The Proper Placement of Words.

March 4, 2010 by Thomas.

According to the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), the arm of the Treasury Department that regulates alcohol, in order to use the words Ice Wine on a label the grapes for that wine must have been harvested while frozen, the grapes, not the people who pick them, although they are frozen too, because to meet the requirement the grapes must be picked in the early morning hours and at temperatures well below freezing.

The ostensible reason for the TTB rule is so that consumers know that Ice Wine was produced in as similar a manner as the Eisweins of Germany and the Ice Wines of Canada, two places other than the U.S. where frozen grapes are harvested. I say “in as similar a manner” because in the U.S. the rules end with the requirement that the grapes be picked frozen. In the two other countries, the rules are more stringent, placing conditions not only on when to pick but how, and even on the prescribed temperature at which to pick.

TTB labeling rules plainly state that the word Ice must be followed by a space and then followed by the word Wine, but the rules don’t seem to care one way or the other what a winery wants to call a wine that was produced from grapes that had not been frozen on the vine, but had been frozen, as in cryogenics or a simple large freezer. These wines can be called Iced Wine or any other creative construction that hints at the real thing.

It’s all about the proper placement of words, or maybe the improper placement of them.

Ice Wine production is a lengthy and expensive process, and thanks to climate conditions, it isn’t possible every year. To produce Ice Wine you must start with grape varieties that are truly thick-skinned and able to hang on the vine for months without deteriorating much. The Ice Wine harvest can take place anywhere between Thanksgiving and sometime in January, depending on when the major frigid time of the late autumn-early winter season hits. The producer must have the luck to avoid botrytis while waiting—a process that is necessary for Late Harvest dessert wines that are purposely harvested as raisins but never frozen.

Wines picked at regular harvest time and then frozen give producers the opportunity to forgo certain trepidation from a long, dangerous wait.

If all goes well, grapes for Ice Wine are frozen and intensified inside their skins. The intensity of the frozen juice creates the opposite of what you might expect. Instead of the acidic fruit salad with honey overtone intensity of Late Harvest dessert wine, Ice Wine has a delicately silky texture with hints of stone fruit flowers; it attacks the palate with the feel of a flavorful liquid ball. In my mind’s eye, Ice Wine is like liquid in the shape of an ice cream scoop, an apt vision as this liquid ice cream seems drenched in a sometimes nutty, sometimes butterscotch caramelized syrup.

Ice Wine’s closest culinary brethren may be baked Alaska.

In fact, at a recent tasting of Ice Wines, I was floored by their “cooked” caramelized characteristic. I asked how is it that wine produced from frozen grapes can seem cooked? The answer was so simple it embarrassed me that I asked the winemakers on the panel whose wines it was that I had just tasted.

While waiting for the right freezing temperatures, grapes hanging out there endure swings of autumn and then winter temperatures that can range from pretty warm to pretty cool. During those long periods of back and forth, an enzymatic twist occurs as the grapes go through a kind of cooking and cooling process over and over.

When a producer leaves grapes to hang for extended periods of time, along with the risk of deterioration comes crop loss and loss of juice volume from the remaining crop. That of course increases the cost of producing the wine. This is where the other frozen wines have an advantage: since the grapes are picked usually during regular harvest, crop loss is almost nil. Even after time spent in the freezer the grapes provide more wine than their Ice Wine counterpart, and with less effort.

The freezer-frozen version can be found on retail shelves at half the price of Ice Wine and sometimes even cheaper than that. Yet, the profile of freezer-frozen wines recently tasted alongside Ice Wines did not deliver the exotic silkiness wrapped in caramel that makes the real thing of great interest.

Sadly, many consumers don’t know the difference between an Iced Wine and an Ice Wine that they may see side by side on retail shelves. If they make their buying decision strictly on price, then to me it’s as if the TTB rules have placed Ice Wine at a state-sponsored disadvantage.

Sure, consumers can ask, because on wine labels proper placement of words has meaning. But the immortal twisted syntax of another bureaucrat, Donald Rumsfeld, applies here: “sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know.”

If you are reading this entry anywhere other than on the vinofictions blog, be aware that it has been lifted without my permission (and without recompense), and that’s a copyright infringement, no matter that the copyright information appears with it.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
March 2010. All rights reserved.

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Lost in Tweet translation

March 1, 2010 by Thomas.

