Dr Vino's wine blog

SIPPED: Competition!
Academic researchers Alan Wiseman and Jerry Ellig studied wine retail prices in Virginia before and after the Supreme Court decision. Care to guess which period had the higher prices? Indeed, prices fell 26 – 40 percent with greater interstate trade in wine. [Journal of Politics, pdf]

SIPPED and SPIT: wine discounts in France
The annual “foires aux vins” are taking place in hypermarkets around France. Consumers rejoice when markups can fall to as low as zero – five percent. Meanwhile, those in the trade grumble about other retailers scooping up the fine wine and reselling it for more later. In all, a quarter of French wine sells during these Foires according to the AFP story.

SIPPED: Pinot Noir. Go Ca-na-da!
The quest for North American pinot noir has moved north–1,100 miles north of Sonoma’s Russian River Valley to British Columbia. Hotter summers and milder winters have brought better grapes such as pinot noir to places like the Okanagan Valley, half way between Calgary and Vancouver. Now it’s a race against the frost to harvest. [WSJ]

SIPPED: late sampling
The 100 wines available by the glass at Artisanal will be half-priced after 10 PM. Starts next week. [Grub Street]

SPIT: Brunello di wha?!?
Author of historical fiction, Ken Follett, has a new 1,000+ page doorstop out. Let’s hope he gets his wine references right this time (we’re all up on our 14th century English wine, right?) since he admits that he erroneously invented the “Brunello Di Moltepulciano” in his last book.

SPIT: Claridges in London
The next time they go to London (by sailboat?), Treehugger admits a boycott of the Claridges hotel in London. Why? Because of the carbon footprint of the bottled water, now with over 30 choices including a liter from NZ for £50. Claridges’ Renaud Gregoire told the Evening Standard that “water is becoming like wine. Every guest has an opinion, and asks for a particular brand.” What the heck, given my earlier bottled water ban, I think I’ll boycott Claridges too! Feel the pain of my non-visit, Claridges! [Treehugger]

With a theme of Portuguese table wines, WBW 38 has been wrapped up with 30 contributors around the web. Great map! [Catavino]

Have you ever had a question for me? Hit the “contact” button above! Tom Wark had twenty questions for me that I answered in a Q&A. Check out my answers at his blog. [Fermentation]

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In the chorus of Rhone varieties, Grenache rarely gets to perform solo. But at the most recent lunch for the Wine Media Guild in New York City, we put it on a stage all alone with twenty five examples of the grape from five countries.

Which is the most planted red grape variety in the world? According to our speaker and grenache-o-phile, Jean-Francois Ey, it’s grenache. The grape often appeals to winegrowers because of it’s workhorse-like productivity in early years of the life of the vine. But it may appeal to consumers, particularly as the vine ages, because of wines light in tannin that can have a faint sweetness and high degree of alcohol. Even though the day of our tasting was still warm, it strikes me now as an excellent transitional red as the weather has cooled.

Our tasting consisted exclusively of old-vine grenache. “Old vine” appears to be the wine label term du jour and producers toss it around–like “reserve”–with so little regulation. Jean-Francois, 30, imports several wines from Roussillon under the Ey Vineyards label and put the question of age into perspective for Grenache. In the Mediterranean climate (with no irrigation or fertilizer), the vines take five years just to get going. Then they have 25 bountiful years with abundant yields. But as the vines age, he said, they yields become so miserly that one vine produces enough fruit for just one bottle of wine. At 30-35 years of age, a producer can make good money but after 50 years, they will make good quality he said.

Turning to the wines, we had two white grenache, one rose, several 100% red grenache and some blends, and finally a Banyuls sweet wine. Read more…

We’re back with our “impossible” pairings of food we eat here in America with wines we drink! The latest installment is…

chili con carne

Comments are open!

See previous food and wine postings. (Image: istockphoto)

Three years ago in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik wrote a scathing rebuke of wine writing, saying that what wine books “rarely seem to be about is drinking wine. Remarkably, nowhere in wine writing, including [Robert] Parker’s and [William] Echikson’s, would a Martian learn that the first reason people drink wine is to get drunk.” Gopnik would love Eric Arnold’s First Big Crush, which seems to try to right Gopnik’s perceived imbalance in wine writing single-handedly.

Eric, now a thirty-something News Editor at Wine Spectator magazine, tells a ribald tale of a year’s worth of winemaking (and “GD”–getting drunk) in New Zealand that would make Chaucer proud too. But in between the salty and perhaps unsavory bits is a fast-paced tale about how wine is made–mostly cleaning tanks and hoses followed by sales and marketing–and the kiwis who make it. I wrote Eric five questions I had about the book.

