Adult Discretion Advised (If You Live in Alabama)

We’re sure – absolutely, really, really sure – that there are two sides to this story. But the news that the Alabama Beverage Control board has deemed the Cycles Gladiator wine label as pornographic is simply weird. But then, the label depicts an 1895 poster, so we guess it’s no surprise that Alabama is still living in the 19th century.

Here’s the Steak, Where’s The Sizzle?

Let’s say that you wanted to create a new international organization. A group of wine movers-and-shakers from five wine regions (California, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, South Africa) on four continents bent on getting more exposure for your wines, especially in the European Union, where New World wines are often overshadowed by continental offerings from France, Spain, Italy, Germany, probably even Slovenia.

Now, you’re living in 2009 (not 1989). What’s the first thing you do? You send out a press release and get lots of wine news websites and blogs mentioning your New World Wine Alliance. And you have all those articles link to your cool, visually rich, informative website. But....

Where’s the website? Yes, we know we’re a web-centric culture, but not having even a web page up is like not having stationary or a phone line. So at this time our conclusion is that this beast without a head is unlikely to survive, unless someone steps up to the plate and becomes the wrangler for these critters. Hey, New World Wine Alliance: Did I mention that I’ve been looking for a position in the wine industry?

UPDATE – 24 July: Or should it be: “Here’s the Sizzle, Where’s the Steak?”
A few more thoughts on the New World Wine Alliance.

Most of the international media reporting on this are saying the alliance is made up of five countries. California is not a country. The NWWA press release (we’re been unable to track down the original; here’s the version from Wines of Chile) says, “In a significant expression of unity, five competing New World wine-producing countries will be collaborating....”

The Wine Institute (“The Voice for California Wine”) has completely ignored the NWWA announcement. On Steve Heimoff’s blog, he writes: “The Wine Institute is telling [the EU] not to worry. ‘We already have a policy trade group,’ said an Institute spokesperson, who did not want to be identified.” Heimoff also quotes the anonymous Wine Institute spokesperson as saying, “This is just some marketing folks getting together to do something.”

To that comment, I’d be rather surprised. Real “marketing folks,” I’m sure, would have a better handle on, well, marketing (websites, social media, and a lot more). We can’t figure out who this is coming from. The “California” contact even has a German domain as an email address.

And the “policy trade group” mentioned, the World Wine Trade Group, has a website that appears to not have been updated in years - the last annual meeting they list was in 2007.

Finally, we feel slighted. Were we not important enough to be on the NWWA press release distribution list? Darn.

If anyone out there really knows what this group is, or how they’re marketing themselves, we’d love to hear more.

Worthwhile Wine Reading

Boschendal is a winery in South Africa we’ve never heard of, nor have we tried any of their wines. But we instantly fell in love with their blog (which is mostly a wine news round-up from many international sources).

Here are some of our favorite headlines from recent posts:

England – It’s against the law to have wine with your picnic
French wines are now allowed to advertise on the internet
What not to do with wine
Women prefer more expensive wine

The last story is especially fascinating, in that it discusses a taste test that seems to indicate that when the price of a bottle is known in advance, women (but not men) rate it higher in quality. We, being smarter than the writers of the original article, refuse to even speculate on why that might be. Great reading, nonetheless.

Wine Blog Writing Disclosures

If you write a wine blog – or any blog, for that matter – watch out what you write and how you disclose any compensation you might receive. The Federal Trade Commission wants to get in your face and “monitor” what’s written online about wines, wineries, products, books, trips, companies, or anything that purports to be a sort of “review” that might have been influenced by compensation from a business. The FTC has an 86-page document detailing the proposal.

UPDATE: John C. Dvorak, writing on pcmag.com, has the most well-written commentary on this topic. He didn’t pay us anything to say that.

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help:
Did you pay for that burger yourself, son?”

Winery of the Half-a-Year

We still have more than half a year of tastings ahead of us, so we won’t finalize our Winery of the Year until the end of 2009. But we did want to highlight a winery that has incredibly impressed us so far, and is a top candidate for WOTY honors.

