Category: Culture

Categories
industry press

Zines, zines, zines…

Wine AdvocateI’m shopping.  When I started this experiment of writing about wine, having been out of the business for what seems like forever but is actually only 2 years, I promised myself that if I stuck with it I would budget in a few wine magazine subscriptions.  I hadn’t maintained my trade subscriptions because it was a little too painful reading about expensive, interesting wines when I didn’t have the money to buy them and no one to discuss them with; but I’m feeling frisky, baby, so watch out!

Back when I was a wine rep, I exhaustively read consumer-oriented publications, because that’s what affected my customers’ shelves and lists.  It was important for me to know what trends were affecting their sales (and therefore my own).Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate, Wine Enthusiast, Saveur, Decanter, and Food and Wine.  Talking to a wine bar owner lately, I’ve learned that Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar affects sales here in Texas (or at least here in Austin), though it didn’t seem so big an influence back in the USVI.
Wine Spectator

My inestimable former boss BG, would also get more trade-oriented subscriptions; we shared, of course, and I always enjoyed reading Wine & Spirits, Quarterly Review of Wine, and Restaurant Wine.  He particularly swore by the little-known gems he would find in the latter, and I must say that he was right on the money when he ordered something for our territory based on a review from RW. BG was a traditionalist and liked to get the printed magazines; I needed information fast, even from back-issues, and needed to be able to search wine ratings, so I liked the online subscriptions.  At WA and WS, you can search their databases for wine rating scores, which is super-useful for wine reps whose customers respond to ratings. (Is that redundant?  Does anyone sell wine to people who are not affected by ratings?) 

Restaurant Wine

 

So, I’m working on a budget, and I am no longer driven by the need to find the next new 92 pt wine that retails for less than $10 (though I’m not opposed to it).  I’m interested in reading articles on industry trends and winery profiles, but I’d also like to hear about cool new bottles of deliciousity.  I like the immediacy of online subscriptions, but then there’s something satisfying about getting something in the mail every month, too.  Plus, I’m not always near a computer.

What would you recommend I buy, if we were to keep at a budget of about $200?  What wine publications are most useful and rewarding for you?  Which ones feel like the best bang for your buck?  Where do you find your precious nuggets of wisdom?

Categories
basics industry

Quit staring at my legs

One of the things I will encourage you NOT to comment on when it comes to wine is legs.  “Nice legs” is a phrase best used in private, only with your beloved partner whom you think has attractive lower limbs and wants to hear your opinion of them. 

Unfortunately, wine legs are easy to spot, and commenting on them is one of the early defaults that a wine drinker learns.  Please, please, please resist.  Legs mean one thing: alcohol content.   If the wine legs you are seeing in your glass are so outstandingly pronounced that you simply must say something about them, then just say something about the alcoholic content in the wine, like “What percent alcohol is this?” or “What is this stuff, Port?”

Tears of WineHere’s how legs work:  wine is made of water and alcohol.  Alcohol evaporates faster than water but has lower surface tension, and so the wine in your glass of wine starts climbing the sides through capillary action.  This exacerbates the quicker evaporation of the alcohol, and the resulting change in the surface tension pushes even more wine up the side.  When gravity kicks in, the wine drops back into the glass.  The tracks of the wine running up and falling down the sides of your glass are the legs, which the French call the “tears of wine.”

Alcohol is one of the things that makes a wine full-bodied, creating that sensation of expansion in your mouth, and sometimes contributing to the mouth-coating texture of a wine.  There has been a lively discussion since late June in the wine world regarding how much alcohol is in modern, high-scoring wines, and whether that’s a good thing.  Wines from Germany usually have about 8-10% alcohol.  French & Italian wines tend to be about 12%.  California wines can range as high as 16%, which winemaker extraordinaire Randy Dunn says is too much.  Tom Wark at Fermentation agrees with him, as I tend to.  Wines & Vines pleads for an appreciation of alcohol.

No matter what side of the high-alcohol fence you’re on, or if you’re dazed by the whole hullaballoo, please take this home in your pocket.  It’s uncool to talk about legs.  Not uncool in a cool way, like Napoleon Dynamite, but simply and utterly inept, like the way our president ad libs.  Don’t say it!  You’ll thank me when you’re older.

Categories
industry

Boxed in

Such an interesting article from our local Austin Chronicle this week on boxed wines! Wes Marshall writes about wine and food for the Chronicle, and organized a blind tasting of wines packaged in boxes, inviting various distinguished Austin wine geeks, including the three Austin men that won the Texas Best Sommelier Competition: Devon Broglie, Craig Collins and Scott Cameron. There were 12 tasters in all, and they tasted a total of 50 wines, giving out a prize for Best Red, Best White, and Best in Show. The winners were:

1.) Seeburger Riesling from Germany

2.) Powers 2003 Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington State

3.) Hardy’s Stamp Merlot from Australia

Now, you may be surprised to hear about very serious wine people enthusiastically tasting box wine. The box stuff is cheap and nasty, right? Well, here’s the thing: not necessarily. Wine is finally having a much-needed packaging revolution. Wines that would sell for $10-15 a bottle are now frequently being packaged in the “bag in box” format and purchased enthusiastically in such wine-savvy locales as Europe and Australia. According to Wes Marshall, 54% of all wine purchased in Australia is in a box. These are people who care much more about substance over form, yeh?

Why give up the good old bottle and cork? Simple: air. When wine is exposed to oxygen, it starts to go south. Specifically, it oxidizes, robbing the wine of its fruit and causing the wine to brown. Wine that’s been packaged in that vacuum bag in the box is guaranteed oxygen-free for life, and therefore can be drunk in any quantity desired, over any timespan desired, without you haveing to worry about the wine going off. Do you drink a glass of red wine a night, like it’s medicine? Then bag-in-box is your Holy Grail.

Another good reason to buy wine in a box rather than in a glass bottle is portability.

Continue reading “Boxed in”

Categories
industry reviews

Tasting HdV Napa Valley Red Wine 2003

hdvnapavalleyredwine-label.jpgUhhh, Scamp? You forgot the name of the wine.

Actually, no. This is HdV’s meritage bottling, which they did not name until 2004. The word meritage is a cross between the words “merit” and “heritage,” and it’s the official California name for a wine that is a blend of at least two grape varietals (hard to blend just one). It rhymes with “heritage,” so please don’t go all fake French on it and say meritaaahhhhggge. Give it a good, American hard G; it’ll probably push back, as most meritage blends are Cabernet Sauvignon-based.

California winemakers started making meritage blends in honor (or imitation) of the great wines of Bordeaux, which are all blended wines. Red Bordeaux wines are blended from any or all of 5 grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec. White Bordeaux wines are blended from Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon.

In the US, we usually market a wine by its varietal, and blending makes the consumer suspicious: a “Robert Mondavi 51% Cab, 42% Merlot, 7% Cab Franc” doesn’t exactly fly off the shelves. In France, they figure all you need to know is that it’s Chateau Haut-Batailley, because the winemaker tries to make the wine taste the same from year to year, blending it differently every vintage to create the same aromas and flavors that makes that wine distinctively Chateau Haut-Batailley. This is what American winemakers are going for with their meritages: a distinctive, winery-evoking character that makes you think, “Ahhhh…. HdV.”

When enjoying this HdV premium tasting at the Lake Travis Wine Trader, I was intrigued to learn that this winery with such close ties to internationally renowned Burgundy was not making a Pinot Noir, but instead a meritage blend, a la Bordeaux. Michael Apstein, in an article about HdV, says that de Villaine declined to bottle a California Pinot Noir because of the “inevitable comparisons.”

In the glass, the wine was a rich red, not jewelled with clarity, but muscley-looking. It was quite toasty on the nose, with some green pepper aromas and a very subtle black currant scent. Overall, pretty spicy/peppery on the nose. The tannins were quite astringent on the palate, with some cranberry and maybe loganberry fruit. The finish lasted about 5 seconds. I expected it to be more fruit-driven when it warmed up a little, and it evened out a little bit, but largely stayed the same. I felt there was too much oakiness present, and the wine was not really ready to drink yet. A pretty austere red blend, for Napa Valley meritage.

To be fair, some reviewers were extremely pleased with this wine, citing rich cherry fruit from the Merlot and earthy, mushroom character, but I didn’t get any of that in my tasting. This wine is probably improved by food: a nice steak or duck dish would cast the tannins in a much more flattering light. Bottle price: $67

Categories
industry reviews

Tasting A to Z Pinot Noir 2005

a2z_pinot_05.jpgPretty, garnet color. Warm Bing cherry, cranberry and sweet strawberry on the nose. On the palate, the wine has a slight silkiness, not too much, although that begs the question of how much is too much… Bright, cheerful acidity on the palate with some warm spice flavors that lingered in my mouth with a scrumptious Bing/black cherry finish. Very well balanced tannin and acidity. Yum-yum!

