Tag: Total Wines

Vol 2 No. 20…wine tidbits

Here are just a few things TB has observed since the last missive:

BPA’s – no longer a health hazard in wine due to the amount you would have to consume to have a negative health effect, this from the FDA. BUT TB advises those of you who drink from box wine encased in plastic to observe expiration dates, they are there for a reason, and if you see a lot of boxes with them, find another wine merchant as it shows their lack of inventory control and attention to wine products.

Corks – a lab has been able to isolate different phenol’s in corks. IF they can nail this down and why not? They did it with gene’s afterall. It would then be possible for a winemaker to isolate and use corks that would enhance the taste of their wine but also to make that taste more consistent in both the same and subsequent vintages.

Wine Theft – Having lived for nearly 30 years in the S.F. Bay Area, I have visited many of the wine shops around San Francisco, and weeded out the ones that did not meet my expectations. The main one I eliminated was Premier Cru in Oakland, but on the basis of snobbery prior to their arrest on multiple criminal charges that has not been adjudicated yet, but a lot of customer money was lost and will not likely be recovered – they better watch their backs though because one group they preyed on was Chinese wine buyers of Bordeaux futures and California wines for export to China…one never knows.

One I respected was Beltramo’s in Palo Alto, which sadly is going out of business after more than 50 years. Just before the last day theives broke in and stole $55,000 worth of wine in a case similar to last year’s French Laundry winery (not the same perps as they were caught and the wine recovered although the condition will only be known by tasting it). Foe their closing sale the owners had brought their library wines out and put them on display making the theft a ‘piece of cake’. Let’s hope they catch them and throw the proverbial book at them!

WTSO – in No. 19 I talked about www.winetillsoldout.com. I have now made two purchase from them. I wrote to customer service on both issues. The first was on the retail price shown first. I asked this because I was seeing prices well below that. It was explained that they use the one provided by the winery at time of release, but also list the ‘best’ online price, so you can compare. This satisfied me fully! The second was on a delivery problem that I won’t mention because they handled it ethically and I don’t want anyone to get the idea and try to get wine for free. I will only say it was a slipup that they stood up for and offered me a full refund or more of the same order. That was very responsible and I don’t know many online companies that would do the same. The point is: if you have a complaint write to them immediately. I was amazed at how fast they responded allowing us to resolve the problem to my, the customer’s satisfaction.

Meiomi Pinot Noir – originally, it was an extremely good value and available at Costco and other retailers who stocked it after tasting it and noting the quality. I wasn’t aware of this but it was owned by the Wagner family who makes Caymus, Conundrum, and other brands. This is from the Wine Spectator and is shocking but not surprising to me:

“Aiming to become an even bigger player in the California wine business, Joe Wagner has agreed to sell his Meiomi brand to Constellation Brands for $315 million. The 33-year-old Wagner told Shanken News Daily that he’s selling Meiomi—one of the U.S. wine market’s hottest brands—because the deal will give him the liquidity necessary to become a much larger landowner. Wagner says he hopes to amass 2,000-3,000 acres of California vineyards over the next five years.

“Constellation is paying a hefty price for Meiomi. Wagner told SND, a sister publication of Wine Spectator, that the deal price was roughly a 24 times multiple against the brand’s present and future earnings.

In striking the deal, Constellation adds a brand whose recent performance has been nothing short of astonishing. Wagner developed Meiomi in 2006 while he was a winemaker at Caymus, which is headed by his father, Chuck, and the wine was released in 2009. In 2010, the brand sold 90,000 cases. Last year, the California wine brand won Impact “Hot Brand” honors after advancing by 41 percent to 550,000 cases and was named Wine Brand Of The Year by Impact sister publication Market Watch magazine. Wagner told SND that Meiomi, which retails for around $25 a 750-ml., is on pace to sell more than 700,000 cases in 2015.

