Crazy is as crazy does.

A story was brought into the Cave today, and by way of this story I've decided crazy stops being crazy if you can convert it into something minimally utilitarian. Sometimes crazy transforms into the sublime, but then which comes first, the crazy or the sublime; is a certain amount of out-of-the-ordinary necessary to achieve an out of the ordinary result? A whole additional set of sentences can be strung along this line, like should those who achieve extraordinary be measured against the same standards as the ordinary, accountable to the same actions, same rules? But for the sake of this story, we'll call it at one sentence back.

Doesn't this just look crazy? This is one of the wines produced by Frank Cornelisson on top of Mt. Etna there in Italy. Good thing it's not Mt. Etna there in Iceland, or Frank would be crostini. Take a moment to read his farming philosophy, echoed in most articles written about him. One blog even utilized the description of "Madman," something he may have been assigned over the few years he's made an impression on the wine/world. Really? Mad to think you are a guest on earth? Mad to think food came to us perfectly intact with no further need whatsoever to tamper with it? Mad to adapt to the nature of the beast rather than to tame or slay the beast? Should we all be so mad.

In Wine Spectator, Matt Kramer's question is about whether different wine is necessarily great wine, acknowledging the consensus that Mr. Cornelisson's product is at least different.

Later today, a non-wine aficionado stopped in, a gentleman who came to us by way of essentially inheriting his wine, now trying to learn his way through it. In our brief conversation he offered the idea of what establishes our baseline of memory and how all wines that follow are measured to that baseline.

So that: have we evolved into such a narrow or precise definition of great, any other offerings are merely adjuncts-experiments-flings?

(Slow Cave day.)