The Wine Curmudgeon

Winebits 285: Wine ingredients, Aussie wine, wine tasting

• What in your wine? The wine industry, for the most part, has ignored the federal government’s decision to allow voluntary nutrition facts labels on its product. Eric Asimov at the New York Times, though not discussing the labels directly, writes about wine ingredients and offers the following: “…wine can very much be a manufactured product, processed to achieve a preconceived notion of how it should feel, smell and taste, and then rolled off the assembly line, year after year, as consistent and denatured as a potato chip or fast-food burger.” The nutrition labels are an opportunity for producers to connect to younger – and especially female – wine drinkers, and it looks like they’re going to pass it up for no good reason other than they think the idea is stupid.

• No money down under: The news just keeps getting worse for the Australian wine business. Only one in four grape growers in the country’s best wine regions say their business is profitable, while a third of them want to stop growing grapes. And, to make matters worse, grape prices have dropped by half but only about 10 per cent of growers are being paid on time. The numbers come from an Australian government survey, and goes a long way to explain the ongoing crisis in the Aussie wine business.

• How many wines was that? The best way to learn about wine is to taste wine, and Sean Sullivan at the Washington Wine Report knows that first hand. No wonder he won a Wine Blog Award. Sullivan recently tasted 600 Washington wines over the course of  several weeks – an impressive performance, even by the Wine Curmudgeon’s standards. The post is worth reading, even if you aren’t particularly interested in Washington wine, because it’s some of the best reporting I’ve seen from a wine writer in a long while. Sullivan eschews the usual sort of wine writing foolishness to give readers something they can use – hard facts, critical insight, and solid advice. In particular, his discussion of alcohol levels is very good.

Why more Americans don't drink wine, chapter III

The Wine Curmudgeon had dinner the other night at his favorite Dallas Tex-Mex restaurant, where wine is more of a concept than anything else. Over the years, it has carried some decent bottles, but its wine selection is usually a dumping ground for distributor-driven, overpriced and less than well-made South American imports that cost $8 a glass.

So, not all that different from the rest of the U.S. restaurant business. As this person has noted. And this person. And even me, once or twice. And restaurant wine sales have suffered for it.

All of which is annoying enough. But what struck me, and the reason for this post, is that this restaurant had no trouble pricing -- or selling -- the dozen or so margaritas listed on the table card. The most expensive was $10, and most were $8. In other words, a customer could order a crappy glass of wine or a very ordinary margarita for the same price. Is it any wonder that this restaurant sells – that most Mexican-style restaurants – three to four times more margaritas than wine?

The restaurant respects booze drinkers; it doesn’t respect wine drinkers. Even I opted for a couple of bottles of $4 beer. And if someone like me, who doesn’t see anything wrong with sparkling wine for breakfast, doesn’t want to drink this restaurant’s wine, what’s an ordinary consumer going to do?

And, for those of you who want to make this a pairing issue, be forewarned – first, because a rose would work; second, because most consumers could care less about pairings, especially at a popularly-priced restaurant; and third, because it’s not like a margarita pairs with anything, either.

It’s restaurant arrogance or indifference or both. And wine drinkers are worse off for it.

Wine Curmudgeon wins Wine Blog Award

I had a nifty little thing mostly written for this morning, explaining why I didn't care that I didn't win the 2013 Wine Blog Award for best industry blog. Guess I don't need to post it, huh?

I was dumbfounded when I got up this morning to find an email from The Italian Wine Guy, a text from Katie Myers, and a tweet from Dave Falchek sharing the news. I honestly didn't expect to win. For one thing, the category wasn't a good fit for what I do. For another, I'm from the Midwest, and we don't win things, as the Chicago Cubs have demonstrated for more than 100 years. Besides, the competition was intense -- Blake Gray, Tom Wark, and The Hosemaster of Wine are wine blogging legends.

But that doesn't mean I'm not thrilled. Or overjoyed. Or any adjective you want that describes complete and boundless happiness. And thank you. I may even find time today to enjoy my achievement, instead of my usual worrying and fretting about filling up the blog and making a living at it. Maybe with a little Puligny? Of course, I also have this nice $10 rose. ...

