Dr Vino's wine blog

On Saturday, the Grand Tasting at La Paulée de New York brought hundreds of consumers and 35 domaines from Burgundy together under one roof. There were only three brief hours to savor the event and since I arrived an hour late, my task made even more difficult–a difficulty that I would gladly shoulder any Saturday, mind you. Each domaine poured four wines, virtually all 2010s, which are so good that that were almost all sold out long ago.Alas, there were still too many to taste them all in the time that I had.

I dove into a raft of 2010 Dauvissat Chablis, wines of such precision and verve, from the Petit Chablis up to the single-vineyard Preuses, that the tasting could have ended there. But it was just getting started: other stand-out whites included the wines of Pierre-Yves Colin Morey, Domaine Leflaive and Comtes Lafon (who had a really nice Volnay too). Read more…

In honor of La Paulée de NYC happening this week, the wine pick this week is from, well, Burgundy. No, this isn’t a Bonnes Mares or a Chambertin, images of which have have been overtaking twitter feeds the past few days. In the language of a panel from La Paulée a few days ago, this is “outer borough” Burgundy, the 2010 Auxey-Duresses from Benjamin Leroux. By day, he’s the winemaker at Le Domaine des Epeneaux (Comte Armand) in Pommard. By night (or something like that), he has his own micro-négoce, meaning he sources grapes and vinifies them in to elixirs such as this.

The 2010 produced some amazing whites and reds in Burgundy and this wines comes from sites that border Meursault, so my expectations were high as I was twisting off the Stelvin closure. I wasn’t disappointed: the fresh acidity and stoniness give the wine a lean core with just a light top-dressing of Golden Delicious apple and a kiss of oak, that will likely become more integrated with some time in the cellar. It’s serious wine at a somewhat reasonable price (especially by Burgundy standards).

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Kobe Bryant recently tweeted that he loves his new nickname: vino. Is the 34-year-old Lakers star insinuating he gets better with age? Apparently. But the Bleacher Report suggests convincingly that he’s not getting better with age, just getting better at managing his age-related limitations. Either way, he’s only about two to three years away from having the Knicks pick him up for $25 million and try to build an offense around him!

Raj Parr tweeted about the new nickname and asked which wine is Kobe most like? My take: before the All-Star game he was a pass-toutgrain. But now he’s more point-driven.

The TSA, in its infinite wisdom, has deemed corkscrews (with small foil-cutting blades as seen at right) safe to bring on planes again.

And knives! (Blades must be under 6 cm.) And whiffle ball bats, hockey sticks, golf clubs, and other items that will be fun to see jostling for space in the overhead bins.

But the big question for wine geeks is: can we please get our confiscated corkscrews back now? Oh, and when will the liquids ban be over?

“TSA Will Permit Knives, Golf Clubs on U.S. Planes” [Bloomberg]

When Antonio Galloni suddenly left the Wine Advocate last month, he took the unusual step of asserting that he owned the copyright to his reviews, particularly the as-yet-unpublished reviews of Sonoma 2011. He has now posted on his new web site a detailed, legalistic play-by-play in an effort to justify taking the reviews.

Yet the choice is crystal clear: let the Wine Advocate publish whatever reviews were done as of his departure. He presented himself as the Wine Advocate’s reviewer when conducting tastings in Sonoma and the wineries and Sonoma County Vintners treated him as such. Taking the reviews now seems petty, almost as if he doesn’t think his new site will have enough interesting content to attract readers. Adding “out of my deep respect for Bob” and “in the spirit of collaboration” in the posting only underscores how little respect he has for Parker and appears an unseemly effort to scrape whatever readers he can from the WA.

Moreover, Galloni has twice raised protecting “editorial independence” as a reason for quitting. While the Wine Advocate has grappled with reconciling its vaunted code of ethics with the actions of some contributors over recent years, it seems the heights of absurdity that Galloni brings this up at his moment of departure. After all, he’s the one who asked the same wineries that he reviewed in the WA to contribute wines to his $1,200/head Festa del Barolo event. The fact that he has yet to articulate an ethics statement for his own web site or say how the WA policy irked him undermine this justification for quitting abruptly.

Galloni told the SF Chronicle a couple of weeks ago, “I don’t want to be an employee.” Clearly, issues with the new regime at the WA are his reason for quitting. Fair enough. But why not just leave it at that, be magnanimous, and move on? Keep the discussion about Burgundy, not Ron Burgundy. Stay classy, San Diego!

La Paulée de New York is coming next week. It has spread to include some pretty incredible events from Wednesday to Saturday, ranging from $75 – $4,750. Daniel Johnnes described it to me as an “uncontrolled, unplugged, unleashed expression of Burgundy.” I wrote a detailed piece about it over on Wine-Searcher.

One part that couldn’t make it into the story was a comment Johnnes made regarding whether Burgundy Burgundy as the wine of the moment. He said that sommeliers love Burgundy and that the wines are really on a tear. “There’s more great Burgundy being made today than ever before,” he said.

“I Kind of worry about trends. If thing are trends, then trends end. It’s important to promote with young sommeliers and keep it really healthy and strong. I want to do my best to keep it that way and fight hard to dispel an elitist image. If it develops that image, it will go the way of Bordeaux. That’s the perception of Bordeaux. I would hate for people to start talking that way about Burgundy–never visiting the region or not even wanting to or thinking that it’s for rich people. Burgundians make the human connection easier: they’re in the vineyards, on the tractors and in the cellars.”

Check out my story on wine-searcher.

SIPPED: varsity tasting
The Oxford-Cambridge rivalry has played out over wine glasses for over 60 years: this year’s tasting included a Vega Sicilia 1953. En garde, you “coconut,” “tobacco leaf,” with “horse manure character!” Oh wait, those were the tasting notes… [NYT]

SLUSH, you huskies! A wine from South Dakota will greet Iditarod competitors at the finishing line. #winesworthmushingfor [ArgusLeader.com] Oh, a previous story reported that the course had to be rerouted in part, thanks to climate change.

BLING: Treasury Wine Estates, the maker of Penfold’s and other wines, is targeting Asia, where profit margins are double other regions. Part of the fatter margins come from trophy bottles such Penfold’s 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon closed with an ampoule sold for $168,000. [Bloomberg]

SPRAYED? Would you sparkle wine with a Sodastream? The NYT investigates a variety of “hacks” for the popular carbonator; do let us know your experiences. Tom Mansell tweeted to me “I’ve done cider. I don’t recommend it. Anything but water fizzes like crazy. (heterogeneous nucleation)” Doh!

The world of processed meats has been on a wild ride lately: the starting bell rang in mid-January when burgers in the UK labeled as beef were found to contain horse meat. This prompted more inspections and the labeling scandal went from a trot to a gallop when Irish processors were found to have 80% horse meat and some UK grocery store meals contained 100% horse meat.

But the scandal got fresh legs yesterday when Czech inspectors found traces of horse meat in IKEA meatballs, the furniture store’s signature food item. To riff off a tweet from Daniel Gross, if you have some meatballs before starting to shop at IKEA, are you putting the horse before the cart?

While some may find this hard to swallow, eating horse meat (or not) follows cultural norms. In France and parts of Asia, eating horsemeat is not taboo and the recent scandals have stimulated an appetite for it in Quebec. So what say you: which wine to pair with IKEA meatballs? A little Cheval Blanc? Or is it…impossible?!?