Abusing Decanters
It’s sad really. The social media phenomena has opened up incredible things for anyone with internet access but as Einstein pointed outmore or less, anything that has the potential to do great things for society has the equal potential to cause great harm. Thus social networking in the wine world has it’s positive sides but what happens when several misinformed people pass on bad information to those that don’t know any better? Predictably, those that don’t know better think that what they’ve learned or been told is accurate and it spreads like wildfire. Pretty soon it becomes a de facto practice and at that point no one even questions it anymore.
Such is the case of decanting wine, which is the practice of pouring wine from the bottle into a crystal or glass container. A decanter was designed to aerate the wine but its higher use is to simply separate the wine from sediment in the bottle, which is usually only necessary for older wines (please visit here for more on decanting older wine: http://www.classof1855.com/Storing___Drinking_Wine.html). Having visited sites like CellarTracker and Snooth where wannabe-wine-critic members rate wine and leave tasting notes I’ve found that decanter abuse is highly prevalent and unfortunate. Good thing there’s no wine police or there’d be big trouble, yes?
Some cardinal rules about decanters:
- decanting bad wine will not improve it – it will still be bad wine
- if a wine needs to be decanted for any length of time, it is not ready to drink
- some wine will never be ready to drink because it was poorly made to begin with – buy better wine and stop expecting miracles from an $8 bottle
- decanting changes the balance of everything – alcohol, tannins, fruit, and acidity, but the outcome is all guesswork. Never expose a good or fine wine to air for long periods of time. As for bad wine, just don’t buy it to begin with because nothing you do is going to improve it
- it is impossible to know exactly when a wine will ‘peak’ (reach its optimal flavor and aromatics) while sitting in a decanter – it’s much better to have it peak in your glass as opposed to missing it entirely while it is being 'decanted'
- most people that abuse decanters do so because they are attempting to soften the wine’s harsh or dominant tannins – if a wine is not balanced going in to the bottle, it will not be balanced coming out of the bottle and decanting it just arbitrarily shifts around various components of the wine. Thus if oxygen softens tannins (and it does ultimately), it means that other components have also been affected by oxygen and usually in a detrimental way. For example, the first thing that happens when wine hits the air is that alcohol evaporates; the amount of evaporation is wine temperature dependent amongst other things. And this is not always a bad thing but changing the chemistry of any given wine is like playing the table in Vegas. Usually the house wins.
- some people like to use decanters to serve wine, which is perfectly acceptable if the intent is to get it into glasses within a short amount of time
Aerating wine is not all bad and in fact is a necessary technique to use while coaxing the wine to open up (release its aromas and flavors) but it almost always should be done in your glass by swirling. I have read with horror, accounts of forty-year-old First Growth Bordeaux being decanted for four hours. Other people have written about wines they have decanted for four days! This is utter nonsense and while I agree that people are, and should be, free to do what they want with their wine, I believe this abuse of a decanter is most often out of not knowing any better.
Wine needs minute amounts of oxygen to age in the bottle (and to age in barrels too – another subject), which is how better wines mature. Oxygen molecules do not penetrate the cork but rather move up the neck of the bottle in the microscopic gaps between the cork and the glass. But oxygen in any other form but tiny, almost immeasurable amounts is very detrimental to wine and will oxidize it quickly if left exposed to air. Taking a forty-year-old wine that is already fragile and mature, possibly past its peak from bottle age, exposing it to air for four hours, and then complaining about the quality is just plain egregious.
Do yourself a favor and do not decant your wine unless it is older and needs to be separated from its sediment. Tell your wine friends about this too because no one benefits from abusing decanters. Most of all buy better wine or buy wine that is ready to drink when you want it to be - otherwise you are really wasting your time and money.
David Boyer
Photo: licensed and © istockphoto
Vintage Hype
If you have been buying and drinking wine over the course of even a few years, you realize the importance of a wine’s vintage unless you drink only ‘grocery store’ wines. I consider a grocery store wine as a mass-produced, non-vineyard-specific, and sometimes non-varietal-specific wine that has no character or hint of terroir left in it by the time it hits your glass. These are most often very inexpensive wines using grapes sourced from huge vineyards where almost everything is automated in the vineyard and winemaking process with the goal of selling hundreds of thousands or even millions of cases each year.
I’m not slamming grocery stores and in the past couple of years many grocery stores have begun to sell better wine and even a limited selection of fine wine in some instances. But Yellow Tail is a good example of a grocery store wine, where vintage doesn’t matter much because the wine was produced to pretty much taste the same from year to year and to be drunk upon release. On the lower end of the scale vintage does not have much, if any, effect on wine.
Vintage for fine wine is indeed a big deal however and all other things being equal, (like a great winemaker didn’t quit and go somewhere else or the winery didn’t stop buying French oak for Hungarian oak, etc) it comes down to what Mother Nature dished out in any specific year. Rainfall, sunshine, coolness, warmth, humidity, wind, pests, storms, disease and much more all have potentially profound effects on the eventual outcome of any given wine. That’s a lot of factors that can and certainly do vary from year to year in the growing and harvest seasons from one year to the next. Even just a good rainfall at harvest or right before harvest can have devastating effects on that year’s production: imagine all of those vines soaking up every drop of rain, thereby diluting the fruit concentration in the grape with water! Unless the wine is made in a region that permits human intervention like using reverse osmosis to remove excess water from the must (must is the grape juice used to ferment into wine after crushing and pressing the grapes), a whole vintage can be ruined by just one event like this.
