The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine of the week: Ipsum 2010

Sometimes, wine doesn't taste the way we want it to taste. When the Wine Curmudgeon first tried the Ipsum, a Spanish white blend, two years ago, it was a revelation -- fruit forward in a New World style, but crisp and with lots of minerality. It was a sure thing Hall of Fame selection.

The 2010 vintage, sadly, is not up to that standard. The Ipsum ($10, purchased) is still a more than adequate wine, and there is still lots of tropical fruit. You could do a whole lot worse, and the Wine Curmudgeon has. But the extra something that pushed previous vintages over the top is gone. The minerality isn't there, and this year's wine doesn't have the freshness and clarity that the others did.

How does this happen? Who knows? The winemaker had an off day, the weather didn't cooperate, the grapes weren't up to snuff. So drink this, well chilled, with seafood or grilled chicken, and hope that the 2011 Ipsum returns to its previous standard.

• Ipsum 2008 review: "... much better than I expected it to be."

Winebits 174: Israeli wine, Australian wine, asparagus wine

• Best winery in the world? That would be Israeli, in case anyone was wondering. Golan Heights Winery, founded in 1983 in Katzrin in northern Israel, bested the field to take the top spot as the best wine producer in the world at the International Wine Competition in Verona, Italy. The award goes to the producer who achieves the best score, calculated as the sum of the highest scores for two wines which take medals in different categories. A panel of 105 wine experts and journalists participated in the judging. The 3720 wines submitted came from 30 countries including Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Venezuela. Golan Heights sells wine under the Yarden, Gamla and Golan labels.

• The end of Australian wine? That's the subject of this lengthy and sometimes overwritten piece in the Wine Spectator, but the main point is well taken: "Where only just a few years ago seemingly everyone was oohing-and-aahing over the new Australian wine baby, today there's a collective shrug. It's just another baby — and maybe it really wasn't all that cute anyway. Australia's fall from grace had a velocity I've never before seen. I can't think of another wine country that, Icarus-like, flew so high and fell so far in so short a time." The other well-made point? That other wine regions had better pay attention to what happened Down Under, lest it happen to them.

• Just a taste, please: Of asparagus wine. Really. The Detroit Free Press reports that a Michigan asparagus producer came up with the wine on a dare, and that it tastes like, well, asparagus. Fruit wines aren't uncommon, and there are some vegetable wines. But this? Says the head of the state's asparagus trade group: "I'd like to get a bottle -- at least to keep on my counter. I love asparagus, but I don't know if I'd drink -- well, I might try it."

Sangre de Toro's plastic bulls

The Wine Curmudgeon got an email from a reader: Did I have any of the plastic bulls that come with the Sangre de Toro? That's the red Spanish blend from the Torres family that has been around for since the end of World War II. Its trademark is the little black plastic bull that you get when you buy a bottle of the wine.

Or, as it turns out, most of the company's wines these days, and the bulls now come in a variety of colors. The bulls have been a key to the popularity of Torres wines around the world for more than 40 years, and they're one of the reasons why I tried my first bottle in the early 1980s. That's the bull hanging from the neck of the bottle, left.

The reader, who needs the bulls for a special occasion, wanted to borrow mine. At one time, I had hundreds around the house, but they seem to have vanished, though did I offer to send him what I had. And, since he is a reader, why not do him one better? Hence, this post.

If anyone in the cyber-ether has any of the bulls lying around, send me an email. I'll forward the reader's contact information, and you can send him your bulls. I'll also make a few calls to some people I know in the wine business, and see what turns up.

Why the mystery? The reader needs the bulls to surprise someone, so we need to be discrete. Rest assured the bulls will be used for a good cause, and I'll report the results here. And, I'm told, there will be pictures.

Writing for free and the wine business

One of the most common questions that people ask the Wine Curmudgeon (and it came up several times last weekend at DLW 2011: Missouri) is whether I get paid for doing this. And how I get paid. And if there is any money in being a wine blogger.

