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March 8 2010
The joke goes, “Wine is good for everything, including curing cancer” and there’s a shred of truth to it with the pile of medical research that would cast wine as a magical elixir ala snake oil circa 1850.
For all of the virtuous health benefits that wine has been purported to promote, one distinct aspect has been missing – an appeal to the now-now, of-the-moment narcissism in all of us. We all have a desire for preventative medicine, but we’re also interested in vanity, today.
With interest then do I read a recent and vast research study that concluded that drinking wine may prevent obesity in women. The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, indicates:
19,220 American women aged 39 or older with a healthy body weight (were asked) to describe their drinking habits in a questionnaire. About 38% drank no alcohol.
Over the next 13 years the researchers found that all the women tended to gain weight but the non-drinkers gained the most. The women’s overall weight gain decreased as alcohol intake increased.
There was also a difference according to the type of alcohol: red wine was associated with the lowest weight gain; beer and spirits were linked to the highest weight gain.
Now, you take the above coupled with the notion that red wine can aid digestion, and you’re getting to something that everybody can get down with – indulgence and waistline.
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February 21 2010
File in: No good publicity goes unacknowledged.
I am very pleased to be featured in the March/April edition of Imbibe magazine as a part of their cover story on real-world wine pairings.
The thing I like about Imbibe (I’m a subscriber) is it’s not just a wine magazine, but a beverage magazine with wide ranging, human-interest based coverage of wine, spirits, coffee and tea. They cover the au courant aspects of drinks culture in a highly educational, very approachable fashion with enough moxie to stay above the fray.
In fact, there are two magazines that help keep me culturally aware of what’s happening in my dual interests of music and wine and Paste and Imbibe magazine do a very similar and very nice job covering their respective genres.
On newsstands now, Imbibe can be found at your local Borders or Barnes and Noble.
The specific piece in which I’m featured is a, “What’s your favorite wine & food pairing” call-out alongside Kevin Zraly, Randall Grahm, Marnie Old, and Leslie Sbrocco.
I’m sure for the rest of them, my inclusion makes it seem like they’ve mistakenly stumbled upon open swim for the caddies at the country club, but I’ve never been opposed to crashing a party.
And, ironically enough, as a 15 year resident of Indianapolis, I’m right below Randall Grahm’s quote in the featurette where he says:
“Many, many years I did a winemaker dinner in Indianapolis where the chef paired a quail molé dish with a still, red pinot meunier that we produced at the time. The pairings of the wine and the food was so unbelievably cosmic that the patrons in the restaurant spontaneously rose from their seats and began to applaud. I’ve never seen that happen before or since. Indianapolis? Go figure.”
Yeah, Randall. Indianapolis! Though, I’m used to that kind of attitude from both the east and the west coast. Two words, Randall: Banana slugs. As a resident of the greater Santa Cruz area, Randall can’t talk much about high-minded food and wine culture, especially with his UC extension nicknamed the Banana slugs.
I’ll take a Hoosier against a Banana slug in an ass-kicking contest of any sort.
My quote says:
“I like to follow the ‘drink what you like with what you eat’ school of casual thought, but my favorite pairing, hands down, has to be a white late-harvest dessert wine from California with a cheese and fruit plate. You don’t have to over-think the pairing, either – I like to think of white dessert wines with a cheese plate as more of an ‘experience’ than a hard and fast pairing with rules.”
I didn’t have to think much about this one – my favorite pairing is indeed dessert wine. It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of the wine world, but it’s a pairing that is the most forgiving and yields the greatest dividends.
To me, dessert wine is like sushi. Nobody in the U.S. just stumbled into a sushi restaurant for the first time. You have to be introduced to it.
Dessert wine is the same.
Anymore, it seems like guests are quick to beg off of dessert of any sort, but pull out some dessert wine glasses, a late-harvest dessert wine and a cheese and fruit plate and watch some eyes light up.
