The Wine Curmudgeon

Bogle Vineyards: Combining value and quality

Ryan Bogle started smiling almost as soon as I told him the story. A friend of mine, on business in rural West Virginia, despaired of finding a decent bottle of wine to drink. But, lo and behold, at a local retailer, was the Bogle petite sirah.

“We hear that a lot,” says Bogle, the third generation of his family to run the 1-million case California winery that is perhaps the best grocery store producer in the country. “It’s the kind of thing that that keeps us going – to make high quality wines that are a great value for the customer. We want to be accessible to the large majority of the population, and we’re happy to able to accommodate them.”

Yes, 1 million cases – a number that makes the Bogle story that much more amazing. There are plenty of huge wineries in the U.S. churning out tanker trucks of cheap wine, but few of them do with it Bogle’s consistency and quality. That the company is able to do this, despite its size, speaks about its commitment to the consumer, even when that might interfere with the bottom line.

Ryan Bogle was in Dallas for meetings with his distributor, and we talked for a few minutes about what the winery does, how it does it, and what the future holds for the winery. More, after the jump:

Wine of the week: Vinho verde

A funny thing happened on the way to the annual vinho verde review. I tasted some poorly made wine, which has never happened before, and almost didn’t do the review.

The thing about the Portuguese vinho verde, as regular visitors know, is that it’s not complicated enough to screw up. It’s an inexpensive, simple wine, slightly sweet with lime or green apple fruit, plus some fizz – more like club soda than sparkling wine. It’s low in alcohol and needs to be ice cold, which makes it the ideal wine for this time of year. It’s not made to age, even for a couple of months, and usually wears out by the time cooler weather arrives.

A couple of producers make most of the vinho verde, which they sell under different labels.This year, though, much of the wine was underwhelming. The Gazela ($7, purchased) was sour, not especially fruity, and thin – more like Alka-Seltzer than wine. The Famega ($7, purchased), usually the standard, was only a little more enjoyable than the Gazela. It had some sweetness and the traditional spritz, but also an unpleasant, almost quinine flavor.

Fortunately, the Casal Garcia ($6, purchased) was up to snuff, fresh and lively. It tasted of very tart green apples, with the right amount of fizz and sweetness. I drank it with linguine with grilled shrimp (lots of garlic and parsley, too), and it did exactly what it was supposed to do. What more can you ask of a $6 wine?

Winebits 237: Wine scores, wine auctions, wine pairings

• Decanter goes to 100-point system: Decanter, the British wine magazine, will start scoring wines with the 100-point system in its annual buying guide. “Introducing the 100-point system is essential as Decanter is now a global magazine with more than half its readership outside the UK,” said the magazine. This is shocking news, not only because Decanter is giving in to something that continues to lose favor, but because it has always been the most sensible of the Winestream Media (for what that’s worth). The reason for this, I think, is the Chinese market, which has everyone in the wine business salivating (though there is no truth to the rumor that a Chinese language Wine Curmudgeon will soon launch – the Wine jué lǎotóu). The Chinese may not understand the Decanter review, but they’ll recognize the 100-point system – another of the legacies the U.S. has given the world, like fast food and Coca-Cola.

• Wine prices slump: Those investments in fine wine continue to look like Florida swamp land. Wine sales at the world’s top five auction houses were down 25 percent in the first half of 2012, which coincides with the slump in the fine wine stock market. I mention these things not because it’s actually important, but because anyone who buys wine as an investment instead of drinking it -- it's the world's best wine, after all -- deserves whatever happens to them. Which, frankly, I kind of enjoy watching.

• Vegetarian food: It’s summer, it’s hot, and we’re eating lighter, which includes vegetarian meals. My pal Dave McIntyre looks at the difficulty of finding wine to go with vegetarian dishes, since it would seem to exclude red wine. Writes Dave: “On the whole, I’d say don’t sweat it so much and feel free to experiment.” One key – choose wines from cultures, like Greece and Italy, that do a lot of vegetarian food.

Wine review: Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay 2010

The wine business doesn’t have a national brand, in the way detergent has Tide or ketchup has Heinz. Those products are instantly recognizable, sold everywhere in the country, and seen as representative of their category.

What the wine business has, instead, is Kendall-Jackson. It’s about the only brand sold everywhere that wine is sold, and even people who barely drink wine know Kendall-Jackson. And what was the big wine news when Barack Obama was elected president? That someone had seen K-J bottles in his Chicago home.

The chardonnay is the most ubiquitous of the Kendall-Jackson wines. It made the brand famous, and has been the best-selling chardonnay in the country for 20 years, according to the winery. Some 2.5 million cases are sold annually, which would make it the 12th biggest winery in the U.S., according to Wine Business Monthly.

The secret to the wine’s success? Stuck fermentation, which the late Jess Jackson, who started the winery, pioneered in the early 1980s. In stuck fermentation, not all of the sugar in the grape juice is converted into alcohol during fermentation, which produces a sweeter wine.

As such, the chardonnay ($15, sample) is rarely taken seriously. Or, as issacjamesbaker wrote on CellarTracker (the unofficial wine inventory software of the blog):

“I picked this up at the grocery store just for the hell of it. The nose shows the expected buttered pear, but also some crisp green apple. The palate actually has some fresh acid, which I like. Crisp apple flavors, rounded out by some whipped butter. Not toasty at all, just pure buttered fruit. The acid on the finish keeps it balanced. This is not a serious wine, but it's very pleasant, albeit not very exciting.”

That’s a fine description of the wine (though “whipped butter” is a bit much), and is pretty much what it tastes like. What surprised me were how those flavors and qualities were so noticeable, when in most wines at this price (and I’ve seen it for as little as $10), you have to hunt for them. This is not a shy wine.

But the tasting note is written entirely from the perspective of someone who doesn’t think the wine is worth writing about. And that’s the thing about K-J and its wines that always baffles me. It takes effort to make the wine taste that way year after year, because the key to grocery store wines is consistency of quality. Consumers will forgive one lesser vintage, but after that, it’s on to the next cute label.

In this, K-J also pioneered something taken for granted these days – the professionally made wine, produced every year without flaws or off-tastes. When I started drinking wine in the 1980s, it was all too common to find wines that were oxidized or made with unripe fruit or tainted in some way. That almost never happens anymore, and today’s arguments about wine quality are about styles and not whether the wine is technically well made.

No doubt I wax too metaphysical. K-J and Jackson’s successors probably don’t care about that. What’s a 92 in the Spectator when your chardonnay is bigger than all but 11 wineries in the U.S.?

Wine, grocery stores, and dog food

The biggest controversy in the wine business (aside from direct shipping) is probably wine sales in grocery stores in the 19 states where it's illegal. New York gets the most attention, not surprisingly, but it has also been an issue in Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Maryland.

The question seems straightforward: This is the 21st century, so why can’t consumers buy a bottle of wine at the supermarket? The answer, of course, is much more complicated, involving the competing interests among the different parts of the three-tier system; what’s often portrayed as a battle for survival between local, neighborhood wine shops and soulless, money-grubbing multi-national grocery chains; and each state’s particular politics and liquor regulations.

Hence the need for a calm, moderating approach, which is where the Wine Curmudgeon comes in. The world will not end for small retailers if wine is sold in grocery stores, and wine in grocery stores is not the panacea that the supermarkets think it is. More, after the jump:

Sweet red wine is sweeping the country

And the wine business will never be the same. Or so these three items seem to indicate:

• I got an an email offering to sell me the domain name bestsweetredwine.com for $275, which is about four times what the cybersquatter who owns jeff-siegel.com wants. Two things strike me about this: First, that someone is cybersquatting the domain, given sweet red wine’s reputation, and second, that they sent me an email. But I suppose that Google tells the squatters the concept is a big deal these days, and then refers them to me.

• Beringer doesn’t want anyone to be confused about its new line of pink and red moscatos, does it? When was the last time you saw a neck hanger boasting that a wine was sweet? This was so shocking that I took the picture with my phone in the grocery store, which happens about as often as producers put neck hangers on their wine saying that it’s sweet.

 

• This Catalina (the coupons you get at grocery store checkouts because you bought or have bought similar items) came from Kroger, and I have no idea why I got it. I didn’t buy any sweet wine, and I’m the wrong demographic for this promotion. Guess it’s because anyone who buys wine is a candidate for a sweet wine, and Turning Leaf’s Refresh line includes a sweet red.

Fourth of July 2012

The blog is mostly off today for the holiday, but we have a little-wine related music, courtesy of nikf at YouTube. And, as impressive as this performance of Mozart’s Symphony 40 by Wine Bottle Man is, what’s even more impressive is the effort that went into setting it up.

Enjoy the holiday.