red wine

MONASTERIO DE LAS VINAS (2006)—Needs no elevator pitch

My dad is considering switching industries, which means he’s been paying some overdue attention to his business speak. It occurred to him this week that he doesn’t have an “elevator pitch.” If you don’t know what an elevator pitch* is, read on, my fellow inebriates, because everyone should have one. As I said tauntingly to my dad, even I have one:

drunken little bear

advising hedonism:

party on, people

He says this is actually a haiku, but whatever, people. My dad doesn’t have an elevator pitch at all. So today I learned how to write a proper one, because I love my dad, plus I want him to bring even more liquor money home, and a good elevator pitch will help. Herewith, the five steps to writing a good elevator pitch—in this case applied to a bottle of wine.

Monasterio de las Vinas

1. Who are you?

I’m MONASTERIO DE LAS VINAS RESERVA (2006), a Spanish blend of Garnacha, Tempranillo, and Carinena, aged 12 months in oak barrels.

2. What do you do?

I exude aromas of berry and spice while leering from the decanter in a purplish way while LB’s parents make him wait to sample me. On the palate I’m full-bodied and rich with earthy notes, firm tannins, and a long finish. I’m mature without having a musty Old World character, and you can’t really beat me for $14.95.

3. Who do you do it for?

I’d like to say I appeal to all drinkers, but I don’t think hard-core alcoholics (LB excepted) are buying me very often, as they gravitate toward massive jugs of vodka and giant boxes featuring marsupials. Basically, I’m here for everybody, but if you like to spread your $14.95 more economically, you might pass me by.

4. What do they want or need?

Most wine drinkers have no idea we have hit “peak wine,” and that global demand for  wine is outstripping supply. In other words, you might be drinking wine because everybody else is. Some wine drinkers choose wine because they think beer will make them get fat or watch hockey. Some wine drinkers follow Robert Parker, who gave me 90 points, although he probably only swished me around his gums for 30 seconds or so. Drinkers like LB are thoroughly indiscriminate, so who knows? I have no idea what people want.

5. How do they change as a result?

They often get really freaking plastered, especially if they have a bottle to themselves.

Okay, so this isn’t working out exactly as I thought it would. Maybe you need to be sentient, like we are, MFI. This last statement—and I hope you’ve been following along with your own notes for this exercise, my fellow inebriates—this last statement is supposed to be the key to YOU and what you bring to the table. If you answer the five questions, you should be able to take your answer to number five—and voila! There’s your elevator pitch.

I expect my dad will be so grateful for this that he’ll buy me another bottle.

 

*I found these five steps in a Tedx talk but then foolishly cleared my cache and couldn’t retrieve it from my history. The reason I cleared my cache is that I didn’t want my dad to know I was playing Candy Crush Saga on Facebook, especially since I’ve been dissing him for playing it. And then there was all the porn too, but whatever.

PORCUPINE RIDGE SYRAH (2012)—Fueling my worst fears while getting me hammered

My Fellow Inebriates,

Even though we’ve talked about this plenty of times, my parents broke one of our rules and bought a bottle of wine with an animal on the label. The bottle was in the Staff Picks section, so they thought, what the hell.

What the hell indeed. If you decided to bring home a bottle of PORCUPINE RIDGE SYRAH (2012), it might be because you employed a similar calculus. It’s not like the bottle notes reveal much. Apparently my parents were content to read about porcupines (nocturnal, potato-eating, snuffling, etc.) rather than select a wine for its winey characteristics. I did eventually find some tasting notes written vertically on the back label (“spicy, aromatic rich-textured, French-oaked and lingering”) beside an essay about porcupines, but not before we’d downed the stuff.

Porcupine ridge syrah

Porcupines are a nuisance in South Africa, where they eat pumpkins and potatoes in a noisy, grunting manner and seemingly impart a barnyard note to grapes cultivated in certain Boekenboutskloof vineyards. If you wanted to learn more about porcupines (estrus, copulatory plugs, freaky quills) you could consult Wikipedia, but you wouldn’t be looking for wine then, would you?

