Dr Vino's wine blog

Pennsylvania is hardly the first state where you would expect innovation in wine retail. The state’s Liquor Control Board owns all the retail outlets and the distribution in the state. Generally monopolies are known for limited selection and high prices, not innovation.

Yet that is exactly what might be in store for Pennsylvania wine enthusiasts as the state has proposed to allow 100 “wine kiosks” around the state. To the tape:

The kiosks, a type of temperature-controlled vending machine capable of holding 500 bottles of wine, would be placed in grocery stores and other places [malls], according to request on the LCB’s Web site. They would offer about a dozen different types of wine.

Before you think this is where all the minors are going to go before the prom, each kiosk will have “fingerprints and biometric readings” for age verification. Yikes! Retinal scan for retsina.

Making wine more accessible is a good thing. I hope for all wine loving Pennsylvanians that the selection is great! Get a little Bollinger before heading to Borders? Malbec and a movie? I wonder if they will have stemware. Or perhaps TetraPak wine so the bottle doesn’t break while being dispensed.

Would you like to see them in your state?

Related: “Poll: should the US drinking age be lowered?”
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“I bet this wine is sixty-two degrees,” I confidently proclaimed. Seconds later, I used the Nuvo Vino infrared wine thermometer to check by pointing it at the surface of the wine and pushing a button. The instant reading was sixty-one degrees. Close.

The company sent me their $37 device for testing recently. I started testing the temperature of red and white wine in my glass at the table. But quickly that got tiresome and I found my son’s hand was eighty-three degrees. His ice water, thirty-three degrees. The next morning, my coffee was 149 degrees.

Is it necessary to know the exact serving temperature of your wine? No. But it is true that many whites are served too cold (fridge temp) and many reds served too hot (room temp). I don’t think you need a $37 thermometer to tell you that a wine is colder than room temp or warmer than the fridge. On their site, they have a detailed chart for recommended serving temperatures, which generally good (I particularly like their advice “cheap sparkling wine is best served quite cold.”). The excessive detail of the chart and the suggestion that there are yet more rules to follow for wine consumption though, I fear, risk confusing the average consumer who is just warming up to the fact that it’s OK to have pinot noir with salmon.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a gift to give the wine lover who has everything, has a hankering for James Bond-style gadgets, likes wonking out with experiments in wine service, and wants to annoy everyone with repeated temperature readings, then throw it in your shopping cart.

[Click through for image. The photographer originally set the rights generously but has now restricted them.]

Where in the wine world is this moldy cellar? Hit the comments with your thoughts!

SPIT: carbon footprint of wine!
Johnny Depp, currently on location in Chicago shooting a 1930s gangster film directed by Michael Mann, had 10 cases of French wine flown to the set. “He is really enjoying filming but the only problem is that Illinois isn’t exactly famous for its vineyards and Johnny is quite particular about his wine. When he couldn’t put up with the local wine any longer, he decided to organise for a shipment of his own to be sent across as well as his favourite Bordeaux Petrus.” Ah, yes, French wine is so hard to find in Chicago many locals resort to having it flown in–on private jets if possible. Bonus: “Depp famously had a tattoo on his arm that read “Winona Forever” but was altered to “Wino Forever” after the pair split up.” (Thanks, Josh!)

SPIT: Picking wine for food!
Tired of wrestling with the wine list? Il Vino d’Enrico Bernardo, a new resto in Paris, lets you order the wine and then they bring you the food to match. But can you send the food back if it is corked? [Bloomberg]

SIPPED: Resveratrol!
GlaxoSmithKline agrees to buy Sirtris for $720 million. The pharmaceutical startup focuses on the anti-aging properties of the red wine component resveratrol. How will red wine hater David Sinclair celebrate his bonanza? [Bloomberg]

SPIT: out of state wine purchases?
In an effort to fund more pork barrel policies help the state’s Treasury, New York will start collecting sales tax from out of state retailers, such as Amazon in July. Will it erode the tax advantage of out-of-state retailers? [Buffalo News]

SPIT: Liquid gold
“Welcome to German wines!” The lede on this story about Riesling is hilarious. [Guardian]

THE tulips on Park Avenue are blooming in gorgeous yellows, pinks and reds, confirmation that spring has finally arrived in New York City. My own seasonal signpost is an annual thirst for German rieslings.

Usually in spring I find myself drawn to the filigreed, finely etched rieslings of the Mosel, as delicate as the petals of those Park Avenue tulips.

So wrote Eric Asimov in the New York Times yesterday. Do your preferences change with the season? What kind of wine are you craving or drinking right now?

I agree with the dry riesling selection since I just ordered a bunch of them earlier this week. Gruner Veltliner from Austria is also fun this time of year, as is the Basque Txakoli and some whites from the Loire. And with this warm weather we’ve been having recently, can rosé be far behind?

Related: “Impossible food wine pairings: artichokes!”

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Julia Flynn Siler wrote an excellent book, House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, which came out last year. In it, she chronicled the compelling saga–complete with sex scandals, business success and failure, courtroom drama, and a brawl–of one of America’s leading wine families. The book is currently shortlisted for a 2008 James Beard award in the wine and spirits book category. (As is George Taber’s To Cork or Not to Cork, which we previously gave away.)

I have two paperback editions of the book to give away. To qualify, post a comment here about which American wine family or company you’d like Julia Flynn Siler to put under her journalistic microscope next. Post your comment by midnight Sunday and check back here or your email to see if your name was selected at random as one of the two winners.

UPDATE with winners: Read more…

“I have too much Styrofoam.” That was the “problem” that a wine writer confessed to while introducing himself at a recent wine writers conference.

There comes a point in the wine lovers’ evolution where getting wine from the local store just won’t suffice. We want a certain bottle, sometimes from the winery or sometimes from a store that offers a better price. So we have the wine sent by UPS or FedEx.

Of the boxes I receive, about half are filled with Styrofoam and about half with cardboard inserts to protect the bottles during transportation. In honor of Earth Day, which is the “greener” material?

My collaborator Pablo Paster calls it “a philosophical choice.” That’s because Styrofoam is much lighter than cardboard thus the box emits fewer greenhouse gases during transportation (though its manufacture emits 8.6 times the equivalent amount of cardboard says Pablo). Even though it can be recycled, it rarely is; new polystyrene is so cheap to manufacture. Thus it ends up in landfills where it takes up a lot of space and needs hundreds of years to break down. Cardboard can be recycled more readily. Both can be reused but probably aren’t reused more than once or twice.

Since I’ve expressed my opinions about the dreaded Styrofoam before, I’ll put the question to you: Which packaging material do you prefer, cardboard, with higher GHG transport emissions today, or Styrofoam, which doesn’t biodegrade?

The response was great to the last “spot the spoof.” So we bring it back! Which one of these items that appeared since the last edition is not true?

* A commentator on the Today show declared the wines of Napa “out” and those of North Carolina in. “This is what’s going to be hot this year.”

* Michael Scott on “The Office” had wine at a dinner party and described it as having “an oaky afterbirth.”

* An anonymous Chinese collector purchased 27 bottles of Domaine Romanee Conti at auction for record-breaking $5 million.

* Restaurateur Joe Bastianich picks the wines to serve Pope Benedict XVI at two dinners in NYC and has the moxie to pour four of his own wines.

* Slate.com opines “kosher wines don’t suck anymore.”

poll now closed