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September 12 2007
Thanks to fine leadership of Dr. Vino, today’s theme for the 37th monthly installment of WBW is indigenous varieties of wine. That’s simple enough: pick a wine made from a grape variety that comes from a place it might call home, so sayeth the good doctor.
However, I immediately took this in the literal sense—find a wine that might call Indiana home. This, of course, immediately limits you to oh, say, one grape varietal—Catawba—which isn’t noted for knocking the socks of anybody.
Ah, but I was just a bit misguided. Have you ever been in a corporate team-building exercise (or watched reality television) when a team is given a challenge and it’s along the lines of completing some sort of task with a finite amount of money and scant other detail—but, and this is a big but, the host or leader says, “you can ask any questions you would like, otherwise you’re free to start the challenge.” 9.5 people out of 10 dive headlong into the task at hand, without asking any questions.
I should have asked a question. I could be drinking a fine Italian Aglianico because I could select ANY wine that calls ANY place its native home.
Nonetheless, there’s nothing wrong with keeping it local.
Having forsaken the French Lick Winery Catawba at the store and already having drunk the Stone Hill Norton a week or two back, I went back to the store for some more local goodness (I know East and West Coast readers must read these posts with some sort of mock pity to which I reply, “I know” even if I’m contemplating a Catawba wine from a winery named -French Lick-).
I’m drinking BOTH the Stone Hill Winery Chardonel and the Vignoles. Now, admittedly, both of these are hybrids so I’m actually failing on the count of true indigenous-ness. But, if Lenn, the founder of WBW, can work the nuance between black and white then so can I.
Stone Hill Winery, based in Missouri is the Crown Jewel of the Missouri wine industry and, like several other prominent Midwestern wineries, they make a ton of different varieties—21 currently for sale. Something for everyone …
The 2005 Chardonel is a hybrid cross between Chardonnay and Seyval, designed to tolerate cold weather climates (more information on the varietal found at Appellation America). It’s also aged sur-lie, a technique by which a stainless steel paddle is inserted inside the barrel every few days to continuously mix the wine with the lees, creating an additional level of complexity in the wine. The body on this wine is light and the flavor profile is similar to that of a Chardonnay. The amazing thing about this wine is the nose, which is fantastic and rich. I would want this scent pumped into my house it’s so delicious smelling—a caramelish, yellow cake goodness. This is a good wine, especially good for a regional offering, enough fruit and acid to keep things interesting and a nice buy at $10.99.
The second wine is the 2006 Vignoles. Vignoles produces some excellent dessert wines and this rendition is made Midwestern semi-sweet style, more demi-sec aperitif than dessert wine. It won a gold medal at the recent Indy International Wine Competition and is incredibly luscious on the nose. The tropical scents barely careen between pleasure and cloying sweetness on the palate, and this would match nicely with some neighborly sociability on the deck during pre-dinner chatter. At $15.99 I would probably take a pass on re-purchase, but it’s a quaffable wine for what it is.
Thanks to Dr. Vino for an inspired choice for this edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday and please feel no pity for me or these Midwestern wines. Even though it’s not a Schioppettino from Friuli, I take solace in the fact that now, if you’re ever in Branson, Missouri seeing the Gatlin Bros., you know a decent wine to pick up, and I do too, which is kind of the point.
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September 6 2007
*UPDATED*
The recent news in Indiana that now allows out of state wineries to ship to consumers is welcome news—both in the ongoing state-by-state wine shipping wrestling match that is occurring, and also for Hoosier consumers, of which I am a card-carrying member.
I am, however, hopeful that wineries will seize the opportunity to ship and not alarm themselves with too many concerns about “Big Brother” legal action.
The Six88 blog, a noted and respected compliance solution serving the wine industry, had this to say in regards to Indiana law and (likely steeped in first hard awareness of how these things have an impact):
This is a very important decision, and many are rightfully celebrating the victory for wineries and consumers. However, a major roadblock to shipping wine into Indiana remains in place. HB 1016 stipulates that “A consumer may not receive more than two hundred sixteen (216) liters of wine in total from one (1) or more direct wine sellers in a calendar year.”
As we’ve discussed before, most wineries will continue to choose not to ship to Indiana consumers because they can’t possibly know if the consumer has already received their 24 case allotment. FedEx and UPS will continue to ship to Indiana, and some wineries will likely assume the risk and ship to Indiana consumers anyway. But the majority of wineries will opt out until the Indiana ABC clarifies their enforcement policies on this matter. Hopefully the Indiana legislature will address this issue directly in the next session.
