Dr Vino’s wine blog

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Where in the wine world was this picture taken? If you’ve found this hard in previous editions, now you have a greater chance since there are two right answers!

According to the photographer, the small road down the middle of the vineyard is actually the line between two significant wine regions. So where is this border zone? Hit the comments with your thoughts! No prizes this time, just glory!

UPDATE: Check here for the answer.

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…

Thanks for the 94 comments sharing your favorite season for maximum wine enjoyment! I’m glad that the idea of changing your wine consumption with the seasons resonates so well with you since that’s the subject of my next book, A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season, due out very soon from Simon Spotlight Entertainment, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

I assigned each commenter a number and generated three winners at random.org, the site that fills all my random integer needs. Three winners were selected to win a signed copy of A Year of Wine and they are:

Jim Boyce in Beijing, Wendy in Brazil, and Aletta in I’m not sure where!

Come on down! As for the rest of you, click through and check out the book’s page on Amazon and see what the blurbs have to say from wine importer and author Kermit Lynch, wine authors David Lynch and Eric Arnold, and starting right fielder for the New York Yankees, Bobby Abreu. Who knows, maybe you’ll want to preorder now? At their discounted price of $16 and change for this hardback book, it’s less than a mere glass of wine at many NYC wine bars!

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.

SIPPED: ironic labels
In 2003, a French publication was fined for calling Beaujolais “vin de merde,” or, “crap wine.” Although the fine was eventually overturned, what critics can say about wines is still a touchy subject. But producers themselves can say what they want and a producer in the downtrodden Languedoc region has now rolled out a wine labeled “vin de merde.” According to this BBC video, the seven euro wine has now sold out. Goodbye critter labels, hello irony?

SPIT: anonymity
A few weeks ago we noted the power of the Japanese wine-imbued comic “The Drops of the Gods” and called for the unveiling of the brother-sister duo who actually make the picks. Today, the NYT does our bidding! Learn more about the power of Shizuku, a quirk in their 3,000 bottle cellar, and why the comic has been translated into French before English.

SPIT: vodka?!?
Poland appears to be the latest beneficiary of global warming in the wine world. [BBC]

SIPPED: Terroir de New Jersey
The latest New Jersey winery, Laurita, opened to the public on last month. Will it rise above the inevitable Jersey jokes from New Yorkers? [NYT]

On November 11, an monumental event will occur: No, hopefully it won’t involve a post-election court battle; instead, my newest book will be available!

The book is called A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season. In it, a collection of essays and hundreds of wine recommendations, I encourage readers to break out of their chardonnay or cabernet rut and drink different by plotting a seasonal arc to their wine consumption. Simon Spotlight Entertainment, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will publish the book, available November 11 at a retailer near you or on Amazon.

Epicurious flagged it on their short list of books for “thirsty readers” this fall.

If you like this blog, you will love this book! Why? Because I sold the book based on this blog. But since you readers were not there in the book to post comments, I recruited 13 of America’s leading sommeliers to lend their voices to the book with their thoughts on seasonal drinking and perfect pairings.

I’ve just received some finished copies of the book and have three to sign and give away! All you have to do to qualify is post a comment on this posting saying which is your favorite season for drinking wine. And while “all” is certainly an acceptable answer, maybe there’s one that brings particular pleasure to you.

Comments will close on Thursday and Friday I’ll throw all the commenters’ names in a hat and draw three names. So check back then to see if you are among the winners!

See the listing for A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season on Amazon.

This November 20, cases of Beaujolais Nouveau will fall from the sky and land as endcaps in wine shops everywhere. This fall, I encourage you to say no to the Nouveau–and reach for a local wine instead.

Beaujolais Nouveau is a travesty on at least two levels, one gustatory and one environmental. The grapes for this proto-wine were harvested only three months prior to the airdrop. In some years, they are not ripe enough and need to have their alcohol levels boosted by sugar. And most of the Nouveau is made with machine-harvested grapes carbonic maceration, commercial yeast strains and enzymes to give it a confected taste. Don’t get me wrong: I think gamay is one of the most food-friendly red grapes and a great value but mostly when it hails from one of the smaller subzones of Beaujolais.

Regulations prohibit the bottling of the wine more than one week before the arbitrary date, when signs all around the world used to proclaim triumphantly “le Beauolais noveau est arrivé” (the Beaujolais nouveau has arrived!”) Now, the dreadful slogan is “It’s Beaujolais nouveau time!” which sounds perilously close to a rip off of a Miller ad.

The short allowable time between bottling and release sets off a global sprint to transport the wine as far afield as Tokyo, San Francisco and Santiago. This has involved motorcycles, trucks, helicopters, regular jet planes and even, in a previous era, the Concorde!

As my research on the carbon footprint of wine has shown, airfreight is hardly the best way to transport any wine even if it were good. A bottle of Georges Duboeuf flown to New York has four times the carbon footprint than if it were sent by ship.

But the idea of a global wine celebration on the third Thursday of November is too appealing to ignore. So let’s ride on the coattails (jetstream?) of this global wine celebration but raise a glass of local wine instead. Wine is now grown in all 50 states and many of us who don’t live on the West Coast overlook our local producers. And many of those wines are likely to go well with the Thanksgiving repast.

So say no to Nouveau and join me in raising a glass of local wine this November 20! Do it for the polar bears.

See the UPDATE to this post.

Since I reached into my Oregon archives for a posting in memory of David Lett earlier this week, here are some photos of the pour from IPNC this past July. Hopefully the new slideshow feature works!

Value wine stories: they’re even hotter items with wine writers these days than grower champagne or skin fermented sauvignon blanc! So here’s another two cents–or two under $20–from me.

One of my neighbors with a cellar particularly strong in California wines that he bought when he lived there in the 1970s, has been convening a monthly wine tasting of enthusiasts for a few years now. Unfortunately I’m not often able to go because of a scheduling conflict with my teaching, but last week was an exception so I joined the convivial gathering with the theme of currently available Bordeaux under $20.

Despite the fact that some 500 growers a year in Bordeaux go out of business, Read more…