The Wine Curmudgeon

Cupcake wine review 2012

Cupcake, perhaps more than any other producer, understands the mindset of the 21st century wine consumer. Whenever I talk to any wine marketing type, the company's efforts are always described with admiration. Or, as one analyst recently told Wines & Vines magazine: “Everything Cupcake is selling is on fire. They are growing faster than practically anything I’ve ever seen.”

Which, of course, has nothing to do with what the wines taste like. It’s one thing to come up with a clever name, an almost corny approach to branding, and those over the top yet demographically correct back labels. It’s something else to make wine that someone will want to buy a second and third time.

Which is why I’m here. More, after the jump:

What do Americans want? Cheap wine, of course

The blog always enjoys an uptick in visitors in September, and the final four months of the year are always the most read. But a funny thing happened on the way to the usual increase in visitors: It has been a surprisingly large increase, some 5 percent over the last four weeks, and was generated by would-be wine drinkers looking for cheap wine.

How do I know this? Because I can track the search terms people use to get here, and there is no mistaking what they were looking for -- and looking for in numbers they haven’t in years past:

• Top cheap wines 2012

• Best cheap wines 2012

• Best cheap red wine and best cheap white wine

Notice the trend? More, after the jump:

Wine of the week: Chateau Saint-Florin 2011

What makes this French white blend interesting is that there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting about it. It doesn’t have a cute label, no one wrote glowing prose about it, and there isn’t a hip and with it QR code. It doesn’t come from an especially fashionable region of France and it’s almost impossible to find any reference to it on the Internet.

None of which matters in the least. The Saint Florin ($10, purchased) is a solid and sturdy white Bordeaux, a blend of semillon and sauvignon blanc from the Entre-Deux-Mers area within Bordeaux – a part of France where dozens of wines like this are still made that offer value and quality. Call it an honest wine from Jean-Marc and Catherine Jolivet, who are fourth-generation winemakers from Soussac in Bordeaux and own another small producer in Entre-Deux-Mers.

The Saint Florin is fresh and clean, with some grassiness, a little citrus and a sort of stony finish. Plus, it's just 12 1/2 percent alcohol, and all of this makes it a terrific food wine. I paired it with with shrimp and linguine, and I don’t know that the result would have been all that much better with a more pricey Sancerre or a sauvignon blanc from Napa.

 

Winebits 246: Alcohol laws, wine blogging, moscato

• Think it’s bad here? Andrew Jefford in Decanter talks about wine laws in Europe, where there seems to be a more civilized approach than what we manage in the U.S. with the three-tier system. At least, writes Jefford, it’s more civilized most of the time: “The European scene doesn’t smell quite so strongly of market control, but the dream of direct shipment from producers to consumers within the European Union remains precisely that: a dream.” In fact, the state-controlled retailing system in Sweden and Finland doesn’t sound all that different from the infamous Pennsylvania state stores.

• Must-read wine blogs: And, of course, the Wine Curmudgeon is not among them. Fortunately, the compiler has the wisdom to mention the award-winning Italian Wine Guy. It’s a good thing that I have such high self-esteem; otherwise, all this being ignored would send me to a dark room, where I would lie on the bed and whimper. And, as long we’re talking about being ignored, there’s a long story in the Northwestern University alumni magazine about NU types in the wine business – which also doesn’t include me, Medill class of '79. There are some really important people, though, like Stephanie Gallo (yes, of those Gallos) and Dr. Vino.

• Mixing moscato and cognac: Am I the only one who doesn’t understand what’s going on with moscato? Or big booze companies? Shanken News Daily reports that Beam, the multi-national drinks company, is introducing Courvoisier Gold, a blend of Cognac and moscato  -- yes, moscato, the sweet white wine. And they expect consumers to pay $25 for it, too. Here’s what’s confusing: If consumers won’t pay $25 for a bottle sweet wine, and the story notes that consumers aren't buying as much Courvoisier as before, why would anyone buy a blend of the two?

Good news about Texas wine -- no thanks to the state of Texas

Texas legislature? We don't need no stinking Texas legislature.

The fall wine season in Texas continues this month, and the Wine Curmudgeon will play his part at Grapefest at 4:15 p.m. on Thursday. I’ll talk about the changes in Texas wine, what to look for in the next couple of years, and how the situation is much improved from a year ago.

The Texas wine industry has finally figured out that the state will be about as much help in the future as an umbrella in an earthquake. The Texas legislature, which had done so much to assist local wine, decided last year that creating jobs and boosting the rural economy was not nearly as important as whining about big gummint and worrying about college football.

Hence the news late this summer that the Texas Wine & Grape Growers Association will start taxing itself to replace some of the money lost when the legislature cut funding for research and marketing. The program, similar to what trade groups in other states do (see California milk), is at least a year away, but that the state’s 250 wineries could agree that it needed to be done speaks volumes about how desperate the situation has become.

More good news, as well as a few things we still need to fix, after the jump:

Riesling -- the grape that doesn't get enough respect

You don't have to wait for summer to enjoy riesling; it's an all-weather wine.

Riesling is, perhaps, the most misunderstood of all the wine varietals. People who don't like sweet wine dismiss it because it can be sweet, while people who drink sweet wine are often confused by the various ways that riesling is made. Both of which are too bad, because riesling is a refreshing alternative to the white wine that we usually drink.

Most rieslings, even those that are dry, have some sweetness. But since it occurs naturally, and not as added sugar or high fructose corn syrup or a winemaking trick, it's not overwhelming and unpleasant.

In fact, in the best rieslings, the sweetness – even in the most sweet – is balanced by the fruitiness and acidity of the wine. There are some top-flight German rieslings that combine  a wonderful lemon freshness with low alcohol and sweetness; drinking them is about as much fun as wine gets (as my old pal Cody Upton, who shared a bottle with me on a 100-plus Dallas afternoon can attest).

The good news is that riesling is making significant progress in overcoming this resistance. Chateau Ste. Michelle, the giant Washington state producer, has scored financial success with its $10 grocery store riesling, which you can order in a strange restaurant and it will be OK. The Wine Curmudgeon has mostly been partial to Pacific Rim’s various rieslings, which can be a step up from Chateau Ste. Michelle and are almost as widely available.

In addition, the International Riesling Federation, a consortium of producers and like-minded sorts, has worked diligently to improve the way riesling is labeled. The group uses terms like dry and sweet, a huge improvement over the old German system, which uses terms like auslese and spatlese.

More about riesling, including a variety of wines to try, after the jump:

Kerrville Wine & Music Festival 2012

This is the fifth year that I've done the Kerrville Wine & Music Festival, and it always reminds me how passionate ordinary wine drinkers are about local wine. Which is a good thing, because even I sometimes need a reminder.

This year's audience asked the usual sort of intelligent questions (and they always want to know the price, of course), and we got a very favorable response when I asked them to contact their local legislator to help restore state funding for grape research. The Texas legislature convenes next year -- God save us.

After the jump, some highlights: