A Wine Not Visited, or How Naive Can I Be?

Last week the Whole Foods in Cambridge, MA (the Car Talk Guys' fair city) on River St. had a special event with Maynard James Keenan of Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer. He must be a very busy individual because on the side he also, with the help of winemaker Eric Glomski, makes wine. He is part owner of Merkin Vineyards and Caduceus Cellars. He was going to be signing bottles of his wine for his fans on the 16th and 17th, and I thought "I might be in the area on one of those nights and hey, that could be interesting". I don't really follow his music, I like some of it, but I don't consider myself a 'fan'. I have not purchased a CD or downloaded a song from Itunes, but I like listening to the occasional song on the radio. I also have yet to try a celebrity wine that I like. Sorry Norman, Coppola, etc. So why did I want to go? Well, for one thing, he has a wine from Arizona. I have never had a wine from AZ, but if the price was right I certainly wouldn't mind trying it. The other reason? It would be interesting to chat with Maynard about his wines. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I don't consider myself to be very naive. But... I pictured this event to go something like this:

Maynard and his winemaker sitting behind a folding table in the wine department, with their wines perched in front of them. Ten, maybe fifteen people in front of me chatting him up and getting their bottles signed, while I readied my questions in my mind. Maybe, on the side, another small table with samples and snacks. Very casual. I've been to events with winemakers and the like. That's what they have been like.

What the event was really like:

As I pull up to the Whole Foods building I notice that the ground level parking area under the store itself is blocked off with a couple vans parked at the entrance slightly askew. As I get closer I notice more than a dozen police officers looking stern or talking into walkie talkies. I start to pass the parking area and start to hear Green Day screaming away in the air (Why Green Day and not Tool? I have no idea.), and I am immediately dumbstruck. There must have been five hundred or more people queued up in a cattle chute waiting to get their bottles signed! And there were people in cars circling the outside parking lot trying to join that line. I think briefly about where I might park but a little voice in my head says "What, are you nuts?" and so I just drive away. On the way to the Mass Pike all I could think was "How naive can I be?"

I stopped by the Cambridge Whole Foods two days later to see if I can still purchase one of the Arizona wines, but they are sold out. Again, "How naive can I be?" I mean, there was a small army there two days ago. They did however have bottles of the Merkin Chupacabra (literally translated to goat sucker), CA for $30 and the Caduceus Naga, CA for $80. A lot more than I wanted to spend on celebrity wines, so I passed. Besides they weren't from Arizona.

As I finish this post, I read that Lil Jon the rapper is also making wine. It seems we may be in for a flood of celebrity wine. Better learn to swim.