Dr Vino's wine blog

Alabama’s liquor authority has banned a label depicting a nude nymph (side view!) from a 1895 poster. The wine, Cycles Gladiator, made by Soledad, California-based Hahn, retails for about $10 and had sold about 600,000 cases since 2006. Although it is available in the other 49 states, Alabama regulations prohibit labels with “a person posed in an immoral or sensuous manner,” according to NBC Los Angeles. (Search for Cycles Gladiator at retail)

Since when is nude bicycle flying considered immoral or sensuous? Imprudent and unsafe would be more like it. If the nymph were in today’s Tour de France, she would at least be required to have a helmet!

In other important wine and cycling news, after the grueling day up Le Mont Ventoux, Lance Armstrong tweeted: ““went to dinner with the RadioShack guys [his new team]…had a few more glasses of wine than I normally would.” And after the tour he posted a pic enjoying a (large) glass of wine with cycling legend Eddie Merckx. The man clearly enjoys wine, so how long until we see an Armstrong celebrity wine? If it ever arrives, he will, no doubt, be fully clothed.

SIPPED: raging keggerThe crew of a US Navy frigate “made history” by delivering wine to the Tower of London! Yes, check out the size of that barrel in the reduced sized crop of the AP photo to the right! The ship was the first foreign ship to participate in ceremonial festivities wherein all passing ships must render some cargo for protection from the Constable. The crew had the option of giving rum, oysters, mussels, cockles or rushes but opted for the wine instead. But which wine was it? [AP]

SPIT: wine and coke
Bulgarian authorities found bottles of Bolivian wine (yes, it exists!) to contain massive amounts of liquid cocaine! According to Decanter.com, all but 68 of 1,020 bottles of Bodegas Kohlberg wine were found to be liquid cocaine. Wow, that would have been a shocker to open one of those from your local store! More evidence that mixing wine and coke is never a good idea…

SIPPED: Department of What The…
Decanter also reports that a winery in Brazil (yes, there are some!) will be making its first ice wine. The Perico Winery is making the wine for export in 2010 from a vineyard 1,300 meters (4,265 ft) above sea level.

SIPPED: Grande Pinot
Starbucks is going local. In a store rolling out this week in Seattle, the chain will be trying out a “coffeehouse” format, eschewing the ‘Bucks name and logo. According to a story in the Seattle Times that includes tales of their local snooping, the location “will serve wine and beer, host live music and poetry readings and sell espresso from a manual machine.” But will they have grande nonfat Pinot?

SIPPED: Desperation!
The Swiss water purification company, Katadyn, has a wine-like product for non-discriminating, thirsty trekkers. They market a red wine powder that hikers can take on the trail, add some of their purified water, and voila, wine! Only they won’t call the 8% alcohol drink “wine,” mostly because the association of Chianti producers has complained. Katadyn’s defense: “We are well aware that we’re not even permitted to call the product wine. No grapes were used in its production, it’s simply a product that is flavored to taste like wine.” Coming next year: powdered beer. [Der Spiegel]

SPIT: family relations
Gary Heck of Korbel has sued his daughter, Richie Ann Samii, for defamation in postings on Craigslist. She denies the allegations in the Sonoma Press Democrat. The two are also involved in legal maneuverings over a multimillion dollar stake in the company.

SIPPED: fraud
Why do the empty wine bottles that fetch the highest prices on eBay correlate with those that are the most expensive and presumably authentic when full? An academic study (in progress) suggests counterfeiting. [Freakonomics]

SPIT: fraud
Researchers at the University of Bourgogne in Dijon have developed a way to track the barrels used for aging a wine: using a mass spectrometer. Each forest has an identifiable fingerprint for its lumber and that can be traced for 10 years after leaving the barrel. The researchers suggest that it could prevent fraud in wine, passing off a less expensive wine as a pricey one. But perhaps its best use might be to track whether the barrels came from the same pricey forest they claim to be from–or a low cost competitor. [New Scientist]

SIPPED: Wine paraphernalia on display
The Art Institute of Chicago has a two-month exhibit called “A Case for Wine: From King Tut to Today.” They describe the exhibit as the first of its kind at “tracing this beloved libation’s surprisingly significant role as a stimulus and source of artistic endeavor.”

SIPPED: red wine in the Tour
And if you were third overall in the Tour de France, what would you imbibe the evening before the rest day? Check out Lance Armstrong’s tweet for his answer: “Made it to Limoges…Gonna have dinner, drink a glass of red wine, talk to my kids, and crash out!!” Hopefully it was the real deal and not the powdered “wine.”

SIPPED: reusing wine bottles
We like reusing corks. And we previously saw the 13,500 bottle wall house previously. And recently another bottle wall surfaced on reddit (though it may not be wine bottles). If this trend keeps up, a winery may soon make the equivalent of Heineken’s WOBO bottle, a brick masquerading as a bottle!

SIPPED: jugs
Dottie Gaiter and John Brecher recommend jug wines. But little jugs, really, just magnums. No Carlo Rossi. [WSJ]

SIPPED: viticultural sprawl
On Friday, the federal authorities that regulate wine gave the thumbs up to a new American Viticultural Area. And true to our rule, that the bigger they are, the more useless they are, this 29,914 square mile sprawlapalooza, our largest AVA, covers portions of Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin and will be known as the Upper Mississippi River Valley. The TTB writes in the announcing document (found here as pdf) “We designate viticultural areas to allow vintners to better describe the origin of their wines and to allow consumers to better identify wines they may purchase.”

SIPPED: divine intervention
An Italian priest blamed Holy wine he had consumed at four masses that day when he was pulled over–and arrested–for drunk driving. [Daily Mail]

SPIT: pine nuts!
Losing your senses appears to be all the rage. First, it was Zicam, with it’s new FDA warning against possible anosmia (loss of smell). Now: pine nuts! According to Britain’s Daily Mail, increasing numbers of people have been left with a “foul, metallic taste” in their mouth after eating the nuts and that taste may linger for two weeks. Their columnist describes his experience with “pine mouth:” “Though I regained my taste after eight days, the only thing I could drink during that time was water, and the only food that was bearable was salad leaves smothered in strong balsamic vinegar. Drinking wine was like swallowing liquid metal.” Talk about an impossible food-wine pairing!

SIPPED: a whale tale
In a fascinating post that provides a look into the business of selling wine, Lyle Fass, formerly in high-end wine retail, posts to his blog about the death of “the whale,” namely, the big customer who orders $10,000 worth of wine with a single phone call. He describes his performance-based pay conundrum: “At my last retail job I was hired with the idea that I would get a cut of the profits from the whales I would bring to the store. I thought this was great. I made a lot of money and was happy selling wine to these whales. Never did I think in my wildest dreams that I would lose my job as the economy went in the tank. But I had a high salary and a high bonus structure and as a result, I was not bringing added value to the store anymore. I was a money vacuum. So I was rendered jobless.” He concludes by predicting that “the whale is not coming back for a long time, if ever.” [Rockss and Fruit]

SIPPED: Follow the leader
Web 2.0, user generated wine review, on sites such as cellartracker, theoretically shift the power of reviewing away from one critic and over to the masses. But using an illustration of one of his Tablas Creek wines, Jason Haas writes about the power of the first review as an “anchor,” which then can set a tone for subsequent reviews that’s hard to break.

SIPPED: hope
Vinexpo, the big wine trade show kicks off today in Bordeaux. AFP reports on a study from Vinexpo that forecasts worldwide wine sales rising to 390 billion euros in 2012 from the current 330 billion euros, citing increased demand from China and Russia. Global wine consumption softened last year.

SPIT: causation!
Does moderate alcohol consumption make people lead healthier lives? That’s what research has suggested since as early as 1924. But now some researchers are now suggesting that otherwise healthy people might just enjoy a glass of wine every night making it correlation not causation. Eegad! Time to pour a glass of wine to mull this over. [NYT]

SIPPED: Hannibal Lecter
A study of 2,000 US and 1,000 UK wine consumers found strong knowledge of Bordeaux, Champagne and Burgundy but recognition of the Barossa Valley in Australia and Marlborough in New Zealand was weak. When participants were asked to free associate when presented the name “Marlborough” most American respondents said “cigarettes.” And when shown “Chianti” many replied “Silence of the lambs.” Hannibal Lecter FTW! (See the full presentation here as pdf)

SIPPED: Canadian Chardonnay
Stephen Spurrier presided over a blind tasting in Montreal akin to the Paris Tasting of 1976 that pitted American wines against French wines. The Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) organized the event, inviting “Quebec’s top wine writers and sommeliers” as judges to reenact the Paris tasting. But they threw in come ringer wines from Canada, Australia and New Zealand in the Chardonnay category–and the Canadian Chardonnay, Le Clos Jordanne from the Niagara Escarpment, came out on top. “The result may redraw the global wine map, just as the Judgment of Paris did 33 years earlier,” opines CNN/Fortune. Le Clos Jordanne is owned by Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ).

