Stuart Pigott's Planet Wine

Often people ask me what the subject of my blog really is, and quite often they ask me if my latest blog posting isn’t off-subject. I feel that I owe all of you questioners an answer, and it’s really simple.

For me wine is a beverage in the glass, but it is never just that, because every wine comes from somewhere and doesn’t smell and taste the way it does by accident, rather there is a complex network of factors, intentions and relationships which lead to that wine being as it is. There’s therefore a story behind every wine, and those stories all fascinate me, regardless of the wine’s place of origin, the grape variety/varieties from which it is made, the greater or lesser price it commands and the esteem it is held in. (FYI some material about Two Buck Chuck is on it’s way!) These stories, no less than the wines they are connected to, are a continuous source of inspiration to me. And that inspiration is like the spark in a spark plug in an internal combustion chamber, it ignites my imagination.

My imagination, just like yours, is inaccessible to everyone else. It’s visions and vibrations must be given a concrete form in order to become accessible to others. That’s what all my writing, including these blog postings, is. I take the materials I have gathered during my re-search for truth, and with them I build boats (that I hope are sturdy enough for a long voyage), then I launch them onto the high seas of the Big Wide World. Last year, 2015, that worked better than it has for a very long time (scroll down for more about that), but this only makes me want to build more and better boats, then launch them onto those same choppy and rough waves. Although building them frequently requires me to face painful truths they are all bear a cargo of hope, and journey forth to overcome fear and the negativity it breeds. Please join me on that voyage!

This is a call for authors to submit manuscripts for potential publication in the ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA e-book (for Kindle) series and is open to all. Please allow me to explain why and how I’m doing this before giving you details of how to actually submit, because you should know what exactly you’re getting into before you jump in the deep end of this Olympic depth diving pool.

When I published my first e-book ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1: Point of Entry featuring Very Bad PR (pictured above) on September 29th last year I knew that it was going to be the first in series, but it didn’t occur to me that with it’s appearance sporting brilliant cover art by Angelyn Cabrales I had de facto become a publishing house and was thereby a (albeit very small) competitor for Penguin, Simon & Schuster and all the other well established publishing houses of Planet Wine. Our relationship may be an extreme form of the David & Goliath struggle, but that doesn’t alter the fundamental nature of it. Of course, you could argue that from the beginning this blog has effectively been an online magazine edited and published by me, and the presence of other authors (particularly Frank Ebbinghaus in the German-language department) makes this undeniably true. But, with God knows how many millions of blogs out there in cyberspace it didn’t feel like even when the traffic cranked up to the current level of half a million plus hits per month. Publishing that first e-book was the decisive step, because it is sold by the Kindle Store on Amazon which is hardly a small underground operation. That made me realize I would have to step up and play the role of publisher in an active way, rather than continue to dodge the issue. Should you not yet have read this outrageous tale of my first trip to the US (to Baltimore, to be precise) thirty years ago told as if it all happened yesterday, then this is where to find it:

http://www.amazon.com/ROCK-STARS-WINE-AMERICA-featuring-ebook/dp/B015QQWTKQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1443094170&sr=1-1&keywords=Stuart+Pigott

With the publication of the second “volume” in the series, ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #2: AZ with MJK: I Could Drink a Case of You (pictured below, also with art work by Angelyn Cabrales) on November 21st things became much more serious for two reasons. The first of these is that this story takes place in the present, in fact, the last events described in the book took place just one hundred hours before it’s publication! Secondly, the central figure of this story set in Arizona is a genuine rock star, Maynard James Keenan the singer of Puscifer and Tool. Tonight is the first night of the 2016 Tool tour (Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, also tomorrow night). This meant that I’m now also in competition with publications like Rolling Stone! I actually offered this story to Rolling Stone, but they weren’t interested. In spite of that they influenced me, because the $4,99 per copy price I set is Rolling Stone’s newsstand price. I have to say that I’m still trying to figure out what being in competition with those guys really means. On the other hand, I immediately realized that one enormous advantage of their lack of interest  in my e-book is that I enjoyed that rare and priceless treasure called COMPLETE ARTISTIC FREEDOM when writing and publishing it. I never forget the first time I heard those words as a teenager – in connection with the movies of Stanley Kubrick, who insisted on those words in every movie contract – they made the hairs on my arms and on the back of my neck stand up. They are still the most erotic words I ever heard and I adopted that freedom and eroticism as my agenda for #2. The PARENTAL ADVISORY Explicit Content sticker is on the cover for a good reason. I can promise you that you will be shocked that a wine book could read like this, because I’m still shocked that it makes great sense to me that a wine book does read like this. As far as I’m concerned it’s the best thing I wrote in a decade. Grab your copy now if you haven’t already done so:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018BWI9EM?keywords=Stuart%20Pigott&qid=1448210914&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

