Archive for the ‘Rants and random wine stuff’ Category

That's me... no, not really. I wish...

It works any way you pair it: Women and Wine, Women and Golf, or Wine and Golf. (Wine and Golf may seem a little shaky, but I can testify that a glass of Chardonnay can sometimes make the back nine a lot easier.)

I bring up these three things because I just read that California’s Mirassou Winery is now the Official Wine of the LPGA (or Ladies Professional Golf Association).

I think that’s exciting, because no one, ever, pays enough attention to us women golfers. Big-name corporations aren’t exactly falling all over each other to sponsor women’s golf events, so this seems big to me.

With a little research on the Mirassou website I discovered that the winery has a history of supporting women’s golf. (There’s even a tab on their website home page about wine and golf.) Besides their LPGA gig, I discovered that they’ve co-sponsored many golf tournaments and events.

I was intrigued by another link on the Mirassou site. They’re involved with an organization called Women on Course, which organizes events around the country where women (mostly working women, I think) can get together to golf, network, and of course, drink wine.

Sign me up! I’m going to check out their site (WomenOnCourse.com) and see if I can find something happening near me.

I’m also going to drink some wine…but you knew that. Cheers!

Adam Lee of Siduri

I’m intrigued by the debate that’s raging among winemakers, critics, and wine consumers about alcohol content in wines. I wrote a post a few months ago, “How High Is Too High,” where I laid out the basic arguments on both sides.

OK, I admit that I didn’t present a totally unbiased opinion — I think my verbal “body language” showed that I sided with the go-for-it, balls-to-the-wall kind of wines.

But I just came across an article that takes the debate to a new level. It’s written by Eric Asimov, the very respected wine writer for The New York Times. You can’t get more respected than that…

So in his column, “A Gadfly in the Pinot Noir,” Asimov recounts the tale of a panel he moderated at a recent Pinot Noir symposium. Now, that’s not a situation that would seem to invite verbal fireworks, but there was a dramatic twist near the end of the proceedings that has created a mini-uproar in the wine community.

Check this out, and let me know what you think.

By ERIC ASIMOV, The New York Times

IT’S been called the Ol’ Switcheroo, and the Great Pinot Noir Kerfuffle. Depending on your point of view, it was either a surprise changeup that proved a point, or a dirty trick that proved nothing at all. Either way, the stunt that the winemaker Adam Lee pulled at a pinot noir seminar earlier this month has evoked both claims of vindication and cries of outrage throughout the wine-drinking world. Read the rest of this entry »

I just read a very provocative article in the Montreal Gazette.com, written by freelancer Bill Zacharkiw. He is ranting (not that there’s anything wrong with that) about a recent promotion by the SAQ, which is the government-operated wine/liquor monopoly in Quebec, Canada. The promotion seems to have been instigated by James Suckling, former Wine Spectator magazine columnist who has gone “freelance” with his own subscription-based wine blog/website.

Suckling has built quite a name for himself in the U.S., where his former publication has a big following among wine drinkers from beginners to geeks and collectors. But in Quebec, he’s relatively unknown. As Zacharkiw points out, there are many Canadian and European critics and wine educators who have had a substantial influence on the Quebec wine world. None of them were given the distinction that Suckling negotiated for himself: he tasted and rated 200 wines, and 50 that received 90 points or higher were released into SAQ stores. Suckling wasn’t paid for this work, but received publicity in return for himself and his subscription website.

Here’s Zacharkiw :

So what bugged me about this? Well, one is the lunacy of the 100-point scoring system for “judging” wines. The SAQ basing a promotion around this inane system simply lends it more credence. I have already written about the SAQ’s buying policy, which despite its insistence to the contrary, favours wines which have received these high scores from American-based magazines, whose taste profile I feel is out of whack with the Quebec reality.” Read the rest of this entry »

I have to admit I was shocked by a recent headline in the wine press: “Canada’s Wine Consumption is Growing Six Times Faster than the World Average” (from WineBusiness.com).”Wow,” I thought. “They’ve certainly picked up the pace since I lived there…”

I know something about Canadian drinking habits, which used to run from Canadian Club whiskey and Molson Canadian beer, to nothing at all. You may not know that Canada was home to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, of which my grandmother was a card-carrying, white-ribbon-wearing member. They believed that alcohol — any and all alcohol — was the Demon Drink and would lead otherwise God-fearing citizens (such as my Great Uncle) to rack and ruin. It’s true that Uncle Harry did his share of drifting, usually ending up in some Western boom town where he would drink and gamble till he ran out of money and then move on. I heard he was a mean piano player, and often paid his way by playing piano in honky tonk bars. I know his church-going relatives were horrified, but I’ve always wished I’d been able to meet the guy.

