Dave McIntyre's WineLine

Sales of "Green" Wine are Up, and Monsanto Smiles ...

Sales of so-called “green” wines increased 12.1 percent over the past year, nearly four times the growth rate of wine sales in general, according to a new Nielsen Company report released last week at the “Green Wine Summit” in Santa Rosa, Calif.

 

The survey, reported by WineBusiness.com, also found that consumers are confused about what makes a wine “sustainable,” “organic,” or “biodynamic.” This confusion will only grow as these terms are used indiscriminately as marketing tools without set standards or definitions.

 

The industry has made several praiseworthy efforts to set standards for these terms. The Wine Institute, the California industry association, has published a textbook of sustainability practices to guide its members. Oregon has LIVE – Low Input Viticulture and Enology – which certifies wineries that use sustainable practices. But there is no easy or uniform definition of “sustainable viticulture.” And with Monsanto advertising itself as the epitome of sustainable agriculture, consumers are bound to become leery of winery claims about their own farming practices or reduced carbon-footprint.

 

As for “organic” wines, the U.S. government made that nomenclature impossibly confusing with its organic agriculture regulations a few years ago, and the best the industry can do now is label its product “made with organically grown grapes.” That seems a half-way measure at best, and there is not a single certifying organization to give that claim any stature or authenticity.

 

There is a single organization for certifying biodynamic wines – Demeter USA. Demeter is not a wine industry creation, which gives it an extra measure of credibility. There is still some gray area, though, as wineries can claim to follow biodynamic practices without applying for certification, and there is no third-party verification of those claims.

 

Another survey reported at the summit, from Full Glass Research, found that 59 percent of those who purchased organic or sustainable wines said they did so because the viticultural practices were better for the planet, while 38 percent of those who do not purchase them said they rarely see them on store shelves, and 33 percent of those who did not seek these wines out simply did not care.

 

I like the "green wine" movement, but I worry that it has become a marketing gimmick as much as a form of viticulture. A wine made by practices that respect the Earth SHOULD taste better, but when every wine becomes "green," how will we be able to tell?

Local Wine Bandwagon Gains Steam With Obama's Help

Virginia wine was featured last night at President Obama's first State Dinner. The president, his guest of honor, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and invited members of D.C.'s elite washed down pumpkin pie tart and pear tatin with Thibaut-Janisson blanc de chardonnay, from the Monticello district near Charlottesville.

Thibaut-Janisson is an up-and-coming specialist in fine sparkling wine. Winemaker Claude Thibaut is convinced that Virginia has the climate and terroir to produce excellent bubbly – and evidently the president agrees.

“Here's more evidence Virginia can produce top-notch fizz,” I wrote about this wine last year in my Thanksgiving recommendations in the Post. “Elegant and stylish, with palate-refreshing acidity and subtle fruit that emerges about an hour after opening.”

Other wines served at the dinner included the 2008 Modus Operandi Sauvignon Blanc from Napa Valley; the 2006 Brooks Winery Riesling “Ara” Vineyard from Oregon's Willamette Valley; and the 2007 Beckman Vineyards Grenache from California's Santa Ynez Valley. The dinner's menu is available on the White House Web site here.

I've always been a big fan of Brooks. The winery farms biodynamically and produces excellent Riesling - the Ara is its best - and Pinot Noir. I had the opportunity to visit the winery last summer during the International Pinot Noir Celebration, and enjoyed the 2006 Ara then. But if you want to taste what the White House guests enjoyed tonight, you'd better hurry - the winery has only a few cases left.

This caps a banner week for Regional Wine. Last week, I wrote in the Post that “the growth of local wineries throughout the country is transforming the American wine industry.” Yesterday, my buddy Jeff Siegel, aka “The Wine Curmudgeon,” offered more proof of the changing face of American wine. Jeff noted that Eric Asimov in The New York Times included a New York wine – Shinn Estate Merlot – in his Thanksgiving recommendations, while Boston Globe wine columnist Stephen Meuse praised Massachusetts Cabernet Franc, even if he didn’t include a specific recommendation for one.

