Dr Vino’s wine blog

First time here? Check out the "site highlights," send in a question, subscribe to the latest posts by RSS, daily email, or free monthly updates by email (right sidebar). Thanks for visiting!

SPIT: wine ice cream!
Move over Cherry Garcia, here comes pinot noir ice cream! Well, assuming you’re over 21. Yes, the New York legislature passed a law preventing minors from getting their hands on the stuff since two gallons of the ice cream contains as much alcohol as one glass of wine according to one producer. Can’t be too careful, New York!

SIPPED: wine and war
Faced with budget cuts for veterans, the fabled French Foreign Legion has gotten into the wine biz to raise funds from the sale of a wine called “Esprit de Corps.” An officer who overseas the property had this tasting note for the wine: “Strong when attacked, solid on the onslaught, full of grapeshot on the frontline.” [AFP]

SPIT: tasting notes!
“From now on, wine drinkers, you get to mention three things you smell in a wine, max. Then you have to tell me something more interesting.” I guess he’d like the note for the “Esprit de Corps.” [Chicago Tribune, thanks, Stephen!]

SPIT: liquid soap!
A restaurant in New Zealand mistakenly served dishwashing soap to two customers thinking it was mulled wine. Courts awarded the stricken customers $752 each for their emotional harm. [AP News, thanks, Casey!]

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Chicago’s foie gras ban has been repealed in a 37 - 6 vote by the City Council, overturning the 48 - 1 vote that put the ban into effect two years ago.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 it would be 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 of grapes other than sangiovese, the only one permissible under the local DOC rules in the wine. 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. 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 Ramsay–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 secondary cause too: $5 of each ticket will go to local water conservation organizations. [Wine & Spirits Hotpicks]
(image 1)

Here are five stories from the past week. Which one was the April Fool’s story?

* Ribera Del Duero “opens minds” with wine aimed at gay community

* Robert Parker to be immortalized on film; played by Javier Bardem

SPIT: Food and wine gone awry
Cabernet and wedding cake, Cabernet and mac n cheese, pulled pork and Burgundy - great comments, and they’re yours! Check out all of the great and wonderful food pairings that knocked your world.

SPIT: the hippocampus!
Wine drinkers have a 10 percent smaller hippocampus than those who drink spirits or beer, researchers say! But I thought “Red wine antioxidants protect hippocampal neurons against ethanol-induced damage“! Ugh, my brain hurts.

SPIT: Chinese wine!
“Millions of Chinese will be disappointed by their first taste of wine” is Jancis Robinson’s assessment of home-grown wines in China. Reporting on a recent trip, she, too, was “disappointed” by the “chemical and occasionally rotten odours” in the wines and general lack of progress with the industry over the past five years. [FT]

SIPPED: Holy wine
In Manchester they may go for Fairtrade wine, but Craig Heffley and Seth Gross of Wine Authorities, a wine retailer in Durham, NC, have another goal in mind for the Duke Chapel: tasty. They plan to start selling a 3L bag-in-box next summer for use in the Eucharist. [Durham News]

SPIT: drinking wine
“The 2006 Insolia from Feudo Principi di Butera…can be pleasurably inhaled for minutes.” Going easy on the hippocampus, was he? [NYT]

SIPPED: understatement
Talk about an impossible food wine pairing! Wine critic and blogger Peter Liem visits a sake festival in Japan and eats live shrimp: “My first two passed complacently, but a third, a female full of salty-sweet roe, twitched a little as I decapitated her with my fingers.” What’s his title for this juicy posting? “Niigata Prefecture.” Tony Bourdain, your job is safe–for now!–until Peter recruits a headline writer from Gawker… [peterliem]

image

SPIT: Wine tasting menus!
John and Dottie, WSJ wine columnists known for their sunny outlook, go negative on NYC wine pairing menus. Le Bernardin takes it the hardest. To the tape: “”Very little went right. The sommelier didn’t hear a word we said…Each white wine was served in the same kind of glass…not one of the seven wines we were served was poured from a full bottle…Most important to us, the pairings themselves were uninspired….We felt very much like we had been treated as hayseed tourists who ordered the tasting and wine-pairing menus only because we didn’t know how to pronounce the names of any of the dishes or wines.” Price: $280–for the wine only. And a parting shot on the phenom: “when we order the tasting menu, the restaurant puts us on its schedule, which is generally too rushed.” [WSJ]

SIPPED: Amazon swirls and sniffs
Move over Manuka honey: Amazon may soon sell wine along with its growing non-perishable grocery line according to the Financial Times today. This would be a welcome entrant into the brier patch of online wine retail. The more retailers, the merrier the wine consumer! The story has a mention of fellow wine blogger Tom Wark. [FT.com]

