Dr Vino's wine blog

Policy reversals in Washington are well known (“Read my lips…”). But none can be faster than the recent U-turn on drunken driving.

Last week, in a fit of “zero tolerance” pique, the Washington DC city council passed a law lowering the acceptable blood alcohol level to 0.01%, well below the common average for states of 0.08%. The Washington Post has had excellent coverage and opinion of the story and even published this chart on blood absorption rates showing that 0.01 = no drinks at all for drivers. (Blogger Wonkette quipped that we should examine the political contributions of the taxi companies. She also surveyed reaction to the law.)

But yesterday the council threw the policy into reverse. By a 9-3 vote, blood alcohol levels have now been set at 0.05% and the bill now awaits the mayor’s signature. The Post reports:

Council members introduced the measure after news reports highlighted cases in which drivers were arrested after drinking as little as a glass of wine. Members said they were worried about a drop-off in business for District bars and restaurants and concerned that the city’s law was becoming a national joke.

Maybe they had read the news from France (where the blood alcohol level is 0.05% btw.)? (FYI, several whole countries actually do have a zero BAC level. Comapre yours.)

A 240,000 square foot warehouse with $100 million worth of wine burned last week in Vallejo, California, just south of Napa. The original story from SFgate is here (includes photos) with a follow up today here.

Many wineries stored selected older vintages of wines at the facility. Justin of Paso Robles lost 15,000 cases and Saintsbury lost their entire “library” of wines.

Arson is sadly a thought to be a leading cause. Police are investigating anyone with access to the facility. Mark Anderson, the owner of a Sausalito wine-storage firm who faces embezzlement charges in Marin County for allegedly stealing $1 million of wine from private collections last month is among those who had access to the facility before it burned according to the police.

To put the scale of this size loss of collectible wine, I’d venture to say that $100 million is more than all the wine that US auction houses sell every year. In fact, it could be more than the value of two years. It will be interesting to see what happens to the price of affected wines at auction. Who knows, maybe some collectors will even give part of their collections back to Sean Thackrey and Richard Ward as thanks for making great wines?

Pink is the new black. Or actually the new white as far as champagne is concerned. Be gone thoughts of Liberace or heart-shaped tubs! Pink champagne is set to the be the darling of the holiday season this year as some brands have boosted sales by 80% in the past two years.

At last week’s Wine Media Guild lunch in New York I tasted the above bottles along with several others for a total of fifteen pink champagnes. Ed McCarthy, WMG member and author of Champagne for Dummies, led us in the tasting and suggested three brackets for these wines: slumming, wedding, and hip-hop or bling-bling. Oops wait, I guess those were my brackets not Ed’s. I think his were more like: $40 – $65; $60 – $80 (“theoretically more serious and can be aged”); and extremely expensive, not yet ready to drink.

While it was undoubtedly a tough call, I managed to come up with my faves in each category. They were:

NV Besserat de Bellefon Brut Rose ($40; Find this wine) The main appeal here is the wine is dry. The acidity really made me think about pairing with food. (Honorable mention here is the NV Piper-Heidsieck Brut Sauvage Rose ($42; find this wine), which has a super pink label to accompany the super pink bubbly. Ed said he’d serve this with large gatherings; I’d agree that it would please a group more than the Bellefon, whose acidity could be offputting to those who expect pink = sweet.)

1998 Pol Roger Brut Rose ($72; find this wine). As Winston Churchill would have I opted for this salmon-colored Pol Roger rose with a fine bead and crisp liveliness. Ed said that this was a better vintage than the 1999 but I lacked that comparative knowledge.

When we get to the bling-bling level, the prices are ridiculous and the tastes are sublime. My runner up was the 1995 Veuve Clicquot “La Grande Dame” Brut Rose ($230; find this wine, which Ed said is usually a full bodied style but I found this one very subtle and delicious.

