The Feiring Line

Embrace the "Snobs." Don't Drink Cheap(ened) Wine

The Joys of Processed Wine and  Ignore the Snobs, Drink the Cheap, Delicious Wine was the two-titled opinion piece from writer Bianca Bosker. It appeared in last week’s New York Times. It didn’t strike a nerve but it did press buttons. “The story shouldn’t have been titled cheap wine, it should have been cheap shots,” wrote Vermont winemaker Deirdre Heekin. 

 I’m not sure those who reacted to the click-bait of it all were being fair. Any thinking person who read Bosker's conclusion (or the titles), would guess the writer was clearly out of her mind. But while I would have rather believed that explanation, I expect something else had to be going on.

For me the Op-Ed’s problems were elsewhere; credibility and believability. Or as the Times magazine cover suggests, "Is truth dead?" In that Times piece was a deep bait and switch that you would only know if you read the Bosker book. Which I did.

 

Photo grabbed from Marko Kovac's facebook page. I've no idea where he found it. 

 

The Cork Dork--which reveals more about Bosker's ambition and competitive nature than any love for or knowledge of wine--energetically chronicles her journey towards the first certified level of the Master Sommelier exam.

This is more like running the Turkey Trot than the Boston Marathon, but through the study one should pick up some tips.  However, being considered a pro or an expert does not come along with that first pin. I suppose this is why there are so many misleading and wrong statements in her essay such as "learning to savor the delicate aromas of aged Barolos from organic growers in Piedmont." That's a weird one? How old? This was one of the worst farmed areas for ages. Organic except for the very few is a rare thing.

Then there's,  “I spent long days studying the farming practices that distinguish the Grand Crus of Burgundy.” 

Farming practices do not separate the Grand from the Village, geology and micro-climate do. There’s a bunch of other stuff I can take on in the essay. While this might seem like small potatoes, it does makes me question her wine knowledge and grasp of the market. But what really confounded me was her flip from her book to a flop of a different conclusion in the Times.

Here’s the deal: The Op-Ed was a condensed version of one of her book's chapters entitled, Quality Control. In that chapter she discusses wine additives and the way marketing team can shape a wine.

The essay oddly reads as if she were on a Treasury press junket. I don’t know whether she was or not, but one understands that she drank and liked Treasury's Kool-Aid. There she was, tasting the wines after a certain natural wine bashing and then  she drops this bomb;

These maligned bottles have a place. The time has come to learn to love unnatural wines.”

Honest opinion here: Treasury and others of their ilk should run and grab this concept for a press release. It’s perfectly transparent. Its message? “So what if we load up wines with process and additives? We make wines of pleasure.”

So in the Times she says processed wines are great.

In her book when at the same big table tasting yeasted, chipped, mega-purpled, reverse-osmosed, acidified, enzymed, Velcorined wines, she seems to have had a very different experience.

They reminded me of blueberry smoothies with a shot of vodka and Hershey's syrup stirred in. But I was trying to keep an open mind. Price is a spice, I reminded myself, and don’t be such a snob. Truth be told, I didn't want to finish them. There was nothing new that revealed itself after the second sip.

 

In the memoir she couldn’t drink the wines.

In the essay she embraced them.

Okay. Fess up. Which one is it? And what would prompt the author to so drastically change her opinion from book to post. In the age of press manipulation, the whole situation left me uncomfortable, and that the Times printed it, took her seriously was part of it. 

Eric Asimov recently wrote a fabulous column, wine is food. Bravo. Absolutely. Fresh orange juice or concentrate? Fresh strawberry or artificial flavor. Genetically modified tomatoes or a syrupy, black acidic one. Wine from grapes or from 60+ additives. Which one do you want to drink? The answer seems is self-evident. To paraphrase Aubert de Villaine, “Do I have to prove that the sun rises?”

To most of us who take wine and food seriously, wines of pleasure are not  concocted grape beverages from ground that I wouldn’t want to walk on let alone eat from. What gives pleasure is deliciousness from great winemakers who can work soils responsibly and give the grapevine an unadorned and unspoofed voice. 

If this piece that would land on April Fool’s Day I would have gotten it. But it didn’t. But frankly, any writer who confesses, as she has, to have a weakness for old champagne --which is a game only the well-heeled can play-- comes off as someone sipping out of her coupe and saying let them drink cake, or rather Layer Cake.  

when Hugh Johnson talks about natural wine

When the wine writer emeritus Hugh Johnson told Washington Post wine writer David McIntyre that "orange" wines were a sideshow and a waste of time fur raised on Facebook and Twitter. He went on to say, "Making good wine is hardly modern technology, it’s just experience and common sense. And hygiene!"

He's right about the part on making good wine, of course. But the sharp that stuck in the throats of wine drinkers who have come to love skin-contact wines (full disclosure, I did write a love poem to Georgian wine, home to skin-contact) was that this wonderful writer, (thoughtful enough to write me a fan letter after The Battle for Wine and Love came out. I was completely honored.) the very same one who wrote The History of Wine, failed to realize that orange wine was nothing new but a revival of all things old, and made by common sense and without a doubt, hygiene.

Yes, Mr. Johnson, today, we do know how to make a really good wine and many times--though not always--the ancients had something to teach us way more than the modern laboratory does. Cleanliness of course is key. All agreed.

Back in something like 2006 the first skin contacts started to arrive on our shores. Many weren't successful. Some had dried, starched fruit and aggressive tannins. But over the past decade as the skins were more understood as a way to make wine without addition, when the use of clay for fermentation spread (grape juice takes to clay as butter takes to toast), and winemakers learned to do less, great "orange" wines have proliferated. Not because they were a style, but because they had a purpose. They have developed a juiciness that combine the refreshment of white with the satisfaction of red. Many are in this category. Some are raised in wood like Radikon, La Stoppa and La Garagista, but others raised in clay like Vodopevic, Pheasants Tears and Iago.  

The disappointment here was not that Mr. Johnson didn't like orange wines. He gets to. But from this scholar and historian, we all expected a more thoughtful and researched statement and opinion.

Now we have another piece from him, in Decanter, where he seemed to suggest that natural wines were the wine equivalent of the Paleo Diet. In it he posed the question; 'Is "natural" a self-justifying word to cover any sort of accident?'

I think it's time for Mr. Johnson to take a break from garden writing for a minute to reconsider his words. Give us the courtesy of a more well-researched response instead of falling down the tweet drain --the second son of the blog--where unsupported feelings have become the norm. There are plenty of wines that are made like a military bed, tightened so extremely that an accident surely has happened. And yet it finds its way into a bottle. This statement is a little aggressive.

Then he dances with a lovely line that could have had some truth to it. "Wines like unmade beds are the In Thing." 

But what exactly does he mean?  What is his unmade bed and how tight does he like his sheets? Hospital corners? A little rumpled just enough to remember the night of passion?  Give us a little there, there. 

I kind of liked his unmade bed analogy.  Today, there are indeed too many wines, "like unmade beds." These to me are unfinished, quick to the bottle before the flavors and aromas have evolved to stability. Many are being supported mostly by newcomers to wine who find these wines fresh. This is a state of infatuation that can stay with the drinker for I'd say, up to ten years. And to some sommeliers who are following trends it could be an 'In Thing.' And my sympathies are with him if he has fallen victim to such a wine director. But there is life beyond the bottled wine still in progress, and surely he's had these --because they are some of today's most celebrated wines, but failed to identify them.

However, when he suggests the word natural is a coverup tactic, is he actually suggesting that  Burgundy, Bordeaux, Brunello, Barolo, made according to the spec sheet, still with ridiculous amounts of very bad and sour wood taint, too much acrid So2 addition, tannin addition and sloppy acidification, not to say anything about chemical agriculture, are superior? Do those get pass? Or is it that Mr. Johnson knows how to avoid those wines yet does not yet know how to navigate the world of natural?  In that case he should subscribe to my newsletter. 

The most stupefying sentiment, however, was tucked into his penultimate graf. 

The sales pitch for natural wine usually tells you that conventional wines contain a lot of non-grape juice gunk. Fish guts: horror. Egg whites: poison. Sulphites: allergens. Colouring: dishonest. Sugar: cheating.

There seems to be a high ground – is it moral, ethical, fashionable, hygienic? – shared by ‘naturalists’ and vegans. Then again, if you read the list of preservatives and allergens on any supermarket packet, you may want to give up eating altogether.

Mr. Johnson fails to acknowledge the 72+ which sail beyond chaptalization and fining... and coloring? Really Mr. J, do you want your claret colored? And by the way, who is giving this so-called sales pitch?  He also ---and surely he knows better--understands that most of todays wines are not made by commonsense and vintage, but by marketer and machine. And I don't know about you, but I don't eat processed food with anything artificial in it.

Look: Most of us have come to natural wine because the other seems dead. Lifeless. Natural wine, made with grape alone from healthy soil---the good ones, and there are many--make us happy.

Many of us choose our food the way we choose our wine and choose our wine the way we choose our food. Meaning any list of ingredients that I don't want to ingest, whether in cookies or in wine, I don't. Real food alone. Yes. Grape alone. A little So2 perhaps. Minimum intervention. Yes.

These wines mesh with our philosophy AND excite our senses. This is not the 'in thing,' this is not a fad. This is the future.

