Dr Vino's wine blog

Bill Lavicka doesn’t lack ambition. The Chicago resident has made wine in his basement laundry room for 35 years, after all, dubbing it Chateau Chicago. But now he wants to make an estate wine.

Lavicka seeks to turn an 1860s building on Chicago’s south side into a winery. And he wants to plant 5,000 vines around it of Riesling and Concord grapes. Here’s a report of the terroir of 5700 South Lafayette St:

Standing at what would be the John Raber House’s front steps — they’ve been removed to stymie squatters — it’s difficult to imagine much anything of beauty rising there.

A chopped-in-half grocery cart and plastic bags have been thrown or have tumbled into the vacant lot across from the 5700 block of South Lafayette Street, while plywood, a tire, construction materials and garbage bags have been intentionally dumped in the home’s backyard.

At 2 o’clock is a carwash that Lavicka, who often says everything is worth saving, says isn’t worth saving. And at 1 o’clock, across the street from the carwash, is an unsightly scrap metal yard.

The project has support from the local alderman but soil samples have yet to reveal whether the site is “steeped in lead.” If successful, Lavicka would propel Chicago to join Paris, Vienna, Madrid and New York as big cities with some area under vine. Bonne chance! Video, after the jump. Read more…

With all the hype about the Bordeaux campaign to pre-selling their 2010 wines, it made me think: surely there are more affordable, just as age-worthy alternatives out there. Here are five current releases I would cellar for 15 years that will bring a whole lot of bang for much less buck:

Domaine Baudry, La Croix Boisée, 2008. Cabernet franc grown on limestone from a top grower in Chinon. And around $30 a bottle? I would sign up for a case faster than I would a 375ml of 2010 Lafite–and I’d probably save money if I did.

Clos de la Roilette, cuvée tardive, 2009: Granted, this wine is mighty hard to find now, but it is worth seeking out. A Fleurie from the edge of Moulin-a-Vent, this is more pinot-like than gamay, structure and elegance over fruit and ebullience. I have a case and plan to age at least half of it for a decade.

Napanook 2007 cabernet sauvignon: This wine’s list price is about $50 but I’ve seen it online as low as $35. Even though it is the “second” wine from the Dominus estate, it has the seductiveness of good cabernet. And the fact that it comes from the Napanook estate under the hand of Christian Moueix gives it a track record of success.

Produttori del Barbaresco, Barbaresco, 2006: This excellent nebbiolo can age (the 1978 is drinking well today, apparently). It sells for under $30.

Isole e Olena, Cepparello 2006, about $60: I had the chance to try this wine at a tasting last year and thought it was terrific. I don’t have a lot of experience with aging sangiovese, but if I were going to, this is where I’d start.

And, of course, for the prices Bordeaux futures are fetching, you could get plenty of Bordeaux with a decade or two of cellar age on them. There’s slightly more risk with the provenance, but the rewards come a lot sooner than pre-release Bordeaux since the pleasures of older wines can be had immediately. Or, as we recently discussed, there’s always Lopez de Heredia.

I was discussing this topic on email with a site reader who is a Spanish wine buff. He offers his suggestions from Spain after the jump. What are your suggestions for age-worthy alternatives ?

Search for these wines at retail Read more…

Calera’s back label passes the usefulness test!

Schmaltzy story, cheesy adjectives, mentions of “handcrafted“: none.

Vineyard data and winemaking info: bountiful.

What with Ridge Vineyards, Bonny Doon, and Calera putting lots of info on their labels, there must be something in the air of the Santa Cruz and Gavilan Mountains.

Francis Ford Coppola is pulling a daring business move: renaming his wine estate after a box wine.

Of course, for Inglenook, it wasn’t always that way. The property is one of the oldest in Napa Valley, founded in 1879, and its image was burnished in the middle of the twentieth century by John Daniel who produced some lauded cabernet sauvignons. But then it was tarnished as the brand became separated from the estate and winery and came to make and market wines such as “Burgundy,” “Chablis,” sangria and–wait for it–”Sunset Blush.”

So it is a challenge that the director of The Godfather has taken on, one that must hearken back to a black-and-white era, while encouraging consumers to forget the intervening decades of jugs, boxes and blush. Do you think he can do it? Do you care? Oh, and to signal his quality play, he also hired away the winemaker from Chateau Margaux (but he has not purchased the Napanook vineyard, which contributed to Inglenook in the 40s and 50s). I think that he could do it with lots of nostalgia marketing, but it will take decades to break the box/jug association. And, by then, we could see if the wines were worthy of John Daniel.

