The More You Know

posted by Scott in Snooth, Wine, Guest Bloggers

A recent blurb (”Distillers team with MADD in call for alcohol labeling”) in Nation’s Restaurant’s News on May 5th stated that the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States has allied itself with MADD and other advocacy groups in calling for “the federal government to require labels stating nutrition and alcohol contents on all packaged alcoholic beverages, including bottled beers, wines, and spirits…” Let me begin by stating that I am neither for nor against the proposed ordinance; I am curious how the issue will play out. My head spins with the thought of how complicated the execution of such a simple idea can be.

Because both nutrition facts and alcohol contents are dependent on the accurate reporting of alcohol percentage, we might see the disappearance of the 1.5% margin currently given to winemakers. The absence of this courtesy would mean that those hoping to pay fewer taxes (the rate goes up once you cross the 14% threshold) would actually have to produce wines with less than 14% alcohol by volume. As things stand, you can make a wine that is 14.5% abv and label it 13% abv and pay the 13% taxes; its a pretty sweet loophole. So, would such labeling requirements herald a new era of relatively lower alcohol wines? It’s too early to say, but they would certainly put a dent in the current trend of wine emulating vodka.

How the already stressed and overworked TTB (the regulatory body that’s currently in charge of overseeing and approving all labels on alcoholic beverages) would cope with such a massive influx of additional work is another question that begs to be answered. And woe is the small 500-case producer who would have to pay someone to tell them how many carbs are in each of their bottles.

I don’t believe that requiring the nutrition and alcohol contents on wine labels will make things safer or entice people to be more temperate. People need more than information and education to make intelligent decisions; this is why some lament that common sense can’t be taught. Still, I believe in the consumer’s “right-to-know” and the easy accessibility of such important information would be welcomed. Let me know when someone figures out how it will all work.

Scott Rosenbaum is director of operations for the International Wine Center and wine buyer for the retailer DrinkUpNY.

Your Biggest Fan

posted by mark in Wine Industry, Wine

A few weeks ago when Philip and I were in Napa we kept noticing these large fans in the fields. They weren’t turning so it was obvious they weren’t wind turbines but still I was intrigued to know what they were for. Here’s a picture of one:

When we made it to Larkmead, Snooth guest blogger Dan Petroski was able to clear up the confusion. I’ll explain from what I remember, and he can jump in with anything I miss.

In spring, Napa mornings can be chilly. In fact, sometimes the temperatures can drop below freezing. When this happens, vines are susceptible to frost damage. Frost can decimate an entire crop in one morning — I heard a few horror stories about winemakers getting to the fields to find their whole crop of grapes grey and dead.

Temperatures out in the field are closely monitored. As soon as there is a danger of frost, short metal installations filled with diesel gas are fired up, creating pockets of heat throughout the field. Here’s a picture of one we saw at Duckhorn:

Once these heat generators are fired up the fans begin to blow air through the fields, distributing the warmer air around, raising the ambient temperature and stopping frost from settling on the vines. Then I got carried away taking pictures of all the different models of field fans I could find.

2005 Napa Valley Cabernets

posted by Dan in Wine, Guest Bloggers

Back in February, Mark posted a summary of Vertical vs. Horizontal wine tasting. It was a clear and concise description of both; so, I’m not going to steal his thunder by repeating anything he wrote. However, I will ask the Snooth team to “link it up,” as the one and only Gary Vay-ner-chuk does many times in his daily video blogs. What I will do is fulfill my promise to detail a “horizontal” tasting of 2005 Napa Valley Cabernets. So, here it goes.

First, the year. The vintage. When asked about the 2005 vintage, many a winemaker in Napa Valley will respond without thinking, “a huge crop.” Production at most wineries was up. A long, cool growing season with late Spring rain and no heat spikes in the Summer produced large berries that matured slowly and in balance. In Spring 2006, James Laube wrote in the Spectator about the 2005 vintage when he barrel tasted 50+ wines (blind). Laube said the large crop was a detriment to quality but went on to compare it to the yields of the praiseworthy, exceptional, 1997 vintage. As discussed in these posts before, (wine) quality is in the mouth of the beholder - especially when a vintage follows one of great critical acclaim. The 2004 Napa Valley Cabernets have been touted for their incredible richness (density), power (structure) and complexity (depth). The 2005 wines had large scores to live up to especially when dealing with the challenges of a disparate growing season. So, immediately winemakers started to defend the 2005 vintage and do what all wine drinkers (enthusiasts and professionals) know how to do best, we make comparisons. And for 2005, comparisons were made to Bordeaux appellations up and down the left-bank of the Gironde and we were chuffed when these repeated cries were heard by wine critics who went on to print them in the pages of their newsletters and magazines — thank you.

