Dr Vino's wine blog

Perplexed about a wine gift this year? Win one of two of the best wine books of 2006 in the Dr. Vino year end wine quiz!

The six questions include mice, other galaxies, deceased world leaders, James Bond, the Bush twins–and, oh yes, wine! Knock back this half-a-case of questions and qualify to wine one of the prizes

* The Oxford Companion to Wine, third edition, hailed by Slate as “the most useful wine book ever” and is a welcome addition to the bookshelf of any wine geek. List price $65.

* The Wines of France: The Essential Guide for Savvy Shoppers, hailed by Eric Asimov as a book that “embraces France region by region, offering opinionated reviews of producers and concise demystifications of the French nomenclature that bedevils American consumers.”

The quiz closes on Monday December 18. Winners will be notified December 19 and little elves will whisk the prizes to the winners later that week.

Surf on over and get started!
www.drvino.com/winequizend2006.php

tags: wine | wine quiz

Bottoms up!
Remember resveratrol, the naturally occurring component of red wine that promotes guilt-free gluttony and cardiovascular-improving sloth? Even though the human dosage resveratrol is the equivalent to 300 glasses of wine, red wine sales “surged” eight percent in the month after the release of the scientific studies. [WBM]

Pump me up
A wine in a New Zealand competition was stripped of its gold medal. Was it steroids? No, but it appears the wine was juiced in another way since the producer provided a “completely different” wine for the judges than is available on the supermarket shelves. [NZH] Mark Fisher wonders on his blog whether this might change the acceptability of media receiving samples too. Probably not.

Movin’ on up
“Fifteen dollars is the new $10,” a market researcher told the LA Times “We used to go in a store and say, ‘I’ll only spend $10 for a wine for dinner.’ Now it’s $15.” Grr…Must keep prices down…[LAT]

Thumbs up
Vino Volo, a wine bar that I recently visited while transiting at Washington Dulles, now has four locations. Who knew? BWI, SAC, SEA now have locations too with more on the way. But will you be able to carry the wine on board? [F&W]

Bulking up
The bigger the better, at least for blue-chip Bordeaux at auction [Decanter]

tags: wine | wine auctions | resveratrol

What’s better than simply pairing wine and food? Why pairing wine and food bloggers and a charitable contribution.

For the third year in a row, the culinary community on the web is coming together to offer items for bidding with the proceeds going to the United Nations World Food Programme. Last year’s event raised an amazing $17,000.

This year my offering to the raffle is a new copy of the Oxford Companion to Wine, third edition. Edited by Jancis Robinson, Slate.com has called this “the most useful wine book ever.” It is amazing in it’s depth and breadth of coverage with 800 pages, nearly 1 million words, and 4,000 entries. It deserves a place on every wine lover’s desk. Heck, it’s so big, it could even be a desk! If you went to your local Barnes & Noble, they would hit you up for $65 for this wine knowledge.

I have a personal connection to the volume since I was honored to contribute 1/900th of the words! Yes, I authored the 1,000 word entry on “politics and wine.” But seriously, I’m sure it is the other 3,999 entries that will make you want this book.

You can bid on this prize in $10 increments. Here’s what you have to do (it’s sort of a sobriety test in its degree of difficulty).

Go to this site and click “give now.” You’ll need to enter an amount for your total donation for this prize AND any others you want to bid on in the charity raffle. My code is WB14. Enter this code in the personal message area. So say you want to bid $50 for this book and $50 for something else, donate $100 and put in WB14 and the code of the other item.

There are a lot of innovative and worthwhile prizes including a dinner with Eric Asimov, some B&B packages, and some very nice wines. So surf over to Vinography to check out the other wine items available or to Chez Pim for the roundup of from the food side of the blogosphere.

tags: wine | menu for hope iii

When I visited Argentina I was surprised to learn that some ten percent of the harvest each year is lost to hail. I’m sure every vineyard has a pest or a problem that attacks the juicy grapes. I’ve heard of birds and deer attacking vineyards here in New York. But on Wednesday I met with a wine maker from South Africa who loses 12 percent of his crop each year to something unusual: baboons.

