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Vol. 1 No. 18 – sometimes you just don’t feel like writing

…or even thinking about tasting wine. Just over a week ago I had a tonsillectomy – at 70! I thought that would be a good time to write but a) I couldn’t focus, and b) wine was not something I wished to think about.

That said, I have been doing some reading on wine and ran across – stumbled actually – a book by Tyler Colman, Wine Politics: how governments, environmentalists, mobsters, and critics influence the wines we drink. I downloaded the sample on Amazon and really got into it. This is a guy who wrote a doctoral dissertation at Northwestern University – the first, and as he said, possibly the last dissertation on wine in the political science department (I wrote about it Michael Veseth, who writes theWineEconomist blog which I thoroughly enjoy and he spoke highly of Mr Colman who he has known for some time).

TB has long been upset about the post-prohibition liquor laws which effectively handed over the distribution side of the business to criminals. While these have been amended it has been slow and still makes the consumer pay for generating big profits to the industry. Why should any state be able to tell you which wines you are allowed to have access to and further, (if you are a GOP states rights advocate you won’t like this), stop you from buying wine directly from the winery and shipped to your state?

I finished the sample and was going to order the Kindle edition but the cost was almost as much as the paperback and since I am writing a book on wine, I am sure I will want to refer to it frequently. So, the book is on the way. Note that I read many samples and don’t buy even a tenth of them – just like browsing in a bookstore…you do remember what those are, right?

Well, now that you know TB is alive he has spent all of his energy for the day, but wanted you to know he hasn’t given up on the blog…OR the book…yet…not ever!

All the best,

TB

©Copyright 2015 TBOW, all rights reserved.

Vol. 1 No. 17…potpourri de vino

“Isn’t it funny, how time slips away?” …anyone else recall that song?

It has been a month since the last post which means ole TB is two weeks late. Kind of lazy as have been taking meds for a throat condition…and get this: looking forward (not) to a throatectomy on the 22nd – at 70! Okay, a tonsillectomy, but the result is the same: pain! (Horrible syntax in that elongated sentence, but so what?

Anyway have been reading a lot but not tasting much wine other than a Basque Txocolina (pronounced Chock-o-li) on the 4th.

So here are some of the items you might have missed:

*Temperatures in the Willamette Valley have been as high as 99 degrees! Columbia River area of Washington too. This is especially bad news, not for this year but future years if they don’t get a big El Nino next year (one is predicted but this years was a weak one thus not helping the drought. Also some unseasonal rains and even snow in Northern California. This could be more problematic than helpful. Repeat after me: there is NO climate change!

*Some years ago TB heard of a recovery of a cargo of champagne from a sunken ship in the Baltic Sea off Finland (2010). Then nothing more. One had to wonder if it was still good after being at the bottom of the ocean. An article in the Los Angeles Times did a follow up. There were 168 bottles of champagne, and it was originally assumed it was headed for Russia aboard, and the wine (which had lost its labels of course) was probably over 100 years old. Oddly enough they tasted it and it was still good. A caveat here: they liked it sweeter then – much sweeteer. This is where it gets interesting: they were able to do extensive chemical analysis on the wine which had been resting at about 38 degrees Fahrenheit. It showed high sugar levels of 150 grams per liter v. about 6-8 grams today (told you they liked it sweet…likewise, German white wines were made very sweet and then somewhere in the 20th century made bone dry and often served with a bowl of sugar to sweeten to taste.

They had also noted that the corks were intact and the engraving still showed: Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin, Heidseck, and Juglar, which the article stated later became Jacquesson. Russia was ruled out as the destination since it turned out they like it even sweeter (Veuve made a Champagne a la Russe that had sugar levels of 300 grams per liter!). The author pointed out that a 12-ounce can of Coke contains ‘just’ 38 grams of sugar.Note that is in Europe and Mexico. Americans are deemed not to be able to discern the difference between sugar and corn syrup so we get the inferior brew.

Philippe Jeandet, a prof at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, was part of the team of scientists who published the results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, was given a miniscule sample on his hand, and declared it very similar to champagne made today. He stated the the taste lingered with him for hours afterwards. Hmmm.