Without exception, every wine we’ve tried from Barnard Griffin winery has been a winner. We don’t generally care for most Cabernet Sauvignon, yet their non-vintage Cabernet/Merlot received our House rating, as did both their Syrah and Sauvignon Blanc. We gave both their Chardonnay and White Riesling a Yes rating.

The winery is located in the Yakima Valley in south-central Washington (Richland), and in our experience the wines have good availability at retail in Washington state. Barnard Griffin also has three different wine clubs available, as well as an online store, if you can’t find the wines in your area.

Watch for our Winery of the Year 2009 post in January (which may, of course, contain surprises), but until then, sample some of the Barnard Griffin wines.

Restaurant Wines

We generally only dine out when we travel. The times we do we eat out close to home at a “local” spot, we frequently just choose familiar and affordable wines. But any wine accompanying a restaurant meal takes on different complexity, tastes, and meaning – the atmosphere, the quality of the food, etc. all play a factor. Thus, we caution that our reviews of restaurant wines might be colored by the dining experience itself. If we try a new wine in a restaurant we might try to find it at retail. If so, we would “re-review” the wine without the restaurant-atmosphere bias (and add notes to our original post). But in general, we don’t choose restaurant wines that we see at retail – that’s the point of trying something different in a restaurant. We also gravitate toward less-popular (at least in the U.S.) selections in restaurants – such as Marsanne/Roussanne, Corbieres, or Muscadet – which are generally otherwise only found in specialty wine shops. Look for our Restaurant Wines icon on reviews of wines we’ve had in restaurants.

Sea Ridge White Zinfandel 2006 – California

We never know what to expect from a $5 wine (which is probably why we seldom buy them). We just bought this blind, because we actually like white Zins (if they’re not syrupy sweet); and because we just sometimes try something for no particular reason. Poured into the glass, this has a peach/pink color – sort of like the old, original “flesh”-colored Crayons. The nose is quite light, with hints of peach, apricot, and strawberry. The tastes are quite nice with peach, papaya, and a touch of strawberry. This is pleasant, light, with a slight acidity that keeps it from being KoolAid. Yes/Maybe (at the price). Still, we doubt we’ll go out of our way to buy this again. $5 retail ($4.50 on sale).


BACKGROUND NOTE: From everything we can find, Sea Ridge was an independent winery on the California coast in the 1980s and early ’90s. It seems it’s now a label of Bronco, and sold in Safeway stores. Bronco also makes the (in)famous “Two Buck Chuck” (aka Two Buck Junk).

A 2004 Wine Business magazine article says: “[Fred Franzia, owner of Bronco and creator of Two-Buck] also seems mystified that more groceries don’t emulate Trader Joe’s. ‘How can any major grocery chain not have a wine that competes with Two Buck Chuck?,’ he asked. He said that Bronco’s Sea Ridge brand, which is sold in Safeway for $4.50, sells for about the same at wholesale as [Two Buck Chuck], so Safeway could sell the wine for $2 and still make a profit.”

The implication being that Two Buck Junk sells for about $1 wholesale. As does, apparently, this Sea Ridge White Zin. Draw your own conclusions.

Our Biases

All wine writers and reviewers have preferences. Yet the best wine writers try to set aside their personal tastes when evaluating a particular wine, and try to judge the wine on its stand-alone merits. Yet biases always show through – in wine, politics, romance, food, or any aspect of our humanness.

So in an effort at openness, we thought we’d discuss some of our general wine preferences. We hope we are still fairly evaluating wines outside our “favorite zone,” but thought you should know what styles we lean toward.

For reds, we like big, fruity wines – Amador County (California) Zinfandels; big Zins from Turley, Ridge, and the like; Petite Sirahs that stain your teeth black; many Grenaches. We also generally like minerally Pinot Noirs in the French style – we’ve said it’s like drinking French dirt (in a good sense). Other fruity reds appeal to us – Washington state Syrahs; fruity new-world Pinot Noirs.

We admittedly aren’t big fans of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, nearly all Italian reds, and most Bordeaux-style red blends – or, for that matter, most red blends at all. Yet we’ve had some wonderful wines in those categories, as well as many others.

