Wine and Whiskey - A Perfect Pair

So I've been reading a lot about a new bar and restaurant in Brooklyn called Char No. 4, and now there's an article about it on Gourmet's website. Located in family friendly Cobble Hill, it's a whiskey bar for the most part, but the wine list is supposedly killer. As a special Thanksgiving treat, I'm thinking about checking it out over the weekend. If you're in the neighborhood and looking for a really great bottle of wine or a $200 sip of Scotch, I recommend checking it out. You can follow the link to read the entire article, but here's a segment to get your taste buds excited.

"The wine list at Char No. 4, a new restaurant in Brooklyn, is fabulous: Darting Riesling from Germany’s Pfalz region and Roagna Dolcetto from Alba, both by the glass; a small but smartly chosen selection of half bottles like Robert Sinskey's Carneros Pinot Blanc or Pibaron Bandol; and a full-bottle list that reads like a compilation of the world’s best undersung wines—and tops out at $78. Yet despite those temptations, all I wanted was whiskey. The place is steeped in it, from the wall of bottles behind the bar to the whiskey-barrel-shaped lights overhead that throw a warm bourbon glow."

Happy Thanksgiving! I'll be back to blogging next Monday.

On Two Buck Chuck

Today I found a great article on the merits of cheap table wine, and more specifically, that which is known by most of the country as "Two Buck Chuck." Charles Shaw Blend wine's (see where the Chuck comes from?) is a remarkably palatable, remarkably affordable wine that's been on the markets for some time now. If you're lucky enough to be in a city that has Trader Joe's groceries or wine stores - you're probably already familiar with the less-than-five-dollars price range. Depending upon who you ask and how snooty they are, some folks will tell you it's amazing and others that it's garbage, but for what it's worth, I think it's just fine.

The author of this article draws a similar conclusion, and explains why it's good and why it's sold for so cheap. You can read the entire article here, but I've provided a clip to get you started.


"Two Buck Chuck, I quickly learned, is a very cheap bottled wine that costs under $5, sometimes as little as $2 (depending on your state), that's sold only by the Trader Joe's group of grocery stores. I had expected it to be the kind of swill that you could run a car on. When I was growing up, cheap wine was bad wine. It gave you a headache or came out of a box. But Two Buck Chuck, which was labeled as Charles Shaw and given its nickname because of its insanely low price, was actually quite good. As the oenophiles might say, it was quite drinkable, particularly for an average guy like me. Who needs to pay $30 for a bottle of wine that will be empty before dinner's done? What was going on here? A lot, as it turned out."

Thanksgiving Wine - A Service Guide

I know I posted twice last week about the absurd number of "wine's to serve for Thanksgiving" articles being published - but I came across one today I couldn't pass up on featuring. Rather than providing a hum-drum list of wines to consider pairing with turkey, the wine writer at The Journal-Constitution put together an all-day long serving guide.

Starting at one o'clock in the afternoon, this list provides readers with a way to keep your guests occupied with vino while you're busy finishing things up in the kitchen. From the "Hey, how's it going?" glass of bubbly to the post-dinner, pre-comatose dessert wine - everything is covered. Follow the link for full text, but here's the introduction to give you an idea what you're in for.

"Right after preparing and cooking 19-pound birds, nothing stirs more angst among Thanksgiving Day hosts than choosing wine. Red wine or white? How much to spend? Boxed or bottled? Well, break out the scissors and get ready to clip this column (you online hipsters can just hit “print”). Here’s your hour-by-hour wine guide to Thanksgiving Day."

Recycling Cork

There's an interesting article on From the Cellarist which discusses a new organization designed to recycle wine corks. In recent years there has been a large scale effort to recycle wine bottles, as well as to reduce the weight of glass used to make them in the first place. The organization, ReCork America, was created to address the other major component of wine packaging - the cork - and how to put them to good use.

According to the article:

"Wine corks can easily be ground and recycled. They could also be ground and used in compost (though whole corks, says Roger Archey, ReCork's program manager and publicist, are difficult to compost for the same reason they're good wine stoppers; they resist water and don't decompose easily). More likely, the used corks will be shipped back to Portugal by ship to be refashioned into other cork products like flooring or shoe soles."

Follow the link for the complete text.

Out of Stocks and Into the Cellar

As you may have noticed - the stock market isn't doing so well. It closed yesterday at it's lowest point in nearly a decade, everything is sell sell sell, and at this point most brokers and small-time investors are just looking for a place to run and hide. One writer at City AM (Business with Personality) has an interesting solution to the problem . . . moving your investments out of the stock market and into the cellar.

According to recent studies wine is one of the most lucrative products on the market, often appreciating faster and better than both gold and diamonds. There's a limited supply of the really good stuff, it gets better with age and it's been around forever - so you know it's always going to sell. So I guess the question is - Is wine the new real estate? This article surely would make it seem that way.

"The reason wine is performing so beautifully is a question of supply and demand-– Economics 101 as the Canadian co founder and CEO of The Wine Investment Fund, Rodney Birrell, calls it.
There is rocketing demand for the top stuff from emerging markets such as Russia, China, India and South America and fixed supply from the investment-grade producing chateaux, almost all of which are in Bordeaux."

It's an interesting theory . . . but we must remember that wine only works as an investment if you don't drink it - which more or less means I can count myself out.

Oh, Thanksgiving

Well, I said yesterday that we should prepare ourselves for everyone's "wine and the holidays" piece, and it certainly didn't take long to happen. Today I'd just like to share a select few the million Thanksgiving-themed blog posts, columns and articles being circulated in the past 24 hours. Enjoy!

Keep your Thanksgiving Wine Choices Fresh

Many Wines Suit Thanksgiving Dishes

Thanksgiving Offers a Plethora of Wine Choices

Give Thanks for Good Wine

Thanksgiving Calls for a Variety of Wine Choices

Wine for the Holiday Table

The Holiday Wine Piece

It's almost Thanksgiving, which means that something widely known in wine writing has started popping up in blogs and newspapers across the country - the holiday wine piece. These columns and articles appear around this time every year, and will generally keep running in one form or another through December 1st. Starting with "Wines to Pair with Turkey" and ending with "Bubbly to Pop on New Years" - if you like this type of thing your in for a real treat in the next few months.

To jump start the season I've decided to share one of the 35 that already pop up in a Google search. This one comes from The Examiner and tells you what you need to know about pairing wine with your Thanksgiving feast. I'll keep you posted on similar pieces as they continue to sprout up through the snow. Enjoy - and happy holidays!

French Vinaigriers

Where before wine there are grapes, after wine there's vinegar. A lot of people don't think much when they pick up a bottle of red wine vinegar at the grocery store, but the truth is that it's kind of interesting. Turning wine into vinegar is a complicated process - arguably as difficult and necessary of finesse as creating a fine wine. And for the number of French regions, vineyards and vintners out there, there's a surprisingly small number of vinaigriers in the country.

According to an article on TheAge.com titled Acid Trips, "France has but a handful of artisan vinaigriers producing vinegar from wine by the traditional method. It's an indication of the poor public image of this pantry essential, says Nathalie Herre, who since 1999 has been making a unique range of vinegars in the Roussillon region of southern France."

If you're looking to take your wine-related trivia knowledge to the next level, this article's a good place to start. Follow the link for the full details.

Faux Wine

Counterfeit wine has been a hot topic this year, and it looks like people just keep getting burned. Wine Spectator has an article up today on the ongoing battle against faux wine. The piece focuses on a collector named Russell Frye who found out just before selling his cellar at Sotheby's that about 3 million dollars worth of high-end bordeaux's were not authentic. He still managed to sell the rest of the collection for just under $8 million, but still - a hit like that has got to sting.

The article then goes onto talk about the growing problem, as well as a number of precautions and technologies being developed to possibly prevent it in the future. From Wine Spectator,

"While it's hard to determine the extent of wine counterfeiting, collectors, wineries and retailers are concerned. In April, auction house Acker, Merrall & Condit pulled 22 lots of Burgundy supposedly from Domaine Ponsot after proprietor Laurent Ponsot said he believed the bottles were fakes. In September, Italy's Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry reported that police had seized 30,000 bottles of red wine fallaciously labeled as Amarone at the port of Livorno. The wines were destined for the United States."

It's a fascinating look at a major insider issue and how industry heads are attempting to deal with it. Follow the link for the full text.

In Search of Smoke-Resistant Wine Grapes

One of the constant hazards of making wine in both California and Australia is fire. Every year we hear stories on the news about wild fires in California. And during the five seasons, Australian vintners reported a significant loss in quality and money as a result of brush fires. And if you're not in the know - these problems don't necessarily stem from grapes being burned. Instead, a large amount of exposure to smoke can turn a perfectly good grape into something that's almost unpalatable.

In an effort to combat this problem, a number of scientists down under are looking into ways to make grapes smoke-resistant. From an article on the subject in The Australian -

"The aims and outcomes of this research are of major significance and relevance to the Australian wine industry," Dr Wilkinson said. "From a scientific perspective, our results will advance knowledge in the fields of viticulture, plant physiology and biochemistry. "From an industry perspective, this insight will enable grape growers and winemakers to make informed decisions to minimise smoke-tainted wine, yielding clear economic benefits." "

The State of Wine in America

Vinology has a really, really, really interesting (and a little sad) report on the top wines consumed in America last year. As I mentioned in a post awhile back, consumption of vino in the States is up, and has been every year for over a decade. But what's so interesting about this report, is that it shows how (for lack of a better word) cheap our tastes are.

Out of the top ten, there's only one red in the bunch. That red, which is made by Australian vintners Yellowtail, retails for under ten dollars and, in my opinion, is almost undrinkable. Other highlights on the list include boxed wine, saccharine-sweet white zinfandel and a number of other grocery store standards. Here's a bit from the post:

"Based on the simple measure of how many cases of each wine were sold at these restaurants, we get a picture of the most important person in America when it comes to wine: the average American wine consumer.

And why is this person so important? Because they are the bread and butter of the wine industry. They are the fuel for the wine engine. They are the bottom 95%, so to speak, whose spending habits make (or break) the market and who make up the pool of wine drinkers from which true wine lovers slowly graduate to more expensive wines and esoteric habits like...reading wine blogs."

So for all the gushing I've down about our wine culture, it looks like there's still a lot of ground to cover. Follow the link at the start of this post for the full report. You might be surprised.

Wine Clubs Gain in Popularity

According to an article in Minnesota's Post-Bulletin the popularity of wine clubs is on the rise. We've reported here at Wine News that vino sales have been steadily on the rise here in the US for the past ten years, and now it looks like folks want to turn their drinking into a party.

From the article:

"Hy-Vee Wine and Liquor and Apollo Liquor have very active groups. The newest is at Hy-Vee in Barlow Plaza. The store was remodeled on the old MGM Liquor site and added a glassed-in, wine-tasting room where the group gathers every Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

It's not a formal affair, but rather a "drop in when you can" situation. Ben Dudley, store manager and certified wine specialist, is in charge. "This club grew out of a ladies wine-tasting I started a few years ago on Wednesday evenings. It was such a success we went to this," Dudley says."

This is a trend popping up all over the country. If you're looking for a few tastings or clubs in your neck of the woods, googling wine club + [insert your area here] is usually the best way to go.

Sparkling Sales Double for Election Day

OK, OK, I know - the coverage of the US presidential election spanned over two years, day in and day out and has driven most everybody crazy with apprehension. I also know that it's been almost a week since the thing was FINALLY decided and Obama was given the nod to head to the White House. That being said, my campaign promise is that this will be the last post on this blog (for at least two years) on Presidential politics.

And besides, this post is actually really relevant to wine!

If this little press release from Market Watch is any indicator, the American public was extremely excited for election night. Sales at Fresh and Easy neighborhood market announced that they sold more than two times their average daily amount of sparkling wine and champagne. Also, I spoke with several wine shops in Manhattan who informed me that they SOLD out of all but the most expensive bottles in their stock. I guess if vintners of bubbly had their way, we'd have election night every night.