There is an enormous amount of fuss over vintages and a lot of speculation and hype that can drive prices through the roof. In Bordeaux for example, look at what is considered the best vintages in the past hundred years or so: 1929, 1945, 1961, 1982, 1989, 2000, 2003, 2005 and now the 2009 vintage which is barely into barrels is being hyped as the greatest vintage since the birth of Christ. What does all of this really mean though? Why is a vintage great and what are the upsides and downsides of a great vintage?
A great vintage only means that the growing conditions throughout the season were optimal and there is a high likelihood of nearly every estate producing a generally higher quality of wine for that given year. But it doesn’t mean that a 95 point wine from a great vintage is going to be any better than a 95 point wine from a difficult or disastrous vintage. It means that a winery that typically produces a 92 or 93 point wine, could produce a 95 point wine or a 98 point wine in a great vintage. Does this really do anything for you or me? You bet it does! It means we’ll pay more for the exact same bottle we bought last vintage. Maybe it will be better or maybe not but we’ll pay more for the ‘great vintage’.
This really only matters if you are a speculator and buy wine for investment purposes. If this is your thing then stick to the great vintages from whatever region you’re buying and, in a stable economy, buy as early as possible in most cases. All bets are off in times like this though – buying wine futures, especially these days is very risky, like the ‘great 2005’ vintage; many of those investing in 2005 Bordeaux futures lost as much as half their investment as the economy turned south. If you are a wine drinker on the other hand, forget about great vintages and buy good or great wine to enjoy. Even ‘off vintages’ produce very good wine from someone and the prices are far less than those from so-called great vintages.
The downside of great vintages is that wine critics routinely revisit them and things do not always turn out the way we (or they) originally thought they would. Right now for example, everyone is drinking the fab ’82 vintage of Bordeaux but critics are wondering if they made the right call on all the wine they rated back then because scores are changing quickly in many cases. Many châteaux thought to have produced incredible wine in 1989 are being eclipsed by the 1990 vintage and sometimes even the 1988 vintage. And some First Growth Bordeaux, like Château Latour didn’t fare well in the ’89 vintage to begin with. These are only a few of numerous examples of so-called great vintages being eventually thrown under the bus. All I’m trying to get across is that great vintages are only hype, they drive the market upwards, and are only important to speculators. Great wine is great wine in any vintage.
Drink good wine. Drink great wine. It does not have to come from a celebrity vintage to be great. I have had many bottles of ‘off-vintage’ Bordeaux that were truly wonderful but had no status in the world of wine. I know - it’s kind of like buying stuff from Off 5th instead of Saks 5th Avenue but put great wine in a glass while the bottle remains in a plain brown paper bag and you will dazzle your guests – even the most experienced collector.
David Boyer
Photo by the truly great, but late, DB III
What Does ‘Old Vine’ Really Mean?
A dear friend sent me an email a couple of days ago because he had just tasted a great ‘old vine’ Zinfandel - I am also very fond of Zinfandel and have had a number of them designated as old vine and even ancient vine. But it reminded me that the term, ‘old vine’, can be quite nebulous and can even be misleading as marketers attempt to find ever-new buzz words to entice consumers in a very crowded wine market. This term tends to be most often associated with Zinfandel wines and to a much lesser extent, Cabernet Sauvignon.
So what does ‘old vine’ mean beyond the obvious? And does it really translate into better wine? To get a grip on this we need to understand vines and how they work. This sounds boring at first but I am absolutely fascinated by the subject and just how important vines and the vineyard are in distinguishing great wine from just okay wine. Apart from terroir (a sense of place that encompasses soil, weather, micro climate, rainfall, drainage, sunshine and the angle of the sun on grapes and so on), there may be no more important element of winemaking than what happens in the vineyard. After all, it has to start with the fruit because wine with bad fruit to begin with, can never become better during the winemaking process.
There is a voluminous amount of information we know about plants, vines, and grapes but this article is not attempting to fill in all of the missing knowledge, but rather give you a very brief non-technical overview of a couple of principles. Current thinking has it like this: grape producing vines are lazy, but particular. It can’t even muster the fortitude to grow a strong enough wood trunk to support itself like many in the plant world, so it would rather crawl up a tree, a trellis, or anything else that will put it high enough to receive an adequate amount of life-giving sunshine. Grape vines don’t require much in the way of nutrition or even water, so when they’re ‘happy’, meaning they are getting enough nutrition and water, they will produce a lot of vegetative growth (non-fruit bearing stalks, shoots and leaves). If they are not pleased with where they are, they want to move but being planted in the ground makes this notion kind of inconvenient so the next best thing is for the vine to produce fruit. I know, it sounds strange to think of a plant that can deduce so much information from its environment and then cleverly come up with a solution to any issues it may have. But it’s true.
An ‘unhappy’ vine puts its energy into growing its fruit. Initially these grapes are all very small, green in color, and blend in well with the leaves, which helps to ensure that predators like birds do not eat them while they’re too young (there is a motive behind this and if a vine’s grapes are consumed too young, the vine will fail its mission to grow elsewhere – keep reading). Besides young unripe grapes are very high in acidity and do not taste good to fruit-eating animals. As the grape ripens however, not only does it taste better but also the seeds inside become developed enough to reproduce the vine if put into the soil or dropped somewhere. Here’s the really important part about vines: upon ripening, the grape turns color to draw attention to animals that will eat them and spread their seeds to other areas. This process of changing color is known as véraison. Through years of observation, winemakers have discovered that if the vine were stressed due to lack of water or nutrition or other essentials, it would slow its vegetative growth and instead concentrate its energy on producing grapes. Brilliant!
But this is only a part of the picture. Most often great wine is made with grapes of extreme concentration, that is, there is intense flavor from the grape. In order to help concentrate the flavor of grapes, vineyards will stress the vine, prune excess vegetative growth, pray for good weather, and reduce the yield (yield is measured in tons per acre in the wine world) by thinning, which is simply a method of cutting excess fruit from the vine and discarding it throughout the growing season. Thinning can take place in the vineyard one time or multiple times per season, depending on the vines, but concentrating flavor from the grapes by reducing yields is an important measure in making excellent wine.
A new vine just planted will begin to produce usable fruit in about three years. In about five or six years the vine should be producing very good fruit and continue to do so for thirty years or more. Usually a vine that is 40 to 80 years old is considered to be ‘old vine’ but there are some vines still producing fruit at 120 years of age! As a vine ages however, it slows down in its vegetative growth and typically builds up a woody surface similar to a tree trunk. Scientists believe that old vines store carbohydrates in this woody bark-like exterior during its dormant winter stage and are able to use that energy to produce better ripeness and concentrated fruit during the next growing season than younger vines. From a vineyard management point, old vines are great because they don’t require the maintenance that younger vines demand although very young vines can also be easy to manage because they have not yet established a root system to produce a lot of unruly vegetative growth.
So does wine produced from old vines make better wine? The answer is it depends. It depends on the winery, the actual age of the vines (a twenty year old vine is not really considered old but it might not prevent some winery from using the term ‘old vine’ on the label), and the actual quality of the fruit the vine produces. Old vines can be susceptible to disease like ‘dead arm’ – and even some diseased old vines can improve grapes, others not so much. Just be aware that so far there is no definitive answer to the question of old vine quality partly because there are no legal parameters put in place to define it. If you are buying wine from a reputable winery, chances are good that the quality is better from an ‘old vine’ bottling than from younger vines but this may not always be true. As always, the buyer must be aware and must always use the palate to discern, not marketing words.
Some of my favorite Zinfandel producers ever are Seghesio, Rosenblum and Orin Swift. Not all of these fine estates produce Zinfandel from old vines but all of these are very worthy of your attention if you enjoy this spectacular grape variety.
David Boyer
Photo: 90 year old vines in Sonoma County California. Licensed
from and © iStockphoto.com
Wine Reviews: Almost Useless in Its Current Form
The image above is I believe, an example of a better way to extrapolate useful information about the quality of wine and I would be very pleased to see reviewers use it. Forget all of the pretty words that critics struggle with for the sake of keeping their journalistic prose fresh (because our language is finite, this is impossible and ends up being just embarrassing and a waste of time for serious readers). How useful is the current system of wine reviews? How much real information can we gather about wine being reviewed? Do we taste the same things reviewers taste? Will the tasting notes change over time, making a reviewer’s notes obsolete? What information would be best to use while assessing wine?
The only thing actually useful about a wine review by the experts is their score. But the score itself does not tell us anything about the wine – it is just a grade, which may be useful if you have aligned your palate with a particular reviewer’s taste. From there, one can adjust their expectations. Me, for example: I have learned that I can take a Robert Parker score and safely downgrade it by 4 or 5 points and it will line up fairly close to my opinion. I can take Stephen Tanzer scores and add 2 to 3 points. James Suckling at Spectator is nearly always right on for me while James Laube at Spectator is a wild-card and is hit-and-miss for me. And for me Jay Miller has zero credibility as a wine critic.
Obviously scoring wine is very subjective and personal preferences are very much a part of the human process of forming an opinion. I believe however that we may be able to get a bit more objective information by changing the way wine is scored. Here are a few problems with the current system:
First, there is very little information in a wine review that is actually somewhat objective or useful to a wine aficionado. If a professional reviewer sat next to you or me while reviewing a wine and we compared notes, I may pick up some of the flavor or aromatic notes I missed if he mentions them – just because of suggestion. Conversely, he may pick up notes I observed just because I mention them. The point is if you read a review before you taste the wine, chances are pretty good that you’ll pick out some of the elements mentioned in the review, which is due to subconscious power of suggestion and its pretty powerful with wine notes. Because our palates are not the same, it is very unlikely that we’d actually have the same wine experience without the power of suggestion and even then, we may not experience the same aromas and tastes.
Secondly, all of the things the reviewer tastes and smells during the moment of his review can change substantially with time – even within a short amount of time. Chances are very slim that even the same reviewer would pick up the same notes after a few months, if the wine were blind-tasted. There are many possible variations that could change a wine’s descriptors such as storage conditions, the amount of time the bottle has been still (in other words it didn’t just get delivered by FedEx an hour ago), serving temperature, how much wine the reviewer has already tasted that day, and many other significant variables.
The end result is that the description of a wine becomes useless because there is no way to assess the condition of the wine or the reviewer. Therefore tasting notes are generally just indulgent journalistic explorations to find words and phrases that have not been used as descriptors; I don’t believe there’s much left that hasn’t been written before and so we read the same things over and over again that are characteristics of the wine being reviewed. This finite amount of text simply has little practical relevance or use to the reader.
Third is the wasted ink that describes the color of the wine; many reviewers begin with a description of the color. Who cares? Red wines all have various hues of red and purple, while whites may be described with straw or golden hues. This will never change unless the wine is flawed. Now observing a flaw is useful information, for example: the wine was amber on its edges, or brown, or the color of red brick. These are all giveaways that the wine is probably well past it prime and therefore of questionable value and quality. But why not just say the wine has a flaw rather than describe its color? Besides it is very rare a reviewer writes about seriously flawed wine.
