Dr Vino's wine blog

“Rampant price discounting in the wine industry means 2009 will be party time for wine drinkers while winemakers will be left with the hangover.”

Low prices! Party time! Love it! Oh, wait, that quote actually came from New Zealand’s stuff.co.nz and was referring to a “massive harvests” in Australia and New Zealand.

Here in the US, it may be a different story. Restaurants, many of which have seen a sharp decline in their business, seem to be doing a lot to attract diners, as Frank Bruni detailed on Wednesday in the Times. This includes cutting wine prices, which in many cases, certainly had plenty of room to come down. To the tape: “Wine discounts, waived corkage fees or wine lists showcasing less expensive bottles can be found in Midtown at Alto and the Modern, where bottles under $50 appear in the Bar Room as “wines for our times”; in TriBeCa at Capsouto Frères; and in Greenwich Village at Perry St., owned by Jean-Georges Vongerichten.”

A story in Wednesday’s LA Times suggests that New Zealand’s party time may even have arrived on the West Coast. Patrick Comiskey writes that there’s a “mini-boom for wine lovers” and describes “a buyer’s market for retailers and consumers alike.” But much of what the article describes sounds like smaller retailers stocking more wines at lower price points although some larger stores are using their heft to extract deals from wholesalers “whose warehouses are full of inventory accumulated in better days and who are striking deals to move it out.”

Here in New York, it doesn’t seem like “party time” has made it to stores. Sure, there are a few across-the-board sales in January and February, such as Moore Brothers 10% off everything and Crush Wine & Spirits 25% of whites one week and then reds. But these types of sales happen after the holiday binge every year, the same as case discounts at some retailers. Some stores seem to be offering more selective sales either through a store card or special clearance items. And there’s a stream of emails announcing one or two selections–sometimes more–of fine wine that have become available, perhaps from a distributor, perhaps from a collector. But to get the most for your wine dollar, it seems you have to be opportunistic and well informed and discounting is far from “rampant.”

What’s happening near you? Is it deal or no deal? And if you live outside the US, be sure to share your thoughts too.

We haven’t done one of these for a while. So when I saw this photo today in a producer’s presentation, I thought it was about time. (Click to enlarge)

Hit the comments with your thoughts. Guess correctly by 11:59 PM (wherever you are) on Thursday and you will be entered into a drawing for a signed copy of my new book, A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season.

A new series of wines from Indiana (search for “Slender” wines) claims to be sugar free, using a non-caloric sweetner instead for all their wine sweetening needs. As their press release states, “even though [the sweetner] has the identical flavor spectrum as sugar, it has no side effects because it cannot be metabolized by the human body.”

Mmm! Nothing says good times like putting indigestible things that you put in your mouth–or a Chenin Blanc rosé (?!?) or a glass of sweet Rubired, the rosé and the red in the lineup of so-called Slender wines. Just to crank it up a notch, they also note that it “prevents tooth decay.” And, people, we might have a new finalist for this year’s worst wine label contest!

But since most of wine’s calories actually come from the alcohol in it, perhaps the ultimate diet wine is a dealcohlized wine with some indigestible sweetner?

Site reader James wrote in with the tip and side order of outrage: “It’s got a Splenda nose! A real Sweet ’N’ Low note on the finish. AAAAAHHHHHHH. File it under Wine of the Apocalypse.”

Riffing off the famed late harvest wine, I’d have to go with Trockenbeerensaccharinelese. And you?

Okay, there was no shootout. Sort of a duel, but without the guns, wounds or Aaron Burr.

In honor of Australia Day last week, and because I think syrah is most seasonally apt in the winter, I tried a Northern Rhone syrah against an Aussie shiraz. Normally you’d think this would be a no-brainer since although it is the same grape by a different name, the stylistic differences can be oceans apart (literally).

But I did try to raise the degree of difficulty by picking a “European-style” shiraz, the Leeuwin Art Series 2005 from the Western Australia region of Margaret River with an alcohol level of rolling in at a mere 13% (find this wine). Against it, I poured a Saint-Joseph ’06 from the small producer Pierre Gonon (find this wine).

I found the Gonon to be excellent, with notes of characteristic black olives that I really dig in a good St. Joseph. It has a mouth-filling character thanks to some gentle oak but has a minerally, ashy core that gives it great poise and balance. The Leeuwin, by contrast, has much more fruit-driven aromas–think raspberry, cherry, and blackberry–as well as a dash of eucalyptus freshness. The palate was bigger than the Gonon and more New World but not to the point of being jammy or extracted. And the lighter alcohol was a relief from many a shiraz.

I was with three other people and although the Gonon edged ahead in my view, the group split with two for each. So the showdown saw both participants walk away unscathed. If only Hamilton had been so lucky.

Last week I attended the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, the annual wine industry trade show in Sacramento. The tractors and sorting tables in the exhibition hall give the event an agricultural vibe but there are also a series of panels and sessions around the main hall. Here are some tasting sized pours.

SIPPED: wine
Industry observer Jon Fredrikson reported while wine consumption grew (by volume) in 2008, the growth slowed to the slowest in a decade. Restaurants have been “pummeled” as more wine consumption is happening at home. He also spoke of a “shrinkage of the supplier pipeline.”

SPIT: global wine surplus
Bill Turrentine, a bulk and bottled wine broker, showed that there’s not a lot of excess wine on the global market with only Australia showing a notable excess. He said that that in previous cycles, sinking demand was confounded by oversupply, a situation that is not happening right now.

SIPPED: trading down
“The $10 bottle is the new $20 bottle, and the $20 bottle is the new $100 bottle.” – John Gillespie of Wine Colleagues in St. Helena.

SPIT: Current quality of wine under $10
“We’ve already succeeded getting American wine on the table at the Four Seasons. That was 30 years ago. Our goal today is to get wine on the table of the bus boy at the Four Seasons.” – Paul Lukacs, wine writer

SIPPED: self
“Wholesalers do a great job getting wine to the local market place.” -Craig Wolf, President and CEO of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America. Perhaps. But what about expanding wine retailer shipping between states and turning the American market for wines into a national market?

SIPPED: big tires?
“You’ve got to check out this tractor babe–she’s hot! Come on!” -unidentified man upon seeing his friend.

(image, with permission)

The number one most emailed article right now over at the Times is entitled, “Take Bacon. Add Sausage. Blog.” It describes the improbable but wildly popular dish known as the “bacon explosion,” which consists of two pounds of bacon swaddling a “torpedo” of two pounds of Italian sausage, which wraps around a bacon core. Meat-tastic!

So what say: is this an impossible food to digest pair with wine?

As I have mentioned previously, my book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink, will be published in Korea. Here’s a note from my Korean agent:

Dear Mr. Tyler Colman,

The translator inquired about the meaning of “scientific wild-ass guess” in page 93 of this book. Would you please explain this to me?

I look forward to hearing from you.

All the best wishes,

The reference was from a California winemaker who, upon launching his new wine, pulled the price out of thin air. Or elsewhere.

“I used to say that the shop was 400 square feet,” Christy Frank told me when I visited her in her downtown wine shop, Frankly Wines, last week. “But it’s actually closer to 350.”

The diminutive shop at 66 West Broadway has a selection that skews toward wines from the Southern Hemisphere and wines under $20. But perhaps the most distinctive feature of the shop is what might well be the world’s largest cork board made entirely from corks pulled from wine bottles.

Christy says that the covered portion of the wall, approximately six feet by eight feet, has about 15,000 corks affixed with wood glue. It took a total of 30 hours of labor to adhere them all. The original inspiration was to tastefully cover a fusebox but it grew to cover the whole wall.

The amount of corks that she actually pulled herself is a relatively small, she told me gesticulating at a small corner of the space. Instead the bulk of the corks came from purchases on eBay where she said there is a thriving market for corks.

Christy says that kids love the tactile nature of the wall and some have written their initials on the corks. Take that Facebook: people can write on Christy’s real wall.

Related: “I just saved you $40 at Pottery Barn”
13,500 bottles of wine are the wall
Map of the best wine shops in New York City