On the Lexicon of Traditionalism, Modernism, Post-Modernism and Perhaps Deconstructivism in the Characterization of Wine

[Howard_Cooper]

Darth Robert’s conversion to the dark side is almost complete. Next post will be about how he has sold all his Sociando Mallet and his “green” Loire wines to buy more Ovid.

[Robert.A.Jr]

Darth Robert’s conversion to the dark side is almost complete. Next post will be about how he has sold all his Sociando Mallet and his “green” Loire wines to buy more Ovid.

Oh, Howard, you missed the most obvious reference: metamorphoses not conversion.

Publius Ovidius Naso.

And no, there is no dark side. There is only light.

A side note, I am going to an Opus-sponsored dinner in two weeks. Where is Opus these days?

[Howard_Cooper]

Darth Robert’s conversion to the dark side is almost complete. Next post will be about how he has sold all his Sociando Mallet and his “green” Loire wines to buy more Ovid.

Oh, Howard, you missed the most obvious reference: metamorphoses not conversion.

Publius Ovidius Naso.

And no, there is no dark side. There is only light.

A side note, I am going to an Opus-sponsored dinner in two weeks. Where is Opus these days?

It has been a very long time since I had Opus.

[Robert.A.Jr]

I choked when I saw the bottle price, around $365. Wow.

Hopefully they don’t pull that cheesy sales move and drop an order form in front of you, at the table, with guests and friends. That Ovid trick cost me a lot of coin, lol. Peer pressure while tipsy is dangerous.

[Jim_Stewart]

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre” ?!

[Chris_Foley]

But, when I think of Troplong Mondot, I really do think of … that picture of Tammy Faye Baker crying with her make-up running in ungodly patterns.

Now I don’t know that I’ll be able to drink my bottle of 2015 T-M without seeing that image. Thank a lot.

[Robert.A.Jr]

But, when I think of Troplong Mondot, I really do think of … that picture of Tammy Faye Baker crying with her make-up running in ungodly patterns.

Now I don’t know that I’ll be able to drink my bottle of 2015 T-M without seeing that image. Thank a lot.

Dude, post something now, like in ASAP. Your post count is 666. Neal will tell you that I consider that the mark of Rolland!

PS. Would you drink that out of the 1855? Scandalous. You have no shame.

[Chris_Foley]

[Chris_Foley]

PS. Would you drink that out of the 1855? Scandalous. You have no shame.

I’m just a points chaser. There’s only one bottle in my cellar with a higher CT average score.

[Robert.A.Jr]

PS. Would you drink that out of the 1855? Scandalous. You have no shame.

I’m just a points chaser. There’s only one bottle in my cellar with a higher CT average score.

I hope you know that I’m kidding. And by the way, I got my Chris confused. Freemont sells the 1855s, you sell racking. Merger?

[Matthew_King]

Thanks for all the thought-provoking comments, guys. Well, except Alex and Alan.

The next evolution is post-postmodernism, which is still emerging. It abandons this “anything goes” mentality and self-referencing. Gone is the unreliable narrator and pop-culture nods. It aims to return to a more stripped-down, honest examination of daily life in a new century.

Great post overall, Matthew. This statement resonated. This is where I am at, and I think Claus and Julian are, too. Wines like Clos du Jaugueyron typify that point. Iconoclasts, but seeking honesty, transparency. They build upon obvious predecessors like Jean Gautreau, Foucault, and Marcel Juge.

The wines do not have to be great to be great. That have to be honest, transparent, and be what they were intended to be, from that place and time. Pardon the existential tangent, but it’s relevant. I’m not just seeking wine that tastes good. That’s pop culture.

I don’t know how to tell you this Robert. But you sir are the epitome of a meta-WBer … poor country squire and all!

[Neal.Mollen]

I woke up this morning to Julian Marshall’s post referring to a wine that I commented on, Domaine Roche Nueve’s Les Memoires, a very old vine Cabernet Franc, as “post-modern”. I assume it was meant to characterize a wine that had traditional roots but modern fruit, without venturing into the spoof that we have found in some more modern styles. I clearly have fallen prey to calling wines like those made by Rolland or Cambie, as “modern”. And I definitely have used the term “modern” as a pejorative.

