Dr Vino's wine blog

Wine scores cloak wine with a false sense of objectivity and precision. If they are to have any rigor, they should be replicable under various situations. Joel Peterson, the Champagne-sipping founder of Ravenswood Winery, has a telling vignette in this regard:

I have made wines under two labels and I’ve had them scored in the same periodical as much as five points apart. Same wines, different package. Like all judging of wine, it suffers from the wine that came before, the wine that came after, the time of day. All those things can affect a wine by as much as five points.

Many Burgundy reviews have higher scores for each wine at a domaine as the prestige of the appellation increases. To add some rigor, it would be interesting to see if those results were replicable if the wines were tasted blind or intentionally mislabeled. But I guess the folks at Caltech already did something similar to that.

Wine tasting notes, long bastions of affectations and preciousness, have come under scrutiny recently. Apparently Eric Asimov spends a chapter savaging them in his recent book. The other day, over on wineberserkers.com, Bill Klapp performed a merciless forensic analysis on a note. But then there’s this:

Surely the problem with many wine writers is not that they write tasting notes but that they aren’t very good writers.

Ouch. Tasting notes are often badly written, which may be the the shortcomings of the writer. Possibly compounding the situation, or adding a new wrinkle, is the sheer quantity of tasting notes some critics produce–it’s hard to say something original when churning out dozens of tasting notes about similar wines that you’ve had on a few minutes with. Sadly, many wine publications appear to be joyless tasting note (and score) factories.

Throwing the Barolo out with the bathwater?

Even though they may be hard to write, tasting notes still can play in important role: a reader has to know if she’s in for a Barolo or a Bourgeuil or a Barossa shiraz. And even in a horizontal tasting, where the differences can be small, some discernible distinctions can still be be conveyed. Since they are inherently boring, it helps if tasting notes include an opinion or wit. The mass production of tasting notes leads repetition and the reaching for fanciful descriptors. And, really, it’s the rare consumer that skims skims the tasting notes to find a wine to buy–fancy a wine with some “Asian spice”? Or notes of saddle leather? Granted, I would definitely seek out a syrah that has some black olive character or a pinot noir with acidity so they certainly can be useful. But tasting notes are best produced and consumed in moderation–the tasting note as artisanal product, if you will.

The Invisible Hand seems to be nudging Burgundy prices higher. Or, wait, was it Carla Bruni’s hand?

The presence of the former first lady of France (I doubt they call presidential wives “first ladies,” and it’s not just because it might be premieres crus dames…) at the charity auction for the Hospices de Beaune helped stoke overseas demand: sales hit $7.6 million, a record, on low volume. Eric Pfanner has a good recap over at NYTimes.com.

The executive summary is that supply declined in 2012, while demand appears to be rising. Not a pretty picture for Burgfans.

My wife and I recently had a couple of friends over who, somewhat to our surprise, were not drinking any alcohol that evening. This can happen since a whole family might be taking antibiotics, or maybe you didn’t know the people as well as you thought. Whatever the reason, the issue of guests who abstain, especially if it is unexpected, does raise a question of etiquette for wine enthusiasts: should you also abstain?

In our case, we asked if they would mind and then went ahead and indulged in some Ar. Pe Pe, a 2009 Nebbiolo from the vertiginous slopes of Valtellina (find this wine). I poured the wine in the kitchen, brought the glasses to where we were sitting and, although it was drinking well, spared them my wine snob’s impression of yammering on about the wine.

Since we may all be entertaining more at this time of year, what are your strategies if you have found yourself in this situation? Would you be more likely to join friends in abstaining in a restaurant because of complications in splitting the bill?

Callie Louw and Adi Badenhorst at Cape Wine 2012

Swartland, an area of the Western Cape where old bush vines abound while razors are apparently scarce, has taken an unusual step for a wine region in the New World: producers have promulgated a membership charter, complete with a code of winemaking. AOC Swartland, anyone?

The hirsute hipsters of Swartland have have taken it upon themselves not just to limit Read more…

At the White House yesterday, our political leaders met to find a way from steering the country over the fiscal cliff.

Even though their positions still seem far apart, the general tone afterward was positive and one of comity (probably better than comedy, in this situation). Setting the mood early, President Obama publicly wished Speaker Boehner a happy birthday before the meeting started. Afterward, Boehner’s aide was seen carrying a wine bottle in a shimmering bag. The Times wrote that Boehner prefers merlot, but that the president gave him a 1997 Brunello, “a pricey Italian red.” Boehner’s aide later tweeted a picture of the 1997 Poggio Antico, “Altero.” (find this wine)

No matter how you look at it, the gesture was very nice. But wine geeks can now parse it for meaning: would a ’97 Barolo have shown hard tannins and indicate the president was digging in his heels? Or is Obama showing the rewards of patience, meaning he’s ready to pop and pour, as it were?

Either way, the gift makes for better diplomacy than giving Boehner some Ding Dongs, which are quickly on their way to becoming collectibles.

How to Spend It of the FT visits Hedonism, a new wine shop in London’s swanky Mayfair that has over $15 million in wine on the shelves. The owner–surprise!–is a Russian magnate, Evgeny Chichvarkin, now exiled from Russia and described as “hands-on proprietor” of the shop.

Spread across two floors, there are 1,000 spirits (600 whiskys) and 4,500 wines, including deep selections of Burgundy–looking for a six-liter ’96 DRC La Tache for $50k?–verticals of Bordeaux, and an entire room (pictured above) dedicated to California’s Sine Qua Non.

No Yellow Tail though–the cheapest wine starts at $20.

In a class̩ of its own РFT

What if Beaujolais Nouveau day–the third Thursday in November–turned into a celebration of Beaujolais writ large or even larger, wine? According to a report in a British wine publication, that’s what happened yesterday in parts of London.

It’s a good idea. While a friend who just left Paris after living there for several years recalls Beaujolais Nouveau day as the most wonderfully exciting wine day of the year, overseas, the decades-old marketing idea is tired. It’s contrived. It has a unnecessarily large carbon footprint. And 99% of the wines are underwhelming tutti fruity concoctions that serve to qualitatively undermine the name of the whole region. A few shops and restaurants in New York City dutifully stock some bottles of Nouveau but few take too many since what they say about white shoes after Labor Day has an analogy in Beaujolais Nouveau after New Year’s Day.

So I say capture the fun, the celebration, and ditch the nouveau. While slaying the region’s sacred cash cow may seem radical, and recognizing the economic difficulties in the region, after the success of the Summer of Riesling, maybe we need a November of Beaujolais to help the region transition away from Nouveau?

Did you attend any launch events yesterday? What did you think?