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!

I’m in an undisclosed location where rum is cheaper than Yellow Tail.

We have the good fortune of being on a family vacation in the tropics. But what’s a wine lover to drink?

If you’ve read my book, A Year of Wine, you’ll know that I’m a fan of pairing wine with context, which includes the food, the mood, and the people. So if you’re on sun-drenched vacation, it’s easy to insert any wine, be it fetid or feted, and you’re bound for a great time since the setting is ideal, right? Perhaps. But this trip, I brought my own to make sure we had a good pairing.

Seeing some space in one of our bags, I threw in three wines from the Loire: two bottles of Muscadet and a bottle of Gamay. Low in alcohol, with refreshing acidity, and all under $15, I thought they would do the trick nicely when we grew tired of umbrella drinks and beer. (You can tell I am a wine geek since I was probably the only one bringing alcohol to the islands as opposed to returning with bottles–although I don’t rule that out.) I put them in a three-bottle wine shipper and they were still refreshingly cool to the touch when I unpacked. So I kept them that way by putting them all in the fridge on arrival.

The real stand out was the Domaine de la Pepiere, Clos des Briords, 2007 (about $15; find this wine), a superb wine in its own right that I’ve mentioned before. Throw in a sunset, 80 degrees, grilled fish, family and you really have a perfect wine moment. I rate it 100 points.

What’s one of your 100 point wine moments?

Friend of the blog and über travel blogger Mark Ashley sent in this photo from his flight from Munich last week: yes, he ordered the infamous Rich prosecco in a can! (We captioned their poster girl Paris Hilton last year.) Oddly enough, I’d just been noticing an increase in wine appearing in airline ads from Qantas to Air France to Lufthansa. Your theories as to why are welcome in the comments; perhaps it is because wine is a relatively cheap feelgood for marketing, certainly cheaper than giving you a seat that could, say, comfortably fit a human being.

In a jab at other airlines, Mark writes, “In Lufthansa’s defense, despite the wine being… middling… at least the wine is free.”

After two bad wine travel experiences this summer, I finally got it right about ten days ago. Returning by plane from a business trip to the Windy City, I found myself unencumbered by either checked baggage or children. Thus the time was right to return to the storage locker that I couldn’t empty when we moved from Chicago over three years ago.

I bought two Styrofoam shipping containers at a wine store and filled them with 24 bottles, some collectible, others I could ditch if necessary. Since I was flying United, I was worried; readers have posted comments on this blog about rogue United agents refusing to check passengers with wine. And Paul Gregutt recently wrote about the experiences of some Washington wine country travelers who were only allowed five liters of wine (less than seven bottles) because the airline agent thought the TSA limit on spirits also applied to wine. Read more…

Just because Hudson Valley, NY is not the first location when you think of American–nay, New York–wine, that doesn’t mean they haven’t been growing grapes there for a long time.

The 28 wineries in Ulster, Dutchess, and Orange counties have launched a new web site to boost awareness of their new but old region. They claim “the country’s oldest vineyard can be found in the Hudson Valley,” dating back to 1677. Whoa! Them’s fightin’ words!

While the site offers itineraries, history and links to wineries, I have to wonder about the authenticity of one of the pictures. Consider this picture on the left, from their site. Compare to the photo that we pondered earlier on the right, which is a cellar in Hungary with the distinctive red banding on the barrels and the bare bulb illumination.

If the cellar depicted on their site is REALLY in the new/old Hudson Valley, then I will go to that winery and visit!

So my trip to Oregon in July was a pinot-drenched journey–literally.

Because I was flying on United, I was a little wary. A previous commenter on this site had noted that the airline had confiscated his wine even though it was in his checked luggage. (Their policy now states that all wine in the hold must be in a Styrofoam shipping container even if it is in luggage.) So I didn’t want to splurge on too many bottles or any at too high a price in case they were taken away.

I put six bottles in a cardboard carrier and put it in my wheelie duffel. When I arrived back at Laguardia, my six pack had turned into a a five pack and my bag smelled like a winery. Fortunately, the pinot washed out without a problem.

