May 22nd, 2013
by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)
 Every Wednesday I post my recommendations of the best of last week’s postings concerning wine, whether blogs or news. I list them in the order I read them, so you shouldn’t infer anything about the order in which I list these posts.
Global wine shortage could be good news for struggling wineries
Steve Heimoff
http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2013/05/14/global-wine-shortage-could-be-good-news-for-struggling-wineries/
Hopefully this is true.
Terroir: Do We Have Evidence?
Erika Szymanski
http://palatepress.com/2013/05/wine/terroir-do-we-have-evidence/
This is a pretty interesting article on the whole subject of terroir. But as I read it, I couldn’t help but think that when it comes to terroir many people just can’t bring themselves to accept that the whole idea is balderdash.
For keeping up to date with what’s going on the in wine world, the best all around source is http://winebusiness.com.
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May 20th, 2013
by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)
As everyone is probably aware, the US Government is recommending that the legal limit on alcohol be reduced to .05 from .08. Supposedly, this will save some number of lives (and I have no doubt it would).
Tom Wark took a fairly close look at this issue (see http://fermentationwineblog.com/2013/05/the-impact-of-lower-blood-alcohol-content-levels-on-wine-lovers/), and pointed out some pretty interesting, and pertinent, facts.
First off, under the present standard of .08, a 200 pound man (such as me) can drink 3 glasses of wine, 3 ½ in fact, and still stay under the legal limit. The .05 limit would mean I could go up to only 2 ½ glasses, which is roughly half a bottle.
Well, based on this admittedly narrow subset of one (i.e., me), I really couldn’t argue against reducing the limit. At half a bottle of wine, I feel reasonably able to get behind a wheel more or less competently. But that’s about it. My general rule is two glasses if I’m going to drive.
But, like pretty much everything, it’s not that simple. As I’ve aged, I feel less and less able to tolerate alcohol. I do think that 20 years ago, I could drive as well with more alcohol in me (though maybe not a whole lot more). And I am quite sure that there are people who can drink more than I can and drive just fine, and others that shouldn’t be driving with less.
And if you go to the National Traffic Safety Administration publication on alcohol-related deaths, which you can find at http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811385.pdf, the whole subject becomes murkier still. A few of the more pertinent facts: the number of fatalities with “alcohol impaired” drivers did not mean that alcohol impairment was a cause of the accident (in other words, the accident may not have been caused by the impaired driver at all). I would guess it was in many cases, but the Safety Administration doesn’t even venture a guess as to what percentage of cases were not just “alcohol impaired” cases, but were cases where the impairment was the cause of the accident. It’s also pretty clear that in most accidents involving the alcohol impaired, it is the impaired driver who died (67% of all deaths), followed by other occupants of that driver’s vehicle (16%). And it certainly seems to me that where someone makes the choice to drive with alcohol in them, and suffers the consequences, that’s less tragic (though still tragic) than when a totally innocent victim of the drunk driver dies.
Apparently the deaths to the alcohol impaired drivers were highly correlated with not wearing seat belts. So I’m not sure whether the deaths were due to the alcohol impairment, or the failure to use seat belts. I’m sure it was some combination of the two, but it’s not altogether clear to me how to sort that out. It looks like roughly half of the deaths could have been avoided by seatbelt use, but, again, it’s not that clear.
Another point that I don’t know the answer to (and probably no one else does either) is how effective lowering the limit would be in actually obtaining compliance. In other words, it is one thing to make driving between .05 and .08 illegal—but will that translate into any meaningful change in behavior? I have my doubts.
At any rate, my point here is not to cudgel you with grisly statistics, but to (finally) get to my main point. My first reaction (and probably that of most people) is that if we can save one life, then it’s worth it. But like many first reactions, this one doesn’t make that much sense. Every activity we engage in has some level of danger. Just looking at driving, I know I drive worse when I’m tired, hungry, am rushing to the bathroom, etc. etc. I am quite sure that each of those “risk factors” can be translated into some grisly number of traffic deaths each year. Somehow it seems incredibly crass and unfeeling to try to balance the number of bodies in a morgue against the pleasure others receive from whatever activity we are considering.
So getting back to the question, should the DUI limit be reduced to .05? I guess my answer is, I don’t know. Unfortunately, it’s a little less or a little more sort of question. And those who enjoy alcohol (I plead guilty to that) would undoubtedly tolerate more risk than those who don’t.