Work on ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #3 about the FLX (Finger Lakes) of Upstate New York has just begun and publication is due for April 1st (!) this year. Having got this far it suddenly struck me that there’s absolutely no reason why other authors shouldn’t also publish under the banner of ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA. If you have an American wine story that’s as good as my material or better, then you are more than welcome to submit a sample and an outline. HERE IS THE OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR PUBLICATION IN THIS SERIES:

A sample is a maximum 20,000 characters including empty spaces and an outline explains in a couple of pages what the whole story you wish to publish is. Please include a realistic completion date and indicate (with contact info) who your editor is, alternatively I can edit your work – no editor is not an option and you cannot be the editor! Samples that are too long will be returned unread. Samples without an accompanying outline will be returned unread. Should your story be accepted we will agree a delivery date and you will deliver on time (or agree a delay with me), or the story will not be published. Before publication you must also submit a written statement signed by you to the effect that you possess the copyright of everything you are submitting and agreeing to my terms. Those terms are that your work sells for $4.99 plus tax on Kindle (they will vary the price slightly, but I will enter $4.99 when uploading your book) and that we will divide the 70% of that price which you receive as follows, $1 per copy sold for me the publisher and the rest for you the author. There will be no negotiations about those terms at any point and they hold for the entire lifetime of the e-book, that is as long as copyright still applies to your work. To submit a work first send me a message through the contact function of this blog, then we will establish email contact.

I am full of anticipation for your work! Together we can turn ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA into a serious competitor for the publishers and publications mentioned above

As promised, my last blog posting of 2015 has a sparkling wine theme. I know that now some of you are now going to ask why I didn’t post this at least a week ago, so that you could stock up on these products for the moment when the ball drops tonight. I will also toast the New Year with a glass of sparkling wine at that moment, but I know that I won’t take in what it tastes likes like I would in a calmer moment. And the sparkling wines made by Larry Mawby on the Leelanau Peninsula of Northern Michigan deserve that kind of attention, rather than only being knocked back when the hands of the clock meet at the top and you’re already so drunk that you know most of January 1st will be painful.

That means that apart from those of you have already secured supplies you won’t be able to begin 2016 with a glass of SEX. Yes, that’s the brand name on the label of the sparkling wine in the left of the photo of Larry. As he said to me when I visited him for the second time at the end of July, “this is the only federally approved sex!” He meant that the label had received approval from the TTB, the federal body that regulates the labeling of alcoholic beverages in the US. As you can see from the photo of Larry above he uses two distinct sets of packaging for his sparklers, SEX along with all the tank-fermented wines appear under the M. Lawrence label and the champagne-method (i.e. bottle-fermented) wines are all marketed under the L. Mawby label. Already this strategy of producing two distinct ranges using different methods is highly unusual and attracted my attention.

Then, when I first met Larry back in 2013 I realized that this innovative, clever, sophisticated and funny man was a great story. Sure the story of his wines had been told before and sometimes quite well, but the I couldn’t find any story that did him justice. Perfect! Nothing is more helpful to a journalist interested in underdog winemakers like me than a tremendously talented winemaker who has been ignored or misunderstood. The problem with this subject was confirmed during my second visit to the M. Lawrence & L. Mawby tasting room on July 24th this year: this is one BIG story, and an important part of the HUGE story of Northern MI wines. I had no time to write a blog posting about Larry Mawny while I was up in Northern MI because of the major commitment of the City of Riesling event in Traverse City (the 3rd of these events will take place August 27th thru 29th, 2016), then when I returned to NYC work on the first of my e-books for Kindle, ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #1 demanded my full attention. The fact is that this format is the right place for a stories like this, because the maximum length of my blog postings is way too narrow a frame for this huge personality. What I can do here and now (an important place to be in!) is tell you about his wines and give you an idea about why I consider him a sparkling genius.

