Dave McIntyre's WineLine

More from Oz Clarke

When I wrote about my tasting party with Oz Clarke, the gregarious and hilarious British wine writer, several readers chastised me for not revealing Oz's reactions to the individual wines. So he was kind enough to send me some tasting notes of his favorites. Keep in mind that we tasted probably 30 or so wines that evening ranging up and down the East Coast of the US, but centered on the Mid-Atlantic region. Here are the ones that stuck in Oz's mind:

NASSAU VALLEY VINEYARDS (DELAWARE) CHARDONNAY  2006 AND CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2007

These Delaware wines were new to me. I really liked the lean, stoney fruit, even a little leafy in the red, and the restrained alcohol. I’d countenance a very light hand with the oak, but this is a promising newcomer.

BLACK ANKLE VINEYARDS VIOGNIER 2009 AND LEAF-STONE SYRAH 2008 (MARYLAND)

With a name like that, you just know I’m going to love the wines, though my fantasy about the exact turn of the black ankle may not be entirely based on fact. These are restrained, reserved styles from Frederick County in Maryland and good examples of Maryland’s late but youthful charge on the Eastern wine scene. Or should I say, re-charge; I have fond memories of Byrd Chardonnays from the 1980s.

MICHAEL SHAPS PETIT VERDOT 2005 (VIRGINIA)

Virginia just loves to play hard ball. Most wine regions steer well clear of Petit Verdot – too tricky to ripen, too tannic, can’t pronounce the name, blah, blah. But good ’ole Virginia thinks – hey. Warmish climate, humid, rain in the fall – Petit Verdot, thick skin to avoid rot, needs the heat. We can do that – and they do.  Lovely dark fruit, pleasant tannic grip, a smudge of oak. Welcome to your New World home, P-V.

HORTON VINEYARDS RKATSITELI RESERVE 2008 (VIRGINIA)

Now. Is that R silent? Some people call it Rekatsiteli, the Finger Lakes boys call it Arkatsiteli – but that R, – that P in Russian – isn’t it silent before a consonant? I learnt a bit of Russian – admittedly from a book published in the 1930s when presumably most decent Russian linguists had been incarcerated – so that I could sing Mussorgsky better. I then realised that Mussorgsky isn’t one of those guys you can sing better unless you’re born in deepest Siberia with a throat as wide as a 100-year-old pine tree trunk, so I sort of lost interest. But I still think the R/P question is silent before a consonant. I’m going to pronounce it Katsiteli. And Horton, God bless the fact that they’ve probably planted a row or two of every vine variety known to man – produce a really classic, full, apple puree example only matched in the East by Frank’s Finger Lakes classic that I tasted a few days later. 

SHINDIG 2009 (FINGER LAKES, NEW YORK)

For those toffee-noses who don’t believe the hybrids can do dick shit (sorry, ed - Note from Dave: That's OK, this is the Internet!) this mean, lean, chewy, apple skin and shimmering green flesh tongue scourer is 80% Vidal with a dash of Riesling to pull it towards the legit. side of the blanket.

BOXWOOD WINERY “BOXWOOD” 2007, (VIRGINIA) 

Well, some Virginian had to take on the twin Shibboleths of St-Emilion garagiste and Napa Titan. It’s pretty good if that’s your thing – and Virginia is sort of equidistant, so it should be good. (Note from Dave: Boxwood does two red blends: Topiary, which is modeled after St. Emilion - half merlot, half cabernet franc - and Boxwood, which follows a Left Bank recipe based on cabernet sauvignon, merlot and petit verdot. We tasted the Boxwood, because that’s the one I had on hand, but Oz can be forgiven for mixing them up slightly given the sheer number of wines we tasted that night. Besides, we probably talked about the Topiary and how that is the most popular of the two.)

BILTMORE RESERVE CHARDONNAY 2008, (NORTH CAROLINA)

I’ve been looking at photos of that damned railroad pile for so long, and at last I taste the wine. Intair-es-ting. Here come de Judge. (Note from Dave: I don’t understand this. But the wine was pretty good!)

  

Momentum for Local Wine ...

The "drink local" movement is gaining steam. When my buddy Jeff Siegel, aka The Wine Curmudgeon, received a press release last week touting a dinner with cookbook author Diana Kennedy to be held next month at the Modern Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, he immediately asked the organizers if Texas or Mexican wines would be among the "carefully selected" wines for the Mexican menu. The museum's chef emailed him that although the menu had not been finalized, Texas wines would be involved. Maybe Mexican wines, too.

