May 7, 2007 by Thomas.

~When someone starts a statement with the words, “I think, I believe, I feel,” be warned that what follows will be merely an opinion.
~There is nothing wrong with an opinion—provided the person subjecting us to the opinion at least knows the subject he or she is waxing over. And when I say knows the subject, I don’t mean knows that it exists—I mean knows what’s behind, in front, and around the subject.
~That someone may have been drinking wine for years, and spending a lot of money on the best names, is absolutely a qualification for issuing an opinion on what he or she does or does not like. But is it qualification for issuing an opinion on a wine flaw?

Rather than being subject to an opinion, a wine flaw is measurable, and so it is subject to the lab. That’s why even the government sets parameters for certain potential problems that can develop in wine production.

Exceed the boundaries and you have produced a wine with a flaw.

With this fact in mind, it is completely fatuous for someone to identify a flaw in wine without having it analyzed. But don’t worry, most people who identify a flaw in wine are issuing an opinion and not a fact.

~I was reminded of this flaw-opinion relationship a few days ago on two separate wine forum sites. As usual, wine geeks were picking nits over whether or not this guy liked that smell or that guy could handle this level of alcohol and on and on. Most of these conversations begin with the tip off words, “I think, I believe, I feel.”
~One of the threads was about TCA in a certain producer’s wine and the other was about volatile acidity.

TCA is the shortened version of a chemical reaction that causes cork taint—that wet cardboard smell that signifies a dead wine.

Volatile acidity is when acetobacteria have flourished to the point where the wine smells like strong vinegar or maybe nail polish.

~The TCA discussion got started because a particular wine critic mentioned that wines from one producer seemed to lately suffer from TCA taint. To his credit, the critic didn’t just ask readers to believe him—he sent the wine for lab analysis to confirm that what he smelled was TCA. Few critics bother to do something so basic and necessary—few critics think they can be wrong.
~Of course, the wine geeks have to pipe up questioning the critic, the producer, the potential TCA, and anything else they can think of questioning, but few truly contributed anything to the conversation save their often misguided opinions. Few hadn’t even tasted the wine in question.
~The volatile acidity thread was more reasonable. Most who posted in it talked about the specifics of what the term means and smells like. But a few people were not sure if volatile acidity is a flaw or not.
~Volatile acidity at a certain level in wine is a flaw. That is not an opinion; it is a fact. It is a fact because the government says that a wine cannot exceed a certain grams per liter of acetic acid—that is called an objective measurement.
~Yet, a couple of people could not get it through their heads that their opinion on volatile acidity reflects only their ability to accept or reject the smell at whatever perceived level. That is not the same thing as identifying an objective flaw.
~The trouble with all this is that people in the wine business who make the mistake of getting into discussions with people who have mountains of opinions but molehills of technical knowledge about wine wind up, as we say, pissing in the wind (and if your wine smells like piss my opinion is that it is likely Sauvignon Blanc).

VA1, VA2, VA3

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May 7, 2007 by Thomas.

~MOX: a new wine term. Well, not really.
~First, MOX is the initials for a process known as micro oxygenation.
~Second, the term is quite hot in wine circles.
~Third, some producers seem shy about admitting that they employ the winemaking process, and that makes me wonder.

Briefly, MOX is a method of slowly releasing oxygen under controlled conditions into a stainless steel tank of wine.

The reason for the oxygen is, essentially, to do what oxygen and time normally do—change the chemical chain structure of tannin (and maybe other components) thereby altering, usually softening the wine on the consumer’s palate.

The reason for this process: to make the wine approachable sooner than nature would were the wine subjected to rest in wooden barrels where oxygen passes through its pores, slowly. Oh; I forgot; the tanks that the wine is in and to which the MOX process is applied may be lined with oak staves or they may have oak chip teabags dipped into them.

In short, wine producers want both the softening and the taste of oak that barrels usually give to wine, but they don’t want to wait for that to happen over too long a period of time—so they MOX it!

~Before you raise your eyebrows and think, “Aha, Now I know why producers want to hide the process from us.” Not so fast.
~Sure, mostly producers who have no trouble waxing poetic on their back labels about oak and malolactic fermentation and their lack of investment in filtration equipment don’t care to talk about MOX, but not because they are trying to fool us; they likely don’t know what to say to us.
~MOX is a technical process, a manipulation in a long line of wine production manipulations that also comes with some controversy.
~The people who sell MOX equipment of course think it is the answer to every wine producer’s prayer for quick release and speedy profit.
~Producers who use the process seem to agree with the salespeople, as do so-called wine consultant experts, especially the ones who advise MOX on wines as a way to make the wine “better,” and you know how I hate the word better…
~Some wine people however, this one included, understand the short term goal of MOX but we would like to know its long term effect on wine, especially on wine’s aging potential. It seems to many of us that if MOX works to soften tannins, and softening tannin is one of the things that happens over time as wine ages, then MOX might very well cut the time necessary to age specific wines—or worse, MOX might mess up the schedule, making it more unpredictable than wine aging already is for us.

