Symphony with Horns

posted by DerKellermeister in Snooth, Wine Industry, Wine, Guest Bloggers

Last week the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a $3.9 million grant to develop a mechanical sprayer. The chemicals used in vineyards have become so toxic that they are considered a health hazard for humans. In other words, the government is trying to find a way to make spraying highly toxic chemicals on grapes more convenient. And we haven’t even reached the end of this expensive and ultimately deathly spiral yet - eventually the pests and weeds will become resistant to what we already consider to be highly toxic chemicals. How much poisonous substance can we survive?

This week the annual “Return to Terroir” tasting of biodynamic wines took place in New York City. Return to Terroir is a group of over 150 biodynamic winegrowers from around the world, led by the charismatic Nicolas Joly from Chateau de la Coulee de Serrant in the Loire Valley (Joly is also the author of several books on biodynamic farming). There are some well-known estates amongst the members of Return to Terroir (which in France is called La Renaissance des Appellations): Marcel Deiss, Kreydenweiss, Zind-Humbrecht, Leflaive, Pierre Morey, Nikolaihof, Frogs Leap, Benziger, Robert Sinskey - to name just a few. The full member list can be found at the group’s website.

The  number of organic producers is growing and so is the number of consumers who appreciate natural wines. The entry level of responsible farming is sustainable viticulture, where farmers try to reduce chemical means in the vineyard  as much as possible. Organic viticulture as the next step categorically bans all chemical pesticides and herbicides. Biodynamic wine growers then take it even a step further and take into account the influence the solar system has on all life on our plane. This holistic approach makes biodynamism the target of people who compare it to witchcraft, usually citing the notorious cow horns filled with manure, which biodynamic farmers bury in the. This sounds like a silly thing to do, but if one is willing to listen to the reason behind it, it actually makes a lot of sense. Plants need micro-organisms in order to take up nutrients from the soil. Without these micro-organisms a plant would simply starve to death. The cow dung that was filled into a cow horn in winter contains 70 times more bacteriological activity than the same amount of dung filled into a terracotta pot when unearthed in the following spring. No witchcraft, just biological facts.

Nicolas Joly makes some of the most intense wines from Chenin Blanc. The intentional oxidative character (the wine often has a Sherry aroma) may not be for wine drinkers with a faint palate, but there are few wines which are as complex as Joly’s Coulee de Serrant. He insists that the wine needs at least 24 hours of decanting in order to fully develop its majesty.

“We desire to understand how an equilibrium sometimes so delicate is achieved; how these bright and dark moods, these sorrows and joys of the vine can ultimately become tastes, scents or harmonies of an almost musical nature.”(Nicolas Joly, “Biodynamic Wine Demystified”)

Nicolas Joly and Thierry Michon enjoying a cigar after the tasting on Monday

Mr. Joly shows a similar intensity and zeal when he talks about biodynamism. During the tasting event he spoke about the urgent need for a viticulture that is being reconnected to its place of origin rather than to the lobby of the chemical industry. He does not read from a script nor does he need notes scribbled on index cards. He lives biodynamism on a daily basis, even in a seminar room and he uses  examples throughout his lecture to elucidate his point of views: “If you want to know how a vine feels that has been treated with pesticides, just swallow a few tablespoons of salt and see how you feel an hour later.”

No matter whether one believes in biodynamism or not, what is beyond all question is that the wines presented at the Return to Terroir tasting were of outstanding quality, often displaying a beautiful earthy character and natural balance. Minerality seems to be more pronounced giving the wines both strength and elegance. Biodynamic wines are rarely labeled as such, so you will need to ask your trusted wine store to point them out to you. Or go directly to Appellation Wine & Spirits in New York City, a wine store that is dedicated to natural wines. Taste for yourself. Have a glass of that witched wine.

Uwe Kristen is a citizen of the greatest empire in the world, reigned by The Queen of Grapes, about which he writes on his website Der Kellermeister — Riesling + I.

