Dr Vino's wine blog

In a profile of Aida Batlle, a coffee grower in El Salvador, The New Yorker blows the lid on coffee’s imitation of wine. Check out all the ways how these above-average Joes are threatening us now:
* using word “terroir”
* rise of estate labeling
* a focus on harvesting good fruit
* existence of a barista guild certification
* frequent use of blind tastings, known as “cuppings”
* stating that coffee pros like their coffee served slightly cooler because it releases more aromatics at a lower temperature
* obsessing over gadgets, such as a $100 burr grinder

Hey, “coffee experts,” back off! We wine geeks already have all these areas covered. And on the iPad version of the story, they even have the gall to offer an instructional video of how to brew coffee. Come on, we know that wine has a monopoly on “how to serve” videos on the web! Next thing you know, “coffee experts” will be spitting their java into a Jets bucket!

One thing they dare bring to blind tasting is rigor. Get this: in the Cup of Excellence program, “judges must be able to describe samples the same way when they are presented at different tables, in different orders.” And the story’s protagonist nails her own coffee when a cheeky barista in Red Hook tried to trick her in a cupping!

But don’t worry, wine geeks, we still have one thing they don’t: point scores! Yes, I pity the “coffee experts,” since they are not able to substitute a subjective experience with the false pretense of objectivity–we still have that one covered!

SIPPED: Bordeaux brands
How big is your brand extension? Cheval Blanc, one of the wines in the LVMH stable, will include a Paris luxury hotel of the same name. [Decanter.com]

Oh my cot!
Things you learn in the WSJ: Cahors is the only region of France where malbec is still grown. Actually, Cahors only grows two-thirds of French malbec per ONIVINS.

SIPPED: diversity
Über-somm David Lynch will open a wine restaurant in SF where all sub-$100 wines will be available as 375ml for half price. Kind of makes you want to try two different halves, no? [SFGate]

SIPPED: Beaujolais
Beaujolais from 2009 and 2010 get thumbs up in a thoughtful LA Times article. “Beaujolais is a party,” says a natural winemaker who still seeks to capture the fun of the wine.

SIPPED: wine jobs
Senior account executive (PR), California Direct Sales Manager for an import portfolio, assistant cellarmaster internship at BALTHAZAR, executive assistant to the CEO at Acker Merrall, and more!

SIPPED: traveling with wine
HOW TO: Bring wine on board a plane
HOW TO: successfully check wine on a plane

The 2011 Beaujolais nouveau debuted around the world this past Thursday. Much of it was airfreighted; American Tim Eustis discovered the lowest-carbon footprint version of the wine by riding his bike to six stores around Paris. He sent us this virtual postcard and pics.

By Tim Eustis

Beaujolais Nouveau succeeded in the United States and beyond thanks mostly to the marketing prowess of Georges Duboeuf. More fun than good, his wines are drinkable for perhaps a bottle, but no more. Then came the backlash against the flower label wine and cultured yeast 71B with its characteristic “gout de banane.” The exciting rise of more “natural” Beaujolais Noveau, that lacks the banana flavors we’d come to expect, is a pleasure to sip. I unlocked my bike and set out to survey the wines–and the joyous scene–in some exciting wine shops in Paris. Read more…

A convenience store in the Bordeaux region was found to have sold 170 tons of sugar in a two-year period. Why?

The store manager says that the locals told her they were making jam. However, a court found otherwise, levying a $6,700 “suspended” fine for selling sugar to wine producers without recording their names as law requires.

Wine producers in certain zones of Northern Europe are allowed to add sugar to the grape juice (aka must) before or during fermentation, a process called chaptalization. The goal is not to have residual sugar in the wine, which would make it sweet. Rather, it is to boost the level of alcohol. Producers must declare the amount used and pay a tax of $17.50 per 220 lb of sugar added. The general impression has been that global warming has diminished the need for chaptalization as rising temperatures boost the natural sugar in grapes. During fermentation, yeasts chomp sugars to ferment into alcohol (and CO2). But one of the years in question was 2007, a cooler and rainer year than usual for the region.

Even though the authorities collect the taxes for chaptalization and other forms of enrichment, they are reluctant to divulge the figues to offer a window onto how widespread the practice is. Dismayed by the lack of official statistics, Benjamin Lewin estimates that 17 to 33% of French wine is chaptalized, depending on the heat of each vintage.

