Dr Vino's wine blog

It is time consuming to run a blog. And harvest time around a winery involves lots of long days. So hats off to those who can combine the two and bring us commentary and photos (love those photos!) from the crush. I am skeptical of most corporate blogs since they seem the antithesis of the democratic, unfiltered nature of blogging. Winery blogs, however, are not only sales and marketing pitches but also have the advantage of giving those of us not present a window to the harvest. I’m just waiting for the first “winery cam” in the vineyard…So here are a few, and thanks to the newish wine blogger NoBullGrape for finding a couple of these.

Chateau Palmer: A chronicle/blog from a leading Bordeaux estate. Interestingly, their harvest labor doesn’t come from the south (Africa) but from the north (Denmark).

Sokol Blosser: Weekly updates from the newly certified organic winery in Oregon

Domaine de la Gramiere: First vintage for some Americans in Languedoc (no this is not a Peter Mayle novel/screenplay), though we’re ready for the next update!

OK, not a winery blog but photographer and fellow wine blogger Bertrand Celce has been in Hungary for the harvest and has excellent photos.

And Carolyn Tillie also has some harvest notes and photos from her California Grape Vine Blog.

Constellation, the world’s largest wine producer, continues its acquisitive strategy with the announcement today of a $900 million unsolicited buyout offer for Vincor, Canada’s largest winemaker.

Constellation digested Robert Mondavi last year for about $1.1 billion but the Fairport, NY based company did not snare either Southcorp or the juicy bits of Pernod-Ricard earlier this year. Vincor rejected Constellation’s C$31 per share cash offer, a 32% premium over Tuesday’s closing price, calling it “opportunistic and inadequate” according to Bloomberg News. Constellation’s shares lost $1.33, or 5.2 percent, to $24.23 in early trading.

What does this mean for American consumers? Not a great deal but it does underscore the trend toward consolidation continues in the wine world.

For Canadian consumers, Jancis Robinson writes on her web site today that she hopes it will be an opportunity to instill greater truth in wine labeling.

As the temperatures cool, it’s time to think about shipping wine around the country again. And this year is the first year after the Supreme Court’s decision that liberalized shipping, which makes this fall all the more exciting.

But one thorn in the side of the newly liberated consumer is the cost of shipping. I’m on the mailing list of one cult winery who wanted to charge $68 to ship a case of wine from California to me in New York. While $5.67 per bottle shipping may not seem like a lot if the wine is $100 a bottle, it does raise the bar pretty high for what kind of wine is going to be crisscrossing the country this fall.

How could $5.67 a bottle reasonable? Since many wineries don’t charge sales tax (although this varies by winery and by state) the shipping cost could be thought of as simply a sales tax. Using a rate of 9% sales tax, paying $5.67 per bottle shipping would mean that you need to buy a $63 bottle of wine ($756 a case) before you are coming out ahead. And this is with a case price on shipping–half cases or single bottles are decidedly less economical running well into the teens per bottle for shipping.

Does it need to be this way? Not always. Yes, fuel prices are rising, which makes transportation more expensive. But wineries have two options to lower costs when it comes to shipping.

First, they can join a trade group such as the Wine Institute or the Family Winemakers of California (check out their good new “buying wine” section to tell at a glance what the rules are for your state). Both groups have negotiated with shippers to offer reduced rates to their members.

Or they could eat some of the shipping costs. After all the winery’s profits are exponentially greater with direct shipping. In a hypothetical example, a winery sells a case of wine to a distributor for $100, making a $30 profit. The distributor then sells it to the retailer for $150, who then sells it to the consumer for $225. So when the winery charges $225 a case to sell directly to the consumer, they are making $155 per case instead of $30. With a $500 case they could be making over $300 profit. The wineries could use some of that added profit to get the wine to the consumer more cheaply by, say, offering shipping for $30/case or capping it at 9%.

Unfortunately, the wineries will probably experience unprecedented demand this fall, meaning they can charge what they want and making everything I’ve said in this post completely moot. If direct shipping is to go beyond cult wines and into the mainstream though, the shipping costs will have to come down.

Wine and New York or some blend thereof have been in the news this week. Here’s a recap:

Order wine
The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story Thursday saying that, in a twist on the usual wine flows, Californians can now order wine directly from New York wineries. The catch? The wine is actually worth ordering and they provide a list of their favorite NY producers from the Finger Lakes as well as Long Island.

Residents of Oregon can now also order wines from New York with the announcement of a new reciprocal agreement yesterday. This New York resident, for one, is certainly happy to have direct shipping for the wines of Oregon just in time for the cooler weather (now we just have to work on getting the shipping prices down).

Harvest wine
The New Yorker had a “Talk of the Town” piece about Latif Jiji’s nearly 30 year old grape vine at his home — on E. 92nd St between Park and Lex. Even though the grapes are not the traditional wine grapes (vitis vinifera), they still make wine every year. The wine’s name you might wonder? Château Latif.

