Dr Vino’s wine blog

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SIPPED: Sauternes
Chicago’s foie gras ban has been repealed in a 37 - 6 vote by the City Council, overturning the 48 - 1 vote that put the ban into effect five years ago. The prices of Sauternes, the unctuous sweet wine often served as an accompaniment, just went up an additional ten percent. [Sun Times, thanks Stephen!]

SIPPED: Cork back for an encork
When a member of the Culinary Institute of American saw my cork iPhone case in February, she exclaimed that they had just found the perfect product for recycling their corks. But apparently someone had other plans as the 900 corks pulled there a day will now be recycled in a new program called ReCORK America, sponsored by a cork producer to underscore the “natural” qualities of cork. But what is the carbon footprint of sending all that cork into be recycled into floor tile (and sidebars for wine blogs). Wouldn’t the CIA be better reusing them as festive holiday wreaths–or those iPhone covers?!?

SPIT: Critter labels
On the heels of our worst wine label contest comes more advice, this time from Wines & Vines. One item: a label designer Down Under has a “no critters” policy after seeing the kangaroo reinvented some “50,000 times.” [Wines & Vines] Related: ”

SPIT: Brunello di Montalcino
Not content with the FAA’s Global War On Toiletries, US federal authorities are now turning their eyes on another liquid: Brunello di Montalcino! A recent scandal has revealed blending in of grapes other than sangiovese, the only one permissible under the local DOC rules. Now, as a result, the feds are threatening to block US imports of the pricey Italian wine as of June 9. “Part of our mandate is to make sure all labels are truthful, accurate and not misleading to the American consumer,’’ Mr. Resnick of the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau told Eric Asimov of the Times. Um, OK, how about starting with Korbel “California Champagne”? [NYT]

SPIT: asparagus in December
In a piece that, oddly, has not received much attention here in the US of A, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey–known for his high-end restaurants in several countries as well as cursing like, well, a chef–lays into out-of season like nobody’s bidness calling for it to be outlawed in the UK. While absolutely laudable in principal, the legislative angle may be the wrong way to achieve this policy goal. And let’s hope eating local in his case doesn’t mean eating any more horse! [BBC]

SIPPED: Wine into water
Wine & Spirits magazine will be holding two public tastings in Los Angeles and Seattle that sound like fun with good people and good wines. Since I gave up bottled water for thirty days and lived to tell the tale, I like the cause: “part of the proceeds will go to local water conservation organizations.” [Wine & Spirits Hotpicks]
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Thank you for your submissions in the worst wine label contest! Here we have it: the finalists!

I recruited two judges to help whittle down the field to five labels and they are now available for your voting after the jump. But first, the judges: Steve De Long, known to many for his fine aesthetic work on the various products at De Long Wine Company; and Guillaume Jourdan, a partner at Vitabella, a PR and marketing firm in Paris who has consulted wineries on improving their labels. Since he’s foreign, I guess he’ll be our Simon Cowell. To the voting! Read more…

Rob Rosania, a 38 year-old collector aka “Big Boy,” sold off around $5 million of his champagne and still wines at auction a couple of weeks ago. And yet he still remains one of the biggest collectors of champagne around.

This factoid from a recent Bloomberg article piqued my interest: Rosania owns 400 cases of the excellent champagne Salon 1996 (minus the five he sold at auction) out of a total of 5,000 produced. Poking around on the web revealed other sources saying that there were 8,000 cases produced. And these are six-bottle cases that we’re talking about. The champagne retails for $250 - $300 (search for the Salon 1996).

It’s a fascinating strategy for investing in wine. Rosania has somewhere between five and eight percent of this blue chip wine outstanding–and that percentage rises every time a cork of it is popped elsewhere. That’s probably a good percentage of the production to have to really benefit from a future price move yet not control the market entirely. It would be hard to take an equivalent percentage of a first growth Bordeaux wine since the production volumes are higher. All it takes is a big cellar and a cool $700k or so.

Even if the economy stagnates, wine such as this will probably always have buyers. Could it double in value in ten years? Even if it doesn’t Rosania can always have fun popping open the bottles of this fine wine with his saber.

I’ve tried a tasting-sized-pour of the 96 Salon and it is a brilliant champagne. In a wine investing video game, I might be tempted to adopt a similar strategy. If, in some fantasy world, you were going to take ten percent of a wine, which would it be?

The always erudite Eric Felten bemoans the Mimosa, “the official semi-alcoholic drink of brunch” as “an ordeal.” True enough because of OJ from a carton and cheap, off-dry bubbly. Then he spells out his recipe for success with the drink: freshly squeezed orange juice and good dry champagne.

In my limited cocktail making, I have come to learn that the fresher and better the ingredients, the better the cocktail. But I’ve also learned that there really aren’t that many great wine cocktails. While I agree in principal with Eric’s suggestion for the Mimosa makeover (though his suggestion of Veuve Clicquot is hardly the driest champagne around in these days of brut zero), I can’t bring myself to put OJ in my Bollinger (his second, and much better, champagne suggestion). If I have a fresh OJ and a glass of fine champange I’d rather enjoy them separately and never the twain shall meet. For me, it’s a nice dry cava or prosecco that is the best way to go with the fresh OJ in a Mimosa.

What do you say? Is the Mimosa where you’d put your Bollinger?

