April 24 2006
What does a Star Wars beer stein, a Chianti glass and Nintendo have in common?
If we are to believe Kylie Thompson, Sommelier at NYC hot spot Fiamma, that’s how he drank his ‘82 Bordeaux--an ‘82 decanted into the stein, drunk in a Chianti glass while playing Nintendo.
What’s real funny about this to me is not the Star Wars beer stein juxtaposed against the ‘82 Bordeaux--to me, its really the Nintendo reference. I mean, nobody has played a Nintendo in about 6 years. PS2 and XBox, man. So, if this is a yarn by Mr. Thomspon he should make sure all of his details are straight for credibility.
Fiamma’s wine list is here.
The above is from Details magazine, definitely an urban magazine for city scenesters, that hasa pedestrian one page article on the cover of their May issue thatscreams, "Everything You Know About Wine is Wrong."
Speaking of the ‘82, Parker is absolutely breathless on the ‘05 Bordeaux vintages, in his newsletter and this Decanter.com article:
But still he eulogises the ‘compelling greatness’ of the vintage inMargaux, Graves, Pomerol and St Emilion, and its consistency andharmony across the region. The Sauternes seem excellent too, althoughit’s too early to judge, and the dry whites have ‘crisp acidity as wellas serious weight, richness and texture’.
He also reinforces the point made by many critics that this is avintage for everyone. The top wines may be ‘stratospheric’ in price,but ‘there will be an ocean of very high quality wine available atreasonable prices.’
So, fortunately, while Mr. Thompson may have enjoyed his ‘82 with a great deal of irreverence, it appears that more of the good stuff will be available for him to quaff.
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April 22 2006
Proving that there is no area left unpublished, comes this book called "Modern Drunkard." Published last fall, its origin is the mildy interesting web site of the same name.
It does, however, have a bunch of funny quotes from site submissions and this gem: "The jukebox is the drunkards fireplace."
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Julio Franco, a baseball player for the New York Mets, and asold as Methuselah, at least by pro sport standards, was born in 1958 the
He became the oldest player in major league history to hit ahome run when he connected for a two-run, pinch-hit shot in the eighth inningon April 20th to help the New York Mets rallyfor a 7-2 win over the San Diego Padres.
Franco, as noted on another site, www.anecdotage.com, is a bit of a winefan, I suppose, and attributes it to his longevity in the game:
Franco, a great lover of fine wine, was once asked ifhe was using steroids. "Yes," he replied, "I’m on the juice: thejuice of Jesus of Nazareth!"
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Larry Bird, in conjunction with Consentino winery, has released his first wine. From the Boston Globe:
The Larry Bird/Mitch Cosentino Legends Meritage is a blend of 41percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 37 percent Merlot, and 22 percent CabernetFranc. Next month the label will release a chardonnay and a merlot. Inthe summer, there will be a Legends cabernet.
And just how did Larry get involved in this venture?
Julie Weinstock, president of Cosentino Winery, said, ‘’A mutualacquaintance of Larry and Mitch knew that Larry was looking to beassociated with the production of a wine. Larry tasted some of ourwines and liked them and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ When I heard about it, Isaid, ‘Larry Bird, the basketball player? I don’t get it.’ But he hassuch a following. It’s introduced wine to a group of people that maynot have been interested in wine. It opens a whole new world to them."
Cosentino said, ‘’He seems to appreciate better wines. I’ve alwayssaid that great wines can be enjoyed by people that may not bewine-collector types. Larry’s goal was to say, ‘They’ve got to bechampionship-style wines.’ He wanted to strive to be at the top level.I think we both shared that vision in the project. And he definitelyhas a wide range of appeal to folks all over the world."
Heaven knows that anybody that has watched the Pacer’s this year has reached for the bottle. The Legends Meritage is going for $69.99 a bottle at a local shop.
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Nat Decants, an email newsletter from a Canadian wine writer offers up these predictions in her most recent newsletter this week.
She prefaces her stunning predictions with this:
Here’s a short piece aboutmy predictions for the world of wine this year and beyond. (After threeglasses, I become especially clairvoyant.)
Here are her predictions for 2006:
Seven More Wine Predictions 2006
1. The wine industry will continue to consolidate, as large corporations buy up smaller wineries.
2. Critter labels, those with animals on them, such as Yellow Tail, Little Penguin and others, will increase in popularity.
3. More bottles will be sealed with screwcaps (thankfully), reducing the incidence of corked wine.
4. Big reds, such as Australian shiraz, will continue to dominate. (But look for Argentinian malbec is starting to make inroads.)
5. Wine web sites and blogs will proliferate, since wine is an information-intensive purchase.
6. Cross-border shopping will get easier, though not all the legal barriers will come down.
Whoo-whee, Nat. Woah. Stop it. Seriously. Knock it off. Your prescient nature is killing me. We’re going to start calling you the "Nostradmus of Wine." Or, maybe we’ll start calling you the "John Edward of Wine" because any more of that garbage and you’ll be channeling a dead career.
