Cafes & Wineries

Amidst the tumbling financial markets, rapacious campaigning, and international crises of one form or another, we all need to slow down and have a glass of wine. Moreover, we all need to stop taking life quite so seriously.

I normally don’t look to French winegrowers for a source of amusement — they are a famously unfunny lot — but apparently desperate times have brought out some humor in some wine producers in the Languedoc.

Faced with low demand for their cooperative produced wines in the face of their region’s reputation for producing plonk, a group of winemakers have decided that they might as well meet the consumer’s expectation.

So they’ve produced a wine labeled “Vin de Merde.” And for anyone who didn′t learn any French swear words when they got the chance in Fifth Grade, that means “Shit Wine.” Or as the ever so proper BBC commentator puts it: “Crap wine.” The rest of the text on the label says: “The worst signifies the best.”

Here’s a little piece from the BBC on the brilliant new label, which just happens to be selling faster than they can get it into shops.

Original post by beatrice.russo

Solidarity, people. That’s what I’m talking about.

The winegrowers of France are outraged. So what else is new? But for once, I’m with them. If I were in France I’d be marching in the streets, arm in arm. Because instead of protesting the lack of subsidies for wine, or screaming about plans to tear out more vineyards, or blowing up buildings to try and raise the price of wine, French winemakers have finally gotten outraged at the right people for the right reasons.

Of course, there’s no word yet about whether CRAV is actually on board with this particular wave of indignation, but with or without the radical wing of the French winemaking industry, people are pissed and aren’t going to take it anymore. And I’m right there with them.

In short:
the winemakers of France are promising large demonstrations against the French government’s inane plans to ban all advertising or showcasing of wine on the Internet. Apparently, the puritanical anti-alcohol lobby in France is about as powerful as the pharmaceutical lobby in the United States.

If I were a better global citizen or a better journalist, I might be able to tell you exactly who these crusading neo-prohibitionist zealots were, but I don′t know. All I know is that they’ve got French lawmakers wrapped around their sinister little claws, so all they have to do is murmur a little something, and the legislature does their bidding like a little lapdog.

It’s sickening that the country that brought us the Enlightenment, and that still brings us Condrieu and Corton could be contemplating such backward policies. The proposed increase of taxes by 15% on French wine, coupled with the inability to promote wine in any way on the Internet (which includes even having a winery web site, as I understand it), may do serious damage to an industry that’s seriously struggling — both against a tide of global competition, as well as the erosion of local consumption (the French have been drinking less wine each year for more than a decade).

Times are tough all over the world at the moment, at least for those with the luxury of stock markets and so called “modern” financial systems. But if you have the energy, please muster a little outrage on behalf of our French brethren. Knock back a glass of Chablis, and yell something out your window.

Or, if you happen to be French, or are merely living in France, go carry a sign for me and shout degrading things at government buildings. I’ll be eternally grateful.

Read the full story.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Solidarity, people. That’s what I′m talking about.

The winegrowers of France are outraged. So what else is new? But for once, I’m with them. If I were in France I’d be marching in the streets, arm in arm. Because instead of protesting the lack of subsidies for wine, or screaming about plans to tear out more vineyards, or blowing up buildings to try and raise the price of wine, French winemakers have finally gotten outraged at the right people for the right reasons.

Of course, there’s no word yet about whether CRAV is actually on board with this particular wave of indignation, but with or without the radical wing of the French winemaking industry, people are pissed and aren’t going to take it anymore. And I’m right there with them.

In short:
the winemakers of France are promising large demonstrations against the French government’s inane plans to ban all advertising or showcasing of wine on the Internet. Apparently, the puritanical anti-alcohol lobby in France is about as powerful as the pharmaceutical lobby in the United States.

If I were a better global citizen or a better journalist, I might be able to tell you exactly who these crusading neo-prohibitionist zealots were, but I don’t know. All I know is that they’ve got French lawmakers wrapped around their sinister little claws, so all they have to do is murmur a little something, and the legislature does their bidding like a little lapdog.