To understand how little real information there is in a typical wine review just analyze the following reviews and scores from the foremost and highest regarded wine critics. There is a Piedmont (Italy) and Bordeaux - also note the differences and similarities between scores:
KEY:
Useful terminology
Similar or common observations between reviewers
Substantial difference between reviewers
Barolo, Prapò 1996 Ceretto - Bricco Rocche
"...rich,
with lots of extract,
tannin, and body...moderately
intense nose of scorched
earth, dried herbs, and sweet black fruits...an
exciting level of fruit
extract, superb purity..." (92-94 points) Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
#124, August 1999 (Robert Parker, 08/01/1999)
Rating: 92
"Complex aromas
of tar, blackberry
and sage. Full-bodied, with fine tannins and a long, long finish. Balanced and beautiful.--1996 Piedmont retrospective. Best after
2007." Wine Spectator (Wine Spectator, 01/01/2007)
Rating: 91
"Medium
red, with an orange rim. Ripe
but vibrant aromas of cherry,
raspberry, chocolate liqueur, mocha and menthol. Ripe and vinous, with perfumed inner-mouth flavors of tobacco and
dried rose. Already quite expressive,
especially in light of the vintage. This will be the first to give pleasure
among the Barolo crus in '96 but has the tannic structure to develop in bottle for eight to
ten years." (90 points) Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar,
November/December 2000 (Steven Tanzer, 11/01/2000)
Rating: 90
Château Léoville-Las-Cases 1996
"...a
spectacular nose of cassis,
cherry liqueur, pain grillé, and minerals...powerful and rich on the attack...a remarkable,
seamless, palate-staining, and extraordinarily elegant wine..." (98
points) Robert Parker's Wine Advocate #122, April 1999 (Robert Parker,
04/01/1999)
Rating: 98
"...vibrant,
very youthful aromas of
cassis, violet and bitter chocolate. Dense and powerful, with great clarity of flavor thanks to a
terrific spine of acidity...Finishes very long
and gripping, with a note of bitter chocolate..." (96(+?) points)
Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar, July/August 2002 (Steven Tanzer,
07/01/2002)
Rating: 96
"Incredible nose of blackberry, mineral,
cedar and currant [cassis and currant are the same DB].
Full-bodied, with
silky and refined tannins
and a medium
caressing finish.
It's a beautiful wine that begs to be drunk now but will age and improve for a
long time.--'95/'96 Bordeaux retrospective. Drink now." Wine Spectator
(Wine Spectator, 01/01/2007)
Rating: 92
Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of journalistic fluff but not a lot of really useful information. The pain grillé and cassis type descriptors do not mean anything to me as these words are used very often in red wine but what I really want to know about is the wine’s balance, intensity of flavor and aroma, its complexity, how it feels in the mouth (the body of the wine) and the wine’s attack, midpalate and finish. If I have this information, I can gauge with much greater accuracy, to what extent I will like a wine or not.
I would be pleased to email you a working version of this wine scoring algorithm to experiment with or use as you like. I am also open to your feedback and input about ways to improve the usefulness of it. Please email me at david@classof1855.com with your request or comments.
NOTE: Jancis Robinson is a very highly regarded British wine critic and one of the few women to hold the highly esteemed Master of Wine designation. She has her own 20 point scale, with a score of 20 being the very best. Because of the difference in descriptors, I did not do an in-depth comparison with her and the other reviewers.
David Boyer
Best Corners of the World
Sometimes, unplanned events are the ones that turn out the best – you know, the impromptu gatherings that are organized by sheer will and pulled together at the last moment. Such is the case of finding myself in a small establishment in Grand Rapids Michigan one recent night. This wine bar and restaurant overflows with innate charm, style, vibe, and intimacy and serves up a really great combination of fine wine and food. For me, it’s always in that order.
Generally one would not think of Grand Rapids Michigan as an epicenter for wine and food although there are a surprising number of both well-heeled and younger well-heeled-to-be patrons supporting fine dining in this city. And so it is with this very cool place near downtown on Cherry Street known simply as Corez. This very fine wine bar is eclipsed only by the owners and staff who were not only gracious enough to show me around, but actually spend time with me talking about food, wine and even people we knew in common. I know of little corners of the world that we wouldn’t ordinarily expect to exist as they do. These are the places that embrace people who are passionate about wine and food, and I have to say that the people at Corez created one of the best corners of the world that I have been to.
Business owners, Mike and Corey are very excellent hosts and actually know what they’re doing. Mike is a sommelier that seeks out small production beauties that shine beyond the mainstream wine aisle and wow - he’s really talented at this! And I enjoyed the words that poured out too, which usually was, “this isn’t going to change your world, but it’s a really nice wine”. He was right about perhaps ‘not changing my world’ but I would say a bit conservative about a ‘really nice wine’. Everything he poured was spot on and until there’s a wine bar that’s willing to serve up Latour, Lafite and DRC by the glass, this is as good as anyone would ever be likely to find. Corey handles the business end of owning such a great property; no easy task in this economy, but he didn’t ask for easy. Just excellent. By any measure I have to say, “mission accomplished”.
And the food coming out of the kitchen by impresario Executive Chef Chad and his stellar staff is exactly what you wish you could cook at home but don’t because it isn’t home cooking, but something much more. In fact I consider it to be a non-stuffy but very delicious version of haute cuisine. The server staff is also superb and made me feel welcome and almost like I was in on a great secret with them. Behind the bar, fresh and innovative handcrafted cocktails are made and I found myself wishing I had more capacity than I do these days.