I mean honestly, who is she passing this off to as something revalatory? "Critter Labels ... will increase in popularity." "More bottles will be sealed with screwcaps ..." ??
No kidding, Nat.
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April 21 2006
Are the French messing with us?
Anybody besides me kind of skeptical about all of the talk out of France the last week or so about how the 2005 vintage might be the perfect Bordeaux vintage?
Jancis Robinson said as much explicitly in this article from the Financial Times.
Every year at the barrel tastings the hype begins, but this time 2005 is being compared to what was the vintage of the century in 1982.
I’m not much of a French wine drinker--at all. Personal preference, I guess. I prefer U.S. and Italian wines as a sort of quasi-rejection of the pomposity that the French bring to the wine market.
But, what has really raised my cynicism about this vintage is that just a few short months ago--January to be exact, there were news reports of vintners taking to the street in France and French officials were promising to plan a new strategy to ensure the market preservation of French wines--literally, in January, they were talking crisis!
Now, it seems that there may be a scarcity of premiere French wine because of how good the vintage is.
I hope we don’t have a situation of groupthink here, and it’s hard not to believe that folks may not be commenting with their hearts and not their heads--or barrel tasting in that regard. The confluence of circumstance is very peculiar.
Parker has weighed in exclaiming:
2005 will not be over-hyped....it is thatspecial....the wines are unlike any I have tasted in 28 years of doing theseMarch tastings.
And, as Moses came down from the mountain, so it is.
Since I don’t drink much French wine, I decided to do a sampling of the Bonny Doon Domain des Blagueurs--a French style Syrah and Red Bicyclette from Gallo--an imported Vin de Pays French Syrah table wine.
Both were nice, but for different reasons. The Red Bicyclette was a nice, drinkable wine--above average for a consumer wine, even.
Red Bicyclette Winemaker notes had this to say,
Our2003 Red Bicyclette™ Syrah is grown in the Minervois and Maury appellationslocated in the Central and South Eastern parts of the Languedoc. The vineyardsin this area benefit from both the warmth of the Mediterranean sun as well asthe cooler temperatures characteristic of the hills found in this region. Thisfavorable climate lengthens the grape maturation process yielding evenlyripened, highly concentrated, full-flavored grapes. The 2003 harvest producedsyrah grapes characterized by deep berry fruit flavors, spicy aromas, maturetannins, and dark purple-to-black color.
The Bonny Doon Domaine des Balgueurs, however, was exceptional--especially after getting some air for about an hour--complex and deep. Hands down, I would definitely pick this wine up again. And, in a head to head taste-off the Bonny Doon is the unquestioned winner.
Notes from Randall Graham at Bonny Doon:
Perhaps the greatest Blagueurs to date and, if I may claim immodestly, unquestionablythe steal of the century. While I remain a great lover of the wines of southernFrance – their earthiness, which is their moral center, their balance, their sense ofproportion all draw me in, whereas the brazen fruit bombosity of New World efforts,far too much rouge, liner and lipstick is a definite turn-off – there is “earthiness”from the earth [good] and “earthiness” from a critter called brettanomyces [more
challenging]. Some of the earlier vintages of Blagueurs have perhaps more than awhiff of the horse they rode in on, but the ’03 is [knock bois] clean as a whistle.Very, very complete wine – fragrant, peppery, elegant and rich at the same time.
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April 20 2006
I kind of had fun with the Johnny Depp "Wino Forever" post. In that same vein, I ran across a Mad magazine from 1967 that had song parodies. As a frame of reference to the wine times in 1967, Mondavi started his eponymous winery in 1966 and he is largely credited with bringing California wine into premiere prominence. This song (aside from the Sauternes reference) had to be referring to some rot gut plonk. Sung to the tune of "Hello, Young Lovers" is the following:
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April 20 2006
I think three majorforces are taking shape in our lifestyles and media consumption that is goingto have a significant impact on the world of wine. I say that it is “going to” have an impact because the changesthat we see in popular culture, for the most part, haven’t yet penetrated theworld of wine as deeply as other consumer segments.
1) The Entertainment Economy
2) Fragmentation of Marketing/Word of mouthtakes off …
3) Blogging disintermediates the 4thestate
The EntertainmentEconomy
In our consumerlives, it is no longer enough for a store to sell us goods—they have tofacilitate an experience. It is now animmersion environment designed to appeal to our aesthetic and lifestylesensibility whereby that experience is manufactured for us. I call this the “Vegas-ificication” of ourlives.
Folks that shopat REI, the noted outdoor lifestyle store, are more likely to get into theirlate model SUV wearing a Patagonia jacket and head to Costco for food samplesthen they are to go camping and do weenies over a fire.
Las Vegasconducts adult fantasy camp everyday of every year and you can pick yourperceived lifestyle aspiration—Bellagio’s new money upscale; Venetian—faux internationaltravel to Italy; Wynn—a casino for those that shop out of (or aspire to) theDupont Registry; Harrah’s—faux New Orlean’s; and the list goes on and on …
Disney is,perhaps, the best example of this—they offer fully committed live theatreeveryday at their theme parks. Nobodybreaks character and we arrive to soak in their entertainment.
