Dr Vino's wine blog

It happened. [yellow tail], the ubiquitous wine brand that advertises on billboards, crossed the million case a month mark last month reports just-drinks.com. Think what you will about the wine in the bottle, but that is incredible growth (not to mention a nice chunk of change). Here’s some historical data on the brand from Wm. Deutsch, the American importer and co-owner of the brand in North America:

2001: 225,000 cases (brand introduced to USA in June 2001)

2002: 1.2 million cases

2003: 4.3 million cases (making [yellow tail] the No. 1 imported wine in the USA).

2004: 6.5 million cases

Don’t forget to catch the podcast of the brand’s Australian wine maker and co-owner John Casella on GrapeRadio. And now that [yellow tail] pinot grigio is available near you, the YT riesling is set to land on our shores in spring 06. I wonder if it is spaetlese?

Wine of the week, 11/12/05

MontGras, Reserva Carmenere, Colchagua,
2001. $9.99 Find this wine

This is a red built for the long haul. It’s not just that it came all the way from Chile…continue

A flight of headlines:

The dollar hits a two-year high against the euro. Hedge, people, hedge! [NYT]

French AOC wine prices are collapsing [BeverageDaily]

A new group of 180 French winemakers has organized under the name of Sève, les amis de Joseph Capus to reform the country’s wine laws. According to Francois des Ligneris in Decanter, new quality criteria should include density of vines, types of yeast used, and whether methods such as cryo-extraction or reverse osmosis are used or if acid, bacteria, chemicals or pesticides are added. Bonne chance, les amis. [Decanter]

PA wineries get a restraining order to delay being prohibited from shipping directly to consumers while the state prohibits out-of state shipments. Hmm, sounds a violation of the SCOTUS decision in May. [PBT]

Blogger Shiraz has a discussion on aromas and tasting notes that actually sniffs out some scientific literature.

Technorati tags: food & drink | wine news | wine

File under department of Who Dat?

Last night at the excellent Crush wine store, I attended a book signing of Matt Skinner. Matt Kramer? No Matt Skinner. This, Aussie Matt was a surfer who started working in the local liquor shop to fund his surfing. After treating it just as a boring retail job, his boss showed him some surveillance camera video (slow down, Big Brother!) of him working, that is to say, reading the paper and pushing the beer. Confronted with such evidence of his poor wine performance, he decided to learn more about wine.

A few years later, the story goes, Jamie Oliver was on a book tour in the land of Oz and Matt went to meet him. Somehow, Matt then moved to London and started as Jamie’s sommelier at the celebrated restaurant Fifteen (The BBC TV “reality” program about opening the restaurant for underprivileged youth is quite worthwhile).

After three years at Fifteen, Mitchell Beazley approached him about writing a book, the story further goes. The book, Thirsty Work, aims to be a wine introduction for twentysomethings and is lighter than a chenin blanc. Matt told me that he’s not really a writer although he did write a few things for Australia’s Wine X magazine before it folded. No page of Thirsty Work is complete without a color picture and the font often changes size mid-sentence, starting big and ending normal sized. It’s the perfect wine book to read while getting your nails done, which apparently he does.

With foreign rights sold in several countries and six languages, he’ll no doubt be able to finance lots of surfing now–or even a nice cellar.

These tasting-sized pours come from recent wine news:

Constellation is shocked that Vincor’s board rejected its $31/share offer. Hmm, maybe it has something to do with the fact that Vincor’s shares closed today at $34.57?

Direct shipping in Michigan took another step forward. Almost there!

Truck drivers at distributors Peerless and Charmer go on strike in New York: “That means no Grey Goose, Bacardi, Dewar’s, Grand Marnier, Stoli, Blackstone, Ketel…As our supplies dwindle, I’m considering investing in kevlar,” one liquor store employee writes me.

Jancis tries beer for a week in Egypt–and likes it!

Today’s WSJ has a story that Anheuser-Busch is hoping to start a less wet-n-wild advertising campaign for beer around the wholesome theme of “Got beer?” Honestly, who gets paid for these things? Anyone who suggests a “got wine?” campaign will be drawn and quartered. * * * UPDATE: a reader just wrote in saying that Rachel Ray has a T-shirt that reads “Got EVOO?” (as in extra virgin olive oil). I’m contemplating a T-shirt “Got ____? Must be shot!” >;-0

(Incidentally though the proposed beer campaign does have one cute idea for the wine industry: instead of beer and food pairings, they will introduce beer and people pairings along the theme of “who would you like to have a beer with? Paul Newman picks Teddy Roosevelt; Oprah picks Lucille Ball. Wine ads could improve on the concept by adding living people.)

OK, this one has nothing to do with wine, but this image of the royal squeeze is priceless.

On the blogs:
Check out Tom’s photos from the wine warehouse fire.

What’s the point? Christian has a rant about numerical ratings.

Fatemah has posted her WBW #15 round up. Check it out for some local microcuvees.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Italian and French trade and consumer groups are pushing for European “Made In” tags to impose origin labeling–in clothing, not wine. Some fashion houses are divided since they although their apparel maybe designed in Europe, it’s actually “made in” Asian countries.

The CEO of one LVMH Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton fashion brand, Celine, has added his support for the initiative. That’s amazingly consistent since the owner of Moet & Chandon, Krug, Veuve Clicquot, and Dom Perignon also seeks to protect origins for its champagnes.

My wine of the week is Fontaleoni, Chianti, Colli Senesi, 2004. $11. Find this wine. I generally don’t clutter the blog with my value wine picks but I thought a periodic mention couldn’t do any harm. See my full write-up of this Chianti, not from the classico zone.

For blog readers who are unaware that I make weekly wine picks under $10 (OK, sometimes it creeps a little over, like this one) you should head on over to the main site where I have a bunch of great wine recommendations for value vino. Cheers.

Technorati tags: food & drink | wine

I recently added a sitemeter traffic monitor for this site and I have been surprised with the geographic diversity of the readers. I’ll paste a recent random snapshot below.

Then I learned about Google’s new frappr community mapping service and thought readers of the site might want to add a pushpin to the map. I’m not really sure what point this serves, but hey, the technology is available so why not?! Click here to map Elmo’s Dr. Vino’s world.

But what could be even more interesting is to map wine bloggers and where they write from. So I set up a frappr map for mapping the wine blogosphere — hopefully wine bloggers will contribute so we can have a quick map of the wine blogosphere.
http://www.frappr.com/winebloggers

A random snippet (albeit a quite international one) of locations from site readers:

France Neuilly-sur-Marne, Ile-de-France
United States San Diego, California
United States Valparaiso, Indiana
Portugal Porto
France Neuilly-sur-Marne, Ile-de-France
Brazil Gata Branca, Minas Gerais
United States Saint Paul, Minnesota
United States Pensacola, Florida
Belgium Brussels, Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest
United States
United States New York
Finland Bredvik, Southern Finland
United Kingdom London, Lambeth
Italy Rome, Lazio
Poland Warzachewka Polska, Wloclawek
France Viry-Chtillon, Ile-de-France
United States Chicago, Illinois
Spain Tarragona, Cataluna
Stockholm, Stockholms Lan
United States Sebastopol, California