I occasionally cringe when I use that term. I am a modernist. I grew up in a universe of mid-century thought, influenced so heavily by my amazingly talented and artistic mother, who introduced me to the beauty of art and architecture. I was also influenced by my father, an aerospace engineer, who like many engineers, believe that the beauty of a creation is in the form following function without any necessary adornment. Minimalism, really.

I entered architecture school in 1983, without knowing what I called it, as devout modernist. My artistic ideals then, and which remain now, were the cubists and modernists, think Mondrian, Picasso, Braque. The art in my house is mostly Cuban modernism from the 1950s-70s. My architectural reference point started and literally still ends with the genius of Le Corbusier. Mies van der Rohe and Gropius, from the Bauhaus movement, would be in the mix as well. I guess we now call that mid-century modernism, and what evolved from these visionaries, think Palm Springs, California, in particular the historic gas station that is now a welcome center to the city. From that, we evolved into the modernistic styles of Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey, and at that time, Michael Graves.


F7B9F1BA-88AF-41B0-9804-02D2B8489DA1.jpeg

Le Corbusier, Villa Savoy (1931)


D5E0A925-85B2-46D2-B60D-382B8A98F651.jpeg

Richard Meier, Smith House (1967)



24AB9A2D-E771-4267-9E5B-3FC18BA97755.jpeg

Albert Frey, Palm Springs Gas Station (1965)


And then modernism devolved. It devolved into a gross characterization of something called architecture, the post-modern generation. This style developed in the 1970s but really gained prevalence in the 1980s, with Michael Graves transforming himself from a modernist, to something where “more is more” became the motto. This style and era is characterized by a professed devotion to traditionalism but with what they called modern thought. It was Franken-architecture. Think out of proportion, collosally-scaled buildings with over-adornment of decoration. While in my architecture college, there was a clash between those of us that thought of ourselves as Howard Roark types - yes we were likely arrogant snobs for sure - and those that we thought adopted this post-modern movement because it was contemporary, easy to understand, perhaps superficially appealing to some eyes. It was the new vogue.


CE803FE4-AD9F-4F04-845D-E8602E61B52A.jpeg

Michael Graves


4CA1FE8C-2B96-4770-B171-EA80EF0AC265.jpeg

Phillip Johnson, AT&T Building (1982)



See a parallel? And therein lies my conflict.

Should we not be calling the wines of Rolland, Cambie, Derenoncourt, Heidi Barrett, et al, these newer style wines, “post-modern” rather than “modern”? And you may know where I fall on my appreciation of this style, especially after my comments above, but this is really meant to be non-judgmental. I acknowledge that people like this style of wine just like they appreciate that style of architecture. My post is more on what, if anything, we call these stylistic movements. Assuming they are even styles.

Of course, to have post-modernism we must have modernism. I’m thinking Emile Peynaud, Mondavi, Baron Phillipe de Rothschild. Clearly these revolutionary thinkers broke from the orthodoxy of the past to advance wine-making practices and philosophies to a new generation. Certainly others here can wax more philosophically on their advancements better than I can. Ironically, Rolland was a pupil of Peynaud. And like Michael Graves transforming his modernist to the next generation, Rolland took Peynaud’s precepts perhaps several steps too far. This is post-modernism to me.

It’s a bit early for all this rambling. I just had this stuff in my head. I’ll circle back to add more clarity of thought, but perhaps you can help me refine, or just debunk, what I am thinking now. Maybe I’m drawing a connection to art, architecture and wine that does not exist. I think it does, I just have not been calling it correctly.

I’m going to give this some thought, but I will say that I have always hated that AT&T abomination, and the Graves building(s ?) is/are almost as bad

[GregT]

“A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.

Think out of proportion, collosally-scaled buildings with over-adornment of decoration.

colossally

Fun post Robert. Has to be the best PWI ever!

I don’t know what to say about it except that some of those overdone buildings may not be so bad. The idea that there should be no ornamentation whatsoever can leave things pretty sterile. Much of the charm of the older ornamentation came from the fact that while it wasn’t necessary, it made things pretty for no other reason than simply to make them so. Those big egocentric sterile projections get boring really fast. Architecture is art that we live in, so make it inhabitable and fun.