I certainly don’t have a problem with the concept of a legal limit. It’s just that when you try to establish one, balancing so many deaths against the difficult to quantify enjoyment, there’s no clear answer. I think .05 is a good limit for me, but I certainly can’t say that it should be the limit for everyone. But there are a lot of people that it should be the limit for. But you can say the same thing whether you’re considering a limit of .08, .05, .03, or .01. I’m sure that reducing the legal limit from .01 to zero would save some lives as well.
It’s a really tough call.
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May 15th, 2013
by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)
Every Wednesday I post my recommendations of the best of last week’s postings concerning wine, whether blogs or news. I list them in the order I read them, so you shouldn’t infer anything about the order in which I list these posts.
Rosé rising
Steve Heimoff
http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2013/05/09/rose-rising/
After judging at a Rosé tasting last week, this discussion of rosé by Heimoff couldn’t help but catch my attention. It’s worth noting that his preference (pretty much a requirement) that rosés be dry is just that, a personal preference, one that many others (including me) don’t share.
“Context-sensitive” wine tasting
Steve Heimoff
http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2013/05/07/context-sensitive-wine-tasting/
Heimoff discusses the three main ways you can go about tasting wine: double blind (you know nothing about the wines you’re tasting and go only on what you taste), single blind (where you know something, such as you’re tasting Napa Cab, but the identify of the wines are not known), or open (you know what you’re tasting). My views on this are pretty clear—double blind is best, single blind is ok, and open is worthless. Heimoff notes that the results of double blind can’t be repeated in other tastings, even by the same judges, which really goes to show how much a wine’s popularity is based on other things, such as pedigree, or even things such as label design. I think a lot of what passes for a defense of open tasting is just an excuse to perpetuate a system (i.e., that wine judging has any validity at all) that, if objectively judged, falls flat on its face.
Turning up the sizzle on an already hot commodity ~ Petite Sirah Symposium
Wine Blog
http://www.wine-blog.org/index.php/2013/05/06/turning-up-the-sizzle-on-an-already-hot-commodity/
Petite Sirah has gone from a sideshow to something close to mainstream, even if it’s not quite there. The Petite Sirah symposium, and the organization that sponsors it, P. S. I Love You, is in large part responsible. Petite Sirah is a love it or hate it wine. I love it, but for those who like their wines lighter and less tannic, I can understand why this wine is a pass. But for those who like big and brawny, Petite Sirah is one of the best wines out there.
Winebits 280: “Value” wine, blind tasting, wine scores
The Wine Curmudgeon
http://www.winecurmudgeon.com/my_weblog/2013/05/winebits-280-value-wine-blind-tasting-wine-scores.html
Apropos of Heimoff’s post is this succinct summary of the power of blind tasting, which I quote in full: “The power of blind tasting: Mike Veseth at the Wine Economist talks about several recent tastings, where “where the wines easily fooled us (or perhaps we just fooled ourselves). ..” The point being that the tastings were done blind, and the results did not jive with what was expected. Wrote Veseth: “Our perception of wine is sometimes less about truth and more about context and expectations than we might want to think. That’s not the conclusion I thought I would find when I set up this tiny experiment.” He also writes interestingly about the power of cheap wine (in this case, Two-buck Chuck) to skew the results. This is why blind tasting is the most powerful tool the reviewer – or any wine drinker, for that matter – can use.”
How Much Do Wineries Really Make?
SVB on Wine
http://svbwine.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-much-do-wineries-really-make.html#more
The answer: not enough. And his data is abased on larger wineries. Smaller wineries I’m sure fare even worse.
For keeping up to date with what’s going on the in wine world, the best all around source is http://winebusiness.com.
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May 13th, 2013
by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)
I did something highly unusual for me last week, I judged at a wine tasting. It was a tasting of rosé organized on my friend, Bob Ecker, which took place at the Meritage Resort in Napa. I, along with four others, tasted through roughly 90 wines, trying to figure out which were the best, and which were not.
It would be very easy to accuse me of the rankest hypocrisy for participating in this event. My views on wine tasting are pretty well known. Basically, I think it is largely a waste of time, highly inaccurate, with results that are not repeatable. So how do I respond to this accusation? Guilty as charged.
But with extenuating circumstances. I guess the biggest extenuating circumstances is that it was a lot of fun, and certainly having fun is a pretty good excuse for pretty much anything. The second extenuating circumstance is that, whether these results have any remote accuracy at all, they could help someone sell some wine. And anything that helps to sell wine is worth something in my book.
