Dr Vino’s wine blog

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I recently had a Bugey de Cerdon, a sweet, pink fizzy wine from the Savoie region of France. It was $22 for 8 percent alcohol by volume. A few days later I had a lovely Txakoli, a white vaguely sparkling wine that was 10.5 percent abv that was also, coincidentally, $22 a bottle. I also remember having an easy-drinking Moscato d’Asti ($16) with five percent abv recently.

I generally prefer low alcohol wines. If the alcohol is over 14 percent, as happens all too often in this age of global warming, the number of glasses I can reasonably consume with dinner declines sharply. Since I enjoy drinking wine with food that makes me sad.

But drinking low alcohol wines can be expensive. The $16 for 750ml of five percent wine might make some drinkers switch to a microbrew that has more kick and costs less per ounce. There was a day in France when wine was sold from vats at the local market and people brought jugs to fill, paying more for a douze (12% abv) than for an onze (11%). So with many low-alcohol wines not pricing in such a discount today, if you pour only low-alcohol wines at a dinner party, you would wind up working through more bottles, thus raising the wine tab for the evening.

To dismiss low alcohol wines would mean never trying these types of wines, which is always too bad. Some types of wine, such as these three as well as Mosel Riesling, are simply low alcohol wines. I find low alcohol wines to work particularly well with spicy foods and warm weather. So they fill a definite void and do so well.

What do you think: would a low alcohol level stop you from buying a wine?

First it was a new winery in Manhattan. Now, word buzzes in about the new Manhattan Meadery, which promises to make “a distinctive honey wine” in NYC (though which borough will receive this honor is unclear since “Brooklyn buzz” is on the ad).

While we were just sitting here sipping our sauvignon, they have brought the fight to us wine geeks, touting their product as “wine,” and packaging it in 750 ml bottles with 13% alcohol. The audacity! And they continue that their measly mead is “a light and crisp dry white that is thoroughly wine-like, but unlike any wine you’ve had before.”

Oh yeah, which vintage is your honey from, Mister Meadery? Can you imagine, the meadery is exploiting the honey bees during their time of Colony Collapse Disorder! Drink real wine instead! There’s a global glut! Manhattan Meadery, you’re on notice!

Now that summer has officially and unofficially started, we need to turn our pairing thoughts to that summer staple: ice cream. Is it an impossible food-wine pairing?!?

I don’t particularly like soft serve but just thought it was a really good picture. If you have a wine suggestion, please note which flavor makes for the best pairing. And if you had a thought about whether making ice cream at home is worth the time and money, let us know that too!

Last week I shot some video with Eric Arnold of First Big Crush fame, now also of Forbes.com fame. The first video–and my video debut–is now live! I pick ten independent American wines for Independence Day. Head on over to Forbes.com for the story (with slide show) or cut straight to the video.

What would be on your list of independent wines?

Also, check out this story from Bloomberg–who knew AVAs could be so fun! Regulatory columnist Cindy Skrzycki does a good job recounting the story that led the Feds to reject the petition for a Viticultural Area named Tulocay in Napa. Quotage from Dr. Vino.

We are in book launch month! The official publication date for Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink is July 14 but there are a few events before that (and the book is in stock now with many retailers). Here’s a roundup:

July 9, noon-1 PM: Beard on Books: a talk, discussion and book signing at the James Beard House, NYC. Brown-bagging welcome; coffee and wine biscotti from Three Tarts bakery will be available. $20 donation to the JBF encouraged for non-students. If you’ve never gotten around to checking out the historic Beard house, now’s your chance! 167 W. 12th St. Details and reservations.

July 11: Book signing at Astor Wines (Lafayette @ 4th St), 6-8 PM. No talk here, just a signing; French wines also available for tasting.

July 22: Book signing at Powell’s Books, Cedar Hills Crossing (Beaverton, OR), 7PM. details and preorder a signed copy of the book

And one day (Saturday the 26th?) at IPNC, the International Pinot Noir Celebration.