Practically no page goes by without some mention of genitalia, masturbation, general swearing or reference to being drunk. Why? Read more…

I went to a gathering of my extended family over the balmy Columbus Day weekend. My aunt and I were talking about the Sidecar cocktails and she wanted to try one, so I brought along the fixins (it IS the year of the sidecar after all). But I knew there were other relatives who didn’t drink so I thought I would make them something too.

I wrote friend of the blog Brian Van Flandern, mixologist extraordinaire, what kind of a mocktail he would recommend since de-alcoholized wine shouldn’t even be served in Dante’s inferno. Brian came up with this cucumber tumbler recipe. It actually worked out great since my aunt’s garden had just yielded the last of its cukes, so I juiced those instead of the English ones Brian suggested. But use whatever cukes you can find–rip them off an unsuspecting sunbather if you have to. The drinks were a big hit.

Cucumber Tumbler
3 oz. of fresh cucumber juice
(juice down a whole English cucumber with the skins on and strain for a dark green bitter cucumber juice-the English cucumbers are the long skinny seedless kind that are usually sold with plastic wrap around them instead of wax).
1/4 oz. of fresh squeezed lime juice (the juice of a quarter lime)
1/4 oz. simple syrup (1:1)
1/2 oz. Ginger beer

Mix ingredients together and tumble roll back and forth (don’t shake the carbonated ginger beer). Then serve in a highball filled with ice. Garnish with a cucumber wheel. Enjoy.
-Brian Van Flandern
MyMixologist.com
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What sort of bubbly would you pop if your team made it to the Major League Championship round?

It may appear a rhetorical question, but around America this week it is a question that confronts baseball team owners. And from their choice, we can tell who will win the World Series.

Consider my hapless Cubs. What did they pop after they clinched the NL Central? Korbel. Granted, spraying a locker room is one of the best things you can do with Korbel. But it didn’t bode well. They were swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Boston Red Sox, until recently, lovable losers like the Cubs, have advanced one round further. But which bubbly did they spray all over each other? Korbel. And with goggles and ponchos, no less!

The Indians appear destined for greatness. After beating the Yankees, they popped open the Mumm’s. Granted, it’s best use is probably Christening ships but at least if you ended up with a shot in your mouth, it wouldn’t be too traumatic. (Though there are some beer cans visible in that top picture.) And the Indians eschewed goggles and ponchos. Real wine geek men. Winners, it appears.

Unless trivial details like earned runs and batting averages come into play.

Image 1: Fair use is made of a reduced size, cropped photo from sports.yahoo.com attributed to Bill Kostroun/AP
Image 2: Fair use is made of a reduced size, cropped photo from sports.yahoo.com attributed to Elsa

We’ve all thought about starting a vineyard–come on, a few sips of a fine wine and you start to fantasize about living a life surrounded by vines and with a cellar of fine wine. And then the next morning cold reality sets in.

Well, now there’s an affordable way to get one vine closer to that goal. The Sonoma Winegrape Commission is selling “bonsai” cabernet sauvignon vines that even bear fruit. Larry, who works for the organization, told me that they get the vines for free and that all the proceeds benefit vineyard worker education. He also sent along the above picture of his own one-vine vineyard. Guard cat not included.

Further information and purchase

And the winner in the kids at wineries photo contest is…Josh for his son, Jackson, propped on a new oak barrel. Even though Josh had an inside edge thanks to starting his own winery in Sonoma and his own blog at pinotblogger, site reader Damon mounted a formidable campaign for photo of his adorable daughter Avery. It was such a heated battle that there was a lead change as recently as yesterday! But the late surge put Josh/Jackson over the top with 47% of the 377 votes cast when polls closed. There is some poetic justice in Josh’s victory since it was his original comment that sparked this whole kids at wineries thread about six weeks ago.

Josh wins a complete set of books by my wife, Michelle, in the Urban Babies Wear Black series, including the New Baby Baby’s Journal, and the black onesie/tshirt. Do Sonoma babies wear black? Time will tell…

Thanks to everyone who submitted very cute photos. One of the other finalists, Amy, has her own winery in the Rhone and put up a posting related to this thread. Amy sez: “I can certainly tell you that here at La Gramière we couldn’t get along without kids! They are always an enormous help to us during harvest, and they add such a wonderful esprit to the whole event. So here are some of my favorite kid photos from our past 3 harvests…”

One final vignette: I was on a panel with Joel Peterson of Ravenswood Winery last week and he told a story about grape ripeness. Thirty years ago he would throw his son on his back and walk through the vineyards to check the sugar levels with his refractometer. The best measure for ripeness, he found, was simply to pass a grape back to his son, Morgan: if he ate it they were ripe, if he spit it out, the grapes had to stay on the vine a little longer.

So here’s to responsible kids and parents at wineries, something (nearly) everyone can raise a glass to!

Related:
“Kids at wineries: let the voting begin!”
“Kids at wineries, a photo contest”
“Poll: should kids be banned from wineries?”
Urban Babies Wear Black