This hip, young and fresh appeal in GR’s very cool East Hills district is brilliantly presented by the team at Corez, all of whom are completely engaged in what they do - anytime you can run into this combination of “ingredients” you know you’re going to be very pleased with the results. My only complaint, if I am allowed, is that there is not a Corez close by with exactly the same people. Oh well. I’ll just have to go back there to revisit this very special place in one of the best corners of the world.
Find them at www.corezwinebar.com, check them out on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFTddvVHvtU), or just get down to 919 Cherry Street and plan on spending a great evening with really great people, fine wine and food. For me, it’s always in that order.
David Boyer
Photo: Sommelier and Co-Owner Mike Dombrowski at Corez Wine Bar and Restaurant, Grand Rapids Michigan
California Dreamin’
All the ink is red
and the shelves are full
(the ink is red) (and the shelves are full) . . .
I understand optimism, pessimism and realism. I generally tend to fall into the optimistic side of the latter. However, after reading through Wine Spectator’s latest issue concerning California Cabs I have to wonder if these folks aren’t hitting the cellar a little too often. Maybe I would be too.
Although my first love is Bordeaux I cannot, by any stretch, state that California does not make truly excellent wine – it does. I have been seduced and massaged by fabulous Cabernet Sauvignon based wine, along with other grape varietals that grow very well there, and it seems that California quality just gets better with most every vintage. There’s not much wine that is structured enough to age very long but that’s kind of the point with CA: they make em’ drinkable upon release providing nearly instant gratification. And although I have stopped short of their cult classics like Harlan, Bryant Family and Screaming Eagle, I have tasted through many of their very finest and have to report that these are very fine wines by any standard. A few that come to mind include Shafer, Paul Hobbs, Schrader, Colgin, Peter Michael, Caymus, Chappellet, Joseph Phelps, Dalle Valle, Lewis, Continuum, and Silver Oak. You get the idea. These are all considered among some of the best of California.
I know that times are really tough for our hard-working estate owners and I am not insensitive to the plight they are facing. But I have to ask of most of them, “what the hell were you thinking?” In California, not only are they dreaming, but also I wonder if they might not be tripping! Looking though this year’s lineup of California cabs crystallizes the notion that there will be some major housecleaning coming up soon. There will be a lot of fallout that should gratefully reduce clutter at retail and sharpen the market considerably, ultimately creating better values for the consumer (prices will drop and quality will have to go up to be competitive). But it’s going to take some time and will be a painful journey for many would-be winemakers that just couldn’t get through to the consumer because of being dropped by their distributor, lack of market recognition and loyalty, less than stellar winemaking, and stupidly high prices.
I personally consider James Laube, Wine Spectator’s California wine critic, to be somewhat of a wild card. I do not think he is nearly as consistent as say, Spectator’s James Suckling, who nails down Bordeaux and Italy quite well. Regardless, Mr. Laube is entitled to his opinion right or wrong, and he does have substantial experience to draw on. And admittedly 2006 was not the best vintage in California but still, as a wine consumer consider some of the following information based on Mr. Laube’s reviews:
Would you rather buy:
a) Goldschmidt Cabernet Sauvignon, Alexander Valley Single Vineyard Selection Vyborny Vineyard Plus, 2005, rated at 83 points for $150, or
b) Greg Norman California Estates, Cabernet Sauvignon North Coast, 2006, rated at 86 points for $15?
Have you ever even seen or heard of Goldschmidt? Do you see this wine stacked up by the case in grocery stores? Me neither, and though I don’t claim to have huge depth of knowledge on the subject of California wine estates, why would anyone bother buying this wine at this price and quality, especially if it is virtually unknown? This nice couple from New Zealand has been around for a decade or so but unless Bill Gates is a close relative of one of them, their winery is probably not going to be around in another year or two. I’m not aware of Bill having family ties in NZ but I’ve been wrong before.
Would you rather buy:
a) Gemstone, Ten Yountville, 2006 rated at 91 points for $150, or
b) Schrader, T6 Beckstoffer To Kalon, 2006 rated at 99 points for $125?
Granted the Schrader is going to be much tougher to find if you’re not a member of their mailing list (and more than double the cost) but the point is, there are literally hundreds of producers that have very high price points and very low quality and when you combine those factors with the estates that are not well-known and did not have time to create a following of mail order clients, well, all one can say is, au revoir.
Screaming Eagle at 91 points and a $750 release price should be charged with some sort of felony against innocent wine lovers, except that they have such a huge cult following that they are not going to be put away anytime soon. One of the most egregious price-to-score ratios of the season has to be Oberon Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Hillside Reserve 2006, rated at 75 points for $75. Just because an offspring of the great and late Robert Mondavi makes the wine for this label, it will not allow them to escape reality forever. Another producer, Hartwell, really ran themselves off the rails in 2006 with their Stags Leap coming in at 81 points for $115 and their Stags Leap Misté Hill coming in at 78 points for $60. In ’05 this estate produced very fine wine, in fact one of my favorites of the vintage, at 95 points and 93 points respectively.
It makes me sad really, in many respects. Yes, we need to get real and, no, not everyone can live the dream, especially these days. The room is simply too small to hold a crowd that is as large as California wine producers so someone has to go. In this case there will be lots of someones. California Dreamin’ was great while it lasted but today’s economic realities will inauspiciously end the dream for many.
David Boyer
Recalibration
Drinking wine is always a great and pleasurable experience for me because, like most people, I drink what I like. If I’m drinking other wine in a social context, even if I’m not fond of a wine being served it’s certainly informative but quite often I am introduced to great discoveries that someone else already knew about and is sharing with me. I have really spectacular wine friends, I’m not kidding.
