Dr Vino's wine blog

The other day, when Jeeves brought me the New York Times’ “Great Homes and Destinations” section on a silver platter in my wood-paneled drawing room, I poured a spot of claret and settled into my leather wingback chair to catch up on what’s been going on.

Lo and behold the Chinese have been buying properties in Bordeaux! Fully 20 of them in the last four years! That only leaves about 8,500 for them to buy. The story–quite detailed–reveals that Chinese buyers are attracted by property valuations that have fallen over the past decade, usually shop in the €5 million to €8 million range, and like a chateau on the land with a bit of history. One chap just picked up a 10-bedroom castle on 420 acres for €5.95 million! He’ll sell almost all the wine back in China. Also, with their domestic economy slowing, the Chinese have been looking to diversify their holdings and have even been buying wineries in the Hunter Valley and Napa. I wonder what kind of values they have found there.

If Jeeves hasn’t brought you the “Great Homes and Destinations” section, you can also read it with one of those computer things that I’ve heard about.

“Mixing Romanticism and Business in a Bordeaux Chateau”

Behold the douche burger, a “a f—ing burger filled and topped with rich people s–-t.”

The $666 burger has gotten a lot of media attention but for the description, we’ll cut right to the owner of 666 Burger, a food truck (yes, this burger comes from a truck, presumably relocated to the Hamptons for the season):

“Kobe beef patty (wrapped in gold leaf), foie gras, caviar, lobster, truffles, imported aged gruyere cheese (melted with champagne steam) kopi luwak bbq sauce and Himalayan rock salt. It may not taste good, but it will make you feel rich as f–k. Douche.”

Hey-oh! That’s some spicy talk to go with the champagne-melted gruyere! Even though the 666 burger man only sold one burger and more or less admits it’s a hoax, which wine would you pair with this burger? Something to go with the lobster, the caviar, the kopi luwak sauce? Or match the minerality of the gold leaf? Goldschlaeger? Ace of Spades, the “gold bottle”? Or just a magnum douchy wine? Or is it…impossible?!?

In today’s NYT, Eric Asimov writes about their tasting panel’s assessment of Chenin Blanc from South Africa (“A Wine That Isn’t What It Used to Be”). He says they found little to like, perhaps because of “difficult” vintages of 2010 and 2011, high yields or the unforgiving nature of screw caps. This is a change from five years ago when he found several wines in the category worth recommending.

Even though the story is in today’s print paper, it went online last Thursday. Last Friday, James Molesworth, who reviews South Africa wines (among others, including the Loire) for Wine Spectator, challenged Asimov’s findings on Twitter, saying, “You missed a lot of wines. A 20 wine sample every 5 years to make a sweeping statement on? Weak.” They went back and forth a few times (though Asimov’s July 13 tweets have oddly disappeared from his feed). Molesworth tastes and reviews many more than 20 chenin blancs from South Africa every year as he adopts a more comprehensive approach.

It’s rare to see wine critics disagree publicly. What do you think led to their different views of the category, their methodology or taste preferences? While the Time’s sampling strategy may miss some good wines in any given column, this seems to be a matter of taste. One of the wines that Asimov mentioned in the column, the 2009 FMC from Ken Forrester, wasn’t recommended since he (and the panelists?) found it “so sweet, oaky, unbalanced and fatiguing.” In reviewing the same wine, Molesworth gave it 93 points, calling it “Ripe and lush, with delicious creamed pear, ginger, heather and fig kept honest by fresh acidity that’s well-embedded on the toasty finish…Gorgeous.” So it seems like different strokes for different folks. Which is fine. Because even if scores seem to impart a sense of objectivity to a wine, wine tasting and enjoyment remain exercises in subjectivity. Which, of course, makes for good discussion.

Read more…

The S&P 500 and gold have outperformed fine wine as an investment over the past few months. But the correlation is most notable between wine and the Shanghai composite as the above chart and article from Bloomberg shows. Since the April 18, 2011 high in Shanghai, wine and Chinese stocks have moved down in tandem, a glaring correlation.

This gives further evidence to our previous question of whether the specter of fraud is casting a pall on the fine wine market: it seems China is such a big driver of fine wine prices, that fraud (specifically, the apprehension of Rudy Kurniawan) has little effect.

So…why not stop treating wine like an asset class, actually pull a few corks, and trade the Shanghai composite instead if you want similar returns to wine? (Or, US stocks or gold for the best return, in hindsight.)

