SIPPED: lobbying
The Village Voice looks at the jockeying behind the legislative initiative to allow supermarkets to sell wine.

SIPPED and SPIT: growth (of the viticultural kind)
The AP offers more reporting on the coming harvest “under economic cloud.”

SIPPED: a second life for those OWCs
Wine crates as serving trays.

SIPPED: tree planting
An Australian winery will attempt to offset its carbon emissions by planting up to 10,000 trees worldwide. Let’s hope the trees fare better than those planted for Coldplay! [Perth Now]

SPIT: a tip of the hat
In the recent double issue, NY mag ran a long piece about ethical eating that included a mention of the carbon footprint of wine. Ditto Newsweek in their current double issue.

SPIT: bottled water
Mother Jones has a long article on the making of FIJI bottled water.

SWIRLED: wine tax increase
The Senate finance committee considers raising the federal excise tax on wine (and beer)–and introducing a tax on other beverages, such as soda–in the name of funding health reform. The last increase in the federal excise tax on wine was 1991, when it was increased to $1.07 a gallon for still wine under 14% alcohol. Prior to that, the rate had been stable since 1951 at $0.17 a gallon.

SPIT and SIPPED: New Vine Logistics
New Vine Logistics, a Napa-based company that provides order fulfillment to 200 wineries and may have been involved in the back end of Amazon wine, startlingly ceased operations a week ago. But faster than you could say “Chrysler,” it found an apparent savior in Inertia Beverage Group. Follow the action over at wineindustryinsight.com.

SPIT: signs as a threat to the environment
The steep hillside vineyards of Hermitage may be preserved under an environmental heritage act. Such an action could jeopardize the signs of Chapoutier and Jaboulet on those hillsides (”one of the region’s most beloved landmarks” according to the Chapoutier web site), which may have to be removed as a result.

The wine in question is a so-called vin de paille, or straw wine, made in miniature quantities. This sweet wine has its origins in the Jura, the Alpine region of France, and gets its name from the straw mats that the grapes are dried upon for months after harvest and before a long fermentation (Stein said his takes 12 months). Germany has many sweet wines, of course, but the sweetest wine of all, the Trockenbeerenauslese, gets its sweetness from the distinctive botrytis rot.

The lanky, hirsute Stein told me yesterday that covertly made his vin de paille for decades and labeled it as a Trockenbeerenauslese, as you can see in the picture. But he wanted to make it legally and brought the issue to a German judge, who turned down his request based on the 1971 German wine law, which claimed that grapes in the vin de paille were not fresh enough. Stein appealed. The next court turned him down. Eventually he appealed to the European courts and won the right to make vin de paille from the 2007 vintage. He added the court granted him the exclusive right in Germany to make vin de paille.

The 2003 that I tasted is a lovely, rich dessert wine. If I were a judge, I wouldn’t ban it.

As to the other Rieslings in his portfolio, they are all very good and interesting. But the standout for me was the Stein Bremmer Calmont Riesling Spatlese Trocken 2007. The delicate, slight sweetness (7.5 grams of residual sugar–all natural) embraces a vital core of acidity and minerality. Very nice.

In an op-ed in yesterday’s NYT, wine shop owner Marco Pasanella makes the case that he and other independent shops should be allowed to expand to have more than one location and be able to sell bread, cheese, microbrews, and, yes, recyclable bags, which they are not allowed to currently sell. I’ll drink to that! In fact, it is absurd that this corollary is not in the proposed reform legislation and should be corrected immediately.

I stopped by Pasanella & Son last week for a book signing. It is a handsome shop with an antique Fiat on the floor; the wine selection is excellent. The staff did a fantastic job setting up the event and it was great to see so many people, particularly from the neighborhood turn out. In his op-ed, Marco says that the staff at a local shop will remember a customer’s name. In fact, one woman there that evening told me that the staff member actually remembered which wine she had bought on her previous visit when she couldn’t. Bet that won’t happen at D’Agostino.

Also check out their clever and popular free wine and movie nights, Sip ‘n Cinema!

“If You Sell Wine, Then Let Me Sell Cheese” -NYT op-ed
New York City wine shops, a map

SPIT: insanity!
In 2007, Illinois wine consumers became legally prohibited from buying wine from out-of-state wine stores, thereby reducing a national market for wine to a local one. State Representative Julie Hamos from Evanston–where I lived for several years and, ironically, the home of the once-powerful Woman’s Christian Temperance Union–has submitted a bill to repeal this restriction. The Chicago Tribune had an editorial in support of the new bill calling the current situation “boneheaded.” Learn more about how America got to this point in my book, Wine Politics.

