Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog

Something Brilliant, Something Artisanal

It's been said by some that a large majority of my articles here over the past 8 years have been derogatory or critical in nature. Maybe they have. But the fact is, I get my greatest pleasure when I can point readers to something brilliant, unique or important.

Today we have something brilliant: ARTISANAL, RELUCTANT BRANDING PIONEER, DIES AT 474

Jen Doll penned this piece of culinary/semantic commentary/satire for Atlantic Wire, the on-line presence of the great "The Atlantic" magazine. If you have an interest in things culinary, in really fine writing and in the semantic arm of the branding arts, then take the time to read and savor this article.

This kind of writing is hard beause it's so easy to fail at it. Doll succeeds.

The point of Doll's article is that the term "artisanal" is so overused now as to be meaningless. It would be easy to make that point in a straightforward essay. And Lord knows that the term has been beaten like a horse in the world of wine. But what Doll does is enchanting. She chronicles the impact, the rise, the fall, the orgy of successes, the friends, the family and the faults of "Artisanal" in the form of an obituary for the word/fellow.

"He [Artisanal] is survived by his wife, Organic, and their two small boys, Natural and Green, as well as his cousin Hipster, though the two had fallen out in the '70s and were no longer on speaking terms.

Doll is inspired by a variety of recent commentaries on the uselessness of culinary terms, "artisanal" included, on the degradation of the meaning of the word and by a few moments in which the shark has been jumped where the use of the word is concerned. The piece is a melange of satire, humor, biting commentary and head-shaking disgust with the world of branding.

This is the kind of exciting and ambitious writing that you don't see much in the wine and food media world, probably because it's hard. Yet Doll's "Death of Artisanal" reads like it just flowed out of her, a sure sign she worked very hard at it.

Doll herself is a veteran writer and editor who has had stints at a variety of publications. Prior to joining Atlantic Wire she was At Village Voice. She's clearly a very good writer, which means she's a very good thinker and someone to try to follow if you do seek out compelling, artful, carefully crafted, entertaining and artisanal writing.

 

Can A Wine Really Be Bad for Your Soul?

The latest article at "Bigger Than Your Head", a blog maintained by long-time wine writer Frederic Koeppel, is evidence of many things, not the least of which is Frederic's talent to compose an excellent essay. It demonstrates why, after having won two Wine Blog Awards for "Best Wine Reviews", his blog also ought to be considered for "Best Writing" on a Wine Blog.

But this latest article, "Wine & Vulgarity", also demonstrates the extent to which judgement of the most serious kind is often an instrumental, fundamental and fascinating part of wine appreciation. And the article begs, once again, the question: what is quality?

Koeppel's primary point is that wine can be "vulgar"; vulgar as in "Kim Kardashian" - "Jersey Shore" vulgar. Frederic explains how vulgarity can make it into a wine this way:

"a wine whose treatment sensationalizes a grape’s aspects instead of allowing them a natural and authentic expression; a wine whose inherent character is obliterated by the ego of its winemaker and manipulator; a wine whose making bends it out of proportion to its...logical necessity, range and delivery."

Example?:

"A zinfandel or cabernet sauvignon or syrah/shiraz wine whose super-ripe grapes and high alcohol content, say, 15.5 or 16 percent, manifest themselves as cloying, jammy sweetness and a hot, unbalanced finish?"

Throughout the article, Frederic offers a number of other examples of "vulgarity" in wine and I recommend its reading as it is among the more succinct renditions of a line of wine criticism that has arisen in response to a certain style of wines over the past few years.

However, what's really fascinating about his criticism and use of the term "vulgar" to underscore his contempt for certain styles of wine is the way it highlights the essence of a critics primary objective:

To explain what is good and bad for your intellectual and spiritual well-being.

There is nothing inherently good or bad, nothing inherently offensive or inoffensive, nothing qualitatively moral or immoral about a red wine that is sweet, alcoholic, soft and extracted. In fact, many people will enjoy a wine that is alcoholic, soft, extracted and sweet.

Yet Frederic imposes a moral judgement upon these wines. It's not just a qualitative judgement or a judgement of the wine's character. It's that, in Frederic's mind, these wines are offensive to his sensibilities; they fail to meet his standard of what is "good" and "right" by being, in his mind, unauthentic, a product of ego and not nature, and ultimately, unnatural as, in his view, the wines step outside the logical limits the fruit is supposed to exhibit.

These wines are vulgar because they do not conform to Frederic's idea of what ought to be. Of course, the beauty of criticism, be it in the realm of television, film, dance, fine arts, architecture, literature or any other artistic pursuit, is that there is no objective warrant for what "ought" to be; there is not one way to definitively say what is beautiful and what is not. There is only opinion.

