Dr Vino's wine blog

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Italian and French trade and consumer groups are pushing for European “Made In” tags to impose origin labeling–in clothing, not wine. Some fashion houses are divided since they although their apparel maybe designed in Europe, it’s actually “made in” Asian countries.

The CEO of one LVMH Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton fashion brand, Celine, has added his support for the initiative. That’s amazingly consistent since the owner of Moet & Chandon, Krug, Veuve Clicquot, and Dom Perignon also seeks to protect origins for its champagnes.

My wine of the week is Fontaleoni, Chianti, Colli Senesi, 2004. $11. Find this wine. I generally don’t clutter the blog with my value wine picks but I thought a periodic mention couldn’t do any harm. See my full write-up of this Chianti, not from the classico zone.

For blog readers who are unaware that I make weekly wine picks under $10 (OK, sometimes it creeps a little over, like this one) you should head on over to the main site where I have a bunch of great wine recommendations for value vino. Cheers.

Technorati tags: food & drink | wine

I recently added a sitemeter traffic monitor for this site and I have been surprised with the geographic diversity of the readers. I’ll paste a recent random snapshot below.

Then I learned about Google’s new frappr community mapping service and thought readers of the site might want to add a pushpin to the map. I’m not really sure what point this serves, but hey, the technology is available so why not?! Click here to map Elmo’s Dr. Vino’s world.

But what could be even more interesting is to map wine bloggers and where they write from. So I set up a frappr map for mapping the wine blogosphere — hopefully wine bloggers will contribute so we can have a quick map of the wine blogosphere.
http://www.frappr.com/winebloggers

A random snippet (albeit a quite international one) of locations from site readers:

France Neuilly-sur-Marne, Ile-de-France
United States San Diego, California
United States Valparaiso, Indiana
Portugal Porto
France Neuilly-sur-Marne, Ile-de-France
Brazil Gata Branca, Minas Gerais
United States Saint Paul, Minnesota
United States Pensacola, Florida
Belgium Brussels, Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest
United States
United States New York
Finland Bredvik, Southern Finland
United Kingdom London, Lambeth
Italy Rome, Lazio
Poland Warzachewka Polska, Wloclawek
France Viry-Chtillon, Ile-de-France
United States Chicago, Illinois
Spain Tarragona, Cataluna
Stockholm, Stockholms Lan
United States Sebastopol, California

Today is the day for the international, monthly, blogtastic event of Wine Blogging Wednesday. Fatemah at Gastronomie has selected the theme for today: drink small.

You might think that this was the wine slogan of Tiny Living, the trendy 450 sq ft store in the East Village that caters hip, apartment-dwelling New Yorkers. But no, Fatemah’s assignment was to try a wine with limited production–250 cases or less.

My selection is Luddite Vineyards Abouriou 2002. Find this wine. I’m not sure of the case production actually but I figure it is at least approaching that level of boutique production (c’mon how many acres of Abouriou are planted in Sonoma anyway?). Luddite’s Languid Duck wine only had 190 cases last year and that has Syrah and other more easy to find Rhone varietals so I’m hoping that the Abouriou is similar.

Even if the production volumes aren’t actually low enough, the winemaker’s heart is in the right place for the spirit of this assignment. Luddite, as the name implies, eschews many technological or chemical interventions (this may include email too since an email query about production volume was not returned–see UPDATE below).

The wine itself is a wine geek’s wine. The inky black color is reminiscent of Tannat, another obscure southern French varietal, but the mouthfeel is not as tannic. I would agree with the winemaker who writes that “it has the aromatics and flavors of Malbec but the structure of a Dolcetto.” Consume it yourself with roasted pork or bring this as a present to a wine geek friend and prepare to impress with your knowledge of off-the-beaten path wines. The price of this “small” wine? $19, if you can find it.

***11/5 UPDATE: I just got an email (!) from Steven Canter of Luddite who writes that the production levels of recent vintages of Abouriou are: 2003, 23 cases; 2004, 69 cases. He writes that he has just put an “amazing” 2005 in the barrel which will yield around 95 cases. Alas, I neglected to query him on the 2002, which I tasted but it definitely appears in the range of our assignment.

