In Part 1 of the Brian Owens interview, we introduced this savant oenophile who has contributed so much depth to the outstanding wine community in Austin Texas and beyond. As mentioned, one of his greatest contributions to wine was his creation of the Austin Wine Salon, where each month collectors, sommeliers, restaurateurs, and wine industry people get together to share great, important, and interesting bottles of wine, compare notes, and generally propagate wine knowledge in a planned and organized format. I have had the pleasure to contribute wine to and attend these great events for about the past two years or so and I can say, there’s just no better way to learn about wine than to do it with a group like this!

So lets talk about Wine Salon . . . 

Wine Salon is unique in that there are wine professionals and there are collectors and it’s very rare that wine professionals actually have the wine experience that collectors have. So if we have sommeliers that have learned about Lafite but never tasted it, the question becomes, ‘is it really useful for them to have tasted Lafite? Is it really necessary?’ In a way it is important. It’s like being a rock and roll musician and asking if you should really understand Beethoven? Well, you probably should at some point and most musicians, and especially jazz musicians, learned Bach and Mozart but they didn’t do it until they wanted to go to the next step. 

With Wine Salon I sometimes worry though that I have opened Pandora’s Box because I take someone that’s doing their job really well, maybe studying for their sommelier exam, they can identify Pinot Noir and Grenache and then they come into Wine Salon and pour up something that’s 25 years old and it’s great but in some ways it throws them off because tasting Grenache and then tasting a 25 year old Vacqueyras or Gigondas would completely throw anybody off. Is it helpful? Maybe not always but when a sommelier pours a glass of wine from their maybe limited menu, it gives them the experience to say, “By the way, this grape can do all sorts of things from different regions, different soils, and different winemakers so don’t limit yourself by thinking it can only taste like this. And that has value.” 

Wine Salon opens up wine professionals in a way that says, ‘I’m not just in the everyday business of serving wine or selling wine but there really is this grand art to it all and it’s so much bigger than I imagined.’ Wine Salon implies that the professionals that attend are not just into wine as a career, but they attend because there’s something bigger and more important about wine. We can pull collectors in to donate the wine each month and provide wines that a lot of people wouldn’t otherwise have had an opportunity to drink. We’ve had Lafite, Mouton, Margaux, Haut Brion; we’ve had d’Yquem so I can’t tell you how many people said, “Thank you! I really always wanted to know what d’Yquem tasted like and now I know, but I can’t afford a $400 or $800 bottle.” So I get a lot of thanks, some for what they know and some for what they didn’t know. There’s a lot of discovery of wine and even self-discovery – I’d like to think it’s helpful and even motivating in some way.

But Brian, you look at Mark Sayre, Bill Esley, and so many more, and Wine Salon really has an impressive alumni . . . [Mark Sayre is the Wine Director and sommelier at the Austin Four Seasons Hotel, named ‘Best Sommelier in Texas’ in ’07 and named one of the ‘7 Best New Sommeliers in 2010’ by Wine & Spirits Magazine. Bill Esley is a sommelier at Duchman Family Winery and named ‘Best Sommelier in Texas’ in ’11.] 

Marco passed his test, Dirk and Paul just passed their sommelier test; we have about a dozen sommeliers now. And Austin has a group of young people studying wine as well as anywhere in the country, including New York and San Francisco. The proof is in the pudding: five people just got their MS in the entire United States and two of them are from Austin, Craig Collins and Devon Broglie, both of which came to Wine Salons. Craig came to the early ones and Devon came until he had to study so much he couldn’t come anymore. And they still come back when they can. And Mark (Sayre) will take his MS test in another four or five months and June is doing really well, and I’m really impressed with Lauren and Paula, but it’s just a matter of them having the time to come to Wine Salon. 

We have a lot of talent here . . . 

And they’re feeding each other. They’re all very supportive of each other. We can say that Austin may be the Live Music Capital but it’s actually kind of a sommelier capital too. We do have a very strong and knowledgeable base of wine people here. If you go to Uchiko, Fino, or Wink, the wait people really know wines. I spent a lot of time in San Francisco this summer and I was amazed at how many wait staff didn’t know their wines or wine service so I think we have many more sophisticated wait people here. Restaurants in Austin that have a sommelier or are working on a wine program are committed to good wines with excellent wine service and it shows. 

So when you came up with the whole Wine Salon idea, how did that come about? 

I had been on the board of the Texas Wine and Food Foundation for about six or seven years and was giving a lot of wine to the Foundation for their auctions to help bring in money [the Texas Wine and Food Foundation is a non-profit organization] plus, around the holidays I was taking bottles of wine to my favorite waiters and restaurant staff. So it kind of hit me after a while, “why not just drink with them?” and I started inviting them to my house. I had been a part of salons in the 70s, which were kind of intellectual, we would have food, discussion . . . it was the kind of salon Virginia Woolf or Gertrude Stein had - it was that whole idea of getting a bunch of people together on a Sunday afternoon and hanging out. Well, this became the same thing except that wine was the central focus.

So we started it at my house with about six to eight people, which consisted of wait staff, cooks, and restaurant owners, as well as with four or five friends who had cellars, and it just expanded from there. It was a way to thank the wait people, who as you know, a lot of times would let us bring in our own bottles for free and these restaurants and people would actually appreciate that we were bringing in good wine. The restaurant owners and managers get that they’re not making much money from us because they’re not selling us wine from their list, but they come to understand that we believe their food is that much better and we’re celebrating it by bringing in really good wines. We’re the ones that really appreciate good food and put it on a pedestal like art or something. 

I had Wine Salon at my house until it grew too large and I couldn’t handle more than 24 people. We started going to restaurants on Sundays because about three quarters of the good restaurants are closed then, and we had the very people that worked at those restaurants coming to Wine Salon anyway so they gave us access to these places. It becomes a shared experience and I like that idea. 

