The Day After

***Obviously, some parts of this are satire, others very serious. I trust the difference will be obvious.***

As I mentioned in the previous post, I have been thinking about what will happen when 'The Great One' is no longer of this world. I, in now way, am suggesting that this will happen anytime soon, but it will happen. As an old friend once told me, 'The funny thing about death is that nobody lives through it'.

So what is to come? I imagine that in true form he will ascend from his already lofty perch to absolute Iconic status. Along the lines of at least two other Americans, his days of birth and death will be marked by moments of silence and endless hours of news coverage recounting the accomplishments of his life. W.A.P. will become a part of the daily lexicon as an abbreviation for 'Wine After Parker'.

The humble house in Monkton will be re-named 'Tasteland' and people from the world over will make it a destination, like going to Mecca. The local police will be forced to hire more officers to deal with the amount of people. Tasteland will be made into a National Park and rangers will give tours of the place, citing the tree in the backyard where once 'On a beautiful August evening in 2000, The Great One actually urinated the remnants of a Guigal Côte Rôtie La Landonne'. Instead of 'p-nut butter and nanner' sandwiches, people will leave plates of Fois Gras and Peking Duck along with an assortment of dim sum - an offering to a god. A 'Glass Tabernacle', dwarfing anything ever created, will be erected using spent bottles of Sine Qua Non, Martinelli, and Turley. The entire ground will be shrouded in a hushed tone of reverence, save for the occasional oohs and ahhs. Parents will tell their children where they were when they heard the news. And the world, if only for a minute, will stop turning.

But what about the others? The ones left to pick up the torch and carry on fighting the good fight....

Daniel Thomasses and Pierre Rovani will meet their maker in a freak car accident on the back roads of Italy. Two Fiats will try to occupy the same space at the same time with rather unfortunate results. Rovani and Thomasses will not see it coming.

The other car, driven by one Marvin Shanken with traveling companions Laube and Suckling, will have just left an all-day tasting at Sassacaia, undoubtedly out of their skulls - drunk. Shanken, white-knuckling the steering wheel - a Cohiba the size of a baby's arm stuck in his pie-hole - is seeing triple at this point, his eyes like a Texas road map. Laube, who passed out hours earlier, is sawing toothpicks while riding shotgun. Suckling, trying to ever impress 'The Shank' - as his friends call him - is in the back seat running on at the mouth about how cool he is and how badass his new Ferragagamo shoes are. Shanken couldn't give a shit and is simply trying to keep the thing between the lines. Suckling, determined to prove his coolness factor, decides the best way to get Shanken's attention is to actually show him the shoe. Instead of taking it off, Suckling re-positions himself. The cramped quarters of the Fiat force him to contort his body, the show-shoe, pinned beneath him. Confident he can pull off this move without fail, Suckling goes for it. He lifts his body up, the pinned foot being released like a rubber band. Shanken, with sweat pouring of his brow, shirt completely soaked but still sporting the suspenders in totally unaware of what's unfolding - literally - behind him.

Meanwhile, Rovani and Thomasses are trying desperately to figure their way back to the hotel after being on a 15 hour bender at Antinori. Rovani says it's this way, Thomasses says it's that. Finally, Thomasses pulls out the map. Being three sheets to the wind, Thomasses navigational skills are less than ideal. After much discussion, Rovani convinces Thomasses that he's holding the map upside down. 'Turn tha damn thing over', he says. Thomasses comes back, 'Okay then, I'll turn the damn thing over...right now', temporarily blinding Rovani

At this very moment in the other Fiat, Suckling is trying his Kerrie Strug impersonation. He lifts up, leg shoots forward. It nails Shanken in the back of the head causing Shaken to lurch forward taking the steering wheel across the bridge of the nose. His eyes start swelling up with water and he turns to smack the shit out Suckling.

BAM!!!

In one fail swoop, the wine writing world as America knows it, is no more.

Millions upon millions of consumers will be totally lost, wandering the aisles of wine shops and package stores, wondering what to do. Said shops, in an effort to keep the machine running will continue to post 'shelf-talkers' for vintages of wine long since sold. This will, for some, provide a modicum of solace, yet only perpetuate their insecurity of personal taste.

And then maybe, just maybe, people will start making wine for the sake of making wine - that long forgotten notion of representing time and place. And of course, Broadbent,Coates, and Johnson will still be there to actually write about them.

Or better yet, people the world over will realize that all of it is really unnecessary, and the headlines will read 'Wine(writing) is Dead.'