Did you hear the news about The Hosemaster?
I was shocked, and saddened–immensely so, almost to the point of grief (except that I didn’t feel anything remotely resembling grief, just a kind of emptiness, like the inside of an empty wine bottle, or the content of a Joe Roberts blog)–when I learned, suddenly, and almost serendipitously (for, if Gus hadn’t vomited, forcing me to rush to Whole Foods to buy some paper towels [Fair Trade, recycled], then I wouldn’t have put on my iPod, which happened to be tuned to a local radio station, which is where I heard the tragic, almost unbelievable news–made all the more grimly believable by the announcer’s nasal flatness–news that stunned me, not to the point of being immobilized–I wouldn’t go that far–but that “knocked me on my heels” [to paraphrase something Shakespeare once said. Or wrote. Or could it have been Joe Pesci?]. Of course, I don’t mean “knocked me on my heels” literally; what would that look like, anyhow? Picture a guy–me!–walking down the street suddenly being “knocked on his heels.” I have no idea what that would look like, and I bet you don’t either. It’s just an expression, and that’s the thing about expressions: they don’t mean anything, but are meant to convey a mood, a feeling, a frisson of some kind. Anyway, I was talking about the news, and the way I felt when it was made horrifyingly, nauseatingly clear to me, listening through my ear buds, that Ron Washam, the Hosemaster of Wine, had been killed.
And not just in any old way. No: In one of those bizarre twists of fate (similar to the way Antonio Galloni was recently paralyzed when he fell into an empty concrete egg somewhere in Brunello) that verges on irony, the poor Hosemaster was simply minding his own business, proceeding north on East First Street, in Sonoma (presumably on his way somewhere, although we don’t yet know precisely where; Vinography has speculated that he was on his way to get an erotic massage from a new joint that opened on the edge of town, but I’m not sure that’s true; and, at any rate, hardly seems relevant to the story. Although it is interesting…), when he was struck, unceremoniously and without warning, by a small truck (apparently an ex-UPS truck), owned and driven by the former social media maven, Hardy Wallace, and loaded down with the former’s Squalid and Filthy wines (I’m always forgetting the name of Hardy’s brand. Evil and Repugnant? Lewd and Malicious? Soiled and Perplexed? It has two words, both of them adjectives, I believe, and one of them has to do with being “in a state of tawdry deshabille,” which is an odd association for wine, but then, maybe not). Hardy, it seems, got distracted when he saw he was getting an incoming text message from (to further compound the weird series of coincidences that litters this entire tale) none other than Jancis Robison, who (I was told this by Tyler Coleman) was calling to ask if he, Hardy (not Tyler) wished to write for The Purple Pages: $20 an article, not a huge amount of money, given Jancis’s stinginess,, but enough “to fill the tank” [as they used to say; not anymore, at least until oil falls to $20 a barrel, which isn’t likely as long as The Purple Pages exist to infuriate Al Qaeda. But that glance at his portable device was just long enough to cause Hardy to take his eyes off the road [never a good thing], which was just enough to allow the little truck to strike Ron, who had on his own iPod and so didn’t hear the squeal of wheels (and, no, we don’t know what the Hosemaster was listening to; that information is expected to be released by the Sonoma County Coroner’s Office any moment, and as soon as I find out, I’ll tweet it to the world).
BULLETIN: Ron was listening to Amy Winehouse.
What are we to make of this?
1. The wine world is a poorer place.
2. The wine world is a better place.
3. The wine world hasn’t changed a damned bit, one way or the other.
I would say the answer is “All of the above.” Which leads to the next, and possibly more interesting question: What is Hosemaster’s legacy? I would argue the answer must be among the following:
1. He left no legacy.
2. He left a legacy, but it is impossible to define what it is with any precision.
3. He left a legacy, and we all know exactly what it is: It hangs over the industry like a cloud of Beijing pollution, choking in its acridity.
4. He left a legacy that exalts us, each and every miserable one of us, specks of nothingness that we are: but because such as The Hosemaster once walked among us, we all of us are a teensy, weensy closer to–what?