SIPPED: foreign owners in Bordeaux
Properties producing mid-range wines on the periphery of Bordeaux have been squeezed in recent years. But they may find relief from foreign buyers as evidenced by Haiyan Cheng, 28-year-old daughter of “vastly wealthy Chinese businessman,” Zuochang Cheng. She bought a property–a first for a Chinese buyer in the region–for $3 million and plans to renovate it and expand the vineyards. [NYT]

SPIT: Merlot (again), this time for headaches?
Merlot can’t get no lovin’. Malolactic fermentation may improve the taste of red wines but it also fills them with tyramines and histamines, which cause allergic reactions in many people. “Merlots seem to be particularly high,” UC Berkeley Professor of Chemistry Richard Mathies said although his research is inconclusive. [Red orbit]

SIPPED: Amen to that!
Taking Communion may soon help Chilean farmers get a fair price for grapes. The clergy and parishioners at Manchester Cathedral evaluate the wine today for potential introduction as possibly the world’s first “Fairtrade” Communion wine. Seventy percent of the churches in the Diocese serve Fairtrade tea and coffee. [BBC]

SIPPED: Drink for causes, part II
“For each bottle of wine you purchase as futures from his Lookout Ridge Winery, [Sonoma vintner Gordon Holmes (and former Wall Street publisher)] donates a wheelchair in your name to one of the world’s 100 million needy people desperate for mobility.” Andy Erikson of Screaming Eagle fame is one of the winemakers. (find this wine) [Bloomberg]

SIPPED: French wine sales
Sales of French wine rose seven percent in 2007. Is the 2003 Iraq-induced hangover finally over? [IHT]

SIPPED: French wine sails
Belem, a three-masted barque first launched in 1896, will begin transporting 60,000 bottles of wine by sail from the Languedoc to the British Isles in an effort to reduce wine’s carbon footprint. Will gerbils power the refrigerated containers? [AFP]

SIPPED and SPIT: climate change and wine
A big shindig in Barcelona attracted some cult winemakers to discuss global warming and wine; although Al Gore could only make an appearance via satellite, wine bloggers Alice Feiring and Catavino were on the scene.

SPIT for SIPPING: Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman caused an uproar because she mighta, coulda had a glass of wine during the Oscars last Sunday. Unlike Gisele who caused a stir by sipping wine at the Super Bowl, the big deal with Keith Urban’s wife was not the wine selection itself; rather, she is pregnant. Kidman’s agent has defended her client, denied the allegation, and called the accuser an “idiot.”

Related:
-”Knocked up: expecting moms and defying expectations”
- All abord the Tesco barge
(image)

SPIT: dollars!
I was just poking around on this web site and I came across some prices of the previous vintages of wines currently in the market. The Loire, Rhone, Champagne, Beaujolais–many prices have risen, sometimes 20 percent in a year! Eeegad. Ben Bernanke, importers, where’s our price stability?! We might have to cut back.

SIPPED: euros in New York!
Robert Chu, a wine retailer in the East Village is accepting euros for payment. Financial site Minyanville suggests that the “euros accepted” sign is, in fact, a contrary indicator and foreshadows a dollar rally. As lovers of imported wine, we can but hope! (But why did they neglect the supermodels refusing dollars as payment as a contrary indicator a few months ago?) Did they check out the generous (for him) rate of 1E = $1.25 he charges? (Thanks, Mark!)

SIPPED and SPIT: American wineries!
A Silicon Valley Bank report claims that 51 percent of US wineries will have new owners by 2018. But with the dollar so low, how many of them will be foreign? [PR Newswire]

SIPPED: diversity!
Dr. Vino makes a suggestion for a way to play the weak dollar, but not here, instead, on Reuters.

Image: a reduced-sized, reworked crop of an image attributed to Shannon Stapleton/Reuters.

