Disqus - Latest Comments for kenpayton

Re: AWB Reviews Wine Refrigerators & Coolers

Ken Payton — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 15:36:58 -0000

I, too, was contacted by the Air & Water folks. Like Joe, I had to turn down the product because of the requirement that I review the unit. Of course, I was free to write according to my own lights, but at the end of the day (and more than one email, including correspondence with Joe seeking his advice), I had to decline. I see it less as an ethical issue than one of having my hand forced. I only write on subjects I select. No quid pro quos. Very simple.

Re: Grapes of Wrath - Food - The Atlantic

Ken Payton — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:45:20 -0000

For further reading about this complex subject please see my interview with Prof. Gregory Jones, America's leading climatologist. He has written extensively on the subject of the impact on viticulture.

http://reignofterroir.com/2...

Re: EWBC Call for Papers

Ken Payton — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:31:26 -0000

Excellent idea! The opportunity this presents for blogger to vet an idea and receive instant feedback from colleagues is a much welcomed Conference innovation. When I had the pleasure of attending last year's Lisbon gathering, I was struck at the overall high level of expertise distributed among the participants. This certainly is clever way to tap into that talent for the benefit of all.

All that remains is for me to find a way there!

Re: The Schönbrunn Palace: Official Venue of the 2010 European Wine Bloggers Conference

Ken Payton — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:27:07 -0000

Incredible!

Re: Nominate Now: Best Writing On a Wine Blog

Ken Payton — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:38:14 -0000

Very sweet of you, Joe.

Re: 2010 Awards

Ken Payton — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:27:10 -0000

Along similar lines as Joe's recommendations, I would suggest giving awards, a gold, silver and bronze, to the top three wine blogs in each category. This might require a modestly expanded base of entries. Joe is quite right, that by adding blogs from outside North America, there is now a significant increase in possible nominees.

With respect to Kathy's comment, while I don't believe it is necessary for the five judge panel to have read every word written on every blog nominated, it is important that the judges already be familiar with the wine blogging community at large. Someone selected from WineBusiness.com, for example, would add credibility not only because they are pros but because of the daily updated blog roll on their site.

Re: 2010 Wine Blog Awards Announced

Ken Payton — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:33:20 -0000

Perhaps we might consider a top three for each category, a Gold, Silver and Bronze. Hardly a fan of the 2009 judging process, I can see how this simple innovation might provide a kind of inspiration, a motivation, for bloggers to try harder.

Re: Malolactic Fermentation: Banned in Portugal

Ken Payton — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:37:14 -0000

Why not contact the winery? A blogger need not limit their research options, especially when what separates them from their answers is an email, phone call or visit to the library. A journalist has no special magical set of communication devices.

Re: ‘Tis The Season to Not Share Special Occasion Wines

Ken Payton — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:37:13 -0000

Hilarious, Patrick! That is exactly my plan!

Re: Been Doon For the Liquid Memories (Saved by the Wild Bunch and Real Wine)

Ken Payton — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:17:45 -0000

No worries, chambolle. Do I regret my remark on Dr. Vino's blog? Of course I do. Did I add anything particularly constructive to the discussion last night? No, not really. But what's done is done. Anyway, do take care. I wish the very best for you and your blog.

Re: Been Doon For the Liquid Memories (Saved by the Wild Bunch and Real Wine)

Ken Payton — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:39:28 -0000

What is ugly is the irresponsibility of the American wine press to not have actually read the book, or to have faulted it for gaps in their own university education. Your remarks, strangely echoing put-a-sock-in-it Steinberger's, amply illustrate my point. You and others freely invent fictive demons and polarizing shadows, and expect no push-back. Funny as hell. The simple fact of the matter of it is that the reviewers I've read are more than deserving of the occasional indelicacy. They are incompetent readers. As literature students, they would have been flunked for their lazy work. Is this 'vituperative filth'? Is this the inauguration of a 'Holy War'? Re-read your post and tell me where I've written anything as offensive as your remarks here.

Of my website, thank you for visiting! That is very kind of you.

Re: Been Doon For the Liquid Memories (Saved by the Wild Bunch and Real Wine)

Ken Payton — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:20:07 -0000

It might interest you to know that there are backstories to all the poor reviews Mr. Nossiter has received. It is not pretty. All major reviewers have been laying in wait for the opportunity to spoil whatever effort Mr. Nossiter might ever have produced. Their reviews are intended to inflict pain. Make no mistake. The motive is to settle scores. That is the ugliness, the insular, the self-referential character of the American wine press. It is a small, incestuous crowd; it piles on. And it is passé.

