Rainer Rilke, Pauline Kael, Archibald MacLeish, Lester Bangs: here’s your wine
October 27, 2011 § Leave a Comment
I’m still unsure whether the wine column I wrote this week is especially true or especially balderdash, but dammit I think it’s the former. It might strike you as “over the top” or irrelevant to wine, but at least it’s honest and wine should be about honesty. Most of the feedback has been good, though one reader told me he wondered why I was so upset.
I’m not upset at all! Just impatient with the consumerist mentality of wine-buying (ha! what kind of oversensitive jerk gets upset about consumerism when we’re talking about buying?!), and unwilling anymore to cordon off parts of my actual life (poetry, music, heart) from the other parts (wine, food).
So, if you want a “hot list” of what to buy next, read Wine Spectator. If you want to come along as I try against the odds to feel my way into a mode of being in which everything is connected and we react to objects and experiences of value with love rather than wallets, read this!
Neal Rosenthal, terroir czar, wine pioneer, represents for Old School/World
May 18, 2011 § Leave a Comment
My latest wine column is on Neal Rosenthal, who for more than thirty years has been one of the most helpful forces for good in the wine world. As my interview with him shows, Rosenthal’s fierce devotion to terroir, both in spirit and in the glass, can be a guide not just to which wines to drink, but really for how to live. First line of the article: “Draw the battle lines.” I don’t love militaristic metaphors, but it really has come to that. To be in favor of truly artisanal wines, made by hand, with love, that express the truth of an actual place in time, you need to be actively opposed to the enemies of those wines. And in this day/age, those enemies are rampant. Throw down!