Been following…

01. Following Constellation Brands. D@P

Trans: “I am drinking the stars!” Dom Perignon

02. Ugh, going home to bathe, drink, and sleep. S@TA

Trans: “Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of good wine.” St. Thomas Aquinas

03. I spoke 2 soon. S@J

Trans: “One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.” Samuel Johnson

04. Wine taxes pay off national debt. T@J

Trans: “By making this wine vine known to the public, I have rendered my country as great a service as if I had enabled it to pay back the national debt.”  Thomas Jefferson

05. Join the party 2nite. J@HV

Trans: “He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long “ Johann Heinrich Voss

06. Champers 2 win or 2 lose. @N

Trans: “I drink champagne when I win, to celebrate…and I drink champagne when I lose to console myself.” Napoleon

07. Wine theft at doctor’s office. R@P

Trans: “Drink a glass of wine after your soup and you steal a ruble from your doctor.” Russian proverb

08. Wine 4 dinner; then, pleasing myself. @P

Trans: “When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself.” Plato

09. Mixologist told me sun+water=wine. G@G

Trans: “Wine is sunlight, held together by water!” Galileo Gallilei

10. No wine=no 2 nite, baby. @E

Trans: “Where there is no wine there is no love.” Euripides

11. No wine; need drugs. @Tal

Trans: “Wine is at the head of all medicines; where wine is lacking, drugs are necessary.” The Talmud

12. Bread & wine & u 4 me. O@K

Trans: “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou.” Omar Khayyam

Wine quotes

If you are reading this entry anywhere other than on the vinofictions blog, be aware that it has been lifted without my permission (and without recompense), and that’s a copyright infringement, no matter that the copyright information appears with it.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
March 2010. All rights reserved.

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Direction

February 23, 2010 by Thomas.

The five or six of you who follow vinofictions may have noticed the absence of a post for a few weeks. What used to be weekly, slipped to every other week, and then to “post when I feel the urge.” Lately, the urge has been usurped by my activity reading and commenting on other wine blogs. Luckily for my real life, I don’t read all the wine blogs out there, but the ones I do read hold me fast at times: some for their humor, some for their glibness, some for their good writing, and some for their ability to raise the hairs on my back and motivate me to vent.

The other day, after I bemoaned my personal blogging fate, a wine industry colleague asked me why I don’t review wines. He knows me well, but obviously not well enough, as he believes that I have a decent palate for wine. Before I snapped back at my colleague with my standard quip, “why should anyone care what I like?” He said, “And don’t give me your standard response. Wine reviews are what people want from a blog.”

Little did my colleague know, but I had long ago come to that conclusion. It was in fact partly behind my choice not to write reviews. My whole life has been accented by an attempt to tweak prevailing wisdom or, with any serious good luck, to maybe change things.

Such hubris needs to be guarded against. The person who sets out to make change likely isn’t going to be the one to effect change—that happy fate often falls to the humble who plod along doing what they love, and doing it well.

Still, my colleague made me think.

Wine became part of my life as early as age seven in Brooklyn. Over my young years, I helped the next door neighbor who hailed from Napoli, as most of my neighborhood had. We loaded boxes of grapes into his cellar for him to press and I helped him move things around and clean up in the cellar. With my first sniff of just emptied barrels of wine that he had bottled, a lasting fume took residence in my soul. Later, I drank some of the wines (cut with water, of course) at our dinner table—they were all red wines, and they each reminded me of what we called tar beach, the smell of an asphalt rooftop in mid July. And they tasted like earth, and not really the Good Earth!

How curiously stimulating wine was to this seven-year-old.

Later, I became the only 19 year-old on the block that owned a corkscrew, used during those times when, flush with cash, I could forgo Thunderbird for a Monsieur Henri Selection to go with that tube of airplane glue. Hey, it was Brooklyn, circa 1960s; what did you expect?

As the years went by, I shed the glue and sundry bad habits and built a relationship with wine. Later still, my horizons opened during my military service in the Vietnam period, as I met people that had life experiences to teach me, and then by my own travel abroad after I got “back in the world,” as we used to say.

In the 1970s, I lived in Iran for two years around the same time as Cat Stevens, but neither for the same reason nor in the same place. My trip was for work and for education. Drinking Iranian Riesling and a red wine named 1001 began a thirty-plus year infatuation for me with the connection between wine and civilization. Then, it was on through Europe, with parts experienced along the soon-to-vanish last stops of the Orient Express.  From Holland to Greece and many points between, I learned about food and wine, not to mention that I found cultures other than the American form—that actually work.

Soon, I found myself studying the winemaking process; then, I practiced at home what I learned; then, I was licensed to make the stuff commercially; then, licensed to sell it; and then, licensed to wax philosophic over it. Not really. There is no license for that. There’s also no license that gives you the privilege to tell others what a wine should be or taste like, and that was okay with me. I didn’t want the horns that I believe it takes to “know” the unknowable, what Lucifer promises but always manages to extract a price for in return.

It was always a mystery to me the way wine grips people. Today, the only thing that I think I know is that wine is elemental—like blood. Too often, however, instead of viewing wine as part of our id we place it squarely in the part of us that is ego.

With the launch of vinofictions about four years ago, my intention was to wade through the PR and the crap that surrounds the subject of wine and then try to tell things the way they are. It’s not only painfully clear that few people want to hear it, I am painfully aware of how egotistical my intention was.

Therefore, I’m not so sure when my next vinofictions post will be or if a next one materializes what the subject of it will be, but I am sure of one thing: I have no intention to review wines.

If you are reading this entry anywhere other than on the vinofictions blog, be aware that it has been lifted without my permission (and without recompense), and that’s a copyright infringement, no matter that the copyright information appears with it.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
February 2010. All rights reserved.

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Wine and the health care debate in congress

February 5, 2010 by Thomas.

This might be a stretch, but wine and the health care debate in the USA seem to have something in common.

The sad state of affairs for wine producers has been written about, interminably, especially the ones who’ve been used to charging high prices for their products only to find that at the slightest mini-economic meltdown that wipes out retirement accounts, home ownership, venerable corporations, and more jobs than there are cockroaches in New York City, these producers can’t move their over-priced plonk. They have been forced (some of them) to charge closer to what the wine is worth.

The situation is enough to make one wonder what it is that motivated buyers to lay down all that cash over these past few years. Maybe it has something to do with the concept, “I’ve Got Mine (IGM).” To interpret: my income from derivatives and bonuses is so great, who gives a rat’s ass if you can’t afford to pay an unreasonable price for 750 ml. of fine-tasting alcohol. I will pay it—until I can’t.

In Massachusetts recently, voters seemed to respond to the IGM message that they have their state health care system and it works for them; why should they send a senator to congress who would force them to help the rest of us gain such a system?

Yep, it’s IGM: a mantra that pervades the right tilt.

Notice that wine drinkers didn’t stop drinking wine when their incomes tanked; they simply lowered their standards. That fact caused one wine blogger to claim that it proves wine drinkers are in it for the buzz—hmmm, maybe so.

Notice, too, that Americans (well, a majority of us) haven’t stopped buying health insurance as the price of premiums surpassed the value of the insurance. The credit card industry seems the only one to have kept pace with the cost of health insurance; banks get away with interest rates that used to send to prison the mobsters on the corner of a particular Brooklyn neighborhood with which this writer was intimate.

In fact, as a side parallel between health care and wine, the government has reversed the definition of the word “usury” from bad to good while the feds at TTB have changed the definition of the word “ameliorate” in reverse order. But I digress…

Why haven’t we stopped buying expensive health insurance and why have we stopped buying expensive wine?

The answer is so simple it is often missed. With wine, we have choices.

There’s a lesson in the fact that as people stopped buying expensive wine, expensive wine producers were forced to respond by reducing their prices. We can probably end the sorry state of affair in the health insurance situation by doing the same thing.

Tomorrow morning, every American with a health insurance policy should cancel it.

By taking that step, we would all lose our health care, but no doctor or hospital will be able to make a living either. How long do you think it would take the idiots in congress (and the idiots who claim IGM) to understand what we are saying through such an action?

If it weren’t for the volume of drinkable cheap wine available on the market, I’d probably have trouble sleeping at night, wondering how to raise the next million to send to the health insurance bureaucracy. Still, I have to hand it to the insurance industry (an industry that I believe was invented by Italians—mea culpa for my ethnicity). Long ago, the health insurance gangsters devised a system to sell a product based on fear and also to make sure that there is no competition, which is the exact reverse of the wine industry.

Wine is in trouble today because it sells a product based on joy and there’s too much competition.

Wow, instead of proving that wine and the health care debate have things in common, I’ve lurched uncontrollably into identifying a truly skewed American lifestyle. Better stop now, before I look for a sharp razor…

If you are reading this entry anywhere other than on the vinofictions blog, be aware that it has been lifted without my permission (and without recompense), and that’s a copyright infringement, no matter that the copyright information appears with it.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
February 2010. All rights reserved.

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Byzantium to the 21st Century

January 21, 2010 by Thomas.

Come April 2010, New York State appears ready to lurch from Byzantium into the 21st century.

That’s when the state’s governor presents his new budget to the legislature, which  manages to pass it on time once a century.

In any case, for the 2010 budget Governor Paterson has taken two bills, Assembly (A8632A) and Senate (S5787) together to construct a proposal that would allow wine sales alongside groceries in New York—and this time, it might pass.

When the governor tried this move last year, the state’s wine and spirits retailers organization was dead against the idea and any form of it, proving once again how entrenched regulated complacency can become. The organization didn’t even want to consider using the proposal to press its members’ needs and get a few things changed in the regulations, like allowing wine and spirits shops to sell groceries and beer, which they cannot do, and which wasn’t in the governor’s plan.

Another opening that the retailers let go by was the possibility of using their potential acquiescence as a bargaining chip to press the State Liquor Authority (SLA) to relax some of its Byzantine interpretations of the state’s alcohol control laws with the kind of rules that slap a fine on retailers who try to sell beautiful wine gift bags around the holidays (they can package wine in bags, but they can’t sell the bags).

One SLA interpretation forbids mom and pop retail stores from taking advantage of volume discounts by forming cooperative buying groups. That one rule may have been the most responsible for the steadily declining number of neighborhood shops and the rise of giant stores across the state. Or the SLA could have been forced to relax pricing and discounting filing requirements that are the basis of much under-the-table wheeling and dealing in the industry that no one likes to admit.

Other matters that the retailers could have used to press the SLA concern licensing hurdles like the rule that says before applying for a license to sell alcohol at retail the applicant must sign a lease or own the space planned for the store. So, while waiting for the retail license process to complete, which can take up to one year in New York, depending upon who contests the application and who needs to get paid off, the applicant pays rent on a vacant storefront.

There are so many similar and oppressive SLA rules that continuing would make this blog entry appear surreal.

Some of the above nonsense is addressed in the new proposal, the most sweeping of course is that wine and spirit shops would be allowed to sell food items and grocery stores would be allowed to add wine to their shelves (I don’t think, however, that beer will be allowed in wine and liquor shops—yet).

The second grand change on the list is in the way licenses will be issued. No more will you have to lease a space and pay rent on it while you await the Byzantines to stamp all the right documents. A temporary license will be issued pending approval for a real one. Plus, once issued, licenses will become commodities with value, modeled after the taxi medallion that in NY City can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

There are other proposed changes, many of which I have yet to dig into. It’s enough for now to know that the governor is proposing and this time the retailers seem to be getting on board. Perhaps someone did a seminar to persuade them not to be like Americans seem to be with regard to health care reform and say no against their own best interests just because things are the way they are and we are used to it.

With a few exceptions, the NY wine and grape industries have been on board. Those of us in the wine business in the 1980s felt that “change was gonna come.” We didn’t think it was going to take this long, but now that it appears to be on the horizon, it is cause for celebration.

Now, if the state could only do something about its dysfunctional political system as well as its oppressive and punitive property tax system, we might bring New York all the way through the 21st century—intact.

The new rules
Alcohol Control

If you are reading this entry anywhere other than on the vinofictions blog, be aware that it has been lifted without my permission (and without recompense), and that’s a copyright infringement, no matter that the copyright information appears with it.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
January 2010. All rights reserved.

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“Truther” Than Strange

January 14, 2010 by Thomas.

The Location is the office of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America.

Craig Wolf’s secretary: “Sir, you have an invitation here to go to a tea party.”

Mr. Wolf: “Idiots. Why would they think I’d go to a non alcoholic party?”

Secretary: “It might be a good idea to see what they are up to.”

Mr. Wolf: “Hmm.”

Later that week at a tea party hosted by Sarah Palin’s publisher to sell books.

Ms. Palin addressing the throng: “So, you see my friends. Bein’ a rogue isn’t like bein’ smart or anything—I doan get accused o’ that, you betcha. No, friends. Bein’ a rogue means goin’ out there every day and doin’ what you do, you know, the way liberals do it but only doin’ it more true to the things that we know we must do because when you do the things that you know you must do you can see things comin’ atchya before they come atchya. So, be a rogue like me an’ drink a lotta that tea, there, ‘cause it’s good for ya, doanchya know? Now line up an’ I’ll sign the books.”

Mr. Wolf finally gets to Ms. Palin. Holding out a book and a card: “Ms. Palin, I admire you greatly. Here’s my card. I have a proposition for you.”

Ms. Palin, dreaming of dollar signs: “Oh, WSWA. An organization close to my heart, you betchya.”

The next day.

Mr. Wolf: “Hello Ms. Palin. So glad I caught you. This is Craig Wolf.”

Ms. Palin: “Who?”

Mr. Wolf: Craig Wolf of WSWA. I gave you my card yesterday at the book signing.”

Ms. Palin: “Oh, yeah. I was goin’ to call ya in a few minutes, doanchya know?”

Mr. Wolf: “Ms. Palin, I represent an organization of family businesses that I know would respond well to you if you were to speak at our annual meeting. And this year, the meeting is being held in the Family Values capital of the country, Las Vegas. I’m sure I speak for all the families in my organization when I say that we want you to be our keynote speaker and talk about free enterprise. Besides, it would be great exposure for you and your book. All of these families are rogues, you know.”

Ms. Palin: “Oh, thank you Mr. Fox. But ya know, up there in Alaska we learn fast that exposure getsya frostbite. My fee is $100,000, Mr. Fox.”

Mr. Wolf: “It’s Wolf.”

Ms. Palin: “Huh?”

Mr. Wolf: “Wolf. My name is Wolf. You called me Mr. Fox. Anyway, that’s a little steep for my organization…”

Ms. Palin, cutting Mr. Wolf off in mid-sentence: “I’m very sorry, but I didn’t give up a governor’s gig so I could sleep in Greyhound Bus Stations across the country pluggin’ a book that I didn’t even write. That’s my fee Mr. Coyote.”

The time is April 2010. The place is Las Vegas. The meeting is for the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America. The keynote speaker is Ms. Palin.

Mr. Wolf: “Well, thank you all for the warm welcome and for joining us this year in fun-filled Las Vegas. As promised, I now have the pleasure of introducing our keynote speaker.  Here she is, ex Vice Presidential candidate, ex-governor of Alaska, ex mother-in-law, and extra hot Ms. Sarah Palin. Let’s hear it for her, folks.”