Koeppel's throwing down of the critical gauntlet is in no way unusual. However, it is among the purest examples I've ever seen of a professional and experienced wine critic making a value judgment wine styles. It's a unique judgement however because Koeppel isn't simply saying he thinks a wine is out of balance or a bit too astringent or a tad heavy-handed on the oak. He's saying it's bad (vulgar). More importantly Koeppel is declaring that in its vulgarity, the wine is bad for your soul and for your spiritual and intellectual well-being because it is offensive to nature? That's his argument.

It's a pretty well-rendered argument too—if you are inclined to buy it. The atheist listening to the apostle declare that his soul will be made wretched by indulging in pornographic images or in liquor or in casual sex because God condemns these things rolls his eyes and moves on because he sees this judgement being based on an unwarranted claim to what is good and bad, what is moral and immoral, what is right and what is wrong. And the atheist's judgement of these claims are equally valid as the original claims because we are dealing here in value judgement that are based on no facts, but rather on the ultimate subjectivity: personal preference.

A case can be made, though probably not as eloquently as Frederic does it, that a fat, soft, alcoholic, extracted Cabernet Sauvignon demonstrates the quality heights to which a wine grape can be brought. It's not a hard case to make. All I have to do is say I like it, then explain why I like the way a fat, soft wine sits easily on and caresses my palate; how the the 16.5% alcohol delivers a slight buy invigorating prick to my palate; how the richly extracted fruit in the Cabernet delivers a beautiful raisiny quality and speaks of deep and delicious pruny flavors that I love so much.

"Vulgarity" is in the eye of the beholder. And one thing is perfectly clear: within the world of wine lovers, there are innumerable definitions of vulgarity. None are definitive.

The Washington State Alcohol Experiement Begins

Friday, June 1 is the beginning of something very novel yet very old: a free market in liquor in Washington State.

On Friday private businesses will be charged with retailing whiskey, gin, tequila, scotch and all other spirits in Washington State, an activity controlled exclusively by state government since the 1930's. What's very old act of a private company such as a liquor store or grocery store selling spirits to the public. What's novel is that it is happening in what has been a "control state".

After Friday, only seven states will remain in the business of retailing liquor. And some of those, including Pennsylvania, are also considering getting out of this business and giving it over to the free market. As a result, the "Washington Experience" the will be watched very closely by many people.

There will be measurements made, studies conducted, early conclusions drawn, and reviews of the studies, measurements and conclusions written. The results of all these will be used as fodder in other legislative battles over privatizing liquor sales in other states and in litigation across the country that speaks to fair and unfair market conditions surrounding alcohol sales.

Will drunk driving arrests increase or decrease? Will more or fewer minors drink? Will minors drink at an earlier age? Will income for people working in and around spirit sales increase or decrease? Will state alcohol revenues increase or decrease? Will the choice of liquor increase or decrease for consumers? Will spirit sales rise or fall? 

All these questions and others will asked and answered over the years and many other states will be watching the experience and reading the subsequent reports that are issued.

But the change coming to Washington State is more than simply getting the government out of the business of retailing liquor. Starting June 1, producers of liquor can sell directly to retailers and restaurants, a HUGE improvement for both producers and sellers of spirits. Additionally, producers may now offer discounts to retailers or restaurants that buy in volume. And also beginning June 1, retailers may "centrally warehouse" there inventory. This means they can buy in larger quantities, store it off site from the retail outlet and not have to pay a wholesaler to make frequent deliveries to their store.

All of this is good in my mind, However, one aspect of the changes that are coming to Washington State that I believe MUST be changed is the requirement that a store selling spirits be 10,000 square feet or more in size. This requirement was originally placed in the bill to stop QuickMarts and gas stations from selling spirits. But, the provision also prevents independent, small, specialty wine stores from stocking spirits. This provision must change. It's simply unfair and without merit.

One things is clear. Washington State may be privatizing its spirit sales on Friday, but it isn't "deregulating" the spirit trade. In fact, numerous rules and regulations remain in place assuring that sales of spirits are carefully monitored and the state will still be paid enormous fees and taxes based on the sale of spirits, beer and wine.

All eyes interested in how consumers interact with alcohol are trained on Washington State. Because it is a vanguard in the slow move toward rational alcohol regulations, it will be watched very carefully. And there will be consequences.

Should Alcohol Bureaucrats Be Dissing the Will of the People?

State alcohol regulators, the bureaucrats that enforce the liquor laws in each state, have had it tough over the past few years. Budgets have been cut to account for reduced revenue and debt, while at the same time new challenges have confronted the regulators from increased products in the market to new technologies that challenge existing regulatory structures.

