Archive for July, 2009

Hip…Or Just Tragic?
Decanter.com is reporting that Château d’Arche will be “bottling” the second label of its Sauternes in 100-ml test tube-like packages aimed at the nightclub market in the Far East. Are shots of Carruades de Lafite next?

Redefining Weekday Wine
Usually it’s an inexpensive bottle casually consumed alongside a family dinner—a nonevent. Why not make it an event by choosing a more elevated alternative? Monday evening I chose a 1999 Karl Lawrence Morisoli Vineyard Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from the cellar, which turned a humdrum evening at home into a memorable night.

Dire Straits for Print Media?
As Appellation America found out, Internet readers balk at paying for content. Online advertising spending is growing, but evidently not fast enough to support all of the budding wine sites. As Tom Wark points out in his recent blog on the subject, print is where the money is—at least for the moment. Ultimately, people will pay for the best content and advertisers will pay to reach those audiences. Unlike in rock-and-roll, you can’t get “Money for nothing and your chicks for free” online.

Planning Ahead
Next week, our contributors will be gathering for our annual editorial conference, where we try to figure out what stories you’d like to read next year. But despite all that brainpower in one room, we inevitably overlook a few things. Write in below and let us know what you really want to read about.

During my school days when I brought home high test scores from elementary, middle and even high school I received a big kiss on my cheek and warm accolades from both mom and dad.  More often than not I’m proud to say my scores were in the 90s and once in a while I even nailed a 100-point perfect score and a delicious bowl of ice cream was my reward.

This similar experience had been embedded into the psyches of tens of millions of Baby Boomers like me and certainly subsequent generations of Americans had a similar encounter with this “100-point” rating system.

It’s quite apparent to me that if millions of consumers can relate to this type of numerical rating from childhood then it must be a valuable way to communicate. The way wine ratings on the 100 point scale impact the sale of wine is a testimony to the truth.  To me, communication and what works for the majority of people is what’s primarily important.

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The flames are lit, the smoke is high and the burgers are sizzling. There is no doubt that Barbeque season is upon us. Even if you’re not a big meat eater, the pasta salads, French fries, and dips are often heavy and rich in flavor. As a result I often see big Zinfandels as recommended pairings for summer cookouts. So I was surprised when I read recently that Adam Perry Lang, owner of Daisy May’s BBQ, stated his favorite wine with barbeque: Riesling. Why? Due to its palate-cleansing properties, he says. I’d never heard of Riesling as a recommendation with meat but after further pondering, I can see why it makes a lot of sense.

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How we taste Wine Enthusiast is a hot topic with many angles. One healthy debate I’ve had with numerous friends and acquaintances is whether we, tasting blind and essentially in a void (well, stark, controlled tasting room environment anyway), are really doing a service to consumers. Most wine drinkers enjoy wine in a completely different way, namely with food, in varied settings, with wafting restaurant smells surrounding them and outside stimulus galore coloring–and they believe–enhancing, their wine experience.

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I went into a wine shop this past weekend for the first time in a couple of months. I was out in the Hamptons (Long Island, New York) for a little rest and relaxation, and was thinking that the most appropriate purchase I could make would be a nice Long Island rosé. I’m always a big fan of Wölffer’s rosé, and to me nothing says Montauk more than relaxing by the beach with an immensely refreshing local wine from a vineyard that you pass on the way out to the end of the south fork.

While in the wine shop, like any curious wine lover and consumer, I browsed the aisles to see if anything new or interesting caught my eye.

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After “What’s your favorite wine?” the next most commonly asked questions I receive center around tasting wine: “How do you do it?” being the most popular. I suppose with all of the recent furor on the blogs over the disclosure that reviewers for Robert M. Parker’s The Wine Advocate rarely taste blind, this level of interest is understandable.

Although we regularly publish a box that covers “About the Buying Guide,” provide submitters with an FAQ and have done a video interview with The Wall Street Journal that covers the most salient points, questions still persist. So, in the spirit of full disclosure, here’s “How we do it.”

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Do different forms of alcoholic beverages give different forms of intoxicating effects? Can it be valid for people to generalize that “beer makes me stupid” and “wine makes me witty” and “Scotch makes me want to punch something” and “rum makes me want to love someone…a lot”?

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It was a somewhat stereotypical Fourth of July for me this year. Tons of good friends and some family came over for the weekend to bake at the beach, barbecue some burgers and dogs, enjoy some adult beverages and light off some mildly entertaining fireworks in the yard (the small fountain type stuff is legal in CT where I live, though we did have a couple more exciting items thanks to my crazy friend Shane). All in all it was good old, moderately clean American fun.

Of course I offered a large range of beverages, from soda and beer to wine and whisky, and it’s always interesting to me to see who goes for what.

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