However, buried in the ill-edited piece is the nut of the piece: change natural wine to alternative wine.

Hmm...would that be like alternative fact?

Nope. That won't work. To those of us who only drink natural and natural enough, there's nothing alternative about it. Those wines? They're the real thing.

 

 

Missed opportunity for reading restaurant wine lists

Last night over a Zidarich Vitovksa, my friend (in for the Lafarge dinner. Which by the way, if I could have, I would have. ) cautioned me and said, "The trick is, if you don't have anything positive to say...."

Then I thought, that's what my newsletter is for, but the blog? Well, other rules apply. Which brings me to this story in Sunday's New York Times biz section.

The story, Reading Restaurant Wine Lists, for Blockbusters and Values could have been a perfect, even sexy idea for the section. The question of how much up-selling and off-loading is that sommelier actually doing is a great one to explore. After all, spending hundreds of bucks on a bottle of wine coupled with dependency on a stranger's recommendation could provoke highly ratcheted anxiety.  

We all want editors who save us from false moves, I know I do. The writer should have been saved from his. There were several. The piece commenced with words from an Antinori salesman (and not a sommelier) drawing the unfortunate analogy of  sommelier as a floor-walker,  brands -slinger and not wine educator. 

A wine list filled with brands (think supermarkets lined with Gallos and Broncos)  doesn't need a sommelier, a well chosen list filled with actual winemakers work does.  If the piece had concentrated its thesis along this guiding truth, it would have made sense. As constructed, the article lacked a needed logic and credibility.

Muddling the reliability of the piece was his inclusion of this quote from the same Antinori guy: "We don’t want to call it the second growth anymore. It’s not what’s left over. It’s a great wine in its own category.”

A second growth of course,  is the reference to a Bordeaux classification and not a second wine,  as the Antinori was suggesting. But yet, the writer took his chosen structure and persisted with...

Is he (sommelier, he meant. Oh, only a man has this job?) on the make to sell you something the restaurant needs to offload, like a purple Audi A8, or is a producer giving him some kind of financial incentive to sell as many equivalents of Volkswagen Passats as he can that month?

If the piece had worked the way it should have, it would have had its details right. It would have been an exposé and a comparison of sommeliers who are motivated by incentive of the brand instead to those motivated by the incentive of a happy customer (alluded to but never unpacked.) This piece could have offered a great service to the biz section reader if it had forthrightly addressed: how to know if you can trust your sommelier.  In that piece?

+The generosity of the sommelier: if you don't like the wine, it will be  replaced.

 + The sommelier offering as many tastes of open bottles as you would like.  

+ An active determination of the preference of the diner

+A sommelier first considering  pricepoint and then suggesting a few possibilities even cheaper than what you're looking to spend

+And if the writer persisted on using that lead from the Antinori perp: How to tell a brand from a wine, and if the sommelier suggests brand, high tail it out of there.

+ The piece would have understood the quotes it picked.

Case in point? In the category of a quote that had to have been bungled, the writer quoted Olivier Flosse, wine director at A Voce explaining how he dealt with a customer's confusion about whether they want dry or sweet wines. When he gives them a choice they almost always choose chardonnay.             

 “It’s not sweet. It’s a dry grape." Mr. Flosse supposedly said. 

Chardonnay, a dry grape?  If someone misquoted me in this fashion, I would be intensely horrified and request a correction. Was it a misquote though? Oh, it had to be, right? There's no way a wine director or sommelier or beginning wine student could call a variety a dry grape.  There are no dry grapes, unless they are raisins and then they're quite sweet indeed.

Moral of the story: A good sommelier is there to spread wine and is not on commission from its restaurant to sell bottles. Editors assigning wine know how to edit a wine piece, pass it by someone who does. 

Why I hate natural wine

Thus spake Bruce Palling.

Or, rather, so he wrote in his 2012 essay.

Palling's recent Newsweek piece was entitled much more astutely, Why Natural Wine Tastes Worse than Putrid Cider.

His title seemed inspired by the sensational Robert M. Parker Jr. and Michel Rolland. Yet the text seemed more in step with restaurant critic Steve Cuozzo. 

It turns out that like Cuozzo, Palling (also a restaurant critic who loves his tipple) thinks he's the rare food writer who actually knows wine---as they say, a unicorn of the species.

Now, Palling still drinks 'claret' and 'vintages, ' and even though he knows as much about natural wine as I know about butchering, he writes about them as if he is an authority.

 But there are signs he might not be the most reliable narrator.   

+ The caption on the photograph accompanying the article refers to chasselat

While not in any grape book I can find, on Wiki it is one obscure synonym for the grape chasselas, too obscure to use in a caption. If I were the writer? I'd get on my editor's ass to fix it as soon as possible.  

