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March 15 2010
When I get an email from a friend saying, “You should check this out” it tends to pique my interest, especially when the subject is wine preservation.
First, I should say I’m an avowed Vacu Vin user. With a wife that’s nearly a teetotaler, and a constant flux of six to eight bottles of opened wine in the fridge, a Vacu Vin and a wine crock started with a vinegar mother is de rigueur for any self-respecting wine taster, as important as having a corkscrew, and especially important if you’re a wine taster that likes to play the field across a number of different bottles, similar to fiddling with your iPod to match your mood.
Pouring a week old wine into crocks (before the bottle hits the recycling bin or gets upcycled into drinking glasses) that turn the bottle remnants into wine vinegar (red and white) definitely soothes any anxiety from watching a wine circle the drain, the Vacu Vin notwithstanding.
So, when the tip came for the Platypus “PlatyPreserve” wine preserver I took heed.
The Platypus, familiar to campers and outdoorsman, is a reputable water carrier noted for its durability, it’s malleability in your pack, and the fact that it doesn’t pick up or throw off scents—meaning that the container that carries orange juice today can carry water tomorrow without cross-flavor contamination.
For its part, the PlatyPreserve is a wine-centric brand extension from the Platypus water carrier and technology. Made in the U.S. and just slightly bigger than a 750ml bottle of wine, the wine preserver has received rave consumer reviews on Amazon.com and other outlets. And, at $9.95 for one, it pays for itself for the wine enthusiast who winces with reticence at willfully pouring leftover wine into a vinegar crock or down the drain.
Likewise, if you’re an outdoor enthusiast, the PlatyPreserve could make a willing companion for some vino at the end of the day, when a proper bottle may be cumbersome to carry in pack or, at the least, from hither and yon.
One user at Amazon.com said of the PlatyPreserve, “I have used every form of wine preserving system out there: vacuum pumps, nitrogen tanks/taps etc. etc. This one beats them all cheaply and simply, by doing better what they all attempt to do, that is, prevent contact between wine and oxygen as much as possible.”
I decided to take the test myself.
I picked up five bottles of an inexpensive red wine – the Beringer Stone Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon, found for $4.99 a bottle. I suppose if I wanted to be thematically correct I could have chosen the Redwood Creek, positioned as an outdoorsman wine, but when $5 bottles are the game I don’t get choosy.
I placed one full bottle into a PlatyPreserve, a half bottle into a second PlatyPreserve, a half bottle under Vacu Vin, and a half bottle under regular cork and put it into the fridge for seven days to see what would happen.
I blind tasted each of the wines against a control bottle that was freshly opened.
The results of the blind tasting were somewhat of a surprise: a wine under Vacu Vin was the only bottle I guessed correctly, but the results also indicated optimism for the PlatyPreserve.
My notes said:
Control bottle (freshly opened): Bright cherry, blackberry, candied nose – Dr. Pepper flavors, bubblegum cotton candy, vanilla Stoli vodka and brown sugar. A fruit and oak wine, sweet, manipulated with an artificial finish. Drinkable at the end of the night.
Wine #1 (Under Vacu Vin): Nose is reductive with stewed flavors. Wine is starting to unravel with fruit minimized and acid coming to the front. Still drinkable and inoffensive.
Wine #2 (Full PlatyPreserve): Closest to control. Nose minimized slightly. Palate is still together and pleasant.
Wine #3 (Beringer under cork): Nose is gone, reductive and stewed. Oxidized.
Wine #4 (1/2 full PlatyPreserve): Nose is gone, alcohol and wood with faint blackberry. Oxidized.
Lessons learned: The wine under cork and the ½ full PlatyPreserve had virtually identical flavor profiles—both wines were shot. The full PlatyPreserve was in good shape and the wine under a Vacu Vin was in reasonably good shape. Given this, the natural comparison needs to be made with the Vacu Vin versus the ½ full PlatyPreserve and on that count the Vacu Vin wins handily.
And, of course, if you’re at home drinking, I can’t imagine why you would need to store a full bottle in a PlatyPreserve.
My overall recommendation: Use a Vacu Vin for home purposes while the PlatyPreserve makes a suitable airtight companion for day hikes, short overnight camping trips and when lugging a glass bottle is impractical.
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February 23 2010
Conditioned by a society hell bent on labels, and with more than a little bit of German heritage that is desirous of order mentally if not physically, I find myself wanting to put wines into a natural field classification system.
You know an “A is for Apple, B is for Boy” kind of thing.
