Super Bowl Wines

Having a Super Bowl party? I know, I know, beer is generally the drink of choice for NFL fans, but that doesn't mean you can't have some good vino on hand as well. People appreciate variety, and offering some nice wine to compliment your party snacks might be just the thing to make your party stand out from the ba-zillion others that will be thrown this Sunday.

The Kansas City Star has a great article offering suggestions on what to serve guests on Super Bowl Sunday. The author makes a good point that what you serve should depend on what your eating . . . but there is definitely a few good starting-off points to help with the selection.

Follow the link for the entire text, but here's a few suggestions from the article to get you started:

"Considering the teams in the big game, a good choice might be Bonny Doon’s Cardinal Zin, which runs to about $18 a bottle. If you think that might be on the pricey side, any good zin should work. Ravenwood’s offerings are consistent but ask your wine merchant for a suggestion in the price range you feel comfortable paying.If you want something a little different, I think a really good go-to wine with plenty of soul and the ability to hold up to substantial foods is Paul Jaboulet Aine Cotes Du Rhone Parallele 45, which you would be able to find for $11 a bottle, or less."

Manhattan-Made Wine

Our much beloved NY Times Wine Writer - Eric Asimov - had an article in yesterday's paper on a new custom winery that's popped up, in of all places, in NYC's Lower East Side. According to the author, the winery (cleverly named City Winery) offers customers the chance to DIY their own vintages, as well as live music, food and good drink. Phillip Glass will perform there soon!

According to the article:

"Still, the centerpiece is winemaking, which is not as alien to lower Manhattan as it might seem. The Lower East Side was once a center of production for sweet kosher and sacramental wines. But City Winery caters to the reality-show age. It’s a kind of interactive building, offering would-be urban winemakers the chance to help make their own. They need only part with anywhere from around $7,000 to almost $12,000 a barrel — about 21 cases or 232 bottles — with the price varying by selection of grapes, barrels, winemaking regime, bottles and labels."

It certainly isn't cheap, but sounds like a whole lot of fun if your one of the lucky few these days with cash to spend.

Wine Tasting for Dummies

OK, well, not dummies - but amateurs anyway. The New Jersey Star-Ledger wine writer TJ Foderaro has a column out today on how newbies to the wine world can navigate a tasting. I think it's great, since tastings are one of the easiest (and most affordable) ways to expose yourself to new varietals, as well as to be led by an expert. It's a way to find out what you like, what you don't like and to have a person on hand to explain - most importantly - why you feel that way. If you're not quite ready to venture out to the wine shop for a public tasting, he also provides some nice advice on how to set up a tasting of your own at home.

From the column:

"If you've ever sat in on a professional wine tasting, you know they can be intimidating affairs. People sit quietly in front of a dozen or so glasses, studiously sniffing, sipping and scribbling notes about the "nose," "mouthfeel" and "finish." While wine geeks might want to try this at home, I strongly recommend a less formal approach. All you need, really, is several types of wine and a glass for each person. It's also nice to put out a little cheese or other nibbles so your guests can try matching the wine and food. The big question when planning a wine tasting is what wines to buy, and how much."

Wine Gizmos

Popular Science has a really cool little feature up on their site about three wine gadgets that those of us with jobs and money to burn would surely love to own. The first, an electronic "wine tongue" I've mentioned here on wine news before. It uses a variety of components like acidity and chemical compounds to authenticate a wine to its year and region. Not a bad thing to have with counterfeiting being as rampant as it is in the wine biz.

The second tests a wine's age using, of all things, a particle accelerator. This is especially cool because you don't even need to open a bottle to test it. And the third is a gizmo that helps vintners to perfectly irrigate their vines. According to the article - "A computer considers these readings, the variety's demands and climatic conditions, and determines irrigation settings so that grapes get their optimal daily water."

America's Wine Problem

Gourmet Magazine has a thoughtful and fascinating article on it's website that discusses the strange nature of the American wine industry. Focusing in initially on Robert Mondavi and how he helped to grow California into one of the largest wine making regions in the world, the author then spirals outward, wondering why - if we make all that wine - Americans don't have that much interest in drinking it.

From the piece:

"But there was one miracle even Mondavi couldn’t pull off. For all his hard work and many triumphs, he couldn’t transform the U.S. into a wine-drinking country. We just aren’t. Despite all the two-buck Chuck we’re lugging home, Americans as a whole have never associated wine with daily life. We are stubbornly, doggedly, foot-draggingly unwilling to get with the program. Yes, this country is the biggest wine market; but that market is measured by money spent, not wine consumed. According to wine industry statistics, per capita consumption is less than three glasses a month; and even that pathetic number is misleading. "

New Wine Pairing iPhone App

It seems like there isn't anything they can't do with the iPhone. Apple's "App Store" which sells thousands of programs to make the nifty smart phones do one thing or another, now offers an application that provides you with over 5,000 food and wine pairings. It's from the nice folks at VinForDinner.com, and will most-likely turn out to be a fan favorite for oenophiles who dine out a lot.

Here's what their press release says about the new app:

"This new iPhone application has features that include: wine reviews, a focus on wines under $30 a bottle, food and wine pairing guide, detailed wine information and large bottle images making it easy to find the wine of your choice. Vino for Dinner specializes in wines the average consumer can afford, find readily available and enjoy. This iPhone application is the first in the industry to target this market, the average consumer. Vino for Dinner Mobile works with iPhone 3G, the original iPhone and iPod Touch (2nd Generation)."

Door in the Floor

Gizmodo has a post on their blog about a very, very cool wine cellar. There's not a lot of information, but the pictures sold me instantly. Follow the link for the photos.

According to their post, "a spiral wine cellar uses the ground to keep bottles at an ideal temperature without needing any fancy electronics. It saves space and, sure, why not, let's call it cost effective. The Spiral Cellars come in sizes that can hold between 1000 and 1600 bottles, which is about 997 to 1597 more bottles than I usually have on hand."

American Wine Biz Look for Hope-Fueled Boost

The past eight years have been marked as the first in a long time that a non-drinker has held office in the White House. Former president George W. Bush had abstained from all forms of booze for more than twenty years, and American wine makers are excited to have a guy who likes a glass of wine every now and again back in the big house.

I posted yesterday with the wine menu for President Obama's first official lunch, and it appears that the wines included have already seen a boost in sales. According to a report through Reuters - "The Duckhorn Vineyards and Goldeneye Winery have seen the same effect since it was revealed that Duckhorn's 2007 Sauvignon Blanc and Goldeneye's Pinot Noir would be served with the first two courses at the official Inauguration lunch in the Capitol."

Needless to say, The American wine industry is collectively crossing their fingers, hoping that this affect will carry on throughout the Obama administrations stay.

Inaugural Lunch Food and Wine Menu

It looks like California wine is going to LOVE our soon-to-be-inaugurated President. According to a report from The Chicago Tribune, here is the menu and wine pairings for the First Couple's, first meal:

Seafood stew with lobster, scallops, shrimp and black cod under puff pastry. Served with a 2007 Duckhorn Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc from California's Napa Valley.

Pheasant and duck with sour cherry chutney and molasses sweet potatoes, served with a 2005 Goldeneye Pinot Noir from California's Anderson Valley.

Apple cinnamon sponge cake and sweet cream glace, served with Korbel Natural "Special Inaugural Cuvee" California Champagne.

The menu was designed to feature foods that Lincoln may have eaten at his inaugural lunch, and the all-California wines is obviously meant as a gesture to the American economy in general. Of course, Champagne isn't really Champagne unless it comes from France, but I'll cut the guy some slack. It is his first day, after all.

Wine on Your TV

I've written a number of posts here at My Wine News on different films that feature wine in their story lines. Every once and awhile I get the urge to find something new in that category, and I hadn't really had a place to go looking before. There are lots of movie/wine top ten lists you can find via a Google search, but what about the more obscure stuff you've never heard of?