In other words, it went from a limited production wine to a mega under Constellation which nobody even heard of (unless you were a wino who drank Wild Irish Rose), and only gained ‘credibility’ by buying the Mondavi brand then going on a shopping spree which has made them one of the top three wine companies in the world. Wagner noted that “no vineyards were included in the sale.” It’s cheaper now…and now YOU, the consumer know why. What next? Boost production to 1 million cases to compete with Fred Franzia’s ‘Two Buck Chuck’? For those not aware his company is Bronco Wines, which owns 40,000 acres of vineyards in California, and bottles as Charles Shaw (an interesting story in itself), and is sold almost (?) exclusively through Trader Joe’s. For the record, Franzia is a convicted felon for using inferior grapes and bottling them as varietals. He didn’t go to jail but instead paid a several million dollar fine (the prosecutor said not sending him to prison like the others involved was the biggest mistake of his career…why didn’t he? Franzia convinced him that the town where it is located, Ceres, Ca., would suffer economic disaster without him). Oh, and about those 40k acres: the longest rows of any winery. Why? So the ‘tractor’, not hand pickers, doesn’t have to waste time turning around, but note you get unripe grapes, stems, and an occasional poor rodent in the mix, but hey at $2.99 or so, who cares? Not the people, mostly seniors, that drink it. There have been efforts made to elect him to the California Winemakers Hall of Fame, which will lose all credibility if it does and shame those who deserve it. Franzia is not a winemaker, but he isa a marketing genius whose only  claim to fame is getting rich…but isn’t that what Constellation Brands as done off Mondavi’s reputation? Wonder what’s in the Woodbridge these days?

Last week I attended a telecast with the Wagner Family at Total Wines, discussing their brands followed by a tasting of their full line, sans Meiomi obviously and all were great.

Sorry for the rant, but TB is about people with passion who make REAL contributions to the wine industry and are not in it merely to enrich themselves or use their fortunes to bid up Napa Valley land (and other places..including Bordeaux), to make small lots of wine with a flying winemaker, get a 90 point rating and sell it at absurd prices due to the small volume. That is wine snobbery at its worst. Not saying these wines aren’t good, just ridiculously priced!

If you are still with TB…thanks for reading…I know I feel better now!

TB

Vol. 1 No. 23 something wine and beer are increasingly having in common (adding mea culpa)

Mea Culpa: TB had details of the SAB/Miller – AB ImBev were wrong and have been corrected. In the same sectionit was Heineken, not Stella Artois that purchased 50% of Lagunitas Brewing. Mea maxima culpa.

Also note that TB welcomes your comments both positive and negative – just make them constructive.

The Management aka TB

First, let me make it clear that TB favors small wineries, especially family wineries. That is not to say that bigger ones are bad but the more people who become involved, the less the passion, and passion is a key element in doing everything to make a remarkable wine. What TB loathes is corporate ownership of wineries. You cannot run a winery like a typical division of a corporation, yet it is done all the time and there are different time horizons: longer term for a family owned winery; short-term for a corporation. In addition to wineries, I find similar comparisons with small wine shops (these focus mainly on wine although they may carry hard liquor too), and the chains which can be as big as Beverages & More, and Total Wines.

A new concern is online wine sellers. Why? Because they may be clearing out someones stale inventory and thus able to sell it at a low price, yet because they bought it at a distress price, make a very large profit…and don’t forget shipping costs! But the important thing is they sell either on a rating (with so many out there far too many are getting 90 ratings and even if it is deserved you might not like it). Remember, you are your own best wine critic! What Robert Parker or Trader Bill thinks is irrelevant…unless you are speculating in wine, something else TB loathes as it drives the cost up to you, the consumer.

Now I will give you three examples of family-owned contrasted to corporate-owned:

Taylor Wine Company, one of the oldest in the U.S. and located in Hammondsport, New York. Originally it used native American grapes such as Catawba and Concord. When other growers had success by bringing in the vinifera grapes from Europe, eventually they decided to do likewise. Then they were bought out by Coca-Cola, who apparently didn’t understand the lead time between planting new vines and getting the production from them to be profitable. In the end, Coke filed bankruptcy for the winery, one with a very long tradition even if you didn’t care for the style.

Robert Mondavi Winery, founded in 1966, became the benchmark for large producer California wines until it was surpassed by…yep…smaller family-owned vineyards. In addition to the joint venture on Opus with Baron Phillipe Rothschild, they began partnering and buying out old family owned wineries in Italy with great reputations for quality. Ironically, the film Mondovino showed them in a bad light, having deviated from their roots. Produced in 2004, it was about the time the Mondavi empire peaked and eventually was bought out by a corporation, Constellation Brands, now a powerhouse but before that famous for one wine My Wild Irish Rose…need TB say more?

TB is not gloating about what happened to Mondavi since it was the first winery he visited the year he and his wife were married, 1969. TB had a vertical collection of their Cabernet Sauvignon from inception, 1966, with at least two bottles from each year (the 1966 was purchased for $4.50!). After the sale, interest was lost and one vertical case was donated to the University of Nevada for an auction, and later the other sold at a Butterfield auction. Because of the corporate ownership, TB has not purchased a bottle from the winery since.

Lastly, what the title of the blog is about. How many of you remember the original Samuel Adams? A true craft beer, but IT grew until it and Yuengling became the two biggest selling craft beers in America…if you can still call them that…TB can’t, not at 4 million barrels a year each! Same goes for Stella Artois one of TB’s favorite’s and now available on tap in most restaurants and bars in America. Is that what a true beer drinker wants to see? By the way, if you want to read what one bar owner has to say about them go to Open letter to Sam Adams

Now to the point: do you recall when Miller Brewing was sold to SAB (Stella Artois), and later Anheuser-Busch was bought by the Dutch company AmBev? Frankly, I never cared much for either Miller or Bud, but they were very popular among the masses and that is what counts, right? Well, if you own the company it is.

A couple of months ago it was announced that Heineken bought a 50% interest in Lagunitas brewery, a beer TB thoroughly enjoyed and still likes, however, several people have said, and TB felt, that it doesn’t taste as good as it once did. Furthermore. both Heineken and Beck’s suffered when they began bottling in the U.S. and thus increased production. Big production will do that. But the big issue now is the AB ImBev – SAB/Miller buyout for $106 billion, yes, billion! In addition, the breakup premium is $3 billion, meaning if, for any reason, the deal doesn’t go through, AB ImBev is out that much! This smells to me like there is something assuring them that it will go through despite them being the #1 and #2 beer producers in the world. Some legislators here have voiced concerns or even dissent, but it is the EU that will decide. What this means for consumers should it happen, and TB will bet it does, is control over beer prices globally, something the Sherman-Antitrust Act was supposed to prevent and the EU has fined some of the large U.S. tech companies for their practices, yet here are two in their own backyard and hardly a peep.

This is what TB does not want to see in the wine industry, Gallo, and Franzia Wines (two-buck Chuck), have a huge monopoly on wines but not on premium wines. Fred Franzia says “never pay more than $10 for a bottle of wine.” Are we to take it that the price may go to somewhere above the $5 it is already at?

A local fellow blogger doesn’t believe you should pay more than $20 for a wine, and despite his self-admission that he has never taken a wine class, he rates them and then deducts for every dollar above ten. By that test, wouldn’t everyone buy a Chevy rather than a Porsche? TB’s just sayin’…

So here is what TB thinks: the aforementioned blogger is correct that people can not drink a $25, $30, or more every night of the week. So buy something cheap to drink during the week that you like. But be adventuresome on weekends and try some better wines…preferably with the help of a small wine shop that is knowledgeable and listens to what you like in a wine.

There is very little bad wine being sold today as good wine is forcing it out and people are becoming more aware of what they like. France, converted something like three million gallons of wine into ethanol last year. Why? Because they couldn’t sell it, obviously. There is a message there. TB’s message to you is if everyone tried to consume $10 wine, or even up to $20 and would never pay more, there would still be plenty of wine around, but the wines of character would be gone. At least you could just go and pick up any bottle as they would all taste the same. Fine…that is, if you don’t want a really good bottle of wine.

Perhaps it is like the younger generation: they have recording artists they love but they don’t pay for the music. See the similarity?

Off to have a glass of good wine…

TB

©Copyright 2015 TBOW, all rights reserved.

Vol. 1 No. 22 …back home again from NYC/Canada roadtrip…

(Readers note: when I began this blog I had planned to post at least once every two weeks. I did not want to waste my, or my readers, time ‘just to get something out there’. The problem with that is people forget and come back and see no updates – the last was on 9/24 shortly before I left on the wine trip. IF you like the blog, please add your email to follow and you will be notified when there is an update. You can, of course, unsubscribe at any time. Thank you, the management) 

…an incredible trip of 4,200 miles in 19 days…not as daunting as it sounds. Despite the fall colors, not that many tourists out there. Haven’t even tallied up the number of wineries I visited and was very impressed. Long Island, Hudson Valley, Finger Lakes, Niagara (mainly on Canadian side). DO NOT underestimate these wineries! Overall quality was very good and many were excellent!