As the applause dies down Ms. Palin steps up to the mic and looks over at Mr. Wolf: “Thank you so much for that accurate introduction Mr. Jackal…”

Mr. Wolf cuts her off in mid-sentence: “The name is Craig Wolf, Ms. Palin.”

While the crowd roars, you can hear Ms. Palin ask Mr. Wolf: “Is it ok if I call you Craig?”

Ms. Palin speaks: “Well, I haveta tellya that I’m so pleased to be here tonight to talk about free enterprise, because no where on this earth is there a place like America for free enterprise. It’s tough now, but when we get Barak Osama out of office in 2012, we’ll also get the government off our backs. An’ I doan think we should stop at the federal level—I unnerstan’ that the families here do business in all the states. What we’ll need ta-do, as I know you agree, is get the states outta your business, too (she winks).

Oh, I did some checkin’ around before I came here. I know that you are regulated under sumthin’ called the Three Tear System. Whassup with that, anyway? Maybe the frustration of workin’ with the bureaucrats causes tears, but that’s no reason for the state to rub it in an’ name the system after it (she winks).

Anyways, I checked an’ I know all about your vendors, the wineries, wantin’ to direct ship across the country. I mean, whassup with ships? Which waterway would they use to go from California to the Evil East Coast? What’s wrong with flying? Oh, I know, but planes are safe, really. I fly allatime an’ I have never met one terrorist on a plane. Not one, doanchya know, and with the miles that I rack up doin’ this book tour an’ all.

Now this tea party of yours tonight shows how much free enterprise can do for business. I mean, I saw the bills racked up for you guys at this hotel, and the money you people have already lost at the tables is big time. It’s more than I’m makin’ in a week right now, but my fleece machine is workin’ hard an’ the tea party crowd will pay up if they want me to run again for office—any office. You betchya.

So, bein’ a free enterprise country means making money. An’ no government should prevent you from doin’ that. In fact, I’ll pledge to you right here tonight that if you families can come together with about a million cool ones, I’ll take the fight to federal and local governments. We’ll dismantle this cryin’ shame known as the Three Tear System.

Whaddaya say to that? No more tears.”

As Ms. Palin leaves the stage amidst a resoundingly quiet house, she runs into a man she does not know. “Can you tell me where Craig is?”

The man: “Oh I’m sorry. Mr. Wolf is no longer with us.”

Ms. Palin: “Aw. I didn’t even know he was sick. Who do I see about that certified check?”

The man: “I’m Joe Bison and I’m Mr. Wolf’s replacement. I’ll take care of the check for you.”

Ms. Palin: “Oh boy. Do you mind if I call you Joe?”

Mr. Bison: “Sure. It’s only for a few minutes anyway.”

Ms Palin: “Huh? Well, listen, can you get me that check right away. I’ve got another gig tonight speakin’ at the annual gathering of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.”

If you are reading this entry anywhere other than on the vinofictions blog, be aware that it has been lifted without my permission (and without recompense), and that’s a copyright infringement, no matter that the copyright information appears with it.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
January 2010. All rights reserved.

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Emerging

January 8, 2010 by Thomas.

When does an emerging wine region fully emerge?

In the mid 1970s, I worked for a production company in New York that put together a multi-media program (16 mm film and three 35 mm slide projectors) for the Beaulieu Vineyards visitor center in Napa. By 1979, the program needed some updating and so I traveled to Napa to meet with Leigh Knowles, who was then the President of Beaulieu, to talk about the changes necessary.

It was three years after the famous Paris tasting that catapulted California’s Napa wine world onto the stage, but in 1979, Napa was not yet a dynamic traffic jam. In fact, V. Sattui was selling wine out of what I believe was a VW bus, and not for effect.

Although it was a well-established wine region more than 100 years old, to me, in 1979 Napa was a sleepy place that seemed emerging.

Now—with hindsight—it’s easy to see how wrong I was. Napa had already emerged; I just didn’t know it yet. Even though I was drinking and enjoying many wines of Napa, my mindset was steeped in European wine regions.

In the nineteenth century, Keuka Lake’s Village of Hammondsport was a Finger Lakes community where the first scheduled airplane flight really took place, and where a naval aviation industry spawned; it also hosted a dynamic wine industry as old as (or older than) the one at Napa. This was no sleepy community.

In 1976, as Napa came out of its deep sleep, a 96 year-old Hammondsport winery was the sixth largest wine company in the U.S. It might still be around today, had corporate mania not gobbled it and spit it out after cashing in on its assets.

While Napa began to enjoy the press coverage of the Paris event, New York wine enjoyed a small revolution of its own—the state legislature finally opened up winery licensing to accommodate smaller wineries, and the Finger Lakes was ending a full decade of successful Vitis vinifera vine and wine production in a region once thought to be inhospitable to that grapevine species.

