They like us, they really like us....

[Botafogo]

Well, it is Pulitzer Prize winning Media Columnist and Gourmand at Large David Shaw opining thusly:

A man of fervent certitude

Roberto ROGNESS of Wine Expo in Santa Monica has a similar philosophy about wine and life, but there's nothing casual about his writing. He tends to wax alternately rhapsodic and agitated in the one-page newsletters he e-mails and faxes to customers every week (and in the eight-page newsletters he mails out quarterly).

Visually, the Wine Expo mailer is among the least attractive of those I receive — the fax version is a jumble of black and blacker type on a single sheet of paper. But Rogness' fervent certitude about almost everything more than compensates. I eagerly await his weekly communiqués to see what new pronouncement, discovery or outrage he wants to share.

Rogness, the only wine merchant I know who calls himself "general manager and creative director," has been in love with music ever since he was taken to a Harry Belafonte concert at age 5, and his newsletters are filled with musical references, some having nothing whatever to do with wine. Last Fourth of July, he urged readers to write their congressmen and ask that "Born to Be Wild" replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" as our national anthem.

Rogness is almost as likely to recommend a CD or a rock concert as he is a wine — and he's just as likely to recommend a CD-wine pairing as a food-wine pairing. Not long ago, for example, under the heading "Rethinking the Classics," he recommended listening to Sister Bossa's "Cool Jazzy Cuts With a Brazilian Flavour" while drinking one of three Italian wines he was then selling.

"The idea was that the musicians and the winemakers were … putting a slightly modern spin on [old classics]," he says, and he regarded them as complementary pleasures because the wines were "big, fairly strong, meditative wines and that CD is a tranced-out version of Bossa Nova. I thought that the wine and the music … would be a wonderful fusion of sensations."

Rogness often compares artists and songs to specific wines and winemaking styles. A frequent critic of Robert Parker and the big "hedonistic fruit bombs" that Parker often favors, Rogness has likened Parker's favorite Zinfandels to "a drag queen in the middle of a great production of Carmen." And he's written, "Thelonius Monk has more to do with the way (and the type) of wines we select than Robert Parker does."

I suppose some folks might find this pretentious. I don't. Rogness is knowledgeable and passionate about both wine and music — he played in professional bands for years, still plays guitar, bass and harmonica and has a 300-CD changer constantly going in the shop — and even when I disagree with his characterizations, I find them intriguing and worth considering.

Rogness and Kemner are salesmen, of course, but it's not the sales pitches that make their newsletters worth reading; their gripes are often more interesting than their grapes. Their genuine enthusiasm for whatever they're writing about and their sheer delight in sharing their discoveries and philosophies with their readers get my attention even when I'm not in the market for their wines.