I am from Oregon, and I love Pinot Noir. And I love Oregon Pinot Noir, so it must be noted that I am biased in favor of this wine. Plus, their website is fancy-cool. One of the beefs I have with Oregon Pinot Noir is how expensive it tends to be, and A to Z really feels me on that one. Their whole gig is to bring good Oregon wine to my mouth without emptying my pocketbook on the way, and for that I thank them heartily. I don’t recall ever having an A to Z wine that I didn’t like, and I will try to remember to taste more of their stuff. You should be seeing more of their juice around your friendly local wine shop, as Wine Business Monthly named them the #1 Hot Small Brand of 2006.

A to Z Wineworks brought together a lot of very well-respected people in the Oregon wine industry with the aim to make a négociant-style wine in Oregon. This is a tradition quite common in France, especially in Burgundy (Jadot), Beaujolais (Duboeuf), and the Rhone Valley (Guigal and Jaboulet). A négociant can buy grapes or grape juice from vineyard owners and make it into wine, or she can buy wine fermented by the vineyard or even other wineries and blend that into a wine that she will then bottle under her own name. The most famous example of a négociant wine in the US is the infamous “Two-Buck Chuck,” or Charles Shaw, whose 2005 Chardonnay recently won the California State Fair’s prize for Best Chardonnay.

If you are horrified at the concept of drinking a wine that is a blend of juice from the Rogue Valley all the way up to Hood River, then you should carefully look for words like “estate bottled” on your wine label, because that’s about the only way you can tell that a US wine was really grown and pressed and fermented and bottled all by the same gal. Me, I care more about well-made, inexpensive, tasty tasty wine, so I don’t worry my head about that. A to Z’s 2005 Pinot Noir purportedly has about 40 different wines in its blend. If it produces an Oregonian Pinot Noir with some character and verve that I can afford to drink, I say, the more the merrier!

A caveat, in which the Scamp’s ass is covered: Not all négociants make great wine. Some of it is nasty plonk, not even worth that $6.99 you paid for it. But at the prices you’re likely to pay for these bottles, you can experiment with impunity.

Other US négociant labels include:
Castle Rock
Domaine La Due
Teira
Three Thieves
Stephen Vincent
Cloudline
Mark West
Stone Creek

The wines of Don Sebastiani & Sons are some of the most successful examples of California négociant wines. I list them separately here because I have learned that this company is financially and politically supportive of anti-choice legislation, and so I won’t be buying them or reviewing them here. Some of their wines include: Pepperwood Grove, Aquinas Napa Valley, Mia’s Playground, Screw Kappa Napa, Smoking Loon, Used Automobile Parts, Fusee, Gino Da Pinot, Le Bon Vin de La Napa Valley, Plungerhead, Hey Mambo, White Knight. Why they be harshing on the womens like that? Shame!

Categories
industry regions

Predictability is the New Black

Driving home from work the other day, I caught another of NPR’s excellent stories about global warming. In the teaser for the segment, the announcer said something about “a positive side to climate change,” and I immediately knew we were going to hear about wine.

For some reason, the only upside anyone can seem to find to global warming is that France has been having record highs, which has resulted in ultra-fruity, superripe, California-style Bordeaux and Burgundy. This is the kind of wine that Wine Ratings God Robert Parker gives 10,000 points to, which sells wine, which is definitely good news for French wineries.

Not so good news for warm-weather climates, though, this global warming. The NPR story focused on Spain, and had a Spanish winemaker talking about planting in the foothills of the Pyrenees, hoping for cooler temps there.

What really caught my ear in this story, though, was not the discussion of rising temps and their fears effects on our agriculture. No, what I thought was so interesting (not that disaster isn’t interesting, my apologies to the 4 horseman and all) was the comment by Albert Puch of wine giant Torres that vintage variations, once a given in the minds of European winemakers and consumers, is no longer an excuse for mediocre or bad wine.

Que que?

