If you don’t know you don’t know,

you think you know;

if you don’t know you know,

you think you don’t know.

- R.D. Laing

Welcome –

Wine is, for many folks, a very labyrinthine idea.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve given advice to patrons who feel both lost and entombed by the duties of selecting wine.  The greater irony is that learning more only sheds light on new, foreign concepts we seemingly need to learn.

When we start drinking, we’re all a little lost.  There’s no shame in realizing that.  (I never make anyone admit it, of course.)  Despite my hyper-active efforts to taste every great wine I can, I know that I’ve yet to achieve a golden palate.  But I, like you and every other reader, have my specialized insights toward what the world of wine is offering.

So, I’ve set out to create a new space in wine thought.

There is a wonderful collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges titled Labyrinths, and I think it’s in that spirit that this site has been created.  Borges’ stories bent in sometimes absurd, fantastic directions, and  created a much wider world [with]in literature.

I see wine in the same way.

In fact, wine tasting is loaded with absurd, fantastic directions.  And I should mention that I’m not limiting my analogy to Borges here: wine can, and should, be appreciated like art and literature.  Great wine reflects the land, and to a certain extent, the people.  It’s a cultural product, plain and simple.

One of many great quotes to come out of the film Mondovino was by Burgundian vigneron Hubert de Montille.  “Where there’s the vine, there’s civilization.  There’s no barbarism… In the Near East, in Babylon and Ancient Greece, they drank wine.  It wasn’t always good, but it existed.  It went hand in hand with progressive societies.  Wine meant an absence of barbarism.”

Here, it’s my hope that you’ll be able to find a great source for smart wine talk.  This blog will be an ongoing source for tasting notes, published articles, and foreward-thinking wine news musing.  The other Chapters of Writer’s Blanc should explain a bit more about what we’re doing here.

I’ll be posting my personal wine tasting notes under the tag of ‘Winespeak’.  Under the ‘Grapethink’ label, this site will showcase completely atypical tasting note contributions from my associates in the literary/academic world.  It’s a radical idea, I hope you enjoy it.  If wine is a cultural item, then I believe we should embrace all of its interpretations and permutations.

Thanks for reading,

Joel Wilcox