It’s sickening that the country that brought us the Enlightenment, and that still brings us Condrieu and Corton could be contemplating such backward policies. The proposed increase of taxes by 15% on French wine, coupled with the inability to promote wine in any way on the Internet (which includes even having a winery web site, as I understand it), may do serious damage to an industry that’s seriously struggling — both against a tide of global competition, as well as the erosion of local consumption (the French have been drinking less wine each year for more than a decade).

Times are tough all over the world at the moment, at least for those with the luxury of stock markets and so called “modern” financial systems. But if you have the energy, please muster a little outrage on behalf of our French brethren. Knock back a glass of Chablis, and yell something out your window.

Or, if you happen to be French, or are merely living in France, go carry a sign for me and shout degrading things at government buildings. I’ll be eternally grateful.

Read the full story.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

We all have our fantasies. These days mine lean a bit more towards getting more sleep than chance encounters with Salma Hayek. But one thing I’ve never given up on, no matter how unlikely, is the daydream of one day living in Italy.

Anyone wine lover who’s been to the small towns in any one of Italy’s wine regions knows what I’m talking about. There’s just something about Italy that’s truly magical if you’re someone who loves food and wine.

But I never knew quite how magical it could be, until this week, when the faucets of Marino, Italy started pouring out wine instead of water.

Even today, in some small Italian villages you can go buy wine from the guy down the street who makes it. Show up with your jug and open the tap, and pay for what you take. Which was why some folks in Marino wasted no time grabbing jugs and bottles and filling up when the taps started running with something a little tastier than usual.

What to wine lovers was as close to a miracle as we might ever experience was actually the work of bungling civic engineers, who accidentally routed a pipeline of wine (which was destined, as it is every year at this time, for the city’s public fountain in celebration of the harvest) into the domestic water pipeline instead.

I’m sure we′d all prefer our wine not to taste of ancient (probably lead) city pipes, but the concept is hard to beat. Just another reason to daydream.

Read the full story.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Faked world-class wines are in the news enough these days that I can decisively call them trendy. They’ve already got a book and their own Hollywood movie on the way. But I didn’t know just how chic counterfeit wine was until I found out that my friend Lettie Teague (who happens to be the executive wine editor of Food &amp Wine Magazine) recently spent some time faking a bottle of 1982 Château Mouton Rothschild for a dinner party.

Of course, like many of Teague’s most interesting wine-related exploits, this latest adventure was done in the service of a story, which appears in the October issue of Food &amp Wine. It’s worth a read, if only for the chuckle you might get at how bent out of shape some of her friends get when she reveals that the 100 point wine that some of them loved wasn’t quite what they thought it was.

Teague goes to a moderate amount of effort to fake her wine, enlisting the help of a winemaker friend in Washington state, but she missed out on the real fun as far as I′m concerned. She bought a real bottle of the stuff, so she didn′t get a chance to doctor up a bottle with a fake label and spend hours “distressing” her new creation to make it look authentic. Half the fun would have been figuring out how to fade the ink and where to abrade the paper, not to mention figuring out how to grow a little mold under the capsule.

Despite skipping some of the parts of the counterfeiting process that I would have been most excited about, the story is a fun read. Check it out.

Thanks to my friend Jack at Fork & Bottle for the tip.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

I′ve now been in South Africa for about three full days, and I′ve tasted, by rough estimation, about 300 or more South African wines, ranging from some of the most common, to some of the smallest production, most sought after wines in the country.

I′ve got a ton of tasting notes and scores for all these wines that I′m working on, but in the meantime, I thought I′d ramble a bit about what I′m learning, thinking, and concluding about South Africa, their wine industry, and their wine.

GENERAL IMPRESSIONS OF SOUTH AFRICA
This place is great. The people are warm, friendly, and very laid back. They remind me a lot of New Zealanders with their enthusiasm, generosity, and sense of humor. The place itself, which is to say The Cape and its surrounding wine country is stunningly (pictures to come) beautiful and very accessible to the traveler. The country is a breeze to travel in, so far. All the interesting bits of being in a foreign country but where everyone speaks English.

There is no escaping the fact that there are great economic inequalities that still exist in this country. There are a lot of very, very poor people here.

