Pope’s Vintner Sells to the Devil

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It seemed like the perfect gimmick:
a celebrity porn star would launch her own wine, with her alluring picture
on the label.

Savanna Samson did just that, but when it received a score of 90 to 91
out of 100 by wine guru Robert Parker, the project became serious. It turns
out Samson, the star of "The New Devil in Miss Jones," has produced
an exceptional wine, becoming the toast of two industries: wine-making
and pornography.

The seriousness of the idea was lining up a respected wine maker. So she
convinced Italy’s Robert Cipresso — also a vintner to the Vatican — to
join the project.

Samson went to Tuscany and tasted dozens of Cipresso’s Italian-grown varieties,
then she selected a mix of 70 percent Cesanese, 20 percent Sangiovese and
10 percent Montepulciano. She ordered over 400 cases.

The result is Sogno Uno, a 2004 vintage of an Italian red wine packaged
under the Savanna name with a label of Samson in a see-through gown. It
was launched last month.

Parker has been called the most influential wine critic in the world, and
a score of 90 to 95 denotes "an outstanding wine of exceptional complexity
and character."

from Reuters

Let’s get this straight. This guy Cipresso makes
wine for the Pope, and for the Devil in Miss Jones? Isn’t that a little
like
selling uranium to the Israelis and the Iranians? Also, although
many of our favorite writers were alcoholics, isn’t it amazing that Robert
Parker has enough time to be the most influential wine critic in
the world, in between writing all those Spenser novels?