Tasting wine, however, and critically evaluating a number of wines in a single setting can be arduous and demanding because of the human interaction with wine chemistry – namely the palate vs. tannins, acidity, alcohol and fruit. If you’ve ever attended a medium-to-large wine event, you know what I’m talking about: wine is lined up for days and after tasting as few as three or four big reds or young wines you find yourself seeking water in a futile attempt to dial back what’s happening in your mouth.
Although the advance of technology can be questionable in many genres, some are pure genius. Enter the fortuitous relationship forged by a couple of Cal Poly (California Polytechnic State University) students, Nicole Chamberlain and Andrew Macaluso. Both studied other disciplines at this esteemed university including biology (Nicole) and chemistry (Andrew) but ended up with degrees in wine, viticulture and enology. In the course of their education in winemaking, they realized that winemakers often taste dozens of barrel samples to keep on top of the winemaking process, but this can be a very challenging thing to do because of this little thing we know of as palate fatigue. With this combination of brainpower, these two set out on a mission to create a substance that resets the palate. Does it work?
SanTásti is the greatest single invention for wine since oak
barrels. Even better actually; you can overuse oak easily, but you can’t
overuse this remarkable product. It absolutely resets your palate to zero. It
perfectly neutralizes tannins, acidity, and aftertastes from the biggest wines
available. It even flat-lines the palate after food. And it’s not just me. So
far I have shared this with about a dozen enophiles, collectors and deeply
experienced wine people and every one of them had the same experience. SanTásti
works!
The wines tasted in the photo:
1995 Andre Clouet, Champagne - France
2007 Brewer Clifton, Santa Rita Hills, Chardonnay – Santa
Barbara, California
2007 Landmark, Kanzler Vineyard, Pinot Noir – Sonoma Coast,
California
2004 Pio Cesare, Barolo, Piedmont, Italy
2005 Pio Cesare, Barolo, Piedmont, Italy
2006 Andrew Will, Sorella, Horse Heaven Hills (a blend using
Bordeaux varietals), Washington
2004 Floresta, Colchagua Valley, Cabernet Sauvignon – Chile
2006 Caymus Special Selection, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa
Valley, California
2006 Pierre Gaillard, Les Pierres, St Joseph – Northern
Rhone, France
2005 Two Hands, Ares, Barossa Valley – Australia
2005 Château Beaucastel, Châteauneuf du Pape – Southern
Rhone, France
2003 Royal Tokaji, Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos - Hungary
If you know wine much you will recognize that this was a ridiculously great wine event, hosted by Mirabelle Restaurant’s owner and savant wine guru, Michael Vilim. All wine tasted that evening ranged from 91 to 98 points from Wine Spectator and Robert Parker. There was a beautiful selection of delicate, nuanced white, Pinot Noir and Champagne wine all the way up to huge, tannic, too young to drink now reds. There could not have been a better lineup of wine to have with SanTásti, which worked flawlessly when I went back and forth. Really, this bevy of wine was like The Beauty and the Beast although eventually everything here will certainly become a Beauty if it’s not already.
I hope to impress on you, that if you have ever wished that you could recalibrate your taste buds, this is the way to do it. I do not work for this company nor do I have a financial interest in this company but I think this is an amazing product for wine lovers. You can order their water for the palate at http://www.santasti.com/ and unlike shipping wine, water can be shipped anywhere. SanTásti might just do for the wine world, what the Internet did for the rest of the world. It’s that important.
David Boyer
Photo at Mirabelle Restaurant, Austin: The Awesome Victoria Boyer
Honor Amongst Snobs
I’ve been told I am a wine snob by family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. I shouldn’t be offended and I’m not – there are worse things to be called. But I don’t understand why I would be called a snob just for learning about something and then being selective about my taste. Except for the occasional vitriolic words projected in good fun at my brother, I really have not lorded it over anyone. I think the world needs all levels of quality, all of them having a constructive function. I wouldn’t call Ralph Lauren a car snob just because he has one of the world’s foremost and incredible collection of classic automobiles. And just because he doesn’t want a Kia shouldn’t make him a snob. Please note: I am in no way comparing myself to the likes of Ralph – Ralph is a genius, I'm not. Okay, maybe I am somewhat of a snob but there is great honor amongst snobs.
Throughout my life I learned humility at a fairly young age and have had good examples of how to be generous and gracious, without expecting anything in return or without being condescending toward others. For me, nowhere have I found this mindset to be more true, consistent, and steady than in the world of wine collectors, or 'wine snobs' as many would refer to them. Being around such people, it influences and encourages me to maintain awareness about generosity and giving so that other people may too experience the great and unbridled joy of excellent wine.
Wine is a social vehicle and by itself, begs to be shared. Regardless of the quantity, quality, or variety on hand, wine needs to be distributed to others in order to get the very most it has to offer. Because we all have different levels of knowledge, different wine experiences, tastes, palates, and resources, we can learn so much about people by sharing a glass of wine with them. And this has not a thing to do with social-economic status (how expensive a shared bottle may be).
In late summer, a dear friend of mine that has great wine knowledge and experience invited me to a wine event he was hosting. He also happens to have a fantastic collection. Six of us including Mark the host, tasted through nine bottles of impeccable, remarkable, high scoring, delicious, collectable, and rare wine that he alone brought to the gathering because he wanted to share it with people he knew would appreciate it. And we did! For five hours, five erudite wine collectors spoke with me, only about wine - it was a fabulous experience.