Once out of the major urban areas areas one quickly finds oneself in an interesting mix of well-to-do farming enclaves and the indigent townships that were part and parcel of the apartheid era. These townships, though now more than 80% have electricity and running water, compared to about 30% under apartheid, are only barely and excruciatingly slowly beginning to be converted to more modern affordable housing. Apparently the wait list for this housing at the nearest township to Cape Town is something like 500,000 people long.

This landscape of gorgeous wine wealth contrasted with utter poverty is not unlike Mendoza, Argentina, for those who may have visited that wine country, where one minute the roadside is littered with trash and has barefoot kids poking through it with sticks, and another minute it passes by a gated estate.

Interestingly, and quite disarmingly, the locals speak with great candor about how far the country has to go in order to get things right, and while I’m sure my experience has been quite narrow in scope, everyone I’ve met has been quite passionate about moving forward socially to continue righting the wrongs of the past.

ABOUT THE WINE
Before coming on this trip, I had tasted perhaps several dozen South African wines, usually at large trade tastings in San Francisco. The majority of them were Sauvignon Blancs, though I had made a special effort to taste Pinotage, as I was interested in this “indigenous” grape that was pioneered in the country.

In short, I had tasted more South African wine than most Americans, but I was essentially ignorant about it. So this trip was a big educational opportunity for me, and the last few days have been what you might call a “total immersion” course in South African wine.

And here’s what I′ve learned.

About Quality
There seems to be a large amount of variability in the quality of the region’s wines. At the bottom end of the spectrum (say, under $3) there is a lot of crap, just as there is in most wine producing countries. The middle tiers of wine are broad and also largely mediocre, except as the price climbs above roughly $10. At this “premium” price level there is a lot of not so good wine, but there is also a lot of excellent wine, including some excellent, excellent bargains, especially when it comes to Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, and red blends. As the price of the wine climbs upwards towards $20, this variability continues, with some $20 wines being absolute knockouts, while others are quite disappointing (for reasons I′ll describe below).

I feel like while in certain countries, spending $20 on a bottle of wine somewhat guarantees a level of quality, this is not yet true in South Africa.

But before anyone gets the idea that this whole country is a crapshoot, I need to say that there is a whole lot of great wine being made here for absolutely silly prices (i.e. $12 to $25). I can’t tell you how many truly excellent wines I’ve had this week that never broke the $25 price level — wines that, if produced in Napa, would cost two or three times as much.

So despite the variability, there are some stunning, stunning values to be had here.

About Varieties
I can say without qualification that South Africa can make Sauvignon Blanc as good as any New World country. The best stuff I′ve tasted here can hold its own against Chile, New Zealand, and California without any effort. There is a LOT of Sav Blanc made here, and while you can’t exactly just pick one at random and know it will be good, any winery that has a “flagship″ or single vineyard Sav Blanc will likely be good, and a value at $15 or so.

When I was in New Zealand a couple of years ago, Pinot Gris was the Next Big Thing. Everyone was making it and everyone locally was drinking it and raving about it. Well South Africa has it’s own local white phenomenon, and it happens to be Chenin Blanc. And just like in New Zealand, it’s not quite worth the hype. I’ve actually had a number of quite pleasurable, crisp, racy Chenins this week, that I’d love to substitute for Sauvignon Blanc with any meal on a hot day. But I’ve yet to have a single Chenin that really turns my head, and of course none that approach the distinctiveness and profundity of how the variety is treated in the Loire.

I did have a botrytized dessert wine from Ken Forrester made from Chenin that was mind-blowingly good, however, so there’s clearly no reason to rip out the vines quite yet, but the hype could certainly do with a little airing out.

The Syrah seems to be all over the map in terms of style, and quite variable in quality. There seems to be a certain movement where folks who are trying to style theirs like Europe are calling their wines Syrah, while those looking for a bigger style call theirs Shiraz, though thinking this was a good rule, my expectations were thwarted more than once this week.

Even the biggest Syrahs tend to be a little cooler climate in quality than the huge fruit bombs of Australia. There’s a restraint to South African Syrah that is admirable and appealing when done right. Having said that however, I found a lot of Syrah that I most definitely did not like — wines that were lean (without compensation of complexity), angular, sometimes vegetal, sometimes rubbery, and sometimes even harsh. There were a few winners, however, which I′ll write about later.

My favorite Syrahs, however, haven’t been Syrahs at all, but rather blends that incorporated a good amount of Syrah.

So let’s talk about red blends, which I think are the real promise of South Africa. I’ve had a large number of truly exceptional red blends this week. From Bordeaux style to Rhone style, these red blends are becoming more common in several main wine regions, and are often startlingly good.

The Stellenbosch region is pumping out a great number of these (usually small production) wines, though they are made in many other regions as well. The Bordeaux blend is the most common variety, and a number of them are very classically styled, with all the major Bordeaux varieties represented.

This group of wines does not escape from the variability problem, however, which means that for every good blend I had, I tried another that was heavy with green bell pepper or other “green” vegetal qualities that I assume comes from poorly ripened fruit. Those that manage to get well ripened fruit can do wonders, however.

There also seems to be a lot of straight Merlot produced here, with a lot of pride, which unfortunately I believe to be misplaced. I have tasted a lot of Merlot over the last week, and much of it tasted unripe to me (with a few notable exceptions).

I′ve had some pretty competent Chardonnays this week as well. Nothing profound, mind you, but some very good ones that I′d be more than happy to drink instead of your average California Chardonnay.

About Pinotage
Pinotage, the local cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsault (or Hermitage, as it’s called here) deserves its own chapter, which it will get tomorrow. However I believe I have “figured it out″ so to speak. There seem to be two directions to go with this grape variety. Until I came here I only had wines that treated the grape like Pinot Noir. But there’s another school of winemaking here that treats the grape more like Cinsault — which is to say, like a Southern Rhone grape, and these I believe to be the most successful.

However, the main Pinotage revelation that I have achieved while here is that Pinotage makes an incredible ros&eacute. So much so that (in jest) I’d be liable to suggest that everyone stop bothering with the red wine and just focused on making pink ones. It’s that good. Really.

ABOUT THE CAPE WINE SHOW
I can’t begin to tell you how impressed I am with the logistics and presentation of this wine convention. It is simply the best public/trade wine tasting event I have ever experienced, and the folks that put it on deserve the highest compliments for what they’ve pulled off.

So what’s so great? Let me paint a picture for you of how this show works.

OK, so it’s in a big convention center, which isn’t the greatest thing in the world, but where else are you going to fit 400 producers and 4000 wines for three days. Once you get over the fact that if you’re serious about the trade show you won’t see much of the sun or of the beautiful city, it’s an absolute joy.

The place is incredibly clean and well lit, and the temperature is perfect — not too hot, not too cold. The acoustics are great — no huge echo hall. You can have conversations, you can hear yourself think, and all with several thousand people milling around.

Each winery gets its own swanky little booth. These are all the same size (unless the winery is part of a huge drinks conglomerate, and then they get a massive custom booth). These booths are essentially a standing height (which is important) 3′ by 5′ white podium which stands in front of an impeccably lit “wall display” which is a custom banner with the winery’s branding on it (photos, logo, etc.) and a set of lighted glass shelves for decanters, glasses, and any display the winery wants to do (bottles, medals, etc.).

These booths are the same for big and small wineries alike, and are usually staffed by the winery owner or winemaker or both.

Every booth also has a refrigerator, and every couple of booths (which are nicely spaced out so there’s no sense of crowding) there are round tables with chairs, where you could (theoretically) sit down and make a deal to buy, import, or distribute some wine.

So not only does every booth have a shelf full of fresh, clean (and properly shaped, I might add) glassware, there’s a whole crew of people at the show that makes sure its always stocked. Instead of endlessly rinsing your glass, which invariably gets caked with wine residue, if you wanted to, you could literally get a fresh glass at each station. While not the most environmentally friendly (I can only imagine how much dishwasher detergent they must use at this pace) clean glasses whenever you wanted was a huge luxury.

Did I mention that every booth had at least 2 spittoons? And that the same crew was constantly emptying these, as well as bringing ice for those who wanted to ice their wines in buckets.

