Interesting show. The bobble head didn’t look a thing like you the hair was all wrong and the face too angular. Perhaps it’s really just some tosser repackaged and your mates are just having a piss with you.
You’re are dead on about the shoulders comment, a few shows back you tasted a wine with the Rhone style sloping shoulders that you said tasted “just like a right bank Bordeaux” and the ones in the Bordeaux style bottles you said were all very New World. Although, I wonder if the question might have been refering to vintage wine that has had it’s fill reduced down the shoulders by evaporation from LT storage in low humidity.
I am opening a new restaurant and the comment about the red Thai coconut curry resolved my dilema between choosing to serve that or a green Thai sauce with my Mahi dish. So your show is altering the world around you, in case you were wondering.
Have a fine labour free weekend.

Best Wine rating method:
The Three Stooges wine rating system
MOE: Moe-ness in a rating denotes the rough harsh qualities of tannin and acidity.
LARRY: Easygoing, simple inoffesive, soft, just trying not to grate.
CURLY: Wines of great character and distinction.
SHEMP: not an actively bad wine but is bland and clumsy-more lame than awful.
joe: doesn’t even deserve to be capitalised- a truly bad wine of this world- a real swill would be a joe besser.
-A wine can be assigned up to 3 Stooges.
-The more Stooges the greater the impression on the taster.
-A wine’s personality is expressed by the particular mix of Stooges.

For a huge, new world, Oak Monster style chard, but intergrated and well made, check out the Chard put together by Silver Stone in Paso Robles. The winemaker, Dan Kleck, has crafted the most delicious “new world” Chard I have come across. It’s all buttered caramel popcorn on the nose, with a touch of oak and citrus – and the finish is all sugar, butter, caramel etc.

QOTD: I have two new discoveries. First, I love the feature on iTunes that lets you print out the song list when you a make a mixed CD. There are lots of options, and when you print it out on to photo paper it looks very cool. I have also discovered Alsatian Pinot Blanc – very fun, with a terrific citrus component that just cuts and cuts. Trader Joe’s has one for eight bucks (in Los Angeles… I can’t speak for those of you in the provinces).

lurker no more. discovered wltv after the conan thing and went back and watched all 300 or so episodes-it took me three weeks- and i became current at the zero episode yesterday. Yeah!!! WLTV I have finally arriven…(inside joke) arrived……….wltv has reminded me not to leave behind the over oaked and the over hyped although i prefer old school old world………..more later

whats moderation. awaiting moderation? is that what i should b doing in my life? i dont think so…more wine,gargorle..garson

Glad to see your excited about the J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets 8-8 finish this year!

You only need to know what you know. Very yogic…I like. Sold on your site

QOTD: This may be along the road to T.M.I., BUT..at least it’s a universal topic, and if I can’t be candid here, where can I be?: Honestly, my favorite new discovery is this herbal deoderant I got at Target. Way back when I used to use Tom’s of Maine, but then two years ago it started giving me a rash. So I had to switch back to normal brands. But I prefer natural products. So when I saw this brand last week while doing my household shop, I decided to give it a try. I know this is totally weird, but I have worn it to multiple sweat-inducing events, and I CANNOT stink. It’s amazing, and cheaper than all the other deoderants. It’s called Herbal Clear. And I found it just in time; it’s been in the hundred degrees here!!

Let me know when the bobblehead goes on sale, and it’ll be on my desk for sure. QOTD: my fav discovery? caribbean jerk sauce. delicious. and also the idea that how i interact with my students is almost as important as what i am teaching them.

great show…

QOTD: My favorite discovery is the Vayniac community wine effort. I’m very much looking forward to every step in the process.

Appreciate the bobbelhead nod, but Gary is much better looking than the bobblehead.

6 bottles, we’re in. Sharing the love. Yeah, we’re a bit prickly, but we still heart you Gary!

oh my, we’re now being moderated. hmmmmm.

guess we’re on the outs???

Great episode, sorry the wines were not good.

QOTD: My favorite new discovery is probably….my talent in the kitchen!

As another suggestion for Nicole for a wine pairing, my wife and I like Viognier when the dish is getting curry-esque. Primitivo is a very interesting suggestion. I’ll have to try that.

Gary, I have to preface my additional comments by saying that I love your show, I love your missions (Changing the Wine World, bringing people together through wine), and I love you. You are a mensch. And I know you are looking for real feedback, not just praise. In that spirit, I have to say that I was a bit disturbed by the manner and vehemence of your answer to Jay O.’s question about wine in bottles with shoulders, although I don’t disagree with the substance of your answer.