Here’s the thing: I hope that most wineries will CHOOSE to ship to Indiana. In an industry that is so built on “trusting your neighbor,” wineries not shipping seems like a possible outcome based on word of mouth. But, more importantly, we don’t know to what level the case restrictions are unenforceable. Trust me when I say that our state gov’t can’t even properly calculate property taxes, the bedrock tax base. Does anybody really think Big Brother has a way of tracking wine shipments from thousands of different wineries to individual purchasers? And, even if they did have a way to organize and keep track of micro-excise tax payments to individuals do we really think that the state government would be punitive in going after the wineries if a random winery sends the 25 case to a consumer who is likely not in tune with the law himself? Perhaps if it were an underage sting operation and a phony 18 year old bought 25 cases in a single shot from a producer, but other than that short answer is “no.” In fact, the long answer is “no,” too.
I’m not advocating that anybody break any laws, but what I am saying is that if there are no tools from the state to manage this on the winery side so somebody doesn’t illegally do something they have no intention of doing and if the consumer isn’t going to be held accountable to understand a small piece of a law, then it’s not much of a law to be heeded, or, most importantly, one that can be enforced.
So, I say to all wine producers desiring to ship to Indiana, come one, and come all. I’d like to buy your wines, particularly if you’re a small “boutique” producer not present by three-tier distribution, which is about 95% of the available wine in the U.S.
UPDATE From Free the Grapes:
For example, Indiana law still includes a provision that limits shipments to 24 cases per individual, rather than a limit on shipments per winery per consumer. The difference, and the problem, is that Winery A is not aware of how many cases Winery B has shipped to a consumer. If Winery A ships one case to that consumer, and it’s the 25th case the consumer has received that year, then Winery A has unknowingly broken Indiana law and could have its federal license revoked. That is a very serious consequence, to say the least.
We’ll keep you informed of developments. Industry representatives are in touch with Indiana state alcohol regulators who, hopefully, will clarify regulations in favor of consumer choice.
Sincerely,
Jeremy Benson
I also communicated with Jeff from Six88 about this post yesterday. Nobody seems to be able to address how a winery would, unknowingly, be caught by accidentally overshipping to a consumer, but the allusion is that regulators may be savvier on shipment tracking than I may want to give them credit for. The net of it is, this is beer drinking country, I hope for two things: 1) a speedy legislative resolution to this sticky wicket and 2) Wineries will take their chances. I have to put myself in the top 1% of wine consumers in the state and I can’t fathom buying 24 cases direct, so hopefully other wineries realize how slight the actual risk may be. Or, perhaps, I should start an Indiana Defense Slush Fund for said wineries in the event they get caught in some example-making crosshairs.
Over at Lenndevours, Lenn hits on a topic that I’ve given some thought to, as well. He notes that boutique is an incredibly nebulous word with little inherent meaning and he asks questions around the word “boutique” in usage. Is “boutique” a winery that only produces a certain amount of cases a year?
When I was at Mondavi a couple of weeks ago the tour leader was asked how much wine Mondavi makes, and the answer was “Oh, we’re pretty small, about 300K or so. We’re not one of the big guys like Kendall-Jackson.” Well, if you’re a consumer and not in tune with case production sizes from American wineries, that’s a perfectly reasonable answer to you, until the day somebody taps you on the shoulder and asks you try a wine from a “boutique producer that makes 500 cases of wine.”
I wonder if we haven’t reached the point in time where a simple label metric isn’t useful for consumer decision-making.
Does it make sense to classify wine, not legally, or by appellation, or in the vinification sense, but from a marketing perspective into pre-defined buckets? This could be on the back label of a bottle of wine, in a small, tasteful manner and would certainly provide more value to consumer making a relatively uninformed decision on a bottle of wine at a $12.99 or above price point. Something like:
Micro Winery: 1 – 1000 cases
Boutique: 1001 – 10,000 cases
Artisan Producer: 10,001 – 15,000 cases
Mid-Tier Producer: 15,001 – 50,000 cases
Large Producer: 50,001 - Above
This wouldn’t be executed by the TTB, but more likely by a winery-centric Association.
Unless it’s a sales point and a winery wants to emphasize their small nature, consumers usually have no idea what production is for a particular wine. Some people will continue to not care, but for me, if I’m choosing in between two Zinfandels each $15.99 and one only has 1000 case production and the other has 10,000 case production, I’m going to choose the smaller brand.
I think a lot of others would as well.
What do you think? Would it impact your purchasing behavior if you knew production size? Please leave a comment.
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September 4 2007
Okay, purposefully provocative headline; I really don’t mean to say that the Internet wine movement is dead. I mean quite the opposite, actually. Pardon me for a moment as I ease my way onto the soapbox.