Champagne is a wine region very dear to TB, having stayed in Fare-en-Tardenois (Hostellerie du Chateau – excellent and a Relais and Chateaux, where he was given a letter of introduction to Mumm’s and provided a private tasting room – at the time we bought Dom Perignon at the chateau for $30 a bottle! Time does slip away…

*Ever considered becoming a Master of Wine? TB did, then dismissed it…expensive and a lot of work, but IF you are thinking about it you can go to http://www.jancisrobinson.com and get the questions from this years exam. If that doesn’t derail your interest…go for it! Me? I prefer to drink it.

A votre sante

Trader Bill

©Copyright 2015 TBOW, all rights reserved.

Vol. 1 No. 16…terroir revisited…already???

TB is always looking for ideas and sometimes those ideas come from readers. This time, it was questioning my contention that terroir doesn’t pertain to an area, say, like Lodi. Here is my answer, and as always the teacher (question answerer?), if given time, learns more than the questioner. If not learns, then at least solidifies the thinking. Thanks Stepehen, here is the response sent to him:
Thank you for your comments on terroir. I will clarify in the next issue. However, just as there are micro-climes within even a relatively small area  – in the half mile drive up to where I lived in Orinda, the temperature could differ by as much as five degrees. Is Napa Valley the right area for growing cabernet? Yes. Pinot Noir? No. Chard? Yes and no. Thus the terroir differs even within the valley, especially the valley floor and the hillsides. This is not as much of an issue in either Bordeaux or Burgundy for making good wines but, as Karen MacNeil writes in The Wine Bible: “Given the vast and variable climatic and geologic forces that must come together to make a wine what it is, why is it that so many Bordeaux are considered great? When you ask Bordelais winemakers that question, chances are they will answer with a single word: terroir. The most renowned wines…are said to be wines of terroir: that is, they derive their characters from singular plots of land.” 
Lodi, my friend, does not have terroir…only perhaps in the sense that, say, all red wines from Calaveras County finish with a slight bitter aftertaste which I don’t find appealing…perhaps it is gold in the soil? Monterey County red wines often exhibit a ‘bell pepper nose’ which I also find unappealing. Thus the terroir does not suit these grapes.
We live in an age of engineering: financial, chemical, etc. A grower can take a sample of his wine to a lab in Napa and they will analyse it and tell him what he needs to do to turn it into a 90 point wine! Helen Turley produces perhaps the most expensive single vineyard zinfandel’s on the planet. Rave reviews? At first I thought it was my taste-buds, then I read a description by a wine critic that resonated: “chemical soup”.
Is there anything wrong with ‘creating’ a wine of quality? No, a person who invests their money and labor (we’re talking the small family owned vineyards here), in trying to make more from their labor? Most certainly not, but when the price escalates based on those high ratings it penalizes the producer of solid quality wines, and why? Nothing, or very little that the rating chaser did has earned those marks. Likewise, many of those producers, simply are not worth the money but are a kind of parasite on the rating issuer and once it starts, the ‘sold out’ mailing lists perpetuate the myth. This is what Jancis Robinson was referring to when she spoke in her blog of faux collectors.
Now, however, the wine-buying public seems to be learning: according to a California trade publication/blog which is chock-full of information on all aspects of wine (www.wineindustryinsight.com), two trends are present among wine buyers: the price increases from a 90+ rating are dissipating as either people are deluged with these wines or simply are finding their own choices, which TB of course, recommends they do; and the fast growing segment of wine buyers is no longer the $10 and under range, but the $10-20 range, and to a lesser extent, the next layer above that, while the high end is stagnant.
Perhaps consumers are finally coming to realize that they are their own best wine critic…at least you know what you are looking for, no?
TB
©Copyright 2015 TBOW, all rights reserved.

Vol. 1 No. 15 reign of ‘terroir’?

TB must apologize for being so remiss in updating the blog but have been doing a lot of reading and thinking since the last issue. Still, no excuse, but here are some of the things I have observed over that time.

