Dr Vino's wine blog

Tony Parker is at the height of his game, bringing his own THUNDER by hitting an eye-popping 76% of his jump shots Tuesday night. It turns out that the three-time NBA champion and star of the San Antonio Spurs is–wait for it–French! So the inquiring wine mind wants to know–who is more popular in France, Tony Parker or Robert Parker, recipient of the Légion d’honneur? And will they ever go head to head in Paris, a battle Parker royale (with cheese?) via a game of HORSE followed by a blind tasting of French wines? Here’s what the tweeps had to say:

RT @lagramiere: @drvino Definitely Tony…
RT @glarange72: @drvino haha! I hope Tony!
RT @whyknowinphilly: @drvino Trey Parker!!!
RT @TishWine: @drvino Actually, in Paris, hoopsters play CHEVAL… And the winning Parker would no doubt be Tony.
RT @nicholaskolnik: @TishWine @drvino To even the odds at CHEVAL, maybe an extensive tasting should be done first. #NoSpitting
RT @TweetAWine: depends on the Region 😉 RT @drvino: I wonder who is more popular in France, Robert Parker or Tony Parker?
RT @serewine: @drvino Robert more famous, Tony probably more loved 😉
RT @amybcleary: @drvino It is an Olympic year. I’d think that would give an advantage to Tony. I’d watch HORSE followed by a blind tasting.
RT @VictordelaSerna: @drvino Do you have to ask? Le Tony, he da man. And he owns one of the best basketball clubs in France.
RT @GDWine: @drvino Ask me again when RP is featured in multi-million dollars advertising deals. Until then, Tony for sure.

BREAKING: it takes a long time and lots of money to make a profit in winemaking. But it’s cool to look at the view and have a glass of your own wine in the vineyards with your adult children.

Oh, and it turns out that it’s hard to get distribution and selling wine can be a lot harder than making it. And constructing a wine to get a 100-point score is risky. But if you hold one for a generation or two, you could make $50 million or even $500 million. These are some items in a “Wealth Matters” column in the NYT over the holiday weekend.

Of course, if you really want to make money from year one in the wine biz, do as Warren Buffett did and buy a wine and spirits distributor.

The story does provide some color to our previous discussions about how high costs, a search for ROI, and an aspirational product/lifestyle explain in part why there are so few tasty domestic wines under $15. Also, it was fun to learn that Jim Laube got a wine from a vintner via their mutual golf pro and then gave that wine 97 points. Fore!

When you get a wine in a can, does the sommelier let you sniff the lid? And place it on the table during dinner?

The Telegraph (!) reports on a study that shows alternative wine packaging is on the rise. The (British) industry is trying to lightweight materials: Marks & Spencer has ten wines in pouches this year and 200 million liters of wine will be sold across Europe in cans next year.

What do you think: sign of the wine apocalypse or a green choice? In your calculations, consider that although aluminum is much lighter than glass and is very recyclable and cans are efficiently stackable, the emissions of making aluminum may negate the greenhouse gas savings in transport, especially if the journey is short and the can is used only once and then chucked in a landfill.

Related: “Calculating the carbon footprint of wine“

I am drinking a crappy Mexican beer.

There, I said it. Cast your Chateauneuf stones at me and throw me out of the wine temple if you must! But it is a sunny 75 degrees and I just got back from a rigorous morning of making sand castles on the beach.

So here’s something for you to puzzle over the grill: why can crappy beer be so refreshing while crappy wine is always so…horrible. The carbonation? The lower alcohol? The chill factor? Have your say in the comments. And happy Memorial Day weekend!

A couple of weeks ago, a 7′ 1″ 325(+)-lb. graduate donned a cap and gown: Shaquille O’Neal earned a doctorate in education. The former NBA star, who left LSU early but finished his bachelor’s degree nearly a decade later because he wanted to make his mom proud, just completed four and a half years of courses and study at Barry University. His thesis studied the role of humor in the workplace and leadership.

Dr. Vino gives a doff of the academic cap to Dr. Shaq Diesel. Now all I have to do to keep up is score 28,596 points in the NBA. Well, what the heck: I raise a glass of wine in his honor and I’ll rate the 28,596 points! To Dr. Shaqtus, Dr. Shamroq, here’s a glass of grower Champagne from Bereche et Fils, their Beaux Regards, a stony, zero-dosage all-chardonnay bubbly. It’s laser-like, which is the kind of focus you need to do a doctorate while also playing in the NBA, doing commercials, offering commentary on TNT, serving as a reserve police officer, being a dad five times over. Nice going Big Daddy! Read more…

The wines of Tyler winery get a thumbs up from me for the brilliance of the name alone–but also for what’s inside the bottle. I tasted a few of them recently at a trade tasting and was impressed with the lean, taut wines from a land known all too often for buxom chardonnay and pinot noir. (Check out this SF Chron article on some recent goings on in Sta. (!) Rita Hills.) Tasted blind, the balanced 2010 Tyler Chardonnay “Dierberg” would be difficult to place, with minerality not often associated with the Golden State, and a mouthfeel more Meursault than Marcassin. The 2010 Santa Barbara County Pinot Noir exhibits a toothsome quality with red fruit and good acidity. The 2009 Pinot Noir “Dierberg” sees some whole cluster and has tingly tannins with appealing red fruit and a snap of acidity. I’ll be keeping an eye out for Justin Tyler Willett’s wines.

I joked with someone at the tasting that I was probably predisposed to like the wines because of the name since it’s also mine. He told me that he worked at a wine shop way back when. They made a private label wine to sell in the store and to find the name, they looked in the phone book and found that Clark was the most popular name in the city after Jones and Smith. So they named their wine Chateau Clark and if flew off the shelves. But I think that’s what Willy van Shakespeare said: a wine named after you, will smell even sweeter.

Tyler winery
Find these wines at retail

The arrest of Rudy Kurniawan on March 8 coincided with the top in the fine wine market this year.

Even though Kurniawan–whose guilt or innocence on wine counterfeiting charges remains to be tried in federal court–was apprehended, wine fraud remains an easy crime: combine sky-high prices with an old collectible whose authenticity may be difficult to verify and willing buyers who may have more capital than wine know-how or may have little intention of ever opening the bottles anyway.

Wine counterfeiting has been around for decades and I’ve always been surprised that it doesn’t get priced in to the fine wine market (but wines sold directly from the producers do fetch a premium). Paul Chiu, a Burgundy fan in Hong Kong, tweeted to me the other day that there’s still surprisingly little discussion about counterfeiting there.

So, as the ArtInfo points out, the decline in the (young) Bordeaux index probably has more to do with shifting (more discriminating?) tastes to old wine and Burgundy since the broader Liv-Ex 100 has not fallen as sharply. “Lafite is out, and Conti is in.” Ack, if the auction market’s taste for Burgundy shifts into high gear, it could crush even a non-collector’s premier cru habit.

But with the Chinese economy slowing down, FT Alphaville suggests some cynics might point out that fewer wines are needed for bribes. Baksheesh aside, it will be interesting to see if, going forward, counterfeiting or the Chinese economic slowdown impacts fine wine prices more. But maybe there will be more buyers, such as the Stamford Management Group, which is raising $100 million for a fund to buy Bordeaux and jade antiques. And perhaps there will be more liquidity and lower spreads if SecondMarket really gets into wine.

Two Buck Chuck turns ten this year.

We were reminded that Fred Franzia’s Bronco Wine Co. owns 40,000 acres of vines in the San Joaquin Valley, debt-free, which helps keep the wine price so low.

How big is a 40,000 acre vineyard? It’s about 50 times the size of Central Park, and, in fact, about three times the land area of Manhattan. So it must suck if you forget something at one end since there’s not even a subway in the Bronco vineyard.

“Evaluating the taste and cost of “Two-Buck Chuck”‘ [KALW.org]
“3 charged in pregnant farm worker’s death” [AP]
“Drink up: The rise of really cheap wine” [NewYorker.com]