Over at Palate Press this past week, Becky Sue Epstein wrote a nice piece about Quady, winner of the 2009 London International Wine and Spirits Competition (IWSC) Trophy for USA Wine Producer of the Year. Incidentally, the Quady Essensia is the dessert wine I most recommend to newcomers to dessert wines – it’s very good, it’s reasonably inexpensive, it’s consistent from year to year and it’s widely available in most cities across the country.
Grab a salty cheese like a gruyere, dried apricots, cocoa roasted almonds, some good quality chocolate and a piece of fresh fruit like an Asian pear and watch people get totally in tune with dessert wines.
It’s almost magical.
I like to serve dessert wines in funky drink vessels like egg cups, but anything will do.
Thanks to Imbibe for including me and make sure you try your own dessert wine pairing as winter winds down!
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February 19 2010
You could write a Zen koan about the wonky, occasionally nonsensical wine topic that is wine criticism and blind tasting versus context-based (i.e. non-blind) tasting.
The path to enlightenment, in my opinion, is neither.
First, some background.
I’ve read both editions of The Wine Trials by Robin Goldstein and I’ve read several articles and blog posts about the book, as well. The book is fine for what it is; what it’s not, however, is a genuine truth-seeking manifesto that should be taken as an article of faith.
The main premise of the book is to instill a sense of confidence in wine consumers to trust their palate, while puncturing the notion that a wine has to be expensive to be good. In doing so, the book slaughters just about every sacred cow there is in the world of wine and comes to the conclusion, via blind tasting, that (perhaps symbolically more than empirically), inexpensive wines under $15 best expensive wines that cost from $50 to $150. The book goes on to present 150 wines (with at least 20,000 cases of production) that won The Wine Trials blind tasting bake-off.
A couple of issues: First, the most fundamental flaw is that the premise of the book isn’t a fully fledged dissertation and assault on wine convention using junk science. It’s partly that, but the book exists to tell consumers the wines under $15 that won in blind tastings.
Make no mistake—the core premise of this book is to conduct these wine trials every year and sell you a book … every year. So, consumers need to look at this with a level of dubiousness when the author does a drive-by shooting of wine critics and the 100 point system, only to further an agenda that lines his own pockets.
The second significant issue is the book doesn’t list the “expensive” wines that these under $15 wines bested. How is a consumer supposed to trust the blind tasting results when they don’t know what wines were in the opposing category, or really how they were chosen?
The methodology of this book is significantly flawed and designed to appeal to people that know enough about wine, but not too much. You get the sense that the first 58 pages of the book are designed to lull consumers into a comfort womb; “Yes, the authors are crusaders for the truth,” and hopefully nobody asks any questions.
This brings me to the other ongoing topic that I believe is largely noisiness intended to perpetuate the empirical correctness of wine critics – blind tasting.
In the comments at Steve Heimoff’s site earlier this week, there was a lengthy going back and forth amongst four professional wine critics.
The dialogue centered on blind tasting with the prevailing thought being that blind tasting a wine provides the reviewer with the most objective analysis of a wine, absent bias.
There’s not much to argue with that point because it’s mostly true. However, one has to wonder if this ongoing “blind tasting” conversation that seems to repeat itself ad nauseum isn’t a subtle policy play and a reach around back pat.
A bigger question to me is does anybody care?
Going back to our Zen koan, “Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?”
The reality is that consumer-generated wine reviews are growing SIGNIFICANTLY. The other reality is that virtually no consumer-generated reviews are done blind.
If professional wine critics continue to stump on the pulpit about blind tasting (and they do it long and loud enough) they continue to create a line of demarcation for their work relative to the unwashed masses.
That’s fine, if that’s the case. But, here’s the thing: It doesn’t matter. Not only do few people truly care, but information is moving to a level of transparency where context in totality matters … a lot.
A couple of thoughts:
I have long felt that individual wine reviews missed the boat a little bit. If you look at wine truly through the filter of the average wine consumer, they predominately don’t buy individual wines based on a review. Now, many do, but that’s at the very upper-end of the price spectrum. For the vast majority of wine reviews, with general wine quality across the industry being top-notch, a good review is just a good review for an inexpensive wine. If it’s used as a shelf talker maybe it moves the needle, otherwise it goes into the abyss of information.