Status Costquo
Judges in the Ninth Circuit Court ruled two to one against Costco, which sells almost a fifth of all wine in Amerca. The judges upheld the Washington Liquor Board’s ban that prohibits distributors from offering deeper discounts to big retailers, varying prices from one retailer to another, and making deliveries to specific stores instead of a central warehouse for retailers. Changing the status quo could have led to reduced wine prices since Costco stores in Washington could buy wine more or less directly from wine producers. [Seattle Times]

Rosenblum sold to furriners!
“Diageo buys Rosenblum for £53m” read the headline in the Financial Times. Why the foreign coverage of a California winery acquisition? Oh yes, Diageo is a drinks multinational based in Britain. With the US dollar tanking, are foreign buyers going to start snapping up American wineries almost as fast as Manhattan pieds-à-terre? Who’s next: Jackson Family? Trinchero? In the case of Rosenblum, let’s hope this reliable producer of zinfandel will continue pumping out the good value vino. [FT.com]

Chew on this
“…if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius.” The meat-guzzler, love it. [NY Times]

Vino Italiano
The next Wine Blogging Wednesday theme has been announced: review an Italian red in seven words. Since having a good picture might help stretch that to 1,007, check out this month’s host and his tips on how to take better pictures of wine bottles. [Spitoon]

Design for wine
Yes, your design could win you free wine in the WBW logo contest, now underway. [WBW.org]

Four questions with…Dr. Vino!
I spoke with Paul Berger and gave him a few tips for NYC wine geeks. [NY Metro]

Playing dirty
Wine.com, a retailer with big ambitions (but a rocky past) and a largely meh selection of wines, rats on 29 online retailers who illegally sent wine to Washington state. How do they know? Because they were the ones who ordered the wine from those 29 stores! Scandale! For a fascinating thread check out Vinography where the CEO of wine.com appears in the comments along with several anonymous retailers in a clash of the business models. Booooo wine.com!! I am pushing my Cramer-style boooo button! [Vinography]

Mo’ moxie
Winemonger, an internet-only retailer specializing in the wines of Austria, has the chutzpa to offer a mixed case of their “best” wines with a 15% discount as a result of wine.com’s actions — and they have pledged 10% of the proceeds to the Specialty Wine Retailers’ Association, an organization that probably counts many of the 29 “busted” retailers among their members. Enter discount code: ISUCK at checkout. [winemonger]

Mo’ money
Tom Wark, who writes a fiery blog and is the head of the SWRA, has calculated that wine and spirits wholesalers contributed a staggering $50 million to political election campaigns from 2000 - 2006. Yikes! If that’s what they spend on lobbying, just think what the profits are! For a backgrounder on the politics of wine shipping, check out this story from the LA Times. [Fermentation]

Mo’ betta blogs
Wine & Spirits magazine doesn’t put much of their content online, alas. But two of their senior editors have now started blogs. Peter Liem, who lives in and loves Champagne, has started his “Besotted Ramblings and Other Drivel.” Wolfgang Weber, Italian critic, has started “Spume.” Check them out!

Ceci n’est pas une pub
A French court has ruled that newspaper articles that review wine must carry the same health warnings that apply to advertisements to alcohol advertisements. But don’t consume journalism (and blogs) in moderation! [Decanter]

More carbon footprints
Science magazine of the AAAS has a piece entitled “The Wine Divide” in the January 11 issue about the carbon footprint research I did with Pablo Paster. Welcome Science readers! Consider subscribing to the site feed or the monthly email updates. And congratulations to Pablo! As of next week, he will be analyzing the carbon footprint of everything in a new weekly column for Salon.com.

Related: “Developing: the next shipping battle”
Image 1 from winemonger.com

Growing pains?
Elaine Sciolino, an NYT France correspondent, ventures to Champagne. As demand for Champagne rises, she examines the fascinating politics of expanding the boundaries of the growing region–is it a boondoggle or a necessity? [NYT] Peter Liem of Wine & Spirits also addressed this question on this blog in September.

Small is beautiful
A Business section story tracks the “grower Champagne” trend, with picks. [NYT]

Big is beautiful
Mike Steinberger, who wrote about grower Champagnes several years ago, now rides to the defense of the big houses and their entry level, nonvintage blends. Shocking! Fortunately the world is still on its axis since he spanks Moët White Star rightfully calling it “execrably sweet, with a confected, cloying taste that made me want to run for my toothbrush.” [Slate]

Old is beautiful
Mike Steinberger fires off another piece this time observing the trend toward buying 30+ year old Champagne at auction. Paradoxically, buyers not much older than the bottles themselves seem to be the source of much of the demand. [Portfolio]

Champ-Angleterre?
Are Champagne houses really contemplating a move to England? Maybe the world IS spinning off its axis?! [Telegraph]

Budget bubbles
Executive Pursuits columnist Henry Hurt III fears a decline in his purchasing power next year. So he had a couple of friends over and poured them nine bubblies blind to see if he could get away with pouring sparkling wine instead of Champagne. They trash the, ahem, grande dame, and praise the lowly Boyer brut, a $9.95 sparkling Burgundy (find this wine). Booyah, Boyer! Happy new year, indeed! [NYT]

(image)