In a recent back and forth on a wine-oriented bulletin board I tried to determine if any studies are under way to try to figure out MOX’s effect on how wine will age, but I was unsuccessful.

My questioning did however bring to light that while some wine industry people claim that MOX is used mainly on low end wines—the wines that weren’t meant to age in the first place—many producers of high end wines may be using the process to make their wines more quickly available for consumption, especially for consumption of those wine critics who tell us what we should consume; but these producers will not admit to it.

At that piece of information I threw out another question: if MOX is considered a perfectly legitimate and non-intrusive manipulation with no particular negative affect, why would high end producers be afraid to admit to employing the winemaking process?

~Obviously, high end producers don’t want their fat wallet patrons to get scared and think that the expensive wines they buy are being purposely designed to keep them coming back for more.
~It is a particularly hilarious revelation to me that people spending lots of money on wine still seem to forget that the industry is a business to make a profit by selling wine, and by keeping the customer coming back for more. All it takes for a food/wine business to meet that goal is to strike the so-called “sweet spot” of tastebuds. How that goal is met is anybody’s guess, especially if the wine producer won’t divulge. But to think that they won’t do it if they can…might as well put your head in that sandbox.

In business, purity is green and it has pictures of presidents on it.

~Anyway, I never got a straight answer from people in the wine business whether or not a study is or will be under way to find out if there are any effects on aging wine after it has been MOXed.
~I also never got an answer to my question concerning why high-end wine producers are afraid to admit to using the process. My suspicion is that they may not know for sure but, like me, they may suspect that if MOX softens tannins, it likely alters a wine’s aging window.
~For the benefit of all wine consumers, I do hope that someday someone comes up with the answer. In the meanwhile, I believe that consumers should ask direct questions like “did this wine go through a MOX process?” Unless they are great poker players, even captains of industry display facial and other tics when they lie.

MOXTALK, MOXsales, MOXpaper, MOXsales2, MOXarticle

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May 7, 2007 by Thomas.

~Did you know that with wine, the back label can also be the front label?
~If that piece of information sounds ridiculous it is, and we can thank the U.S. federal government for that Orwellian situation. Come to think of it, we can thank the federal government for every Orwellian situation; that’s what governments are for!
~Let me explain.

Federal wine label regulations mandate that certain blocks of information must appear on the label, information like the warning statements, plus the name of the region, grape variety, producer, alcohol, etc.

Never mind that much of that stuff is not really information. A lot of it is like those tourist maps when you visit Italy; you know, the ones that are more impressionist than they are directional.

For instance, the government alcohol warning statements are a lesson in misinformation and Orwellianism, and the other items are potentially but not necessarily true—it all depends on the definition of 100% and what constitutes a cellar or the definition of the word “vinted” if there is such a word in the English language.

~After we spend our time trying to figure out if we indeed have a wine that will make us pregnant, or some such thing, or a wine that is 12% alcohol by volume, or if it really is Merlot and not just partly Merlot, we can relax and take in the pleasure of the back label.
~The back label is where producers get creative, or at least they think they are creative. This is where you find out all that important stuff like how old the family vineyard is, where the patriarch came from, what he used to believe back in the nineteenth century, and the virtues of his old vines, some of which are today owned by some big corporation—but that is no matter.
~On the back label we find attempts at poetry or at descriptive missives. The problem is that too often people with absolutely no poetry in them or with poor writing skills write these back labels, which usually creates unintentional hilarity.
~ Who knows, maybe wine producers simply don’t value good writing, or don’t have the money to hire a good writer. Or maybe they are either under the sway of a P.R. hack or an inflated sense of their abilities to communicate the joy and beauty they experience from wine.
~Whatever the cause for the funny back labels, in my view, they can do away with them completely. All that is needed is a simple and brief description of the wine (maybe the blend) plus some ideas concerning the food to pair with it.

So, what does this complaint about the writing have to do with the back label also being the front label?

Nothing. But I’m getting to that subject.

