Which is the wrong wine direction, and how would you know that it’s “wrong”?
Promptly timed for my return to New York Wine City (NYWC) today the weather turned grey and wintry. It seems a bit early for that seasonal twist – for example, I remember how outrageously warm it was here on December 8th 2012 – but it doesn’t really bother me, because tomorrow evening I’ll be flying to one of the warmest places in the country for a five day Gonzo Wine Adventure. Let’s face it, here in NYWC almost nobody thinks about Arizona when it comes to wine. Seen from the perspective of this self-consciously cosmopolitan metropolis AZ is one of the wrong wine places. The fact that New Jersey also falls into this category, proves that AZ’s fate isn’t directly the result of its physical remoteness from NYWC. Instead, it has to do with the fact the wine growing regions, along with many other things in our world, is subject to hierarchical thinking. The somms, wine journalists, dealers and many consumers in NYWC, like everywhere else wine is drunk, have a mental A-list of wine growing regions that are cool, also a B-list of those that are OK, and also a C-list of those which don’t count and who’s wines rarely, if ever, get taken seriously.
The reason for AZ being firmly on the C-list is that so far nothing dramatic ever happened that lifted its wines out of the mist of obscurity and on to the B-list. I don’t even think the involvement of Maynard James Kennen of the band Tool has done more than raise a ripple, also because way too few people have tasted the wines from his Caduceus winery that won a bunch of prizes (including at the San Francisco International Wine Competition). To be frank I haven’t either. Then, there’s the cumulative effect of the daily TV and internet weather reports from Phoenix that suggest to many who aren’t familiar with AZ that the entire state is so fiery that the sun must burn every grape there to a cinder. The inability to think further than such simplistic assumptions is, of course, a fundamental human weakness. The problem with all this is that some NYWC wine pros simultaneously act in a way strongly influenced by those mental lists while promoting the virtues of wine democracy, that is of giving every wine the same chance on a level playing field. Of course, those positions are contradictory. But please don’t think that purpose of this message is to gripe about this situation (though that would be an understandable reaction). I’m observing all this, because it’s the background to the Gonzo Arizona Wine Adventure I’m about to depart upon. You need to know this in order to make full sense of what follows during the next days. WATCH THIS SPACE!
PS I rarely go on press trips, but this is one. My flights, accommodation and food will be paid for by a loose affiliation of Arizona wine producers which is being dubbed “A2Z”. Gonzo PR man David Furer has organized this press trip for them and his involvement is the reason I put aside my usual rejection of press trips and signed up. The list of other guests only seemed to confirm the rightness of this decision.
