As everyone knows, I try my best to steer clear of controversy on this blog. But these are times that try the soul. Here’s something that just makes me want to scream!

Rough play? References to wine, sex prompt BYU to cancel U of U production of Greek play

That’s the headline in one media outlet reporting how Brigham Young University, the Salt Lake City school owned by the Church of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), canceled a performance of Euripides’ Greek tragedy, The Bakkhai, just hours before it was scheduled to be shown.

Let’s break it down. The Bakkhai (sometimes Bacchae) premiered in Athens in 405 B.C. It is a morality tale, relating a fierce confrontation between Dionysus, the Greek God of wine, and the temporal King of Thebes, Pentheus. Dionysus calls upon the people to celebrate his annual Festival in the usual way, with wine-drinking, dancing and sex. Pentheus, a rather conservative sort who was the ancient Greek equivalent of the Family Research Council (or perhaps Mike Huckabee is a better example), doesn’t believe it’s right for the people to so indulge, and orders Dionysus’s arrest. However, the table is turned on Pentheus, proving that it’s a terrible idea to challenge a God, particularly one so popular with the people. Pentheus is torn apart by his own mother, who exhibits his head as a trophy. The Bakkhai has been called “the most horrific, powerful and theatrical of all Greek tragedies.”

The production, staged by the University of Utah’s Department of Theatre and Media Arts, had been scheduled as part of its 39th annual Classical Greek Theatre Festival, and was to have been shown at BYU. You can imagine the dismay of the 350 BYU students who purchased tickets when they were abruptly refunded their money and told the play wasn’t happening.

What prompted BYU to muzzle it? University officials knuckled down on the Univ. of Utah, and who knows what local political and religious pressures they brought to bear. The play’s producer, James Svendsen, offered this lame excuse: the production “does not really fit the BYU proscenium arch theater nor their audience.” If you believe that, I have a Tabernacle Choir to sell you. Is it really credible that the producer would have discovered his play didn’t fit onto BYU’s stage hours before it was to open? And in what way did the play not “fit” BYU”s audience? Isn’t that a judgment that the 350 people who bought tickets should have made, rather than had imposed upon them?

What really freaked BYU out was the “gender-bending in the casting” and “abundance of phallic symbols and cleavage” in the play (this, according to Svendsen). In the straight, white, male-dominated Mormon culture, any artistic expression, no matter how rooted in history, that doesn’t accord with their idea of correctness must be quashed, censored, driven underground. (And don’t forget, the Mormons were behind last year’s Proposition 8 campaign in California.)

The Mormons were also clearly obsessed with the focus on wine, notwithstanding its place in the Bible of both the Hebrews and Jesus. Wine is evil, because it lets people relax and be themselves instead of following some imposed mania, and so it must be resisted!!

Look, we’re not talking about some weird performance artist covering herself in chocolate and licking it off, or about the head of Jesus Christ in a jar of urine. I can understand why people would find those objectionable. No, we’re talking about an ancient Greek play by one of their greatest tragedians. The Bakkhai deals with a perfectly reasonable and important topic: the relationship between God and man. The Bible, Shakespeare, even modern playwrites like Kafka have asked precisely the same questions: Who is man to give his devotions to? What are the consequences of the clash between spiritual and civil authority? Jesus wisely recommended rendering unto Caesar, etc., and our own U.S. Constitution took the same route, famously prohibiting, in the First Amendment, the establishment of a State-sponsored religion.

But obviously, some reactionary religious groups never have been comfortable with the separation of Church and State. They would prefer to see governance and theology tightly intertwined, even in the halls of academia, where freedom of inquiry and expression ought to be celebrated, not despised. Why is that? And why is it that such people so often hate wine and the spirit of freedom it inspires?

Well, at least the Salt Lake Tribune gave The Bakkhai a glowing review, advising playgoers to “get there early to catch dramaturg Jim Svendsen’s informative introduction.” Too bad BYU crushed it.

Dionysus won’t be playing in Salt Lake. Maybe San Fran?

Late word: At 11:02 a.m. tomorrow (Tuesday 7/21) I will publish the winner of the Murphy-Goode “A Really Goode Job” with pics and up close and personal background info.

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Interesting article by Dan Berger in last Friday’s Napa Register on bottle variation, a phenomenon rarely talked about by vintners because, frankly, they don’t want to talk about it. The most commonly understood (by wine consumers) reason for bottle variation is TCA — corkiness — but Dan points out another: lightstruck bottles (whether by direct sun or indoor flourescent lighting). I have to admit I’d never heard of this before I attended a tasting at Rubicon restaurant, years ago, at which Dan was present. He found some of the wines lightstruck.

There are other reasons for bottle variation:

- Transit. A bottle may have been exposed to excessive heat, say, in the back of a UPS truck on a summer day.
- Poor storage.
- The unequalization of production. Production of a wine is said to be equalized if all the barrels or tanks in which it was raised are blended together in one large tank. If this isn’t possible (and it’s often not), then you can have two different wines, both bottled with the same label.
- Time between tasting. Even if two bottles are identical, they can leave different palate impressions if tasted at different ages. Just a few months can alter a wine’s profile.
- Dishonest winery practices. Just because two bottles have identical labels doesn’t mean the winery didn’t knowingly put different wines in them. What, you think it never happens?
- Glass differences. The same wine, tasted in different glasses, will taste differently. This isn’t exactly “bottle variation,” but we don’t drink wine from bottles, we drink it from glasses.

I think bottle variation is the main reason why critical reviews of the same wine by the same critic can vary, when the wine is tasted more than once. It’s only reasonable for the public to expect perfect consistency from a critic, and certainly we critics ourselves would like to perform perfectly consistently. Unfortunately, consistency in anything is rare, and particularly in so subjective a practice as winetasting. Add bottle variation to the mix, and you have ample opportunity for scoring variation.

I once scored the same wine 9 points apart on 2 different occasions over a period of a few months. I don’t like saying that, but it’s the truth, and any critic who says it never happened to him isn’t being honest. Having said that, more often, when I accidentally re-review a wine (only to discover I’d previously reviewed it), my scores are either identical, or within 2-4 points of each other — a tolerable discrepency. I think that when I rate a wine differently over time, it’s because of bottle variation. I don’t think it’s because my judgment is at fault. But a wine reviewer always has to accept the fact that his judgment may be cloudy on any given day. I will say this: there is a strong imperative for critics to maintain rating consistency, which is the linchpin of our credibility. Imagine if, for instance, Parker started giving 72s to Lafite. Everybody would wonder if he’d lost his mind. That’s why he’s not going to start giving Lafite 72s.

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I came across this John Cleese video on wine. It’s quite good, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Lots of familiar California faces.

On the Murphy-Goode contest

I spent the day today (Sunday) with the Top Ten and will blog Tuesday morning on my impressions and, more importantly, the winner. Will post a few minutes after the winner is announced by the winery.

R.I.P. Walter Cronkite

I met him once. I was on my first real job, as a sous-chef in a French restaurant in Massachusetts. Mr. Cronkite’s daughter was going to private school in the area; he was visiting with her. He dined alone, and after dinner, was hanging out in the bar. After I shut down the kitchen, he was still there, alone, nursing a drink. I got a glass of wine and asked if it was okay to talk with him. Of course it was. This was less than a week before Nixon resigned, so Watergate was obviously the focus of our conversation. I had the feeling Mr. Cronkite was happy to talk with me. He was so friendly, unpretentious, unphased by his fame. I was just a young, politically-oriented kid. He was a great newsman, a great reporter. The real deal. I hope his example of fair reporting lives forever.

He was “the father of California wine,” and July 6 is the 140th anniversary of Agoston Haraszthy’s untimely demise.

Born to a noble Hungarian family in 1812, Haraszthy sailed for New York in 1840, in search of his future, and embarked upon a tour of America, which included a visit with President John Tyler “in my full Hungarian Guard dress uniform,” as he reported in his 1844 book, “Travels in North America.”

