Dave McIntyre's WineLine

Wine News: Are We 'Buying Up' Again? Yet?

The California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Market Enforcement Branch saw a spike last year in the number of complaints filed by wine grape growers against buyers who couldn’t fulfill their contracts, the North Bay Business Journal reported this week.  While these cases don’t involve any names you’re likely to recognize, they demonstrate the poor economy’s continuing impact on the U.S. wine industry.

Yet the wine industry continues to try to drum up some good news. (Can we string a few more infinitives in there just for good measure??) Bloomberg reported this week that younger wine drinkers are once again “buying up” by choosing pricier bottles in restaurants. The beneficiaries of this, according to Bloomberg? Constellation Brands and Diageo.

Well, okay. These wine industry behemoths produce enough wines at various price levels that they are probably pretty well insulated against the vicissitudes of recession. Or consonance. If consumers are indeed “buying up” over what they were willing to pay a year or two ago - whether in retail or restaurants - I would like to hear about it. More likely, this is wishful thinking. Consumers may be less reticent about spending money on wine now that the recession is easing, but my bet is that we’ve learned over the last few years that there are plenty of terrific wines available that cost a lot less than what we were used to paying. Maybe prestige of price is less valuable than it was before, while we’ve discovered that quality of taste can be had for less.

Are you spending more - and more comfortably - than you were a year or two ago? In other words, is the wine recession over for you personally? Or have your buying habits - in stores or restaurants - changed permanently because of the recession? Please let me know in the comments.

Reader Poll: What's in a Wine Label?

  I'd like to pose a question to my readers: How do YOU read a wine label? What is the relevant information you look for when deciding whether to buy a particular bottle? And what is the fluff you look beyond? I'm considering a column on this topic, and while I know what I respond to on a wine label, I'd like to hear your perspectives. So please let me know in the comments.

Obviously, the following are relevant, if not crucial:

• The producer (Winery, chateau, etc., although this sometimes blurs into "brand" ... )
• Grape variety
• Place of origin (Country, state, appellation, district, vineyard name, etc)
• Vintage year - perhaps less relevant for $5 "California" wines, but more so for high-end bottlings.

But what about some other information:

• Pretty picture/artwork (critters)
• Importer's name
• Alcohol content
• Back label blurbs
• Government warning(s)
• Ingredient labeling (if there - if not, should it be? By this I mean disclosure of additives, fining agents, oak chips, flavoring or barrels, etc.)

What other things do you look for when sizing up a bottle on the store shelf?

• Screwcap vs. cork? (No way to tell if it's a natural cork until too late, of course.)
• Bottle weight?

Cheers!
Dave

What's Ahead in 2011?

What should wine lovers expect in 2011? More debate over direct shipping, and hopefully we'll get that privilege here in Maryland this year. But will be able to order from out-of-state retailers, or just wineries? And will we be allowed to bring our own wines to restaurants in Maryland?

Politics is likely to dominate debate in other states as well, as governors in Virginia and Pennsylvania try to privatize their states' liquor control regimes. Should the government be in charge of selling alcoholic beverages? It's a worthy question with no simple answer.

Local wine will continue to gather buzz as well. The DrinkLocalWine.com conference focused blogger attention on Virginia last year - look for more this year when the Wine Bloggers Conference comes to Charlottesville - the Napa of the East.

Consumers, of course, will continue to seek value. We've learned that we don't have to pay top dollar to get a really good wine - we just may have to search a little harder. $10 is the new $20, etc.

And where will we find bargains this year? My prediction for the hot "new" bargain wine region is none other than France, as wines from the textbook 2009 vintage reach our retail shelves throughout the year. My January Recession Busters list in today's Washington Post already has a few French 09s, and you can expect many more throughout the year!

Happy drinking, everyone!

Wine Follies and Cheap Wine Hall of Fame

Who thinks these things up? Elin McCoy of Bloomberg News reports on an Oregon winery that recruited an elephant to stomp grapes as part of a fund raiser for a wildlife park. Talk about “natural wine”! Winery owner Stephen Reustle of Reustle-Prayer Rock Vineyards was not worried that the pachyderm would crush the grape seeds and exude harsh tannins once he saw the beast’s “soft, fleshy pads,” McCoy reports.

In her roundup of wild and wacky wine stories from 2010, McCoy notes a British Columbia cattle rancher who gives her cows a liter of red wine a day for the last 60 days  before slaughter. At least they die happy, and supposedly more tender and flavorful. The steaks are high on that venture, to say the least.

“It really has this umami thing,” says Janice Rayndahl of Sezmu Meats. Isn’t umami Japanese for “je ne sais quoi”? You know, that flavor you can’t really pinpoint or put a name to?

McCoy also highlights sales of the “Wine Rack” bra, for the woman whose cup runneth over. It conceals an entire bottle of wine to be sipped inconspicuously through a tube. I can see this catching on with guys, too - we no longer need be ashamed of our man-boobs!

