Winberis

This does look like fun...

I've done a few of these over the years...  A friend mentions to me, "I wish I knew more about wine" and all of a sudden I'm the "unstoppable wine opinion machine", or a customer of mine wants a training session for their waitstaff, and I'm off to the races.

But what if you have boucoup bucks to burn and you have always enjoyed Stephen Spurier's column in Decanter?  What to do?  Why not order him up for dinner, replete with horizontal of classed growth '61s?  I suppose now you can!  Why should Bipin Desai have all of the fun with his brilliantly conceived and justly famous home tastings?

From Decanter:

A personal wine guru -  yours for the evening
April 21, 2006
Adam Lechmere

A new London-based company is cashing in on a booming new trend – private wine-tasting parties for well-heeled wine-geeks.

Taste-In, which bills itself as 'a completely new way to entertain and impress at home', has persuaded some of the UK's most prestigious wine professionals to host its upmarket home tastings service.

Steven Spurrier, Oz Clarke, Michael Broadbent, Tim Atkin, Charles Metcalfe, Robert Joseph and Joanna Simon are on the company's books.

With two services, the Classic and the Fine & Rare, Taste-In will deliver a wine celebrity and a tailored flight of wines ('limited only by your imagination' in the case of the five-star Fine & Rare service) to your door, for prices starting at £1200 for 12 people.

The company's founders, pr professional Sophie Jump and journalist John Stimpfig, reckon they have a 'slick and simple' service. 'Once your tasting has been defined, the rest is up to us,' their brochure says.

They are also confident, with suppliers like Majestic, Harrods, the Wine Society and Berry Bros lined up, that they can supply any wine the customer specifies.

'If they want to taste a range of minerally Chardonnays, for example, we'll get eight different ones from around the world,' Jump told decanter.com.

She added the impetus for the start-up came from two important trends – the continuing aspirational interest in wine in London, and the influx of wealthy 'new Europeans' setttling in the capital.

'With the widening of the EU there are huge numbers of people coming to live here who want to absorb British culture – and wine is an important part of that culture.'

Sunday Times wine critic Joanna Simon said the idea of doing an informal tutored tasting at home was the most attractive part of the deal.

'You might still be entertaining clients, but the fact you are doing it at home and not in an anonymous hotel makes it far less formal.'

Alchemy, Or How I Turned Syrah Into Auslesen.

    Well, It's good to be back.  The Turks and Caicos Islands are a great place for a honeymoon and a bad place for restaurant wine lists.  For those of you still following this rather spotty blog, I thank you.
   
    Every once in a while I sit down to look at where my (diminutive) cellar is, and where my tastes are going.  I don't have the luxury of keeping too many trophy bottles because mine is a working cellar...  If it's there it will eventually be consumed. 
    Now that I am wed to a woman who is both a great cook and a vegetarian, my need for big reds is substantially diminished.  Inconveniently, because she drank most of my Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, all I have left are big reds.
    A few years ago I received a bottle of Sine Qua Non "Impostor McCoy" as a Christmas bonus from a former employer.  A generous gift to be sure... 96 points from Robert Parker, rare in the extreme, and a very heavy bottle: 'A thick, juicy, massive Syrah, it gushes copious quantities of licorice-infused blackberry fruit offering smoke, coffee, and meaty notes. The wine is mouth-filling, teeth-staining, and loaded.' (Parker)
      Enter Winecommune.com.   I am not anti-new world, I just don't have a good place in my cellar or diet for a wine with as much alcohol as Jeagermeister. especially when I can offer the wine in question to someone who needs it like lifeblood.  I was able to magically turn my Syrah which I had been guiltily holding for some years into a case of wonderful Spatlesen and Auslesen from my favorite place for German wines.  Dee Vine was having their annual(?) sale, a kind of clean out the closets period for bin ends.  There are some really great values, the first of which I took for a test run last night...

    In summer time when the kitchen is bare one of my favorite desserts is Stoneyfield Farms full fat yogurt over whatever sliced fruit I happen to have around.  Last night it was delicious, ripe yellow peaches.  Mmmmm.  I paired this simple concoction with 1997 Kesselstatt Josephshofer Auslese form the Mosel Saar Ruwer.  As far as Auslesen go, it was awfully light, which under the circumstances was perfect.  The lovely floral / petrochemical (NASCAR / gardenia?) dance that German Riesling does was in full effect, giving this wine a wonderful interplay with the sweetness of the peaches and the tart punch of the yogurt.
    My summer is now going to have a dozen pretty, refreshing matches as I find ways to brighten warm summer evenings with food friendly German Rieslings.  For those of you who have shied away from Germans in the past because of their bizarre nomenclature, give them another chance.  There is no better time than summer.

(If any food bloggers have pairing suggestions I'd love to add them here!)

Are Glossy Ads Useful?

    What is the purpose of a wine print advertisement? 

    I suppose it is to build brand familiarity among a targeted group of consumers (in the case of wine ads, us).  I understand the premise, and in a world in which each advertising message existed on its own I would say great, a picture is worth a thousand words... that is an efficient form of messaging.

    But that is not the case.  We as consumers are besieged daily by 3000 advertising messages, up from 560 in 1971 (According to David Shenk in Data Smog).  3000 messages per day means that we get 187 messages per waking hour or 3.125 messages per minute.  Every day.  We 21st centurians have built up certain modern survival skills which allow us to block out the ad-static and look for cues of inherent quality. 
   
    Here is where the importance of independent critics, message boards and bloggers comes in.  When a modern consumer needs information or guidance, we naturally respond with knee-jerk cynicism at producer sponsored opinions.  I would argue that the more informed a consumer is in a given field, the pickier they are about which information sources they will respond to.  Robert Parker's The Wine Advocate doesn't have near the circulation of his competitors at The Wine Spectator, but his influence outweighs the spectator, largely I suspect because he shuns advertising.  (The Wine Spectator on the other hand charges $35,000 for a full page color ad, and that doesn't jibe well with many consumers, hence the many suspicions about WS's impartiality.)  Critics, message board posters and bloggers become trusted advisers and friends.  We come to know their tastes and biases and  respond by letting them influence our buying trends.

    Everything that independents are, print ads are not.  The majority of wines bought are chosen at the point of sale.  We are drawn to labels, pricing, point-score-shelf-talkers and whether we get a fuzzy feeling from a given brand.  Do print ads provide that fuzzy feeling?  Does familiarity alone inspire trust?  Or do we perceive the recommendations of those voices we hear and the scores we read as indications of inherent quality remote from the taint of marketing dollars?

    If you see a print ad by a new brand, do you confer all of the attributes of its big dollar advertising brethren?  Do you assume 200,000+ case production?  Is there the suspicion that advertising means it can't stand on its own two feet?  In our advertising barraged lives do we begin to assign traditional messaging the role of liar and cheat?

From Jack:

 

If you see a print ad by a new brand, do you confer all of the attributes of its big dollar advertising brethren? Do you assume 200,000+ case production?" Yes, though only 50,000+ cases (i.e., in excess of a half million bottles). And, what I'm really thinking is Industrial Wine. So, these full page ads in wine, food, Robb Report, etc., magazines just tell me to stay way clear of these wineries. But then again, these wines aren't really targeted at wine geeks, but rather people who buy most of their wine at grocery stores, right?

Me:

    I got an email from the director of marketing for a large family owned winery here in California who writes:

Your thoughts re: advertising are of course valuable and insightful. I could go on to speak about print advertising and other forms of visibility, their value, impact, and more ad infinitum, but I’ll try to summarize my thoughts.  As competition for mindshare and shelf space skyrockets in the wine industry, large producers are in a bit of a conundrum as to when, where, what to advertise—no one wants to be considered overexposed, but the reality of economics and competition requires that producers be visible, and print advertising is just one vehicle. No one would argue your points about the nauseous number of impressions we’re exposed to daily, and our need to worm our way through the chaos to find the value in the messages.

That said, you’re right about you not being the target audience for ads—passionate geeks such as yourself receive impressions from a variety of sources both above and under the radar—and brand-building happens in sublime and complex ways. I would encourage you to continue to disregard ad input and its power to overwhelm your senses, and rely on the senses that tell you a wine is great or not. But I hope you’ll try to put aside your distaste for print ads and not let them color your perceptions about particular wines?

You’ve got such a great thing going, Christian, with Winberis.com. Thanks so much for sharing and educating my tech and wine palate!!