I’ve put a lot of wine in my luggage over the years and thus far escaped unscathed. But it can’t hurt to use a little extra padding–or even use that Styrofoam shipper! Click through for a gory picture of my broken bottle–and of a funny celeb I saw making a spontaneous gate announcement in the terminal. Read more…

As many of you set out on drives for this holiday weekend, consider this conundrum from our recent trip.

As wine geeks are wont to do, we brought a case plus a few bottles on our Adirondack adventure. The wines were from different producers and I bought them from different retailers. We had enjoyed several of the wines in the preceding two weeks and decided to share them with our relatives.

Yet several of the wines tasted too advanced. And we’re talking some 06s and 07s, which shouldn’t be advanced at all.

So what happened? I’m not sure. We did stop for a three-hour lunch with some friends on the way. I parked the car in the shade but when we returned, it was in the summer sun. I’m tempted to say this stint was the cause of our wine woes. But I’ve received so many wines via UPS that must have had even more exposure to the heat of summer than that. Do you have a theory?

Fortunately, the wines were diminished but not destroyed and some seemed unaffected. But as a precaution, I might bring a cooler next time we are going to make a stop on a trip like that. Assuming I can fit it in the car with all the kids’ gear etc!

Dear Dr. Vino,

If you had to take a bottle of American wine to Bulgaria that reflects the most recent trend in American winemaking, what would that bottle be? I want to take a bottle to my key participant in my academic study (who is one of the best winemakers in Bulgaria) when I head out next month to the wild Balkans. If this is an impossible question to answer, forgive my boldness (& ignorance) and please ignore it!

Impossible–never! It’s a great question, actually. I thought about American wines recently for a piece that I contributed to on Forbes.com about ten independent wines from the good ole US of A. I’d probably take one of those. Many of them actually run counter to the trend in higher alcohol levels so I’d point out that they are, in fact, anti-trendy, or the beginning of a new trend, perhaps. And then maybe bring a Turley that I’m trying to get rid of just for laffs.

What about you? Which wine would you bring if you were in this reader’s shoes?

Last February, after some time in Napa and Sonoma, I checked my bag and a case of wine at Oakland airport. The nice guy who helped me at JetBlue asked me if I wanted a “fragile” sticker on my box o’ wine. I asked, “Does it really make a difference?”

“Nah,” he replied. I appreciated the honesty!

It turns out that trip was the last of a golden era, the era of “free” checked luggage. Now almost all airlines charge $25 for a second bag and American Airlines continues the Ryanairification of American air travel by imposing a $15 fee on the first bag. (Southwest, of all airlines, still allows two checked bags at no additional charge!)

As travel season kicks off with $4-a-gallon gas this Memorial Day, many wine enthusiasts might be giving thought to how we’ll bring wine home from our travels. UPS certainly looks better with these new airline surcharges (no schlepping!). But then there’s the heat of summer to contend with and it’s withering effect on wine–at least the short airline trip would minimize that.

If your travel takes you to a domestic winery this summer, how will you bring the loot home?

Related: Bringing wine home from overseas

Sixty-year-old, dry farmed Riesling vines at Stony Hill Vineyards, Napa Valley

“We make a red wine.”

Normally that’s not the sort of statement that raises an eyebrow in Napa Valley. But when one vintner told me that at dinner one night last week, I had to taste it for myself.

The vintner in question was Peter McCrea who owns Stony Hill. While most Chardonnay in the region receives lavish oak treatments and has high alcohol levels, Stony Hill Chardonnay is aged in 40-year-old (and therefore neutral) barrels and has 13 percent alcohol. His other two wines, a Gewurztraminer and a Riesling, roll in at 11.24 and 11.65 percent alcohol respectively. And at $21 a bottle, the wines stood out for another reason from the Napa wines.

Not your average California whites. Which is why I jumped in a car with another wine writer and drove up to the winery the next day in pursuit of the red nobody has ever tasted outside of the winery: Stony Hill Syrah. Read more…