Dr Vino's wine blog

This just in from the Pyonyang bureau: Kim Jong-Il says cheers with wine!

The despotic ruler of North Korea was known for his lavish lifestyle. However, UN sanctions, enacted last year, aimed right at his silky soft underbelly banning trade in crystal, silk scarves, designer fountain pens, furs, leather luggage, jet skis, and Harley-Davidsons.

Now the Financial Times reports that the Dear Leader “has given up cognac so that his liver can last a few more years.” And with a $1 million a year budget for ‘yak, that is quite a lot of Louis XIII not consumed.

Given Kim’s apparent deteriorating health, would he and President Roh Moo-hyun raises glasses of wine to toast the summit? As the picture picture above shows, he’s still enjoying red wine in big glasses!

And just in case you were wondering what to pair with blueberry wine, here’s a quick take on the summit menu:

The South Korean delegation was served with a variety of North Korean food specialties, including boiled beef, stewed ribs, carp stew and trout soup.

Pyongyang’s famous blueberry wine and Ryongsung beer was served during the dinner, and watermelon and roasted chestnuts were saved for dessert.

When I was half way through a blind tasting of 42 wines from Rioja, a thought struck me: why do magazines still organize their correspondents along regional lines? Some of the Rioja wines I was tasting had regional character and they, obviously, could be evaluated alongside some of the other wines from the region.

But some of the wines were so extracted, bathed in lavish oak, and made in a new world style and clearly seeking Parker points and high prices. These wines, it seems to me, should be evaluated against other such wines. Araujo versus Aro if you will.

In fact, we could carry the logic even further and change labels to state what really matters for these wines. See above.

Just over thirty years ago, Chilean wines entered the world wine stage. As with the export trajectory of Japanese car manufacturers, Chilean wine makers started by exporting inexpensive but reliable offerings. And as with the Japanese car manufacturers, they eventually became so proficient at the low end that they began to target the high end and focus on quality.

Montes is one of the more recent quality producers, more Lexus than Toyota (although they do have reliable wines at $10). Started in 1987 as a partnership between Aurelio Montes and Douglas Murray, the company now makes wines in Argentina under the Kaiken brand and in Napa, from Rutherford and Coombsville, to be released in 2008.

At a recent tasting in New York City with Aurelio Montes, a key question for me was: can Chilean wines age? With eight vintages of the Alpha M (a cabernet-dominant blend, generally about $80 retail) in front of me dating back to 1997, I tasted through to find the answer to be yes but the record is short and mixed. I also found out about the mysterious phenomenon of the “annual rhythm.” Read more…

Following the controversy generated by a recent poll on this site about banning kids from wineries, we add another poll! But this one has content from you, dear readers, of this site! Grateful for all the photos, the hastily convened Kids At Wineries Committee surveyed the submissions and picked the top five–wait, top six with a late and provocative entry crossing the line! They were all very cute–well, except for that last one that the Committee included for diversity.

Unlike the previous poll, this one has prizes! A complete set of children books by Michelle, my wife, starting with Urban Babies Wear Black and running through the just-about-to-be released Winter Babies Wear Layers. Five books in all, with a black onesie, and a grape juice box thrown in for good measure, these prizes will go to the person who submitted the photo here with the most votes as of Sunday the 7th.

So without further ado, to the photos! Read more…

Is bigger better?

This perennial question came up during my class on Saturday at the University of Chicago. In this context, it related to bottle size, specifically, magnums.

The tasting had two magnums, one of Pierre Peters, “cuvee de reserve” Champagne and another of Ridge Monte Bello 2002. How sweet it is to organize tastings!

Anticipating the question of size, um, arising, I asked none other than the importer of the champagne, Terry Theise, via email beforehand. Here is his reply (reproduced with permission): Read more…

Has wine reached the investment status of gold? In Romania, the answer is yes. Even though Communism had a knack for turning gold into lead, the country’s wine from that era is now taking its place alongside ingots. Roll the tape from Bloomberg (thanks, reader Mike!):

This year, the National Bank of Romania will begin storing select vintages next to the gold bars in its Bucharest vaults. The first deposit will be 300 bottles of Grasa de Cotnari made in 1956, one of the last good years during communism.

It helps that the Romanian central bank Governor Mugur Isarescu is a wine maker, trying to give new life to cramposie, a 2,000-year-old grape that Ceausescu nearly extinguished. Wow, talk about an indigenous grape variety!

Martha Stewart is the latest big name to appear behind bars–wine bars, that is as the Independent (UK) put it. America’s queen of homemaking maven has just launched a new line of wines made by E & J Gallo that might actually do well based on her large following in the related area of entertaining. Even corporations are getting into the act: Microsoft has a wine called the Blue Monster with wine from Stormhoek winery in South Africa and a label by cartoonist Hugh McLoed. It’s currently only available for staff and affiliates.

A celebrity hardly even seems like a celebrity these days without cashing in on wine. Lorraine Bracco, Barry Manilow, Jay-Z (more or less), Mike Ditka, various Boston Red Sox players, Greg Norman and many more.

So who’s next celeb-u-tainer–or corporation!–to bravely lend their name to a new wine? Have your say in the latest poll–or add your own choices in the comments below.

poll now closed
(Photo credit: Fair use is made here of a reduced-size crop from an image in MSNBC attributed to Scott Duncan)

Yesterday, several readers of this site showed off just how smart they are by rapidly answering the question about which state consumes the most wine in America. In fact, it was a trick question because it is our nation’s capital, Washington, DC that holds the state wine-drinking crown. But it’s not even a state! New Hampshire is the thirstiest state in America with both taxation and representation. Congratulations to Alex on guessing DC and JB for being Jill on the spot with her guess of New Hampshire.

The rate of wine consumption is 7.79 gallons per adult per year for DC and 6.29 for NH according to Adams Wine Handbook 2006. Although those figures are way above the national average of 3.09 gallons per adult American, they are still below France, which has about 14 gallons per person.

For some local perspective on why Washington is at the top of the charts, I spoke this morning with Scott, the general manager at the wine store Schneider’s of Capitol Hill. Read more…