SPIT: minimum pricing
Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK rebuffed an attempt to set high minimum prices for alcoholic beverages. The chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, sought the increases, which would have doubled the price of some beer and spirits and set a minimum price of £4.50 for a bottle of wine as a strategy to combat binge drinking. Separately, Scotland is set to impose minimum prices on alcohol by year-end. [Guardian]

SIPPED: more celebrity wine
The latest entrant into the crowded field of celebrity wines is Sting (who has chosen the downturn in the NYC real estate market to offload his Manhattan apartment, btw). The two red wines will come from his 300 hectare (!) Tuscan property and are, as yet, unnamed. Will they go with Message in a Bottle? [The Times of London]

That’s why he has proposed to allow food stores to sell wine, a subject we discussed the day the idea was floated. To recap the budgetary logic, he proposed to more than double the excise tax on wine and increase the points of sale beyond the 2,400 wine and liquor stores in the state and allow the 19,000 grocery stores to sell wine. The Governor’s office estimates that it will bring in an additional $150 million over three years, presumably from new store license fees and excise taxes rather than an increase in overall purchases. The deficit for next year alone is forecast to be $15 billion.

Shortly after I moved to New York State from Chicago four years ago, I was looking for a supermarket wine for a story and wondered where you found “supermarket wine” in New York. The answer is epitomized in this store I saw the other day, which we can call “Wines & Liqu” since that’s the only part of the neon sign that was illuminated. It’s these stores, uninspiring package stores, that don’t much invest in human capital and stock high-volume brands that will be most threatened by the impending change.

But alongside the Wines & Liqu stores are thriving boutiques that is probably the best concentration of wine stores in the universe. Check them out on my map of NYC wine stores if you want to explore some of the rich tapestry that blankets NYC. In the best of times, these stores would have little to fear from Costco, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Food Emporium, and Fresh Direct (oh wait, they already do) selling wine. But this is not the best of times; it is the worst of times economically so an erosion of even a small percentage of these stores’ business could bring them to the edge of a precipice.

So the challenge for these stores is to make this into an opportunity. One option is to take a page from the Chicago store playbook and add cheese, cured meats, and craft beers, sort of a gourmet deli with a strong wine focus. Another option is to continue to invest in staff training, since big box retailers all too often let the flaps of paper do the talking. In my view, the staff represents one of the great assets of small stores; forming a good relationship with someone on the staff can be worth it’s weight in, well, Cabernet. A final strategy that requires more capital (you remember back when banks made loans, don’t you?), would be taking a winning wine store and expand it to other parts of the city or state.

Many stores offer a discount to purchases of 12 bottles or more, in part because they get volume discounts when they buy from wholesalers. But food stores selling wine could siphon off the one or two bottle customer. Far be it for me to want to clog up my wallet any more, but perhaps a loyalty card scheme might come in handy and apply a discount retroactively after twelve bottles purchased. Or take a page from the air miles rewards program and offer customers tiered service through loyalty discounts or other perks based on total expenditure in the year. Price competition is likely to be more acute in the next chapter of NY wine retail, particularly if interstate wine shipping becomes a more widespread reality (but even this holds within it the opportunity to legally expand the market for boutique wines to states that don’t have such a varied selection).

Could interesting wines end up on supermarket shelves? Absolutely; I’ve certainly gotten interesting wines in supermarkets in Chicago and California. But supermarkets often operate with a regional buyer who sets up an approved list. And the list at even the best may not be extensive and small wineries, often the source of tasty bargains and interesting splurges, may not on the list since they don’t have sufficient volumes to supply a regional or national chain. As to drinking locally made wine, it’s probably a fair guess that since most wineries in New York don’t produce a lot of volume, they wouldn’t be winners under the reform either.

It will be fascinating to see what New York wine retail looks like in five years, assuming the proposed legislation passes. But to survey what the situation looks like now and hopefully generate some ideas, I’ve talked to several wine shop owners about their stores and their thoughts going forward. Check back for the first in our 2,400 part series, Better Know a Wine Shop.

