Cul de Cuvée: Death & Karens

The recently-random bits.

For those not up on all things Iberian, today is ‘Sant Jordi’ in the Catalan regions of Spain and France. It’s a lot like Valentine’s Day except with books and roses as well as no chocolate and probably less drunken sex. This lack of action likely has nothing to do with the suggested wine pairings that local sommeliers shit out curate for the day, focusing on either red wines to match the roses given, or rosé wines to meet halfway and sell pink juice from the harvest before last as we all know that themed wine pairings, suck.

Also on the theme of pairings is the rise of the AI Sommelier. People are already fighting back by saying that, “A.I. will never be able to understand the mood at a table, the vibe.” which is true, but, won't the dining experience also be missing that ‘thing’ when there isn't a disgraced Master Sommelier offering to masturbate in front of you even after you’ve repeated that you don’t want to go back to his hotel room? Some things you can put a price on, for everything else, there are lapel pins.

And for those who didn’t hear, famed wine critic, Robert Parker, enologist Michel Rolland has joined that micro-oxygenated tank in the sky after living a life that most any mortal on this planet would have killed for.

From our Desk of Idle Hands, word comes that a huge block of tasting notes were analyzed and grouped. The result? Well, it turns out that tasting notes are stupid, redundant, stupid, and also redundant.

How do you catch a hotel-scamming individual? The minibar. It’s always the Achilles Heel of any would-be international accommodation mastermind.

Word has arrived from the Archive of Pointless Anachronisms that if you have no tips in a restaurant, then you have no Karens. All is win in this land of paying staff a fair wage.

Hot on the drinks menu of any discerning late-teen in the US now are BuzzBalls. They have double the alcohol of beer, or, what we in the industry call, wine, which we know that Gen Z isn’t drinking anyways of course, except when they are.

In what should give night terrors to Sherry, Puglia, and basically all of Greece, grape cultivation is rapidly moving north according to raw data. This means that what was formerly just the Borscht Belt in Ukraine is potentially the new Burgundy. No wonder the Russians want it so badly instead of just ‘crafting’ Pinot Noir in Krasnodar from imported juice.

At the top of the CdC Hot Chow List comes small plates that beget orange wine that begets ‘Prik’, a restaurant for when want to know why you don’t go out to eat anymore.

If you’re already not digging on the very warm spring in the Northern Hemisphere, there are all kinds of potential work positions in Antarctica, but sorry, nothing for sommeliers. This is mostly due to the 2016 incident when an Advanced Sommelier wouldn’t shut up about how he’s “basically a Master” during the Antarctic winter and the entire station team fed him to the penguins with great and joyful abandon.

Lastly, from the WTF Folder comes the fact that “coked-up salmon swim faster and travel farther” but they found that the constant need to talk over colleagues and occasionally run out into the street naked defied all the benefits of having salmon with a shredded buzz.

Until we meet again, up in the cul of the cuvée.