The things that amaze me about the L. Mawby champagne-method sparkling wines are their technical perfection, their precisely-judged balance and the distinctiveness of each product. The most important of them is the non-vintage Blanc de Blancs Brut, because at circa 24,000 bottles per year this accounts for roughly half of Larry’s production under the L. Mawby label. I love the combination of lemony freshness (it is MI 100% Chardonnay) and creaminess in this wine (from 28 months on the yeast in the bottle), then the aftertaste that reminds me of lemon meringue pie, but is fresh and dry. The mousse (technical name for the bubbles) is persistent without being dominant. Is this an American sparkling wine that New York somms obsessed with Blanc de Blanc champagnes from obscure growers (preferably Extra Brut, biodynamic, $50 – $100 per bottle, and really difficult to get hold of) will have orgasms over? Definitely not, but for $23 direct from Larry it is a seriously delicious sparkling wine with great charm and balance. However, the much more concentrated, creamy and complex 2005 Mille Blanc de Blancs, ($50 direct from Larry, but now sadly sold out) might just gain their grudging appreciation. I was also really turned on by the wines in the L. Mawby range made with the hybrid grapes that are mega-uncool in the wine scene of NYC and just about everywhere else. My favorite of these is the seriously sexy non-vintage Sandpainting Brut, a blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Vignoles. The latter grape really energizes the whole and adds a fresh pineapple note to the red berry and lemon aromas of the French grape varieties. The stunning interplay of fruit, creaminess and acidity in this sparkler must be experienced. I know nothing else like it anywhere Planet Wine, and it costs just $27 direct from Larry. That is mega-cool for me!

The M. Lawrence tank-fermented sparkling wines are much more up-front and fruity, but this strikes me as merely a stylistic alternative. I refuse to fall into the trap of thinking that this is an “inferior” method, and because they come onto the market without the long aging of the champagne-method wines they shouldn’t be taken as seriously. Larry describes his Green Extra Sec as, “like Vinho Verde, but with bubbles,” but I find the personality of this blend of the hybrid Cayuga grape with Riesling comes mostly from the latter grape. The list described it’s flavor as, “tropical electronics,” a Larryism that was spot on and made made me laugh. These two pictures of signs on the winery patio fall into the same category. After I tried the SEX Larry asked me, “was it good for you?” and I answered with British irony, “if I may say so, I really enjoyed the SEX!” This dryish sparkling rosé is a weird mix of grapes with the color coming form Regent and Marechal Foche and much of the flavor from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. It’s crisp and juicy and it might stimulate your appetite for some healthy and positive physical activity with someone else, or even yourself. Detroit only appears under that name in the local market, while in Chicago it’s called CHI and in the New York area it’s called NYC. This is a blend dominated by Riesling and Muscat Larry aptly describes on the list as a, “floral, HipHop diva.” Even with just over 5% / 50 grams per liter RS this is not an overly sweet wine, the effusive aromas and bright acidity plus the mousse balancing the sugar really well. These are really fun drinks that deserve to be taken seriously. My suggestion would be that over the coming weeks and months you experiment with these still little-known works of sparkling genius that begin around $15 direct from Larry. Valentine’s day is not far away, and that is time when we sit (or lie) and savor!

Thank you all for your attention and support during 2015. Happy New Year and all the best for 2016 to you all from NYC! I shall return shortly.

PS My new year’s resolution is – in the spirit of Larry Mawby – to enjoy wine, sex, laughter and life more thoroughly, (but never to do so at someone’s else’s expense).

Obviously I’m not celebrating the holiday at the moment, because I have to sit at my desk to write this message of good will to all women and men. Sorry for reminding you all of that horrible things called work on the ultimate day off, but I wanted to let you know that I haven’t got fancy software that writes the blog postings for me, nor do I employ minions to take that task off my shoulders. No, if this stuff that I write and publish is any good, then that’s because I really enjoy working on it, even when it means sitting at my desk on a day like today in order to say Merry Christmas to you all.

I took the photograph above just before 5pm on Christmas Eve from the bank of the East River and it was about 70° Fahrenheit. Yesterday in NYC it felt positively sub-tropical, conditions seriously difficult to cope with. I felt like I was in a daze the whole time! In order to wake myself up so that I could cook dinner for friends I headed out for a walk just before sunset and caught what you see above. The riverside pathway is part of my morning jogging route, and if the weather is bad early then I head out later in the day for my run. That mean’s that I get to see this view in all kinds of weathers and lights, but it never looked like this before. When I got back home I felt a lot better and dinner worked out pretty well, thank goodness.