Adieu, Copia?
Copia, the wine, food and art museum and restaurant in Napa City, closed on November 21 and has filed for Chapter 11. The original $55 million in funding came at least half from Robert Mondavi. The NYT promises more coverage tomorrow. [Diner's Journal]

Biodynamics is poop
In what promises to be a salty interview, French actor-vintner-restaurateur Gerard Depardieu–who once joked that his mother’s amniotic fluid was actually wine–disdains biodynamics claiming the vineyard treatment “doesn’t exist.” Then he claims that he uses biodynamics at his Chateau de Tigne property in Anjou only because he is “poor.” [Decanter]

Michigan: no delivery?
A federal court struck down Michigan’s law that prohibits out-of-state retailers from shipping to Michigan residents while allowing local wine stores to deliver. While the case is on appeal, a new bill in the legislature tries to create a level playing field–by preventing local wine stores from delivering! See the op-ed against the bill in Crain’s Detroit Business.

The duty on a bottle of wine under 15 percent alcohol in the UK is £1.46. Throw in VAT at 17.5% and you can see why it is essentially impossible. Even wines under £4.99 have a distinct aroma of taxlicious since 40% of the price paid at the register ends up going to HM Treasury.

That’s one of the things I learned writing a short piece about wine politics for The Guardian & Observer guides to wine, which appeared on Saturday on news stands in the UK (a second part of the guide will follow shortly and I have another piece in that). Fortunately, since I can’t pop down to a WH Smith and pick up a copy, the full contents of the section are available on the Guardian web site. Be sure to check it out for more fascinating articles by Jancis Robinson, Steven Spurrier and others.

Mike mentions the growing ranks of quality producers who have had wines refused by the tasting portion of the appellation process. When the list includes names such as Jean Thevenet, Didier Dagueneau, Eloi Dürrbach, Marcel Lapierre, Thierry and Jean-Marie Puzelat, Marcel Richaud, Georges Descombes, and Philippe Jambon, you’ve got to wonder if that doesn’t say more about the appellation politics itself. But there’s one other notable rule breaker who could be included in that list: Philippe Pacalet.

I caught up with Pacalet at the IPNC last month in Oregon–his first visit to the U.S. In the above picture he poured me a taste of his absolutely delicious 2005 Pommard, light in color and body with terrific aromatics, from a tea kettle shaped decanter (find this wine).

Pacalet is the nephew of Marcel Lapierre, one of the leaders of natural wine in France whose scrumptious Morgon 2006 I’ve mentioned before. In the 1980s, he developed an affinity for natural wines working with his uncle and Jules Chauvet, an important figure in the early days of natural wines in France. Today, he is a winemaker but doesn’t own any vines–he rents. He explained that he does not add sulfur to the grapes after harvest, works with the indigenous yeasts, and doesn’t add enzymes or tannins. (See this SF Chronicle article for a backgrounder on sulfur and sulfites; Pacalet does use some right before bottling.)

While I was standing in line at the final salmon bake dinner with Jamie Goode, author of The Science of Wine, Pacalet told us that he believes that much of the vinifera vines in France have been weakened by generations of inbreeding, which makes them susceptible to disease. His solution would be to genetically modify the vines to have greater disease resistance, which would reduce the need for spraying. Pretty provocative for a natural winemaker.

At breakfast the next day (IPNC is like a reunion weekend for pinotphiles), Pacalet told me that his 2005 Corton-Charlemagne was denied the appellation, which meant for him “30,000 euros in the trash.” When I asked him why doesn’t make it as a lowly vin de table and join the list of producers above, he said “I don’t pay taxes to make a vin de table.”

Since then, he’s become a member of the Corton-Charlemagne syndicat, or the rule-setting board of local producers.

So we have to be ready: we need a motto. Britain did it. Then Freakonomics blog urged their readers to come up with one for America in six words. Collectively, we drink and now YOU can decide: Post your suggestions in the comments here for America’s new motto as the top wine consuming country.

Ray Isle, who writes his own excellent blog (now with pictures!) when he’s not giving wine seminars in Aspen or writing his wine column for Food & Wine magazine, will join me as a mini-panel of flag pin-wearing judges. We will cull through your suggestions and select some finalists for your voting, starting next Tuesday.

And to up the ante from our usual prize of mere “glory,” whoever submits the winning slogan will win a signed copy of my just-about-released book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink. That’s right, the book that tells the story of wine in France and America through the lens of industry politics could be yours for the Fourth of July.