+ Natural wine isn't on the shelves of supermarkets. 

Well....the Whole Foods in London --unlike most other Whole Foods--stocks plenty. At Marks & Spencer or Tesco? Most likely just industrial plonk there. But he takes it further to say they're not at wine merchants? 

 

+  "The feeling goes that if the food served in a restaurant is best when it has no pesticides and herbicides, then the same must be true for wine."

Amen! Like this is bad? Especially if some are delicious?

 +Real natural doesn't exist because all wine needs human intervention.

Such a tiresome straw man argument. There are brains out there. One of you guys, please jump to  an original argument. Look, bread doesn't happen without intervention either. But there is Wonderbread and real stuff. Done. 

+At least 30ppm of SO2 is needed to keep a wine without sulfur alive for a few days.

My experience? The more sulfur the shorter the lifespan of the open bottle. The little secret of drinkers and sommeliers is that the low or unsulfured wine  lives dramatically over days and sometimes even months. Many natural wines love oxygen. 

+ The natural wine movement kicked off with Noma in Copenhagen.

Now, where in heck did he get that one?  The NWM kicked off in the Beaujolais in the late 70's. It came into its own first in Paris when in 2000 the natural wine bar of the city boomed. Thanks to the internet from 2006 to 2014 the category mushroomed. By now,  the world's interesting winelists has exploded. Sure, Denmark is high on the natural hog, but they're relatively late to the game. Hello Japan?

+ Hibiscus has seen the light and gas "reintroduced top vintages."

According to the list's creator, Isabelle Legeron, she's always had some classic wines on the list.

+ Noma has seen the light and has "reintroduced top vintages." 

 That would be news to their wine maestro, Mads Kleppe. 

Last month in Vienna I talked at length with Mads. The night was approaching the wee hours, there was some Overnoy involved. He confided to me that he is still trying to get rid of some of the earlier inventory which pre-dated him. The wines, he said, were an embarassment. Perhaps those are the very ones Palling thinks are new kids the list. I'm sure Palling would be appalled at Mads' wine pairings because he told me that those with preconceived notions have a hard time. Some were indignant, furious even. It was mostly the coffee pairing (very barely roasted coffee) that got them pissed off. "If you fuck with peoples conception what good wine and coffee looks and taste like they get really upset," Mads said to me.

 Mad's pairings aim to challenge, inspire, break the fourth wall. He wants to provide  an experience. To offer wines that were chemically farmed, yeasted, bacteriaed, tannined, acidified, deacidified, overly sulfured, megapurpled, RO-ed, micro-oxed etcetec, would be cynical. Devastating really.

 Some of Mads' offerings would be gorgeous, easy to love. Others would be challenging, provocative, engaging. The purpose is journey, sensual, explorative. And at times, delicious.  Or at least that's what I got from my conversation with him as I've yet to visit and dine.

 I  have no problem that Palling doesn't care, (nor can he taste) that his Cote Rotie has added tannin and the flint in his Chablis is actually too much SO2. What I have a problem with that he spoiled a perfectly good piece. He had a beautiful whine in the making of  I can't go to eat the greatest  restaurants of the world anymore (no, Palling, not the trendy ones, the greatest ones)  of the world anymore because they've been invaded by the dreaded natural wines.  

Ach, yet another case of a writer burying his lead, swapping for a piece for a flawed article a magazine like Newsweek should have never honored with publishing.

However, I will grant the critic three things:

1- Like in all wine worlds, some are sub-par.

But am I going to get in the way of someone who loves mousiness? No. But I won't be able to recommend them. 

2- Dagueneau made some good wines, sometimes great ones. 

But, if he wanted to drink them, he should have dug into his own pocket for his wallet and not wait for what was being offered to him.  

3-  I  believe the critic that natural wines are just not his thing.

And while I have no doubt I could show him a completely no So2 added wine he would love.

                                      

 

I don't want to convert him. Let him drink claret! But believing him as a reliable narrator? Not so sure.

 

L'episode Cuozzo--makes perfect sense

Included in astute Episode Cuozzo commentary were Eric Asimov, Jon Bonné  and  Talia Baiocchi--who I believe broke the story.  Analysis of this train wreck was so spot on I didn't think I could possibly have another thing to add. Really, I should  be telling you about the sad time the vines are having in Burgundy or about the wonderful wines of Jean -Yves Bizot--but I after going in search of gas in Beaune, cursing the provincial idea that the gas station at LeClerc only accepts European credit cards I realized I'm not finished with the subjet.

To begin with: most restaurant critics know little more than red, white and pink about wine.  They mostly avoid mention, usually a wise move because when they do opine, they can step into a smelly pile of it. And a pile is exactly what The Post's Cuozzo squished into with his inept spanking of Lee Campbell's list over at  Reynard's.

