Dr Vino's wine blog

Spotted yesterday at a trade tasting: Bonny Doon’s labels are now baring all and putting a full “ingredient” list. This is not a legal requirement but more comprehensive labeling for wine is a subject that is in play. While more information on labels is a probably good thing, it would be helpful to have some context about some of lesser-known aspects of winemaking. But maybe that’s what the internet is for, researching things like wine ingredient lists. What do you think about more information on wine labels?

I asked Doonmaster Randall Grahm what prompted him to take this extra step. He said his reasoning was twofold. While admitting it was a little bit “pious” on his part, he said that he was doing it in part to encourage the industry to do more with less and to be more natural while “trumpeting our own virtue.” Further, he said that it is kind of an enforced discipline: “if you have to add it to the label, you think twice before doing anything.” He added, “It makes a better wine.”

Stay tuned for more with the Randall Grahm as I ask him about screwcaps and his new project!

In case you can’t read it from the blog-blurry photo of his 2008 Albarino (find this wine), here’s the text after the jump: Read more…

Red Truck, a high volume brand from California, has decided to roll out the barrel. Their new three liter bag-in-barrel wine will appear this month at Sam’s Clubs across the country. Their press release claims that this packaging is “convenient, eye-catching and environmentally-friendly…[and] a terrific wine value.” Let’s check the truthiness of these claims.

Convenient? Sure, it probably keeps the wine fresh for a month with the bladder and spigot.

Eye-catching? Yes, it looks better than a box, at least from the photos. Maybe in person it is nasty, plastic-y looking but for now, yes, eye-catching.

Environmentally friendly? [NOTE: because the Red Truck press representative misunderstood my query about the weight of the packaging, this portion has had to be altered.] In my joint research into the carbon footprint of wine, we found that lighter packaging can greatly reduce the overall carbon footprint of wine. This barrel puts 3,000g of wine in 250g of packaging, so it vastly improves the wine-to-packaging ratio over bottles. (The PR person had previously told me the weight of the whole barrel, full of wine, was the weight of the packaging alone. So even though I had to redo this part, she buttered me up by saying that my NYT op-ed had inspired their their 3L package.)

But the cylindrical casing still leaves more dead air in the truck so it’s not quite as efficient as the rectangular box. (That’s why watermelons are square, right?) The packaging is all #5 plastic, which some municipalities may recycle. The plastic bladder is #7.

Value? At $29.99, it’s the equivalent of $7.50 per bottle. Although it can be found for $6.99 a bottle, many retailers appear to have it for $8.99 a bottle. So, yes, some savings. But you should probably experiment with a bottle of it first to see if you like it.

While gesticulating fervently, Nicolas Joly addressed a packed room yesterday at the Return to Terroir event in New York City today. Although the tasting was going on in the next room, separated only by a thin curtain, the standing-room, rapt audience listened to Joly, a sort of evangelist for Biodynamics who makes wine at the Coulée de Serrant in the Loire (search for Coulée wines).

What follows are some excerpts from his talk. It’s not a verbatim transcript insofar as every word he said is included (I got lost about the relative benefits of having manure from horses, cows, AND pigs, for example). But while he was talking, I was typing his words as he said them. So without further ado, take it away Monsieur Joly:

What is an appellation controllée? Ideally, it is a type of soil and a match of vines. If you have been putting these vines in the right spot, you have an originality.

How much of the concept of the appellation controllée is left? Unfortunately, very little. The so-called modern farming with weed killers destroys the microorganisms of the soil. Read more…

Have you ever tried to return beer bottles for a deposit in New York State? I have and it ain’t pretty. The last time I did it, I brought 12 bottles in to the supermarket and left after much grinding and crashing in the machine with six bottles and a receipt for a 20 cent credit. Woohoo! It made me want to drive to Michigan for their ten cent deposit a la Seinfeld!

Bottle or container deposits are a hot topic now. Eleven states require some sort of deposit, mostly on beer and carbonated soft drinks. But former New York Governor Spitzer and now Governor Paterson have now proposed a “bigger better bottle bill,” which would expand the five cent deposit system to single serving sport drinks and water. The goal of this policy proposal is to increase recycling–as well as revenues to the state.

I was not surprised to learn after my experience that there’s a lot of deposit money that is not collected. In fact, it was $100 million last year. But I was astounded to learn that that uncollected deposit money goes to distributors of beer and soda, not the state. Shocking! In the new legislation, these funds would go specifically to New York’s Environmental Protection Fund.

