A week of rain and high humidity

Last week's storm has brought much needed rain at the expense of the remainder of the 2009 grape crop. Mind you the rain itself -all 5 1/2" of it- was not the worst part of the storm that moved through...

...the worst part has been a week of high humidity, and bunch rot compounding the problem.

Most growers and wineries pushed hard through the previous weekend to get as much of the crop in as possible, and maybe only 15~20% remained out on the vine through the storm, most of them reds which would fare better than whites. I would've given the fields a few days to dry out after getting 5.5" of rain, but the rush was on, and I saw people harvesting Chardonnay on Friday mud or not, hoping to get their fruit out before mold set in. Now it wouldn't have been preferable to leave a white grape out there for the storm in the first place, but I imagine it was due to their having too many blocks to harvest before the storm came in. They probably picked what they absolutely had to first, and put a few blocks off until after the storm hoping it wouldn't be as bad as predicted. Sadly, it was, and even if they avoided any rot issues they still have to contend with lower Brix due to the weather and water.

It started with the rain on Monday night a week ago, with rain falling continuously through Wed night. Thursday was supposed to be a day of drying out after the storm passed...instead we got another 1/4" of rain. When it finally got sunny on Thursday, it was 4 PM, and the humidity jacked up through the roof.

This takes us to Friday of last week....and sun, Finally!
However there was no wind and it remained near 50% humidity with highs in the mid 80's. NOT GOOD for the remaining grape crop out there, but a perfect environ for molds.

As we see in the satellite picture from Saturday, a large bank of clouds remained overhead and denied us the full sun we wanted. It was humid again, with broken clouds at the middle of the day and highs in the mid 80's. No help for the remaining grapes there...

Yesterday was better in a way as the temps remained lower, but no sun again as a marine layer sat over most of the area all day. The breeze was light, when there was one, and at least it wasn't as warm as Fri or Sat.

Today's water vapor map shows us smack-dab in a bunch of moisture, but hopefully this will give way to sunnier drier weather for the remainder of the week.
But it's raining now, and we're forecast to get 1/4"....hopefully that's all until the remaining grapes which are still viable are brought in.
Again, if you're into challenging fermentations, there is a lot of fruit which won't be harvested commercially this year, and you can probably still get a ton or two for a song.

5.25" of rain so far with this storm

...and its not over yet, thought here are only intermittent showers. Maybe another 1/4"~1/2" will fall before the skies break open to glorious sunshine...

Inside today, getting caught up on weigh tags and general cellar work order tracking. It's not the end of the month yet, but may as well get working on the drudgery of the job. I'm not going out into any vineyards for a while.

U2's "All I Want is You" is on the stereo, blasting off the walls. There are a hoard of samples on my desk that I have to taste and analyze, standing like soldiers of a small army threatening to charge my computer at a moments notice. And as I've tried to ignore them over the past week - doing only what had to be done to keep moving forwards - their ranks have grown. Soon I'll be over run!

[sigh]...Time to get back to work....

Rain, rain...go away....

A little over an inch by the time I got up this morning.

September was a charm - 12 days had high temps in the 90's (two days it hit 100+) and 18 days with fog, avg hi was 85°, avg low was 48°, with sunny afternoons making for perfect ripening conditions.

I'm one of the lucky ones - I got my last fruit in the cellar early afternoon on Saturday. (I should qualify that, I brought in the last of the fruit I had budgeted for this year...that's off from what I SHOULD be normally doing by -15% due to the economy. Much of that was accomplished by green drop, not that I like to do that, but it was what I thought was the lesser of two evils. The other being letting it rot on the vine - though I probably would have found myself doing exactly what everyone else is, selling it for pennies a pound when it was worth more than a dollar a pound.) I know more than a few people who had buyers that couldn't get financing this year. Banks wouldn't lend them scratch to buy more fruit as they were unbalanced with what the creditors thought was too much inventory from past vintages...

Sadly, much of the fruit which was still out there was (is) some of the best. Late ripening Cab and Zinfandels that were worth the long wait. Many blocks will be offered to home winemakers this year as it either won't have a contract buyer, or will be deemed "compromised" by the rain we're having right now. If you're a garagiste, then this could be your year to shine, if you're ready to work around some low sugars - depending on what the next few weeks bring us....

So?

For wineries, the spot market prices for grapes was already dropping like a stone with demand off as much as it was. Add to that the fact that many wineries can't fulfill the fruit contracts they had due to financing woes, and the market prices fall further. Then throw a big heaping spoonful of rain on top of that and it gets even worse...

Prices aren't just dropping into the basement, they're heading for the abyss.

The irony of years when there are great crops available which wouldn't be available otherwise is that you're either at full production capacity, or you have no money available to snap it up.

Mystic Rhythms

"...The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown
We suspend our disbelief, And we are not alone...
We sometimes catch a window, A glimpse of whats beyond
Was it just imagination Stringing us along?
More things than are dreamed about, Unseen and unexplained
We suspend our disbelief, And we are entertained..."

RUSH, Mystic Rhythms 1985

What, didn't anything front-page-worthy happen on Saturday October 10th, leaving the paper scrambling for something to fill the void?

 Kudos to the Press Democrat for giving away yet another front page spread - this time to Biodynamics.

Yet more free press for the Benzigers, and another shot of their comments as fragments left hanging for the public to absorb, without much in the way of explantion of the oddities they practice, and why or why not those practices should work. I do feel Guy Kovner was trying to write something that presented both sides...but it doesn't seem he understood the foundations of Biodynamics himself, or perhaps the editors didn't give him enough space to present it...

More likely it was the first. I doubt many people wold suffer through Steiner's Agriculture lectures if they didn't have to...I almost didn't finish it, and I had reason to read the damned thing! Maybe this reporter wasn't given enough time to research fully.

Shall I go into the multitude of errors he made in his farming philosophy? Maybe, but what I really want to focus on is the way wineries which practice this "spiritual science" -even though it has nothing to do with science- can capitalize on the articles it generates. Witness the quote by Mike Benziger:

“I can't look you in the eye and say it's better,” said Mike Benziger, head of the family-owned winery. “I can say it's different.”
Making biodynamic wine isn't about “technical perfection,” Benziger said. “It's about an authentic vintage, an authentic place.”

Notice that?

See the way in which he disarms you and "doesn't" throw mud in your eye, but then throws mud in your eye at the same time?

It's NOT about it being better...but it IS about BEING BETTER than the rest. The slight is that everything else is NOT AN AUTHENTIC vintage, and doesn't REPRESENT an authentic place

Answer me this Mike Benziger....if Biodynamics is so great, why is it you only bottle up ~30,000 gallons as BD certified and not ALL your production?

Is it because you don't have to risk your entire production volume this way, yet still get all the talking points?

Beware!

Large companies are starting to take notice of the BD movement, and are looking to remove your talking points! For example, I have heard from several sources within Kendall-Jackson that they (one last year, and again this harvest) are now starting to farm using Biodynamic methods. I doubt they will convert their whole vineyard empire over to the practice, or even to get the certification, but undoubtedly they will have a few blocks they can use as a talking point. There are a few articles out in the past about how the Jackson empire had approached Biodynamics years ago [Alice Feiring], but passed on the idea of implementing it at the time.

Hopefully this move by large companies will sully the image enough for the "true believers" to abandon their odd ideas...

Read the article by Smith & Barquín at Fine Wine Magazine.com listing well thought out criticism of the movement, and link here to follow up on it with the comments.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with my past posts about the subject [link here].

More trouble on the horizon

There are many indicators that the recovery for the wine industry is NOT on the doorstep right now for some of the larger wineries. Normally, this time of year sees frantic bottling as wineries across the state try to get tanks emptied for use in the coming harvest. Not so this year....

Several larger wineries have suspended bottling of their wines off and on over the past 8 months. This is due to lackluster sales keeping the products in the warehouses instead of heading out to the consumers. If your warehouse is plugged full, you have nowhere to put the product. If you're going to have hold wine in a warehouse due to slow sales, the rule of thumb is to avoid the extra expense of putting the wine in the bottle in the first place. This saves the headache of needing to either decant the wines for bulk wine sale or remove the labels at the very least for another winery which might buy your wines from you to generate cash flow.

Some of the larger wineries I know have crews which are near panic, as they turn the proverbial spigots off and on again to drain tanks for the coming harvest. Also, there's only so much cleaning you can do when you're supposed to normally be bottling. Then there's a cascade effect as the wines normally to be trucked from one place to another no longer need to be shipped - so more truck drivers stand idle, and trucking companies start hurting. Wines no longer on the fast track to the bottle don't need as much work done to them, so the cellar crews start looking like they have too many people on them to the bean-counters, and discussion starts about cutting them back or temporarily having them work only partial weeks (if not to lay them off entirely until the next harvest starts). Lab analysis also is put on a back burner, so testing companies like Vinquiry or Enologix might be seeing reduced work loads. Then there are the companies providing labels, bottling glass, glue, corks, capsules, etc....all of which also feel the pinch from the lack of forward momentum on the bottling lines.

And it goes on from there....

The problem is that tanks should all be emptied for the harvest which has already started, and winery management will be trying hard to minimize capital outlay for bottling, while they create space needed for the incoming fruit. It is a very delicate balance to maintain, and requires a great deal of communication between the vineyard, cellar and the marketing teams.We all would have been better served by Nature if the current harvest was a bit smaller than normal, which it isn't. The only silver lining to our plight is that the harvest may run a bit longer than normal, and we may have time to turn the tanks over for another round without having to "short vat" too much of the initial onslaught due to the hot weather we're having.

What's it mean to the consumer?

There are some wines being discounted, but that shoe is only now starting to hit the floor. The bigger concern is for the financial performance of the wineries. This is their "stress test", where we will learn if their high paid marketing and promotion staff are worth their salt. But they hold a double-edged sword, as dropping the prices moves more product, but cuts the amount of revenue they generate (doubtless they had more profits penciled into their business plans, and one thing owners and bean-counters abhor is the dreaded "write down" of inventory valuation). Another problem for large wineries is that almost all of them have tried to position themselves up-market in the past few years, and that's the sector which is hurting the most. All we need to do is look to the article in the Press Democrat today to see many of the higher end wineries feeling the crunch. The tone of the article is spot-on, but some of the concluding thoughts are a bit optimistic...

Fred Reno is right that this isn't a 1~2 year dip...and three years is a bit too short also. I don't see the high end ever fully recovering...well, at least not until the next generation of wine drinkers hits the market. And even then, that prospect is "iffy". 

I'd say it's more likely to be "near" to where it was before this mess started within a decade, but owners and marketers will have a tough time getting the same people to buy the highest priced wines when their eyes have been opened to great tasting wines at lower prices. I liken it to my grandparent's need to have "mad money" in their pockets after they survived the depression, or their need to have a well stocked pantry decades after the end of those difficult economic times ("mad money" was their name for the $20~$50 they always had on hand in cash for quick purchases - people told them they were mad not to put all their money back into the banking system, which was deemed "bulletproof" after the government regulations were in place). Even though the danger was long since removed, they had a difficult time getting their heads back to the spend-freely attitudes they had prior to the bad times. I don't see the current purchasers going back in that direction, not that the sales of Two-Buck-Chuck will always be booming like they are now, but they won't go back to buying wines priced as high as they had purchased in the past.

What - and wine sales are down in restaurants? Because people don't want to pay double the price they'd pay in a retail environment to get the same wine? Do tell!

People are going to be much more frugal as they come back into the market. Wine sales in the high end are seeing something that should've happened a long time ago: a correction to deflate some of the ego driven inflation that has injected itself into the process.

So what if someone starts a winery from scratch and wants to put the first vintage out at $100/btl? 

I say let 'em fail. It's not pretty, but if you're stupid enough to put wines out there at that price right now, then you are getting what you deserve to see them stagnate and not move at all.

After all, it's frickin' fermented grape juice, nothing more....so why were people paying those incredible prices to begin with?
If you're a winery owner or marketing type who asks me today what's going wrong with your business plan the first thing I'll ask you is, "why aren't you discounting more heavily?"

"Inglenooking" revisited...

I have been doing far too much traveling for brand promotion and sales these past few months. Sales are finally starting to creep upwards again though, so hopefully the recession is on the way out.

Anyway, I was looking through a list of "Top Wines form Argentina" while on a flight back to California, and was somewhat amused to see Inglenook as the #3 brand (Chablis, same wine is in the #13 spot as well).

Inglenook? Really??

I had lost track of that brand a few years back when it was still low-end California bulk wine. Anyway it still shows up in the #10 spot (for Burgundy), #15 (Chianti Classico), and finally in the #20 spot (Rhine). Not bad to have your brand in 4 of the top 25 positions....but even so, it is still extremely sad when you remember the rich heritage of the Inglenook name.

Inglenooking is a term used within the industry referring to a high-end brand which is then shifted down-market to capitalize on the previous successes. In the case of Inglenook, it was once the highest end Cab from Napa Valley, with the 1941 Inglenook Napa Cab having a perfect 100 score retrospectively bestowed upon it by the Wine Spectator. Bottles of that vintage can still fetch almost $25,000 each. (Yeah, that's right...$25k for each bottle!)

Now THAT's a brand....top of the Napa wine heap....or at least it was for a while....

It was relegated to California plonk as the brand was expanded and moved in larger format bottlings onto the lower shelves of the supermarket displays. Now it seems to have been further globalized by its corporate handlers...

The body's not even cold yet

I can't believe that City Winery is already trying to make money off of the death of Michael Jackson. To wit, I have the latest email from them (7:46 PM last night - a scant 5~6 hours after MJ's passing):

Granted they want to do this tonight, and they feel they have to work fast at it...but really, do we have to do this?

I suggest we rename the event "City Winery's Tasteless Tasting", and the subtitle should be "How to Milk the Legacy of a Dead Celebrity"...

From the email:

5 Wines paired with 25 songs, $25

City Winery will celebrate Michael Jackson's career with a mix of music and wine by paying homage with a wine pairing—listening to 25 of his classic songs with wines paired with 5 eras of his music. As Michael has touched the entire world with his music, City Winery brings its own special way to honor him with loud music from the venue's concert sound system accompanied by 5 selected wines for this once-in-a-lifetime memorial. Starting with a toast to the King of Pop, to a young period with the Jackson 5, smooth textures, developing into deep and complex personalities, and funky tastes. Michael Jackson's flavors will be lingering in our minds and age for long after he is gone.

Needless to say that Michael Jackson's connection to wine was, shall we say, "infamous" as it came to light during testimony in his trial for child molestation....and that's not really the sort of thing we should be remembering him for. What will be "lingering in my mind" is the poorly thought out marketing idea this was/is, and the aftertaste of desperation it leaves on my impression of City Winery. They get $25/head for playing some music & capitalizing on a dead celebrity.


Quite frankly, this is as offensive as it gets. Maybe South Park got away with their Steve Irwin joke only 2 weeks after his death, but pairing wine with MJ?
What, will it be served out of soft drink cans and be called "Jesus juice"?


And dudes - the guys' body isn't even cold yet. Talk about disgusting.

I'm open to anyone from City Winery who'd like to rebut this. Feel free to pony up & let us all know how you justify this sordid event...

And for those of you out there who feel like I do, here's their email address from their website (I've already forwarded this posting to them):
 info@citywinery.com.

France "dysfunctional"

Well, IT'S ABOUT TIME! 

Top wine industry insiders have labeled France (and Bordeaux in particular) as "dysfunctional".

I've been saying that for years....maybe they don't read the Zinquisition?

Highlights from the Vinexpo conference via Decanter.com:

'Bordeaux should be selling everything,'says Tony Spawton, an associate professor for wine marketing at  University of South Australia.

This is blatantly false...he's implying that just because it carries a Bordeaux appellation it should sell, but there are always less desirable wines from any locale, and just because it's Bordeaux doesn't make it GOOD wine...

'The fact the world's leading wine region is having to distill wine is a bad sign,' said Spawton.

What? They've been doing it for years...why wasn't it a bad sign back then? Weren't they paying attention??
C'mon, I've been blogging about the perpetual "crisis distillation" program and its ill effects since 2005....

Another speaker, UK wine writer Robert Joseph - who produces wine in France - said dysfunctionalities in Bordeaux, and France in general, existed at many levels.
He cited a 'lack of wine branding, poor marketing - with the exception of Champagne' - and the fact that Bordeaux customers are 'blackmailed' into buying.

No $hit...again, something I've been saying since '05...