In April, the Park Hyatt in Washington added a Virginia winery to its Masters of Food and Wine program after I criticized the all-California selection for an event touting regional Mid-Atlantic agriculture. The Lettuce Entertainment restaurant group did the same for a Chesapeake Bay-themed dinner at their Wildfire restaurant in Tyson's Corner, Va, scheduled for July 27. Once I inquired about it, they quickly lined up Barboursville Vineyards as a co-sponsor and featured winery for the dinner.

The message is getting some big media play, too. Jon Bonne wrote about "justifying local wine" in the San Francisco Chronicle - "local" meaning California, of course. And Steve Heimoff, a senior editor and very distinguished wine writer with Wine Enthusiast magazine, recently blogged about a plea from a vintner for wine lovers to support their local wineries to help them through hard times. Heimoff lives in California wine country, and "local" for him also means California wine, but the message translates. The vintner Heimoff cited was Oded Shakked of Longboard Vineyards, who criticized restaurants for touting their local produce but ignoring local wines.

And that is precisely the message Todd Kliman eloquently espouses in a withering essay posted last week on The Daily Beast. In "The Locavore Wine Hypocrisy," Kliman takes on some of the most famous restaurants in the country for talking a good local game on their menus and not following through on their wine lists.

Here's an excerpt:

"... if these are heady days for the local cheesemaker, butcher, and farmer, they're head-scratching days for the local vintner, who has been largely shut out of the feel-good foodie fad. If the wine lists at the country's most prominent locavore restaurants tell us anything, it's that 'what grows together, goes together'—the mantra of the movement—is meant to refer to what's on the plate, not what's in the glass. Local and regional wines are seldom to be found."

Kliman, the food and wine editor of Washingtonian magazine and author of the tremendous new book, The Wild Vine, rips apart the most common excuse for ignoring local wines - that they are too expensive and better values abound from California. Chefs are willing to pay extra for organic eggs from chickens just up the road, he points out. And sommeliers are supposed to align their wine lists with the chef's menu, even if it means a little extra work to suss out the better wines from the area. But many somms seem unwilling to take a chance on local wines that don't seem trendy.

"The idealism of their mission statements notwithstanding, what locavore restaurants are telling us is that quality matters much less than cachet when it comes to assembling a wine list—the perception that a given product is the best, most exquisite example in its class," Kliman writes.

Maybe once local wines gain a little more cachet, the sommeliers will wake up. What's interesting to me, however, is that momentum for local wine is coming from writers - bloggers, especially - and consumers, rather than retailers or sommeliers. When I eat out, I want my sommelier to be taking chances and to seek out unusual wines - even if they come from just up the road. Don't treat me with kid gloves - dazzle me.

Todd Kliman's The Wild Vine

Todd Kliman, my friend and former editor at Washingtonian magazine, has written a beautiful book about the Norton wine grape. Except it really isn't just about the Norton; rather it is a history of American wine through the very distinctive perspective of a talented writer and storyteller. In case you missed it, here is a link to my recent Washington Post column about Kliman's The Wild Vine.I highly recommend it for all wine lovers.

Oz Clarke Triumphs Over Jetlag

When I invited Oz Clarke, the prolific and genial British wine writer, to my house to taste some wines from the Eastern United States, I didn't want to overdo it. He was coming fresh from the airport after a flight from London after all, and the man would be tired.

I needn't have worried. After more than 30 wines, lots of local cheese and homemade bread, a lengthy meal and a few ballads, I was the one waving the white napkin of surrender. Clarke is not only a laserlike palate - he's a raconteur who has never forgotten his professional training in theater. That helps him write entertaining and engaging books about wine, and it gives him amazing stamina at the dinner table. Excerpts of our discussion about wines near and far are in my column in Wednesday's Washington Post Food section. And don't forget my monthly list of Recession Buster wine recommendations.

Park Hyatt in D.C. adds a local winery to its locavore event

After I posted here and on The Washington Post's All You Can Eat blog castigating the Park Hyatt for not including any local wineries in its June Masters of Food & Wine Event celebrating local agriculture, the hotel promptly added one.

The day after my post, representatives of the hotel approached Boxwood Winery in Middleburg, Va., and asked them to participate. The winery immediately accepted, said Rachel Martin, Boxwood's executive director.