Open letter to web hackers

posted by philip in Snooth

On Wednesday someone tried to scrape Snooth. Now, this happens all the time - Google crawls our site daily, downloading hundreds of thousands of pages each day for example. Hundreds of other search engines do it too. However, this traffic was coming from a source we didn’t recognize, it was also coming in way faster than anything we’d experienced to date.

After some digging it turned out to be an anonymizer service that was using over 1,000 different servers to pound our site - this slowed down our page load times for legitimate users. We quickly found an innovative way to block them, and our site speed returned to normal.

Snooth is the world’s largest wine database - the site has the most wines, reviews, images, winemakers notes and wine related content in the world, so I understand why other sites would want access to the content. However, we offer an API that makes it easier than crawling/scraping us.

The API is a better way to get at our data - its a dedicated set of servers, so you’re not fighting over resources with our users. It’ll also stay current. Instead of scraping the data and seeing it go out of date in a month, you can use the API to collect images, reviews, notes and wine information. Best of all is the prices - by using the API you can keep the inventory items and prices up to date.

We launched the API in November and so far over 50 companies have launched or are building applications that run off the Snooth API. In addition to our 500,000 strong monthly audience the extended network of users that we reach via these API partnerships brings the total audience to over 2,000,000 users per month.

So, next time you are thinking you want some wine data, please go take a look at our API instead of scraping us. It’ll give you better data, and we won’t be trying to throttle your access to protect our users.

What Your Friends Are Up To

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

This weeks updates couldn’t come at a better time. With Snooth groups heating up, and curators stepping out of the woodwork to claim pages, it’s great to be able to see what’s happening in your network. With that in mind we’ve updated the Grapevine feed on the Profile page and the Groups pages. They’ve got a new, fresh look and allow you to better see what’s going on. Whether you’re looking to see what the best Rhone Wines are, who’s talking about Pinot Noir, or what people think about Charles Shaw Winery, the new grapevine feeds really speak for themselves, so take a look and let us know what you think.

Wine Writing

posted by Dan in Snooth, Guest Bloggers

It’s Tuesday, the night before my blog is to be posted. And although there is always scintillating things to talk about regarding the wine world, I have to share some thoughts about wine writing.  T.S. Eliot wrote while reviewing a playwright and his work, “immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.”  So, I steal a few words from some writers I have read these past two weeks since my last post.

First, I was reading Eric Asimov’s blog, The Pour, regarding his attendance and participation in a wine writers conference in Napa Valley last week.  I was shocked with a snippet that Eric related from a writing coach who said; [in today’s media environment] you need to ‘chunkify.’   After re-reading the post and being a self-confessed internet illiterate when it comes to the Twitter nation, I made a negative assumption of what that means.  (I still don’t know what it means.)  But then, in my comments, and even today, I still feel that wine writing needs to be one part savage, two parts verve.  So, I quoted, in my comment, the advice from the late, great Auberon Waugh,

“Wine writing should be camped up. The Writer should never like a wine, he should be in love with it; never find a wine disappointing but identify it as a mortal enemy, an attempt to poison him. Bizarre and improbable side tastes should be proclaimed: mushrooms, rotting wood, black treacle, burned pencils, condensed milk, sewage, the smell of French railway stations or ladies’ underwear.”

When I started out pursuing wine as a hobby, I found such that in the texts (er, books) of Jay McInerney.

Jay’s wine writing gets better with age and/or more drinking. Jay’s wine doesn’t have the ubiquitous “‘je ne sais quoi’ this wine reminds me of,” it has the poetic praise of wine.  Frequently comparing wine to everyday vices like tobacco, coffee, truffles, Viagra, chocolate and leather; and to everyday, omnipresent music and movies; and to the odd references of tuning forks and samurai swords. Jay’s books, ‘Bacchus and Me’ and ‘Hedonist in the Cellar‘ are must-reads for the wine educated and the amateur drinker. Hopefully it will engage you and excite you, like it did me, to look at your glass of grape juice in a new ‘Bright Light.’