With white wines, we generally like crisp and bright wines – the minerally French style in many white Burgundies (Chardonnay), rather than the oaky, buttery California style of Chards (or the similarly heavy white Bordeaux Sauvignon Blancs and Semillons). Yet we can still sometimes be blown away by a “big” oaky-style white, as some of our previous reviews attest. We love Rieslings and Gewurztraminers that perfectly balance softness/sweetness with acidity. And we love crisp Sauvignon Blanc, although sometimes the New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs are just too bright and grassy (although we generally do like them a lot).

We also gravitate to out-of-the-mainstream whites – such as Chenin Blanc (whether in the French Vouvray style or the lighter American wines), Marsanne/Rousanne, Muscadet.

So even if our “desert island” wines might be Sierra Foothills Zinfandel, French Chablis, and Chenin Blanc, we hope we are offering unbiased reviews of other wines and other wine styles.

Any flat spot will do.

Toward a New Year

We started this wine blog mostly just for fun, and to help us remember the wines we’ve enjoyed over the years.

Apparently, a few others of you have also enjoyed our writings. So far in 2008, we’ve had site visitors from 74 countries (map below).

We’ll probably get a couple of more posts up before January 1, but then we will take some time off until about January 10. Have a great new year.

Wines of the Year

We thought we’d jump on the end-of-year bandwagon, and offer our top new wines we enjoyed this year.

Grgich Hills Fume Blanc 2006

Cathedral Ridge Riesling 2007

d.A. (Domaines Astruc) Shiraz/Viogner 2006

Columbia Crest Vineyard 10 Rose 2007

Ridge Petite Sirah Dynamite Hill 2002 – California

After seemingly years of campaigning, the election’s finally over. Whether your choice won or lost; now, the day after, when it’s finally sunk in; tonight will be a night for a comfort wine. Our suggestion:

Ridge Petite Sirah 2002
This opens with a powerful nose of dried blackberries, cherries, and peat – almost like a single-malt scotch (in a very good way). The tastes are deep and rich of dried blackberries and black cherries, as well as some nice spice. It has some sharp tannins, and the label suggests bottle aging for up to 15 years. We believe it. Yes. About $35 (only available from Ridge’s mailing list program).

Curl up by a fireplace, grab a good book, turn off the TV, savor the wine. The world will be different in the days ahead, but they will come and go as they always have. Enjoy your wines and meals with friends and family every day.

Book Review: Robert Mondavi – Harvests of Joy (Harcourt, 1998)

We were first exposed to Mondavi wines in the 1970s, when the winery was new and cutting edge. Robert Mondavi was probably the best known “name” in California wine, and certainly in Napa. (OK, so maybe more Americans actually knew Gallo better as a name, but we’re thinking real wine drinkers here.)

Robert Mondavi’s personal story is interesting, and the book is a good look into the wine industry before it became big business. But, sadly, this book is so poorly written that you want to rush through it to get to the meat of the story instead of savoring the nuances as you go along.

Robert Mondavi alludes just once to a writer who assisted him in this work – one wishes that either that writer or the book’s editor at Harcourt would have made a stronger effort to bring the quality of the writing to the level of the quality of the wines Mondavi was producing.

Mondavi Winery was a true innovator in Napa, championing Cabernet Sauvignon, and creating what would turn into one of today’s success stories – Sauvignon Blanc. Mondavi had the marketing wisdom to call it Fume Blanc, and the wine’s distinctive differences from the French white Bordeaux style made it one of Mondavi’s signature wines.

Today, the winery with its Mission architecture and surrounding vineyards still stands as a Napa Valley icon, but the winery is now owned by Constellation Brands, and many of the “Robert Mondavi” wines at the lower end of the spectrum taste like industrial stuff from a factory. (True, the Mondavi Private Reserve Cabernet is still highly sought, and of estimable quality.) Harvests of Joy ends before Mondavi lost the company to a big conglomerate, but reveals the lead-up to that event.

Robert Mondavi died less than a year ago, and it pains us that such an incredible winemaker and inspiration could have produced such a pedestrian work. We never met Robert, so maybe his words in Harvests of Joy truly reflect his personality. But if the intent of a writer is to entertain, illuminate, entrance, and inform his or her reader, this book only serves well in the last sense. Nonetheless, if you’re interested in the history of the Napa wine culture (and how it became the Disneyland tourism dynamic it is today), this is well worth a quick read.

Our Favorite Cookbooks, Part II: Francesca’s Favorites

As usual I have waited until the last minute to write my “5 favorite cookbooks” article (Ken writes with ease and in such an interesting, creative way . . . not me, i have a tendency to try too hard with my limited writing skills and I’m too wordy), but since today I need to pick my “Wednesday night dinner” choices, this is perfect timing.

The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook
When Ken and I first started our romance together, I was a strict vegetarian (salmon once a year on my birthday) and he was still eating meat & chicken, supplementing with his love of fish & pastas. Our eating habits soon changed . . . I started eating more fish and he stopped eating meats. Christmas morning at my parents a few years ago, one of the presents to my mom was this cookbook. Ken and I immediately snatched it from her and began to look inside like two little kids. This cookbook offers a variety of creative main dishes, breakfast & brunch ideas, soups, pastas, casseroles, stir-fries, salads, and condiments. Accompanying this storybook of vegetarian cooking is an array of beautiful pictures to feast upon.

Vegetarian Planet
“350 big-flavor recipes for out-of-this-world food every day” . . . filled with little tidbits about some of the more unknown, hard to find, obscure ingredients.

Horn Of The Moon Cookbook
I happened upon this cookbook when planning a self-catering-accommodation vacation to Vermont to enjoy the autumn colors. In addition, we have a border collie whose name is “Moondoggie” and I seem to gravitate to anything with the word “moon” in it. Nonetheless, this is a wonderful little cookbook. The recipes (which come from the restaurant of the same name in Montpelier, Vermont) are quite simple using basic ingredients, yet fun and inventive.

Café Paradiso Seasons
Each chapter is devoted to a particular season – late spring, summer, autumn, winter, and early spring (with a chapter on outdoor cooking as well). At the beginning of each section is a list of the fruits & vegetables grown during that time of year. The pictures are deliciously enticing, the preparation instructions are incredibly vague, but the end results are very tasty and I love challenging my experience in the kitchen.

Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers
We have several Moosewood restaurant cookbooks, and this one is definitely my favorite. Excellent every day recipes for a wholesome, well-balanced diet . . . down-to-earth cooking fun.

(See Part I, Ken's favorite cookbooks, on this previous entry.)

Buyer Beware: Grape Trickery at Beringer, BV, Redwood Creek, Mark West

We used to claim that some of the best affordable Pinot Noirs came from big producers such as Beringer. But the Beringer Pinot we loved was from California. Then Beringer began sourcing grapes from France, and later from Italy. We liked those wines less (France) and a lot less (Italy). So we sorta gave up on Beringer Pinot.

Last night, we opened a Redwood Creek Pinot we were familiar with and it was completely different from our previous bottles. What happened, again, is that the winery stopped sourcing grapes from France and it’s now Italian. A similar experience happened with a BV Pinot a few months ago.

BV is now owned by Diageo; Beringer by Beringer Blass; Redwood Creek by Gallo; and Mark West by Constellation. (At least they were the last time we looked. Huge beverage companies trade wineries like commodities nowadays.) All are just little parts of big wine conglomerates, and the factory wines they are producing more-and-more taste like it.

In our opinion, if a winery is going to completely change the source of its grapes, it needs to produce a completely different label highlighting that fact. As it is, maybe the less-knowledgeable (or rushed) consumer will be fooled and just buy a bottle of cheap Pinot and be satisfied enough to buy it again. But our guess is that the quality and flavor fluctuations will turn off many customers – like it has for us.

We don’t want to scrutinize every label, especially of a wine we’ve had before and enjoyed. So guess what, Beringer, BV, Redwood Creek? We’re just gonna buy someone else’s wine next time. Guess this just gives us a chance to try other new and potentially interesting wines.

Kestrel Lady In Red Non Vintage – Washington

Friends brought this over for dinner, having picked it up at Costco (which has been known to have some nice wines). To us, it’s just another red wine. Better than the “standard” of cheap reds (Trader Joe’s Two-Buck Chuck - aka “2 Buck Junk”), but still just a red wine nonetheless. This has been well-rated by Wine Spectator, but for us, it’s a Maybe at best. (We originally didn’t know what our friends paid, but having found out it’s $21 retail, we’d really not bother.)

