The Natural Wines of Splooge Estate

Thank you for joining Ejaculate™, the Wine Club here at Splooge Estate and Winery. You’ll be receiving your first load in the next few weeks, but I wanted to thank you for joining, and outline the many benefits of your Ejaculate™ membership. As you know, Splooge Estate is an organic estate and all of our wines are natural wines. We take every precaution to insure that every Splooge is as natural and as satisfying as it can be. It just tastes better that way.

We’re happy that you’ve joined Ejaculate™ at the highest level, the Mother Load. Four times a year you’ll be receiving a Mother Load of our natural wines. We know you’ll enjoy tasting each and every Ejaculate™ selection, but, rest assured, should you feel that a Splooge is not to your taste, just spit it out and we will happily replace it. That’s our Splooge guarantee.

Your June Mother Load will consist of the three latest Splooge releases:

2011 Splooge “Spray of Pink” Rosé of Pinot Noir

Our natural pink wine is produced from our estate Pinot Noir grapes that are harvested by hand, not using any sharp tools that might harm the stems. Harvesting with grape knives is cruel and painful for grapes. Splooge grapes are harvested by gently twisting each cluster until it gently falls into the fur-lined harvesting basket. Our Rosé is carefully bled from our finest lots of Pinot Noir and then fermented at very cold temperatures using local nuns who sit on the barrels. Serve it chilled with our local bivalves. A recipe for “Splooge’s Famous Cloister Oysters” is included with your Mother Load shipment. For all we care, you can go shuck yourself.

2010 Splooge Estate Pinot Noir “Dos Huevos Vineyard”

We know that you expect your Splooge to be handled with the greatest care. We never use pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides in our vineyards. In fact, we basically ignore our vineyards altogether in order to make the most natural wine possible. We do occasionally walk through the vineyard waving pruning shears, but that’s just to let the vines know we mean business. Our vines are intimidated naturally, not by modern methods that harm them psychologically, like pruning and leaf-pulling or suckering. Ever been suckered? Yes, you have. You joined a wine club.

2010 Splooge Rouge

Splooge grows five different red grape varieties. Well, last time we checked it was five. We don’t really look that often, that’s unnatural. Each of the five (?) varieties is harvested individually. Most are gently twisted from the vines, but we let the Zinfandel fall to the ground when it’s ready. We’ve found that the Zinfandel vines are most comfortable when they decide when their fruit is ready. The grapes are gently picked up, placed in canvas bags from Whole Foods (this makes the grapes feel self-important), and then placed in our specially designed bamboo fermenting bins. Our Splooge Rouge is for when you just feel like Splooging after a long day at work.

Your Ejaculate™ membership has many benefits:

Free Tour of the Splooge Estate (normally $30/person)

One of Splooge Estate Tasting Room Jerkoffs™ will take you and up to five guests on a walking tour of Splooge Estate, explaining the natural way we grow and produce wine. Because we are natural wine producers, this is a clothing optional tour, so wear plenty of sunscreen and put a muzzle on your friendly dog. Along the way you’ll visit our world-famous compost heap, where we not only make our own compost, but we use the internal heat generated to bake our famous Splooge bread! Depending upon what’s available in the garden, your friendly Jerkoff™ may instruct you in how to eat an all-natural shit sandwich! At Splooge Estate, as part of our commitment to nature, we also cultivate rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes help control the rodent population, as well as helping to supply the compost heap with local winery dogs. Except in the winter months, you’re likely to see many of our Splooge Snakes. Just don’t get bit on yours!

Discounts at our many Splooge Events

Our Splooge Estate Events are all about having fun naturally. We put on many events over the course of a vintage, and as a Mother Load Splooger, you are given a sizeable discount. We know that our Sploogers enjoy many strokes, and we deliver! Events change in any given year, but there are certain events, the ones that are the most popular with our Ejaculate™ Members, that are held annually. Don’t miss the Splooge Native Yeast Festival in August! The featured entertainer is Miss Sugar, a local ecdysiast, and guests are encouraged to dress as their favorite yeast and try to convert Miss Sugar to alcohol. Miss Sugar loves the native yeasts and converts easily. Those who are cultured she can barely stand. Needless to say, there’s plenty of Splooge on hand for everyone to enjoy. You’ll also want to save the date in May for our “Unnatural Wines Suck” Celebration. Compare our latest Splooge Estate releases to wines that are not naturally made and discover the difference for yourself. Our neighbors’ wines might taste better, they might have less bottle variation, but our natural wines are wines as God intended them to be—punishment for your sins.

And, finally, our natural wines’ finest benefit

The smugness of knowing you’re full of Splooge

Natural wines are simply better. Natural wonders are better than other wonders, right? Natural foods are better than other foods—only the disenfranchised and poor eat foods that aren’t natural—coincidence? I don’t think so. The only wines that have any meaning are natural wines. Just ask the people who make them. Wine is not made to be enjoyed. Every wine you consume is a political statement, no more, no less. And your membership in Ejaculate™ proves that above all you value everything else over taste.

The 2012 Wine Blog Awards! Let's Karaoke!

It’s that time of year again. Nominations are open for the Wine Blog Awards, or, as I call them, the POODLES. If you lean in and listen closely, shhhhh, there’s one now, you can hear the bloggers surreptitiously nominating themselves. The categories include Best Overall Wine Blog, Best Writing on a Wine Blog, Best New Wine Blog, Best Industry Blog—or, as they’re collectively known in Track and Field, the Low Hurdles.

No one knows how many wine blogs there are. But all you have to do is see one, and you just know there will be thousands more. Like cockroaches. Or butt pimples. The wine blogosphere is a lot like a karaoke contest. Most of the people doing it don’t really have much of a voice. And they all tend to pretty much sing the same damned songs over and over.

Unlike most awards, the POODLES judges remain anonymous. Oh, but you know they’re qualified. How do you know? Each judge received at least 96 points from the organizers. There, that’s proof positive. Why are the judges’ names kept secret? Simple. Much easier to nominate their friends that way. Or win awards themselves. Wait, that seems way too cynical. No, the judges are anonymous in order to protect those judges from lobbying or pressure from nominees. And that’s understandable. We all know Poodles are so damned articulate and persuasive—look at how much wine they sell. And, besides, judges are usually kept anonymous in every great democracy. Say, North Korea. One can really only trust the decisions of anonymous judges. Ask Justice Clarence Thomas.

There is about it all the feeling of the elementary school playground. “Pick Me, Pick Me!,” mixed with the sincerity of Sally Fields, “You like me, you really like me.” A lot of bloggers, in a wondrous blaze of shamelessness, will ask their readers to nominate them. I wonder if this happens for the Nobels. “Yes, it’s time once again for the Nobel Prize in Literature. I’ve worked hard all year, written a brilliant, self-published novel, and, well, Phillip Roth is never going to win, so why not nominate me?” Now in its sixth year, the Wine Blog Awards have become something I only barely recognize—a joke. Or maybe a Wark in Progress. It boils down to awards for typing. And typing often.

I was going to start my own POODLE awards. I know that an award from the HoseMaster would be far more meaningful than one from some imaginary and self-appointed Wine Blog Awards website. (Hey, this post is about vanity, I’m entitled to my Cher.) I was going to start my own wine blog awards because the current categories for a POODLE are useless, and don’t reflect the reality of the wine blogosphere.

May I suggest a few categories that might be far more appropriate? Oh, you know I will. And I’m actively seeking nominations.

BEST NATURAL WINE BLOG

No, this isn’t for a blog about natural wines. The winner of this category is a blog that doesn’t add anything at all to the wine world. It is a blog as nature intended. Natural blogs do not contain anything from outside the blog that artificially enhance it, such as pirated photos, lame ads for the California Wine Club, or anything cultured, like yeast or literary references. A blog is either an unnatural wine blog or a natural wine blog, but natural blogs are clearly superior. There are countless natural wine blogs that add nothing to the conversation, and this is an award to recognize their facileness. (Many have their own FacileBook page.)

BEST BLOG I’D PAY TO READ

There was a time when one of the most common topics on wine blogs was how to “monetize” your blog. That topic has vanished. Primarily because wine blogs are like the junk people take to “Antiques Roadshow” and the expert says, “What you have here is an item that should be strapped to a suicide bomber.” So, this award asks, is there a wine blog you would actually pay to read? I think we all know the answer.

As an aside, I personally love the blogs, like W. Blinky Gray’s, that ask for a donation through Paypal. There’s a guy outside my local Safeway with a sign written on cardboard that says, “Any Spare Change Apreciated.” I give him money because I think he’s more interesting to read.

FEWEST COMMENTS ON A WINE BLOG

It seems all wine bloggers try desperately to have zero comments on their posts, at least judging by how interesting those posts are. This award celebrates the wine blog that manages month after month to have the fewest comments, with none being the perfect score. This promises to be a hotly contested category.

BEST TROLLING WINE BLOGGER

We all know this clown, the one who haunts the “successful” blogs posting comments relentlessly in order to troll for hits on his/her own useless, ego-driven blog.  I think it’s time we honor those tireless and shameless advocates for themselves. Devoid of original thoughts themselves, they want to sidle up next to those who have something to say and nod their virtual heads in agreement while pretending they’re part of the same intellectual team.

Ultimately, it is they who epitomize the finest in Poodledom.

And for my previously published explanation of most of the categories for a Wine Blog Award, follow this LINK.