Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog

Truth and Dare and Wine

I've always enjoyed playing games, partly because of my competitive nature but also because a good, well-designed game can reveal a lot about the players. And I like revelation.

The first game (not sport) that I was really good at was "Quarters". For some reason I was coordinated in such a way that I could bounce that quarter into a glass of liquid repeatedly. I was scary-good! In college I was the ringer that would be placed in quarters games where money was at stake. It wasn't quite a living, but I was good at it.

Quarters is, of course, a drinking game. I hadn't thought about my Quarters Career in a long time until the other night when I was prompted to recall not just my successes at forcing other people to drink too much after challenging me, but also the moment years ago when I came face-to-face with a person who made my skill look pathetic and also made me look pathetic after being trounced. This defeat put an end to my professional Quarters career. But the memory made me begin to think about games that are good to play with wine on the table.

The following list may just be a list of some of my favorite games. But It's also a list of games that are fun to drink to. Wine is a good accompaniment to these games not because the games demand someone being forced to drink, but because a little liquid lubrication always makes these games more interesting.

1. Jenga
In my experience, there is a certain advantage to having a little bit of wine in your system as you attempt to build a larger structure of blocks by removing blocks from the lower level of the structure. The herky-jerky motion that can be disastrous to the building process isn't quite so pronounced after a hand-calming couple of glasses of Rhone.

2. Apples to Apples
Simple game. Players match one of the nouns they have on one of seven cards with an adjective provided by the person who will judge which of the nouns presented by the players provides the most entertaining match. This is a very revealing game; revealing of players' wits, historical knowledge, cultural knowledge, and even their current disposition. Again, a little wine often helps loosen the players willingness to make odd, but revealing matches. I've learned a great deal about many people playing this game for hours over many bottles of wine.

3. Truth or Dare
Truth or Dare isn't really a game, is it. Nevertheless, it is turn-based, questions are asked and deeds are done. The rules tend to be flexible and often change as the game goes forward. Truth or Dare is a game that held great significance for me  and my personal development in my pre-teen and teen years. It has also been a game that has cropped up now and again in my adult years. One version of the game has the person who chooses either "truth" or "dare" drinking a shot of very strong alcohol if they choose to not answer the question or do the dare they say they will do. I'm not a fan of this rule. That said, I can't imagine playing truth or dare today without a good glass of wine nearby.

4. Scattergories
For those of you who know and have played this vocabulary game, you'll probably have noticed that it's a game that also tests one's ability to sell a dubious proposition to your game mates. You have to have a certain amount of wine in you to go about trying to convince a group of people that a "Pommaria" is the name of a tiny, red, stone fruit beginning with the letter P that is only grown on the island of Corsica where it is made into a liqueur that isn't exported.

5. Pictionary
Face it, how much fun is it to watch a person who has had three or four glasses of wine try to draw a picture of "Thought Police"?

On Fathers and Bourbon

George Wark was not a wine drinking man. He drank bourbon.

I never saw him drink wine, though he did once relate to me the story of the  best drink of wine he ever had. I often wonder what he would have thought of his son making a career in wine. I'm positive he would have approved and, being a betting man, I'd wager I could have gotten him on the wine train. Before he became a prominent contractor in Marin County, he worked for National Distillers, the home of Wild Turkey and Old Grandad—forever his favorites. I'm sure George would have appreciated his son working in a fermentation-based industry.

Born in April, 1919, George was child of the Depression, a fighter pilot in World War II, a prisoner of war, a husband, an outstanding gardener who never saw a fruit tree he didn't want to tend, the father to two adopted children, a good provider, a Mason of national standing, a 15 handicap golfer, a traveler who would stop to see any ball of twine or museum in his path, and the person who taught me everything I still believe about women and how to treat them and how to be a good man in general.

He was also the man that taught me the consequences of and responsibilities that went with drinking. And he did it in a way that only he could.

