Dr Vino's wine blog

Meet the newest wine blogger! Her name is Mariann and she hails from Denmark! When she’s not blogging she is known as Mariann Fischer Boel, the Commissioner of Agriculture of the European Union. Check out her blog.

She’s just getting into blogging so she’s just learning the ropes. For example, she hasn’t learned yet that she doesn’t have to put her photo in EVERY posting. And she doesn’t have a blogroll and couldn’t hyperlink her way out of a conference room. But at least she has comments! And she blogs in the blogging lingua franca–English!

This woman, who carries the big stick of wine policy reform, has the cojones to go to regions that could be affected by her radical initiative to uproot vineyards, reduce subsidies and upgrade quality. She went to Sicily to pat on the back and taketh away (see the Bloomberg story on her trip). And she lived to blog the tale. Roll the tape from her blog:

We visited vineyards in the hills around Etna whose high quality red wines matured in oak barrels are finding ready markets all across Europe and further afield.

As we work towards major reforms in both fruit and vegetables and wine, I was really inspired by what I saw. European farmers really can do well if we give them the correct conditions to allow their entrepreneurial talents to flourish.

Of course, it would be wrong of me to pretend that everyone was happy. I had the impression that my speech in general went down well. But I did notice some mumbling in the audience when I moved to the subject of wine reform – and more specifically the proposals for grubbing-up and ending distillation.

I know this seems harsh, but we cannot continue spending half a billion euros disposing of unwanted wine. We need to spend the money on improving the quality and marketing the results. The winemakers I saw in Sicily showed what is achievable if you have an open mind and a good business sense.

MFB is pro-barrique! And also a little unsure of who she’s blogging for. Clearly it’s not her constituency–European farmers–since they get hit with the third person pronoun. Maybe European taxpayers? Maybe Brussels bureaucrats? But, hey, even if it amounts to little more than a pamphlet, at least she takes comments!

The gleaming 72,000 square foot Whole Foods Bowery, opening today, has a “fromagerie” complete with an aging room. Cheeses come from Neal’s Yard in London, French affineur Hervé Mons, and some American classics such as Jasper Hill. The cheese manager was formerly at Artisanal Premium Cheese. There is a French fry station, a culinary center for classes and events, and two dining areas including conveyor-belt sushi. They can sell beer, local micro-brews and national macro-brews.

But there will be no wine.

Yes, it’s time for another edition of “New York’s crazy wine retailing laws!”

Law #1: Thou shalt not have more than one wine retail license in the state of New York. This is the fourth Whole Foods in Manhattan and the seventh in New York State. None of the NY stores sells wine (you never know what might happen if you could buy Sancerre the same time you buy Camembert), unlike Whole Foods stores in renegade states California, Illinois and Texas–where, I hasten to point out, levels of social unrest are no higher than in New York as a result of selling wine.

Whole Foods did have a wine retail license at their Columbus Circle location when it opened. They pulled the pulled the plug on that location voluntarily if somewhat mysteriously–there was something about it not being a street-level entrance, another instance of NY wine retail craziness. Apparently, WF still has the right to transfer the license to another location. Which brings us to…

Law #2: Thou shalt get down on bended knee and ask locals for the privilege of selling them wine. As Eater.com has been chronicling in their excellent series on the “drying of NYC,” this law affects bars and restaurants a lot more. Think about it: bar opens in your neighborhood, spills loud people into streets while you are trying to sleep. Fair enough, that could be worth getting riled up about.

But a shop? People go in, buy wine, take it home to drink it. It’s closed by 9 PM. I fail to see how that can cause angst in the neighborhood. Unless of course you are a competing wine retailer and you are attempting naked economic protectionism.

And apparently that’s what’s really happening. According to the NY Sun, Frank Geresi who owns local wine shop Elizabeth & Vine fears Whole Foods as a wine shop. He said “If I were a small hardware store and you were Home Depot, who would come to me to get a hammer once you moved in?” Nice try, Mr. Geresi: hammers are commodities and Whole Foods isn’t a discounter.

I don’t doubt that if Whole Foods got permission from the Community Board for the at-grade store-next-door-to-the-store that they would do a good job filling it with tons of interesting, biodynamic, organic or otherwise natural or even local wines. Look at all the TLC they’re putting into the “fromagerie” after all. And it would be convenient. But anybody who’s been to a WF in another state that does sell wine knows that you pay for that convenience: shopping around other wine stores will cut probably 15% off your wine bill.

