New is the new old. Unwarranted sobriety is a social networking disease. There is a time in a young man’s life when lubricating jelly must be kept handy, that is, readily available. We hold these truths to be self-evident.

In my nearly 12k days on this Earth I have never before witnessed such a disastrous economic depression as I’m witnessing in my 401(k). Jim Jones and his insanity mob have infiltrated my shiny nickel-and-dime database. One by one the mighty have fallen, helpless as mops. Blood flows in the streets. Mad Dog 20/20, an incorrigible saccharine despot, once again beatifies itself as the wine of choice, self-replicating like agamogenetic bunnies in the supermarkets—the myuck! has inherited the vertebrate palate. We must unite against such atrocities or prepare for a malfeasant, spunk-lathed world just riddled with cruel paradoxes and unfathomable injustices. Imagine if you will your darling tweenage cupcake, a bastion of unbridled innocence, a veritable reservoir of impregnable desire and untested salacious charm, a vessel in which your own shattered hopes and dreams may find purchase, as she arrives home from volleyball practice (that American primer mix of rugged individualism and aggressive social functionality) to discover her parental units, you sir! you madam!, splayed over the family ottoman sans pooch like amorphic gelatinous starfish twisted in frothy lustful coition. And worse! you have brought mirrors from other rooms so you may witness via panopticon your own violent regression into atavistic depravity. This behavior might be considered exemplary, exciting, banal, Cupcake might even shout a Hurrah in your favor, but not when she notices the empty, morally bankrupt container from which you have imbibed! Imagine the horror, imagine the stockpiled acres of medical bills accrued from that future raptor-psychiatrist, all because one eerily labia-pink bottle of Mad Dog caught your eye while passing the super-cooled supermarket bargain bin en route to the uncrowded, meditative, temple-like atmosphere of the wine stacks. O but how it undulated seductively, fluidly behind its pop cartoonish Romanesque label….O but how it clinked just so, the tintinnabulary resonance as one bottle struck another in my lifting, sweet as a Siren’s song….Listen to your conscious, people! Two-for-five-bucks spells mayhem!

You might think me chevalier, by which you mean “a horseman” or “a knight.” You would be correct. I’m writing this from the stirrups of my childhood rocking horse, naked in my chaps. A stiffening winter breeze from the window keeps my blood racing. The squeaks from the plastic pony’s many springs are the squeaks of universal terror! The soothsayer has shucked her goddamn eyeballs from the roots! The meliorist freaked and caved for McCain! We must rise above this subprimocalypse and solidify our resolve—no! we will not disavow honest laboring and craftsmanship and artistic excellence by investing in the dregs of flamboyant consumerism and paltry pandering—no! we will not loosen our proverbial belts and respective loins as we self-consciously improvise semi-accurate autobiographies (nee memoirs) over a wooden bar to a lovely Other while in earnest tip-toeing across our most tender fallible intimate desires while under the influence of any spirit that does not share with us the possibility of a humbling, vinegary failure or the eruptive benefits of a full-bodied generous reward—no! we must demand as global conspirators of cosmopolitanism a vintage borne from the phallus and womb of classical cultivation and hard-nosed activism (non-respectively), a liquid ouster of the artifact and easily manufactured, a wine whose dexterity and verve strengthens with age but whose surviving voice contains an unyielding remnant of that vibrant astral pitch exhibited at its inauguration.

Hard times require that the ingenuity of ambition be tempered by the pragmatism of conservation, but even harder times require a fusion of the two. We are at a moment when it is necessary to be both ambitiously conservational and inventively pragmatic. The times require sacrifice, but that must not mean we should sacrifice our spirits. We each carry within us an intrinsic understanding of the value of a single Lincoln, but I implore you to consider the great benefits to be gained from introducing but one more!

OK, first of all thanks for all of the wonderful responses and questions. I promise we’ll get to each of your inquiries in due time and cover all the appropriate topics in reverse alphabetical order when phonetically transcribed from pig-latin. Secondly sorry for being away so long… I’ve no good excuse.

Among the heap of emails one question came up again and again. “What kind of wine will best get me laid…” asked one drinker from Illinois summing up the burning issue so many of you were skirting around.

Well, the short answer would be Brachetto, but that wouldn’t make for a very interesting post so I’m going to try and muddy the waters. Also, one word answers tend to lead to a bunch of tiring follow up questions like “which one?”, “how much should I spend?”, “when do I whip it out?” etc…

A). There is a particular brand that will produce the desired effect most consistently but I’m not going to mention any particular label that I don’t make money off of.
B). $12 – $25 US
C). Timing is everything.

The slightly longer and more complicated answer to question of the hour, is that every situation has it’s perfect wine. There are wines for breakfast and wines for watching surrealist films, wines for muffins and wines for vinyl siding, wines for sitting by the fire and wines for waxing your back… I digress… The point of this post is to find some sort of middle ground between the two answers, consistent wines to get the job done.