“What's with these big deal wine writers suddenly hopping on the DrinkLocalWine.com bandwagon?” Jeff asked. Not that we're complaining!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Please comment here on what wines you'll be enjoying for the feast.

Carbon-Neutral Wine

Wineries today tout their green credentials almost as much as their scores from influential wine magazines. Solar power, sustainable or organic or biodynamic (s/o/b) viticulture, and "carbon-neutral" winemaking are all marketing buzzwords for wineries. In today's column in The Washington Post, I focus on "carbon neutral" - what does it mean, and why should we consumers care? And in this video, I interview Dave Pearce, chief winemaker for New Zealand's Grove Mill winery, which was the world's first to attain "carbon-neutral" certification. The video was shot on my new Flip camera in a restaurant, and the light was focused on the center of the table, which means the wine glasses look great while Dave and I resemble shadowy creatures in a county fair house of mirrors, but oh well. I'll get the hang of it someday.

psst - Grove Mill's wines are good, too! Especially the Sauvignon Blanc and the Riesling. The Pinot Noir ain't shabby, either.

Cheers!

Randall Grahm, Author at Large

Who was that lurking around side streets in Washington DC the other night? Why, it was Randall Grahm, "president for life" of Bonny Doon Vineyard in Santa Cruz, California. He was carrying a copy of his new book, Been Doon So Long, so I asked him what the book was about, as well as how his conversion to biodynamics was going and his advocacy of "truth in labeling" for wine.

(Well, OK, we found this relatively quiet sidestreet and a fairly bright streetlamp under which I could do this interview, using my nifty new Flip camcorder.)

Oregon Pinot Noir - Sustainably Good

Oregon pinot noir offers an ideal opportunity to explore the effects of terroir, as the state’s main wine region, the Willamette (rhymes with ‘dammit’) Valley features two main soil types, each with its own expression in the wine.

I explore these expressions in my column this week in The Washington Post, written after my enjoyable sojourn in McMinnville at the International Pinot Noir Celebration.

The Oregon wine industry leads the way in the United States in sustainable, organic and biodynamic viticulture. There is a state certification for sustainable viticulture and a regional group called “LIVE” - that's Low Input Viticulture and Enology – that stresses environmentally friendly practices in the vineyard and in the winery. Its members include familiar names such as Adelsheim, Bethel Heights, Chehalem, and Rex Hill, among many others. LIVE works with the “Salmon Safe” certification that monitors wineries for practices that protect fisheries, and the IOBC, the International Organization for Biological and Integrated Control of Noxious Animals and Plants. (Whew – that's a mouthful!)

This environmental consciousness is to be applauded, for it stands to reason that healthier land will produce healthier grapes and better wine. No one can prove that yet, and any honest winemaker will admit that bad wine can be made from great grapes, and no great wine can be made from bad grapes. So maybe land wins out over the winemaker’s hand, after all.

Price, of course, is always a factor. Oregon has positioned itself in the $35 - $55 range for fine wines, and is beginning to feel the pinch of the recession, as luxury wines from other regions such as Napa Valley experience steep price cuts. Oregon pinot noir has not yet responded to this pressure, though Ted Casteel of Bethel Heights said his winery will be increasing production of its regular cuvee and de-emphasizing its top wines with the 2009 harvest.

Even without the economic climate making its presence felt (yet) on the price of Oregon pinot noir, there are several that provide good value at $25 or less. Here are a few worth seeking out, in alphabetical order:

A to Z Pinot Noir 2007, Oregon, $20

Anne Amie Cuvee A Pinot Noir 2007, Willamette Valley, $25

Benton Lane Pinot Noir 2007, Willamette Valley, $25

Firesteed Pinot Noir 2007, Oregon, $18

Of Cow Horns and the Cosmos

Biodynamics is a small but rapidly growing style of winemaking. Basically put, biodynamics is “Extreme Organics,” going way beyond avoidance of chemical fertlizers, pesticides and herbicides to include some rather esoteric practices. The wackiest of these is probably the only thing many people hear about biodynamics – burying cow horns full of manure throughout the vineyard at the autumnal equinox.