    Perhaps she's right and my head is in the sand as to how wine consumers behave...  To a certain extent I have lost my "basic" consumer instincts though years in this business, but my knee jerk reactions to advertising are just that, knee jerk.  I don't exercise control over gut reactions or first impressions and like Jack (above) feel more of a deterrent effect from print advertising. 

    I understand the need to get the brand out there, but there must be a way of having your cake and eating it too.  There must be a way to bring in new consumers while building relationships with the jaded professionals and geeks.  Perhaps blog based independent interviews would be good, warts and all portrayals of winery principals and key figures which would allow people to build those personal relationships.  A forum like this one could be used to present both the standard messaging (declared as such) and accompanying interview.  Or something.

Anyone else have a good idea?

 

Wine Blogs are Passe, and Silent

    It would seem that winberis.com sooo last month...  Here I am silently sitting here tapping away while the authors of Grape Radio and Winecast are doing interviews and leading "Virtual Tastings" from the comfort of home. 
    Podcasting (broadcasting audio files for later playback on ipod-like devices) may not be the newest thing on the block, but I am beginning to get more excited about the possibilities.  Grape Radio seems to specialize in an interview format that offers winemakers such as Bob Foley (Pride, Paloma, Foley)and other glowing luminaries to speak freely without the editorial control of the mainstream wine press.  Winecast seems to serve an entirely different function, that of a virtual tasting coordinator.
    It may be more time consuming to listen to a broadcast than read a quick blurb at your leisure, that is why I never got into Wine and Dine Radio (which runs as a live feed).  I was never willing to sit still at my computer for the half hour required to make it through a session.  Podcasting requires a shift in thinking, I wouldn't listen to either of the above programs at home, but I have a 45 minute drive to Sonoma a couple of times a week which is perfect.
    For those of you who express amazement at the existence of blogging, let alone something more technical, I'll include a link to ipodder.  This is the program I use in association with itunes to record and download these programs.  Start with the above mention programs, move to the NPR feeds, and then start you own podcast!

    Please let me know if you found this post illuminating or useful.

    An update from Tim Eliott of Winecast.com:

Hi Christian,

Thanks for the post, but I don't see my show as just about tasting. I am trying to educate a general audience about wine, while not being too basic (or boring) for higher level wine lovers.  The whole "virtual tasting" idea came from a listener suggestion to help listeners to better understand some of the tasting tips I shared in previous shows.  I will continue to do "live" tastings and encourage listeners to pick the wines up for tasting while they listen and compare/contrast their impressions with mine.  I am also hoping to expose listeners to new and different wines than the mass market Chardonnay's, Cab's and now, Pinot's, they typically gravitate to.
Anyway, I think you are partly correct in your characterization... thanks again for including me along with the good folks at Grape Radio.

Cheers,
--
Tim

From Pabloest:

Podcasting is certainly on the rise....but it certainly appeals to a more devoted audience than does, say, general blog reading. In fact, isn't reading blogs and using RSS syndication just a way to fuel short attention spans?...look, an update, read the headline, is it interesting? If not, move on to the next blog! I don't have a personal music device so I haven't listened to said programs but that's just what I think...scrolling in audio just isn't the same...

Me:
    Maybe the problem with blogging is that it is content deficient.  I know that when I write, I merely scratch the surface of my chosen topic (if I can stay on topic).  Winberis.com is essentially an aggregator of interesting snippets; that is why I include so many links, so that readers can continue their inquiry into a topic of interest. 
    Podcasting serves a different purpose.  If I had your ear for a half hour, I would attempt to tell the story in a different way, if not attempt the whole story.

 

A Soda By Any Other Name

On occasion Megan and I have batted around the regional naming conventions of carbonated beverages.  She, being from Michigan has on occasion slipped and called said beverage "pop" to my fierce ridicule.  Now Pablo has sent the definitive research on the subject.  I assume someone granted money for such an exhaustive work (at least it didn't go to education [unless the goal of this study is marketing Pepsi in schools{in which case I suppose it did go to "education"}]).

