Dr Vino's wine blog

SIPPED: upgrading label info?
No disgorgement date, no review: Antonio Galloni, who reviews Champagnes for The Wine Advocate, announced in issue 186 that if nonvintage Champagne doesn’t come with a disgorgement date, then it will not be reviewed. (Discussion ensued over at wineberserkers whether there was a loophole in the statement.) With this information, consumers can have a better handle on the freshness of such wines.

SPIT: bling champagne
The economic downturn has started a bull market in columns about the bear market in Champagne! Alice Feiring got a jump on the competition with her WSJ. magazine piece from September (“Bubbles takes a bath”), a WSJ Europe reporter followed up with another piece this month (“All That Fizzes Is Gold“), and the wine columnists at the NYT and the more spendy Slate.com join the fray with recommendations, with nonvintage bargains under $40 and overall bargains under $100 respectively.

SIPPED: solitude
Ray Isle of F&W escapes the holiday madness of midtown at the Garden Wine Bar at the Four Seasons hotel. There he finds solitude and some more-intriguing-than-usual hotel bar selections. [Tasting Room]

SPIT: business as usual
Eric Asimov serves up a meaty post on the shuffling of the Bordeaux wine trade. [The Pour]

SIPPED: Bordeaux
Driven by sales of red Bordeaux, which country saw a fifteen-fold increase in imports from France during 2002 – 2008? Okay, it’s China. But you’ll need to click through for the importer stock pick in the story! [WSJ]

SIPPED: looking back
Good Grape and La Otra Botella review memorable moments in wine blogging from the past year.

[Before launching into this post, be sure to get a laugh with this spectacular, poppin’ Champagne video from Japan, posted here earlier this year!]

“We’re selling a lot of Prosecco,” a leading Manhattan retailer told me recently as he has observed consumers trading down from Champagne this fall. Not only are people trading down within grape bubbly, Starwood hotels forecast that beer would be the bubbly of choice for the holidays this year. Say it ain’t so! Here are a few grape bubblies worth seeking out.

In my quest to provide bubbly at every one of my events, I have, indeed, had to trade down from Champagne several times. I’ve had the Col Vetoraz (find this prosecco) and the Bisson (find this prosecco), two slightly off-dry versions of the simple and fun Prosecco under $15. (The Bisson could fake people out before opening since it doesn’t have a large cork akin to most bubbly.)

At the most recent meeting of a local wine tasting group I belong to, the theme was bubbly and we poured the sparklers not from Chardonnay or Pinot Noir, the traditional grapes of Champagne, in one flight, blind. The Cremant d’Alsace from Lucien Albrecht (about $18; find this cremant) won by a mile with its good acidity and fine bead.

In the domestic sparkler category, I approached the Gruet with trepidation after a previous experience that fell quite, um, flat. But the rose ($15; (find this sparkler) got a thumbs up.

In the Champagne flight, more serious bubbles in the glass and in price, I was surprised that the Taittinger brut La Francaise (find this champagne) came out on top. Although it’s an excellent nonvintage wine, it’s a lighter style that I thought would be trumped by the the richer and fuller and delicious Bollinger Cuvee Speciale (find this champagne), which came in second. Gosset (find this champagne), another fine champagne, came in third.

Let us know what you plan to pop tonight! And whatever it is, may you have a happy new year!

After so many suggestions in magazines, food and dining sections about which wines should be on your table, and probably a fair amount of going back and forth, which wines did you pour for Thanksgiving? What worked and what didn’t?

Some local friends and their extended family welcomed us to their celebration this year so it was an “away” Thanksgiving for us. We brought some wine, which included a Taittinger brut nonvintage champagne (find this wine), a magnum of Marcel Lapierre Morgon 2007 (find this wine), and a bottle of the (in)famous Palin syrah (find this wine). The Champagne was very good and well received. The Lapierre was lighter than I recall the ’06 being but still excellent and even my friend who really prefers “big reds” admitted that it was a really fine wine (someone else said it was the most beautiful wine bottle he’d ever seen!). The Palin syrah was horribly corked, not much different than the erstwhile veep candidate. Fortunately some more Champagne emerged from the other guests.

