Dr Vino's wine blog

SIPPED: longevity
Tom Angove died at the age of 92 last week. Never heard of him? Well, in the 1960s he had the idea of putting wine in plastic bag, placing that in a cardboard box, and tapping it like a keg. His son, then 15 years old, told him he was nuts. Undeterred, Tom Angove commercialized the bag-in-box and forever changed how wine is consumed in Australia, Sweden and college dorm rooms. More recently box wine has crept upscale. Angove joins Robert Mondavi, Peter Mondavi, and Ernest Gallo as having lived well into his nineties. Maybe there’s something to resveratrol after all?

SIPPED: number crunching
Since we all have broken out our green visors and fired up TurboTax this time of year, we can now turn our attention to the economics of wine under $20 again. Jason Haas, general manager at Tablas Creek in Paso Robles, opens his books for us and walks us through his decision-making on whether a vineyard is worth developing to make a wine under $20. He considers the cost of land, labor, planting (dry farmed vs irrigated) to make his conclusion. If you like to wonk out about the business side, this post is a must! [Tablas Creek]

SPIT: Tart (and tact)
A surprising write up of the Mommessin Clos de Tart appeared recently: “The biggest disappointment was the 2006 Clos de Tart. Like so many red Burgundies from 2006 seem to be, it was underripe, excessively acidified, and almost textureless. It’s a sham, and it’s amazing how few people are willing to stand up and admit such stuff exists.” [Hedonist’s Gazette]

Over the past month, critics and wine trade buyers have been on the ground in Bordeaux, tasting the 2009 vintage before they go on pre-sale (as “futures”) in the coming months. Even though the wines, now in barrel, have yet to finish their aging and the blend will likely be adjusted between now and bottling, the outsiders flocked in record number this year. Before the grapes were even harvested, some commentators and industry participants had hailed this vintage as superb, everyone making parallels to 2005 and some even invoking the storied 1947.

So how did things pan out in the glass? There is always a dash to opine first and Twitter has allowed that to happen in real time. But before turning to the tweets, this past weekend saw the first summary article, in the WSJ. Freelancer Jacqueline Friedrich writes up a thoughtful piece. In it, she expresses how difficult it is to taste unfinished wines, calling them “raw, hard, closed, astringent and achingly tannic.” Also, instead of handing down iron-clad truths to her readers, she is honest in suggesting uncertainty, “no matter how discerning and experienced the taster, the verdict can be wrong, or wrongish.” Her summary comment as to the overall quality is that they are “pretty damned good, and the best may be mythic.” She then invokes a similarity to the wines of the Rhone and lists five wines–Cos, Pontet-Canet, Palmer, Leoville-Barton, and Valandraud–with no point scores!

On to the dispatches from the Twitterverse! Tim Atkin, Read more…

SIPPED and SPIT: wine as an investment
A new research paper shows that wine as an investment class beats the Russel 3000 equity index. But journoblogger Felix Salmon punches holes in their methodology and conclusions. [Reuters]

SIPPED: legal action
William Koch, the billionaire wine collector, has sued Christie’s auction house in Manhattan federal court over the disputed Jefferson bottles. He claims to have found two engravers in Germany who put “Th.J.” on the bottles. [AP; WSJ law blog]

SIPPED and SPIT: smoky pinot
The smoke-tainted (and some smoke-free) 2008 Sonoma Pinot Noirs are hitting the market now (as we tasted earlier). And they get page A1 treatment in the WSJ complete with a picture of the machine that removes the “wet ashtray effect.”

SIPPED: the wine talking; SPIT: Earth’s precious resources
In what may well have been an April Fool’s spoof, Sharon Kapnick draws to our attention a new label on the Allegrini Pallazo della Torre 2006. It blurts out information about the wine and winery in seven languages! Only thing standing between you and having the wine literally doing the talking at dinner is a handheld scanner.

Today, Trader Joe’s launches a value wine that riffs on history.

The grocery store chain that brought the world Two Buck Chuck is debuting a wine in a weather-beaten bottle bearing the initials Th. J. and a $9.99 price tag. Various wine blobbers have dubbed it “ten buck Tom” after trying samples. Trader Joe’s is also colloquially known as “TJ’s.”

“The bottle itself–a real collector’s item–is expensive since it is sandblasted for that aged look,” said Bill Cook, Director of Operations at Trader Joe’s. “The wine itself costs considerably more but thanks to widespread discounting in the industry today, we were able to source this Pinot Noir from prime vineyards in the Languedoc region of France.”

The inspiration for “Th. J.” was the contested wine sold at auction allegedly having belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Malcolm Forbes bought one of those bottles for $156,000 in 1985. These bottles were the centerpiece of the book, “The Billionaire’s Vinegar.”

“Since those bottles are now considered at least questionable, we’re selling a wine that we know to be true and a heckuva lot cheaper,” Cook said.

Lines have formed outside various Trader Joe’s locations as collectors and wine enthusiasts hope to score a bargain.

“I’m going to buy ten cases and sell the empty bottles on eBay right away,” said Harvey Rollingstock outside the 13th Street location in New York City.

“I’ll put it a third of it for sale with a $30 reserve to triple my money overnight,” he said. “And drink the rest.”

In a collision of two of the last decade’s most absurd wine trends, celebrity wines and critter labels collide in the form of a new Hello Kitty line of wines.

Is this wine targeting minors, adding fuel to the fire of distributors who play the underage drinking card in the direct shipping debate? The wine’s marketer told LA Weekly: “My take on it is this: with over 60,000 Hello Kitty sku’s in the marketplace and at 35 years old now, she is definitely ready for more adult skewed products. I don’t think that the $15,000 dollar Hello Kitty handbags are aimed at children either.” What say you: is Hello Kitty wine the Joe Camel of wine?!?

[poll id=”12″]

Could California’s wine excise tax increase 12,600 percent?

If Josie and Kent M. Whitney have their way, it will. According to the Sonoma Valley Sun (via wineopinions), the Secretary of State has cleared their ballot initiative that would raise the excise tax on a regular bottle of wine from four cents to…$5.11. They estimate this would raise $7 – $9 billion for the state’s coffers. (See more on the proposal at ballotopedia.org)

The only thing standing in the way of this rise is the fact that the Whitneys need the signatures of 433,971 voters — and then half the votes on the referendum in the fall.

While excise taxes might be the type of strong brew that only a few politicians can raise, it’s extremely unlikely that voters would really want to raise these taxes in such a drastic manner both out of their own self-interest and protecting the local industry. (If the mild reversal in California’s budgetary woes reported on Bloomberg today continues, any popularity for the initiative could be dampened.) But where there is no local wine industry, excise taxes do have a habit of creeping up every year…

How far would you drive to taste some vintage port? That’s most often a rhetorical question but I actually confronted it head on last week as a rare vertical tasting including some legendary wines came on the agenda in Montreal. Since I tucked away some 2003 Fonseca from one son’s birth year, I thought this would at the very least offer a something of a preview of how it will taste when we drink it together in 2024 and beyond. So I hopped in the car. Read more…

Last week we heard about baboons who give Chardonnay a thumbs up. This week we learn that cougars like Merlot!

If they are on ABC’s Cougar Town, that is. Also, pouring wine should be done to the rim, apparently.

Of note: Sheryl Crow played a sales rep at wine distributor in Wednesday night’s episode. As SlateWine quipped on Twitter, “Does this mean she supports three-tier system? Say it ain’t so, Ms. Crow.” Couldn’t she bring her glamor to another part of the wine biz, such as an independent shop owner? The cougars have to buy their Merlot from somewhere, after all.