Equal parts agriculture, philosophy and mysticism, biodynamics somehow stops short of requiring the winemaker to dance naked among the vines at midnight under a full moon.

Shortly after I posted a link to today’s Washington Post column on biodynamic viticulture on Facebook, I received a message from David Page and Barbara Shinn (right), the husband-and-wife team behind Shinn Estate Vineyards on Long Island. I met them a few years back while researching an article on New York wines for the San Francisco Chronicle.

“We just dripped this year’s first compost tea brew through the irrigation system,” they wrote. “Turning millions of beneficial organisms into billions. Nothing about doing these kind of applications seems mystical to us, just good feet-on-the-ground modern use of old farming practices that too many good farmers abandoned for chemicals with names no one can understand, and only addictive results.”

I can’t say biodynamic wines taste better than other wines, but in many cases, they do taste different – more lively and vibrant. They often defy our expectations of what a wine should taste like, which is precisely the point Nicolas Joly, the mad professor of biodynamie, makes when he rails against “appellation l’Oréal.”

Conventional wisdom says biodynamic farming won’t work here on the East Coast. I don’t know how rigorous David and Barbara are in this regard, whether they are “as biodynamic as possible,” “practicing biodynamic,” or working on a Demeter certification. But I do know they make some terrific wines, and their message gave me a hankering for a glass of their Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc.

The moon is waning. Do  you know where your vines are?

A Toast to Earth Day

Today is a day to celebrate our planet. Heck – the government has finally acknowledged that we’re killing it with greenhouse gases. Maybe now we can take some steps to help the environment.

One step might be to support earth-friendly winemaking – sustainable, organic, or biodynamic viticulture, or what I cheekily call S/O/B wines. In my Washington Post column today, I explore the idea that taking better care of the land might actually produce better wines – something that, I will admit, I cannot prove. Today’s column focuses on sustainable and organic wines – more on biodynamics next week.

Cheers, and Happy Earth Day!

Montirius Côtes du Rhône 2007

Montirius hits the stony, mineral side of Rhône wines. It is tight and focused, delicious and very much alive. Increasingly I find myself saying “focused” and “lively” about wines that impress me. This one impresses me. I won’t recite a recipe list of ingredients you may or may not taste. But I will tell you that this biodynamic producer uses no oak – these wines, and there are fine Gigondas and Vacqueyras as well, are all from the vineyard, not the forest.

Montirius is imported by Vintage ‘59 Imports LLC of Washington, DC. The wines are apparently marketed under different labels in France.

The Terroirists Are Coming!

The “Return to Terroir” tasting came to Washington this week, courtesy of the French Wine Society. It wasn’t as big a tasting as in New York the day before, but I only had to find parking along Reservoir Rd., not shlep to the Big Apple and back in one day.

I also had the opportunity to have an extended conversation with three leading apostles of biodynamic viticulture: Nicolas Joly of Coulée de Serrant; Christophe Erhart of Domaine Josmeyer; and Mathieu Deiss, the newest generation of winemaking at Domaine Marcel Deiss.

There were about forty wineries at the tasting, mostly from France, but also from Spain, Austria, Australia, Italy, Chile and of course the United States. I won’t bore you with tasting notes. One does not take notes at a tasting like this – one shmoozes, one kisses up and hopes to be kissed, one tries to get an impression of wines to be explored later, all the while keeping a vigilant eye out for a familiar face or an uncrowded spit bucket.