SPIT: Ladybug taint
Have you ever had the dreaded ladybug taint? Perhaps you know it as methoxypyrazines. Well, anyway. Scientists have now found that wine in Tetra Pak (aseptic cartons) can reduce that aroma. But, caution: the packaging is not good for aging! [NewScientist]

In Memorium: Johnny Hugel (Hugel) and Paul Avril (Clos des Papes)

SIPPED and SPIT: rosé! Controversy continues to swirl around the proposed changes in the EU to allow blending rather than bleeding. We’re talking rosé, of course, which has traditionally been bled off red grapes but may soon be allowed to have the lower cost method of red being blended with white. Francois Millo, head of the Provence vintners’ association, brings this intra-European fight to the pages of the NYT with an op-ed arguing that their local “achievement should not be drowned in a flood of cheap imitations.” AFP previously reported that France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland are opposed to the practice. But Decanter reported that José Bové, in full EU electoral mode, has called the French agricultural minister a liar, saying that he failed to vote against the reform as a part of a broader package in January.
UPDATE: The European Agricultural Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, has withdrawn the rose reform. [Guardian]

SWIRLED: wine tax increase
The Senate finance committee considers raising the federal excise tax on wine (and beer)–and introducing a tax on other beverages, such as soda–in the name of funding health reform. The last increase in the federal excise tax on wine was 1991, when it was increased to $1.07 a gallon for still wine under 14% alcohol. Prior to that, the rate had been stable since 1951 at $0.17 a gallon.

SPIT and SIPPED: New Vine Logistics
New Vine Logistics, a Napa-based company that provides order fulfillment to 200 wineries and may have been involved in the back end of Amazon wine, startlingly ceased operations a week ago. But faster than you could say “Chrysler,” it found an apparent savior in Inertia Beverage Group. Follow the action over at wineindustryinsight.com.

SPIT: signs as a threat to the environment
The steep hillside vineyards of Hermitage may be preserved under an environmental heritage act. Such an action could jeopardize the signs of Chapoutier and Jaboulet on those hillsides (“one of the region’s most beloved landmarks” according to the Chapoutier web site), which may have to be removed as a result.

SIPPED: Stalinist architecture in St. Emilion!
A bottle of wine allegedly in Hitler’s cellar at the Berghof sold for $900 at Alexander Autographs recently. The label might have raised some questions since has only St. Emilion, Frankreich (German for France) emblazoned on the front with no producer name, a vintage of 1934, and what a blog at the NY Times describes as a “Stalinist-style structure towering over the church.” Donald and Petie Kladstrup, co-authors of Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure, told the NYT blog that Hitler “occasionally drank wine, though he preferred beer.” What ever happened to his being a teetotaler?

SPIT: translation
A lot of wine descriptors could be interpreted as bedroom talk. But Jim Boyce writes about a case worthy of Engrish.com, a Chinese back label that cuts to the chase: “Yellow flowers and a beautiful apricot color with a strong musk. Rich texture with sweet f*ck in sweet orange peel and apricot flavor at the end of a clean. Drink now.”

SPIT: Champagne corks
Champagne, perhaps the last regional holdout (ex-Portugal) from the assault of screwcaps, now has The Maestro. Although we mentioned it previously, details are now out: The new closure, which hides a crown cap (think: beer) under a plastic cover and lever, will soon adorn select bottles of Duval-Leroy champagne. TIME says that it is “far easier to use than a conventional stopper— no struggling to hold the heavy bottle as you twist, no worrying that you’ll take someone’s eye out with the cork.” But, really, a lever doesn’t add to the bottle’s aesthetics–get a grip! [see video of the Maestro in action]

SPIT: wine
In France, consumption continues to fall. So do exports. “French households drank almost 10 percent less wine last year than in 2007, and exports by French vintners sank 15 percent by volume and almost 30 percent by value in the first quarter of 2009, the agriculture ministry reported.” [AP]

SIPPED: ID
Equifax, a credit rating agency, is developing a service to strengthen online identities, which could be particularly useful to verifying the age of someone who wants to buy wine on the web. [Bits blog]

Photo: Alexander Autographs