Sometimes I feel a bit negative about the way the world is developing (just think back over the events of the last year!), but I would genuinely like to think there is a good chance that things will be better in 2016 than they were in 2015. Let’s work on that! Do not fear, this is not the last blog posting of the year. At least one further item will follow on the subject of sparkling wine. Outrageously – I’m good at outrageous, in case you missed that – that story has been waiting for half a year. I’m hoping that it will have been worth the wait for all of you, because your interest is what drives this blog. Thank you!

Why wait for people to give you stuff you don’t want for Christmas that will only depress you, when with a couple of mouse clicks you can give yourself my e-book for Kindle (just download the free Kindle app onto your device) ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #2: AZ with MJK that will blow your mind? If the idea of an outrageously entertaining hardcore piece of gonzo journalism straddling the genres of rock and wine writing appeals to you, then follow Hunter S. Thompson’s advice, click on the link below, buy the ticket (for just $4.99), take the trip:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018BWI9EM?keywords=Stuart%20Pigott&qid=1448210914&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

If you are hesitant, then you can look at this selection of photographs from my two research trips to AZ to study the state’s wine industry and meet it’s pioneer winemakers before making that commitment. The only picture that isn’t mine is the one above showing the Nagual del Judith vineyard in Jerome a mile up in the mountains of Northern AZ on January 1st, 2015. It was taken by the singer-winemaker Maynard James Keenan of Tool & Puscifer / Caduceus Cellars & Merkin Vineyards. Before we get to MJK properly I have to show you my photo of the same vineyard taken six months later during my second trip to the wine industry of AZ. The contrast says everything about how challenging the growing conditions in the state are for the wine grape. Just look how rocky the soil is and imagine how the vines must struggle to survive in it!

AZ wine wouldn’t be where it is today – on the cusp of gaining insider recognition as an important up and coming category – if it wasn’t for the tireless efforts of MJK over the last dozen years. That was reason enough to put him on the e-book’s cover, but the quality of the 2013 and ’14 vintages at Caduceus & Merkin sealed this decision. I didn’t go crazy trying to take the ultimate photo of MJK, because I have to write a ton of notes if I’m to have a real chance to write a great story and that left me only a modest amount of time for photography. For that reason the picture below, taken in the Four Eight Wineworks in Clarkdale is the best I have to offer.

I hope, and believe, that MJK’s personality comes through better in my book than in this picture, I certainly threw myself at the task of doing it justice. When I started writing I tried throwing into the story one or two quotes from the lyrics of Puscifer songs in the hope that this would get more of the man into the story,  and it seemed to work so well that I ended up quoting them extensively. I have point out that I’m not claiming to having any special talent as an interpreter of these texts, merely that I have my own take on them that may well surprise many fans. As always, my goal was to provide a wealth of surprising angles and perspectives on the subject of AZ wine and the many things that connect with it. My e-book would be missing something if MJK’s vineyard manager Chris Turner, pictured below, hadn’t been such a mine of information, funny stories and support of many kinds.

Southern AZ is where two thirds of the state’s wine grapes are grown, and it is a completely different world to the north, as the photo below of the Callaghan Vineyard in the Sonoita-Elgin AVA (American Viticultural Area) shows very clearly. Somebody should give Kent Callaghan a medal for having never wavered in his commitment to making great wine in this Great American Emptiness since planting his first vines in 1990. Most of them died and more recently. My jaw dropped when he told me that in 2010 he had no crop due to frost damage, in 2011 a tiny fraction of a normal crop, and in 2014 rain during the harvest almost destroyed the crop. What other business faces those kind of risks? None that I can think of, not even rock music!

It was strange to go to this place so different from the safe suburban world in which I grew up and meet someone like Kent Callaghan, pictured below, and then to connect with him. Without that kind of connection no outsider can even begin to make sense of a wine location as strange as Sonoita-Elgin. I work hard at making those connections with my subjects, but that doesn’t mean there’s any guarantee that will work out. Certainly, if I’d written this e-book after my first trip to the state in November 2014 on the A2Z Wine press trip (as the organizer, Dada PR man David Furer called it) the story would have been way too flimsy, also because I hadn’t really connected with Kent Callgahan then. When I returned in June 2015 I made that connection, gained the depth of factual knowledge that my e-book needed, but also a bunch of unexpected stuff that turned it into a roller coaster of a story with its own crazed dynamic.