I hope you can make one–or more! If you can’t, consider adding the book for your virtual shopping cart. Ponder this comparison: William Fevre, Chablis, 2006 a fine wine that goes for $19.95 a bottle. Or , available from Amazon for $18.15! The Chablis will bring you pleasure for one evening but the book will hold down your bookshelf forever! And unlike wine, available now for shipping to all 50 states!

In the name of reducing his carbon footprint, Prince Charles has retrofitted his 1970 Aston martin convertible to run on ethanol–made from “surplus” English wine.

Wait, surplus English wine? This isn’t France. I thought wine was a new thing in England and they were proud enough to serve it to world leaders? (In 2006 there were actually 365 English vineyards totaling 2,280 acres–not a lot, but more than I would have guessed.)

So just how fuel efficient is it for Prince Charles? I caught my carbon footprint research co-author, Pablo Paster, on chat and crunched the numbers. It turns out that the ethanol the Prince is putting in his car has three times the carbon dioxide emissions of regular fuel–not to mention that he’s soaking up a lot of English wine in the process! It takes about 500 liters of wine to distill into a tank of fuel.

But the exhaust must smell great–chardonnay with a whiff of irony!

E Pluribus Vinum will be the new motto for America, soon to be the top wine drinking country in the world! Katie of Ramsey, N.J. suggested it and you voted it.

As a prize, I sent her a signed copy of the hottest (only?) wine book to be released in July, my own, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink. Thanks, Katie, and thanks, all, for your votes!

Cities used to be for beer making. Wine, traditionally made near the vineyard, is moving into cities at warp speed.

First wineries infiltrated Brooklyn, as Brooklyn Oenology and Bridge Urban Winery have done and Abe Schoener will do in Red Hook later this year. Next up: Manhattan. City Winery, a night club meets wine bar meets winery, will open at 143 Varick St in the fall.

Michael Dorf, owner of the nightclub the Knitting Factory among other pursuits, is heading the City Winery. Grapes will be trucked in from New York State, California and possibly beyond to be made into wine under the supervision of David Lecomte, a French trained winemaker who has made wine at Chapoutier and Herzog, the kosher winery in California. People can buy a barrel (approximately 250 bottles of finished wine) starting at $5,000 and track its progress. Crushpad, which pioneered this approach in San Francisco, will also open a facility in NYC in the fall.

While the winery space will be for members (aka “barrel owners”) only, the nightclub/wine bar will be open to the public with more than 50 wines by the glass and an event space for up to 400. Oh, and there’s a state-of-the-art sound system.

Read more about City Winery and the bureaucratic hoops they had to jump through including licensing and waste removal issues at Wines & Vines (they could send all that pomace to Delluva Day Spa instead!). The Village Voice also had a recent piece on the trend.

Tipster Steve points out that times have changed since 2000 when the “last” winery moved out of NYC as tax incentives and rising costs lured the kosher Kedem to Bayonne, NJ. The barrel always rolls…

A reader sent in this photo from his trip to the region in February. Where in the wine world was he? As a sort of hint, he said this vineyard was planted in a long-dormant volcano.

UPDATE: Adam is correct! This photo is from Read more…

Even though we encountered something similar previously in this series of impossible food wine pairings, site reader Andy from Napa clearly has given this some thought. So we should too! To his email:

Hey Dr. Vino, I have what may be a real stumper – and one I’d love some help with. I’ve got two kids – 8 and 5 – and every Wednesday night at our house is “backward night” – we have breakfast for dinner. A very, very, very popular night with the kids. The menu is usually pancakes, which we whip up from scratch, and breakfast sausages. Added to that, we often put peanut butter AND syrup on the pancakes. All of this goes fine with milk, but, of course for me it’s evening, when my thoughts turn to wine. Sadly, I’ve not yet found a good pairing.

I really would love to know if there’s an actual wine that works. It would have to be something that goes with the nutty flavors of the pancakes (I tend to throw in some sunflower seeds or some toasted flax seeds — you know, sneak in a little healthy stuff when the kids aren’t looking!). Given that milk works so well, I’m tempted to think that a wine with some lactic acid might work — like a white that’s gone through some serious malolactic?

I guess with the sunflower seeds, it’s a safe bet Andy doesn’t serve pancakes and sausage on a stick!