myass.com

In the spirit of the Internet, and in deference to myspace.com, I was thinking of starting a site called myass.com.

This idea came to me after reading a number of posts on wine bulletin boards concerning winery mailings—or, to be more exact about it, emailings. The savings from using no stamps is applied to raising the price of the wine!

Some of the posts are about how the guy can’t help it—they are mostly guy posts. He buys everything that plops into his email software, and in some cases, he hides his shopping from his wife.

Sounds like a 1950s sit-com in reverse, when the wife can’t stop buying shoes or hats, and hides them from her husband. It’s actually easier for a wine geek to hide wine, since after spending a fortune on it, it’s supposed to go into a dark cellar and stay there so that one can boast over one’s possession.

Other posts complain that the prices of the wines are way too high, and so, the thinking goes, better buy the wine now before the price gets even higher.

Still other posts are from guys salivating, because they have been informed that they are off the waiting list—or they have been informed that there’s something seriously wrong with them, so they are now on the waiting list.

I particularly love the posts intended to “help” everyone see the light. These guys implore, beg, warn, threaten us to get on the mailing list, because we surely don’t know what we are missing.

For the finale, the posts that tickle me greatly are the ones when the guys are sick and tired of all the direct mail solicitations that they receive. They are cutting the wineries off—well, not all of them; just can’t go without that $300 bottle of milkshake from that screaming winery or the $250 proud bottling, or that $1,000 ghost with its tongue in its cheek while writing the emailer.

What do you think about my idea? A Web site devoted to chronic high rollers complaining about the marketing technique of wineries that they encouraged and rewarded with their spending habits and with their adoration?

Only problem is: I’m having second thoughts about the name, myass.com.

Maybe it should be, you'reanass.com.

This entry’s wine:

To call wines from Italy by the monolithic description, Italian wine, does not do justice to the diversity of wines from Italy. When they say it, most people think that Italian wine is Tuscan or Piemontese, two out of two dozen wine regions in the country.

Since it made a splash in Rome of 121BC, one region, Campania, has been among Italy’s most interesting wine places. When compared with the well known northern wines, the wines from Campania seem, er, un-Italian. Rather than leathery and acidic or earthy and forward, the wines from Campania are big boned, almost flabby at times, but always lush and rounded.

One of the grapes in the region is named Aglianico. The name is derived from the word, Hellenic, which gives clue to its origins: Greece, about 750 BC.

Aglianico is usually a big, lush, tannic wine that acts as a good foil to big foods. But sometimes the producer’s hands, or barrels, get in the way. This was one of those times.

Anyone from Brooklyn should know what an egg cream is and what it tastes like. The original egg cream was white and foamy—it looked like a whipped egg white. It was made from vanilla syrup, milk, and seltzer (to me, the abomination called chocolate egg cream is non-existent).

How it was done I don’t know, but the 2006 Aglianico from Terredora DiPaolo reminded me of an egg cream, after I got past the cedar aroma and tasted the wine. I didn’t like it at all, even later, when I thought I detected a touch of cherry in the finish. On the plus side, the alcohol was not a problem.

Didn’t have the wine with anything to eat. Must be an old habit: when I was growing up, I took my egg cream neat.

2006 Aglianico, IGT Campania

Terredora DiPaolo

Alcohol 13% $14/bottle before volume discount

Imported by Vias Imports, NY

Copyright, Thomas Pellechia
February 2008. All rights reserved.