The Park Hyatt D.C.'s Blue Duck Tavern is a terrific restaurant, and Chef Brian McBride does a great job featuring local ingredients. Local wines are underrepresented on the list, however, and they were left out of the initial lineup for the June. 

The lineup for the event includes some top-name West Coast wineries, including Brewer-Clifton, Melville, Caymus, and Duckhorn. But for an event celebrating local agriculture, it seemed fitting that at least one local winery should be involved.

DrinkLocalWine.com 2010 and locavore hypocrisy

This week, the Park Hyatt Hotel chain announced that it would bring its annual Masters of Food and Wine event to Washington this June 17-20. Chef Extraordinaire Brian McBride of Blue Duck Tavern in the Park Hyatt in the West End will welcome chefs, sommeliers and winemakers from around the country for a weekend of food and wine that will “focus on the commitment to local farmers and to supporting sustainable agriculture,” according to a company press release. They will visit the Dupont Circle FRESHFARM Market and Virginia's “esteemed” Chapel Hill Farm in Berryville, which raises an heirloom variety of veal called Randall Lineback.

Will they be visiting any local wineries? No.

Will any local wineries be participating in the event? No.

Who is the wine headliner? Dan Duckhorn, of Napa Valley's Duckhorn Vineyards. An eminent name and hard to fault, especially given the obvious cute tie-in to Blue Duck Tavern. But hardly local.

This is a restaurant so committed to local farming that it wants you to know the name of the rancher who slaughtered the lamb you are about to eat. But its commitment to local wine consists of a few good but desultory selections buried in the list at markups (3x retail) guaranteed to render them mere window dressing.

The Park Hyatt is not alone in this hypocrisy. Alice Waters, the doyenne of the “eat local” movement, has organized a series of dinners in DC the last two years to preach the eat-local gospel. Each time, she has served only California and Italian wines.

The locavore movement in DC-area restaurants ignores important advances in local viticulture that should make us locapours as well. This conundrum was a major topic at last weekend's DrinkLocalWine.com 2010 Conference at Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg. The conference, which I helped organize along with Jeff Siegel, a Dallas-based wine writer who blogs as The Wine Curmudgeon, focused on how local wineries can get their message out without relying on the “winestream media” of the major wine mags, as well as how to convince locavores to become locapours.

On that latter point, Todd Kliman, wine and food editor of Washingtonian magazine (and a friend and former editor of mine), argued eloquently that local wineries should not focus on the Holy Grail of wine lists – those at the top-tier restaurants such as Citronelle or CityZen. Such restaurants are designed to impress international and expense-account clients, and so will naturally focus on top-end wines with international fame and high point scores. Local wines will find little room to infiltrate their wine lists.

Interestingly, Kliman derided area restaurants for touting their Randall Lineback veal while ignoring local wines. One restaurant he praised for featuring local wines was Baltimore's Woodberry Kitchen, whose chef, Spike Gjerde, will be participating in the Park Hyatt event. Such restaurants in the middle tier are better target for local wineries, Kliman argued, because they are innovative and often dedicated to the local farm movement to a greater degree than high-end restaurants.

(Kliman is the author of The Wild Vine, a history of the Norton grape to be published May 4 by Clarkson Potter. One of the more endearing parts of the conference was when Bruno and Jane Bauer, two Norton fans from South Carolina, revealed that they had trekked up here in their RV just to meet Kliman, having obtained an advance copy of the book on eBay. “Every winelover should read this book,” Bruno Bauer said.)

As for how to get around the winestream media and its focus on Bordeaux and Napa Valley, the answer was social media. Jen Breaux Blosser, of Loudoun County's Breaux Vineyards, described how she uses Facebook and Twitter to forge relationships with customers and advertise special sales. During February's snow storms, when no one could get to the winery, she offered blizzard discounts – order now, pickup after the melt – and managed to make money even without people coming to the winery. Jim Corcoran, of nearby Corcoran Vineyards, told me that Internet coupons have significantly increased traffic to Corcoran's tasting rooms.

The highlight of the DrinkLocalWine.com 2010 Conference was the Twitter Taste-Off, in which nearly 30 wineries from Virginia and Maryland poured two wines each for about 100 participants, including wine bloggers and writers from across the country.(See my video at the bottom of this post to get your own taste.) Tasters were able to Tweet live, and you can still follow them on #DLW10 and #DLW10VA. Statistics of how many tweets were tweeted by how many twits to how many followers are not yet available – apparently the contractors enjoyed the wine too much. But a secret ballot revealed the crowd favorites to be the Breaux Vineyards 2002 Merlot Reserve for Best Red and Media Favorite; the Chrysalis Vineyards 2008 Albarino for Best White; and the Michael Shaps 2008 Viognier for Peoples' Choice.