Two types of regulatory structures exist in the various states: The "Control State" and the "Open State". The primary difference is in "control states" it is the state that is in the business of wholesaling, retailing or both. Some control states only play in the market with spirits, leaving beer and wine to the free market. A smaller number of states control nearly everything.

The greatest existential challenge to the control state structure in the past couple of years has been the ballot initiative in Washington State that passed and, by vote of the populace—not legislators—put the sale of spirits in the hands of the free market and provided a variety of other reforms to Washington's other alcohol control and distribution laws. In addition, other states are considering reform that would turn control states into "open", "free market" states for the sale and distribution of alcohol.

This is a disturbing trend to regulators and they aren't necessarily taking it sitting down.

At the most recent meeting of the national association of control states, The National Alcohol Beverage Control Association (NABCA), the incoming president, Mark Bodi of the New Hampshire State Liquor Commission, had something to say about the privatization trend according to an article at Wine & Spirits Daily:

"Going from control to virtual un-control is not good for anyone. New taxes, higher prices, unfair distribution, regulatory uncertainties" and lawsuits "are not good for anyone in this room. We can never afford to let Costco again or anyone else control the debate or be so influential in an election."

Bodi is referring to the fact that in Washington State, Costco, hampered by the state control of spirits and other old laws that proved of little value today, funded the ballot initiative to the tune of $20 million.

Here's what I'm wondering. What business does an association of appointed bureaucrats have in advocating for, and appearing to want to affect, certain alcohol policy when their charge is not to make policy but rather to carry out the laws of the state?

What business do alcohol bureaucrats have dissing the will of the people, whether their will was instigated by Costco or anyone else?

This concerns me for the simple reason that it is in the best interests of the individual bureaucrats at the various state alcohol regulatory bodies to have more regulations to enforce. Their most basic interest is self interest, like others. What's best for them is more more responsibility and less hours working. More importantly, the NABCA has made it absolutely clear in the past that their advocacy efforts tend to anti-consumer.

Not long ago, the NABCA voted to support HR 5034 and HR 1161. These bill in Congress would have stripped wine retailers of their constitutional Commerce Clause protections to be free of state based discrimination. The bills were the creation of beer and wine wholesalers who greedily attempted to work out a method of keeping consumers from having wine shipped to them directly from out-of-state retailers and wineries.

Now, according to incoming President Bodi, the NABCA wants to prevent the public from voting on changes to the way alcohol might be regulated in states. Bodi characterizes some simple changes to regulatory laws that came out of the Washington initiative as "virtual uncontrol".

But again, these regulators that make up the membership of the NABCA are not policy makers. Nor are they charged with being advocates for any particular regulatory structure. They are charged, simply, with carrying out the will of the people as it pertains to alcohol control.

On the bright side, Bodi did seem to understand that the job of the alcohol regulatory control system is to serve consumers when he noted the necessity of "revising blue laws for new laws that are realistic, effective and consumer friendly....More than ever we need to work together. Good regulation, not necessarily more regulation, will promote more business."

Robert Mondavi: Winemaker and Zombie Killer

"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter"

If this isn't one of the most monumental non-sequitrrs in the history of film and literature I don't know what is. The film, based on the book (which I read with a great deal of glee), is coming to a theater near you very soon. It will, besides offer another opportunity to see how vampires react when their heads are chopped off, provide something of an "alternative history" for students of Lincoln.

However, the real prize that comes with the appearance of "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" in a theater near you is the opportunity to explore the idea of creativity and imagination. For those who write frequently about wine, market wine via frequent communications or are looking regularly for new ways to simply explore the nature of wine and their relationship to the beverage, the non-sequitur that marks the heart of this story of Lincoln and the undead is fertile ground.

For me, the best writers, thinkers and observers are those who possess the talent of finding linkage between ideas. Sometimes a link between ideas is obvious and likely to be intellectual ground that has been tilled for insight repeatedly because of the obvious connection. The notion of "Terroir" and "Culture is one such linkage between seemingly different ideas. Once you thnk about what terroir in wine means, it's not hard to make the link between the culture of a region that is said to express terroir.

The ideas of weather and drinking wine is another seemingly desperate set of topics where the linkage between them comes fairly easily. So, it, like terroir and culture, are discussed frequently. Because it's an easy connection.

But the most thrilling conversations and observations come when the set of topics have no easy linkage, yet the author or commentator finds a way to link them for intellectual profit. Don't be disappointed if you can't see the connection between the savior of the American Union and the undead straight away. It took me a few nights with the book to appreciate the link.

