---Why I am leaving political writing for wine writing.
I was born in the USA during the Carter administration, and I remember that he was considered to be a bad president by everyone who voted for Ronald Regan. By the time Bush Sr. was defeated by Bill Clinton, I was masturbating - though I had little talent for it at the time.
Bush Jr. was elected president in the very first election I was allowed to vote in, and Obama was the first time that a politician who I truly supported was elected. Obama was a major disappointment, politically, although he was the coolest president ever.
After Obama came, well you know… and that's when I moved to France.
Yes, I moved to France during the Trump administration, I am one those people. Don't get me wrong, France has it's problems, and lots of them, but I can't physically handle living in the USA anymore because I have chronic medical issues that need monitoring and care - I have teeth.
Yes, I can't afford to live in the USA because of my teeth. Prior to coming to France, I had spent a college tuition at NYU on my mouth, and it was still not fully fixed. No, I didn't neglect my dents, nor did I go weeks without brushing them. It wasn't until I was well past 30 that someone finally figured it out - my teeth were bad because of stress.
Did you know that? Yes, extreme stress can cause major dental problems and there is a strong correlation between extreme stress and cavities.
Why was I so stressed out? Mainly because every single day of my life was an identity crisis and anything and everything I was interested in was assaulted by some macho asshole who suggested that I needed to try sucking a cock. I am not a homosexual, but I was a bit sensitive as a child - in America during the 90's this meant that you like cock. Ironically, it was always the people who claimed not to like cock who insisted that you try it.
Anyway, my teeth were fucked up, and not from sucking cock, but instead from sucking down all the shame and resentments built up over the years of torment that I endured not being a tough guy, so I did what any non-tough guy from Detroit would do - I moved to New York City.
Now this may sound bizarre, but it was the best thing I ever did. Sure, I was sick constantly, and struggled with addiction, and I was always broke… but I was happy! All seven of my therapists, and even my psychiatrist, agreed that moving to New York had been the right choice - but I was being consumed by my career, and it depended upon a dependence on Valium in order to sustain. I needed something more peaceful, something where the sirens of temptation were less violent in their enticing screams.
So I moved to California.
I know, what's with this guy? One bad decision after another. Well, actually, moving to California was amazing because I moved to the Napa Valley.
This is where I found Jesus and Jefferson.
Where politics fails, wine prevails
Napa was the best, and it was also one of the only places in the San Francisco Bay Area where I could find a rental for under $2,000/mo - this was about six years ago, so today I think it's 18x higher.
Initially I was a bar manager, but I quickly found my way into the silver mine of wine, where I could earn as much money as a waiter at a halfway decent restaurant, but never had to touch a single plate of food - this was the wine tasting rooms.
While it required standing on your feet a lot, pouring wine in a tasting room at a winery was a truly enjoyable experience. It was work, but it was the best work I've ever done. Passion consumed me, and so I went to Reno to get my sommelier certification. I failed, so I tried again in San Francisco, where I passed. Getting this certification was certainly nothing to sleep on, and for my second attempt, I gave it everything I had - this resulted in mountains of flashcards and boxes of empty wine bottles.
Oddly enough, delving into wine made me drink less. Each sip from a glass would take 10 minutes. Each bite of food had to be paired with a complimentary beverage and thoroughly analyzed. As I progressed, my friends and I would take turns blind tasting a wine and determining which type, location, and year we were drinking. All this took hours upon hours.
It was brilliant, truly brilliant… then Trump got elected.
I won't bore with you the rest. Long story short, I fled the country and started ranting about politics from afar, while trying to figure out how to survive on the continent that my great-grandparents had to escape a century earlier.
But one thing saved me - Jesus and Jefferson.
Image by Colleen Conger from PixabayYou see, one day, I was walking down the street and I was very upset about something that Joe Biden had done. Suddenly, by accident, I found a rather obscure plaque along the Riverwalk (sur le quai) - it explained that Thomas Jefferson had been in that exact same spot while he was in France during the American revolution. The plaque was covered by overgrown branches, and this section of the river was no longer easily accessible, but it was a beautiful and ancient stretch of the city, and it dawned on me, that it probably looked almost the same in his time as it did today.
I decided to investigate, and while I did not discover more about Jefferson's time in the French city that I call home (no it's not Paris) I did, however, discover that Jefferson tried to grow French wine in Virginia and failed - he did this because he believed French wine to be the beverage of the gods.
To confirm this, I went and asked Jesus.
Image by Robert Cheaib from PixabayNot far from where Jefferson stood was a really really old church, so old that it's modern replacement that is next door was over 900 years old. There, standing next to those old stone arches that are now under the exposed sky, and where some of the very first followers of Christ once stood and prayed, I had a vision.
In front of me, so clear it felt like I could touch it, was a wine shop. I approached, and suddenly, the door opened, and in front of me, were hundreds of bottles of affordable wine.
I realized at that moment, that I lived in France, and that I should stop caring about America.
And so, this little Ogre snapped up a bottle and broke out his pen.
No more politics, it's all wine from here on in people.
The Blunt Ogre, September 21, 2021
---How my love of history made me drink a white wine
I love Riesling, because the epic story of this ancient and dynamic wine is enough to keep any happy hour conversation going on for hours.
No other beverage is as intertwined with the story of humanity than wine - and Riesling is no exception. This is probably because no other fruit known to man manifests in so many different forms, flavors, fragrances, and sensations. Just like people, the wine grape vitis vinifera has thousands of varieties, of which almost all are useless, save a few dozen - these have become the world-famous celebrity grape varietals we all know and love.
Riesling is one of these chosen few, but Riesling is special.
Noble Wine
If wine grapes are a noble family ruling amongst a kingdom of grape berry peasants, Riesling is a Lord ruling over an important house in that kingdom of wine. As it is with people, Lords must be born into such nobility - at least partially.
Riesling, although not purely aristocratic in ancestry, was born from a noble ...
Police officers deny that he attempted to demonstrate his whiteness.
During a routine traffic stop, 36-year-old Shaun Jones was shot twice by police officers. Jones was attempting to reach for a DNA test from his center console when police opened fire, Jones himself was unarmed.
Police have stated that the official reason for stopping Jones was they considered Jones to be a black man, and therefore assumed he was a suspect in a crime.
A lawyer for one of the officers involved in the shooting stated that "had Jones not appeared to be so black, police never would have pulled him over in the first place."
The DNA test that Jones was reaching for clearly demonstrates that Jones is primarily of European descent.
Jones, who is in now in stable condition, claims that he did, in fact, say to the officers that he was white and that he was reaching for the DNA test in the center console to prove it.
"I just got the test back a week ago, and it shows that I'm 52% European," Jones said from his hospital bed. The test was ...