Dr Vino's wine blog

What do Motörhead, AC/DC, Whitesnake, the Rolling Stones, and Dave Matthews have in common? Well, besides never being in the same playlist on one person’s iTunes library, these musicians have all released their own wine labels recently. Sadly, none of them could probably identify the vineyards used for making said wines. (Perhaps Matthews could; he is apparently a vintner in Virginia but this wine is something different from California.)

I understand why these wines come about: someone approaches the celebrities as yet another way to cash in on their fame. But what I don’t understand is who buys them. You like Motörhead? Fine, crank Ace of Spades up to 11. But leave the wine selection to someone else.

I’m holding out for the Keith Jarrett wine, an improvisational blend that has a 20-minute finish. Or the Bob Marley wine. (Oops, I guess pot wine is already available, apparently.)

New for the 2009 vintage: Sea Smoke of Santa Barbara is putting “California Grand Cru” on the label.

The term is pure marketing. Needless to say, there is no codified “cru” system of California. However, the term does not fall afoul of the protected terms negotiated in the EU-US accord on place names. The labels previously read “Santa Barbara County California.”

After eyeing it for some time, Bob Davids acquired an apparently gorgeous, 350-acre parcel in the Santa Rita Hills in 1999 for his label Sea Smoke. According to North American Pinot Noir, it was previously a bean field. He immediately developed about 100 acres into vineyards; the first vintage was 2001. The winery produces four pinot noirs and two chardonnays; all bear the term “California Grand Cru” for the 2009 vintage.

Queried about their decision to use their term, Director of Winemaking Victor Gallegos pointed me to this Wine Spectator article ($) in which James Laube called Sea Smoke “an important part of Santa Barbara’s wine scene and one of its ‘grand cru’ properties.”

YOUNTVILLE, CA
WHAT: A gated, hilltop estate on 56 acres off of Silverado Trail that was the former residence of Robert and Margrit Mondavi.

HOW MUCH: $13.9 million reserve, down from $25 million. Auction to occur next month.

SIZE: Two bedrooms; 11,500 sq ft. Includes 50-foot-long pool in the living room where Mr. Mondavi regularly exercised and a roof that opens up over the pool.

OUTDOOR SPACE: Guest house; two outdoor, lighted tennis courts. No vineyards.

CORBIERES, France
HOW MUCH: Planted vineyards at $6,000 per acre.

BURGUNDY, France
HOW MUCH: Planted vineyards at about $1.3 million per acre, if available.

Gourmet, even though it’s not even in print any more, obviously has been on different winery tours than I have! To wit:

In wine country, pot-infused wines are the open secrets that present themselves in unmarked bottles at the end of winemaker dinners and very VIP tours (it bears mentioning that most winemakers are cagey enough to keep the manufacture of such wines far from winery grounds). The wines range in style and intensity as broadly as “normal” wines and winemakers do. Some practitioners of the fruit-forward, higher-alcohol, New World style take a similarly aggressive approach to infusing wine. “I know a winemaker that takes a couple of barrels a year and puts a ton of weed in it and lets it steep, and that wine is just superpotent,” says a James Beard Award–winning chef, who also asked not to be named. Henry, though, makes more classically styled wines, and with that reserve comes a more subtle hand with the cannabis. Adjusted for volume, “special” wines can range from under a pound of marijuana per 59-gallon barrel to over 4 pounds per barrel. The result is a spectrum ranging from a gentle, almost absinthe-like effect to something verging on oenological anesthetic.

Just reading this is giving me the munchies…what food pairs with marijuana wine (cuvée MJ?)–brownies?!? Where does this weedy wine fall on the natural-spoof wine scale? Marijuanipulated?

PS: has anyone heard of this? How widespread is it?

SIPPED: snappy advice
GQ.com has a fun list of 25 wine tips that may run counter to expectations (cool photos too). If you like your tips in book form, I mentioned many of these items in Dr. Vino’s guide, A Year of Wine.

SIPPED: Yeoman wine
James Conaway, who wrote Napa a couple of decades ago, now turns his eyes and palate to Virginia and its wines on the pages of Garden & Gun (really, who doesn’t get their wine news there?).

SPIT: brainwashing
As we did here recently, Matt Kramer also expresses distaste with the idea of “brainwashing” among wine consumers [WineSpecatator.com]

SPIT: left on the block
Sign o’ the times? Lafite fails to sell at auction in Hong Kong. “There weren’t so many buyers.” [Bloomberg, WSJ]

SPIT: AOC
So what if Anjou producer Olivier Cousin wrote “Anjou Olivier Cousin” on his box? Well, the authorities that preserve origins already have a monopoly on those initials so his wrist has been slapped the spanking paddle has been broken out with large fines threatened. [levindesamis]

SIPPED: Bacchanal and bananas
The Montmartre Harvest Festival is underway in Paris, celebrating the one remaining vineyard there, complete with kids’ programming, a parade for Bacchus and a tribute to France’s overseas holdings (not sure of the wine angle there…).

SPIT: brown bags
Wine picnics in Paris: what NYC could emulate if it weren’t for open container laws…enjoy a last gasp of summer this weekend! [Enjoy the photo above and more at WineTerroirs]

The New York Times magazine ran an charticle on Sunday that compiled the picks of 18 wine industry types. The category? Wines under $12.

But the list raised questions for Ray Isle of Food & Wine, since he tweeted:

The lack of California wines is understandable for a couple of reasons. Yes, California makes a lot of wine and much of it is under $12. But, as we have discussed before, precious little of the California wine under $12 is estate wine; rather it is often assembled from far-flung vineyards in steel tanks so large they could double as nuclear silos. The two American wines on the list, from NY and OR, are both from single estates.

The people on the list, mostly wine directors at restaurants, don’t exactly champion tanker wine. They are trend-setters or at the very least someone who wants to help a diner or customer discover something new that they might only find at a restaurant or specialty shop. Also, the composite nature of the list means that one author didn’t save spaces for certain categories as each contributor gave a top pick. As to the absence of other new world countries, perhaps that was a function of the taste preferences of the people surveyed too.

Anyway, good wine under $12 is always of interest and Ray raises some good questions. What do you think?

If you’ve turned on PBS during the past couple of nights, you’ve probably encountered slow zooms and pans of black and white photographs. And the people in those photos may have been women protesting saloons or men using hatchets to destroy barrels of whiskey. Yes, these are scenes from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s three-part series, Prohibition.

I’ve seen the first episode (available here online), entitled “A Nation of Drunkards,” that chronicles the social and political forces that led to enacting Prohibition. Part of it was that men were drinking Herculean amounts of whiskey. As Ken Burns told Stephen Colbert, men were each putting away 180 bottles of whiskey a year. To which Colbert replied: “How did we conquer the West?” Another factor was the rise in political activism among women. The episode is well done and very much worth watching.

But the one that I am most looking forward to is the concluding episode that airs tonight. It’s not because Read more…

The Phoenix diocese just got news from their bishop: you can survive on bread alone. During Mass, that is, since he is removing wine from the communion, save for a few times a year.

Bishop Thomas Olmsted has taken the action as part of a new translation of the Mass that will start in coming months. The Arizona Republic reports that no other diocese in the country will be removing wine from the Communion. Since 1975, bread and wine have been available to parishioners during Catholic Communion. Bread and wine are believed to be transformed during the service into the body and blood of Christ. There is no obligation to take both and the Diocese of Phoenix’ press release underscored that “… bread alone makes it possible to receive all the fruit of the Eucharistic grace.”

Criticism mounted of the wine-less mass. So the chalice may not disappearing a Mass near you soon. Unless you live in Phoenix.