The 40 acres of vines on Tulbagh Mountain Vineyards abut a national park. Marauding baboons wander into the vineyard just as the grapes are approaching harvest, when the sugars are high. The vineyard owners used to lose a quarter of their crop to primates. They implemented several controls that have reduced the toll, but not eliminated it. They put up a fence but the baboons dug under it. They used patrols, but the baboons waited until the patrol was around the other side of the vineyard.

Since Chris Mullineux, the vineyard manager and wine maker, adopted biodynamics last year, he searched for a harmonious way to eliminate the pests. One British wine writer told him that the biodynamic solution to pest management was to capture a pest, burn it and sprinkle the ashes around the vineyard to deter future incursions. That was a little much for Chris to stomach in this case. A mealybug, maybe. But a baboon?

In the end, he got lion dung from a lion park in Stellenbosch and sprinkled it around the periphery of the vineyard. That proved the most effective solution. It scared the poop out of the baboons. Or, rather, it was the poop that scared them. The grape loss has been cut in half.

2004 Tulbagh Mountain Vineyards, Syrah Mourvedre find this wine

Winemaker Chris Mullineux doesn’t like pinotage (the taste). Nor does he like wine competitions (they favor big, extracted wines). All the grapes are hand-harvested. And the vineyard has been organically farmed since it was planted in 1999, but they’re in the first year of a transition to biodynamics, a sort of organic plus plus. Further, I know no animals were harmed in the making of this wine (see above).

This 85-15 syrah/mourvedre is a hugely serious wine. The syrah gives it tannins and spice and backbone; the mourvedre rounds it out and gives it a wild side. Minerality blends with dark berries and notes of leather to make a wine that disappears quickly from the bottle.

The bad news: 1165 cases produced. Since Chris gave me this bottle, I’m sad to report that a quick search doesn’t show any more in the US market. More details as they become available.
Tulbagh Mountain Vineyards

THIS JUST IN: the 03s are in the US–but only 339 cases were produced. The 2004s are coming. The importer is Indigo Wine Group, in Venice, FL. (941) 483 1816

tags: wine | south africa | baboons

I was thrilled that Eric Asimov, chief wine critic of the New York Times, came so speak to my NYU class last evening. He is a super-nice and knowledgeable guy and it was fun to talk with him about the mechanics of his job as well as some trends in the wine world. We also tasted five wines together that he had written about in some of his recent stories.

Asimov told us about the three avenues for his writing. The first is the traditional column about a theme or an issue where he often journeys to a remote corner of the wine world.

The second is the Wines of the Times tasting panel, a thematic tasting that runs every other week. Four tasters including Asimov, another member of the Dining section and two guests, meet at noon in the offices of the Times every couple of weeks. They taste about 25 wines blind from a certain theme over two hours. The wines are purchased by the Times and not sent as samples from producers or distributors. This panel format is useful for covering a lot of ground and offering practical wine picks for readers.

Asimov is ambivalent about the panel format, but seems to have made peace with it for the time being. That includes the star reviews. But at least they are better than scores, he said, since scores seem to split hairs. Is there really that much of a difference between an 87 and an 88 he wondered? I was interested to learn that even though the tasting panels have usually four tasters, Asimov writes the tasting notes and awards the star ratings himself.

The third avenue for his writing is his blog, The Pour. It is a contrast to the panel since it is free of tasting notes and offers Asimov’s more intimate experiences, drinking wines a few at a time and with friends and food.

In closing, one student asked Asimov what is a bottle of red and a white that he would bring to a friend’s house for dinner. He said it depended on several factors. Most wine gifts to hosts go directly into the host’s cellar instead of on the table that evening he pointed out. But he did offer specific advice on what to bring if you ever dine chez Asimov: champagne.

