Dr Vino's wine blog

Comrade, would you prefer red?
The sommelier becomes an official occupation in China, “to help meet surging demand in the increasingly prosperous nation,” state media reported Sunday. Related: “nuts chef” also joins the list. [via AFP, thanks reader Grayman!]

Little Luxembourg, big gulp
China may be big, but Luxembourg is thirsty. The Grand Duchy consumes the most alcohol per capita of any country in the world. France, Ireland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic round out the top five. [MSNBC]

Menu for Hope
See the creative donations from food and wine bloggers — bid and help UNWFP! [Chez Pim]

Claret, no merci
English wine outsells than Bordeaux in England?!? So says supermarket Waitrose. Are they doing it for the smaller carbon footprint? [Decanter]

Dueling critics
The 2003 Quinault l’Enclos (find this wine), is it “all about finesse, balance, and purity” or “low in acidity, rather bland and yet again lacking freshness and definition. A couple of sips is enough.”? We love dueling critics–and it’s even more fun when the shootout is in one publication, in this case, Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate! Incredible! Diversity of opinion is tolerated! [see more on Rockss and Fruit]

USB wine?!?
You might think this blend of wine and technology is from California, but this laptop spigot is francais–and in development until 2039. [link]

From feast to famine
The Australian wine lake has dried up. Was it the thirst of Chinese sommeliers? No, the industry has swung from glut to shortages in two years because of drought. [NZ Herald]

Vote Vino!
This site has been named a finalist for “Best Food Blog – Drinks” in annual awards at WellFed. Lend a click if you can! [WellFed.net]

We’re less than a week until Friday 12/14! What’s that, you ask? Why, it’s the day of my holiday wine class at the so-new-it’s-not-even-open Astor Center! With only nine seats remaining, it’s time to buy tickets before they’re gone so you can swirl and spit (or not) seven great wines. Oh, and here are some more reasons why you should:

* It’s more fun than sitting at home watching re-runs on TV during the writers’ strike!

* Being able to know which end of the bottle to open the only prior wine knowledge needed!

* Robert Parker will make an appearance and I will thumb wrestle him!

* Get a gilt-edged, collectors’ edition of Dr. Vino’s holiday wine survival guide!

* Isiah Thomas will stop by and reveal his master plan of how the Knicks will become NBA champions this year!

* Find some excellent wines to give as gifts to your friends and co-workers–and buy them with a discount!

* Find out which wine is the perfect match for roaring fires and chestnuts!

* Discover the perfect wine pairing for the weather condition known as “wintry mix”!

* Meet fellow wine enthusiasts!

* Find out which vineyard Brangelina are buying together with Jennifer Aniston!

All right, some of these may be true and some may be totally made up. Stop by and find out the truth for yourself!

Buy tickets in advance here
Friday, Dec 14, 6:30 – 8:00 PM, 23 E. 4th Street (at Lafayette, above Astor Wine & Spirits)

Last week I posted a wine travel puzzle: despite the FAA liquid ban, how could you actually bring a bottle of wine onto a commercial flight in the US?

With the ins and outs, please welcome friend of the blog, Mark Ashley, proprietor of the excellent travel blog Upgrade: Travel Better. Read more…

“Choosing one Vino Volo wine flight has a sneaky way of begetting another,” wrote Pete Hellman in the NY Sun in September. He was doing some recon at the new wine bar at inside Terminal 8, on the right side of security. He tried the “Taste of New York” flight for $9 and mentions talking with a Finnish traveler who was taking his wine education seriously and on his third flight already. Good man.

Wine bars around America have been warming up to flights, a series of three or four small pours around a certain theme, say, a region or a grape variety. I like flights. If you’re going to order wine by the glass, which is generally an enormous rip-off, I figure why not use it to experiment. Who doesn’t love having multiple glasses in front of them? Well, it does matter what they contain, of course. And, to a certain extant, once you’ve had the flight once, you can move on to your faves.

One of the oddities about the vibrant NYC wine bar scene is that there are so few flights available. Wines by the glass, yes, with some places offering over 100 selections. Why not make some of those into flights? Comments are open for your theories on why flights have crashed and burned in NYC. And feel free to post the names of places that do have flights. Here, I’ll get the ball rolling: I Trulli, The Monday Room, Vino Volo…

See my map of NYC wine bars.

Have your say in the latest poll!

poll now closed

Federal law currently prevents taking wine on board airplanes. Or does it?

As we are in a busy travel time of year, some wine enthusiasts may be wanting to travel with the juice (no, Barry Bonds, fermented grape juice) and most will be frustrated. But it is possible!

The puzzle of the day is thus: where (and how) can you bring your own wine into the cabin with you on a commercial flight in the US?

Comments are open.

Related: “Wine: you CAN take it with you when you go (home)“

On this day, December 5, in 1933, they partied like it was 1999.