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Another book I have on the bed side night stand is ‘Everyday Drinking’ by Kingsley ‘Lucky Jim’ Amis.  I do recommend this book, a collection of essays Amis wrote that were compiled and are now out of print.  There are many classic quotations on every page as Amis leads you through the world of drinking.  He dedicates a fair amount of space to being a proper host of a drinking party.  Reading the work, although dated, it is a term paper for throwing a raging good party on a budget (especially important during these economic times).  Most of his insights are the cynical noshings on “the field of booze, with all its snobbery and true and false expertise.”  There are one or two pages (153 and 154 in the hardcover, First Edition) that left me laughing my way to sleep.  Amis “borrowed” some advice from Stephen Potter who wrote about wine one-upmanship or what he called “winesmanship.”

Lifting from Potter, Amis rallied off advice on how to enliven your tablemates with the power of suggestion,

“It’s partly what you do – pretend to fetch the bottle from your cellar, take forever uncorking it, keep staring at it before you pour – and partly what you say – “Over the top now, of course, but still with a hint of former glories.  Keep it in your mouth a moment… see what I mean?”  At this, the other fellow will start thinking that the flavor of carbolic he thought he’d noticed is actually rather interesting or even pleasant.”

And then how to shutter even the most arrogant,

“As soon as he mentions tannin or chalky soil or the ‘79s coming on fast – or slowly – shush everyone else and say: “Listen chaps, here’s a chance for us all to learn something.  Carry on, Percy” – the equivalent of dropping him on his head…. When he is finished, which should be pretty soon, ask a lot of questions, the more elementary the better, like: “Does that make it good or bad?”  Then having wrung him dry, say: “Fascinating!”

Another fascinatingly fun read.  Go on, log on, buy it, pour a glass of your particular brand of vodka and read it.

Dan Petroski is Assistant Winemaker at Larkmead Vineyards in Napa Valley. Dan has an MBA from New York University and worked as an Ad Exec in New York for several years, before switching it up and trading his suit for a move out west.

Busiest time of the year for a wine consumer …

posted by John in Snooth, Wine Industry, Guest Bloggers

As it turns outs the busiest time for a wine consumer like me is not around the holidays or any other special event.  The busiest time of year is during the winery offering periods.  This is the time where the wineries that sell their wines through allocation make them available to their mailing lists.   It usually happens twice a year.  Once in late winter (prior the spring releases) and late summer (prior to the fall releases).  However, right now I’m in one of those most difficult of periods as a wine consumer.

What is a winery allocation?  Is it different than a wine club?  Yes they are different but in ways they are the same.

•    A winery allocation is permission given to an individual to purchase wine.  The amount of wine is that can be purchased is limited to certain number or allocation.  An allocation is not guaranteed and you don’t have to buy your full allocation.

•    A wine club reserves wine for people that are members.  They generally ship what the winery wants to send and wine is not offered … just delivered.

•    For more information, I have blogged about wine clubs and mailing lists before: http://www.snooth.com/talk/#http://www.snooth.com/talk/topic/wine-clubs-1/

To date I have received email and regular make from more than a dozen wineries letting me know that there spring releases are now available for purchase.   They are from wineries like:

• Bond Estate
• Williams Selyem
• Kosta Browne
• MacPhail
• Lancaster Estate
• Peay Vineyards
• Loring Wine Company
• Scarecrow Wine
• Arista Winery
• Paul Hobbs Winery
• Pahlmeyer

• Flowers Vineyards & Winery

Most of these are smaller producers.  Some of these are considered cult wine producers.  This means there production is limited, the allocation offer is time encapsulated and the prices, well the prices are usually higher.  With some of the wineries, where allocations are small and my future allocations will depend on what I buy now.  Throw in that allocations are not guaranteed as mentioned above and my stress level rises.  There are so many good wines but not enough money for me to make purchases.

