Singing the ABCs of Wine
The columnists’ updated glossary swaps Parker for Dr. Vino and Vayniacs; why there are 27 entries

It was very nice of them to give Dr. Vino a shout out! (Click through for their full comments.) And to hold up my book A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season in the accompanying video! Check out their glossary for other fun wine terms, such as Xinomavro and Zweigelt (also good in Scrabble).

And while you’re there, be sure to Vote Vino! Yes we can!

The past year has been a great year and I thank you for your participation in making this blog lots of fun. Looking forward another year of wine talk that goes down easy!

Instead of traversing the familiar terrain of regions or grape varieties, I forge a new path by plotting a seasonal arc for wine consumption. This ties in to the way that I enjoy wine, by emphasizing the context of how, where, when (and with what and with whom) we drink wines, as well as linking to the trend of seasonal cooking that is so prevalent today among professional chefs and home cooks. I’m glad that this theme resonated with so many of you in our previous discussion.

The book has short essays and hundreds of wine recommendations across the twelve months of the year. There should be something for wine lovers of all levels, newbie to full-on wine geek. There’s also some information for all seasons about wine style, wine service and how to actually find good wines near you. And twelve wine travel sections help you even change your context for maximum wine enjoyment.

Alex Eben Meyer contributed the great illustrations. Check out his excellent portfolio at his site!

And a total of thirteen sommeliers lent their thoughts to the volume. They include: Richard Betts (The Little Nell, Aspen, CO); Shayn Bjornholm MS (Washington Wine Commission); Thomas Carter (Blue Hill Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills, NY); Belinda Chang (The Modern, NYC); Christie Dufault (Quince, SF); Erik Liedholm (Seastar, Seattle); Rajat Parr (Michael Mina Group, SF); Shelley Lindgren (A16 restaurant, SF); Roger Morlock (Park Avenue Seasons, NY); Virginia Philip, MS (The Breakers, Palm Beach); Tysan Pierce (The Herbfarm, Woodinville, WA); Juliette Pope (Gramercy Tavern, NYC).

So check out the book’s page over at Amazon (or Barnes and Noble or Powell’s if you prefer) and see what Kermit Lynch, Eric Arnold, David Lynch, and Bobby Abreu had to say on the back cover. Or ask for the hardcover at your local bookstore and check it out in print. And if you do get it, let us know what you think of it here!

The book is called A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season. In it, a collection of essays and hundreds of wine recommendations, I encourage readers to break out of their chardonnay or cabernet rut and drink different by plotting a seasonal arc to their wine consumption. Simon Spotlight Entertainment, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will publish the book, available November 11 at a retailer near you or on Amazon.

Epicurious flagged it on their short list of books for “thirsty readers” this fall.

If you like this blog, you will love this book! Why? Because I sold the book based on this blog. But since you readers were not there in the book to post comments, I recruited 13 of America’s leading sommeliers to lend their voices to the book with their thoughts on seasonal drinking and perfect pairings.

I’ve just received some finished copies of the book and have three to sign and give away! All you have to do to qualify is post a comment on this posting saying which is your favorite season for drinking wine. And while “all” is certainly an acceptable answer, maybe there’s one that brings particular pleasure to you.

Comments will close on Thursday and Friday I’ll throw all the commenters’ names in a hat and draw three names. So check back then to see if you are among the winners!

See the listing for A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season on Amazon.

Beaujolais Nouveau is a travesty on at least two levels, one gustatory and one environmental. The grapes for this proto-wine were harvested only three months prior to the airdrop. In some years, they are not ripe enough and need to have their alcohol levels boosted by sugar. And most of the Nouveau is made with machine-harvested grapes carbonic maceration, commercial yeast strains and enzymes to give it a confected taste. Don’t get me wrong: I think gamay is one of the most food-friendly red grapes and a great value but mostly when it hails from one of the smaller subzones of Beaujolais.

Regulations prohibit the bottling of the wine more than one week before the arbitrary date, when signs all around the world used to proclaim triumphantly “le Beauolais noveau est arrivé” (the Beaujolais nouveau has arrived!”) Now, the dreadful slogan is “It’s Beaujolais nouveau time!” which sounds perilously close to a rip off of a Miller ad.