I would argue that the answer to #4, above, must necessarily be among the following:
1. We all all closer to our Deaths.
2. We are even closer to our Deaths than we would have been had The Hosemaster not walked among us.
3. We all have already died and are now dreaming. (The Hosemaster would have liked that one.)
4. We now know that Life, including the entire wine industry, is essentially meaningless; this, The Hosemaster taught us, and, once his teaching was concluded, there was no longer any reason to continue among us. In this sense, did Hardy’s truck strike The Hosemaster, or did the Hosemaster strike the truck?
5. All the above is completely ridiculous.
Here we see a thrilling example of the type of indeterminacy The Hosemaster spoke of; his life was, in a sense, a perfect example of it. One never was able to determine both The Hosemaster’s position and his velocity simultaneously, or even if he was particle or wave. We shall ponder these enigmas until the last wine blog dies.
On a more personal note: You know we journalists aren’t supposed to inject our feelings into our reportage, but in this case, I simply must, and I hope you will forgive me. I am at the moment overrun with feelings, and not just because of that huge burrito I chowed down for lunch. No, it’s more than that. I admired Hosemaster, looked up to him as a kind of Older Brother. He could be funny one moment, bitingly sarcastic the next, but always oozed a Mother Theresa-esque compassion. In fact, Hosemaster was a Saint. I think we should take up a collection and build a statue of him. We could tear down that nasty “Welcome to Napa Valley” sign on Highway 29–nobody likes it anyway–and replace it with a 40-foot replica of our own Hosie, arms spread, sporting a smile as big as all outdoors that seems to say to visitors, “Hey there! What took you so long?” After all, who more represented Napa Valley than Ron Washam? Robert Mondavi? I think not. Ron WAS Napa: its soils and pebbles, its alluvial fans, its foggy nights, its diners and auto body shops and hardware stores. Above all, Ron’s everyman sort of demeanor symbolized Napa’s enduring values. Are you with me on this one? If you are, let me know. I can already feel the Hosemaster bashers out there (and they know who they are), getting ready to smear his legacy. Let us not let them do that. We are better than than. Ron Washam taught us how to be better than that.
STEVE!
I’m here in Hell sitting at the bar with Robert Parker enjoying a glass of skin-contact Gruner Veltliner (wine by-the-glass in Hell) when another patron, Robert Lawrence Balzer, showed me this post. You’re big in Hell.
I wasn’t going for an erotic massage, exactly. I was heading to the Buena Vista tasting room to try their new VIP experience. For an extra $20, you get a Happy Ending from Jean-Charles Boisset. When Hardy ran me down, I wasn’t killed instantly. You’ll be happy to know I suffered horribly. I asked Hardy not to make me taste his wines, but he insisted. He did try to apply a tourniquet to my wounds, but the legs on his trousers were too short to go around my thigh. I clearly remember my last thought. “That fucking hurt.”
Thank you for your kind words and phony sympathy. I like to think that as HoseMaster I didn’t so much leave a legacy as I did a skid mark.
You cannot be serious. This guy is a danger to us all. He refuses to give points to the wines he reviews and one of the objects of his satire once remarked, “It’s good thing I have a sense of humor”. Beyond that, I don’t think he even owns a dog so don’t let Gus near him.
Other than that, he has a small following who think they are funnier than he is. How can that be?
Former? Once a social media maven, always a social media maven. 😉
You are right that I plowed HMW down. He more than deserved it after his out of character love fest for Stolpman the other day. 🙂
Hardy, indeed, that Stolpman episode was bizarre. I think HMW was momentarily taken over by alien.
Oh, I see, STEVE!, you can do bad comedy, but I can’t do bad wine reviews. Sure, mock the dead.
Notice Hardy hasn’t sent me any samples of his Shit Howdy wines either. Why, they’re Natural! Just the way God intended–in order to punish us for our sins.
Though I must say, I am honored by the outpouring of grief for the HoseMaster here. Sniff.
Dear HMW, you have achieved immortality. Without any sarcasm your name will go down in the annals of wine blogdom.
I think we should donate his brain to science. Freaking brilliant human that also happens to have one fierce ass palate. Oh and we shan’t be donating that ass or palate, I’ve sent in a request to Avril, those are mine.