One early Fall day, when I was 15 years old and exploring the teenage freedom I believe was my right, I decided to have a drinking party by the pool. With my mother out and my father at work, the circumstances for this party seemed quite ripe. I invited over 5 friends and we went about raiding George's liquor cabinet.

That cabinet was a gold mine. Despite being a bourbon lover, my father kept any and every type of liquor on hand. He knew there were more than just bourbon drinkers in the world and he didn't want to disappoint. Inside the cabinet, under the bar off the kitchen I found bourbon, scotch, gin, vodka, vermouth, creme de menthe, mixers of all sorts—a treasure trove of trouble.

Vodka seemed the obvious choice to me. It was clear and appeared to be the least offensive to an untrained palate. So, over the course of the next 2 hours we went about drinking. LOTS. Then, the sound of the garage door was heard.

My friends had the presence of mind to run, jump the fence and get out of harms way. I didn't have that inclination primarily because I was passed out, sitting in an old wheel chair on my patio, a blanket over my knees and a box of Cheerios under my arm. I didn't hear my mother drive up. I didn't hear anything.

Naturally concerned, my mother somehow got me to my bed and called George.

My father was gentle with me. Upon arriving home, he got me out of bed quite gingerly, shook me to consciousness and firmly told me to go out to the garden and pick some ears of corn for dinner. (The garden my father planted ever years was not so much a "garden" as it was a series of "crops".) I don't know how I got out to the corn patch. What I do remember is being picked up by my Father from between the rows, carried into the house, placed in the shower with my clothes still on and feeling cold water rain down upon me.

Once my father's brand of consciousness raising was accomplished, he dressed me in dry clothes and took me out to to the kitchen table. He asked my mother to leave the room, went to the liquor cabinet, pulled out the vodka, got two shot glass, placed one in front of each of us and proceeded to pour a shot.

"If you think you are a drinker, then let's drink like men."

George was not the kind of father you disobeyed. I drank the shot. So did he. He poured another. he held his glass full of vodka, he looked at me and silently told me, "Again!". I drank it. Then I vomited.

He made his point. And to this day I don't drink Vodka. (Thank God he didn't shoot bourbon with me!!)

Later he would sit with me in my room, he looked me in the eye and he explained the conditions of my grounding and offered advice on how to drink, when to drink, why to drink and when not to drink. Then he put me in bed and that was the last he ever mentioned of the episode.

It has been 30 years now since my father last looked me in the eye. That last look wasn't a pleasant one. As he lay in bed and looked up at me, he explained he would soon die. Cancer. And he did, soon after that look.

I don't regret the fact that I only had 17 years with George. I do regret he didn't live long enough to give me a chance to sit with him and sip Old Grandad.

Wine PR? What Exactly Do You Do?

For nearly 20 years, when I tell people "I work in wine PR", I often get the same response: "So what exactly do you do?"

Sometimes this questions sets me back on my heels because from day-to-day my responsibilities to my clients change, the things I'm asked to do change, and I'm not always sure, on any given day, exactly what I'll be doing. In other words, while there are some vague boundaries to the realm of "PR", it's not always so well defined.

For this reason, I thought I'd point readers to at least one view of what Wine PR is all about. In this case it's a job description for a "Director of Public Relations" now open with Constellation Wines U.S. The job listing is over at winejobs.com and is a pretty thorough, top-down explanation of what is expected from a PR pro working for a large firm. What's interesting about the job description (which does not list salary possibilities) is that if you scan it with a small winery's needs in mind it actually translates. That is, what Constellation expects of the person filling their Director of PR position is what would generally be expected of the person doing PR for a small or medium sized winery.

Now, while I have worked with large wine organizations over the years, it has not been my preferred sort of client. Things tend to move a bit more slowly than with small and medium-sized wineries and the layers of bureaucracy tend to be more imposing. Still, this kind of position doesn't open up that often. We are looking at one of the most influential, powerful and vibrant wine companies in the world seeking out a PR pro for the position that sits just below their VP of Public Relations.I would suspect they will receive MANY resumes.

