Dr Vino's wine blog

I tasted with Gregory Smolik yesterday at the Domaine Select portfolio tasting in New York City. You may remember Greg from last year’s Real Wine World project. Greg is now the Midwest Regional Manager at Domaine Select.

Although he’s no longer on his own, he still has his passion for the wines of Italy. I recorded us tasting the wines from the biodynamic producer COS from Sicily. COS owner Giusto Occhipinti (pictured right) was there but he does not speak English. As with the philosophy of biodynamics, the wines are made in an extremely natural style complete with respect for the lunar cycle. These wines from indigenous grape varieties are also fermented in terra cotta amphoras.

We taste three wines:
1. Rami 2005, a white wine made from insolia and grecanico grapes (find this wine)

2. Pithos 2005, a light red made with nero d’avola and frappato. This was my favroite wine of the three. (find this wine)

3. Cerasuolo di Vitorra, a red aged in old oak barrels (find this wine)

Listen to Greg from the floor of the tasting talking about food pairings, using wood in winemaking, and descriptors such as “the inside of a walnut shell.” Find out which wine Greg says “you and I could drink three bottles each of this and we wouldn’t get a headache!”

Listen here (12 minute mp3 file)

Thanks for the audio help, Tim!

tags: wine | biodynamic| Sicily

At 7:46 AM today, America hit the 300 million inhabitants mark. Whoever thought of giving this an exact time is a marketing genius extraordinaire. The 400 million expected in the next 50 years (exact minute not yet specified), what’s the likely impact on wine?

It’s likely to be good.

America is already forecast to become the world’s largest market for wine by 2008 according to VinExpo, a French trade group. Not only are Americans currently drinking more per capita, but with an expanding populace America is likely to remain the favored market for the world’s wine producers. While producers from France, Italy, and Argentina, have to look abroad for growth American producers can focus on the growing home market.

And those American producers could be smaller and more dispersed. Wine Business Monthly estimates that there are close to 4,000 wineries in America now. In 50 years, there could be 20,000. And many of those could be in the other 47 states that are not California, Washington, or Oregon.

For consumers, more local wine might mean knowing more winemakers. Wine makers could be less of celebrities and just a member of the community, a vigneron if you will. Snob value could be shed in favor of actual drink value as more wines make it on to the American table. Probably many of those will also be imported since foreign producers seem particularly clever at making and marketing wines that sell at low prices.

Wine might also finally lose some of its lingering stigma and become the choice of moderation that Thomas Jefferson thought it. Quirky laws known as “blue laws” and laws against shipping that keep wine sales different from other consumer products might have withered. The market for distribution might even be more competitive.

So let’s raise a glass to the demographer’s most likely choice of the 300 millionth American, Maria, born in LA this morning at 7:46!

tags: wine | wine consumers | American wine

Wine Blogging Wednesday takes a turn for the unusual. This time, instead of just getting a bunch of wine recommendations, you can also win a book! [basic juice]

The Bordeaux glut, under the microscope [Time]

COPIA, a Napa attraction dedicated to food and wine, strugles to avert financial collapse. [Napa Valley Register]

Brits get warnings on wine labels: wording is still undecided. Could range from “Please Drink Sensibly” to the extensive US Surgeon General-style. Will they be alerted to the presence of sulfites? [Telegraph]

Smoking banned in public places–in France! Starts February 07. Mayor Daley, take note. [WaPo]

Malcolm Gladwell writes in last week’s New Yorker about whether a computer could predict movie hits. We already have that in wine: Enologix.

tags: wine | wine news

Homaro Cantu, the Chicago chef who writes his menu on edible paper and bakes his bread inside out with a laser, is now turning his lasers on something else: wine. Roll the tape from the current Wired magazine:

Carmelized Wine
Mixologist: Homaro Cantu
1 vanilla bean
6 oz. red wine

Clamp vanilla bean below inverted wine glass. Heat bean with a class-IV laser until mist coats the inside of the glass. Remove bean, flip glass, fill with wine, and serve.

I dispute this. It’s really much better with a class-II laser.

Actually, this 30-year-old chef at Moto restaurant and practitioner of “molecular gastronomy” has pushed his wine too far (but at least he’s not using hazelnuts). If he needs to enhance his wine, maybe he should simply try other, better wine? And make it one aged in American oak, which imparts his desired vanilla notes. Would Homaro add vanilla aromas to enhance any “red wine” from Beaujolais to Barolo?

Keep your laser away from my wine glass! We’re putting you on notice, Homaro!

