Dr Vino's wine blog

Chateau Petrogasm (such an unfortunate name–wine? oil? sex?) is a blog that does visual tasting notes, using a single picture. Sometimes their reviews make me say “huh?” But more often than not, it’s good for a laugh, taking wine reviews in a new, word-free, points-free direction.

In this vein, I offer you my visual tasting note for the Colome Malbec 2005 from Salta, Argentina (find this wine).

Red Hook, Brooklyn, will be the home of a new “urban winery” later this year.

Abe Schoener, excellent and unconventional winemaker from California, told DrVino.com yesterday that he will open the winery in a building on Beard Street sometime late in the summer 2008. Schoener’s partner will be his Brooklyn-based distributor for the NYC area, Mark Snyder of Angel’s Share.

The wine-making facility represents a first for Schoener. Although the former Greek philosophy professor makes compelling and hugely serious wines under his Scholium Project label from California, he does not have a winery there. The Red Hook winery will make exclusively wines from New York State grapes, purchased from vineyards up the Hudson River Valley and from Long Island.

With a slip outside the building, Schoener said yesterday that some of the grapes will be shipped to the new winemaking facility. Not for carbon footprint reasons, mind you, but just because the slip is there easily presenting that option.

Even though the space will be dramatic, with 60 foot ceilings behind door 15 the huge complex on Beard and Van Brunt, it is not yet determined whether it will be open for visitors like the Bridge Urban Winery and Tasting Room in Williamsburg.

The Schoener wine label is currently unnamed but will have a historic reference. It will not be part of the Scholium Project wines.

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We know international summits are tough. They’ve been known to make a teetotaler go weak in the neck as recently as, oh, last year.

Now we have this photographic intel that the Teetotaler-in-Chief raised a glass with President Yushchenko in Kiev last week! The Dr. Vino cam only has this one angle, but it looks distinctly like the fruits of the vine that he his holding in the glass behind his goobery hand. My guess is that it beats fermented yak milk!

UPDATE: thanks to a comment from reader Mark, please feel free to “CAPTION THIS PHOTO!”

In the Final Four, the sleek and stylish Rieslings of JJ Prum got out to an early lead but Mollydooker came roaring back to take the crown in the first ever Wine Madness! The Maitre D’ set up shots, the Two Left Feet ran hard, and The Boxer played a tough inside game. The Violinist annoyed the crowd at first but then got drowned out by the cheers for the action from the court. During the chilling moments in the first half, they all had Goosebumps but by the end they were walking down the Enchanted Path, drinking Gigglepots, and wondering if they might be heading to a Carnival of Love.

And Mollydooker gets the grand prize: a link back to their website! Catch all those references in the preceding paragraph by checking out the whole line of wines over at Mollydooker.com.au.

I hope you enjoyed the tournament. Thanks again to wine blogger and journalist Mark Fisher for the idea. If you have suggestions on how to better run it for next year, hit the comments! Perhaps we will have to do a pool after all. If only this blog were hosted in Las Vegas…

Here are five stories from the past week. Which one was the April Fool’s story?

* Ribera Del Duero “opens minds” with wine aimed at gay community

* Robert Parker to be immortalized on film; played by Javier Bardem

poll now closed

Last summer, some Italian police were trained as sommeliers. They have been kept busy.

First, 600,000 bottles of Brunello di Montalcino from Castello Banfi have been impounded because the wine, which should be 100% sangiovese, may have had other grape varieties blended in. Not a big deal, really, but it is in contravention of the Brunello di Montalcino standards.

Now, thanks to a tip from Gabrio, I’ve learned that there is another, more serious adulteration scandal affecting 70 million liters of Italian wine. According to this poorly translated page from L’espresso, fertilizers, hydrochloric acid, sulphuric acid and maybe more have been found in some low-end wines in Italy. The perpetrators cooked up the “hellish cocktail,” apparently, in an attempt to stretch wine by adding water and sugar. Then they used the industrial acids to break the sucrose (sugar) down into glucose and fructose, which are allowable and prevented detection. Yikes. L’espresso calls it “the largest food adulteration ever discovered in Italy.”

Gabrio writes “This is a serious problem that can damage the Italian wines image like the ethanol scandal that happened 22 years ago…That is the reason why I stay away from the mass produced wines.”

Do you think Italy has more fraud than other countries? Or are the authorities just better at sniffing it out?

Site reader Conrad sent in this picture of the Belem under full sail. As you may recall, the three-masted barque (schooner?) built in 1896 has been enlisted to transport wine from Languedoc to Ireland with a zero carbon footprint.

Sail.ie recaps the story and has the excellent picture. As a green enthusiast, I think it’s a cute, if somewhat headline grabbing effort (barque worse than their bite?). But as a wine enthusiast, whoa, if the boat’s a rockin’…

Here’s a great lineup of red wines form Loire – three 2005s from Bernard Baudry and two vins de table (and thus, no vintage) wines from Puzelat. Hmm, sounds like a matchup from Wine Madness…So let’s throw in a Breton too to change things up…

First to the Baudry wines from Chinon: I tasted them first blind, in a lineup of Loire reds. The 2005 “domaine” (under $20; find this wine) is tight, concentrated and serious with a great balance of dark fruits, acidity and cab franc tannin. I poured it later to my NYU class where the reception was mixed but definitely favorable. It probably needs some cellar time…

The Baudry Les Grezeaux (find this wine) is another solid offering that, back in the blind tasting, had a great degree of seriousness and poise. But even better was the Le Clos Guillot (find this wine), a serious and age-worthy wine with great integration of the dark fruits, acidity, minerality and tannins.

The Puzelat “vin de table” wines (find these wines) are not allowed to state the vintage but they are probably 2006. They are easier drinking, with bright fruit and higher acidity and totally rewarding under $20 wines. Try with chevre.

The Catherine & Pierre Breton 2005 Chinon (find this wine) is also tasting great right now–so great, it’s one of those “there must be a hole in it because how else could it be empty so fast” kinda great.

The reason for these speed reviews today was at the suggestion of Garyvee, who holds the rotating chair for Wine Blogging Wednesday this month and picked the excellent theme. Since he is a video blogger, I’m not sure how he will do a customary round-up but you can always check the WBW site for the latest.

Also of note: Eric Asimov did his own Chinon shuffle recently.