At the time, only a handful of wineries existed in the Finger Lakes region—34 years later, more than 100 make the region their home.

So why did a wine blogger recently refer to the Finger Lakes as an emerging wine region?

He did so because that is what the region’s image has remained ever since it began to emerge anew in 1976.

Like any other wine region, there’s good, bad, great, and not-so-great wine produced in the Finger Lakes—wine is always producer-specific. Therefore, this wine writer doesn’t buy the notion that lack of quality keeps the region in an emerging holding pattern, as many have opined.

Many producers of Finger Lakes Riesling wines have proven themselves over and over, and consumers willing to try the region’s sparkling wines would be pleasantly surprised by many of them. But as I learned with my attitude toward Napa 30-plus years ago, mindset makes for powerful denial.

So, what keeps the Finger Lakes region from having fully emerged? Here are some thoughts that might explain it.

Generally, Finger Lakes wineries are not focused—the region offers too many wine styles that it probably shouldn’t. Plus, its message is confused. Does it want to be a national industry or a local tourist draw?

If the Finger Lakes wine industry seeks national attention and distribution, it will likely have to increase production of its best wines.

Not enough critics have told enough wine geeks to drink Finger Lakes wine, and that places the wine industry in a Catch-22: although it emerged many years ago as a quality wine-producing region, until someone else proclaims that it has emerged it will continue to be viewed as emerging. (I recall Robert Parker being quoted in the 1980s that the future of the New York wine industry will remain provincial.)

I welcome other opinions as to why, after 152 years of commercial wine production, and after 34 years of a vinifera revolution the Finger Lakes remains an emerging wine region to many.

In my view, it’s up to the Finger Lakes region to agree on a focus and stick to it–and then get out and build the Finger Lakes brand.

If you are reading this entry anywhere other than on the vinofictions blog, be aware that it has been lifted without my permission (and without recompense), and that’s a copyright infringement, no matter that the copyright information appears with it.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
January 2010. All rights reserved.

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End of year thoughts

December 30, 2009 by Thomas.

Here it is, the close of 2009. The interminable “best of” lists are everywhere, and as it is with individual wines, the many lists face agreement as well as disagreement. It’s all a great testament to the subjective tastes of people—which of course leads to wine.

Now that we are in the last stages of the “best of” blogs will certainly rack up their 2009 wine picks, and I will yawn with Jack at Fork & Bottle, as I can hear him all the way across the country.

Having said that, I particularly like Fredric Koeppel’s end of year list at his blog, Bigger Than Your Head—it’s a 12 days of Christmas list of sparkling wines, and it’s among the original-thinking lists to come around at this time of year. If I were so inclined to create a “best of” list, Fredric would be in the top few—he not only has things to say that don’t drip with self promotion; he can write.

In any case, it is the end of my third full year of blogging and I’ll be damned, I am running out of things to say.

One way to develop material for writing is to scan the Internet and pick stories that might appeal to readers. The problem with that method is that there are so many wine blogs these days that any good story that pops up seems to gain more coverage than is necessary.  What’s worse, so many stories are the same stuff wrapped in new packages, as are so many online discussions.

So, on the eve of 2010, I am left not with something to say, but with questions.

How many times can the shortfalls of critics be discussed?

How many times can we cover the way wine producers (and critics) try to fool consumers into a false sense of security?

Is there a wine retailer conspiracy, as so many suspect?

Can the Commerce Clause ever be over-invoked?

How big can one wholesaler actually get?

How long will it take for consumers to learn to understand the messages found on a wine label? Will they ever?

In how many variations can one talk about the relationship between acid and sugar?

Is there such a thing as too much wood, or too many wood chips?

Do fruit-forward wines last in the bottle?

How many gallons of water does it take to add back to wine to make it palatable because the grapes were overripe and the wine was over the top in alcohol?

How many stupid wine gadgets can we laugh at, and how many do we have waiting for us in 2010?

Must we endure armchair winemakers alongside armchair wine philosophers?

Can we ever measure the amount of philosophy contained in one bottle of wine?

How many arguments must we engage in before (or if) one of us on either side admits to having learned something?

Do people really understand subjectivity, or do they care to understand it?

How many terroir-driven wines get requisite accolades, no matter their orange color?

While we are at it, can we define terroir to everyone’s liking?

Must we face the same worn arguments in 2010 that we faced in 2009, 08, 07 and before?

Finally, is there anything that someone can say in 2010 that will hold our interest and maybe even break new ground?

Let’s hope so.

BiggerThanYourHead

Fork&Bottle

If you are reading this entry anywhere other than on the vinofictions blog, be aware that it has been lifted without my permission (and without recompense), and that’s a copyright infringement, no matter that the copyright information appears with it.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
December 2009. All rights reserved.

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Vinted?

December 19, 2009 by Thomas.

Ah, for the days when top wines sold at about $4 a bottle—yes, I am old enough to remember. Besides, the 1970s isn’t that long ago.

Among the Bordeaux, Italian, and Spanish wines that were good to splurge on once in a while were a number of California wines of equal quality and at far better prices. These $3 and $4 bottles came from venerable names like Beringer, Beaulieu, Inglenook, Sebastiani, and Martini. The latter two producers were always standouts, especially in their rustic presentation of Zinfandel that spoke to wines from the earth.

Among the many times that I drank Martini wines I cannot remember having ever been disappointed either with the wines or their value. This was the case well after Louis M gave way to his son Louis P who gave way to his son Michael in 1977. Although I haven’t bought a Martini wine in a long while, I can say that from what I recently tasted, the Napa winery is still doing well for us consumers, and if you relate the value of the dollar today with its value in the 1970s, the price hasn’t risen at all.

Today’s Louis M. Martini wines are the responsibility of the multi-tentacle E. & J. Gallo Winery, and based on the back label of the Louis M. Martini 2006 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Michael is still the winemaker who, “continues his grandfather’s tradition of crafting rich, complex and beautifully-structured wines.”

It isn’t exactly the description that I would have used for Martini wines of thirty years ago. For the purpose of this blog entry, however, the word that got my attention on that back label was “crafting,” which is different from winemaking, and which I’ll get to later.

First, let me say that I take exception to most back labels because more often than not the writing is deplorable and because I hate being told what I’m supposed to taste in the wine; that’s my job. This particular back label description, however, wasn’t too far off from my personal description, although I have no idea what the back label means by “old-world complexities.” The only thing that description brought to mind was the way European monarchies used to in-breed.

In any case, for $27 suggested retail, the Louis M. Martini 2006 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is quite a mouthful of dark fruits, lush body and firm, yet silky tannin, and at the labeled 14.2% alcohol, it does not come off hot. A nice wine.

The wine came to me free and unsolicited from the company’s promotion arm in San Francisco. The press release and description sheet that came with it did a good—and objectionable—job at telling me what I’m supposed to think about the wine, but what no one ever told me is who produced this wine.

It says on the front label that it’s a Napa Valley wine from Louis M. Martini—even has a near unintelligible signature at the right hand corner that is ostensibly the old man’s. I know that Gallo owns the winery, and I know that the winemaker named on the back label is Michael Martini yet, based also on the back label, I have no idea who actually made the wine.

The back label states that the wine was: VINTED AND BOTTLED BY LOUIS M. MARTINI WINERY, NAPA, CALIFORNIA.

Estate Bottled on a wine label tells you that the grapes were grown and the wine was fermented and bottled by the winery that owns the license, vineyard, and winery.

Produced and Bottled By… tells you that the winery that owns the license fermented, stored and bottled the wine, but not necessarily from its own grapes or grapes from its own vineyard.

Cellared By and Vinted By… are really rather meaningless, but they do tell you that the entity that grew the grapes and fermented the wine was not the entity that bottled and labeled it. In other words, wines with those designations on the label have been either assembled or stored, but not fermented or made, by the license holder.

If you want to kill some time, see if you can find the definition of the word “vinted” in a standard English dictionary.

Michael Martini may have crafted this Cabernet Sauvignon, and if so he did a fine job, but according to the label, neither he nor anyone at Louis M. Martini made the wine.

The problem that I have with this kind of label information is that under the rules it is perfectly possible that the same wine was shipped from its source to more than one winery. Following that trail, it is also perfectly possible that the same wine can be bottled under many labels and at many different prices.

Buyer beware: the romance of the wine isn’t always reflected in the reality of the label.

LMM2006Cab

If you are reading this entry anywhere other than on the vinofictions blog, be aware that it has been lifted without my permission (and without recompense), and that’s a copyright infringement, no matter that the copyright information appears with it.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
December 2009. All rights reserved.

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Wine Trials

December 12, 2009 by Thomas.

When I first saw the title, Wine Trials, I immediately thought it had something to do with a recent story about phony wines that a collector discovered and was suing over—but I was wrong.

The Wine Trials refers to wine tastings hosted by Robin Goldstein and Alexis Herschkowitsch, two WSET certificate holders who are behind the Fearless Critic Restaurant Guide series. The tastings are organized in a successful effort to show that consumers and wine critics aren’t exactly synchronized. According to the results of these tastings, which have become annual events, wines that consumers prefer are generally inexpensive and not the same as the wines that well known magazines and critics routinely rate highly, and which are usually expensive.

According to Goldstein, the major difference between the Wine Trials tastings and the wine magazines or critics is that the latter do not taste blind. Anyone who isn’t a stranger to this blog knows how strongly I believe in truly blind wine evaluations.

Still, I have a problem with the Wine Trials take on the issue of inexpensive versus expensive wines as it relates to blind tastings.