But I can give some impressions: Biodynamics is a fascinating and somewhat controversial farming philosophy – some call it a religion – and the wines are not by definition good. Many of them are, but there is still the possibility of too much alcohol or heavy-handed oak. The idea of biodynamics is to express a particular terroir, and some of these terroirs do not match our preconceptions of what wine should taste like – they are challenging wines; often delicious, sometimes not, never boring.

With biodynamics, I feel a bit like Fox Mulder on The X-Files: I want to believe. It makes sense that taking care of the earth will produce better wines. To be honest, though, I’m not at all certain that I could pick an organic or biodynamic wine from a blind tasting lineup.

I need to explore these more.

More on this tasting and my conversations with the winemakers to come …

Mike Grgich and Wolfgang Puck

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting two legends of American wine and food - Mike Grgich, celebrated winemaker who created the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay that won the Paris Tasting of 1976, and Wolfgang Puck, who helped revolutionize our cuisine by incorporating flavors from around the world that reflected the increasing diversity that is America. The occasion was a wine dinner at The Source by Wolfgang Puck, the chef's D.C. outpost at the Newseum.

As I sat there listening to these two long-time friends regale their dinner guests in their pronounced Eastern European accents, I couldn't help but thinking, "What a wonderful country!" Our economy may be going down the toilet, but optimism and cheer were on display. We had just elected as president a second-generation American of mixed-race who speaks of hope and a bright future instead of enemies lurking around every corner hoping to destroy our way of life unless we destroy it first in self-defense. My own forebears came to this country long enough ago that I have no trace of Scottish or Irish brogue, but I thought of my Taiwanese mother-in-law, who came here 38 years ago and has scrimped and saved and worked her ass off ever since to realize the American dream of a comfortable life for herself and her daughter. And I thought of her 8-year-old granddaughter, half-Chinese, who will now grow up thinking a mixed-race President of the United States is nothing out of the ordinary.

The food and wine were good, too.

This is as political as I will get on this blog, but I figure the people who sent me hate mail five years ago when I made fun of "freedom fries" and joked of putting plastic sheeting up to protect my wine cellar from WMDs are probably no longer reading anyway.

But back to the subject at hand. In between choruses of "You Are My Sunshine," which is apparently Grgich's favorite song, I was able to ask the winemaker what he thought of "Bottle Shock," the recent movie about the Paris Tasting.

"It is just Hollywood, not fact," he said. He acknowledged he hadn't seen it or how it portrayed his accomplishment, but he said he had read the script.

Grgich is also a champion of biodynamic winemaking. He began converting his estate vineyards to biodynamics in 2000, and by 2006 the conversion was complete. He said he can taste the difference.

"We like how our wines taste without pesticides and herbicides," he said. He expressed some skepticism, however, at the current talk of wineries becoming eco-conscious and obsessed with reducing their "carbon footprints."

"The world is going green, though of course like everything else, you can go too far," he said.

And on living and working in Napa Valley, going strong at age 87: "Why should I die and go to paradise, when I can live and work in paradise?"

My thoughts on the Grgich Hills Estate wines served at the dinner:

2007 Fume Blanc - Textbook, with bracing acidity and a good balance between grass and tropical fruit.

2005 Chardonnay - Oaky, not yet fully integrated, but beautifully structured.

2003 Chardonnay - Buttery, orange peel, full and long, nicely rounded and a good testament for aging Napa Valley Chardonnay.

2004 Merlot - Gorgeous, cocoa, roasted coffee, still quite tannic but very rich.

2004 Cabernet Sauvignon - Still somewhat tight and tannic, not yet showing its full potential, though some nice herbal/lavender notes emerge with time.

1995 Yountville Selection Cabernet Sauvignon - Lively, blackberry fruit, good acidity and balance, delightful.

1997 Yountville Selection Cabernet Sauvignon - Delicious, berry and black fruit, lively acidity, with notes of anise, clove, 5-spice (my Chinese background perhaps? Or Puck's Asian-accented cuisine?) and lavender.