Jeff Siegel, my co-conspirator at DrinkLocalWine.com has posted his annual “$10 Wine Hall of Fame” on his Wine Curmudgeon blog. Jeff revels in cheap wine, and has since even before the recession, so he can spot the extreme values. I don’t share his fondness for Barefoot Merlot, which almost made the cut this year, but Jeff has a keen eye for everyday wines - the type of wines most people actually drink.

 

 

 

For the past few years, the cork industry has fought back against screwcaps by playing the global warming card - buying cork-stoppered wines helps preserve the Mediterranean cork forests and their natural wildlife habitats. Now cork producers are playing the sex card, too - their latest ad campaigns (primarily on the Internet and savaged by wine bloggers such as Alder Yarrow at Vinography) show a guy striking out with a hot babe when he pulls a flaccid plastic “cork” from a wine bottle. Another video has a woman scorned as a “brown noser” when she twists open a screwcapped wine at an office party. I guess they think we wine lovers are really shallow.

 This post appeared in similar form on The Washington Post's All We Can Eat blog on Jan. 6.

Beaujolais - Everything Old is Nouveau Again

Today is the third Thursday of November - which for wine lovers is a day to stay inside and avoid the hype of "Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivee". But I've always loved nouveau, and I wrote about it in November 1999, in my second e-mail newsletter, Dave McIntyre's WineLine. Someone recently said WineLine was one of the first wine blogs; I dunno, no one had invented the word "blog" then, and it took me years to put it on a website. I still don't post as regularly as I should, or would like to. That's because I have deadlines for articles that people pay me for, and well, I have a life. But here's what I wrote about Beaujolais Nouveau back in 1999, to the few people who had given me their e-mail addresses and said they would like to read my writings. I offer it now to the few subscribers of this blog, or whatever it should be called. Cheers!

 

Thursday around noon I'll be standing in a wine shop awaiting a special delivery. This is always a tricky business, as wine shops can be cramped and delivery men take sport in weaving dolleys loaded with liquor or beer swiftly through the aisles, jostling the displays and clipping the ankles of unsuspecting customers.

But this is the third Thursday of November, so I'll take that risk because le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé.

Wine snobs look askance at Beaujolais nouveau. We like to dust off a forgotten bottle of five-dollar spaghetti red that's been boiling to vinegar in our garages, then rave about the marvels of age. It's reassuring, after all, to think that a nectar we identify so closely with life itself gets better with time; we'd like to think we'll age so gracefully. Something so new, so fresh out of the press, something that actually tastes of fruit instead of macho tannins is naturally considered inferior, worthy only of ignorant neophytes who describe wines with meaningless mush words like "dry" or "smooth." Pablum for soda drinkers.

Another reason wine snobs hate nouveau is that it is heavily marketed and has made one man, Georges Duboeuf, fantastically rich. Having spent ourselves into near-penury stocking up on our fave Barolos and late harvest Zinfandels, we resent anyone who is living royally off our hard-earned dollars. Someone that successful should have given us a snobbier wine, one that would receive at least 90 points from Robert Parker. We prefer wines made by mythical "artisans" who sacrifice all for quality and therefore earn mere pennies per bottle of their exorbitantly priced and never-to-be-found Cabernet.

Beaujolais nouveau, on the other hand, is mass produced and shipped out in truck convoys on the stroke of midnight the third Thursday of November to be air-freighted around the world. Or so the marketing types say. It may have been resting in our warehouses for weeks, so far as we know. If a wine snob is somehow forced to drink a glass of nouveau, he will invariably complain that it doesn't taste as "banana-y" as the 1996.

Who cares? Beyond the hype, Beaujolais nouveau is a celebration of the harvest just completed. By pulling that cork this Thursday, we can join in with French vignerons as they commemorate a global Thanksgiving of sorts, the unofficial start to the wine lover's holiday season. And with our own national harvest celebration only a week away, it's noteworthy that nouveau's grapey sweetness pairs beautifully with turkey and all the trimmings – both in symbolism and flavor.

In fact, Beaujolais – nouveau or not – is one of the most food-friendly of wines, even though it is under-represented in our wine stores because of the bad image nouveau has given the lot. Or because the French, who aren't given to snobbishness when no Americans are around, want to keep it for themselves.

Nouveau is no longer the first wine with this year's vintage, like the shiny new penny you find in your change drawer each January. Some 1999 Sauvignon Blancs from New Zealand have already reached our shelves, and some U.S. wineries, most notably Beringer, produce some nouveau from near-forgotten plots of Gamay and rush it to market unencumbered by artificial deadlines such as the "third Thursday of November." And no, it is not the best wine for the price; but that misses the point.

Wine is the bottled memories of summers past, and there is no reason to wait to celebrate the most recent. So let's strike a blow against snobbery and in favor of sentimentality Thursday as we pull that brand new, unstained cork from a bottle of Beaujolais nouveau and raise a toast to all within earshot in honor of the final vintage of the millennium.    

Let the holidays begin!

 Early issues of Dave McIntyre's WineLine are archived on Robin Garr's WineLover's Page.

Has the "Perfect Storm" Claimed Kluge Estate?

For the past few weeks, rumors have swirled around the twittersphere that Kluge Estate winery was in trouble. Such rumors are not unusual, as Patricia Kluge has her detractors, who seem intent on undermining her effort to produce high quality Virginia wine on her estate south of Charlottesville. But this time, despite denials from the Kluge folks, the rumors were too specific, too detailed to ignore.

Late Friday, William Moses, Kluge's husband and CEO of the winery, issued a statement that was at once an acknowledgement of troubles and a defiant vow to stay alive. It isn't posted yet on the winery's website, so I'll paste it here in its entirety:

This is sad news for the Virginia wine industry. Kluge has made a major investment, including hiring famed flying winemaker Michel Rolland as a consultant. There have been missteps, to be sure - most notably charging more than $60 for their New World Red blend, which now sells more reasonably under $30. Consistency has also been a problem, as winemakers have paraded through over the winery's ten years. But the Kluge Estate wines, including the SP sparkling and the Albemarle viognier and rose, have generally been very good, and have achieved good distribution. Kluge and Moses have also been vocal advocates for the Virginia wine industry. This winery's collapse could send the message that Virginia is not a good market for wine investment, even as the overall quality of the wines improves to impressive, world-class levels.

So what will happen now? Moses' reference to the banks trying to "dismantle" the property is most alarming - rumors that I have not been able to confirm (Moses was not available for comment late Friday) have the banks threatening to rip out the vines and sell off the property for housing lots. Others have a high-profile investor (the "promising partners"?) interested. The news stories, speculation, and gossip are only just beginning. As Moses says, stay tuned ...

Sweet on Local Dessert Wines

When exploring the greatly improving local wine scene, it's easy to focus on dry table wines - the most dramatic improvement - and lose sight of dessert wines. Stickies have always been a staple of local wines, but they are improving too. Check out my column in this week's Washington Post  Food secction for a story of innovation and wines that are often overlooked. As Jim Law of Linden Vineyards says, "They demand your attention, but they come at a point in the dinner when no one wants to pay attention."

This is my final column in a month-long series about local wines - well, sort of. It seems my local focus has ruffled some feathers among readers, so next week I'll answer charges that I've been "pandering" to local winemakers. Stay tuned ...

Why Aren't More Local Wines on Local Wine Lists?

This is a question that can probably be asked wherever fine wines are made. In fact, it WAS raised last year in the San Francisco Chronicle, which reported complaints by North Coast vintners about restaurants that touted their local meats and produce but filled their lists with imported wines. Todd Kliman took the debate national this summer with his essay, "The Locavore Wine Hypocrisy," on thedailybeast.com. In today's Washington Post Food section, I look deeper into the question, and find some intriguing arguments on both sides to explain the problem. I also discover some area restaurants that are making the commitment to feature the local vino.

Regional Wine Week Creates Some Buzz

Regional Week 2010 is this week, which you know since I've been telling you. But the world is noticing, too. We've managed to create some buzz, including this nice interview of Jeff Siegel on ColoradoWino.com.

And vintners near Traverse City in Michigan were all abuzz about the attention they are beginning to get on the national stage for their Rieslings, Pinot Blanc and other wines. Local TV news was quick to pick up on the story.

What got them so excited? A travel feature in last Friday's USA Today on 10 great places for local wines - featuring Jeff Siegel and myself, with a great plug for Regional Wine Week.

You can follow Regional Wine Week at DrinkLocalWine.com. And if you feel inspired, check out the local wine haiku at the DLW Facebook page.

A New Virginia Winery Takes Top Prize

Last month, the Virginia Governor's Cup for white wines was awarded to Paradise Springs winery of Clifton, in Fairfax County, for its 2009 Chardonnay. This was noteworthy because Paradise Springs is one of Virginia's newest wineries. But it is also worth celebrating because the winery's owners fought stiff opposition from the county government and from neighbors who feared that a winery would just be an events venue for jazz festivals, weddings and drunk fests and such. This award, plus a gold medal in January for their Norton in the Governor's Cup judging for red wines, shows that Paradise Springs is more interested in quality than buzz.

I wrote about the award last Thursday on The Washington Post's All We Can Eat food blog. But while I commend my scintillating writing for your enjoyment, I hope you will notice the comments added by Post readers. The first asks, "Why would I drink local wine when I can drink cheap, delicious, imported wine for half the cost?" Someone then replies, "Because you don't know the difference." (The third comment is simply spam for someone selling bootleg clothing.)

This exchange is illuminating. Local wines - be they from Virginia, Maryland, Texas, Michigan or elsewhere - face the challenge of demonstrating their value. Sure, if I just want to spend $8 or less on a bottle of wine, I will find many from France, Spain, Argentina and Chile that will suit me just fine, thank you very much. A wine that speaks of terroir, especially local terroir, that demonstrates through some subliminal message that it is somehow connected to the place where it was grown, is another story. And yes, such a wine can come from Virginia, or Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Texas ...