The Wine Curmudgeon

Birthday Week starts tomorrow

So don’t leave any numbers between 1 and 1,000 in the comment section today in an attempt to win one of this year’s fabulous prizes. Wait until tomorrow -- and read this to find out how to enter.

Besides the prize giveaways, I’ll recap the past year on the blog. That means the top posts, as well as the least liked, and my always insightful analysis about what it all means.

This year’s prize schedule:

• Monday: Two red and two white Riedel Bordeaux glasses, courtesy of Banfi Vintners.

• Tuesday: A wine book gift pack, including the controversial “Grape-a-hol, ”Oz Clarke’s Pocket Wine Book 2013,” and “The Curious World of Wine” from the esteemed Richard Vine. A tip o’ the Curmudgeon’s fedora to the authors and publishers who supplied the books.

• Wednesday: A $50 gift card from Wine.com, and thank you very much to the people at Wine.com for the card.

• Thursday: A wine accessories gift pack, including a wine diary, wine tote, and waiter’s corkscrew.

• Friday: Two tickets to DrinkLocalWine's fifth annual conference set for April 2013. We’re announcing conference details on Nov. 16.

Amazon goes into the wine business

Maybe Amazon knows something the rest of us don’t. Maybe the world’s largest on-line retailer’s much awaited wine store offers something that isn’t obvious at first glance.

Because, frankly, the debut of Amazon Wine, announced yesterday, is underwhelming. Or, as one winery official told me “In looking through some of their selections, there are ‘no’ bargains. In addition, Wine.com seems light years ahead of them.”

More, after the jump:

Expensive wine 44: Patricia Green Yamhill County Pinot Noir 2010

In a couple of weeks, many of us will drink pinot noir with Thanksgiving dinner, since pinot is traditionally the red wine recommended for Thanksgiving. The catch, of course, is that much of the pinot noir we’ll be drinking won’t be especially pinot-like, thanks to one of the biggest changes in the wine business over the past five years.

Those of us who do want to drink pinot that is varietally correct and want to spend a little extra would do well to look for the Patricia Green ($36, sample), long one of my favorite Oregon pinot noirs and not a bad value given pinot noir prices.

In the old days, when winemakers paid more attention to these things, there were three kinds of pinot – red Burgundy from France, which could be earthy and almost mushroomy; California pinot, which was focused on fruit but remained true to the Burgundian concept of elegance; and Oregon pinot, which fit somewhere between the two.

The Patricia Green has remained true to that ideal, and is made as it should be, without any foolishness like over extraction, extra oak, and 15 percent alcohol. There is berry fruit, but also herbs and earthiness; in this, it is what one critic has called a benchmark for Oregon pinot noir -- clean and well-crafted, where the grapes and not the winemaker determine what the wine tastes like. Highly recommended.

Five years, and the five biggest changes in the wine business

Even Eddie G. is surprised by the changes in the wine business over the past five years.

The blog turns five next week, a period that has given the Wine Curmudgeon a cyber-eye view of some significant changes in the way we drink wine in the U.S. It’s not the same score-driven, pay as much as you can business that it was when I did newspaper wine writing in the two decades before the recession.

The biggest change? That consumers discovered that they can drink cheap wine without worrying about quality or what wine snobs think. This shift in drinking habits has been well documented, though rarely discussed in the Winestream Media. Head in the sand, I suppose.

But everyone I ask says the same thing (and I ask everyone I talk to). We’re selling more wine than ever before, they say, but we’re making less money because we’re selling cheaper wine and cheaper wine is less profitable. One importer was practically rueful; she said she had never seen anything like it in all her years in the wine business.

The other changes: The multi-national wine producers’ growth and increasing domination of the wine business; the return of sweet wine; the decline and fall of Australia; and the idea of local wine. More, after the jump:

Wine of the week: Cristalino Brut NV

Sometimes, one forgets old friends. Not intentionally, of course, but because of the press of business and the rush of life. There are new wines to try and more posts to write, and one sometimes takes things like Cristalino for granted.