We made our rule about animals on the label for good reason, MFI. Particularly antipodal animals—and not exclusively marsupials. Nevertheless, my parents were persuaded by the Staff Picks sign, and so they picked up this Syrah, paid $16.99 for it, and brought it home.

porcupine ecardOne mark in PORCUPINE RIDGE SYRAH’s favor is its 14.5 percent alcohol, a kick-ass level that had me running for the decanter. First impressions: ripe, dark fruit with smoky, spicy chocolate on the nose. Snuffling around behind these promising chords is a hint of barnyard. On the palate, PORCUPINE RIDGE is mouth-filling and lively, with pepper and oak at the forefront. Gamey and earthy, it has palate-parching tannins and a tarry, anise finish, with wild-game notes never distant. For complexity, it’s well worth the experiment, but…well. It has too many notes.

You all know I’m an idiot bear, and who’s to say these notes I would have happily subtracted from PORCUPINE RIDGE weren’t the very notes well-trained wine enthusiasts covet? But somehow…I found myself wondering what porcupines smell like, and if we need them in our house.

“They probably smell better than you, LB,” said my parents, and again began discussing a future appointment they say I have with the washing machine. So I pounded as much PORCUPINE RIDGE as I could, because I was afraid, people.

ALAMOS CABERNET SAUVIGNON (2011)—Now your liver can handle it

My Fellow Inebriates,

I’ve been waiting a long time for technology to catch up to my drinking. So when I saw this new bioprinter that manufactures functional liver tissues, I knew my ship had come in. And probably yours, too, my fellow inebriates, with your complicated “real biological organism” livers that are no doubt being pummeled senseless by CUERVO.

bioprinter can print a new liver for me

Goodbye HP, hello NovoGen MMX Bioprinter. Photograph by Timothy Hogan.

 

The best part is that LBHQ is in the market for a new printer anyway. Two days ago our HP started blinking. After ascertaining it had plenty of ink, Dad jiggled the cartridges around to make sure it knew it had ink, but the bloody thing kept flashing until we looked up the error code and learned it needs a new print head. And given the disposable nature of electronics these days, I thought, well, why not put this wretched HP on the curb and get ourselves a new bioprinter? If the thing can print liver tissue, it probably does a freaking awesome job on ordinary office documents, right? Win win.

And the third win? We can drink more ALAMOS CABERNET SAUVIGNON (2011) knowing our livers have a back-up plan sitting in the office.

But wait a sec. What the hell are bioprinters, and are they for real? I’ve had my chain yanked before, people, so let’s look into it.

Judging by venture capitalists’ enthusiasm for them, bioprinters are the real deal. The printers layer bioink onto biological scaffolds that allow it to be shaped into blood vessels, ears, synthetic hamburgers, urethras—you name it, MFI. The technology is really complicated—maybe more so than our defunct HP’s, and certainly too complicated for an idiot bear to understand. So I gave the marketing materials to my dad, who makes all the LBHQ electronics purchases. You see, I can’t just say: “Dad, go and buy us a bioprinter so we can produce crisp documents and filtration organs.” He has to do the reading himself, so it can be his idea. All I can do is put a bug in his ear.

Meanwhile, our livers are crying out for this thing. ALAMOS CABERNET SAUVIGNON contains 13.5 percent alcohol and, with its dark berry redolence and mouth-filling depth, you try stopping me from finishing the bottle.

alamos_cab_webALAMOS benefits from decanting. Once swished and swirled it releases a concentrated burst of dark fruit and earthiness and perhaps a little leather. The color is deep purple. Tasting notes from our local booze shop insist that it’s medium-bodied, but—and perhaps we’ve just been drinking lighter wines lately—ALAMOS knocked our socks off with its palate-coating mouthfeel. The tannins are firm, you get oak and chocolate plus hints of tobacco in the background, and the finish is lengthy and satisfying. Damn fine for $14.99.

So my thought was: let’s pound as much of this stuff as we can. Within the week we’ll have a new bioprinter—i.e., an unlimited supply of livers, ears, and urethras if we need them. Now we can drink without worry.