With a tight economy and sales of high end wine suffering it would seem that now would be a great time for bargains.  However, with these wineries that does not seem to be the case.  These high-end, smaller production wineries have waiting lists for their wines that are often 4 to 5 times the size of the list that actually gets allocation.  Usually, this means waiting multiple years before you get onto the main list.  It also means that to get on the main list one of two things must happen:

1.    A production increase or

2.    Someone drops off the list.

Only then can someone move up the list.  The economic conditions may not have created the deals I was expecting but has caused more people to be drop out of these winery mailing lists.  This is what has happened to me.  I had not expected to get allocations from some of these wineries but now I do.  I’ve been bumped into the mainstream list and I have tough decisions to make.  Where do I spend my money and how much?  It is definitely great to have so much great wine available to me.  I just wish I had the money to take advantage of it.

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.

International Snooth

posted by mark in Website Updates, Snooth

With 60% of Snooth’s traffic in the US, that leaves a lot of people on the site from other parts of the globe. Wine is enjoyed around the world, and we’re very happy to report that Snooth is as well.

For a while we’ve heard from you that seeing prices in your home currency would be a great help. We’re now allowing you to do just that. Now when you visit Snooth, we’ll automatically check where you are and set your home market correctly. You’ll see prices calculated off of your home currency, and the wines sold in other markets won’t effect the price that we show to you. This is a huge step forward for Snooth, and we’re very happy we can help a huge portion of you, the users of Snooth, to find better wines at home where you can buy them, and much more importantly, enjoy them.

I’d also like to make quick mention of the new and improved search results page. It’s fresher, cleaner, and still helps you buy wine online. In the screenshot below I’ve set my country to the UK, and my prices are shown in GBP.

As always we want to hear your thoughts. Give us a shout over in the wine forums!

Would you like to be a Voice of Snooth?

posted by philip in Snooth

A few months ago we released the group pages, which created centralized pages for every region, winery, store, attribute and grape in our database. The volume of analysis, content, images and discussion on these pages has been growing very rapidly and it was clear that these pages were getting to the stage that they would benefit from human curation.

I’m pleased to say that, as of today, every page of this type will either have a curator, or if it doesn’t, and you have an interest in the subject, you can apply to curate the page, and to create a micro site around the content you are most passionate about.

Here’s an example of how it will work:

I live in New York city and like NY state wines, so I go to the group page to see what I can learn. Lenn Thompson of the NY wine blog Lenndevours is the curator.

If I roll over his profile I can learn a bit more about him, or send him a message.

I like what I see, so went ahead and followed the New York group. One of the advantages of this is that Lenn can keep me, and the other followers, up to date with recent news and events, and the followers can even communicate with each other via the comment board, further down the page.

Group pages aren’t limited to being curated by professionals, if there’s a region, grape, winery or store that you love (even if you’re not from there or an official representative) then you’d be the ideal curator.

If you see a page on a topic you like, just check to see if it’s been claimed already. If its still unclaimed, go ahead and claim it - we’re looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

Snooth / Zemanta Integration

posted by philip in Snooth

Something for the bloggers out there - Zemanta is a neat service that helps bloggers add relevant links to their content, and I’m pleased to announce that Snooth is one of their official content partners.

Lets say I want to blog about a wine I had recently. The Ponzi Vineyards Pinot Noir 2006 from Willamette Valley, Oregon, is a good example. Zemanta is a blog plug in that reads the content that I’m writing and then gives me the option to link to key phrases (Ponzi Vineyards, Willamette Valley, Pinot Noir etc). You can choose to add links to Snooth, Wikipedia, or other sites - see the image below.

OK, so in this case I decided to link the winery name, grape name and region name. Just three quick clicks and Zemanta did all the work.

The tool also helps suggest related articles as well as shows you a library of images you can access - this pulls data from multiple sources, but includes bottle images from the 300,000 we have on Snooth (see image below).

Zemanta is another service that leverages Snooth’s API, and part of how we extend the reach of our data. This is an important note, as wineries, retailers and others spend their time adding and curating content on Snooth. In return for that time, we do our best to insure that in addition to the 500,ooo users who get to see it directly on Snooth, there’s a wider network of 10 million people who get access to the work.

I know a lot of bloggers that use Zemanta, and many wine bloggers have asked us and Zemanta to integrate Snooth. I’m glad we were able to get this launched so quickly. As always, we’re looking forward to your feedback.

