Dr Vino's wine blog

Five years ago, Randall Grahm staged a funeral for the cork. The great marketer and label designer behind Big House Red and Ca del Solo among other brands staged a processional for his last cork at Grand Central Station of all places. From then on, all of his wines have been bottled “en screw.”

Since enjoying wine is in many ways a race against time (and oxygen), how a bottle of wine gets sealed is of utmost importance. Corks have their detractors since they can introduce the noxious chemical TCA that makes wines “corked.” Further, the pieces of tree bark can lose their elasticity as they age letting in wine’s nemesis, oxygen.

Screwcaps, by contrast, can provide such a tight seal that no oxygen gets in and there is no problem with TCA. Many proponents of screwcaps (or Stelvin closures, if you must) might suggest that the only thing standing between them and domination of the wine world is consumer resistance since wines bottled “en screw” have typically been seen as more downmarket. And what would you do with your $100 corkscrew if you only had to twist the cap off?

Screwcaps appear to be so controversial with their partisans for and against, you might think it impossible to find a producer who goes both ways. Fortunately the Wine Media Guild was able to find several examples of the same wines bottled under both closures for the March tasting.

Michel Laroche attended the tasting as speaker to share his experiences as well as several of his wines bottled under both closures. Laroche is a fifth generation winemaker from Chablis who has run his family firm since 1967 and now also makes wine in the Languedoc, Chile and South Africa.

For Laroche the transition to screwcaps started in 2001 when an unacceptably large amount of his wine was sold unknowingly with TCA that came through corks. Placing the estimate at 10 percent of his production that year, he expressed frustration because he said that consumers never complained so he didn’t know if they thought that flawed wine was actually his style.

So in 2002 he took action. He set up an alternative bottling line and bottled three percent of his production under screwcaps. He bottled the same day and from the same vats. He brought four of his wines that run the gamut of his line for us to taste, with a bottle under each closure.

The difference was shocking. Read more…

Dear Dr. Vino,

-Wino on the move

Glad to see that you have your priorities straight–and you are in luck!

It turns out that North Carolina does have direct shipping. Since October 1, 2003 residents have had the right to order wine directly from wineries at the rate of two cases a month–almost a bottle a day! Those wineries can be either in-state or out-of-state, laws that conformed with the current legal environment two years before the Supreme Court decision in the case Granholm v. Heald was handed down. The only catch is that the winery has to have a license to ship on file with NC so check first and encourage them to apply for one if they don’t have one already.

I called Sam’s for you and they do ship to North Carolina. By the way, consider yourself lucky in this regard. Even though NC allows direct shipping by wineries, even in the post-Granholm era, you can’t take it for granted that shops will ship too (see my previous frustration with this here). Indeed, Sam’s doesn’t ship to me in New York, also a reciprocal state. When I asked why, one of the owners emailed me that the decision is based on the advice of their attorneys. Those darned attorneys…grrr

And don’t forget the local options you have in North Carolina. NCwine.org boasts that the state is 10th in grape production and 12th in wine production!

No F&*%# Merlot!
Miles may have had a rant against merlot in Sideways, but now officials in Utah are piling on the grape–and wine itself. The officials have revoked a personalized license plate in use for ten years with the word “MERLOT” on it citing a state ban on words of intoxicants to be used on vanity plates. Wow. The owner should file for “VINO,” which should give him another 10 years. [AP]

Binge 1
Taking their campaign against DWI to a new, um, level, New Mexico has introduced the talking urinal cake. A woman’s sultry voice intones, “Hey there, big guy. Having a few drinks?” and then advises a taxi. A laudable goal for sure, but what’s up with the sultry voice? Don’t want guys to lean on the urinal and ask it out on a date! [Free New Mexican, with video!]

Binge 2
One Chinese traveler blew $30,000 in a 15-minute shopping spree at a duty free shop in Charles De Gaulle airport. His haul included a 200 year old cognac, a 100 year old armagnac, and a 45 Mouton–but if he’d only shopped around, he could have found it for half the price! [news.com.au, thanks U:TB!]

What’s hot?
Everything. Grape varieties across the board from riesling to pinot gris/grigio were up; only lowly white zin (not even a grape, but a style that’s out of style) was down according to Nielsen scanner data for 2006. Screwcaps gained acceptance and New Zealand zipped higher. More details at Uncorked.

