Dr Vino's wine blog

Mike Steinberger posted a piece to Slate.com on Friday detailing the folly French appellation politics (entitled “How Bureaucrats Are Wrecking French Wine”). I’m glad to see the topic getting a broader airing since it is at the heart of my book, Wine Politics, which Mike kindly mentions. But go check out the article and see Mike’s plan for AOC reform if he were French wine czar for a day.

Mike mentions the growing ranks of quality producers who have had wines refused by the tasting portion of the appellation process. When the list includes names such as Jean Thevenet, Didier Dagueneau, Eloi Dürrbach, Marcel Lapierre, Thierry and Jean-Marie Puzelat, Marcel Richaud, Georges Descombes, and Philippe Jambon, you’ve got to wonder if that doesn’t say more about the appellation politics itself. But there’s one other notable rule breaker who could be included in that list: Philippe Pacalet. Read more…

Thanks so much for the reactions to my op-ed, “Drink Outside the Box,” in Monday’s NYT. The interest astonishingly drove it to the #1 most emailed story on nytimes.com! (And then some guy named Mikhail Gorbachev came along and knocked me off the list.) With the interest has also come reactions and I thought a post was in order to respond to some of the many important issues you raised both on the previous posting on this site as well as in the comments section on the Times’ site.

One point I’d like to underscore is that by far the majority wines in the US are consumed, oh, about an hour after purchase. There’s a joke in the wine trade that we Americans do have wine cellars–they’re called the back seat of the car.

Another important point is about freshness. Wine bottled with cork closure can be with oxidized or, worse, plagued by TCA, also known as cork taint, which afflicts annoyingly high percentage of wines–nobody knows for sure, but one bottle per case is certainly a plausible guess. Do you really want to donate eight percent of your wine budget to spoiled wines gods? For box wine, this is not an issue since there is no cork.

Finally, I’m really excited that nine out of every ten respondents in the poll say they would try good wine in a box. I think wine consumers–or a strong subset of consumers–are really ahead of the trade on this issue. With good wine, box wine’s longtime stigma can be used as a counter-culture sign of hipsters!

Okay, let’s roll with your questions and comments about recycling, aesthetics, wine picks, and more!

How is putting wine in a plastic bag with a plastic spigot more environmentally friendly than using recyclable glass?
— GG, Minnesota Read more…

If you decided to get a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for you restaurant wine list, what would you need? The answer according to Robin Goldstein is $250 and Microsoft Word. Restaurant not actually required.

Goldstein, the author of The Wine Trials, has a posting up on a new web site describing how he invented a restaurant name, Osteria l’Intrepido, a riff on “fearless.” Then he typed up a menu (“a fun amalgamation of somewhat bumbling nouvelle-Italian recipes”), put together a wine list, and submitted both to Wine Spectator–along with the $250 fee. The list was approved and given an Award of Excellence (see screenshot).

Then Goldstein decided to add a twist. To the tape:

It’s troubling, of course, that a restaurant that doesn’t exist could win an Award of Excellence. But it’s also troubling that the award doesn’t seem to be particularly tied to the quality of the wine list, even by Wine Spectator’s own standards. Although the main wine list that I submitted was made up of fairly standard Italian-focused selections, Osteria L’Intrepido’s “reserve wine list” was largely chosen from among the lowest-scoring Italian wines in Wine Spectator over the past 20 years.

Click through for the list complete with WS annotations and scores.

Reached by phone today, Goldstein said that he also presented this information at the annual meeting of the American Association of Wine Economists in Portland over the weekend.

“I didn’t have any empirical evidence of the quality of the restaurants other than my own impressions,” he said. “I wanted to see what the standards of the Awards of Excellence were. The results speak for themselves.” His experience will be part of an academic paper he is working on about standards for wine awards.

In 2003, Amanda Hesser explored the Wine Spectator restaurant awards in a piece in the Times entitled “A Wine Award That Seems Easy to Come By.” She concluded that the 3,573 restaurants that year grossed Wine Spectator $625,275. But the annual application fee then was $175 as opposed to the $250 that Goldstein and others paid for their application fee this year.