Really Old Madeira

posted by AdamL in Snooth, Wine

I have a thing for Madeira. I’ve never bought a bottle, but I have been lucky enough to taste some pretty cool stuff and each time I’m blown away by the complexity and enjoyment I get out of these wines. Greg was kind enough to dig up some treasures from his cellar to mark the occasion of me trekking over to frigid New York from my base of San Francisco. If 150 year old Madeira is served each time I’m in town (no I’m definitely not counting on this) I’ll be sure to visit often.

This tasting included 4 identifiable wines and one unknown
1. 1880 D’Oliveras Terrantez Reserva
2. 1898 Blandy’s Terrantez Reserva
3. 1910 Barbeito Sercial
4. 1863 Blandy’s Solera
5. Something older than 1863 that, judging from the color in the  picture, is much older. Apparently the bottle this originally came in was a 3 part cast glass bottle such as the one detailed on this external site

Needless to say these wines were Killer, Rockstar, Fantastic, and then some. Each of us in SnoothHQ got one sip of each of the wines and each one was vastly different than the previous. I’m a huge fan of the caramel, earthy, sweet/acidic, and salt water notes commonly found in Madeira and this tasting did not disappoint.
I have always found these wines hard to describe in words, so instead here’s some background info on Madeira to hopefully encourage some discovery.

Basics: Madeira is an island in the Atlantic that belongs to Portugal. The island itself is a horrendously difficult place to grow grapes with poor soil and very steep topography. Trellised vines are planted on terraces, called poios, that are carved into the rock ranging from sea level up to over 3000 feet. The best vineyard sites have a Southern exposure.

History: Early 1400’s - Portuguese discover a wooded island off the coast of Northern Africa. Madeira means wooded in Portuguese. In the 1500’s, the main port on Madeira is used as a way station on the trek to the Americas or around Africa to Asia. Wine is sold to these shipping expeditions which happens to better as the boats sail around the world. By dumb luck taking these simple wines and exposing them to heat and many other disturbances people go to great lengths to avoid with their regular wines turns these into caramelized goodness. Consumers like the way these wines taste, so farmers on Madeira start purposely heating their wines, estufagem, to replicate that twice around the world on a boat flavor.

Similar to Port, Madeira is a fortified wine made in a variety of styles. I’ll let you research the various styles and grapes used on your own, but what’s amazing about Madeira is its ability to age for what seems like forever and its ability to last once opened.

These are tortured wines, so there is pretty much nothing you can do to harm them.  These are great for those of you that keep your wine stored in your kitchen or in another less than ideal location. If you’ve never had really good Madeira, do yourself a favor and try it out. You don’t necessarily need to go buy a bottle (although it will keep forever even after it’s open), but your local quality wine bar should have an interesting choice or two.

I would love to get comments about any really old Madeiras people have tried or if you know of a particularly great spot to taste them.

All of the pictures from the tasting can be found here.

Snooth / Mashlogic Integration

posted by philip in Snooth, Partnerships

I’m happy to announce that we just launched our integration with Mashlogic.

Mashlogic is a service that allows you to browse the web and to always see the information that’s most relevant to you.The following examples will illustrate just how useful it can be:

Lets say you are browsing on a wine ecommerce site and you want to check if the price they are selling the wine for it actually a good one, Mashlogic allows you to simply hover over the wine name and a popup will appear that gives you links and prices of the wines on Snooth. Particularly useful in this case as it looks like I can save an additional $2 per bottle on that Tin Roof Merlot by shopping via Snooth.

The other great use is if you are reading about a wine on a wine blog or on an online newspaper - great content, but they don’t tell you where you can buy the wine. Well, just mouse over any of the wine names and Mashlogic will do its think, quickly showing you the matching wines. With just one click you can go to Snooth and find the store that has it the cheapest, or the closest to you. See the example below with SFGate’s Top 100 wine list:

Mashlogic has created a special Snooth version of the plugin, available here. Its Firefox only at the moment,but, if that’s your browser give it a try and let us know how it works out for you.