Richard Leahy, East Coast editor of Vineyard & Winery Management magazine, commented that the victory for the Breaux 2002 Merlot Reserve demonstrated how well Virginia red wines can age, especially considering the strong competition from so many reds of the excellent 2007 vintage. I was thrilled at the consistently high quality of the wines from both Virginia and Maryland.

Local sommeliers should take note. Your customers have.

You can read other participants’ accounts of the conference at DrinkLocalWine.com.

DrinkLocalWine.com 2010 - THIS SUNDAY!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s still time to register for this Sunday’s DrinkLocalWine.com 2010 conference and Twitter Taste-Off in Leesburg, Va. This conference – for bloggers, Tweeters and wine lovers of all kinds – will highlight issues facing local wineries in the Mid-Atlantic, plus the chance to taste wines from about 25 of the best wineries in Virginia and Maryland.

 

The conference is modeled after the one held last August in Dallas, which of course featured Texas wines. The Twitter Taste-Off is a real treat and not at all as silly as it sounds. There will be free WiFi onsite so anyone with a smartphone or a laptop or – gasp! even an iPad! – can instantly tweet each wine review. All the tweets will be displayed on a big screen at the event and of course will become part of the Library of Congress’ Twitter archive! It’s a great chance to taste these wines and meet some winemakers, and of course it’s a great opportunity for the wineries to generate some Twitter buzz on the Internet.

 

If you can’t join us, you can still follow the fun at http://twitter.com/drinklocalwine and the hashtags #DLW10 and #DLW10VA.

 

Registration is $65 in advance, $75 at the door, and includes three panel sessions discussing Virginia and Maryland wine, social media and the wine industry, and why locavores aren’t locapours. You also get lunch and the afternoon Twitter Taste-Off. A full conference agenda, plus a list of participating wineries and attending media members and the all important registration link, are available at DrinkLocalWine.com.

An Abrupt Farewell from MD's Direct Shipping Advocate

Adam Borden, executive director of Marylanders for Better Beer & Wine Laws, sent this email today announcing his surprise resignation as leader of the direct shipping cause. He explained to me in a telephone interview that his aggressive grass roots tactics had made him "a lightning rod" for opposition to direct shipping among some key members of the Maryland Legislature. He decided to step down, he said, so that they would not oppose the bill just because of resentment toward him.

 

Unfortunately, this does not bode well for supporters of direct shipping in Maryland. The bill isn't dead yet, but already we're hearing, "Maybe next year... "

My name is Adam Borden, and I’m a wine drinker. 

I am also the Executive Director of Marylanders for Better Beer & Wine Laws, a non-profit advocacy group trying to legalize wine shipping in our state. Friday, I spoke for the last time in that capacity. I am hereby announcing my resignation as Executive Director effective immediately.

When I first took over Marylanders for Better Beer & Wine Laws 15 months ago, I always knew consumers wanted wine shipping. What I neither knew then nor could have imagined was just how substantial our group would become. During my tenure, MBBWL has increased its membership from 1,500 members to over 20,000. Our elected officials have been inundated with calls, emails and faxes pleading with them to finally make this a reality. Not just fine wine drinkers are upset that wine cannot be delivered. I received an email last week from someone who is angry that he can’t send a bottle of wine as a gift to someone … and he doesn’t even drink. Period.
   
Wine shipping is not just a consumer issue. Our supporters are also county governments, chambers of commerce, economic development agencies, wineries, retailers, gift basket makers, entrepreneurs, farmers, grape growers … the list goes on and on. The only people not on this list are the liquor wholesalers, who refuse to this day to meet with us. They do not want wine shipping because it would amount to 1% of the wine sold in the state … and these are wines they don’t even carry.

Sure, they espouse arguments that seem legitimate like worrying about the kids, the difficulty the state might have in collecting taxes or the detrimental impact on local liquor stores. These arguments like all their others are smokescreens. They are cover for the plain business interest driving their motivation. They will stop at nothing to maintain their stranglehold on Maryland’s liquor supply and fear that wine shipping is the proverbial “camel’s nose under the tent” that would loosen their profitable franchise.