It’s funny that wine bottles have not been included in a bottle bill in New York. They aren’t included in Oregon either, which enacted the first container deposit laws in 1971. But reforms are afoot in Oregon, where many single-serve, noncarbonated beverages now have a deposit as of January 1 of this year. Further, a task force has just recommended adding all beverages except for milk by 2013. HB 2184 proposes changes to the bottle bill based on these recommendations and is scheduled for a hearing on Thursday.

What do you think: should wine bottles also have a deposit? As the program currently stands in New York, I don’t think so. Five cents might have been enough when the program was first enacted but now it would just be another tax, not an incentive to return any bottles. And the redemption process for beer is not very effective since not every store accepts bottles from every brand. Further, wine is mostly consumed at home or restaurants/bars, which tends to lead to high levels of recycling. Unless we all start drinking wine in the park, that is.

Christine Saahs of Nikolaihof was the first to apply Rudolph Steiner’s philosophy to viticulture, thus cultivating her vines in Austria’s Wachau region biodynamically. The Im Weingebirge Smaragd bottling is always one of my favorite gruner veltliners and indeed the 2006 I tasted had great, rich intensity and a long minerally finish. The 2007 Hefeabzug for half the price offered great zip and zest overlain on a mineral core. Nikolaihof also makes several very good Rieslings. I was happy to have the chance to chat about three things during a busy trade tasting on Tuesday.

How was the 2008 vintage for you?
For the biodynamic growers it was fabulous. There was a lot of rain; it rained every day for three months. But it wasn’t often a heavy rain and the leaves were just wet, which caused fungus problems for many growers. But we are so happy with the quality of our wines and harvested our Smaragd in the third week of September, earlier than many others. For us, the vintage was less quantity but great quality.

Describing her Gruner Veltliner “Hefeabzug” (about $25; find this wine):
It’s such a refreshing aperitif. The wine has such energy that customers say they can’t sleep after a glass. It’s much better than anything from the pharmacy–it’s a natural energy drink!

Is Austrian Riesling too high in alcohol? [Hers are 12.5%]
No Austria is one of the best places for Riesling in the world. Rising alcohol is not a problem of global warming; it is a problem of wine journalists who give high scores to high alcohol wines. Customers are always asking me for low alcohol wines because they want to be fresh after a bottle. Have a bottle of 14.5% alcohol wine and you’re dead! Well, not you because you are young, but me, I’d be dead!

As a side note, Christine told me she doesn’t say “cheese” for photos; she says Riesling!

We all know bigger is better. No, not that way; get your mind out of the gutter. When it comes to wine, the reason is at least twofold. First, a bigger bottle has a lower carbon footprint per ounce of wine because there’s a more favorable wine to packaging ratio. Second, more wine!

I’m not sure how important the first of these two reasons is for wine consumers but the second is one of those things that everybody can agree is a good thing.

And so they have. Jonathan Schwartz, the hirsute portfolio manager of Terry Theise wines for distributor Michael Skurnik, says that sales of his five one-liter Gruner Veltliners from Austria have been zooming. “Restaurants like them because it’s an extra glass and a half per bottle for wine-by-the-glass pours. Wine shop customers like them because it’s a glass and a half more wine.” (A standard bottle has 750 ml.)

He said that people are interested in the closure too, which on the Hofer and the Berger, the two best selling of the wines, is a crown cap (think: beer).

So which is better? I tasted them at the Skurnik tasting today. Both are simple versions of Gruner Veltliner, clean and zesty with a minerally verve. The 08 Berger (about $11; find the 2007 or the 2008) is slightly softer and the 08 Hofer slightly more tart (about $11; find the 2007 or the 2008). The wines are both an easy extension for people who love pinot grigio but are looking for something new. Hofer is made biodynamically, which goes to show that biodynamics and low price are not antithetical to each other. Berger is practicing organic. Gru Vee.

Events have conspired, the plot has thickened and now I call on you to say “non” to only one-third of Beaujolais Nouveau this year!

As you may recall, last week I asked you to ditch Beajolais Nouveau this year because of the high carbon footprint of the wine. The rush to bring this proto-wine to the world’s shops on the same day, November 20 this year, means that airfreight is commonly used, increasing the greenhouse gas emissions of the wine by at least fourfold for New York and many times more to places like San Francisco, Santiago, and Tokyo.

