What Am I Doing Here?

My wines were recently reviewed by Tony Fletcher on http://www.ijamming.net/
I think I may have mentioned, Tony's book
"All Hopped up and Ready to Go", W.W. Norton
is coming out soon, October 26th, it is a precis of the NY music scene and I for one,
(particularly as a musician finding someone finally with something intelligent to say about the contemporary music scene) am
eager to read it and so even if I have mentioned it you will forgive me.
Anyway, in the interests of pure laziness I am reprinting my response to the review here: (since probably no one else is interested)


Tony,

Thanks for the plug and the honesty. I would expect nothing less and I think you
captured it to a 'T' (though I think you undershot on the Chard,--it is really something quite remarkable now when at the right temp. Several wine professionals have liked it immensely)
but on the whole you did certainly capture the spirit of what I am doing better than anyone which falls somewhere in between the committed muscular amateurism of a 'garagista punk' on steroids (implying a willful lack of marketing polish) and the image of a parapalegic on crutches trying to make the winning kick at a football game also comes to mind. In short (not to make too much of a virtue of necessity) it is intended to reflect my opinion that great wine should be a drama each time and drama by definition should never be polished. Sweet wine is comedy, I really
have nothing against sweet wine or comedy, (I enjoy Rieslind ,(sic Riesling) and in fact I made a super Pear Wine last year. At $16 a bottle it was as good as $70 ice wine--still have two bottles left), it is only the saccharine approach (of) being driven by the market I really despise and the refusal to be driven by the market conversely something that I admire, even if I fail to achieve it myself, sometimes, --it is a challenge to the moon eyed self-swindlers who come and inquire 'do you have any sweet wine' --it is not a challenge to sweet wine per se only to the reluctance to throw off cultural shackles and actually taste something besides sugar when approaching (a) wine that bothers me.

Just to clear things up,

As for the 'Frankie' 'Franky' contretemps. I was aware of the different spelling versions however,
being a New Yorker, an unreconstructed Brooklyn Boy, putting 'Frankie'
on anything would constitute linguistic heresy.
Never even considered it.
Hence, in short not a copyright concern at all.
My previous successful red was called 'Call me a Cab',
so correct syntax is not really what I was going for.
Still pissed the Dodgers left:)

Ken

Tony's original message follows:


Ken


I posted my first review of the Hunter Wine Fest today. Focused on you and Suhru for obvious reasons. As a good honest winemaker you'll appreciate the need for honest tasting notes regardless of acquaintanceship. I found it interesting that you did so well with the red wines (compared to the whites, IMHO) as I think they're generally much harder to pull off in this region. And I love that you think independently and have fun with what you're doin...


All (the) best ..