My point is this: if you are looking for new and interesting ways to embrace or talk about or explain or understand wine, then play with disparate ideas and try to connect them with wine. I'm not suggesting you go the distance and contemplate a story, book, blog post or marketing campaign that begins takes on the idea of "Robert Mondavi: Zombie Killer" or "Gary Vaynerchuk: Prom Queen" or "Robert Parker, Jr: Champion of Chicken Liver."

Rather, I'm suggesting that let yourself be inspired by being open to connections and linkages of a somewhat less absurd nature, but not too easily inspired,

The process of making seemingly disparate wine connections is somewhat like playing Seven Degrees of Separation On the one end always sits wine. On the other end sits nearly anything that you come across in your daily pursuits. For example, what are the connections between wine and:

-The presidential election
-The diminishing of anything free on airlines
-The way dogs seem so easily distracted
-A blue sky with no clouds to be seen

It takes an intellectual effort to see if there is a connection between the two seemingly disparate ideas, but frequently, in trying to connect the two, you discover what may be very interesting insights that could fulfill your responsibility to write about, think about or market wine. This is often how I approach a blank screen when I feel like writing for this blog, but have little on my mind or anything in particular I want to explore: I take the idea of wine on the one hand, place another idea or circumstance or observation on the other end, then walk them to the middle with connections and linkages and see what appears.

-The idea of Denigration Marketing comes out of looking at "natural" wine and presidential election marketing.

-The fascinating eruption of so much free wine knowledge flows from the realization on the one hand that nothing is free on airlines, including now a seat by the window, and the proliferation of wine advice that can be found now on the Internet.

-The conclusion that wine consumers today flit from one wine fad to another so much more quickly  occurs when watching my dog drop her chewtoy when a butter fly arrives at one end of the yard and also noticing the sudden taste for Moscato today; one that will be gone some day soon.

-The picture of a flawless blue sky above me combined with statistics on I've recently been studyng on direct wine shipping trends leads me to consider that there may be a picture perfect convergence of circumstances that will make winemakers very happy in a decades or so.

-And of course that Robert Mondavi was responsible for slaying the Zombies that fed on the notion that American wine could never be as good as French wine is is a connection so easy to make I'm almost embarrassed to offer it.

The process of creativity in wine writing and wine marketing is no different than the process that results in creativity in literature, film-making or anything else. It's about making unique connections between ideas and things and people that are not commonly made, then having the wherewithal to suss out the meaning of those connections. One thing I am NOT is a creative genius. I came to terms with that reality a long time ago. But I am familiar with the tools that make me and anyone a little better equipped to walk outside the box.

What Wine Club Members Want

There ought to be substantial benefits of membership for wine club members.

Fifteen percent discounts on regular shipments? Great! First dibs on new releases. Lovely. Waved tasting fees at the winery? Dandy.

But if you want loyal club members, ones that keep coming back, members that recommend membership to their friends, then give them something special. Give them reason to come together as real members of a club.

Here are some fine ideas for Wine Club gatherings that will keep club members happy, give them reason to gather and provided added value to your wine club:

1. Comedy Night
Members that laugh together stay together. This is remarkably easy event to produce. Find a good booker of comedians in your neck of the woods (call the closest comedy club and ask for the talent booker), hirer three professional comedians, provide dinner and drinks, then give them the laughs. An annual comedy night will sell out quick. Every one likes to laugh.

2. The Annual Charity Poker Tournament
You'd be surprised how many people now play Texas Hold'em. Some do it at home games. Some go to poker rooms, others indulge when they head to Vegas. Have your own. Bring in professional dealers (call the closest poker room), limit the number of folks to 100 to 150, charge $100 per person to "buy in", provide for prizes, wine and food and give the buy in money to your favorite charity. Poker is amazingly social, gets your members chatting, gives them bragging rights and makes them feel good about playing games.

3. The Annual Club Golf Outing
Why? See above. Additionally, your local golf courses will be happy to help you organize a wine club member golf outing. Better yet, show case your wines by having one wine tasted every other hole. You'll get mainly men attending, but you'll build lots of good will.

4. The Showcase of Artisan Foods
Given the explosion of artisan and craft food producers over the past 20 years, it's likely that you've got a ton of cheese, honey, meat, condiment, bread, pasta and other food producers in your neck of the woods. Give your members access. An annual showcase of local culinary artisans is the way to do it. Have 20 or so of them set up on your grounds, let them sample, let them buy and make sure they taste your wines at the same time.

