Wine Wits (#021): Japanese Pet Nat, Books vs. Movies & ChatGPT
The latest from grape juice drinker Aleksandar Draganic
Hi friend!
It’s wedding day! Well, not mine, but it’s always exciting to get prepped for anyone’s wedding. As you may have guessed, I’m the groomsman that’s setting up the beverage program for the day. “Just when I thought I was out…THEY PULL ME BACK IN!” Yesterday was nothing short of fun as well - I attended a tasting of award-winning Chinese wines at 67 Pall Mall Singapore. This is uncharted territory for me, so it was great to see where China is in the wine world at the moment. Stay tuned for my thoughts on that in one of the upcoming posts.
WINE I’M DRINKING
Kunoh Wines Rosé 2019 (Temple Cellars, 105 SGD)
A former sommelier, Yuki Yakano loves to make wine to pair with the food that he eats. And he doesn't eat just anything. Yuki-san shys away from Western food as he thinks that these dishes are too rich and will alter his palate. He eats Japanese food, including tons of raw fish and vegetables. After working for Smallfry in Barossa Valley and Kindeli in Nelson, he decided to launch his own venture with the help of Alex Craighead, who acted as a consultant. He operates two project - one in Japan, one in New Zealand. You can read an interview I did with him here.
This rosé is coming from the Miyagi Prefecture in central Japan and is made from 100% Steuben, a black-skinned hybrid grape developed in New York from a crossing of two obscure varieties, Wayne and Sheridan, in 1925. I got maximum nerdy and asked Consensus to write an essay on the grape. Still have no idea what I read. Back to the wine. This is quite a wild little number. Didn’t appreciate it much on its own, but paired with beef curry, this was shining. Pink grapefruit, lychee, melon notes. Tangy, fruity, flirty, fun. Fresh and vibrant drinking.
BOOK I’M READING
Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra
Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Patric, Brad Pitt. A casting crew of a movie that was extremely hard to erase out of memory. Having watched this over a decade ago, it was time to find the book and I must say, I prefer the movie (a rare one in my book). Sleepers is about 4 boys that screw up a prank on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen and find themselves facing a year’s imprisonment in the Wilkinson Home for Boys. The oldest of them is fifteen, the youngest twelve. What happens in there will change their lives forever. I won’t dwell on the plot too much because you have to experience it yourself. What I will say is that it definitely made my stomach turn upside down. On the other hand, the writing of this book is not in the hands of the most skilled writer on the planet.
While reading the first part, which tells us of the protagonists' childhood, I thought that Carcaterra dwelled too much on anecdotes and events that might not interest the reader. It evokes a lot of nostalgia for childhood, theirs and a bit of my own, which may not have been idyllic, but certainly more so than adulthood. The second part, set in the Wilkinson juvenile detention centre, was the hardest to read. At times I had to stop and close the book for a while, and I'm not someone who is easily struck by “heavy” scenes. The third part is probably the most fictionalised; it feels like a totally different book. You may not approve of the idea of taking justice into one’s own hands, but I think it is humanly and emotionally impossible not to hope for the protagonists' plan to succeed after reading the second part. A rollercoaster of a novel for sure.
RANDOM THOUGHT
I read this article by Jane Anson on the use of ChatGPT amongst writers and sommelier, a very interesting read. What are your thoughts - is the industry going to become lazy or progressive?
As always, thanks for reading - stay thirsty, stay curious.
See ya in a week!
Aleksandar