Well, who knows. maybe they'll get their act together and finally move into the 20th century. Then they'll only have one more century to make up for to be on par with the rest of the world!
I've saved the best quote for last:

'The biggest change will be producers actually asking themselves who is drinking, why, and questioning the blind assumption that there is a market out there for this kind of wine.'                 -anonymous French wine producer

 Yeah, that would be a change for the better, wouldn't it?

What's going on at Foster's Wine Estates?

I hear rumors flying about layoffs at Foster's Wine Estates...

Two I can confirm, but the number & locations of the others are still amorphous...some reports are saying there may have been many more, but until I can get my sources to confirm where and when they are happening I don't have concrete info to pass along. I will update as soon as I can....

It is interesting to note that Foster's was until very recently looking for a few more production staffers for their North Coast operations. I counted three local openings on Winejobs.com for that company, but only two are production positions, and six positions advertised there total with locations all the way to Florida. Perhaps this is a management /marketing department weighted reduction? But perhaps this was in the works for a while as Foster's has been in the process of separating their wine and beer portfolios from each other, and follows on the heels of some $240 Million worth of vineyards and property going onto the market (which they likely won't see full price on). They have also recently changed the marketing director for their Australasian Wine division. Reports are that they originally were looking to sell off their wine holdings, but couldn't get a good price for the ~$4 Billion estimate they were hoping for.

Not good news for the industry as the California layoffs continue from the big players.

So far we've seen Kendall-Jackson, Diageo, and Brown-Forman...all of them tightening their belts back toward the start of the year (Feb~Apr).  Is Foster's now joining the ranks?

Good luck to you all out there....

Copia: an idea too large for the canvas

“Our mission is fairly simple: we are essentially leading an effort to reopen Copia for the benefit of the community and preserve as many of Mondavi’s goals as we can, but in [a] sustainable way,” said John Salmon, a member of the Coalition to Preserve Copia, created about four months after the December bankruptcy announcement. [link to article here]

So in this context I take it "sustainable" is used to mean "keeps itself afloat"?
And perhaps "for the benefit of the community" means "give them another place to drop their hard earned cash"?

You have to hand it to Ol' Mondavi...he did mean well, and his vision was on the grand scale. Years ago I was talking with an artist friend of mine at her house, and I spotted a large canvas (maybe 4'x8') with a panorama in various stages of completion across it. I commented on how it must be nice to have the ability to put together such a painting, when she said that it was a pain in the ass because it wasn't falling into place. And her killing comment was that overall the idea was "too large for the canvas"...

It was beyond anything I could ever do and I told her so, but to an artist that's little consolation. Her disappointment lay in the fact that the project wasn't what she had envisioned in her mind's eye - that she couldn't translate what she imagined onto canvas. It just wasn't coming out of her and onto the fabric.

I think Copia has the same flaw.

Build a huge complex right in the middle of Napa, design it for international food and wine events...but in the end, fail to get the locals (who are needed for supporting something like this) to buy into the idea they need to use the center too. Too much pretension, perhaps? Maybe it was a pricing issue or management structure issue, we probably won't know for sure because it was likely a combination of factors. Don't get me wrong, there's always room for another pretentious complex in Napa (or so the conventional wisdom goes)...provided you can convince the clientele of that. Hell, you could probably build a Castle and get people to pay for it...damn, that's been done already. But Copia couldn't draw enough people. Didn't it always operate in the red? Wasn't there a huge amount of cash needed every year to keep it operating?

I think the logical thing to do is carve the complex into manageable chunks and sell it to various businesses which want a beautiful spot on the Napa River. There's a huge parking lot for them all to share, and some of the garden plots on the south side can be turned into stores or restaurants, but I think we need to scrap most if not all of Mondavi's visions for the place and think up some of our own.

Bully for John Salmon and the group for thinking about how to preserve what's there. The reality is that people need to see a reason to go there, and by people I mean PLURALITY! Many people need to use the spot, and that means a mix of business types and of different price and pretension strata . It's bold to declare that you'd love to keep the old vision alive, but sometimes that's the danger. It failed because it was "too big for the canvas"...and a new vision is needed for what that property will hold in the future.

And what happened to that old picture I started this rant with?

I saved it from destruction by the artist, and put it up in my house for a number of years. Later, after I had grown weary of looking at its incomplete nature I locked it away in my storage to collect dust. It was finally destroyed by one of the floods we have from time to time around here when the water got several feet deep in my barn.

Hopefully the complex formerly known as Copia fares better.

Nobody "makes" Wine Anymore

Have you noticed how nobody "makes" anything anymore?

Take a look at the picture of Heinz Ketchup, and pay particular attention to the "Grown Not Made*" slogan  below the tomato:

Compare these two statements:

      "Wine is made in the vineyard"

      "Ketchup is grown, not made"

Say, where in either of those statements is there room for the person who takes the ripe fruit and processes it into the end product that graces your tables? I can see an argument for the farmer being present in either case, but not anyone else, and this is not right.

Originally I had contemplated posting on the "Death of the Rock Star Winemakers", a breed which has declined over the past 5~7 years. Sure, there are still many big names out there, but the frequency you used to hear about all but the top hoity-toity "rock stars" has all but died off. And while I feel this is still a valid topic I might get around to in the future, one of the reasons winemakers roles are being downplayed actually eclipses the topic completely. But I do see the point, after all who needs a winemaker if the fruit has done all the work already?

I was going to start by mentioning how the last few years have had more involvement from owners, with winemakers public exposure as "rock stars" diminishing. The main reasons were the need of the owners to make sure that if/when a winemaker left their brand, that the "loyal" following that had migrated there with them didn't then leave. But I think the real reason is that winemakers as a whole are being displaced by the rush back to authenticity and naturalness - by the need to be greener than the next guy - even to the point that we remove ourselves from the equation entirely...and I mean ALL of ourselves, not just winemakers!

And that is why something as common and kitsch as ketchup is now modeling itself as having been dropped into the bottle by Mother Nature herself, without any interference from mankind at all!

The "authenticity" debate maximizes value of non-intervention while minimizing role of the winemaker and cellar staff. This also allows the owners of the brand to maintain the focus of the trade upon what THEIR vision is, and not that of the winemaker (who was making sure the fruit was harvested properly, fermented correctly, then blended, filtered and bottled correctly). We see the people who do all the heavy lifting get the shaft in the PR/Media, while the brand continues forward as an unblemished rose or virgin snowbank, neither of which had been contaminated by the Human hand.

But WE ARE part of Nature...and we DO need to make decisions about how fruit is handled, and what the final taste should be...so why can't we acknowledge that? 

I'll acknowledge here that we are the only species which has developed the earth (for both good and ill) to the extent it's been changed...

But why is it that Mankind isn't allowed to "make" wines anymore? Why is it preferable that "we" haven't made anything? Why does "manipulate", which foremost means "to handle, manage, or use, especially with skill in some process of treatment or performance", get used in nothing more than its negative connotations when referring to foodstuffs - and wines in particular? Certainly there are reasons people have gone this route, and there have been numerous times in the past that fraud has occurred - and no doubt it will happen again in the future, and not just with the highest priced bottles...but I fear we've gone a bit overboard in our reaction. Listen carefully to all the winery representatives talk up their wines at the next big tasting you go to. Likely that the majority of what you hear will be about how fantastic the vineyards are and how "the wine is made in the vineyard"...

I know many people who read this blog will have gotten tired of hearing this explanation, but much of this is rooted in the 17th century Romanticism and the back-to-nature movement it spawned. However, it now goes to lengths that dismiss many natural treatments which were in play back then as well as now: isinglass, egg whites, milk protein (casein) are all now somewhat vilified in the popular wine press as "manipulation" (only negative connotation). 

Filtration, too, is a victim of the authenticity drive, and is spun by many producers as a evil process which robs the wine of fruitiness, structure, or both. Frankly I don't let anything I work on go out the door without filtration - it's your last chance to secure the wine from subsequent spoilage of microbes present in the wine. And that means better consistency for the consumer, which is never a bad thing. Does filtration diminish your wines somehow? Not in my experience. But I do take good care to educate all the staff on how to do it properly, as its when its done wrong that you can screw up your wine. If everyone is vigilant and well versed on how to get it done, then there shouldn't be any problem - though I'll acknowledge that there's quite a spectrum of opinion on this subject, and you'll no doubt hear from well educated people on the other side of that argument as well.

They'll have different experiences, and I can respect that and their different opinions here.

But I still don't think you can separate Man from Wine. 

Wine just doesn't exist without willfull interference from mankind, any less than ketchup could exist without mankind. Raise a glass in honor of your favorite cellar, and remember ALL the people it takes to bring that product to your table - from the vineyard through to the grocery store.

In Tweetum Lucrum?

I had the misfortune recently of having to sit through a few presentations on how wineries can use social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. to further their own marketing ends. Maybe it was the sheer lack of data in the presentations, but frankly I don’t buy it and my read from the other attendees suggested that they felt the same way. I just don’t think that wineries will be able to effectively use these sites to sell their wines, at least not in enough quantity to justify the investment of time and money. 

And certainly not enough to justify spending $10k/Mo for 6 months as some people are looking to do!

Let me give you my reasons:

1. Wine consumers crave an authentic experience. Without a doubt, the continued proliferation of wine brands and the inertia of the industry to consolidate as beer and bourbon have done is the ability of a winemaker or winery owner to give a consumer a genuinely personal experience. The only way for this to happen in web 2.0 is for winemakers and winery owners (not heads of the marketing department!) to commit several hours each day to blogging, facebooking, tweeting, etc. I know lots of winemakers and lots of winery owners and exactly zero of them have the time to commit to this. Even during a strong economy, these people are working non-stop and have no time for that “instant-response” needed in social media. I see many wineries start down this road with the best of intentions, but then they can’t follow through with something so minor as a simple blog update, due to time constraints. My own Twitter personality suffers form exactly this...maybe when I'm on the road I can tweet occasionally, but otherwise I just don't have the time to post in a stream-of-conciousness fashion.

2. As a corollary to the above, concepts like Murphy-Goode’s (a brand owned by Kendall-Jackson) are doomed to fail because they lack authenticity as well. Wine consumers want to hear from the winemaker or the owner, they don’t want some hired gun whose full-time job is to tweet and give status updates to be selling them on a brand made by somebody else. They want Mr. Murphy or Mr. Goode (neither of whom is involved in the brand anymore) to give them updates and tell them about their “honest” “artisanal” and “hand-crafted” wines. In the Jackson’s favor, they do have David Ready Jr. as the winemaker (the original partners being Murphy, Ready & Goode), but even so the tweets they get more than likely will be from the person they hire and not him. This also invites the consumer to look for Murphy-Goode's winery in the hopes of finding the authenticity they desire, only to sadly have them realize that the M-G team sold the brick & mortar facility they had to a Sonoma custom crush company and the wines are now made at various K-J wineries instead.

[2a.  In the application legalese fine-print for the job referenced above, there is a nice clause about how the "Winery" doesn't need to hire ANYONE if they don't feel they have the right candidate in their applicant pool. Now this is boiler-plate standard release clause for the "Winery" to back out of the deal should they feel it isn't going in the right direction...but should they actually NOT HIRE anybody for the position then they risk losing any sort of authenticity and credibility they might have otherwise. I mean, they've already reaped the rewards of this whole stunt, right? I have seen many, many Tweets, articles, emails and blog postings about what appears to the outside world as a Dream Job in the wine industry (and its been described as such in many articles)...if they then DON'T hire, they look like they've been shilling the brand the entire time because of all the media buzz they've collected to date. Plus, they're owned by K-J which just laid off 15~20% of their workforce a few months ago, and let's face it, there's already enough bad feelings in the industry regarding the business moves that Jess Jackson and his team have made in the past 25 years. Add to that impression a guy who sacks his labor, continues to buy expensive horses, and then pays $60k to someone to sing like a canary (Tweet!) about his wines. Albeit that they were apparently solid business decisions which have put them ahead of the pack in many ways (some might say ruthlessly), but a failure to cement this carrot-and-stick-type-PR-event would do nothing but reinforce the already jaded consumer that K-J was more interested in the mighty $$ than in the reality that people now expect them to make good on the reward they offered for keeping this brand in the public consciousness for the past few months. And why do I use "Winery" in quotes when I mention this topic?...because the "Winery" is K-J, not the M-G that many people might associate with the brand on the face of the offer. The stakes are high for a failure to complete the deal...]

3. How to close the sale? I can see social networks generating fans and followers, but how do you get a fan to stay brand loyal when your wine is $14.99 at Safeway and Gallo’s new brand is running a deal for $11.99? Wine consumers, due to the 9,000 wine brands in this country, are notoriously fickle and have been increasingly “trading down” lately to lower-priced wines. I don’t see how you convert followers into sales, and most importantly, how do you measure the conversion from one to the other?

4. You say the answer to #3 is not to sell through Safeway but to use the internet? The internet in general has not been a boon to wine sales. Yes, there are successes out there (Wine Library), but there have been some big failures too (the first several iterations of Wine.com). Further, ask a winery owner or winemaker if they’re able to rely on web-based marketing, eschewing travelling the major wine markets like they were 5 or 10 years ago. Those that I run into say they’re having to do it more than ever due to the challenges of the economy as well as lack of distributor commitment to any non-corporate brands. I know I'm travelling much more than I have in the past for just this reason. Few wineries sell more than a single-digit percentage of their monthly sales through their website and most all will tell you that club sign ups come from their tasting room, not from the web and this after most wineries have had websites for 10 years or longer. If not by now, by when?

5. Being marketed to is a turn-off on the internet. Web users are increasingly bombarded with ads and messages, most of which are ignored. Overt marketers are shunned. The social network proponents concede this up front and will tell you that you have to engage on a different level. Tell your story less directly, interact with wine pages and sites other than your own, be personal not preachy, etc. Frankly, I think that just dilutes your marketing story and makes you a friend – the type of friend whose parents own a winery and whose parents expect to get free tastings and other comps when they show up. Me, I rarely buy wines from friends in the business because I expect them to bring some when they come to my house….If I’m going to buy your wine, I’ll buy it because I like the quality and/or price, not because you ‘friended’ me. 

6. In support of #5 above, I feel the need to mention the sheer lack of any sort of "style" or "etiquette" by wineries when dealing with the web currently - blogs in particular. I'll hold up a comment on my post the other day by "Trecini", which appears to be nothing but a veil blogger ID from a company shill of the same name...

I was "honored" with a comment on my post the other day by said blogger, and the entire 188 words were nothing more than a PR note re their wines. What a turn off! Talk about how NOT to do it...it was clumsy, just outright clumsy!

And if we want to make it appear that we've "just been to a blind tasting party and discovered the wines" from said winery, maybe you should choose a blogger ID name which isn't so obviously transparent. (BTW, tracking down this ID brings you to a "blog" which was created within the past week and touts 2 [yes, TWO!] posts; the first is a word-for-word repost of the 188 words left in my comments section, the second is an ad for a wine brokerage.)

In case you're looking for the comment proper, don't bother yourself as I've already deleted it (I have a copy in my email of the original).

Now I’m not suggesting that wineries give up and ignore web 2.0 altogether, but I think it should be approached with a healthy skepticism until someone actually demonstrates that they can convert followers into consumers. Today’s wine environment is more challenging than I can remember and one’s focus needs to be on getting the best sales results for one’s time spent.

Maybe following the sales performance of Murphy-Goode would be the bellwether here. I’ll check back in six months and let you know how they’re doing.

News from the trenches

After a few weeks of traveling to visit several key account markets (Sonoma County, San Diego, Phoenix), I have compiled some notes regarding what actual servers in restaurants have been experiencing. Note that none of this is scientific data or taken from scanner data reported by retail stores, rather from first-hand reports of day-to-day observations by servers.

Overall, the concerns of the public aren’t the same as those of us in the industry. The topics which seemed most important didn’t cover cult winemakers, hang time, acid and yeast additions, biodynamics or organic wine methods, etc. Because of this I find it refreshing to hear it directly from the people who are serving the public from time to time. Some of this is due to the economy, some is seasonal, and hopefully a bit of it is the wine drinking public becoming more informed about wine.