5. The Roving Wine Dinner
Chances are every winery has ambassador-like club members across the country. Go visit them. In fact, set up a series of wine dinners in the homes of these members, let them show off their connections to their best wine loving friends, have a local chef or caterer brought in to fix the meal, then extol the guests with your story. And sell some wine. This kind of event is becoming more and more popular among the smaller, artisan wineries and it's a great idea and leads to new club members. And don't forget to thank your host.

6. The Harvest Lunch
If you are crushing lots of grapes, chances are you are also feeding lots of hard working harvest workers. Why not invite club members to join them for lunch. It will cost the members, but it gives them sort of the ultimate insider experience. Eating a fine lunch, on the premises, with the folks who are at that moment crushing the grapes that will eventually end up in the members' cellars.

7. The Vintage Dinner
If you are going to pour your older library wines for anyone, it really ought to be your wine club members first. They deserve it and they are most likely to rid you of whatever older vintage you may still have in inventory and are willing to part with. Limit the size of the event. Hire a really great chef. Set up a nice long table in your cellar or cave or on your lawn. And show off what your wines can do with a little age. This is a nice excuse for a very elegant affair. I've been to such events where it's primarily candlelight and there are large screens on four walls with older black and white films playing while nice jazz floods the room. Brilliant

8. Oscars Night at the Club
This is a no-brainer, isn't it? Whatever it is about the Oscars, folks love to get together, predict the winners, critique the dresses, watch the ceremonies and drink. Throw out a red carpet, create a schwag bag, get a few really big screens, set up tables, provide wines and food and watch the members revel together. Make sure there are prizes for most winners correctly predicted.

There's a larger point here: Take care of your club members and your club members will take care of you. Treat them well. Treat them special. Give them more.

 

Social vs Traditional Media in Wine Marketing

I was told something the other day that shocked me.

Listening to a prospective client, they VP in the room said: "We want to start to tell our story and deliver our messaging primarily through the media, through wine writers, reviews."

The other publicists reading this may have a good idea why this declaration was somewhat shocking. Today, when public and media relations specialists like myself sit with prospective clients, oftentimes a great deal of focus is placed on marshaling, managing and exploiting social media to communicate and tell the brand's story. Telling the story of the products and the producer via earned media (press), is a far less common instinct in today's wine industry, particularly among it's younger members and marketers.

Crafting and delivering a pitch to the media has always been my bread and butter. I'll say right here it is a true craft that demands good instincts, the ability to tell a story well, excellent interpersonal skills, a broad perspective on current events and industry trends and courage. Interestingly, over the years what I've found holds back most marketers from engaging in media relations is the courage to ask for the coverage by the media. That goes back to most people's fear of rejection. But that's another post.

The question today for many in the wine industry is emphasis of effort. How much effort, where communicating brand messaging is concerned, does one put on social media, press relations, advertising, events, etc. The trend, particularly among small and medium sized wine companies, has been toward more social media efforts and less press pitching. This is a mistake.

The lure of using media relations as a primary marketing tool derives mainly from the instant gratification it provides, the ability to speak directly to potential consumers of your product, and from the inexpensive nature of the tool. While these advantages of social media communications are alluring, what a social media messaging and communications effort can't do is result in the kind of authoritative endorsement of a product that is at the heart of media coverage of a brand and product.

Put another way, @gollyilovewine's retweet of your tweet announcement of the birth of puppies in a warm corner of the cave to their 2,500 Twitter followers is not the same as when a bonafied media outlet's wine writer describes the motivation for your decision to build caves in a 2,500 word article that includes a photo of your winery's dog and her puppies. One endorsement is more authoritative than the other. The authority of the messenger is hugely important in the substantiation of a product's claims.

When I pitch a new client to use my communications consulting services I almost always provide a balanced plan that seeks to efficiently deliver a particular message to a particular audience. The communications activities almost always include strategies that include the use of social media tools, sampling (if a product), the development of messaging tools and outreach to the media. More and more I find that the enthusiasm for reaching out to the media is less than the enthusiasm for reaching out to @gollyIlovewine.

While it's true that you can probably find a social media consultant who will change a retainer much below what I or other wine industry publicists would charge for a media relations campaign, it's equally true that the results of each campaign will likely be very different. It's likely that what's produced in a press relations campaign will end up driving a social media campaign. And it's likely that the results of the press relations campaign will result in far more sales than the social media campaign.

The point is not to disparage social media as a tool. Some of my best friends are social medians. The point is that many looking to enhance there marketing efforts are leaving precious, sales-inducing results on the table by not embracing the kind of mindset the VP across the table brought to our meeting the other day.

What Wine Is For: An Epicurean Response

What is wine for?

As I continue to grow older, I find that the questions that occupy my intellect tend to grow more basic. The questions that occur to me and capture my interest tend to be substantially broader than the kind of trivialities that were stationed in my more youthful mind.

