Dr Vino's wine blog

This is certainly a bravura performance. But, sheesh, couldn’t she use a Laguiole to open the wine?!?

Can’t wait to see this as a grande finale in the Master Sommelier exam!

Thanks, Phil!

DrVino: Michel Rolland has an autobiography coming out? A magnum oakus, surely.

CraigCamp: hear the Oxygen network picked up the rights and will turn it into a micro-series
Wink Lorch: Bet it will appear late 😉
OlivierLandry: A very ripe comment on your part, good sir. #RollandPuns …I think we’ve extracted everything we could out of this…

In meme action, consider #mostinterestingsommintheworld:
@WineauxDLynnP: He finished inventory at Berns in 40 minutes.

@JosiahBaldivino: He taught Jesus how to turn water into wine.

@DrVino: He doesn’t decant because sediment is afraid to come out of the bottle.

@alpanasingh: He is a She

@ganzer_wein: (s)he routinely sells wines for $5000 a pop from the DRC…democratic republic of Congo

@JeremySeysses: He decided not to have his own label.

Sometimes, opportunity lies right in front of you. Or, if you’re Jeremy S. Walworth, it lies in your neighbor’s pile of recycling.

Jeremy hauled the wood from a broken IKEA bed frame out of his neighbor’s driveway and set about making a wine rack for his basement. With help from his daughter, he cut, sanded and glued a 60-bottle wine rack complete with bottle slots. Nice wine rack hack! Wine and family bonding taken to a new, productive level.

Now that’s some wine aged sur lit.

More wine DIY: corks as Christmas tree ornaments

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!

I’m going out on a limb here and say that women don’t really want their wine in perfume-shaped wine bottles.

But that’s just what the grappa distillery Mazzetti d’Altavilla is making with their new “Essentia Vitae.” Here’s what someone who hailed it as the packaging innovation of the week had to say.

“While perfume-inspired wine may be an acquired taste, Essentia Vitae goes further than most to connect to female consumers. Its perfume-like packaging should break through the crowded product assortments that can often confound shoppers.”

Argh, those crowded product assortments confusing women wine shoppers! Apparently the wines come in three different flavors/aromas/varieties: No. 4 Ruche – jasmine scent, No. 6 Malvasia – rose scent, and No. 8 Moscato – violet scent. What that exactly means is not clear–are they for drinking or dousing?

My bold prediction: these will go the way of Beringer’s White Lie and the French WineSight. Dammit, marketers, gendered approaches to marketing are best left to important things like razors blades and deodorants!

Search for this wine at retail

I got a catalogue in the mail the other day from something called Napa Style. I don’t know if it’s 100% from Napa or just sort of a Fred Franzia Napa style. But they had the item shown above listed as “big bottle wine hurricanes.” Yes, empty bottles, albeit big bottles, priced $99 – $249!

How hard is it to cut a wine bottle and make your own “hurricanes” with big bottles left over from your last party or gotten from a restaurant? Not hard, it turns out. Check out the video below for details. Or, to save you ten minutes of your life, score (no points!) the bottle with a tool like this, then pour boiling water from a tea pot over the score line and the glass has a super clean break, apparently.

Voila. Now, if you like this sort of decor and feel a tiny bit artsy-craftsy, you can spend the $249 on bottles that actually have wine in them, not candles. Read more…

Have you ever been cycling home and thought, “Gee, I’d love to stop at that wine store but I have nowhere to put a bottle because I do not have a backpack or paniers or a basket or anything!” Well, this clever little gizmo available on Etsy will solve all your problems! And if you are commuting in New York City and a cab cuts you off, well, that wine bottle might just come in handy too.

One caveat: probably not great for Champagne. Unless you are seeking to turn the cork into a projectile.

When do the companion baguette holders come out for handlebars that turn your bike into a sort of Longhorn?

Hat tip: bottlenotes.

Rob, a site reader living in China, sent in these photos. He says he doesn’t drink Chinese wine (“for obvious reasons”) but this bottle was a birthday present (“tasted terrible and was definitely not made of 100% juice”).

Still, are the Chinese trying to send anglophone customers messages via corks a la fortune cookies? If so, cute idea but they may want to use a service other than Google Translate. Oh wait, maybe “You Fat in bed” sounds better? Hmm, not really.