But the ultimate in hedonistic indulgence was the NV (yes, non-vintage!) Krug Brut Rose ($293; find this wine). Even though Ed said that it was “too young to fully appreciate” the wine was pure elegance, very dry and very delicate. Given the stratospheric pricing on this one, I’ll bet that Krug rosé becomes the new “Cris” (aka Roederer Cristal). Find it in a nightclub near you.

The Greater New York Wine and Food Expo will be held at Caramoor in Katonah, NY on October 22-23. Drive by and wave at Martha Stewart under house arrest (oh wait, I think that’s over) on your way to Caramoor, 40 miles north of midtown Manhattan. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in wine seminars, taste lots of wines, and mingle with chefs.

Send in your answers by Monday (10/17)and I will draw two names at random from those with correct answers to this mini-quiz. Each winner will win two tickets (valued at $170) valid for entry on Sunday. Send me an email using an email address you will be checking on Tuesday as the turnaround is fairly tight on this. Click here for my email.

1. Humans can perceive a greater range of smells than tastes. True or false?

2. If you have a glass of American Pinot Noir, what percentage must be pinot noir?
A. 50%
B. 75%
C. 100%

Privacy policy: email addresses will never be sold, traded, swapped, exchanged, bartered, or lent.

Electrolysis may be most popularly known for the removal of an unwanted something (e.g. hair). But a Japanese inventor insists that putting on something unwanted–in this case, age–is just what the wine world needs.

Reconfiguring atoms and molecules of wine (after blending with water, egad), a process known as electrolysis, will make young wines taste “older” and hence better he asserts. The Times of London reports that “reds can become more complex, and whites drier. A wine costing £5 a bottle could taste the same as one costing twice that,” which according to Hiroshi Tanaka, the inventor, “will create huge changes to the global wine industry.”

So you take a bottle of Woodbridge sourced from the Central Valley and stick it in this thingamajig for 15 seconds and it comes out tasting like boutique Sonoma Chardonnay? I thought that Woodbridge and its ilk were distributed “ready to drink” and no further aging was necessary (or wanted).

Even though the Times‘ mini-tasting panel (they do those in London too, eh?) thought it improved two bad wines, the transformation does seem too good to be true. Can a switch in time improve wine?

The Financial Times reports that Algeria will soon be flooding the world with vital liquid–wine that is. A country better known for its oil production than its wine, Algeria is set to crank up wine production again thanks to significant government investment to diversify the economy away from petroleum. A decade of violence in the 1990s wrecked the economy as well as the vines. But as a French territory, Algeria provided millions of hectoliters of bulk wine for the French market.

This second take for Algerian wine comes as oversupply in France and the rest of the world makes it a challenging and competitive global wine market. This time producers and the government recognize the need to produce quality as “Grand Crus Garage” and some will even be certified organic.

* * *

Apparently there’s something romantic in the Algerian vineyard that’s not just intoxicating government officials: French film star and vigneron Gerard Depardieu has found a new love in his Algerian vineyard and they are now engaged. The old-vine has found some young fruit: if they do make it to the altar, his new bride would be younger than his two children from his first marriage.

The latest in celebrity wine is touted in a recent Wine Discount Center (Chicago) email…Parody is impossible. -Dr. V

>Vince Vineyards
Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 . . . . . 16.49
88/100 – Our score.
Mötley Crüe front man Vince Neil is making wine, and, well, it ROCKS! Turns out that Doctor Feelgood likes to unwind with a glass of Cab after a show, so he commissioned Santa Rosa winery, Alder Fels, to produce a limited-run Cabernet under the “Vince” label. The 2003 Vince Cabernet Sauvignon is a hedonistic fruit bomb with gobs of palate-drenching black fruit and vanilla-scented oak. At less than 20 bucks, it’s cheaper than a general admission ticket to the next Crüe show! Vince, your Cab kick-starts our hearts. (California)

Mike Steinberger revives a discussion from earlier in the year about current PR approaches that explicitly target women and wine.

For my take and related comments on the ignominy these approaches inflict on male and female wine enthusiasts alike, click here.