The restaurants I was talking with are mainly in the middle of the price range spectrum, though maybe 25% were more on the high-end side than true mid range. All were stand-alone restaurants; I wasn’t talking with any chains. Here’s what I heard - please remember that these are generalizations from ~24 establishments:

• Zinfandel sales seem to be holding where they always have been, but are flat otherwise (this always seems to be the case, but was interesting when you consider that many people are experimenting with reds other than Merlot and Cab Sauv and Pinot…)
• Sauvignon Blanc sales are gaining on Chardonnay sales (some of this is seasonal), a lot of people reporting the public is tiring of 100% malo-lactic white wines
• Patrons don’t appear concerned with high reputation wines as much as they want to get some “tasty juice on the table” at a decent price, and to this end “cult winemakers” and “image/ego buys” are not the deciding factors when patrons are ordering , though some “conspicuous consumption” is still taking place (before you flood the comments section with hate-mail, let me say “yes, this is a generalization”, and I imagine the impression would have been different had I talked with more higher-end establishments)
• The public is starting to catch on that high prices don’t automatically confer a high coefficient of enjoyment, and are increasingly drawn to wines which actually taste good and haven’t been priced out of the stratosphere
• French wines are down overall right now, while the Italians and Spanish are replacing them (price for quality drinking is in play)
• French Champagne sales are down while Prosecco is on the rise (sadly, California Sparkling isn’t filling the void instead…not that I find anything “wrong” with Prosecco…)
• Syrah seems to be the new experiment for patrons who have had enough Cab and Merlot…as one wine buyer said “people are looking for more ‘bang’, but with approachable wines…not over complicated and with tannins which are easier on the palate”…another made it a bit over-simplified and said “people want something purple, that tastes “purple”, without having to think about it to enjoy it”…(we've seen this before; I don't recall how many times I've heard about how Syrah was going to be the next "hot" varietal, only to have it slip back to "ordinary" status...)

The most shocking news that I have to report is that incidences of corked wines seem to be up across the board – regardless of the price range of the bottle or country of origin. In fact, this is the one thing I heard repeatedly while I was out and about. Some reported it’s now double or triple what it was just a few years ago. The majority of the accounts I talked to seemed to think the wineries were switching to lower grades of corks to save money, and this may or may not be true but I imagine the respective wineries would point the finger back at the cork suppliers. That it seems to be across the board leads me to two thoughts: that more people are cognizant of what cork taint is and are willing to send those wines back, and that there might be an actual increase in the number of bottles with defective corks as well.


In the end you and I can talk 'til we run out of breath about vineyard blocks and additions to must or wine, or about how Mark Squires may have traveled to and from various tasting events, but the public seems more concerned with getting the best tasting wine for the buck.

Add another voice to the lists!

Three Cheers for Steve Test, who joins the list of acclaimed winemakers to publicly renounce witchcraft, superstition, and other unproven practices on this site!

I'll reprint his comment here, as it bears repetition well:

"Stuart Smith recently wrote a great letter to the editor (of the Chronicle?) responding to the Dolan-Benziger school of non-stop BD promotion, practiced with nothing but anecdotal claims of efficacy, and plenty of marketing hype. As Stu pointed out the problem with the BD promoters is that it puts the rest of us at a competitive disadvantage. There are a few accounts that won't buy anything but organic and BD wines. Those of us who are more concerned with making delicious, well-made wines are fortunate, so far, in that most people care most about wine quality, not BD hokum.

When you look deeper into BD, beyond what the winery proponents choose to talk about, you find some truly wacky stuff, as if the common BD practices aren't enough already. Steiner was a paranormal fancier and clairvoyant. There are lots of spirits of various kinds. There are sylphs and fairies that move light and water into the plant and gnomes in the earth that tell the roots and worms what to do --- I'll bet there wasn't much about that at the seminar!

Careful, minimal input viticulture ought to be the standard, but the antiscientific-religio-cultish stuff at the heart of BD will eventually send it back where it belongs .... I hope."

I'll add a quick HALLELUJAH!, and use this post as a PUBLIC CALL TO ARMS for those responsible winemakers out in the field to publicly join the crusade against this modern-day mumbo-jumbo! Make yourselves heard!!

Join the Zinquisition!

Distilling a 'Why Biodynamic" conversation

Well, I did go to the "Why Biodynamic?" conversation at the Sonoma County Day School last Friday eve. Mrs Johnson and I both went, and though the proceeds were to benefit the Sonoma County Wine Library, I'm glad we each saved $5 by buying our tickets beforehand.

I'll post some highlights in a moment, but I must say I was disappointed the Q&A section was so short that it only allowed for 3 questions to be put to the panel. They were [Thank God!] skeptical in nature...

For the introduction: I'll thank Jeff Cox for his observations, but I have to point out that gravity is NOT an invisible force. (Cox dropped his glasses case from one hand to the other to demonstrate that not all forces were "seen".) We can see and demonstrate its effects, and can predict how it acts. You are correct, it is not VISIBLE (we don't see strings pulling objects toward the Earth or Moon, but that's not the same thing), and the fact that we can't SEE it does not imply that other unseen and yet un-demonstrable forces exist.

Also -and this is important- the Moon DOES NOT influence when women menstruate. This has been proven incorrect time and time again, and Mrs. Johnson would like me to let you know that if what you implied WAS true, then women -as a group- would all menstruate at relatively the same time in the lunar cycle, which she can personally attest to that they don't. She further wanted me to mention that there is only one planet that all the women live upon, and there is but one moon to influence them all, so the assertion implies that women should be in "synchronicity" of some sort. They are not.

Period. [pun intended!]

Highlights:

Alan York  

BioD since 1971, never farmed Organic –went straight into biod, Louisianan good ol’ boy

- Old Yeller & Agriculture course were the only two books he’d read at the time (funny, but hard to believe that’s true)

- Read Agriculture, but didn’t understand anything that Steiner had said…

- Very entertaining! I'd love to talk with the man over some period of time, maybe 1 of the dozen people I’d pick to be stranded with on an island for a week (reminded me of Gilligan – not in an inept way, but too much of the folksy-ness would get to be a real drag)

- We don’t “grow” anything, the plants grow themselves, we just create environments for plants to grow to their potential. We are co-creators with nature, not destroyers.

- biodynamics is an art, not a scientific venue [sadly this seems to be lost on the practitioners who later assert that it IS scientifically proven or provable...]

- Farmers should try to foster a “closed system” [qoutation marks are his, not mine], though that’s not fully possible, to avoid destroying one portion of nature in favor of another

- waste stream becomes fertility stream w/ composting

- DIVERSITY of plants and organisms is the indicator of success and fertility, so don’t focus on just one organism

- Goal of biod is “diversity”, conventional agriculture goal is simplification by removing unwanted organisms [“reductionist”]

- Agriculture removes more than just minerals: life forces & soul forces, which must then be replenished into the environment [interesting, and yet unproven theory of BioD, upon which I'd say most of the conflict with non-believers stems from]

- Cosmic Hierarchy: physical sphere (represented by minerals) – life sphere (plant life) – soul sphere (animals) – spiritual sphere (humans)


Paul Dolan  

Organic for many years, recently has converted to biodynamic, sons still somewhat skeptical [thank God again!].

- Read AG course & didn’t understand it either (like York) but had York as a guide to help him through it (fallacy of blind leading the blind?)

- Don’t feed the plants: feed the soil, or better yet feed the environment, and life will flourish

- Create bug highways for beneficial insects to control the bad bugs

- [after Q from Cox RE “we are part of nature…why don’t we trust it, why don’t we trust preps (witchcraft, voodoo)"] “…we nicknamed the system “moo-joo”…”

- [Cox: vortex is recurrent form in nature: water going down the drain to tornadoes, to galaxies. Shape focuses forces into the center of the form…] Dynamization is process to bring the ethereal forces into the material realm using this recurring natural pattern.

- Dynamization by hand is best, but “flow form” is used to create same effect [this is where the practitioner creates a sculpture like a waterfall, where the water is theoretically mixed continuously in each successive pool...and thus "imprinted" with the desired cosmic energies...]

- Captured rainwater is used for the preps, passes thru flow-form first. Groundwater has mineral components which are “imprinted” with the site already and is considered inferior.

- Cow horns used because they follow the vortex form…manure from female lactating cow (!) is collected for the process [Dolan buys organic manure from outside his farm to use for this process]

- Homeopathic doses used [must be powerful stuff! or maybe it doesn't make a difference that you're using so little because it has no effect anyway!]…manure formula benefits “life force” (microbial life)

- silica formula promotes qualitative “soul force” and governs aromas, flavors, colors, etc., [supposedly] everything that we associate with quality.

- Difficult to attribute qualities to the compost preps… [“weenus” factor in play, wussed-out answer, maybe they don’t exist and that's why this is difficult?]

- Organic cert vs. Biod cert: Biod is also yearly independent party inspected [biod is not so much policing as “counseling”, he says, but that raises some interesting questions whether practitioners are held to the same standards all over the place]

- 10% of area on farm might be left fallow to avoid monoculture (doesn’t need to be “natural” just different than the main crop)

Terroir? Freshness factor brought up as possible explanation for better tasting produce. No further discussion on that point.

Okay! Now on to the questions that were asked....

Q does BD rid you of phylloxera, Pierce’s, etc?

Dolan: We were ORGANIC back in the 90’s while there was Phylloxera outbreak, and many neighbors had to tear out their AXR-1 rootstocks. Bonterra didn’t have to. Overall health seems to have been better, more resistant to those pressures…while a few vines were affected, it wasn’t widespread swaths like the conventional farmers were being hit with. It seemed to be weaker individual vines. We did have hoppers and mites when we changed over. to biodynamic, but they seem to have reached a balance with our beneficials and we don't have a problem now.

[Currently he doesn't have an example of BioD defeating pests like the Q asks...]

Q is there a commercial aspect to this practice?

A [Dolan passes to York] [pause] Yes, we are in business (dead silence from the audience), and we need to continue to make a profit like all businesses.

Q I have chickens, and have been organic for many years, but no cow. Can I be BioD?

A if you aren’t using the preps then you aren’t biod. “Biodynamics is organic-plus” (dead silence from the audience – especially those organic farmers present that I know!) in the fact that it fosters these etheric forces using the preps.

Q you can’t have a "closed system", which you placed in quotes, so how does it work?

A [York]  it is the effort towards the goal, not the attainment which is important. It has to be a stretch. If we don’t stretch then we aren’t going to fulfill our (human) potential.

Well, that about sums it up.
Entertaining evening. And while there were some positions outlined, there was no persuasion to be had.

The biodynamic food and wines that were poured in the lobby afterwards were all serviceable, but nothing I'd be running out to get. "Good", not "great", and certainly nothing discernable that I'd ever be able to pick out from the numbers of other good, servicable wines out on the market...

an EARTH DAY present from Randall Graham

From Eric Asimov's The Pour (New York Times):

...[f]or Mr. Grahm, that means owning a vineyard, embracing biodynamic viticulture and farming without irrigation, as the best Old World vineyards are farmed. “Dry farming is absolutely crucial,” he said. “It’s more important than anything — biodynamics, schmiodynamics.”

And...

“I actively resorted to all manner of marketing tricks,” [Randall Graham] said, as if standing before the congregation to confess.

 "Biodynamics, schmiodynamics....”!

"...marketing tricks..." !!

For anyone who's been asleep at the wheel these past 10 years, the truth is now out in the open! Now Randall implies that perhaps the entire thing (biodynamics) was a mistake, and he should've been paying attention to the amount of rainfall his vineyards get and how deep the local aquifers are instead of stuffing cow horns with "poo".

Well I saw that for what it was!

Simultaneously sad and funny to see, but here's the story: a man who set himself up as the advocate of this preposterous method of agriculture for marketing purposes is now backing away from his previous positions to focus on his NEW MARKETING position: Dry Farming!

Unfortunately, Randall hasn't given up all his old ways...

He seems to be relying on a geomancer to evaluate his newest vineyard acquisition's water potential, rather than hiring a certified hydrologist or geologist.

C'mon, Randall!  Make a clean break and purge your soul...

...you're so close to redemption!

A voice of Reason in these dark times...

 

Huzzah! for Stuart Smith of Smith-Madrone Winery!

I just got through reading his letter to the editors of the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, somewhat taking them to task for the nonsensical video of Mike Benziger on the PD site touting his Biodynamic philosophy. I've clipped the letter he wrote here, as well as provide the link for the PD letters for Fri April 17th...

The best lines have to be...

"...People today make all sorts of assertions with little or no connection to the truth, and biodynamics is no different. Show me the scientific experiments that prove biodynamic soils and vines are healthier and biodynamic wines are better.
... in my opinion, biodynamics is a hoax and deserves the same level of respect we give to witchcraft. On Earth Day or another day, animal sacrifices (a biodynamic farming practice) should not be an acceptable practice of modern day agriculture or our society."

Damn!

That's poetry. And my heart is warmed that people out there are starting to take notice of this mis-represented farming practice which wants everyone to think it naught but "peasant agriculture".......

A BIG thanks to Mr.Smith for his letter of reason!

A word about the economy

"Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."  - Francis Bacon

"A penny saved is a penny earned."   - Benjamin Franklin

Ok, so this is more about saving money than the economy in general. Actually, I'm still dumbfounded that it's taken an economic crisis of this magnitude to really put the brakes on sales of top end tier wines. Were we as a society really all that happy about ourselves going out and buying wines at prices ranging from $100 to $1000+ per bottle?

Was the wine really that much better than a $45/bottle wine, or were we "compensating" for something?

People are dropping the higher end wines from the shopping lists, generally, in favor of lower priced relatively "bargain" wines, and the results from near and far afield are a boom in the sales of the remainder of the market. This isn't the end-all indicator of the economic turn around, but hearing that the CA wine industry has boosted its shipments of wine by 15 million gallons in 2008 is a sure sign that people who are drinking wines aren't stopping their consumption, just looking to drink those which "fit in" with their new budgets. And it is an interesting difference to see three main EU players dropping in market share while upstarts like the Californians and Argentinians shoot upwards....

Sadly, this also comes at a time in the EU where the wine industry has been under attack in France(!), by the French themselves. In the past decade, French legislators and firebrands have changed the wine consumption habits of its' people directly via laws restricting advertising, and indirectly through cultural campaigns to curb drinking period. This has been a huge contributor to the French producers' angst and has no doubt helped them to get themselves into the rioting mood these past few years. As the French Giant has nodded off, Italy has passed France in wine consumption, with the US now nipping at its heels. In a way that shouldn't really come as a surprise given that there are ~3 times as many Americans as Frenchmen, but with the US consumption of wine only a paltry 8.7 litres of wine in 2005 compared to the French per capita rate of 55.8 litres that same year it is quite a feat! Converted to cases of wine per year, the US would be slightly under one case per person in 2005, while France was at nearly 6.2 cases per person annually.

And that's not too bad of a deal when we look and see that 2008 had an overall drop in global consumption of almost 1% of the previous mark in 2007...

It will be interesting to see how long it is before the high-end tier recovers once the economy does get its legs back under itself. 

Of course at that time we'll see what happens to the lower end of the market as well, but hopefully people in the US are continuing to embrace wine as more of a necessity than they have in the past. Even if they are at a price-point they thought they couldn't/wouldn't like as much...

Californian sweet wine: a continued debate

I had a conversation this past weekend with a few guests about the popularity of sweet white wines, and heard comments about how California is responsible for the sad world-wide trend towards producing "sweet" (off-dry) white wines. Californian chardonnay in particular was vilified...

I should lay a little background for this topic before I go into it.

Most people in the industry consider a wine "dry" (meaning it has completed the conversion of sugars into alcohol) when the level of sugar falls below 2~3 grams per liter. There's a little bit left over in the wine, but at this level it usually doesn't represent an amount which spoilage organisms can really exploit, and the yeasts present which did the work are tired and have pretty much stressed themselves out with the alcohol they've produced and are dying off. Also, the maximal amount of alcohol has arguably been produced, and alcohol has a preservative effect. At this point most human palates can't pick up notes of sweetness in the wine, and the aroma, acid and alcohol components of the wine drive the overall tasting experience. Alcohol itself can add a little sweetness to the profile of a wine, but it also contributes a pungency or "heat" to the experience as the concentration increases (think about the last time you had a shot of vodka...there's a LOT of heat, but also a slight sweetness to the finish). If a wine is a little too acidic, or the body is a bit flat or hollow, a small amount of sugar can be blended in to help fill out these perceived shortcomings, without making the wine "sweet" to the taster. This happens because our palates have been selected to prefer sweetness (think of sugar as a natural indicator that fruits are ripe) over almost every other perception. And even though the levels are below the level where our brains say "this is sweet" (threshold level of identification), we still pick up a signal saying "this is good, but I'm not exactly sure why" (the 'je ne sais quoi' effect at the level of perception, but below that of identification). This is akin to seeing a light moving on the horizon, but we're unable make out exactly what it is: we have met the level of perception, but not that of identification. As time goes by, we look again and see the light has come closer and the object with the light is a ship (level of identification).

Anyway, here's a quick sampling of my conversation at that point:

"Isn't that manipulation?"  Sure it is.

"Isn't that a bad thing?"  That depends now, doesn't it...on the level it's taken to and the final wine desired.

"Then the wine doesn't represent what Nature intended, does it?" (?) Say what...? Remember, Nature WANTS to make vinegar, not wine...WINE is never what Nature intended grapes to become, not that Nature ever 'wants' or 'intends' anything.

"Well, then, you're an interventionist!"  Yes, and back to my point - all WINE is a creation of/by intentional intervention in the natural process when the juice gets to a point where we have alcohol and aromas we like, with a balanced level of acidity.

"But organic wine that doesn't have sulfites..."  Doesn't matter. The process is still stopped by human activity at the wine stage before it becomes vinegar.

"But we're talking about sugar in the wine - how do you get a wine to stop with sugar still in it?"  The real question many times is how do I get my wine to finish fermenting(!) not how do I stop it...many wines stop by themselves before the sugar is finished. Weak yeast strains, "natural yeasts", fruit with minor nutrient deficiencies, excessive temperature spikes (high or low) during fermentation can all be factors...wines can be centrifuged to remove yeasts, and sulfur can be added to shock them into submission.

"How is sugar added to a dry wine? Are we talking about beet sugar again?"  No, this is not like chaptalization, where in the EU beet sugar (being phased out in favor of concentrated grape must) can be added before fermentation to change the final alcohol level of the wine. What we are talking about is more like taking a few of the lots you made which haven't finished their sugar and blending them back into the dry wines to balance body, acidity, etc. If you're one of the lucky ones whom had every fermentation finish to dryness, then you can add concentrated grape must to adjust the final sugar level.

Some producers even select lots of grapes prior to harvest which they then chill and/or centrifuge the natural yeasts and solids out of before they hold it in tanks through the harvest. It may or may not get a hefty wallop of sulfur at this point to help ensure that fermentation doesn't start by itself. After everything else has finished its fermentation, this "stopped" juice can be added back in small quantities to adjust the profile of the wine. The Germans have a name for the wines created by this process: süss-reserve [actually süß-reserve], which literally means sweet reserve. Yes...juices intentionally held (reserved) without fermenting so the sugar can be blended back later. And they have added them for years to make sure the balance of the wine is where they want it.

So is that manipulation? Yes.

Does it produce fantastic wines? Yup, youbetchya!

Is it some new-fangled crap-tastic method to cheat Nature out of what it intended? NO...and while we're at it, let's stop being so g**damned anthropomorphic by ascribing "intentions" to Nature...

Nature doesn't give a damn about what our desires are, and has none of its' own.

PS to Uncle Lou: No, I reject that most California Chards are too floral and sweet to drink, and are best used as weed-killers and ant baits...though I grant you have a different palate than mine...

A good show (dinner not included)...

I found this on the web while looking up a few points for this post:

"You do not 'believe' in science. Science is not a BELIEF SYSTEM. Science is a method of inquiry. If you do not know what deduction and induction are you need to LOOK THEM UP. Don't try to burn Galileo, you villianous Heathen!"
         - Angry Pontiff

All the same, put this on your calendar:
Friday April 24th, 7 PM @ the Jackson Theater, 4400 Day School Place, Santa Rosa...keep critical thinking points like that above in mind while attending...

Why?

Because this location is hosting an evening of Biodynamic Q&A put to a trio of proponents [link]: Alan York (BD consultant), Paul Dolan (winegrower), and Jeremy Fox (chef @ Ubuntu...uhhhm, so how's he fit into this exactly?). Tickets are $20 in advance/ $25 at the door, and the proceeds go to the Sonoma Co. Wine Library, which is housed at the public library in Healdsburg. This is the type of theater which is most amusing, and my suggestion to you all is to read up on a bit of the BioD nonsense and then ask the hard questions of those assembled on stage, to wit: "exactly what forces are those that we are 'concentrating' by using these BioD preparations?"...

After all, these are the 'experts' - hell, York charges MONEY for those types of answers everyday! - and if they don't have clear answers to these questions, or if they conflict with each other, then we can draw one of three conclusions~

1. they don't have a clue...
2. they know, but don't want us to know...
3. there is no answer because there really aren't any forces being concentrated, and to say such would expose the farce that biodynamics is.

 Personally, after about a decade of trying to fathom what-the-Hell BioD actually is doing in the vineyard by talking with growers & proponents, I believe the answer is a combination of 1 & 3. You can witness this firsthand by viewing the video below of Steve Beckmen of Santa Barbara "explaining" what they do at his vineyard...and "why"... 

This last part is the most telling, due to his rambling answers and lack of anything concrete. How someone can produce a video where the "expert" being talked to can stumble when trying to relate what "forces" are being "excluded" or "enhanced" is beyond me. Why anyone would then post that video w/o cleaning it up first to make sure it made sense is even further beyond me (c'mon! you've got all the time on your hands to make it as authoritative as possible, and ensure it flows smoothly...why not do a couple of takes and get it right?).

A few high points of the video are: 

• Steve telling us about how his magic plywood box (lined with peat) keeps out unwanted "energies" from his BioD concoctions (sadly, those "energies" remain unnamed)...
• relating the "art" of dynamization, and his confession that although hand stirring is best, he uses a machine to do the job so he doesn't have to hire 8 people to get the same job done...
• that they CAN'T get the job done by following the biodynamic calendar, because you only have 2 days out of every 8 where the system allows for the work you need to do to actually get done - so they wrap the work onto other "similar" types of days ...
  
• ...and many more!

And look here, you can actually see the potent cosmic-type energies escaping the box when it's opened!

http://www.sbwinemakers.com/Beckmen-interview.php

Well, we're back to the beginning again, just like the snake eating its own tail, no closer to the real answers about what this system is really trying to do, or better yet "how it gets those things done". And why when people ignore the doctrines of that system it continues to deliver the wanted results. As I've said before - if you can delete or ignore certain parts of the system, did they really contribute to the overall results in the first place? 

Did any of it ever contribute to the results??

Hmm. Reminds me of a post from back in March '06 where a writer had published all sorts of nonsense re BioD and their silly calendars (don't forget to plant your potatoes this coming Monday after Easter...unless you're Greek Orthodox, when the best day will be the Monday following THEIR Easter Sunday...).

I have an experiment I tried a few years ago, but it might be time to try it again...providing it doesn't implode and cause a black hole to form! [See the link for details!]

Another weekend of frost protection

Saturday and Sunday morning's temperatures both dropped below freezing, causing me to get up at 2:30 Sat morn, and 3:30 AM yesterday. The problem with this time of year is the vulnerability of the young shoots to frost damage. Last year, I had the sad fate of having to use much of my irrigation pond water for frost protection. Since our rainfall was so short, I really didn't have that much water left for the rest of the growing season. Now some out there who think dry-farming is the best thing since the invention of sliced bread and processed cheese may rejoice, but from the farming side of the equation, this is a bad thing. For as bad as frost is, having your vines wilted by extreme high temps during the summer peak is bad too.

There is a benefit to those who have wind machines, and vineyards with those installed get to save their pond water for irrigation. What they've traded for is added capital budget expenses, and a system which only has one function: mixing the air in your vineyard to avoid frost. On the plus side, you save water, either from your own ponds, wells, or drawn from the Russian River. I had pushed for putting a few wind machines into the budget in the past, and more so last year after the short rainfall, but persuaded myself not to with the idea that there might be some cleaner technology on the way to power them, namely solar instead of diesel or propane. (This type of system seems a bit too "iffy"...and without being backed up by plugging into the main grid, or having a propane back-up, probably wouldn't allow me to get any more rest than I do now. Betting that the system would have stored enough electricity from solar energy in the winter months to be useful 100% of the time it's needed is not a bet I'd want to make. Hopefully the near future hold some solution which is a bit greener and sustainable, rather than rely on a fossil fuel driven back-up system.)

I hope that one day I can look out and see a wind machine which is powered by the sun, but for now I'll bet on having the water available for preventing frost damage.

Do you need a winemaker for wines under $2?

Well......do you?

Is it really all that important to shell out hard earned cash for a "Certified Master of Wine" [CMoW] to produce wines at the $1.99 price point?  TESCO is doing just this, though the winemaker will be in charge of wines in the range of  $2~$40/btl.

But really, I mean how many people would return a wine that was $1.99 if they found it a bit "off" or "different" from a previous bottle? How many cases of the stuff would you need to produce (and sell) to recoup the salary you're going to give that winemaker? Certified Masters of Wine don't just fall off the trees, now do they...

Fresh & Easy to Launch 25 New Wines (TESCO)


"Over the next three months, Tesco's small-format U.S. grocery chain, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, will introduce 25 new wines, 15 of which will be exclusive to Fresh & Easy, and crafted by a Certified Master of Wine, the company said.
The new local and imported wines range from $1.99 to $40 per bottle.... [t]he new wine selection includes a California Cabernet from Sonoma, a Malbec from Argentina, sparkling wines from Italy, and a Tempranillo-Shiraz and Ribera del Duero from Spain..."

I'm assuming the CMoW will be involved with each of the 25 wines to be carried...and I don't want to totally deflate the reasoning behind having the CMoW involved as there are more pricey wines in the range, but the MoW designation is vastly different than a MS or PhD in Enology or Viticulture [see here for a good description]. What this implies is that neither TESCO nor Fresh & Easy will be getting into the wine business by owning a winery...rather that they will be sending their CMoW to various existing wineries with the mission of having said businesses make custom wines for their exclusive retail. Think of the symbiotic relationship between Trader Joe's and Two Buck Chuck. One produces, the other sells exclusively.

This is a double-edged sword. While the winery might sell more of the low-end wine it produces with this scheme, it could also end up cutting the consumer base it normally relies on. If the wine is of decent enough quality, some of its' prior consumers may opt to "trade down" and purchase the cheaper wine with the idea the price is low due to lack of a national marketing program or need to support a brick-n-mortar winery facility.

Custom made wines have been in play for quite some time, from restaurant specific offerings, to airlines, cruise ship companies, tour groups, etc. I don't know of a winery which ever went out of business by participating in these deals before, so the threat of this sort of thing going badly for the winery seems very limited...in fact wineries would prefer to do this in a way because the retailer is contracting with them for the wine, and thus wineries see the cash for the transaction without having to figure out how to get it out the door.In the end, the wineries are happy, the retailers involved tend to be happy, and the consumer - who gets wine of a quality they like at perceived basement prices - also is happy.

Another worthless item to buy for your winery

Much has been made of "dynamization" of water by Rudolph Steiner and his biodynamic followers. The theory is that water as we see it today is disorganized and somehow "unnatural", needing to be corrected by applying dynamism (forcing a vortex to occur in the water by mixing it rapidly in one direction, then reversing the flow by stirring in the opposite direction)

At the site below you'll see yet another of the devices which supposedly delivers better water (to your house-winery-vineyard so that you can experience better heath and nutrition: the much anticipated "Vortelys"® (Terre de Lys®)....

And it's so easy to use:

"The main application of the Vortelys is the revitalization of drink and food. Earth is the planet of water. The human body consists of 90%-70%...."

Hmmmmmm....I think they're off by a little bit. I've never met anyone who was 90% water!

It continues....

"...Our development is done in a liquid medium. Our food contains between 50 and 80 % of water..." 

They obviously haven't been over to taste Mrs.Johnson's grilled burgers (dry as a witches teat, and only slightly more palatable than a hockey puck...a point I never waste mentioning to her as I sprint to the grill to take charge of the burgers before she does!). Anyway these points are really non-sequiturs. Again....

"The water molecule made of 2 hydrogen atoms and one atom of oxygen. Oxygen is the pole of communication. Hydrogen is at the same time the referential and the regulator. This unit is governed by very complex natural laws. The technologies and techniques of Terre de Lys respect natural dynamics, which are the source of well being. The use of Vortelys requires as a preliminary treatment of the electric pollution using the CHL01 protect which treats the electromagnetic pollution. To regenerate the water of the house, the Vortelys is placed near the water meter."

All the incorrect physics and pseudo-anthropomorphism ascribed to these elements aside, I believe they intend it to be "in-line" with your water service flow. Notice how their product "respect[s] natural dynamics" and is implied to do the same for the "very complex natural laws", which remain undefined in the sales pitch. And I've absolutely no idea what the referenced "CHL01" is, but I imagine they'll SELL you one whatever it might be...

"Consequently all the water consumed is revitalized. All water usage such as drinking, cooking, liquid used in healing, gardening and the others benefit from the treatment. In the same way the environment benefits from the discharge used water which has undergone revitalization: Little by little the ecosystem is regenerated. If you wish to benefit from the revitalization of food, and the drink wine, fruit juice etc.), it is enough to place for few minutes the products to be regenerated on the Vortelys. This will greatly enhance the taste of water/liquids and foods. Other applications are taught within the framework of BioSyntonie during our Biosyntonic seminars."

Ah-ha! We see what they really want to do is sell you this item so they can charge you to learn how to use it! And apparently just placing the item you want corrected upon the Vortelys is enough to impart the powerful "electric decontamination" effect, as they state you can do that with wine, juices, foodstuffs, etc.

Ha! What a load of manure this all is.

No cold stabilization on red wines

I was reading an article this morning by Dan Berger and I thought it was a little vague on the point of cold stabilizing red wines. (The article is carried by the Press Demo from Creators Syndicate, so I don't have a link to post...)
What Dan reports is that on a recent trip to the Paso Robles area to taste wines from Justin Winery, the winemaker there (Fred Holloway) stated "I don't cold stabilize my reds". Bully for him. 

Cold stabilization is the process of super-chilling a wine down so that it is unable to hold any extra acid, and then adding a very small amount of potassium bitartrate (cream of tartar) to force the excess acid to drop out of the wine and deposit on the bottom of the tank. This is usually done for white wines, which a consumer can look into the bottle and see the crystals inside if they exist. Frequently, the crystals form after a customer puts the bottle just purchased into the freezer to quick chill for use that same day/night. It's common to then get busy with other things and forget the wine, allowing it to sit there for hours in the freezing cold. At this time, excess acid can naturally form crystals and drop to the bottom of the bottle. Many people, uninformed of the true nature of these harmless particles assume from their appearance that they are really particles of glass, and either don't purchase the wine in the first place, or worse yet, if it "pitches" or "throws" tartrates after spending some time in their freezer or fridge - pour it down the sink or return it to the store they brought it from. That consumer then usually avoids the brand of wine in the future...
In the end, wineries use the technique because it is easier to do this than to mount a huge consumer education program to let people know that these crystals are natural and harmless.
Frankly, as I recall I've never met anyone in the California wine biz who DID cold stabilize their reds. White wines are commonly put through the process for the reasons stated above, but reds are fairly opaque, the green tint of the bottles helps combine with the red color of the wine itself making it harder to see into the bottles, and let's face it - not too many people are throwing their red wines into the freezer. So the issue rarely comes up, and when it does the consumer can usually tell the crystals in red wine aren't glass due to the reddish color of the crystals (some of the wine is trapped within the crystals as they form), which white wine crystals don't have (these are usually slightly off-white).


On another note.....

This is also one of the main acids in wine which is responsible for the crystals left over when the wine is poured into a petri dish and evaporated (the other main players are malic, lactic and citric acids). This experimental process, usually used for what is euphemistically called "sensitive crystallization", which purportedly tells one everything they need to know about how the wine is balanced, integrated and "wholesomeness".

Frederic Koeppel [is this really necessary?]  blogs about one of Bonny Doon's labels (similar to the one on the right) that...

"...[t]he strange objects on these labels, which look like condoms wearing little fur coats, depict the “sensitive crysallization”[sic] of the individual wines. The press materials don’t reveal how these “sensitive crystallizations” occur, but when Grahm writes, of the Muscat 2007, “well-defined vacuoles reflect the powerful aromatic potential” and “finely textured crystals reach out to the end of the periphery reflecting the vine’s connection to the soil,” I cannot help thinking that “sensitive crystallization” is a synonym for “smoke and mirrors.”

Ha! Condoms wearing little fur coats! 

Sounds like something stolen from the Playboy mansion....and is about as informative to why the wine will taste like it does as the back-label drivel that Randall Graham throws onto it!

It's also simmilar to the comment on one of my posts deriding sensitive crystallization where someone suggected the photo towards the top of this post looked like a "pecan pie"....
Do they really expect anyone but an April Fool to believe this sort of thing?

the Dregs Report 2009....

OK....it's April Fool's Day. But you have to give a shout out to the wit, sweat and inspiration that went into this fake headline page!
The Dregs Report 2009 I love the visual of California separating from the Union to become its own "Wine Nation" as the headline states...drifting off towards Hawaii wouldn't be half bad, now would it? Also, there's this gem of Governor Palin pimping for the Alaskan Wine Industry. Of course this explains why she wants us to "Drill, Drill, Drill!" in the ANWR, so there will be even MORE carbon emissions, warming of the Alaskan permafrost to allow for more grapevines to be planted in the area just north of Juneau.... ...and who wants all those pesky caribou running around eating all that precious fruit?! Go take a look & have a laugh!

Go David!

I've mentioned David Coffaro's winery in Dry Creek before ([what it takes to produce a $100 bottle of wine], [vintner in it for more than money]) becuase I like his candor when it comes to the already-too-pretentious wine industry. I'm posting his letter to the editors of the Press Democrat (Santa Rosa) regarding the "Madcap Millenials" article by Peg Melnick last weekend [link to his letter here]:

"Wine should be fun

EDITOR: As a local winery owner, I was distressed by the negativity of the March 21 article by Peg Melnik concerning young people partying during the Russian River Barrel Tasting event. I thought the article unfairly criticized the younger generation of tasters.

At our winery, we experienced nothing like what was reported. We saw at least 1,000 people ages 21 to 31 during the event, and all were well-behaved, excited potential customers. I personally saw no one drinking beer in our parking lot, and I did not see anyone with residual beer remnants in their glasses.

These 20 and 30 somethings are the future customers for all wineries in the industry. When I became passionate about wine in 1970, I saw very few young people who appreciated wine like I did. Since then, I have seen way too much snobbery associated with wine, and I am excited to now see young people interested in the industry. To enjoy wine, I don’t think they have to copy some of us by sniffing, swirling and spitting. Wine should be fun.

I feel it would be better to devote a front-page article to promoting our wine industry than to discouraging winery tourism.

DAVID COFFARO (Geyserville)"

Personally, I've never experienced what Peg reported either. And as I stated in my previous article on the subject, I'm not sure what constitutes "behaving badly" in Ohio, where the quoted tourists were from...

AMEN, Brother David! I'll raise a glass to you this evening.

California still on top where it counts

This in today from the Napa Valley Register's Jack Heeger:

"The famed 1976 Paris Tasting wasn't a fluke.
California wines came out ahead in the 2009 Westchester Wine School tasting in Rye Brook, N.Y., too. The 2009 tasting wasn't quite as decisive nor will it be as famous as the one in Paris, and the 25 judges weren't all wine professionals, although they were described as wine afcionados. But when the results were tallied, California wines proved they can stand proud among the wines of the world."

What I love about revisiting this topic is that it continues to hold true when done in a blind tasting format - meaning people aren't subconsciously biased by what they think they should like....
That this round was done with "lay people" is all the more meaningful in my eyes. After all is said and done, these are the people whose opinion matters more than any professional wine reviewer or blogger (myself included), because they're the one who will be purchasing the wines and spreading their observations, likes and dislikes to the world.

The "fly in the ointment" moment for the French is the line about the...

"...difference in prices led to one woman saying that her husband bought expensive French wines because he thought they were superior, but now she figured he wouldn’t spend as much on wine."

Meaning he isn't going to be buying French wines blindly anymore, and it sounds as though if she gets her way, he'll be looking at a lot more California wines. That says it all right there, Baby!

Heeger continues by stating:

"California wines not only fared better in the scoring, but they were easier on the budget, too. Towle said the average cost of California whites was $32, while the French wines weighed in at $170 average. California reds averaged $75, compared to the French at $170."

So...you're telling me I can get better tasting whites, and buy 5 times as many bottles for the same amount of scratch than if I buy French whites, and get better tasting reds on average while spending less than half what I would on the same number of bottles of French reds! Quite nice news with the economy as shaky as it is.

So why is it the French keep touting their "terroir"?
Sounds like they're continuing to lose this battle......

Go Cal!

Right choice to approve Jackson's new winery

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors just approved Jess Jackson's newest winery, Pelton House on Hwy 128 in Knight's Valley. Now Knights Valley is a beautiful place, but there's been a bad case of NIMBY-ism there for the past several years. (For those unacquainted with the term, NIMBY = Not In My BackYard...)

I think they made the right decision for several reasons, some of which I'll get to shortly.

A rather vocal anti-winery / anti-tasting room group organized mainly from residents of the small valley has tried to get the project shot down since the first whispered plans were making their way around the community. They quickly rallied together, and over the years have made their case known to pretty much anyone who would listen. A few years ago I'd talked with a couple who lived in the area about the issue, and they had nothing to say that was good about Jackson's plans. In fact, they were most concerned about how the winery would become a Mecca for drunken tourists who would then cause all sorts of accidents, and the possibility that there would be huge parties held there throughout the year. Also, that the area was an agricultural area, not a commercial one. (To buy into that argument you have to ignore the fact that vineyards ARE commercial agricultural enterprises...harvest already sees large trucks on that road hauling MANY TONS of grapes to various wineries from the local residents' properties, so it's not really the quiet little lane that opponents made it out to be.)

The proposed site is right on the road, amid many other vineyards in the valley (a large one belonging to Beringer Vineyards is about 1.5 miles west of the project). The key point the residents group were trying to use to get the approval derailed was the fact that there are no other tasting rooms open to the public (without appointment) in the immediate area. Peter Michael Winery is just west of the site, but it is open by appointment only.

The opponents are right to point out that the road is only two lane and has some winding and sharp turns on it - but how many roads in Sonoma County don't fit that description? Not many...
Beyond that point, how do they justify their narrow view that it's ok for residents to have a drink or two and navigate that road, and that same scenario isn't ok for tourists? And what about the residents right to have large private parties at their own properties without the restrictions like those placed on Jackson's project? (The approval of the project limits the number of parties they can have to 4 events per year, with a 200 person max attendance each.)

The residents really risked nothing in their opposition to this, as any of them could go to the Board for a permit in the future looking for approval to open up their own property as a winery/tasting room...if they went that route I think they'd be arguing that their (resident's) project was "a small mom & pop operation", and try to exclude Jackson merely based on the size of his holdings overall. There hasn't been a conversation I was party to where the resident/opponent DIDN'T mention the fact that K-J was a 6+ Million case operation, and how they (K-J) DIDN'T NEED another winery, and certainly not in that area....
And I don't recall ever hearing about anyone approaching Jess Jackson with the deal that residents would give up their right to develop tasting rooms or wineries in exchange for Jackson withdrawing his application...and that strikes me as somewhat hypocritical on their part (please correct me in the comments if this was in fact offered but rejected by K-J...be prepared to give specifics in support of that claim). I also heard from about a dozen concerned opponents over the years that the original K-J plan was for a much larger production facility and "round the year" events - but this has never been confirmed to me by people who work within the company that I know...which isn't to say that wasn't the case, I just have no information to support that point.

The vineyards for the project are seen here from the west on a road leading up the side of Mt. St. Helena. They look pretty quiet and tame, if you ask me, and I seriously doubt the impact from an operation which is producing only ~5,000 cases of wine a year is really going to be felt by the residents to the extent they've complained about it. I think the winery itself will be positioned back in the trees on the lower left of the photo, and wouldn't impact the visual beauty of either the valley or the mountain...in fact, if I understand correctly, the site I have pictured is the same one that the Friends of Mark West Watershed have pictured from 2005 stating it was already graded for the new winery (looks like they were actually clearing it for a vineyard)...
Their article states that "Knights Valley Loses to Jackson Winery" after the Board listened to a whole room of opposing residents and concerned citizens, making the whole scene sound like the issue was bought off by big business. I wonder if any of the local residents' properties were opposed by such a vocal group when they were looking to get permitted for their vineyard plantings....?

Of course not. They're the "David(s)" and K-J is the "Goliath", which is evil, has no repentance, conscience or doubt, and must therefore be "destroyed" by the locals due solely to its size. Bah!

BTW, the wines that have been released to date seem to be performing pretty well: I've seen at least one review of 2004 Cab which garnered a 93 pt score for Wine & Spirits, and a 91 pt score from Stephen Tanzer...so it doesn't look like just another run-of-the-mill winery.

The Knights Valley is a beautiful place, as I said above, but it shouldn't be looked at like it was soooo pristine it couldn't hold together after being violated by a winery with a public tasting room you don't need an appointment for.
It's NOT like we're talking about oil drilling in the freakin' ANWR for chrissakes!

Kudos to the Board for approving the project with some restrictions which should adequately address the residents concerns while not impeding progress....

Take your bagette and shove it!

Why?
Why do this to yourselves when your market is already hurting? The French (and the EU) are poised to try again to restrict use of even more place names, processes and other sheer nonsense in the name of Intellectual and Geographic Property. (The EU proposal describes these as "PGI" [Protected Geographic Indication] and "PDO" [Protected Designation of Origin]...see this link for more though the details aren't on that site...see here instead for detail.)

This is but a sampling of the original April 2008 text, and is in itself a good sentiment preparing to go horribly wrong:

"(38) Certain terms are traditionally used in the Community and convey information to consumers about particularities and quality of wines complementing the information conveyed by designations of origin and geographical indications. So as to ensure the working of the internal market and fair competition and to avoid consumers being misled, those traditional terms should be eligible for protection in the Community."

I see it as foolishness on a grand scale. And I blogged about it back in 2005 when it was first being put to the vote, and later over the years (see here [French Angry], and here [EU subsidies reform]).

If the Italians want to limit the use of "Prosecco", fine. If the French want to restrict the use of "Burgundy" or "Bordeaux", again, I'm fine with that too. But now we cross the line of logic and find ourselves faced with a country(-ies, in the case of the multi-headed Hydra that the EU has now become...) which would have us stop using ALMOST ANY of the words we've borrowed from their language - EVER!

Yes, I refer mainly to France, which if all goes well in their eyes, we heathen Nouveau Monde upstarts would be prohibited from using words like "clos", "vintage", "chateau", etc. But a question remains...where does this all end?
Will we be prohibited from naming restaurants "Chez"? (think "Chez Panisse" for example...)
Will brands of French bread such as "Parisien" be outlawed?
Will "French bread" itself be renamed "EU-style yeasted wheat foam" to avoid confusion with the continental product??

The real problem is that the French - once proud that their industry led the world in both product sales and ubiquitous verbiage to describe not only the wine itself, but the process by which it is made, as well as practices in the vineyard, are now wanting to rescind their lease of words we seem to have borrowed...
And please note: the word "vineyard" is yet another potential casualty in this war. "Martha's Vineyard" will soon become "Martha's Orchard For Grapes" (BTW "orchard" is safe to use due to its humble beginnings in Latin...).

And what other words may be in danger...?
Brace yourselves! How about Chardonnay, Cabernet, Sauvignon, Pinot, Noir, Gamay (not that anyone uses that anymore), Blanc, Sirah, Petitte, etc...
Yup, you guessed it, all first coined by the French and then adopted by the unwashed hordes and used throughout the world to describe wines. Why should they stop just with place names or winemaking styles? This is a very slippery slope they want to place us on.
And what of words like "bleu"? Words which we culturally associate with French, but originating from Germanic and Norse language words before the French picked it up.
Will France be required to drop those words in a nod to the cultures it stole them from? Really, where will this process finally peter out...there seem to be so many layers it depends on where people finally become fatigued and stop the bureaucratic nonsense.

In the meantime, how will we deal with this - do we all have to learn Latin and use that? Certainly there aren't any members of the Roman culture still around to protest the use of a language which has been considered "dead" by top scholars for many centuries....

We need to stand up for "generic" and "semi-generic" terms now, or face the future consequences of a few determined, but closed minded imperialist Frenchmen...
Perhaps soon the French will be the only ones allowed to speak French at all, and will see their world shrink as well as their wine sales...

"Madcap" millenials...? Long Live Queen Victoria!

On Saturday last (3/21/09), Peg Melnick of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat wrote an article which was featured high on the front page, just below the name of the paper (dear God - it must be important!) which seemed to imply that many of the recent tourists & wine aficionados were put-off by the large number of miscreant youths who partied through the wineries with apparent abandon. To the credit of the editors of the paper (or perhaps Peg herself), the term "madcap millenials" didn't appear in the print edition of her story - only in the blogged version.

Now, with all due respect to Peg , I don't think anyone in the past 50 years has used the term "madcap"...unless you count the British comedy troupe Monty Python back in the mid 70's when they described themselves as "zany, madcap humor..." (Historically, I believe that was also the last recorded usage of the term "zany" as well...)
Drunken antics of a few aside, this is all -simply put- Victorian Prudishness, and the old guard needs to get over themselves. We read of the "average Midwest Joes", who were offended by this travesty:

Dear GOD! ...have they NO SENSE OF DIGNITY!?
The sheer hubris of dressing up for St.Patrick's Day, and going to a winery instead of a brewery!
OH! The irritation! Why I'm chaffing at the mere thought of having to share a tasting room with these...these......young fashion-challenged-miscreants....?!
Wait a minute....just what is the Ohio definition of "misbehaving"?

BTW, it IS and always HAS BEEN the responsibility of the participating wineries NOT TO SERVE PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY DRUNK - regardless of whether their inebriation occurs from beer, wine or liquor, and regardless of whether they become inebriated on their property or show up in that condition. This responsibility also encompasses the right to refuse service to individuals who are acting inappropriately on their property...
Again from the article:

I believe the correct term is "(they) Tweet" not "twitter" when speaking in the plural. And again, it sounds like this is just the crowd the industry needs to appeal to - think how far your marketing dollars go when the crowd gathers at your winery and HAS A GOOD TIME and then spreads the word via their own circle of friends electronically!

In a recap of her reporting, Peg has an online blog which posed a few questions to people who had experience at the recent Wine Road Barrel Tasting, asking if they, too, had some unfortunate or unpleasant experiences with the "younger generation of wine drinkers" (my quotes on that last phrase, Peg didn't use it). And this is where the generational warfare tone continues from the main article, to wit:

"Who are these brash drinkers? A suspect element within the Millennials, the offspring of the Baby Boomers who range in age from 22 to 31. And these so-called "madcap Millennials" are roaming through Wine Country with some regularity..."

Come on now! With phrases like that it sounds like we're talking about packs of feral dogs attacking pastoral herds of sheep, or the hoards of mindless zombies from Night of the Living Dead showing up on your front porch!!

There is an element of concern when people show up at your establishment and proceed to get "hammered" or "plastered"...or if they show up at your place already in that state...
But lets all address THAT issue, not one where we separate people out because they dress differently, or age, or if they - God Forbid! - are actually having FUN...
Afterall, FUN, respectfully enjoyed, IS what everyone should be seeking...

Another Nuance to the Specator's Black Eye

What I find most interesting about this week's Wine Spectator Restaurant Award debacle is not that WS was duped or their very defensive response. No, the most interesting part to me is the outright shadenfraude most people seemed to react with upon hearing the news. Its been known for a while that the WS Restaurant Awards are not only a huge source of revenue for the magazine (4,500 applicants x $250 each is a cool $1.1 million, with what we can now see is obviously minimal overhead to administer!) but also an opportunity for restaurants to advertise under the guise of an award, which many seem to hang right in the lobby area, so diners can see it as they wait for their table.

This symbiotic back scratching has gone on for years, and many of us just chuckled over it, particularly if we visited one of the award winners and saw a truly disappointing wine list - we were then reminded the WS's diligence did not seem particularly thorough. Now, Mr. Goldstein has brought this into the public eye, the story hit MSNBC, The NY Times, The LA Times and just about every wine blogger in the universe. One can only speculate on the damage to WS's reputation, and while I don't defend Mr. Goldstein's methods, they seemed to have served their intended purpose by bringing this issue to daylight.

The real bit of interest here though is the sheer joy many bloggers and posters have shown at the black eye given to WS. I've taken my own pot shots at the magazine (and that one got me a similarly defensive and pointed email from Thomas Mathews), but its surprising to see just how much smug glee people showed over this. I'm frankly a bit surprised by it. Other than the sycophants on the magazine's own message boards, there seems to be limited support for WS's position, particularly given the now-widespread coverage of how much they really profit off this single issue. I can only surmise that there is some strong resentment over WS's position, either as the iconic industry leader everyone aims to topple or as the industry's stuffed shirts, emblematic of everything elitist and off-putting about wine.

So what does it mean for WS going forward? My guess is that those that supported the magazine before will continue to support it (perhaps more ardently), and those that disliked it before will use it as a rallying cry, proclaiming the downfall of the magazine. The damage will probably be done with those that held no opinion on WS. They'll skim the surface or see the MSNBC coverage on TV and think less of the magazine, but I doubt circulation will be affected materially.

Will this lead to a changing of the guard via Wine Blogs or other media? James Molesworth of WS doesn't. He says "This is the problem with the 'blogosphere'. It's a lazy person's journalism. No one does any real research, but rather they just slap some hyperlinks up and throw a little conjecture at the wall, and presto! you get some hits and traffic..."

What makes me laugh most is Molesworth's comment about bloggers being lazy, particularly given the context in which he makes the comment. Goldstein went to enormous lengths to perpetrate his deception (an answering machine in Italy, a website, phony reviews of the restaurant, etc). Dismissing him, and other bloggers, as lazy is not only delusional, its flat-out wrong!

Robert Mondavi

There have been many fine tributes to Bob already, I'll only share a page of quotes from him. There are some gems here:

http://www.robertmondaviwinery.com/flash/docs/A-Quotable%20RGM%202008.pdf

and share a quote of my own from my Grandmother:

"If you can't say anything nice, say nothing"

and dedicate it to Julia Flynn Siler who, on learning of Bob's passing, had this touching gem:

"The family had made preparations for this day for a long time. Whether his passing heals the family, I don't know,"

I think its times like this that people reveal their true selves. At least she managed not to slip a promo in for her book....

Anniversary of the 1906 Earthquake

Here we are 102 years after the 1906 San Andreas earthquake which shattered San Francisco.

I hear some of you saying..."so what does that have to do with wine?"

Plenty!

But first- attached are a few stereo-optic photos taken right after the 1906 earthquake: notice how everything is pretty much gone (fires consumed most of the wood the quake spared), how the people are living in the streets, and how the then destroyed Fairmont Hotel was reported to have cost JUST $4,000,000 to construct in the first place! These days you can't even look at a lot the hotel occupies in SF for that much cash.
(Thanks to Stuart for sending these photos in...
Click on the photos to see a bigger version, and look at the center of the photo and cross your eyes slightly...and the photo should magically pop out at you...)

...and isn't it nice how the Keystone-esque cops are guarding the safes from the banks?...
And still more damage & people living in makeshift shacks and tents, with no water and no sanitation...(please note how the shack has a horseshoe which is placed the wrong way up for luck...)...
Again, how does this tie into wine?
One of the most common questions when I see people tour wineries is "what happens when there's an earthquake?"
It's usually asked as people are shown around barrel rooms - especially rooms which have the barrels stacked high above the tourists heads...and by people from back east, or at least people whom haven't experienced an earthquake or two.

Well, here's a video of what's possible when you take a stack of barrels 6-racks high and place it on a shaker table for a simulated quake. I should note that in my book, wineries really worried about this possibility use 4-barrel racks for stacking as they're much more stable than the 2-barrel variety are in earthquakes...notice how they fail in the front-back (linear) direction and not to the sides (laterally). (I didn't get any sound on the video...)

As you watch the video and look at the photos, think to yourself of how much it would cost to repair the damages from a quake in these current gloomy-economy times...I mean even the smallest mom & pop winery is worth $10~20MIL.
And even the cheapest house in Napa or Sonoma counties is a half-million dollars each....

Inventory losses for winery case goods alone could reach the $500MIL mark, as they're also stacked high and might be damaged in a quake. Tack on all the costs from damaged buildings, losses to equipment and lost time working the wines, as well as possible losses to life, and the place is pretty much a shambles. Transportation chains broken due to injured workers, damaged highways, overpasses and bridges, etc...
In fact, just a few spots of Silverado trail, highways 29, 12/121, and highway 101 being damaged would cripple the ability for National Guard relief to get through.
If there was also damage to the local airports, we'd be pretty much screwed for a week or two.

What is there for you to do to prepare?
Definitely put together an earthquake kit with all the food & water you'll need for 4~7 days, but also slip a few bottles of your favorite wines in as well...after all, you can't be sure when your favorite wine shop will reopen (if ever), and the comfort you'll get from having something as simple as a good bottle of wine will be priceless in a major event like that (you could also barter it for something else, should the need arise!).
[check out the ABAG website for additional preparedness info]

Shat would the total monetary damages be? The final number would vary greatly depending on the type of scenario that plays out, but it could easily be in the billions.
It might even approach the total from, say, a Katrina-type disaster, though the area affected would be much smaller in scope. But still the possible consequences of a strong quake scenario in the North bay area are drastic.

Beware rising wine prices

I can't imagine anyone still buying super unleaded these days, much less imagine someone buying 38 gallons of it at the same time.......but here it is: the $159 purchase!
Maybe some kid in his new 4x4 thought he'd get a better burn with that higher octane stuff...
Sure as hell wasn't me, as the only things I've ever driven with a 40 gal tank are tractors and vineyard trucks. But that leads me into the next topic: what's gonna happen when diesel hits $4.20 per gallon?

Be ready for increases in the prices of all goods, but I think you'll see that the vast majority of wineries will hold their prices steady for the short term, as most are already structured with their prices well above their cost of goods. That's not to say they don't feel this impact - they do - but they should be able to hold steady for the short term, barring any higher records for a barrel of crude oil. The exceptions to this will probably be for the truly small Mom & Pop wineries which really just scrape by anyways, and the public traded wine companies which have hungry shareholders wanting to hold onto their dividends if not increase them.
Of course, I've gone on record before as stating that wines don't cost nearly as much to make as wineries want you to believe (see this link about Coffaro winery) and how that plays into the image they then market to consumers, even so, there are many wineries which keep their prices down who will not have that extra padding to absorb the fluctuations in the fuel prices...

The problems for the smaller family wineries is one of "where do we get the money for the fuel increases", and it's likely they'd need to raise prices or sell out (not likely that fuel prices will retreat far enough to get them back out of the red), but they may do OK if they have a higher-end flagship or specialty blend they can market for extra bucks. The problem then becomes one of how much of that specialty blend they can possibly produce, and what the market saturation point is.

On the other hand, most of the really large wine companies are already structured to a position where they can more easily move revenues around to keep up with fuel prices, but will see a higher demand from their investors who want to make up for failing portfolios from other market segments which currently are tanking. Couple that with the continued talk of recession (gasp!) - even by the head of the Federal Reserve, and our gutless President Bu$h who strangely DIDN'T see this as a potential problem only a month ago - and you'll see investors start to harp on their "safe" stocks in large wine companies to get them more scratch.

There will still be people who drink outrageously priced wines, and I hereby donate my allotment of Kristal to the likes of the debutantes whom do so (Britney & Paris, do you hear me?)....
But I think it unlikely that those segments of our industry will see growth in the near future...I think the mid range part of the market will make gains as people who otherwise might take vacations don't, and hedge that the economy is likely to drop further before it gets any better.

March: out like a lion

And here just a few weeks ago I'd jinxed the season by mentioning that it didn't feel like we were likely to get a frost this season.
And then the weather report came out on Saturday night suggesting that we might drop well below freezing on Sunday night...

And so we did....the frost alarm here went off just after midnight.
Not that it woke me up. Frankly, when I know it's coming I can't really fall asleep anyway.
I already had the coffee pot ready to go, and as I was only drowsy I knew it'd only take a quick cup to go with me in the truck to get me fired up. There's a lot of adrenaline that shoots into your system when you have 2" shoots already out on the vines and the temp's dropping below freezing - fast. This really is the danger zone for all growers, a time when everyone needs to be extra cautious to make sure your crop isn't lost to a late frost which kills the buds off. Those shoots in the photo above are really in danger on a night like Sunday's.

I turned on the sprinklers at midnight when it was just dipping past 33°, as I knew that was just the start! The lowest temp I registered was 27 °F @ ~4 AM, and even at sunrise the temp hadn't climbed back out of the danger zone yet...
It wasn't until a little after 9 AM that I turned off the water system, and by that time I had used about a foot of water out of the irrigation pond.

Luckily we've had a decent amount of rain this year (so far...we still need another 7.5" to be at our "normal" level), and the pond has plenty of ammo in it to fight a snap frost here or there.
But my frost protection pond is also my irrigation pond for summer, so I'd rather not see too many of these incidents - not only because it puts the shoots in danger of getting frosted & wilting, but also because it means I don't have as many options when we hit a warm dry snap in the summer or just before harvest. As it is, there's no harm done...this time.
Woe to those whose system fails, whether it is a fan system or irrigation setup, as there's no real way to recover from losing your most productive buds to frost... once the cold air has done its damage, your coming harvest is pretty much shot for the affected vines....

So here we had March, which came in like a lamb with warm temps, heading out like a lion.....albeit a quiet lion, without much in the way of noise (storms), but certainly a dangerous situation for the coming crop.

75th Anniversary of Prohibition's REPEAL !

Saturday 3/22/08 is the Septuagesiquintennial (75th) anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition!

And I'll bump my post from 2005's anniversary for the occasion:
"Don't let this happen to you!"

Every year I take a few moments to reflect on where we are now, thanks to all the hard work and sacrifice of those Americans who had to weather the crappy social experiment that was prohibition...
After all the corruption which took hold of the country, and drove people to all sorts of bad behavior to get what they wanted, we must remember that the "noble experiment" was foisted upon the nation by various Social Conservatives who had worked hard to bend public perception to their own end. They created and reinforced existing stereotypes to work their evil on our society. Luckily, not too many other societies have been so naive to follow our 20th Century experiment.

Yes, the "teetotalers" of the various Temperance Unions and movements were the architects of almost 14 years of HELL for this country...despite the fact that many of them no doubt believed they were doing "God's work" in getting alcohol outlawed.
Little did they think how strong the desire for drink by people who were moderate consumers when they decided that it was the only way to save families and individuals from "drink". Thank God we've learned from the past, and won't be going back in that direction again.

At least we won't if ALL of US pay attention, and continue to call the Neo-prohibitionists on their false claims as them make them.

Now all we have to do to truly be free of the legacy of prohibition is to put the final nails in the coffin of the three-tier system, and free up interstate shipping. But before we do that, sit back tomorrow evening with a good glass of your favorite wine or beer, and enjoy the freedom to consume!
Legally!

Savor Sonoma, cheers & jeers

This past weekend was the Savor Sonoma wine tasting event, and after inviting several friends to this barrel tasting event for the umpteenth time, I thought it'd be a good post if I had everybody gather all their impressions at each winery and put it all together. Here's a run-down of what the group found to be the best (& worst) of the weekend.....tasting staff and volunteers were all very helpful, except where noted otherwise...

Cheers:

Mayo Family and Collier (at Family Winemakers in Kenwood) tied for the best overall performances, and the 2-for-1 special at Collier was fantastic (bought a case of the '04, got a case of the '03 FREE!....now THAT's marketing!), and the winemaker at Collier was a hoot!
Mayo was very good overall, with very drinkable sangiovese, chard, and viognier. The petite sirah was a tad aggressive, but would do well with a bit of age on it, and the cab franc was classically (read as "old world") less-ripe than most of the other cab francs produced these days in California, so a nice change on that varietal. The Meritage and Cab were both put together very well, and could use a few years to pick up some bottle bouquet. The port was excellent, and was "futures" worthy.

Eric Ross Winery had a very nice "light style" pinot, which was also worthy of buying futures, but the rest of their wines were not all that exciting. I'm still surprised Gallo hasn't tried to sue them for having a black rooster on their label...perhaps they're waiting to see if the Chianti Classico organization in Italy will take care of that for them...

Valley of the Moon had the best food pairing, with a tomato-bread soup that paired perfectly with the wine. The recipes were available on postcards for everyone to pick up if they wanted...another nice touch. The syrah they were sampling wasn't all that great, otherwise they were good.

Muscardini had some nice wines, the Unti Syrah was good, as was the sangiovese and the "Tesoro" blend, which we grabbed a few bottles of for dinner that night.

VJB...in a tent outside the tasting room right on HWY 12 in Kenwood, we felt a little like we were going to be hit by a car careening off the road at any time, but the wines were good: both their primitivo and the Dante blend were very good to excellent.

Jeers:
Ledson......has been much better in the past, not very impressive this time around. Also, the "kid" who was pouring behind the bar was, well... the best phrase is "somewhat lit". And as he poured us all a Brett ridden petite sirah, proclaiming how "...most wines need quite a bit of time before they're ready, but this wine's ready to drink right now. Really just an excellent barrel of wine..."
Right. It was poured out directly into the spittoon, and I even opted for a fresh glass, but was disappointed by receiving another Brett wine, this time a Cab.
(So, if you're going to have a wine event, make sure your employees aren't drinking more than your guests, and make sure they know the difference between Brett and complexity from aging!)

Benziger. How could I NOT stop by the Sonoma bastion of all things biodynamic?
Ok, to be fair, they had a very nice Sauv Blanc barrel being sampled, which was paired extremely well - most of us felt perfectly- with a slightly spicy asian noodle salad. I also hold their stated desire to farm as responsibly as possible in high regard. But the rest of the wines were average to disappointing, with both the BD wines being Brett tainted. Not a great advertisement for the potential for BD which they preach so loudly...

As we made for the exit, I recognized one of the gals behind the bar as the one who'd helped some guests and myself a few years back...and for a moment I panicked that she recognized me also, as my friends stopped to taste what she had to offer behind the bar.

This I should explain: on that particular occasion years ago we had gone to their tasting room for my guests' introduction to what BD was, and how the resulting wines turned out. We had tasted thru the wines available at the bar, and had opted for the "premium" reserve tasting. We paid our money and shuffled into an adjacent room where this gal got into the whole BD is the best-thing-since-sliced-bread was invented, and how the wines we were about to imbibe were fantastic, low-yield vineyards, and how no better example of what quality wines BD could produce. Long story short, we tasted thru the first wines with not much comment, happy to let her go on-and-on with the winery's spiel...until she poured what she assured us was the finest of their offerings: a BD cab sauv from McDowell (?) vineyard. I was the lucky schmuck who got the first pour, and before she had gotten the glass poured for the person next to me, I was pouring mine into the spittoon. It never made it closer than arm's length from my face - it never was tasted.
At this point she stops pouring, aghast & with a unique mixed expression of disbelief and utter shock, said "That's our best wine...".
My reply was "No. Thanks, but I can smell band-aids and barnyards as soon as you started pouring. That wine's contaminated with Brettanomyces yeast."
She haughtily countered with "It's a style...." (as if I was an idiot she could pull that crap on.).
Flatly I replied, "No it's not...it's a contaminant yeast which is producing those aromas. There's no fruit to be found in here...what's next to pour today?"
The pissed off look on her face spoke volumes.
Needless to say, our tasting ended soon afterwards...and we broke for the parking lot...

How this all ties in: This same lady just this past weekend, while pouring a BD wine for one of my guests which was Brett ridden, started waxing about how great a wine it was, and about the exquisite fruit it came from. My pal, quick to get the strong band-aid odor wafting from his glass baited her by asking "what is it that you smell in this?"
Her reply - "All that makes this vineyard special, the terroir of the site."
My pal persisted "It smells quite strong..." to which the gal replied "That's the soil you're smelling..."
He poured it out & took her to task by saying "No. That's Brett making that band-aid smell, NOT the soil!".
(I felt quite happy with myself, as though I'd just completed some magna opus, hearing my pal stand up for himself to this snotty lady...)

Here it was several years later, and I found my party walking out of the tasting room - again - and this particular pour staff gal still hasn't improved either her demeanor or her knowledge base.
If indeed she DOES know what Brett is, then she needs to improve her delivery to people so she's not continually talking down to them. It was just insulting.

I think she's had enough of the company Kool-aid, boys...
PS - it's time to change your staff out when they can't offer anything but a scowl to your patrons...I don't recall her smiling once the entire time we were there. Frankly she looked like she'd just swallowed a live scorpion.

Better luck next year...I hope....

the Myth of Price: Sex and Wine

Eliot Spitzer, the soon-to-be-EX Governor of New York, provides an excellent reminder of the fallacy of "high price equals quality"...

