Dr Vino's wine blog

SPIT: fake wine
Italian police (these cops?) have made arrests in a case where about $1 million in cheap wine passed off as expensive. The scariest part is one official who says that the lack of border controls in the EU means that ‘It is illegal to transport unlabeled wine across European borders, but… it’s very difficult to enforce the law.” [Decanter]

SIPPED: beer writing
Michael Jackson is dead at 65–no, not THAT Michael Jackson. Instead, the British beer writer. Is he remembered for his tasting notes? Not so much. I liked this praise from a colleague in his NYT obit: “He was simply the best beer writer we’ve ever known. He told wonderful stories about beer, breweries and far away places. He told the story of beer through people, and he was humorous and erudite at the same time.” [NYT]

SPIT: 2007 vintage, Bordeaux version
Bordeaux may allow chaptalisation, or the addition of sugar to the wine to raise the alcohol level. Remember that rain I reported on in June? Seems like there wasn’t enough ripeness in the end. Funny, and we were all just thinking it was warming up–the Bordelais had been adding water in recent vintages to cut high alcohol levels. [Decanter]

SPIT: glass bottles
Fully 95 percent of wine bottles in the EU come from three manufacturers: Saint-Gobain, Owens-Illinois INC and Ireland’s Ardagh Glass. There’s already a shortage and importers and distributors are complaining to the EU, hoping to break the glass oligopoly. Why? Probably because price increases eat into their margins and can’t be passed on to the consumer. Think about the box, people! [AFX News]

SPIT: bulk wine
The EU puts the distillation of bulk wine up for a tender offer. [Reuters]

SIPPED: Indiana reform
Thanks to a federal court decision, things might just get better for Indiana wine consumers. [Indy Star]

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SIPPED: Nose jobs
Twenty five cops have been trained as sommeliers to sniff out fraud in Italy (reacting to fraud in olive oil, perhaps?). That would make for great TV! “‘The ability to remain lucid is at the core of every undercover activity, without exception,” said one of the officers. [Decanter]

SIPPED: bagged wine
Not as in a blind tasting bag, as in the wine pouch–with handle! [wine.co.za]

Sipped AND Spit: the 2007 harvest
Hottest in 400 years makes it “another 2003”–decidedly mixed to me. But this reporter thinks it’s better: “Fiercely hot, true, for months now, but without that pitilessly dry, hot spring that we had four years ago.” [Guardian]

SPIT: high alcohol wines
A journalist suffers a boozy night and then limps off to taste through Tesco new a line of low-alcohol wines. [Guardian, thanks Mark!]

SPIT: Wine on Bali
An overhaul of the corrupt Customs agency has left this resort island virtually dry. “It is becoming a serious issue,” said Michael Burchett, the general manager of the five-star Conrad hotel and head of the Bali Hotel Association. “Some hotels are reporting a 40 per cent reduction in the number of items available on their wine lists. If something doesn’t happen soon most of the hotels are going to have very serious problems by the end of September.” [FT.com]

SPIT: warm beer
“In the UK, beer lost 5 percent year-over-year, while wine gained 6 percent. Rose wine has enjoyed the greatest sales boom – up 188% since 2005 to hit 49 billion liters this year.” [Sky news]

SPIT: Cipriani
After guilty plea to tax evasion, the NYC restaurant owner who may lose liquor licenses [AP]

SPIT: Punch & Judy closes, ditto for Bourgeois Pig Cafe. See the updated NYC wine bar map.

We wine tasters are not the only ones tasting under blind conditions–consider this excerpt from the excellent August 13 New Yorker article about fraud in the Italian olive oil market. But we’re more social, since many wine tasting panels don’t isolate tasters in cubicles but actually welcome discussion among the tasters. Also, I’d gladly slurp–sorry, do a strippaggio–with wine instead of EVOO any day. To Italy, after the jump: Read more…

Jack Nicholson, wine critic? [Gawker, via TR]

Up the Nile, with a paddle?
Mark Vadon, CEO of the successful gemstone retailer, BlueNile, joins the board of wine.com. But can he help the retailer, which has undergone many revisions of their business plan over the years? [CNN]

Wine and capitalism
“The laws of capitalism are, he argued, ‘not adapted to wine because behind wine there is history and tradition,’ and because vines take years to develop, have a life span of decades and do not provide the quick returns required by the market.” Roger Torreilles, president of the wine producer Cave des Vignerons in Baixas, near Perpignan, quoted in the NYT.

Harvest heats up
In Italy, harvests have begun. Global warming anyone? On NPR, some St. Emilion growers say they don’t mind.

Drunken chicken?
Yes, this NYT recipe is drunken, but Shaoxing wine is not grape wine.

Sipped: Leaping into retirement
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars was sold for $185 million. The legendary founder, Warren Winiarski, now 78, will stay on three more years in a consultative role–just long enough for the two rival movies about the Paris tasting to appear in theaters! The buyers are Ste. Michelle, a unit of UST, and Piero Antinori, who will own 85% and 15% respectively. [Reuters]

Sipped and spit: Gallo buys William Hill and Canyon Road! Duckhorn almost sold! [SF Chronicle]

Spit: Ratatouille wine
Before one bottle was on shelves, Disney canceled a Ratatouille branded wine. Was it because the wine was French while Disney’s home is in California, coincidentally also the home of 90% of American wine production? Was it the idea of selling a wine in an animated movie (at least ostensibly) aimed at kids (though wine features prominently in the film)? Or was it a new puritanical streak since they recently banned smoking from their movies? [LA Times]

Spit: high alcohol wine
Randy Dunn, maker of Howell Mountain Cabernet, says “higher alcohol wines should stop.” I guess we know how he would vote in the poll! [Appellation America]

Sommeliers unite!
“Almost a dozen” sommeliers in Melbourne are boycotting Tasmanian wine from Gunns Limited because of a perceived deforestation through their new pulp mill. The wine waiters may not be the big guns but, according to one, “Gunns have got a lot of money and a lot of power and we don’t. But we have the power, not through money, but through influence.” [“Pulp friction“]

Red hot red wine
“Château Lafite Rothschild 1996 has been selling at £7,000 ($14,300) per case, up from £4,200 six months ago; Château Mouton Rothschild 1998 has been on the market for £2,600, up from £1,500; and Château Latour 2004 has sold for £3,200, up from £2,050.” [FT.com]

The new pink?
“Citrusy and bright, Picpoul de Pinet is lively enough to be an aperitif, complex enough to drink with cheese or seafood and — no small consideration — affordable enough to indulge in a second bottle while waiting for a perfect partner for more than food.” [LA Times]

Attention deficit
“Financially we don’t mean very much to the state wine distributors, compared to Robert Mondavi,” Mike Reynolds of Hall winery told CNN. “Distributors look at the bigger brands,” he explained, and “our volume does not justify their attention.” A good point in general, but specifically, maybe the $70 million Gehry-designed winery will get the distributors’ attention for the Halls? [CNN]

A contingent future
Buy six and get one…option? Yes, that’s the new futures policy at Cloof Winery in South Africa. Buy six bottles of the 2006 Very Sexy Shiraz and get one option to buy a bottle of their top wine, Crucible. No word on whether the options themselves are tradeable, or what the demand is. [allafrica.com]

Brands. They make the world go round. Or so the theory goes in a world of global competition.

Some may say that a failing of France, the land of tens of thousands of wine producers, is the lack of big brands. In an effort at consolidation, several cooperatives have come together to try to make and market a new line of wines under the name of Chamarré.

As I zoomed by the large Chamarré stand at Vinexpo, I had a chance to pick up a pamphlet and hear the two-minute story on the wines. The highlights include consolidation of the 13,000 growers under one winemaker, R. Rosari, and rapid growth since they have sold 100,000 cases as they approach their first anniversary of the brand. US launch/expansion will follow in the coming months following the initial push was in the UK (search for the wine).

Soon after leaving their stand, I bumped into two anglophone wine guys who are specialists in the global wine biz. I couldn’t help getting their reaction to this new wine.

Global Guy 1: “Chamarré? I can just see a guy in America ordering that at a bar! Sha-mar-ay. And what if you forget the accent? Then it is Sha-marre. Eww.”

Global Guy 2: “They just don’t have the label right. What’s up with the butterfly?”

Global Guy 1: “What’s this? Four lines of wines? Oh, now THAT’s easy! Wow, they really don’t get it do they. And look–a shiraz, grenache, merlot–the famous SGM blend!” [note: it’s usually GSM for grenache-syrah-mourvedre]

And so on…Unfortunately I wasn’t able to head back to the stand to get their opinions (and gather my own) on what the wines actually taste like. But overall presentation is a potentially large part of the buying experience, so the globetrotters’ reaction was interesting at one level.

What do you think? Will this butterfly take off in the US?

chamarre.com

House of Mondavi’s crumbling foundation
“But by early 2004, Robert Mondavi Corp.’s reputation for high-quality wines had eroded, and the House of Mondavi was rent by conflict. His hand-picked successor, son Michael, had been removed as chairman, and the Mondavi family was on the brink of losing control of the company. Indeed, behind Michael’s ouster was a closely guarded secret: Robert faced a personal financial crisis that threatened to embarrass him and destroy his legacy.” [WSJ, with video!]

Are wine ratings pointless?
“A wine gets rated one time — a nanosecond in its life cycle,” says Sebastiani winemaker Mark Lyon. “From then on, its fate is determined. Aren’t wines always evolving? Shouldn’t they be rated every year?” From a story by W. Blake Gray in today’s SF Chron

Slow drinkers
“Boxed wine really does keep for six weeks, but would we keep one in our refrigerator for that long? There are so many interesting, affordable wines on the shelves that we’d rather taste several wines than one in a big box.” – John Brecher and Dorothy Gaiter. But what about the low low price per glass if you can find a good one?!? [WSJ]

Do futures have no future?
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to play this game? I hope 2006 will not be a success. I hope it will really show the Bordelais the shortcomings of the system.” –Jancis Robinson in a podcast on Bordeaux futures, aka “en primeur”