The Salon started almost as a seminar. The first one we did was Pinot Noir from Burgundy. We talked about the wines and presented them in a way that went through the grapes, here’s the Côte de Beaune versus the Côte de Nuits, here’s their appellation system where you have village wine, the Premier Cru, the Grand Cru, and then here’s what old wines taste like. Then we did the same thing for Bordeaux and the Rhone. The seminar format was interesting but at some point, I think that people already knew about 2/3 of the information being imparted. We were learning about the regions and tasting the wines but the next stage was to go into a kind of laboratory setting and really understand why Barolo tastes different than Barbaresco. The best way to go in to a lab is to just start writing tasting notes about these wines and comparing notes. We eventually expanded the format and started doing things like blind tastings or pairings with cheese, so we keep throwing in different things, which is how we learn instead of just always doing the same format all the time. 

We’ve done 30 Wine Salons to date. We’ve tasted more than 1200 bottles, we’ve posted tasting notes for about 450 wines on CellarTracker, [posted as events under “Austin Wine Salon”], and many of these were what we called ‘Definitive’ like Definitive Bordeaux, Definitive Rhone, and we can’t taste them all but we bring the most important ones into these events. About a third of the people that come to Wine Salon own cellars and out of the remaining two thirds, about half are sommeliers and the other half are people in the wine business or very close to it - maybe chefs or restaurant owners or some that work for a wine distributor. So we have about 70 people on a list but I can only get about 36 people into a Wine Salon at any given time. 

Do you have a vision for the future of Wine Salon or do you want to keep the status quo? 

If I were younger I’d be doing a blog and maybe even more Wine Salons. They could be replicated and done in other cities - that would be fun! People with cellars like sharing and after some years of sharing with your friends it’s actually thrilling to share them with younger people and, at times, see how wide their eyes get tasting some of these wines that they may not otherwise have had an opportunity to taste. But for now, I like the idea of just continuing it the way it is and let it evolve and just enjoy it. Maybe someday it will become an adjunct to some other program but there’s never a lack of topics. In fact sometimes the wines may not always be the greatest in the world, but it’s the topic that keeps me interested. 

What are your views about wine critics? 

I like scores in a lot of ways because we go through life with scores. We took tests and wrote term papers and had a sense of where we stood, so it’s a cultural thing that we grew up with. If you’re going to buy a car you look at Consumer Reports and you check out what Car & Driver thinks, so am I really going to go out and buy a car without checking in on what the experts think? I know scores make it easier than reading a whole page of tasting notes. But it’s interesting that at Wine Salon I tell everyone as they’re tasting that if they want to enter scores, please do because I’ll enter them on CellarTracker, but half the people write down scores and half don’t. I think some people don’t feel comfortable scoring wine. 

What is useful are the wines that are scored. If I’m going to drink a Pichon-Lalande and I can choose between a 1990 or an ’89, I’m going to look it up. Maybe this one scored a 93 and the other one scored a 96 so which one am I going to drink? The very people that say they don’t believe in wine scores are the same people that go to CellarTracker to find out what the best vintage of Pichon-Lalande is from those years. They use it, but they don’t want to score wine. At Wine Salon scores might come from ten or more people that are pretty sophisticated and I’ll average them out and use them because I trust them.

The important thing for me in wine reviews isn’t always the score, but more importantly is, when do I drink it? I don’t like drinking wine that isn’t ready to drink because it’s a waste of money and so is drinking them too late. So the first reason for me reading reviews is so that I can drink wines when they’re at their best. And then it goes into value, quality and cost, and then if you read a little more you might find out it has two grapes in it that you haven’t had before or it will tell you what the blend is. 

I wish all reviewers were more flexible though. It’s very difficult for Parker to explain why one year he rates all these Australian wines at 97 or 98 points and four years later they’re 90 or 91. As a critic, you owe it to a lot of people that spend a lot of money, to explain what was going on with your palate. A great example is, day in and day out Parker will say the 1990 Pichon-Lalande is a 79 point wine. He said it fifteen years ago and he’ll say it today but it’s never been a 79 point wine! It might be an 86 or 88 but it’s not a 79. And Spectator gave it a 97, which it’s also not, so why are they so different? 

They’re different because they insist that their palates discern something the other does not and I’ve had that wine enough to know that they’re just making their own point of view. They need to loosen up and start explaining more and be able to say, “I made a mistake, I was wrong about this, and this is what I think now,” and to always understand that it’s not the absolute final word on the subject. But I’ve sat next to Parker a couple of times at dinner and he’s a nice guy, down to earth. 

What about ordering wines at restaurants? 

Well almost all restaurants sell their good wine too young so I don’t order expensive wines at restaurants. And I also get served wines too cold or vise versa. From experience, I’ll order rosé because they’re good when served cold or I’ll order a German wine because they don’t need to be warmed up that much. Often I’ll order wine based on temperature! 

I went to a restaurant two weeks ago and ordered a half bottle of Meursault, a really nice wine. I was sitting outside in 60 degree weather in San Francisco and I had to wrap my hands around it for an hour to warm it up, otherwise it would have been a waste of money. It was so sharp and minerally and I thought it was just off, except finally the last three sips were great. But why in the world would they pull this out of a refrigerator and serve it at 40 degrees? There’s still a lot of work that restaurants need to do but it’s really fun to go to a place that does it right – they have the right wines and serve them in the right glass at the right temperature. 

The biggest jump in the US and in Austin has been with food and wine pairings so restaurants are more and more carrying the wines that pair with their food, or they’re more often preparing their foods that go with their wines. It’s admirably noticeable. It’s interesting that many chefs are beer drinkers because they work in hot kitchens, and the end of the day beer cools them off a bit, but a lot of chefs have been making a big effort to understand wine better, so we’re seeing a big change from five years ago. 

How important is it to have food with wine? 

I think it’s totally important. Except for maybe Champagne or rosé to start with, I can’t imagine drinking any wine without food. A good example is drinking a Chianti on its own and then drinking it with food, it almost doesn’t matter what the food is, and the wine is so much better. Chianti is not a very pleasurable drink on its own but it’s a completely different experience with food. I don’t think you can taste wine real well with food but if you have some food and go back and taste wine, it’s a lot better. 

But if I’m academic and drinking a great wine, one of my favorite wines is a ’90 St Emilion or a La Tache, no, I’ll go straight, I won’t insist on food because I really want to understand those wines. I can jump over that need for food. If I’m drinking a great d’Yquem though, and pair it with Roquefort or foie gras, I think it actually gets better. I’m amazed at those pairings; they’re almost mystical. But Italian wines almost always need food. I think Burgundy and Bordeaux lend themselves to drinking better on their own, especially when they get older and do stand on their own. Even some old American Cabernet Sauvignon can do that. Last night I drank an ’86 Cornas and is was beautiful on its own but I think that most wine historically came about to be vinified to have with food so when I’m drinking Côte Rôtie or something like that, I find that drinking it with food is a better experience. 

Are there any particular wines or wine regions you tend to favor? I know you’re really diverse . . . 

Well, I’m kind of encyclopedic when it comes to enjoying wine, as are most of us, but I prefer French and Italian and within France, it’s typical with the three regions [referring to Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Rhone in no particular order]. I love old Bordeaux, I can’t imagine not loving old Bordeaux, because they are just tremendous when they’re ready to drink and with a tremendous nose. Sometimes I think with older Bordeaux or Burgundy I don’t even need to drink them – the aromas are just so fascinating that I just want to smell them. Sometimes it’s like, okay I’ll drink it but I don’t have to, and in fact, sometimes I don’t want to be disappointed by drinking it. And sometimes these aromas are not taking me back to childhood memories of smells, but instead they’re taking me back to the first time I had Pauillac or understood it. So I like that. And I prefer France versus Italy. 

Any predictions about where the wine industry is going? 

Well wine as a whole has never been better than it is today. I think global warming is helping wine, sadly enough, due to more regions that can now make better wine because they can grow riper grapes. Burgundy is a good example: it used to be that there would be maybe two out of ten vintages that were good because the climate was just so cool, same with Germany, and now it’s warmed up enough that most years are pretty good. So I think wine is very exciting today. There’s so much choice and it’s never been as good. 

On the other hand, what’s going on in business is that business itself is being driven by not having inventory, like if you want a Dell computer, they’ll build it for you. So we don’t have wine aging and it’s more focused on immediate gratification, which is why we have so many wines that are ready to drink as soon as they are released. That’s kind of disappointing. The best example is California Cabernet Sauvignon, where some of them from the 60s are absolutely wonderful, a lot of times better than their Bordeaux counterparts, and I’m not sure that’s happening much anymore. I’m not sure there are any California winemakers that are making wine that will drink well forty years from now. 

With all the technology being used in winemaking today, that leads to the question of intervention. How far can we go with this before we end up with wine that’s as non-expressive or is as homogenized as Coca-Cola? 

I’m always amazed. Take the number of vintages, times the number of grape varieties, times the number of winemakers and what do you have? Let’s just throw out a number of a million different wines out there. And yet I can drink a wine and tell you this is a 1985 La Tache [Domaine de la Romanée-Conti] or a 1985 Silver Oak, Napa Valley, or I’ll know it’s a 1995 Ornelia, and even with a billion different tastes, there are wines you just know. Some people don’t care. They want the same thing every night like Budweiser or they want Kendall Jackson Chardonnay, and there’s nothing wrong with this. But then there are other people that just want the larger experience – they want to read different books and see different kinds of movies, take in independent films. So with wine there will be people that drink the same Kendall Jackson forever that’s been manufactured for twenty years, then you have others that love the Paolo Bea di Montefalco Sagrantino and if you started screwing around with Sagrantino and made it in a different style, they wouldn’t like it. 

So I think there are a lot of us that appreciate differences. I think there is more differentiation happening today with Oregon Pinot Noir than there was ten years ago, I think for California Pinot Noir and Chardonnay too, so there is more individualization and it shows. But people need to find those wines because there’s so much clutter that even if you make the greatest wine, if people can’t find it, you’ll go out of business. But there has never been so many wine bars, wine classes, or wine tastings. Today there are probably more people going to wine tastings than going to book clubs – it’s a social phenomena. 

Last question. Any three people, living or not, that you could have dinner with, who would they be?

Well a lot of people I like are rascals so I don’t think I’d like to have dinner with them (laughs). I like Krishnamurti who was an Indian philosopher, an anti-religion, but spiritual person, and then I could deal with anybody because he can deal with anybody (more laughter). Maybe James Joyce but I probably wouldn’t enjoy having dinner with him. 

Sorry, I don’t know who that is Brian.

He an Irish writer that wrote ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, ‘Ulysses’, and ‘Dubliners.’ There are so many musicians . . . I’ve got a philosopher, a writer . . . and then John Lennon. Lennon would love to have dinner with Krishnamurti and he’d actually love to have dinner with James Joyce too. ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ is kind of like ‘A Day in the Life’. That’s only one dinner – I’m sure I could think of a lot more! 

Awesome interview Brian. You have been very generous with your time and I really appreciate this interview. Thank you again – I look forward to seeing you at Wine Salon and other wine events soon.

Photo by George Edwards, presumably used with permission: Brian Owens at Austin Wine Salon (Great French Wines – May 2010). 

Let’s face it. As fascinating as the subject of wine is per se, there would be no wine without actual people (at least so far) so the nexus of this series of interviews takes on the greater subject of influencers, whether they be winemakers, collectors, chefs and foodies, educators, or benefactors whose path has somehow conveyed intrinsic value to the world of wine. It was my distinct pleasure to interview Brian Owens, an Austin Texas wine collector and educator that has had a profound effect on many professionals in the wine industry and countless others that have had the good fortune to know him.

Due to his father’s US Air Force pilot career Brian lived in a lot of places, like kids do that come from a military family, and from the age of sixteen his dad was stationed in London. At seventeen Brian was shuttling from the US to Europe and back and after high school he started traveling through Europe. Brian traveled mostly throughout France and Italy at the time, thus wine became the order of the day. His early introduction was mostly focused on Spanish and Italian wines, somewhere around wino grade, but at that age quality is not the first thing on anyone’s mind. 

After a couple years of graduate school Brian came back to the US but not before traveling around Europe with his best friends, who once back, opened Jeffery’s (consistently one of Austin’s best fine dining restaurants). Acquiring a taste for European wines at a young age paved the way for Brian to become who he is today: a highly esteemed and respected wine collector and wine educator with a great palate, knowledge, and passion that he willingly shares with most anyone who’s interested in learning more about wine.

Amongst his many formidable accomplishments, Brian first created and now plans and presides over a wine event known as the Austin Wine Salon. Each month at Wine Salon collectors, sommeliers, restaurateurs, and wine industry people get together to share great and interesting bottles of wine, compare notes, and generally propagate wine knowledge in a planned and organized format. A typical Wine Salon will pour anywhere from 36 to 40 bottles and each event has a theme such as ‘Definitive Bordeaux’, ‘Blind Is More Fun’ or ‘Definitive Burgundy’. Wine Salon usually is host to 32 to 36 people and the waiting list to be a part of this coveted function is long and in high demand.

Brian is very well spoken and eloquent and has a wonderful ability to make complex subjects easy to understand without ever being condescending or intimidating. Like many of us, he embraces the opportunity to be around people that love wine as much as he does and he shines brightly in this environment. Without further ado, I give you Brian Owens:

So when you came back to the US you landed where?

I started working in television in Washington DC for the National Cable Television Association and I was traveling a lot and later I was in California a lot, so what do you do? You start visiting wineries. So when I was 24 or 25 I discovered California wineries. I was going to Napa and Sonoma and drinking Zinfandel, which were all of $2 or $3 dollars a bottle. Zinfandel was very misunderstood at that time but I got hooked beyond the European wines.

It’s interesting that you lived in DC. They had great food and wine in that town.

Washington was very French oriented, it was designed by a Frenchman, I lived in a neighborhood that had great wine stores and great restaurants, and good wine was really cheap. Robert Parker was around the area then before he started Wine Advocate and was going to the same places. It was so amazing that even in ’73 or ’74 you could buy a Clos Vougeot Grand Cru Burgundy for $5. I don’t even know who produced most of these wines because it was often a négociant but they’d slap the same label on the bottle. It might be a Clos Vougeot or a Gevery-Chambertin or Bonnes Mares. One might be $3 and another might be $9 - there were some good and some bad vintages. From ’67 through ’70, some were awful vintages but the price was right.

It’s interesting that traipsing around Europe for as long as you did, that you came back and actually found an appreciation for California wine, especially at a time when California was still trying to find itself as a wine region.

Well, I think I got into California because I was working in the cable TV trade association. I was had just gotten through graduate school in film production and the industry was in the early stages of cable TV, just starting Home Box Office (HBO) - my job was programming. But HBO started a lobbying effort and they wanted to do wine and cheese tastings for Congressmen so they gave me the job because they knew I liked wine and that I knew something about it. So suddenly I had to go out, like ten different times, and buy four cases of wine each time and the cheese too. I was 23 or 24. I would buy different California wines and that’s what really got me into the region. They didn’t want to serve European wines to United States Congress members so I had to buy American wines and American cheese. I was buying a lot of Oakville and Beaulieu Vineyards [BV] and that’s how I learned those wines.

So this was influential in your decision to start collecting wine at this point?

Yes, I started collecting wine at that point. I’d go into the wine shop and say, “If I buy four cases would you give me a discount on some European wine?” Sure! So that’s how I got into collecting Burgundy.

But you knew what you were buying at this point?

No, not really. I remember the first nice wine I got was Beychevelle, then I got Clos Fourtet, then I remember buying a Margaux and being so excited that I had a Margaux, only to learn that what I bought was a Margaux from the appellation, not a bottle of Château Margaux. So I’m sitting on a bottle of wine for about a year and a half until I realize I didn’t buy Château Margaux, and you learn that way.

Do you remember a moment that went off in your head where you said to yourself, “Wine is really awesome, I want to learn more” or was it kind of a gradual process?

Well, I think almost everybody that’s into wine has an experience with a bottle and it’s in a situation, and it may or may not be with food, but we have a situation where we drink this wine and think it’s perfect. There’s something that comes over our bodies and we think, “I’m at one with what I’m drinking.” It’s almost an out-of-body experience with a bottle of wine and then what happens is that we want to replicate that experience! So we come back and try to experience it again and it’s elusive. So then the questions: ‘why did that happen? Was it the wine? Was it the vintage? Was it the food?’ And we’re kind of caught and we had this experience but had trouble replicating it and then eventually we replicate it at some point again – we have another experience with another wine and we just want to do more of that. And it’s not just purely a sensatory experience about tasting a wine. It comes in context because we’re probably with somebody; one person or three people and we’re all going, “Wow!” So you have this whole dynamic of sharing going on too, this complex experience of wine.

And to jump to the sensory part of it, smell is a very, very deep sense and it can bring back very important stuff, even memories from childhood, and if you smell wine sometimes it will take you back thirty years ago. So when you have that sensory experience with the complex aromas of wine, maybe even subconsciously, you sometimes have an indefinable experience that delivers you back into some kind of pleasure moment. And secondly, taste is a very strong sense. So you can have some kind of experience that is more than, say, just looking at the Grand Canyon. We can be amazed by the view and size of the Grand Canyon but to smell something that takes you into a different time is a so much larger experience. So I think when you do that and try to replicate it and start to go down that road, you just subscribe to it – you just become a believer.

Some people actually don’t get it and, this is weird, but maybe it’s because some people just don’t have a sense of smell that’s developed. I do find that people that like wine actually do have a sense of smell that is developed really well and they taste very well. They have very good olfactory senses and that’s probably why they’re involved in wine. It’s kind of like musicians. The great one’s naturally have an ear that they were born with. There are a lot of people that want to be musicians but lack the natural talent to actually do it well. Same with wine people.

What is it about wine that makes it such a social vehicle?