Kudos to Matt and Ted Lee who wrote in the Sunday NYT magazine about “gastronomics:” the rising cost of fuel as an input in restaurant prices. Although crude oil prices and prices at the pump have retreated recently, fuel prices have still risen sharply over the past year and restaurateurs and those who sell to them are often not able to pass on the price increases.

It’s a good thing that “volatile food and energy prices” don’t factor into the consumer price index!

One aspect the authors don’t consider though is that rising fuel prices might keep restaurant consumers at home instead of eating out. Even if fuel is a minor part of the dining out experience, the expense of the meal (and possibly a sitter) might make a couple stay home and have Trader Joe’s prepared foods or take-out while watching a DVD. They can apply the expense saved to their rising fuel bills. That is a scenario that restaurateurs should fear more than $3.95 fuel surcharges. But hopefully everybody’s not such an economic maximizer.

Michelin released the results of the first ever Red Guide New York and some gourmets have their forks out for the inspectors. Only four restaurants got the top honor of three stars (Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, Jean Georges, Le Bernardin and Per Se) and only four restaurants received two stars (Daniel, Masa, Bouley and Danube). Thirty one restaurants received one star including the Spotted Pig, a Greenwich Village gastro-pub, and Saul in Brooklyn, which has a $30 prix fixe menu Monday to Thursday.

Mario Batali, who Time Out New York last week called a “legend” and a “grand master,” got only one star for his popular Italian restaurant Babbo. Daniel Boulud, another “grand master” according to TONY, was also slighted by not getting a third star. Chanterelle, Montrachet and Union Square Café–all pioneers of the restaurant scene in New York–got no stars. Thomas Keller of Per Se was the first American-born chef to ever receive three Michelin stars. The Guide officially goes on sale Friday.

The best take on the guide appeared in the Weekend Financial Times. Freelance writer Mike Steinberger (also Slate’s wine critic–great life, eh?) argues that “New York is as good as Paris” for restaurants and after recent scandals at Michelin’s guide publishing, that Michelin “may need New York more than New York needs it.”

Indeed, New York seems to be listening to the vox populi more than professional critics. Tim and Nina Zagat have made a publishing empire with their slim little guide of diners’ composite reviews. And discussion forums such as chowhound.com and egullet.org and various blogs offer up-to-the minute reviews from empassioned enthusiasts. That’s a crowded field for the Red Guide to enter and one with a culture clash of top-down or bottom-up. But it seems to be weathering the storm well already clocking in at #67 on Amazon three days before the official release.

FT, NYT. Technorati tags: food & drink | michelin | New York

Trick: Nazi raccoons wreck vineyard. Hermann Goering, Nazi air force chief, introduced raccoons in 1934 and their descendants have picked a small vineyard clean. Raccoons love Riesling apparently.

Treat: Bruno Magrez of Pape Clement will open two wine shops in France (Paris and Bordeaux) with London and New York a possibility for the future too. Besides Pape Clement, Magrez owns Herencia del Padri from Priorat and 90 brands in total from 30 wineries in Bordeaux, the Languedoc, California, Argentina, Morocco, Spain, Portugal and Uruguay. It’s interesting vertical integration that wouldn’t be possible for an American producer thanks to the three tier system.

A company with $7 million a year in sales decides to have an IPO. Is this an internet start-up? No, it’s the Napa winery Consentino Signature Wines, which will list its shares on London’s Alternative Investment Market in the coming weeks according to Decanter.

Chairman Larry Soldinger hopes to raise $30 million at the IPO, which would give the company a $60 million valuation. Soldinger claims the regulatory burdens of Sarbanes-Oxley in the US make London a better place to raise capital and float the shares. Hopefully he’ll bring some wine when he rings the bell in London. Consentino wines aren’t currently even available in the UK market.

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Further items about the business and politics of wine (and food):

Constellation Brands goes hostile in their bid for Canada’s Vincor offering C$31 a share. Vincor pauses to think it over. Vincor’s shares traded yesterday at C$34.43.

You add water! You add sugar! The EU and the US continue to air their differences about wine making during trade talks.

Wine tourism? Mais oui. Tobacco tourism? Mais non!

Add your $48,231 worth. That’s what Michigan wholesalers added to the still unresolved question on opening the state to direct wine shipments.

Whole Foods Market emphasizes freshness, but is the business model perishable?