Laube Gets His Day in Court—and is Ruled ‘Irrelevant’

Wed April 1 2009 2:44:00 ET

ST. HELENA, CA -- Emergency crews are on full alert today throughout Northern California after great cracks appeared in the earth’s crust and hot rocks fell from the sky on Main Street in St. Helena. Wine Country tourists feared a precursor to California's long-awaited Big One, but local residents remain sanguine.

“Laube must be tasting Cabernets,” is one explanation heard along the lunch counters and winebars of this otherwise quietly fashionable enclave. “Happens every time. He usually tells us when, and we all go to Calistoga for the day.” Long-time locals know some of the details. “It goes way back. Jesus made a wine that Jim tagged ‘uninspired.’ Pissed the family off, big-time.”

The natural disturbances came only days after a decision in an ongoing court case that found Laube “irrelevant” to Napa’s best-known cottage industry—wine writing. Laube and his employer, Wine Spectator, are defendants in a class action suit by international winemakers claiming defamation and damages from Laube’s often incomprehensible opinions of wines that sit otherwise untroubled at the top of wine lists everywhere. Laube’s personal attorney defended Laube against the criticism, saying, “Nobody is listening, anyway. It’s irrelevant.”

Prosecutors for the class action stipulated to the point, conceding that the Spectator audience is limited, and further conceding that even among that limited audience, most think Laube's pieces are supposed to be humorous. One court watcher commented, “He's a hoot, but nobody takes what he says seriously. We assume he's kidding most of the time. Lighten up.”

In an unusual move, the judge appointed the crowd of courtroom observers, mostly local winemakers, as a “jury comitatus,” a rarely used concept in Common Law made popular in the colorful Gold Rush days of California, when lynchings were authorized by public opinion.

“What say ye,” the judge asked. “Irrelevant!!” was the unanimous proclamation. Laube seemed unmoved by the furor, and later explained he was parsing degrees of toasted oak in his head when the decision came.

In his own testimony, Laube said, “Look, I taste thousands of wines every year. I’m lucky if I spend a minute or two with each wine.” One clearly upset winemaker yelled from the back of the courtroom, “Taste in haste, repent at leisure!” brandishing a battered copy of Wine Spectator in which an offhand comment by Laube, he said, had ruined his life. “Laube panned my wine. I couldn’t sell it, so I drank it. I’ve been living off my trust fund ever since.”

In a procedural move, the judge has separated the issue of relevancy from other apparently damaging biases against which the class action has been lodged: “We still have to go through the whole ‘high-alcohol/high-score’ thing. And I have two clerks and a retired Supreme Court justice researching the ‘fruit bomb’ issue. I think they’re in Argentina this week.” - by Ethan MacLeod

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