Durham, NC
12 January 2007
I had two thousand words about the wine business that I was going to publish as part of the 'snotty postscript' I promised to my W(h)ine Wars with Todd Weilar, the proprietor of Chapel Hill Wine Company. There was a lot of stuff about the way the wine business works (basically, according to the importer Joe Dressner, a 'three-tier shnook system'); a brief tale about running into my friends Debra and Rick, both of whom work in the wine business, on the beach on Topsail Island, NC, just after Christmas; and a silly Proust imitation, because I have lately been reading the third volume of La Recherche du Temps Perdu, in a new translation. Perhaps the new translation is cheating a bit, because it seems easier reading than the original Moncrieff edition, which is more lyrical, perhaps, and maybe truer to Proust's soul, but certainly harder to parse; nonetheless, I'm enjoying the Mark Treharne version.
I deleted the two thousand words because you can read about life in the business from a veteran perspective on Dressner's own website, and because, even though I love Debra and Rick, running into them on the beach isn't really germane to the W(h)ine Wars.
The point is that I finally got to taste the Mollydooker Shiraz that started these W(h)ine Wars in the first place. The restaurant where I work put it on the wine list a couple of months ago. Drew, our new manager (who has worked as both a wine shnook and a sommelier), put it on the list with little fanfare for $42/bottle: a mid-priced Aussie shiraz. We already had two mid-priced Aussie shirazes on the list, so this seemed a factitious choice, especially since the Mollydooker replaced a Crozes-Hermitage. Yes, these two wines are made from the same grape -- and Mondrian and Pollock both used oil paint. (Probably. I have no idea. But you get the point.)
I was curious, of course, but also immediately resistant to the Mollydooker. On principle, I felt I had to suppress this Parkerific bottle, especially because of its goofy label art. Although I don't much care one way or another about wine labels, it seemed to me that the packaging for "The Boxer" (as Mollydooker calls this particular cuvee) only reinforced my prejudices: this is not a serious wine; it is trying to appeal to people who value cute packaging more than good product; it has to rely on such packaging in order to mask its lack of individuation from the zillions of other Aussie Shirazes that flood the market and pretty much all taste the same.
So when people wanted Aussie Shiraz, I recommended the Two Hands "Angel's Share" 2005, a wine I had tasted and knew to be a crowd-pleaser: fruit, oak, syrupy mouthfeel, high alcohol (15% in this case). The producer's tasting notes describe the Angel's Share as a "bouncy bubbly blonde!" It costs about as much on our list as the Mollydooker, so close enough. Guests who I thought might care about what they were drinking, rather than just wanting something Australian, I pointed to the Bonny Doon "Cigare Volant," another wine with a silly name, but which is actually good, and about the same price.
