February 13 2008
Wine Blogging Wednesday is inspiring this month. Just seven words is the host request. It is hard to write with constraint. Try though, I have, with varying success.
Phew, there you have it--four sentences comprised of seven words. Bless the poet who can write like that in rhyming couplets.
Now, I just need to do a couple more sentences with actual wine descriptions. I am beginning to wonder if Andrew created this challenge as some sort of antagonistic vehicle for the most verbose and flowery of the wine bloggers—truly, I am a man of carefully chosen spoken words, but abundant diarrhea of the pen. Therefore, I find the “Just Seven Words” combined with an Italian red to be a bit anachronistic given that, in my minds eye, Italy is the last bastion of Old World de-stressed, non hustle and bustle. So, compressing something like a wine review into such a short amount of words is something of an oxymoron. We should all be writing 500 words of linguistic masturbation.
That said, I have reviewed two nice Italian red wines. The first is the 2004 Morgante Nero D’Avola (about $17). I did two notes for this one—it is like a choose your own adventure wine review, if you do not like the first one, you can go with the second one …
While Funky on the Nose, it’s Delicious
Or
Cherry Trees in Tobacco Field by Barnyard
The second wine is the 2004 Umbria, IGT, Ca’ Andrea, Carlo Massimiliano Gritti (about $17). Likewise, I did two notes for this one, as well.
Bitingly Racy with Earthy Ripe Red Fruit
Or
Vintner Makes Production Wine that Tastes Small
Overall, a fun and engaging Wine Blogging Wednesday. Thanks Andrew!
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February 11 2008
Nineteenth century gastronome and author of the influential “Physiology of Taste” famously said, “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are.” What if somebody also told you, “Tell me what you drink and I’ll tell you who you are?”
For a wine lover, that becomes a mildly controversial proposition.
Nobody is going to define me by my drinking patterns, because it is an ever-evolving scenario. For the love of all things vinous, I just had my first Marsanne just the other day (tasty wine, too). I think most wine lovers, righteously, would bristle in self-defense—such is our wanton ways, not wanting to define our palates (or ourselves) while still reserving the right to pass empirical quality markers on wine.
It is kind of like the soothsayer telling me when I will die. Please do not, I would prefer not to know, I will simply take the journey. So it is with wine lovers and our palates, too—I will simply take the journey.
However, Tim Hanni, Master of Wine, formerly of restaurant wine consultancy WineQuest, and currently a co-founder of Napa Seasoning Co. and a proponent of taste bud categorization with a development process underway called the “Budometer” might change our perception of ourselves and our wine consumption, regardless of our trenchant wishes.
Sometimes change is good.
The Bourgeoisie Meets the Masses
Never before has the wine bourgeoisie been on the precipice of such egalitarianism.
I have read a couple of recent articles on Tim Hanni, Master of Wine, and very subtly you see the potential seeds of some radical potential change in the way we approach wine. This is change on the order of defining wine drinkers based on their God-given taste buds and, at the same time, balancing out the notion of food and wine pairings to a true state of, “drink what you like, with what you like.”
The Wall Street Journal had a recent personality profile on Hanni, even if it was a half-baked article shedding light on neither the man nor his passions and, likewise, a recent Wines & Vines article featured the implementation of the Budometer system engineered by Hanni at the upcoming Lodi International Wine Awards.
Simply, Hanni has a couple of credentials that bear, to paraphrase Janis Joplin, “great social and political import.”
First, he IS a Master of Wine. Second, he has already exerted great influence into the wine drinking landscape by working with a great number of casual dining restaurants across the company to help them categorize their wine lists by taste intensity and third he is working on a so-called Budometer that categorize wine drinker preferences based on the number of taste buds they have in a simple blue-dye test.
Wine Judging Formats Are Tweaked
From the Wines & Vines article (authored by freelance writer and wine blogger Tina Caputo):
(In reference to the Lodi International Wine Awards) … the competition will divide judges into panels according to their palate sensitivity. This will be determined by painting their tongues blue with food coloring, then counting their taste buds to see if they are “tolerant,” “sensitive” or “hyper-sensitive” tasters.
The categories are defined as follows:
• Tolerant--those who tend to favor dry, high-intensity, assertive wines
• Sensitive--the median group with a broad range of preferences
• Hyper-sensitive--those who tend to have an aversion to bitterness, and favor delicacy over intensity. They often prefer some degree of sweetness in their wines.
You can also do a simple online quiz to check your tolerance level by going here for the original web site and a special test put together by the Wall Street Journal. According to both sites, I am a “Sensitive” taster.