 Wine choice can well fall in neatly along the lines of  politics. Mostly, how one chooses wine has a lot to do with personality. Do you stay in your comfort zone or not? Are you adventurous or not? Will you eat local food? Are you curious? 

Anyone who has ever ventured out into a foreign country without enough facility in a language can attest to the unwarranted terror of being seen as stupid. Some get their courage up and start to speak, showing off lousy accents others buy what they need through their concierge. Perhaps they eat at McDonald's,  look for the comfort of  The Gap or Starbucks, even in Paris.  Perhaps theytravel only on tours. Many tourists go out of their way to stay familiar so they aren't confronted with their lack of sophistication, experience or knowledge.  

In this way, in Cuozzo's  article on Reynard's Cuozzo focused on the need for wine to be familiar, he never said good. But familiar. Recognizable. And that is the issue.

 Mr. Cuozzo  looked at a list, put together by a  talented sommelier who could have guided him to pleasure, yet he was pissed she spoke another language. She had the skills to communicate to him, he wasn't going to tolerate her accent. 

We must not forget the man writes for a tabloid-esque newspaper.  It's The Post for Godsake's. I had a harder time when the New Yorker didn't get its sherry right. I mean, they're supposed to know, or at least know when they don't know. The Post, afterall,  is most famous for Page 6,  not its news.  We are afterall, a  tribal bunch. Sometimes humans are  xenophobic. This gets demonstrated historically through serious issues like immigration to tamer ones  such as Picasso couldn't paint. The  Guggenheim was the toilet on 5th Avenue. Cuozzo felt stupid.

I have no idea if Cuozzo knows about food ot not but I would bet good money he has very little knowledge about wine, except that he likes big reds from obvious, pronouncable locales. But one thing he has spot on, knowledge of his audience and plays to their Archie Bunker stereotype (whether or not the stereotype is true.). He plays it safel, making sure he doesn't encourage them to go to the tabac, on an errand, in, God forbid,  a foreign language. 

 

(but really, the LeClerc in Beaune SHOULD accept global credit cards. I mean, I don't need them to write it in English, they don't even need to take my Amex, just take my damned credit blue.)  

 

Sweet Stuff (word proud, sherry poor)

The somewhat lukewarm New Yorker review of Francesca's located in the old Frankie's space on Clinton didn't bother me, but the writer's take on drinking there made me do a double take.

The most notable risk that Francesca takes is encouraging patrons to drink sherry with dinner instead of wine (one waitress joked, “It’s not your grandmother’s sherry,” as if that were a selling point). There’s nothing wrong with simplicity or grandmothers, of course, but suggesting that diners forego wine in favor of the sweet stuff bespeaks an eagerness bordering on impatience to show off what Francesca knows about Spain.

 From the look of it right now, Francesca's  does not have a destination-worthy selection of sherry, though they do have some very interesting looking sherry cocktails.  However, if  you go there for a copita check out the Byass ($8) and El Maestro ($11). (There had been better offerings over at The Beagle (closed for renovations) hope they keep up the good work when they reopen. $24 will get you a copita of La Bota 30 @ Tertulia, and I think Casa Mono might have some better options, at least by the bottle.)

But getting back to the  matter at hand, I wanted to call the writer up and just let her know that sweet sherries are the minority. "Really, you can be sure, no one was suggesting you drink a PX with your Fideuà."

But, such is the reality the makers of sherry have to deal with. I wanted to guide the writer to  Eric Asimov's tone poem to the wines of Jerez.  I wanted to point her to the writings of Peter Liem. And also wanted to tell her about my evening with the wonderful Jancis Robinson.  This past May, after tasting many saperavis with some Georgian friends at Jancis Robinson's home round table she graciously insisted we stay for dinner. When she insists, if you're smart, you obey. We did.

But first Jancis had a big problem to solve. She knew the Australian riesling wasn't going to work for me. "What am I going to give you to drink." (It sounded more like , what the hell am I going to give you!) 

No problem there: she played sure-footed sommelier as she said, "This is the only thing I can think of."  She then disappeared and emerged with  what could have been my personal bottle of Gonzalez Byass Palmas fino, but it was not too be. The other's loved it too.

How wonderfully thoughtful, and I hope to one day return the favor. I might have polished off the 500ml myself, enjoying everything as a pairing. Herring and fino?  Excellent.  (by the way, the herring rivaled Russ & Daughters.)

But meanwhile, over at The New Yorker, there's no range of sherries, there is only the equivalent of  Harvey's Bristol Cream, a syrupy, one note aberration.  I could cut the publication some slack, blame the gaffe on a summer intern  syndrome, but even if it was the fault of a  sub-drinking age word-picker, the assumption flags the issue at hand: most people don't know shit about sherry.

 Now, it's fine if the writer doesn't like sherry, but that she doesn't know there's a wide rainbow of ocean-air-like sherries under the categories of  Fino, Manzanilla, Amontillado, Oloroso and Palo Cortado, was not due diligence, even though it is the tragedy of sherry. But the good news it is finally starting to reclaim its reputation, because we live in the age of the oxidative wine revolution.  Maybe one day, she'll learn what she missed: the angular, salty, nutty, umami side of the Palomino grape.

 I shouldn't be too harsh, though.  After all, if  I were  given an assignment to write about baseball, I too could make this kind of mistake, afterall, aren't the Dodgers a New York team? But you know, the chances that I'll ever cover baseball......

 

how to tell a wine fake?

 

When I heard that the FBI busted Rudy Kurniawan, at one time touted as the most important and flashiest of the Burgundy collectors is accused of--manufacturing faux bottles of expensive wine, I thought back to when a friend of mine was busted by, yes, the FBI, for child porn. My friend's wife was on the can with they rushed through the door, and opened the door on her telling her to wipe and get out. My friend was a film buff, of all kinds of vintage film. He was a big Elvis collector too. A nightmare. Yes. And totally insane and wrong. But yes, I thought of that with Rudy, though in this case, after a four year investigation and some pretty damning photographs, this is a different story.                                           

  I met Rudy for the first time at the 2004 Domaine Romanée Conti event at Daniel Bouloud. He was swinging a magnum of La Tache 1999.  Nowhere near ready to drink, I suppose it was the real deal and not a confabulation. Back then he was young and shiny and sitting right next to Robert M. Parker, Jr., who introduced him to me as a great guy.

 The last time I saw Rudy, he was a guest at a dinner party thrown for me in Los Angeles this past August. Shy and nervous. He was wearing his boots and t-shirt, and little new 'hipster' cap, he barely talked to me, but he did bring the Salon. 

One thing Rudy was, besides the flash and the sometime arrogant, was kind and generous, at least by reputation, even though he had plenty of people drinking swill,  thinking it was delicious. This only gives credence to the whole Robin Goldstein concept that people can't tell the difference between cheap and expensive, (a different story however between esque and real.) But when fancy labels are involved, egos occlude intelligence, just look at the lines for Louis Vuitton on Les Champs-Élysées or Galleries Lafayettes in Paris.   

As someone who used to work on psych units, I've had my share of sociopaths, but aren't they usually super smart? If Rudy wasn't framed, which does seem unlikely, and he really was a one-man counterfeit factory (unlike Madoff, he did act alone), still spoofing the wines, points to a case study that begs to be written.

In 2008 when writing for an LA based magazine on  wine fakes, I interviewed Mr. K. on the Ponsot affair. (He provided a lot of faux Ponsot for sale, the beginning of this debacle.)

  Below is the email he sent along, exactly as he wrote it from his hotmail account.

Hi alice,

 Could the mistake have been avoided? There's always "what if?". I could have asked Laurent but I did not know him then and my past requests for help with the wineries had been met with only mixed success. So I tasted the wines with many experienced and respected collectors as well as winemakers and the man who is in my opinion the best Burgundy critic and taster, Allen Meadows. All of us thought the wines were exceptional and that they were what they claimed to be.  I apologize for my ignorance, but I consider myself a collector and a drinker, not a wine historian. I had asked a couple people who know a lot more than I do about Burgundy, if the wines were plausible. The discrepancy even escaped those people.

 

That said, since the incident I have been scrutinizing my cellar even more closely and have much more actively requested assistance from friends at wineries. With their help, we can maximize the chances of weeding out the bad bottles and I will destroy those. Also, a while back I started to deface the labels of the old and rare wine I drank so the empties could not be used to create fakes.

My passion for old and rare wines remains as strong as ever and I am thankful to Laurent. 

Sincerely,

 Rudy Kurniawan 

 

++

Natural wine movement, just noise?

That was a tweet I responded to the other day, but I needed more than 140k.

Natural wine bars existed in France since 1982, in the past five years wine bars and wine -oriented restaurants who focus on them in that city exploded to over 160 in Paris. There's at least one in virtually every appellation in that country, from hill top remote towns like Valvigneres to Toulouse and even to Beaune.They've blossomed like dandelions in Brussels, the UK, the US and Scandinavia. As wines, they've spread to Austria, never left the country of Georgia, and finally has gone wild in Italy. Israel is sadly slow on the uptake. But Australia and  the United States have a new generation of winemakers side-stepping school and making wines in the old fashioned way.

