UPDATED THE 10th, 20th, AND 30th OF EVERY MONTH, WHETHER WE’RE SOBER OR NOT!
Friends of the Friends
of the Forgotten Grapes
Please support them because
they support us...with wine!
Doing for Forgotten Grapes what
Dancing With the Stars does for
forgotten celebrities.
Copyright ©2009-2010 by ForgottenGrapes.com
Who the hell am I?
WHO THE HELL AM I?
I’m the President of Words & Wine, a wine travel company devoted to wine tours and writers’ retreats in southern France, Provence, Burgundy, Beaujolais, and the Rhone valley. I write the “95W1NE” column for Area9 Magazine and am a regular featured contributor to Fandango.com. I also get to work from home, which is nice since it allows me to drink whenever I want to.
I’m someone who is basically self-taught in the ways of wine. No classes, no lectures, no sommelier academies. So more or less just like you. I didn’t start drinking wine seriously until I was out of college (I can still remember the first “everyday” bottle I really liked and bought repeatedly: a 1997 Talus Merlot. Yes, my dirty little secret is that Merlot was my gateway wine) and didn’t really start taking wine seriously until I had that one bottle that made me sit up and take notice and ignited the passion inside me. In my case, a 2002 Papapietro Perry Peter’s Vineyard Pinot Noir.)
As my tastes matured and my palate expanded, I found myself searching for newer, different, more exciting wines to kick-start my sensibilities. Merlot led to Pinot. Pinot led to Syrah. Syrah led to Riesling. Everything was great until I hit that rut. You know that rut. The one where you keep drinking the same varietals over and over again until the grapes starts to lose their magic and you forget what you liked about them in the first place. That rut.
Then on my first trip to France’s Rhone Valley — truly the epicenter of Forgotten Grapes — I had my eyes re-opened and my passion for wine re-ignited. Hello, Mourvedre. Cinsault, glad to know ya. Carignan, happy to make your acquaintance. I got back to the States and began seeking out not only these lesser-known varietals but their brethren as well: the Chenin Blancs, the Grüner Veltliners, the Albariños and Semillons of the world. Red, white, rose, it didn’t matter. If it was obscure and I’d never heard of it before, I wanted to drink it. I needed to drink it. And very often I did.
The problem was that not many other people I knew were willing to join me on this quest. Most people were all too happy to suck down their oaky Chardonnays or fruit-bomb Cabernets rather than break out of their comfort zones and try something new. Worst of all, people were intimidated and afraid. Intimidated by the wine-speak, the ratings, and the snobbery that comes with trying to learn more about wine but not quite knowing how to do so. Sort of like the movie School Ties if you replaced the Judaism with the Jura.
That’s why I founded Friends of the Forgotten Grapes and started ForgottenGrapes.com: to educate and inform wine drinkers of every shape and scope – from the high-schooler sneaking her first glass of White Zin (okay, not really. 21 and over, folks. 18 in Canada, Mexico, and the rest of the world, but 21 and over here in the U.S.) to that guy in Monkton, Maryland who thinks he knows everything – about all the terrific and wonderful grapes and wines they are missing because they’re too afraid to break out of their zombie-like Cab/Chard/Merlot/Grigio/Pinot/SauvBlanc/Syrah/Riesling haze. And to do so in a fun, entertaining way that cuts through all the pseudo-sophisticated jibber-jabber and intimidating wine-speak and gives people what they want to know on the simplest terms: what is this wine? What does it compare to? What does it look/smell/taste like? What foods does it pair well with? Where can I buy it and try it for myself?
If you have any questions or comments about the site or just want to get in touch with me about what’s going on in your life (no stalking, please) or what wines you like, feel free to e-mail me at chris@forgottengrapes.com. I will do my best to respond personally to every e-mail sent to me. No promises, though.
And that’s my goal. To get you to discover and try as many Forgotten Grapes as you can find. And there really are hundreds (I’m not kidding; I looked them up). All of which we’ll cover. Once a week. Every week. Updated every Thursday. Ad infinitum.
So won’t you join me on this journey through the wondrous, undiscovered country of cool-to-warm stoves that I call the Forgotten Grapes? Just think of me as your professor, except I don’t have a degree. And I’m not an actual professor. Though if I were, I’d be one of those cool professors who smells like cigarettes, wears t-shirts under his camel-hair coat and wants everyone to call him Jerry or Daniel or whatever his first name is instead of Professor Blank. And I’d still listen to the Afghan Whigs.
That’s me. I’m Chris Kern. And I’m a Friend to the Forgotten Grapes.
So that’s who I am. What am I not? Well, I’m not a Master of Wine or a licensed Sommelier,
which instantly makes me a hundred times cooler and more interesting than 90% of
the Sommeliers and Masters of Wine out there. I’m not a wine snob or a wine geek.
I’m more like a wine jock, and as a jock, it’s my job to make fun of the geeks. So
sayeth Homer Simpson and so sayeth me. I’m not a slave to wine ratings. In fact,
I do my best to ignore them whenever possible. I believe you should drink wines based
on what you’ve liked in the past and what you’re going to like in the future, and
you should always be willing to take a chance on something new (even if it’s Merlot,
although hopefully it’s not). Like the baby and the stove, you’ve got to touch it
once before you know it’s hot. Wine is the exact same way. You’ve got to try a new
wine at least once before you’re going to know whether you like it or not.
