By Jason Feulner, Finger Lakes Correspondent
At a recent wine event in the Finger Lakes, a few individuals approached me to express disapproval over my previous post about the upcoming opening of Pompous Ass Winery on Seneca Lake.
Their chief complaint? Some felt that I came down too hard on Pompouss Ass before it had a chance to prove itself. I was told that the owners seemed like nice people.
I'm sure they are nice people, but that's not really the point.
Now that the winery has a liquor license and is open for business, I re-visited the website to see some new content. I found this bit of text: "And for those of you who enjoy fruit-forward sweeter wines, our Red, White, and Blush will be coming soon. R.S. 7%"
Yes, 7%! At 2%, the winery's more "serious" wines are certainly not bone dry either.
I won't rehash my entire critical argument about why I think the Pompous Ass concept misses the mark as a truly funny or appropriate Finger Lakes name, but this follow-up simply stresses the obvious now that the winery is finally showing what it will produce.
A good joke thrives on contrast. A cartoon donkey with a naughty name might work if the wines themselves were quite serious, or were surrounded by other serious wineries (like in Napa, for instance). Instead, what we have here is a cartoon promoting sweet wines, which actually makes sense. That's certainly nothing new.
But, unlike other wineries that have specific sweet wines with fun names, here we have a winery that is only the fun name. It's like if the famous Red Cat became a winery instead of just a label from Hazlitt, a winery that also makes some delicious, more serious wines.
Pompous Ass will probably make a boat load of money on the wine trail and will reward the owners handsomely. I wish them well, but in light of this news I still stand by my original opinion about the name.