One thing very interesting about the Constellation job posting is that there is no mention of Social Media. Among the Constellation-owned brands is Robert Mondavi Winery. They have a Facebook page. It possesses 2 fans. Perhaps the area of Social Media is part of the job postings note that candidates responsibilities would include: "Execute focused public relations and communications plans, ideas and programs that support the strategic messages of each estate for multiple wine brands."

Either way, for those of you who have asked, "What do you do", this job posting is a good start toward an answer.

The "Mouth Agape" Factor

There are a few things that always leave me stopped in my tracks, mouth agape and oblivious to everything around me, leading often to being knocked back to consciousness by a jostle and the trailing sound of someone saying, "get out the way, asshole". Those things tend to be a beautiful woman and a striking and monumental piece of architecture.

In places like Chicago, New York and Paris I can often be found on a corner, looking outward and upward, staring at some man-made, habitable piece of art and lose touch with the movement around me. But this doesn't happen so much in the case of man-made winemaking facilities. So I thought it pretty cool to come across DesignCrave and it's post on the Ten Architectural Wonders of the Wine World.

Among the Ten is Dominus, located in Yountville, California in Napa Valley. The author of the post says this about Dominus: "a stunning angular obelisk of natural stones contained within a tough wire mesh.  From afar, the building appears to be fully concrete, but as you approach its stone character is revealed."

I remember the first time I laid eyes on the Dominus winery while driving south on Highway 29: "What the hell is that," I thought. But I was drawn to it. The Dominus structure is geometric and probably appeals to me for the same reasons that the many simple, concrete, vertical skyscrapers in Chicago do: extraordinary simplicity. But the thing about Dominus is that it has no relationship to its surroundings, making it somewhat gaudy in its "man-made-ness" and simple lines.

To me, architecture is most closely related to fashion where art is concerned. Many of the things that appear on the bodies of models on runways in Paris, Milan and New York will function as cover-up, but their primary function is interpretive. The same can be said of buildings like the Dominus Winery. It certainly does function as a winemaking facility, but it's primary purpose is to express an idea.

As some of you know I'm a huge fan of "Top Ten Lists". Give me a Pastis, a warm day and a few intelligent friends and I can while away an afternoon constructing them. For those of you who love wine and Top Ten lists, check out this post in DesignCrave. It's fun and thought provoking.

C'est La Vie

If you traversed the heart and mind of a travel-lover I'm positive you'd encounter the same conditions that afflict the wine lover: desire for adventure, a willingness to dive into the unknown and even a proclivity to absorb disappointment and move on. I'm sure of this.

On my recent travels I drank not a single sip of wine in any form. Had I wanted to it was available, but the climate, both meteorological and spiritual, wasn't entirely suited for that kind of adventure. Still, I embarked with a particular adventure in mind under conditions that were unknown and, as I look back now from the comfort of my home and as I type and think, I'm still absorbing disappointment, but I'm moving on.

The upshot of these travels remind me of the feeling of disappointment one gets when they open that fine dessert wine after having consumed way too much in advance, leaving its charms and potential inaccessible due entirely to my own poor judgment in choosing to open it at this inopportune moment when my body and mind are incapable of appreciating what is in front of me.

C'est la vie, right? There will be other dessert wines and they will even be reached for and experienced at the perfect moment when mind and body are ready for them.

Well, yes...and no.

As it is with wine and romance, the joy that comes with travel flows in direct proportion to the expectations we heap upon it. More importantly and again as it is with wine and romance, the judgment that informs our expectations for travel can't be clouded by self-deception, early childhood trauma, ill-founded optimism or the belief that doing the same thing might result in different outcomes.

So, there may be other dessert wines, other travels, other romances, and they may please the palate, the heart and the mind, but not if they are not properly prepared for or even approached with proper and well-founded expectations.

It's All About the Lotion!

It's All About The Lotion!

I'll Have A Double!

I'll Have A Double, Por Favor!

And I Work Why?

And I Work Why?

Where Are My Sandals?

Where Are My Sandals?

What Time Is It?

What Time is it?