Hooked on the new country, Haraszthy settled in Wisconsin for a few years, but something lured him westward: the California sun and the future state’s golden allure, already being reported to the outside world. On Christmas Day, 1848, Haraszthy, his wife and their six kids set out for California, traveling along the Santa Fe Trail and reaching their destination nearly a year later. The family struck down its roots in San Diego, where an important event occurred: he was introduced to local grapegrowing and winemaking by the Spanish padres, who acquainted him with the Mission grape. “Haraszthy quickly noted its defects and became convinced that plantings of nobler varieties could be commercially viable,” writes a biographer, Robert Lawrence Balzer, adding, “He sensed that by planting vines brought directly from Europe, he could realize his old dream of producing wine of a quality that could complete with good Hungarian and other European wines.”

Haraszthy made good in San Diego, getting elected Sheriff and, following that, to the State Legislature, which at that time met in the city of Vallejo, just south of Napa Valley. That brought Haraszthy into contact with Northern California, which he realized was the best place to grow winegrapes. He purchased, in 1852, a plot of land in San Francisco’s Mission District and planted several hundred acres, but it wasn’t long before he discovered that San Francisco’s cool, foggy climate could never ripen grapes. One thing led to another, and in 1857, General Mariano Vallejo, the leading vintner in Sonoma County, invited Haraszthy to visit. “With his first glimpse of Sonoma Valley,” Balzer writes, “[Haraszthy] sensed instantly that his long search had ended.” Haraszthy bought 6,000 acres at the foothills of the Mayacamas Mountains and planted his estate, which he named Buena Vista.

It was, of course, Haraszthy’s 1862 book, “Grape Culture, Wines and Wine-Making,” which he wrote as a report to the Legislature, that made Haraszthy famous. That, and his importation to Buena Vista of hundreds of thousands of cuttings of 1,400 different varieties he gathered on his tour of the winemaking regions of Europe.

Haraszthy loved California and was the first great believer in its future as a world-class wine-producing region. “The California climate, with the exception of the sea-coast, is eminently adapted for the culture of grape-vines,” he wrote in his book. “…[T]here is no doubt in my mind that before long there will be localities discovered which will furnish as noble wines as Hungary, Spain, France, or Germany ever have produced.” Haraszthy was far ahead of his time; for all the talk about mountain vineyards and volcanic soils we hear today, one is amazed to hear Harasthy recommend that vintners “look for a soil which is made by volcanic eruptions, containing red clay and soft rocks…This kind of soil never cracks, and retains the moisture during the summer admirably.”

Haraszthy died in Nicaragua on July 6, 1869, reportedly eaten by crocodiles. I wish he could be around today to see how his hopes for California wine have been realized many times over. He is one of the giants of California wine, on a par with Robert Mondavi and Andre Tchelistcheff, the kind of person the wine industry produces only a few times a century.

The passing of Don Blackburn leaves California one winemaker poorer.

I first met Don nearly 20 years ago, when he was winemaker at Bernardus. I remember walking with this tall, gangly, good-looking guy through the hilly vineyard. He had a shock of unruly blond hair that blew in the wind, and a big mustache that went down to his upper lip. With his jeans and boots and sunburned face, he looked like a cowboy. We discovered we had a mutual interest in philosophy, and we talked a little about that.

Don died on April 23, of cancer, at the too-young age of 54.

Sometimes I wonder which I like more, wine or winemakers. To me, winemakers are the heart and soul of the wine industry — romantic men and women, mythic and larger than life. Before I actually ever met a real live winemaker, I felt like I knew them from reading about them. Monsieur Pontac, who founded Haut-Brion, and (if my memory serves me right) in the 16th century lugged a barrel of his claret all the way to London, across dangerous, bandit-infested territory, to show it off to the King of England. Baron Phillipe de Rothschild, who wouldn’t rest until Mouton was elevated to First Growth. Robert Mondavi, already a legend when my wine-writing career began. These giants created in my mind a respectful admiration of winemakers bordering on hero-worship.

When I finally got to meet winemakers as a wine writer, I discovered that most of them weren’t giants. They were just hard-working, largely unknown young men (not too many women back then) who were farmers as well as craftsmen. They had “dirt in their boots,” as opposed to the folks on the business side of the wine industry. But to a person, they considered themselves lucky to be doing what they loved.