Another crucial figure in my story and vital source of AZ wine enlightenment is Todd Bostock of Dos Cabezas Wineworks in Sonoita, pictured below in full flight in a local cafe. Todd’s wife Kelly plays an equally important role in the success of this winery that produces AZ’s best white wine (a crazy blend called Meskeoli), and is fast becoming one of the best sources for reds and rosé too. The hardest thing of all when writing about someone who speaks as well as Todd Bostock does is deciding what to leave out, because if I’d put in all the striking things he said to me the book would be at least 50 pages longer! However, I decided there was no alternative but to putting in Kelly Bostock’s telling of the  story of how she got together with her husband verbatim. You see, MJK wasn’t the only person I quoted at length!

When I think back to my time in AZ, then I fondly remember the many hours sitting in the Airstream trailer pictured below at MJK’s Merkin South vineyard where I wrote quite a chunk of ROCK STARS OF WINE AMERICA #2. In fact, one crucial scene in my story actually takes place inside that Airstream and that’s the reason that I had to put the PARENTAL ADVISORY Explicit Content sticker on the cover. The Puscifer fans amongst you will recognize this from a couple of the band’s videos and might recognize some elements of that scene in my e-book too.

Some readers have already asked me if I mean that scene inside the Airstream seriously and the answer is “yes”, that’s why it remained in the story through the editing process, rather than landing on the cutting room floor. I use that metaphor, because I told the story as if it was a art house movie. Who knows, maybe there’s a movie director out there who will want to film it. If not you should see some exciting pictures in your head when you read it! I hope that it also convinces you that you should go and try the new wines of AZ with an open mind, and that when you do you don’t think I’ve gone off the deep end.

Unfortunately, I just realized that I don’t have a bottle of AZ wine to drink with dinner tonight. That was a mistake I will have to correct as fast as I can!

The title of this entry to my wine diary is radically out of synch with the subject of this posting, because yesterday after three days in the Pfalz I made the decision to return to Berlin for medical tests. It turns out that I probably didn’t need to come back and therefore this blog posting ought to be titled “Pfalz Wine Diary: Day 4”. However, I had already achieved the main goal of my visit to the region, because I had completed portraits of Valentin Rebholz (pictured above) and Hans Rebholz (pictured below). I first painted portraits of the twin sons of Hansjörg and Birgit Rebholz of the famous Weingut Ökonomierat Rebholz in Siebeldingen back in the late 1990s when they were small kinds. This spring the Rebholz twins told me how much they liked those pictures, then surprised me even more by begging me to return to do new portraits of them. In a weak moment I agreed to this – how could I really say “no” ? – not having painted for a full decade.

This meant that when I arrived in Siebedlingen early on the evening of Monday, December 7th I had no idea if I could still paint, much less if I would be able to compete portraits that would satisfy the Rebholz twins or me. It was therefore quite a surprise to me when the portraits quickly took (contrasting) form on the first day of work, this Tuesday, and by the end of the second day of work, this Wednesday, I was already wondering if there was anything else I could do to them. This Thursday morning I decided they were finished and started work on another painting, but within hours I was unwell, the medical advice was clear and I was on an ICE express train on my way back to Berlin.

Now it seems that my problems are much smaller than I thought, I could probably have stayed in the Pfalz and completed at least a third and possible a fourth painting. However, that is all theory. The two paintings above are the facts. For me the interesting thing about them is how radically different they are to each other, although the Rebholz twins (now 20 years old) look so alike it’s hard to tell them apart at first glance. It was a conscious decision to go down this path and try to make that work. How well it works is up to them and up to you. Obviously, the way I paint – influenced by artists as diverse as Diego Velasquez, Francisco Goya, Chaim Soutine, Max Beckmann and Francis Bacon – is not going to agree with everyone and I expect to upset as many people as I intrigue or actually please. That polarization of audience opinion is inherent to the way I paint no less than to the way I write. Please let me know what you think, and don’t ever hesitate to criticize wither my writing or my painting.

Alongside the reassuring news that I almost certainly don’t have a major health problem, the other positive thing which today brought was another painting commission. It feels seriously strange to suddenly be asked to paint again after having started again following a ten year break! I am now planing to pack my paints and brushes in exactly one week and take them with me to NYWC (New York Wine City) to work on that commission. It will be the first time I ever painted in the US. Wish me luck!