A Three Sided Coin

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jumbo_coin_quarter The old saying two sides of the same coin all to often applies to wines these days. Diversity is drowned in the head on pursuit of Points. We can’t really criticize wineries for seeking financial success. I know that it’s strange to think of an elite winery having to make a buck in these days of multi-multi-million dollar wine temples, but it’s a fact that some producers actually have to turn a  profit to stay in business. Blaming them for Point hunting seems a bit disingenuous when both the trade and wine buyers are so Point drunk.

Recently I tasted three wines from the same variety and region. Each could not have been more wonderful, lovely or good at what they were trying to be. Each winemaker had a different goal and achieved it. To somehow rank these wines is silly as they were made with different visions, but each accomplishes that vision with equal dexterity. Awarding these wines Pointless Points only confuses the consumer because to every wine  there is a season – Turn, Turn, Turn.

Here were three barbera wines from the Piemonte region of Northwestern Italy that have little in common except variety and the fact that when served with the right meal they’re almost perfect.

scarrone 2006 Vietti Barbera d’Alba, Scarrone – Scarrone  is barbera presented as a great wine. From old vines planted in a vineyard that by all rights should be planted in nebbiolo for Barolo, winemaker Luca Currado crafts a powerful, magnificent barbera that ages beautifully. That same evening we tasted the 2006 we had a 1996 Scarrone that had aged into a graceful beauty. Young Scarrone is deeply colored, concentrated, richly fruity and powerful. A wine that always gets big Points – how could it not?

brovia barbera2006 Brovia Barbera d'Alba DOC Sori Del Drago – Brickish with touches of brown in color, the wonderfully traditional Brovia winery has made a high strung graceful beauty.  With an aromatic complexity that will please Barolo traditionalists, this firm, structured zesty wine is a wonder with classic Northern Italian dishes – I’m thinking Ossobucco Milanese. This wine is all about complexity, structure and aromatics and power. Points are not what it’s about. I feel this is an exceptional barbera.

2007 Fontanafredda, Barbera Piemonte, Briccotondo – Purple, fresh and lip-smacking good.  A bright, fresh, fruity modern wine that still tips its hat to real barbera character. The nice acid pucker underneath the veneer of sweet dark fruit reminds you that this is indeed an Italian wine. I’m buying this for ten bucks at Cost Plus and I can think of few better values in a wine at this price. Most wines at this price range have a innocuous jammy sweet fruitiness that quickly bores. There is nothing boring about this fun and delicious wine.  Eating pizza or simple spaghetti con pomodoro? This is your wine.

To rank these three lovely wines is Pointless as each served with the right foods will appropriately show their charms. Appropriate is the right word and that responsibility lies with the consumer because if you follow Points, you’ll be led astray at the table.

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Is the (2nd) Fiasco Over?

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fiasco in italia Wine trade legend had it that the word fiasco entered the English language when the Italians flooded  the American market with mediocre wines after the war and destroyed their reputation for decades. The fiasco was the the name of the straw wrapped around those bottles of cheap Chianti, which became the symbol of Italian wine in the United States. Cheap, innocuous or worse -the straw covered bottles were omnipresent on tables covered with red checked table cloths and provided romantic light, covered with candle wax, in dorm rooms in the 60’s and 70’s.

Of course, Italian wines long ago recovered from that debacle and are sold at prices on par with the the worlds finest. However, there was a second Italian wine fiasco. The first was them sending bad wine here, the second was our fault. We imported Italian varieties and proceeded to make some very boring wine from them. In the eighties there were a lot of high profile efforts to make expensive wines from Italian varieties in California and the category was even given a name: Cal-Ital. There was a lot of hoopla, but the wines were mediocre and expensive – not a good combination. Even today all too many American sangiovese and barbera wines look ridiculous when compared to Italian wines (or other American wines) selling for half the price. Those that deigned to attempt nebbiolo fell far shorter than ridiculous. What could the possible reason be to buy these American wines at $40, $50 or more when you could buy better Italian ones at $20. What made these Americans even worse is that they had no varietal character. They could have been made from zinfandel, merlot  or cabernet, but were not as good as the wines made from those varieties. Why buy an expensive sangiovese when a zin or cab that tasted better cost less? As you might expect, the Cal-Itals soon went out of fashion.