It is true, the 2005 Napa Valley Cabernets that I tend to gravitate to have a purity of red and black fruit wrapped in subtlety and nuance, grace and elegance. The wines of 2005 are approachable now and are drinking like you’d want them to drink when you are hovering above a piece of well-cooked red meat.

Let’s get on with it…. Sometime in late March, at Larkmead, I gathered with colleagues and friends for a pot-luck barbeque that started with a cocktail party of oil-tanker sized proportions. Sixteen 2005 Napa Valley Cabernets (and blends) in the $45-$80 price range were tasted side by side. I won’t give scores or rank my favorites (notes below are in alphabetical order). However, there may be a word, a phrase or a line or two that speaks to the wines I liked or disliked. So, enjoy and drink up.

Producer (Description/Appellation) Price.

Cakebread (Napa Valley) $65 - A bit green. Nose and palate a little harsh. Felt the tannins from the back to the front of my mouth.

Caymus (Napa Valley) $70 - Very focused aromatics. Soft and subdued linear movement through the mouth. Well worth a second sip, even a second glass.

Cliff Lede (Stags Leap) $50 - Approachable even as a big wine. A bit of Brett on the nose, but the texture in the mouth is soft and cedary with chewy tannins on the finish.

Covenant (Kosher/Napa Valley) $80 - A bit of parsley on the nose highlights the ‘green’ in this wine. Reminds me of the aromas of a wine during fermentation. Whole cluster to be exact, which tends to subdue the fruit characters with herbaceousness and spice. Never tasted anything like this from a Cabernet.

David Ramey (Larkmead Vineyards/Napa Valley) $80 - Ripe, over ripe and then extracted some more. Finishes very oaky, then green and then bitter. Over the top for my palate.

Fisher Vineyards (Cameron/Napa Valley) $55 - Soft on the nose and palate. Silky, as if you wrapped a silk scarf around your neck already adorned with a silk shirt. Dusty tannins front a long, sweet finish.

Garric Cellars (Napa Valley) $75 - Complex. Layered. Lean. Elegant. Balanced. Sweet. Everything you could every ask for from a wine (or a woman).

Joseph Phelps (Napa Valley) $55 - Ripe, vanilla, red raspberry cream. Same on the mid-palate. Then finishes with a refreshing, dry bitterness.

Larkmead Vineyards (Napa Valley) $55 - Review omitted due to bias.

Orin Swift (Papillion/Napa Valley) $55 - Wildly attractive packaging. The 5.4 lb bottle is 62% Cabernet, 19% Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot to finish. The gravitas of the packaging outshines the wine. (I need to taste it again from a brown paper bag to give it its full due.)

Pride (Spring Mountain) $65 - A bit green and disjointed right down the middle - like its appellation breakdown: 58% Napa Valley, 42% Sonoma. Possibly a fault in the wine or bottle variability. Would like to re-taste.

Shafer (One Point Five/Stags Leap) $70 - Lovely, lingering nose. Lean fruit, not sweet. Finishes with a comparable lingering, soft, bitter tannins.

Terra Valentine (Wurtele Vineyard/Spring Mountain) $55 - An outlier - young from start to finish but giving up good chalky tannins and fresh acidity. Ageworthy.

Turnbull (Oakville) $45 - Completely fruit driven with a soft, supple finish. Nothing profound about this wine, it is simply a crowd pleaser.

Vineyard 29 (Cru) $50 - If you love your asparagus wrapped in bacon and your filet dripping with blue cheese, this wine delivers the steakhouse complement - ripe and delicious… but somewhere, deep down inside it wants to be Bordeaux.

ZD (Napa Valley) $50 - Watery red fruit, short on the finish. Surprising as I have tasted many good stand-up wines from ZD before.

