Unfortunately your registration at Mark Squires’ Bulletin Board on eRobertParker.com did not meet our membership requirements. Therefore your registration was deleted. Sorry, Mark Squires’ Bulletin Board on eRobertParker.com team.
The above message was sent to me the other day, about four hours after I tried to register for the Mark Squires’ Bulletin Board. I didn’t really want to join the Mark Squires’ Bulletin Board. After all, Squires doesn’t seem to like the natural-wine-loving kind. He already booted two of my favorite wine bloggers, Alice and Lyle. I only wanted to read a post by Mark Fornatale, who works for Skurnik (an importer). He had written about recent managerial changes at one of my favorite wineries, Borgogno: the prince of modern-style Barbaresco, Giorgio Rivetti of La Spinetta, he reported, would be revising vinification practices at the winery. I had been alerted to the post by Franco, who, upon reading Mark’s report, promptly contacted Borgogno’s new owner, Oscar Farinetti, and asked him point-blank if he would allow Giorgio to modify the style. Oscar answered via SMS (entrepreneur Farinetti is the creator of Eataly in Turin):
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Borgogno has no need for any changes in the cellar. As far as Rivetti is concerned, he will play no internal role. He will give us a hand with exports. The following is Borgogno’s corporate strategy: no change in the cellar or in winemaking [and] elimination of wines not internally produce… Borgogno will continue to produce [its wines] using the classic method. (translation mine, see the Franco’s post in Italian with quote from Squires BB in English).
Thank goodness Franco was able to clear things up: to lose Borgogno to the realm of homogeneous modern-style wine would be a tragedy.
Groucho Marx (above, left) once said famously, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” Squires would not have me as a member so I guess I can’t refuse membership. But why did Squires refuse me membership? On paper I met all the “requirements.” Did he see Alice and Lyle on my blog roll? did he visit DoBianchi.com and browse disapprovingly through my blog? (You can’t register with a gmail account so I used my dobianchi.com email.)
I wonder what the great logician Bertrand Russell (left), discoverer of “Russell’s paradox”, would have said about Groucho’s paradox. Russell recognized that self-reference “lies at the heart of paradox.” Groucho’s self-referential line is a not-so classic but very funny example of Russell’s paradox: “I refuse to join the set that would have me as a member of that set,” Russell might have joked. I would have liked to join the club of bloggers who had joined Squires BB and then were booted. But Squires wouldn’t even let me on in the first place. I guess I’ll never know what I’m missing. But who can see the logic in that? Sorry, Mark Squires.