The Wine Curmudgeon

Virginia DrinkLocalWine.com conference

Our second annual DrinkLocalWine.com conference is in less than three weeks, and it's already shaping up to be as much fun as the first one in Dallas last fall (even allowing for the shameless plug). We're focusing on Virginia wine, with a smidgen of Maryland wine for good measure.

The details for the April 25 event are here. Early registration is $65 -- just go to the DLW Web site and click on the Google checkout button. Among the highlights:

• The "If local food, why not local wine?" panel, which not only includes DLW co-founder Dave McIntyre of the Washington Post, but big deal Washington, D.C.-area chefs and sommeliers like Andrew Stover.

• The Twitter Taste-off will have about two dozen wineries from Virginia, plus a special Maryland contingent -- all told, some 60 wines. We're bringing in the great Kenton Fabrick, who is one of the top Twitter gurus in the country, to emcee the taste-off. And I'm told there will be video and other high-tech thrills.

• A live Internet radio broadcast, featuring my pal Olivia Wilder of Blog Talk Radio.

• A special DLW-approved badge for blogs and Web sites that focus on regional wine. That's the graphic at the top of this post (and a tip o' the Curmudgeon's fedora to Jynette Neal, who designed it). If you'd like the badge, send me an email.

DrinkLocalWine.com, regional wine, Virginia wine, Maryland wine

Wine terms: Negociant

Ask an American how wine is made, and most of us will answer that it involves buying a winery and growing grapes on winery land. It's all very romantic, and it's one of the reasons why so many people think they want to own a winery (until, of course, they discover the joys of harvest and Pierce's Disease).

In fact, this vision of the wine business – which produces what are called estate wines – is not the only approach to winemaking. There is also the negociant method, a French term for a wine company that buys grapes or finished wine, or even both, and sells the resulting product under its own name. In this, a negociant may not own land or a winery, and the only “winemaking” that it may do is to blend the finished wine that it buys from other wineries into a final product.

There is nothing wrong with this approach; it's a centuries-old tradition that started in the French region of Burgundy, where some of the best wines in the world are produced by negociants. It moved to Bordeaux, where it works in a slightly different fashion, and today exists all over the world. That includes California, where many well-known wines are made under the negociant system. Purple Wine Company, which makes Mark West pinot noir and Avalon cabernet sauvignon, is a negociant (and quite proud of it).

Nevertheless, many California producers still don't like to be thought of as negociants. In this country, a stigma still attaches to the term, as if it's un-winely in some way. I can't tell you how many winemakers and marketing people make an effort to reassure me that their wines are estate wines when I interview them, as if estate wines carry some guarantee of quality. Which they don't.

The photo is from Kay Pat of New Dehli, via stock.xchng, using a Creative Commons license

wine terms, negociants

Hello Kitty wines

The Wine Curmudgeon does not have any children, so the Hello Kitty phenomenon is something that I know exists, but didn't have to pay attention to. Until now.

An Italian fashion company is marketing Hello Kitty wine, and it went on sale in the U.S. this spring. There are two sparkling wines, a white and red (both made from pinot noir), and they aren't cheap. The rose bubbly is $30 a bottle and the other bubbly is about $15 for a half bottle.

Interestingly, the debate in the cyber-ether has very little do with the price or the quality of the wine (though I doubt the rose sparkler is four to five times better than Cristalino). The hipsters note that the concept is cute, while others wring their hands about whether it will turn pre-teen girls into alcoholics. The most common comparison is with Joe Camel, the late and unlamented spokes-animal for the cigarette of the same name, who was run off by the Federal Trade Commission.

This, of course, is typical of most wine writing. Why bother to write about the wine when there are so many other things to write about? Best yet, since it's the Internet, it doesn't matter if your argument makes sense. I doubt this is Joe Camel redux, if only because it's much more difficult for an underage drinker to buy a $30 bottle of wine than it is to buy a $5 pack of smokes.

In fact, what will probably happen is that tens of thousands of U.S. consumers will buy the wine because they like Hello Kitty, taste it, and decide that the wine isn't worth the price. This will set back the cause of wine drinking in the U.S. once again, which will make me even crankier than I normally am. Thanks, Hello Kitty.

wine writing, Hello Kitty, livestock wine, wine marketing

Happy April 1

The Wine Curmudgeon does not believe in blog reruns -- that's what cable TV is for, after all. But it is April Fool's Day, and this post from last April 1 was one of the most popular from 2009. I wrote it for my pal W.R. Tish's April Fool's Day wine extravaganza.

So let's start a tradition -- the annual California secedes from the United States to become its own wine country re-post. "I'll drink to that," says the Guvanator.

California wine, April Fool's Day

How much does cheap wine cost?

Tom Johnson at the Louisville Juice blog asked that question last week, and was nice enough to quote the Wine Curmudgeon in his post. Tom's point is that the cost to buy quality cheap wine has increased, and that there isn't that much good $10 wine anymore. He points to a couple of the leading wine blogs that offer $15 and $20 as cutoffs, says he uses $17 as the dividing line, and even notes that I'm writing about more $20 than ever before.

I have been pondering this since Tom's post ran, and I think I'll stick to my $10 price point. There is still plenty of wonderful wine at that price, as Robin Goldstein and I discussed when the second edition of The Wine Trials was released. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that there is more cheap wine than ever before, much of which is very ordinary, and which has overshadowed the quality $10 wine that is available. More, after the jump: