Archive for the 'Industry Issues' Category

UnReserved has selected a winner in the American port-naming contest. In an uncanny trans-continental mind-meld, the editorial committee at Wine Enthusiast magazine in Elmsford, N.Y, and yours truly in Napa Valley, Calif., chose the same name as their favorite.

The winner of two Riedel port glasses will be revealed in a moment, but first let us summarize the protean efforts of so many who submitted names to help the makers of port-style fortified wines in the U.S. who are now banned by an agreement between the European Union and the United States from calling any of their new ports Port.

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This has been gratifying, to sit back and watch the potential new names for American port roll in. Some have been just so-so, many have been snarky and snide, and in recent days more and more have been potential keepers.

The challenge to readers was to come up with an original name that conveys the character of port that isn’t made in Portugal, because an agreement between the United States and the European Union bans any new U.S. brand from calling itself Port on the label.

Two previous posts on this have now gathered lots of comments, and you can read the name nominees from readers there. See the first post that explains the political situation in some detail and the second that puts up two Riedel port glasses as the prize for the best category name submitted. The reward seemed to get everyone’s attention.

We’re going to bring the contest to a close at the end of this week, at midnight Pacific time, Saturday, Oct. 27, so get your new names in as soon as you can. A committee of Wine Enthusiast editors and I will select a winner thereafter. We will submit the winning name to any and all winery associations that might be interested in running with it.

Here are a few more that I came up with. When brainstorming for names, headlines, etc., I like to write down everything that comes to me, bad and good, and see where it leads. Maybe these will inspire some better terms. I was going with the idea that Port comes from the city of Oporto, which is a port of embarkation.

Embark
Embarcadero
Embarco
Wharfo (duh?)
Docko
Harboro
Robusto (ha!)

You get the drift. Thanks for all the help so far, and I welcome any and all new ideas.

As a follow up to my ambitious post yesterday, in which I invited users to submit alternative names for domestic port, I have this to add: the person submitting the name judged best will win a pair of Riedel Vinum port glasses, courtesy of Wine Enthusiast. He or she will also have a fleeting moment of fame, and the admiration of all.

The idea is to help U.S. wineries that are just beginning to make or sell what’s been known as port, to find a new generic name for these wines, since the U.S. and the European Union made a deal. The deal gets the E.U. to begin recognizing U.S. wine appellations, but American wineries have to give up terms like California Port, Washington Port, etc.

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I’ve been worrying about the producers of Port-type wines in the U.S. The new ones, that is. Any winery just starting out to make a sweet, high-alcohol dessert wine of the type that’s been called Port for several centuries is in trouble. They’re going to have to come up with a new name. But what will it be? Can someone coin a term that might be widely adopted, like Meritage for Bordeaux-style blends made in the U.S.?

The terminology ban is part of a deal between the U.S. government and the European Union that semi-resolves an issue that’s been a burr under the saddle of the English and Portuguese companies that make sweet, high-alcohol dessert wines in the Douro Valley of Portugal. They traditionally sent the wines down the river in small boats to the port city of Oporto before they were shipped to London. So it’s no surprise that those wines were and still are called Port.

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My home state of Ohio has taken one giant leap backward, restricting Ohioans’ access to direct-shipped wines from out of state. Effective today, citizens from Akron to Zanesville and everywhere in between can no longer order wine delivered direct to their homes from out of state wineries that make more than 150,000 gallons (63,000 cases) a year.

This rules out the largest wineries but also a lot of medium-sized high quality wineries, too, whose products are in high demand. To me, it sounds like Buckeye-staters can no longer order wine directly from biodynamically farmed Benziger Family Winery, or single-vineyard Merlot from Duckhorn Vineyards, or Petite Sirah from Markham Vineyards.

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Not long ago beliefs that could easily have been labeled superstition governed a lot of what happened in vineyards and wineries. If deer were eating your grapes, you didn’t build a fence to get rid of them, but you shot one of them, cut the carcass into chunks and hung the chunks from trees at strategic spots around the perimeter of the vines. The deer would get the idea.

Grape growers in California used water witchers to find where to drill for water. Vignerons in France wouldn’t let women into cellars because they believed that if a woman was having her period it would spoil the wine.

It seems like one current superstition going around is that yeast has gotten stronger in recent years, and that explains in part why wines are higher in alcohol. Tim Patterson did a great job of debunking this myth and has gotten a lot of compliments and commentary on his investigation.

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It’s fun to hear Fred Franzia — maker of Two-Buck Chuck and many other California wine brands – speak. I just listened to a discussion on public radio that was supposed to pit Franzia against a wine writer and a wine business journalist to get some lively discussion about wine snobbism.

Franzia did his part, declaring that if anyone uses any more words than “it’s good” or “I like it” to describe a wine then they’re a snob. He is really down-to-earth and says what he thinks, so it’s refreshing to listen to him talk, but he’s also smart and cleverly made several points that made him and his Bronco Wine Co. look good.

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Judging by the response here on Unreserved to my post about winemaker Randy Dunn’s manifesto against high alcohol and posts elsewhere in the blogosphere, it’s an issue with legs, and not just those streamy things that run down the side of your wine glass.

Unlike Dunn, and many of the other people speaking out against high-alcohol table wines, my problem is not that wines over 14 or 15 percent alcohol don’t go with food. My problem is that they don’t go with my metabolism. I like to have a 3-4 ounce glass of wine before dinner while I’m cooking, another glass or two with dinner, and then another small one after dinner if it’s good enough to savor.

But I have to get up the next morning without a headache and have a good day.

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Now, this was unusual. A communication from Dunn Vineyards. If I’ve ever gotten any kind of PR outreach from the winery of Randy Dunn on Napa’s Howell Mountain I can’t remember it. So it must have been an important topic to spur Dunn, an individualistic Cabernet maker who in another time could have been a trapper-trader like John Colter or Jim Bowie, to go public with anything.

“It is time for the average wine consumers, as opposed to tasters, to speak up. The current fad of higher and higher alcohol wines should stop,” Dunn wrote in an email that went out to Wine Institute’s media list. “Most wine drinkers do not really appreciate wines that are 15 to 16+ % alcohol. They are, in fact, hot and very difficult to enjoy with a meal. About the only dish that seems to put them in their place is a good hot, spicy dish.”

(I digress to disagree with him on the hot, spicy dish thing. For my palate it just piles heat on heat. Really spicy food needs really fruity, fresh, un-tannic wine.)

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Just when you think the world is becoming more enlightened about the stopper on your wine bottle, something happens to show how hard and how long the struggle will be to get over corks. Recently I met a nice couple in the publishing business, apparently affluent, apparently sophisticated, apparently in their late 50s, but he at least was apparently a cork snob.

We were discussing barrels, oak alternatives (chips), winemaking techniques, grape growing practices, and marketing topics including corks, synthetics and screwcaps, products that they call closures in industry jargon.

Screwcaps have come a long way from the cream sherry days, I told him, and they’re working great on not only New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and California rose, but on hiqh-quality, expensive red wines, too. He reacted like I’d just brought Nancy Pelosi into the steam room at the Bohemian Club (although I’m not sure they have one).

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