Or, perhaps, this affliction in trying to makes sense of something that doesn’t naturally make sense is caused by attending one too many parties where the 1.5L of wine is barely potable, as it was this past weekend with a “Barefoot Wallaby,” or something like that.
Now, make no mistake, many people have talked about a winery-type classification system – something based on a craft sensibility, or case load, etc. Something that denotes the type of winery one is and the type of wine produced – artisanal, corporate, that sort of thing.
This is well and good, but increasingly case load by itself isn’t an indicator for the care that goes into winemaking, nor is ownership type. In fact, I’m most interested in the style of wine—something that tells me what is in the bottle from a profile perspective.
Call it a case of the “extracted” blues. Or, the “Barefoot Wallaby” blues.
And, other “taste” classifications like “soft” or “fruity” aren’t going to cut it.
Incidentally, Randall Grahm touches on this subject at his book web site in a transcript from a speech he gave at UC Davis earlier this month.
In his wide-ranging treatise that covers “brand” versus “terroir” and introduces words like “brand sickness” (which I’ll cover tomorrow in a different post), Grahm notes:
In the world of wine you can certainly dichotomize the universe rather neatly between the industrial, and the artisanal the standard and the truly singular.
But there is an even finer distinction to be made, a distinction between what the French call vins d’effort, or wines of effort and vins de terroir, or wines which express a sense of place. You can almost think of this maybe as less of a dichotomy but rather as some sort of continuum. A “wine of effort” is one that bears the strong stylistic imprint of the winemaker, and one where the winemaker has controlled virtually every aspect of the production, from the deficit drip-irrigation of the vines to the use of selected clones, selected “designer” yeasts, enzymes and malolactic bacteria; there is a strong overlay of “house style.”
Now, I’m not the smartest guy, I’m from Indiana and I went to mid-major college, a place where I was happier to be there then they were to have me, certainly. Given that (or perhaps despite that), the above doesn’t make much sense to me.
First, Grahm notes that there is an easy dichotomy in the world of wine in between the industrial and the artisanal, but he goes on to talk about a CONTINUUM between a “wine of effort” and a wine of place.
Regardless, it’s the striations (or continuum) in between the “wine of effort” and the wine of place that interest me.
Simply, there’s a difference in between a Marquis Phillips Shiraz and a Barefoot Shiraz. Likewise, there’s a difference in between a Sineann Pinot Noir and Kosta Browne.
It’s not as simple as Grahm might suggest – a wine of effort equals “New World” and a wine of place equals “Old World.”
Yet, it’s not that complex, either.
In a back of napkin exercise that took moments, I classified wines into the following categories:
Natural: Wine from vines that collectively represent as little intervention as possible in the process of growing grapes and their fermentation
Terroir: A wine that comes from cultivated vines and express the unique characteristics of the climate and soil of their geography
Style: A wine that carries the signature of the winemaker who made it
Spoofulated: A type of wine (typically red) that is extracted (dense), high in alcohol and best served without food
Wine Beverage: A beverage made from grapes with additives that enhance flavor and color while promoting consistency from year to year.
My overall point is a simple one – one of the reasons the wine world continues to progress in inches rather than yards is a stunning lack of clarity and alignment on the simplest things.
With natural wines and imports making a broad assault on consumer awareness, and the debate of “Old World” versus “New World” continuing to rear its feral head, the wine world (at least domestically) must create some sense of order—both for the good of understanding who they are marketing to and for the good of the consumer who wants to understand what they are buying.
A classification system need not be formal, and need not be expansive, but it does need to be generally acknowledged and it needs to encompass a wider variability than the tired clichés of “old” versus “new” with a dash of “terroir.”
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January 29 2010
Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass …
Nipping it in the Bud
The over/under betting line on how soon an online wine writer will wax philosophic and draw an analogy in between the new Apple iPad and wine is set at three days. This earnest soul, our online wine writer, his proverbial skirt still blown upward from Steve Jobs’ hyperbolic presentation on Wednesday, will say that the iPad has an opportunity to “change the game” for the wine-interested.
This writer will urge us to ponder the possibilities: How amazing it would be to deliver applications and wine books in an elegant, interactive way that is portable.
Or, perhaps, this intrepid writer will suggest that using an iPad to deliver multimedia wine content within the context of a gargantuan wine list at a restaurant is a smart solution to an age old problem.
All of these circumstances could be true. Or, not. Or, not right now.
I say: don’t believe the hype.
