Dr Vino's wine blog

Beaujolais has had a string of great vintages–2009 was warm, which made for fuller wines (relatively speaking) while 2010 and 2011 have made some gorgeous, classic wines. Unfortunately, the run stopped with 2012, which was difficult.

So focus on the 2011s, now on the shelves. I picked up some Lapierre Morgon 2011 before Hurricane Sandy hit; after a week without power, it was a delight to pop a bottle with friends, lights blazing and heat pumping again. This was Mathieu Lapierre’s first full vintage making the wine and he maintains the light touch in the cellar that his father established. The wine has tremendous poise, delicacy and transparency, some fruit coming through, but also the stony minerality.

Similarly, the Clos de la Roilette wines of the Coudert family are also stunning in 2011. These serious Fleuries, especially the Cuvée Tardive, almost have more oomph than the Lapierre Morgan. All three of the wines have a lip-smacking appeal, that makes you want another glass, reach for some more food, and generally love life.

These are among the best in Beaujolais so it is amazing that they are also relative values at about $25. And the 2011 “regular” Roilette is about $20 and gorgeous. These are wines that I buy every year and one or the other always gets a place at our Thanksgiving table.

Find these wines at retail

A reader writes in:

I have just seen that Robert Parker has tasted the wines for Jorge Ordoñez and given points instead of Neil Martin. What is going on? I thought after the No Pay No Jay scandal they would be doing things by the book. Very disappointed as I was very happy how Neil Martin was doing things. I personal will cancel my web subscription. These points given can not have any creditability.

This is not the first time that Parker has reviewed the import portfolio of Jorge Ordonez separately from the Spanish critic: When Pierre Rovani reviewed Spanish wine, Parker kept the Jorge Ordóñez wines back to review those personally. This time, Parker uses the 25th anniversary of the importing business as a reason for singling them out. He also adds this line:

Jorge Ordoñez can sometimes annoy people, and he seems to have no shortage of competitors who are clearly jealous of his great success.

It’s an odd line, with more bitterness than a wine before microxidation; if he likes the wines, why not just leave it at that? To include this line in a short piece praising Ordonez seems spiteful and almost paranoid since nobody had said anything badly about Ordóñez, as far as I am aware. From my perspective, the Ordóñez wines appear less visible than they were a decade ago and there have been some notable wineries that have left his portfolio. Meanwhile, the rise of boutique importers of Spanish wines has been one of the more exciting stories out of the Iberian peninsula in the past decade. Given that Parker frequently mentions Ordóñez wines, and Miller had been the recipient of hospitality, I understand why the reader is irked.

Amazon Wine went live today, in time for the important fourth quarter of wine sales.

The site appears very similar to what had been discovered previously (read how it works for wineries) and offers exclusively domestic wines with orders fulfilled by wineries. Shipping is $9.99 for up to six bottles and you can only order from one winery per order. Customers in only 12 states can order wine at this time. As of this second, there are 1,054 wines available for purchase, sortable by point scores, price, and even alcohol level. External links to retailers are also available, greatly expanding that number and adding imported wines.

It will be interesting to see how the program does. In general, wineries do not offer the best prices for their wines; retailers do. A quick search of a few wines plugged into wine-searcher, a database of wine retailers, revealed pre-shipping prices 10-25% lower than those offered on amazon.

While the pricing may be underwhelming, one area that Amazon Wine could have an enormous impact is in the user wine reviews. Right now, the space is dominated by CellarTracker, which has more community and a generally wine-savvy crowd. But amazon has mastered SEO, so if their wine listings start appearing at the top of organic search results, wine geeks could be drawn to post (or cross-post) on amazon. If they can find wines of interest…

Frank Prial, who wrote the Wine Talk column for the Times for the better part of three decades, has died. An obituary in the Times has details on his career and important place in the history of wine writing, particularly in the 1970s when specialty wine publications had yet to emerge.

