The Wine Curmudgeon

Wine studies, wine analysts, and wine foolishness

A couple of months ago, I wrote about what I thought was the dumbest thing ever written about the wine business: That chardonnay was declining in popularity because more Hispanics were drinking wine.

Turns out I was the dumb one, because a study released last month was even sillier – that the Internet and big retailers would eventually put the local wine store out of business. Where do people get these things? And who is goofy enough to pay them to write this stuff? More, after the jump:

Kickstarter, wine writing, and a Cheap Wine Book update

The Wine Curmudgeon has been remiss in updating the cyber-ether on the progress of the Cheap Wine book, which was scheduled to appear sometime in the next six or eight weeks. That's not going to happen; call it the vicissitudes of book writing in the 21st century. How was I to know the city of Dallas was going to jackhammer my street while I was working on the second chapter?

The good news is that the book might stil make the July 1 Kickstarter deadline, and will certainly be out this summer. Oddly enough, I did some quality work on the airplane when I was travelling to and from Denver over the weekend, which I take as a good sign. Who can write on an airplane? I'm about a quarter of the way through the manuscript, and it's very nicely done. No point in false modesty here, is there? A sample:

We assume our betters know better. Ask an American about football, and they'll have an opinion, and it doesn't matter if the only thing they know about the game is that each team has 11 players. Ask them about politics, and they'll have an opinion, and it doesn't matter whether they vote or aren't sure who the vice president is. Ask them about wine, on the other hand, and you'll get a blank stare. “It's too complicated,” they'll say. Or, “That's too fancy for me. I drink beer.” Or, my favorite, “I don't know wine. What do you think I should drink?”

As part of this, I wrote a story for Palate Press, the on-line wine magazine, about funding wine writing projects tthrough Kickstarter. In the article, I talked a little about my experience, but focused on two of the most successful efforts, Alice Feiring's natural wine newsletter and a series of on-line wine guides written by Lisa Talarico.

The Kickstarter model, transformed into some sort of author's co-op, might well be the future of book publishing, given that there doesn't seem to be much of a future for book publishing. Like-minded writers get together to finance each other's efforts, much the way farming co-ops work. Interestingly, a Kickstarter spokesman declined to be interviewed for the article; I think alcohol-related projects are a touchy subject for them.

Richie Havens, 1941-2013

So long, Richie -- The love you save will be equal to the love you gave. (Video courtesy of Voice of America via YouTuibe.)

Windows 8 is like a bottle of crappy wine

The Wine Curmudgeon, proving just how fallible he really is, left his computer at home last week during a media tour of the Texas Hill Country. This meant I had to make do with periodic access to a computer, and one of them ran Windows 8.

Is there any way to be polite about this? Nope. Windows 8 is not only bad, but worse than Vista, Millennium, and Windows 98. And I didn’t think anything could be worse than Windows 98. Windows 8 is not only counter-intuitive, even for those of us who are kind of geeky, but slow and crash-y.

Think of Windows 8 as an overpriced bottle of wine that is not only corked, but oxidized. And did I mention that it’s overpriced?

Roger Ebert, 1942-2013

“You have to realize you're not writing for the filmmakers, you're writing for the potential film audience. And I would much rather hurt somebody's feelings who made the picture then send somebody to see a movie and spend two hours of their life seeing a movie that I don't think is worth seeing.”

                                                                     -- Roger Ebert

What better credo could a critic – any kind of critic – live by? Would that more wine writers kept it in mind.

I never met Ebert, though he did decline to write the introduction for my book about the movie “Casablanca,” written for its 50th anniversary. My editor, who knew him a little, thought she could talk him into it, but without success.

I did, however, have a great moment with Gene Siskel, who was Ebert’s original co-host on their TV movie review show. I was a 17-year-old phone clerk in the sports department at a newspaper in suburban Chicago in 1975. One evening, I answered the phone, expecting to talk to a high school basketball coach.

“Is Temple Pouncey there?” Pouncey was one of the writers, and was hosting a party that was legendary at the paper.

“No, he’s not. Can I take a message?”

“Yes, this is Gene Siskel, Can you tell him that I’m coming to the party?”

I almost dropped the phone. Siskel was the film critic at the Chicago Tribune, and this particular 17-year-old phone clerk wanted nothing more than to one day work for a big city newspaper like the Tribune. I idolized reporters the way others did rock stars.

“Yes sir, Mr. Siskel. I’ll give him the message.”

”OK. Now, that’s Gene Siskel,” and then he spelled his name for me, “S-I-S-K-E-L.”

Which is another lesson wine writers should learn – no matter how famous you think you are, you probably aren’t. Humility never goes out of style.

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.

 

 

Gov. Perry to California: Bring your wineries to Texas

Perry: "Give us your high-dollar wine innovators, yearning to breathe free of taxes."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, calling California a bloated, over-sized mess of a state where the gummint makes it impossible to do bidness, announced today that all of California’s 3,400 wineries should move to Texas.

“Building a winery in California is next to impossible," said Perry, marking a whirlwind tour of the state’s leading wine appellations. “That’s why I’m here -- you fish where the fish are. You're at a tipping point in California from the standpoint of high-wealth wine innovators. Many are looking for somewhere else to go, and we'd like them to consider Texas."

Among the incentives Perry offered California wineries:

• Special appellation laws so that Napa and Sonoma wineries that move to Texas can still label their wine Napa and Sonoma. “It’s all about getting gummint out of the way of bidness,” he said. “Who are we to tell entrepreneurs how to run their wineries?”

• Elimination of the state’s three-tier system, allowing the relocated wineries to sell their wine to whoever they want, where they want, and how they want. “Gummint red tape and bureaucracy stifle bidness, and we don’t let that happen in Texas,” he said.

• Repeal of Texas’ environmental and labor regulations, allowing the re-located wineries to ignore federal EPA and hiring and firing rules. “It’s not like we had many of those to begin with,” said Perry, '”so it was no trouble at all to get rid of them.”

Reaction from California was swift, coming as it did after the state’s unsuccessful plan to let its wine regions secede from the United States. Said Gov. Jerry Brown: “I used to date Linda Ronstadt. And he presumes to tell me how to run the state? Who has he ever dated?”

In Texas, the legislature, debating whether it should offer Texas A&M tax incentives to re-join the Big 12, issued a statement saying that wine was fine as far as it went, but that it would never replace sweet tea and Dr Pepper in the hearts and minds of real Texans.

The Texas wine industry, which lost its state funding for research and marketing after a Perry budget edict in 2011, said through a spokesman that it completely understood the governor’s plan and would stand in the corner and not make any noise or complain in any way.