The Wine Curmudgeon

Mother's Day wine 2009

A few suggestions for Mom for Sunday:

• Tardieu-Laurent Guy Louis Blanc 2007 (about $15): We don’t see many white Cote du Rhones in the U.S., and especially at this price. The Guy Louis, a blend of marsanne, roussanne, grenache blanc, and viognier, has that distinctive white Rhone spice aroma (cloves, perhaps?) and enough fruit to appeal to the American palate. This is for people who are tired of chardonnay. An excellent value, though it may be difficult to find.

• Three Rivers Winery River’s Red 2007 (about $15): This red blend from Washington state (seven grapes, about half syrah) is a solid, fruity, low alcohol, food friendly red wine. You’ll smell cranberry and taste cherry and wish more American red wine was made this way. Pair with roast chicken or grilled beef.

• J Cuvee 20 Brut NV (about $32): J Vineyards is a long-time Napa tasting room favorite that has changed the focus of its effort from sparkling wine to table wine. Along the way, new winemaker George Bursick has reinvigorated the way the winery does bubbly. This is crisp and fresh with just the right amount of acidity – the quintessential Mother’s Day brunch wine.

For more on Mother’s Day wine:

• Buying Mom wine for Mother's Day
• Wine of the week: Argyle Brut 2002
• Wine of the week: Duca di Castelmonte Notorius 2007

Technorati Tags: holiday wine,Mother's Day wine,French wine,Washington state wine,sparkling wine,Guy Louis,Rhone wine,Three Rivers,J Vineyards

Yet another reason why I love French wine

The Wine Curmudgeon just got back from a big-deal tasting, sponsored by Wilson Daniels. I asked Erwan Faiveley, the heir to Domaine Faiveley (and a very nice producer), if the 2007 Burgundy vintage would age. Not really, he said. The 2007s aren’t for collectors – don’t expect to get more than 30 years out of them.

Only in France (and Italy, I suppose) would 30 years be considered not aging.

Technorati Tags: French wine,Burgundy,Domaine Faiveley,vintages

Wine of the week: Duca di Castelmonte Notorius 2007

The Wine Curmudgeon loves Sicily. The island at the bottom of Italy produces quality cheap wine from grapes most people have never heard of. What more can one ask?

The Notorius is made with the grillo grape, which is native to Sicily and apparently has been used to make wine since before the birth of Christ. It’s most widely used to make marsala, but is increasingly showing up in table wine.

The Notorius is richer than I thought it was going to be, with more of a soft lemon flavor and not the usual harsher citrus common to poorly-made cheap Italian wine. That’s from a bit of oak aging, which gives the Notorius a richer mouth feel and more complexity than the usual cheap Italian wine. Highly recommended, especially for Mother’s Day chicken, fish and shellfish. This would really impress Mom if it's served with grilled shrimp marinated with garlic, rosemary and olive oil.

Technorati Tags: Italian wine,Mother's Day wine,Notorius,grillo,Sicilian wine,$10 wine,cheap wine

Texas crop update

And it’s not good at all. Some of the state’s best vineyards are reporting significant losses, thanks to a series of late winter freezes and thaws that followed in rapid succession.

Neal Newsom, whose Newsom Vineyards in west Texas supplies grapes for some of of the state’s leading producers, says he may get as little as half a crop from his 95 acres -- and his experience may be typical. Newsome says his grapes mostly made it through a first freeze at the end of March, but didn’t survive a second freeze. Temperatures had climbed into the 70s and 80s between the two freezes, and buds started to appear. Then, when the second freeze occurred a couple of weeks after the first, the budding grapes were set up to die.

The problem, says Newsom, was not so much the second freeze, which hit 21 degrees around Easter weekend. It’s not unusual to see a freeze that late in the year. Rather, it was the unseasonably warm temperatures between the freezes, which made the vines  bud earlier than usual.

This is the fourth consecutive year that west Texas will produce less than a full crop, thanks to bad weather. Reports from the rest of the state aren’t good, either, including the Hill Country between Austin and San Antonio. Rick Naber at Flat Creek near Marble Falls told me he may have lost more than half his crop.

Technorati Tags: Texas wine,regional wine,grape growing,Flat Creek,Newsom Vineyards

Tuesday winebits 76: Recession update, Bordeaux futures, Corkeeper

• Recession-related woes? The recession is not a short-term problem and wineries should expect it to last beyond this year, says one of the wine industry’s top financial experts. “This is not a fear mongering, the world is coming-to-an-end scenario, but it is a real bump in the road,” says Rob McMillan, founder of Silicon Valley Bank’s Wine Division. “We are going to be bumping around in a rocky business climate for a number of years.” McMillan says to expect more layoffs and more labels to go away.

• Bordeaux futures squabble: Yes, this doesn’t apply to most of us, but it is fun to watch. Decanter, which follows the ins and outs of futures pricing the way ESPN covers sports, reports that many British wine merchants are furious with Robert Parker, who sent prices for the 2008 Chateau Lafite futures soaring after a positive review. Said one: “No one else believes this vintage is outstanding.”

• Mother’s Day gift: Stuck for an idea? And apparently, many of you are. Then how about the Corkeeper? The Wine Curmudgeon can’t vouch for it personally, but does seem an improvement over throwing wine corks in a kitchen drawer. I’ll have Mother’s Day wine ideas on Thursday, plus a Mother’s Day wine of the week on Wednesday.

Technorati Tags: recession,Bordeaux futures,Corkeeper,Mother's Day

DrinkLocalWine.com: The conference

We’re going to bring some of the best wine bloggers and writers in the country to Dallas in August for the first DrinkLocalWine.com conference. This will be the start of what co-founder Dave McIntyre and I hope will be an annual event that moves around the country to key regional wine states. And yes, it will be open to the public -– seminars and a Texas Twitter wine tasting included.

The details are on our new and improved Web site -– DrinkLocalWine.com, which includes a DLW blog, with links to some of the best regional wine writing in the country. We are also Twittering (may the wine gods protect the world) and we have a Facebook page. We’re at 300 fans in just three days on Facebook, and I don’t understand that at all. (I’m not complaining -– I just don’t understand it.)

I’ll have more on the conference as we get closer to the date. Everyone is welcome -– we’ll have registration information in six weeks or so. But we already have commitments from some of the top regional wine people in the country, including winemakers, growers, sommeliers, and writers, to speak.

And you know something? Even the Wine Curmudgeon is excited about this. And how often does that happen?

Technorati Tags: regional wine,drinklocalWine.com

Women and wine: What do they want?

Not to be treated like women, apparently – or at least treated like a marketer’s idea of a woman.

That’s one of the most interesting results of a study conducted by Vinexpo, a French wine trade group, in conjunction with four magazines around the world. Just 4 percent of the respondents in the U.S. portion of the survey said they bought wine based on what the label looked like. Most women – two-thirds – said they bought wine based on the grapes that were used to make it.

This is revolutionary, if true. The wine business has spent the past 15 years designing labels specifically designed to sell wine to women, like Little Black Dress and Mad Housewife. I can see millions of marketers running around the office in a panic after reading this.

But it’s not quite time for them to panic. The study, say its organizers, was not scientific. And, most importantly, in the U.S. it was conducted through the Wine Spectator Web site. This means it was almost certainly skewed toward more experienced and sophisticated wine drinkers, given the demographics of those who read the Spectator. I’m willing to bet that the answers would be have been quite different if the survey had been done on a more mainstream site.

The two other results that should warn people the results may not be entirely accurate? That 93 percent said they drink wine at least once a week and that 79 percent prefer red wine over white and rose. If those numbers are correct, then all the sales data that companies like Nielsen and IRI spend millions gathering is wrong, and the wine world is much different than the statistics say it is.

Technorati Tags: women and wine,wine surveys,Vinexpo