Dr Vino's wine blog

SPIT: wine in France!
Over the past year, as the economy has been grinding down, some Parisians have decided to cash out of wine by pawning their wines to the Credit Municipal, who, in turn, just auctioned off 2,500 bottles. [AP]

SIPPED: wine the beverage
“Red wine patches? No thanks, I’ll take mine orally,” quips Mark Fisher about a resveratrol ad he saw in his Sunday paper. He continues, “What’s next? A suppository?” Hey-oh! [Uncorked]

SIPPED: haggling!
The NY Post delights in the fact that the recession brings the end of water sommeliers. And they point out that negotiating with the (wine) sommelier is now not only acceptable but encouraged at David Burke’s restaurants: diners are given a list of “auction selections” where they can bid. The sommelier has “never been insulted” by an opening bid.

SIPPED: change at the Times dining section
Come August, Frank Bruni will be pushing back from the restaurant reviewing table at the New York Times and heading over to the Magazine. [Diner’s Journal]

SIPPED: the printed word
I’ll be signing copies of my book, A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season, this Saturday in New Canaan, CT. Although the event is in conjunction with Elm Street Books, it will be at a new wine store called The Respected Palate @ 21 South Ave., New Canaan, CT 06840. 12 – 2:30. And, yes, there will be free wines available to taste!

Stephen Colbert has a hilarious send-up of the dog food vs paté research paper we recently discussed. Check it out! (and see what he puts in his mouth–ack!)

In further canine wine news, also check out “Learning to sniff out corked wine” in the current issue of Food & Wine. Inspired in part by a grudge against a beagle from Customs and Border Protection, Ray Isle engages in a competition with a Sonoma winery dog (no dog food consumed by either party).

SPIT and SIPPED: Bordeaux 2008
After better-than-expected but still largely tepid reviews, Bordeaux 2008 took a shot in the arm form Robert Parker who raved about it. All the action is summed up nicely, with charts of price action, on FT.com’s Alphaville blog. Quotage from Simon Staples, aka BigSiTheWineGuy and a buyer at Berry Bros and Rudd in London: “He [Parker] went crazy about 2003 (all on his own) He missed 2005 (everyone else loved it) He’s now potty about 08(a few very nice wines)Plot?Lost?”

SIPPED: wine growing
Wine in London, yes. But vines? Apparently so. But a terroir de double decker diesel may be avoided: Decanter reports that a horticultural college about 10 miles north of St. Paul’s has planted 1,500 vines.

SPIT: red wine stains
A South African winery blog posts with the results of their tests on various red wine stain removers. The winner: hydrogen peroxide! It’s a cost-effective result considering hydrogen peroxide costs something like 99 cents a gallon at Duane Reade. [ht: Tasting Room]

SIPPED: plastique
Wolf Blass, an Australian producer, announced two new wines in plastic (PET) bottles that resemble a traditional glass bottle.

SIPPED: fighting garden thievery
The BBC reports that Hugh Johnson, renowned wine writer and avid gardener, had “a late 17th Century astronomical sphere and urns [stolen] from his historic garden.” He has posted a £1,000 reward for information leading to the return of the items.

SIPPED: wine
Bloomberg reports : “Half a glass of wine a day may add five years to your life, a new study suggests. Drink beer, and you’ll live only 2 1/2 years longer.” Take that, resveratrol pill–a lot more fun!

SPIT: red meat
The New York Times reports on another study: “the men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner.”

Maybe that’s why red meat needs wine–a net effect on mortality?

SPIT: corks in Champagne!
Champagne house Duval-Leroy has announced that they will be replacing the cork with a “revolutionary” metal cap. Full details will be announced next month. The BBC reports that it will “still produce the familiar “pop” and spray beloved of generations of racing drivers on the winner’s podium.” But how will this affect the Japanese corkslinger?

SIPPED: wine as a tax revenue source
New York State will raise the excise tax on wine sold or made in New York from $0.18 a gallon to $0.30 a gallon, effective May 1. This rate increase of roughly two cents a bottle may be too little to pass on to consumers thus may fall to producers or wholesalers. In order to avoid channel stuffing, there will be a “floor tax” levy imposed on warehouse inventory as of May 1. So will there be mega sales in NY wine stores between now and then to draw down said inventory? [NYT]

SIPPED: fraud
Fraudsters posing as buyers for British wine retailers have bilked French producers out of an apparently large amount of wine. Sad. [Decanter]

SIPPED, surprisingly: Bordeaux 2008
If in 2008 grapes were, in the words of Jancis Robinson, “swollen with summer rain,” vineyards are “ravaged by mildew and threatened by rot,” would that make for a good vintage in Bordeaux? Despite all odds, Robinson in the FT and Elin McCoy on Bloomberg attest to finding some surprisingly good wines. McCoy asks the money question: “But dropping prices dramatically in a good vintage? It’s not in the Bordelais DNA.” But some have gotten the message as she quotes Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou, owner Bruno Borie: “We have to go back to basics, go back to the consumer, instead of the speculators.” Subsequently, Decanter reports several releases down 20 – 40% from last year’s prices. What will happen ultimately to the weak and expensive 2007 vintage? A caution against buying wine as futures…