For which I’m sorry. It has been two years since I reviewed Cristalino, the Spanish sparking wine known as cava, and that post was more a back-handed slap at the lawsuit that made it change its name because a federal judge ruled that consumers might confuse it with the $150 Cristal, which was French and Champagne. (Its new legal name is Jaume Serra Cristalino, which I refuse to use.)

This was one of the first wines I ever reviewed professionally, back in my newspaper days, and it has never – and I mean never – let me down. The first bottle I opened for this review was flat (no doubt sitting on a shelf in a hot warehouse too long), but was still quite drinkable.

Cristalino ($7, purchased) is everything a cheap wine should be and too often isn’t – varietally correct and well made, with distinct flavors and character. Look for terrific bubbles, a little bit of green apple fruit, and even a sort of mineral finish. Yes, it’s simple, but it’s also not too much of one thing or not enough of another, an incredible achievement for a $7 wine.

It will take its rightful place in the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame in January, and I will drink more of it this holiday season and recommend it for Thanksgiving. Because it’s always good to say hello to an old pal.

Winebits 254: Wine prices, French wine, Asimov

• Aussie harvest: I suppose I’ll have to stop trying to teach journalism to the wine business one of these days, but one more lesson: The wine business in Australia is still in the tank (no pun intended), but a good harvest has increased the supply of grapes. The Aussies have cut the number of acres of vines by six percent, but production still increased three percent in the last harvest. And, given that the wine business is worldwide, more grapes in Australia helps offset shortages elsewhere. Without taking demand into account.

• Changing habits: Simon Kuper in the Financial Times looks at the changing role of wine in French culture, in which they are drinking less but apparently enjoying it more. And, lest anyone forget the paramount role the French play in wine, he writes: “In drink as in other domains, France still shapes global tastes. Around the world, wine has become the upmarket drinking option – the opposite of earthy, proletarian or peasant beer. Soon middle-aged male ‘wine bores’ will be as much a Chinese affliction as a French one.”

• “How to love wine:” Eric Asimov, one of the few members of the Winestream Media who understands what’s going on, has a new book. In it, he demonstrates that insight: “Uncertainty [in wine] means that you can say, ‘I don’t have to tell you precisely what you should taste in this wine or how many points it should score. There is something more ambiguous about this wine and I can’t really grasp it and I am okay with that.’ “ Would that more people who profess to be wine experts understood that concept.

Riedel, wine gift card highlights fifth annual birthday week

The Wine Curmudgeon is giving away better stuff this year because the blog’s readership has been phenomenal over the past 12 months – up another 25 percent through the end of October. It’s the least I can do to say thank you to the blog’s visitors.

Birthday week begins a week from today, on Nov. 12. Each morning, in addition to the regular post, there will be a prize post. To win the prize, pick a number between 1 and 1,000 and leave it in the comment section of the prize post. At about 5 p.m. central each day, I'll go to random.org and generate the winning number. The person whose number is closest to the random number wins the prize -- and no, you can't pick a number someone else has picked. You must be 21 and older to be eligible.

This year’s prize schedule:

• Monday: Two red and two white Riedel Bordeaux glasses, courtesy of Banfi Vintners.

• Tuesday: A wine book gift pack, including the controversial “Grape-a-hol, ”Oz Clarke’s Pocket Wine Book 2013,” and “The Curious World of Wine” from the esteemed Richard Vine. A tip o’ the Curmudgeon’s fedora to the authors and publishers who supplied the books.

• Wednesday: A $50 gift card from Wine.com, and thank you very much to the people at Wine.com for the card. I'm also told they'll have a major announcment next week, which we'll share on the blog.

• Thursday: A wine accessories gift pack, including a wine diary, wine tote, and waiter’s corkscrew.

• Friday: Two tickets to DrinkLocalWine's fifth annual conference set for April 2013. We’re announcing conference details on Nov. 16.