Wow.  I'm shocked and honored to be included in Wine Enthusiast's "40 Under 40:  America's Tastemakers"

About 7 years ago, I started Dirty South Wine with no plan, and no direction besides to have fun-  Where that has taken me, I could never believe.

Most of my time is now spent here-  Dirty and Rowdy Family Winery, where I have somehow found myself as the winemaker and co-owner along with my longterm partner in crime Rowdy (who I met via this blog), and our two spouses.  Most of our updates come through short blasts on our Dirty and Rowdy blog, instagram feed, Facebook page, and mailing list.

I am humbled by all of the support I've received through the years.  Without Dirty South Wine, there would be no Dirty and Rowdy Family Winery-  Without you, there would never have been Dirty South Wine.

Again-  Huge thanks to the crew at Wine Enthusiast for including me with such an amazing group of people.

(the author showing off the next trend in skin fermented white wines--  cloudy, day-glo yellow wines that for some reason won't turn orange)

(Warning:  Before reading this, please note that this post is satirical)

Last week almost a dozen people gasped when Richard Betts, wine guru turned Mezcal Marauder, declared on Forbes.com that orange wine completely blows.

If in print, the article would have been easily glossed over in thousands of physicians waiting rooms in retirement destinations across the US (primarily in the Southern regions where the elderly mock god and refuse to bear witness to the changing of the seasons). Instead, in a most surgical strike, the article was published and shared online, where only people who work in the wine industry would ever truly digest it-- Because who in the wine industry has $4 any more for a friggin' magazine?

To sink his cold steel deep, Richard's major assault included a dogpile of "taste makers"-  The wheels behind the wheels we say-- Including a restauranteur / wine guy that loves Italian wine so much that he makes it from Colorado.  To distill his words down- "Orange Wine is all bullshit sold and ordered by di*shits"-  "You know what would go great with that Petra Sole? Some F'n Tecate and a shot of Mezcal."  BoooYAHHHH! he cried as he unexpectedly swept the leg from one of his line cooks-- "Stay down!!! I play for keeps!!!!!"  Someone in the background could be heard saying "Get him a body bag!"

Little did he know- That Tecate was what was most likely running through the veins of the American Orange Wine Movement.

The spirit of the West-  Jon Bonne, was perhaps less or more direct.  Noblely both assaulting and defending  Orange Wine like a man at war with war itself!   "Orange wines can suck. I said it back in 2009. Well most, do, but shit, I just spent a weekend writing a chapter about Orange Wines and I didn't see this coming..."

In JB's Orange Wine hits a wall post, another Italian wine guru in a trendy-ish restaurant that was the former location of an offensive wine bar that kept an incredible arsenal of orange wines had something to say that I'm not sure I remember, but was more or less--  "They now pour this stuff in the Marina, THIS SHIT IS OVER!"  Reading into it, I think he is more upset that Mission hipsters wearing ironic sweaters still stumble into his spot trying to order Orange wine while saying "Dude, where's Jeff?"

But true credit goes to the Spankmaster. He- the one who shot down Crispus Attucks, and in doing so included a reference to the Kardashians-  not to the traits of Kim which engorge both the loins of Lion and Lion tamer, but to the whole turd-burgling family that in itself is worthy of a drone strike to preserve our freedoms.   Penned from a hole in the deeps of Dry Creek Valley, the butterfly's wings of the storm of war...

With the publications of such decrees, the online wine world erupted into mayhem.  Tweets fired across the bow became all out conflict.  Alder Yarrow became entrenched, dueling with naturistas, rallying tweeters with thrusts and parries of razor steel, axe and mace, blunt hammers of staccato'd tweets-  "Take that You ungrateful curr, I've been blogging about wine since you were on LiveJournal! #wine"

And then the quiet weekend....

So now after we try to pick up the pieces and contemplate the extent of the carnage of last week's all out blood bath-- If in fact these stories reached and were comprended by the millenial wine consumer base, this past week may have been Orange Wine's online equivalent of the Sideways effect on Merlot.

So while we wait and count our dead, dying, and wounded, the winter sun still rises in Georgia, Slovenia, Forestville, corners of the Loire, Healdsburgundy, and in filthy cellars uncounted and forever unknown...Rest assured that even if Orange Wine falls, somewhere brave men and women will still be playing outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes (and most likely be wearing skinny jeans and a t-shirt with a kitten or baby seal on it)....