So to New York officials: down with state laws limiting licenses! And to the Elizabeth & Vine: drop the resistance and let WF in! Just step up your game. Get great wines. Offer great prices and service. Heck, offer shipping to increase your reach. Who knows, WF selling wine in the neighborhood might just make more people in the neighborhood want wine. And to Community Board 3: do your bit and help make wine more accessible in America. Grant them the license!

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Dear Dr. Vino,

-Wino on the move

Glad to see that you have your priorities straight–and you are in luck!

It turns out that North Carolina does have direct shipping. Since October 1, 2003 residents have had the right to order wine directly from wineries at the rate of two cases a month–almost a bottle a day! Those wineries can be either in-state or out-of-state, laws that conformed with the current legal environment two years before the Supreme Court decision in the case Granholm v. Heald was handed down. The only catch is that the winery has to have a license to ship on file with NC so check first and encourage them to apply for one if they don’t have one already.

I called Sam’s for you and they do ship to North Carolina. By the way, consider yourself lucky in this regard. Even though NC allows direct shipping by wineries, even in the post-Granholm era, you can’t take it for granted that shops will ship too (see my previous frustration with this here). Indeed, Sam’s doesn’t ship to me in New York, also a reciprocal state. When I asked why, one of the owners emailed me that the decision is based on the advice of their attorneys. Those darned attorneys…grrr

And don’t forget the local options you have in North Carolina. NCwine.org boasts that the state is 10th in grape production and 12th in wine production!

Wine and Valentines
US News & World Report emailed, asking for some wine picks and I told them something I have neglected to tell you: Pierre Peters champagne is excellent! I have enjoyed it on the deck as an aperitif, at dinner, but not, however, in the jacuzzi. Send me your notes if you do! (find this champagne) [US News]

Wine and politics
Wine and cheese? No, wine and corruption is perhaps a more common pairing in Texas according to member of a committee examining the regulation of the wine biz. [Houston Chron, thanks Tom!]

Wine and sports
Did you spend $14.60 on wine all of 2005? And last year did you spend $81.40? Then you might just be a fan sports fan! Ladies golf comes in at the top of the heap of couch potatoes with $125 of spending. [Reuters, thanks Jeff!]

Wine and sports, part 2
Indy Colts fan Jeff at Goodgrape.com took me up on my betting wine for football. Fortunately for his sake, since I took da Bears, I couldn’t find any Illinois wine to send him. So I am adding a $25 bottle of his choosing (Tulocay Napa zinfandel 2000) to his cellar. Hey I’m almost a third of the way to the average expenditure of a sports fan!

Wine and weather
The Economist discusses German wine and climate change. But they fail to mention the economists who already did! (Slate even thoroughly discussed the paper) For more detail on the broader trend, see a recent LA Times story [Economist]

UPDATE:
Wine and blogs
Looking for a new world syrah tip? Tim wraps up his WBW with 50 of them. [Winecast]

…and finally, I forgot to include a link to Tony Bourdain’s hilarious rant against every show on the Food Network. [Ruhlman]

Related: “This Valentine’s Day, don’t have pinot envy”

tags: wine | wine

Michel Rolland, the controversial wine maker whose signature adorns over 100 wines around the world, has announced he will be stopping his consulting work to some 20 chateaus in Bordeaux. Rolland was placed on a low circle of the inferno in the 2005 documentary Rolland drops Bordeaux consultancies
decanter.com, February 8, 2007
By Adam Lechmere, and Panos Kakaviatos
“Michel Rolland has dropped some 20 consultancies – among them Chateau Kirwan – because of pressure of work.” Continue

Rolland leaves Chateau Kirwan under Mondovino cloud
decanter.com, January 29, 2007
By Panos Kakaviatos
“Celebrated flying winemaker Michel Rolland has left Chateau Kirwan, with the estate owners saying they are looking for higher quality.” Continue reading in cached version–original page is now mysteriously blank.

So was he pushed or did he jump?