California banned the sale and production of foie grasas of July 1. Now, a politician in the heart of a foie gras-producing region of France is hitting back: by calling for a boycott of California wine…Ooh, that will bring the industry to its knees!!

As silly as it is to boycott foreign coal in Newcastle, as it were, this is the first time that I recall American wine as the object of a foreign boycott. Sure, whenever diplomatic feathers are ruffled between France and the US, such as the 2003 showdown in the UN, French wine gets dumped down drains in protest. But when foreigners object to US policies, they usually boycott our larger consumer brands, such as Coca Cola or McDonald’s. So this ignominy is a historic first even if it has no economic impact.

Good thing the politician didn’t call to action another California industry that his constituents might have, er, found a little more difficult to swallow: boycotting Hollywood movies.

Related: “San Francisco Restaurant Claims It Can Serve Foie” -HuffPo
My visit to a foie gras farm

La Gramiere’s wine tasting truck (see inset of truck before Amy pimped her ride)

Have you eaten lunch or ice cream from a food truck and thought there was something missing? I have. Where’s the wine truck? It has been found in the south of France.

Amy Lillard, an American who is living the dream of making wine in the Rhone under her La Gramiere label, recently posted a picture to Facebook of her newly refurbished wine truck. She details the conversion of the Citroen on her blog saying that the truck will serve as a mobile tasting room:

We’re going to do evening tastings with tapas and wine, sometimes in our vineyards as the sun goes down, sometimes in the surrounding villages! We are also going to be inviting guest “vignerons” to pour their wines along with ours, and guest chefs to cook for us! Sounds fun doesn’t it?

Good to see that the turn in French wine policy toward the puritanical hasn’t prevented such creativity. Of course, licensing laws in the US give this a 0.0001% chance of ever happening here. So get your fix in France. The Super Camion de Dégustation was last seen at the evening market in Uzès…

Related: Food Trucks in Paris? U.S. Cuisine Finds Open Minds, and Mouths [NYT]

A chuckle-worthy video from the folks at CollegeHumor.com. “Impress your friends with a year that’s not the current year because–trust us–that’s good.”

With apologies to Peter Sagal and Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, today’s wine news roundup is presented in the form of a bluff the reader challenge. Today you are playing for Steve in St. Helena, CA. Spot the one fake story below, and I’ll write the footer for Steve on all his outgoing email messages!

A) It’s not news that the Chinese love of wine has been growing. But what is news is that the Changyu Pioneer Wine Co. will be building a “wine city” on 1,000 acres in Shandong province. With an expected budget of nearly $1 billion, the attraction will blend wine research, wine making and tourism including a European-style village, vineyards, an international wine trading center, and two wine and brandy chateaus that will be among the world’s largest wine and brandy production facilities. Put it on your calendar to stop by and say “ganbei” starting in 2016.

B) In the Northern Rhone, growers on Hermitage hill have long produced wines coveted around the world. Although the hill famously has panels demarcating the various vineyards, the growers there are protesting what they perceive as a blight on the visual landscape: a sixty-foot high cell phone tower that would be visible behind the hill’s famous chapel. Although operator TDF already has a tower on the hill, this new tower from Itasim has irate growers promising legal action if they cannot prevail via other means. “There’s already one tower that disfigures the landscape that is part of our national heritage,” one local official exclaimed. “Don’t make it two!”

C) Wine enthusiasts at the Olympics in London this month will have a lot to cheer about. Trying to underscore the huge strides dining in Britain has taken over the past couple of decades, authorities will be opening the taps–to wine though, not beer. Wine-in-a-keg stations will be at every venue and each pour will be explicitly priced 50p less than any beer offerings. In a backhanded blow to France, the fresh pours available will consist of Mosel Riesling, sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, Semillon from the Hunter Valley, pinotage from South Africa, and Pinot Noir from British Columbia. To highlight the domestic industry, an English sparkling wine will also be on tap using a pressurized keg system developed by Ridgeview.

D) Fans of “natural wines” in Rome have more to dispair than a stuck fermentation. Authorities there have have fined a wine shop owner for a sign designating a selection of wines in his shop as “natural;” criminal charges might even be in store for the shop’s owner. The crime is consumer fraud since “natural wine” has no official meaning. The blogopshere erupted in cries of a “crackdown” and pointed out that the shop, one of Rome’s oldest dating back to 1929, is being made a high-profile example in what could be a newly aggressive stance at the Ministry of Agriculture.