Dave McIntyre's WineLine

Wine: There's an (iPad) App for That

The inevitable has happened. There are now wine magazines created exclusively for the iPad.

The tablet computer is a media revolution, so it isn’t surprising that we now have wine publications dedicated exclusively to this format. It isn’t a complete wine experience of course - the iPad offers sight, sound and touch, but not taste or smell (yet).

First out of the gate was By the Grape, with an introductory issue featuring Jancis Robinson, the British wine writer, master of wine, columnist for the Financial Times, editor of the Oxford Companion to Wine (aka, “The Great Big Book of Everything”), and Internet wine maven. The introductory issue, available in the iTunes App Store for $3.99, is a hagiography of Jancis written in glowing terms. For example, it quotes Hugh Johnson, Britain’s senior wine authority (and co-editor with Jancis of the World Atlas of Wine), saying, “Secretly or not, perhaps we’re all a little bit in love with her.” (Guilty!)

By the Grape is the product of a Dutch team that traveled to Languedoc in southwest France to interview Jancis and her husband, FT restaurant critic Nick Lander, at their summer home. The magazine takes advantage of the iPad’s game-changing features, including interactive tasting notes and a lengthy video (helpfully subdivided into chapters for shorter attention spans), in which Jancis discusses her tasting techniques and tries some surprisingly good Dutch wines, while Lander cooks lunch and raves about the local produce.

It’s actually rippingly good video, of a wino/foodie, Peter Mayle-ish, aspirational sort. And Jancis’ discussion of her wine tasting technique should be watched and digested by every serious oenophile, wine writer, or even casual consumers befuddled by tasting notes. It’s a short distillation of her wonderful book, How to Taste.

“Smells and tastes are not perfect subjects for words,” Jancis says. “They’re very private, they can’t be extracted and objectified and compared to somebody else’s. So you just have to get as close as possible to some other taste that will be comprehensible to people, which I suppose is why in tasting notes you read so many of these strange fruits and herbs and woods and things like that.”

She also explains how young French wines can be reticent in aroma but “amazing” when you taste them, while in contrast, “typically with a very technically made New World wine you’ll have an explosion on the nose, very beguiling and aggressively aromatic, and then it just fades to nothing on the palate.”

The second early entrant into the iPad wine comes from Nomad Editions, a web-based venture headed by former Newsweek magazine president Mark Edmiston. Nomad produces lifestyle publications designed for mobile devices such as iPhone and iPad - including Uncorked, a digital wine magazine launched last month.

Uncorked, a weekly magazine available for 99 cents a month in the iTunes App Store, is actually rather conventional in its approach. It doesn’t take advantage of the interactive possibilities presented by the iPad or iPhone, except you swipe pages rather than turning them.

Yet Uncorked could find a niche: It is smartly written, using well-known wine writers and focusing on value wines versus cult wines (though its definition of “cheap” wine seems to be $30). It could use some sharper editing; cliches about the “snotty French” or pinot noir producers “living on the knife’s edge” quickly get dull, and no wine publication should misspell Lafite. Even so, Uncorked features some lively writing, including an article by Tina Caputo on “flash” Internet sales of collectible wines, or editor Stephen Yafa’s skeptical look at wine aerators.

Uncorked really isn’t different from other wine publications except in its voice, which is noteworthy, and its exclusivity to the mobile format. If it ever takes full advantage of that format and all it has to offer, such as embedded video and the iPad’s interactive possibilities, Uncorked — and other publications such as By the Grape — could help define a new genre in wine media.

(This post appeared in slightly different form on The Washington Post's "All We Can Eat" blog.)

Agh! Public Speaking - Seattle and St. Louis

In high school, I hated public speaking class. In grad school, I was a lousy teaching assistant. But maybe that's because I didn't have anything worth speaking about. Like wine, for instance.

In the next few weeks I'll be venturing out of my cave for three (yikes!) public speaking engagements. The first two will be March 26 in Seattle at Taste Washington!, an annual event sponsored by the Washington Wine Commission to showcase that state's wonderful wines. I'll be on a panel discussing the terrific Seven Hills Vineyard, giving the consumer/critic's perspective along with a top-notch group of winemakers: Marty Clubb of L'Ecole No 41, Chris Figgins of Figgins Family Wine Estates (including Leonetti Cellars), and Jean-François Pellet of Pepper Bridge Winery, plus Drew Hendricks (Master Sommelier!) of Pappas Brothers restaurants. The panel will be moderated by the Wine Commission's Shayn Bjornholm (another Master Sommelier!). So I may be mostly in listening mode for this one ...