The other interesting thing that the Wines & Vines article pointed out that is completely separate, but somewhat related to Tim Hanni, is a wine competition in Iowa that is doing food pairing as a part of the judging component:
We think that all wine competitions ought to consider food affinity when selecting wines for acclaim.”
A group of 30 wines will be selected to participate in the food and wine judging. Wineries will then choose one food item per wine from a list of available dishes that will be prepared by local chefs. Frost and competition director Bob Foster will help vintners choose the best pairings, if necessary.
A Sprinkle of This, a Dash of That to Pair Your Wine Dish
This is an interesting development, but Hanni, in fact, is trying to democratize the wine pairing process with his Napa Seasoning Co.—a concept that utilizes a technique called “flavor balancing” rejects the notion that wine and food pairing is a pseudo-science. According to him, any wine can be paired with any wine by adjusting the salt, acidity and sweetness in a dish.
His new product from the Napa Seasoning Company is called Vignon and it is in a spice shaker combining a number of ingredients including salt, lemon juice and other ingredients like soy sauce that are high in umami. A couple of dashes and supposedly you can enjoy that red wine and fish.
This is all fascinating stuff and typically the sort of thing that sneaks up on us as a society. Rarely do we watch these developments and understand the ramifications in context; it is usually after they become accepted prevailing wisdom that we ponder the way things used to be.
It won’t be a complete upsetting of the apple cart, but if you want to think about the future of wine differently, think about the possibilities presented by Hanni—the potential Brillat-Savarin of our times-- and the potential change that can come if every wine drinker is categorized based on God-given taste buds and the ability to sprinkle a combination of spices on a steak in order to pleasurably drink it with a white wine.
For More Reading:
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February 8 2008
On the Quintessential Parker Wine
With all of the ongoing talk of “Parker’s palate” and the incumbent bit of posturing from those on the other side of the divide (every bit the equal of the political divide between the red, blue and disenfranchised, by the way), I have to say that I think I have found the “perfect” Parker wine.
If you want to buy a wine that encapsulates the vitriol on both sides of the aisle, I can think of no better example than the 2005 Marquis Phillips “Sarah’s Blend.” Speaking of vitriol, I’m linking to wine.com. Sorry about that. But, check out their hand-dandy dryness meter and note this baby is about a 25% up on the dryness meter.
I bought this at a wine shop on a random recent Saturday during a tasting. Under fluorescent lighting, without food, it seemed the least bombastic of the wines I tried that day and at around $16 it seemed like a relative bargain.
I opened the bottle this week and immediately thought that the oaky tannins were sweeeeeeet. Way sweet. Sweet as in too sweet. I did a search on the Internet and came back with Parker’s tasting note, as noted, from wine.com:
“One of my favorite Marquis Philips cuvees is the 2005 Sarah’s Blend, a concoction of 60% Shiraz, 22% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, and 3% Cabernet Franc fermented in wood and aged in both new and one-year-old French and American oak. Its deep ruby/purple hue is accompanied by aromas of flowers, spice box, blueberries, black currants, and smoky oak. Opulent, voluptuous, and full-bodied, with low acidity and sweet tannin, this is a blockbuster red that sells for a song. If you like fruit, flavor, and character, this is a big-time winner to drink over the next 3-4 years.”
91 points. -Wine Advocate
Now, mind you, I’m not going to get into this ideological debate because there is no right or wrong and I can drink down either party line, I will simply say that this wine, to me, typifies what is so polarizing about Parker’s palate: dense fruit, oaked to the bejeesus and virtually no acidity. It is a perfectly decent quaff, just depends on what you’re down for. It’s widely available. Give it a crack and let me know what you think.
Oh, and another note, I can already see the public tide shifting back towards sympathy for Britney. The same is true for Parker, if there’s too much backlash, every wine lover on the planet is going to start experiencing “Stockholm Syndrome.”
Wine Blog URL’s
I did a quick search on wine blog related URL’s. Both wineblogger.com and wineblog.com have been taken for some time, but, oddly, neither are in use. I sent emails to the owners of both asking if they were interested in selling the URL and neither replied. Cole Danehower who publishes the Oregon Wine Report owns wineblog.com. He bought the URL in 2002, so kudos to him for having some foresight. Too bad he doesn’t use the URL and an even greater tragedy that he doesn’t have the decency to extend professional courtesy and answer email.
Facebook + Wine
If you have not gotten on the Facebook wagon yet, I would highly encourage you to do so. There is a ton of wine-related activity. Rumor has it that a couple of winery specific groups on Facebook are getting shut down because Facebook doesn’t want to endorse alcohol or pornography. It seems a bit hypocritical to me to grandfather people in, but stop new groups from forming. Sign up for Facebook and search for wine and you’ll see the groups upon groups that exist already.