Additionally, wineries had back stocks of wine that were clearly in storage somewhere behind the scenes, and whenever they wanted a bottle, they waved down girls in red shirts with baskets over their arms, and in 2 minutes, the girl would be back with a bottle or two in the basket.

Over the course of three days, I think I might have waited to taste a wine perhaps three times, and then only because there were four or five people at the tasting booth ahead of me (not 30 like at some tastings in San Francisco).

The booths were laid out in a perfectly logical manner, prominently numbered, and every winery was listed in a huge book with their correct booth number. Not only was their booth number available, but this booklet had their full contact info, URL, a list of all the wines they were pouring at the event, the technical details of each of those wines (alcohol, pH, residual sugar) the production levels of the wine, the price range of the wine, and more. While this wine listing was not always 100% accurate, it was totally comprehensive. The booklet not only had the wineries indexed by name and by location in the hall, it also indexed all the wines by region and varietal, so if you wanted to taste all the Mourvedre produced in South Africa (about 12 wines, in case you were wondering) you would know exactly which booths and producers to go to. It was truly awesome.

MORE TO COME
That’s about enough for now. Here′s a teaser for the posts to come: This morning I (and about 40 others) had the chance to taste the very first Pinotage ever bottled in the world — the 1959 vintage — along with about 10 other Pinotages ranging from 12 to 35 years of age. I′ll have tasting notes for all of them, as well as my current “verdict” on Pinotage shortly.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Perhaps only thing worse for winemakers than getting a below average review in a wine publication is being mentioned in any publication that describes itself as investigative. “Normal” journalists, namely those that don’t normally focus on food, wine, or lifestyle issues, have a pretty lousy reputation in the wine industry, and sometimes for good reason.

Especially when they publish pieces like this. Or when they try for a “new angle” on a particular issue.

The issue of ingredient labeling on wine has been discussed at length in the United States, and it’s apparently also under discussion in the EU. I’ve written about the subject here on Vinography before.

Now, apparently Channel 4 and its investigative program “Dispatches” has aired a program suggesting that much of the wine industry adulterates its products with all manner of ingredients. The discussion about ingredient labeling has now turned into a muck-raking sensationalist exercise, that threatens to completely misinform and alarm UK consumers.

Here’s a clip from the segment. Here’s another one.

While neither of these clips contain the worst claims supposedly leveled in the program (namely that winemakers use so many additives in the winemaking process, that what you get at the end isn’t really wine), you don’t have to see much of them to hear the agenda being pushed. Those in the UK can see the full program online for the next seven days.

Now, I’m all for truth in labeling when it comes to wine. I think winemakers should err on the side of disclosure. There are certainly a lot of things allowed in wine that most people have never heard of. I probably wouldn′t make buying decisions based on the fact that a winemaker had used reverse osmosis to lower the alcohol of a wine, or that it had been fined with isinglass (a fish protein). But I wouldn′t mind knowing those things, and some people have the right to make purchase decisions based on them if they like.

But I do object to the sort of “digging for dirt″ that this program seems to have been after. Apparently they called Jamie Goode, looking for some sort of expert witness who could tell them all sorts of nasty things that people put into their wine. His impression was that they had already decided what conclusions they wanted to draw, and were simply looking for supporting evidence, which he declined to give them.

Apparently they ended up revealing the scandalous truth that sugar is added to most Champagne.

Duh.

My sympathy goes out to retailers, producers, and distributors in the UK wine market who are rightfully upset at how this issue has been reframed as a “doctoring of the product” as opposed to a legitimate debate about how wine gets labeled.

I also cringe at the way that some folks in the wine industry use such occasions as an opportunity to push their own “if it’s not biodynamic, it’s poison” agenda. That’s as inappropriate as the lousy journalism.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Compared to sports fans, wine lovers of different stripes don’t have a lot to have really heated arguments about. Even when my fellow wine geeks get into it about whether Romanee Conti is worth the money, or whether Biodynamics is more voodoo than science, there’s less vehemence than you’d find at any pre-season football game.

If there is one exception to this rule in the mild mannered arena of mutual enjoyment of wine and camaraderie, it may be the modern hysteria about rising alcohol levels in wine.