That afternoon I'll join some fellow wine writers for a panel called "What's the Point(s)?" We'll discuss different ways (100 points, stars, etc) of "quantifying the quality" of wine in general and Washington wine in particular. The panel will be moderated by Sean Sullivan, the energetic and talented author of Washington Wine Report, and my fellow speakers will be Sara Schneider of Sunset magazine and Rebecca Murphy of The Dallas Morning News. This will be a raucous, fun discussion.

The next weekend, April 2, is the DrinkLocalWine.com 2011 Conference and Twitter Taste-Off, this year focusing on Missouri wines. (Unofficial conference slogan: "Tweet Me in St. Louis!") I'll be moderating a panel discussion on "Does Locavore = Locapour?" My fellow panelists will be Ann Pollack, of the popular blog St. Louis Eats and Drinks; Glenn Bardgett, wine director of Annie Gunn's Restaurant (and a James Beard Award semi-finalist this year!); Debra Grace, of Grace Manor Restaurant; and Todd Kliman, Washingtonian magazine's food and wine editor and author of the award-winning The Wild Vine, a story of the Norton grape. (And a James Beard Award winner!)

This should be fun! Whether your passion is Columbia Valley Riesling and Syrah, or Missouri Norton and Vidal, I hope to see you! And don't forget to follow Twitter tage #DLWMO.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! DLW11 is Coming!

DLW 2011: Missouri will feature some of the top names in Missouri and regional wine as well a live Internet radio broadcast and an expanded version of our trademark Twitter Taste-off on April 2, 2011, at the Doubletree Westport in suburban St. Louis.

The  schedule for the third annual event includes Doug Frost, MS, MW, the godfather of American regional wine; Eric V. Orange, the founder and CEO of LocalWineEvents.com; Missouri winemakers Andrew Meggitt of St. James and Cory Bomgaars of Les Bourgeois; Todd Kliman, author of The Wild Vine, the best-seller about Missouri’s norton grape; St. Louis sommelier extraordinare Glenn Bardgett of Annie Gunn’s; and DLW co-founder Dave McIntyre of the Washington Post. [That's me!]

Olivia Wilder, host of the top-rated Olivia Wilder Times, will do her radio show live from the Missouri Twitter Taste-off on the blogtalkradio.com network, interviewing the winemakers and wine personalities in attendance.

Some two dozen Missouri wineries will pour two wines each for the Twitter Taste-off on April 2, where participants will blog or Twitter about what they've tasted.  We’ll give awards to the best wines, as voted by the taste-off participants (who must be 21 or older).

“Every year, we put together a great program, and I wonder how we’ll ever do better than that,” says DLW co-founder Jeff Siegel, the proprietor of the Wine Curmudgeon blog. “And the next year we always do. I think that has a lot to say about the quality and depth in regional wine.”

Ticket packages start at $35, which is the price for the Twitter taste-off and a buffet reception with the winemakers and wine personalities at the conference. Go to DrinkLocalWine.com for a complete schedule and to order tickets. For information, call (214) 727-1992.

DLW 2011 follows the success of the group’s first two conferences -- in Dallas featuring Texas wine in 2009 and in Leesburg, Va., featuring Virginia and Maryland wine in 2010. DLW also holds an annual Regional Wine Week in October, in which more than 40 wine bloggers, writers and columnists from the U.S. and Canada write about their favorite regional wines, ranging from Ontario to New York to Florida to Texas to Colorado.

DrinkLocalWine.com's goal is to spotlight wine made in the 47 states and Canada that aren't California, Washington, and Oregon. It's the brainchild of Washington Post wine columnist Dave McIntyre and wine blogger Jeff Siegel, the Wine Curmudgeon.

Conference sponsors are the Missouri Wine and Grape Board; LocalWineEvents.com; Annie Gunn’s;  the Doubletree Westport; and the St. Charles County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

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 ...

USA Today on Regional Wine

USA Today, the nation's newspaper, dropped at hotel room doors across the land every morning, last week endorsed the regional wine movement with a travel feature on 10 "local" wine regions to visit. This is a great idea - if your business or pleasure takes you to St. Louis, consider a detour to Hermann. Heading to New York? Linger awhile in the Finger Lakes. Taking your family to Washington, DC, for some American history, or Charlottesville, to see Jefferson's Monticello? Guess what? Wine country is just around the corner.

The article is also a tribute to Regional Wine Week and DrinkLocalWine.com, as Jeff Siegel and I were interviewed about emerging wine regions across the country.

New York on My Mind

I'm a big fan of New York wines. Riesling from the Finger Lakes seems to get better every year, especially as winemakers continue to carve out a distinctive style that speaks of the region's terroir. Are they particularly German? Well, maybe not, though some definitely have that mineral oil quality (many wine lovers call it petrol or diesel, but I think mineral oil seems more positive a reference). The ones that send me over the top when I taste them have bracing acidity and an almost unbearable lightness of being, an ephemeral characteristic that leaves flavors flitting across your palate with surprising complexity, even if the initial impression may not carry depth. If I had to point to a German region and insist on making the comparison, I'd say Finger Lakes Rieslings (at least the ones that excite me the most) remind me of the delicate wines from the Mittelrhein, which admittedly is not Germany's most revered wine region. (Though I love that delicacy!) So perhaps it's best just to say that New York is carving out its own identity with the grape.

Of course, I have a soft spot for Seneca Lake, which is the middle finger. (Ba-da-boom!)

Some of my favorites? Hermann J. Wiemer and Dr. Konstantin Frank are the most classic. The ones that I find especially enticing come from Fox Run, Anthony Road and Red Newt. Chateau Lafayette Reneau had a wonderful Riesling that won Best in Show at the Atlantic Seaboard Wine Competition once, and at this year's judging I flipped for what turned out to be the 2009 Dry Riesling from Glenora.

New York is not limited to the Finger Lakes, of course. Long Island is making some delicious reds, and this region is also establishing its own style and character - the better wineries are no longer trying to make Pomerol, they're just happy making the best damn Long Island merlot they can.

And more and more New York wines are now reaching the D.C. area market, which means they are making enough to distribute wines outside the state. This was the topic of my Washington Post column last week. This column was particularly gratifying because it engendered considerably more response than I usually get, through e-mails and phone calls. Most of them said something like, "Nice column, but you didn't mention my favorite ... " That means readers are aware of New York wines and looking out for them, whether on their travels up north or now on their local retail shelves.

For more information about New York's wineries, go to uncorknewyork.com, the website of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, or to Lenn Thompson's New York Cork Report. Don't forget Regional Wine Week coming up Oct. 10-16 on 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.

NostraWINEus predicts 2010 ...

What's up for wine lovers in 2010? Here are a few prognostications ...

An increasing emphasis on value over stature as the recession maintains its downward pressure on wine prices. Consumers will continue to "drink down" and look for wines that cost less than they used to spend, but still taste expensive. This will reverberate across the price spectrum - those who could comfortably spend $120 in a restaurant two years ago will continue to look for quality in the $60- $80 range, while those who may be cutting their restaurant budgets altogether will look for the $30 - $40 wines that taste like the $80 they used to praise a sommelier for recommending.

The sweet spot in value in the retail market will continue to be in the $15-$20 range, especially for imported wines. Although the average price paid for 750 ml of wine in the US continues to hover in the $5-7 range, the "bang for the buck" is still in the teens.

More wineries will downblend their reserve wines into their basic blends - so we will see fewer $50 cuvées and more in the $30 range from places like California, Oregon and Washington. While these will appear expensive, they will often provide great value.

Bargains in imported wines? Portugal and Spain - more emphasis on the Iberian peninsula for sheer value. Why? Quality price ratio, of course, but also because these wine regions manage to bridge Old World sensibilities with New World preferences for riper, sweeter wines. Argentina will continue to shine, too.

More emphasis on "natural" wines - whatever that means. It means organic, and biodynamic, and - depending on who you read or talk to - even using ambient yeast instead of cultivated yeast. All well and good, and I applaud winemakers who want to preserve the environment and protect their vineyard workers from pesticides, fungicides, and the like. However, I worry that "natural wine" is becoming a buzzword that is more a reflection of marketing than viticulture. Wine has enough polemics - the pendulum may be swinging too far to the left.

The anti-alcohol movement will continue to grow - not an anti-wine (or beer or booze) movement, but a swing against the high-alcohol, high-extraction wines that have dominated the high end of the market the past several years. Consumers will favor moderate-alcohol wines well balanced with acidty, even from areas and wine types we now associate with syrup.

Regional wines will continue to gain in prominence. The Millenial Generation will continue to explore and expand its wine palate, and this rising consumer group appears to be unfettered by its elders' preference for cabernet, chardonnay and merlot. As local wines improve in quality, more consumers will ask for them in restaurants, stores, etc.