The best way to get to know wine is to taste. Here are two very good events where you can taste on someone else’s tab! And some others…

Free tasting of Domaine Daniel Rion at Moore Brothers. map it
Friday, 5 – 8 PM
Pascale and Christophe Rion will be on hand to pour the great Burgundies from their family estate. Taste the wines in this range from the $18.50 white to the $95 Echezaux 2001. NOTE: they’re doing a similar tasting at another store for $20, so the one to hit is the free tasting at Moore Bros.

Saturday December 9th
10 AM Acker-Merral auction at Cru restaurant, 24 5th Ave. No charge to drop by and pick up a catalogue and a paddle.

3-5PM, Astor Wines. map it
Meet the charming Mary Ewing-Mulligan and Ed McCarthy as they sign copies of their new edition of Wine for Dummies. No word if a tasting will accompany the signing.

Monday December 11th Wine Science at NYAS (7 WTC)
Dr. James Kennedy talks tannin and more in this one evening session that includes a tasting. Not free but sounds interesting. $25, 6 PM. Details

Tuesday December 13th at Crush. map it
Champagne tasting they call deluxe; at this store, I’m sure they mean it. Free but you must RSVP, 212.980.9463

And finally, a new wine-firendly restaurant has opened according to a short piece in New York magazine. Varietal is run by Greggory Hockenberry who had took one of my NYU classes last spring. I look forward to checking out the space and the wine list since I can attest that he knows his Sancerre from his Savennieres–or, given the name of the restaurant, his roussanne from his riesling.
138 W. 25th St., nr. Seventh Ave. 212-633-1800

tags: wine events | new york city

Fully 70 percent of human resource professionals say that drinking on the job is ok according to today’s Wall Street Journal. The only catch is that it has to be at the holiday party, the most widely accepted opportunity to drink at work.

The results are from a survey of 501 HR professionals. Surprisingly less than a third said it is OK to drink in celebration of a company milestone–no champagne, it’s back to work!

Most of the piece’s of advice at the end of the story are good–don’t drink during a job interview, for example. However one struck me as in need of elaboration.

Dinner with a client: When dining with clients, let them order first. If the client orders a drink, it’s OK to order one, says Phyllis Davis, the founder and director of the American Business Etiquette Trainers Association in Las Vegas.

An alternate approach, particularly when it comes to wine, is simply to ask your client if he or she is interested in wine. I do agree that if your client says no then you are probably going to be paying homage to San Pellegrino that night.

But if yes, then ask them if they have any wine preferences in general or what was the last bottle they had that really stands out in their memory. That way you can gauge how into wine they are–and whether you can justify ordering something expensive or unusual. When it comes to business entertaining, after all, client satisfaction is the key! (Just don’t take it to the extreme, the way this guy at Jefferies & Co. did to win new business)

Original story: “Sober Thought: How to Mix Work, Alcohol” [WSJ$]

tags: wine | drinks at work

In my critics class at NYU last week I poured a contentious wine. Sadly, it wasn’t the famed Pavie 2003 (we are on an academic budget after all). The contentious wine this time was the Alvear Pedro Ximenez 1927, a fortified wine from Andalucia that actually started the year my grandfather graduated from college. (find this wine)

Sqaring off in one corner was the Robert Parker. And in the other was HRH Jancis Robinson. I won’t insult your intelligence and tell you who said what. Jancis made me laugh though. Roll the tape:

“The impressive 1927 Pedro Ximenez Solera, from a Solera begun nearly 80 years ago, boasts a dark amber color as well as an extraordinary nose of creme brulee, liquefied nuts, marmalade, and maple syrup. Huge and viscous, yet neither cloyingly sweet nor heavy, it is a profound effort priced unbelievably low. It is meant to be drunk alone at the end of a meal. 96 points.”

“There is also a super-stickie Alvear Pedro Ximénez Solera 1927 Montilla-Moriles for £12 a half-litre that should sweeten any 80th birthday celebrations next year – very, very dark, like ancient raisins steeped for years. If the octogenarian still has their own teeth, this should put paid to them.”

For what it’s worth, the class gave the wine a thumbs up.

tags: wine | wine writing