1. Use and misuse of the term ‘terrior’ in blogs. Terroir is kind of like je nes se pas, as in something you detect but are unable to define. A blog recently referred to the ‘terroir’ of Lodi wines. Lodi! This is not to denegrate these wines but there is a difference between a ‘well-made’ wine and a wine of great character, thus terrior. That does not mean they aren’t good value, but it depends on what you expect in a wine. For instance, what if you tried five, or ten wines and found them all good but with no distinctive qualities. Is that what you want to buy? Hold that thought for a minute…

2. The great wines of the world have their own terrior, but through the efforts of wine critic, Robert Parker, and his friend, global wine consultant Michel Rolland, winemakers are adjusting their wines to suit the tastes of these two and other wine writers. Why? Because they can make more money with a 90 or 95 rating than an 88. There are perhaps half a dozen (or more?) wine raters now so the odds of getting a 90 or higher from one of them is improved. After all, they are not all looking for the same thing in a wine…and did it occur to you that what you, the end purchaser, likes that matters most? It is you, dear reader, that should decide what you want in a wine…that makes you go back and buy another bottle…or case. but if you just buy based on ratings you may never find that wine…your find!…that you love enough to make your ‘house wine’. This implies that unless you are blessed to be wealthy you can afford enough of the wine to serve your needs.

3. This leads to still another issue: wine snobbery. When TB first began this project, he considered something like “ending wine snobbery”, but then what is a wine snob?…or a ‘reverse’ wine snob as one fellow blogger has titled his blurb? His thrust is that you needn’t pay more than $20 for a bottle of wine (if you do, are you thus a wine snob?). He then uses a rating system that factors in taste  – and a negative price factor – to come up with an overall rating on an 8 point scale. Be it 8, 10, 20, or 100, I want to know what the rater is looking for so that if her tastes don’t match mind I can go on to another wine critic to get a rating. I actually prefer the UC Davis 20-point scale as I have tried it on wine novices and find it simplifies judging wine. But there is still a problem. It is judging a wine on quality alone not a distinctive wine. In the end, TB chose as his mot: demystifying wine, not for wine snobs. Now there is a topic that can produce hundreds of blogs, right?

4. Let’s go back to that $20 maximum price: you will get for the most part, a well-made wine but not a stand-out. Furthermore, you will eliminate most wines made by real producers. Real producers? I mean the non-corporate, family wineries who don’t produce a 100,000 cases, or whatever, giving them incredible economies of scale. Isn’t that who you would really like to support: someone making a quality product, often organically (by not using pesticides, natural yeasts, etc – note that there are reasons to not use natural yeasts in controlling fermentation, but on a smaller scale it can be done). This overlaps on sustainable and bio-dynamic production which is more expensive but often with the end result of a better product. Moving into this range means wines that are more in the $20-35 price segment. Not, to TB at least, in the realm of priced for the wine snob. No, to TB, a wine snob is someone who buys on ratings alone, and adjusts her likes to what she is told to like. Lettie Teague, who writes a weekly column in the Wall Street Journal, is an honest writer who ‘calls ’em as she sees ’em’. Her last column was on sins of people in the wine industry. Sins? How about the sommelier who pours you a glass and then describes in detail what you are tasting – isn’t that like giving you a book then reciting the story and telling you to enjoy? Another of the sins is wine shops that pepper their inventory with stickers showing the ratings of most of the wines. One of TB’s pet peeves is the server, intent on selling you more wine, pouring behind your back, or dumping the rest of the bottle in someone’s glass. I have experienced and seen friends experience, getting pie-eyed because they lost count of how much wine they drank because they didn’t see their glass refilled…again and again.

5. I know of one blogger who refers you to a wine he has rated (and often following a rating by a seller), that offers you a chance to buy direct by clicking on the link. Without accusing said blogger, how can she be independent if there is an incentive to sell the wine. TB has never, and never will, accepted anything for a favorable plug…period. But then, TB is not out go get rich, but merely provide information to fellow wine-lovers (note he did not say ‘oenophiles’ – enough of enophiles!). Instead, TB hopes you will regard his efforts at truthfulness positively and if…and when…his book is published be inclined to buy a copy, but that is up to you.