Fragmentation ofMarketing and the power of word of mouth
In our 200 cable channel/Internet/spam on cell phone world, the average consumer likely see's well
over 4000 advertising messages a day. According to David Shenk, in his book Data Smog, states that
the average American encountered 560 daily messages in 1971. By 1997 that number had increased to
over 3000 a day.
Imagine that--3000 messages a day before the Internet and cell phones gained widespread acceptance.
But, the truth is, we don't trust advertising. Not at all. Not even a little bit. In fact, we're wary of it.
What people are relying on it word of mouth--the oldest form of advertising--a first or second person
reference, sometimes framed within the construct of a story.
And, marketing is changing to account for the way we want to learn about things. Seth Godin, something
of a new age marketing yogi summarizes the proposition pretty succinctly on the dust jacket blurb to his
book, All Marketers are Liars:
Every marketer tells a story. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes
better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior
to a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our
feet feel better-and look cooler-than $20 no-names . . . and believing it makes it true.
Successful marketers don’t talk aboutfeatures or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story. A story we want tobelieve.
This is a book about doing whatconsumers demand-painting vivid pictures that they choose to believe. Everyorganization-from nonprofits to car companies, from political campaigns towineglass blowers-must understand that the rules have changed (again). In aneconomy where the richest have an infinite number of choices (and no time tomake them), every organization is a marketer and all marketing is about tellingstories.
Marketers succeed when they tell us astory that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and thenshare with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner or the iPod.
Blogging disintermediates the 4thestate
It used to be that we got our messagesfrom the media with objectivity and from marketers with some level of trust--apitch, but, perhaps, a pitch with trusted intent.
We had filters on our messages,pre-screening from what we read and understood in terms of our reality and howwe were sold to. And, we werecommunicated to and marketed to in mass.
But, the Internet changes all ofthat. Instead, of a one-to-many mode ofoperation, we are now carrying on individual conversations and technologyenables somebody in Indianapolis, IN to have an influential opinion and socalled word of mouth marketing to somebody in the same affinity group thatlives in Tacoma, WA.
Dan Gillmor, an established journalistwrote the following in his influential book, We the Media regarding the eventson September 11, 2001:
But, something else, somethingprofound, was happening this time around: news was being produced by regular people who had something to say andshow, and not solely by the “official” news organizations that hadtraditionally decided how the first draft of history would look. This time, the first draft of history wasbeing written, in part, by the former audience. It was possible—it was inevitable—because of the new publishingtools available on the Internet.
This new sensibility is summarized froman excerpted blog posting from this site.
The thinking is: Hell - if theblogosphere can lead to the firing of major corporate executives, surely it canenlighten people to buy better wine. While this is certainly a fulfilling questfor the average wine blogger, is it not at best elitist and at worstintimidating to suggest there are wines consumers should enjoy? When I hold a winetasting the first thing I do is make sure everyone in the room speaks theirmind - giving the wine a personal score from 0-100. If there’s one thing thatis absolutely a given at each tasting, it’s that everybody rates the winedifferently.
The beauty of the winerevolution, it seems to me, is that wine is losing that perception ofrighteousness and snobbery that has accompanied it, especially in the UnitedStates, for hundreds of years. If someone wants to rate Yellow Tail a 95, I’mnot going to tell them their wrong or deluded by mass marketing gimmicks. Ifthat’s the wine they want to reach for when they shop, that’s great! The pointis that they are enjoying their wine. As bloggers, the best we can do is tointroduce new wine to people that might not otherwise find it. Let them decideif it fits the bill.
The trifecta of change is upon us:
1) The Entertainment Economy
2) Fragmentation of Marketing/Word of mouthtakes off …
3) Blogging disintermediates the 4thestate
And what does it all mean?
Wine is unique in that wine tastingrooms and the wine lifestyle already exist--people already aspire to secure theintrinsic value that wine offers. Theentertainment factor has existed for a long time.
Fragmentation of the marketing istaking place, frankly with a fragmentation of producer’s and marketers—there isso much wine out there.
Wine is also unique in that it is aheavily blogged category. Wine BlogWatch counts well over 100 wine related blogs of various perspectives, but theone undercurrent is they are all by the people and for the people.
If you look at the three change factorshierarchically the top is pushing down on the middle (Marketing Fragmentation)and the bottom is pushing up on the middle—but, unlike other industries, whathasn’t happened is a landmark groundswell in the middle whereby a word of mouthmechanism—something that speaks in a human conversational voice, uncontrivedwith a touch of humor makes a significant impact in the wine market. The human voice, for the majority of thewine drinking public has already derided the 100 point system as passé, butwhat the wine market is truly waiting for is our Guffman to arrive and to saveour theater troupe in the entertainment economy—somebody to give wine fanseverywhere true hope that their voice has been heard and it will continue on ina natural, relaxed fashion.
It will happen in the next five years,overthrowing current wine media and the way we buy wines.
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