Dr Vino’s wine blog

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The Wall Street Journal recently got in the act of selling wines. Now Playboy doesn’t want to be left, um, behind.

The magazine has collaborated to put “iconic images on a new limited-run collectors’ wine series,” according to a press release. Limited runs of wines will be “hand-chosen” by “credible master wine sommeliers who also were tasked with selecting the magazine cover that they feel best represents the flavor and taste profile of each wine.” Yikes, what an assignment!

But these are old wines in new, airbrushed wine skins with about 60 percent markups: The Schug Heritage Reserve Cabernet 2003 is easily available for under $50 (where to buy?) but with their label it is $86; the St. Supery Dollarhide Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 (where to buy?) is available for about $70 but with their label it is $112.

Their label for the Schug is particularly, erm, revealing; how did they get this by those dour, green-visored regulators at the Treasury Department? The “peel away” label no doubt helped. And to think that 1993 Mouton label by Balthus, a line drawing, was too much for them to approve.

After the jump, if you dare, click through for a comparison of the banned Mouton label with the current one from Playboy wines! Read more…

SPIT: financial turmoil
Mike Steinberger provides some advance evidence that the financial crisis will not upend America’s fifteen year bull market–for wine consumption. But the make-or-break fourth quarter has just started! Stay tuned, and keep pulling corks. [Slate]

SIPPED: wine investment (alpacas optional)
The WSJ finds a stay-at-home dad who has sunk $120k into 400 bottles of 1996 Champagne, quoting him saying: “It sure beats looking at a Merrill Lynch monthly statement.” Um, I think he means Bank of America. But nice call on the 96 Champagne! Also, the FT also reports on individuals and funds who are socking away blue chip red wine.

SIPPED: Portugal!
British photographer and journalist David Eley has launched a site with some impressive photography and producer profiles from his travels in the Duoro. Mmm, sun-drenched hillsides, good wines.

SIPPED: JetBlue terminal
About 400 wine choices await travelers in the new JFK JetBlue terminal, half of them by the glass–let’s just hope there’s something good. And with the free wifi in that terminal already, JetBlue is on the inside track to become the unofficial airline for wine bloggers. [NY mag]

SIPPED: Tropical wine! (”for tourists”)
What do you get when you combine a stiff 170 percent tariff on imported wines, a strong tourist economy, and tropical conditions? Why, Bali, the Indonesian island and new wine frontier. But Pinot Noir, move over since you’ll have to settle for a glass of Probollingo Biru. [IHT]

SPIT: Italian wine
When Italian wine bloggers get together, they drink Mexican beer apparently! Oh okay, and Produttori di Barbaresco Barbaresco with smoked pork ribs.

After two bad wine travel experiences this summer, I finally got it right about ten days ago. Returning by plane from a business trip to the Windy City, I found myself unencumbered by either checked baggage or children. Thus the time was right to return to the storage locker that I couldn’t empty when we moved from Chicago over three years ago.

I bought two Styrofoam shipping containers at a wine store and filled them with 24 bottles, some collectible, others I could ditch if necessary. Since I was flying United, I was worried; readers have posted comments on this blog about rogue United agents refusing to check passengers with wine. And Paul Gregutt recently wrote about the experiences of some Washington wine country travelers who were only allowed five liters of wine (less than seven bottles) because the airline agent thought the TSA limit on spirits also applied to wine. Read more…

Last week we heard about the Palin syrah and because it’s organically grown in Chile, we knew it was the perfect wine for the veep wannabe, Sarah Paleen (as they say in Alaska, methinks). Check out reader Nate’s tasting note.

In anticipation of this Thursday’s debate (when we will need mucho vino), put your country first and decide which wine is best suited to each of the three other candidates! I already had my say during the primaries, so now it is your turn.

To sweeten the pot, I will be giving a away a signed copy of my book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink, a book in which none of these four candidates is mentioned!

Post your pairings for the non-Alaskan candidates here in the comments. Friday after 3PM Eastern, check back to see the winner, selected at random. Everyone, to your snow machines!

Back in January, we ran a poll after a rough patch in the markets asking about how a downturn would affect your wine purchases. Ah, what a different era that seems! Everyone was saying that the economy was fundamentally sound (oh wait, for some that was also just a few weeks ago), we barely knew a sub-prime mortgage from a prime one, and billions of dollars had not yet been pumped into non-vinous liquidity.

How will all this financial turmoil affect your wine consumption? Let’s run the same poll now that we did back then and see if attitudes have changed. If only I could make this poll scientific then I could sell it to Gallup. Hit the comments if you have further, more nuanced thoughts. Or hot stock tips.

Strolling between the burnished steel Enomatic machines, with their bottles behind (plexi)glass and only dispensing nozzles poking through I thought the high-tech Clo wine bar seemed like a reasonable place. Selections included Dr. Konstantin Frank’s Rkatsiteli ($5), Domaine Tempier rose ($9), Nicolas Potel Savigny-les-Beaune ($11), Chateau Musar 1990 white and red ($33 and $30 respectively), and Leoville-Las Cases 1989 ($47).

But then I realized those were for two ounce pours, not full glasses. And with machines doing the pouring, there would be no overfilling.

Located in the Time Warner Center on the fourth floor landing between Masa and Per Se, the space has walls with no ceiling. One long table runs down the middle and you can rub Brioni-clad elbows with the person sitting on the stool next to you.

The menu appears projected down from the ceiling onto the tabletop. Oddly, the focus is not sharp and I felt as if I’d had a few before I’d even ordered anything. A fancy camera sensor detects your finger tip and you can flick through the projection, sometimes flicking farther than you intended. (If you’re into party tricks, spread all ten fingers over the menu and the sensor doesn’t know which one to read.) The menu has a few descriptions including the some bars next to words “earth,” “zip,” and “sweet.” One guy in my party remarked that this nomenclature was one of those things that is supposed to make it easier for you but in the end made him feel dumber since his wine was dry but the graphic was telling him it was medium sweet.

Fork over your credit card to start a tab and the server gives you debit cards and some tiny tumblers–perhaps they are a new line of Riedel, the “O” Thimble? They are so small that they make a two ounce pour look like a normal fill all while looking oddly like a wine shot glass. Anyhoo, to fetch your wine, take your tumbler to the Enomatic of your choice, insert card, punch number, receive wine. The pours are fresh and slightly chilled. Walk around with your friends but don’t share samples with them since you risk not having anything left by the time you return to your stool.

Even though we didn’t have any, apparently small bites are also available (no word on whether these pop out of the wall). And so is some extravagant merchandise such as the “dollypop bottle cooler” ($226), the handblown-to-order Mickey decanter ($495), or a “tripod” wine glass ($70 each).

Speaking of tripod, there was one area where I didn’t have a firm footing: when the wine is self-service, do you tip? More photos after the jump! Read more…

And we’re back with a “where in the wine world” photo! This photo is from harvest time, just last week somewhere in the wine world. But where was it? Feel free to show your powers of deduction for partial credit.

Further details to be revealed later…Send in your photo if you think you can stump us. Read more…

It’s been a little while since I did one of these roundups–and not sure they are of real interest to anyone but my mom (hi mom!)–but here’s another roundup of my book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink, in the news!

Wine & Spirits magazine gave the book 100 points! Or, no, wait, that was the Chateau Latour 2005. But they still had kind words about the book in a review in the October issue calling it “engaging and entertaining!”

The omnivorous Mike Sula asked me several questions and I saw his questions with answers! [Chicago Reader]

Colin Marshall had me on his radio show, Marketplace of Ideas, for a 53 minute discussion about the book. Check out our discussion via iTunes or in his show archive. Actually, poke around the archive for other cool interviews with the likes of my almost doppelganger, economist Tyler Cowen, as well as Steve Wozniak, a founder of Apple Computer, Slate economic columnist Tim Harford, NPR’s Peter Sagal and more.

University of California Press also recorded a (shorter!) podcast. You can also hear from John Winthrop Haeger, author of North American Pinot Noir in another recording on their author podcast page.

The good folks at the New Hampshire Public Radio show, Word of Mouth, were kind enough to have me on. We talked a lot about box wines but also got into the book a bit too. Always fun to talk to an audience in a control state! [NHPR]

Thad at Beyond the Bottle, a wine blog that focuses on the Pacific Northwest, had very kind words!

And Porthos, an Italian wine site had words to say, unfortunately all in Italian!

And if you’ve been waiting for a chance to read and review the book, why not tune in to Wine Book Club?! Every two months they choose a new book for everyone to review and Wine Politics is next up. Read it now and join other bloggers posting reviews on October 28. I’m looking forward to it. Let me know if you have a blog and review the book and I will gladly post a link on this site to your review. But no blog is required to pick up a copy!

I had the good fortune of appearing on Colin Marshall’s NPR show and podcast, “Marketplace of Ideas” recently. Colin asked great questions and gave me a chance to talk about the issues in my book, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink, for my longest interview ever–a whopping 53 minutes! Download it from the show home page or as a podcast from iTunes if you can stand such a dose of Dr. Vino.

One of the questions that he asked me is whether Yellow Tail is a “gateway” wine. In case somehow the ten-million case wine brand from Australia had escaped your attention, they are now following up a billboard and print ad campaign with a $6 million campaign on teevee.

With such scale, the brand owners must source from a wide area; indeed, the geographic origin of the wine is simply stated as “South Eastern Australia,” a vast area that encompasses virtually all Australian vineyards. With such a wide reach and an effort at consistency across bottles and vintages, the wine defies what many of us wine geeks look for in wine, which is individuality and the expression of where the grapes are grown.

So will people come to wine through Yellow Tail and then move on to more expressive wines? In the interview I said that it is a “gateway” wine. Having people reach for wine of any sort will hopefully lead them to enjoy the fruits of the vine at first and then lead some more curious to explore wines from other, more specific, places.

What do you think?

All right people, we’ve done this impossible thing before. But they were all warm ups for this one: okra!

The Brooklyn Guy, who eats local foods and drinks sparkling wine, recently admitted that okra is one of his favorite late summer vegetables at the farmer’s market. He’s not even put off by okra slime! While trying to match his pickled okra really would be impossible, there’s a chance of finding a wine match for his suggestion for cooked okra: “Imagine pureeing stewed okra with hot chilis and coconut milk, and using that to stew some chicken thighs or chunks of beef.” Can you imagine? Do you believe? The challenge is really more the okra/spicy/coconut with the dark meat.

Hit the comments with your suggestions!