~Earlier I wrote that the federal government mandates certain information on a wine label. Generally, anything that is mandated on the label must appear on the front label and not on the back label.
~Have you checked that bottle of wine lately? Is that bottle cylindrical or am I nuts? Of course, the two are mutually exclusive, but the bottle is cylindrical.
~Take a good look at the bottle. Do you know which is the front and which is the back of that cylinder?
~The potential real reason that wine producers don’t spend money on hiring a good writer to do the back label is that they spend all their money on designing the artwork for the front label.
~After spending all that money on the front label why would a producer want to ruin it with that government mandate stuff, especially when most of the government stuff isn’t true anyway?
~Are you with me?
~Not yet?
~OK. I’ll spell it out.
~All wine labels are subject to both federal and local (state) approval. The federal approval takes precedence. Every label design must be submitted to the feds with an application (and of course a fee) for approval, to make sure that the mandates are covered, and that the women in the drawing are covered too…
~The producer can arrange the labels in whatever format desired so long as the mandated stuff appears on the one that the application identifies as the front label.

It must have taken a smart importer fifteen minutes to figure out that the producer can’t control which label the retailer displays on the shelf—a cylinder can be turned around and around.

TTB labels, morelabels,

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May 7, 2007 by Thomas.

~Someone recently called my attention to an online wine columnist who makes the claim that freezing a wine makes it “better.”
~I normally discount the subjective opinion of words like “better, worse, good, bad” etc. Subjectivity is a personal opinion and not a technical one that can be reproduced, and so you must take its value with a grain of salt…
~Yet, I know that freezing wine doesn’t really hurt it, which means the possibility exists that it may help the wine, and so I decided to do an experiment, to freeze a wine and then to see what the process had done to the wine in comparison to it in its natural, out-of-the-bottle state. Here’s what I did.

I took a Spanish red wine from the La Mancha district, which happens to be Europe’s largest wine region demarcation. This is a mainly arid region south of Madrid; its name interprets into “parched earth.” The wine I selected was produced from 100% tempranillo grapes, the so-called spine grape of Spain.

I opened the bottle, poured a one-ounce taste into a glass and then split the bottle into three 8-ounce portions, each into its own sealed jar, and placed all three jars into the freezer to rest for eight days.

I smelled and tasted the sample pour from the bottle and made notes.

When the eight days were up I took the three jars out of the freezer. I put one jar in a convection oven, which I set on “defrost” for an hour. I put a second jar on the kitchen counter and let it sit for an hour. I left the third jar in the freezer. I also took a second bottle of the wine, set it on the kitchen counter—unopened—and let it wait for an hour.

Four minutes before the hour was up, I took the third jar out of the freezer and defrosted it on a four minute setting in the microwave. Then, into three separate glasses I poured the wine that had defrosted in the jars—one glass for each jar—at about two ounces each. I opened the bottle and poured two ounces of wine into a fourth glass. I let all four glasses sit for 45 minutes, to get them all at the temperature of the room.

~I called my friend. He was responsible for serving the four glasses to me—blind—so that I would not know which wine in which glass I was evaluating. My evaluations of the frozen wines and the second bottle of wine were to be compared with my original notes on the first bottle that I had opened eight days prior.
~Here are my results.

Impressions from the first bottle.
Appearance: deep, ruby, with transparent clarity.
Nose: dark, lush fruit and cedar wood.
Taste: tart black cherry, tannic, bitter finish, wood on the edges—great middle palate or spine.

Impressions from the four glasses.
Appearance:
Glass 1—deep, ruby, opaque.
Glass 2—deep, ruby, transparent.
Glass 3—deep, ruby, opaque.
Glass 4—deep, ruby, opaque.
The glasses were switched around.

Nose:
Glass 1—flat, hardly any nose.
Glass 2—flat, hardly any nose.
Glass 3—hint of fruit.
Glass 4—fine, lush fruit and cedar.
The glasses were switched around again.

Taste:
Glass 1—soft, almost sweet sensation, vacant middle.
Glass 2—sweet cherries, soft tannin, prominent wood, vacant middle.
Glass 3—tart cherries, tannic, wood, biting middle palate.
Glass 4—soft, almost sweet sensation, vacant middle.

For Appearance, glass 1 was the microwave defrost, glass 2 was the fresh bottle, glass 3 was the convection defrost, glass 4 was the countertop defrost.
For Nose, glass 1 was the convection defrost, glass 2 was the countertop defrost, glass 3 was the microwave defrost, glass 4 was the fresh bottle.
For Taste, glass 1 was the convection defrost, glass 2 was the microwave defrost, glass 3 was the fresh bottle, glass 4 was the countertop defrost.