Instead, I believe, what consumers do is scan reviews and build brand familiarity. “I may not be sure if it’s the Riesling or Cabernet from Chateau St. Michelle that was supposed to be good, but I’ll pick up the wine I have in my hand regardless,” goes the thinking.
I will do an entirely separate post on this topic related to the social science of consumer choice and risk mitigation, but suffice to say there’s a lot of data that supports this.
Again, to me, what the majority of reviewing activity is good for is creating a level of mental stickiness about THE WINERY in the consumer’s memory bank, not an individual wine.
Given this thought, you might wonder why more people don’t review wineries en total – as in, “Beringer, across their line-up, produces the most consistent quality wines under $15 based on the following individual reviews.” This is a much more useful way to do things instead of on a one-off basis. Consumers have demonstrated a limited capacity to remember individual things, but they remember brands.
In addition to this, we are seeing twin movements that also play into this “winery as a total entity” notion.
Yelp, a retail-oriented, consumer generated review site, is growing at a very fast pace. It’s growing so significantly that VinoVisit and Cork’d have created a strategic alliance for consumer-generated content that will now include visitor reviews—a subtle pick-up from the Yelp business model (the Yelp site already includes a significant number of California winery reviews).
Simply, customer service and the tasting room is the new “review” frontier and no longer is a good (or bad) experience relegated to word of mouth. Now it’s a broadcast message.
Finally, Wal-Mart has been working on their “Sustainability Index.” Similar to my mention of wine reviews, brands and mental stickiness, I could create an entire post on this Wal-Mart index, as well.
Suffice to say that they are creating a visual and/or numeric index that will be displayed with each product (including wine) that grades companies on their commitment and support of green practices. It’s expected that other retailers will adopt this methodology, as well.
So, a winery is graded for their wine(s), their on-premise customer service, and, very shortly, their support of green and sustainable business practices.
My point here is that blind tasting is really a great topic, as is skewering the conventions of wine criticism – it makes for endless fun. But, this is a topic that wouldn’t have been widely discussed six or seven years ago, and it’s not a topic that will be discussed six or seven years in the future. The ship has sailed and those that are interested in true wine enlightenment will soon see a winery at 360 degrees – quality across their wine line-up from consumer reviews in aggregate (as well as professional critics), their customer service in the form of a star rating, and how they conduct their business in the form of sustainability – likely delivered as a score.
So, while I can indulge today’s give and take about wine critics and blind tasting, it seems to me that the smart people are figuring out a meta-analysis that takes all of this content into a usable form that measures a winery across all of the categories that are emerging.
For those that get fired up about critics and scores, the bottom line isn’t far away, but this time it’ll be the so-called triple bottom line that measures a winery far more holistically, comprehensively and transparently then what we have today, and it won’t be blind, nor will it have to be.
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February 9 2010
In the midst of the turmoil in the wine industry about the long-term ramifications of the “trading down” phenomenon, I’m reminded that everybody should have a dear friend who is a non-materially oriented (read: Buddhist-light for the western palate) career California lifeguard, a world traveler and an educated wine enthusiast.
It does a lot to keep you grounded, with eyes open, while also reinforcing that there are a lot of smart palates out there that never “traded up” to begin with. This “new normal” we hear about is actually the “old normal” for a lot of people.
This is a prelude to say: I took my semi-annual trip out to San Diego last weekend to visit my friends Ed and Jen and their two kids.
After 20 + years of an itinerant life as a lifeguard for the State of California, working the coasts north and south, Ed finally settled down about seven years ago as a Peace Officer and Lifeguard at Torrey Pines State Park in La Jolla.
One of the significant benefits of his job is the opportunity to live in and act as caretaker for the Guy Fleming house at Torrey Pines. The two bedroom adobe bungalow, built in 1927 by its namesake, is complete with a million dollar view of the Pacific Ocean. And, if the views are worth a million dollars, the sunsets are priceless.