Well, it is just by its nature. I go up and get an éclair or a cup of coffee, I’m probably not going to split it with you. I go up and get a bottle of wine, I’m not going to drink the whole thing by myself - I’m going to share it with you. I’m not going to have a bottle of my wine and you’re not going to have a bottle of your wine without us sharing what we have.

So you think it’s about quantity?

No, it’s about the bottle immediately. You can see it with beer: you get this beer, and I’ll get this other beer. We may not share a glass of wine but the bottle has a lot to do with sharing and it’s part and parcel of the beast. It forces you into sharing. When a bunch of us go out for barbeque it forces us into sharing too. Should we get some brisket, some pork, some beef? It’s a different experience than going to a traditional restaurant when you go out to a place like this with people, and you get a whole bunch of stuff on butcher paper and then everybody digs in. Right away conversation begins, “How is that?” Do like that? Is this good?”

But wine seems to be different socially than drinking beer together or cocktails.

Yes, a good example, you get a cocktail, I get a cocktail, and we’ll say we like our cocktails and we might even make a few comments about them but it won’t go much further than that. But when you get a bottle of wine you’ve made a joint decision and ultimately you have to ask, was it a good decision or a bad decision because you’ve got this whole bottle you have to get through. Even at a basic level people will start talking. They order a bottle of Pinot Grigio and one of us asks, “Should we have ordered the Chardonnay?” and the conversation begins. And wine people definitely share more about what they’re drinking, especially with other wine people. Wine gives us this sensory experience on a deeper level and can transport us to a different world, so-to-speak. I don’t think I can do that with a beer.

When you first started collecting wine, did you have a specific goal or strategy in mind?

I think not. Most of what I started buying was because of value and if the value was from Argentina, even though I like Bordeaux, I’d buy it if it was really priced right. So early on it was really about value but as you get into value you eventually get suckered into reading reviews about wine and wine scores. Then it moves to, “Wow, I can buy this 95 point wine for $10 or I can buy a 90 point wine for $20.” Even if the $20 wine is the one I like, I’m going to walk away from it and buy the 95 point wine.

So your collection was initially more about value?

Yeah, when you’re young, you don’t have a lot of money and you’re still learning but you don’t mind because you’ve got the whole world at your palate. You don’t mind buying something from the Languedoc or Minervois or some strange region you’ve never heard of. And you find a Côte du Rhône for $4 that Parker rated 90 points, and you explore it and pretty soon you learn what Grenache is. It’s all learning. And almost everybody I know started collecting on value and you work your way up. And then you start learning about vintages – some of it’s good, some bad, but I think you expand your horizon more by starting with value than you would if you just decided to learn everything there is about Bordeaux or a single region, which is the second act.

Do you have any formal education in wine - did you ever want to go down that road?

Well, a lot of it is time and when you’re working hard, you just don’t have the time to do it. The other thing is that I wasn’t in the profession so I really didn’t have a need to become a sommelier, for instance. So with me, I have substituted experience for sitting in a classroom learning about wine. The sad thing to discover in wine is that sommeliers, and even winemakers, have very small worlds. Sommeliers are in the world of consumers/restaurants and more and more restaurants cannot afford to acquire older vintages so the wine list is limited to the last several years of releases. That’s the scope of their world. And winemakers are often the same. They’re basically farmers, out in the country, and know a lot about farming but not so much about wine. So experience can certainly be a substitute for formal education, which at some point will segue this conversation into Wine Salon.

Part 2 will be posted soon. Don’t miss this because there is so much to gain from Brian’s wisdom, experience and depth of knowledge; more about Wine Salon, restaurants, wine critics in Part 2!

David Boyer

Photo: Brian Owens

It’s pretty easy to taste and write about great wine from a great vintage, especially if it’s from a great château like those in Part 2. All of those wines mentioned from the appellations of Pauillac, Margaux, St Julien, and St Estèphe in Part 2 are produced by châteaux from the Classification of 1855, which are located on the Left Bank and are considered some of the most esteemed and famous wine estates in the world.

Think about this for a minute though: there are over 10,000 châteaux in Bordeaux, producing some 14,000 different labels (brands). That is an enormous number of wine producers by any measure! In 2005 Bordeaux produced 950,000,000 bottles of wine, a slightly higher than average number per year. But the world’s most recognizable Bordeaux comes from the 61 châteaux that were listed in the Classification of 1855, the few upper echelon estates in St Émilion and Pomerol, along with a smattering of others. And I mean smattering.

Does it not make sense that other châteaux in the region would be capable of making reasonably good wine too? I know there are lots of issues such as terroir, financial resources to produce good quality, winemaking skills and so on. But after tasting numerous Bordeaux that were previously unknown to me, I can’t begin to tell you how badly America is missing out and I’m talking about everyday types of wine that would be priced at under $30 if we could only get them here. All of these wines were from small family châteaux that are all around the ‘big and famous’ châteaux, growing the same grapes and using the same techniques as the big guys.

I would like for American wine lovers to understand that:

• Just because a particular wine from Bordeaux is not classified doesn’t mean it is low quality, especially in good vintages such as ’03 ’05, ’09 and 2010
• Just because you have a bad experience with one bottle of Bordeaux doesn’t mean that all Bordeaux is bad – often the grocery store wines are made in huge quantities much like the jug wines from California to satisfy distribution channels, so take the time to explore finding some better bottles with your local retailer and you will be rewarded
• Often Americans drink Bordeaux too young when it was made to age (and with proper storage and age comes complexity that cannot be obtained by any other means). Some vintages like 2005 and 2010 will be approachable at a much younger age than say the ’03 so don’t expect great things from a wine that’s too young to drink. Either buy older wines or age them properly for the best results unless it is a vintage that can be enjoyed very young.
• Bordeaux is far bigger than just a few dozen châteaux; these brands do not have an exclusive on the quality of wine
• Lower priced Bordeaux does not necessarily translate into to poor quality Bordeaux; many wines from Médoc and Haut Médoc (the larger region surrounding many of the smaller more illustrious appellations) were truly delicious, well-made, beautiful wines that would sell in the US for $20 to $30 per bottle at retail – if we could only get them here
• Compared to many New World wines, these wines are made with modern tools but with Old World values, which means far less intervention during the winemaking process. Winemakers in France are far less likely to add things or subtract things just to gain market share, which is more of a New World tactic that begins to taste a lot like so much homogenized soda after a while. Here, you can still taste a wine’s grapes, region, and style and it’s far more interesting and better tasting too.

The problem is that many of these wines are difficult to find because they don’t have distribution here. The only way to change this is to create demand for them at the retail level by asking your retailer to find the best one’s and stock them. At some point a savvy retailer will begin to demand these wines from its distributors who will then look for them from importers. There’s a whole long chain to accomplish the feat of getting ‘non-household name’ Bordeaux into the US but it’s seriously worth the effort. Many of these smaller châteaux are producing 50,000 to 200,000+ bottles a year so they’re certainly large enough to be distributed here.

Once you have great Bordeaux, whether it’s a $1500 First Growth or a good quality $25 Cru Bourgeois Superieur, your whole outlook will be changed about wine. This is truly some of the very best wine on the planet and in a vintage like Bordeaux had in 2010 you almost can’t go wrong. We as consumers need to be insistent with our local wine shop owners or we’ll continue to be left out from enjoying some of the best wine in the world. If you would like to receive a list of some of these wines I tasted personally, please drop me an email at david.classof1855.com and I’ll be happy to send it to you. Let the hunt begin!

David Boyer

Photo: My visit to Château Lafite-Rothschild, maker of one of the most prominent wines in the world.

As I mentioned in Part 1, the 2010 Bordeaux tasting was the highlight of Vinexpo for me and really one of the main reasons I went to the event. I have enjoyed fine wine from every region of the world and it doesn’t matter if it’s great Burgundy, Syrah/Shiraz, Brunello, or Riesling, I always come back to Bordeaux.

The tasting itself was filled with exuberance from châteaux serving their wines, as well as those tasting the wines. It had a joyous party-like feel to it and somewhere around 130 châteaux were present. Not many of the wines being served were actually bottled yet but were served from bottles with handwritten labels so most of what was poured into our glasses were actually barrel tastings. That’s really what blew me away: the fact that these wines were so young but drinking so well already, with such balance, purity, and complexity was a remarkable achievement to me!

Standouts for me from the 2010 vintage:

• Château Lynch-Bages was the best vintage I have ever tasted from this estate and I’ve enjoyed a considerable amount of them. Here was spectacular depth and purity of fruit as if I could taste all the separate elements of the Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petite Verdot (the typical Left Bank Bordeaux varieties). Beautiful tannins and a long and layered finish were just frosting on the cake so to speak. I’m positive this will come together over the years and be one of the best ever from this estate.
• Château Pichon-Longueville Baron was a huge mouthful of gorgeous black fruit and polish but with enough acidity to keep it all framed and in balance; too often this much ripe fruit makes a wine flabby but not so in this case. I have had many vintages of both Pichon Baron and Pichon-Comtesse de Lalande and usually find the Lalande to be the better of the two, but for ’10, the Baron to me was clearly better. By the way the Lalande is not shabby either.
• Wines from Pauillac led the way in terms of flavor, complexity, polish, and finish, to wit: Châteaux Lynch-Bages and Pichon-Longueville Baron
• Wines from Margaux exhibited the classic and remarkable aromatics that only Margaux can produce – one of the standouts was Château Rauzan-Ségla, which had a higher blend of Merlot (35%) than many Left Bank wines, and was one of the best ever this château
• Wines from St Julien (Château Gruaud Larose and Châteaux Léoville Barton and Léoville Poyferré were standouts for me) and St Estèphe were also very fine and kind of in between the wines from Pauillac and Margaux in terms of flavor, nose, complexity and finish; nearly all were great quality, very delicious and balanced for being so young but also have enough stuffing to age well
• Pessac-Léognon and Graves were very structured and were much more like barrel tastings than the other appellations I tasted that day. I am very fond of this appellation and although they didn’t show as well at that moment, I think they will age better than many 2010 wines from the other Bordeaux appellations unless the alcohol levels of finished wine goes beyond 15%. The standout here for me was Château Latour-Martillac (and their whites are truly sensational too)
• The Right Bank’s St Emilion wines were spectacular showstoppers with rich ripe fruit, finesse, and depth of flavor, all with great precision and balance. There were too many standouts here to list but Château Angélus was perhaps the most memorable. Pomerol wines too were great with Château La Conseillante being the standout for me. Not surprisingly Château Pétrus and Château Le Pin were not present. Why? Because they don’t have to be.
• Not to be forgotten for a second are the wines of Sauternes and Barsac. I believe the 2010 vintage will produce some of the best ever from these appellations. These wines were almost across the board stunning in their depth, complexity, balance, and finish. Botrytis was kind to the fruit in this vintage and all the right weather conditions converged to produce some amazing wine, even though much of the fruit was not able to be picked until late October. With the excellent acidity and sugar balance, these wines should age very well and develop into something very special. Outstanding for me was Château Sigalas Rabaud, which is a First Growth Sauternes that I had never tasted before, possibly due to limited US distribution. I found upon my return that what little there is in the US is priced so low, it’s like stealing. This wine was very pure and had a phenomenal nose of apricot, pear, pineapple, and almonds with a long and ever-changing finish. Wow!

These are but a few of the wines that really knocked me out but there is a lot more to get into on the next segment of this journey. Specifically, I’ll share some important information about the Mèdoc and Haut Mèdoc because America is missing out on some real treasures that are actually affordable. More soon!

David Boyer

The experience of tasting nearly 2000 wines in the course of about 65 flights seems daunting to me even now but that is exactly what I did for Better Wine Guide. I’m fairly caught up with this project and I’m ready to get back to writing. As challenging as this was for me, I am really happy I had such an opportunity because it certainly puts things squarely into perspective, not the least of which, I must acknowledge that I am completely spoiled by the trappings of fine wine. But fine wine, or at least good wine does not have to cost $200+ per bottle.

Better Wine Guide is an iPhone app developed for people that do not have the desire or the time to learn all about fine wine. And if you are knowledgeable about fine wine, you know that the learning curve is pretty bloody steep and can take years of study and tens of thousands of dollars to eventually ‘come to an understanding’. It takes a protracted amount of time and commitment to learn wine on a reasonably deep level so, who can blame anyone for not doing it? It’s really like learning a foreign language and one must have that kind of commitment and resources of both time and money to bring themselves up to par with other wine experts in the world.

How did this Better Wine Guide project get started anyway? It started with my neighbors, all of whom are dear to me. Everyone knew I was a wine collector or as I am called more often, a ‘wine snob’ (I do not take offense to the description). So during frequent neighborhood get-togethers I would often ask people about their wine choices of Woodbridge, Yellow Tail, and the like. Truly I was fascinated about the selections that would show up in wine bottles. This lead to the question of, “How do you buy wine? When you’re shopping, why would you choose one bottle (brand) over another?” Almost every response was either, “I’ve had it before and I’m okay with it”, or more often “I like how the label looks.” Wow! How the label looks has never been an accurate indicator of quality as far as I know. This lead to more questions.

So I started researching this and it turns out that even though I have numerous brilliant people all around me, this wine-buying logic is not indigenous to my neighborhood. And further research revealed this mind-numbing information: last year in the US 330 million cases of wine were sold and more than 90% of that wine was priced at less than $25 per bottle. Those numbers were almost inconceivable to me. But the thing is that anyone that buys wine at a grocery store, or at a liquor store not specializing in fine wine, has no information available whatsoever about what they’re buying and no wine critic has ever reviewed these wine because they are not taken seriously! But if we revisit the number about these wines representing over 90% of the market, how can this be? I was stunned, really, when I started looking into this. But it hit me that I’ve never seen any major critic rate the wines that most Americans buy.

Thus, the idea of Better Wine Guide was born. As I’ve always shared with you, few things give me greater pleasure than turning people on to a bottle of wine that lights their fire. And the fact that these wines (almost all of them) have never been critically rated is what created Better Wine Guide, with the hope that people will discover a world of better of wine out there. I don’t want to compete with Wine Spectator, Robert Parker, Steve Heimoff, Stephen Tanzer, Jancis Robinson, or especially James Suckling (a rock star of sorts to me). These guys know what they’re doing, so who am I? I’m the guy that reviewed all of the wines they have disregarded, kicked to the curb, and would probably consider plonk. But the reality is, these are wines that most people drink and there deserves to be unbiased, critical information available about them.

The app’s design is easy to use with a barcode scanner so while in the store, scanning the barcode brings up a score and tasting notes for that particular wine. I wanted to write tasting notes that would be accessible without being condescending to people, avoiding the dumb-down approach; I would rather have people ask what ‘tannin’ means than intentionally sidestep the use of an extremely important term. With powerful search features and the ability to rate every wine purchased and contribute to community scores, the app seems well rounded for millions of wine consumers. All wine are under $25 per bottle and the user can search within her or his own price range in $5 increments.

My intent in the wine world is to turn people on to the best wine at a price that’s comfortable for them, whether that’s $6.99 or $1699. And I believe that regardless of price, if people have a good experience discovering good wine, they will at some point want to expand their horizons into better wine as their wine knowledge also expands. If you are a collector, oenophile, connoisseur, or otherwise a wine expert, the only reason you might want this app is to provide an answer when someone asks you to recommend a good wine, and you know they’re not going to spend more than $25 to buy it. But for people buying over 90% of the wine sold in America, this is for you.

So without further prose or fuss, I present to you Better Wine Guide - now available on Apple’s iTune Store.

David Boyer

To my dear readers: I know I’ve gone off the grid for a couple of months or so. I haven’t wanted to stay away but, like you, I’m subject to that dumb allocation of ‘you only get 24 hours a day’ rule. If I could have managed to stretch it or bend that unforgiving mandate somehow, I would have been posting on this blog a lot more and I wouldn’t be feeling so execrable about being away for so long.

For more than two months Monday through Friday, I have tasted, scored, and written tasting notes for 30 wines each evening. I did not taste wine on weekends or around the holidays to give my palate a break but nonetheless I have managed to get through over 1500 wines, a formidable task to say the least and the photos above and below illustrate how much my kitchen has been torn up. You’re the first to know - I’ve been engaged with this activity for the soon to be up-and-coming company, Better Wine Guide.

Although I can’t yet reveal all the details, Better Wine Guide is unlike anything that exists in this world so far and I believe it will contribute deeply to the discovery and enjoyment of wine for millions of people. Just in case you haven’t come to know me by now, that’s really what I’m about. If I could, I would make it my mission to turn everyone on to great wine because most often the people that say they don’t like wine are people that have never had good wine. And what are the chances of finding good wine when you’re in a store and swimming in a sea of bottles? The fact is that most people buy a wine based on how the label looks, which is definitely not an indicator of quality.

The experience of blind tasting thirty wines each evening is jarring physically and humbling cerebrally. Each morning I carried 30 bottles of wine into the kitchen and put the whites in the refrigerator to cool, leaving the reds on the counter. I wanted to taste these wines based on how most people will taste them, a white from the fridge and a red at room temperature, no matter what that happened to be. Even if serving temperatures were incorrect (and they were), it’s the real world.

At about 4:30 each afternoon, my stellar Tasting Assistant Deanna showed up. Her job probably wasn’t real great now that I think about it but she did it without fail or complaint. She dragged all the white wines out of the refrigerator and sorted them by varietal from presumably lightest to heaviest, entered in all of the wine label information into our database, put each bottle in a numbered brown bag that corresponded to the tasting order of wines that day, and returned them to the refrigerator. Each day typically consisted of 15 whites and 15 reds with sparkling and rosés included. She then sorted the reds and entered all of the information into the database, bagged them in numbered bags and set them up. Deanna would let me know when she was far enough ahead of me to begin tasting for the day but everything was in a numbered bag by then.