Train with the CIA

    Who hasn't wanted to train with the CIA (Culinary institute of America)?  The CIA is the premier culinary school in the US with campuses in Hyde Park, NY and St Helena, CA.  I have taken a few of their courses over the years which cost me $800 to $900 per course.  Now it seems they are offering a free course in wine basics. 
    Here's your mission: I'd love for a couple of my faithful but quiet readers to check out the course (materials will probably be about $150) and report back on what they thought.  I'll devote a future post to responses.
    Will distance learning work for wine ed?  I think its a cool idea...  (Thanks vinography for the story)

Download MOV00191.MPG
    This bottling line has no bearing on the subject at hand, It comes from Jeff Dern, he took it on our recent South American sojourn.

In Wine Nothing is Too Small to be Controversial...

    ...Not even the cork. 
    Champagne Ruinart recently held its "Best Sommelier in the World" competition which was won by Australian Matthew Wilkin.  Wilkin was asked by Jancis Robinson about his philosophy on sniffing corks as a guide to quality to which he answered:

At times when I am opening a bottle and catch a whiff of an off-note I will have a habit of doing so just to check it’s not actually the cheese trolley. Otherwise, as a measure of a wine’s quality it is pointless as cork smells of cork!

The only logical point of a customer viewing the cork for me is to see how well it has sealed over a 5, 10, 15 or 20 year period, and by the time you finish consuming the wine, at what point do you return to reconsider its closure?

I have opened many bottles whose cork smells somewhat dodgy (especially on older bottles) and have found the wine to be sound, vice versa, or both are completely off the scales.

    His comment would indicate that he doesn't see a correlation between sniffing the cork and ferreting out bottles contaminated by TCA (2,4,6 tricloranisole, or "corkiness").
    This has for a number of years been "common sense" in the wine trade, to the point where in San Francisco most servers no longer make a show of putting the cork before the head of the table for inspection.  It would seem that there is no controversy here.
    That is until a response comes in from writer David Schildknecht:

Surely other readers will have shared my experience that the more chances one can give oneself to arrest a bad cork and the sooner one can do so, the better. I find that in the very act of pulling the cork and releasing the atmosphere trapped between it and the wine, one often receives the best early warning signal. I then routinely sniff the cork, which ferrets out further spoilers, indeed sometimes eliminates bottles whose contents may not immediately display any obvious signs of their bad cork. Naturally, though, the performance of the wine itself in the glass - and not just in the first minute of exposure - is the definitive, final indicator.

    What do I think?  I continue to use a cork as a visual indicator, I like to see a wet bottom and a dry top.  There are definitely those out there with a more sophisticated nose than I have, and they are welcome to whatever they like.  Just keep Zinfandel corks far from your nose... They can leave you with a purple dot on the end if you're not careful.

 

 

Up-and-comers

    I love getting replies to my posts... it makes it easy for me to think of things to write about.  Pabs sent me a comment this afternoon in response to my last post:

You mention that Chile has had a rough time competing with Australia, Argentina and even Eastern European countries, because of their "myopia". Do these other countries have a Mondavi-like voice of their country or region? If so, how much success have they had? As barely more than a Safeway-level wine consumer, I have heard of "up and coming" Australian wines; less so from Argentina and Easter Europe. I wonder why that is?...

    There are three voices at work in the three areas mentioned:
    Eastern Europe, specifically Hungary has a wine called Tokaji, historically one of the world's great sweet wines which lost its glow during the reign of collectivization (individuality of wines was not held in high regard).  With the opening up of business conditions in Hungary a group of investors named The Royal Tokaji Company went in and obtained the use of some of the most storied old sites and proceeded to make critically acclaimed sweet wines.  In this case an individual company, if not an individual (the critic Hugh Johnson is one of the principles, I believe) is the symbolic voice of the region.
    In Argentina, one grape has led the charge to relevance.  The introduction of a Bordeaux blending grape called Malbec which became recognizable and popular brought Argentina forward.  The danger is of course that if Malbec looses its shine, Argentina could sink back into irrelevance (I speak only of the US market).
    The third, Australia, has quite a bit of government backing in the form of subsidy and marketing support.  The reason for this is simple, a few years ago Australia ran into the situation of having more grape production than the domestic market could consume.  Instead of ripping out the vines and going back to sheep, the Aussie government decided to focus on export.  I admit because of the extreme consolidation of the Australian wine producers government/commerce relationships were relatively easy to accomplish in comparison to most countries.
    As to why you have heard more about the Australian wines, that is simple... Quantity, marketing and money.  In terms of dollars, the Australians beat the French in the US market by 430% during the last 52 week period.  That money, especially when concentrated in a few companys' hands buys a lot of visibility.  The Australian labels are easy to understand; which would you remember more easily, one of Chile's biggest is Casillero del Diablo, Australia has Yellow Tail.  They use flavor profiling wherein they will tailor the taste of a product to match the palate of the targeted market, giving you whatever you want.  Finally, getting back to money, the Australians have an amazingly profitable business, they make wine like its beer; everything is automated and standardized.  They were built from the ground up to take on the most important wine markets in the world, and they're doing a smashing job.

