Rhode whine

In this week’s “Life” section of Time magazine, critic Joel Stein tries a different wine from every state, ranking them from excellent to good to bad to undrinkable. Rhode Island’s randomly chosen vintage, a Vidal Blanc from Sakonnet Vineyards of Little Compton, gets a “Good” score, but you’d hardly know it from the mini-screed that Stein delivers on the pop-up online version of his review. It follows, with snarky deconstruction by your faithful beer-biased blogger:

This wine is from Rhode Island, but you’d have to look at the tiny print on the back of the label to figure that out. Instead, what appears in a big font on the front and back is Southeastern New England. Is Rhode Island that embarrassing? [Obviously not a Blog on the Half Shell reader. Of course Rhode Island is that embarrassing. Only Florida and California can keep up with us in this category.] And is Southeastern New England incredibly prestigious-sounding? [It is if you’re from Southeastern New England.] Is this why the Patriots refuse to say they’re from Boston? [No, the Patriots refuse to say they’re from Boston because they’re not from Boston. They play in Foxborough. Which can also be spelled “Foxboro.” That’s one of the neat things about living in Southeastern New England. Multiple spellings of place names.] The name of the town where this wine is made, Little Compton, [a.k.a. Common, Compton, Compton Commons or Little Compton Commons] doesn’t conjure up images of beautiful vineyards. But this vidal blanc isn’t too bad. It’s sticky-sweet, and I’ve had better vidal blancs, from New York and Canada [those names conjuring up vineyards for you, Stein] – and I don’t think vidal blanc is such a great varietal to begin with. [Hey, nobody forced you to try vidal blanc. You could have tried vidal sassoon, gore vidal or one of our other “varietals.”] But still, Rhode Island, dude, get some state pride. [Hey, New York critic dude, you want Rhody pride, next time try ranking states by their coffee milk.]