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May 31 2006
Mike Damone, misguided cool guy loser in the seminal 80s classic movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, had his Five Point Plan to Score with Girls (while alienating friends)
1) Never Let on How much you like a girl
2) You always call the shots
3) Act like wherever you are, that’s the place to be
4) When ordering food, find out what she wants and then order for the both of you—it’s a classy move.
5) Whenever you’re making out, play side 1 of Led Zepplin IV
Fred Franzia, wine impresario, and the separated at birth twin look alike to Lou Perlman, the impresario of boy bands N’Sync and Backstreet Boys, has a lot in common with Mr. Damone. He’s a veritable quote machine with, assumingly, a Five Point Plan to Score with Wine Consumers (while alienating the rest of the industry).
Among recent gems, Franzia is quoted as saying,
Who gives you the best advice about your business?
Mymirror.
Onhis release of a $4 wine from Napa Valley :
"We challenge anyone to have a blind tastingand see where our wines come out. We think we can run with the top dogs at$100-plus. There’s no wine worth more than 10 bucks a bottle." - FredFranzia, Bronco Wine Co.
Referring toretailers who charge too much for wine:
"greedy bastards,"
Alder at Vinography has a nice summary and a couple of recent article links. You can find Alder’s post here.
And, just in case the future of wine, or at least Fred Franzia’s wine empire, had you concerned about your ability to find a value wine in the future, rest assured that he and the other two Franzia’s involved in the business have 13 kids—nine of whom are involved in the business, as well.
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May 30 2006
... Beep ... Beep ... Beep ... Beep ... my radar is officially going off.
I generally believe that the prevailing wisdom amongst the popular wine critics of the day is to make wine less intimidating. Most every writer of any renown eschews the pomp (or at least tries to) and plays to an audience that might not be as in tune with the language of wine as they are. Maybe sometimes its professorial, but there’s still an attempt to connect to a wide audience.
And, of course, sure there’s the occasional blowhard—a guy or gal so inebriated on their own faux gloriousness that they have lost touch with reality and their palate ... and I think I’ve run across him ... an idiot whose tasting notes are so egregious that he deserves to be called out.
While doing research on a post on Wine Sediments, I came across the reviewer for the Las Vegas Review Journal. I read his review. I read it again. I read a couple of other reviews ... and ... well, I thought, "This guy is so completely full of crap, I can’t believe he gets away with it."
My friends and I, when watching live music, refer to overly indulgentguitar solos and musical jams as sort of a self-satisfaction kind ofexercise because usually these types of things lose their lustre withthe audience long before the musician has tired of the masturbation.
This wine reviewer does that as well—going into vain glorious detail that would make Parker swoon.
I won’t name him because we’re kind of gentlemanly here at the GoodGrape, but I sure will provide you a link to look at the folly and Isure will excerpt some of the b.s. below.
…raspberry sorbet and herbs de Provence.
Inthe mouth, the wine overwhelms the palate with rich forward crushed blackberries, including cassis, boysenberries, loganberries and a streak of the morerustic form of blueberries called huckleberries. The wine lingers on theafter-mouth for a full minute with yet creamier cassis and hints of licorice.
Raspberry sorbet? Being able to taste the difference between a boysenberry and aloganberry while delineating a wild blueberry?
…raspberry coulis, some licorice and intense notes of crushed black currant,with phenolic references and cedar box underlying.
Inthe mouth, there is serious upfront black fruit with cherry, brambleberry,sweet cranberry crush, raspberry jam and a multitude of flavors held togetherby great concentration and superb structure.
Raspberrycoulis? Crushed Black currant? Which is different from black currants intaste, how exactly? Sweet cranberrycrush?
And, here, as well:
…melted licorice molasses.
Other’s may disagree and say this guy has a super-phenomenal palate and really is able to identify the difference between a boysenberry and a loganberry as a note in a wine made FROM GRAPES. But, to me, the coup de grace here is, for the Gnarly Head Zinfandel, he picked up notes of "reductive fruit stew and beef jerky."
I’m calling b.s.
This clown is not only full of himself, he very well may be dangerous to the wine drinking public at-large. How many, untold, countless people in the friendly community of Vegas have had their vigor for wine put off, delayed or stopped because of this guy’s alleged ability to pick up parts per 1000 notes of lemon verbena?
In most parts of the business world there’s the generally understood notion that as long as you say something with conviction others will believe it to be true. Ahem. I’m not buying this.
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May 26 2006
Folkseverywhere will be firing up the barbecue this weekend for the first of theholy trinity of summer holidays.
TheZin’s can take care of the steaks and bbq, the Sav. Blanc can handle thegrilled vegetables and fish and a nice Rośe can really bridge the two.
Evenwith White Zinfandel sales dwindling, Rośe sales are picking up with somevigor.
Anda Rośe by any other name really, to borrow from Shakespeare, is a White Zin,but with two different target markets.
WhenRośe is featured in Food & Wine magazine and Martha Stewart Living as theyboth are this month, you know that the demographic is probably skewing a littlebit closer to your preferred wine consumers then the average White Zin which isconsumed by more casual drinkers.
JaimeGoode, from his site Wine Anorak, had this nugget on Rośe, the rest of thearticle can be found here.
Just a note on how rosé wines are made. Red grapesare crushed and only brief contact is allowed between the skins (which containthe coloured pigments and tannins) and the juice (which comes from thecolourless flesh of the grape). [I should add here, that there are some rarered grapes which have pigmented flesh, called teinturier varieties, butthis is the exception. These cannot by definition be used to make rose.] It isthe degree of the contact between the skins and the juice that determines thefinal colour of the wine. Thus rosé wines lack both the deep colour and thetannic structure of red wines made from the same grape varieties, and in thissense are more like white wines, and are best served very cold. It is also rareto find rose wines subjected to oak treatment.
The other aspect of wine consumption that isgrowing rapidly, especially amongst younger drinkers, is Sangria.
I attribute this to the re-awakening of awareness to the Spanish wine industry. And, RealSangria, is
packaged with a “never went out of style” retro labeling. Spain, of course, is credited with creatingsangria—specifically the Andalucia region, where it is kind of the officialdrink of the region, the southernmost part of Spain.
Sangria, in general, is a wine-ish, citrusy spritzer;it’s a refreshing and sluggable drink that my wife can put away by the halfgallon.
Here at the Good Grape household, we’re not big onthe wine/food blogging aspect, leaving that to folks that really are morecommitted and better cooks than my bride or me. But, because she does do a really nice sangria, I’m including therecipe here.
And, her preferred version is with a WhiteZinfandel. Ahem. If you, mr./mrs wine consumer prefer to usea White Zinfandel because it’s at least $6 cheaper, I promise not to tell.
Basic Red Sangria
1 orange
1 apple
1 lemon
1 cinnamon stick or a dash of ground cinnamon
1 C sugar
1 C brandy
1.5 liters of the cheapest Cab you can find.
Wash and slice fruit. Put it into a big pitcher with the sugar and
These white and pink variations are basically the same as the red.It’s
White sangria is the same recipe (sans brandy) as red, but youshould use a
My absolute favorite way to make sangria is to use white zin withoranges,
Enjoy the weekend. Drinksome wine. Grill some food. Hang out with friends and family and hold ontight. Summer blows by quickly andfootball season and harvest will be here as quick as you can recall how closeValentine’s day seems.
Salud!
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May 22 2006
When in New York recently, my wife and I did a Greenwich Villagefood tour … a kind of neighborhood tour de force that delineated all of theexcellent purveyors—some history, some gossipy chatter, whom to go to for cannoli’sand a lot of tasting—from pizza at Joe’s to Murray’s Cheese.
Murray’s is the venerable cheese shop that carries over250 varieties of cheese including a good number that you’re not likely to findanywhere else in the states and some blue cheese that is so full of flavor thatit makes the stuff at the local A&P seem like Kraft singles.
The tour ended inMurray’s upstairs area where classes are conducted; a quick scan of the classschedule shows that a lot of the classes are about wine and cheesepairing.
Thatmakes recent research all the more curious.
HildegarrdHeymann and a graduate student/researcher, Berenice Madrigal, from UC Daviscompleted research that challenges the conventional wisdom of wine and cheesepairing. This research got some mediaplay last summer and then again in the early portion of ’06.
TheSan Francisco Chronicle, as usual, has a nice article that encapsulates theresearch.
"Ourdefinition of a good pairing was that the two enhance each other," saysHildegarde Heymann, professor of sensory science in Davis’ viticulture andenology
…it was Heymann who steered Madrigal to cheese as a thesis topic, a continuationof the professor’s research into the sensory analysis of wine with food.
