Building a (wine) community online

posted by philip in Snooth

I was on the keynote panel at the annual Wine Industry Technology Symposium in Napa about a week ago, and finally have time to post the slides. My fellow panelists included Adon Kumar from Wine Searcher, Stephen Gilberg of WineTwits, and was chaired by Julie Brosterman CEO & Founder of Women & Wine.

I’m hoping all the panelists will post their slides, and will chase down the organizers as there was one presentation (that of Dave Morin of Facebook) that I particularly want.

Its always nice to get out to Napa in the summer, and I really enjoy speaking at WITS (I spoke just after snooth launched in 2007). The slides are below, please let me know if anything is unclear.

View more presentations from snooth.

Wine Influencers of Tomorrow

posted by philip in Snooth

Courtney Cochran recently wrote a piece for Appellation America entitled “Wine Influencers of Tomorrow” - you can read the entire article here (subscription required).

With permission I’m excerpting a snippet in which Courtney interviewed me for the piece, where she calls me “The New Peter Granoff”. Peter was the founder of Virtual Vineyards, the worlds first online wine retailer. Virtual Vineyards had a turbulent life, blew through tens of millions of dollars and was a retailer, but other than that I like the comparison, Peter was an early adopter and tried to change the way people bought wine. He believed that information was king and that the small winemaker was an important part of the industry that big box stores and distributors were overlooking.

The quote I gave sums up our goal here at Snooth:

Philip James: The New Peter Granoff   

“James’ Snooth.com – which he founded as recently as 2007 – has quickly risen to the position of most-trafficked wine website in the world, with more than one million wines in its database. Not sure what Snooth does?  James says that Snooth is looking to mirror the offline purchasing cycle a consumer goes through in buying a bottle of wine, albeit with the applications and advantages (like robust user reviews and links to some 10,000 stores worldwide) available thanks to Internet and its social tools… Accordingly, James’ predictions for the future are robust; as he put it to me, “Our mission is simple, but the road is long - to provide wine lovers worldwide access to every piece of information in existence on every bottle of wine ever produced.”  And what a fabulous mission that is.”

The full article is here. (Subscription required).

Spotlight: Camel Valley Winery

posted by philip in Snooth

I’d heard of Camel Valley Winery’s reputation (award winning sparklers) since I first moved out of Cornwall over a decade ago. I was glad after all this time to get the chance to visit and meet Bob and Sam Lindo, the father and son winemaking team.

Camel Valley was started in 1989 with 8,000 vines. They added 4,000 vines in 2002 and another 12,000 in 2005. However, even with 20k vines under management, they still get 2/3rds of their grapes from other vineyards around the UK – this gives them some defense against a poor harvest and allows them to choose the ripest grapes from around the country. Total production is around 90,000 bottles.

They grow an eclectic mix of hardy, cool climate, early ripening grapes, including Bacchus, Triomphe, Dornfelder, Rondo, Pinot Noir, Dornfelder, Seyval, Huxel and Reissersteiner. When I asked how they figured out why these grapes would work well in the English climate, Sam said that they are all commonly grown in Germany, which is one of the Northernmost wine regions in the world.

South facing Seyval at Camel Valley Winery

I also asked when they first realized that the region could produce good Sparkling wines, and Sam told me that they used to make still (acidic) wines, and one year the harvest was particularly lean, the grapes under ripe, and not destined for greatness, so they decided to go ‘bubbly’, and haven’t looked back. Champagne and sparkling wines are known for their high acidity and make extremely tart, puckering, still wines, so it makes perfect sense.

The cool climate means that the grapes take a long time to ripen, and in some cases, although the grapes reach “ripeness”, they are never “ripe” by warmer regions standards (ie. no phenolic ripeness). The long hang times mean that the grapes are picked in October, and give a meager 2 tonnes per acre yield. That’s comparable to Burgundy Grand Cru, and typical vineyards harvest 6-8 tonnes per acre for table wines.

Grape clusters beginning to form

My favorite wines of the day were:

- Camel Valley Valley Rosé 2008, £22 ($37):
“Pinot Noir and Dornfelder. Light straw and cherry aromas. Good, rich, mouth feel, with a sweet cherry taste (7% residual sugar). The sugar isn’t as noticeable as you’d expect given the acidity, but it keeps the wine smooth. Subtle pine flavors and a candy floss finish.”

- Camel Valley Atlantic Dry Quality Wine 2008, £9 ($15)
“Made with Huxel and Reissersteiner. Green apples and cinamon dominate. Great oily texture and firm acidity - green apples and crisp. Secondary fruit flavors of banana and apple crumble. Rhubarb crumble on the finish. 4% residual sugar, but barely noticeable.”

The State of English Wine

posted by philip in Snooth

Over the past decade the UK has been developing a reputation for its sparkling wines. Over here in the US, people tend to snort at the thought of British wine, at first, but then after considering the relative latitudes and the weather to that of Champagne start to see its potential. Throw global warming into the mix and suddenly the UK seems a sure bet for the next great region.

In reality the terroir is not the same, the soils tend to be different and the weather is too. What I learned was that the UK does best when embracing its own style, and not merely emulating that of its more famous neighbors.

For all the noise over British sparkling wines a few things were apparent:

- Firstly, wine in the UK is still a niche industry. With a nationwide annual production of around 2.5 million bottles, it would take decades to for each British citizen to enjoy just a single bottle.

- Secondly, and this follows from the above, retail and restaurant support/presence is meager. With such low production I can understand why the large supermarket chains are unable to sell local wines, but I struggled endlessly to find a single store that sold British wine (final thanks went to Sainsbury’s, but the experience was hardly pleasant, as we found the bottle after 30 minutes of searching the shelves), and the only restaurant I went to that had British wines had a French Sommelier who tried to advise me against buying local!

- Thirdly, if you’re fortunate enough to have the opportunity to try British sparkling wine, you may be very impressed. Try a white, they are interesting, pair well with food and some are very good. However, skip the reds. A major generalization, of course, but the ones I tried were disjointed, green, very woody and not to my liking. The UK simply does not have the weather for the grapes o achieve sufficient ripeness to produce good reds.

Some of my favorites:

> Camel Valley Ltd Brut Cornwall 2006, £19 ($30)
“Camel’s flagship sparkler. Made with Seyval, this sparkling wine exhibits firm acidity and a fine bead, which swells into an excellent mousse of bubbles in the mouth. There’s a slight almond character which plays well with the peach and biscuit notes. Smooth mid-palate with a light summery strawberry finish. Light hay on the nose. Very nice.”

> Chapel Down Sainsbury’s English Sparkling Wine Rose NV, £30 ($47)
“British sparkling wine - almost as rare as a 4 leafed clover. Obviously i had to try it…Pale salmon color, large bubbles, light berry and yeasty nose, low acid but not flabby. Nice fruits with a medium finish. Also, an interesting selection of grapes.”