He had previously worked at the Wall Street Journal and brought a business reporter’s sensibilities to the task and often sought the business or political angles in his stories.

He also had a human touch. I recall him once telling a group of us scribes about the best wine he ever had. Even though he had the opportunity to taste many of the world’s finest wines over the course of his career, the best wine he ever had was some rotgut American “Chablis,” the first wine he had back on American soil after serving in the Korean war.

The Justice Department filed some photos in their wine counterfeiting case against Rudy Kurniawan. Don Cornwell, a collector and attorney who has been actively following the goings-on, posts the six pictures that the government filed in their latest brief to rebuff Kurniawan’s claim that they entered his house illegally.

While the stacks of boxes, packed and ready to go in the front hall is pretty damning (would love to know where they were headed), there’s got to be a metaphor in the 17 unlabeled bottles lying on the treadmill. They just keep going around and around…

The day after the election, there’s always much to discuss. With Obama’s victory yesterday, who will be the new Treasury Secretary and whether Daniel Shanks will survive in his post as usher in charge of wine at the White House will no doubt be at the top of the agenda.

One of the big winners yesterday was Nate Silver and the empirical analysis he brought to forecasting the election. He ran daily aggregates of polls with pinpoint precision–and accuracy. On November 5, while many pundits were calling the race a “tossup,” Silver said that Obama was 91% likely to win the electoral college with more than 300 votes, which proved accurate on both counts. Further, he called every state correctly, batting 50 out of 50.

Will Silver’s sabermetrics extend to the wine world? Will sommeliers start saying, “Based on our algorithms, there’s a 91% chance you will like this wine.” Could sommeliers with a high OBP (Open Bottle Percentage), DRS (Diner Rating Satisfaction) or PECOTA (Probability Enology Contains Oak TCA Algorithm) start getting traded from one restaurant to another?

In all seriousness, there’s a lot of subjectivity in wine that masquerades as objectivity under the false precision of point scores and distant drinkability windows. Just because you see a number in wine, doesn’t mean that it’s empirical.

LOST: inventory. But not hope.
The winemaker at Red Hook Winery told nonabrooklyn that the ambitious project on Pier 41 has to “assume a total loss” of all wine on the premises in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. They hope to continue but admit that their future hinges on insurance policies paying out. Best of luck to Christopher Nicolson, Robert Foley and Abe Schoener.

SIPPED and SPIT: shipping fees
The Press Democrat has a lengthy story on Amazon wine. In it, they report that the shipping fees will be $9.99 for six bottles and $19.96 for 12. Seems below the market price so make that a SIP for consumers and a SPIT for the wineries, who will likely be doing the fulfillment. [pressdemocrat]

SIPPED: calories
The evergreen wine topic of calories in wine gets a graphic look and comparison to beer over at WineFolly. But, sadly, the graphics choose to make wine look less cal-o-rific, even when a standard wine serving could likely have more calories than a standard beer (a lager). Basic rule: more alcohol = more calories.

GLUGGED: A Nebuchadnezzar of Trockenbeerenauslese? Eegad! [Reuters]

In the wine world, we often talk about weather. But usually it’s about how it affects the grapes, not the the places where we drink it.

Well, it’s been five days since we had power at our house and it’s still dark. But we’re far from being the worst affected by Hurricane Sandy as New York and New Jersey have been declared federal disaster areas. Indeed, in light of the devastation and relative depravity in the area, writing about wine seems a little superfluous. As the storm was approaching, it was fun to joke about hunkering down with wine. But after seeing the damage, it’s a little sobering to say the least. Nonetheless, wine can be a balm and I hope that everyone affected can return to enjoying a glass of wine soon enough, thanks to the Herculean efforts of rescue workers. And here’s to hoping that the many wine shops and restaurants with thoughtful wine programs in lower Manhattan and the region are able to return to business soon without too much loss.

We hope to return to regular posting on Monday.