Have you ever said, “I cannot wait to get home and pop open a bottle of red California Trousseau!” It’s not likely since the grape that hails from the Jura region of France is pretty rare in California: Only 49 tons were crushed last year (compare that to 400,000 tons of zinfandel; but since it fetched as much as $1,700 a ton vs an average of $442 for zinfandel, maybe the premium will attract future plantings). But maybe you should? Assuming the wines are done well, I think the expansion of grape varieties beyond the Big Six is potentially one of the most exciting stories to come out of California, nay, all of America.

A while back, I tweeted about Trousseau (noir) from Arnot-Roberts, a wine that I liked. The Sonoma-based winery sources the fruit from Luchsinger Vineyards in Lake County’s Clear Lake AVA. Bryan Garcia, a savvy 24-year-old wine geek from NYC, tweeted back exclaiming that California trousseau is more expensive than the Jura masters!

It’s a fair point. But if all the Trousseau lovers of America bought only Jura wines, who would buy the domestic Trousseau wines–zin fans? Somehow, I doubt it. And without demand for offbeat wines, producers would would likely give up making them commercially.

More broadly, what do you think: do you have any sense of obligation to buy local or domestic wines because you like the idea or the story, even if you find them not price competitive–or even quality competitive, as Bryan suggests by invoking the “masters”?

SPIT: carbon footprint
A cardboard wine bottle, similar in material to a milk carton, may soon be found in British supermarkets. Its maker claims it has only a tenth the carbon footprint of a glass bottle. [Daily Mail]

SIPPED: Valencia
Proava.org reported last month that Jay Miller would lead a “master class” of Valencia wines in the region this month. An email to Miller last week requesting comment did not garner a reply. It appears that his visit to neighboring Murcia has been canceled or postponed.

SIPPED: Burgundy in Hong Kong
Interest in Bordeaux softens while “Burgundy’s on fire and sizzling.” [Bloomberg]

SIPPED: summer fun
A fun slide show (from July): A Wine Tour of Collio, by Vespa [NYT]

SPIT: copy editing
The cover of a recent Wine Spectator misspelled Christian Moueix, “Bordeaux’s quiet leader” and a winner of the magazine’s Distinguished Service Award.

SPIT: opening a bottle with a shoe
A reader tries to open a wine bottle with a shoe at a party and gets a trip to the hospital and six stitches for the effort. [comment]

SIPPED: rules
A 92-year-old woman in Britain was not allowed to buy a bottle of whiskey since she didn’t have ID, only a pacemaker certificate. [Daily Mail]

During the recent, week-long power outage, we sought refuge in an undisclosed location that may or may not have been the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We found a bottle of “brut nature” cava German Gilabert (about $15; find this wine) at a local wine shop and got some lobstah rolls. This is hipster cava with a secondary fermentation in the bottle, six bar of pressure, no dosage and overall a very solid match!

Interestingly, a little of the cava remained in the bottle and I left it on the counter. A couple of days later, I poured it in a glass and was surprised it was bubbly! I tasted it and it showed no signs of deterioration.

I asked the wine’s importer, Jose Pastor, via email for his thoughts on why this bottle held up so well. He was puzzled by the persistence of the bubbles, pointing out that he likes to decant many (grower) Champagnes and that reduces the fizz. As to the lack deterioration, he said that many of the (natural) wines from his portfolio often actually show better after being open a couple of days.

As several small producers in Champagne are making their bubbly more wine-like with less fizz, perhaps giving sparkling wines some air and serving in wine glasses will be a good way to go. What have you found in your experiments in giving bubbly some air?

St. Helena resident John Gillespie tweeted the other day: “Trade and consumer alert – bad harvest weather in CA meant lots of grapes (Napa Cabs included) went through “flash détente” machines.” Since I am a political science junkie, I thought SALT II had finally made it to Napa!

But instead of laying down weapons, some vintners appear to be ratcheting up technology as Mother Nature dealt them a third consecutive growing season that was relatively cool. Wines & Vines, a trade publication, ran a story last year on Flash-Détente, which roughly translates as “instant relaxation.” They report that by heating the grapes to 185ºF and then sending them to a vacuum chamber to be cooled, the the technology increases extraction from red grapes while minimizing bitter seed tannin and pyrazine (vegetal) odors. The finished wine also has a darker color. Because some of the water content of the grapes has been vaporized, the pre-fermented juice (called “must”) has a higher sugar content, which will result in higher alcohol or will be adjusted down in some way. Developed in France, the first Flash-Détente machines arrived in California in 2009.

Here endeth today’s Flash class on winemaking.