Some background: Old World wineries (winespeak glossary — Old World = wine regions in Europe; New World = wine regions everywhere else) trained their consumers long ago on the vintage system: if you wanted to know which of their wines were the best, you needed to memorize which vintages were the most successful. Of course, every wine maker does her best with every harvest, but sometimes your weather is great and sometimes it’s crap and it’s hard to control that, even in France.

Then, when everyone agreed that average vintages were a shame but what could you do?, New World wineries started bringing vintage after vintage to the table with no variation in quality. Regions like Australia, California, Chile, even Washington all have very predictable weather, and could make a wine that tasted the same year after year after year after year… You know when you buy a bottle of Chateas Ste Michelle Riesling or Jacob’s Creek Shiraz and you enjoy it, you can buy another one next year and it’ll be equally likeable. Victory! No more vintage charts!

Old World winemakers fought back, charging that their wine had very much specialness in it that made it better than predictably drinkable New World wines do not. They can’t really tell us what that is, but it’s there, and you’re missing out if you drink tasty new world wine all the time. And lots of people beleived them for a long time, feeling undisciplined and bourgeouis when they forgot their vintage cheat sheet at home and had to buy something they simply knew they liked, without remembering whether hail fell in the Rhone Valley in 2002.

Hearing someone from Torres saying that they needed to find places that weren’t going to provide unpredictable harvests was like hearing the fashion editor of Vogue say she was going to have to write about some shoes for women that don’t hurt our feet. Finally, the cart is placed behind the horse where it belongs, and you, gentle reader, are in the driver’s seat. Giddup!

Categories
industry regions

Old Vines

Wine marketing frequently throws normal advertising rules out the window, when it comes to Americans. We love all things new, right? Bright, shiny and new: new iPhone, new house, new car, new Hollywood star, new bestseller… in a world in which technology seems to be accelerating life, we work harder and harder to keep current.

So why does the term “Old Vines” have such cachet with us? It sells the crap out of wine, let me tell you. It’s one of those terms that, when a wine-nervous consumer sees it, makes her feel that she’s in good hands. Don’t worry, say the Old Vines, we’ve been around the block a few times and we’ll treat you right.

And Old is supposedly a good thing when it comes to wine, right? Wine ages, and gets better with age (sometimes). “Old Vines,” though, refers to the age of the vines producing the grapes producing the juice producing the wines, though — not the wine itself. Apart from the comforting sense that at least something is old about the bottle you’re buying, what is it about old vines that makes a winery think they should put it on the label?

In Europe, where they invented the term (Fr: vieilles vignes), wine producers slap the Old Vines on a bottle to brag about how long wine’s been made on their land. It makes sense, if you are a devotee  of terrior , the concept that what makes a wine good is the land its grapes come from. Older vines have deeper, more complex root structures that, according to some terrior believers, bring unique, irreplaceable elements to the wine grapes.

Especially in Europe, vieille vignes also implies that the people making the wine have been doing so for generations, and therefore really know what they’re doing.

Ironically enough, though the Old Vine mystique was born in Europe, it is now many non-European vineyards that can boast some of the oldest vines in the world, Chile, Australia and California in particular.

Australia’s Barossa Valley: Hewitson’s Mourvedre planted in 1853
Maipo Valley in Chile: Merlot planted in 1863 at Cousino Macul
California’s Amador County: Zinfandel planted in 1886 by Joseph Davis

We can blame this on the phylloxera blight of the late 1800s, which all but annihilated the wine industry in Europe until it was discovered that native US rootstock was immune to the disease. European varietals were grafted onto new rootstock, which saved the day, but it means that many of the greatest, most expensive wines in Europe come from vines that were planted less than 100 years ago.

There is one other reason to prize the old vine, and that is yield. As vines age, they naturally produce fewer grapes, but those grapes are said to be more intense and packed with flavor and complexity. It’s as if all the energy of the grapevine is concentrated into fewer grapes, but better grapes.

The problem with the term “old vines” is that it’s completely unregulated, even in France, where they love them some wine regulations. So while any of the reasons to choose a wine made from really old vines are good, it’s hard to tell who to trust. Is Winery X’s definition of old 20 years? 30 years? Or are we talking 100 or 130 years old here?

