Dr Vino's wine blog

SIPPED and SPIT: saber rattling
Jim Budd posts more revelations about Pancho Campo and Jay Miller, including emails involving a $31,000 tasting for the wines of Madrid that the regional body could not afford. On his web site, Robert Parker threatens to sue over the recent revelations. Jim Budd pushes back against such a prospect.

SIPPED: tragedy
A blogger views the events transpiring in Spain through the lens of Aristotelean tragedy. But how does it end? [koskeloonwine]

SIPPED and SPIT: Yao Ming wine
Yao Ming, former NBA player and current wine enthusiast living in Shanghai, has released a Napa cabernet that will sell for $289 a bottle in China (including duties and sales tax). Blake Gray points out that the wine is not from a specific vineyard; Cameron Hughes elaborates in the comments that he bought similar wine for $5 – $25 a gallon on the bulk market. (There are about five wine bottles to the gallon.) A higher-priced wine, Yao Family Reserve, is expected soon. [WSJ, Gray Report]

SIPPED: BYOB?
Over on Chowhound, a commenter wonders if it is okay to bring wine, specifically Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades,” to MASA where the corkage fee is $90. Over on Facebook, Lyle Fass quips that the bling bottle merits that “They should charge your ass double!!” It’s an interesting idea to have restaurants vary corkage fees depending on whether they like a diner’s wine–how much for Chateauneuf du Pape at Masa? Or Yao Ming cab?

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
Ãœber-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

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]

SIPPED: nap time
James Suckling tweets this picture and comment from Hong Kong: “Surreal picture of Bob Parker and @jancisrobinson at #wfhk11.” [Yfrog]

SIPPED: restaurant advice
Start at the back of a wine list? Levi Dalton offers some excellent and provocative suggestions on how to navigate a wine list based on his covering for my class last week when I was snowed under (literally). [SoYouWantToBeASommelier]

WANTED: 1870 Lafite
A restauranteur friend of the Pentagon chief will uncork an 1870 Lafite Rothschild for him on New Year’s Eve as a result of the successful Bin Laden missin. [CNN]

SIPPED: Malbec for Porsches
Isn’t that the trade that Adam Smith wrote about? It’s happening now in Argentina. [Bloomberg]

SIPPED: liberalization
The California Alcohol and Beverage Control has issued new regulations on “third-party” marketing and advertising of wine. It was previously a gray area but the reform clarifies and liberalizes. One commentator in this Wines & Vines story suggests that even Amazon, the retail giant that previously called off a foray into the wine biz, might be attracted back to the space now.

And from the annals of wine shop emails, guess which region is under discussion here? “…his intimate knowledge of each butt’s character was incredibly impressive…”

SPIT: carbon footprint
Forget the mode of transport or the weight of the glass bottles; my co-author neglected this in our calculation of wine’s carbon footprint: grape drying by helicopter in Napa! [NPR]

SIPPED: watching grapes grow
Viticulture & Enology is one of the sexiest majors at Cornell. Well, with the helicopter blow driers, why not? (Oh and what type of positioning is happening in their vineyard?!) [CornellSun.com]

SIPPED: buying binge
Chinese investors are no longer satisfied with mere wine: now they are buying wineries in Australia and Bordeaux. [Bloomberg, BBC]

SIPPED: wine in food
Short ribs feature at Men’s Health — with a delicious braising wine (and drinking) from Dr. Vino. But will it give you six-pack abs?

SIPPED: more wines at better prices?
The Pennsylvania governor released a report on privatizing the state’s liquor stores. [businessweek]

SIPPED: snappy advice
GQ.com has a fun list of 25 wine tips that may run counter to expectations (cool photos too). If you like your tips in book form, I mentioned many of these items in Dr. Vino’s guide, A Year of Wine.

SIPPED: Yeoman wine
James Conaway, who wrote Napa a couple of decades ago, now turns his eyes and palate to Virginia and its wines on the pages of Garden & Gun (really, who doesn’t get their wine news there?).

SPIT: brainwashing
As we did here recently, Matt Kramer also expresses distaste with the idea of “brainwashing” among wine consumers [WineSpecatator.com]

SPIT: left on the block
Sign o’ the times? Lafite fails to sell at auction in Hong Kong. “There weren’t so many buyers.” [Bloomberg, WSJ]

SPIT: AOC
So what if Anjou producer Olivier Cousin wrote “Anjou Olivier Cousin” on his box? Well, the authorities that preserve origins already have a monopoly on those initials so his wrist has been slapped the spanking paddle has been broken out with large fines threatened. [levindesamis]

SIPPED: Bacchanal and bananas
The Montmartre Harvest Festival is underway in Paris, celebrating the one remaining vineyard there, complete with kids’ programming, a parade for Bacchus and a tribute to France’s overseas holdings (not sure of the wine angle there…).

SPIT: brown bags
Wine picnics in Paris: what NYC could emulate if it weren’t for open container laws…enjoy a last gasp of summer this weekend! [Enjoy the photo above and more at WineTerroirs]

SIPPED: Prohibition
PBS has a three-part documentary airing next month about Prohibition. It’s directed by Ken Burns and based on the book “Last Call” by Daniel Okrent. Fire up the TiVo to see the battle of the “wets” vs the “drys”: the first episode is entitled “A Nation of Drunkards.” [WITF]

SPIT: Puritanism
Professor Lena Brattsten has offered a wine appreciation course to Rutgers undergrads for twenty years. And for twenty years, it has had an outlandishly long wait list. Remind me: Why aren’t there more undergraduate wine classes? [Rutgers.edu]

SIPPED: Manhattan harvest
A blogger joins what is perhaps Manhattan’s only grape harvest, 350 pounds from a single labrusca vine on the UES dubbed Chateau Latif. [Treehugger]

SIPPED: a Riesling rap
“My Riesling’s so tasty/I drink it so hasty/because it plays well with sausages in their casings.” [youtube]

SIPPED: remembrances
A touching piece that balances the pleasure of learning about wine with the horror of 9/11. [esquire]

SIPPED: quality
The Muscadet region, known for quantity over quality, now boasts three sites officially recognized as superior, as crus, including Clisson. So glad the authorities are catching up! [larvf.fr]

SNAPPED: fun pics of the 2011 harvest in the Loire (one of which is above). [Wine Terroirs]

HAMMERED: $500k of Lafite
A vertical of 25 solid cases of Lafite from 1981-2005 sold for $539,280 to an “anonymous Chinese phone bidder” at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong. Great way to dump those ’91s! [WSJ]

SIPPED: going postal: The budgetary crisis at the US Postal Service puts wine shipping on the table. [NYT]

SPIT: frauds
Mike Steinberger summarizes the recent reactions–and adds his own–to Parker’s recent report on tasting fraudulent wines. [winediarist]

SIPPED: edumacation
My next NYU wine course runs Oct 12 – Nov 16. Registration and details.