Remember when I drank dirt? Of course you do.

Well, while I was putting dirt in the bottle, Eduardo del Fraile was putting dirt on the outside!

This bottle was designed to honor Agapito Rico, an important figure in the DO of Jumilla Spain. He was a pioneer in achieving quality wines in this region. The grape that is grown in this land is the Monastrell, a strong flavored grape suitable for arid areas.

via Serious About Wine

There you go. 🙂  I’m not sure if Agapito Rico’s wine goes into the bottles or not.  I’ll keep you posted if I discover more.

Well, the people who find this post through Google are going to be exceptionally disappointed, but I promise it isn’t false advertising.

I recently noticed that the youtube video of me drinking dirt had been featured on a tumblr account called Women & Wine.  Innocently enough, I went to the site to see exactly how the video had been presented.  I would not remain so innocent.

My dirt-drinking video has somewhat hilariously earned a place on this tumblr account devoted to naked girls and wine. I’ve heard google and other search engines can be pretty harsh if you start linking to naughty neighborhoods, so I’m going to abstain from linking.  But you can find it by typing in “womenandwine . tumblr . com” without the spaces and my specific video can be accessed at “bit.ly / wineporn” sans spaces.  Before checking it out, allow me to remind you that the abuse of pornography can be dangerous for your health.  And don’t even try to operate heavy machinery while under the influence of pornography.

I’m sure my parents will be proud to discover that I’ve finally made the big time and broken into wine-themed Internet pornography.  It’s been a long time coming given my embarassing knowledge of all things naked and vinous.

For every good idea I have, I get at least three ridiculously bad ideas.  And some of those bad ideas make it far beyond the planning stages.

So, last week, I was joking about the rhetoric we terroir-lovers tend to use.  We get very wrapped up in the importance of a wine reflecting a sense of place and we can often minimize the efforts of the winemaker.  We say that winemakers should only act in order to produce good fruit that reflects the place where they’re growing the fruit.  Anyway, we can get a little carried away with the rhetoric.  So in the spirit of making fun of myself, I bottled some vineyard dirt and put it up  for sale on the website.

The idea, unfortunately didn’t stop there. Once I had a bottle of dirt, it was pretty much unavoidable: I had to do a dirt tasting.

Tasting notes: dry, abrasive attack; strong minerality; dead leaves; low alcohol; significant sediment; muddy finish

So, without further ado, Ryan O’Connell from O’Vineyards tastes some dirt and makes fun of himself.

If we can learn anything from this ridiculous exercise, it’s that the perfect wine is not 100% vin de terroir or 100% vin d’effort but some clever middle path between these two extremes.

Buy now 🙂

Couleur bouteille

Marron €13,00Vert €13,00