Please take a look at David McMillan's youtube video that got picked up by the LA Times a couple weeks back. David is wonderfully talented and pretty dang funny. And I happen to know he likes wine and stogies. Don't tell his grandma.
Mouse sent some wine picks under or around $20. Mouse is the King of sub-20 wines. He begged me for years to try grenache blanc. Being a pinot apostle at the time naturally I thought he was silly. Cute. And here he is again suggesting any white blend from southern France. Believe him. I have a couple photos I took in a snooty LA wine shop yesterday of their sub-$20 wines. We are a movement!!
Southern France - the Languedoc and surroundings - is my #1 wine destination. When we visited in 2000 it was impossible to spend more than $10 on a bottle of local grenache/syrah/mourverdre etc. All wines are blended with distinctive styles. The Languedoc used to be the bottom of the French wine barrel 20 years ago. A favorite claim-to-fame is there was such an ocean of plonk coming out of the region they used to sell it off as fuel.
Wine meets golf idea: I am thinking that it might be fun to try and draw some correspondence between the ridiculously hard Oakmont course and wines that are equally tough to love. Example - the absurdly long 288 yd par 3 8th hole. Think excess without a point. Think only accessible to the biggest hitters. Is this not a metaphor for Screaming Eagle, Harlan and other similar trophy wines? What is the point of going to all the effort to be distinctive when after all is said and done you either make par or you don't. Or the Oakmont Brazil-waxed (thank you Mr. McCord) greens. Analog to wines so impossible to approach and at the same time so consistently the same (no flats, all slopes) I wonder if Robert Parker was on the design team.
Send your thoughts.