This is a good time for a digression about personal tastes. We read the popular wine press, and often agree with many of the writers – especially Matt Kramer in Wine Spectator and John Brecher & Dorothy Gaiter of the Wall St. Journal. All writers have personal favorites, and despite trying to be impartial in their reviews, their own upbringing and taste preferences can (and do) color their recommendations. Remember that applies to us, too. Another Wine Spectator writer, James Suckling, seems to be on a mission to deify all Italian wines, while we seldom find anything beyond ordinary in almost all Italian wines, no matter the price. Our suggestion, of course, is to taste a lot of wines, and read a lot of wine writers and their reviews. Once you can say, as we did above, that you agree with a taster’s tastes, then you can begin to rely more on their recommendations.

Corks & Corkscrews

We were never particularly concerned with the type of cork or closure used for wine, and besides, consumers don’t have a choice – we’ve stuck with whatever cork a winemaker puts into a bottle. Until last night.

Like everyone in the wine world, we’d heard of “corked” bottles – wines tainted by TCA, a chemical found in (among other places) cork, which makes a wine smell like wet dogs or dirty socks. Last night, we opened one of our regular House wines, and the wine was unmistakably corked. We’ve had “bad” wines – vinegary, past their prime, or with other flaws – but never one we could point to and say, “That wine is corked.”

It really wouldn’t be fair to point out the wine and winery (unless subsequent bottles show the same flaw, at which point we’d want to alert the winery and consumers), but suffice it to say the wine was from a large producer that we’ve found consistently reliable. (Two good articles about cork taint can be found at The Wine Academy and BlogCritics.)

So, our little meditations on corks and corkscrews.

Corkscrews
After opening wine bottles for many years, we’ve gravitated toward some preferences in corkscrews. Our three favorite types are:

Waiter’s Corkscrew – The old standby classic. It has to have an “open” worm, not one with a central shaft. Unless the cork is old or damaged, or we insert the corkscrew incorrectly, this opens everything every time.

Ah-So – This is the two-prong “rock-and-twist” corkscrew, which is absolutely essential for getting broken corks out of bottles. It’s also a good everyday corkscrew, but doesn’t have the traditional appeal of a worm-type screw.

The Lever Types – These come by a lot of names: Screwpull, Rabbit, etc. They generally have open worm screws, and have a three-step lever action which inserts the worm, removes the cork, and then removes the cork from the worm. We love these, but find that the worms need frequent replacement as they loose their coatings or break.

(To us, the absolute worst are the wing-type corkscrews. They almost always have a central shaft, and chew up corks like a dog with a bone. For some reason the new-to-wine set in the 1970s just seemed to love these. We don’t know why.)

Corks & Closures
Even before we had our corked wine experience, if we had a choice, we’d prefer a screw top (despite its lack of traditional charm). Yet despite that bottle, our second choice would be a good old real Portuguese cork from a tree. To us, the other big problem with real cork is that it deteriorates with age – even some five-year-old corks have crumbled on us. (Guess we’ll just have to start drinking our wines younger.)

We detest composite corks (we know they aren’t, yet we think of them as full of wood glue, sort of like plywood), as they seem cheaply made and prone to crumbling and breakage. (The corked wine we had was closed with a composite cork.) We also dislike synthetic (plastic) corks, as they are next to impossible for screwpull openers; an Ah-So often slips on them; and they’re even a lot of work for a waiter’s corkscrew. Conversely, they’re as TCA-proof as are screw tops. (I say “we,” but this is mostly Ken’s writing. Weirdly, Francesca, who is tiny and struggles with most corks, actually prefers synthetic corks.)

And as opinionated as we are, we really don’t spend a lot of time worrying about foils, plastic foils, or wax on a cork. We’d prefer anything but wax, but for us it’s a non-issue.

Left to right: Real cork; 2 synthetic corks; 2 “one-plus-one” composite corks (real cork on ends and composite middle); screw cap.