SPIT: quotes!
Ray Isle, wine editor at Food & Wine, is ticked. He previously posted about some wipes that claim to remove wine stains from teeth (saying, among other things, that “they fill the mouth (mine, at least) with a searing citric acid note, overlaid with a kind of strange metallic dissonance”). His comments were modified, taken out of context and then used in the product’s promotional materials, which he is shocked to discover. So he goes for the takedown. Click through for the whole thing; here’s a taste: “I hope you discover that your product poisons peoples gums and makes their teeth fall out, and that you get sued into nonexistence as a result.” [foodandwine.com]

SPIT: wine store websites
John and Dottie, often positive, go negative on wine store websites citing many problems: phantom inventory, slow delivery, cluttered and old fashioned sites, and too many emails (round of applause for that one). At the end, they offer some suggestions for improvement. [WSJ]

SPIT: Australia
“Foster’s may be Australian for beer (mate); it appears that screwed is now Australian for wine.” But ends on a positive note. [Slate]

SPIT: Mondavi, Constellation edition
Paul Gregutt, wine writer for the Seattle Times, tastes through the lines of Robert Mondavi wines and sums up the experience: “Perhaps some hidden treasures are out there; I did not find them.” [Seattle Times]

SPIT: 2007 Bordeaux and 2008 prices
We leave you with a “glimmer of hope” (Friday’s catch phrase in Washington). Jancis Robinson calls the 2007 vintage of Bordeaux “wildly overpriced” and “rather scrawny.” The big question is if and by how much the 2008s will come down in price. Angelus dropped by 40%. But the glimmer is that Jancis says next week she will reveal “why such a miserable summer [2008] produced such cheer in the thousands of tasting glasses emptied last week (at the en primeurs in Bordeaux).” [FT.com]

SIPPED: English wine
Well, now that all the serious business of the G20 meeting is over, we can turn to what wine lovers wanted to know all along: what did they drink? Gone were the lavish dishes of last year’s G8 summit. Jamie Oliver, chef for the dinner at Downing Street, put together a menu showcasing the “best of British cuisine,” which was expected to include Nyetimber, a sparkling wine from West Sussex. (The spouses’ table seemed like the most laughs that evening–Joachim Sauer excepted.) [timesonline.co.uk]

SIPPED: a shot glass of sanity?
Chateau Angelus is the first of the top Bordeaux properties to release their 2008 vintage: 50 euros a bottle, or 40% less than the 2007, which was not a strong vintage in the region. Our previous discussion highlighted how mush pricing is relative and based on perception, rather than actual costs. And Simon Staples is back again, quoted as saying that he wouldn’t even be a buyer of Angelus at 30 euros. [Decanter]

SIPPED: wine in the USA
While worldwide wine consumption fell by one percent, Americans tacked on a 1.8% gain in wine last year, the fifteenth consecutive annual gain according to the new edition of Impact Databank.

SPIT: cakes!
On March 23, we laid out the Layer Cake/Cupcake confusion/silly naming. March 26, Layer Cake’s producer (One True Vine) sues the Cupcake producer (The Wine Group) for trademark infringement claiming the name is “confusingly similar.” [Wines & Vines]

SWIRLED IN CONTEMPLATION: Australia
Australian wine “has moved from being revered to being reviled” with tremendous speed, writes Jancis Robinson at FT.com. She asserts this is largely because of the success of “ubiquitous and vapid” low end wines and the high alcohol wines that receive big scores from the Wine Advocate. Then add a glut followed by a drought and fires, industry consolidation and a global recession and it’s not difficult to see why the sledding has gotten a little rough. I’m quite interested in the story of Australia, particularly the one that is not much exported to the US. That’s why I’ll be joining a group wine writers and sommeliers there in June for the Landmark Australia tasting.

SIPPED: Rosé
Rosé wine is popular the world over. But in Britain sales of the pink drink have been particularly strong, increasing 64% between 2003 – 2007 according to the BBC. To the victor go the spoils: rosé now joins rotisserie chicken and DVDs ordered on the internet in the country’s “basket of goods,” a measure of inflation. To make room in the index, the Office of National Statistics removed box wine from their figures. But that may be premature, as I told the Financial Times last week, since box wine is not only growing in popularity and quality but might be a better fit with the times.

SPIT: Rosé
“A Rosé by Any Other Name Is Not a Rosé,” runs the headline on this AP story. True dat. According to an EU proposal floated last week, the lower-cost method of blending red and white wines to make rosé may soon be allowed alongside the traditional method of “bleeding” rosé off of red grapes. Furor ensues and the method of making the rosé will appear on the label if approved in a May vote.

SIPPED: sanity in restaurant wine prices
A “hot, newish” restaurant in San Francisco may soon roll out wine at retail prices. That’s a fantastic idea and one that would likely fill up many a seat in the restaurant. Key question: do they allow doggy boxes? [Spume]

SIPPED: economic indicators
Forbes, known for their lists of billionaires, ran features on 10 wines under $10 AND box wines last week. What has the world of bling come to?

SIPPED: China
Domaines Barons de Rothschild, maker of the Bordeaux first growth Lafite, has announced they will be developing a 60 acre vineyard in China, specifically the peninsula of Penglai, Shandong province.

SIPPED: yet another celebrity wine
Antonio Banderas buys a stake in a winery in Spain’s Ribera del Duero. It will be renamed “Puss in Boots” after his role in Shrek. Oh no, scratch that–it will be called Anta Banderas.