Is this second fiasco over? It may well be as some exciting wines from Italian varieties are finally being made up and down the west coast. They are distinctly New World, as they should be, while maintaining true varietal character. Cabernet from Bordeaux and Napa may not taste the same, but the family resemblance is unmistakable. Finally you can now say the some thing about a few wines produced from varieties like barbera, sangiovese and even nebbiolo. While most of the better examples seem to be coming from Washington there are a few Californians producing some exciting wines too.

Palmina_Nebbiolo I can think of no more stunning example of this new trend than the 2004 Palmina Nebbiolo, Stolpman Vineyard, Santa Ynez Valley. This is a gorgeous wine that is true both to its variety and its vineyard. First of all it is perfectly pale, with a radiant garnet color. Dark purple nebbiolo, like pinot noir, is not to be trusted. On the nose it is powerful, yet elegant and laced with all the classic tar and roses you could want. However, it also shows its pride in its American birth with a round, warm spiced fruit forward personality. The firm classic tannins, that are a hallmark of fine nebbiolo, are very present suggesting that those that age this lovely wine will be well rewarded.

The second Italian wine fiasco is coming to a very happy ending.

No Sh*t Sherlock

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Wines & Vines - Wine Industry News Headlines - How Consistent Are Wine Judges?

Wine judges are rather unsteady, study finds - Los Angeles Times

There has been a spate of articles and blog posts about a study that statistically proves that results from large judgings are, for all practical purposes, worthless. They had to do research to figure that out? The wine trade figured this out long ago and the only place a gold medal from some judging does a winery any good is in their own tasting room. Tell a wine buyer in a top restaurant or retailer that you've just won a double gold and best of show and they'll look at you like you're some rube from the sticks. They could care less.

Everyone who has participated in such events knows that their results are skewed. It's just not possible to taste and accurately rank large numbers of wines. For example, if you took just ten wines and had the judges rank them, then took the same wines, changed the order and retasted them an hour later the results would change. If you did it ten times, in different orders over the course of a day, you'd get different results each time. You would also get different results if you took those same ten wines and had the judges taste one wine a day with dinner over the next ten days. In such a test even a tasting machine like Robert Parker Jr. would give different scores to the same wine as he, like all of us, is not a not machine, but a human whose palate is impacted by too many variables. This is not to say that professional wine criticism is not useful, but it is an opinion, not a science. To be scientific results have to be repeatable.

The explosion of wine blogs and sites where consumers post their notes, like on CellarTracker and Adegga, offers the antidote to relying on notes from a few critics and competitions. After all, can you think of a worse way to appreciate and understand a wine than sitting down and tasting it buried in a lineup of dozens (if not hundreds) of them? The notes from bloggers and consumers come from tasting conditions more in line with how wines are meant to be actually consumed - leisurely, thoughtfully and with meals. It is also a wonderful thing to have so many different opinions of the same wine tasted in different circumstances by different people. Of course you always have to be aware that some of these new media reviews may come from tasters with little experience, but it's easy to spot that inexperience in their notes. Also the risk of inaccurate information is no greater than that coming from professional judges when those judges are basing their opinions on results from mass tastings.

Over the last few decades wine sales have been driven by points and medals awarded by tasters plowing through masses of bottles at a single tasting. As a result, wine producers started making wines that tasted great with other wines, but not so great with food. Fortunately the tide seems to be turning back to wines with balance and elegance.

Perhaps with the price of gold these days, wineries should be sending in their old medals to Cash 4 Gold.

Non Plus Ultra

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Those of us in the wine blogging community know Jeremy Parzen for his passionate wine blog Do Bianchi, but the multi-talented Parzen is also a rocker and his band Non Plus Ultra is grabbing attention in Europe and on the college radio circuit. Non Plus Ultra has a new CD out and just released this video to support it. Good biodynamic wine drinking music indeed!

 

Why Does That Wine Cost $550 A Bottle?

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fredthompson_jmccarth_8441278 It was a quiet Sunday night in late January, not a big night even for this well-known restaurant. I got a reservation with no problem.  Not long after we were seated a couple swept into the room with a bottle in tow. He was grey haired and elegantly, but casually dressed. She was quite a bit younger and beautiful – just like the bottle of wine he was carrying.  It seems he had decided to bring two trophies to dinner.

