• Drink cheap wine: Slate, which just fired its wine writer, has an odd piece claiming that most wine is overpriced, criticizing Slate for recommending expensive wine, and advocating that we drink wine that costs less than $10 a bottle. Sound familiar? The post is intriguing to say the least, and the comments are so harsh that you'd have thought that Brian Palmer, who wrote it, is telling Americans to run down the street naked. I don't say it's odd because Palmer likes cheap wine; after all, the Wine Curmudgeon is perhaps the foremost enthusiast for cheap wine in the country. Or that he argues that one reason why European wine consumption is so much higher than ours is that prices are so much lower there. Rather, it's the dig that the article takes at Slate, and, by implicaton, departed wine columnist Mike Steinberger. Are some axes being ground?
• Delivering wine by mail: Anyone who doubts that the Congress no longer has a grasp on reality need look no further than this -- a proposal to let the U.S. Postal Service deliver wine. Currently, the postal service is forbidden to handle booze, but the usual group of bi-partisan senators wants to change that as a way to boost revenue for the cash-strapped agency. What their proposal doesn't take into account is HR 1161, the anti-shipping bill that aims to eliminate the very shipping that this bill wants to allow. If I had the stomach for it, I'd look and see which of this bill's sponsors has also spoken favorably about HR 1161. But I don't have the stomach for it, because I'm afraid of what I would find.
• TV wine programs: Kris Chislett at BlogYourWine offers some clear-eyed analysis about why wine makes for a lousy TV show, noting that the programs are usually too long and the format is usually as visually dull as reading a wine magazine. This is something that I have always wondered about; somehow, programs on HGTV about people buying homes are a hit, but wine shows, to quote Chislett, "put me to sleep faster than 4 glasses of Australian Shiraz….laced with horse tranquilizers." He thinks one failing is a lack of personality, which may be true. On the other hand, even someone with a TV persona would have a difficult time making a Wine Magazine-style discussion -- "Doesn't this wine have cheery notes of leather?" -- worthwhile.
Wine is not visible, other than the color, so that's it for TV . Houses, gardens, before and after shots of kitchens, cooking, all have visual appeal. Let's face it, the real value in wine is drinking it.
Posted by: bburnsey | November 09, 2011 at 12:26 AM