The answers, which are complicated, say a lot about the direction that wine writing is headed. More, after the jump:

Wine my brother drinks 2: E. Guigal La Turque

My brother Jim is a wine aficionado of some repute, though he hangs out in much more rarefied wine circles than I do. His thoughts on E. Guigal's 1994 and 1996 La Turque, two Cote-Roties from a venerable producer. It's part of a feature that appears occasionally -- Wine my brother drinks. Jim writes:

"I probably paid a bit too much for these single bottles in the late 90's, $150 a piece, but my logic at the time was that Guigal is a quality house, these were one of their premier offerings, and I'm a big Rhone fan. Which is exactly counter intuitive as to why I like Rhones in the first place, which is value. So I was behind the eight ball from the get-go. And so, like most of us, I decided that I would wait for a "special occasion" to bust these out. The problem with that is that there are always other "special occasion" bottles in the cellar, so the tendency is to let the bottles sit. Bad move."

More, after the jump:

Wine of the week: Montecillo Rioja Crianza 2007

Let's get the full disclosure out of the way first. Maria Martinez-Sierra, the winemaker at Bodegas Montecillo in Spain's Rioja, is one of my favorite people in the wine business. She is talented, outspoken, and funny, and makes wine to make great wine -- not to get on the cover of the Wine Magazines.

So am I exaggerating a little when I say that her crianza ($10, purchased) is classic Spanish winemaking? Not in the least. It's everything that Rioja is supposed to be -- and for just $10. There is a wonderfully funky Spanish nose followed by a touch of fresh sour cherry fruit, lots and lots of Spanish-style acid, and a long, though subdued, finish. It's a food wine, as all well-made Spanish wine should be, and will pair with everything from red meat to egg and seafood tapas.

No, it's not nuanced and subtle, but it's crianza, made to drink now, and not gran reserva, made to age. (There are three styles of Rioja wines, based, broadly, on how long they age before release -- crianza, reserva, and gran reserva, and all Rioja is made with tempranillo). Highly recommended, and almost certainly in the 2012 $10 Hall of Fame.

Winebits 173: Food and wine pairings, direct shipping, Blue Nun

• Most wine drinkers aren't interested: In pairing wine with food, that is. The Wine Opinions consultancy says that what it calls high frequency wine drinkers drink more without a proper meal than with it. The Wines & Vines article about the study reports that only 41 percent of this group drink wine with a meal. In this, it smacks conventional wine wisdom in the face, which says that most of us drink wine with food. Are the study's methodology and data good enough for that conclusion? It used 800 responses from its 5,500-person Wine Opinions consumer panel, which it says are panel's most frequent purchasers and consumers of wine. And the people behind Wine Opinions are some of the most respected in the business. Which gives the wine industry new food for thought.

• New direct shipping legislation: Which, is again, heralded as the end of the world. Says the Wine Spectator: The 2011 version of the bill, "if passed, could end direct shipping of wine and other forms of alcohol in the United States, or at least put major roadblocks in front of lawsuits by consumers and wineries trying to reduce restrictions on direct shipping." The caveat, of course, is "if passed" -- which is no closer to happening today than it was in the previous session of the Congress. Though, as the Spectator notes, the anti-direct shipping lobby is paying to play. It has donated more than a quarter of a million dollars to the bill's nine sponsors since 2005. And ain't bi-partisanship grand? Four of the sponsors are Democrats and five are Republicans. It's a shame they can't work together to solve the country's real problems.

• The white wine that's correct with any dish: Blue Nun, the German wine that was so au courant in the 1970s, is trying to make another comeback. Its new owner says the wine will now be a varietal (rivaner and riesling), and will be part of several new Blue Nun wines. Look for riesling, pinot grigio, rosé and pinot noir. Not to worry, though: the wine will still come in its trademark blue glass fluted bottle. How big was Blue Nun 40 years ago? How about TV commercials?