Surely, wine evaluations should always be done blind, but whether blind or not, wines preferred by untrained tasters are likely to gravitate toward a taste for the easy to drink, smooth, on the sweet side, not too complex. These are the attributes that the common wine consumer is accustomed to and to whom the mass production wine industry caters. It stands to reason that in a blind tasting, consumers would prefer them over the more complex wines, which seem always to cost more, too. The seasoned wine geek normally eschews such wines, often deriding them. No matter their claim to the contrary, wine critics aim their evaluations and ratings at those wine geeks, because that’s where the lemmings with money are located.

This is not to say that the wines that receive high critic ratings are either better or worse than the mass-produced wines, and it is not to justify ridiculous prices many of the rated wines command. This is to point out that the Wine Trials tasting system is as biased on one side as the wine critics’ rating system is biased on another side. One must keep that in mind when trying to use one evaluation to discredit another. No matter how you cut it, each evaluation is audience-specific—that’s why to me proper training is important for wine evaluations to mean anything of substance.

Having said that, I also believe that the Wine Trials performs a service for consumers by helping them understand the real meaning of wine, which is something that should be consumed for enjoyment and not because it costs a lot or receives certain numerical accolades. Simply put, the Wine Trials is a way to inform consumers to consider what they like and not what they are told that they are supposed to like in a wine. Such a message is a threat to self-appointed arbiters of taste and I am glad for that.

Last week, I had the pleasure of joining the Fearless Critics at a dinner to highlight a few of the 2010 Wine Trials picks. The idea was not only to show the quality of the inexpensive wines in the list, but to also show them with food. The following is my assessment of that evening.

We were greeted at the door with a glass of sparkling wine—blind. My first impression of the wine was that it contained a minimum of about 2% residual sugar; I didn’t like it. I questioned the decision to serve something that sweet as an aperitif, and it did not enhance the Alsatian tart that was served with it. In addition, the wine showed minimal complexity—no yeastiness, which I seek in sparkling wines. Until I learned otherwise, I thought it was Prosecco with small bubbles!

It turned out to be a two-time Wine Trials top sparkling wine pick: Domaine Ste. Michele N/V Brut, Washington State.

The sparkling wine seemed to prove my earlier point concerning the general consumer preference for easy to drink, smooth, on the sweet side, not too complex…

The first course was roasted red beets and frisée salad with goat cheese over apple.

The wine was Domaine Wachau 2007 Gruner Veltliner, Federspiel Terrassen.

It had a fine nose but it was rather thin on the palate, lacking the signature Gruner spiciness.  With either the beets or the apple, it was a bust, but with the goat cheese, it was quite a good match.

The lobster bisque that followed was among the best I have tasted recently. It came with a small crab cake seated atop what tasted like a mashed potato but was billed as a sugar cake.

Unfortunately, the bisque was almost marred by the Marques de Caceres 2007 Rioja White.

The wine was woody, slightly oxidized, and truly D.O.A. when put up against the fabulous bisque. (I have since been informed that this wine was produced in stainless steel, and after reading a few reviews of this wine, with so many references to fruitiness, I’m baffled. Maybe this is a case where we should have been tasting blind and I was guilty of making a pre-conception evaluation.)

Have you ever tasted a monkfish “osso buco?”  I can now say that I have, and that I liked it—a lot. It sat over well-prepared, al dente saffron risotto alongside two ribs of a rack of lamb, over sautéed spinach, which was too mushy to be called sautéed.

Other than the spinach, the dish was nicely done and this time the wine pairing was perfect.

It was Bodegas Lan 2005 Rioja Crianza, a wine with hints of dark fruit and light wood, finished with interestingly subdued but still available tannin.

The next course, the cheese plate included a fine Gruyere which was unfortunately accompanied by a nondescript blue cheese.

The blue cheese did not pair with the wine at all, but the Gruyere showed a distinct affinity for the Altano 2006 Douro Red, which was solid, if medium bodied. I loved its enduring finish.

Finally, I am not much on desserts so I was not likely to eat the chocolate cupcake with the hot chocolate inside it and what tasted like a cherry sorbet but was not listed on the menu.

The wine was a raisin-like, sweetness restrained and delightful Patras Kourtaki Mavrodaphne non-vintage.  It made me glad that I ate the chocolate, as the two were made for each other.

Responsible for the food was the Swiss chef, Claude Solliard, at Seppi’s Restaurant, at Le Parker Meridien. In all, it was a fine evening, although I wondered how many of those everyday consumers eat such meals with such wines.

It appears that Robin and Alexis are onto something, but the Wine Trials message could use some refining. Untrained wine evaluations may get you a wine that you like at a decent price, but it really doesn’t dispute the claims of professional critics.

I expect that over time, Wine Trials will get the refinement it requires and it will prove to others that the price of solid wine need not be prohibitive.

WineTrials

If you are reading this entry anywhere other than on the vinofictions blog, be aware that it has been lifted without my permission (and without recompense), and that’s a copyright infringement, no matter that the copyright information appears with it.

Copyright Thomas Pellechia
December 2009. All rights reserved.

Posted in Uncategorized | Print | 1 Comment »