Dr Vino's wine blog

The Australian Open is underway. Tomorrow is Australia Day. So today, instead of focusing on the current troubles of the Aussie wine biz, let’s pay homage to Australian, erm, cuisine by thinking about pairing up the iconic dish, the meat pie.

The hand sized-pie is made of a variety of meats (perhaps at once), and topped with ketchup, known locally as tomato sauce. Served hot, they can be purchased in grocery stores, convenience stores, gas stations, sporting events and pretty much anywhere in the country.

So even though Eric Asimov reaches for the closest dump bucket every time he hears us ask it, is pairing wine and meat pies… impossible?!

Friend-of-the-blog Eric Arnold did his own meat pie and wine experiments while spending a year in New Zealand, a country with its own pie predilection. As he details in a chapter in his book, First Big Crush, Eric lined up an array of “greasy, heart-attack inducing” pies including steak and kidney, steak and cheese, and “Mexican.” He poured New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling, Pinot Noir, Merlot and a rosé and invited the makers of those exact wines along for a tasting. Lo and behold, not only did they take it surprisingly seriously, but they had fun with it! To see the results of their pairings, check out chapter 18 of his book.

Is Riesling a hard sell? Has the bubble burst on his Champagnes made by those who grow the grapes? Just how good is 2009? On Tuesday, I pulled wine importer Terry Theise aside at the trade tasting of his New York distributor, Michael Skurnik Wines. We discussed these topics–and more. To the tape!

2009—great vintage or the greatest vintage? Read more…

Dave Pearce crunches carbon numbers for breakfast. The kiwi winemaker at Grove Mill winery has studied the carbon footprint of wine, reduced what emissions he can at his winery, and purchased offsets for the rest.

We sat down over a macchiato in NYC one morning and discussed his views on alternative packaging. Although he recognizes the weight of glass and its role in the overall carbon footprint, his own wines still come in glass bottles. His thoughts, in brief: Read more…

BLOWN: box wine
After news of an implosion yesterday, today we bring you an explosion for all your demolition needs. (Via @upgradetravel)

SIPPED: Jancis, rocked
A German sommelier who goes by the nom de internet of Finkus Bripp drops by Jancis Robinson’s house to interview her. No exploding microwaves, sadly, but worth a look nonetheless. [Wine on the Rocks]

SIPPED: slim bottles
The wine bottle makes good on its resolution to lose weight: Tesco introduces an ultralight glass bottle that weighs just 300g, or, significantly less than normal bottles. That means more wine shipped around the world, and less packaging. Take a look at the bottle over on wineanorak.com.

SIPPED: more freedom of shipping
A federal appeals court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that Massachusetts law could not offer free shipping to in-state wineries over 30,000 gallons a year while preventing out-of-state wineries from shipping. Wineries producing more than the 12,618 case limit rejoiced at the ruling–as did free trading consumers. [AP]

SIPPED: the “new normal”
What’s in store for the wine biz? “Slow growth, lower prices and younger fans who are drinking more at home than at fancy restaurants.” [Wines & Vines]

SIPPED and SPIT: new wineries
The number of new wineries in the USA increased by six percent, according to Wine Business Monthly. Although this is up, the growth slowed to from 15 and 10 percent in 2006 and 2007, respectively. It was the same growth rate as last year. Related question: does the US need six percent more wineries?

SIPPED: Discussion
Randy and Kaz, the hosts of WineBizRadio invited me on last week to talk about my post about wine samples at the Wine Advocate.

News of a bounced check from Vinfolio, the fine wine retailer and auctioneer, appeared yesterday morning on eBob. By the afternoon, the CEO, Steve Bachmann, posted this to his blog:

After three years of very rapid growth — placing it among the top 15 fastest growing private companies in the SF Bay area from 2006 to 2008, Vinfolio experienced a much more difficult sales environment during 2009. A few weeks ago, we found ourselves in need of additional capital on a very near-term basis. The company investigated several options but new capital could not be obtained on a necessarily compressed timetable. Because of the situation, and to safeguard the interests of our customers and creditors (including for wine purchases, wine sales, and wine stored with Vinfolio), the board of directors and the shareholders of Vinfolio approved and undertook a form of restructuring known as an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors (the “Assignment”) on Friday evening, January 15, to provide the business with the flexibility to develop the appropriate course of action going forward.

The San Francisco-based company had just raised $4.5 million in September, they said to fund an expansion in Asia. According to the same article, the company, founded in 2003, had raised $6.1 million in previous rounds of financing (both debt and equity).

