Dr Vino’s wine blog

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How great it is
“2005 was my best vintage–until 2006.” Franz Pichler of FX Pichler in Austria told me at a tasting.

Why drink wine?
“Twenty five years ago people drank wine for three reasons: 1) allegedly because it made dinner better; 2) because it made the people at dinner better; and 3) to intimidate others. Now, the first two reasons are still valid but the third is to ensure you will have sex within six hours of drinking the wine.” –Josh Wesson, founder of Best Cellars, at a Vinexpo panel about “millennials” in New York yesterday.

All for one?
“It is a reasonably well-known fact that the largest buyer of classified growth Bordeaux…..with a heavy emphasis on FIRST GROWTHS, is the Asian chairman of a major…and I mean major company….of course all his activity is done through third/fourth/fifth party strawmen….and not one auction house or wine merchant would dare reveal the name(and they all know who it is)….purchases to the tune of 40-50 million dollars per year for about 4-5 years.” [Robert Parker, on his BB, ellipses in original]

Vodka, aka, diluted ethyl alcohol
“The European Union would define vodka simply as diluted ethyl alcohol, which is, of course, what it is. That suits members like Britain, the Netherlands, France and Austria, which wring “vodka” from anything from grape mush to sugar cane. The quotes are important here, because countries of the Vodka Belt around the Baltic Sea, which have distilled the stuff for centuries and produce two-thirds of the European Union’s vodka, insist their traditional use of grains and potatoes to make vodka should be enshrined in the definition. All else, they insist, is mere regional swill, and should be labeled as such.” [Serge Schmemann in the NYTimes]

Truth in labeling
“It might be disenchanting if the label also listed the chicken, fish, milk and wheat products that are often used to process wine.” Oh those? Not so much. But what’s this Mega Purple? [LA Times]