I’ve written before about the degree to which I think that this is a tempest in a teacup, and largely confined to a small segment of wine wine connoisseurs, critics, and journalists that can afford to care and complain about the issue. Most wine drinkers, I maintain, have no idea nor concern over the alcohol levels in their wine.

Despite this fact, the number of news stories, discussion threads, conversations, and, yes, arguments about the topic continues to increase, fueled in part by global warming and its presumed involvement in rising sugar levels at harvest.

There can be no denying that average alcohol levels in wine, especially red wine, are rising around the world. A simple survey of California and Bordeaux wine levels going back the last three decades will show an average increase of between one and two percent alcohol by volume, or more specifically a rise from somewhere in the low 13% level to somewhere in the high 14% range at the moment. Of course, it is also true that increasingly there are many red wines from California (as well as places like Australia) that are tipping the scales at fifteen or even sixteen percent alcohol.

So people continue to complain, and the issue continues to be a scab that I can’t help picking at. It’s stupid, but strangely pleasing.

There are two main complaints voiced against the rising alcohol levels in wine. The first is that such wines don’t pair well with foods. I’m going to leave that argument alone, as there is some truth to it. Though I will point out that, again, the average wine drinker doesn’t perceive this problem. Just as they don’t perceive a problem with ordering a glass of Merlot to go with their oysters.

The second complaint against these higher alcohol levels in wine is usually expressed to me as follows:

“The problem with these blockbuster wines is that I just can’t drink as much of them as I can a nice low alcohol wine. Back in the day, I used to be able to put away a whole bottle by myself, but now, one or two glasses and I’m drunk as a fish.”

That’s not a direct quote from anyone, but if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard it, I would be able to quit my day job and work on Vinography full time.

This particular argument has always struck me as a little implausible. But I’m not a biochemist, and I’m not great with statistics, so I’ve never been able to marshal enough information to call bullshit. Which is why when I found out about a place called the Alcohol Research Group, I jumped at the idea that there was someone there who could speak with more authority on the facts of the matter.

So I talked with some people who went to school for about four times as many years as I did, and who sit around doing research on alcohol all day long. Dr. William Kerr is the Director of The Alcohol Research Group’s Methodological Studies Component, and Dr. Tom Greenfield is the Group’s Senior Scientist and Center Director. Their center devotes its time and energy to researching various topics about alcohol to inform public policy and public health action.

I asked them if they could explain to me the effective difference between a wine at 13% alcohol and 15.5% alcohol in terms of the amount consumed.

“Comparing 13% and 15.5% wines,” says Greenfield, “at the 2 drink level there is not a huge difference in the amount of alcohol consumed. It amounts to about 1/3 of a glass of the 15.5% wine.”

“3 glasses of each differ by less than one glass of either– they differ by just over 1/2 a glass of the 13% wine (or actually very close to 1/2 a glass of the 15.5%). In a similar simplistic comparison I also conclude that 5 drinks of the 13% is close to (just a tiny bit over) 4 drinks of the 15.5%–they differ by less than 1/4 glass of the 13% wine.”

Dr. Kerr went on to suggest that sometimes bigger wines at higher alcohol levels may take lighter drinkers by surprise: “In our recent Bar Study in 10 Northern California counties we found most mixed drinks were around 12 or 13%, one indication that people may prefer contents around this level of alcohol by volume.”

He also went on to note that some studies done on beer show that people tend to drink the same amount of beer, regardless of its alcoholic strength, and hypothesized that the same is probably true for wine.

“A wine at 15.6%ABV (alcohol by volume) is 25% higher than a wine at 12%ABV. So if you drink 4 glasses of the higher ABV you will get one extra drink as compared to the lower %ABV wine. A wine at 14.6% is 33% larger than an 11%ABV wine so it will take only 3 glasses to get one extra glass.”

So what to make of this?

It’s clear that someone who used to be able to put away an entire bottle of 13.2% ABV California Cabernet should have no problem drinking most of a bottle of modern 15.5% ABV wine, even accounting for the difference that their ABV’s would make in the effective rate of alcohol consumed per hour over their dinnertime.