A recent article on MSN provides the story, one which even Freud knew to be true and which still bombards us everyday via marketers who wish to present their product as superior: Charge more for it! (click on the photo for the link)

Where he spent $1,500 and upwards for the "company" of a woman, one has to wonder how much better the experience was than with FIVE $300 Vegas hookers - not that I would know...and I don't intend to get too graphic here, as this blog is about wine...although the similarities in how both products are positioned price-wise is tempting....
No. Must...resist...temptation...!

But really, what was he paying for - exclusivity? I mean a bottle of Chateaux Petrus will run you something in the $1,500 to $2,000 range, and that would be pretty exclusive as they're only 5 glasses worth in each bottle (so around $300 to $400 per glass). That's pretty exclusive. But the only thing exclusive about a hooker is...well...nothing really, by definition anyway...

The placebo effect mentioned in the article clearly demonstrates that price matters to us - subconsciously - and that it then colors the experience as we perceive it.
Could it really make a $20 bottle taste like a $200 bottle, if that's what we paid for it? Probably not, but we might THINK it does when we taste it, and therein lies the power of the price tag.

I personally know of a past obscure winery which had several different labels of what was essentially the same wine, but placed in different price tiers. And you know what? The label with the highest price and most upscale presentation almost always sold out faster than the others. It's not a perfect example, because the wines in question were sold in restaurants where people are easily led down the path of price equals quality, and in the higher $$ per plate establishments is where this was reportedly happening. But what was weird was the fact that the wait staff seemed to prefer the higher priced wine when they were tasted through the wines by the distributor. Part of that can be ascribed to the spiel the marketer sold them at that time, but that the impression persisted even after the staff had time to taste the wines on their own later was most impressive. So not surprisingly they would then recommend that wine more often when asked by customers.

This is why I always counsel people starting into the wine tasting world to ignore price and focus on quality as YOU perceive it. This way the "overpriced" average wines that someone is trying to foist on you as quality product are lost in the shuffle if there's a better tasting wine to someone at a lower price.

For my take on Mr Spritzer, my thought is a quote I heard years ago..."there is no virtue so great as to be beyond all temptation."
Sadly that also applies to wine producers, aspirin manufacturers, car companies, etc...

March...a time for vigilance

Well, I guess now there's no arguing that Spring is here.

With daytime temps hitting the mid 70's, and lows in the high 30's, the trees and flowers have started blooming across the countryside. The air is thick with the smell of all the flowers, and even those dormant old vines are starting to look as if they may bust forth from their winter sleep very soon. Insects have reawakened, and have begun to buzz about the various nectar rich flowers.

Now I may seem a bit alarmist, but....this IS the time of year that we've seen the first attempted incursions of some nasty pests into our area, and the glassy-winged sharpshooter (GWSS) is the primary concern. The "normal" route of attack is for the pesky buggers to try to hitch a ride on ornamental shrub shipments which are coming up from southern California to various nursery's here in the north bay. These days we also have to be vigilant for the light brown apple moth, as well as the transporting of the grapevine mealybug from place to place.

As happy as I may be to be out of Ol' Man Winters' grasp, I would've preferred to have a few days of hard frost to make my life easier as far as pest management is concerned. And although we did have some cold weather -as well as a little more snow on the ridges than usual- it never really seemed to get that cold, or cold-enough to put an icy foot on the pests' little necks....
Even though an occasional late March frost (or Alaskan cold front) isn't out of the question, it's hard to envision one happening when the daytime temps are as high as they are now. If we'd had more of a penetrating frost during the winter, then maybe there would be a few more damaged vines, but less pressure for farmers to spray very heavily.
The slight increase in the number of damaged vines from winter frost is something I'd be willing to sacrifice every once in a while to help control the little SOB's, but that's due to the fact that I advocate pruning late and can compensate for some damaged buds here and there. Mind you, I'm not wishing there was an ice storm like we sometimes see damaging Florida's citrus crops, or the current winter storms we see across most of the rest of the country right now...just a little deeper cold snap back in late December or early January.

There's been more rainfall this year but we're still about 10" short of where we should be (I'm showing 28.5" so far since July of last year). That usually isn't a problem since March will dump ~7" of rain on average, and April and May both contribute ~2" each to the season's total....but the cold weather is pretty much a memory for this season.

See these posts for more information on the pest threats we collectively face!
2007/03/more-bad-news
2007/02/napa-sharpshooter-alert
2005/04/vigilantes-wanted
2005/04/update-on-sharpshooter-vigilante-post

2007/06/Vine mealybug threat

And here are the IPM websites for each of the pests:
GWSS - sharpshooters
Light Brown Apple Moth
Grapevine Mealybug

Amazon joins wine shipping debate

Amazon.com is joining the interstate wine shipping debate...and in a huge way!
By looking to ship wine via internet sales, they are joining the ranks of other relatively smaller retailers (e.g., Wine.com) which are already doing this. But while the folks at Amazon aren't divulging their long-term motives, it's easy to extrapolate their move as one to become the largest online wine retailer - and they have the mechanism in place to do just that, once they can nail down the model to move it into the buyers' hands....

Their strategy is starting with adding wine onto their existing fresh food (groceries) delivery in Seattle (called "Amazon Fresh"). But while this seems pretty innocuous form the onset, it would look to be only a test shot being fired over the bow of neo-prohibitionists and distributors whom wish to keep this area of commerce for them selves.

One of the benefits of the way that Amazon is doing this right now, is that with a fresh produce delivery, well...you have to have a delivery person, and therefore direct consumer contact as the goods are delivered. This allows for confirmation of the buyers' ages by any said delivery person, and completes the "handshake" to ease fears of those who are worried that teens will be using the service to illegally get wine & booze.

Leave it to a large, well oiled internet shipping machine like Amazon to bring the argument back to a national level - a position this topic hasn't enjoyed since Granholm vs Heald !
Sure, Costco continues to take states on one-by-one, but if Amazon expands it's delivery service to a national level, and can continue to provide this "handshake verification of buyers' ages....well, what're the neo-prohibitionists and distributors going to have left to complain about???

Frankly, I can't really imagine any other Internet Giant doing this...as the sales of all their other items will buoy any shortcomings in cash flow until the project takes off. The only thing I can envision on the same scale would be if eBAY suddenly decided to implement an age verification system and allow online bidding for those hard to find '45 Margaux.....

Grab a fork, pop a cork!

You've got to give credit where & when it's due - and today the winner is....[drumroll...]
...Costplus!


This wine series is created by someone else for Costplus, obviously, since they don't have their own winery operation, and custom labeled for the shelves. These shown are all California origin, but who knows, maybe they'll expand it to include foreign wines as well. I'm not sure yet who it is who makes it for them, but that is really beside the point...

Making wines marketed to the foodies who already run into the likes of Costplus, Whole Foods, etc., strikes me as really well done by linking the "suggestion" of pairing food & wine with the graphic of meat cuts on the label. And the tag-line they use - "Grab a fork and pop a cork..." - is an instant classic!
And with an ad price of just $7.99/btl, certainly not something that would break anyone's bank by trying it (this raises a few questions in my mind, as most serious "established" foodies tend to fall into the "wine snob" camp and might dismiss this wine based solely on it's bargain basement price...though it likely would draw the attention of "budding foodies", and those foodies with a more adventurous spirit and less pretension...
Although drawing in Ma & Pa Kettle, or whomever, into trying wine with meals is the actual objective, and on that point the marketing is very effective).

In fact, I can see a whole line around this, with a lamb graphic for Syrah, Pork for Gewurztraminer and some Pinots, etc., tailored to the tastes of the wine manager for the brand. Perhaps even to the point where the label offers suggestions for specific cuts of meats...
Classically, the wine suggestion would entail taking the method of preparation and any sauces into play as well as the meat source category, but the idea is intriguing!
In my mock-up below, perhaps the Cab in question has some oak and smoke along with a nice tannin level, and would pair well with some steak, or other thinner cuts of beef.
Of course, I'm still in the "drink whatever you want" camp, and routinely ignore classic food & wine advice (last night I had BLT's with a cheap Pinot Grigio...), but even so, I can see where this sort of marketing would be really effective, and perhaps dramatically reduce the public trepidation over committing to a particular wine for fear it doesn't pair with what they are planning to prepare.
What really needs to change is the perception that wine needs to be paired properly to be enjoyed at all... which belief is sadly prevalent in western popular culture.
Cheers to Costplus for attempting to make wine "fun" and "foodie-friendly"!
Even if that ends up only being "budding foodies"...

The Noble Fluid: time & place

I spent a few well earned weeks on a trip to Italy in the past month. Mostly it was for pleasure, but I did manage to get some wine tours and meetings with vintners into my schedule.


Primarily I was in Rome for the wedding of a harvest intern who came over to work with us for two consecutive harvests. Vittorio was extremely talented, and when I got the invite to see him & Annalise get hitched in Rome I took the opportunity for yet another Italian road trip.

I mean, who could resist, right? Even if I did think they were crazy for having a wedding in February (they got lucky & the weather was gorgeous for the ceremony & reception) - I think the main reasons they didn't wait until early summer was that Anna's father is in poor health...and probably the fact that Vittorio didn't want to wait any longer...

As always, I found the Italians welcoming and willing to share every aspect of their culture. And I also met a wonderful older German couple which hit it off really well with my party...so much so, that we altered our plans a bit so we could spend the last part of our vacation with them.
And it was over wine and fantastic food that I heard some great stories about how they grew up (both were born ~1940, and lived in what was to become West Germany) in a post WWII Germany, how they had family on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and (unbeknown to me) how in the first few years after the war people could go back and forth over the border and trade relatively freely with each side.

The most interesting stories were about how they still had wines from the eastern side in those early days, but were sending more to the other side than ever came west...
Eventually, the "curtain" was lowered more forcefully, and people really couldn't cross the border anymore - if you were able to get permission, you certainly didn't return to the eastern side!

"You are born into a certain time and place...it becomes you, and you become it. There is nothing you could ever do to change that..."

On the topic of European history, I count myself as "informed", but certainly not an expert...and it was fascinating to have such eager teachers with first hand experience ready to answer each and every question of ours. They had been wine buffs since their early adulthood, and started our conversation about "the Noble fluid" (a phrase at which I first cringed) with the feeling of history which permeates everything the Europeans do. After all, they asked, how can you separate yourself from the context of your own life?
Every action in their home towns when they were growing up was juxtaposed upon a cityscape made up of new buildings right next to older sections of town where the buildings were more than a thousand years old...

"(The weight of history) is really wonderful, yet it can suffocate, too."

They said many times that they didn't really wish to change anything, but that when change was needed, it tended to take longer because of "everyone's sense of history", and that it was especially true of the wine industry.
And while they talked of their new found love for an occasional California Sauv Blanc, they also flatly rejected wines which were too ripe in their opinion as trash - but that mostly came down to the prices they pay for New World wines in Germany, as they said they wouldn't feel too bad getting a bottle every once-in-a-while they didn't like, if they hadn't just dropped so many euros to pick that disappointing bottle up.

Great people, and fantastic wines.
More later on this when I have some time to look back at what we drank & where (some of it is still blurry!).

Happy B-Day, Rudy Steiner!

An historic day!

The 147th Birthday of Rudolf Steiner!

Born Feb 25th, 1861, we can see from the following astrology chart that he was destined for greatness right out of the womb....

Note how the "inter-connected-osity" of his planetary alignment provided a superior complex polygonic network of communication pathways -an über-functionality, if you will- allowing him to commune with Nature and discern Spirits the rest of us can only sit back and marvel at!
Why even the lowliest inorganic elements were not immune from his powerful psyche - we read of his wonderous, momentous interrogations of Sulfur, Nitrogen, and Phosphorous!

But anyway, enough of that nonsense!
So here's a glass of our best raised to you, Rudy, without whom I wouldn't have nearly so much in life to lampoon!
Uhhhh, I don't believe the producer was BD...sorry about that...
*** Not that it would matter, but I have no recollection where I found that chart on the 'net. Not that a fact like that would change any - and I mean ANY - description you wanted to attach to it....
And what of the fact he shares that birthdate with untold numbers of others? Then that description would effect EVERYONE who shared that same birth chart. So perhaps the question shouldn't be "Didn't his astronomical chart indicate he was unique", but rather "where were all the people in the world who should've shared his amazing attributes due to being born on the same date at the same time disappear to"?
I mean, really, why weren't there 6,000 (or more!) Steiner-esque philosophers unleashed upon this world on the day he was born? Or do we need to talk about how this sort of psuedoscience (both astrology & biodynamics) is bunk...?

Sensitive crystalization of Wine

It's a new year, and intelligent people will continue to find differences of opinion between themselves as they have throughout history.
In fact, even though we find ourselves another year away from our superstition ridden past, it's not uncommon to find otherwise reasonable people who might still hold onto "quaint, old fashioned" ideas - like astrology actually being accurate, etc.
But to find that the number of people who are turning their backs upon science, and reverting to "populist psuedoscience" as evidenced by the "sensitive crystallization" movement within the wine industry, is...well, an "ill omen".

For those not familiar with the practice, wine is mixed with a solution of copper chloride, dried at 95°C (~205°F), and the resulting crystal pattern is interpreted.

Amazingly, the pattern is supposed to reveal the inner strength and harmony of the wine. Yet more amazing is that reasonable people seem to be suspending their critical thinking processes, and start believing that it actually IS doing what proponents claim.

Along those lines, Domaine Laflaive has results posted for a rather interesting experiment - sensitive crystalization of a vintage 2000 Burgundy...

From the picture above on the right, we see a wine which is obviously damaged after being scanned with a supermarket scanner (from the article posted on the Domaine Leflaive website). The "tell-tale" marks in the crystal which are so important are the ones which breakup the even visual flow. But do they really portend such ill omens as the article concludes? If you allow your wine to be scanned by an optical scanner at the local market, is it really going to be "dumb" for 10 days following it???

Personally, I can't speak to the types of optical scanners they were using, but I find it highly unlikely that a quick scan - which takes what, 1/3 of a second? - would have such a profound affect on the wine...
For another article on the subject, look at the post on Appellation America, where some enquiring minds experimented with crystalization...unfortunately, they don't seem to ask the all important question - "is all this reproducible?"...there are side by side shots of crystals, and the conclusions are boldly stated on the basis of those pictures. But how many times did they do this? Are all the results similar, or did they cherry-pick results that reinforced the views they wanted to see? Are the results due to something like dust motes settling on the plates causing the odd patterns? I just can't see drawing these conclusions from a single set of slides, and hopefully they have plenty of other trials that were faithfully replicated on much larger scales so that they had a larger database to come to these startlingly profound conclusions...

It's one thing to draw conclusions about the state of a wine by looking at the crystals it leaves behind, but what really are you examining? The amount of acid in the wine? The amount of non-volatile compounds in the wine like tannins and color compounds in the wine? To really baqck this up, you'd have to have enough of the bottles to replicate the crystal trials, AND actually taste the wines to back up the conclusions they come to.

***

Here's another article which plays up the "wonders" of BD...and has this wonderful quote:

"A small, but still dramatic, example: composting according to the actions of both lunar and solar forces. "If you want to do compost at the right time, you have to look at the earth" and the things that exert an influence upon it. "The earth is connected to the sun -- you can see that by looking at the seasons. In the springtime, it's getting warm, the plants are shooting up, growing. The earth is 'breathing out' -- exhaling, pushing. Things grow." Then, "In the summer, there's a big change -- the plants stop growing and put all their energy into the fruit. Once the fruit is picked and gone, the vines lose their leaf and go into dormancy." At that point, "You've got all this energy which is actually moving toward the center of the earth. The vegetation above the soil dies, but the soil is reawakening. The earth is 'breathing in.' That's the best time to put compost on top of the soil."

There's an even better spot in the article where the French born vinyardist for Bonny Doon states that the vines take mineral up from the soil for the "minerality" effect that some wines exhibit, but then totally contradicts himself only a moment later by saying that the vines don't actually take up minerals into the wine....

Confused, at best, would be the most charitable way to characterize the views...
Another photo from the Leflaive article (just for fun)...

Biodynamic wine guidelines

BD (biodynamic) wines are better for you and don’t have any "nasty additives", right?

What’s the difference between "BD wine" and "Wine made from BD grapes"?

Can someone "spike" his BD wine with common "organic" wine?

From the DEMETER website come these delightful documents to help us all understand what they're attempting!

First, since I’ve parodied this topic many times before, I feel it important to note that I really do want to know what all the fuss over BD wines is about. And to the point of this post, I’ve been rather frustrated by the lack of specifics when BD proponents and producers talk of these wines.

