The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine availability: How to find what you're looking for when it's not on the shelf

Wine availability is the bane of any wine writer’s existence. Even the Wine Curmudgeon, who only writes about wine that I see on a store shelf or am assured is on a shelf on pain of my considerable wrath, gets emails all the time asking why something I wrote about isn’t available.

There are a variety of reasons for this, most of which are discussed in the link above. The point of this post is to help you find wine when your local retailer doesn’t have it.

The process is after the jump:

Ask the WC 1: Loose corks, cava, unadulterated wine

Because the customers always write -- this feature, which will run every now and then. Ask a wine-related question by clicking here or on the Ask the Wine Curmudgeon link on the top of the web site.

Greetings WC:
A bottle of white wine I bought got warm in the car last summer and the cork pushed out a small amount. Is that possible? If so, should I expect any negative impact to the wine getting warm?
Car & Driver

Dear Car & Driver:
Heat expands, and that's what happened here. It's not unusual, and often happens with wine kept in warehouses without air conditioning. Yes, they still exist. The wine may have spoiled or oxidized; really no way to tell until you taste it.

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Dear Mr. Curmudgeon:
I am a faithful reader of your ever informative and always entertaining blog. I want to re-stock my wine rack with cava. Any suggestions?
Bubbly drinker in New York

Dear Bubbly:
So hard to answer while I’m blushing. But you can’t go wrong with the widely available Segura Viudas and Casteller and Naveran from Ole Imports, which may be more difficult to find. Each is around $10. If you want to spend a bit more, try Raventos and Juve y Campos.

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Dear WC:
I'm looking for a simple red wine, one that is unfortified, unsweetened, with nothing added -- no spices, flavors, etc. What’s available?
Confused by winespeak

Dear Confused:
I'm surprised I don't get this question more often, given the terms used to describe wine flavors. If a wine writer says a wine has cherry fruit, it's not untoward to wonder if cherry juice has been addedadded. But most dry red wine is made without adding those things – typically, just grapes, yeast, and sulfites. You can buy a red wine from Bogle, for instance, and it should meet your criteria. The fruit flavors come from wine grapes, which have different flavor properties than table grapes.

 

 

Anthony J. Hawkins and the Wine Grape Glossary

The Wine Grape Glossary, perhaps the most important wine reference tool on the Internet, was compiled by someone who did it to learn how to use a computer and to teach himself basic programming.

Thank you, Anthony J. Hawkins.

“That’s one reason why it’s so simple,” says the 83-year-old Hawkins, retired from the ceramics department at Alfred University in western New York state. “I didn’t want to put in any bells and whistles because I didn’t want it to be too complicated.”

More, after the jump – including why Hawkins had to give up work on the project and how he’d like someone to take it over:

2012 holiday gift guide redux

Unfortunately, this Champagne bottle lamp has been sold.

Just a week until Christmas, so it’s time to remind everyone who missed it the first time that the Wine Curmudgeon has you covered. Check out the holiday gift post, as well as a couple of more suggestions:

• Templeton small batch rye whiskey ($38, sample): The revival in brown goods means those of us who drink rye have more to choose from than Old Overcoat. The Templeton, from Iowa no less, has that wonderful rye sweet edge, and it lasts from beginning to end. Cut it with a little water, sit by the fireplace, and it doesn’t matter how cold it is outside.

• “Wine Grapes,” which my pal Dave McIntyre described as “a book of biblical scale.” How about entries for 1,368 grape varieties over 1,280 pages for $175? Yes, it’s not for everyone, but I have to confess: It would be fun to have around the house.

The "What do you drink when your magazine is sold and everyone gets fired?" blog post

The Wine Curmudgeon’s career in the newspaper business included three newspaper closings as well as one really spectacular newspaper wake (for the late and much lamented Dallas Times Herald). So I am, sadly, well qualified to write this post.

Pet Age, the premiere trade magazine for the pet retail business, has been sold and all of its employees have been fired. I have freelanced for Pet Age since the early 1990s (one does not live by wine writing alone), and so I know the good work the staff did. Cathy Foster, who was my editor, was smart and quick to see how a story should be written, and editor Karen MacLeod, a fellow Northwestern alum, may know the pet business better than I know cheap wine.

So this is my gift to them for a job well done. After the jump, what to drink when they hold the Pet Age wake, be it public or just sitting at home trying to make sense of the whole thing:

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:

Catfish meuniere, Randall Grahm, and Spy Valley

Honest wine is the best pairing for honest food.

The most important lesson I ever learned about seafood came from the late, much loved and much missed Merlin Kleinpeter: If you can’t buy it from Robert at Bayou Seafood, she used to say, then don’t buy it.

Which was Merlin’s way of telling me that fresh is what matters, and that any supplier who wasn’t honest about things like freshness wasn’t worth my time and money. If the crabs weren’t good that day, then Robert told her so, and Merlin didn’t buy them.

I mention this because food and wine are inextricably linked, and not just about which wine goes with which food. Pairing wine with most takeout pizza, which never tastes as good as you think it should, is one thing. That’s what $10 grocery store merlot was invented for.

But pairing wine with honest food – food that someone cared about and that required them to make an effort when they prepared it -- is another matter entirely. More, after the jump: