Wine Humour?

So what or more precisely are we dealing with here? A humourless bunch of dry leeching bores intent on relieving you of one of life's few simple pleasures. Probably not, well at least we hope not from the possibly disillusioned viewing glass of Empty. Wine is  like anything else pretty much, you have the bores who have long forgotten what, why and how they fell in love with Vino. This love is inter-tangled with wit, charm and a healthy dash of laughter? Summating my flowery bullshit rant, what in as many words is this fleeting entity wine humour? A more pressing issue for those out there whose struggles have led them here, does the bloody thing exist? Or are we as our abstract accompanying swan necked friend suggests above this meagre engagement of the  plebeian masses insofacto, humour?

Labels

Beginning where most of our wine affairs begin with a simple glimpse at labels. Many wines, wineries even wine markers would woe the day their label ended bearing anything other than a heavy dust and prosaic mantra of incomprehensible riddles and jargon. Yet thankfully, this is a dying breed, and while I will self admittedly decry I am not without shame and have Bordeaux's of the square mustard labelled variety sitting quietly on a shelf waiting to emerge in a million years time, it is not with them my fondness lies.

Names Creep into thoughts, Fat Bastard (Below) and Arrogant Frog, and while my experiences of these has been light it has been met with a wine of poor quality, simple and large. Moving beyond these we are engaging with bigger giants where a slight of wit dashes the conservative belief of matching fine wine by labelling and champions the idea nonsensical labels maybe bearing a burden not of muck wine, but of ageing potential, elegance and flavour.

Enter Sexy Beast, a subtly named unsubtly, worth grabbing the eye, elegant Cabernet from no other home but Australia. A paradox apparently. Yet, so is the cocktail of interesting labelling and fine wine is one was to believe the bores bound up solely by their Bordeaux-Burgundy pairing.

Here's a few favourite labels the team have picked out; Monsters Attack (Curious Wines), Geil (Corkscrew Wine Merchants, Geil translates as a childish "Horny" in German),


Our Taste

Beer geeks are bearded, bicycle-messengers-short-and-ironic t-shirt waring hipster elitists. Wine Snobs are inclusive only if you possess an adjective vocabulary larger than a kitchen sink pantry, blessed with a nose comparable to that of a dog.

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Enter now the blunt of our irony, our sensory perceptions, taste, smell, colour. A tasting would not be a tasting with the side nudge as a glass of water is described as having perfumed notes of chlorine and minerality with a hint of fluorine cleaning up. These jokes are the endless bastard children of the long known fact that wine seemingly to some smell like grapes while the said individuals are in the company of tasters. The irony to the joke spread as soon the thoughts of unravelling the heart of the wine and its core elements become harder to resist.

Herein lies possibly the greatest problem for the defence of wine having a heart and capability to laugh, translation. It seems that this unwanted exclusiveness garnered by again our armchair arseholes has bandied yet another problem for us Joe-sub turned taster.

Yet, us, the brave the 99%, the rebel wine movement are really beginning to add a fresh breath of air to the dusty cellars of the laughter vaults. No icon has become safe from the trawling eyes of wine nerds; Hilter now endorsing US cult wines and our very own take Wine Spotting image (Click for Larger version).

At empty we have our own way however of twisting taste into humour, our reviews, hold a key to an soft laugh, one review was once described as soft porn.

Our best advice on how to find wine humour? Pop open a bottle with a friend and create a memory of gaiety.

Regards
Team Empty
(Enjoy some of our finds below)