has just announced a new "Scheisse" glass to go with its modern "O"-shape family of glassware. The glass was created to complement wines with musty TCA-infected natural corks and wines from regions known for their barnyard characteristics, i.e., black humus earth, fecal wafts, Brett Band-Aid, and sweaty saddle heaviness (as if one were thrown from a horse in less than ideal paddock situations). The design is flat and cow-pie shaped, with the bowl lip turned in on itself to compound aromatic pungency, to make tasting difficult, and to facilitate its use as a petri dish for plating the infections for identification.

SPACE SHUTTLE FLIGHTS TO FINALLY PERMIT WINE

Sommelier in orbit.
Shuttle sommelier is now a reality, as NASA permits wine in orbit. And it looks like this one has selected well. Can we anticipate holiday excursions, with open bay doors, lawn chairs, and Tim McGraw booming on the sound system? (©IStockPhoto.com/
GEORGETHEFOURTH)

Reversing previous policy, NASA administrators have agreed to permit alcoholic beverages such as wine on board space-shuttle flights beginning in 2008. The policy previously attempted to reflect the current administration’s conviction that drinking wine is not Christlike and therefore sinful, whether on Earth or in orbit. Restrictions were relaxed when advisors convinced them to read forward in the Bible to where Jesus drank wine and actually made and distributed it himself to multitudes of people. W was enthusiastic, saying: "This reading thing—we call this thing with books reading—is neat since it uses the same words we talk!" There was no change to
policy prohibiting loaves and fishes in space, as fish fries and shrimperoos compromise orbital hygiene.

Federal Research Budgets Increased for Wine-Delivery Systems

Defense and space program budgets have been modified at the request of administration officials to focus increased attention on wine-delivery systems for wartime and space travel applications, defense department spokespeople disclosed Tuesday. Key among technologies designated for accelerated work within the next six months is scratch-and-sniff, an established sensory strategy used in publishing and perfume marketing in smelly fashion magazines, that will be improved to quickly dissolve in dilute alcohol solutions, producing a drink not unlike a glass of Keno Jackson Chardonnay or a cute cartoon animal Aussie Shiraz, one being a white and the other a red wine (I think).

__________________________________________________________

EDITOR'S NOTE

Chicken.

Here’s a chicken, in case you haven’t had frog legs or rattlesnake or fresh water eel recently. Bright? No. But it reminds me of the thousands I grew up with—maybe that’s the joke. Looks a little like Aunt Edna. (©IStockPhoto.com/ KICKERS)

CRITICS CRY FOWL: Chicken jokes amuse some people, some people aren’t amused. It’s not clear what this means, but wine critics are in here somewhere. And they aren’t going to have a job anymore with wine becoming so easily manipulated and most of it tasting and looking the same, whether it’s Cabernet, Grenache, Pinot Noir, or Riesling. If all scales are calibrated to the same wine line and type, or what we here call linotype, and production efficiency makes them all Two-Buck-Upchuck price levels, then what’s a wine critic to be critical of? Maybe doping scandals in baseball or Washington D.C.–influence peddling? Or maybe Chehalem newsletters? Or where on the unagi scale certain bar foods fall, like how much so-called buffalo wings taste like chicken, not cloven-hoofed beasts?

To continue...
Annoyances, or It's Not Supposed to Be That Way