So put down your flag for a second and start typing your slogan for America as world wine leader!

SPIT: freedom in France
Liberté takes a back seat in France too where wine ads are strictly controlled in France and Microsoft has taken the unusually cautious step of removing wine ads from their ad service (Google ads still include wine on the internets in France). If anyone is looking at this site in France, remember, ceci n’est pas une pub! [thepost.ie]

SIPPED: wine education
An inside look at wine education at the Sommelier Society of America. [NYT]

SPIT: jugs!
Almaden and Inglenook, two wines known for their big jugs, will now come in the lightweight bag-in-box format. It sounds like old wine in new wineskins but because of the volume involved it will contribute to reducing wine’s carbon footprint. [Bizjournals]

SIPPED: corks in space
Schramsberg winery reports that Navy Commander Kenneth Ham is flying with bottles of the bubbly on board the space shuttle Discovery! If only. But he is taking some corks and labels from the Napa sparkling wine producer on the flight with him.

SIPPED: Wine books
A review of three wine books today in the NYT Book Review section follows one by Eric Aismov from ten days ago to review the spring crop of wine books. And, yes, my reviews will follow soon before you head to the beach this summer!

RIP: Robert Mondavi, the American wine colossus, who died at 94. [SF Chron, NYT]

(image)

As a wine enthusiast, I’m for greater liberalization of wine shipping laws. Freer markets means greater availability and probably lower prices. The Supreme Court decision in 2005 paved the way for greater possibilities of shipping directly from wineries to consumers. But the legal situation of shipping from out-of-state retailers remains a murky area, illegal on the books of too many states.

A quick and dirty political analysis can help explain why. Wine wholesalers want the wine to pass through their warehouses so they can profit from the sale in their state. There are few distributors and they have a narrow economic interest and thus have the ability to lobby the state powers that be. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Mobsters, Environmentalists and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink, this can really hurt you if you live in a smaller market.

The main economic counterbalance to distributors are shops and some local ones may not welcome out-of-state shipping. But many of the best shops want to able to ship freely to Texas, Florida, New York and beyond. And for citizens and wine consumers, wine shipping is so far down the list of policy objectives that we are never likely to organize around this issue. But the laws aren’t going to change by themselves.

So check out the Specialty Wine Retailers Association, the main group fighting for a liberalization of shipping laws. In fact, they are having an awareness campaign right now and you can even contribute to the organization to help fund their legal fight (I got an email from Sherry-Lehmann last week saying that Ken Starr–still hard to think of him as one of the “good guys” even after his role in the previous Supreme Court case–is leading the charge. Raise money to pay Ken Starr’s fees!). Yes, in the short term, their members stand to benefit from a reform in the legal situation. But in the long term, there will be greater innovation and perhaps even new entrants in the field as even Amazon intimated last week.

So check out the SWRA and support them in some way, if even by signing up for emails. Together, consumers and specialty retailers can form a coalition of the swilling to change the laws. Let’s push for change so that we don’t all have to wear “Free Eric!” T-shirts!

image

And speaking of the Super Bowl, which wine to you think Gisele was sipping up in the booth?

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

And for all that is wonderful about wine, beer and liquor, they clearly bring some heavy costs. Right now, the patchwork of alcohol taxes isn’t coming close to covering those costs — the costs of drunken-driving checkpoints, of hospital bills for alcohol-related accidents and child abuse, and of the economic loss caused by death and injury. Last year, some 17,000 Americans, or almost 50 a day, died in alcohol-related car accidents. An additional 65,000 people a year die from other accidents, assaults or illnesses in which alcohol plays a major role.

Wine has ethyl alcohol in it so it contributes to these statistics. But the argument has floated around for centuries that wine is consumed differently than beer and spirits. Since at least the time of Thomas Jefferson, wine has had advocates who see wine as a drink of moderation since it is mostly consumed with food.

Further, since about 1991 when “60 Minutes” popularized the notion of the “French paradox,” there have been many studies underscoring the health benefits of wine, particularly the role of tannins. Heck, resveratrol extends life and promises fat-free gluttony!

So what do you say, does wine still deserve a sin tax? Of course, Cook does not take into account the fact that wine geeks already have been paying a “tax” called the declining dollar. Sobering indeed.

And if we’re opening the discussion of taxes and wine, there’s always the environmental cost of the wine industry in the form of greenhouse gases. A carbon tax, perhaps?