Who are these “barons of booze” to quote the Washington Post? The two main distributors in this state are estimated to supply 70-80% of the total liquor and wine in Maryland. It is a duopoly. These companies are enormous, operating in multi-state jurisdictions and grossing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. It is estimated that they and their friends have contributed to the campaigns of over 80% of the Maryland General Assembly. 

Many in leadership have said that 2010 is NOT the year to debate wine shipping. Why not, I ask you? Because our leaders fear angering what is arguably the most generous political patron in the state at a time that every incumbent Delegate and Senator desperately needs campaign funds.

But all of this is not news to any of you. If the wine shipping debate truly rested on its merits alone, our elected leaders would have passed it long ago. Instead, the bill has been hijacked by the liquor lobby. Friday, we announced that we came to a critical common understanding with our opponents on this issue. We can finally agree on one thing: they want this bill killed more than anything else. They will stop at nothing to see it defeated rather than work on a meaningful compromise. No matter the thousands of constituent letters and telephone calls, no matter the prominent levels of support throughout the state, no matter the logic of our arguments, our elected leaders are hard-pressed to challenge the liquor lobby.

I am still an optimist. I have not given up hope. There are so many good people in the General Assembly who want this to pass that I still continue to believe that 2010 can be our year. Direct shipping will not create world peace. It will not solve our budget crisis (though it will indeed help). Nonetheless, direct shipping will do so much good for so many people all over Maryland that I know its day is just around the corner.

In the course of growing and building Marylanders for Better Beer & Wine Laws, I have pursued a grass-roots approach. Rather than play an inside game, we have gone directly to voters around Maryland to inspire them to take action. We’ve always played by the law but not always by the rules of Annapolis. As a result, my advocacy for this issue has sometimes rubbed politicians the wrong way. My own state senator from the 43rd District, Joan Carter Conway, is probably the most notable example; however there are others.

Because I care so much about this effort and about seeing Maryland enter the 20th century, let alone the 21st, I announce my resignation today. I hope my stepping down will in some small way advance the cause, allowing others to pick up from where I leave off. I would hate for my involvement in this legislation to be the reason for its demise one more year. Paul Hoffstein, a dear friend and fellow wine lover, will be taking over as interim director until someone more permanent can fill the position. 

I want to be clear, though, that my resignation is in no way a concession of defeat. Nor does it mean that I will stop advocating for direct wine shipping, which I believe in wholeheartedly and have dedicated more time to than I can possible quantify over the last year and a half. I have taken no money from the organization and stand to gain nothing from the passage of this legislation. 

I stand before you to deliver this message, “With my resignation today, there is NO reason that I know of, with the exception of the all powerful influence of Maryland’s liquor lobby, that this year’s direct wine shipping bill should not become law.”
 
If I have any regret about what has happened, it is only that I have not been able to share this news with any of our thousands of supporters before now. I want to thank each and every one of them for their continued dedication, especially those here today to testify on behalf of the house bill in Economic Matters this afternoon.

I am not yet a cynic and pray that our elected leaders will prove me wrong. With so much support and so many legislators behind this year’s bill, I continue to believe that 2010 will be our vintage. Thank you.

Tastefully yours,

Adam Borden
Former Executive Director
Marylanders for Better Beer & Wine Laws
4315 Underwood Road
Baltimore, MD 21218
Tel: (443) 570-8102

http://www.mbbwl.org

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King Family Takes Top Virginia Honors

This year's Virginia Governor's Cup - for red wines, at least - was awarded last Friday to King Family Vineyards for their 2007 Meritage, a stylish Bordeaux blend grown in vineyards just northwest of Charlottesville. Fifteen wineries took gold medals in this year's competition, which serves as a nice snapshot of Virginia's wine industry, which now stands at 157 wineries. Here's my column in today's Washington Post.

Wines from Where?

Wines are now made in all 50 states - but would you know that by looking at a typical wine list or store shelf?

Andrew Stover, the hyper-energetic millenial generation sommelier at two hip Washington D.C. restuarants, is trying to change that perception. Working with a D.C.-area distributor, Stover is bringing high-quality and high-value wines from aorund the US to the DC-area market. These include Arizona Stronghold from Cochise County, Arizona, and Sawtooth Vineyards from the Snake River Valley in Idaho.

Let go your prejudices. I did - I'd never heard of Maynard James Keenan, the rock star behind Arizona Strongholds. I didn't let that stop me from appreciating these delightful wines.

You can read more about it in my wine column in The Washington Post.