QotD: Cool and Dorky Wines

Though it's fashionable to pretend otherwise, there are indeed such things as cool and dorky wines. I took the question to an assorted in-crowd of master sommeliers, opinion-making wine press and early-adaptors. What wines, I asked, are hotter than hot? What do sommeliers drink and discuss in breathless whispers when they're alone with their own kind?

Here's what I learned. What's not cool is money. Forking over wads of cash to have giant, manly, trophy wines decanted is so over.

The concept of the moment is terroir-wine. Wine from, say, a single, half-acre vineyard on a precipitous mountainside in East Fraxistan. Weeded, harvested, stomped and vinted by one old guy with callused hands and the artistic sensibilities of a concert violinist; so in-tune with life's cycles that the grapes talk to him. He has to be into some sustainable-earth cult involving ancient amphorae, lunar cycles, rune-casting and babbling in tongues. The wine should be quirky, perhaps with a putrid smell you have to get past before you suck it in, gurgle loudly, and proclaim it: "pretty funky stuff." Funky is good. It speaks of earth and of the fine line between disgusting and delicious. A line the general public, with its bland, corporate taste, is too cowardly to approach.

Jennifer Chotzi Rosen, "Chasing Cool", vinchotzi.com, 2005-11-23