Today I realized that Netflix actually has a Food and Wine Sub genre, which points you in the direction of a lot of relevant stuff. Some of it's good (Sideways) and some of it's not so good (Simply Irresistible) but all of it's pretty interesting. They even have a number of documentaries and info-pieces that can help you learn more about the wine world. Check it out if you're looking to expand your horizons.

Restaurant Wine and Liquor Sales Down

A report in today's Los Angeles Times notes that not only are wine and booze sales down in restaurants - but a larger portion of people are showing up to bars earlier in the evening to take advantage of Happy Hour. The lower sales numbers and the increase in sales of discounted booze is starting to put a hurt on the industry, and the people who ARE drinking seem to be scaling back on quality.

According to the report:

"Typically, alcoholic beverages are recession-resistant, if not immune to economic downturns. This current recession, however, is hurting alcohol sales more than previous slumps have.
People are trading down from premium vodka brands to whatever is good enough to still make the martini work. Others are giving up Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons for budget reds. Some are ordering a soft drink or just consuming water when they dine out."

Follow the link for the full scoop.

Chilean Reds

It seems as though everyone is writing about Chilean reds these days. I've seen five or six articles in the past few days discussing "the new prevalence of bold Chilean reds in the US" or "Want something different, why not Chile?" Today, Decanter has an article up on their UK site discussing the growing presence on these oft-spicy, many times wonderful varietals on the US market. According to their report:

"Wines of Chile is to open a new US office in a bid to capitalise on consumers' increasing thirst for more diverse styles of the country's wines. The New York office will be housed in the new Puro Chile complex, a combined retail space, showroom, event venue, business centre and art gallery designed to promote the country's wine and tourism. Chile's bottled wine exports to the US were up 8% by volume and 15% by value in 2007, but figures for October last year showed that growth had slowed to 3.3% and 3.9% respectively as the US slid into recession. "

So if you haven't tried a Chilean red recently . . . run out and by one. It's the next big thing! Not to mention that many of them are remarkably affordable (less than $10) and much better than you'd expect. So give it a shot, you can thank me later.

Don't Feel Bad for Returning Bad Wine.

Ever opened a bottle of wine and it was AWFUL? I'm not talking about a variety or year that you didn't particularly like, but those rare instances when you get a vinegary, off-smelling or brownish white. If you do, chances are that the wine has just gone bad. The most surprising thing about this for a lot people I know - that you can and absolutely should take it back to where you bought it.

Everyone in the industry knows that this happens occasionally. Wine isn't an exact science, and sometimes a cork goes bad and it ruins a bottle. There's a great article on 77Square.com today that discusses why you should not feel bad about returning a bottle. From the article:

"The wine shop will usually exchange it and get credit from their suppliers. "Some people are surprised they can bring it back," said Bruce Frisch, co-owner of Le Cork Wine & Spirits in Mount Horeb. "I never have a problem with that. It's not their fault the wine is bad, it's not the winery's fault, it's not the distributor's fault, it's not my fault." Usually the fault is in the cork. If a wine is "corked," that means the cork has become contaminated with trichloroanisole (TCA), although the contamination can come from barrels or wood within a cellar, too. TCA doesn't pose a health risk but creates a musty, moldy smell that is obvious once a wine buyer has experienced it."

On Saving the Good Stuff

Over at The NY Times Wine Blog, The Pour, Eric Asimov has an entertaining (and uplifting) piece up on what I'll call the reverse-Jesus scenario. Remember in The Bible when JC turned water to wine and his guests commended him for saving the good stuff for last? Well, Asimov discusses the idea of opening a good bottle of wine for yourself, and serving plonk to your guests. It's not all that uncommon, and he points out one of the more famous examples in the post - which comes from Richard Nixon.

