The Wine Curmudgeon

Winebits 215: Moscato, natural wine, wine trends

• Love that sweet wine: Moscato sales increased by what one trade magazine called "a staggering 73 percent" in the 52 weeks that ended Jan. 7, 2012, and the wine business wise guys are trying to put all sorts of spin on that news. The report in the link credits pop music stars like Kanye West, who sing about moscato, but the Wine Curmudgeon has another, more likely, theory. Americans like sweet wine. Which, of course, none of the wise guys want to admit. My electrician, who wouldn't know Kanye West from Cornel West, has become a big wine drinker. His favorites: Pinot grigio and moscato, and his wife likes sweet red wine. Not coincidentally, buried at the bottom of the story in the link, was this: "... small but growing categories included unoaked Chardonnay and sweet reds."

• Natural wine backlash: Renowned Rhone producer Michel Chapoutier has denounced natural winemakers as out-of-touch hippies making defective wines, reports Decanter magazine. Chapoutier told the magazine that natural winemaking – which doesn't allow techniques like adding sulphur dioxide to stabilize the wines – "...is a connerie. It is rubbish. It’s like making vinegar, bad vinegar. How can anyone allow toxic yeasts to develop so that these inhabit the wine?" This should make for an interesting back and forth, since proponents of natural wine are equally as shy as Chapoutier about advancing their cause.

• Annoying restaurant wine practices: Two of the most annoying restaurant trends in the Zagat Survey's 2011 list were wine related, which should come as no surprise to regular visitors here. Overzealous wine pouring, when the waiter or waitress won't let you sip wine before they show up for a refill was No. 3, while No. 5 was wine glasses that are too big. Interestingly, inflated restaurant wine prices didn't make the list. Perhaps, like death and taxes, we've just accepted those something we can't do anything about.

Winebits 214: YellowTail, winery growth, wine smuggling

• Better living through currency hedging: Or, to put it in English, the Australian company that owns YellowTail made more money betting on the price of the Aussie dollar in fiscal 2011 than it did by selling YellowTail. In fact, reports the Australian Financial Review, the company is so concerned about the strong dollar that it's considering a price increase. The Australian dollar was worth about 50 cents U.S. a couple of years ago, but has been at parity for the last year or so. YellowTail sells about two-thirds of its wine in the U.S.

• Damn the recession, full speed ahead: The number of U.S. wineries grew six percent last year, which is kind of hard to believe given how much whining we heard from the wine business during the recession. Nine states that aren't California, Washington and Oregon had more than 100 wineries, reported Wines & Vines magazine as part of its annual study. These included Ohio and Illinois, hardly considered wine country. But, as the magazine noted, "many states are now making excellent wines and have developed regional, if not national, customer followings." Now, if we can only get the magazine to send someone to the DrinkLocalWine conference.

• A life sentence: That will teach you to cheat the Chinese liquor cops. Reports Decanter magazine: A Chinese man has been given a life sentence for illegally importing more than $7 million of fine wine into China. He altered the name, details and price of high-end wines imported from France, Britain and Hong Kong, stating they were cheap alcohol, the court said. It is not clear which wines were imported, although one report said there were large amounts of Chateau Lafite, Latour and other blue-chip wines.

Winebits 213: Wine prices, wine scores, bootlegging

• Cheaper wine and traffic accidents: States with higher wine consumption have fewer traffic deaths, so why not make wine more easily available? A new study suggests that wine is more socially responsible than beer or spirits, so why not push consumption toward it and away from the others through legal supermarket sales? Said one researcher: "Wine is more likely to be consumed with food. That has an impact. We also suspect that there are different demographic groups that consume this alcohol. Maybe the audience that consumes wine is less likely to drink and drive and be in a traffic accident." A fascinating thought, though the Wine Curmudgeon notes that the study was conducted by researchers in New York state, where there is a huge fight going on over wine sales in grocery stores.

• Because we can never get enough about wine scores: David Duman in the Huffington Post takes on wine scores, calling out two leading members of the Winestream Media, Jon Bonne of the San Francisco Chronicle and Steve Heimoff of the Wine Enthusiast: "... it was discouraging to see their defenses of the system utilizing those same tired arguments used by lesser critics." That's about as harsh as it gets in this business, but Duman didn't stop there. He sounds almost Wine Curmudgeonly: "If you want to be a wine critic who remains relevant for the next thirty years you might want to ditch the rating system now, lest you be stuck wearing the wine writing equivalent of acid-washed jeans and feathered hair a decade too late."

• Consumers and state stores: Here's a shocker: Wine drinkers will break the law to buy cheaper wine if all that means is shopping out of state. Regular visitors here will remember that the Pennsylvania state store system, in which the state runs the liquor stores, has been under attack for being inefficient, bloated and poorly run. This on-line survey says that 81 percent of respondents would rather break the law and bootleg their wine and liquor across the borders than suffer state-mandated price hikes. Bootlegging? Does this mean shoppers will start wearing Wine Curmudgeon-like fedoras?

Winebits 212: Wine scores, grilled cheese wine, regional wine

• Score jiggling: Lots and lots of wine score news in the cyber-ether. Blake Gray has done some number crunching, and sees score inflation. Shocking news, no? My favorite was this article in the New York Times, in which the writer thinks he may have discovered how to buy really nice wine for less money -- wait until Robert Parker lowers the wine's score, after Parisian retailers lower the price. It's the equivalent, he writes, of a Moody's downgrade. And any article on scoring that includes a reference to "Spinal Tap's" infamous 11-level sound system is well worth reading.