Almost three years ago, I wrote about a company called Vinio that had a similar solution in providing an interactive tablet for diners at restaurants – a virtual Sommelier of sorts that could provide region, varietal, food pairing matches and a host of other value-added types of contextual information.
While pragmatic at the time, I also displayed a touch of the, “consider the possibilities” wide-eyed optimism.
Today, ahem, the Vinio site appears as if it hasn’t been updated in two years.
My point is – it’s been tried before. Sometimes old wine in new bottles is still old wine.
Automated Tasting Notes
In 2006 there was a buzz rippling in the burgeoning online wine community about a piece of Japanese technology dubbed the Robo-Sommelier.
As reported by the BBC at the time, Japanese technology manufacturer NEC developed a two foot tall robot that could “taste” and identify types of wine using infrared light to identify different flavor components. Eventually, this robot could be personalized to make wine recommendations for its owner based on their palate preferences.
Now, of course, this is well and good and a little bit like Popular Science magazine articles from the 70s that talked about flying cars in the new millennium. Yet, there is something interesting here, particularly when combined with another developing technology called Stats Monkey.
A developing technology from a research lab at Northwestern University, Stats Monkey can create computer-generated baseball stories.
From the web site:
Imagine that you could push a button, and magically create a story about a baseball game. That’s what the Stats Monkey system does. Given information commonly available online about many games—the box score and the play-by-play—the system automatically generates the text of a story about that game that captures the overall dynamic of the game and highlights the key plays and key players. The story includes an appropriate headline and a photo of the most important player in the game.
Hmmm …
What’s interesting about this is not its use for writing little league baseball stories for a local audience, as reported by NPR. Instead, the interesting thing is its ability to take information from a set of parameters and accurately construct a story—across a range of disciplines.
Also from the web site:
The applicability technology underlying the Stats Monkey system scopes across any sport or event in which the events produce significant quantitative data. It also has applications in domains in which recurring story types that are primarily data-driven, including other kinds of sports stories and many kinds of business stories such as quarterly or annual earnings stories, market updates, and so on. The Machine Generated Sports Stories system could be employed by news organizations or directly by organizations which wish to publish information about their activities, such as college sports teams or businesses.
Ultimately, the system can be extended to generate stories that include quotes from individuals or organizations involved in those stories (when those quotes are available online) as well as stories in different narrative styles for different audiences.
Hmmm …, again. What niche relies on quantitative data (scores) that can be combined with quotes for different narrative styles?
Forget the “wisdom of the crowds” when it comes to tasting notes. A far more interesting story to me is a robotic tasting element and an automated wine review story generator.
We think major wine critics have their panties in a bunch now? Sounds like we should just wait a couple of years …
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January 3 2010
Time for another edition of “What they Say, What they Mean” an occasional look at foolishness in wine-related press releases.
This time, we’re reviewing “All Out Wine” the new, online wine ecommerce site from Joe Canal’s in Rio Grande, New Jersey. To see the same press release distributed to dozens of PR outlets in the same, bad form please Google, “The Hottest New Online Wine Store Has Hit The Market.”
My comments are italicized and bolded in parentheses. Items notated with a (Huh?) or a (Really?) denote inexplicable assaults on English, logic, proofreading, and the American educational system.
The Hottest New Online Wine Store Has Hit The Market!! (One exclamation point will annoy a copy editor, two will undo him. Two exclamation points indicate a palpable excitement level on par with 14 year old girls at the mall. Avoid at all costs.)
RIO GRANDE, N.J.Dec 14, 2009 - Wine is a drink of characteristics that explode through the palette of many daily ($5 to anybody that can decode this sentence. Also, “palate” is one of the most misspelled words in the wine lover’s dictionary and it should never be confused with palette, something you put paint on). Wine makers (winemakers, no spaces, is the common usage, though Microsoft Word will want to auto-correct into two words) are revolutionizing the world of wine with new wine making techniques that appeal to the masses (And this is a good thing?). More and more consumers are enjoying wine with food, for celebratory reasons, and special occasions. With the always evolving wine industry, the internet has made it easier for you to buy wine online and AllOutWine.com is becoming the hottest online store to satisfy all wine lovers needs (Because, of course, all wine lovers have the same needs. Regardless, this is an unquantified claim). AllOutWine is a one stop (‘one-stop’ should be hyphenated) wine shop that offers wines throughout the world (I think they intend to say they offer wines from around the world, not the fact that they’ll ship worldwide). Everything from the great wines of Napa Valley (should have a comma in between Napa Valley and California) California to some of the most sought after wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy. From collectors to consumers, you will surely fine (typo) wines of great value and great appeal.