~My interpretation of the results:

Certainly, freezing wine changes it. In this test, the freezing indicated that acidity was lowered significantly, which I already knew would happen, and which accounts for the opaqueness of the wine, with tartaric acid crystals floating in the wine as they dropped out from the cold. The lower acidity made the wine taste softer and even made it seem sweeter.

More striking, to me, is that each frozen sample seemed to lose its middle—its spine—making the mouthfeel of the wine rather thin and uninteresting to me.

~If I had to make a subjective remark about the wines that had been frozen I certainly would not use the word “better” to describe them, mainly because I don’t care for flabby wines that are empty in the middle.
~All I can say is that freezing doesn’t necessarily ruin the wine, but it certainly makes it different, which is what I suspected all along.
~Whenever someone tells me that a wine he or she had stored in a particular manner tasted a week later just as it had when the bottle was first open I say that you can’t be sure about that unless you compare the stored wine with a fresh bottle—but most people don’t do that, and so the information is rather meaningless to me. The wine guy who says that freezing makes wine better has issued an opinion, but he doesn’t seem to know what he is talking about.

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May 7, 2007 by Thomas.

~Have you ever visited a wine bulletin board or forum? If not, you might consider doing so.
~You can have a lot of fun learning on a wine forum. You can also have a lot of fun reading some of the truly idiotic threads that can develop on a wine forum.
~Mostly, the threads on a wine forum that cover wine are relatively straight forward: sometimes, they are technical threads; sometimes, they are tasting note threads; sometimes, they are general interest threads; sometimes, they are specific interest threads; most times, they are all over the place threads; all the time, they are great fun for someone with either a passing or a deep interest in wine.
~The idiotic stuff that takes place on a forum often starts with a subject either directly related or vaguely related to wine, but then the discussion degenerates into insults, inanities, and serious displays of intemperance, which, to me, is a fine irony, since these are people who drink alcohol…
~The first wine forum I ever visited was by invitation.
~The late Jerry Mead was one of the most outspoken curmudgeons in the wine business, which is why I loved the man. We had never met in person, but we had established a correspondence after I once sent him a letter regarding one of his beautiful anti-government diatribes in his small magazine named the Wine Trader.
~Jerry asked me to write something for his magazine on two separate occasions. After the second piece, he invited me to join in an ongoing email conversation among a number of industry professionals. The email “round robin” was simply an open discussion among many people with definite opinions. We disagreed a lot, sometimes feverishly, but I cannot remember one personal insult ever having been thrown at anyone in those emails.
~Then, Jerry got involved with the Internet and he invited me onto a forum. Jerry’s forum still operates under the name wines.com—its URL is below with the other forum URLs.
~Today, the state of the wine forum is all over the map. Each forum is free to the public, but some are there to support a separate commercial interest, like the forum connected to the name Robert M. Parker—the URL is below.
~One particular forum is operated by a truly free-spirited, fun-loving winophile Russian-American who started his forum after his online posting style had gotten him into trouble on other wine forum sites.
~You’ll even find a forum where most of the posters will likely remind of your days in the schoolyard…you know, when teasing and one-upping was adolescent fun.
~Without doubt in my mind, the most open and reasonable of the genre is the forum that Robin Garr operates: Wine Lovers Page—the URL is at the bottom of this post. But—and there is always a but—even on Mr. Garr’s site there are those whose brains sometimes seem to revert to the crib, or worse.

There simply are people on this earth who can’t be made either to think or to be sociable.

Unfortunately, the Internet is an easy place for such people to spout off. On many of the sites, such a person gets a few warnings and then likely is barred.
The best thing to do when you encounter a person like that on a forum is to ignore…do not respond with a post of your own; instead, some people cannot avoid the impulse to respond, and then the fun begins.
For an example of what can happen when a melt down occurs on a wine forum look here: ridiculous

~Incidentally, the man who started that vicious thread once worked as a critic for Mr. Parker. I have no idea what he now does for a living, but I assume he doesn’t directly rely on the wallets of wine geeks or, as he so eloquently puts things, us morons.
~I am endlessly amazed at the capacity to entertain of so many people who aren’t entertainers, and I am sometimes happy that I don’t have to buy a ticket for the entertainment.
~Don’t get me wrong. I am not squeaky-clean. I engaged in some stupid arguments in the past. I have sworn not to do that again…

A wine forum usually requires no registration to read the posts of others, but should you get sucked in and want to post, you must register. If you register and post remember: I will be watching—try not to make me wince…at times, you might even see my name in your thread.

Here are only a few sites: wine talk, Parker, wines.com, Garr, Therapy,

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May 7, 2007 by Thomas.

Someone asked me to post this—it’s something I wrote a couple of years ago in my weekly wine newspaper column.

~1. After receiving your pour, get out of the way – don’t shuffle, walk.
~2. Do not wear white (even if you don’t intend to taste red wine, others will and an accident is only a drunk away).
~3. If you must wear white, and you spill red wine on it, immediately splash the stain with white wine. Don’t forget to get out of the way, preferably in the method described above.
~4. Do not wear perfume or anything else that smells up the room.
~5. Talk, don’t holler, but keep your travel stories to a minimum; we are there to taste the wine in front of us not the one you had in Europe, the name of which you cannot remember but you seem to have all night trying to recall.
~6. If you know nothing about wine, don’t use this forum to dump a pile of questions onto the table for the pourer to answer, who may know less than you and will give you a bad answer anyway. Taste the wine (and get out of the way). If you like what you taste resolve to take a wine course later.
~7. A common complaint heard at wine tastings: “this wine tastes metallic.” Leave your tongue ring at home.
~8. Forgo the lipstick too, but you already knew that.
~9. Most wine tastings include a buffet of some sort. The food is there to eat, but don’t be a hog. Also keep in mind there are hundreds of people behind you. This is not the time for indecision. Fill your plate and get out of the way – see number one for instructions.
~10. It is common knowledge among wine professionals that one should drink a glass of water for every glass of wine consumed. This practice prevents you from becoming dehydrated and maybe from getting drunk. The water cure has an added advantage: it helps to thin the crowd every so often, shifting the bulk from the tasting floor to the waiting line at the toilet.
~11. Leave the wineglass and the buffet dish on the counter/s provided for them – do not leave them in the toilet.
~12. If you reject the water treatment but want to prevent yourself from getting drunk learn to spit, preferably in the spittoon provided. Under no circumstances should you spit in someone’s face, intentionally or not. In fact, if you must talk to your neighbor, stand a few feet apart; people at wine tastings who do drink a lot of water tend to release the water between toilet trips by spraying droplets when they speak.
~13. If you attend a wine tasting for the sole purpose of putting on a free drunk, make an appointment with your counselor to talk about it. But if you are unsuccessful at reaching your counselor and so you attend the wine tasting instead, do not leave your coat at the coat-check counter. What with the increase in crowds at these events, it is quite difficult to get your coat back under the best of circumstances.
~14. If the wine tasting is a consumer event leave your business cards home. People who engage in business discussions rarely remember their etiquette and so they take up valuable floor space. If you must give out a business card, be discreet and be quick about it, and be sure the recipient wants the thing.
~15. If you are in the wine business and at a business-oriented wine tasting, you are likely impervious to the requirements of proper etiquette, so do whatever you want, but do get out of the way.

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May 7, 2007 by Thomas.

~A friend recently told me about a story in the New York Times concerning a man who uses 8,000 square feet of cellar storage space to house his 65,000-bottle wine collection.

I suppose the New York Times must have had to fill some space of its own. I also suppose that whichever reporter submitted the story must have been impressed. I further suppose that the cellar is designed to be impressive.

I can only suppose these things because I haven’t the slightest interest in reading that story or any other story about what, to me, is a gross misuse of such a lovely product—to collect it for the sake of collecting it.

~A quick turn of math indicates that if one person drinks one bottle of wine each day it would take that person 170-plus years to consume 65,000 bottles. So, do you think this collector has any intention of drinking all that wine?
~ I suppose it’s possible he isn’t too good at math and he just miscalculated, but that’s got to be my biggest “suppose” of this post.

The guy can count; how else would he figure out that he owns 65,000 bottles of wine and that his cellar measures 8,000 square feet?

~In my wine career I meet people with too much money, too much insecurity, and way too much space in their cellar.
~Generally, the encounters go something like this:

Collector: “Oh, so you are in the wine business. I’ll bet you get to taste some of the great wines.”
Me: “Well, to me, a wine that gives me the greatest pleasure is the one that pairs well with my meal.”
People trying to impress often don’t listen.
Collector: “Sure, sure. My wife wishes I had never heard of some of the great wines because she thinks I spend too much money on them at the auctions.”
Me: “She may be right about that, if all you do is collect them.”
CONVERSATION OVER.

~I do it that way because I have learned from experience that if I encourage the conversation to continue I will soon start hearing about the collection, about all the wildly expensive bottles of wine from vintages dated before Christ!
~Then, I will be subjected to information about the cellar: how large it is, how much the temperature control system set him back, how many bottles are in the collection, and of course the names—oh, the names, the endless parade of names and vintage dates and on and on…
~These are the people who make my task difficult, which is to make wine drinking a daily habit in America, alongside another daily habit—dinner.
~When I heard about this latest wine bottle collection I had just reached into my five-case wine cellar for a bottle of Rioja to pair with my chorizo and yellow rice dinner.
~Later, after dinner, I did some reading, finished my nightly wine allotment, which seems to creep up in winter, and then went off to bed to drift swiftly and blissfully to sleep, content with the wine that collected in my belly that night.
~I imagine that the collector spends most nights in fitful sleep, poised for the sound of the burglar alarm. Not even the fifth of Bourbon he drinks does him any good.
~What? You don’t think he drinks wine, do you?
~If the collector were to drink wine what would he do to justify that big, beautiful cellar?

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May 7, 2007 by Thomas.

~More than twenty years ago, I remember having been invited to a business associate’s upper East Side Manhattan apartment for a gathering. In my usual, but unfashionable manner, I was early. I was also unaccustomed to the Upper East Side, which can be as prime in pretension as it is in real estate.
~The host knew about my growing interest and involvement with wine and so, when he telephoned to invite me to the gathering he mentioned a new gadget that he had recently acquired that made even the least expensive wine taste like a wine of a Chateau of the highest order (one way to keep your money is not to spend too much of it).
~Since I was early to the party, the host felt the need to entertain me. After walking me through the 4,000 or so square feet of the ostentatious, but impressive nonetheless, duplex apartment off of Fifth Avenue, he took me into his “library” where the wine aging gadget was being housed.
~As we approached a small oak barrel, I was about to comment over the quaint-ness of having a faux wine barrel in his library when my host pointed to the barrel and said, “Look at that, will you.”

My host poured me a sample of what turned out to be cheap, red oxidized wine that was past the point of recognition.

This man of money, this V.P. of a small ad agency, this middle-aged wine aficionado was sold a meaningless bill of goods and he didn’t have the taste buds to figure it out.

“Isn’t that something?” He asked me the question with such pride I almost couldn’t bear what I was about to say to him.

Incidentally, I never got the project that I was bidding on with my host’s company.

~These days, to rake in the dollars, the “improve your wine” scams are more technical than a mere small barrel. The scammers use magnets, ion exchangers, things with compartments, shiny objects, computerized shiny objects, and just about anything else that looks like it might make the buyer feel like he or she has been transported to the future of wine production and aging.
~Some of the modern gadgets claim to age your wine before your eyes; others claim to remove from your wine whatever the hell it is that you want removed.
~Mostly, the gadgets are probably useless, but even if they were to work as promised, I am still trying to discover a reason to buy a wine that is undrinkable and then buy a magnet that would make it drinkable. Seems to me it’s much smarter to buy a wine that is drinkable in the first place.
~As to whether or not the many gadgets do indeed perform the function they are intended to perform, I can’t speak from first-hand knowledge, since I don’t buy gadgets.
~I learned as a child from my father that buying from scam artists through the mail will only get you things like Christmas tree ornaments that glow in the dark. The ornaments performed as promised, but in order to enjoy them we had to wait until dark and then turn out all the lights in the apartment—even the ones we painstakingly hung on the tree the day before Christmas!
~I have many friends and associates in the wine business. I know of not one who thinks anything more of these products to improve your wine than that they are scams. A few of my colleagues host and operate a wine forum or two on the Internet. When these fellows questioned the inventors of some of the “improve your wine” products the answers to their questions have been laughable. They avoid offering tangible proof, and they quote a variety of supposed scientists or wine people who, it often turns out, are part of the scam.
~I suppose there are some people who would prefer Christmas tree ornaments that glow in the dark over a string of lights.
~I also suppose that many of these people are quite content remaining in the dark—that’s their prerogative. But you wine drinkers out there know that the only way to tell if the wine in your glass is red, white or pink is to turn on the light.
~In my view, the only way to make sure that the wine you have is properly produced and aged, is to turn on the light of knowledge, and not to rely on light bulbs that have been darkened with a thick coat of snake oil.

Read these sites. Some of it is funny: snake, oil, snake, pit,

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May 7, 2007 by Thomas.

~Ever hear of Croatina, Dornfelder, Durella, Dureza, Falanghina, Fer, Frappato, Kerner, Sercial, Touriga Nacional, Uva Rara, Vilana?
~They are the names of grape varieties, and they are used in wine production.
~If what I’ve been told is correct, the above dozen grape varieties represent .0012 percent of the wine grapes that grow throughout the world. In other words, there are about 10,000 wine grapes on this planet. Interestingly, about half that number is believed to grow in Italy alone—Ah, that Roman Empire.
~Ok, that many grape varieties yet the press seems to write about, what, maybe two-dozen of them. What’s that about?
~A great deal of the unheard-of grape varieties are used for blending, and that is one good reason for them having remained relatively unknown. At the same time, however, many seeming obscure grapes do get their own varietal label, and that is one good reason to take writers to task for not covering them. We have to actively seek the obscures because few wine critics ever mention them (truth be known, I’d bet that few critics even know about them, or worse, few care).
~Before the twelfth century human beings had the chance to play around with wild grapes and to create new grapes–they had 12 centuries plus about 60 more before Christ. The ancient Greeks and Romans probably did more to add to the grape stock in Europe than any other cultures before them. Some of those ancient grapes are still with us, and they are still in Italy and Greece; none are named Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir; grapes like these came much later
~Between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries a lot of viticultural activity took place, and a lot of new grape varieties had been introduced by breeders—Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon for instance. Wine had historically been a good economic force, but in Europe during these centuries it became a major force.
~Many of the new grapes were purposely designed for certain growing and climatic situations, and when the design worked it often worked quite well, developing great renown for many grape varieties. When Europeans began to codify regional winegrowing and winemaking regulations, part of the activity included demanding which grapes a region could grow and how much of the grapes were allowed in each blend.
~There is only so much ground within a region, so it stands to reason that regional grape variety selection had to be limited. It also stands to reason that as certain regions gained a higher level of fame, the grapes from those regions took on a higher level of importance. This is the simplest explanation for why, out of 10,000 grape varieties, only a choice few are well known.
~In the New World, where wine production has nearly 8,000 years to go in order to be as old as in the Old World, the initial desire was to produce wine in the image of our immigrant forefathers, so we homed in on the well-known grape varieties; we planted and we marketed them, and then our illustrious wine critics told us all about the few wines, over and over and over again.
~There’s not much wrong with the system, really. Some of the greatest wines in the world are produced from the well-known grape varieties. Yet, 10,000 grape varieties for wine! What a challenge and joy it would be to explore them all.
~Many times I talk about wine geeks as being a limited, focused species of wine phenomenon. Mostly, they are. But, there are some out there who reach beyond the “tried and true.” Just this morning a discussion ensued on one wine Web site that proved there are geeks and there are GEEKS. I was happy to read some of the comments people made about so-called obscure grape varieties.
~I will go out on a limb and say that within the 10,000 grapes in the world, there are many that can produce as great a wine as any of the “known” varieties. In fact, I’ll name a few: Aglianico, Albarino, Blaufrankisch (also called Lemberger), Falanghina, Mondeuse, Schioppetino, and yes, Grenache, especially as a dessert red wine produced in the south of France.
~Sure, most of these wines won’t command the prices that Pinot Noir, Cabernet, etc do…wait a minute, that’s a good thing. Better for us searchers.
~Here’s what I do about obscure wine:

First, I seek a wine retailer with a vocabulary that reaches beyond, “this is a popular wine,” and who expresses true interest in wine. If the retailer’s conversation doesn’t give away with whom you are dealing, the store selection will. I love standing in a retail shop that offers wines I have never heard of or seen before.

Second, I attend wine tastings offered by lesser known regions and producers.

Third, I like to get friends and wine groups together where we pick a theme and then go for it. When I am responsible for the theme, it’s usually obscure or at least out of the norm. I once presented a group with a five-course dinner from eighteenth century recipes; each course was served with a different Madeira wine, from dry to sweet—in that century Madeira was quite the rage.

Fourth, I don’t spend my life seeking the greatest wine on earth. That kind of aspiration can never really be met, and while one spends valuable time trying to meet it, one misses so much.

~If you want to learn a lot more about this subject, get yourself the latest version of the Oxford Companion to Wine, edited by Jancis Robinson. It is among the best laid out resources about almost anything connected to wine. One caveat: I don’t think Ms. Robinson includes all 10,000 grape varieties, but I never took a count to find out for sure.

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May 7, 2007 by Thomas.

~Nearly two years ago the Supreme Court ruled on Granholm V. Heald, a case connected to wine that has been reported in the press as some sort of breakthrough. Unfortunately, the ruling was what a lot of the court’s rulings become: a narrow decision with a wide ambiguity running through it.
~In short, the Supreme Court justices said that no state can bar wine shipments direct to consumers from wineries in other states while allowing wine shipments direct to consumers from wineries within that state. To the judges, the legal choice a state has is either to allow every winery to ship direct to consumers within that particular state or to bar every winery from shipping direct to consumers.
~Giving wineries in your state a commercial advantage over wineries out of state is called protectionism.
~Either I’m an idiot, which is always a possibility, or the justices have a blind spot when it comes to alcohol, which is not so impossible, as I will show you later on. In any event, alcohol seems to be the only legal commodity that does not deserve the protection of the Commerce Clause found in Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution.

