2001 Allegrini Volpolicella Classico

[stevebody]

You think that because you see me as a guy who's trying to erase differences between wines. Which says a lot more about your views than mine.

I work - as a hobby - at a retail wine shop in Seattle, Esquin Wine Merchants. I don't own it and have been, in fact, a tremendous thorn in the side of yahoos such as Stimson-Lane and Gallo, having blown the whistle in print here in Sea-patch about those loathsome, notorious "corporate sets" that Gallo installs in supermarkets as the LCD wine list. For that, I was honored to get a call from our local Gallo hoods, threatening legal action if I singled them out for any more grief. As Edward Bennet Williams once said, when told he'd made Nixon's enemies list, "An honorable man can receive no higher honor."

I own three restaurants in the Eastern part of the US, which have made me more $$$ than my grandchildren can spend. I was a chef for 30 years but finally decided, about a year ago, that wine was my true passion. I work at Esquin as a lowly sales clerk and write about wine for several online sites and three newspapers back in North Carolina and Tennessee.

In these parts, I have a very modest reputation as a very good wine salesman, who can sell large quantities of wines I believe in. I have no alleigence to any winery, distributor, or wine conglomerate and have pissed a lot of people off (primarily Stimson-Lane and all that overblown Ste. Michelle stuff) by doing exactly what you read here: taking exception to narrow assumptions.

My customers know me as a nice guy who always greets them with a smile and my distributors know me as a nice guy who an't buying crap, no matter where it comes from, who made it, what regional characteristics are showing, or whether Parker, the Spectator, Tanzer or anyone else thinks it's great or not. I get to know my customers, pinpoint their tastes, show them new wines that reflect those tastes and, if it's possible and curteous to do it, try to help them understand and accept better wines.

It annoys me no end that the entire tenor of the responses here have been tinged with the assumption that I don't care about terroir or regional character. Nothing I've ever written here says that and it's not even close to the truth. What I've said and still believe is that considerations of terroir and traditions of wine making can be great for posterity and continuity of greatness or can be crutches for perpetuating sloth and low ambition. If you want to think I'm some heathen sent bto trash traditions of winemaking, go ahead. I refer to the above quote.