I only broach the question above here because lately I've been questioning (or at least trying to understand) how I could have possibly produced more than 2,450 posts here at Fermentation and how, after 20 years concentrated on the marketing of wine, I remain concentrated intellectually and functionally on the marketing of wine.

Very simply, wine is for pleasure.

True it is for drinking. True it is for commerce. But so is water and so are widgets, and neither of these can also claim that they are also for pleasure.

That wine is decidedly and fundamentally for the pursuit of pleasure makes it a servant of the intellectual and philosophical commands of the wise Epicurus and sublime Lucretius, the great and ancient proponents of the notion that, given we all are but combinations of atoms just as the plant and animals are such combinations, and given that we all will simply live and parish with no hope of post life redemption nor condemnation, the highest pursuit of a life is the acknowledgement of wonder and the pursuit of pleasure.

It's easy and tempting to suggest that as a conduit to pleasure, wine is best incorporated into an Epicurean existence by regularly consuming just enough to arrive at inebriation. But both Epicurus and Lucretius would remind us that excess isn't the path to pleasure, but rather to debauchery. And the latter is as likely to lead to despair as are pursuit of power, embrace of avarice and the search for position among ones fellow man.

While it's true that a certain lubrication of the mind and body that comes with wine drinking might breath some life into the authentic pursuit of pleasure, the real pleasure of wine is the intellectual pleasure it provides. We don't need many different kinds of wine for the purpose of moderately lubricating ourselves. In fact, a single 12.5% alcohol wine with the tiniest hint of sweetness, a texture to enliven the palate and enough grapiness to satisfy the name of the beverage would do the trick for anyone and everyone that took wine for its effect alone.

Instead of a single wine, we have thousands, and we always have. This tells me that for those who incorporate wine into their devout or unconscious lucretian pursuit, it is the opportunity to engage with whole histories of man, the diverse cultures of time and place, the idiosyncratic nature of personal taste, the nature of nurture vs. nature, and the challenge of testing one's memory that recommends wine over water or over Coke or over milk.

It goes nearly without saying that to find pleasure in the intellectual implications of wine drinking, we must first possess a healthy bit of wonder at the finesse of the state of living and the majesty of our finite circumstances. It is surely wine's first duty to confirm that in the face of finality, great stores of pleasure await us everywhere and exist in the simplest of items.

It seems to be our duty, if the pursuit of pleasure is our finest destiny, to embrace the simple pleasure that wine provides. And that seems to be a good explanation as any as to why more than 2,450 posts on the subject of wine reside on this blog.

The Threat and Shame of Natural Wine

On the eve of two simultaneously scheduled wine fairs dedicated to the proposition that everything old is new again, it's hard not to admire the enthusiasm of those taken by "natural" wine. It's hard not to notice the excitement its admirers exhibit. It's hard not to notice that many of the proponents and champions of these wines revel in the idea that they are part of a revolution that defies a stale status quo.

The kind of excitement that is now found across the global wine industry for "natural" wines is exceedingly rare. One is, if a devotee of wine, forced to take note of this movement and the devotion, curiosity, and dedication of its fans. I am.

And yet, what I know is that this "natural wine movement", for all its exciting elements, is marred by fraud, deception and misunderstanding. All this concerns me because there is a real threat that the deceptions will be taken as truth and the excitement taken as proof of their truth, particularly among those who don't know any better. The impact of this is the potential scarring of the truly authentic wines and winemakers across the globe that don't adopt the sketchy moniker of "natural" or its unsubstantiated claims.

At its heart, the "natural" wine movement is dedicated to celebrating minimal additions and minimal interventions, both in the vineyard and in the cellar. The idea motivating of this celebration is that authenticity in wine is important and achieved when as little as possible stands between what grows in the vineyard and what lands in the bottle.

WHAT'S OLD IS NOT NEW AGAIN
This idea is not unique, revolutionary, nor new. It is in fact the substance of what has motivated the artisan edge of winemaking across the globe for decades. This idea has been the substance of the motivation among those winemakers that have changed the global wine industry, inspired many a wine lover to continue to seek out something new rather than something that merely lubricates the palate, and inspired new paradigms and standards adopted by winemakers across the world, including those winemaker exhibiting at "The Real Wine Fair" and "The Raw Wine Fair", both happening in London beginning Monday.

What is really interesting to note is that none of the artisan pioneers that are now emulated by those at the these two fairs ever thought to call their wine "natural". And none of the various organizers of tastings and events that highlighted and showcased the terroir-driven winemakers over the past 30 years ever thought to call their events the source of "real" wine.

Instead, these original seekers and showcasers of authenticity and terroir merely called their product "wine" and their events "wine tastings". As far as I can tell, it never occurred to these folks to label thier wines "Natural" or "Real" or "The Greatest" or "Better than all others" or "Perfect". Or maybe it did occur to them, but the idea of that kind of presumption felt a little dirty. Or maybe it occurred to them that labeling their wines "natural" would be a fraud, given that no self-respecting winemaking, wine lover, or marketer believes that the processed and manufactured product called wine is anything close to "natural".

Believing that what they are doing and championing is somehow new or revolutionary or unique, and communicating this message far and wide, is only one problem with the "natural" wine movement and those that favor it. This is a problem of hubris and shortsightedness and it it can be forgiven as this problem overtakes us all at some point. What can't be forgiven is the movement's insistent that the use of the term "natural" is benign.

EXPLOITING DECEPTION AND FRAUD
Because none of those making or marketing or enjoying these wines would even think of suggesting that the products are truly "natural", there must be something else at play. Honey is natural in its raw form. Milk from a cow is natural in its raw form. Apples are natural in their raw form. Grapes are natural in their raw form. However, when honey, milk, apples and grapes are manipulated, fermented, processed and changed into something else, like wine, they are not close to being natural. And yet, we have "natural" wine.

Douglas Wregg, the producer of "The Real Wine Fair", is a foremost champion of the wine genre. He has written extensively about his passion. Yet despite is regular protestations that "natural" wine is not in fact "natural" by anything resembling the meaning of the world, he remains devoted to the term in all its deceptive glory:

"One would have thought that wine would be natural by definition, however, there’s many a slip (or intervention) between grape and bottle, many choices that can be made, and additions and manipulations that push the final wine further from its origins. But the word natural does not mean “produced by nature without human assistance”, it is the very nature (sic) of assistance, the degree of human interference that distinguishes a natural wine from a conventional one."

Here we have a redefinition of the word "natural" meant to suit the wines and winemakers he prefers. Wregg is apparently unaware that the average person on the street, with an average intelligence and who might want to indulge in something that is truly natural might take the term "natural" as it's meant to be used and has been used for centuries. They would be deceived by Wregg and many others in the movement who apply the word "natural" in its deceptive form noted above.

Isabelle Legeron, the promoter of "The Raw Wine Fair" and another prominent champion of "natural" wine doesn't seem to get around on her website promoting the Fair to address the issue of the term "natural" as Wregg does. Instead, we are offered a "charter of quality" that defines the wines that may be showcased there. When you read through the charter you see that the wines she admits to the fair are all able to be manipulated, processed and derived. Yet, she too uses the term "natural", knowing full well that the term can't come close to describing what's in the bottles at the fair.

The point, of course, is that insisting on calling these wines "natural" is a perfect fraud that can't be justified with romantic tales of getting back to nature and combating the evils of "spoofalated" wines. Add to this the fact that there are innumerable other, yet far more accurate, terms that could be used to describe the lovely wines at these fairs. Yet the terms won't be employed.

Let me make a suggestion as to why this is the case: The fraudulent term  is more profitable.

We live in a time when more and more people are keen to examine what they put in their body. People are keen to support people that take pity on the earth by not adulterating it and ruining it. In this environment the label "natural" has become quite powerful, both as an idea and a marketing term. I suspect the movement's leaders understand that. They must. Yet when confronted with the simple fact that "natural" is a term that can't in anyway be applied to wine, they still use the powerful label.

This puts the responsible, fair minded, and honest artisan winemakers who won't adopt the term at a real disadvantage in they eyes of the consumer that believes in the potent meaning of the term "natural" and who assume that those behind the movement that truly do have the best intentions at heart would bastardize the term for profit. The use of the term "natural" is irresponsible, unfair and dishonest. That's a problem. But the real problem is that the folks that employ this term know it is being used irresponsibly, unfairly and dishonestly yet they continue to imply it. Shame on them.

DEFINING NATURAL WNE THROUGH DENIGRATION
The Natural Wine Company is a retail outfit owned by  Michael Andrews, Ross Bingham and Rebecca Pridmore. It is a modest retailer that seeks merely to introduce wine drinkers to terroir-driven wines that emphasize organic, biodynamic and wines made with grapes farmed sustainably. It is a marvelous excuse for a wine store. On their website, after explaining their motivations and experiences, they write this:

"During this same time, we fell in love with wine, and soon discovered that most wine sold in the United States contain "color enhancers," preservatives, chemical stabilizers, Mega Purple™, "oak essence," sugar, acid and the like.  In fact, there are over 200 products listed by the FDA that are permitted to be used in wine besides grapes."