I’ve mentioned Ed (or “Easy” as he was known on the road with a backpack) on several occasions; he is somebody I consider a wine mentor and he certainly is principally responsible for sparking my passion for wine. Ed has turned me onto countless wines, most of them gems, and he has a fantastic palate. Visiting once or twice a year is always a good way for me to decompress and recalibrate – it’s always a hedonic weekend couched in a lifestyle that doesn’t sweat the need for the trappings of wealth.
I shipped some wines out ahead of time, a barter for the free frequent flier ticket I flew out on, and we picked up a couple of additional bottles while picking up provisions for dinner – a gigantic, rich ML monster in the Murphy-Goode Island Block Chardonnay ($12) and a Rabbit Ridge Zin ($9). With enough wine to last a month of Sunday’s (and a nice sourdough loaf to soak it all up), we headed back to the house to make dinner.
Fascinating for a landlocked Midwesterner like me, Ed free dives off the beach at Torrey during lobster season. He hand catches enough of the crustaceans to stockpile the freezer for their frequent guests.
I was to be the lucky recipient of two lobster tails for dinner.
Drinking the Murphy-Goode along with an inexpensive Pinot, Ed made Lobster Thermidor as we talked, shared, and laughed. The dulcet tones of West Coast Jazz pioneer Chet Baker wafted in the background intermingled with the giggles of his 4-year old daughter who was crescendoing before bed time.
Outside, the light was making its way from orange watercolor to the dark of night.
My belly now full from an indulgence in lobster, begging off dessert, we continued to talk and embellish the same stories over again for a couple of more hours until the pauses lengthened, the glow of the wine waned and the yawns increased.
As I retired for the evening, polishing off the last swallow of wine, Ed emptying the coffee mug that holds virtually every ounce of wine he drinks, I thought about him, his wife and beautiful kids, the small and charming Guy Fleming house, the fabulous dinner (hand caught lobster?!) and the blessings I have.
Ed isn’t a wealthy man by bank account, never has been. He’s smart with his money, he doesn’t buy things he doesn’t need and he buys wine that is reasonably priced, not quite understanding how a onetime consumable could possibly be worth $40.
The one thing Ed is, though: He is rich in life.
It dawned on me that for all this talk about the “new normal” for wine, it really isn’t about over $20 wines slowing in sales or over $50 wines tanking, it’s about people getting back to the fundamental things that are important – family, friends, good food, a laugh or two, nice music in the background, money in the bank and a decent wine to quaff alongside the story of life.
Coincidentally, this is the “lifestyle” of wine, but something went askew over the last 20 years with the amount of money necessary to enjoy these “simple” things.
To me, the “new normal” means that a “big and rich” lifestyle is just another way of saying you live a life gracefully, within your means with a sense about money and its hard-earned value.
It’s a lesson most of us are learning painfully, and a lesson that some wine lovers, already steeped in an under-$15 mindset, won’t have to make the adjustment for.
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January 27 2010
Add another tiny ripple to the groundswell that is the Washington wine scene…
…A quick hitter for a Wednesday…
I examined three recent pieces of research for correlations in between wine consumption by state, overall happiness by state and ranking of “healthiness” by state using the following sources of research:
1) Top wine consuming states by volume (Wine Handbook data from 2006)
2) Gallup Healthways Well-being Index (Measures the “Happiest” states, Nov. 2009)
3) United Health Foundation rank of “Healthiest” states (Nov. 2009)
I hypothesized that there would be a strong correlation in between top wine consuming states and general happiness and health. The reason being, in pop analysis, is that wine promotes an erudite, moderate lifestyle that would (should?) equate to a general state of well-being and healthiness. Or, at least, that’s what you might think. The reality is—not so much.
In fact, there are hardly any correlations between the three pieces of research results examined together.
However, one interesting pattern does emerge – Massachusetts seems to be the place to be (despite their ongoing wine shipping battles). And, without question, if somebody was looking for a place to move that combined a wine industry, wine consumption, a “happy” state of being and a “healthy” state of being, the winner would no doubt be Washington!
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