Valentine’s Day and Wine
Forget the wine for Valentine’s Day. If you want a fun, hand-crafted wine-related gift go to etsy.com and search for “wine.” All kinds of handcrafted wine-related items pop up. Your sweetie will appreciate the thought and it might pay more thoughtful dividends than the Victoria’s Secret gift.
Wine Retail Concepts
I keep reading about new retail concepts … and there are tons of them happening. The one thing I have not seen is where wine + technology merge; really merge in a retail venue. Hell, you cannot go into a Starbucks without see ½ of the people in there plastered into the glow of a laptop. Is a wine retail concept featuring some edutainment using the Microsoft computer table too far off? I think not, particularly because the Vinio is gaining some traction. Imagine the Oxford Companion to Wine come to life and Jancis Robinson introducing the Poilly-Fume you are drinking.
The Other Teams Playbook
I read many wine-related magazines, including many trade-oriented magazines. General wine enthusiasts who care not to see the wizard behind the curtain can bypass most of them. However, a new magazine geared towards Sommeliers may be the lone exception. The Sommelier Journal, found here, is a terrific new magazine with plenty of general interest articles to satisfy the general wine lover. If you like Wine Spectator or Wine News, you will like the Sommelier Journal. At $59 bucks, it is not inexpensive, but it fills a tremendous void in the marketplace between the hardcore trade mags. Like Restaurant Wine by Ronn Weigand and Wine Spectator. Plus, if you want to read the “other teams’ playbook” and get some insight into the role of being a Sommelier, in addition to some terrific general wine information, this is a great place to start.
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February 6 2008
I wrote a post recently on Cost Plus World Market, a consumers Shangri-la for low cost brands that usually deliver at price point. If you are not that wine savvy, but enjoy a wine tipple (which is most of the wine consuming country) than Cost Plus is your place.
Thanks to a pointer from my friend Renee at the Indianapolis foodie blog, Feed Me/Drink Me, she notes that this site is indicating that customers of Cost Plus World Market are in for more wine fun.
Cost Plus, long a Bay Area leader in specialty food and drink retailing, kind of lost its way as it moved into housewares and furniture and it looks like the housing slump that is hitting the country is likewise hitting their business as folks shop for furnishings at discount retailers.
According to the site, the housing sector woes may be our gain:
Look for specialty foods, beverages, wines and craft beers to play a major--if not the major--role as the retailer attempts to steer a new path in the retail marketplace. Its origins are in these categories, and despite the fact that overall sales have come largely from an expanded mix of furniture, housewares and the like over the last three or four decades, food and drink have always remained the top categories on a store-sales basis.
We see a “back to its specialty foods and drinks origins” move being key for Cost-Plus as a way to rapidly increase sales and profits in light of its declining furniture and related goods sales, especially in the current economic climate where the housing market looks to not be improving for some time.
As far as I am concerned, Cost Plus World Market can bring in every high value, under $20 wine in the universe and I would be a happy guy. Bring it on and as stockbrokers like to note—there is an opportunity in every downturn, maybe this is wine consumers opportunity.
Now, it would chagrin me to say that a wine that you would not see in Cost Plus World Market would be a Michigan wine. It turns out that local Cost Plus stores do carry a regional selection of wines and a steady diet of good news from the Michigan wine industry is challenging the notion that Michigan wines do not travel out of the Midwest.
Aside from the L. Mawby bubbly that I saw featured in a San Francisco restaurant, consider also this recent story from The Detroit News that indicates Chateau Grand Traverse is selling its Riesling at Ralph’s supermarkets in the LA area. Coupled with the fact that a California winemaker is going to label Michigan Riesling under his California label, Jana, and you might have some salad days for Michigan wine coming up.
Oh, and, the 2007 harvest is supposed to be one of the best on record … As the columnist for The Detroit News sums up,
Surely, if the New York wine industry is the “California” of the East in quality, quantity and organization, then Michigan is the “Oregon.”
I am sure the folks in Michigan could live with being the equivalent of “Oregon” this side of the Mississippi. Check out Michigan wines if you get a chance; armchair travel to Michigan via the wines from the state is a pretty good trip, I promise.
Speaking of armchair travel, it is a concept everybody understands, but if you are like me you also armchair read around other areas aside from travel. It dawned on me that I must have a sub-conscious “head-to-the-woods” streak in me because I unpacked a bunch of books and they included not only “Country wisdom and Know-how,” but also “Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live it.”
