Dr Vino's wine blog

So the King of Spain, 18 bottles of Grenache, and a man wanted by Interpol walk into a conference in Rioja. Sound like the start of a bad joke? Welcome to the reality that is Wine Future!

The two-day Wine Future Rioja 09 event next month will showcase a long list of wine luminaries including Jancis Robinson, Oz Clarke, Steven Spurrier, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jorge Ordonez, and Robert Parker.

The pinnacle of the wine summit will be a premium tasting with Parker (who will be meeting King Juan Carlos during his trip, Parker’s first to Spain since 1972). Limited to 450 attendees, the VIP tasting costs 217€ but can only bought in conjunction with the 783€ conference ticket. Parker and the organizer selected a lineup of 18 grenache based wines, seven from Chateauneuf-du-Pape, five from other parts of Spain, two from California (including one aptly named Pandora), and four from Australia.

Can you imagine a top-dollar tasting in Napa Valley, sponsored by the Napa Valley Vintners, that showcased the wines of the Rhone, Australia, and Argentina?

Grenache, of course, is not the top dog in Rioja, land of Tempranillo. So the local hosts and sponsors of the event took afront and after much protest that included the regional Partido Riojano joining the fray. Now, two wines from the Rioja have been added, the Marqués de Riscal de 1945 and a Contador 2007. Neither of those wines contains any grenache.

But the drama doesn’t end there. The event organizer, Pancho Campo, has resigned from his position to “focus on clearing his name” according to Decanter. In 2003, a court in Dubai found him guilty in abstentia in a dispute stemming from his time as an event organizer and promoter in Dubai. Jim Budd has a thorough round-up of the evidence; Manuel Camblor has been writing about the events recently in Spanish on his blog La Otra Botella.

John Gilman, author of the newsletter The View from the Cellar, joins us again for a Q&A. I asked him six questions; he replied with over 10,000 words! So grab a glass of wine, throw another log on the fire, grab a sandwich, channel your inner wine geek, and listen to John opine on the topics of natural wines, zero dosage champagne, some pitfalls of collecting, 2007 vintage for Port and in the Rhone, the nobility of chenin blanc, the Piedmont producer Produttori del Barbaresco and more!

Natural wines are growing in popularity. These include what might be termed “process controls” such as organic and biodynamic farming, favoring indigenous yeasts over commercial strains, as well as the rise of “no sulfur” wines. Are these wines forcibly better? Read more…

SIPPED: disclosure
The FTC has promulgated new guidelines that include disclosure of “material connections” (in cash or kind) for bloggers as of December 1. Should this apply to magazines, newsletters, or online magazines? Why not? As discussed previously, enforcement will be an issue.

SIPPED: more nudity and wine
In Burgundy, 713 people take off their clothes to be photographed among the vines–all in the name of demonstrating against global warming. Randall Grahm had the bon mot on twitter: “Cotes de nue-its?” [greenpeace.fr]

SIPPED: Hong Kong
Hong Kong surpasses London and NYC as the largest wine auction market according to a story on Reuters. The Asian market for wine is “in danger of overheating” while the US is “weak” according to David Elswood, Christie’s international head of wine.

RIP: Gourmet magazine
After a review by McKinsey consultants, Conde Nast has decided to close Gourmet, the venerable food magazine. But if BusinessWeek, which lost $43 million last year, has attracted many bidders, why isn’t Conde putting Gourmet up for sale? Or making Anna Wintour stay at an EconoLodge?

SIPPED: changes in NYC dining
The new Michelin guide NYC comes out tomorrow; Daniel has been promoted to three stars, Alto rises to two stars and Corton debuts with two. Why Eleven Madison Park only gets one star is anyone’s guess. [Bloomberg]

Also in NYC dining, Chanterelle will now be closed permanently. Their long-time sommelier, Roger Dagorn, will now join Porter House according to Off the Presses.

And in NYS, the State Liquor Authority has a backlog of 3,000 applications; a report suggests a bureaucratic overhaul that may include making BOYB easier for new restaurants. [NYP]

On Wednesday evening I attended a tasting of fifteen wines from Bordeaux 2005. The vintage was widely hailed as superb and pre-recession demand drove the prices into the stratosphere. Aside from the outrageous apparent quality of the wines, the tasting had two other attractions: the ability to taste some of the top wines blind and to do so in the company of Robert Parker.

Over 100 of us packed a room in a midtown hotel for the event, organized by Executive Wine Seminars. I arrived fifteen minutes early and it was already hard to find a seat at a table. Five wines were pre-poured into five ISO glasses, and there was some bread and cheese. At my table were people who had come in from Chicago, Wisconsin, Delaware and Napa. And they had paid a lot of money too: $795 each (I was fortunate enough to have gotten a ticket from someone who couldn’t attend). The air practically buzzed with anticipation.

