Dr Vino's wine blog

SIPPED and SMASHED: Lafite empties
After tasting older vintages of collectible wines before an auction, the bottles are routinely smashed. Why? An empty bottle of Lafite 1982 fetches $1,500. [CNN]

SIPPED: counterfeit bottle
William Koch, the billionaire wine collector, bought a bottle of 1870 Lafite from a Christie’s auction for $4,200, discovered it was fake, and sued the auction house. A judge has now thrown out the suit, saying that Koch knew the bottle was fake before bidding. Here’s hoping anyone else bidding on it also knew! [Bloomberg]

CHUGGED: Box wine up 18% last year. [PR web]

CUT: subsidies
The Texas wine industry has received $4.2 million in state funds the past two years. However, the subsidy is likely to be cut to zero. Fun fact: there are estimated to be 1.3 million wine tourists a year in Texas. [Dallas Morning News]

DAMAGED: some tentative information on the state of Japan’s sake breweries. [sake-world.com]

Last year, a rag-tag coalition introduced a piece of legislation that threatened wine shipments. It’s not even Halloween but the scary news is that, like Poltergeist II, this horror show is baaaaaack.

Now known officially as HR 1161, and unofficially as the Wholesaler Protection Act, the bill seeks to restrict legal challenges to the interstate shipment of wine (and beer and spirits) and keep the legislation that affects wine shipping at the state level. The reason that’s scary is because the judiciary is the consumer’s best ally in the fight to liberalize wine shipments–with more options to purchase wines, many consumers will get lower prices and a better selection than what is available in their local markets. Legislators, desperate for (re)election, frequently accept donations from wholesalers who seek to prevent freeing up trade in wine. The Beer Wholesalers wrote the legislation last time and the text is virtually identical this time.

The Wine and Spirits Wholesalers Association recognizes the threat Read more…

Wine Library TV has kicked the Jets bucket!

After 1,000 episodes of Wine Library TV (I had a good time with him on episode #771), Gary Vaynerchuk has decided to hang up his signature Jets bucket. Well, sort of. Many of his fans had wondered if one day Gary might leave the wine world entirely to jump to other, more lucrative pursuits such as public speaking, social media evangelism and promoting books from his 10-book deal with HarperCollins. Instead, Read more…

My wife and I were in Tokyo on September 11, 2001, preparing to come home the next day. Needless to say, our return was delayed. During that extra time in Japan, so many locals expressed their sympathy and condolences to us for what had happened in the US.

The tragedy in Japan over the past week is horrifying and I find it extremely dispiriting. But it would be good to do something for them, no matter how small. Giving to a charity, such as the Red Cross, Unicef, or Doctors without Borders is a generous idea.

Blake Gray had another: try a sake in the next week. According to an account on Twitter, over three dozen sake brewers have been damaged or devastated by the recent disasters. And Japanese consumers may not be wanting to splurge on premium sake right now. So the theory is that having an artisanal sake here, could keep demand flowing for the traditional industry. Several restaurants in SF are donating parts of the proceeds from special events. If you’re looking to try one at home, here’s an article Blake wrote about daiginjo a few years ago or try to head to a specialty shop, such as Sakaya on the East Village (some wine shops now have small, refrigerated sake sections). If you have other suggestions sake or how to help Japan, hit the comments.

We did it! Congratulations, America! According to analysts Gomberg, Fredrikson, we are now the biggest wine consuming country in the world! USA! USA! (hat tip: winebusiness.com)

We’ve overcome challenges as a country. Even a scant four decades ago our parents had trouble finding good wine here. And our domestic wine industry, which makes about two-thirds of wines sold here today and is the fourth largest in the world, had yet to reach acclaim on the world stage. But now we put away more of the stuff than France and Italy despite the fact that we can’t easily buy wine via stores on the internet. Triumph over adversity, part deux!

What with a large domestic population, it’s understandable that we could do it. But we still need to work on that per capita consumption rate, where we’re currently below the likes of Ireland and Equatorial Guinea. So let’s raise a glass in honor of America!

It’s not every evening I get to taste ten white Burgundies with a decade or so of age. For one, they’re often expensive. But they’re also a category that has not been aging well in the bottle, thanks primarily to the issue of “premox,” or premature oxidation, the cause of which is little known despite plaguing bottles since the 1996 vintage. So I delighted to have the chance to taste through several bottles at a collector’s house recently to assess the risk and reward of white Burgundy. From this admittedly small sample of premier and grand cru wines from good vintages, I’d say the risks outweigh the rewards. One factor is that the wines are quite expensive, almost calling out for cellaring; bright, fresh acidity can be found much less money with Bourgogne blanc (or Chablis), for example. So it is frustrating when wines that appear fresh in the first lap of five years or so after vintage, appear to grow tired too fast.

What’s your assessment of the risk and reward of white Burgundy?

The whole lineup—complete with a surprise!—follows after the jump. Read more…