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A Toast! Or is that Brioche on the Nose?

Wine writers are a filthy bunch.  They all seem to travel the same path.  First they are surprised they even like the stuff and relate stories about their early days with Franzia and Rossi and other sweet swill.  Then they explore all sorts of grapes and values and flavors.  Then pretension creeps in and pretty soon they only sip Yquem and Margaux and discuss the variations between the ’82 and ’86 Bordeaux vintages.  Disgusting.

No, wine is supposed to be fun and finding a good wine value is great fun.  Would you rather have one bottle of Dom or ten bottles of Korbel?  Well, how about three bottles of Bollinger?  Personally, I’d pass on the Korbel, but definitely choose the Bollinger.  I think Bollinger is one of the most fantastic Champagne values.  Bollinger employs its own cooper to keep its barrels in order.  There’s only one other Champagne house that relies on these old techniques: Krug.  And Krug starts at $150 a bottle.  Quite simply, Bollinger Special cuvee is as good as or better than most houses’ premium offerings and it costs between one-half to one-third as much as these.  It’s a great deal.  Put the Grand Annee in the mix and it becomes very difficult to rationalize the need for any other producers of Champagne.

Today a toast is in order.  Prolonged Insult is soon-to-be live and with a little luck, writers that previously had limited venues to sing in will find this new one where serenading and crooning are encouraged, and all writers that want others to hear their voices will have a spot to vocalize and harmonize together.  All readers that are fed up with the filtered filth they are subjected to will have a new place to turn to read something new, something fresh, and something beautiful.

Publishing is a tough business.  Each permutation seems to be a slightly worse version of its predecessor.  Have you ever read an issue of Details or Lucky?  Or should I say looked-at?  There just isn’t enough room for articles anymore.  And what articles they do have are really just dressed up ads anyway – 10 Best Cell Phones / 5 Perfect Vacations – disgusting.  Fiction’s place in publishing shrinks daily.  Wine writers have consolidated power between a few ‘elite’ publications and created a monopolistic state.  Travel writing is increasingly influenced by freebies and promotions.  Of course there are exceptions, but the trend is clear.

Prolonged Insult hopes to be a step in the opposite directions: a place for fiction to be published and actually read instead of just filling pages; a venue for all wine voices, not just those that regularly drink Mouton-Rothschild; a journal for all travelers to share their adventures and experiences.  I am excited about what Prolonged Insult can be.  I am excited to read your stories.

So I propose a toast.  But a toast of what?  Of course I like Bollinger, but I’ve associated it with other memories and would prefer to try something new.  Problem is, I tried a bunch Champagnes and sparkling wines last December at a tasting and none of them really stood out other than the Grand Annee.  Diamante from Heidsick was good, very good, actually.  Then there’s Dom and Cristal, but I’m neither a czar nor a rapper.  Speaking of rappers, there’s the new ‘Ace of Spades’ wine that Jay-Z seems to like, but all the bottles are non-vintage.

I’ve always been attracted to Krug, and there’s no reason that this toast should not be with Krug, except price, of course, but Krug makes a fair amount of wine.  Vintage, Rose, NV, they make it all.

So that leaves Salon.

Moet doesn’t disclose how much Dom Perignon it makes.  I’ve seen estimates as high as 100,000 cases.  That’s a lot of wine.  Moet also makes a Dom Rose, a Dom vintage and the ever-popular White Star and a whole portfolio of other wines.  Salon makes between 6,000 and 10,000 cases when they make it.  Their first vintage was in 1905 and they’ve made 37 vintages in the 100+ years since.  They make one style – vintage brut.  No rose, no NV, nothing at all if the weather doesn’t cooperate and the grapes don’t ripen correctly.  Bad year?  They just sell off the grapes and look forward to next year.  It’s absolutely one of the most insane business plans ever written.

Today, I toast you with Salon.  The bottle of wine in front of me represents the highest ratio of price per unit urine produced that I have ever experienced.  With Salon I begin the opposite path of most writers: I will start from the top and work my way down.

Acting as the control in this experiment is my go-to bottle of sparkling – Gruet.  In many ways, Gruet is the opposite of Salon.  For one, they make a lot of the stuff.  They also make a whole variety of styles (it’s brut v. brut today, though).  And Gruet is made in New Mexico.  Instead of Salon, where the ideal vineyard sites were selected based on past performance, this seems to be a location where the attitude was more: “Well, we can make it work here.”  But it’s delicious and a great deal.  If you got a case-discount, you could buy three for the price of one bottle of Salon.

I’m not drinking alone.  I’m with the love-of-my-life and my buddy, Ben (you’ll see Ben’s writing on the site), and his wife.  We start with a small taste of the Gruet.  It’s good – light in color, very bubbly right from when you pour it.  You’ve got to be careful or it will overflow the glass.  We open the Salon next – none of us has had it before and we’re excited.  It opens with a tiny pop.  The Gruet was almost ready to shoot the cork across the room, but I have to nudge out the Salon’s.  We can smell it almost as soon as it’s open – yeasty, like pound cake and vanilla cookies.  We pour small glasses and sniff.  The smell – the smell is amazing.  I want cologne that smells like this.  If you’re more pretentious, you’d say you smelled notes of brioche.  The taste is full with nearly every flavor possible competing for your attention – citrus, vanilla, cake, yeast, bread, baked apples, butter.  And the finish, it lingers.  The acidity seems to burn the flavor into your mouth.  It’s great.  And it has our attention for a while.

We turn back to the Gruet.  It’s warmer now and seems to have lost its effervescence.  You can swish it around in your mouth and nothing really happens any more.  The warmth has changed the flavor profile and it’s no longer as balanced.  Something’s off, but when we refill with cold wine, it’s good again and the bubbles are still there.

The Salon, when warmed a bit seems to keep its balance.  It’s almost better as we pour another glass.  It seems to have opened up more.  Even when left to sit the bubbles remain.  It almost seems to hold them in until it hits your mouth and then the wine transforms to a wonderfully creamy texture that coats your mouth with flavor.

But it’s still just wine.  The law of diminishing returns comes to mind.  If you spend twice as much, do you double the quality?  Sometimes, yes.  I would argue that Gruet is more than twice as good as Andre or Cook’s, but is Salon 30x as good as Gruet?  Nope.  So, the value.  Is Salon worth it?  “Worth what?” is the only correct response, because it isn’t, but it is.  Yesterday, it was worth everything.  Yesterday marks the start of something special.

Writers (and winos) of the world, unite!  Let’s change the world.