winespeak

Dear Dude,
This guy who is working for about a three week stint at the winery sent me an email because he wanted me to send him a picture I took.  I didn't recognize the name on his email address and there was no message.  So I googled the name and look what I found.  He is a chef at a restaurant in Chicago and teaches at a culinary school.  He is a wine guy so he spends his vacation working the harvest.  He was here last year for a week or so and we hit it off.  Anyway, he teaches a wine class and has a profile on corked.com or something.  here is his description of a wine (2005 Cirrus).  How fun is this industry?

First off, a lush, inviting color, and waterbed viscosity were a welcome change from the rusty syrah I have been seeing of late from SA. The nose was plummy, peppery, and a bit like squashed pennies on the railroad tracks; lots of ferrous minerals. The tannins were velvet and smooth, a pretty muscular wine, really. It is only in the persistent iron and minerals that one gets a sense that this wine might not be from the US or Australia. A sense of place is hard to grab in this bottle, but who cares. The wine has richness, fluid, silky tannin, a warm mouth feel, and enough junk in its trunk to stand up to bold flavors in food, or loud mouth dudes that "only drink red wine." It is red. It is 14% alcohol. It might get you laid. How's that?

BTW: the above is a picture of Mike in a bin of must, or unpressed skins and seeds, left over after a tank has fermented and is drained into a more civilized vessel.  It is like the wine is out of the ICU.  He choses to wear a big rain suit to dig the must out of the tank.  I tend to go for the shorts and a t shirt for digouts.

 I was thinking of a wine label for the wine I am making (Oregon Earwig Soup) Maybe a strong workman's or farmer's arm with the sleeve rolled up revealing a tattoo of an earwig.  I was thinking like a socialist propaganda feel to it.  Kind of wood cut looking?  Or a print.  What think ye?