When I walked in to begin my daily tasting episode, she was opening and pouring white wine into the glasses, having about eight or ten glasses poured already. I picked up number one and took it to my tasting area with a computer set up. The computer had the database already opened but the screen was set so I couldn’t see any details about the wine. The only functions I could perform consisted virtually of entering a score and writing my notes. After tasting each evening, I had hours of running the dishwasher (no soap or heat) to clean the glasses and dry them by hand each night. I finished usually by 10:00 or 10:30 PM; the wine glasses I used are fantastic and have held up beyond belief.

I am always excited to find something good and even more so, something great. And I always feel bad about trashing a winery or giving low scores – as if I could make great wine? But I know what great wine tastes like and having no experience as a winemaker I found it challenging to be harshly judgmental. But I got over it and put the judgment thing into perspective. If I made lousy wine and I was the only one to drink it, who cares? But if I’m trying to sell it to the public (with a great label created by genius designers and marketers) and I know it sucks, well that’s another matter entirely. And ultimately, that’s the case with probably most wineries that are trying to sell ‘dumpster wine’ to us wine drinkers and they don’t deserve good scores but they do deserve to be uncovered. Like I said, I got over it.

Wow! Throughout this tasting experience, which is far from over, I have to say what really came into my consciousness (in a very deep way) was the concept of terroir. Terroir (pronounced tehr-WAH) is a French term that expresses a sense of place and typicity and is what makes a wine unique based on grape varietal characteristics, weather, microclimate, soil, sun, terrain, rain and exposure to all of the aforementioned. There are certainly descriptors that define wines from different regions and even from different vineyards within a few yards of each other, especially in France. Throughout this tasting experience the lack of terroir came front and center, as I tasted so many wines that are similar. These wines lacked character or expression because it has all been squeezed out of the winemaker’s equation by some enormous corporation in order to be competitive in the market. Sad. And I pounded them for it because ‘sameness’ is not anything good in wine – distinctiveness is.

As I wrote earlier, this is an eye-opening experience and I feel much better rounded because of it. There were good wines, and great wines too and I was surprised by quite a few wineries that I would not have imagined as making good wine, which gives reason to tasting wine blind. I have biases about wine because admittedly I tend to be a wine snob in the traditional sense, but I have to say that I’m impressed with a surprisingly large number of wines I would have never considered to be of quality. Surprise, in fact, is the word of the day on this subject. I really have to tell you that there has never in the history of the planet been more really good wine available at every price point. Yes, there’s some plonk out there and with so many wines available (some experts believe that 200,000 labels are available worldwide at any given time and that it is a conservative number) there’s a lot of it. Regardless, there really is a tremendous amount of drinkable wines (like for an everyday wine) and a pretty good amount of very good wines, and of course a handful of really incredible wines.

Although there is no end in sight to this assignment, I must say that I feel very lucky to have had the experience of tasting wine critically. It smacks down old prejudices, opens new doors for me, and ultimately humbles me to know that there are so many great wines out there. In the end, would I trade good Bordeaux for a good Yellow Tail? I’ll answer the question but if you know me at all, you probably already know my answer.

David Boyer

Photos: Sad, unusable kitchen. Take out anyone?

I love turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and all of the traditional Thanksgiving dishes but sadly, I wear those dishes for quite a while, post-gorge. I especially enjoy family, loved ones, and dear friends over the holidays. But when it comes down to it, I could entirely forget the holiday meal and just enjoy some great wine. I could dispense with the turkey but not the meaningful social experience of sharing good wine and, the season is upon us already so let the sharing begin.

Hanging with my wonderful wife, my great brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew give me a lot to be thankful for. We four adults have had numerous and very memorable wine experiences together and although this year may not be as grandiose as other wine explorations, it will be decent. Sharing good wine is always rewarding to me, as is the ensuing and deep conversation about wine.

So here’s what’s on deck this Thanksgiving:

-        LaSirena Muscat, 2006

This is Heidi Barrett’s label and of course Heidi was responsible for making all of the great vintages of the very famous (and incredibly expensive) Screaming Eagle. This is vinified bone dry so there are fabulous tropical fruit and grapefruit notes as I recall, very nice complexity, and a long, clean finish thanks to its crisp acidity. It really drinks perfect with turkey.

-        Louis Latour Volnay En Chevret Premier Cru, 2005

This red Burgundy is young and on the more muscular side but the vintage was so good and the fruit so ripe that it was drinkable and enjoyable almost upon release. It should compliment nicely the bolder flavored dishes that will be passed around the table. I’ll be happy to have another go at this because, as I remember it, the wine was very deep and rich with a powerfully long and flavorful finish and it’s been three years or more since I’ve cracked one open so it should be even better this year.

-        Château Doisy-Védrines, 1988

Second Growth Bordeaux from the Barsac appellation, this dessert wine should be in its perfect drinking window right now. The color is fairly deep amber at this time, which indicates that it is aging as expected - these great wines are somewhat pale upon release and darken with age and become ever more complex. We’ll serve it up with the classic pairing of fresh bleu cheese – this is a dessert to savor.

-        Château Gruaud Larose, 1989

Second Growth Bordeaux from the St Julien appellation, this wine is one of my all-time favorites in many vintages and is still a very reasonable bargain, I believe, because it never made it on the list of Robert Parker’s so-called ‘Super-Seconds’. That list made superstars out of a few Second Growth Bordeaux and drove their prices higher and although I very much enjoy the Super-Seconds, Gruaud Larose offers nothing less than any other Second Growth. This will be for later in the evening I suspect, but will likely deliver smoky, beautiful black fruit with a gorgeous bouquet, palate, and finish. Really there’s nothing left to ask for in a fine wine – I’m a huge fan of this châtaux.

These wines may be considered modest by the great trophy-wine standards of the world but I don’t have to drink First Growth Bordeaux, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Burgundy, or a Château d’Yqum to be happy or enjoy wine. I am truly grateful to my family, and friends (which certainly includes my wine friends) and have every reason to give thanks to many, including you, dear readers.

I’d like to know what everyone else is drinking for the all-important feast this year – please send me your lineup. I wish you a great and safe Thanksgiving holiday filled with wine and loved ones.