The Wine Review We Always Wanted To Write (and Read)

Chateau du Cal Pinot Meunier 2004

When I was living in Paris in the early 1970s, I dated a French woman who smelled of olive oil and violets. She used to lounge on a feinting couch covered with green velveteen that was probably upholstered by her grandmother in the 1920s. Her hair was dark, her eyes wide, and the smells of her apartment were encapsulated in the first hint of aromas from this wine. I breathed deeply, memories of an idle youth contrasting with the warm glow emanating from my glass. This was going to be a wine to remember.

I hesitated even to take a sip, as I was afraid my memories would be deceived. I was hoping for perfection, but would have gladly settled for merely wonderful. Alas, the wine’s promise didn’t initially quite live up to my heated desires. Oh, it had a rich nose and tastes of an English summer garden, and a round, sensuous feel that coated my mouth like chocolate pudding. Yes, this wine reminded me somehow of the Brits – warm, uptight, and reserved all at the same time. But slowly, I began to open to the wine, as the wine began to open to me.

The flavors changed to tobacco, earth (deep, California dirt, from someplace near the central coast, not some loamy mud from the valley or foothills, but rather a clean, sea-sharpened note of wind spray and coastal pine infused into the dry hills), and leather (old, tanned leather, like the native Americans used to produce, of brain-tanned cowhides that were washed with salt and left to dry in the Arizona desert sun). Over the course of the first eight-and-a-quarter minutes that the wine had been in the glass, all these tastes came to the fore, as if they’d been hidden behind some Persian silk screen and only now chose to reveal themselves.

Over even more time – and time now seemed to stand still for me, as I became lost in the depth of this marvel – the wine moved from youth to midlife to maturity, much as a round-the-world traveler moves from continent to continent, from excitement at the beginning of his journey to depression during the middle of his undertaking to finally near the end of his adventure where the very act of travelling brings contentment with the universe and he realizes he has been blessed to see. Finally, the last drop about to be drained from the bottle, I sensed a finish to the wine that I would have never imagined.

As the wine lingered on my palate (pallet? palette?) I knew I was in the presence of greatness, as if Genghis Kahn or Charlemagne were to walk through my door and challenge me to acts of bravery and heroism.

$11. (We found it on sale for $8.99.) 86 points.

Go-To Wineries

There are times when you need a bottle, yet can’t remember the specifics of wines you’ve enjoyed. We’ve also suggested that if you find a wine or two from a producer that you enjoy, keep trying that winery’s other wines. Following our own advice, here are the wineries that we feel we can buy any wine from without thinking, and we’ll almost always get a bottle we enjoy at a fair price.

• Rosemount, Australia
• Yalumba, Australia
• Beringer, California
• Cambria, California
• Ridge, California
• B&G, France
• Columbia Crest, Washington

Book Review: The United States of Arugula

The United States of Arugula, by David Kamp
We were a little late discovering The United States of Arugula (published in 2006), but found the book to be a wonderful history of American food in the 20th century. Beginning in the late 1930s, the book chronicles the taste makers that changed America’s eating habits from meat and potatoes to sun-dried, free-range, and organic. The biggest changes began in the 1950s, with Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and with her appearance on American television. The story ranges from personalities who may not be well known to most people (such as Clementine Paddleford or Mollie Katzen), to the icons of American food – Alice Waters, Thomas Keller, Wolfgang Puck, and a host of others. If you have an interest in food and cooking – and in how we went from canned peas to baby Arugula in the grocery store – The United States of Arugula is a great read.

Food and Wine Pairing

There was an interesting article in the January 19 Wall Street Journal about Tim Hanni, who has developed a wine consulting business and a method to help pair wine with hard-to-match foods. He also is promoting “progressive wine lists,” and we’ve shopped in wine stores where basic wine progressions similar to his were used (light-bodied whites, medium, full, etc.). Hanni’s credentials are impeccable – one of the first Americans to pass the “Master of Wine” exams – yet some of his recommendations seem odd to us. We really don’t want our asparagus to taste like salt and lemon juice (his basic spice suggestion) just so we can drink a big Bordeaux with it – just pass the white Zinfandel and we’ll enjoy it just fine.

Wine and food pairing is an art – just as food and spice pairing is. Try some of our “cheap” wine suggestions from this blog with different foods. If something doesn’t taste good together, open another cheap bottle of something else. To us, that’s far better than changing the flavor of the food we so carefully created.