The wine was 2006 Chateau Margaux and it goes for well over $500 a bottle these days. Probably cheap compared to his date. The sommelier did his duty and was suitable attentive as he pulled the cork and poured the wine. Graciously they offered him a taste. Then they ordered. He took a bowl of clam chowder, she a dozen pristine, fresh oysters – and that was it. Now I’m as open minded as they come when it comes to serving red wine with almost anything, but one thing I know for sure is that a young, tannic red Bordeaux is disgusting with fresh oysters and not much better with chowder. Yet the fact that the Margaux was nowhere ready to drink and that it was terrible with the food made not a difference to this couple. It only mattered that they could afford it. That’s why it costs $550 a bottle because people that don’t have a clue about what they’re eating or drinking buy it because it costs $550. A living example of the which came first the chicken or the egg dilemma. They didn’t buy the wine because it was great, but because it was expensive.

There is a range where wines are expensive because of their excellence, but that dollar point is passed at a much lower level than today’s trophy wines. It’s hard to say where that line is, but $550 is way over the top. Such prices are achieved only when people who have no idea what they’re drinking must have a wine to prove they know what they’re drinking.

Much to the pleasure of the staff, when they left the bottle was still a third full and she left almost a full glass. It mattered not because the wine had fulfilled their wants before the cork was pulled. They got their money’s worth.

Note: Fred Thompson was not in attendence that evening. Photo used for humor value alone.

Cheating On Your Wife

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bigamy-wineI had lied to my wife. Every guy in the room had. This was not the kind of thing you could safely share with a spouse. We gathered in the room with an exaggerated good-old-boy bachelor party kind of conviviality. The level of anticipation was high, perhaps too high. It was still afternoon and it felt a bit strange to be doing this in the light of day.

Everyone finally arrived and one-by-one we passed our wad of cash to the host with a sense of excitement and a tinge of guilt for the pleasures to come. After all, wasn't this money supposed to be going into the college fund or buying that new dresser? This was more money than I could easily afford on my rookie reporter's salary at the newspaper and I could only hope my wife would never find out. Our host took the cash and disappeared into another room.  A second later, radiating sensuality, they swept into the room and were even more beautiful than we had hoped for in our dreams the night before. There were eight of them, one more exotic than the next. Each was wrapped in a skin tight sheath of aluminum foil just begging to be torn off and marked with a letter so each of us could choose their favorite. An electric energy coursed through me as I unpacked the toys I had brought for the festivities: eight glasses and a notebook. Once again I thought of my wife and how ticked off she we going to be if she found out I had spent our hard earned money on, of all things, wine.

This group of liars was cheating on their wives with our mistress - wine. She was stealing our money and time with our spouses, but we could not resist her charms. We had long passed the flirting stage and this was to be our most amorous liaison yet as we were going to taste Grand Cru Burgundy. None of us had ever spent that much money on wine before. We were at the stage where we had learned more about wine from books than with our tongues and were easily influenced by reputation and label. More than once I had convinced myself to like a wine because someone famous said I should. With this innocence and ignorance we began tasting the eight bottles of Burgundy that our host had tightly wrapped in gleaming aluminum foil as we were doing a “blind” tasting. However, this was not really “blind” as we knew that each wine was an expensive and famous Burgundy. We were prepared to be seduced. Each of the tasters had eight glasses and the table was a crowed forest of stemware. After each of the wines had been poured silence settled on the once boisterous group. Each of us focused our entire concentration each wine as we sipped, swirled, spat and furiously took notes. For the next hour the only sound was the occasional moan or sigh when our mistress hit just the right spot.

I can still remember some of my notes now, which went something like this:

A. Light color, weedy earthy aromas...

B. Light color, earthy, dried leather and cheese...

C. Light color, vegital, smoked bacon. plastic...

So it went for the next hour. When everyone finished it was time to compare notes and come up with a group rationalization for why these wines were not the other-worldly experience we had anticipated. They were strange and not very satisfying. We soon came to the conclusion that problem could not be these famous wines, but that it must be us. Our palates were not well honed enough to understand the complexities of these great and famous wines. Those odd aromas and flavors must be that magical ingredient terroir that the French use to describe the unique personalities of each vineyard that make each single-vineyard wine distinct. Those leather, cheese and bacon smells had to be terroir. Now it was our duty to keep learning and tasting until we could come to understand and appreciate them.