We now have something a bit more detailed to work with: DEMETER USA has a Wine Standards document posted on its website. That should provide us with a good foundation to decide what is and isn’t allowed in BD wine production. (I'll try to help by translating the more "interesting" phrases in the document... but to view it in its entirety please use the link provided above).

The Standard is of 16 parts, and not surprisingly, the first part is relegated to establishing the vision of the BD wine movement. It also contains the single largest caveat/disclaimer of the document:

Now isn’t that a kicker?

That warning is there to put the producer on notice that BD in NOT a panacea, and that even using it and its associated “spiritual science” you still won’t be able to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Also, that since you won’t be able to use some of the common “traditional” winemaking techniques to adjust your wines that other producers can employ and still call your wine your wine BD. They expect to have variation from one vintage to the next, so big producers who try to minimize those variations by blending on large scales may be out of luck

But you might end up reading it thus: IF you happen to have a fantastic vineyard which churns out fruit to make a wine which in your eyes is exactly what you want from the start without manipulation, then BD would be happy to ride along on the coattails of your successes!

One would assume from that statement that blending from one vintage to another is verboten (currently allowed under TTB reg’s @ 15% max), but that restriction sadly remains unstated…so its anybody’s guess on how that’s handled for any given wine.

§2 defines the various types/categories of BD wine, as well as placing some restrictions on how the DEMETER name/ BD branding may be used and products labeled.

DEMETER recognizes two distinct categories:
“Biodynamic wine” (explicit)
“Wine made from Biodynamic grapes” (explicit) …

[The document then goes through much of the remaining restrictions applying them to both classes, so the points between them are few, but significant ones at that.]

This same section lays out what it means to be “Biodynamic Wine”, and states curiously, …

(§2.a) “...Common manipulations such as yeast addition, enzyme addition, acidity adjustment, tannin addition, oaking and chappalization (sic) are not permitted.” (See “Oaking”, below…)

However, that doesn’t apply to “Wine made from Biodynamic grapes”, where you can add yeasts and ML bacteria, and can even adjust acid and or sugar as needed, so long as…

(§6.b) “Justification for acid and sugar adjustment must be documented.”

What was that?
Would “it tastes better with the extra acid” be sufficient justification?
What qualifies that addition to be made? Do we need prior authorization, or just to scribble a note to ourselves “wine needs acid” before we do it?
How long does it take for DEMETER or one of its reps to get back to you, in the event you need to make a time-sensitive adjustment?

The door is left wide open on that point…

And there’s no real difference between the acids you can add as a BD producer and the acids you’d be allowed to add if you were a conventional producer: citric, ascorbic and tartaric are all currently allowed under TTB reg’s - depending on what type of wine you are making. The restriction for the BD producer is that those acids must be either organic or BD in their origin (conventional producers can use synthetic...not that there's anything wrong with that...).

And yeast nutrients CAN be added to any/all BD wines, provided it doesn’t contain DAP (see below) and is otherwise approved of by DEMETER.

What is explicitly forbidden is the use of any material which has a GMO (genetically modified organism) origin, either directly or through the process of its manufacture. Also expressly prohibited are;

Diammonium phosphate (DAP) – a yeast energizer (Steiner feared man-made ammonia!)

Isinglas (swim bladders from Sturgeon, which they have errantly called “Sturgeon gall bladders (isenglas)” in the document),

PVPP (polyvinylpolypyrrolidone) – a clarifier which is added then filtered out of the wine (I think they did this because it is synthetic…but that wouldn’t explain why they later allow polypropylene and nylon filtration membranes to be used…curious, eh?)

Blood – classically used in the Rhone region of France to clarify wines (but not currently done to my knowledge)

Gelatin (because of the animal origin, though again that’s curious as they allow –nay require- you spray your vines with various concoctions made using bovine intestines (from BSE free countries), skulls ([only bone] from cows [less than 1 year old], pigs or horses), and stags' bladders (not originated from North America, for whatever reason...) [see link].

Neither class of wine is required to go to bottle unfiltered. In fact, there are no real restrictions on filtration, other than the glaring omission of cross-flow filtration. Unbleached pad filters can be used for any BD wine. So can DE (diatomaceous earth), gold filters (I don’t know anyone who’s using those – and it would be kind of a waste anyways…), and the aforementioned polypropylene and/or nylon cartridge filters (standard industry issue there…).

Wine labeled “Biodynamic wine” must be restricted to a single vineyard estate, but can be of various blocks within that vineyard –provided they are BD farmed vineyards (see my post on single-vinyard-wines here). Regarding blending and topping-off (§10.b) BD wines are stated that this “should be done using wine made from BIODYNAMIC grapes.” I think they meant MUST , not should…though that means you could top a BD wine with BD or organic wines, or maybe even conventional wines – though that would really not be in keeping with the spirit of BD production…

OAKING

This point made above of not allowing “oaking” is misleading – under §7, titled “Oaking” we see the following applied to BOTH classes of BD wines: “§7.a) Oak may be provided by using oak barrels or oak chips. Chips should be barrel grade.”

Ok…first things first. Get your document in order so you don’t include self-contradicting propositions. Secondly, it’s pretty hard to classify chips as “barrel grade”, they’ve been through a chipper, and are unevenly toasted, etc….

To paraphrase the old anti-Chicken McNuggets ad “chips are chips”. Frankly, you’re never really sure where they came from or how they looked before the got ripped apart.

So I guess I’ll have to settle for anything other than barrels and chips being outlawed (that being oak extracts and oak powder)…otherwise its still business as usual!

STANDARD PRACTICES

Fining and filtration still can be done. Bentonite and egg whites are still possible agents for that. Most of the language that is included is the document merely outlines what would be considered “industry standard” practices – like the use of food grade equipment. Sulfur dioxide (SO₂) can still be used, up to a total level of 100 ppm, which is lower than the TTB reg’s 350 ppm total sulfite level for conventional producers (my experience is that most conventional table wines in the US hover around 25~35 ppm free sulfite, and 100~120 ppm total sulfite).

CONCLUSION

What we see is an attempt to minimize the influence of the winemaker in making the wines. What I also notice is that despite all of the protestations of the adherents of the system, it is rife with “standard industry practice” and manipulation. Glaringly open manipulation still exists. Other production restrictions also apply as general Demeter production standards are evoked as well, but those can be boiled down to prohibiting the following: GMO products or products made via a GMO, irradiating, fumigated (except for N2 & CO₂), and pretty much any treatment involving microwaves. Other restrictions also apply –see the links below for full details.

DEMETER Wine Standards (US)

DEMETER Processing Standards (INTL)

DEMETER Production Standards (INTL)

DEMETER Beer Standards (INTL)

Brett-barrel revisit

It's been a bit since I posted, and for good reason.
With the nights being as cold as they have been, it was perfect weather to shut down the vines, and therefore a perfect time to get out and prune all the vines before the start of the wet weather. Having just finished with that -actually I got lucky and finished on Sunday morning, as the rain was just starting- I can now relax (just a little) and get back to blogging, amongst other things around the cellar...

The weather is turning, and we should see around 2 inches of rain this week, and I'm glad not to be in a rush to get back in the vineyard for a few weeks.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand: Brett and barrels.

One of the points in my previous post was to point out that new barrels coming in from a cooper are probably not the source of Brett entry into the winery because of the high temperatures and the length of time that they are held at those temperatures. I still think that makes quite a bit of sense. But after talking with a friend of mine, I found he has examples of staves and barrels which have large cracks where Brett most certainly find refuge when the barrel was cleaned!

In the photo below, the areas circled in red are longitudinal cracks on the interior of the barrel from when the barrel was made (the whitish-pink deposits on the staves are tartrate crystals). The stave in the middle is intact, from the same barrel as the others, but doesn't have these flaws....
You might ask "so just how bad is this?"....
In a word, "unacceptable"...in fact this barrel should have been rejected and sent back to the cooper, never to be filled with wine. The flaw on the lower stave is about 7" long, and 1/2"deep.

Sawing the stave in half reveals what really is the problem: debris, lees, tartrate crystals, etc...
In other words, the perfect reservoir for molds and brett to hang about and reinfect any other wine ever put into it. Even with ozone, it's doubtful that this area ever was cleaned properly.

Cracking off the overhanging wood, you can look directly at the scum residing underneath it:
This is a problem when inspecting all barrels when they are coming into your cellar: looking through the bunghole, you only ever see half the barrel. And it's really not practical to take a head off of each barrel to inspect the interior before they're used.

Brett spores may have found their way 8mm into the staves in some instances, but the idea that there are barrels in your cellar which will be repositories for brett regardless of what you do to clean your cooperage is just damned scary.

For what it's worth, my friend said that this particular barrel was French oak from a French cooper, and had never contributed to any brett lot that he could remember. What a miracle that seems like when looking at what they were dealing with! Sure, every barrel is somewhat unique as they're made from wood, which by its nature is of variable density, grain, etc....
But this barrel never should have left the cooper to start with.

Perhaps Matt Thompson is onto something after all when he states that it isn't in the coopers interests to be looking for brett...or perhaps to overlook many things that they might think will go unnoticed upon arrival. Like cracked staves...

Biggest bottle - ever!

FLASH !!
"Biggest Bottle of Wine ever produced in Australia Exported to USA."

New York - Biggest bottle ever to leave the Southern Hemisphere filled with Aussie Shiraz, results in immediate wine shortage on the Australian continent. Aussie producers herald the idea as a new way to use up excess supply of Alice Springs Sparkling Grenache, or other non-market performing blends to help keep the bulk market in balance.

"What really put the corker on the deal, was the slogan Yanks had coined years ago: one bottle a day is all we ask", says Richard "Dickie Bull" Bulldoon, winemaker for Perth Pink Wines, LLC.

"...mind you", Dickie continued, "repeat sales are a bit soft, but we're comin' out ahead with each sales."

"Plus we can market ourselves as a small boutique winery since we only have enough wine to fill a thousand of these bottles each year, so the snob factor works on two levels: not only do you own the biggest bottles ever made (as well as a full tenth-of-a-percent of the annual output of New South Wales), you also own a bottle from a producer who has a client list with only a thousand entries on it. No mass mailings here, eh?! Each one has it's own container to be shipped in, usually by bulk sea carrier. But I'm sure they taste exactly the same as they would if you drank one right at the winery - even though they've gone through the tropics & Panama to get to you..."

"...and best of all, you never have any of these babies returned to the winery! I'll tell you that will never happen, not at a ton [metric] each! And who cares 'bout wine quality either?! By the time they drag the cork out of that monster, they're so tired they'd drink any old swill or plonk...
Say, we're still off the record, right mate?"

New barrels unlikely source of Brett

From an article on Decanter.com, we have a theory that new oak barrels are the source of Brett infections in wineries...that "infected wood" has been harvested, and that...

“[Consultant winemaker Matt] Thomson believes that the incidence of brettanomyces has increased in recent years. 'I think it's a relatively new thing in many Old and New World regions,' he said, adding that he thinks the increase is, 'partly down to new wine styles that are low in acidity and relatively high in residual sugar, but also due to increased demand for new oak barrels.' ”

Should this be a concern?
Doesn't nearly everyone use some new barrels somewhere in their production - so, potentially this is a huge issue, right?

For decades wine makers have noticed that Brett infections tend to be caught in wines from new oak barrels - but does that mean the infective yeast was already in the barrel to start with?

I don't think so....

This theory has been in the "folklore" of winemaking for quite a while - it's nothing new (weird that wine makers would employ the "it-can't-possibly-be-MY-fault" type of argument, but I guess that's just human nature...). In fact I ‘ve posted before upon the research work done which showed that 2/3 to 3/4 of wines produced in the EU were contaminated with Brett, and a healthy 50% of all wines were above 425 ppb (the generally accepted threshold for 4-ethylphenol detection for the "average" person), which shows that this is not a “new” problem. But let's delve a little deeper into this subject, and see what we come up with...

• barrels are toasted to temperatures of roughly 200~400°F, and usually this is done with an open flame (though electric heating elements are also used)
• the barrels are likely held at toasting temperatures for 10 to 45 minutes depending on the "house style" toast, or specific toast level requested by the winery, which should be plenty long and hot enough to incinerate any beasties on the wood
• some toasting techniques DO release and/or create sugars from breaking down the wood, some of which may be caramelized by the toasting "style" employed
• the process of toasting can also create low levels of 4-ethylphenol and 4-ehtylguaiacol which are two of the signature compounds of a Brett infection
• these aromas are released in the highest concentrations during the "death phase" (decline) of the population, so detection of the aroma by tasting usually means it is too late in the cycle for prevention - rather you are finding it at the "corrective action" stage
• Brett yeast does seem to like sweeter wines, and lower acidity levels, so there is a viticultural aspect to this problem if fruit is “overly ripe”
• the offending aromas are linked to the presence of caffeic, ferulic and caftaric acids which are at higher levels in less ripe fruit
• contaminated cooperage and other equipment can transfer the dreaded organism from one wine to another undetected, until a later date when the wines "stink"
• vineyards can have a "natural" population of Brett, and equipment used to pick those blocks can bring it into your winery, as well as be a source for cross-contamination of other fruit picked with the same equipment if it has not been properly sanitized beforehand
• infected, but yet undetected, wines can also contaminate larger blends when combined with otherwise uninfected wines

Having seen my share of Brett problems, I can testify to their variable nature (some wines are more noticeably “afflicted” by the yeast, and there is a vintage-to-vintage variation for vineyards as well – though my experience is that past offending vineyards tend to remain infected at some level, that is when the infection can be traced back to a single vineyard or block of fruit). Some varieties like syrah are much more prone to the infection, possibly due to levels of the precursor acids available, and the presence of more sugars attached to the tannins & cyanidins (color compounds). Certainly white varietals are almost never infected (detrimentally) as they don’t really contain those acids, tannins and cyanidins, and therefore can’t be used to produce the offending aromas by Brett.

While true that Brett is noticed more in newer cooperage, this may be two-fold: first, there are already produced compounds of the same nature that Brett produces which may help more people to detect the problem by raising the overall level, and second, there are as previously noted more sugars available for the yeasts to live on (these leach into the wine in the first year of use), which may help larger populations grow – and subsequently generate more of the offending aromas as those larger populations die off. Some varietals have higher levels of the base acids that Brett uses to form the aromas, so are more likely to produce noticeable “faults” later on, and also younger wines still have some sugars attached to their tannin and color complexes (called glycones) which also may be an energy source for Brett when they detach from said complexes as young wines age.

The overall likelihood that the yeast is traveling into the wineries via new cooperage is –at best- doubtful. While it cannot be discounted entirely, it would be surprising since it’d be likely that specific coopers would get reputations as producing those infections, which hasn’t happened to date (I would note that some coopers do have a rep for producing barrels with a Brett aroma from their house toasting styles, but that those barrels are not then always linked to wines which show Brett character or infections later on). Also extremely doubtful is the possible survival of yeast organisms through the toasting process – though that does not mean the barrels couldn’t be contaminated when they were being handled after the toasting as the heads were being put onto them, or during the inspection phase. Important to note that only the interior of the barrels are toasted, and while the entire barrel heats up, only the interior could be considered “heat sterilized” in my mind. The Brett yeasts conceivably could still be on the exterior of the barrel and be introduced by accident when the barrels are handled later. Again, we’d likely see a string of problems all consistently pointing back to a particular cooperage, which isn’t my experience.

Lastly, there is cellar sanitation and “traditional practices”…this is yet another of those modernity vs folklore conflicts…

There is a noted high-end winery in Napa which uses spent lees from their red wines to “paint” the bilges and bungholes of their new barrels red on arrival. Ostensibly, this is used to make an even covering of the barrels, and add a little visual character to their cellar (I have one report that tourists were told the practice “illustrated the winery’s commitment to pay attention to each and every barrel in its care”, whatever that means…). Unfortunately it results in each and every barrel so treated to be twice risked for further infections: once by the fact that other wines which were contaminated but not detected with Brett may now be literally spread all over the new cooperage, and twice by the fact that even if clean wines were applied to the new cooperage, the barrels would now have a food source available for any mold/rogue yeast/what-have-you organism to colonize the barrel and possibly get transferred not only into that barrel itself, but also across to other barrels and blends, etc, as Providence might desire…

It would also not come as a surprise to regular readers that this same winery in the example has been panned by me before, due to the high levels of Brett and other organisms which consistently run through their products.