Prince wasn’t even born, tech stocks hadn’t been invented, and the dreaded Y2K bug hadn’t yet terrorized the land. No, 74 years ago today, wine, beer and spirits flowed freely for the first time in fourteen years as the ratification of the 21st Amendment ended Prohibition. Can you imagine–fourteen years of a (legally) dry country? [shudder]

You can read more about how this complicated period affected the story of American wine in my forthcoming book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink.

Until then, let’s raise a glass in honor of having the ability to do so–providing you’re over 21, of course.

By complete coincidence, one friend wrote me yesterday saying that he had just enjoyed a bottle of 1933 Justino Malmsey Madeira (find this wine), saying it was “really, really good…still had enough acidity for another 74 yrs.” Now that’s toasting in style.

After the jump, find a list of bars in NYC that are celebrating Repeal tonight. In the comments, post bars in your city that you know of or any plans you have for tonight. Read more…

Wine is always a good gift for a wine lover–more on that next week–but so is wine paraphernalia! With almost every catalog now offering some sort of wine accessories, it’s not hard to find stuff. But some of them are cheesy and some of them are expensive. Here are some links to good value gifts.

Brown bagging the hooch! OK, no brown bag, but handsome velvet bags. Have blind tastings at home! May sound uber geeky but it is actually a fun way to sharpen your perceptions of grape varieties or regions. [$19.95 for a set of 5, Amazon]

Have screwpulls: An excellent, super-easy corkscrew that beats many at 10x the price. Go crazy and throw in the $8 foil cutter as well. [$15 or $22.98 with the foil cutter, Amazon]

Kicking glass: well, you probably can’t kick this glass and have it survive, but these “impact resistant” crystal stems from Schott Zwiesel do seem to have nine lives. [$10 each, Amazon]

I can decant: Decanting can help improve some wines, particularly young tannic monsters. But you don’t need to break the bank on a decanter. Although I haven’t tried this specific decanter, I picked up a similar one with clean lines at a wine store earlier this year for $24.95. [$19.99 via Amazon]

Tag it so nobody snags it: “Wine Lines Waterproof Colorful Drink Tag Markers for Parties, Euphemisms for Drunkiness” – come on, with a product name like that on Amazon, what’s not to love?!? Keeping track of your glass at a party can be confusing and the more well known dangling trinkets can be annoying while actually drinking as they clink and slid along the stem. [$6, Amazon]

Tag it again “From the cellar of…” stickers. OK, this could be a little pompous. But throw in some wit and no bottle that you bring to a party will be forgotten whether it is consumed then or by your hosts later. [$0.14 each with an order of 500, victorystore.com]

Take note: The only thing more important than tasting is writing! Oh wait, I guess tasting is still more important. But writing notes is crucial so you can remember where your category “wine” in Quicken went. Steve De Long has a new and original tasting notebook including a “guided” tasting note to get you started down the road of scribbling. [$6.95, De Long Wine]

Savor saver: Can’t finish the bottle in one sitting? Give it more life with a pump from the Vacu Vin stopper. And toss it in the fridge too. [Amazon]

Drinking game: Play Wine Smarts with friends and you will likely bore them or alienate them. But it’s a fun bunch of (sometimes hard) questions that you can use for yourself (wine solitaire?) or your nearest and dearest sommelier friend. Memorize the questions before giving then you will look all the smarter! [$19 via Amazon]

Book it: Oldman’s Guide to Outsmarting Wine has great nuggets of wine info interspersed with–get this–humor! [$12, Amazon]

In my classes, I pour dozens of bottles from around the world and, inevitably, one is “corked,” or contaminated by the chemical compound TCA (technically, 2,4,6-tricloroanisole). Of course it never arrives at the right moment (which would be during our discussion of sending wine back at at restaurant) and I don’t always have a backup bottle. But it’s a fun learning experience since we can all take in that mmmmoldy odor of wet newspapers stuck in a basement for two weeks.

But what’s a fun problem in a class setting can ruin dinner. The problem of “cork taint” was only scientifically identified in 1981. Since then it’s been a huge point of contention whether the industry should stop sealing bottles with bits of tree bark and shift to another closure, such as screwcaps, that eliminates the problem of TCA.

George Taber traces the arc of the cork story in his very readable book on the subject, “To Cork or Not to Cork.” Three copies of the book have landed here at the Dr. Vino World Headquarters and I’ll be giving them away in a random drawing. To throw your name in the hat, post a comment with your thoughts on corks, which can be as succinct as: love ’em, hate ’em, or indifferent.

Post your comment by Wednesday at midnight ET to qualify for the random drawing on Thursday. Check your email and this post that day to see if you are a winner.

To Cork or Not To Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle, by George Taber ($26, Scribner)
Related: “Poll: Judge these books by their covers”
“Bringing closure: a screwcap-cork showdown“