The Commerce Clause is a legal doctrine in U.S. Constitutional law that limits the power of states to legislate and impact interstate commerce. The U.S. Constitution reserves for Congress the exclusive power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States…”

~The above definition means that individual states are either excluded from, or limited in their ability to legislate on interstate commerce—the bench has often cited the Commerce Clause to restrict states from passing protectionist regulations and to apply undue burdens on interstate commerce.
~ Granholm V. Heald was seemingly about wine shipping. But what it has turned out to be about is the old guard being threatened and state legislators being bought. Not much new there, really.
~What the case should have been about was a conflict between the 21st Amendment to the Constitution and the Commerce Clause.
~The 21st Amendment to the Constitution is the only amendment to have repealed an earlier amendment (the 18th Amendment: Prohibition), which is not an easy thing to do since after an amendment is passed in Congress it must be ratified by the states. In this case, however, the states were handed a veritable cash cow; the real wonder is why any state had to think over ratification.
~ In its wisdom, Congress inserted into the 21st Amendment the right of individual states to regulate and control the sale and distribution of alcohol within state borders. By so doing, Congress opened a floodgate of confusion, not to mention corruption.
~State legislators were quick to see a bonanza revenue source; they imposed taxes, fees, stipulations, restrictions (which always lead to fines) and all kinds of social engineering, like Sunday “Blue Laws,” prescribed hours of operation, wine in or not in grocery stores, and so on.
~Most of all, the states were handed the freedom to create whatever system they wanted in order to provide or withhold access to alcohol. Mostly, the states built individual Byzantine empires known either as Liquor Control or Alcohol Control Boards. The boards are generally made up of political appointees, and you know what that means.

Some states opted for the three-tier system, which builds in not only a mandated middle-merchant, but also a sizable cost to the consumer and a quasi-private monopolized business that is heavily controlled by the state. In some states a retailer can buy certain wines from only one distributor–how’s that for creating free competition?

Some states opted for state control. In other words, the state buys and sells alcohol. When the state is involved in commerce you have the potential for corruption, and in states that opted for this choice potential has usually become reality. Yet, at least these states did not offer the illusion that the three-tier states offered, that they were allowing competitive commerce to flourish.

Some states allowed localities to select whether or not they wanted an alcohol business in their community. This option allowed situations where a person could cross an intersection into another county and buy wine that could not be bought in the county across the street. Of course, crossing the street into the “dry” county carrying the wine in a bag might have left the person open to prosecution.

I’m sure there are other choices states could have made, but thinking any further about them gives me agita.

~Notice that through the maze of state legislative restrictions and controls, something American always got lost: free flow of commerce.
~Because the states have such power over the commerce of alcohol, the result of the recent Supreme Court ruling was not exactly an opening of wine shipments across state borders, as the always eager to recite a press release media often reported.
~What really happened is that the states created new legislation that opens shipping, but that usually makes it extremely difficult and more expensive. Imagine owning a small family winery and having to apply for fifty licenses—one for each state—in order to send wine direct to consumers in the rest of the country. That is only one costly hurdle. There are restrictions on volume, on cases shipped, and probably on the color of the box that the winery uses as packaging. I’m not being cynical; in some states a winery that submits certain tax reports on the wrong colored paper risks being cited in violation.
~As predicted, a flurry of court actions are popping up all over the USA—some exploit the glaring Supreme Court ambiguities and some want them fixed.
~In my opinion, the only thing that will definitively end the legal battles is a direct ruling by the court whether or not the 21st Amendment violates the Commerce Clause; if the court were to find that it is a violation, then a whole lot of things regarding access to wine are likely to change. But any winery willing to take on that fight has to be careful. It’s not a given that a court ruling would be on the side of the Commerce Clause.
~When the Supreme Court ruled in the wine shipping case Justice Kennedy read the majority opinion. He made a fleeting reference to the Commerce Clause, calling alcohol a “special” commodity that may not deserve the same commercial protections as other legal products.
~Isn’t that great? Free and unfettered commerce is a constitutional right, but for wine it will be a right only so long as legal alcohol fits the majority morality of the Supreme Court justices or the Congress. You can’t ask for anything more beautifully hypocritical than that.

In my view, Congress should free alcohol from its unconstitutional chains.

On the other hand, Congress can pass an amendment to the constitution to make alcohol illegal—now there’s a novel approach…

Read on: commerce, 21st, 21st again, granholm, litigate,

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