European Wine Bloggers Conference

posted by philip in Snooth, Wine Industry

The first European Wine Bloggers Conference is being held in Logrono, Spain from the 29th to 31st August. In true Web 2.0 style, its going to be held as more of an un-conference.

Gabriella and Ryan Opaz and Robert McIntosh are doing most of the legwork on this important project, but what really interests me is how open and collaborative even the planning stage is. If you head on over to their site, you can participate in choosing and defining the round table discussions, for example. They also mandate that any presentation materials be distributed in advance, giving the audience time to fully digest and absorb the content and be ready to ask tough thought provoking questions during the talks themselves.

Proposed topics that I’d personally like to hear more about or get involved in are: wine communities, blogging standards and blogging technology.

Good luck guys - it sounds like the event is coming together. I’ll be reading the materials when they are published online and hope to hear about the fantastic turnout at the event itself.

Getting things done (or not)

posted by philip in Snooth

I’ve enacted a new policy and emails will be answered (or deleted, if they are viagra ads) in the order they are received. I have quite a backlog, so am hiding out here on the forums to avoid beginning.

Point being, if you emailed me and havent heard a response yet, please be patient, your message is important to us, you’re the next caller. Expected wait time 24 hours.

Seriously though, I’m moving as fast as I can and will write you back. Promise.

The pressure of wine knowledge

posted by John in Wine, Guest Bloggers

Knowing a little bit of wine is fun but it can be dangerous. Once people know that you are a ‘wine connoisseur’ they want to defer to you for any decisions. This can be flattering and at the same time … stressful. I admit I do know a little bit about wine. I probably know a more than most people. However, and A BIG HOWEVER, my knowledge is based on two things: the process of wine making and what I like.

The process is something I can tell people about and educate them on. It gives people an idea of what goes into the creation of a wine. It illustrates that it is simple and complex at the same time. It doesn’t tell them what the wine is like. What I like, now that is something that cannot be simply transferred. Many studies have gone into categorizing how people taste, to identify what characteristics to wines and, overall, trying to see where people fit. I can’t do that.

When I get the inevitable question of, “John, what wine would you recommend?” I can’t help but panic a little bit. This week has been a world of panic for me. In my full time job (the one that pays the mortgage) I’ve been attending a conference. Many of the people at this conference know about my affinity of wine. I’ve fielded just as many questions about wine and what some should have as I have about my regular job.

Each time I get asked this question I have to go through a mental checklist of questions for myself to make sure I get it right. It’s a creditability thing. I feel like I have to get it right because that is what is expected of me. So I have judge the person, I have remind myself of what I’ve seen them drink in the past, I have remember the things the said and if I have the opportunity find out where they are going to be eating. So many variables, some many questions but I can only give one answer.

What I do? I give it my best effort because ultimately I know that people trust what I have to say and are going to appreciate I took the pressure off them for having to make the ‘wine’ decision. If I can’t really figure out what to suggest for them, I usually give up and say, if I were you, I’d go with Pinot. It’s my favorite style of wine.

John Andrews is a software product manager during the week and is a professional Tasting Room staffer at Loxton Cellars in Glen Ellen, CA on the weekends.

Friday night thoughts

posted by philip in Wine Industry

Its Friday night and very quiet in the office as the rest of the office has left (they were up most of the night moving the site to our shiny new servers - am hoping you can all see the difference when you use the site). I’m feeling reflective so thought I’d jot down some thoughts about trade groups and efficiency.

Yes, I love efficiency and Snooth’s in part founded on that principle: its more efficient for you, the use, to have a single port of call to research your wines, its more efficient for wineries to have one standard of data feed to support and for them to have one site to monitor the public sentiment on their products.

When Jeff Lefevere of Good Grape posted a call for the two most forward thinking wine industry trade groups to merge, I immediately said I thought it was a good idea. Most people disagreed with Jeff, and maybe I was supposed to as well, as I’m on the Advisory Board for the Wine 2.0 trade group and one of the two Admins for the Open Wine Consortium group for Wine Technology Companies (the other being the fantastically quirky Randy Hall of WineBiz radio, who was wearing his “Bobs Bitch” tshirt when I met him).

Having one industry group is simply the ‘efficient response’. It may be hard to actually create, or outside of the respective founders interests, but thats not for me to judge.

This brings me to my next cry for efficiency: wine bottle shots.

