The Wine Curmudgeon

Texas wine, Ming Tsai and John Besh

The Wine Curmudgeon, ever vigilant, fully expected to write one of those "Well, what do you expect posts?" when I saw Ming Tsai cook with John Besh on the former's PBS show a couple of weeks ago. Both men, and Besh in particular, are ardent supporters of the local food movement, but I don't know that either has really been associated with or embraced local wine.

So I didn't expect them to pair a Texas wine with their meals, prepared at Luke, Besh's new restaurant in San Antonio. Imagine my shock -- and pleasure -- when Besh poured a Texas cabernet sauvignon to drink with his country fried quail and Tsai's pan roasted chicken. He didn't say whose cabernet it was, but the restaurant wine lists includes the Becker Vineyards Iconoclast.

How happy was I? Enough to overlook the fact that cabernet is not what we do best in Texas, and that a tempranillo would have paired better and been more representative of Texas wine. Also, Besh said Texas sells grapes to other parts of the country. Which we don't, because we don't have enough for Texas winemakers to use.

It was enough to see two big-time, celebrity chefs drinking local wine on national television. What better way to get ready for DLW 2013 in Baktimore, featuring Maryland wine, in six weeks?

Wine of the week: Dry Creek Dry Chenin Blanc 2011

I’m doing research for an upcoming blog post about U.S. wine sales – what varietals we’re drinking, the brands we’re buying, and so forth. Chardonnay, not surprisingly, is still the white wine of choice for most of us.

This wine and grape are not high on those lists. Which, frankly, is a shame. The Wine Curmudgeon has long been an advocate of chenin blanc, a white wine grape that is fairly well known in France but is known in the U.S., if at all, for indifferently made sweet wine. Chenin blanc is much better than that.

The Dry Creek ($10, purchased) is not indifferently made and is not sweet. In fact, It's one of the few wines in the world that isn’t reisling that lists the residual sugar on the label -- 0.6 percent, which makes it as dry as many red wines. (Though, given that hardly any consumers know what residual sugar is, it’s more a good idea in effort than execution).

Look for lots of white fruit aromas, a little lemon peel fruit, and a sort of slate-like, fruit pit finish. This is a wonderful alternative to chardonnay, especially for salads, grilled vegetables, and cheese courses.

Winebits 270: Maker's Mark, nutrition labels, cheap wine

• Bosses don’t know best: Maker’s Mark, the bourbon label owned by drinks giant Beam, announced it would water down its product so it could make more. A week later, the company’s chief operating officer apologized for having such a stupid idea and said that it would keep the alcohol level unchanged. Why does this matter to wine drinkers? Because big companies like Beam are more likely to do silly things like this, given how removed and insulated they are from their customers. Witness New Coke (which, amazingly, not enough companies seem to have learned from). As Big Wine continues its domination of the wine business, consumers will have to be wary of just such machinations – substituting inferior grapes, changing the wine’s formula, and the like.

• Are labels finally coming? The wine industry has largely been ambivalent about nutrition labels on wine, and the federal government has been in no hurry to do it, either. But an odd coalition of Big Spirits and several consumer groups is forcing the issue. Diageo, which has been granted permission to add a label to its Four Loko malt liquor, sees this as an opportunity to  add labels to its other booze products. Meanwhile, four consumer groups want the federal government to use the Four Loko decision to require “easy-to-read, standardized ‘Alcohol Facts’ " labels on all beer, wine and spirits. In the long run, these labels – similar to what’s on light beer – will be good for wine. The problem is that the industry can’t see past the short-term cost and aggravation of adding the labels.

• John Mariani on cheap wine: This is big news, given Mariani’s position in the Winstream Media. and that he doesn’t spend too much time writing about wine that most of us can afford to drink. But his last effort goes into great detail about $10 and $15 French wine, There are some nice wines listed, though availability may be a problem (like the Chateau Lamothe-Vincent). Maybe there is something to this cheap wine thing after all

 

Millennials and the confidence of the palate

Confidence is one thing, but that 71 percent number is something else entirely.

Dear Millennials:

Almost no one who writes about wine respects you as much as I do – in fact, I’m in the middle of a trade magazine story detailing the massive changes you’ll bring to the wine business.

But even I had to giggle when the new Wine Market Council study reported that 7 out of 10 of you who drink wine at least once a week said you could “correctly differentiate a glass of merlot from a glass of cabernet sauvignon.”

That’s saying a lot. For one thing, the two wines can taste quite similar, especially given that one goal of post-modern winemaking is to eliminate the qualities that make them different. For another, I often have trouble telling the difference between cabernet and merlot -- and I’ve been drinking wine for a long time.

In this, I’d love to do a blind tasting – for money, of course, because I have all these expenses – to see if you can really do it. I’d enjoy being proved wrong, though I doubt that would happen. It’s one thing to wax poetic about wine at the dinner table with your friends, and something altogether different when a bunch of people are waiting for you to demonstrate the acuity of your palate.

Yet, having said all this, I’m quite impressed that so many of you are so confident about wine. It’s not something that we’ve always seen in the past from younger wine drinkers, who are usually more worried about using a corkscrew than about what the wine tastes like. No doubt this is yet another way in which you’ll change the wine business. I guess I need to figure out to work that into my story.

Mini-reviews 45: Penfolds, Caldora, Brancaia, Paul Cheneau

Reviews of wines that don’t need their own post, but are worth noting for one reason or another. Look for it on the final Friday of each month:

• Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet 2010 ($12, sample): Perfectly acceptable grocery store red blend from Australia -- simple and fruity, but not flawed or offensive.

• Caldora Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 2011 ($9, purchased): Ordinary Italian red with just a hint of Italian-ness and neither especially funky or fresh. More New World in style than anything else.

• Brancaia Tre Toscana 2010 ($23, sample): Italian red with lots of sweet red fruit and a bit of tannin and acid, but not especially Tuscan in any way

• Paul Cheneau Cava Blanc de Blancs Reserva NV ($10, sample): Very ordinary cava, which would not be a bad thing except that so much cava is so extraordinary. Much better available at this price.

The Dallas Morning News and TexSom Wine Competition 2013

Midway during the second day of judging at this year’s event, one of the other judges smiled at me and said, “This must make you feel good.”

And it did. My panel was judging red wines from the United States made in places that weren’t California, Oregon, and Washington. And they had been – dare I say? – spectacular. We gave five silvers and a gold; the day before, we had awarded gold medals to chardonnays from Idaho's Pend d'Oreille and Michigan.

The other judge, Paul Lukacs of Baltimore, knew about my work with DrinkLocalWine and my enthusiasm for regional producers. And, as someone who judges regularly, he also knew the quality of these wines can be uneven. And while we had some clunkers during the two-day event (we judged all regional wine), the overall quality was as good – if not better – than at any competition I have judged. There was even a nifty red from South Dakota's Belle Joli made with the marquette grape. More, after the jump:

Update: Cheap Wine Book –– we did it

We made the $8,000 goal with $52 and a couple of hours to spare. Thank you so much. You’ve made a cranky ex-newspaperman smile very much.

Now I need to finish writing the book (the introduction and first chapter are mostly done). I’ll post updates here and on the Kickstarter page; my goal is to finish the book for release around Father’s Day.

Again, thanks for all your help.