Trillin hilarity with ACI: "A new way of measuring pretentiousness."

The parallels with "craft" beer are immediate, stunning and entirely accurate.

ACI: A new way of measuring pretentiousness, by Calvin Trillin (Slate)

... No sooner had I ordered a drink than we had occasion to exchange glances that communicated dismay: Three men who were sitting at the other end of the room had begun discussing wine in voices that seemed intended to enlighten oenophiles who were strolling past Rockefeller Center.

The man at the end of the bar nodded in their direction and said, “Among people who think of themselves as wine connoisseurs there’s a 61 percent ACI.”

I was puzzled. “What’s an ACI?” I asked.

The story of Pappy Van Winkle Jell-O shots lances the boil of libations snobbery.

I wouldn't waste Pappy Van Winkle on Jell-O shots. However, I absolutely WOULD use it as a marinade for frozen weenies.

Steve Coomes picks up the story at Insider Louisville.

Meta gains national news attention, praise and threats over Pappy Jell-O shots

I had to go, and I had to know.

To Meta to taste a Pappy Van Winkle Jell-O shot last Friday and learn how this brilliant and borderline scandalous — for Bourbon Country anyway — promotion turned out for Jeremy Johnson, co-owner of the craft cocktail bar.

Johnson grabbed headlines on Thursday after informing Insider Louisville he was taking a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 15-year-old bourbon and a bottle of 12-year-old and turning those sought-after sippers into Jell-O shots.

Sales were brisk ... and snobs were outraged.

For the most part, Johnson said the Pappy shots were praised by people who “got what we were doing, tasted them and really liked them.” But some regarded using such rare whiskey as blasphemy and were downright vicious in their commentary.

Johnson received an email death threat (Hey, smart guy, you can trace those things) and another threat to burn the bar down. A thread on Fark.com contains a litany of splenetic remarks toward Johnson, his bar and the commonwealth — all because he turned bourbon into a Jell-O shot.

Could it be that Jell-O shots are the egalitarian answer to the question, "Whither bourbon snobbery?"

“People are missing one big point: We took a bottle of Pappy and (150) people got to try it rather than two or three. I think that’s pretty cool.”

Johnson offers a cross-disciplinary conclusion, one that I wish could be applied to beer, too.

Overall, Johnson thinks the whole buy-at-all-costs bourbon craze is way out of hand, and he recalled a story of a Napa Valley winemaker who treated several peers to a dinner at which he served them popsicles made from Château d’Yquem, a pricey French wine known for its complexity and sweetness.

“They freaked out, they couldn’t believe he did that,” Johnson said. “He told them that at the end of the day, it’s just grape juice, and if they started believing their own hype, then they’re really screwed.”

My friend Tony S. took this ball and promptly ran with it.

Better yet, how about a whole Pappy dinner? Cocktail weenie appetizer, salad with pappy vinaigrette, pork loin with Pappy bourbon mustard sauce, bread pudding with Pappy bourbon sauce.

Boom! I replied that the only form of Pappy to be made unavailable at the dinner was "by the glass," but Tony already was one step ahead of me.

Of course, any bourbon event such as this needs a signature cocktail, I suggest:

86 proof Yellowstone (of a dusty bottle--complete with a faded and broken tax seal--discovered in a basement cabinet of a bungalow owned by someone's old maid aunt who purchased the fifth at Taylor Drugs sometime between Sputnik and the Beatles' "Ed Sullivan Show" appearance for her brother (who visited every Sunday afternoon and dutifully cut her lawn and--in spite of their parents' leadership in the Temperance movement back after the War to End All Wars--acquired a taste for the demon liquor hanging out with those fish-eating, papists at the tavern after returning from THE War.)

While only aged in new charred white oak barrels for four to six years, surely the 50 year bottle-conditioning ought to make it delightful.

Served either neat (for the Foodies), with a splash of water (for the intelligentsia), or with your choice of Big K Cola or the ever-popular "Orange Drink" (for the hipster).

Dude. I have a couple bottles of Dark Lord hidden away. Beef stew?

John Holl asks beer industry peeps for their reaction to the cover of The New Yorker.

When John Holl saw the cover of The New Yorker, he found himself thinking about a reference to "snob."

 ... It wraps up by saying: “It’s an unprecedentedly excellent time to drink beer in Brooklyn, as the cover suggests. Just don’t become a snob about it.”

In my opinion, “Brooklyn” could easily be replaced by “the United States” and this scene could happen in many places (maybe minus the neck tattoo).

Because of the strong reaction and celebration around the cover I (contacted) several folks in the beer industry and asked for their opinion on the cover (click on their names to see their responses).

One of them was me -- thanks, John. You can read all the answers here:

BEER INDUSTRY REACTS TO ‘THE NEW YORKER’ COVER, by John Holl (All About Beer Magazine)

Alstroms have a problem with session beer, and Lew Bryson begs to differ.

Note that these days, it is my custom to refer to RateBeer and BeerAdvocate collectively, as RateAdvocate. However, in this instance, I must defer to the correct usage, since the actual reference is to BeerAdvocate, the magazine.

Aww, what the hell.

It's been a while since I visited RateAdvocate, and I'm happy that Lew posted his thoughts on the session beer editorial. Admittedly, given the depth of my feeling in favor of session beer, I probably haven't done enough to educate local beer drinkers. I constantly vow to do more, and some day, there might actually be time. Until that day comes, it's honestly the case that most of the beers I drink fall into the session boundaries.

When I feel like something stronger, there's always Thomas Family Winery's Gale's Hard Cider or gin. Am I becoming a Session Snob? It's a badge I'd happily wear.

What's Your Problem?, by Lew Bryson (The Session Beer Project)

Jason and Todd Alstrom put an editorial in the latest issue of Beeradvocate magazine titled "The Problem with Session Beers in the US." They've had a passive-aggressive stance toward session beers from the early days, and this piece fits neatly into that. Because they have such a large bully-pulpit with the magazine, I felt I should at least respond. Because I only see ONE problem the way that they do; the rest of their problems are manufactured, questionable, or just plain wrong.

A digression on Bullitt County wineries.

I'm delighted for Steve Coomes. See what I mean? Remove "Bullitt County" and replace with "Southern Indiana," and it's exactly what this blogging beer guy has been saying for at least five years, maybe more.

To understand why a portion of my craft beer time is spent advocating for local wineries, consider that for me, rooting for the underdog is a genetic necessity.

So is a chronic inability to refrain from informing those possessing misguided views, in the loudest possible terms, that they're off base. In terms of locally made wine, they need to give these wineries a chance. They need only visit the winery, tell winery staff that sweet wines aren't to their taste, and ask for samples of drier wines.

But it's deeper than this with me. I remember when the only good beer we could get came from far away, and how much I wanted it to be from here, instead. Now that the Louisville metro area (and the extended region) has plenty of good beer made close by, there remain substantial numbers of beer drinkers continuing to insist that for a beer to be good, it must come from far, far away.

Bullshit. We make great beer hereabouts, and great wine, too. The very least I expect of alleged experts is to acknowledge it, for the best and simplest reason of all: I'm telling the truth.

Take it away, Steve. Great article, indeed.

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Bullitt County winery tour surprises cynic and signals promise for burgeoning industry

By STEVE COOMES | Published: MARCH 6, 2013

The drive up to Brooks Hill Winery is one of the area’s most scenic. Ascending the winding two-lane, rock-walled stretch happens quickly and makes your ears pop. At the top of the knob the view opens; several hundred feet below is the convergence of Bullitt and Jefferson Counties, an impressive vista that’s worth the drive by itself.

The grounds at Brooks Hill Winery.

But you don’t make the drive just for lookin’, you drive about 10 minutes beyond the southern edge of Metro Louisville to taste wine, quality wine made right here in Kentucky.

Seriously.

My guide on this Bullitt County winery tour is Tom Kohler, a full-time CPA, amateur winemaker and studied oenophile who’s nudged me for months to join him on a visit to all four Bullitt County wineries.

A renewed commitment to Southern Indiana wineries promised at the Bank Street Brewhouse.

I expend very little energy thinking about wine. This isn’t because I don’t like wine. It’s because I prefer beer, and having become renowned for preferring beer – in essence, being paid to drink beer – it’s what I drink and think most of the time.

Not all of the time, though, and drinking wine is an enjoyable busman’s holiday for me. Much of the reason why wine is enjoyable for me in limited doses is because I know comparatively little about it. It may be true that I know a bit more than I let on, and yet, overall, my knowledge base is rudimentary. I aim to keep it that way, not out of malice, but rather out of triage. I’ve neither the time nor the liver to become “expert” at a second drinking discipline.

These considerations matter because of a decision we made about the newest of our two businesses, Bank Street Brewhouse. Our goal with Bank Street Brewhouse is to accompany Chef Josh Lehman’s formidable cuisine with the beers we brew at BSB and the original garage brewhouse three miles away. It is a measure of how admirably Josh has succeeded in the kitchen that customers ask for a wine list, presumably having been trained to think that such high quality of food could not possibly be consumed without wine, as opposed to beer.

This is an errant assumption, and one that we’ll change with time. In the interim, we have not neglected the output of the vineyard. Rather, we have taken the position that if our locally produced beer stands the test of pairing with Josh’s culinary creations, so do local wines being handcrafted throughout Southern Indiana and wineries like Huber, Turtle Run, Thomas Family, Winzerwald, Butler, Best, Oliver and several others.

I can tally these wineries here without cribbing off the Internet, primarily because in the past year and a half, I’ve visited all of them save for Best and a couple others not listed here. At each there were greater and lesser wines, but the point is that at their best, these wineries make excellent products worthy of featuring as part of our effort to emphasize local beers and foodstuffs that come from small, independent or family-run operations.

We’re trying to stay consistent with these principles as it is possible to do so. Why should Southern Indiana wines be treated any differently? My own taste buds tell me that while there surely are classic wines from time-honored wine making areas of the world that are “better” than these, and I use that term rationally yet guardedly, locally made wines are good and getting better. They fit the bill conceptually, and I believe some of them are better than just “good.” Besides, a grape like Chambourcin is one grown right here. That’s local. That’s the point, isn’t it?

As with the tendency at one time for beer drinkers to prefer imports over American-made craft beers, I suspect there is an element of snobbery in this prejudice, which provides even more reason for me to reject the notion that for the BSB wine list to be suitable, there must be selections from somewhere else. This is bunk. I’m advising staff that we’re making a renewed effort to build a wine list that features Southern Indiana wines, and I believe we shall make it slightly larger than I first envisioned. Yes, BSB is all about NABC beer, but not to the exclusion of other local products worth enjoying and savoring. Come to think of it, shifting this knowledge back to the original location is a very good idea, too.

If I have to visit these Southern Indiana wineries again, and go through all those samplings a second time, I’m willing to make the sacrifice in the name of science, and local commerce. It's exhausting. Someone must do it.

Cheers.

Indiana Uplands Wine Trail

Wineries of Indiana