Anyhow… the point of my digression was to explain that alcohol in general and wine in particular was not traditionally a part of many Canadians’ lives. (Just ask all of us who sat through countless dry family gatherings.)

But apparently all that has changed. A report conducted by the British research firm ISWR examined worldwide wine consumption trends from 2005 to 2014. It showed that between 2005 and 2009 alone, Canadian wine consumption increased a whopping 22.5 percent. Wow! In the next five years, 2010 to 2014, a 19 percent increase is expected in Canada, while the rest of the wine-drinking world logs a modest 3.18 percent increase.

Canada is also the world’s fifth largest importer of wine, and is scheduled to hold the number 3 spot by 2014, lagging behind only the U.S.and China. And this with a mere tenth the population of the U.S. and I can’t even count high enough to figure out how much larger China is.

All I can say is, “Go Canada!” Whether my brothers and sisters to the North are enjoying more domestically-made wine (you’ll read another post about that tomorrow), or they’re hitting the Old World and New World wines harder, I say, “Keep up the good work.” Forget that nasty rye whiskey, and limit your lager to hockey-game-watching. Go ahead and pour a glass of red, white, pink or bubbly and keep racking up those numbers.

I’m proud, once again, to be a Canadian: Oh Canada!

I’ve seen it way too often. Casual or serious wine collectors have cellars where they carefully guard their prized wine collection. They delight in telling me about their 1982 French, or 1987 Napa, or whatever. When I ask, “So have you enjoyed any lately?”, they invariably say, “I’m waiting for the right occasion to open something.”

Guess what? Any occasion is the right occasion for a great bottle of wine! If you keep putting off the pleasure because it’s not a good enough occasion, you may just find that… you’ve run out of occasions!  And worse yet, you’ve run out of drinkable wine. Because too often, cellar dorks keep their wines cloistered beyond the point when they were at their peak. I can’t tell you how often I’ve sat around a table swirling my 19whatever and heard, “Damn, I should have opened this last year.” Or the year before, or the year before that.

So here’s a great way to avoid all that sorrow. Participate in this year’s Open That Bottle Night on February 26, 2011. I read about this on one of my favorite blob/websites, BoozeMonkey.com, which is manned by a group of very fun Australian and New Zealand wine freaks. They reminded me that the last Saturday in February has become an International Wine Event. Anyone and everyone can participate at a restaurant or in someone’s home. The only stipulation is that everyone bring a bottle they’ve been waiting to open. “It could be a special vintage, your dad’s favourite wine, the wine you enjoyed on your first date or one you bought on a memorable visit to a winery. Or if you aren’t saving a wine (wine is meant to be drunk after all!) OTBN is a good excuse to go out and buy a bottle and treat yourself.”

My feelings exactly. So start planning your evening now. Call up some family and friends — anyone who also enjoys good wine (that leaves out half my family). Commandeer someone’s dining room table (the biggest you can find), and start searching your recipes for a wine-friendly dish to bring along with your wine.

It sounds like a blast. Stay tuned, because I’ll report on our OTBN and I’d like to hear some comments on yours, too. Cheers!

You’ve probably noticed how every major sports organization creates sponsorships of every conceivable kind, some only vaguely related to the sport in question. You know what I mean — we have the “Official Hamburger of the Olympic Games,” “The Official Car of the National Football League,” and “The Official Scotch Tape of Nascar.”

Now we have “The Official Wine of the PGA of America.” But don’t think I’m complaining! I love wine, and I love golf, and if someone can give me an excuse to do both at the same time, I’m all over it!

Here’s what the PGA had to say about their new partner: “Chalone Vineyard’s proud tradition of providing quality wines to customers, and committed interest in the golf industry, make a wonderful addition to The PGA of America’s valued family of partners,” said PGA of America President Allen Wronowski. “We are proud to have Chalone Vineyard as the Official Wine of The PGA of America and join us in celebrating our 95th year in golf.”

And here’s what the Chalone folks say: “I am absolutely delighted to be working with The PGA of America to increase the enjoyment of wine along with the great game of golf,” says Chalone Vineyard winemaker Robert Cook. “I have been an avid golfer since I could hold a club, and this alliance gives me the chance to discuss how the excellent wines we make can be an inspired beverage choice for the “19th hole” – a terrific way to combine two of my passions.”