This is not the first time people have expressed to me their generosity with wine, although this particular event will be very memorable to me for many years to come, I’m sure. Other collectors like Susan, Tom, another Mark, Lori and George along with a list that would read like “A” movie credits have also been generous and gracious, not only with their wine but with their knowledge. There is not much that is more rewarding than watching someone have an epiphany when experiencing truly great wine for the first time, or any time. Or in helping someone understand why some wine is better than another and watch them actually ‘get it’. It is a very honorable thing to do: to share not just the wine, but also the wine experience.
And it is natural for me to be generous with nearly anyone when it comes to wine not just because of my passion for it, but also because I have been shown through example many times over, the rewards of sharing. I recently had a service guy in my house. Of course being in my home he became aware of my proclivity for wine and wanting to know more about it, struck up aconversation with me that lasted nearly an hour. Maybe this was how he chose to spend his lunch break but whatever the circumstance, I gave him a bottle of excellent Italian wine that aligned with his wine preferences and knowledge level before he left. He was blown away that I would do that. But for me, I hope to hear how he enjoyed it, or not – what he thought of it, and whether it he gained any insight from the experience.
I have been around a few people that tend to take advantage of those that are generous and I try to avoid them like h1v1. Being generous is not fool-proof and requires some reasonable judgment to avoid the “I’ll have some of yours but you’ll never see me offer anyone else anything of mine” type of people. But the reward of generosity promulgates more generosity in the world and that alone, is a great and honorable pursuit. When it’s tied together with someone really getting excited about discovering a new wine or new wine knowledge, well, as the commercial says, that’s “priceless”. Call me a snob if you will - I am honored.
The Future of Futures
Confusing isn’t it? Read on. Barrel tasting scores are starting to roll in for the ’08 Bordeaux vintage, which means it's also time to begin seeing prices for Bordeaux futures. In case you’re not familiar, a barrel tasting is exactly as you would think: wine is extracted and tasted from the wood barrel that is used for aging wine before it is ready to be bottled; this is not considered finished wine. Barrel tasting usually takes place in the wine cellar, which is where the winemaker constantly monitors the condition of the wine during aging. These wines are very, very young so it takes considerable knowledge and skill on the part of the winemaker (and the wine critics that barrel taste and rate wine at this stage), to understand what is going to happen next and how the wine will develop and age over time.
When wine critics like Robert Parker from Wine Advocate (WA) or James Suckling from Wine Spectator (WS) arrive at an estate to evaluate wine in production, the intent is to give a range of scores that a wine should fall into once it’s finished and bottled. For example a barrel tasting score of 90 – 93 points would express where the wine might eventually land when it’s finally bottled and such scores have a direct and substantial influence on wine futures prices. Keep in mind too that in the case of high-end Bordeaux, even when it’s finished and bottled, it’s always too young to drink for many years. More than anything, fine Bordeaux needs your patience.
As for futures, they’re pretty much like any other financial instrument or commodity in the market. In Bordeaux, brokers buy the wine from the châteaux before it is even bottled and sell it to importers, who sell to distributors, who sell it to retailers and eventually us wine consumers. The idea is that if you buy Bordeaux futures at a low price before the wine is even finished, it will hopefully rise in value when it is released and distributed to the market. Buying Bordeaux futures is the same as other instruments in that if you guess about the future value correctly, you will be rewarded for your brilliance (luck usually), if you guess incorrectly you will loose your tail (bad luck usually). One of the biggest smackdowns in Bordeaux futures happened with the 2005 vintage, which was touted by the press as possibly the best vintage in a century. Investors, collectors and speculators of wine bit the bullet on '05 futures.
2005 First Growth Château Lafite-Rothschild futures were selling for $1200 to $1500 per bottle but can now be purchased for about $800 at retail. Pretty much the same with Châteaux Latour, Margaux, Mouton-Rothschild and Haut Brion. So over-hyped was this vintage (it was great, but not so great that there had to be a financial blood bath of this magnitude) that many buyers of Bordeaux futures are now gun-shy and understandably so. As far as I can determine, anyone that bought a case of First Growth 2005 en primeur (as a future) lost at least $2400 per case in value. Sadly the châteaux have nothing to do with this, yet they are often vilified for charging high prices and wrongly accused for futures investors loosing money. It’s the brokers and nêgociants in Bordeaux that have been the market makers for centuries and control prices, just like in equities and currency. And if you can’t afford to loose money with investments (who can these days?), it’s much safer to not play the game.
The generally marginal (in quality) 2006 vintage did not lower prices much from ‘05 as brokers attempted to maintain their margins and extravagant prices. The 2007 vintage, dismal compared even to ’06, lowered prices a bit but by then buyer confidence in Bordeaux futures was already struggling to breathe. It’s going to be a really tough sell for 2008 futures and I’m sorry to see great estates suffer because of the archaic systems to which they are subject. In a perfect world, the multi-tiered system would give way to less layers of outside control but considering the long history and political capital these brokers have, certainly evaporates any possibility of that happening any time soon.
Futures or not, store shelves will make way for new wines that will be released and a glut of un-sellable wine is expected. For the 2008 Bordeaux vintage, it appears that critics favor the Right Bank over the Left this year although their scores (at least Parker’s scores) so far were a little more generous in Left Bank’s Pessac-Léognan district. This district is the furthest south of the other major Bordeaux districts of the Médoc and here in Bordeaux, weather is king and can vary considerably within small distances; I mean sometimes even by meters. In the Right Bank, St. Emilion and Pomerol estates scored better and can generally be enjoyed at a younger age because they are made primarily with Merlot as opposed to Left Bank’s high content of Cabernet Sauvignon.