Everyone Needs a Mondavi

    Yesterday Laura Goldberg sent me an article from Business 2.0 entitled "The Fall of the House of Robert Mondavi" (subscription required).  In a nutshell, the article chronicles the life of Robert Mondavi from his beginnings at Krug, working with his father and brother Peter, to the recent acquisition of his eponymously named company by Constellation Brands.
    I will not cast judgment on "The Fall" or on the clashes between his sons Michael and Tim, I won't bemoan the passing of an era (can it be an era if it sticks around?).  Instead I will ask you to look at what happens without a unifying iconoclastic force like Robert Mondavi.
    California was barely an emerging region when Mondavi first persuaded his father to purchase the Charles Krug winery, and in 1965 when he left to found Robert Mondavi, there was no guarantee of success.  He spent the next 28 years (until the winery went public in 1993) traveling the world promoting not only his wines, but the entire concept of California as a quality producer.  Most people in this business will be quick to thank Mr. Mondavi for his efforts and call him the giant on whose shoulders they have stood.
    I spent January in Chile, a country strikingly similar to California in climate and, I would argue, wine making potential.  They have had a rough time of competing with newer players such as Australia, Argentina and even Eastern European countries because of what I see as a fatal myopia.  Chilean producers seem to think that if they are from Colchagua, their primary competition are producers in Maipo.
    What Chile lacks is a champion.  A voice who will offer his own success as a springboard for the success of his region.  The messaging often seems the same, "We are a great producer, even if we are Chilean".  What they don't realize is that the competition is not between Chilean appellations, it is between global regions. 
    As long as emerging producers fail to heed the example set in California since the 1960s they will have little chance of replicating our success.  We in California have created a $22 billion industry through faith in the intrinsic quality of our produce, and voices like Mr. Mondavi's who never stop singing about the place they love.

P.S. If you are interested in learning more about the Mondavi story, read his autobiography.  It is essentially the story of the Napa Valley's rise to (post-21st amendment) prominence.

This "rarity" thing

Today I was reading a wine discussion board called VinoCellar and one of the threads got me thinking about the race for "rare" wines.  Adam Lee, a respected maker of Pinot Noir and Syrah here in California posted a note about a new young winemaker who has produced 2 barrels (about 600 bottles) of Pinot Noir from a pretty good vineyard called Keefer Ranch. 

Fantastic New Boutique California Pinot Noir #248041 - 03/23/05 01:58 PM

Edit Reply Quote

Well, just when we thought there couldn't be another great new Pinot out there...

I would highly recommend jumping on the Salinia bandwagon. Kevin Kelly, the former assistant winemaker over at Copain, has come out with his first, very limited release of Pinot Noir. It comes from the Keefer Ranch Vineyard and it is pretty incredible. He only made 2 barrels of it, but if you are a Pinot fan and a Keefer fan I recommend getting in touch with him and trying to get some. You can reach him at mail@salinia.com.

Just a heads up.

Adam LeeSiduri Wines

Lee's implied endorsement of an ultra tiny run of expensive Pinot was like chum in the water to the fanatics (in a good way) who populate this board.  Within 48 hours of the original posting,  Kevin Kelly had gone from a new winemaker entering a tough business to a cult hero with a waiting list for his wines.  Not a bad bit of luck over Easter weekend.
I admit I have succumbed on occasion to the temptation of the rare... I have paid through the nose for a wine that was unobtainable, only to be left with a faded flavor of the month. I wish Mr. Kelly the best, and hope that these folks who are chasing him now will stick around a while... The wine world is a fickle place.