28 January 2023
The recently-random bits.
The greatest threat for our time (at least in wine) has arrived. Yes, many would-be scribes are now very worried that AI chat bots that can generate decent text. Why would this be worrying? For the simple reason that a great wealth of wine writing is utter dreck and no one is going to notice when the change up happens.
"Where's the bread?" was the question on every restaurant diner's mind on January 5th in Portage, Wisconsin. As it turned out, local firefighters were allegedly using it to sop up a butter factory fire with supposedly excellent results and both the 2021 Chablis as well as the Chenins of Loire's Central Vineyards paired well.
We English speakers love adopting French words to sound fancy: "potpourri" (dead pot), maitre d' (master of... [something missing]), "cul de cuvée" (snarky, typo-prone bottom feeder), and of course "sommelier" (intolerable waiter in a suit who won't stop pouring your wine even though you didn't ask). The French weren't going to just stand by and let this happen so in addition to borrowing from English, "cool", "chewing" (gum), "le basket", and "le weekend", they've now reverse-vomited, the "sobrelier" which is apparently the name concocted for someone who creates overpriced flavored water "cocktails" for people who haven't heard that you can stick a wedge of lemon in a glass of tonic for a buck fifty.
Oh, did you think that people were going to stop talking about alternative wine bottle formats just because they're not actually better? Nah, there's all kinds of misguided virtue signaling to be done on that front and the year is young my friends.
It has come time to once again revisit, Schrödinger's bottle wherein one has to ask, is a 1,700 year-old bottle of wine still a wine if we open it?
Would it shock you to learn that all of the text to this point was written by a computer? It shouldn't because it wasn't. First of all computers have less typos and secondly, it's only once they master the sarcasm chat bot, that you'll see me worried, but not a moment before!
In Shakira and quality strawberry jam news, we learn that while footballer and #1 Dumbshit of History (rather redundant), Gerard Piqué was cheating on her, his non-Shakira woman was eating Shakira's top-notch strawberry jam. Commenting on the affair via music, Shakira stated, "You've [Piqué] traded a Ferrari for a Twingo [dumpy Euro van lacking Shakira's hottest]." When supposedly asked for a reply, non-Shakira class bag, Clara Chia Martí stated, "Strawberry jam is classy as fuck, like me, and Shakira doesn't deserve it, like she doesn't deserve Gerry [sic]." This rumor should now put to rest the other rumor that it was the damned boars who had stolen her jam.
Supposedly Fuah!, the vegan foie gras is selling out in Spain because well, that's just... huh, actually a great idea if it ends the suffering of ducks and geese to produce this stupid liver spread and they don't charge five times the price of cruelty-full foie gras.
If one isn't a big, tough man who ignores a road closure sign and drives his not-a-woke-ass-Tesla pickem-up truck directly into curing concrete, then you'll be happy to know that the torrential rainfalls of January might actually be good for the vines this year giving a silver lining in the golden state.
In more California news, you've undoubtedly heard that there's wine being made in the dangly Baja bit by now. Will it challenge the dominance of Alta? Probably not, but Jay McInerney does make it sound like a great place to visit.
Think you can split wood? Not if you don't chug maple syrup like a goddamned Canadian hero you don't. Also, if you don't have a wood-splitting sword then you're really just nothing now, aren't you?
Of course at this point, one must ask how Dry January is going? Well just great, thanks for asking!
And lastly, in case you didn't hear, famed staff-non-payer and worker-abuser, Noma, is closing... in about two years. Will any of us actually miss it? Honestly, we shouldn't.
Palate filtherer
What could be the filthiest thing to hit the brewing world since Old Milwaukee's "Swedish Bikini Team"? Well friends, that would be Hormel chili cheese brew, a "sippable beer inspired by the dippable chili cheese dip".
Anyone got some of that bread from the butter factory fire to go with this?
Until we meet again, up in the cul of the cuvée.