Re: Get Your Wine Story Amplified

Ken Payton — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:03:38 -0000

A point to keep in mind is that while wineries may tell their own stories that is not to say what they present is necessarily true. Clearly 'green-washing' is a problem. A winery may celebrate that they have planted a thousand trees but conceal that their waste-water discharges pollute local streams. What they write on their web-site is essentially an invitation, not only to drinkers but to wine bloggers to take a closer look. And if they play by basic rules of transparency and truthfulness a winery thereby adds value beyond a simple list of wines recently produced.

They also are able to (potentially) attract readers and writers with interests other than wine: writers interested in sustainable agriculture, labor relations, climate change scientists, even historians! It is all a question of how deeply a winery is able and willing to go into these related matters. The point for a winery is to differentiate themselves as much as possible from their competitors by appealing to as many cultural values as possible.

Wine bloggers will, therefore, be far more interested in initiating contact with a winery if they already offer a well-told 'story' and a socially responsible marketing position.

Re: Been Doon For the Liquid Memories (Saved by the Wild Bunch and Real Wine)

Ken Payton — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:50:13 -0000

Hi, Alice. Thank you for taking the time to reply. I do not think the book is 'small-minded, full of posture and poorly written'. What I think is going on, part of problem, is Mr. Nossiter's deep involvement in cinema. For a film buff like me, his references to Pasolini, Fassbinder, De Sica, Rossellini, Cassavetes et al. are deeply revealing of his worldly orientation. But I feel such references, many coming early in the book, put the America of 'Star Wars' on thin intellectual ice. Mr. Nossiter's intellectuality, simple breathing in his circles, is off-putting to an American audience. Who the f**k is Pasolini? Hence the paucity of reviews, even among his admirers. Or the hostile tone of the reviews!
I was curious why he didn't mention Antonioni or Lina Wertmuller or Joseph Losey or Wim Wenders etc! But that is a different matter.
Mr. Nossiter would be the first to claim he is a film-maker, not a writer. He says as much in the interview you graciously linked. He also said he did the translation, with a substantial edit, of Le Gout et Le Pouvoir, the book that has become Liquid Memory. (By the way, I did not attempt to tell you the 'message' of the book. But were you to press me I would say it is most resembles a map. It is a topology of a personal journey. What is the message of a map? Does that help?)

And it is good you recommend folks buy this book! Well, you recommend people buy books. (Palin will be pleased.) I will continue to insist that in the fullness of time, Liquid Memory will be recognized for the wine culture game-changer that it is.

Re: Been Doon For the Liquid Memories (Saved by the Wild Bunch and Real Wine)

Ken Payton — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:29:44 -0000

Hi, Alice. A few thoughts. One of the more naive arguments in Mr. Steinberger's review is that politics should not play a role in discussions about wine. He tosses his biggest handfuls of manure at Mr. Nossiter because he dares to politicize Parker and his ditto heads for remarks made after the release of Mondovino. What would he have Mr. Nossiter do? The tone of the forums back then was sinister. And anti-jewish rhetoric was in play. The 'wine gestapo' remark from Parker himself following upon the release of Taste and Power in Europe two years ago was, therefore, not altogether unexpected. Now, Mr. Steinberger takes credit for tagging Mr. Nossiter the Michael Moore of wine for simply turning on and pointing his camera. Well, perhaps Mr. Parker needs his very own Leni Riefenstahl. Nothing but sleek bodies in heroic poses drinking South American wines made by 'rehabilitated' elements from within former military juntas.

(As a side note, even I came in for a bit of name calling in the Parker forums by referring to Walter Benjamin in the introduction to one part of my interview with Mr. Nossiter. Walter Benjamin as a Marxist ideologue? Well, I suppose if you subtract his jewish mysticism, intellectual originality and independence, and the ugly circumstances surrounding his death, yes, Mr. Benjamin was a marxist.)

So clearly wine belongs in its own little apolitical void. Sure it does. Of course if Monsanto were interested in letting loose upon the vineyards of America a new broad-spectrum pesticide, then perhaps legislative or regulatory 'politics' would be the only way to stop them. But that is too subtle by half for Mr. Steinberger to consider.