Cheap wine, it’s fine
The Gray Lady has run tests to determine what I have practiced for a long time out of my sheer miserly tendency: using cheap wine is fine for cooking. [NYT]

Puck says no duck
A three-year campaign against Wolfgang Puck has brought the chef to his knees–he’ll stop serving foie gras in his restaurants. [AP]

Varietal, crushed
Frank Bruni one-stars the wine-themed restaurant Varietal. He can’t seem to stop giggling about the “grower champagnes,” which reinforces my thinking that they should be called indie champagne. He also trashes the desserts, which “don’t so much eschew convention as pummel and shatter it — literally, and often pointlessly.” I found the same with molecular gastronomy desserts in my experience at Moto. [NYT]

Goat cheese is a sign of spring in France. When we had a few people over this past weekend, I was sure to have a nice chevre–even if there is still snow on the ground. Grrr…

One of our friends stated his dislike for goat cheese. Then when I brought out a Sancerre, two guys raised their eyebrows, “WHITE wine?!?” Skeptics all around!

We poured a Sancerre and the raised eyebrows lowered, intensely studying the aromas and color. Not half bad was the sentiment conveyed with a nod.

Then the goat cheese skeptic tried the cheese and washed it down with the Sancerre. And again. And again. He proclaimed it a great match!

So check out the 2005 Chavignol from Thomas-Labaille’s vineyard “les Monts Damnés” or “damned mountains” (about $20, find this wine. The name reminds me of the red “Hell’s mountain“). This name derives from the steepness of the vineyard’s slope of which compels the growers to hand harvest whether they want to or not. Since this is not the norm in Sancerre, the resulting wine has a beautiful blend of richness and crispness that can convince non-chevre eaters and even non-white wine drinkers of its virtues.

Got any favorite pairings with goat cheese? Hit the comments!

Related:
“Spring for Savennieres” [Dr. V]
“BREAKING: Sarkozy tastes Sancerre, promises wine reforms” [Dr. V]

Welcome to the new Dr. Vino! This site integrates my wine blog content as well as web site content all under one roof. Consider this site as your one-stop shop for all Dr. Vino wine picks and wine commentary.

Along with the swanky new design, you’ll see some new features. For example, you can browse topics by category. So if you are looking for wine recommendations, click “wine picks” to generate a list. If you’re looking for “wine politics” (and come on, who isn’t), just click on that in the category on the first sidebar. And so on. This feature was not available on my old blog so I have to go back and tag 697 posts with categories, a process that will take at least a bottle of high-octane tempranillo and few episodes of the Daily Show to work my way through…Thanks for your patience in this regard.

You may notice a new email sign-up for monthly summaries on the right sidebar. I encourage you to sign up in case you don’t check in with the site regularly. Or sign up even if you do you can get a monthly note with some highlights of site activity. The email list is and will always remain not for sale, exchange, loan nor lease, truck nor barter. There is new placement of ads on the right sidebar and a new statement of my ethics and privacy policy above. I have added some other pages to the nav bar including an events page. The maps will be folded into this page template shortly. Feel free to subscribe to the feed with your RSS reader!

Any questions, or suggestions, drop me a line or post a comment! Otherwise, we’ll return to our normally scheduled wine programing .

I am thrilled to have been nominated for a James Beard award in hugely broad the category of “Website Focusing on Food, Beverage, Restaurant or Nutrition.” Given the fact that so many more people eat, drink beverages other than wine, or are interested in nutrition, I am truly honored to be among the finalists. And thank you, dear reader, for your comments, which make this site a collaborative effort!

My humble blog is nominated alongside Epicurious.com, internet home of Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines, and Leite’s Culinaria, a food site with essays and recipes. See the full list of nominees here in pdf including book authors and many great chefs (and even some winemakers too).

If you are new to this site–or if you are a veteran reader–I will ask you to “pardon our dust” as the cliche goes. I initiated some site improvements that will be finished in a day or so but may cause uneven performance of the site’s images in the interim (great timing, eh?). Crackling wine commentary resumes shortly with an enhanced look and feel.

It’s spring time, which for us wine geeks doesn’t just mean crocuses and robins–it means it’s time to pay now for wine that won’t be delivered for another two years.

A friend called me on Saturday and asked if I wanted to claim a few bottles of Ridge Monte Bello 2006 allocation. I hesitated for a moment, thinking that nobody outside the winery has ever tasted the wine and the final blend is probably a year away from being constructed. Then I said yes.

Is this sheer folly? At least when Bordeaux futures start rolling out in the next month, journalists and buyers from around the world will have already ventured to the region to taste barrel samples and be able to offer a third party opinion.

But I figure Ridge is a Name You Can Trust. Which wines would you be willing to pre-buy without anything other than the weather report and some vague assurances from the winery about the current vintage being spectacular?