And you’re going to enter your $75 Cabernet in a competition?

Take my Appellation — Please!

Wine’s dirty little secret No. 1

Is Frankenwine coming to a bottle near you?

A realistic view of Napa's middle-class real estate market

And you’re going to enter your $75 Cabernet in a competition?

The California State Fair once again presented Daryl Sattui with the Golden Winery Award, recognizing his V. Sattui Winery as the top winery in California for 2007.

This marks the third time in the last four years that V. Sattui was bestowed this honor. This award is presented annually to the winery which has the greatest number of wines winning the highest number of awards.

Of the 28 V. Sattui wines submitted, 23 won awards, a record the winery says no other winery has accomplished in the State Fair Wine Competition.

The biggest award was for V. Sattui’s 2004 Preston Vineyard Cabernet, voted Best Napa Valley Cabernet and also the Best Red Wine from the Napa Valley out of hundreds of other wines submitted.

The winery's other big awards include:

Double Golds for 2004 Preston Vineyard Cabernet Best Napa Valley Cabernet & Best Red Wine from the Napa Valley, 2006 Marsangnier, 2006 Semillon (Sonoma) Best Semillon from Sonoma County, 2006 Semillon ( Napa Valley) Best Semillon from the Napa Valley and 2005 Crow Ridge Zinfandel, and golds for 2006 Dry Riesling – Best Riesling from California and 2006 White Zinfandel – Best White Zinfandel in California.

The California State Fair is the largest state wine competition in California. This year 650 wineries entered nearly 3,000 wines from around the state.

Not to take anything from the V. Sattui wines, but you’ll recall that this is the competition that called Charles Shaw (“Two Buck Chuck”) the best Chardonnay in California.

I tasted that wine, by the way. While I certainly wouldn’t call it the best in California (or even in Trader Joe’s where it’s sold), it’s a pleasant wine, light, showing fruit but not too much, not oaky or reeking of caramel and vanilla. It’s a great deal for $2, and competitive with most wines that cost far more.

Of course, I don’t like typical big, buttery California Chardonnays, so it’s not surprising I find the Charles Shaw version quite pleasant. I like the Sauvignon Blanc even better.

Also note that wineries get to choose the wines they submit, and though I doubt that they'd cheat by picking the best they make, this always raises questions among those who find it difficult to believe a wine made in such large quantities is that uniform.

Anyway, a winery must be very optimistic to  enter its wines in competitions. There's only one winner in a wine competition; everyone else loses.

Some wineries that make very good wines were embarrassed by being bested in the results -- and I don’t think those results are particularly valid or relevant.

Aug. 13, 2007

Take my Appellation — Please!

The recent decision by the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau (TTB) to stop issuing new wine appellations while it reevaluates them might be great news for some grapegrowers. Those appellations (American Viticultural Area) might be superfluous:

If Jerry Seinfeld were telling jokes to wine geeks, I can hear his routine:

“So we spent a ton of money and lobbied to get Pope Valley gerrymandered into the Napa Valley appellation even though it isn’t part of it geographically and has different soils and climate.

“Now we’re going to seek our own American Viticultural Area and spend more to convince people it’s really distinct!”

[Raucous laughter from happy wine drinkers]

He could tell a similar joke about Oregon, Washington, Lodi and many other wine-growing regions:

“Oregonians have finally convinced Americans that the state is a good place to grow wine grapes, especially Pinot Noir. So they’re dividing the wine regions into increasingly obscure bits, inevitably playing down Oregon. Is this designed to confuse customers? I think it’s a plot by Russian River Valley Pinot growers personally.”

“Most people barely realize Washington state makes good wines, much less that the Columbia Valley does. Wahluke Slope? Rattlesnake Hills? You must be kidding.”

And “Lodi is being jigsawed into six American Viticultural Areas. Lodi? Six! The local grape commission has fought hard to finally gain deserved recognition for the area as a premium-growing area instead of just a place you get stuck. Now we’re going to slice it into pieces you can only find with a GPS.”

Maybe one of Rodney Dangerfield’s one liners works better:

“American winemakers are adopting the French system of geographic designations so they can copy France’s recent success in wine!”

That reminds me of the minor Bordeaux winemaker who once asked me when Californians were going to adopt the French system and start mandating  varieties, planting methods and yields. I almost laughed until I realized he was serious.

Every study done proves that Napa Valley (and Napa) is by far the most valuable word you can put on a bottle of wine made in America, as Fred Franzia knew when he paid millions of dollars for the “Napa Ridge” name so he could slap it on bottles of cheap Central Valley wine. Nevertheless, now Napa vintners are insisting on promoting their own tiny appellations as if there was any difference between Rutherford and Oakville that more than seven people could distinguish blind.

Napa Valley now contains all or part of 13 AVAs, maybe to be more soon (Calistoga and Tulocay are pending, and maybe the aforementioned Pope Valley). Yes, there are differences between them, but most of the wine in Napa Valley comes from a few broad categories: the cool area south of the Yountville hills that trap the cold air from moving north; the warmer but rich upper valley floor, and the low alluvial slopes or "benches" from there to north of Calistoga; and the mountains.

Napa Valley wineries have traditionally stuck together, a huge strength compared to those in Sonoma, who squabble and often didn’t even mention that also-valuable name prominently on their labels until recently when it was mandated by law.

