Still intrigued by my neighbor-the-scientist joining this club, and after ensuring that I wasn't obligating myself any further, I 'bit' at the 'case of wine for $65 delivered' initial offer. How bad could it be for that, I wondered.
Right off the bat, emails from found Rowan starting pouring on the love, and I do mean love, trying to create excitement toward the day all 93,445 people in line in front of me got out of the way so that I could become an Angel too.
The case of wine showed up within a few weeks. In it was a big glossy folder full of over-the-top information, including a card about the size of the Christmas card you get from your insurance agent every year embossed with "Your journey has begun" and containing photos of my new friends, the winemakers I was now 'supporting'.
In between the emails came some snail mail teasers like the letter from "Jeff Jarvis, winemaker" with "Thanks from the bottom of my heart" in a handwritten-looking font scrawled across the top of the page. "Dear Jenise," it reads, "Please accept a bottle of wine with my grateful thanks. It will appear in your basket...on the day you become an Angel. You are about to invest $40 a month in winemakers like me...so you can taste where your money is going and see how it has changed my life."
"I've been making wines for years, and I'm fortunate that people say I'm very good at it with over 15,000 positive reviews and a lifetime of shiny medals. But despite all these awards...life for me was very hard indeed...I had to spend 200 days a year on the road...and hardly got to see my family...Because you are funding me I can invest in quality. I can buy the best fruit, I can give my wines the time nature needs to do her magic and I can make the wine the way I want to make it...So from my family to you, thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Jeff."
So, the wines. I've only opened four bottles so far, but all four were hopelessly, or barely, average and what's in the bottle tastes cheaply made (as are the labels). But they're probably cleverly average too, as they're clearly meant to never offend an inexperienced palate. They are not lean or racy or earthy or funky or bitter or concentrated or bombastic or tannic--probably especially not tannic--or showing character in any way at all. They are simplistic with no sense of regional typicity, and every one has a maudlin back label message from the supposed winemaker like this underripe NZ pinot did: "Lay of the Land wines have been a long time coming, After ten years as head winemaker with a leading Marlborough winery, the beautiful Angels and our wonderfully dedicated farming friends have combined with me to bring this long dream of a project to your wine glasses. It is still hard to believe it is really happening--thank you, all you Angels."
This is a wine club for lonely people. But it's an amazing shtick, and has been interesting to witness. Those of us who understand the world of winemaking know no true artisan of fine wine spent his life dreaming of being able to make the kind of bland, dilute wines I've tasted so far. The only campaign I've ever seen like this was the stuff that came to my father in law (after he died, all his mail was forwarded to us) from Jimmy Swaggart and Reverend Schuller; it goes beyond the product to play on neediness and emotion, and what has worked with religion is apparently working in the secular world of wine. I would never have bet something like this would succeed, but it apparently has.
Needless to say, when I got the email this week telling me that I was finally at the front of the line, I opted out.