From the blog:

"Nonetheless, secretly reserving a wine for oneself while serving something else to the guests violates numerous rules of etiquette. Not that it’s uncommon. The most famous such anecdote comes from “The Final Days’’ by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, in which Richard Nixon is depicted entertaining Congressmen on the Presidential yacht Sequoia, serving them a modest Bordeaux with their dinner of tenderloin while the stewards poured Nixon Margaux 1966, the bottle wrapped in a napkin to conceal the label. Tricky, Dick!"

An education in Wine

From Dictionary.com - "A Sommelier is a restaurant employee who orders and maintains the wines sold in the restaurant and usually has extensive knowledge about wine and food pairings."

And from Wikipedia . . .

"Though sommelier is a a job title potentially anyone may claim, becoming a certified sommelier requires classes and an examination. The certification is offered by a wide range of educators, and a basic education may be attained for $800-900 over the course of six months.
In North America, two of the largest bodies are the Sommelier Society of America (SSA), established as a union in 1954, and the American Sommelier Association (ASA) founded in 1999. In the U.S., organizations such as the Wine & Spirit Education Trust and educational bodies such as the Wine School of Philadelphia and Wine Spectator train sommeliers but do not issue a sommelier-specific certification."

I shared these two entries because I just saw an interesting question posed to the wine writer for The Times Union about where to pursue a professional wine education. If you're interested in really learning your stuff, these are all great places to start your research.

Wine: Why's It Have to be Fancy?

There's a great article on Vinography today (well, sort of a rant . . . but entertaining anyway) on "The Travesty of Wine and Social Class in America." What that boils down to, is that when people came over to America, just about everyone drank wine. Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out how to properly grow grapes in American soil and importing bottles from France was costly.

So, most of us started drinking more beer and bourbon, and the President and elite class kept drinking wine. Then came the industrial revolution, widening the gap between classes. Then came prohibition, ruining new American-grown wines chances of gaining a foothold amongst the lower and middle class.

And as it were, now we have this huge gap in drinking habits - with most of the lower class feeling like wine is just a snobby, elitist fru fru drink. Here's a snippet from the post:

"Meanwhile, wine to many people represents the intimidating, elitist, and snobbish rich. Sarah Palin's quips during the recent campaign about the wine and cocktail drinking elite perfectly illustrate the way that many people think about wine. So too do the many comments on a recent New York Times blog about the words that are used to describe wine. I can't tell you how sad it makes me to see how many people think that attempting to describe the flavors and aromas of wine is an exercise in pretension and snobbery. But it gets even worse. It's bad enough that the average beer loving American (whoever that is) at best thinks that wine is really just for special occasions, and at worst believes that the people who drink it are rich, stuck-up, pedants. But unfortunately, a lot of wine lovers actually act that way."

The Future of New York Wine

Daily Messenger wine writer Ron Reals has a fascinating article up on MPNNow.com about Gov. David Paterson's proposed budget for next year and how it will effect the New York wine industry. For those of you who don't live in New York, I'll give a brief synopsis of what's been going on in Rochester.

Basically, the state faces a 15 BILLION dollar deficit, and the governor has proposed a wide-sweeping array of changes and taxes to address the issue. Among them, increased tax on wine sales, allowing grocery stores to sell vino and cutting funding to the New York Wine and Grape foundation. If the budget goes through as-is, it could have a tremendous impact on the industry as a whole. Reals breaks down a number of pros and cons of the proposal, and I think it's pretty well done. Follow the link for full details, but here's a bit of it in the meantime.

"The aspect that intrigues me about the proposal is that it always seems to be predicated upon being beneficial to New York wineries. I disagree to a point. It probably would be helpful to the grape growers and some larger wineries. But it would likely not help most smaller “farm” wineries, which don’t have the production to support grocery distribution. Couple that with the increase in excise tax to these smaller players and we could be looking at a crippling effect. Our current system has been in effect for 75 years and liquor store owners see no reason to change it."

From Wine to Vinegar

The Washington Post has a detailed article running today on how to make your own DIY Red Wine Vinegar. The process requires a few bits of special equipment (although none of them too expensive), some left-over red wine, spring water and a fair amount of patience. If you cook at home a lot and have some extra space in your kitchen . . . the process is well worth the extra effort.