“A delicious blend of spices,” one of my friends called Trader Joe’s Jaipur Vegetables when he recommended it to me. I threw a box in my cart last time I was at TJ’s. A few nights later, I opened the silver pouch and discovered that, sure enough, it is a delicious blend–one that kept, um, being delicious for hours afterward.

So which wine would you pair with this dish of “garden vegetables and cubes of Paneer cheese with spices and cashews?” Hit the comments with your thoughts! That is, if it is not…impossible.

I am an op-ed contributor to the New York Times today urging wine producers to upgrade the quality of wine available in boxes. If you’re new to the site, welcome and feel free to explore the site including wine picks. Also, consider subscribing to the site feed or get caught up on my joint research on the carbon footprint of wine.

Overall, I’m disappointed with the quality of box wine here in the U.S. But the time for good box wine has come for environmental as well as economic reasons as I argue in the piece.

There are some rays of hope in the box wine landscape. Unfortunately, the $40, 3-liter D-Tour wine, made by Dominique Lafon of Burgundy and imported by Daniel Johnnes, wine director at Daniel Boulud’s restaurants, has been temporarily withdrawn from the market (search for this wine). However, the Cuvee de Pena, an old vine grenache from the French side of the Pyrenees, is still available (find this wine). And the newest and brightest star is the $11 unoaked, organically grown malbec called Yellow + Blue sold in a 1-liter TetraPak (not bag-in-box; find this wine). There’s also the Bandit from California (find this wine).

So what do you say about boxed wine? Have your say in the latest poll! And hit the comments with your preferred box selections.

poll now closed

Related: “Drink outside the box” NYT
“An open letter to Jorge Ordonez” [Dr. V]
“How I gave up bottled water and lived to tell the tale” [Dr. V]
Drinking box rosé in the south of France
The excellent image is by Grady McFerrin and ran with the story.

I’m just back from a week in the woods of the Adirondacks. It was a fun time with my siblings and families though at times the theme of seven days with seven kids under seven seemed like something dreamed up as the next reality TV show. But nobody got thrown off the proverbial island. Here are some things I learned on my summer vacation:

* If a tree falls in the woods and you’re there, it does make a noise.
* The 2007 Von Volxem Saar Riesling disappears in a scant few minutes when uncorked with a group! And deservedly so with a beautiful balance of sweetness and acidity. (find this wine)
* A lambrusco from an artisanal, however, remains unfinished. Fun, purple, fizzy wine but a tannic monster!
* The Domaine Guion 2005 cuvee prestige from Bourgeuil in the Loire is a red that everyone can enjoy. (find this wine)
* The Marcel Lapierre Morgon 2006 that I have enjoyed previously was also a big hit! (find this wine)
* I found a new favorite wine for my sister who claims not to like wine! More on that later.
* Lots of kids fishing from the same spot can lead to tangled lines.
* Junipero gin from San Francisco (find this gin) is superb on the rocks, not so good with Schweppes Tonic water (because of the Schweppes) but quite good with Pom juice and a dash of simple syrup on the rocks though the alluring aromas are compromised.
* Use the iPhone camera only if you leave the other camera in the car.

And one final observation: in the small town where we were staying, deep in the woods where it took three people to determine the location of tofu in the supermarket, there’s a new wine bar opening! Unfortunately it wasn’t open yet but I take it as yet another indication of how far enthusiasm for wine is going in America. We’ll see if it’s still open next summer!

At the recent IPNC, I had the chance to taste a tasty pinot from British Columbia–my first! The pinot (find this wine) was from Blue Mountain Vineyard & Cellars. I caught up with Matt Mavety (pictured above with his wife, Christie) to find out about making Pinot in the North American frontier–and how he protects his Pinot from bears and rattlesnakes.

How long have you been making wine at Blue Mountain Vineyard & Cellars?
The winery has been making wine since 1991, commercial vintage. Read more…

I stumbled on a photo of this (presumably) wine product from Japan the other day. The unusual blend of Mann, milk/juice box, wine and Japan seemed like a mix worthy of your captioning!

Have your say in the comments!

No prize this round–just our admiration!