Related: “Meeting Michel Rolland”
“Michel Rolland: the man, the myth, the legend“

Challenging
“This is the next wave. This is the Granholm case all over again,” said Kenneth Starr, of counsel to Chicago’s Kirkland & Ellis. Granholm? Yes, Granholm v. Heald, the Supreme Court case that paved the way for greater liberalization in wine shipments. Pre-Granholm, there were 26 states that allowed shipping. Now, almost two years later, there are only 34. Volume caps, requiring person-to-person transactions are among the barriers that remain and amount to distributors doing an “end run” around Granholm. Several cases will be coming this year according to a summary of the issues on Law.com

Reforming
Georgia is trying to make it easier to buy wine with bills facilitating internet sales and Sunday sales making their way through the legislature. Go Wendell Willard, scotch man and Georgia House Judiciary Committee Chairman! [Bizjournals]

Dunking
Teri Hatcher, Desperate Housewife, likes red wine, though not to drink (too many calories). According to the Daily Telegraph, she “is one of an increasing number who has started pouring a glass of wine into her bath every day. She would never drink it, but she claims bathing in it keeps her skin soft.” Um, someone help her. [Starpulse]

Dunking, II
Long a staple of California and Bordeaux, “vinotherapie” comes to NYC. Delluva Day Spa is now offering it in TriBeCa, just in time for Valentine’s Day. They must love Teri Hatcher there. [Urban Baby]

Drinking
Burgundy 2005–Is it the best burgundy year ever? Tim Atkins doesn’t buy the hype. But he isn’t about to dump it in his bath, either! [The Observer]

Daunting
A panel will assemble on March 13, 2007 to determine the Wine Women Want(TM). Oy. Good luck! [Jancisrobinson.com]

tags: wine | Burgundy 2005 | wine law | women

This is not a beer blog. But we can commiserate with our hops and barley brethren and sist’ren on occasion. (I even posted about French microbrews this summer.) Looking at a recent story about beer is especially important since it sheds light the political construction of alcohol markets in the US.

The Chicago Reader has a cover story about how the owner of Bell’s, a popular beer from Michigan, has withdrawn from the large Chicago market because of distributors. Roll the tape:

Until October Bell’s was distributed in Chicago by Union, which is owned by National Wine and Spirits. (NWS is currently enmeshed in court proceedings; NWS vice president Greg Molloch says a gag order prevents him from commenting for this article.) Bell was happy at NWS. But according to state law, NWS was entitled to sell Bell’s distribution rights to another wholesaler without his approval, and a few months ago it decided to do just that, in a deal with Chicago Beverage Systems— the Miller distributor in Chicago. CBS is part of Reyes Holdings, the biggest beer distributor in America and, according to Crain’s Chicago Business, the biggest privately held company in town.

…People in the industry are skeptical about whether CBS can properly distribute these smaller brands. “What they do, before they started dabbling [in regional beers], they did very well,” says Laura Blasingame at the Map Room. She buys Heineken and Amstel from CBS. “Those brands are hard to mess up. CBS takes care of beers that don’t need as much love. I understand why Larry Bell would be nervous. I don’t know if they really know how to handle craft beer.” CBS officials didn’t answer questions on its approach to distributing craft beer.

State law says that a distributor can drop (or better yet, sell the rights to) a brewery at any time. But outside of identifying “just cause” like gross professional misconduct— such as selling beer past its sell-by date—there’s no easy way for a brewery to dump its distributor.

Check out the whole story. It has sad parallels to the wine biz…

Thanks, Mark!

tags: wine | beer | the business of wine

Trivia: When is an American wine not an American wine?

Answer: When it is from overseas!

According to federal regulations on labeling, for a wine to be labeled as generic “American wine” only 75 percent must come from the good old US of A. According to the TTB, they don’t have a rule on where the other 25 percent comes from. Hmm, truthiness…

This is now being exploited by California producers according to a story on Decanter.com. In the story, an unnamed source cites The Wine Group’s Franzia brand as exploiting the regulatory gap. The California Association of Winegrape Growers is lobbying against it. Bulk wine imports are up 229 percent in the past year according to the story. Meanwhile California had a bountiful harvest last year.

It’s hard to get fired up over jug wine. But American jug wine needs to be all American, dammit! Call your member of Congress and tell him or her to put this issue ahead of a flag burning amendment.

Or just tell the wine regulatory authority, the TTB, that you are for truth in labeling.

phone: (202) 927-8210
Fax: (202) 927-8525
ttbquestions@ttb.treas.gov

tags: wine | wine labels