Every winery takes a beautiful and artistic photo of every wine they produce. They may have the bottle next to a full glass of their wine, or perhaps carefully positioned on a rustic picnic table, with a bunch of grapes on one side and some corks on the other. Its beautiful, romantic, evocative.

Unfortunately, this is not what online retailers want. They want standard bottle shots. White background, high resolution, standard lighting and standard angles so every bottle shot looks the same and gives the store a sense of uniformity. So every online store now has to hire a professional photographer to re-shoot every bottle of every wine they sell.

With around 25,000 wines sold in the USA each year and hundreds of stores in the US alone having to photograph every bottle they display online the inefficiency is galling.

Conservatively, consider this:

200 stores, each needing 2,000 wines photographed per year at a cost of $50 per bottle shot (and these numbers are very conservative). Thats $20 million.

If there was a standard and the wineries took a second bottle shot that adhered to the standard we’d save $19.9 million dollars.

Stores would be able to offer bigger discounts to the consumer, wineries (at a minimal cost) could ensure their brand was visually represented at its best at all times across all stores, and everyone would be happy.

Are You Suggesting that Servers Migrate?

posted by mark in Snooth

No, we didn’t carry them by the husk, but last night Snooth moved from New York to Dallas. We’ve got a sparkling new set of shiny servers. They’re powerful, they’re RAIDed, and we’re happy to have them.

Back in the early days of Snooth, we were running on one server. It was kind of a junker, 2 gigabytes of RAM, one processor, but we were still trying to prove ourselves and didn’t need the kind of firepower that we now feel we owe you. Snooth is growing up. Philip talks about the giant shoes we’ve recently acquired through the partnership with Global Wine Stocks. We’re all about getting ourselves the room to grow into what we know will be a very important resource.

So what does this mean for you? Well, check it out. Hopefully you’ll notice the site is faster, especially for searches. Talk should be faster too (although we have some designs on scaling that with an eye towards being able to search it). Also, if you’re a California Snoother, you may notice that you have a faster experience simply because the servers are closer to you. (All traffic is in some way effected by the speed of light — the time for light to travel between the source and you is called latency.)

So let us know what you think unless of course you’re too busy snoothing around for your next bottle. Of course, we do want to hear about that one, too.

Finally, many thanks to Justin for his hard work on this. Now it’s back to work.

The Culture of Wine Quiz

posted by Rodolphe in Wine, Guest Bloggers

1. Wine in Music
What did Jay-Z swear off after the winery’s managing director Frederic Rouzaud told The Economist magazine that he was unimpressed that the expensive beverage has become popular in rap circles. Rouzaud said, “[Its] unwelcome attention. What can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Perignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business.”

2. Wine in Film
In the 2004 movie “Sideways” Miles and Jack embark on a road trip through the wine country of what valley?
In the 2006 film, “A Good Year,” Londoner Max Skinner inherits his uncle’s estate in what European wine region?

3. Celebrity Wine
Which celebrity does not own a winery?

Greg Norman
Francis Ford Coppola
Mario Andretti
Ernie Els
Olivia Newton John
Robert Redford

4. Wine & Religion
Wine was such an important part of life in ancient Greece that they had a god of wine. What was his name?

5. The Politics of Wine
The White House has a bowling alley and nu-cu-lar bunker, but it doesn’t have a wine cellar! So much for showing off some Old Vine Zinfandel or well-aged Napa Cabernet the next time Sarkozy or Putin shows up unannounced.

Although JFK and Jackie O loved their Bordeaux and Nixon craved Champagne, in today’s White House all wines served must be _________ ?

Bonus Question – Wine in Literature

Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers are named Athos, Athos, Porthos and Aramis – which Musketeer shares his name with a winery in Mclaren Vale?

Rodolphe Boulanger is President of The Wine Messenger, an online wine retailer focussed on small grower wines. Rodolphe is also currently a diploma student at the WSET in London.

Maintenance

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

Hey Snoothers, we’re going to be unavailable from around 12 midnight EST tonight while we shuffle some servers around. We’re expecting a good boost to our power, reliability and performance due to this upgrade. If all goes well, it should take 4-6 hours to complete the maintenance. Your reviews and other content will be unaffected.

So get your Snoothing done early, sleep well, and check back with us in the morning.