And prices? You won’t believe it! These prices are incredibly dialed back from Bordeaux former glory days – maybe there’s hope after all. The only 2008 First Growth score I could find so far is Château Margaux, which was rated at WA 95-97, WS 90-93 selling for $290 per bottle. Super Second (the more popular and famous Second Growth Bordeaux, so named as ‘Super Seconds’ by Parker some time ago), Ducru Beaucaillou came in at WA 96-98 and is selling for a paltry $90 – compare this with its ’05 futures price for this wine in the $300 to $350 per bottle range and which now sells for around $170 at retail! A few other examples include Montrose WA 95-97 for $67, Château Palmer WA 95-97 for $145 and Leoville Las Cases WA 95-97+ for $120. Price reductions like these certainly speak volumes about our current economic plight and efforts to correct trespasses into our bank accounts in the recent past.
Except for First Growths and the Super Seconds, so far the ’08 Left Bank fell pretty flat with barrel tasting scores in the upper 80s to low 90s. Still, these all are all shaping up to be relatively very good deals depending on what happens with the finished bottle. The only drawback for some aficionados is that the best of these will require ten to fifteen years of bottle age before they should be enjoyed.
Consider the fact that you have now seen the future.
David Boyer
The Sting? (Maybe)
What would happen if you were the seller of goods or services (I can’t think of a for-profit enterprise that doesn’t sell something) but you have a very sagacious clientele that insists on low-balling you at every opportunity? You want $100. Your client tells you she’ll pay $60. You want $1000. Your client says $650. Painful if you’re not on the buy-side, yes?
So over the course of major wine auctions that took place between, say, autumn of 2008 until the summer of 2009, this is exactly the scenario. Believe me, I have been one of those low-balling clients; the auction catalog arrives and I peruse it with great anticipation because I know how depressed the fine and rare wine market is. Can I get a bargain? Well it’s certainly worth a try. So I carefully read through a thousand or more lots scheduled to appear on the auction block and map out my strategy. As a guide to bidders, the auction house publishes in the catalog a low estimate and a high estimate of the price their experts believe each lot will sell for. One lot might consist of one bottle, one case, or any combination of wine, bottle size, and vintage.
But if you owned the auction house and your entire reputation rides on how much wine you sell and how high the price, perhaps you’d carve out a strategy to deal with all of these miscreant low-balling bidders. What if in the catalog, your published low and high estimates were generally very conservative (now you’re low-balling the bidders) so bidders would think they were going to be able to load up on cases of valuable wine at fire-sale prices? And then when you got them all gathered in the same room you beat them senseless with auction hammers until every last wallet was flatter than our current economy? I think that is exactly what Hart Davis Hart (HDH, one of America's most respected and prestigious auction houses) did during its September 12 auction. That day 1134 lots went out the door, most at ridiculously high prices. Whether intentional or happenstance, this was an excellent sting and I’m sure some bidders went home at the end of the day walking funny. I'm not suggesting that bidders were fleeced in any way - we were just outsmarted at our own game.
Were these extravagant prices a result of pent-up demand? Very likely. But also what was smart was publishing such low estimates in the catalog and then once the competition and fury began in the bidding room, the rest just took care of itself. By the way, not all estimates were low: some were near or at record highs like the best vintages of Lafite and other First Growth Bordeaux. In fact Bordeaux made a spectacular comeback, with Château Lafite-Rothschild making some of the largest gains in price since the crash. A case of 1982 Lafite sold for $38,240, including the auctioneer’s take of 19.5%. A case of six magnums of 1982 Château Petrus sold for an arresting $65,725. In their catalog, HDH estimated this lot to sell somewhere between $24K to $35K. Smart yes?
Nearly everything sold that day showed respectable, if not remarkable, gains redolent of the boom days, although in general, California collectables did not fare as well except for Sine Qua Non. Prices for typical Californian auction darlings such as Screaming Eagle, Harlan, and Shafer seemed to be hammered down (forgive the pun – or not) but Italian classics such as Sassicaia and Gaja along with the Rhone La La's and top Burgundy fared much better.
The bottom line is this: prices are rising quickly so we’ll feel this at retail very soon. Buying a good vintage of an occasional bottle of Lafite or pretty much any Classified Bordeaux is soon going to be much more expensive as are many other collectables. If you see bargains out there at retail or auction, and there still are a few (including some Californians), right now is the time to grab them up. Also if you’re willing to be patient and age some wine, bargains are still available from some great young vintages like the 2005 Bordeaux, although the word ‘bargain’ in this context is relative.
The most profound effect of this recent auction was the Asian influence because they have all the cash these days and were high bidders on many of the most expensive lots, according to HDH. Fine and rare wine auction houses in the past couple of years have even begun conducting auctions in Hong Kong, which has certainly driven prices up. It was probably less than five years ago that China was emerging as a financial powerhouse and its successful purveyors were just starting to find enjoyment in western-culture luxury goods. Because they didn’t know any better, Chinese wine drinkers were buying up expensive Classified Bordeaux and mixing it with ice and Coca Cola. I believe they have learned to do without such appurtenances these days.
I have no problem with anyone including Asians; we’ve seen
Japan buy up American assets like there was no tomorrow, then the Arabs, now
the Chinese. But I wouldn’t be honest with you if I said I didn’t feel a little
sad about the greatest wines in the world again becoming too expensive for most
Americans and finding its way to foreign shores. So sting or not, the outcome
of this latest auction is not favorable to American collectors.
David Boyer