I was driving up to beautiful South Bend, Indiana this past Saturday to attend the Notre Dame football game, (as a brief aside, if you’re a college football fan then you know that the highlight for this Notre Dame fans day was not the outcome of the ND game, but rather the outcome of the Michigan game. Ahem.) and on the drive up, my brother mentioned the Mark Cuban blog post, which I had not yet read, where Cuban stated that the Internet was “dead and boring.”
Excerpted from his post, the kernel of what he says is:
Applications like Myspace, Facebook, Youtube, etc were able to explode in popularity because they worked. No one had to worry about their ISP making a change and things not working. The days of walled gardens like AOL, Prodigy and others were gone. The days of always on connections were not only upon us, but in sufficient numbers at home, work and school, that the applications ran fast enough to hold our interest and compel us to participate. In other words, the Internet stabilized. Great software was developed to run on the software.
The days of the Internet creating explosively exciting ideas are dead. They are dead until bandwidth throughput to the home reaches far higher numbers than the vast majority of broadband users get today.
John from Quaffability picked up on this blog post and agrees in a post found here. I should note that John caveats his perspective with his own take, so I mention it only to point out that another wine blogger read Cuban’s treatise. It’s not my intention to paint Quaffability with my contrarian brush.
I think Cuban is fundamentally right in his assertion that the next wave of innovation will only occur when bandwidth increases and that the Internet is currently stabilizing like a utility, electricity for example.
Cuban’s stock in trade has been seeing trends far, far away. Afterall he made his billions on broadcast.com, about 8 years prior to Youtube.com. However, his assertion that the Internet is dead is saber rattling at its finest and is damn near akin to hurling a Molotov Cocktail at the Wine 2.0 world.
What Cuban fails to acknowledge—utterly, completely and foolishly, is the fact that he invested in a company called Ice Rocket that was something kind of like Technorati, a blog search engine, but nobody uses Ice Rocket and nobody can figure out Technorati, so much for him being the Oracle for Internet trends. Nevertheless, at one point Cuban saw and understood the value of the democratization of content and social networking in the Web 2.0 world … a fact he fails point out for the lemmings that take his post at face value.
And, the other “it’s as obvious as the nose on your face” point Cuban misses is the fact that Myspace, Facebook and Youtube didn’t explode in popularity because “they worked” they exploded because we’re in an era of user empowerment with tools that have made it easy for the layperson to develop their own web site and connect with others.
Is the Internet dead? Absolutely not. Is the Internet boring? It’s more dynamic and interesting everyday. Is Wine 2.0 going to get lumped into the inevitable backlash to this mini-riptide of Internet enthusiasm? Yes. Should it? No. Is this period of time for the wine world akin to the birth of the commercial Internet in the ’94 – ’96 time period. Yes.
The next most popular question is, “Well if the Internet isn’t dead, how can I capitalize on what you say is there.” Ah, good question, but rare is the person that holds the wisdom in the midst of the maelstrom. What I do know is that wine blogs continue to explode in growth, Facebook, at this very moment is growing astronomically, new wine business models continue to proliferate, new wineries continue to open their doors, more wine is purchased online, and the barriers to shipping continue to tumble. The answer is to try a couple of things, not everything, and commit yourself to making them work and understand that mindshare doesn’t equal sales, but it equals influence which can be more important then a single transaction.
Stormhoek sampled 100 bloggers a ½ dozen bottles of wine—maybe 600 bottles of wine total—50 cases maybe. And, well over a year later, we’re still talking about them … that’s influence.
The wine world is changing and those wineries that heed the winds of change will be rewarded, consumers like me will be tickled pink and Mark Cuban can go back to being head cheerleader for the Dallas Mavericks.
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August 8 2007
This edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday has our venerable host, Lenn from Lenndevours, celebrating the 3rd anniversary of his brainchild, a communal exercise in wine blogging goodness and a mass tasting based on theme. This edition implores thematically, “Let’s Get Naked.”
Maybe not “Let’s get Naked” in the literal sense, but in the figurative sense by stripping away the shackles of oaky flavor artifice by drinking un-oaked chardonnay.
Now, one of the values of Wine Blogging Wednesday is it moves you out of your comfort zone and into areas you might not otherwise explore. This edition has that in spades, but I need to make mental note to remind myself that this is, indeed, a good thing. Creatures of habit, we are, I suppose. Last month I drank a tasty white for the “Passionate Spain” theme and this month I’m forced out of California and into France. Gone are the notes of buttered popcorn and tropically oriented pina-pineapple Kool-aid. Nope, bring on an expression of the land manifested in the fruit.