ToHeymann’s surprise, few sensory scientists had analyzed the presumed affinityof wine and cheese. A review of the literature turned up almost nothing. ASwedish scientist, Tobias Nygren, had looked at white wine with blue cheese—the cheese mutes white wine flavors, he found—but no one apparently hadlooked methodically at the intersection of red wine and cheese.
Heymann says, "My ‘take home’ is, you shouldn’t worryabout which wine you have with which cheese," says Heymann. "Have thewine you love with the cheese you love. " If most cheeses affect most redwines in a similar way, by turning down the volume, it may be pointless to keeplooking for a match that soars.
Sometimes academics can get shouted down for breakingconventional wisdom with research. I’mnot sure if Heymann was smart, or not brave for her caveated last statement, “Havethe wine you love with the cheese you love.” Many gourmands are likely to call “poppycock” on her, but at the sametime, the little man has struck another blow—the guy that wants to drink aSyrah with Tilapia in a buerre blanc sauce has moved one step closer tovalidation.
X X X X X
Also on the same tour, wevisited some historical houses made with clinker brick. Clinker brick, as I learned fromwikipedia is a brick that is very usable, but has been overfired.
Inearly brick firing kilns, the surface of the bricks that were too close to thefire changed into the volcanic textures and darker/purplish colors, and werecalled "clinkers". They were originally discarded, but around 1900, these bricks werediscovered by architectsto be usable, distinctive and charming in architectural detailing, adding theearthy quality favored by Arts & Crafts style designers. Modernbrick-making techniques can recreate the appearance of these bricks and producea more consistent product.
In the past I had enjoyed theKlinker Brick Zinfandel from the winery of the same name, but, really, I
didn’tknow a clinker/klinker brick from a paver stone at the local Home Depot.
I re-visisted the Klinker BrickZin and it’s really a good value. Theweb site tells their story, as well.
http://www.klinkerbrickwinery.com/index.htm
Rich, deep color, enormousdensity, unique and distinctive are the same qualities found in our old vineZinfandel. And, we hope it is a name that you are not likely to forget!
The Old Vines Zin is around $15bucks and deep and rich. It doesn’thave the same sort of minerality that you find in other OVZ’s, but it’s wellworth taking a flier on …
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May 9 2006
A while back I tripped across a web site at www.winelabels.org, it’s a blog in the truest sense of the word, though the technology isn’t a blog service. The owner of the site, Peter F. May, combines some really good, spot-on writing alongside an archive of unusual wine labels—of the Fat Bastard and Cleavage Creek variety.
The site celebrates the weird, odd and esoteric in wine labels.
Peter dives into the occasional double entendre and I was going to reference an article he wrote on the "Gallo Nero" on the Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico wine. But, I decided it was too naughty for me to pull off with grace. In the interest of full disclosure, you now have the context and you can find the article here.
With that in mind, I found a recent article in BusinessWeek that touched on the "Blook" phenomena,
Justabout any blog writer—there are 36 million blogs out there, with 75,000 newonline diaries added daily, according to search engine Technorati—is acandidate. "We believe there’s a market [for book-publishing services] forevery single blogger out there," says Eileen Gittins, CEO of onlinepublisher Blurb.com. "Charles Dickens originally serialized his novels inmagazines. We are seeing much the same thing happening today, with blogs."
Big-name publishers such as Putnam and Little, Brown & Co. have begunreleasing books based on blogs. "I am now more open to blogs than I wouldhave been [before]," says Judy Clain, executive editor at Little, Brown.And a dozen new businesses have sprung up with the intent of helping scribesturn their blogs into books. Blogbasedbooks.com, specializing in blooks, hasset up shop on the Net.
Unheralded in the wine blogging community and, really, saddled with a charmingly ugly site, Mr. May has been rewarded with a book contract and his book "Marilyn Merlot and the Naked Grape" will be off press on June 1. Though, to his distinct credit, May has been maintaining the site since 1998, clearly at least five to six years before most wine bloggers got off the ground.
This is nice to see. Mainstream writers jumping into the wineblogosphere is well documented, but to my knowledge, this is the first"reverse course" book of a freelance writer / wine blogger making thejump mainstream.
Tip of the hat to the new blog (ANOTHER one in Ohio) My Wine Education who tipped me off—she has the book on her Reading List on her navigation—probably based on the fact that they are both in educational technology and technical writing.
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