• Wine with grilled cheese: Food & Wine's Ray Isle, who knows his way around cheap wine, has some intriguing wine pairings for grilled cheese. And not just the classic white bread and American cheese version, but several more esoteric sandwiches, including one with Italian robiola cheese and mortadella sausage. Oddly, enough, the Wine Curmudgeon made croque monsieur, the French version, and tomato soup a couple of weeks ago, pairing them with the Chateau Bonnet red. Who knew I was on the cutting edge?

• Chefs love regional wine: Local wine, for the second year in a year, is one of the top 10 restaurant trends, says the National Restaurant Associaton. It's right up there with healthful meals for kids and ahead of culinary cocktails -- pretty impressive, given how much ink the latter gets. I was skeptical when local wine made the list last year, but I'm beginning to see a trend, especially as we travel the country for DrinkLocalWine and see how enthusiastic so many chefs are. (Shameless plug for DLW 2012: Denver on April 28 -- tickets on sale soon through the website.)

Winebits 211: New Jersey wine, really expensive wine, wine education

• Near the center of the universe: There have been a spate of recent articles, not only in the Winestream Media, but in many big-time consumer publications about New Jersey wine. One of the most recent came from the Wall Street Journal (behind the paywall) which revealed that the Garden State is enjoying a wine renaissance. As a long-time and ardent supporter of regional wine, I'll take the good news anywhere I can get it. But it does seem odd that media like the Journal are suddenly discovering New Jersey wine, which has been around for more than a decade. This can be traced to what some media critics call the center of the universe theory -- nothing exists until it has been identified and validated by the most important news outlets in the country. And where are the most important news outlets in the country? In New York City, just a short ride down the New Jersey Turnpike from New Jersy wine country.

• Wine prices plummet: Not, of course, for wine we actually drink, but wine the wise guys use to make money -- on the Live-ex wine exchange, a stock market for wine. Really. As silly as that sounds. Prices of the 100 top-traded wines fell by an average of 22 1/2 percent between June and December last year – the steepest fall since the beginning of the recession, reports Drinks Business magazine. The reason for the decline, apparently, is a slump in the Chinese market. The link is well worth clicking on, if only because the story is so bizarre. I've been writing about both business and wine for more than 20 years, and I can barely make sense of it. How anyone makes money trading wine is beyond me -- ignoring the fact that the point of great wine drinking it.

• Too much knowledge? Kris Chislett at Blog Your Wine asks a question that I've asked many times here: Why does the wine business do such a lousy job of wine education? "Sure, I can wax poetically with the best of ‘em about the meso-climates within this one tiny vineyard parcel within the sub-region of a greater region, which has a sandy loam soil and maritime climate. I just don’t think that’s what most people, even the more wine-savvy, can relate to. ... I want to help people learn, and I just don’t think that can be achieved by boring them to death with what for the most part is useless wine trivia." Can't argue with that, can we?

Winebits 208: Winery sales, old bottles, underage drinking

• Recession forcing winery sales? That's the question the Wine Spectator looks at, and the answer is yes, kind of. "It’s far from a fire sale, but wineries in California are changing hands while others are quietly taking on new partners. The surge of deals follows two years of slow business activity—the struggling economy meant plenty of wineries were struggling but no one wanted to rise to their financial rescue." Now that the wine business can see an end to the slowdown, the story says, deep-pocket investors -- the story cites Fiji Water and Boissett Family Estates -- are buying brands that the investors thinks are good values. Also going on, but with much less publicity: Well-known wineries are taking on partners to shore up the books after four years of slow business.

• Oldest Charles Krug bottle: A search for the oldest Charles Krug-Peter Mondavi Winery bottle of wine in existence hasn't found much yet. Krug, which is owned by the Peter Mondavi family, was founded in 1861, and the winery is looking for a really old bottle as part of its 150th birthday celebration. So far, though, no bottle much older than the 1940s has turned up. To complicate matters, there don't appear to be any records existing from before the 1950s, making it harder to track old wine.

• The French failure? NPR ran a story that said underage drinking in France was increasing, despite the country's long history of alcohol use. This is not supposed to happen in countries like France, according to people like me, where drinking is accepted and not taboo, like it is in the U.S. Then, in practically the next sentence, the story explains that the French have recently tightened their drinking laws, as well as setting a new minimum age. Is this how bad journalism has become, that a cranky ex-newspaperman has to lecture a media outlet like NPR on a wine blog? If the French have changed their laws and made drinking more difficult, like here in the U.S., why should we be surprised that binge drinking and underage drinking are going on? And it's a crappy headline, too. Harrumph.

Winebits 206: Holiday gift guide

A sampling of what other wine types recommend:

• The Napa Valley Register: The Wine Curmudgeon was stunned by these suggestions -- New York riesling from Dr. Frank and Todd Kliman's "The Wild Vine," about as regional as wine gifts get. Several other good ideas, including a mini-vertical or mini-horizontal from your favorite wine or region. The former is the same wine from a couple of different vintages; the latter is the same vintage from a couple of different producers.

• Northwest Wine: The advice focuses on the Pacific Northwest, but the approach makes sense no matter where you live. Chocolate wine, anyone?

• The Guardian: The English newspaper includes a reciple for mulled wine, making it worthwhile just for that. The point here is not whether the suggested wines are available (though some are), but, again, the approach to take. There is good advice on buying pricy gifts, as well as one of my my favorites, buying wine at the local convenience store.