The “Self-sufficient” book, in particular, is a pretty incredible bedside reader. If you long for simple days and want to know how to tie a knot, sharpen a scythe, make bricks and even make some country wine, then this is the book for you. It is a lot of fun and easy to read with beautiful illustrations that are typical of DK books.
I am only a generation removed from the farm and my Mom recently sent a couple of country wine recipes she undoubtedly got from my grandfather. Her rhubarb wine recipe is similar to the one in the book. For fun, it is listed below:
Rhubarb Wine
½ gallon chopped Rhubarb
1 gallon boiling water
Juice of 1 lemon
Juice and rind of 1 orange
½ cake yeast
Cover rhubarb with water. Add juice. Add yeast. Let stand in jar 2 weeks then bottle.
And, to wrap up and bring it back to viniferous wine proper, I do have to point out that that both of the de facto standard wine industry magazines, Wines and Vines and Wine Business Monthly, in the last two months, had excellent cover to cover coverage of an alarming issue facing the wine industry: we’re getting lapped in wine-related research. We are not doing enough to keep pace. Most industry invests in research at pace that is equal to sustainable innovation and sales. So, what is the next thing I read about wine research? Lenn from Lenndevours, very innocently, noted in a post found here that the winemaker from Fox Run is heading to Serbia on a USDA research grant to, “conduct an assessment of the wine industry there.”
No offense intended to anybody, but hopefully that sort of money is re-allocated in the future to focusing on the U.S. I think there are some folks in not only California, but also Virginia, Michigan, Missouri, and elsewhere that could do some real good with some research monies.
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February 4 2008
Finally! We have been watching the convergence of a number of wine trends and, finally, they converge into some coherence in mainstream press.
The Sacramento Bee had an article last week (found here) highlighting Wine & Spirits magazine Editor Joshua Greene’s comments from the Unified Symposium. The gist of the article is encapsulated in the first two paragraphs:
The wines you’ll be savoring five years from now are being picked today by enological trendsetters barely old enough to drink.
But what they’re looking for – wines that are quirky, regional, with rich background stories – isn’t what the mainstream domestic industry seems to be selling today.
I have been waiting to see this come together. Many trends are colliding to bring something of a perfect storm together that—naturally—will move the influencer segment of the wine market away from the so-called “Parker wines.”
When I say naturally, I am talking about the evolution of the market and not some big bang theory based on any single person or incident.
Consider:
1) Twentysomething’s are adopting wine at a positively alarming rate
2) Twentysomething’s are pre-disposed to armchair travel vis-à-vis their wine choice—they drink more imports than domestic
3) Restaurants, for the most part, are a young persons business and restaurants are increasingly bestowing deserving Wine Director/Sommelier responsibility to those in their twenties.
4) There is an increasing marriage of food and wine in our popular culture and that wine in the pairing is more often the balanced, elegant and acid-friendly wine, instead of some of the ripe, alcohol-laden, fruit-forward California-style wines
5) Food and drink trends (and almost all trends) are a pyramid—they start at the top and get bigger as they go broader
If you combine the above and accept it as fait accompli and you look at sales numbers that indicate that imports are the fastest growing segment in wine and that, according to the article, imports represent about 43 percent of wine sold at restaurants, than it is easy to believe that this broad trend will reach broad consumer adoption and naturally offset the notion of ripe, “fruit bombs” or wines that are associated with Parker’s palate.
I don’t think, however, that the future business ramifications on California wine are as dire as many would have you believe because there will also be increasing segmentation in the market which means that even if there is an ideological shift away from “quote, unquote” New World-style wine, there won’t necessarily be a business shift away from those kinds of wines.
However, I do believe, as evidenced above, that we are going to see a popular shift away from what is deemed as “Parker’s palate.” The easy analogy is Merlot. Prevailing wisdom amongst those in the know is that nobody is drinking Merlot, but sales figures indicate differently. The same will happen with the “Parker’s Palate” notion. People will still drink ripe wines, but they will not be in vogue.
Folks in the wine industry like to take credit for things so let me state this as a matter of factual intent—when the backlash fully storms the beach against stylistically ripe, extracted fruit-forward wines with low acid it will because of broad trends around food and wine pairing and influencers in the on-premise market that are young and import minded. It will not be a result of any single person, winemaker or documentarian lashing out. Jonathan Nossiter, Randy Dunn, et al – I am talking to you.
What is going to be funny about this is the anti-Parker people are going to claim victory, while at the same time Parker’s palate is going to shift and he, undoubtedly, will be rewarding wines with more classical distinction--and, when that happens, my friends, we’ll fully understand what it is that makes wine so much fun—it’s a riddle wrapped up in a mystery; a place where the young can eat the rich and what you knew yesterday may not mean much tomorrow.
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