In preparation, I went to a local wine shop and started looking in the Chardonnay aisle—all California wines and nothing that appears to be un-oaked. “Ah, here we go” as I picked up a ‘Silver Un-Oaked Chardonnay.’ $35 bucks. Eh. Hmmm … what else …
Up walks a floor sales guy, “Can I help you?” “Yes, I’m looking for a un-oaked Chardonnay for a tasting, what do you recommend that’s not $35?”
We promptly moved out of the California Chardonnay aisle and into the French aisle. I explained that I preferred a California chard. “Why” he asked looking at me as if I had just grown a third-eye before launching into a riposte that would have made Jess Jackson apologize for his K-J Vintners Reserve.
Next, he asked me when and why I was going to be drinking it. Bonus points for being a good wine guy and asking questions, but this is where it becomes tricky, because I didn’t really want to go to the trouble of explaining that I was going to blog on it, and it’s easier to research a California wine than a French wine, and I like the narrative aspect, etc. I just said, “Well, at our tasting you have to give a brief bit of background on why you chose the wine and I’m more comfortable with California wines.”
Looking down at his name tag, I realized that “Alain” was not the Italian I figured him to be and he was in fact French. I might as well have spit on his mother’s grave. At this point he moved past looking at me like I had a third eye and simply stared right through me. “French it must be,” he said and he pointed me to the Macon-Lugny, which (I’m paraphrasing here), for us ‘Ugly Americans’ even includes the word “chardonnay” on the front. “Chardonnay comes from France, you know” he said
Remind me to ask for more wine recommendations from Alain, because this $11 vino is a steal. What a great wine—steeliness and apple on the nose, crisp, bright acid, nice well-rounded fruit with a medium-long finish.
Thanks and kudos to Lenn and all of the others that have contributed to Wine Blogging Wednesday for the last three years. Much fondness and well wishes for the ongoing online party … and, at least I know which inexpensive Spanish and French whites to bring should an in-person confab ever occur.
Producer: La Cave de Lugny
Wine: Macon-Lugny, “Les Charmes”, Chardonnay
Vintage: 2005
Country: France
Appellation: Burgundy-Macon
Wine Type: White
Varietal: Chardonnay
Price: $10.99
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August 2 2007
I guess I could join the Kiwanis club or the local wine enthusiast club for social engagement around the grape. Instead, I choose to blog to get my hobbyist cup filled with wine and peer fraternizing. And, occasionally fun connections happen as a result.
Last week I wrote a post on six blogs that had recently garnered my attention. The Cork Dork was one of the blogs that I mentioned. John from the Cork Dork and I exchanged a couple of emails and by sheer coincidental happenstance (which happens more often in the wine blogosphere than seems possible), John was doing some tasting in Calaveras County—home of El Jefe and Twisted Oak winery.
Via email I casually mentioned that he should swing by Twisted Oak. I mentioned how I liked all of the wines, having tasted through them twice and that El Jefe was himself a bit of a luminary in wine blogosphere (I’m extrapolating a bit here, but the jist was –“Go to Twisted Oak. They’re cool and they make good wine”).
Around the same time El Jefe must have sent a note to him, as well, throwing out the welcome mat. Lo and behold, John does pay a visit and he came out the other side of the “twistedness” an hour and ½ later with a new blogging acquaintance and an appreciation for some wines he might not have otherwise tasted.
This is why I like to blog: connecting with people around wine, even if it is digitally. I’ll save the mind-bending notions of “knowing” somebody from their writing, without knowing them personally, but these sorts of stories tend to make my day and give me faith in fellow man.
From the post at The Cork Dork (Found here):
Well, I’m back home now, but need to tell you all about the wine-highlight of my vacation in the Sierra Foothills. Thanks to Jeff at the Good Grape, word got around that I was in the area, (every blogger’s dream) and I got an email invitation to taste at Twisted Oak, near Murphys. Owner, Jeff Stai, aka El Jefe, is also an avid blogger, and obviously very clued in to the Calaveras/Tuolumne scene.
I spent about an hour and a half with Jeff and we tasted through his regular tasting room bottles, then retreated to the 300+ foot-long cave underneath the fermenters to do some barrel tasting.
John goes on to list his favorites from the experience.
It goes without saying, check out The Cork Dork and of course try Twisted Oak wine, and if you’re a reader and not a blogger, well, it never hurts to throw your blogging shingle out there, too in order to see what kind of connections you can make. You can’t put a price on memories, and this little blogging thing has sure helped create some new ones in my repository of positive experiences.
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