For better or worse, wine writing will trend towards new media. The recent demise of the popular Wall Street Journal wine column by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher emphasizes the shift toward blogs, Facebook and Tweeter as mainstream media - newspapers - cut costs. This will mean a decline in substantive, thoughtful wine articles, but an increasing visibility for individual wine reviews in "tweets" or blog posts. Some familiar names from newspaper columns (Gaiter and Brecher, perhaps?) will gravitate toward blogs and "word of mouth" media like Twitter. But will they have the same market pull? Psst, buddy, wanna try a nice Zinfandel? ...

Happy New Year, everyone!

Two Spotlights on Virginia Wine at the White House

Last week's White House state dinner featured Virginia wine in two ways – one positive, one … well, not so positive. As I blogged last week, the sparkling wine served with dessert and for the exchange of toasts between President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was the Thibaut-Janisson Brut de Chardonnay from the Monticello AVA near Charlottesville. But this sweet kudo for Virginia sparkling wine was quickly overshadowed by the sensational story of the White House gate crashers.

Turns out the couple who traipsed uninvited into the White House that night were Tareq and Michaela Salahi, of Oasis Vineyards in Virginia's Fauquier County. Oasis is one of Virginia's oldest wineries and has specialized in sparkling wine, with mixed success. The winery was founded and is owned by Tareq's parents, who have been embroiled in a nasty public dispute with their son over the disposition of the winery – they wanted to sell it when the debts piled too high. (The winery is now shuttered and not open for business.) And Tareq and Michaela, who definitely qualify for the term “socialites,” have been auditioning for Bravo TV's “Real Housewives of Washington.”

That's enough – I won't go into the details because I start laughing too hard. You can read all about it in The Washington Post, The New York Times and probably any other major media outlet. Let's just say the Salahi story casts an unfortunate light, however indirectly, on the Virginia wine industry – showing a vain and shallow side and stealing the limelight from the very worthy wine served at dinner that night.

Of course, there was another “scandal” about the state dinner, also involving wine. More on that later.

Photo: Tareq and Michaela Salahi with Vice President Joe Biden at the Nov. 24 White House state dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. From the Salahi’s Facebook page. Joe, dear, watch your hands!

DLW Conference Gets the Message Out

The DrinkLocalWine.com conference attracted about 70 people from around the country to discuss ways to promote regional wines against market preconceptions and the vagaries of the distribution system. The day culminated in the “Texas Twitter Tasteoff,” which you can follow on Twitter at #dlw09.

The audience at Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts in Dallas included local wine enthusiasts, Texas grape growers and winemakers, and bloggers not only from Texas but from as far afield as Colorado, Arizona, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and even California, many of whom tapped away at their laptops during the presentations and the tasting. Bloggers were a key audience for the conference – after all, DrinkLocalWine.com was created last year (by Dallas writer Jeff Siegel, aka “The Wine Curmudgeon,” and myself) as a portal site to link to bloggers covering regional wines from around North America.

And bloggers are an idea channel to reach regional wine’s key market – millenials. Richard Leahy, East Coast editor of Vineyard &Winery Management (the best wine magazine you’ve never heard of), made a persuasive argument that millenials are more open-minded about regional wines than older drinkers because they don’t care about which wines are endorsed by Robert Parker or the Wine Spectator and they want to experience wines for themselves rather than let someone else tell them what to drink. Fer Servadou, anyone?

Leahy, who blogs at RichardLeahy.com, also argued that wineries should avoid planting cabernet and chardonnay simply because of their popularity and focus on grape varieties suited for their climate. For our Texas hosts, that meant Mediterranean varieties such as tempranillo or sangiovese, Leahy said.

This ruffled Greg Bruni, winemaker at Llano Estacado, the second-largest winery in Texas (which boasts 177 wineries altogether, despite having fewer than 4,000 acres planted to vines). Bruni said any winery that wants to be commercially successful needs to grow cabernet because the consumers want to drink it.

Indeed, Bruni poured a delicious cabernet during the Twitter Tasteoff – at $12 a bottle it represents a tremendous value. That said, several wineries poured delicious tempranillo. And perhaps in the spirit of harmony, the winning red at the tasting was a tempranillo-cabernet blend from Inwood Estates in northern Texas.

The other winners included a racy and vibrant pinot blanc from Flat Creek Estate, a “port” styled sweet red from Sandstone Cellars, and a nearly unanimous crowd favorite, a “Madeira” from Haak Vineyards & Winery made from an exotic hybrid grape called blanc de bois.

Many people asked me, “Where are you going to do this next year?” Any wine regions want to step up?

The Texas Twitter Tasteoff