I quickly came to have my favorite winemakers — those whose personalities clicked with mine, and who were outspoken and honest, earnest and friendly, modest and reflective. Which, come to think of it, describes most winemakers I’ve met. (Not all…)

Winemakers — the best of them — art part artist/poets, part technicians. Of course, they have to master the mathematics and biochemistry of alcohol, yeast, pH, acidity, grape sugar and so forth, and that requires them to have good left brains: smart, high IQ, rational. But no amount of U.C. Davis or Fresno State V&E education can compensate if the winemaker doesn’t have the soul of a Picasso or a Bob Dylan: passionate, intuitive, creative, able to express something that speaks to people in a mysterious way that touches and amazes and inspires them. In fact, being a poetic winemaker may be harder than being a competent one. After all, anyone with a degree in V&E is competent (more or less). But look at how few real artist-winemakers there are.

Don Blackburn was an artist-winemaker. In addition to philosophy, his interests ran from ballet and writing to studying medieval texts. His wines, whether at Bernardus, Byington, David Bruce, or his final winery, Emeritus, always expressed a purity and sense of place that required, not merely a special terroir, but a special vintner who knew how to let the Earth speak.

The last time I saw Don was about 2 years ago, at Emeritus, in Sebastopol. Brice Jones, the owner, invited me to look at the winery, and it was a pleasure to re-connect with Don. A few days later, I reviewed Don’s Emeritus 2005 William Wesley Pinot Noir. It was a spectacular wine I thought was the highlight of Don’s career until then. I gave it 95 points.

Don was a soft-spoken, gentle old soul. He never yearned for the spotlight and wasn’t quite comfortable when it shined on him. He was content to be in the quiet background, doing the things he loved, perfecting his vintner’s art and craft. Don was a winemaker’s winemaker. He will be missed.

I know we’re still in the grieving stage of COPIA’s recent demise, when you’re supposed to remember all the good things about the late, great dearly departed. But really, can we talk? The truth is, COPIA was a drag from day one.

As a tourist attraction it just didn’t cut it. Think of some of the cultural institutions that have opened around here over the years that have truly been successes: The new DeYoung Museum. The new Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. The new Asian Art Museum and Main Library, in Civic Center. The Contemporary Jewish Museum. San Francisco MOMA. All of these opened to great fanfare, and have done stellar business ever since, because they delivered — no, over-delivered on their promises.

COPIA didn’t deliver.

Granted, COPIA wasn’t in San Francisco, but even if it had been, I don’t think it would have thrived. The problem was that it just wasn’t interesting or exciting. As an art museum, it basically sucked. There’s nothing worse than an art museum that displays bad art. Every time I went to COPIA — maybe 15 times in all — I was amazed at the feeble quality of the exhibits that passed as “art.” Other places in Napa Valley, such as Clos Pegase and the Hess Collection, had great works. COPIA didn’t. I always had the feeling they tried so hard to be avant garde, they forgot that contemporary art actually has to be good.

Then there was the wine education stuff. I never could figure out why tourists would go to COPIA for a wine experience rather than to the actual wineries in Napa Valley. I guess the tourists couldn’t figure it out either, which is why not enough of them went to COPIA to keep it alive.

Julia’s Kitchen was okay, although it never achieved the critical renown of restaurants in Yountville and further upvalley. Nor was COPIA attractively or conveniently sited. It was built on the “wrong” side of the Napa River, in a humdrum area that’s only now beginning to come alive. Moreover, COPIA was notoriously difficult to get to for years, while the roads and bridges were being worked on and that whole part of town was detours and closures. I bet a whole lot of tourists got fed up with that.

In the end, a cultural destination needs to generate word of mouth, and no one I ever knew who went to COPIA was excited enough by the experience to either go back, or to tell their friends to go. COPIA wasn’t a bad place; it was just kind of boring. When you think about it, the only reason it did as well as it did was because we loved and respected Robert Mondavi and Julia Child, and wanted their vision for an American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts to thrive. It didn’t, and I’m glad that neither of them was around to see their baby fold.

COPIA R.I.P.

P.S. Tom Wark, at Fermentation, this morning included this blog among his 5 Most Intriguing New Wine Blogs of 2008. I am humbled and grateful.