Word floated in to the Dr. Vino tower that major changes were afoot this year in Beaujolais with this year’s Nouveau. So I picked up the phone and called France (at the low rate of 2.3 cents per minute). First up, I spoke with Inter Beaujolais, a regional trade authority, where I learned that Beaujolais Nouveau last year had a volume of about 48 million bottles, about a third of the region’s production. Further, the Nouveau for EU destinations is not permitted to leave the region until November 13 this year, giving it a week to get places like Amsterdam and Athens. But non-EU destinations were given a special extra week this year and could leave the EU on November 6. Could it really get to store shelves in New York City by November 20?

To find out I called Georges Duboeuf, the largest shipper of Beaujolais Nouveau with around three-quarters of the Beaujolais Nouveau market. Read more…

We often talk about those impossible food wine pairings; here are three improbable food wine pairings that I had recently that worked.

Food: sauteed green lentils
Wine: Ocone aglianico 2003 (about $15; find this wine)
Every year at about this time we make a lentil minestrone that is so good that it has even gotten approving nods and slurps from carnivores. But it takes a lot of time, ingredients and three pots. This quick version uses the same green French lentils but is a lot easier with just some onion and garlic and a quick boil all in one pan. The result is dish rich in earthiness and umami. The biodynamically grown Ocone aglianico (about $13; find this wine) really picked up on it and registered one of those desired pairings that improved both the food and the wine.

Food: Trader Joe’s Dal mahkani
Wine: Drouhin, Laforet, Bourgogne rouge (about $13; find this wine)
We’ve talked about Indian food before; in fact, we’ve even talked about Trader Joe’s Indian before! And while pinot noir under $25 is pretty rough terrain without terroir, pinot noir under $15 mostly something straight out of Fear Factor. But this, the lowliest Drouhin made, would surely outclass most pinot sold by the glass. To my surprise, the lightness of the red really worked with the dal!

Food: homemade vegetarian chili
Wine: Albert Mann, pinot blanc, Alsace 2007 (about $16; find this wine)
I uncorked a Bandol red with six years of age on it that I thought might work with vegetarian chili; it didn’t. The tannins on this mourvedre were still too huge and the fruit was miserly. But I shifted gears and tried this biodynamically grown pinot blanc that was at the bottom of the Dr. Vino cave and it was a great match! Full and rich, but with a good accompanying zip, pinot blanc balanced the spiciness of the chili. The only complaint from the guests on this one was that it was too easy to drink.

Crises–they’re everywhere, not just the financial markets. In France, the low-end producers have been in crisis for some time with adjustments in global demand and European policy. And for appellation wines, theoretically high-end of the quality pyramid in France, the crisis is that the system is now approving bad wines while squeezing out producers who dare to be different. I explore these issues in my book, Wine Politics, and Mike Steinberger offered his own recent broadside against the AOC system in discussing the celebrated case of Jean-Paul Brun’s 2007 Beaujolais. In a nutshell, the wine tastes great and was denied the appellation while truckloads of insipid wines were given the green light since they were deemed “typical” in an AOC taste test.

In a series of posts, I’ll be exploring some of the producers who have decided for whatever reason to make their quality wine outside of the appellation system in France.

And one of my favorite such producers is the super-naturalista and heirloom grape cultivator Thierry Puzelat in the Loire. I’ve been reluctant sometimes to pour wines made from the hipster grape variety to an audience of non-wine geeks. But I poured his Pineau d’Aunis (about $20; where to buy?), at a recent at a recent event in Chicago but it rocked the house.

But the wine for today is La Guerrerie (about $20; where to buy?). Since it is bottled as the lowly administrative category vin de table, it can’t state grape, place nor vintage. Thus it is simply La Guerrerie, which I thought was some sort of cheeky name riffing on “war” (la guerre) for the struggle with the authorities. But it is not so. I queried the wine’s US importer, Joe Dressner, who replied:

Guerrerie is a site, about 68.37% Côt [malbec] and 31.18% Gamay. Folklore has it that the spot was where the ancient gangs of the area used to rumble, or something like that. But no one is certain. Nevertheless, that is the name of the plot on the map. It doesn’t have the AOC because the wine took a long time to finish and it was not in a tastable form when the AOCs were evaluated.

The wine, with only a dash of sulfur added before bottling, is dark in color with great aromatics, particularly a grind of pepper. The wine has some fruit, lively acidity and a fun level of tannins that make it substantial and extremely rewarding–a perfect red for fall weather since it’s got more heft than a straight gamay but not as much as, say, a barrel-aged cabernet.

For more on the Puzelat brothers, including photos and why he has to maintain to wine making facilities 50 years apart, check out a very thorough post on Bertrand’s Wine Terroirs. And don’t forget how well Thierry Puzelat did as the Cinderella in Wine Madness!