Ah, I think I get it. Chalone’s Robert Cook engineered this whole thing so he could get inside access to golf and golfers. Good idea: I wish I’d thought of it first. The closest I come to pairing wine and golf is when I’m playing really badly and say, “What the heck, I can’t get any worse. Send the drink cart out with a glass of Chardonnay.”

But don’t get me wrong: Chalone does make very good wines, and in several price tiers so they can be accessible to nearly everyone. They specialize in Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, two grapes that grow particularly well in the cooler climate of their appellation near Monterey.

Hey, wait a minute — the PGA at this very minute is playing its weekly tournament in Carmel, just a stone’s throw from Monterey. I’m sure the Chalone folks are there at Pebble Beach, soaking up the fabulous views of rocks and waves while the golfers fight it out on the immaculate fairways and greens. And then they’ll all go off to the clubhouse and start sipping Chalone Pinot.

Wish I was there… Cheers!

They’re at it again: feeding perfectly good wine to laboratory mice in the interest of Science. While I question whether this is a good use of something I could be drinking, I’m all for Advancing Human Knowledge, if that means finding yet another reason for everyone to drink wine.

I wrote a story a few months ago (“Are You a Man(Woman) or a Mouse”) about a study that used mice to research the effects of resveratrol, a substance that occurs in the skins and seeds of red wine grapes and therefore in red wine. Now, researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri have reported the results of another mouse study. I’ll call it the Mighty Mouse study, because the results are indeed important.

Here’s what the university’s press release said: “The investigators studied mice that develop abnormal blood vessels in the retina after laser treatment. Apte’s team found that when the mice were given resveratrol, the abnormal blood vessels began to disappear.” In short, “Resveratrol…stops out-of-control blood vessel growth in the eye.”

That’s a good thing, because “The discovery has implications for preserving vision in blinding eye diseases such as diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in Americans over 50.”

Wow! That means that we should drink red wine so we can continue to see clearly. But not too much, because we all know that over-indulging in red wine or any other alcohol is the primary cause of slobbering drunkenness, which is not only unattractive but definitely impedes the vision.

So think of red wine as just another vitamin supplement: it’s just a lot more fun to swallow. Cheers!

I was reading an article about Zinfandel written by Jon Bonne of the San Francisco Chronicle’s blog, SFGate. The event that prompted the article is the ZAP festival coming soon to SFO. What’s ZAP, you say? The acronym stands for Zinfandel Advocates and Producers, and it’s a group of winemakers and wine drinkers  who love big, juicy, high alcohol, red wine.

And there’s the rub — the “big, juicy, high-alcohol” part. Zinfandel producers have been accused of letting the grape lead them where  no man/woman should go. The criticism is that grapes are  left on the vine until they’re too ripe and too high in sugar, producing a Port-like wine with more raisin than berry flavors and alcohol above 15%. On top of that, many producers overdo the oak barrel aging to add texture, and they end up with waaaaay too much vanilla and toast. As well as everything else.

Some say, “Bring it on!” Others say (yours truly included), “Tone it down!”

It’s important to point out that all Zin producers aren’t on the same side of this fence. Bonne quotes two winemakers: Ehren Jordan, who makes wine for Turley Wine Cellars, said “I actually have a major issue with a lot of Zinfandel that is produced in California.” Mike Dashe, owner/winemaker of Dashe Cellars, a vey respected Zin producer, said, “I think some of the exuberance for that super-ripe, almost overripe, fruit is not there anymore…I really think that people are tired of that.”

I sure am. My palate gets tired of those Port-like Zins after about one sip, and the over-ripe fruit starts to comes across muddy and flabby. There’s no balance in these wines, and balance is what good wine is all about.

At about this point in Bonne’s article, I started going, “Hmmmm: overdone, too heavy, too much oak.  This sounds like the Chardonnay debate!”

The same arguments made about Zin could be made about a lot of California Chardonnay. I happen to be one of those wine drinkers who object to chewing on a 2×4 when I drink a glass of Chardonnay, and there used to be way too many of those on the market. Recently, though, I’ve seen a trend away from the Super Woody Chards towards a more balanced style where fruit, acid and oak all happily co-habitate.

I have an idea. I say we get the High Alcohol Raisin’y Zin people together with the Over-Oaked, Too Buttery Chardonnay folks. We make them try each others wines, and maybe they’ll see the faults that the rest of us have been grousing about. Then the wine industry can set about making nothing but wines that the discerning public (i.e. “me”) can enjoy.

What a concept! Do you think it’ll work? Cheers…