Mother Nature's Son
We think of wine as such a natural and beautiful thing. It’s an artisanal product that brings a connection to nature to all those that ponder and enjoy it. Wine is Mother Nature’s Son.
Unfortunately, only a few measly percentage points of total wine production has such idyllic origins. The vast majority of wines produced are soulless industrial products, which are appropriately sold and marketed by an equally heartless industrial system of distributors. This is the middle tier of the so called “three tier system. The executives of companies that mass produce these industrial wines and those that mass distribute them move from beverage industry to beverage industry seamlessly. It doesn’t matter if they’re producing or selling Coke, Rock Star, Budweiser, Gatorade or Rutherford Hill (all companies that they slip in and out of as they move up the ladder): boxes are boxes and their job is to move them. They accomplish their mission with ruthless efficiency.
It is these cool predators that control the means by which wines go from winemaker to consumer no matter the size of the production or quality of the wine. The billions of dollars they generate selling vodka, rum, tequila and mass wine brands fund one of the dirtier lobby groups out there, the W.S.W.A. They take their millions and buy politicians who deliver them legislation that gives them market franchises not unlike your local cable company enjoys and you know how well that goes.
As you might imagine, the needs of small wine producers and fine wine consumers are buried under this mountain of sleaze and political corruption as their small voices are not likely to be heard by politicians being wined/boozed and dined in sky boxes at big time sporting events.
The 2005 Supreme Court ruling that would supposedly finally allow small producers to ship directly to consumers throughout the nation was met with a great celebration by wineries. However, what seemed a blessing soon turned into a nightmare as state after state enacted restrictive legislation that finally made the situation even worse than the bad system it replaced. Funded primarily by liquor profits, large distributors and mass liquor/wine companies have used their muscle to make it more difficult than ever for some tiny winery up in the hills of California, Washington, Oregon or other state to ship a few cases a year to a consumer that loves their wine, but would find it impossible to buy in their own market. Mind you they could care less about such wines and wouldn’t bother to ever sell them, but their paranoia drives them to seek total control. As hard as it seems to believe, producers making millions of cases of wine and marketing them through ultra-sophisticated marketing systems perceive some guy with 5 acres of pinot noir, an old tractor and some used tanks in a ru
n down barn picking his grapes in the rain and cold as some kind of threat that must be crushed.
Through all of this mess there has been only one clear voice out here trying to protect the interests of consumers and small producers. That voice belongs to Tom Wark, who exposes these issues through his blog Fermentation and as director of The Speciality Wine Retailers Association. Anyone craving access to the wines of small, passionate winemakers should visit these sites and sign up for the SWRA newsletter. Like the muckraking journalists of the past, Wark is exposing the political corruption and under the table money that is preventing you from buying the wines you want without having to wait for some distributor decide for you what you should be drinking.
Fine wine and food may be Mother Nature’s sons and daughters, but there is nothing about the system that gets wines from producer to the consumer that’s natural.
Top Ten List
With the writer’s strike Letterman fans have been without a new top ten list for weeks. For them here is a Wine Camp top ten list.
Ten ways to tell if someone is not a wine terroir-ist (in no particular order):
- They purchase Veuve Cliquot
- They shop with The Wine Spectator top 100 list in hand at Chambers Street Wine Merchants
- They make a newbie post of their wine tasting notes complete with points on The Wine Therapy Forum
- They see Mark Squire’s point
- They subscribe to The Wine Enthusiast
- They think Eric Asimov is a wine-science fiction writer
- They have Yellow Tail Shiraz Reserve in their cellar
- They’re paranoid about the Wine Gestapo
- They confuse Mondovino with Mondo Cane
- They invite Alice Feiring to be the moderator at a horizontal tasting of Loring Pinot Noirs.
Some Required Reading
There is so much good wine writing and reporting going on these days that there are few excuses for anyone not to think for themselves when it comes to learning about wines. The best wine writers challenge you to think rather than tell you what to think. Best of all, it's all free. Here are some insightful examples from Lyle Fass and Thor Iverson, two writers always ready to challenge conventional wisdom:
Mary Baker
Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog: Bloggerview #14: Mary Baker
Sabbatical
Please excuse the short sabbatical. Writers sometimes need to take breaks to deal with real life. Starting next week, I’ll be back on a normal schedule. Thanks for your patience.
American Wine Blog Awards Finalist
It is particularly rewarding to me to have been singled out for the “Best Wine Blog Writing” award as it is the pleasure that writing brings me that led me to create Wine Camp in the first place. So vote now and vote often and my sincere thanks to those who nominated me and to the finalist selection committee for finding my work worthy of this honor.
The American Wine Blog Awards
Best Wine Blog
Best Winery Blog
Best Wine Podcast or Video Blog
Best Graphics on a Wine Blog
Best Review Wine Blog
Best Single Subject Wine Blog
Best Wine Blog Writing
The Burgundy Report
“1999 Michel Gay, Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er Serpentièrs - Medium-plus ruby-red. The nose is forward and deep but to my taste unfortunately pruney - though there is a core of red fruit. The wine is concentrated and well textured - there’s plenty of wine here, ripe and sweet but again there’s that rather blocky, pruney element here in the mid-palate, some raisin too. As said, there’s a lot of wine here, unfortunately I don’t like it very much… Rebuy - No”
From this pithy, straightforward prose you can tell here is someone both knowledgeable and passionate about Burgundy. If you’re into Burgundy and not subscribing to Bill Nanson’s Burgundy Report Blog you are out of the loop. Between the Burgundy Report and Allen Meadow’s Burghound there are no better resources for American consumers of Burgundy. What is amazing is that The Burgundy Report Blog is still free and connected to the another resource that is absolutely necessary for any Burgundy collector, The Burgundy Report Website.
It's Crush Time
The harvest is upon us, so forgive me if my posts are fewer over the next several weeks. Nature has blessed us with warm sunshine at harvest and a bumper crop of of beautiful grapes. That means we are harvesting as fast as we can, which makes our work days long, often starting at dawn and ending at midnight. What that means to my blog is that most of the time my hands are too sticky for the keyboard! Please follow my harvest updates on my Anne Amie Vineyards Cellar Blog. and, of course, I’ll be writing here as often as I can.
In addition to my duties in the cellar, I am the official harvest cook here at the winery. Each day I prepare lunch and dinner for our harvest cru of twelve. I relish this chance to play chef and feel that the meals we give the crew should reflect our goal of making great wine. My theory is that a well fed crew does better work and giving them real meals instead of sandwiches is just one more example of our dedication to quality in everything we do.
One of the benefits of my harvest season pre-dawn “commute” to work are the spectacular Oregon vistas as I pass over the top of Chehalem Mountain. Pictured above is Mt. St. Helens (right) and the Cascade Mountain Range as the sun just breaks.
There are few things more exciting or tiring than harvest at a winery. All of our hopes and worries during the year are concentrated into a few weeks and now we will see what Mother Nature gave us.
Sleaze and Wine
Tom clearly points out the evil in this organization by identifying the key personnel of the W.S.W.A. staff as former lobbyists of the National Rifle Association, Big Tobacco and Big Drugs. It’s hard to imagine a sleazier or more adept team and we should be afraid of them.
As many of you know, my real job is to produce and sell wine. Our wines are represented by distributors in nineteen states and not one of them belongs or has any interest in the W.S.W.A. - no wine distributor that really cares about the wines they sell is seriously involved with this organization primarily financed by vodka.
As a small wine producer, it would never occur to me to not work primarily with our distributor network. This has nothing to do with the mandated three tier system. I would work through our distributors anyway, as they do outstanding work on our behalf. They present our wines, educate consumers and trade on our philosophy and maintain an inventory of our wines to support their market. I would never consider not working with any distributor who does such fine work - with or without the three tier system.
So why is the W.S.W.A so paranoid? It’s because most of their members are incompetent when it comes to selling fine wine and only truly care about spirits - where the big bucks really are.
They should be afraid, because without three tier laws they would have no reason to exist for any fine wine producer.
Iron Wine Critic
I suggested American Wine Idol and now Dave Brookes of the Vinosense Blog is proposing The Iron Wine Critic. I think we have a whole new television season ready to go for wine buffs. Check out Dave’s pilot and his excellent blog at the link below.
American Wine Idol
The brouhaha over the botched attempt to recreate the Paris tasting of 1976, where Steve Spurrier pitted some California wines against some of France’s best and low-and-behold; the California wines won, shows how far we have sunk when it comes to appreciating wine. American bloggers are raging against what they see as the cowardly French, while ignoring the ego battles between the Americans.
We have finally reduced wine to a competition instead of a pleasure. Why not go all the way?
Fox Network should be working on what will be a hot new reality show: American Wine Idol. The formula is set already. You’ll need three celebrity judges just like the current American Idol show. I would propose the following three:
- For the sharp tongued Simon Cowell slot: Pierre Rovani
- For Paula Abdul’s role: Andrea Immer Robinson
- For the affable Randy Jackson’s spot: we’re still looking for the wine critic to fill this role
Then, just like the singers, you bring the winemakers out on stage, whose wines are then tasted and ripped apart on national television by our celebrity panel. At the end, the viewers vote on which winemakers are given the boot. Finally, the winning wine gets a national distribution deal as a wine by the glass at all the Four Seasons Hotels and a guaranteed 95 point or higher score in The Wine Spectator for the next five vintages.
This is the direction we are taking wine appreciation. While everyone is bemoaning the fact that this contest was not recreated, they should be really asking themselves if this is how they want wines to be judged?
While hearing that great gentleman of wine, Michael Broadbent, speak at a seminar last summer, I was particularly struck by one of his comments. He recounted a conversation with the owner of Chateau Haut Brion, who was complaining of how wines are rated these days. That gentleman noted that he made his wine to go with food; not Chateau Latour. It’s true, we have become more obsessed with how wines taste with other wines than how they taste with the food on our plates.
Wine, Funny?
Humor is often all to rare when it comes to the snobby (yes I too confess to wine snobbery) world of wine. Jeff Lefevere of The Good Grape Blog (link below), is doing us all a favor by mixing in some of his own cartoons into his wine blog. Below you’ll find one of his recent efforts and I recommend frequent visits to his blog to see his latest work. I hope to see some of his cartoons in some of our print media wine publications, but perhaps they take themselves too seriously or maybe just lack a sense of humor. Fortunately for us, Jeff does have a sense of humor.
Good Grape: A Wine Manifesto: New World.
The Forum is Back!
The Wine Camp Blog Forum is back up-and-running! You can access the forum with the link at the upper right of each page of Wine Camp. Thanks for your patience as I worked out a few technical issues.