So let’s touch on a few factors. As in any situation it really depends who you are trying to lay and what your relationship is to them. The path to the bed is paved with many things that wouldn’t go into the paving of high quality road that can smoothly get one from point A to point B (such as the road that was just repaved in front of my apartment). Nor is it paved in stone…

People are so different and situations are so different. It’s difficult to take in all the factors of a situation but as man I feel confident speaking for both genders and as an American I feel confident speaking for all nations. If you are a eighth grade teacher (for example) trying to get close to a single father of a troubled teen at a potluck fundraiser, you might pick something different then say someone on a match dot com blind date. In the first case I say a Rose from Provance in the second a low to medium priced Malbec. The rose shows you are non-threatening and fun and will go down easy, the Malbec should be totally tasty without being too complicated. So how can we lay down guidelines when such different wines might be equally good choices. Well we’re going to try but first off I’d like to say, studies have shown that any alcohol will make you 32% to 67% more likely to get some, and a well chosen beverage can increase these odds by 4.5% to 23%.

So what other wines might be a good bet…
Some say Champagne because it reminds people of money which has been proven sexy.
Some say Rose because pink has been proven sexy.
Some say wines of the Loir Valley but I don’t think they were paying attention to the question.
I say all of these would be good choices given that the champagne is cold, the rose is dry, and the wine from the loir is white served with oysters.

So what are the hard facts?

Don’t get anything too complicated (while I quite like a Chateau-Chalon, it isn’t usually love potion number whatever).
If you’re with a young white urban american, don’t get anything too sweet (despite eating cupcakes, drinking coke and snorting pixie sticks this demographic doesn’t seem to like sweet wines).
Unless your date is over 80, don’t get Silver Oak.
Don’t get anything too expensive or with too much name recognition (unless your date is super cheesy).
Don’t order a Cabernet, why would you do that.
Don’t be afraid to ask the wine person for advice.
Stick to yummy.

Love – Aaron

We knew this, didn’t we? That the more expensive the wine is, the better it tastes, regardless how it actually tastes. I pay people to trick me all day long, from the movie actors to the novelists to the guy behind the counter at the bodega, who keeps switching the price on my vitamin water. I just published an art monograph that I had priced at $15 until a gallerist/rare book seller told me nobody would take me seriously unless the book was at least priced $25. Still, I’m a firm believer in the clearing-the-head, take-a-step-back approach to anything regarding money. Truth is, when I have it, I spend it, but I’m terrible at spending it, because I’m afraid of poverty, so I hold a bigtime grudge when I go to a restaurant and drop $100 on a meal that tastes terrible. I have no fear about telling the waiter how shitty the food tastes, or if the wine seems bad, or if I feel I’m being treated disrespectfully. I think maybe it’s growing up poor that did it. I’ve handed a bum $20 and not thought twice about it, because that twenty means a helluva lot more to him than me, and I get this fuzzy fantasy feeling about doing a good thing, but if some asswich tries to con me an extra nickel for a tootsie roll, I get bent out of shape (I let the vitamin water con happen because bodega man makes me roast beef and turkey sandwiches at 3am, which is I believe on level with sainthood). My point is, I will pay for certain cons if the fictive nature of the premise is firmly established beforehand, but I hold no reservations about complaining about bad wine, or trying to fool myself into believing money equals substance (though this is true in terms of Mac vs PC). This is why wine tastings are great for you–before you even get the price, you get the taste. Go to more wine tastings–that is my point. Yes, thank god, that is my point.

Joyous joyous Independence Day! I was drunk on a rooftop in Long Island City, with fireworks exploding over my head! I hope your experience was similar, with like explosions…in and/or around your head.

So, okay, we’ve all heard about Chemical X (resvera…deleted because I’m tired of people asking me questions about it–go elsewhere for info, this is my just wanting to write about it), found in red wine, that seems to be a cure-all, according to Harvard scientists and a research report in Cell Metabolism, that myelin-sheath-ripping page-turner of a periodical. The benefits of Chemical X apparently include overall better cardiovascular function and motor coordination, reduction in the proliferation of cataracts, and high bone-density growth (the spoiler of osteoporosis). Basically, the benefits of Chemical X equate to those exhibited by humans adhering to a low-calorie diet, as wine’s chemical X ingredient activates the SIRT-1 protein, which is “linked to long life in many animals, from yeast to mammals.” The quality of life stays high in the present, and may even extend a person’s life-span. Of course this is all in testing stage, and the testing has only been done on mice.

“I was most surprised by how broad the effects were in the mice,” added David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School. “Usually, you focus on slowing down or ameliorating one disease at a time. In this case, Chemical X influences a whole series of seemingly unrelated diseases associated with aging.”

Awesome. But wait a second…

“However, the [obese] mice lived longer only when they were fed a high-calorie diet, consistent with earlier reports.”

Wait, so if I’m obese mouse, let’s say, then I have to be on a high-calorie diet to get the low-calorie effects of wine? Which means…what, doc? I can stay obese and just drink wine to live longer, or subject myself to the grueling torture of low-calorie dieting to experience the same benefits?