When I published The Battle for Wine and Love in 2007, there were maybe three wine makers who made wines I would happily drink on the west coast. Today I might be able to say I can count them on three hands. In a few years, that will pop. 

The formation of groups where winemakers can exchange tastes and ideas has helped. Austria's got one, Spain has one, France, one + numerous tasting events (La Remise, Haute les Vins, La Dive, ViniCircus---a score more.) Italy's natural wine groups are fractional, now there are about  3 -4 splinters. As a result where five years ago in Italy there were a few handful of natural wines, today there are a good 100 + producers, new producers mixed in with the older traditionalists. Carso, up north, is crawling with them. Mt. Etna in Sicily is vino naturale  a- go- go and even more shocking, there are natural Chianti's and Brunellos and Barolos. Rome has a natural wine bar, (no broken knee caps yet) and there's an Italian natural wine guide.

 Wine importers trawl the international wine shows ( mostly occur in France and Italy)  for new finds. Good luck to them. Competition is fierce. New York City has more than five  importers specializing in them. California has about five as well. Okay, so Napa is slow to embrace the wines on their restaurants list, understandably, but affirmative in Sonoma, Bay Area and LA, there's natural in Las Vegas, a wine bar in Kentucky and natural wine in  the Carolinas. Speaking about Kentucky, one reader of this blog, who happened upon The Battle in a used book store is now a faithful follower of Chambers Street. He just got a passport and is thinking about going on Europe Natural this summer.

The powerful ambassadorial wine tasting, The Renaissance des Appellations travels globally. Yes, that one is for Biodynamic wines but there's plenty of overlap in the natural wine world. The Italian organization,  Vin Natur is one organization alone that has 142 producers in 9 different countries, held a tasting and conference in Zurich this Fall. There, Terje Meling, head of the Norwegian monopoly, considered the largest buyers of natural wine worldwide, presented his deadpan rationale for their buying practice. Customer demand.  Beyond that? The 'natural wine' world has reintroduced a variety of kinds of wines to the public. No longer only red, white and rosé, there is orange as well. Barrique has given way to anfora and old wood and concrete. Red wines can be delicate or medium weight. Maybe it's circumstantial but I do accredit the wine geek pushing the wine envelope with embracing variety, and this whether natural yeast or not, is a very good thing for everyone.

In short, evidence of growth is circumstantial, and I hope it always stays that way. But it is there. These wines are not for everyone for sure, but there is still a very strong demand that exceedssupply. So, is it just noise? 

And is it a movement?

Where there is growth, where there is pooling of talent and pooling of ideas, where there is cross pollination, and deep kissing on the dance floors, where there are wild packed tastings in limestone caves and in conference centers where there are  groups that form and exchange information, wines,  fun and drama, there is life. Here exists a strong and often fanatic community of the makers and the drinkers. This movement is about as much white noise as the anti-war movement in 1970. And mostly people are knocking them back with gusto and little ceremony.

A writer recently  wrote, "To call the “natural wine category” a “phenomenon” is an exaggeration. If it is a phenomenon, then it is a very small one and certainly not “the most powerful movement rocking today’s wine market.” It represents a tiny fraction of the global wine market in terms of both value and volume. 

Well, then I say, this is a phenomenon because this is a desire that is people driven, not market. The winemakers are growing, the drinkers are growing, hell, I can't get the wines I want anymore. The competition is cut throat and if I dont' act quick, the stores run out of them. I hear the same complaint from Pascaline Lepeltier up at the restaurant Rouge Tomate in New York City. 

 

Big Wine and the conventional wine world might be slightly threatened  but not desperate. That might change if ever ingredients will be required on a wine label. I imagine their lobby $ will be too strong, the ingredient list, while nice, won't ever happen. But one can see it on negative tweets and attacks on natural wine.  I do find it amusing to see the use of the world nature/natural catch fire on the Lallemand catalog. 

* Yeasts selected from nature. The word occurs 9 times on that one page. There are yeasts pointed to the natural and organic community. Prediction?  This will step up

I would imagine that their yeast etc sales are not impacted. Their money is safe. Natural wine folk tend to make very little wine, and losing their market share, no big deal. But what happens when natural gets industrialized in the way organic food is now?  What happens when the demand for these kinds of wines hits the supermarket? What happens when Whole Foods bends to their customers demands to get real with their wine program, and presents wines from the bottom up that are natural or natural enough? That's when the impact will happen. And it will. But the companies will adapt. They'll find some way to make money when the yeast and sulfur sales decline.

This is not a fad. Or at least no more a fad than heirloom tomatoes and good taste is  a fad. Now, bad taste? That can be a fad. Just look at fashion from the 80s, or hot pants.

No matter what you call minimal intervention wines, it's all about returning to a more sensible time in wine making when an ego stayed out of the winemaking and stayed in the farming and what was in the glass dazzled.

But take a look at that above graf. Is it inflammatory? To some people it is. And that brings up the vitriolic axe that even my fellow wine writers need to grind. I understand the threat from Big Wine (wineries + chemical farming/oeno companies) but I can't understand those who need to attack a group of winemakers who dare to go natural and those people who seek them out. The name calling and bickering is as bad as it ever was in the sandbox at the erobertparker.com board. The point is to keep focused on the wines and not the debate, because how can you possibly debate something that is delicious and is not overly processed. I fail to see the argument.

So, long term ramifications? When people wise up to the ingredients inside a wine other than grapes, demand will accelerate. Big companies like Gallo, Boisset, and who knows, probably even Yellow Tail will have their "natural" wine line extension so they don't lose the supermarket sales. More wine makers who are happy with small scale production will see if they make the wine they actually want to drink, there are customers waiting to drink with them. And happily, more and more farmers will be going organic, biodynamic and the real love of farming will come back to the vigneron. Who knows, we might even get a real word in this country for one person who makes the wine tends the vine.

So, noise? I'm not a betting woman, but I might make an exception here. You in?

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By the way, on another wine note. Had the  NV Bereche et Fils Extra Brut Reserve, it was just gorgeous.  (also at Chambers) 

Wine and Austin Whole Foods

If you're looking for the previous post in this space, I removed it. While there's another post  in the future (on the more general topic of where Whole Foods stands in relation to wine) my original structure and words terribly muddied my message, so much so that people I thought I had praised, viewed themselves as bashed. Not pretty. Nothing could have been further from my truth. I don't mind when my blog gets me in trouble because of something I believe in, but it's another matter entirely when I get into hot water unintentionally. And and so with the benefit of a few days and enriched clarity, here is the post as it should have been written.

I was thrilled that the Texas Wine & Food foundation brought me down and that  Devon Broglie and his staff at the wine department of Whole Foods said, "We'll take her!" 

Having a backer like Whole Foods has always been a dream for me. There were a fair number of visitors. Conversations were intense. The public was open and curious.  In the middle of the tasting, Devon and I shared a few sips (Pinon Vouvray, Silex 2009, Coquelet 2010) where he  he fessed up, "I'm on the twenty- year plan here."

He  knows that change happens at a slower pace than certain impatient red heads would like. But still without the twenty-year plan, what they have right now in Austin is already commendable.  People cramming their wine bar at 1pm on a Sunday afternoon. All over the wine department, shoppers were drinking and sampling wines at different stations. Those who came over to the Naked Wine stand almost always left with a bottle of wine (Wine of the day, hands down; $23 for the Montesecondo Chianti Classico 2007.). However, my moles nationwide, from other Whole Foods have told me that they fear Whole Foods when it comes to wine is headed to more industrial instead of natural, and if this is true, I beseech the company to utilize their talent within their ranks, such as Melanie Mann in New York and Devon in Austin. Whole Foods should become a leader here, and maybe with the proper coaxing, we'll see it to fruition.

And there you have it. The Texans have a lot to teach this little old Northerner, and I hope they'll find I'm a willing and eager student.  So, to Devon from Whole Foods and Marshall Jones at the Foundation here's a big hug your way, with deep gratitude.--Alice

 

2011 Burgundy, what's in a vintage?

Driving through Burgundy from Auxerre to Morey St. Denis the vines look tired, as if wiped out from a fever. I fe;t like patting them on their heads and saying, "Poor babies." They had a hard time since their stap started to flow. Hot, dry, cold wet, humid, hail, hot, wet, cold, hot. They didn't know which end to move first. And critics have expected the worst.

I'm here (apologies to JS)  harrassing winemakers,  trying to get to the bottom of their problem child, Aligoté, I've had a chance to taste several of the new vintages. Like last night I hung with Philippe Pacalet going through about a bakers dozen. The vintage is well and a live, good concentration and life.  Driving south on the what used to be RN74, I realized the only responsible speculation a journalist can have is about the amount of work required in the vintage. Was it handed to them like a baby in velvet knickers on  a velvet pillow or did they have to work like donkeys in Fes up to the last minute.

In 2011 it was the donkey year.

They fretted, worried and worked their ass off. They couldn't second guess, they had to live day to day and then pick really well. As in any challenging vintage the result is in the ingenuity, skill and compassion of the vigneron. 

There will be plenty of good wines in 2011, in Burgundy.  Check back in a year and a 1/2 to see if I'm right. 

 

(non-Aligoté wine of the night, Domaine Alain Jenniard Chambolle Musigny 2009 12 euro a glass, drunk at La Gourmandin on Place Carnot. Happy to have drunk it, sweet place, but...)