Image: istockphoto

The Trimbach Cuvee Frederic Emile is one of the world’s great white wines. And at $35, it’s also one of the world’s great white wine bargains.

I had the 2001 recently with a friend and loved it. I tried the 2002 at a tasting last week and found it higher in acidity and not quite as subtle as the 01, so I went out and bought some more of the 01. I’ve never had the top wine from the Alsatian producer, the $120 Clos Ste. Hune (find this wine), but one of my friends who has had it describes the “Freddy” as “more than half the wine at a quarter the price.”

Although I prefer German Riesling on the whole to the Alsatian versions, this Freddy has a German-like precision, alluring aromas of lime zest, lemon grass, wet rocks and a touch of honey, while the palate has excellent richness while remaining dry and a long finish. I’d like to try a version of this wine with some age on it so I’ve stashed away a few bottles for just that purpose. Next time I’ll try it with pan-seared scallops.

The wine is from grand cru vineyards but still seems to have a production size that means that it actually can be found. Search for it now before it is all gone.

Why write about this wine today? Why, it is for Wine Blogging Wednesday #45, with a theme of Old World Riesling that Tim Elliott selected. Surf on over to Tim’s site to see a roundup of which other Rieslings people chose to explore. And thanks for the one day grace period, Tim!

Eric Asimov has a great piece in today’s Times about all the sensory inputs of wine–and he’s not talking about blackberries, leather, and tar but rather what makes us buy and ultimately enjoy a given wine.

The piece summarizes recent research into wine purchasing decisions, particularly two studies that have made consumers appear to be easily influenced by price. Obviously many other factors go into what makes you buy a wine including what you’ve read about it, the place of origin, the grape, the producer, the importer, and perhaps the bottle design and label (if you’re new to this site, have your say in our worst wine label contest while submissions are still open!).

I’m a huge fan of context for wine enjoyment and thanks to Eric for quoting me in the story with this perspective. Sometimes context can even elevate a humble bottle of wine to make it an all-time favorite. I remember Frank Prial, previously wine critic for the Times, saying that the best bottle of wine he ever had was some crappy wine he drank enthusiastically right after returning from a tour in the Korean War. It wasn’t the wine so much as it was the fact that he was home.

It’s amazing how often learned wine folk cite humble bottles as their faves when the experience was really so much about the mood and the moment. How has context influenced a great wine experience of yours?

Maybe there should be 100 point moments rather than 100 point wines. There’s no price tag on that, after all.

Related: “Wine’s Pleasures: Are They All in Your Head? [NYT]
A reduced-sized crop of the image attributed to Lars Klove that accompanies that piece is reproduced here.

Robert Parker goes to China. It doesn’t quite have the same geopolitical impact as Nixon goes to China, but the magnitude for the wine world may be similar as Parker heads there later this month for the first time. Jancis Robinson stopped by earlier this year too. And two big auction houses have resumed wine auctions in Hong Kong this spring after a seven year drought. The removal of the wine tax in Hong Kong has driven a “thirst for top-level wines” in the city “is growing at an exponential rate,” according an auctioneer quoted in Bloomberg.

Apparently Asian buyers are getting much more wine savvy. It wasn’t long ago that they only bought wines with 100 point Parker scores, perhaps a sign of slavish following more than connoisseurship.

But now I am wondering if the locals are waking up to the joys of pairing Riesling with the cuisine. And the quality of German Riesling just keeps getting better and better. Perhaps they now have confidence to venture away from Bordeaux and cult Cali cabs.

Actually, since I am really getting into the sublime pleasure of German Riesling, dry and off-dry, young and mature, the thought of demand from Asia is something of a doomsday scenario for me. The last thing I need is to have investors pile in and run up the price in yet another category of wine!

TO: wine shop managers and their webmasters
FROM: Dr. Vino
RE: adding importer information to e-shops

I was surfing the sites of a few online wine retailers today looking for some specific imported wines when I should have been working. Some of the sites generated other imported wines suggestions that sounded good but I hadn’t heard of the producers. Since you already list tons of information about the wine including the producer, region, vintage, possibly grape variety, and a critic’s opinion, how hard would it be to add a field to list the importer as well? I, for one, would be more likely to throw a bottle in my virtual shopping cart if I knew it was from one of my favorite importers. If I am in a shop I can look at the back label, which provides that info, but not online…

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Site reader Sal sends in this query: “Can I submit an impossible food/wine pairing? How about Kim Chi? We’ve had it with Soju and it’s great but what if you like still wine (especially red)? Is a Kim Chi/wine pairing possible?”

Excellent question! Hit the comments with your thoughts. And in honor of Stephen Colbert’s rivalry with Korean pop sensation Rain to become the TIME most influential person of the year, as well as getting in the mood for an impossible food wine pairing, check out this hysterical video of Stephen singing in Korean.

We’ve all seen them–wine labels that are so ugly that they make us cringe or run to the next aisle in the shop out of horror.

So right here, on this blog, we’re going to “out” the worst wine labels you’ve ever seen. Channel your inner graphic designer and post a link in the comments or send me an image of a label that has rubbed you the wrong way by next Friday. Then our panel of experts (yes, perhaps more than just me) will review them and put a list of finalists for your vote.

Send images–even bad cameraphone images such as mine above–to tyler at drvino dot com and, if necessary, say why it rubs you the wrong way.