Welcome to the annual Wine Curmudgeon rose post, where our motto is: If it’s summer and you have $10, you can buy a pretty good rose – and sometimes even get change back. And Memorial Day weekend is a fine place to start.
The quality of rose available in stores continues to improve. When I started writing about rose regularly, about 10 years ago, there wasn’t much to choose from. Since then, there are not only more wines, but they are better than ever. I don’t know that I have actually tasted a poorly made rose in the past couple of years. Some of them have been too expensive, but that’s another story. The rest, after the jump:
This has been the subject of much discussion in the wine cyber-ether, starting last fall. That’s when Rodney Strong said it would send samples to selected wine bloggers before it sent them to the Mainstream Media, with the understanding that the bloggers had to write something, good or bad. That’s because most mainstream types never get around to writing about all of the samples they receive, and they pile up until they’re given away. This way, Rodney Strong would get some kind of publicity – and, as we all know, some kind is better than none.
I thought that was much ado about nothing. Samples are samples, with all of the ethical concerns they entail, and it really doesn’t matter who gets them first. But that doesn’t mean that ethics aren’t something worth discussing. I have written about this before, but it’s worth clarifying and expanding on. After the jump, how I do this at the Wine Curmudgeon and how I avoid conflicts of interest:
The Wine Curmudgeon, dressed in a white lab coat and clipboard at the ready, has been judging wine for the past three days. I'm at the 34th annual International Eastern Wine Competition in Watkins Glen, New York.
The lab coat is one of the unique features of this event, which is affectionately known as Wine Camp. I'll write more about this next week (and there is even a picture of me in the lab coat that I'll post). We finished today with the best-of-the-best judging, in which the double gold medal wines face off against each other.
This has been much fun, despite all of the spitting. The other judges in my group (winemaker Peter Bell of Fox Run Vineyards in New York; Phil Ward, a distributor with New Jersey's Opici Wine Group; and restaurateur Paul Geisz II) have more than tolerated my quirks. Even let me convince them about the quality of a very dry rose that I liked more than they did.
We tasted some intriguing wines, including a bunch of what we thought were New York rieslings, and frontenacs, probably from the upper Midwest. Frontenac is a new grape variety bred to withstand winter, and it makes a cherry-ish red wine with soft tannins that still has a backbone.
Time to put the lab coat back on and resume spitting. More next week.
The Wine Curmudgeon didn’t expect to like the Fortant. Not quite sure why, but had my doubts. Which violated the first rule of wine tasting: Drink the wine before you make up your mind.
In fact, this is a well-made cheap wine that delivers a lot of oomph for the $8 it costs. It has lots of strawberry and a long finish – a splendid example of how to make quality wine and not charge a lot. And yes, it’s a dry wine, despite its name (which may have been the reason I had my concerns). Not surprisingly, Fortant is part of the Robert Skalli family, which has been doing fine work with wine from southern France for 40 years.
Serve this chilled, and sip it on the porch as long as summer is here. And even after summer if you want.
• That burnt rubber smell: South African red wine, and especially pinotage, has a distinctive aroma, similar to burning rubber or road blacktop. This has been the subject of many jokes in the wine world, but it’s actually a serious problem for the South Africans. Who wants to buy wine that smells like burnt rubber? What’s worse, they aren’t sure why that happens, reports Decanter.
• Wine scores don’t work, one more time: This, from very important French wine critic Michel Bettane, when asked to score a a couple of South African sauvignon blancs at a wine competition (and as reported by Neil Pendock, who was on the panel): “Michel, what do you score the first?” “60 and 80” (points of out of 100). “How does that work?” “80 if you like this grassy style of sauvignon, 60 if you do not.” Too bad the Wine Magazines don’t try this approach.
Wish me luck. The Wine Curmudgeon is judging this competition, one of the most prestigious in the U.S.,over the next three days.
Why do I need luck? The IEWC gets thousands and thousands of entries, which is a lot of spitting. Or, as one friend of mine said, “After you’ve judged this competition, you’ll know you’ve been judging a competition.”
Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I’ll get to taste regional wine, which I enjoy; get to taste wine made from grapes other than chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and merlot, which I also enjoy; and get a chance to spread the word about DrinkLocalWine.com and our August conference, which I will really enjoy.
Though South Africa’s wines continue to improve, there doesn’t seem to be any discernible pattern. It’s a two steps forward, one step back, one step sideways kind of thing -- especially for cheap wines.
But there has been progress, and especially with chenin blanc. The South Africans used to call it steen, and it was often greenish and sour. But the Simonsig chenin blanc (about $10) is a fine example of the improvement. It’s crisp, dry, clean and with apple fruit and a nice mineral finish. It’s lighter than chardonnay (no oak), and has the makings of a classic New World chenin blanc. Serve this chilled: Either before dinner, with salads, Chinese takeout or whenever you want a pleasant glass of white wine.
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