But, Alice, how can you say the book has "no arc, no relevance, no message'? You could have said 'I could not understand his point.' Or 'I would have preferred an expanded bibliography for further research.' But instead you join in the bashing of Liquid Memory normally reserved for books like Palin's 'Going Rogue'. You and Mike. I presume you call him Mike because he is a colleague, a friend. But it implies, in my small mind anyway, a critical deference to his coarse review not shown to Mr. Nossiter.

That you don't like Mr. Nossiter I can understand. Sometimes people just rub you the wrong way. Back in '93, when you alleged he was preening over his Wine Spectator award, I can see why that personal memory might prove relevant here. But what lesson are we to draw from it? That Mr. Nossiter's hypocrisy is amply revealed? I don't think so. He would have been around 32 years of age, already with one excellent film under his belt. I do not know what you or Mike were doing or saying in '93, but I know of dozens of marriages, to take one example from the 'culture wars', that have been dissolved since then. Do we accuse the people of hypocrisy for their failed pledges of eternal love? No. People change.

Bottom line, I believe your review of Liquid Memory is quite simply unfair. I, by contrast, would encourage to read it. It is stuffed with ideas and avenues for exploration. I would further encourage readers to see all the films referenced in the book. And look into to filmographies of the directors he mentions.

Thank you very much Alice for providing a link to my interview with the gentleman. You know I love you.

Re: My Jura Disclaimer

Ken Payton — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:28:11 -0000

Brilliant post. One of the best I've read in a long time.

Re: Doug Cook – Creator of Able Grape and Head of Twitter Search

Ken Payton — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:42:46 -0000

Very much looking forward to seeing Doug again. Quite a gentleman.

Re: Sunday Winery Tour – Quinta do Mouro and Herdade do Esporão in the Alentejo

Ken Payton — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:18:49 -0000

I am very much looking forward to this tour of the Alentejo.

Re: Mark Angeli, the bees go missing

Ken Payton — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:12:59 -0000

Mr. Angeli may well be right (in part) with respect to the effect of cell towers, microwave radiation, on bees. There have been a number of hints in the scientific literature that towers may play a role in CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) going back more than two years. (Although the recent research does point to a virus.)

But the irony is, of course, that the same scientific rigor and discipline that has bought this possibility to our attention is the same rigor and discipline that is dismissed as ignorant and uninformed when making findings contrary the efficacy of Bio techniques.

'Science', with a big 'S', is just as despised in America's bible belt as it is in the BD community. As we move toward the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species this November, it is important, I think, to reflect on how his evolutionary logic, greatly refined in recent decades, works within the BD scheme of things.

It doesn't, quite simply.

My gut feeling is that BD producers do not themselves understand what they are doing. They do not grasp the science underlying their project. Clearly they are doing something positive. That is undeniable. (Despite there being plenty of awful BD wines; and a future post on my blog will chronicle assorted BD disasters.)

But I cannot join their camp for the simple reason that, like a wine reviewer who cavalierly dismisses a farmer's year of hard work with a bad review, BD producers and their supporters dismiss producers unlike themselves. They always, I mean always, find spiritual fault.

Intolerable.

Re: A Nice Tofu Steak and Bordeaux

Ken Payton — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:15:47 -0000

And speaking of roast chicken...

http://www.huffingtonpost.c...

Re: A Nice Tofu Steak and Bordeaux

Ken Payton — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 03:08:19 -0000

Why does the guy use the qualifier 'secular'? I mean, to be secular is to recognize a distinction between religion and authority. Yet his comments have the crushing weight of both.

Re: Winners Announced for the All Expense Paid Trip to the EWBC!!!

Ken Payton — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:24:56 -0000

And congratulations to you, Susan! It all begins with the wine. If it ain't in the bottle, it ain't in the soul. Please post the names of wines you receive!

Re: Winners Announced for the All Expense Paid Trip to the EWBC!!!

Ken Payton — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:16:26 -0000

I am stunned! What an extraordinary honor! I shall do my very best to taste as widely as I am able, to speak with as many producers as my (now trembling) frame is able. This is a tremendous opportunity to add my voice to the growing chorus of those who now understand that Portuguese wines have arrived on the world stage!

I shall work very hard to deserve this honor, of that you can be sure!

Great thanks to Ryan and Gabriella of Catavino, the folks at ViniPortugal, Doug Cook... I'm going to need some time to wrap my head around this! Much more to come!

Re: One for You, Two for Me: Blending Can be FUN!

Ken Payton — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 19:59:33 -0000

Six Fingers

Re: One for You, Two for Me: Blending Can be FUN!

Ken Payton — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 10:45:28 -0000

Curious write-up. Thanks for the mention.