Fun fact: in 2009, WBM estimated Coppola made 900,000 cases of wine, making it the 17th biggest winery in the US.

Related: “Coppola makes leading wine expert a deal he can’t refuse” [Marketplace]

Donald Trump has purchased Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard in Virginia for the terroir, saying, “I’m really interested in good real estate.”

Er, wait. He added that he’s not so interested in wine. He continues: “This place had a $28 million mortgage on it, and I bought it for $6.2 million. It’s a Trump deal!”

In buying the the 776-acre property in Virginia at foreclosure auction, he has said “you’re hired” to the owners Patricia Kluge and her husband and will likely be keeping them on to run things, according to washingtonpost.com.

Will any of the one of the wines get re-branded “Comb-Over Cuvée” as the twitterati suggested? No such luck from the presidential hopeful (and teetotaler). “It’s only Trump. Everything is Trump!”

Remember the “Fill ‘er up” wine from a tank?

Sadly, there have been no US entrants to this space in the scant six months since we posted despite a lot of interest. However, the NY Times recently observed that the Community Tap in Greenville, SC (photo, above) is offering wine-to-go as wine “growlers” akin to the 64-oz refillable beer bottles. Fruit-forward wines may be fresher with a keg than some bottled wine closures but unlike some craft brewers, all craft wineries bottle their product so the benefits would mostly be environmental and cost-savings. I think a large part of the appeal is the value aspect thus the $16.99 for 32 ounce strikes me as high, even though it is the same price as a 750-ml (25-0z) bottle. Part of what drove the popularity of the post on self-serve tanks in French grocery stores was the rock bottom pricing, I think. Unfortunately, the various markups of the three-tier system make that an uphill struggle in the US (except, possibly, at wineries).

I tweeted about wine growlers in the US and the twitterati could not think of other bars or stores that yet to offer these. (Can you?) However, a few wineries do allow growler-type refills; the NPA in Sonoma offers wine in refillable “kleen kanteens.”

What’s the most appealing part of self-serve wine to you–environmental aspect or the cost savings?

Raj Parr is the wine director at Michael Mina’s restaurants and a partner at RN74, a Burgundy-centered restaurant in San Francisco. When RN74 opened a couple of years ago, Parr drew attention by saying that he wouldn’t carry pinot noirs or chardonnays over 14% alcohol.

So, as we mentioned earlier, it was interesting that Adam Lee of Siduri Wines (pictured, right, via Facebook) got up to a little skulduggery (as Jordan Mackay tweeted when it happened). The NYT details that at a recent panel discussion and tasting about balance in pinot noir, Lee presented a 13% and a 15% pinot noir of his to the audience. Parr apparently leaned over to Siduri and said that he’d like to purchase some of the 13% wine. Lee then told Parr that he had, in fact, steamed off the labels, so the wine that Parr had just requested to buy was the one over 15% alcohol. Ta-dah! With Parr’s permission, Lee told the audience what had transpired. (After speaking with someone who also attended, the audience wines appeared to be correct and untampered with.)

So, what to make of this? To me, dogma is the big loser here. Sure Parr got punk’d. But he has the confidence to immediately laugh off Lee’s ruse and let Lee share what transpired with the whole room. Further, even though Parr drew a line in the pile of pommace about alcohol levels a couple of years ago, based on a tasting with him last month, I’m inclined to believe that he’s not as dogmatic as the RN74 policy makes him seem.

What’s your take on what transpired?

“The Gadfly in the Pinot Noir” NYTimes.com

We did it! Congratulations, America! According to analysts Gomberg, Fredrikson, we are now the biggest wine consuming country in the world! USA! USA! (hat tip: winebusiness.com)

We’ve overcome challenges as a country. Even a scant four decades ago our parents had trouble finding good wine here. And our domestic wine industry, which makes about two-thirds of wines sold here today and is the fourth largest in the world, had yet to reach acclaim on the world stage. But now we put away more of the stuff than France and Italy despite the fact that we can’t easily buy wine via stores on the internet. Triumph over adversity, part deux!

What with a large domestic population, it’s understandable that we could do it. But we still need to work on that per capita consumption rate, where we’re currently below the likes of Ireland and Equatorial Guinea. So let’s raise a glass in honor of America!