What makes me the happiest is that the award was voted on by people who read wine blogs, and that those people voted for me. That means they want to know the things I write about -- the idea that wine should be easy and enjoyable, that it doesn't have to be about marketing gimmicks and winespeak, that wine writing should do for wine what intelligent, critical writing does for anything else: inform and educate the consumer.

Which, by the way, I'm going to keep doing, and would have even without the award. But you knew that anyway, didn't you?

Still, it's time for celebration. How about the Boss, the Big Man and the rest of the E Street Band Dancing in the Dark (courtesy of 19eagle81 at YouTube)?

Twitter tastings, wine marketing, and what comes next

The Twitter tasting has revolutionized wine marketing, as anyone who cares about regional wine will happily attest. We have used it with great success at Drink Local Wine, and the monthly Texas wine tweet-off has been equally as successful. People from around the world can comment and taste wine at the same time, linked through nothing more than the cyber-ether.

That’s why I wanted to participate in the recent Don and Son’s pinot noir Twitter tasting. The format – a live webcast combined with a Twitter tasting – sounded like it could take virtual wine tasting to the next level.

The wine was well done, and reminded me that California can produce quality pinot noir. The Twitter/webcast part, though, didn’t quite do what I hoped it would, which says more about the wine business than the technology. More, after the jump:

Lone Star International Wine Competition 2013

We saw the future of Texas wine during one of the championship flights at the 30th annual competition this week, where there wasn’t a chardonnay in sight. The five wines competing for best white from Texas were all outstanding, and each was worthy of winning -- two Rhone blends, a viognier, a roussanne, and an albarino.

Can I write, finally and after 20 years, that Texas producers and growers have figured this thing out? More, after the jump:

Wine of the week: J Winery Pinot Gris 2012

I just finished a trade magazine story about pinot grigio, detailing what people are drinking, why they’re drinking it, and what’s in the grape’s future. One of the editor’s instructions: Make sure to include the J pinot gris in the story.

It’s easy to see why. The J ($15, sample, 13.8%) is one of the great wine success stories of the past five or six years – a very well made, reasonably priced wine that does exactly what it is supposed to do.

Pinot grigio and pinot gris are the same grape; the difference in name  points to a difference in style. Pinot grigios, mostly Italian, have little fruit and a minerally finish, while pinot gris, like those from Alsace and Oregon, are fruitier.

The J is somewhere in the middle. Look for some lime fruit in the front and a peach pit sort of finish, but there is more to the wine than a wine writer's description. This is not a simple, full fruit ahead wine. Rather, it’s about as long and elegant as a wine at this price gets, one that you sip and and then, suddenly, notice that the bottle is empty.

Serve chilled, on its own or with summer food (and especially if your air conditioning goes out just as the Texas summer is beginning). Highly recommended.

Winebits 284: Wine prices, wine bottles, soft drinks

• Too many grapes? During the wine price panic a couple of years ago, the wise guys kept mumbling that there weren’t enough wine grapes planted in California, and that, psst, I’ve got a deal for you if you want to buy some vineyard land. That wasn’t necessarily the case then, and it’s probably not today, either. The president of one of the biggest grape grower trade groups says the number of acres in production could be 25 percent higher than the official figures. If true, this would explain why prices never took off, even after the so-called short harvests in 2010 and 2011. And it would also explain why production rebounded so quickly to a record in 2012. And, for those of us who care about wine prices, it also means they aren’t going up any time soon.

• Do we really need glass? No less than the pre-eminent British wine writer Jancis Robinson asks this question, wondering “why we need a material as heavy, fragile and resources-hungry as glass for everyday wine, wine that is consumed within months of being bottled.” Why not juice boxes and pouches? Good questions all, but ones that overlook the role of tradition in the wine business. Screwcaps are not new, and are cheaper and more efficient than corks. But most wine is still closed with corks, and for no other reason than that’s the way it has always been done.

• Rot those teeth: The Wine Curmudgeon does not drink soft drinks, dating from my days as a young reporter who wrote a story and learned that Coke, Pepsi, and the rest are among the most nutritionally bankrupt foods on the planet. So I was not surprised to see this study, which claims that diet soft drinks rot teeth like cocaine and meth. The story that describes the study doesn’t go into much detail about how it was conducted, and I’m curious why only a handful of women were studied, but it does make great reading and something to point out to those who tell me I drink too much wine. And why my teeth are in such good shape.