Wine Regions Feeling Blue

In a political way, anyways. There's an interesting article up on The San Francisco Chronicle's website discussing the coincidental trend that the Blue States in Tuesday's elections make approximately 99.4% of all American wines. The article's author, Jon Bonné, is a pretty funny guy. He makes a clever observation that - in this election anyway - Democrats have lived up to the hard-to-shake image of wine-loving, French sympathizing elitists. To be fair, a lot of places that don't make wine went blue this year as well. Follow the link for the entire piece, but here's a little taste to wet your whistle.

"Rumors continue that Obama is more of a wine drinker, which I wholeheartedly endorse - so long as he's not one of those Nixonian types who serves the plonk to guests while hiding the good Bordeaux for himself. (Fine, fine. So Nixon also brought Schramsberg to China along with diplomacy.) But watching the election maps turn blue Tuesday night set me wondering where the wine-producing states fell on the electoral map."

Predicting the Future

One of the most elusive things about wine - from an outsiders view, anyway - tends to be wrapped up in the process of aging. Why does aging wine make it better? How long is the ideal period to leave a bottle before opening? How do you know if a wine will "age well?" These are all common questions with not so simple answers - but I stumbled across a Q & A in The Seattle Times today that tries to address it. The Times' wine writer, Paul Gregutt, breaks things down simply and gives a fairly straightforward answer.

Gregutt was asked by a reader, "As you are tasting a wine, what criteria do you use (tannins, etc.) to decide if it would improve with time?"

His response:

"Most of the wines I taste are quite young, as the rush to be the first to market the newest vintage tends to hurry up release dates. But I've found it is not that difficult to get a fairly good idea of how a wine will age.

In general what I look for in a young wine is aromatic complexity; balance in the mouth; no excessive alcohol, oak or tannin; and the ability to reveal more and more layers as it breathes open. A good way to guesstimate its future prospects is to decant it and taste it over the course of several hours. Sometimes, if I think a wine is really wrapped up tight, I taste if a few times, then put the cork back in the bottle, and simply let it breathe in the bottle overnight. If it has improved the next day, it generally means that it will likely improve with more cellar time."

Red Wine Pill

Remember a few weeks back when I kept posting about how red wine is really, really good for you? Well, the reason scientists have been saying that is because reds contain a chemical called resevratrol that aides weight loss, lowers your risk for lung cancer and a handful of other amazing things. Now, Scientific American is running a story on "red wine in a pill," a medicated version of what you'd typically get out of red wine. Personally, I think that takes all the fun out of it - but it's interesting nonetheless. They're testing it on mice to pretty solid effects so far. I'll keep you posted as more information on the subject comes about.

Wine and Your Election Party

There are many, many, MANY stories out today on planning your election night party. Several of them are filled with fun games, scorecards and things to watch for. This one, which I stumbled across a few minutes ago has a pretty clever election-themed wine tasting oenophiles might want to consider.

"Your party is centered around voting, so do some of it. Try a blind-balloting wine tasting, or poll your guests on whom they voted for and compare the party tally to the nation's outcome. If you've got guests who don't want to disclose their presidential picks, try games focused on presidential history: a round of trivia or charades. "Dealing with the past instead of contemporary issues can take the sting out politics," Ms. Watson-Werst says."

Only in America do folks go to such great lengths to drink in a politically poignant sort of way. Get out and vote!

The Sideways Effect

There's been a lot of talk the past week about the Bradley effect . . . but at least one news outlet is giving a little play to the less-talked-about Sideways effect. What is that you might be wondering, well, it's the much discussed and debated question of just how much everyone's favorite vino flick, Sideways really had on the Pinot Noir market.

According to an article released by the AP today - the effect may have been as big (if not bigger) than everyone thought. Findings from a recent report tracking wine sales after the film were remarkable. Not only has distribution and sales of Pinot increased, but also the prices people are willing to spend for it. There's also a notable negative effect on Pinot. I guess it just goes to show how much clout the American movie industry still has in America.