Hopefully, this has made up for the self-made ‘drought’ (sorry Californians), and given you pause on what you seek in a wine. In Jancis Robinson’s latest blog, she commented on her version of wine snobs who get on every mailing list of hard to get producers and cause more price escalation and hording. What is a bottle of wine worth? Take the word of Heidi Barrett, consultant to many of the top wineries in Napa Valley after hearing that an Imperial (six-liter bottle equal to eight 750ml bottles) of her Screaming Eagle sold at the Napa Valley Wine Auction for $500,000. As author George M. Taber writes in Judgment of Paris, that works out to $22,944 per four-ounce glass (purchased by a dot-com multimillionaire). Barrett, while obviously pleased by the price, said this, “It’s wild. you drink it, and it’s gone. My brain doesn’t get it.” Neither does TB’s, especially when there are people can’t afford their next meal. Oh, well, let them eat cake, right?

Off to get a glass of wine…

Trader Bill

©Copyright 2015 TBOW, all rights reserved.

Vol 1. No 12 …you can call it Duero or you can call it Douro…

One of the most intriguing wine regions in the world is the Ribero del Duero in Northern Spain at the source of the Duero River in the Cantabrian Mountains (so you won’t think TB is getting senile – he may be – he discussed part of this are in Vol. 1 No 110), which then flows south through Valladolid and into Portugal where it becomes the Douro, famous for centuries for Port wine growing. The major city of the region is Burgos, near the source. It then meanders down past Valladolid where the two most expensive Spanish wines hail from (Vega Secila and Pesquez), and dozens of other fine and reasonably-priced reds and just outside the boundaries of the appellation one of Spain’s best white wines is made, Rueda, a complex and beautiful wine.

The Duero then passes to the north of the university town of Salamanca and into Portugal where it becomes the Douro for the remainder of its 550 mile journey to the Atlantic. It is in Portugal that it becomes navigable and the Port growers used Daδ’s (small lateen-rigged sailboats) to transport the barrels down to the Port Lodges near the sea across from the beautiful town of Porto (I just learned that there are 8 day river cruises up the Douro and the views look incredible).

While TB loves Port (just as he does Pedro Ximénez sherries and Madeira’s), our interest here is on the unknown Reds that come from here (and slightly above it the whites called Albarinho’s which are labeled Vinho Verde – the only similarity to the old Vinho’s is the name as the quality is equal to Albariño’s and they are less expensive – try one, you’ll like it and save some money too!).

TB will revisit the Duero region in October when he returns to finish the northwest edge of the Iberian peninsula (Rias Biaxas, Santiago de Compostello, and Vigo), then down into Portugal to Porto. From their he will fly to Madeira and back to Lisboa to begin a cruise to Marakeesh, Casablanca, and more, then finish in the Canary Islands at Tenerife – one would think it would be easier to fly from there to Madeira but since the Canary’s are Spanish and Madeira, Portuguese, no can do). Can’t wait to take the trip and report back to you.

Last Sunday, TB read a review of a wine named Portada. A 2013 red, that the author said was a $30 wine selling for $10. Intrigued, and anxious to increase his knowledge of Portuguese wine he bought a bottle from a local wine merchant and it is ‘knock your socks off stunning’! What does it taste like? Indescribable – a wine for all tastes as it is chock full of rich berry flavors but with soft tannins to make it a great wine to go with everything from barbecue to ??? But more than that it will even appeal to those of you who are Two Buck Chuck lovers (even though the price is approaching $3!). Don’t misunderstand, TBC has not only enriched the coffers of Trader Joe’s but it has helped eliminate cheap wine from the competition – globally, good wine is forcing out bad because you can’t sell much for under three dollars – that is legal anyway!

That’s all  for now, friends! Stay thirsty? – now why would you want to do that? As an old Navy guy running an enlisted men’s club used to say, “drink up, this ain’t no library!”

TB

©Copyright 2015 TBOW, all rights reserved.

Vol. 1 No. 9 …what is good wine?

(TB is really anxious to report on my trip to northwest Spain but I saw a blog today that just had to be reported in the wake of the arsenic ‘scare’: people are already increasing their price points on wine or as the TV show was called we’re  movin’ on up! Will try to get the Spain articles in this week. TBOW)

Customer: This wine tastes terrible!

Merchant: Really? Parker gave it a 90!

Customer: I’ll take two cases!