Where do you fit “natural” wine?

I don’t know that you can fit the last forty years of wine into architectural terms, although I’ve heard that some wines exist in all dimensions and others are vertical in feel, so maybe that’s the thing -

wine + architecture = WTF!

[Chris_Foley]

PS. Would you drink that out of the 1855? Scandalous. You have no shame.

I’m just a points chaser. There’s only one bottle in my cellar with a higher CT average score.

I hope you know that I’m kidding. And by the way, I got my Chris confused. Freemont sells the 1855s, you sell racking. Merger?

If I could convince you the Troplong-Mondot would taste good if the bottle was stored in one of my racks and then poured into Grassl Glass …
would you come to my wine dinner?
Oh, I live in a house (black ranch) that was built in the 1950s in a semi-Craftsman style. Is there a space for that label in Bordeaux?

[Robert.A.Jr]

I’m just a points chaser. There’s only one bottle in my cellar with a higher CT average score.

I hope you know that I’m kidding. And by the way, I got my Chris confused. Freemont sells the 1855s, you sell racking. Merger?

If I could convince you the Troplong-Mondot would taste good if the bottle was stored in one of my racks and then poured into Grassl Glass …
would you come to my wine dinner?
Oh, I live in a house (black ranch) that was built in the 1950s in a semi-Craftsman style. Is there a space for that label in Bordeaux?

I live in a French Country home. Every day I walk through the front door and wish the big oak would fall on it.* The the classic irony is, my house is mid-century (built in 1952). Such a classic floor plan, open, reaching out to nature, and the folks that bought it before us, converted it into this “thing”. Well, my wife loves it, and I guess it is marketable.

There is a saying about architects not being able to afford their own creations. I guess that’s doubly-ironic, as I often say that I could not afford myself.

\

• There is an old anecdote about Frank Lloyd Wright visiting my alma mater, and was given a tour by the Provost. The Provost asked Mr. Wright which was his favorite building, and supposedly he quipped, “Century Tower, as I envision it falling on and crushing the Gothic cathedral.” Apparently he hated Gothic architecture. The cathedral was next to it.

[Robert.A.Jr]

Fun post Robert. Has to be the best PWI ever!

Technically, it was PWHO.

[AlexS]

Honestly, it’s pretty effing hilarious that Greg assumes you must have been drunk to post this - guessing he didn’t look at the time stamp lol.

[Robert.A.Jr]

I don’t know that you can fit the last forty years of wine into architectural terms, although I’ve heard that some wines exist in all dimensions and others are vertical in feel, so maybe that’s the thing -

wine + architecture = WTF!

Parker himself started it!

“The utterly perfect 2014 Scarecrow Cabernet Sauvignon has everything one could possibly want in a Cabernet. Inky purple-colored to the rim, with a glorious nose of white flowers, crème de cassis, hints of blackberry and boysenberry, some licorice and forest floor are followed by an enormously concentrated wine with fabulous purity, a skyscraper-like mid-palate and texture, a length of nearly a minute, and stunning flavors, with flawless integration of acidity, tannin, wood and alcohol. This is a great, great wine and certainly one of the Cabernet Sauvignons of this vintage. Drink it over the next 25-30 or more years.” 100 pts – Robert Parker, Jr., Wine Advocate 12/30/16

[James_Billy]

Interesting post.

It may have been mentioned above, but aren’t ‘natural wines’ the vinous equivalent of post modernism? Sentimentally harking back to the past but ending up with car crash-like results?

[PeterH]

" riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend
of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs"
That is natural wine.

Modern wine should be defined by form=function, and the time period roughly post war to mid-1990s. Wine is what it delivers. Paris tasting and all.
Spoofed wine- Rolland, Cambie et. al.- is post modern. I agree with Robert. Ornamentation (oak) becomes form (and thus function as well).

Quite an amusing thread that can pull in Ovid, W B Yeats, Pynchon, and virtually anything from everywhere, because that is where we are now.