Even though the tasting was blind, everyone knew the lineup of wines and it included some of the most heralded wines of the vintage as the Parker scores (in parentheses) indicate:
Angelus (98) • Cos d’Estournel (98) • Ducru Beaucaillou (97) • Haut Brion (98) • Lafite Rothschild (96+) • La Mission Haut Brion (97) • Larcis Ducasse (98) • Latour (96+) • L’Eglise Clinet (100) • Margaux (98+) • Montrose (95) • Pape Clement (98) • Pavie (98+) •Le Gay (95) • Troplong Mondot (99)

In addition to my excitement about tasting these wines, I was eager to see Parker engage in a blind tasting. Blind tastings are incredibly challenging, of course, and can humble even the most accomplished tasters. On the other hand, Parker is known to be a formidable taster, and he has made some impressive claims about his own tasting abilities. In the famous profile of Parker published in The Atlantic (that Parker displays on his web site) back in December 2000, the author wrote that Parker “stores the sensation of each [wine] into a permanent gustatory memory. When I asked him about the mechanical aspects of his work, he told me in a matter-of-fact way that he remembers every wine he has tasted over the past thirty-two years and, within a few points, every score he has given as well.”

2005 is a vintage that is obviously very fresh in his memory (and he has said it is the greatest Bordeaux vintage he has experienced in his storied career), and given his apparent total recall of the wines he tastes, I was obviously very keen to see how he’d fare in a blind tasting–particularly one involving his favorite wines of the vintage. Read more…

In August, I dropped by the Manhattan studio of the public radio show Marketplace studio and chatted with reporter Caitlin Carroll about sherry. She was interested in it since apparently the Sherry Promotional Council has a $1 million promotional effort under way to rehab the drink’s retro image. The story aired yesterday (listen here) saying that part of the campaign involves putting sherry in the hands of sommeliers and chefs to get people pouring the drink again.

The following weekend, I tried exactly that. We met up with some college friends at a Rhode Island home just a stone’s throw from the ocean. I brought several bottles of wine and threw in a bottle of Lustau fino that I had picked up at Astor Wine to try out on the guinea pigs–er, our friends. The hors d’oeuvres included some crab cakes but no marcona almonds, which are a great match.

The wine was universally panned. One guy wouldn’t even taste it saying, “It reminds me of my grandmother.” It then flooded him with memories of his grandmother and he regaled us with tales from his youth. But he still wouldn’t taste it. “Is there any Sauvignon Blanc?” someone else asked. Another guy soldiered on and almost finished his glass. Surprisingly, the crab cakes didn’t help the situation.

What do you think? Is sherry, the darling of wine writers and some sommeliers, poised to be retro chic or remain simply retro? Some of you have recommended a fino here in food pairings, such as gazpacho. Food really is key. Assuming people will even try it.

Related: Apera, topaque, vintage, lickoffable – Aussie fortifieds grasp new names

Via goodgrape, we learn of the impending release of a new The Sims-like computer game called Wine Tycoon. The producer’s description:

Create the vineyard of your dreams in 10 of the most important wine regions of France. Commanding operations from your very own French chateau, build your winery, plant and tend your vines through all four seasons of the year, and hire staff to harvest and process your grapes. Produce 50 French wines such as Bordeaux, Burgundy, Pinot Gris and Champagne from more than 40 different grape varietals, all in the ultimate goal of becoming a wealthy wine baron!

Reactions:
* In this age of Wii and PS3, people still play PC games? If it’s going anywhere, it had better be massively multiplayer!
* Does naked pigeage count as a plus or a minus in the game?
* Who stirs the Biodyanmic preparations?
* Do the vignerons-tycoons have to learn about selling into the three tier system in America?
* And don’t forget the goal of wine making: become rich as Croesus! But I thought you had to start with a large fortune to make a small one in the wine biz…

Over at the new blogazine, Palate Press, there’s a posting about a pair of women who bare all and then jump in a tank full of warm, fermenting pinot juice, seeds and skins. No, this isn’t the recreational sport of tank diving; they did it in the name of “pigeage” or a punch down that keeps the floating bits (known as the “cap”) moist. Most wineries do this with a long tool while some use a method of taking juice from the bottom of the tanking pumping it over the top.

Here’s the photo that ran with the posting: what’s your caption? Try to keep it PG-13 or somewhat safe for work.

If we ingredient labeling on American wines, would they have to add naked woman if they do the traditional pigeage?

SIPPED: match made in a barrel room
Jean-Charles Boisset and Gina Gallo married over the weekend in a private ceremony at the San Francisco Fairmont according to winemag.com. Each is a wine scion: Boisset Family Estates is the third largest wine company in France and E&J Gallo Winery is the largest in the world. They both have wineries and vineyards in Sonoma.

SPIT: trophies
Dick Grace of Grace Family Vineyards tells the SF Chron “the pendulum has swung too far” on the cult wines he pioneered: “We have to get over what I call the trophy mentality.”

SPIT: more trophies
“If I buy a bottle for $100 from Napa Valley — and believe me, there are hundreds — I’ll mark it up to $225. But no one is buying those,” Rajat Parr wine director at RN74 in San Francisco told CNN in a piece entitled “wine buying for vultures.” As a result, Parr is “saying no to all Napa Cabernets until customers drink what’s left.”

SIPPED: a new chapter
Mariann Fischer Boell, the EU Commissioner for Agriculture who oversaw a controversial reform of the wine sector in 2007, has announced she won’t seek another five-year term. [MFB blog]

SIPPED: bigger Terroir in NYC
Marco Canora and Paul Grieco tell Grub Street that while they’re leaving Insieme (boo hoo) they will be adding a newer, slightly larger Terroir wine bar in Tribeca (yay!). We look forward to adding it to the map of the best wine bars in NYC!