Dr Vino's wine blog

Stephen Colbert has a hilarious send-up of the dog food vs paté research paper we recently discussed. Check it out! (and see what he puts in his mouth–ack!)

In further canine wine news, also check out “Learning to sniff out corked wine” in the current issue of Food & Wine. Inspired in part by a grudge against a beagle from Customs and Border Protection, Ray Isle engages in a competition with a Sonoma winery dog (no dog food consumed by either party).

Fred Franzia, creator of Two Buck Chuck and founder of Bronco Wine Co, has a somewhat laudable if self-serving goal: no wine should sell for over ten dollars a bottle. While tasty wine under $10 is something wine consumers could rally behind even in the best of times, the recession certainly makes value have greater appeal now. The only trouble with Franzia’s wine is the that they just aren’t that tasty.

The current issue of the New Yorker has a lengthy profile of Franzia that is well worth reading, especially if you’re not familiar with his story. Here’s how the author describes his winery in Ceres, California:

It also irritates Franzia when people describe Bronco’s facility, with its four hundred and fifty-two stainless-steel storage tanks–including six liquid oxygen tanks that once held fuel for intercontinental ballistic missiles and are now being used to make champagne [sic]–as being reminiscent of an oil refinery.

(In addition to the satellite image above, click here for a street view of the flags. Franzia had this to say about the flags in the story: “No California flag–they’ve screwed us too many times. We shouldn’t fly the US flag, the bastards. They have a felony on us.”)

One of the biggest puzzles about the American wine market is why there are so few tasty values made in the USA. Imports, somewhat paradoxically, offer better value despite traveling a farther distance and often having to pass through another tier, the American importer.

What do you think are the key reasons that American wines under $10 are so often uninspiring? (Granted, there certainly are uninspiring imports under $10 but there are also some rustic wonders that sell for three to six euros in Europe.) Here are some variables to toy with: short-ish history of American wine with relatively few small growers, recent industry consolidation, the soil and/or climate, high land prices, producer greed/pride, the three tier distribution system, or the consumer as chump.

Swirl. Spit. Discuss. And while you’re at it, let us know your favorite American wines under $10–or even cast the net wider to include wines under $15 if under $10 is too hard. Maybe in a future post we’ll do a low-cost throwdown, domestic versus imports.

E & J Gallo, the enormous, privately held wine company, is well-known (notorious?) for protecting their brand. Ernest and Julio sued their own brother Joseph in 1986 to prevent him from marketing his cheese as “Joseph Gallo.” They also sued unrelated East Bay company, Gallo Salume Inc., to limit the number of their meat products that could carry the name.

A couple of weeks ago, E & J Gallo cranked the lawsuit-o-meter up a notch: They sued a Seattle gourmet food store for selling a Spanish pasta called Gallo. On the forums of the Seattle Times, Steve Winston, the owner of The Spanish Table in Pike Place Market, comments that Pastas Gallo dates from 1874 while E & J Gallo dates from 1933.

In Ernest Gallo’s obituary, the Times of London further summarized Gallo’s legal actions:

In 1990 the company successfully sued the Gallo Nero wine consortium of Chianti who had used the word “gallo” (cockerel) on their bottles. Ten years later the brothers took the Chianti wine-makers to court again over their domaine name.

In the meantime they put pressure on a small domaine called Santa Marcellina in Chianti because they had a “Marcellina” trade-mark among the many they had patented. In 1994 they attacked a Mexican company called Pasatiempos Gallo. In 2002 it was the turn of a lady potter in Texas, who used the word “gallo” because she made ceramic representations of roosters. Gallo himself made no excuses for his behaviour, saying: “We don’t want most of the business. We want it all.”

While it’s no doubt important for mark holders to protect their marks, there’s no point in being a cockerel about it. The situation smacks of Monster Cable’s overreaching and suing a mini-golf company and engendering consumer ill will. Perhaps we should take a page from Gizmodo’s book and come up with a list of items that Gallo legal eagles might want to put in their sight:

Pico de gallo salsa
The Year of the Rooster
France
Rossignol skis
Coq au vin
Le coq sportif
Cockfights

SPIT and SIPPED: Bordeaux 2008
After better-than-expected but still largely tepid reviews, Bordeaux 2008 took a shot in the arm form Robert Parker who raved about it. All the action is summed up nicely, with charts of price action, on FT.com’s Alphaville blog. Quotage from Simon Staples, aka BigSiTheWineGuy and a buyer at Berry Bros and Rudd in London: “He [Parker] went crazy about 2003 (all on his own) He missed 2005 (everyone else loved it) He’s now potty about 08(a few very nice wines)Plot?Lost?”

SIPPED: wine growing
Wine in London, yes. But vines? Apparently so. But a terroir de double decker diesel may be avoided: Decanter reports that a horticultural college about 10 miles north of St. Paul’s has planted 1,500 vines.

SPIT: red wine stains
A South African winery blog posts with the results of their tests on various red wine stain removers. The winner: hydrogen peroxide! It’s a cost-effective result considering hydrogen peroxide costs something like 99 cents a gallon at Duane Reade. [ht: Tasting Room]

SIPPED: plastique
Wolf Blass, an Australian producer, announced two new wines in plastic (PET) bottles that resemble a traditional glass bottle.

SIPPED: fighting garden thievery
The BBC reports that Hugh Johnson, renowned wine writer and avid gardener, had “a late 17th Century astronomical sphere and urns [stolen] from his historic garden.” He has posted a £1,000 reward for information leading to the return of the items.

Rivalries and conflicts simmer throughout the world. At least one was resolved peacefully last week in a historic vertical tasting of the wines of the two Pichons.

Around 1850, faced with the inheritance laws of the Napoleonic code, Baron Pichon split his Pauillac estate among his five children: his three daughters got the larger share of the property but his two sons inherited the chateau itself and two-fifths of the vineyard. This action not only set up a rivalry between the two properties but also doomed legions of wine consumers to confusion between the two adjacent estates now colloquially known as Pichon-Baron or Pichon-Lalande. Read more…

According to a study, it’s hard to distinguish pâté from dog food when served blind.

Robin Goldstein, author of The Wine Trials and chef/owner of a fake, Wine Spectator award-winning restaurant, is the lead author on the working paper from the American Association of Wine Economists.

The researchers served pureed Newman’s Own dog food alongside duck-liver mousse, pork-liver pâté, puréed liverwurst, and Spam. Of the 18 volunteers (who are these people?), only three could correctly identify the dog food.

So the question on the minds of wine lovers–and dogs–everywhere is: which wine pairs with dog food? A Sauternes? Late-harvest Gewurztraminer? Or is it…impossible?

Yesterday, the UPS man dropped off a box of books in Korean. I was amazed. Not so much at the fact that I got a stack of books in Korean. But the books had my name on the front–or so I understand.

It was only November when I first heard about the Korean edition of my book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink. And now it has been printed–and with a better cover, I might add. Wow, that was fast.

In news about my other book, A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season, we have blog reviews!

Jeff at goodgrape.com writes: “It has ascended to the top of my intro. guide favorites list…Not only is his crystalline writers voice clear, concise and accessible, but he’s truly done something inventive with the introductory wine guide genre by interspersing his wisdom very suitably within the context of the calendar.”

Cathy Huyghe writes: “…this book makes wine fun. Relevant. Not stodgy. Easy reading. And by the end of it – or by the end of the month if you prefer – you’ll have learned something new. When it comes to books on wine, you cannot ask for anything more.”

Vinography posts Tim Patterson’s review of Wine Politics: “Dr. Vino knows his stuff–and rest assured, the writing is clean, clear and lively, not the least pedantic, and in no way requiring an advanced degree in econometrics.”

And, finally, you can check out a video Q&A with me done by the good folks at Organic Wine Journal. They also have some other vids there about cow horns with Mike Benziger or how to spit with Lyle Fass so you might just click away from mine to surf around their site.