While there may not be that much of a difference in the amount of alcohol that someone consumes between a 13.5% alcohol wine and a 15.5% alcohol wine, it is certainly true that alcohol can change the sensory qualities of what’s in the bottle, and those effects may very well be objectionable to some.

Higher levels of alcohol in wine are often accompanied by various sensations on the palate, ranging from a thicker, more viscous body to the wine (thanks mostly to the qualities of Ethanol), as well as the alcoholic heat that is, in my mind, the true scourge of high alcohol wines. The presence of this heat, however, is not constant. Some wines, which I simply assume are just better made (though I don’t know exactly how) don’t betray their alcohol content with heat, while others (the cheaper, more mass produced ones in my experience) can sear the throat badly.

Finally, there is some interaction between alcohol and our perception of the taste of wine, as anyone who has ever participated in a “sweet spot” tasting can attest. These tastings use some fancy modern winemaking technology to adjust the alcohol levels in a batch of wine. By using the same batch of wine, but adjusting the alcohol in .2% increments, a tasting of a given wine from 13% to 15% can be conducted, while all other variables in the wine remain the same. The effects are quite interesting, though I’m not sure they are consistent either from wine to wine, or from taster to taster. What I can say is that most people find a specific level of alcohol that “tastes best” to them, and there can often be broad agreement among tasters on the “sweet spot” for a given wine.

So alcohol levels do change our experience of wine, but not in such clear cut, absolute, and negative ways that all this carping that I hear from the wine industry might suggest.

It’s time to stop throwing around categorical statements about how life used to be better when wines were lower in alcohol. If you liked the wines of the early 1980’s more than those now, I suggest you do some searching online. There are plenty for sale at relatively inexpensive prices. Or better yet, just start making wine the way you want it to be, and those who agree with you will buy it if it’s any good.

In the circles of wine lovers I travel in, many folks make a common observation about the evolving landscape of wine criticism. Namely that the era of Robert M. Parker, Jr. is coming to a close, and a new world of wine critics are emerging. I’m not sure I’d personally describe what I see happening in the wine world in quite those terms, but it’s clear that Parker has been doing some succession planning in the past couple of years with many of the new additions to his staff. It’s also clear that there are many new voices in the world of wine criticism, and some of them are beginning to carry serious weight.

One in particular seems to be rapidly gaining in power and influence, to the point that he is making markets for wine — when he writes about a wine, it flies off the shelves and skyrockets in price.

His name is Shizuku Kanzaki, and he is a cartoon character.

Specifically, he is the sommelier hero of the Japanese comic book series Kami no Shizuku, or “Droplets of the Gods.” Long time readers will remember that I have written about him before. But apparently he’s gone from novelty to downright phenomenon. And when I say that he is gaining in power and influence, a single number may suffice to demonstrate that fact:

Number of subscribers to Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate: 50,000
Estimated number of individual readers of Kami no Shizuku: 500,000

Influence on wine prices and inventories aside, the most impressive impact of this imaginary wine critic seems to me to be the fact that sommelier classes for women are “fully booked” in Japan.

How cool is that? Beats the heck out of the “Sideways Effect.”

Read the latest story.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

About two years ago, I headed off to New Zealand for the first time, armed with lots of recommendations from readers that proved very valuable. I discovered a couple of wines that I had not heard of, and dined at a couple of restaurants that were highlights of my trip.

So I’m asking you again, dear readers, for advice.

In two weeks I am headed to Cape Wine 2008, the biennial South African wine festival, with a singular goal: to taste as much darn South African wine as I possibly can in 8 days. Lesser goals include: finding a fantastic Pinotage (some say it can′t be done) and scoping out the sparkling wine scene (rumors circulate about up and coming stars).

The South African wine industry has done a huge push for international visibility in the last year, culminating with this event, which will likely be well attended, thanks in part to the recent accolades that many wines received from Decanter Magazine.

There will supposedly be 4000 wines to taste at this event. I feel a bit like a triathelete who hasn’t gotten on the bike in six weeks but is staring down the barrel of an Ironman.

Wish me luck. And, oh yeah, tell me your tips!

Original post by Alfonso Cevola