The company sources fine wine from collectors, wineries and has an importer’s license. Their other offerings include VinCellar, a system for wine inventory management, both on computers and as an iPhone app. The company also has 17,000 square feet of temperature-controlled storage for customers. Last July, the company launched VinFolio Marketplace, an online marketplace where not only wineries and importers could list wines for sale, but individual collectors could sell wines from their collection to one another. When launched, the company proclaimed that it enabled “access to the $500+ million in wine” making it the “world’s largest fine wine marketplace.” At the time of launch, in any given Marketplace transaction, the seller incurred a fee but the buyer did not.

In his post, Bachmann said that operations will continue during Assignment, a state-level insolvency measure. But in the eBob forum, several commenters on eBob debated whether collectors with wine in storage should arrange for immediate pick-up of their wines.

Yesterday’s post sparked a discussion about which words and/or information you really would like to have on a back label. While everyone can agree that pabulum (ahem, “handcrafted“) should end up in the dump bucket rather than the back label, what would you like to see?

A site reader sent in the above photo from New Zealand, which blends tech specs with some yadda yadda. Another small importer/distributor commented that half the people he asked actually wanted tasting notes on the back label. Do you want grape varieties on the back when place names only appear on the front? Even though about a quarter of wine consumers feel “overwhelmed” by wine, there’s still a strong case that, pace Mies van der Rohe, more is indeed more when it comes to useful information on the prime real estate of back labels.

Previously, we discussed Randall Grahm’s decision to bare all on his labels and that the FDA may push all producers in that direction. And don’t forget barcodes! So here it is, an omnibus thread for all your back label venting/discussion needs!

Please note that this post does not contain sulfites. And that you may operate machinery after reading it.

Usage of the term “handcrafted” on wine back labels is increasing.

In related news, the space for “machine crafted” on labels remains wide open. Read more…

SPIT: Tina Fey?
The Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association selects Sarah Palin as their convention speaker in Las Vegas. Her talk is likely to be entitled “Going Rouge” and expound on her secret love of Nebbiolo. Oh wait, the WSWA says that she is a great supporter of free enterprise–so maybe she will talk about the market liberalizing effects of dismantling the three-tier system?

SPIT: impossible food-wine pairings!
Eric Asimov, chief wine critic at The New York Times, dismisses our impossible food-wine pairings as “sad” and irritating–eegad!! Too bad since the popular series brings many new commenters out of the woodwork. (And, no, we weren’t being serious when talking about which wine to pair with dog food.) Take a look for yourself at the previous entries in the series and decide if it is funny, interactive, thought-provoking, unpretentious, mouth-watering and sometimes useful–or whatever he said.

SIPPED: Physics!
Does this funky wine glass defy physics? Apparently not! (via @wine_markfisher)

SIPPED: imitation as flattery?
A Loire Sauvignon Blanc called “Kiwi Cuvee” gets a thumbs down from Australian regulatory authorities after objections from their Antipodean neighbor. [Telegraph]

Robert Parker states that his publication, The Wine Advocate, purchases “more than 60%” of the wines that it reviews. Parker previously said that he paid for 75 percent of the wines, but amid the furor last year over the free trips that two of his contributors, Jay Miller and Mark Squires, had accepted, he scaled back that figure. However, many people wonder if even the revised figure is true. After all, The Wine Advocate reviews thousands of wines a year (16,474 wines last year), and more than a few of them are extremely expensive. Also, Parker now has six contributing writers, all of whom are presumably drawing salaries from The Wine Advocate.

In 2006, Parker’s assistant, Joan Passman, told a New York Times reporter that Parker purchased bottles “on occasion” but that “by far the largest portion” of wines he sampled were free samples. (Parker publicly dismissed her assertion, saying she had “no clue as to whether I spend a dollar or a million dollars on wines to be tasted.”) In the related article, Marvin Shanken admitted that the Wine Spectator, which has many more subscribers and much higher revenues than the Wine Advocate, was dependent on free samples. “It’d be economically impossible to buy all those wines, especially the ones that are $100 to $300 to $500 a bottle,” he said. During the Miller/Squires flap, Parker seemed to suggest that shouldering the travel expense could lead him to “sacrifice” coverage of some areas. If that travel cost is too much to bear, it certainly seems reasonable to wonder if Parker is really buying as much wine as he claims.

To find out what the Wine Advocate spends on wine according to the stated policy, I crunched the numbers from Read more…