The short allowable time between bottling and release sets off a global sprint to transport the wine as far afield as Tokyo, San Francisco and Santiago. This has involved motorcycles, trucks, helicopters, regular jet planes and even, in a previous era, the Concorde!

As my research on the carbon footprint of wine has shown, airfreight is hardly the best way to transport any wine even if it were good. A bottle of Georges Duboeuf flown to New York has four times the carbon footprint than if it were sent by ship.

But the idea of a global wine celebration on the third Thursday of November is too appealing to ignore. So let’s ride on the coattails (jetstream?) of this global wine celebration but raise a glass of local wine instead. Wine is now grown in all 50 states and many of us who don’t live on the West Coast overlook our local producers. And many of those wines are likely to go well with the Thanksgiving repast.

So say no to Nouveau and join me in raising a glass of local wine this November 20! Do it for the polar bears.

See the UPDATE to this post.

Overall, I’m disappointed with the quality of box wine here in the U.S. But the time for good box wine has come for environmental as well as economic reasons as I argue in the piece.

There are some rays of hope in the box wine landscape. Unfortunately, the $40, 3-liter D-Tour wine, made by Dominique Lafon of Burgundy and imported by Daniel Johnnes, wine director at Daniel Boulud’s restaurants, has been temporarily withdrawn from the market (search for this wine). However, the Cuvee de Pena, an old vine grenache from the French side of the Pyrenees, is still available (find this wine). And the newest and brightest star is the $11 unoaked, organically grown malbec called Yellow + Blue sold in a 1-liter TetraPak (not bag-in-box; find this wine). There’s also the Bandit from California (find this wine).

So what do you say about boxed wine? Have your say in the latest poll! And hit the comments with your preferred box selections.

poll now closed

Related: “Drink outside the box” NYT
“An open letter to Jorge Ordonez” [Dr. V]
“How I gave up bottled water and lived to tell the tale” [Dr. V]
Drinking box rosé in the south of France
The excellent image is by Grady McFerrin and ran with the story.

The interesting lineup of speakers includes New York winemakers such as Eric Fry and Thomas Laszlo, NYC somm/wine soothsayer Paul Grieco, and winemakers from Friuli Venezia-Giulia, the Rheingau, Rías Baixas, The Loire, Bordeaux, and Santa Rita Hills. Check the site for the full line-up.

There will also be a tasting on Tuesday night with wines from 75 wineries and it’s possible to just attend this portion of the two day festivities. The whole event will be a good opportunity to taste the NY wines compared to other wines and discuss potential directions for New York wines. If I were in town, I’d be there!

August 5 & 6, SUNY Stony Brook Southampton.

I also contributed a story on “innovations in wine retail,” which came out well on a two-page spread, complete with time line.

But if you can’t wait to get two the newsstand, you can take a sneak peak at two of the revolutionaries on the Wine & Spirits website. Paul Grieco of Terroir and Hearth in NYC (see our Q&A with Paul) interviews internet retailer phenom Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library. Then they turn the tables and Gary interviews Paul. No swirling or spitting in the video–and no Jets dump bucket.

Yes, my beat is not only wine but also cocktails. This will take me first to a pre-show on the red carpet (which doesn’t show wine stains!). Then into the awards with breaking coverage (not glasses) of winners. Then on to the dinner where I’ve been assigned to the VIP section where I’ll have to ask co-host and “Sex and the City” star Kim Cattrall if she only likes pinot from magnum. Daniel Johnnes (wine director at all of Daniel Boulud’s restaurants) will be heading a team of sommeliers pouring during the dinner. I’m even covering a cocktail lounge there so I’ll see what’s shaking–and what’s straight up.

It won’t be on this site, sadly, so surf on over to the official site on Sunday starting at 6 PM. Available now, you can see a list of the nominees, including wine and spirits books, best wine service and wine & spirits professional of the year. What do you think is Kim Cattrall’s favorite wine? I’ll have to ask her.

In a story this morning on “Marketplace” from American Public Radio (on NPR), the “dulcet tones” (as a reader wrote in) of Dr. Vino contributed a couple of quick comments to a story the decline of tobacco and the rise of Kentucky wine.

Listen here.

OK, not from him personally. But the editor at the newly reborn TRUMP magazine. I contributed two wine stories to the current issue, which, as you can see, does NOT have The Donald on the cover! Take that, Oprah!

