Dr Vino's wine blog

Du pain, du vin, du Boursin

Some wine, some bread, some Boursin cheese. So ran the national ad in France for Boursin, linking it to both wine and bread.

But what works in France might not work in America. Specifically, Connecticut.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of meeting Mitch Rapaport and Margaret Sapir. Throwing in the towel on corporate careers (and perhaps in spite of their business training since each holds an MBA), the couple decided to start a Wave Hill Breads, a bakery, as a second career. They apprenticed for three years with a baker in Vermont before finally finding space in Wilton, Connecticut a year and a half ago.

It’s a great bread for wine lovers since they mill their own spelt and rye at the bakery, activating wild yeasts and leading to…fermentation! The excellent, hand made breads made from just six ingredients are currently available at select stores in Fairfield and Westchester Counties (see a photo of them in their bakery here). Foodie Michael Stern even went so far as to say it is possibly the best bread on the East coast!

Mitch had a previous career in branding and thus told me that he took a particular interest in the bread’s bag. He wanted to include a couple of stanzas from the poem “Neighbours” by Robert Service that mentioned both wine and bread. But when he emailed the text to about a dozen friends, he said the opinion was split on whether to include the reference to wine, with the negatives particularly strongly opposed. So he decided to scrap the poem.

He wrote me in a follow-up email that some were “concerned that wine may be taboo in some homes, that parents may be concerned about the influence on children, and that many families contain recovering alcoholics. In other words, why take an unnecessary risk?”

I could possibly understand some people not wanting to put actual wine in front of recovering alcoholics or children–but the mere mention of wine?! Eegads, the Catholic Church with real bread and wine must pose difficulties…See right for the final packaging of the bread, which isn’t exactly short on words. Here’s the text from the poem that Mitch wanted to use:

My neighbour has a field of wheat
And I a rood of vine;
And he will give me bread to eat,
And I will give him wine.
So with my neighbour I rejoice
That we are fit and free,
Content to praise with lusty voice
Bread, Wine and Liberty.

What do you think? Have your say in the comments below!

Wave Hill Breads, 196 Danbury Road, Wilton CT 06897. Tel: 203.762.9595

Related: “You say oinos, I say oenos” [Dr. V]
tags: wine | bread

Apparently this blog is worth more than the paper it’s printed on–oh wait, it’s not even printed on paper!

The first vintage of the American Wine Blog Awards is currently underway. Tom Wark, author of the Fermentation blog and creator of the awards, has arranged a hybrid process of popular nominations followed by seven no-doubt patient and beneficent judges who narrowed the field. I am honored to have been nominated for two categories: Best Wine Blog Writing and Best Overall Wine Blog! The competition is formidable and now the awards swing back to a popular vote among the finalists.

I ask you for your vote. But don’t do it for me. Do it for the children. Specifically my child. When I am in my pajamas with my laptop on my lap, and my three-year-old son turns to me and asks “what are you doing, daddy?” I don’t just want to reply to him that I am wine blogging. With your vote, help me be able to tell him that I am doing “award-winning wine blogging.” Help make him proud of his pajama-clad dad.

Since I am originally from Cook County, IL, I can proudly urge you to check the nominees in each category and then vote early and often.

Vote here
Best Wine Blog Writing
Best Overall Wine Blog

Thank you for your support.

Related: “Tasting sized pours: Dr. Vino edition”
“NY Sun sets on 2006”

tags: wine | wine blogs

So what will you be doing for your sweetheart this Valentine’s Day? It’s likely that it will include some wine, food and flowers. Here are a few suggestions for the wine — the rest is up to you.

Can you find a good pinot noir under $20? I put this to the test recently asking some wine shops for their faves. Some clerks recoiled in horror at the prospect of finding a worthwhile pinot noir–the grape praised by Miles in Sideways–for a mere $20. Part of the problem is that since Miles told everyone to have pinot noir producers have rushed to bring more to market even though there was little more to be had. Thus many “pinots” under $20 contain the legal minimum of 75 percent pinot noir and then jack the rest up with syrah or zinfandel trying to make a dark, lush wine not dissimilar to the very merlot that Miles disdained.