As the author explains, most red wine vinegar is not very flavorful because it's made quickly to increase profits. Vinegars made the more old-fashion way are often hard to find and extremely expensive. That being said, the batch that you make at home, especially if you use a nice medium-fruit, medium-bodied wine to start, will most likely be better than anything you've ever tasted. Follow the link to learn how to get started on your first bottle, but here's a clip from the article to give you a glimpse of the process.

"The Orleans method is an aerobic process, meaning it needs air. Choose a container that lets air in and keeps fruit flies out. If you want to make a continuous fresh supply, you'll need a place to pour the wine in at the top and a spigot at the bottom to drain off vinegar. (A wood spigot is best because the acid often reacts with metals and corrodes them.) You can order a container -- ceramic or plastic, or a wood barrel -- from a winemaking supply house. The same company can set you up with a mother of vinegar (red wine, white wine, malt or cider), and, much as with a sourdough starter, if you take care of it, you should never need another."

Getting to Know Your Wine for 2009

The Examiner's Website has a helpful article running about the best ways to find, select and learn about new wines. It's my personal resolution to continue to branch out this year, and I feel like the author of this piece has some great suggestions on how to make that happen. She provides some simple answers like asking a lot of questions of the staff in a wine store and going to tastings, but also some less common suggestions like trying varietals you like - but from a different region.

If you're into Pinot, try one from France instead of California. Like Rose? Give a chance to something coming out of Sanoma rather than Italy. And so on, and so forth. It's all about experimenting. The more you try, the more you'll find that you like - and that's how you start to build a really solid knowledge of the game. So drink up, venture out and enjoy. It is a new year, after all.

No Champagne in the Champagne Room

A new year, a new day, and Eric Asimov at the NY Times is at it again. I know, I know, I've said a million times how much I like the guy's blog - The Pour - but he's got another great piece up on Champagne and how it's being effected by the struggling economy. His conclusion? Basically that it's more expensive than ever, being drank less and hard to market in a time when a lot of folks don't have much to celebrate. Follow the link for the whole post, but here's a bit to whet your whistle:

“It’s a completely different playing field today,’’ Paul Grieco, an owner at Hearth, Insieme and Terroir told me. “One of our investors said: ‘You don’t want to show extravagance. You still want to go out to dinner, but who the hell has anything to celebrate?’ Obviously, the usual motivation for Champagne drinking — the celebrations of bonuses, mergers, real estate acquisitions — is not available this year. Apparently still having a job is not reason enough to pop corks. Champagne is also a lot more expensive than it was even a year ago, with prices for an entry-level bottle at retail running roughly $8 to $10 ahead of last year. Many restaurants are charging $20 for a glass of Champagne. This seems outrageous no matter the state of the economy."

Quality vs. Quantity - A Look at America's Wine Habit

There's a fascinating article in The International Herald Tribune today about American wine sales during the past 12 months. The findings, the recession has had an effect on what we're drinking. Also, it's had an effect on HOW MUCH we've been drinking. According to the article:

"In response to the economic downturn, alcohol retailers and industry experts say, American consumers have been trading down for less expensive wines and spirits. But what they have saved per bottle, many have almost made up for in quantity. "People are loading up on a lot more of the things that cost less," said Michael Cappadona, the assistant store manager at Total Wine in West Orange, New Jersey. "People that would normally come in and might buy five or six bottles are now wanting to buy something cheaper by the case.""

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. On the one hand, it's nice to read that American's are drinking more wine then ever. However, it is a bit sad to see that the quality of what their buying is going down and down. The piece goes onto say -

"At Wine.com, a large online alcohol retailer, the average price of a bottle of wine sold in December 2008 was 17 percent below the average price of a bottle sold in December 2007 - but the number of bottles sold was 15 percent higher than a year ago."

It's a fascinating read to say the least. Follow the link at the top of the post for the complete article.