As I look back on this event over thirty years ago, I have learned to understand and appreciate the true glories of Burgundy, none of which could be described as weedy, cheesy or sweaty. I have also learned that those wines that made me feel inadequate in that tasting three decades ago would have better been poured down the drain. Those wines were faulted - full of brett and VA. We were just too young and too intimated by the names and prices of those wines to know the difference. Fortunately I soon learned the difference between terroir and wine faults. Wine faults are a major concern of mine as time and time again I run into wines that are loaded with faults that go undetected in many large tastings. All to often I lift a glass to my nose from an almost empty bottle to find it severely faulted with TCA (corkiness), brett or a range of other faults. At the recent Wine Bloggers Conference there was a lot of debate about ethics, but none about knowledge and tasting technique. If wine bloggers want to be taken seriously, it's far more important that they can spot brett and other faults than if they take samples from producers for free or not.

These memories were jogged by a bottle of 2004 Thomas Dundee Hills Pinot Noir that I pulled from my cellar to share with my good friend, winemaker Donald Patz. Always looking to bring something that he probably hasn't tasted (no easy task) I grabbed a bottle of this hard to get Oregon cult wine. Upon pulling the cork we were treated to a perfect example of brett. Needless to say, it was a great disappointment and we left the bottle, still mostly full, on the table when we left the restaurant. Thirty years ago we may have forced ourselves to accept such wines, but today there are no excuses. Winemakers have the finest laboratories available to them and far more knowledge than the winemakers of the past. Brett needs to be recognized and recognized for what it is - a fault that obliterates varietal character and terroir - which are the two most important things for me in a wine.

Not long after that tasting of three decades ago I entered the wine business. We were importing the Italian wines of Neil Empson and doing tasting event after tasting event. Neil and I would open hundreds of bottles over several days. Every time Neil found a corky bottle, which was often in those days, he'd shove the wine and the cork under my nose. Soon I got it and ever since have been hyper-aware of that musty TCA smell. We should all do what Neil did and every time we find a faulted bottle we need to shove it under someone’s nose. While winemakers have no business making faulted wines, we (especially wine writers) have no business missing those faults.

Trading Down at Joe’s

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Trader Joe's Paper Bag Sign I gave it my best shot. For the last several weeks I’ve been working through the wines at Trader Joe’s hoping upon hope to find a deal. Yet wine after wine was hopelessly thin, bland industrial plonk or out-and-out faulted. Didn’t anybody ever teach whoever is tasting these wines what brett is all about? Trader Joe’s offers few deals on wine. A “deal” should mean good wine at a low price not crappy wine at a low price. In fact, the $5 wines at Trader Joe’s are overpriced. Without a doubt the best way to find a real wine bargain is to establish a relationship with a local wine merchant that cares about wine and you. That means finding a specialist – someone whose livelihood depends on wine. In other words good luck finding a real deal at Trader Joe’s. You’ll find a lot of cheap wine, some with well known names, but few good values.

castoro logo Yet among all the industrial and/or faulted plonk at Trader Joe’s I discovered a gem. As a lover of Côtes du Rhône, Dolcetto and Barbera as everyday wines I have searched and searched for American equivalents, but with few successes. What’s doubly amazing is that I found such a good wine in a temple of wine mediocrity (or worse) like Trader Joe’s. The 2005 Castoro Cellars Reserve Syrah, Paso Robles is one of the best deals in American wine I’ve ever tasted. Juicy, fresh and just plain delicious with clear varietal personality and all for well under $15 (actual price hidden to protect the innocent). I’m headed back tomorrow to grab a couple of cases because a better everyday American wine I’ve yet to taste. Not a great wine, but a damn good one to have with a burger on Tuesday night or a Friday night pizza, which, as we usually forget in the the United States, is what wine is all about. A good glass of wine elevates a simple meal and our spirits. That’s why they made Bacchus a god. The Castoro Syrah is a very good glass of wine and a great value. Castoro Cellars is to be admired for producing wines that should be easy to make in California, but that most producers seem incapable of achieving.

Trader Joe’s has a few great deals, like the Castoro Cellars Syrah, but the vast majority of their wines are bad deals. To be a bargain, a wine should have to taste good. At Joe’s you’re trading price for quality, which is not a fair trade.

Bocksbeutal Screwed?