Matt Belock, the enthusiasm behind AllOutWine has combined 2 (always spell out numbers one through nine) of his passions into 1 powerhouse of excitement (Presumably his passions are wine and marketing, though his background indicates dubious internet marketing which may mean his passion is making money off the unsuspecting based on faux-enthusiasm). “With AllOutWine our plan is to do more than just sell wine online. We want to bring you the customer a fun, enjoyable and rememberable(Rememberable is a dictionary word, but one that is more likely to come off the tongue of George W. Bush than be used in a press release) experience all day, everyday (See page 14 CrushIt! By Gary Vaynerchuk – re: hustle also, ‘everyday’ should be two words). I have many plans in the works (What this usually means is, ‘We rushed to publish the press release before the end of the year and I have no idea what we’re going to do after this, but I’m taking two weeks off at the end of the year and I’ll think about it’) that will allow everyone to interact with each other and share their wine experiences” (Thank goodness, because there is a strong, unmet need for this in the online wine space, cough … cough).
AllOutWine has 1,000’s of wines to choose from at everyday low prices (Like everyday low prices at Wal-Mart?) Receive tasting notes, ratings, and wine maker descriptions (This means that they’ll take the copy straight from the winery and publish it because otherwise it’s a lot of work). They are constantly exploring different wines that they can share with you (Who are ‘They’?). It is a fully functioning and easy navigating website (well, that’s good) that makes it simple to search their entire inventory. They are constantly looking forward to the future and going to provide the best service online (Huh?).
When it comes to drinking wine everyone has their own tastes buds (Really?) One may think a wine is excellent and another may think it is just above average. At AllOutWine they have wines that will satisfy the tastes of everyone. With what’s in stock for the years to come it will only make things easier for the customers to be able enjoy wine on many different levels (Huh?).
Join the over 6,500 and growing followers of AllOutWine at Twitter.com/AllOutWine (Should I join the ranks of Twitter followers like Lolita Borgia and Kristina Mae – two XXX/Spam followers?). Stay interacted (Huh?) with what’s going on daily. Join their email newsletter and become (a) VIP so you can be updated with specials, pre-sells, and deeply discounted wines. They also offer 20% discounts on selected wines that are posted daily, weekly, and monthly. Browse through their cellar selections and find some hidden gems of highly rated wines that will keep your wine cellar full of passion (Huh?).
AllOutWine is here to stay and grow (Thank goodness. A launch press release should always note that whatever you’re launching is here to stay) They are improving the wine lover’s interest and the enthusiasm in building up a world where wine can be brought forward and shared by all (Huh?). They will continue to offer daily, weekly and monthly specials at some of the lowest prices online. So move forward and improve your taste buds (Huh?) by purchasing some of the best quality wines from what some will be calling; the most exciting online wine store on the web (incorrect usage of semi-colon).
About “www.alloutwine.com”
We (Inconsistent pronoun usage) at AllOutWine welcome you to a whole new world of wine on the web. Search though our website and enjoy everything we have to offer and stay tuned to what is coming in the near future (With bated breath, my powerhouse of excitement friend, I will …). This is an online wine store that will be (Passive voice) helping 1,000’s have a memorable (Rememberable?) experience.
For more information visit: http://www.AllOutWine.com
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December 12 2009
It’s stock in trade for practitioners of polemic rhetoric to appeal to the basest instincts of their audience. Why resort to reason when half-truths and pretzel logic will work just fine?
You just hope that your audience is either dumb enough or lazy enough to not call B.S. on what you’re spoon feeding them.
So it goes with the Marin Institute and their latest assault on reason. Only this time, their spin defies the suspension of disbelief that can occur with a carefully constructed story. They have significantly undermined their credibility now and into the future.
Caricature has officially turned into a cartoon with a chorus of dissent raining down that sounds (if not smells) curiously close to the cacophony of people yelling, “B.S.”
The Marin Institute is a watchdog organization that advocates for social responsibility from alcohol organizations. They run several annual campaigns designed to raise awareness about the business practices of beer, wine and spirits businesses with a specific focus on the societal implications wrought by alcohol abuse.
It’s certainly a noble mission and one that any pragmatic person can see as valuable advocacy work for the greater good. In fact, one of their notable organizational campaigns is called, “Charge for Harm” supporting efforts to dedicate some percentage of alcohol taxes to alcohol-related support services.