Sussing this out is mostly a matter of knowing your regions and varietals, unfortunately. I’m not shocked to hear of 100-year-old Zinfandel vines in California, but I’d be surprised to hear of 100-year-old Sauvignon Blanc vines there. I’ll believe almost any vine is super-old in Australia, because way back in the mid-1800s James Busby, a very serious Australian wine evangelist, collected all the varietals he could from Europe, and spread the gospel of grapes. I know that in Spain’s craggy hills and valleys lie vineyards that time and the modern world had forgotten until very recently, and so a $10 bottle made from 80 year-old-vines is feasible.

In the end, though, the term Old Vines on a bottle means less to me than the region, the winery, the price, and the grape. It’s always nice to drink the juice of historical grapes, but only if the wine is well-made, and is appropriate to the food and/or the setting.

Categories
industry reviews

Tasting Garnacha de Fuego 2006

Garnacha De Fuego 2006 Price: $7.99 at Whole Foods

I got the heads-up on this wine from The Cork and Demon, a great Austin wine blog. Taj paired it with meat manicotti and friends; I had it with pizza and Borat with friends.

The color is bright garnet, with a nose of jammy blackberry, a little spice and just a tiny pepperyness. In the mouth, the texture is soft, and it’s obvious you’ve wrapped your gums around a fruit bomb. Rich, sweetish blackberry flavors are balanced with some cranberry and raspberry notes with some acidity, which is good because this wine has NO tannins. It doesn’t even recognize tannin on the street; it’s all, “Tannin who? Tannin what? Never heard of it.”

Overall, a medium-bodied, simply tasty wine that is everything I want out of a casual table wine, including the price. Juicy-juicy goodness.

A confession: I knew I would like this wine because the label said it’s from Fine Estates of Spain, run by Jorge Ordonez.

Continue reading “Tasting Garnacha de Fuego 2006”
Categories
industry personal

Manifesto

So here’s what I don’t get: when did wine get so snooty? Humans have been drinking the stuff since ever since any of us can remember. If familiarity breeds contempt, then we should be snotty to wine people, not the other way around. They make it all over the world now, just like cars. And we Americans love our cars, but we don’t tell people to pick a car for us because we don’t know enough about them. Sure there are an overwhelming number of choices of different wines out there, but you could say the same about sodas, and I don’t see anyone taking classes to learn what kind of Coke they like. What’s the big deal? It’s grape juice that had a brief affair with yeast and was never the same since.

Honestly, whence the mystique?

Anytime I tell people I “know about wine,” they gasp and stand back as if I told them I were telepathic or a member of the aristocracy. This is, admittedly, a reaction I enjoy more than the reaction I get when I admit to a past life as an English teacher, which is that 90% of the world thinks it necessary to explain that they can’t diagram sentences and hated trying to learn. (I love to diagram sentences, but I never force it on anyone.) Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the two reactions are similar: guilty consciences. “All this time I’ve been drinking wine, and now a real life wine expert catches me in the act! OK I give up! I admit it! I don’t know what I’m doing!”

Hey, there’s a big bad wine world out there that doesn’t choose to tell you what the slosh in the bottle tastes like before you buy it. There are magazines and online wine clubs and wine writers that profit by your ignorance because the wine establishment, while saying it wants your business, wants it only on its own terms: you drinking what you’re told. I say, and many say it with me (shall we all say it together?), let’s think less about what the wine means and more about what it does in our mouths. Wine biz, tell us up front what you’re selling us, and don’t tell it to us in points. Points are for sports. (And while you’re at it, would you make it easier to open? Cripes, every bottle that used to be closed with a cork in ye olden tyme (perfume, whiskey, oil) is now provided with a closure that doesn’t require special equipment or skill to broach.)

Gracious, how would any normal human being learn all about wine if she weren’t completely obsessed with it, or in the business itself? I say, you don’t need to know everything about wine to know what you like to drink. And, I say, that is the purpose, the raison d’etre of wine itself: to please you. The wine that does not please you has failed, poor darling. I dream of a world where we’ve learned to pair the right wine with the right person, and everyone drinks what they love without the haunting feeling that they’re showing ignorance by simply enjoying what’s in their glass.

It puts me to mind of the old e.e. cummings poem, “pity this busy monster, manunkind” which ends,

listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

In this blog, I plan to write about wine I’m tasting, wine events I attend, and wine-related subjects I enjoy. As I do so, I hope to encourage you, gentle reader, to find the wines you love, drink them, and enjoy doing so. Who’s with me?