Although I originally took the assignment to satisfy my inner bling, I actually wrote a story about (wine) travel in the Loire based on our family vacation last summer, tasting wines at the legendary Domaine Huet and storming some of the castles. The other story is about Crushpad, a custom winery in downtown San Francisco.

You can pick up a copy of the magazine at any Trump property, or city with a Trump property such as New York City, Chicago, Palm Beach, Dubai and Atlantic City.

Anyway, I’ve taken the plunge on three social networking sites. Be my friend, follow me, or whatever their jargon is. Here are the sites:

1. Twitter. Be my friend. I can’t decide if this is a revolution in micro-blogging or a complete waste of time. So far I’ve learned various things such as: one woman was PMSing, another guy hates his job, another guy just finished 18 holes of golf, somebody else is at the farmers’ market (BREAKING!), and yet another guy is pinging his DNS server or some such. I have revealed trivialities as well such as my confusion thinking New York State cider was different from mere apple juice. OK, I’m probably not doing the best sales pitch and, indeed, I’m kind of undecided about the whole thing. Be my friend and convince me of its virtues! One beauty of Twitter is obvious since all postings are limited to 140 characters: Blowhards not allowed.

2. StumbleUpon. Be my friend. SU is sort of the Russian roulette of web surfing–except without the guns and death. Sign up for it, select some preferences, and SU generates new websites for you to explore at random every time you click “Stumble!” Or you can explore what your friends like, which may be safer and more rewarding.

3. Open Wine Consortium. Be my friend. OK, not as catchy a name as Facebook. But it is like a Facebook for wine geeks. Post comments on your friends’ walls and join the various networks to discuss aspects of wine, particularly issues of interest to wine bloggers and those in the trade. There was even a brief discussion (now, oddly, closed) about the logistics of a possible wine bloggers conference later this year. Join the fray.

But Mrs. Vino’s (re)productivity doesn’t stop with babies. The fifth book in her series of children’s books has just been published: Eco Babies Wear Green. Just in time for Earth Day!

I have the very good fortune of having two wine books coming out this year! The first, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink will be published on July 1 by the University of California Press. In it, I trace the story of wine in France and America through the lens of wine politics–struggles against nature and society, where lines get drawn, how wines get made. Man versus man, man versus nature all that good stuff. There’s even a part where Britney goes crazy and shaves her head–oh wait, that’s not in there but I thought I’d mention it here in an effort to sell more copies.

Above you can see the cover art in all of its glory! I’d venture to say that I have the first ever wine book cover to be graced by a bottle in a brown paper bag. Covers matter, obviously, since buyers often judge books by them–and especially now since Borders will be displaying more of them face out.

There was a great essay in the Times on why it takes so long to get a book on the shelves if you’re not familiar with the book publishing process. One peril discussed in that article is having a book come out in the second half of a presidential election year. Even though it’s not a wine drinker’s guide to politics, it’s perhaps fortunate for me that this book on wine politics also happens to be coming out in a presidential election year!

The second book is the one that I finished writing last month when I gave you a head fake and said I was going to take a break from blogging and then didn’t. More details to follow on this one. But since the first book won’t tell you which wine to have with dinner the second one will–and more!–since it is Dr. Vino’s Guide to Wine. The publisher on that one is Simon & Schuster. It’s due out in November.

Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink (Amazon; UC Press)

Last year, a study of the carbon cost of the global wine trade found that it is actually more “green” for New Yorkers to drink wine from Bordeaux, which is shipped by sea, than wine from California, sent by truck. That is largely because shipping wine is mostly shipping glass. The study found that “the efficiencies of shipping drive a ‘green line’ all the way to Columbus, Ohio, the point where a wine from Bordeaux and Napa has the same carbon intensity.”

It’s good the research is getting out there! The WSJ blog Environmental Capital also mentioned it here and the New York based authors were delighted to raise a glass of Bordeaux to the finding. Foreign Policy also mentioned it in passing this time around but actually did mention it before.

Anyway, if this has made you thirsty for more on the topic, check out a summary of our research findings, my op-ed in the NYT suggesting a local drink, and be sure to come to the March 18 free talk and tasting benefiting The Nature Conservancy! Hope to see you there!