My first question, however, is: do we really believe that wine, a beverage of inherent moderation, should be a target of the Marin Institute? Forget the poor judgment in decision-making for those that decide to drive after having one too many cocktails; I wonder who at the Marin Institute had a BAC above .08 and thought it was a good idea to pick on the California wine industry and the Wine Institute?
Besides wine being the least likely alcoholic beverage to be abused, the fact is that the allocation of tax dollars is a state decision, and while the Charge for Harm program is noble, it is a business obligation to protect your interest from further taxation. That’s America.
The latest Marin Institute effort takes an unoriginal page directly from the September news cycle in which a soda tax was bandied about to help pay for the healthcare related costs of obesity and diabetes. This caused the likes of Coca-Cola and Pepsico to foment their own consumer movement. In their incarnation, the Marin Institute has set their sights on the Wine Institute as a bogeyman for harboring corporate wine and spirits businesses (“Big Alcohol” they call it) who supposedly lobby against new taxes that can also support alcohol-related social programs.
The report, written by Sarah Mart, focuses on the rubric of, “The Myth of the Family Winery.” Mart, who stayed on message in her email communications with me while being evasive in answering questions directly, is a career policy advocate and not a marketer – that much is clear by reviewing her poorly conceived report replete with more holes than a block of Swiss cheese.
Their press release indicates:
The report details how global alcohol giants promote the California winery storyline while steadily working to deregulate alcohol nationwide. Big Alcohol exploits California wine imagery by exerting undue influence on the political process, including massive lobbying against federal and state alcohol taxes and fee increases to balance budgets and reduce over-consumption.
Okay.
In actuality, the report (if you can call a 10 page PowerPoint using bad logic and Internet research a report) is absent any thought more considered than what an underclassman in high school debate would do while also lacking any meaningful persuasion by presentation of fact or narrative. Mart and the Marin Institute allege that the Wine Institute and “Big Alcohol” perpetuate the myth of California wine as:
• Local
• Small
• Family-owned
• Exclusive
• Healthy
• Integral to California lifestyle
In doing so, Mart focuses on the seven wine companies that represent over 80% of the domestic wine market by market share. She elaborates on the global nature of these companies who (in many cases) have other lines of business that include beer and spirits.
She supports her premise by elaborating on the leadership of the Wine Institute as being from “Big Alcohol” and then enumerating the various lobbying efforts directed by these large wine companies to various California politicians and ballot measures.
Yet, when I posed the question to Mart about stratifying her focus based on what people are drinking that causes societal ill i.e. beer and liquor, she gave a non-sequitar before subsequently following up and acknowledging that beer represents 80-85% of California and national alcohol sales.
There you go.
Why pick on wine and the lifestyle when the fact of the matter is that California’s contributions to California and the country include all of the things that Mart represents as a myth – wine IS local, small, family-owned, and occasionally exclusive, offers health benefits and is a significant part of the California lifestyle. In addition, very significantly, wine is a beverage of moderation, a companion to food on the table.
Those are facts and while it is true that the wine industry does have an 80/20 rule in effect related to large wine company sales volume relative to small wineries, that’s the case in any industry and a virtue of distribution, not intent.
Mart’s attempt at Karl Rove-like spin of taking a strength and turning it into a weakness is certainly poorly conceived.
Why?
Because for all of this focus on the large wine companies the whole argument comes crumbling down when you look at the supposedly “massive” amounts of money these large wine companies contribute to politicians.
Let’s see. California wine does the following:
• Produces $58.9 billion dollars for the California economy
• Pays $12.3 billion in wages to California employees
• Pays 14.7 billion in state and federal taxes
• Has thousands of small, family-owned wineries
• Generates $2.1 billion in tourism dollars from over 21 million visitors
• Gives over $101 million dollars to charitable organizations.
So, if you take the supposedly “massive” contributions that “Big Alcohol” makes to politicians (approximately $1M as calculated by the Marin Institute) and juxtapose it against the value California wine has on just the state economy it comes out to an infinitesimal percentage – tenths of one percent. I mean, it borders on the ridiculous it’s so small relative to the revenue generated. Relative my personal income, it’s like me giving a homeless person a dollar on the street—which is an apt analogy given the wine industry gives over $100 million dollars in goods, services and cash to charitable organizations!
The good news is that outside of a glancing mention in the San Francisco Chronicle it appears that this story hasn’t garnered any sympathetic coverage. I strive to be fair and balanced and I want to be careful not to make this a referendum on the author of the Marin Institute report, but the results of this campaign will surely equal its quality and that’s a lesson learned for everybody involved, particularly those that make ill-conceived assaults on reason.
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