Dr Vino's wine blog

SIPPED: Mozart and Merlot!
Clark Smith, wine industry revolutionary, insists that they music playing can affect your evaluation of a wine. I demand that the Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator release their playlists along with scores!! [SF Chron]

SIPPED: NASDAQ move over, here comes Sotheby’s!?
The auction house announces a real-time ticker for wine auction prices. But will the data be archived, free and searchable?

SPIT: oak barrels
More California winemakers are using oak alternatives, such as oak staves (planks) and chips. Derrick Schneider goes inside the barrel–er, bag o’ chips. [SF Chron]

SIPPED: Crossover wines
Rob Kasper emailed me about wines that go both ways. That sure got my attention. Then I realized he was talking about food-friendly wines. I make some picks for wines that go will with fish and meat and can keep a table happy. [Baltimore Sun]

SPIT: the three tier system
Tom Wark has started a new blog for the Specialty Wine Retailers Association. He’s no fan of the legally mandated three tier system, which all too frequently limits consumer wine choices, raises prices, and, of course, prevents the specialty retailers from expanding their business. Good message, Tom, but please ditch the black background behind the white text! [Wine without borders]

SPIT: Apfelwein
New EU laws may restrict “wine” to only coming from grapes. Auf wiedersehen, apple wine? “We will not allow our traditional name to be sacrificed to regulatory madness in Brussels,” says the Hesse state governor. [IHT]

SIPPED: Competition!
Academic researchers Alan Wiseman and Jerry Ellig studied wine retail prices in Virginia before and after the Supreme Court decision. Care to guess which period had the higher prices? Indeed, prices fell 26 – 40 percent with greater interstate trade in wine. [Journal of Politics, pdf]

SIPPED and SPIT: wine discounts in France
The annual “foires aux vins” are taking place in hypermarkets around France. Consumers rejoice when markups can fall to as low as zero – five percent. Meanwhile, those in the trade grumble about other retailers scooping up the fine wine and reselling it for more later. In all, a quarter of French wine sells during these Foires according to the AFP story.

SIPPED: Pinot Noir. Go Ca-na-da!
The quest for North American pinot noir has moved north–1,100 miles north of Sonoma’s Russian River Valley to British Columbia. Hotter summers and milder winters have brought better grapes such as pinot noir to places like the Okanagan Valley, half way between Calgary and Vancouver. Now it’s a race against the frost to harvest. [WSJ]

SIPPED: late sampling
The 100 wines available by the glass at Artisanal will be half-priced after 10 PM. Starts next week. [Grub Street]

SPIT: Brunello di wha?!?
Author of historical fiction, Ken Follett, has a new 1,000+ page doorstop out. Let’s hope he gets his wine references right this time (we’re all up on our 14th century English wine, right?) since he admits that he erroneously invented the “Brunello Di Moltepulciano” in his last book.

SPIT: Claridges in London
The next time they go to London (by sailboat?), Treehugger admits a boycott of the Claridges hotel in London. Why? Because of the carbon footprint of the bottled water, now with over 30 choices including a liter from NZ for £50. Claridges’ Renaud Gregoire told the Evening Standard that “water is becoming like wine. Every guest has an opinion, and asks for a particular brand.” What the heck, given my earlier bottled water ban, I think I’ll boycott Claridges too! Feel the pain of my non-visit, Claridges! [Treehugger]

With a theme of Portuguese table wines, WBW 38 has been wrapped up with 30 contributors around the web. Great map! [Catavino]

Have you ever had a question for me? Hit the “contact” button above! Tom Wark had twenty questions for me that I answered in a Q&A. Check out my answers at his blog. [Fermentation]

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SIPPED: Freddy boy
If there were no Fred Franzia, would journalists have to invent him? In this story, the man behind Two Buck Chuck swears, slams all wine over $10 a bottle, mocks the concept of terroir, and relieves himself near his car–all in the first paragraph! Business 2.0 lapped it up talking about his “wars” and why he has an Enya CD in his Jeep. [Business 2.0, now defunct]

SPIT: Blind tastings
Eric Asimov writes “maybe as wine drinkers we’re all a little more grown up now and don’t need to taste blind all the time.” Indeed! Three cheers wine evaluation without numbers! [The Pour]

SIPPED: Gringo vino
Are Americans finally heading to Argentina to make wine? Fortune Small Business found a few. I hope they read my article from January about the pitfalls! [Fortune SB]

SIPPED: Bambino vino
Gabriella writes up her experience taking 55 elementary school kids on a winery tour in Spain. Could this ever take place if it were in America? [Catavino]

SIPPED: green wine
Whole Foods rolls out an “organically grown” wine in a tetra prisma! [Seattle dbusiness]

SIPPED: merlot
The grape, spit in Sideways, will get it’s own defense on the silver screen with a new documentary. Key question: will anyone notice?

SPIT: The greenback
The US dollar falls to 15 year lows. Say hello to more expensive imported wine–and wine travel overseas!

(Photo credit: Fair use is made here of a reduced-size crop from a larger image in Business 2.0 attributed to Michael Kelley)

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.

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]