Shop wine
The NY Times mentions the fact that Jean-Luc Le Dû, formerly sommelier at Daniel, now has his own wine shop of mostly hard-to-find wines though there are some weeknight wines too. Le Dû’s Wines, 600 Washington Street (Morton Street), in Greenwich Village, 212.924.6999

Doors opened September 6th at Appellation New York, a new shop specializing in organic and even biodynamic wines. Scott Pactor, a former accountant, became a wine geek and decided to follow his passion with his profession. Scott opens a bottle every day at 5:30 for a free tasting. 156 10th Avenue (@ 19th Street) in Chelsea. 212.741.9474 Closed Mondays.

Drink wine
Over 60 restaurants will be pairing the wines and foods of New York in October. www.newyorkwinesanddines.org for more.

…And finally, since we’re on all things New York, Time Out New York mentions Shane Welch, brew master at Sixpoint Craft Ale, who calls NYC tap water a “godsend for brewers” and uses it in his brew.

The state-run Liquor Control Board of Pennsylvania acts as distributor and retailer for alcohol in the state. The monopoly claims that bulk buying keeps the final price to the consumer low. Last month our Senior Visiting Philadelphia Wine Consumer reported his disappointment with the prices in Pennsylvania despite the promotional materials.

Thanks to an article yesterday on the state’s difficult decisions in this post-5/16 era (oh yeah, that was the date of the recent Supreme Court case on direct wine shipments), we now have a better understanding of why. Consider these markups:

Currently, if a case of wine costs the LCB $100, there is the standard 30 percent markup plus a $10.80 per case “bottle handling” change, plus the 18 percent flood tax (enacted in 1936 and never repealed), plus a “rounding up” feature (to the nearest 99 cents) plus the 6 percent sales tax (or 7 percent in Allegheny and Philadelphia counties).

That brings the $100 case of wine to $166.42, which makes it hard for restaurants to add a profit margin to a glass of wine and keep it affordable to customers, he said.

Yikes. They were doing great with the 30% markup, which is low for the industry but the per case tax and the flood tax (?!) certainly are sobering. But with $200 million in revenue from the flood tax alone, any efforts at repeal are likely to meet with stiff resistance–if not a stiff drink.

You’re in a pricey supermarket buying food for a dinner party, are tempted by the wines but wonder, could this $39 Clos du Val 2001 be cheaper elsewhere? You scan the barcode on the back of the bottle with your infrared UPC zapper built into your Blackberry and, presto, several other vendors are displayed with other prices.

This futuristic scenario is where Google is taking us in the world of search according to John Battelle who has a new book out entitled, “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture” (Penguin). An extract that appeared in the Weekend Financial Times ( from the UK version, which was longer than the US version. Scroll way down or search “whole foods” to find the wine part).

In my view, the web does offer great potential for price savings. But it is not Google providing this information. Wine Searcher has seized the lead in such a service but it also demonstrates the challenges since retailers have to provide their price data (actually they have to pay to have their price data included and consumers pay to access premium results, which makes for a lucrative business model). But this sort of searching is best done from home, before setting out (if you even need to go out at all and can’t just have it delivered), not from inside the shop.

There are plenty of other things that it would be great to run through a mobil(e) price check, but I’ll save those for my own killer app. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go meet with my venture capitalists….

Cool weather has delayed the California harvest, or crush, which is now underway. Bloomberg reports that the harvest will be the biggest in four years, not exactly what the industry needs as it still grapples with oversupply. But the growers and winemakers in the article sound bullish.

I recently received this correspondence and photo from Patrick Campbell at Laurel Glen in Sonoma:

9/15/05

Greetings from a foggy and unseasonably cool September.

We’re just now pulling out of a couple of weeks of heavy fog and cool temperatures here in the north coastal region of California. By now, most of the Chardonnay would have been picked and growers in the warmers areas would be assembling crews to bring in cabernet. Not this year! Most of the chardonnay is still on the vine and basically in a holding pattern until the weather warms up again.

Fortunately, the weatherman says that we’re in for at least a couple of weeks of rainless, seasonally normal temperatures beginning Sunday. And looking on the bright side, flavors are particularly vivid this year, perhaps because of the cool summer? No blockbuster, overripe, overblown cabernets will likely be made this year, which will be a nice change!

Also fortunately, as you can see from the attached photo [above], for many days the fog has not extended as high as Laurel Glen: while the vineyards in the valley are enclosed in the grey and cool fog, we’re bathed in bright sunlight for most of the day.

To be continued!

The theme for the next Wine Blogging Wednesday has been announced: New World Pinot Noir. This international, transnational, multinational phenomenon unites bloggers to collectively review wines around a certain theme. October’s WBW is selected/hosted by Jens at Cincinnati Wine Garage.

I sat out the last WBW since the theme was pairing wine and chocolate. While I enjoy both wine and chocolate, I’m not such a fan of them together. But Pinot Noir, that’s another story…I’m sure that you have lots of faves in this post-Sideways era, so I hope you’ll join in posting your notes too on October 5.