“Although dietary restriction has beneficial effects in humans, such a diet [ie, a nutritious diet that reduces calorie intake by 30-50%] is unlikely to be widely adopted and would pose a significant risk to the frail, critically ill, or the elderly.”

So the elderly have missed this boat already, too? Chemical X, you suck it.

But for those obese red winos under the age of ELDERLY…say YAY, hey!, you only need to keep up your caloric intake to live forever! And you may not know this, but guess what’s high in calories…mice. A Mekong Delta speciality and favorite dish of the Tumbuka people of eastern Zambia, who dine on more than fourteen species, mice tend to be overlooked as a high-caloric form of protein. So imagine what kind of developmental advantages a Chemical X-injected obese mouse might yield to a youthful obese red-wine lover? A word of caution, however, before procuring that Chemical X mouse…I suggest reading a bit about the Hanta Virus, which can be a bitch to kick, especially if you’re like me, a Survivor Man who’d eat almost anything, as long as it’s accompanied by a pinot.

Ok so I’ve decided, or at least I think I’ve decided that if this is a wine blog at least some if not many of my postings should be drunken. After all drunkenness is an integral part of the whole wine thing. I figure the drunken-bloggieness will happen in various degrees of severity and perhaps we should come up with a system to denote this. As an added bonus I’m hoping drunk-blogging should substitute for some unnecessary drunk-dialing and some…

Anyway, so alright, here I am drunk (not too drunk) at my computer with a glass of Chardonnay from the Jura that I’m sipping before bed. I just got back from the studio where I’ve been drawing stones over a bottle of Gruner Vetliner from the Wachau. If you don’t understand anything I just said wine-wise don’t worry it will all become clear or at least clearer. Or anyway if it doesn’t become clearer just look it up on wikipedia.

Back to the issue at hand, Chardonnay from the Jura. I figure everyone knows Chardonnay (a white grape variety from Burgundy responsible for some of the worlds greatest wines) but perhaps folks round these parts might not be so familiar with the Jura. Well I’ve never been there but I’ve seen photos and I’m drinkin’ a wine from there so I guess between the two of us I’m the expert. In my expert opinion wines from the Jura are totally unique. Totally. If anyone ever tells you there is no such thing as terroir please punch them in their esophagus muscle and then drink a Chard from the Jura and be totally confident that you were in the right because Chard from there tastes like no other chard. “Well maybe it’s mutated” or “Maybe it’s a different clone” you might hear them try and choke out, but don’t listen. Maybe it did or maybe it is but fine that’s kind of the point. As Darwin said, different places are different and the organism that fits in best will survive and taste most delicious.

In the case of these wines they taste like sea air key lime and nuts in your mouth. You should experiment with one if you haven’t. My first one was in college but I’ll save that story for another time, for now just remember that they’re great savory wines to go with all sorts of food especially tapas and cheeses. I warn you though they finish very dry.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well, or is perceived as having a good finish or as being well balanced except when the above statement is false or misleading.

love – Aaron

I’m going to be out in Portland and Seattle over the next week and was looking for recommendations of wineries to visit and received one: Revelry Vintners, outside of Sammamish, which is superfantastic since I have a friend who lives in Sammamish. Looking at the map, it’s off I-90, squished between Lake Sammamish and three mountains: Squak Mountain, Tiger Mountain, and Cougar Mountain. I am already entertained. There is a narrative here, something about being sandwiched between a tiger and a cougar, and the noise I’d make if this were so. Where there is violence there is wine. Guaranteed.

So… I’m sure we’ve all been there… You wake up one morning staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, you roll over and well… you’ve got a wine blog thing at pinotgrigio.net

‘Pinot Grigio’, the Kenny G of wine, and at ‘dot net’ the am radio of the internet. Do these two cliches somehow cancel each other out, or should I go back to drinking malt liquor with an egg on a roll?

Anyhoo it’s been a long time coming and it’s going to be a long time going.

- Aaron

Alan Richman, a wine critic for GQ, writing for Canada’s National Post, jotted out this amusing little dollop of modern-living realism that hits home for those of us whose castles are a bit claustrophobic:

“Long ago, people in castles drank wine. People in hovels drank swill. The good stuff was stored in cellars. The other was not….Then came democracy and apartment-dwelling for one and all. Now everybody feels entitled to fine wine, but nobody knows where to put it. You can install a temperature-controlled refrigeration unit in your living room, if you want friends to think your decorator was Robert Mondavi. You can put it under your bed, if you want to live a ’70s lifestyle. You can be smart and never buy wines that are supposed to improve with age.”

He goes on to explain which wines to refrain from purchasing if you haven’t got the patience to wait for a good wine to age or the space to keep it: red bordeaux, red or white burgundy, barolo, and vintage port or champagne—these are no-gos. And if you’re That Dude, the one who isn’t impressed until confronted with the most random, trivial and titillating of warnings: stay away from “Grange from Australia.” Seriously? Grange from Australia? It might be safe to say that one should keep one’s distance from grange in general. Sounds catching.