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Bocksbeutel_bottle A screwcap on a Bocksbeutal? The prophylactic properties of the screwcap take on a whole new meaning in this case as the wine is never impregnated by a uncovered cork. It may in a funny bottle with a funny top (complete with double entendre), but the 2005 Randersackerer Marsberg, Riesling Spatlese Trocken, Spielberg Gutsabfullung Franken, Wiengut Schmitt’s Kinder is a wonderful wine. Besides being a current contestant for long wine name of the year, its linear focus, punchy minerality and long laser-like finish reminded me why riesling is my favorite white variety. The emergence of excellent dry (trocken) wines like this from regions of Germany that were (rightfully) ignored years ago offers a delightful replacement for the now sweet and overly alcoholic wines of Alsace. While those Alsatian wines are wonderful with cheeses, dry German rieslings like this are much better with dinner.

Another stand out dry riesling comes from Austria, the 2006 Offenberg Spitz Riesling Smaragd, Wachau Wiengut Johann Donabaum, which sharpens your palate like a honing steel. Gloriously fragrant and spiced with a hard edge of acidity that focuses everything into a long, lingering whole.  It’s hard to imagine two more pleasurable wines to have with dinner.

Getting back to the Bocksbeutal, it’s great to see more and more producers practicing safe bottling.

Wine Bar Food

tony-and-cathy-mantuano Wine and food. Seems to go together doesn’t it? So what’s up with wine bar food. All to often the food at wine bars is selected for ease of preparation rather than if it goes with wine or not.

Perhaps nothing better represents this dearth of good wine and food matches at wine bars than the ubiquitous cheese plate. The cheese and wine thing is one of those urban legends as most dry red wines don’t taste very good with most cheeses. Brie, goat cheeses and the like with a big Cab is a waste of good cheese and good Cab. White wines and sweet wines are another matter, but matching cheese with dry reds can be tough on the wine.

Those that have had the pleasure of an aperitivo at a bar in Milan or a tapas bar in Madrid know there’s a lot more to wine bar food than a cheese plate.  In Europe the bars are laden with tasty tidbits that actually taste great with wine.

While it’s too late for Christmas presents, there’s one gift every wine bar owner in the country should give themselves. Wine Bar Food by Cathy and Tony Mantuano offers a wine lover’s dream of small plates to interplay with the the most creative of wine lists. Better yet, forget that cheese plate you were getting ready to put out at your next wine tasting at home and be kind to your wines by preparing some of the wine perfect dishes the Mantuanos have assembled in this must have cookbook for any wine lover.

While Chef Tony Mantuano is famed for the complicated and elegant fare at Spiaggia, the Obamas preferred Chicago restaurant, there’s not a bit of that here in this collection of very approachable recipes. Cathy, well known as the innovative wine director of some of Chicago’s best wine oriented restaurants, has teamed with her husband to bring us the best of Mediterranean wine bar food.

Wine bar food should be simple, varied and delicious, just like this book.  

The Wine Sheriff Needs Your Support

henry bishop Henry Bishop, AKA The Wine Sheriff, is a well-known name not only in the Chicago wine trade community, where he was the long-time sommelier at the distinguished restaurant Spiaggia, but to Italian winemakers and growers of Italian varieties throughout the rest of the world.

Henry was interested in authentic, natural wines before anybody ever thought of such things. He also sought out fine wines, for his Italian focused list at Spiaggia, not only from Italy, but throughout the United States finding compelling wines from passionate growers in unlikely places.

Today, Henry has a true battle on his hands as he fights throat cancer. Like so many others that dedicate their lives to the restaurant industry, Henry’s insurance is not all it could be and, obviously, he is unable to work in the service industry while he fights this fight. As we enjoy our good fortune this New Year’s Day it’s also a great opportunity to feel better by helping someone out who has done so much for the beverage we love and those who make and enjoy it. Donations to help Henry in his fight can be made by clicking on this link.

Protecting Prosecco

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Italian Makers of Prosecco Seek Recognition - NYTimes.com

It's hard to believe that a simple, charming wine like Prosecco needs protection, but it's true. Once normally dependable, the surge of popularity for bubbly Prosecco has prompted the invasion of an ocean of sparkling wines under that name that hold little charm - Proseccos main reason for existence. Recently I bought a bottle for $5.99 at Trader Joe's and was reminded of the truth that you can't get something for nothing. As New Year's Eve approaches remember an extra couple of bucks a bottle will buy you a much better wine. Let's hope the growers of Valdobbiadene succeed in protecting their good name.

Sweet Alsace

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crab The Dungeness Crab season along the Oregon and Northern California coast is something I look forward to every year. They’re so succulent that dipping them in butter is redundant.

With this lusciousness in mind, I selected the 2004 Audrey et Christian Binner Pinot Gris for what I knew were going to be some great crabs. The crabs exceeded even my highest expectations and were perhaps the best I ever tasted (I think I say that every year), but the wine only reminded me why I buy so few Alsatian wines these days. The Binner was out-and-out sweet and was cloying with the crab. Cloying was not the flavor match I was going for – rich and concentrated yes, but cloying no. While the Binner would be outstanding with a cheese course, it was terrible with crab.

Alsatian wines used to be one of my go-to wines. They were always balanced with a firm, complex minerality No more, you’re more likely to find ripe apricot than firm mineral in the wines and the various varieties have started to lose their individuality and meld into one unctuous sameness.

The thing that bothers me most about the sweetening of Alsace is they don’t give you a hint on the label except for their ultra-rich dessert wines Vendage Tardive and Sélection de Grains Nobles.  But for everything else, if they’re going  to continue making wines like this (as they surely will considering the high points they get) they should start doing like the Germans do and tell us on the label how sweet they are.

The Binner is a wonderful wine and my remaining two bottles will be finding themselves bonding with some Munster instead of clashing with some crab. It would be a perfect wine if they only put a little more information on the label.

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Stellar Cellars

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chateau-petrus

I was a guest, which is by far the best way to attend tastings like this, although as this was a dinner, it might be better to call it a drinking. Be assured I didn’t spit once. It never crossed my mind. One thing drinking old wines confirms is they don’t make’em like they used to. For better or worse, they’re different – more delicate and less alcoholic. It was a great evening with outstanding food, wine and company. What else is great wine for? Many thanks to Dr. Mike Dragutsky for inviting me to join in. Below are the wines with some short comments.

1990 Cristal Brut, Magnum – A reminder of how great Cristal used to be. Toasty, creamy, long and very complex. Cristal today is a mere shadow of this wine.

1985 Kistler Chardonnay, Carneros – Rich and powerful, but a bit passed its prime.

1995 Puligny Montrachet, Enseigners, Verget, Magnum – Unfortunately showing quite a bit of oxidation already, but still quite exciting with a firm mineral backbone and great length. Drink up soon.

2005 Sea Smoke Pinot Noir, Ten, Santa Rita Hills – A powerhouse pinot with a lot of new oak.

1988 Bonnes Mares, Comte de Vogue – Not showing well at first, this bottle ended up by my place so I got to go back to it several times. By the end of the evening it opened into a graceful beauty with layers and layers of length and personality.

1997 Chateau Pichon Lalande, Pauillac, Magnum and 1997 Chateau Lynch Bages, Pauillac – I’ll comment on these two lovely, elegant and totally mature wines together as they dramatically illustrated how much better wines age in magnum. The Pichon Lalande was much fresher with brighter fruit and depth. These wines show how pretty wines can be from lighter years.

1989 Chateau Pichon Baron, Pauillac – Still velvety and rich with an expansive bouquet and a long seductive finish. Twenty years old is a great place for classic Bordeaux from excellent vintages.

1988 Chatau Guraud Larose, St. Julien – Silky, delicate and perfumed. Really lovely with an almost caressing texture. Drink up now while it’s so pretty.

1961 Chateau Bouscaut, Graves (Pessac-Leognan now) – Just a beautiful old wine that is still showing a touch of fruit freshness amid all the coffee, porcini and spice. With that nice touch of that earthy minerality that defines Graves. Long and graceful.

1988 Petrus, Pomerol – Wine of the night. An elegant, graceful wonder. Svelte and incredibly long and complex. A wonderful wine.

1979 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, Pauillac – The definition of elegance. A perfectly proportioned wine. Subtly complex and endlessly interesting. As usual, a perfect Bordeaux.

1977 Taylor, Oporto – Will this wine ever mature? Still young, fruity, dark, sweet and powerful. Just plain great Port that will age forever.

Alice in Wonderland

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alicefeiring She’s a rabble rouser and contrarian who was tossed off the Robert Parker Forum. Sorry, I always get that wrong, I mean the Mark Squires Forum. Tried and convicted by Mr. Squires for the ultimate sin: asking questions - Alice Feiring is persona non grata at eRobertParker.com.

For those who have met Alice Feiring in person this image of her as someone who needs to be banned from Parker’s, crap, I mean Squire’s Forum is hard to reconcile with the reality of the woman herself.

Alice floats into a room like the dancer she is and like the wines she loves. Diminutive with an explosion of long, wavy red hair, she seduces all comers with an inviting mixture of confidence and shyness. Soon she charms her audience into actually listening to what she has to say, which is a lot. Alice’s delicate voice is one of the few beacons of light for wine producers dedicated to making wines of a place, or, as she calls them natural wines.

Wines that have a sense of place are an endangered species and Alice is out to prevent them from disappearing from the earth. Putting her natural shyness aside she has become a veritable Woman of La Mancha as she swings her sword at the corporate windmills of modern winemaking: cultured yeasts, new oak, over-ripe grapes and the long list of additives and manipulations available to today’s winemakers.

This Christmas there are few more important gifts that you could give your wine loving friends than Alice’s book, The Battle for Wine and Love or How I Saved the World from Parkerization. Alice’s voice may seem small compared to the bloated wines, points and writers at The Wine Spectator and The Wine Advocate, but her message is more meaningful and honest. With no other agenda than what she believes, Alice writes about wines made by the most passionate of winemakers for the most passionate of wine drinkers. While conformity of taste is the message of so many wine publications, Alice celebrates the diversity of the wine world.

Alice, like the wines she loves and the winemakers who make them, is not for everyone, but for those whose minds and palates are open to the experience she is the most important American wine writer I can think of as what she is fighting to preserve is so valuable.

It may be too late to save the world from Parkerization, but for those who care, through Alice’s looking glass they’ll discover a wonderland of wines.

Slow Learner

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dunce-cap I love the country wines of Italy, France and Spain. Unassuming, un-oaked, personality soaked bargains that make the most of simple meals. There are so many of these wines available for under $20 it is astounding – especially considering how weak the Dollar has been for the last few years.

It has been a national embarrassment for many, many years that American wine producers have been unable to produce anything of interest in the bargain basement. What could be our excuse on the climate blessed West Coast? There should be an ocean of great bargains. Instead all we can muster is a sea of cookie cutter, industrial wines with, at best, no personality or, at worst, an undrinkable gloppy-ness. Clean they are, but that’s it.

Being the slow learner that I am, I picked up a bottle of 2006 Petite Sirah from Vinum Cellars in Clarksburg.  I thought what the heck: Petite sirah? From Clarksburg? That could be good, a no-name variety from a no-name region. After all, why spoofulate up a Clarksburg petite sirah? Put me in the corner with a dunce cap. You’d think I’d learn. What did I get? A purple glop of something that barely resembled wine. Undrinkable and inexcusable – even at $12 a bottle.

As much as I hate to write about wines I don’t like and that it’s perhaps unfair to single out this wine when there are so many like it, it’s just such a waste to make purple glop from grapes that could give us good wine for everyday drinking.

The fact is that you rarely get decent American wine until you cross the $20 threshold. The choices under $20 seem to be purple grape marmalade glop and/or neutral corporate wine. By the by, often these types overlap.

So I have put myself in the corner with a dunce cap writing over and over again, “I will be good” and not buy American wines for everyday drinking. For some bizarre reason to get a decent inexpensive wine I have to find it from producers over 4,000 miles away.

Blowing Yet Another New Year’s Resolution

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fish in barrel I make the same New Year’s resolution year after year. That is to ignore The Wine Spectator Top 100 Wines of the Year. It’s too ridiculous to get worked up about. America is a country that lives on bad food so it’s a waste of energy to get upset about the absurdity that is their Top 100. What’s a little more bad taste.

Yet I always had this little fantasy of blind tasting The Wine Spectator editors on their Top 100. It would be all to easy as the results would be guaranteed to embarrass them. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

So every year I resolve to ignore this farce, but something always seems to remind me of its fundamental dishonesty. This year it was the Top 100 in the San Francisco Chronicle. The reason it’s so frustrating is that The Chronicle got is so right, while The Spectator gets it so wrong. The Chronicle has no absurd rankings or points, but only a list of their favorite wines of various varieties. In other words a logical and responsible point of view. Something in sharp contrast to the arbitrary Spectator rankings.

While we never may get the Spectator editors into the barrel so we can take pot shots at them, I guess it’s important to remember every year when The Wine Spectator’s Top 100 comes out that there is something fishy about it.

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Cheezy

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pizzacheezy As a unabashed lover of good pizza, I have often ranted about how hard it is to find a decent pizza in the United States. It’s much easier than it used to be, but it’s still tough. It’s odd that while pizza and Chinese restaurants may be the easiest to find, that it’s also harder to find good Chinese food and pizza than anything else.

What ruins most American pizzas is that we put much too much crap on the top. I guess that’s to be expected in a country where, as Bill Maher noted a few weeks ago, our favorite hamburger topping is another hamburger. We destroy pizza by putting two much cheese on it, which turns it into a mushy, stringy chewy glop. Oddly enough they usually put really bad cheese on pizza. It confuses me how adding more of something bad would make people think it was better.

We have the same problem with our wines, which we also bury under too much “cheese”. The cheese in this case is over-ripe, over-extracted and over-oaked. These things have the same impact on a wine that too much cheese has on a pizza. The once crisp crust is turned into mush.

I was reminded how bad most pizza is as, having moved this week, I was still without my pots and pans so I grabbed a carry-out pizza at Whole Foods. This was not a great pizza by any means, but it was a very good pizza and better than 99% of the pizza sold in this country. That the pizza at a grocery store is better than a pizzeria, whose specialty is pizza, is inexcusable. The crust was wonderfully crisp even though I took it home to eat. A bottle of wine I grabbed to go with it was also wonderfully crisp and unburdened by any “cheese”.  The Barbera Oltrepo Pavese from Cantine Pirovino is less than ten bucks and is mercifully non-vintaged, as more wines in this price range should be. It is young, fresh and bright with a wonderful bite of acidity that was just as crisp as the crust. I really enjoy simple, pretty wines such as this with simple, but delicious weekday fare. As with cheese, more is not always better.

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Southbound

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grapecrusherLast weekend I headed southbound down I-5, but it was no vacation. I was moving from the Willamette Valley to the Napa Valley. I was migrating from pinot noir to cabernet sauvignon. It was less than a ten hour drive, but it’s worlds apart.

Cabernet and pinot may both be wines, but they have little in common other than being red.  Cabernet’s backbone is tannin, while pinot’s is acidity - at least that’s what nature intended. The culture between the Willamette Valley and the Napa Valley is also a contrast. The hippie winemaking ashram of Oregon versus the corporate powerhouse of Napa. For me it is another step on a winemaking  journey: three vintages in Italy, three in Oregon and now on to Napa.

I’ve learned many things on this odyssey. First and foremost is that your palate is not a machine that can be calibrated, but something always in motion. Something that is influenced and defined by the wines you are drinking at the moment. After three years of drinking young nebbiolo, the the wines of Oregon seemed unstructured. After three years of Oregon pinot the wines of Napa seemed bombastic. Yet after a month of drinking them my palate has adjusted and opened so that I also appreciate their power and concentration. As in all art, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  The fashion today is to rank wines with an exactitude that is absurd, but true connoisseurs understand that it’s the full rainbow of diversity that makes wine such a compelling beverage.

Wine is a beautiful, creative thing that brings not only happiness, but health and invites us to sit back and appreciate life and each other. Those that define it by points deny this cultural and aesthetic beauty. Those that rank wines don’t give up their aesthetic distance when they taste. I do.

So this is my first week as a full time resident of Napa, a place I’ve visited many, many times over almost three decades. It’s a new start in familiar surroundings.  I hope regular readers will forgive the sporadic posts over the last two weeks during my move and transition into my new job, but now I’m back to the the blogging grindstone. I’ll not be commenting on California cabernet for obvious reasons, but will be increasing my commentary on exciting wines of America’s Northwest as I separate myself from day-to-day relationships with wineries there. As always you’ll find extensive commentary on the wines of Europe, which I love.

IMG_0043 Now you’ll find my professional attentions focused on Cornerstone Cellars, which produces two cabernet sauvignon wines, a Napa Valley and a Howell Mountain, crafted by an extraordinary winemaker, Celia Masyczek. So my blogging focus will be on everything but Napa Cab.

I became a wine professional in 1980. Now as I approach my 30th year immersed in all things wine and food I can only count my blessings. Most of all I treasure the diversity of taste that I have been privileged to experience. That experience has taught me to dig deep to understand the character of wine and those who make it. With the same passion I took on nebbiolo and pinot noir I now focus on cabernet sauvignon.

Appreciating each wine and wine region for both what it is and what it isn’t is what wine appreciation is all about. I’m about to truly appreciate the wines of the Napa Valley.

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