Old Vine Vs. Old Wine: A Modern-Day Dilemma

In today’s hyper-rarefied clime in which the world’s wine elite bask, for most folks the access to ancient and great old wine can often seem unreachable. If you peruse the many impressive sights, whether it be on Instagram, blogs, paywall-protected wine websites, or pertinent Uniform Resource Locator’s on your phone, tablet or laptop, you might think the world is one giant wine library of Alexandria, waiting for the next abecedarian to enter.

July 1, 2043: No More Tattoos, No More Natural Wine

An unexpected, but inevitable, missive, from Last Gen
(translation by devinchi’s Submarine)

It’s so odd to be writing this note to people who are probably already dead, if it weren’t for the fact that we found a back door in the time-space continuum. So, while most of you have less life in you than the tartrates at the bottom of a barrel of Krug (Boomers) or just plain shaggin-old (X’ers and Millennials), from where I transmit this communiqué, I know this is reaching most of you while you are alive, and still very much full of yourselves.

I am a mid-century somm. Well, we don’t call it that anymore, but the word we use would be meaningless to you (and devinchi can’t translate it anyway), just like the word sommelier is to us in 2043. I was born on July 1, 2018, and am turning ⓴❺ today. Happy birthday to me, ĿǦĕĕ. My device just snapped a holo of me and sent it to my 3 million followers. Instantly I received a holo-cake back with 3 million candles on it. My personal assistant, ĂĬ, “blew” out the candles for me. A good time was had by all. So they tell me.

So, you think you love wine. But do you like wine?

This month, while traveling in Connecticut, I was in a little wine shop in Madison, chatting with a salesperson. She was a self-described millennial, a mother of two young children, and the daughter of a woman who was feted by her religion for selling the most Upanishad books in airports, and, most likely, in the world. “I can’t stop thinking about wine," she told me."Wine! Wine!! Wine!!! It invades my mental space, I can’t get it out of my head and I can’t get enough.” I don’t think she was complaining. Lamenting perhaps, as the demands of motherhood dictates that she also attend to her little ones. But clearly, she has been afflicted with a vinous virus. I’m sure her devout parents might have already counseled her in becoming too attached to worldly objects. And wine is from this world. But is it of this world?

Earlier this week, I’m in the hill-country of Texas, going down a most wonderful rabbit hole of conversation about wine. The young sommelier at the table was bright, energetic and engaged (he reminded me of a younger version of Charles Curtis, who, if you don’t know of him, still has a child-like enthusiasm and wonder about wine). As our conversation veered left and right, the young somm suddenly uttered, “I know many of our colleague’s love wine, they love to study about wine and pour over maps and charts. But I am beginning to wonder which of them really, truly like wine!”

The Bi-Coastal Post-Retirement Italian Wine List Report

In the last two weeks, I’ve been on both sides of the northern corners of America. It must be my busy time of retirement. And it appears the demands of time upon my schedule will be like this until the end of September, when I can really put my feet up and read a book by Ursula LeGuin or Philip Roth again.

Odd, that I’d mention these two writers, as I have been scouting around their respective regions, the Pacific Northwest and NY Metro. The weather in both was cool and pleasant, in contrast to the already balmy and searing heat of a North Texas Spring that has been hijacked by Summer. Both areas abound with plenty of natural beauty, but also with enough of an urban presence to give the Italian wine lover a place to go to, and with a wellspring of choices from the Italian wine palette.