Californian police have surrounded a compound in Napa Valley following reports that the members of the religious cult inside could be on the verge of a mass suicide.
Austere conditions
The cult, the 100-Point Adventists, are disciples of the tasting notes of Robert Parker.
Former member, Emma Gullible, fled the camp, in the hamlet of Nutjob and painted a grim picture of life inside.
‘We’d spend 14 hours a day reading back issues of the Wine Advocate, tasting endless flights of Napa Cabernet and discussing oak regimes,’ she told Fake Booze.
‘It was like studying for the MW. Though probably slightly more fun.’
Targeting the vulnerable
According to Gullible, many of the members inside have been recruited from abroad, often from those with troubled backgrounds.
‘They target vulnerable people who have problems with health, money or self-esteem,’ she told Fake Booze.
‘Which basically means the entire drinks industry is fair game.’
Heaven and hell
Expert in the field of Wine Occult, Dr Theo Logian, has been studying the Seventh Day Parkerists for many years. He says they have much in common with evangelical beliefs about The Rapture.
‘A select few are taken to paradise to drink 100-point wines, while the rest suffer mortal torment for all eternity.’
Scholars, he said, disagreed on the exact details of hell, beyond the fact that it’s ‘probably a lot like drinking Saperavi.’
Number of the Beast
The cult appears to believe the world will come to an end on December the 20th.
‘Numerology is central to their belief system, with ‘12/20’ recurring frequently on their sacred texts,’ explained Dr Logian.
12/20, he said, is referred to as ‘The Number of The Beast’ because ‘that’s how Jancis Robinson once scored Pavie ’82’.
Fundamental splits
Recently there have been rumours of disagreements in the group surrounding such fundamental issues as ‘what to do in the event of a wine tasting better than an existing 100-point wine’ and ‘whether it’s OK to call a wine ‘natural’ if it’s been touched by God’.
But the biggest split appears to have surrounded a heated argument over what should be done in the event that the Seventh Seal of Revelation is made of wax.
A local sheriff said it appeared the ‘soften it with a lighter’ faction was refusing to speak to the more hardline ‘gently prise it open with a knife’ group.
A fundamentalist ‘just pull through it’ falange have apparently begun arming themselves in the basement.
Existential crisis
Several cult members have fled to safety in recent days, and said that the deteriorating conditions in the compound were having a serious impact on the inmates’ mental health.
‘Mealtimes are the worst,’ said one escapee. ‘With the end in sight everyone has realised they need to drink up all the old bottles from their collections. It’s terrible watching people having to pretend to enjoy elderly clarets that taste like a tweed suit, and 20-year-old bottles of ‘age-worthy’ Sancerre.’
Some members, she said, were already questioning everything they thought they knew on discovering that their prized bottle of Coche-Dury smells of feet.
The end is nigh!
Police said they feared for the safety of those within when witnesses reported the delivery of a large shipment of Apothic.
‘That stuff eats away at your self-respect real slow,’ said police chief Glock Toter. ‘Particularly if you’ve got half a palate.
‘Believe me, it’s no way to go.’
Click here to read about the first wine to score more than 100 points; and here to read about James Suckling’s ‘battery tasting farm’ empire