Don’t be that customer! Trust what you like, not what Robert Parker, Michel Rolland, or any other critic says is a good wine. For one thing, you  might serve it to friends and they might have the same tastes as you and like the customer, think it tastes terrible. $50 down the drain and worse, perhaps ruining a good meal (putting aside for a later column which wines pair well with food).

First, ‘good’ is a relative term: compared to what? Is a wine ‘good’ for a Cab? Is it good in the $50 and up range? Is it good value? Is it good by itself? …with food?

As TB writes this column those thoughts come back again and again. We have all heard someone tell us that is a good wine,  but then tried it and found it ‘so-so’ – or worse! A few decades ago Gerald Boyd, a prominent San Francisco-based wine writer, wrote an entire column that essentially asked this question.

He said, how can you accept a wine writer’s recommendation without knowing what he looks for in a wine? Does he like big, bold, tannic wines, like Robert Parker?  At the other end of the spectrum the late Robert Lawrence Balzer who wrote in the Los Angeles Times? An eccentric, pioneer wine writer who accomplished many things in his 99 years but who could talk as glowingly of Gallo Hearty Burgundy or Sutter Home White Zinfandel (they pioneered it in the 1970’s and Balzer wrote a column saying they were ‘on to something’, even though there is no such thing as a white Zin, a red grape that produces what we now know as a ‘blush’ wine), as a first growth Bordeaux.

This is the point of TBOW: you be the judge, not some recognized expert. Two of the most respected wine writers are Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson have had a ‘lively’ debate over which is better: Bordeaux or Burgundy? Since I have a friend who can‘t stand Pinot Noir (it makes him ill, and we have tried to trick him but somehow he always has the same reaction), it proves it is in the ‘nose’ and taste buds of the beholder.

Think of wine as NASA would: the cost difference between 90% reliability and 100%, or even  95%. Wine is not a matter of life or death so a wine that is 90% as good as a $100 wine (very subjective, of course), can cost as little as $25-30. If you want the expensive wine and can afford it, more power to you, but TB would suggest that fewer and fewer people either an afford an expensive bottle of wine or do not have the inclination (there was a time that this writer wanted and collected them but that is in the past having some that were disappointments when he finally drank them).

I want to recommend a great wine blog, www.thewineeconmist.com by Mike Veseth who is an economist who has chosen to study wine. In today’s blog (3.31.15), he discusses the impact of the financial crisis on wine consumption (actually all consumption was impacted). Wineries have seen their wine clubs ‘wither’, and downward pressure was exerted by wineries and wine shops who were finding it difficult to move their inventory,  significant discounting occurred in th ‘dead zone’ of $20 and up wines. As a table in the blog shows, sales of wine selling up to $8.99 a bottle are off (and will likely be more so with the new  arsenic ‘scare’). Meanwhile wines  from $9.00 to $11.99 have had increased sales of 7.2%; contrast this to wines from $6.00 to $8.99 which have declined by 3.2%! Below that level they are off from 0.1%- 1%. More significantly, wines selling for $12..00 to $14.99 are up by 10,6% and wines selling for $20 or more are up 15.7%! This is significant since total wine consumption  for the 52 weeks ended 12/6/14, as reported by Wine Business Monthly, was up just 3.4%! Think about it!

The extreme high end Bordeaux have priced themselves (been priced?) out of the range of all but a small percentage of consumers. Also, new laws in China which prohibit giving gifts (Lafite Rothschild was a favorite), have cut back on Chinese demand and the ‘spec  wine’ buyers have seen the values of their wine consortiums plummet. Also, you will find this hard to believe but there is counterfeiting  out there! No…not wine! Yes, wine and it is as old as Thomas Jefferson’s era. One would be wise to consider wines as consumables and stop gambling on demand and thus prices of rare wines continuing to rise.

In the movie, Red Obsession, the statement was made that the Chinese would buy up all the best wines in the world. TB chuckled at that because in 1989, just before the Japanese economy tanked, the same was said of Japan! Funny how that same year the went into a tailspin and have never emerged from it. The same may be true for China, and take TB’s word for it: no wine is worth even $100, except for the historical value, but do you feel lucky? It might be fake!

TB

©Copyright 2015 TBOW, all rights reserved.