Related:
“Who’s threatening us now: robots!” [Dr. V]
“Who’s threatening us now: cider!” [Dr. V]

UPDATE: Read about my encounter with Chef Homaro Cantu and his laser beams

Jamie Goode, a British wine writer, argues in Wines & Vines that “the next battleground in the wine world will be the controversial use of genetically modified yeasts.”

I disagree. American wine consumers won’t care about genetically modified yeasts in the next five years or more.

I wish they did. It’s hard enough to get wine consumers to care about a lot of winery practices such as watering back, reverse osmosis, micro-oxygenation or wood chips. But indigenous yeasts versus commercial yeasts? Sadly, it’s a non-starter.

GM yeasts could spark popular interest but it’s doubtful. Americans eat GM corn and GM soybeans while Europeans generally reject them. Sure, there’s a growing number of organic choices in supermarkets now but a huge backlash against GM has not hit these shores. In part, that’s because GM is confusing.

One confusing aspect is the National Organic Program and how it applies to wine. I’ll elaborate in a future post. For now, suffice it to say that the protocol allow a wine to state “made with organically grown grapes” even if that’s only 70 percent true. And it makes no mention of using GM yeasts. As Goode points out, one such yeast strain, the ML01 is now commercially and legally available in the US.

The most likely way that American wine consumers would care about GM yeasts is if foreign consumers care first. If wine consumers in the UK or Australia or New Zealand were successful in getting some wording about GM yeasts on labels, and somehow those labels made it to the US, American consumers would start asking questions. But that’s a big if.

Goode may be right in calling for a ban on GM yeasts. But I don’t see the political will in America to achieve it.

tags: wine | yeast | jamie goode | genetic modification

Rick Trumbull is an engaging character. He used to sell chemicals to farmers. Then he had a conversion to sustainability and organics. Now he makes compost for vineyards in the Walla Walla Valley such as Seven Hills vineyard.

I visited his compost facility in Walla Walla recently. I recorded a few minutes of Rick talking about making his compost. Get the poop and listen to the audio!

I also put up a photo of Rick in front of his “compost tea” brewer. Rick essentially steeps some compost in water, which then forms a nutritionally rich solution that can be applied to the vineyard. I never knew dirt could be so interesting.

Download audio 3mins 49secs, .wma format.

(Sorry about the wind–I’m new to audio. Hopefully podcaster Tim will be able to provide technical advice.)

tags: wine | sustainable agriculture | compost | walla walla

“I realize it’s subjective, but there need to be some guidelines that say, in order for a restaurant to get three stars–and I’m not talking about anyone in particular–you need to have a wine list.” –Paul Kahan (Blackbird, Avec) in a chef’s roundtable in November’s Chicago magazine. Hmm, nobody in particular? How about Micahel Carlson at Schwa, which is BYOB?!

“Anybody who wouldn’t have a wine program is leaving so much money on the friggin’ table, you’re crazy! That’s where all the money is.” –Charlie Trotter, same roundtable. How long until Michael Carlson gets a lease on a bigger location and gets a wine program?

“Beer, wine and liquor-based concoctions often have profit margins more than double those of food — making them just the ticket for a restaurant’s sagging bottom line. And the timing is right: Americans’ alcohol consumption, after dropping for nearly two decades, is on the rise again — due in large measure to recent effective marketing campaigns by wine and spirits makers.” -Wall Street Journal, 10/12/06

tags: wine | chicago | byob | wine | charlie trotter

“It’s a marvelous creature, with hair flying everywhere, which launches itself over the vineyards.” – Frank Gehry on the Marques de Riscal winery, which he designed. [EiTB]

“Wine is done for what? The public! Wine is a business. They want to make wine to sell wine. In the U.S. they are honest enough to tell you they want good ratings. They don’t want loser wines.” – Michel Rolland [NYT]

“Given that new markets take time to develop, I would say the next 12 to 24 months will see continued pain before things get better.” -Spokesman for the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation [UPI]

“Synergies and mix from the Vincor acquisition added to operating margin improvements but were mostly offset by competitive market conditions in the UK that did not allow us to pass on the increase in UK duty costs, and the impact of stock compensation expense recognition.” Constellation’s recent earnings [Bev Daily]

“We wanted something special, and we really did it. I don’t know how to top it. This guy’s a living legend. I don’t know if it will ever happen again,” Bruce Cohn said of Willie Nelson’s charity performance at his winery.

Related: “Meeting Michel Rolland” [Dr. V]

tags: wine | Michel Rolland | willie nelson