Welcome to The Pour Fool Website: My Dogs Plan to Sniff You

My dogs, Edgar (no respecter of persons or personal space) and Mickey (ten pounds of Attitude in a five-pound bag), have suggested that I say a word or two on the occasion of the debut of this website, so here goes…

For the past almost five years (I know. Shocks the hell outta me, too.), The Pour Fool has been appearing as irregularly as Dustin Ackley hitting streaks in the pages of seattlepi.com. And, because I’m eternally grateful to the fine folks at Hearst and their local outpost down on Elliott Avenue, it will continue to show up there with the same slackerish, Seattle-bred frequency it always has, unless I can somehow master the fine art of time management, something that the folks in Vegas refused to even quote odds on.

The Staff of The Pour Fool

But, I always planned to eventually either truck the whole mess off to its own web domain or to at least duplicate it there…which has now become a reality. If you’re reading this, you are now in my cluttered corner of the interweb, where opinions sprout like weeds and the tolerance level for willful ignorance dwindles literally by the minute. In keeping with the central principle of The Pour Fool – NO negative reviews – this site will carry on the proud tradition of trumpeting very loudly that which is truly exceptional and noteworthy in the beverage world and, just as assiduously, will continue to Ignore With Extreme Prejudice that in which I detect the stink of “All Sizzle and No Steak” or the annoying low-frequency hum of trendsetter hyperbole.

The other guiding principle of The Pour Fool is this, and this is far more important, from a practical, user-oriented standpoint, than the No Negatives thing:

Edgar, an unrestrained hedonist and Senior Partner

The Pour Fool, as is the case with ANY review of anything you read anywhere, is nothing more than One Person’s Opinion. At the risk of never having another human being ever read thus blog again, I do not want you or anyone else to ever invest what you read here with any instant credibility. Question everything and everybody. The proper use of The Pour Fool or the Wine Advocate or Steven Tanzer’s fine website, or any critical scribblings is to read, compare how the writer’s views square with your own, decide if what you read by that person makes sense to you and has any value in YOUR life, and only then grant any of us any trust or simple cred. To do this little unspoken, unwritten compact between reader and writer any other way is to invite yourself to be hoodwinked, heartbroken, or just simply have your valuable time wasted in extravagant and wholly useless fashion.

In the weeks to come, the content of the P-I edition of this blog will be carted over here and posted, although some of it will come without photos, as some of the shots used in the early posts have now either left the web or been foolishly erased by yours truly. The eventual plan is that new posts will  appear at this web address at least 24 hours in advance of when they appear in the P-I. I have absolutely NO plans to ever remove The Pour Fool completely from the P-I, as it is a wonderful forum for the subject and the powers that be there have given me a priceless gift that I never once got, in 20+ years of writing for daily/periodical magazines or newspapers: They left me the heck alone – NO clumsy editing, NO prohibitions as to content, NO questioning or red-lining of language, and NO demands for content other than what I was motivated to write and really wanted to say. To Sarah Rupp and all those riding herd on the blog menagerie at the P-I, I have nothin’ but Valentines and chocolates and a round on me anytime they want.

Mickey, Junior Partner and staff Love Sponge

Welcome to The Pour Fool website. Expect changes, in the months to come, as I get slicker with the WordPress tools and add on upgrades. It’s not out of the question that the site may move to another platform down the road but, in that event, there will be an auto-redirect posted here that will take you right to it. I hope to make this, as I’ve been repeatedly assured it has been for the past five years, fun and (I fervently pray) funny and a bit more irreverent and, yes, a bit cranky as time goes by. Truth be told – and whatever it says about me I accept – I rather enjoy a dash of cranky and/or curmudgeonly in what I read and Lord Knows it’s coming into my own writing in the most natural and organic way possible: as a product of encroaching age and lowered tolerances. If I get too judgmental, get right on up in my face about it and I promise I will at least stop and examine my attitudes to see if I agree you have a point. We will not always agree and, in those cases, since this is my little blogdom, I may well decide to change nothing. But if you’re right…I will say so, offer thanks, and shift what needs to be shifted.

My dogs will want to sniff you and, if you stay in proximity, they’re remarkably persistent and will eventually succeed. They don’t bite but the big one is a chronic drooler (and God help you if you have food on ya), while the little one has been known to hump things, from time to time. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience…