Typecast!

The word Muscat elicits a visceral reaction, an involuntary rush to judgment. You’ve been told it’s uncool, and from the times you’ve tried it, you’ve found it too sweet and simple to be considered a great wine. Dismissed as a sweet vehicle to buzzland, you’ve avoided it. No more. Open your mind and let this dry Muscat blow away your preconceptions.

Muscat has been typecast as the lightweight character actor of wine, the silly slapstick oddball who takes pratfalls for laughs. It is rarely the hero or the love interest, but real heroes are less 007 and more Zelensky, a man once thought of as a lightweight actor/comedian who surprised his oppressors and his people, to rise as a great, unconventional leader, middle finger raised to the invaders. Muscat has been typecast, but that says more about the audience than the actor. We’ve been told what’s cool, what’s worthy, and what’s not, too concerned with what other people might think of our choices. That’s not the fault of the variety. It’s the fault of marketers who manufactured wine for the masses, where sugar sells an inoffensive beverage that no longer reflects agrarian origins, more in common with a soda pop than with something grown and crafted. Muscat has been manipulated and altered into something other than what it started out to be: a natural product of the land. We need to demand something that tastes real, from a place where purity matters.

Instead of manufacturing it to fit the role it was assigned, we let Muscat’s freak flag fly, allowing it to become the clearest expression of itself: naturally crisp, dry, floral, and at home around the table. It’s ready for its close-up.

Rob Sinskey