Of late, however, I’ve seen intense economic competition developing among Napa’s almost-400 gentlemen (and lady) vintners, and one response is to promote the so-called “sub-appellations” heavily. And that always leads to discussion of the differences between the appellations, with the obvious implication: “Our is better than theirs!”

Every time they do this, they’re chipping away at the strength that Napa has so carefully built.

People today don’t relate too well to geese laying golden eggs, but I think most of us understood what Joni Mitchell was singing about, “They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.”

That’s just what these Napa wineries are doing. They’ve got paradise, the most valuable “brand” in the industry, and they’re trying to disassociate themselves from it. Incredible.

Aside from people who write about wine like me and a few wine educators and people who work as paid AVA directors, who does this benefit? Almost no one.

About 1 percent of potential wine buyers care or should care whether a wine is from Oakville or Rutherford. In fact, there’s far more difference between the grapes grown in the west side of the two areas and those from the east 3 miles away than between the two adjacent townships north and south.

Most wine buyers respond primarily to grape variety, brand name and image and price, with recommendations from friends and experts also important.

They don’t care about appellations, especially ones they’ve never heard of. A few years ago, consumer research found consumers ranking the Ozarks higher than Stags Leap for wine because of the familiarity of the name. And if you’re reading this, I assume you know better than that.

Admittedly, if you’re trying to attract tourists, location matters, but beauty trumps wine quality in this case, and fortunately, some top wine areas are very pretty.

Don’t get me wrong. I love learning about and explaining the nuances of terroir, but I also find seminars on the relationship between the chemistry of organic sulfides and sensory perceptions fascinating, and I make part of my livelihood writing about them. But vintners who want to sell their luxury wines would do well to read Vanity Fair and Town & Country rather than the National Geographic Magazine, and do a good job explaining their own wines, not trying to convince people that the little piece of dirt they share with a few other wineries is a reason to buy the wine. 

Aug. 20, 2007

Wine’s Dirty Little Secret

Most wine in America is drunk without food

While we who write about wine rarely address it, most wine in America is drunk alone, not with food. The majority is enjoyed in place of cocktails or just hanging around with friends. Still other glasses are poured after dinner.

By contrast, most wine in traditional wine-drinking countries of the Mediterranean is consumed with meals, and considered as much a part of those meals as bread – which is almost universally served.   

That makes a big impact on the type of wines enjoyed.

If you’re drinking wine with a meal, you want something to complement the food and make it taste even better. Most regions traditionally only made a few types of wine, and that was enjoyed with everything served. Nobody worried much about whether it matched the food; the food and wine evolved together.

There were some surprises, too. Many regions in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece as well as France and most of Austria, Switzerland and Germany  traditionally favored white wines. It’s only recently that snobbishness has declared that red wines are better.

Those white wines, however, tend to be fairly acidic – crisp is a nicer term – and rather neutral, not full of strong flavors that clash with the foods.

Likewise, the reds tend to be a bit tart with a subtle balance of bitter tannins that enhance the food.

Few people drink either these bone-dry, somewhat acidic reds or whites (or the very popular dry rosés) alone. When wine critics visit Italy and Spain, for example, the winemakers try to get them to enjoy the wines with olives, cheese and tasty sausages and ham. They all make the wine taste better.

The favorite aperitifs of the Mediterranean are not white wines, but sparkling wines like Cava, Prosecco and Champagne, whisky (Scotch), bitter digestives like Campari and soda, or licorice-flavored pastis and its cousins.

In America and many other countries that don’t have a long wine tradition, however, the most popular wines are formulated to taste better alone. By far the most popular is slightly sweet, fruity Chardonnay smelling of vanilla and caramel from oak barrels (or chips) and butterscotch from the malolactic process that converts its tart malic (apple) acid to soft, buttery lactic (milk) acids.

There wines are a far cry from traditional French Burgundian wines made with the same relatively neutral Chardonnay grape, which tend to be crisp and light and don’t have the other flavors we associate with Chardonnay but are the result of winemaker manipulation.

We also like soft Italian Pinot Grigio, and, increasingly, Spanish Albariño, both good with foods but also pleasant alone. Sauvignon Blanc, the traditional runner-up white here, is often made soft and easy to drink for that reason.

For reds, the most popular wines to drink alone aren’t tannic Bordeaux, but fruit-filled, often sweetish wines such as Zinfandel, Merlot, or Shiraz, many from Australia or Chile.

This phenomenon extends to the high end of the market, too. Expensive “cult” Cabernets and Chardonnays are picked very ripe, making intense wines that are better for socializing than drinking with food. After all, if you’re going to open a bottle of California cabernet that cost hundreds of dollars, you want to savor it, not hide it under food.

There’s nothing wrong with either type of wine, but it’s important to keep in mind how you’ll serve a wine before buying it. And don’t hesitate to experiment. Wine prices are at their lowest in years, making it truly a buyers’ market.

 -- end--

Afterthought: The dirty little secret of Napa Valley: I believe that it produces far more white Zinfandel than any other wine. That’s because the two biggest producers, Beringer and Sutter Home, are based here.

Of course, virtually none of the grapes used in these wines are from Napa Valley, but the wineries were grandfathered into being allowed to use “foreign” grapes (from other counties). New wineries have to use mostly Napa grapes.

There’s nothing wrong with white Zinfandel anyway. It’s the fourth most popular varietal wine in America. But I don’t like it, just as I don’t like $50 oaky, buttery Chardonnay. Plenty of people do, however, including my sister; she drinks no other wine in spite of my attempts to introduce her to other types. 

August 27, 2007