Where to start…well…not where you might expect. Starting right here in Excelsior, MN, where we got home on Friday afternoon. I had two reasons for this: first, Total Wines here was having Gaia Gaja speaking on the Gaja wines – or so I thought. For $20 she spoke with a Q and A followed by a tasting of Gaja wines – some but not the very high end ones that cost more than $200. I then found out (and it made sense) this was a teleconference that could be viewed in any of their stores and having recently tasted the Gaja portfolio, I passed. Several years ago I visited the winery in Barbaresco, Piemonte, Italy. Some time later The Wine Club in San Francisco posted in their newsletter that she was interning at their store following one at Robert Mondavi. I went down and was privileged to meet a ‘cautious’ Gaia, who was charming and opened up once she realized I had been to the winery and met several of her friends in Barbaresco. As it turns out, she is now running the winery, having taken over from her father, Angelo. If I can connect with her again, it will be the subject of a later blog.

So, while that was a bust, the other reason I came back was for a tasting of Italian wines at The Wine Republic here in Excelsior, MN. Patti Berg and RJ Judalena (and their precious daughter, Orla), opened a specialty wine shop here a little over a year ago. Their niche is that they only carry wines that are either organic, sustainable, or biodynamic. Besides being environmentally friendly, these methods are growing in popularity…in California, mostly sustainable, and in Sonoma all wineries will be sustainable by 2020. I also saw on the trip of both sustainable and organic (only one certified organic), and one biodynamic which is also starting to catch on in California. Although it has been since sold, Justin winery in Paso Robles was doing it when they started.. Without getting technical (which I can’t because I don’t fully understand it), it involves planting by the phases of the moon and much more…think Farmers Almanac.

By carrying only these environmentally-friendly wines (along with some beers, ciders, and hard liquor that meet the criteria), it limits the number of wines so you don’t see a wall (which is what you will see at Total, Wine Club, or any large wine store), of confusing wines – some of which may have been standing for a year or more. Instead, you can browse or tell them what you like (isn’t that what TB has been trying to tell you here?), and they will show you their wines that might appeal to you.

But the other thing they do is host weekly tastings of wines they carry and sometimes very special tastings of wines. Cost of the regular tastings is $5 which can be applied to any purchase, while the special tastings cost $10 (so far at least) but due to the large number of wines tasted, can not be applied, but trust TB, they are worth it.

The first of these was France is for Lovers, featuring wines distributed by Berkeley, Ca. importer/distributor Kermit Lynch, who has done more than anyone to promote wines from the south of France which were previously obscure, and was the first to come up with the idea of temperature controlled shipping containers for all of his wines – especially important on the West Coast where they frequently travel through the Panama Canal. It took several years for another distributor to replicate this. He also is author of several wine books, the most enjoyable being Adventures Along the Wine Route, written more than 20 years ago and recently updated, which drove TB’s passion for wine. It is a thoroughly enjoyable read, even for wine novices or those just interested in French travel. The tasting included 25 of his wines and provided the taster with the ability to try wines they might never have the nerve or inclination to buy. It was very festive an even featured a beret-donned accordion player to set the mood!

Saturday’s was Italian Opera and Wine, featuring 22 wines from FIVE different Minnesota distributors, The quality was high and the prices blew me away – TB marked 11 as having exceptional value (range $16 to $30). Especially notable were four alternative whites including a Soave (Tamellini) – a wine I wrote of long ago; a Ca Lojera LuganaTrebbiano which blew me away; 47 Anno Domini Pinot Grigio (also a Prosecco that was fabulous), with a beautiful floral nose that finished very dry, an amazing PG that I had never seen before. Lastly, a deliciously sweet but very clean 47 Anno Domini Moscato – yummy. If you haven’t ever had any Malvira wines you are in for a surprise. Their Brachetto D’acqui Birbet is a beautiful, succulent red that seduces you. Note that Malvira’s Roero Arneis Sargietto is highlighted in 1000 Wines to Taste Before You Die. If you haven’t ever tasted an Arneis you will be surprised by the wonderful flavors. TB first tasted it at Vietti in Piemonte, on a private tour by founder Alfredo Corrado, then in his 80’s and recently deceased. Roero means wild and Arneis is the river that flows through Piedmont stretching past Asti and Alba. He was the Robert Mondavi of the Piedmont region, an unbelievably wonderful man. Caution: never buy an old Arneis…the one cited in the book was a 2004. They should be drunk young and not exposed to heat. Two of the reps/pourers (Marcus and Dustin) as well as a young lady sang opera spaced throughout the tasting adding to the experience.

Kudos to Patti and RJ for both of these events and there will no doubt be more to follow.

Okay, back to work on sorting out the trip. Several of the posts will be up over the next week or so. Hope you enjoyed this one. Au revoir, ciao, adios, friends. If you enjoy the site simply add your email – you can cancel it at any time.

TB

©Copyright 2015 TBOW, all rights reserved.