There is no shortage of stupidity in the world, and some of it deserves to be confronted directly and vigorously. However, I think that Changing the Wine World — a world in which wine bullies intimidate people with all kinds of arcane knowledge and rituals and prescriptions for what you should like — should include giving people permission to ask “stupid” questions without fear of being ridiculed for it. In your defense, I note that you were careful not to call Jay O. stupid, or to call Jay O.’s friends stupid. Still, by saying “That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” it might be hard for Jay O. or his friends to refrain from drawing the inference.

A more sympathetic (and informative) way to answer the question would be to try to understand where somebody could have gotten this strange idea. Perhaps because the taste of the wine is affected by the size and shape of the glass in which the wine is served (which also seems like a strange idea until you try it), people are overgeneralizing to the size and shape of the bottle. (And people do claim that the *size* of the bottle affects how the wine ages because of the air/wine ratio.) Another possibility is that Jay O.’s friends have picked up on the fact that, by history and tradition, certain wines are put in bottles of certain shapes (e.g., Bordeaux in bottles with shoulders, Burgundy in bottles without shoulder, Alsatian wines in long slender bottles, etc.), and to some extent producers from other areas have honored those traditions by putting wines of similar styles in bottles of those shapes. So there actually could be a statistical *correlation* between bottle shape and taste of the wine without the bottle shape actually *causing* the wine to taste any different. Perhaps Jay O.’s friends prefer wines of the style that tends to be put in bottles with shoulders, and they have confused correlation with causation (which is a very common mistake).

Regardless of the way that Jay O.’s friends arrived at this idea, the fact that they now *expect* wine from certain bottle shapes to taste better to them may itself have an actual effect. This could be like a Placebo effect, where the patient really does feel better after taking the doctor’s prescription, even though the unsuspecting patient is actually only taking a sugar pill. Expectations in themselves can have real effects. That being said, personally I don’t want to enjoy my wine solely because I expect to enjoy it (or because the Jets won). I want to enjoy my wine because it has certain sensory characteristics that other people can agree are really in the wine. But if our own palates (and our own pleasure) are all that matter, it isn’t really clear whether I should care about that. Perhaps this is a philosophical question that people have to answer for themselves.

In any case, I think there were better ways to handle Jay O.’s question, and it is only because I think so highly of you that I took the time and trouble to call you on it. You do an awesome job, and I want to thank you for it.

QOTD: This new Wine Bar in San Diego. It is called Wine Steals. It has the best prices in San Diego. Plus the atomsphere is just awesome. I have been there three times in four days. They also have the 2005 Dover Canyon Cujo for only 18 bones (that is the same price on the website). The other place I was going to marked the price all the way up to $56. Place was a damn ripoff. Plus this place serves all kind of foods to go with your wine.

Sassodoro your so BOOOOOOOO00000000…ring.
This is not your diary.

Gary, I would like to order The Vayniac Cab, but the order form only ships to the US, and I am in Canada. Problem?

WTF, you don’t ship to WA?! What up wit that?

Great episode Gary,
And i have to say, contrary to Sassodoro’s lengthy diatribe, i love how you responded to the shoulder question.
There are lot of wine videos on the internet…lots of opinions.
Why do we all choose to watch Gary? Why do people who have NEVER been into wine choose to watch Gary and maybe try new things?
Because of the originality, passion and personality that he brings into an old, dusty, crusty, snobby, elitist pastime.
I would HATE to see winelibrary tv degenerate into a nice, polite, don’t-offend-anyone, freakin CASTRATED, buttoned-up version of what it once was.
Gary throws things at the camera, spits into a jets bucket and has thunder cats on the table for god’s sake. Everyone should know what they’re getting into 30 seconds into the show.

Gary, we love you. We love the thunder. If you make any change at all….MAKE IT LOUDER!
🙂

QOTD: Really had a nice discovery with Gravner’s wines. Very unique and interesting.
(also, WLTV is probably my favorite wine discovery lately!)

GV, good show! QOTD: Montevina pinot grigio from CALIFORNIA ! Awesome!!

Nice show, I’m glad you rated the chardonnays the way you felt and weren’t influenced by the “big boys.”

QOTD: Pinot Auxerrois 2003, a nice change to the everyday American white.

QOTD: That Gary rates wine he doesn’t like 84. Doesn’t leave much wiggle room for ones that you do like, does it?

A suggestion on how to improve your rating system. err.. :”changing the wine rating system world”.. I think that you should rate wines based on 3 categories 1. Smell 2. Taste 3. Finish..

seth