Archive for the ‘Wine Education’ Category

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…

Here’s an excerpt from a very interesting article by Sean Sullivan, printed recently in the Washington Wine Report. “The Great Recession has left many in the wine business looking for new ways to provide high quality wine at more affordable prices. One approach, which I wrote about recently, is keg wine.” (I also wrote an article about keg wine article for thewinecellarsclub.com.) “Another, which has recently started in Seattle, is the use of refillable wine bottles.”

“Paul Beveridge of Seattle’s Wilridge Winery started offering reusable bottles several months ago. Beveridge says that the inspiration was both to be as green as possible and to provide high quality wine at “recession buster” pricing.”

“The reusable bottles reduce environmental impact by eliminating cork (the bottles have reusable stoppers), capsules, paper labels, and the waste associated with recycling glass. “It takes five percent of the energy to clean and refill a bottle as it does to recycle a bottle,” Beveridge explains. Additionally, unlike boxed wine, it comes in a package consumers are already familiar with and that is fully reusable.“

I’d say this is an idea whose time has come, if only it hadn’t been around for eons already. We may not have seen it in the U.S of A., but in Europe, reusable bottles have been a way of life as long as they’ve been making wine (and that’s a long time). Read the rest of this entry »

I’m about to do something wild and crazy: I’m going to throw spices, fruit and sugar — yes, sugar! — into perfectly good wine. Will it kill a bottle of otherwise decent wine? Maybe. Is there a reason I’m going to violate this wine? Well of course there is.

This winter I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Spiced Wine, or Mulled Wine. There must have been an article in a woman’s magazine or a TV talk show, because Spiced Wine is suddenly all the rage. Everyone wants to try it, and expects to buy some Spiced Wine already bottled and ready to pour.

“Not so fast,” I say. “If you’re going to drink some crazy concoction, or a weird and wonderful mixture of anything, you better be mixing it yourself.”

Why? Because then you know what’s in it. I feel the same way about Sangria, too. I refuse to drink some off-the-shelf Sangria made from horribly cheap wine, dolled up with added chemicals, sugar and artificial flavoring. If I’m going to drink some blended rubbish, then I’m gonna be doing the blending.

So what about the Spiced Wine? I know it has a long, long tradition in Europe and England, because it’s the perfect drink to warm you up on a frigid winter evening. Practically every country in the Northern Hemisphere has their own variation on spices, fruits and booze, but I intend to make a quasi-English version, because that’s where my ancestors hail from. Read the rest of this entry »

Chalet Debonne's estate vineyards in Ohio's Grand River Valley

Northern Ohio isn’t the easiest place in the world to grow wine grapes. It takes determination, energy and a good measure of stubbornness to create a winery in the shadow of the Great Lakes. But after years of hard work, Chalet Debonne is a thriving business and the Grand River Valley District has become a popular leisure destination. This is in no small part thanks to Tony Debevc Sr, who passed away recently at the age of 94.

Tony Sr. was one of the pioneers in the Ohio wine industry. The land he lived on near Madison had been planted to grapes by his father as early as 1916, but Tony got serious about wine when he created Chalet Debonne Vineyards in 1971. With his wife Rose and son Anthony, Tony Sr. used innovative new techniques in his vineyards: before wind machines were common to prevent frost damage, Tony brought in World War II airplane engines to protect his vines. His energy, commitment, and smart ideas steered the winery through the early years and helped make it the largest estate winery in Ohio.

Tony Sr’s family made this statement: “Tony will be remembered by many as a respected, innovative winegrower whose legacy includes a strong and dynamic family, great friends and fine wines with which to celebrate life.”

It doesn’t get much better than that. Cheers.

Mountain-grown fruit makes big, bold, kick-ass reds. The depth and structure of the wine, and the intensity of fruit and tannins are unique.

I’ve had the good luck to drink Napa Valley mountain-grown Cabernets the last two evenings. The first was Schweiger Spring Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon 2005, which I drank with a great big Filet at a steakhouse in Arizona. The winery was new to me, and I assume their production is too small to warrant distributing their wines in the state in which I live.

Too bad. I’d love to drink Schweiger Cab often.

Schweiger Vineyards is pretty old by Napa standards. Their property up on Spring Mountain was purchased by the family in 1960, when the valley floor was full of sheep and the hillsides were heavily forested. When they began clearing the land for vineyard planting in the late 1970′s, they found redwood stakes that suggested the hillside had been planted to grapes as long ago as the 1870′s. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes expensive wine is great, and sometimes it’s ludicrously overpriced. Sometimes experts are blow-hards that want to obfuscate and confuse to make themselves feel important, and sometimes experts are actually helpful. Sometimes ratings are just a crutch for the timid and unimaginative, and sometimes they help us find a previously undiscovered gem.

You might wonder why I’ve begun this post with lots of italics. Well, the italic type is my reply to an article recently published in livemint.com, which I believe is a Wall Street Journal online publication from India. Here is the article’s headline and subhead:

Here’s a great quote by Wine Spectator’s Matt Kramer, from an article on December 7, 2010: “Good wines can take care of themselves if seated next to a food partner that’s the least bit sociable.”

He was writing about what appears to be a growing obsession, often fueled by a Search-for-the-Hole-Grail ardor, to create the perfect wine and food pairing. Sommeliers and wine lovers have gone to incredible lengths to match every possible nuance of a dish with an accompanying wine. It can get kinda ludicrous, as they concoct ever-more-bizarre combinations of ingredients and choose obscure wine varietals.

Well, I’m with Matt. Mind you, I too have thrown out more than my share of suggested pairings, because as a wine retailer I’m frequently asked the question, “Which wine should I buy to go with tonight’s blah blah?”  I also plan and host wine and food pairing dinners, where I wax eloquent about the unique and perfect compatibility of each pairing.

But when I go home at night, I don’t waste any time worrying about what I’m drinking with dinner. In fact, I follow a very predictable pattern: while I’m cooking, I’ll sip on a Chardonnay, hopefully well-balanced with just a bit of oak and a snappy finish. My spouse chooses a crisper white for the cooking session, usually a New Zealand style Sauv Blanc with enough acid to turn my mouth inside out. Read the rest of this entry »