Having taken part in a number of tastings over my wine life, I would have to say that the judging in this one was more consistent than in pretty much any other tasting I’ve been party to. I always felt that the thing that can be judged with any degree of accuracy are the objective factors. For example, for a red wine, lack of flaws, color, tannin level, acidity, and other factors which you can learn in large (though not total) measure from laboratory analysis.
But what about flavor? Well, I think that’s where judging is at its weakest, not because individual tasters are incapable of evaluating flavor, but because each judge has his own sensitivities, as well as flavors that he likes and dislikes, which can be entirely different from those of the judge sitting next to him.
And I think it was thus with our judging. The ones that got no award, very often earned a no award across the board from every judge. It certainly was rare to see a bunch of no awards along with a gold. In fact, I don’t think it happened even once. I think that the no award category was largely the abode of flawed wines. I know personally I would pretty much give a bronze to any wine for showing up without a serious flaw.
Once the wine got past this low hurdle, opinions differed more widely. It was not unusual to see bronzes and golds for the same wine. However even here, I think there was a level of consistency that is usually lacking in most tastings.
Another facet of the tasting was interesting. It was split into two categories, dry and sweet. It was up the entrant to determine which category his wine fell into. Essentially, 80 submitted as dry and 10 as sweet. I think this reflects more where the winemakers think the market is than where the wine’s really were. Many of the “dry” entrants had noticeable, if not elevated, residual sugar. And one of the “sweet” wines tasted pretty dry to me.
It was also very interesting to know the correlation (or lack there of) between price and quality (assuming that our awards were the gold standard of quality, a dubious assumption). If you took the average price of each award category (no award, bronze, silver, gold), there really wasn’t that much of a difference. In fact, the gold average was slightly cheaper than the no awards. Which adds another nail in the coffin of the argument that you get what you pay for when it comes to wine.
Another thing that stood out fairly well from the tasting was that I, and at least one other of the tasters whose scores I took particular note of, have a particular wine profile that they preferred. I think for me I can pretty much guarantee a silver to any wine that was not low acid, flawed in some serious way, overly sweet, or lacked a tannic, harsh finish. I think that’s a pretty good description of what a rose should be, but obviously other people would disagree. My love of acidity, for example, is not shared by all people. Certainly, if you look at what has to be considered the most successful blush wine around, White Zinfandel, it would be hard to argue that hyperacidity is a favored attribute in the marketplace. In fact, if you take an objective view of the marketplace, you’d have to say that cloying, insipid, and tasteless are the descriptors that correlate best with megasales. So what do I know?
As far as I can tell from doing a quick Google search, Bob has not yet posted the results, but I expect that he will shortly. I’ll put a link in next week’s Good Reads Wednesday for those who would like to check them out.
For those of you who live in the San Francisco area, the Meritage will be having a tasting of the winners on June 8. Anyone with an interest in Rosé should try to attend.
So I would certainly do this again, if I ever get invited (and in light of views expressed herein, that may be a long shot). But it was a lot of fun, and to the extent that anybody is able to sell some more wine as result of the tasting, more power to them. As I say, anything that helps sell wine is okay by me.
Posted in Wine Tasting | No Comments »
May 8th, 2013
by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)
Every Wednesday I post my recommendations of the best of last week’s postings concerning wine, whether blogs or news. I list them in the order I read them, so you shouldn’t infer anything about the order in which I list these posts.
The Seven Percent Solution Tasting: May 11, Healdsburg, CA
Vinography
http://www.vinography.com/archives/2013/04/the_seven_percent_solution_tas.html
This group is dedicated to the wine grapes that aren’t the usual suspects, but should be. Just because a wine grape is relatively obscure doesn’t mean it isn’t every bit a good as the ones that are more well known.
Which is more important for fine wine, terroir or technique?
Steve Heimoff
http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2013/05/03/which-is-more-important-for-fine-wine-terroir-or-technique/
Pretty interesting idea: divide up a load of grapes into thirds, send it to three different winemakers, and see if the resulting wines are more different (due to different winemaking) or more the same (due to the common grape source). No clear result here, except that they both seem to be pretty important.
The new Cali acreage report: Chocolate, vanilla and strawberry continue to rule
Steve Heimoff
http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2013/04/30/the-new-cali-acreage-report-chocolate-vanilla-and-strawberry-continue-to-rule/
Grape acreage isn’t changing very fast, and the main varieties continue to dominate.
For keeping up to date with what’s going on the in wine world, the best all around source is http://winebusiness.com.
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