The Wine Curmudgeon

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.

•

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.

•

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.

Wine with lunch and the end of Western civilization

The Wine Curmudgeon, as a general rule, eats lunch at home -- a sandwich with a couple of glasses of water while hoping the phone doesn’t ring. It ain’t glamorous, but it is effective.

About a dozen times a year, though, I get to have wine with lunch. It’s usually a meal with a visiting winemaker, but it could also be a media trip or just because – either I’m taking the day off or someone suggests it. And, in those dozen times a year, I’m reminded that sometimes, effective isn’t enough. More, after the jump:

Why so much wine analysis is so useless

Consider this, from a story about chardonnay's declining popularity:

"In analyzing the report, Napa Technology said the United States’ large Spanish-speaking population and the growing popularity of Spanish food seemed to be contributing to the growing popularity of Spanish varietals."

Yes, chardonnay, though still the best-selling varietal, isn't as popular as it once was. But to give credit to Hispanic wine drinkers, who make up just five percent of the country's core wine drinkers as measured by the Wine Market Council, seems silly at best -- and lazy and sloppy at worst.

I don't think Proctor & Gamble, or the analysts who follow the company, stumble through that kind of fuzzy thinking when it looks at the sales of its products.

Ask the Wine Curmudgeon

Because the customers always write. In fact, it surprises me how many emails I get asking wine-related questions (especially when you can ask questions in the comment section of the posts). So why not use those emails on the blog?

Hence a new feature, Ask the Wine Curmudgeon. I added a link on the top of the web site – just click on that, and you’ll get an email form so you can ask your question.

Not sure how regularly the feature will run to start, though I’m hoping for once a month. And pretty much any wine question is OK, whether it’s about pairings, what I think of a wine I haven’t reviewed on the blog, or how the wine business works.

Wine Curmudgeon at Savor Dallas

I’ll be part of Saturday’s Modern Lifestyle Wines panel at Dallas’ foremost wine, beer, spirits and food extravaganza. You can buy tickets here.

The panel should be a lot of fun, if only because it will be moderated by Alfonso Cevola, the award-winning Italian Wine Guy. The other panelists include Dr. Richard Becker of Texas’ Becker Vineyards; Jim Collins of Frei Brothers (who kept one of my Cordon Bleu classes spellbound – literally – with a discussion of the best grape growing techniques); Ellen Flora of  Domaine Chandon;  Brian Maloney of Deloach and Buena Vista wineries; and Diego Pinilla of Bodegas Bilbainas.

We’ll talk about wine. We’ll taste wine. We’ll probably even try and figure out what constitutes a modern lifestyle wine. I might even offer some cheap wine advice.

On Friday, meanwhile, I‘ll join my old pal Tim McNally for his wine radio show live from Savor Dallas. Tim will broadcast from noon to 3 p.m. from the Four Seasons in Las Colinas, and I’ll be on around 1:30 p.m.

Stop by if you’re in the area and say hello. I’ll update you on The Cheap Wine book.

"Am I boring you?"

The cartoon is courtesy of Bob Johnson, who did the covers for a San Francisco wine distributor catalog between 1980 and 1996. You'll find more of them here. Today, Johnson owns a gallery in Healdsburg, where he sells signed editions of some of the covers as well as his wine label art.

If any of you wonder if people like this guy really exist, they do. The Wine Curmudgeon has suffered through them more than once. Though, having said that, I wonder if people think I act like this when I talk about cheap wine.