In case you’re curious what other people around the world tried, click here to see the 5,500 bottles consumed on 11/27/08 and entered (so far) into cellartracker. Domestic wines prevailed with Kistler, Kosta Browne, Peter Michael, Ridge, Seghesio, and Turley coming the first six places.

An $18 bubbly showdown! Well, it was and I didn’t even plan it. Some friends came over recently and we each had a bubbly ready to go. So what are wine lovers to do? Why, open them both, of course!

First up, from the Loire was Thierry Puzelat, naturalista wine maker who made it through to the quarterfinals in the Wine Madness tourney back in March. I was ready for Thierry to bring the shazam since I am a fan of his wines. But the cork on the Vin Pétillant de France Naturel Non-dosé released with a whimper rather than a bang. The mousse–the foamy part–was weak! This pétillant did not have the gas (literally) to keep it frothing! Upon tasting, it was more like cider than Champagne–that non-dosé stuff can be tough to make. A bummer! One person dumped her glass! (Ahem!) Puzelat, upended! Shades of Wine Madness all over again!

Then it was on to the Strohmeier…I mean come on, who’s ever heard of Strohmeier? They’re an Austrian producer founded in 1990, which is practically a New World time frame. And it’s not even from the esteemed Wachau–it’s from Styria! Some southern part of Austria that has produced, among other things, the Governator! And the grape in this Schilcher Sekt nonvintage–Blauer Wildbacher? Let’s get serious! Now to the pour: major mousse! Frothing all over the place. Bright pink effervescence in the glass! Now on to the taste. Oooh, it’s got hints of strawberry, it’s juicy, it’s got good acidity–in short, a delightful summer sipper on the deck! No glasses dumped on the geraniums! Strohmeier takes home the trophy in this spontaneous $18 bubbly showdown!

Find the Puzelat petillant
Find the Strohmeier Schilcher Sekt nonvintage

Roederer, the Champagne house that makes the bling Cristal as well as an excellent nonvintage champers, has announced that they will be testing out a new location for bottle aging: under the sea. To the tape:

Roederer said on Monday it had placed several dozen bottles 15 meters (50 feet) underwater in the bay of Mont Saint-Michel, a rocky tidal island off the coast of Normandy, last weekend. A cellarman came up with the idea after realizing that the water temperature in the bay, a constant 10 degrees Celsius (50F), was ideal for aging wine.

But if cork lets in scant amounts of oxygen in a normal cellar, might undersea aging turn the champagne a tad briney? They will stage a tasting in a year to find out how it’s going. Assuming, that is, that lobsters haven’t opened an undersea night club where the cases are stored.

BREAKING: Behavioral economists at Caltech attached an EEG to the heads of 21 volunteers who knew not much about wine, fed them one milliliter of cabernet through a tube and the only thing they told them about the price, which wasn’t always accurate! Guess which one they always thought was better? The more expensive one, even when it was the same wine!

For a summary of this study, check out this BBC account, the best I’ve seen (with blog-worthy reader feedback too! And thanks to readers Grayman, Brian, Stephen and Terry for sending in versions of the story.).

Unfortunately using price as a proxy for quality happens all the time in the world of wine. That’s why, for example, Ace of Spades $300 nonvintage Champagne sells out when it tastes remarkably like the $50 version from the same producer. Hmm, maybe that’s why no samples of it were available during Vinexpo, a savvy crowd of trade tasters? Examples also abound of new producers who release wines at high prices in an attempt to signal quality that may or may not be there.

But, fortunately, price and quality are not always perfectly related. Just last month I poured two wines for participants at a tasting. One was quite a storied Napa producer and another was an unheralded producer from some dustbowl in Spain. They could see the bottles and some knew the Napa name. Which did they prefer? The Spanish one. And when I told them it was $15 vs $115, they rejoiced!

What do you say, is a higher priced wine always better? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments.

It’s too bad that the researchers’ next project is about pain–I was hoping they would repeat the wine quality test with Parker scores. I bet it would have an even higher correlation with perceived quality than price!

Image used with permission from DeLongWine.com

Growing pains?
Elaine Sciolino, an NYT France correspondent, ventures to Champagne. As demand for Champagne rises, she examines the fascinating politics of expanding the boundaries of the growing region–is it a boondoggle or a necessity? [NYT] Peter Liem of Wine & Spirits also addressed this question on this blog in September.

Small is beautiful
A Business section story tracks the “grower Champagne” trend, with picks. [NYT]

Big is beautiful
Mike Steinberger, who wrote about grower Champagnes several years ago, now rides to the defense of the big houses and their entry level, nonvintage blends. Shocking! Fortunately the world is still on its axis since he spanks Moët White Star rightfully calling it “execrably sweet, with a confected, cloying taste that made me want to run for my toothbrush.” [Slate]

Old is beautiful
Mike Steinberger fires off another piece this time observing the trend toward buying 30+ year old Champagne at auction. Paradoxically, buyers not much older than the bottles themselves seem to be the source of much of the demand. [Portfolio]

Champ-Angleterre?
Are Champagne houses really contemplating a move to England? Maybe the world IS spinning off its axis?! [Telegraph]

Budget bubbles
Executive Pursuits columnist Henry Hurt III fears a decline in his purchasing power next year. So he had a couple of friends over and poured them nine bubblies blind to see if he could get away with pouring sparkling wine instead of Champagne. They trash the, ahem, grande dame, and praise the lowly Boyer brut, a $9.95 sparkling Burgundy (find this wine). Booyah, Boyer! Happy new year, indeed! [NYT]

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The good people at Wines of Alsace held a press event in the Bronx yesterday. It allowed me the opportunity to ponder a question I have long overlooked: which wine goes with hot dogs?

The venue was in fact the venerable and soon-to-be-demolished Yankee Stadium. Bud Light be damned–the wines available were, naturally, from Alsace!

So for you, dear reader, I broke a decade-long fast and had my first ball park dog, loaded with sauerkraut and mustard. It’s a crazy food that comprises of salt, fat, some meat-like product, nitrates, and probably much more. I wasn’t about to eat 66 of them like that American who brought home the glory earlier this month in other “sports” news. (As a point of interest, there was a hot dog afficionado present who informed me that, indeed, the hot dogs consumed in such a contest have to “stay down” and if they come back up, it is a violation known euphemistically known as a “reversal.”)

Hot dog in hand, I surveyed the Alsatian wines. With their good acidity and minerality, they seem like a good pairing overall for the dawg if you’re not doing the classic beer pairing. The most effective was the Albert Mann, cremant d’Alsace, brut nonvintage (about $19; find this wine). It has bubbles, like beer! But more importantly, I found the zesty citrus notes worked really well with the dawg.

Moving up the wine richness scale, I found the heft of the Domaine Ehrhart, “Rosenberg,” geurztraminer, 2004 (about $20; find this wine) to work well too. The faint spice of the wine was somewhat overwhlemed by the “zesty mustard” but the refreshing core of acidity and minerality remained a good complement. The Albert Boxler 2004 pinot gris (about $30; find this wine), a rich, sweet and powerful wine seemed a little too flabby with the food.

The Hebrew National dog was great going down but an hour or so later I found it had an unpleasant, um, “finish” (safe for work: no “reversal”!). The finish of the Boxler wine lingered longer and was much more pleasant.

Maybe this should be an “impossible food pairing” post, too. A double-play, if you will. So which wines do you like with hot dogs? Vega Sicilia?

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