So thanks to your generous click-throughs on ads on this site, I deployed my tasting budget gathering 12 bottles of pinot noir under $20 and a few friends. The wines hailed from Burgundy, the grape’s ancestral home, as well as California, Italy, Chile, and Oregon. All were tasted blind, which provided some unusual surprises.

On the whole I would say that the category produces some good rewards but is not without risk. Think of the degree of difficulty as equivalent to the quadruple back flip off a low board. But the reward is a very food friendly wine with great fruit and acidity and little of the tannin that wine newbies find offputting–yet sufficient depth and intrigue to fascinate wine geeks like me. In sum, an excellent date wine. And because of the light price tag, you can deploy the rest of your Valentine’s Day budget elsewhere.

So here they are, in order of preference:

Au Bon Climat, Santa Barbara County, 2005. $18. Find this wine
The hands-down winner. A wonderful, almost Burgundian nose of earth and fruit. On the palate, the wine has cherry notes, cola, a certain pleasant earthiness, and a surprisingly nice level of acidity given its SoCal origin. The finish even has a bit of an arc like a serious pinot. Very food friendly and hugely date friendly.

O’Reillys, pinot noir, Oregon 2005. $19 Find this wine
The Irish are known for their wine. OK, maybe not. But they might be better known for it after giving the O’Reillys pinot a shot. This O’Reilly factor comes from the no-spin-zone of Oregon: a delicate balance of cherry notes and acidity make this a bottle whose contents disappear quickly.

Hofstatter, pinot nero, Alto Adige, 2005. $18. Find this wine
Mentioned previously on this blog, the Hofstatter fared well during this blind tasting. This pinot, light in color, has a sense of place in the bottle. But don’t worry about the Dolomites where it came from: the place for you should be on your dining room table.

Fleur, pinot noir, Carneros, 2005. $15 Find this wine
This pinot is easy drinking. Soft, straight forward pinot noir, it paired great at our tasting with the Jasper Hill cheese called “constant bliss.” With the bouquet of flowers on the label, the wine in your glass, and the cheese on your plate, you’re as close as I can take you to Valentine’s pleasure.

And finally…Roederer Estate, brut rose, for $20+ Find this wine
If you must have a great-tasting pink bubbly this V-Day, you’re going to have to pay a couple of three dollars over our limit. But it is 60% pinot noir! This Roederer Estate is a great way to go. It pairs well with many foods–but not sure how it is in the jacuzzi.

If you have a favorite pinot noir under $20 feel free to post a comment below.

Related: “Biodynamics in Oregon”
Aging pinots

tags: wine recommendations | pinot noir

Check out my next wine class at NYU starting Feb 1.

But also check out this NYT story from a couple of weeks ago. It turns out researchers think education–yes, education!–is phenomenally important in having a long life. Roll the tape:

The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income.

Year after year, in study after study, says Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, education “keeps coming up.”

And, health economists say, those factors that are popularly believed to be crucial — money and health insurance, for example, pale in comparison.

Now couple that with the recent studies on resveratrol and the class may just be the fountain of youth! Ponce de Leon, come hither and enroll!

We will be talking about and tasting cool things like what the heck is going on in these posts.

* Results may vary. Not guaranteed.

tags: wine | wine classes | nyc

Trivia: When is an American wine not an American wine?

Answer: When it is from overseas!

According to federal regulations on labeling, for a wine to be labeled as generic “American wine” only 75 percent must come from the good old US of A. According to the TTB, they don’t have a rule on where the other 25 percent comes from. Hmm, truthiness…

This is now being exploited by California producers according to a story on Decanter.com. In the story, an unnamed source cites The Wine Group’s Franzia brand as exploiting the regulatory gap. The California Association of Winegrape Growers is lobbying against it. Bulk wine imports are up 229 percent in the past year according to the story. Meanwhile California had a bountiful harvest last year.

It’s hard to get fired up over jug wine. But American jug wine needs to be all American, dammit! Call your member of Congress and tell him or her to put this issue ahead of a flag burning amendment.

Or just tell the wine regulatory authority, the TTB, that you are for truth in labeling.

phone: (202) 927-8210
Fax: (202) 927-8525
ttbquestions@ttb.treas.gov

tags: wine | wine labels

On an October trip to Germany, I visited a number of supermarkets, and inevitably I found myself browsing the wine department. Out of chauvinist curiosity — or perhaps Schadenfreude — I always made sure to look for the wine offerings from the United States.

In nearly every supermarket I visited, including some smaller shops outside of city centers, there were two predominant Californian wine brands available. Gallo and, secondarily, Fetzer. (Interestingly, Chilean and South African brands are more prominent and varied on store shelves.)

But one wine in particular caught my eye. I noticed a Gallo wine that was called “Gallo Sierra Valley Merlot.” I thought, “Sierra Valley? Where the heck is that?!”

Visitors to California looking for Sierra Valley will be disappointed. I looked closer at the bottle, to find a tiny “(tm)” after the name. Indeed, there is no Sierra Valley — it’s an “appellation” invented by Gallo’s marketing department for sending bulk-produced wines to Europe with fancier labels.

The company’s website for the Sierra Valley brand offers this description:

Let us introduce you to California. The grapes for our Ernest & Julio Gallo Sierra Valley are sourced from our sun-drenched vineyards throughout California. By balancing Old World heritage with New World innovation, we harness the potential of the California terroir and bring it to you in the bottle.

“Vineyards throughout California” allow them to “harness the potential of the California terroir“??! One terroir for an entire state? Obtained by blending wines from the Central Valley? Who wrote this?

Sadly, it turns out that “Sierra Valley” and its broad notion of terroir are not limited to Germany, or even Europe. The brand is sold to Canada and Japan as well. For many people, sadly, this bulk wine with the phony-baloney appellation is the only exposure to Californian wine they can readily receive.

— Mark Ashley, Upgrade: Travel Better

tags: wine | Gallo Sierra Valley | Germany

“I will make as much selling grape plants off of two acres this year as I did many years on 1,000 acres of corn and raising 3,000 head of hogs,” said Stan Olson in today’s NYT. Olson used to grow corn and soybeans on hundreds of acres in Iowa west of Des Moines. Now he supplies many of the state’s 70 wineries with vine cuttings.

I observed a similar shift in Walla Walla, Washington earlier this year. There, one apple grower had uprooted some of his orchard to plant grapes. Even though apples had a higher profit per acre at the farm gate, with the added value of making wine, grapes were the winner.

And then there’s the tourism, which is even being felt in Iowa according to today’s NYT story.

Summerset [Iowa] has also become a tourist destination, with concerts on the weekends, themed parties and grape-stomps that draw thousands. Tourists will actually pay for the privilege to stomp grapes.

With growing demand from wine consumers, producers are popping up at a staggering rate. In Iowa, there were 15 wineries in 2000, which represents a growth rate akin to an internet stock to reach the current 70. However, they join an already-crowded field that is oversupplied with wine. But they have an edge that non-descript wine from California doesn’t have: they’re local. And that seems to go down easy.

tags: wine | iowa | american wine

I recently tried to order wine from a San Francisco retailer to my home in New York. They don’t ship to New York

Later, I put a great case of hard-to-find wines in my virtual shopping cart from an Oregon web vendor. Only trouble when it came time to check out: they don’t ship to New York.

I called a retailer in Chicago to put together an order to be sent to me. Sadly, no NY shipping. I queried why and eventually the owner wrote me back that his lawyer advised them not to ship to New York.

I thought that the Supreme Court’s ruling from last year would facilitate New York (and other) wine lovers in having more access to wines. Yes, buying from wineries is great but buying from other stores in other states also has advantages. What’s going on? Please post any insights or experiences in the comments.

tags: wine | direct shipping | buying wine