It's unclear whether what is meant by this statement is that most WINE or most WINES contain the implied atrocities they describe here. But if this statement is put in line with so many other implications provided by champions of "natural" wine, then what is meant is that most WINES are to be tarred and feathered with the notion that all but "natural" wine is UN-natural. This of course isn't true.

No one disputes that many wines are highly manipulated with all sort of things and can be best described as beverages. Yet there are now thousands upon thousands of wines that don't meet this definition at all, but rather are careful efforts resulting from low intervention and a careful eye toward explaining terroir through wine. But this fact is not included in any of the implications that come out of the minds of "natural" wine's champions.

• Ms. Legeron does it this way:
"Most wines, including some Bordeaux crus classés, Champagne Grande Marques and household brands are nowadays no longer made exclusively from grapes. They are products of the agrochemical food industry.  The concept of wine's 'poetry', its artistry or romantism, or indeed its exceptionality as a product with a sense of place is becoming rarer."

•Wregg leaves the impression that all but "natural wines" are lesser entities in this way:
"Real wines taste of themselves and where they come from; they are not manipulated with chemicals and other winemaker’s tricks and tropes. They are more natural, more tasty (dare we say) and in the age of conformity and mediocrity they are probably “unreal”.

Fabio Bartelomei, a winemaker in the "natural" wine school and frequent contributor to discussions of the movement does it this way:
"I think that these are two very different worlds or markets out there (ie, the ‘natural/organic/ecological/biodynamic/macrobiotic/whatever’ wine market as opposed to ‘conventional/industrial/chemical/mass-produced/supermarket wine market), and there will always be room for both. I think it’s like for any other product: ie utility cars / sports cars, or any everyday bog-standard product / quality special product."

At MoreThanOrganic, a website promoting French "natural" wine created by Pierre Jancou, the implication that all but "natural" wine is problematic is done this way:
"Natural winemaking will always produce a better, more individual wine than conventional methods used on the same site.....A natural winemaker is a genuine artisan. Natural winemaking requires skill, patience, nerve, and hard physical labour. In most cases it brings small financial rewards. There is more money, less risk, and far less work in making wine conventionally."

Guillaume Aubert, champion of "natural" wine and part owner of the "natural" wine importer Aubert & Mascoli denigrated all other wines this way:
“The more [natural wine] you drink, the less you can drink other wines. You start reacting badly to them, coming out in rashes and swelling up from all the sulphites."

Hardy Wallace, an American winemaker, blogger, marketer and someone I admire, disparaged non-natural wines this way:
"Fortunately for the non "natural" camp, the majority of consumers buying wine today don't know about (and might not care) about the winemaking process."

At the website promoting the film, "Wine From Here," about the "natural" winemaking movement in California, the makers describe in extraordinarily naive terms what their film is about by posturing "natural" wine as something entirely new that didn't exist before and that hasn't been available to wine lover prior to the advent of "natural wine":
"Ultimately, “Wine From Here” captures the values of a new generation of wine drinkers who care about authenticity and the environment."

Ceri Smith, owner of Biondivino Wine Boutique in San Francisco and proponent of "natural" wine, implies here that the "natural" wine movement will save us all from all the other wines in the world that are spoofalated:
"when, nowadays, around the world,  there is the clutter of wine built up upon the marketing gurus and trendy expensive “label” wines – these winemakers are showing the world the beauty and elegance of  “un-spoofalated” winemaking – sans the marketing masters and bulk consistancy, these are the gems in the raw.  in a way, they are the progressive future by returning back to the past."

These are the tip of the iceberg. The proliferation of stated and implied criticisms of the rest of the wine world are so commonplace among "natural" wine champions that this form of denigration marketing is now an inherent part of the natural wine movement. But the thing is this: given the path that the "natural" wine movement has taken, the only model to separate out these wines in the marketplace is by denigrating other wines. These champions must attack in order to self define.

The only other example of this kind of Denigration Marketing I've ever seen in the wine industry is the now very rare example of Francophiles disparaging American or new world wines. This used to be much more commonplace than it is now. You see this kind of denigration marketing in politics regularly. But you haven't really seen it deployed in the wine world with any regularity, until now.

Part of this kind of negative marketing effort is driven by the very name of the movement. If their wines are "natural", what are those that are not in their club? Kinda Natural? Almost Natural? UnNatural? Whatever they are, they aren't "natural". This obvious implication of the term "Natural Wine" is often dismissed by the champions of the genre. But it can't reasonably be dismissed if you possess any fidelity to language and the meaning of words. The fact is this: By using the term "natural" you must find some way to justify its use beyond relying on the actual definition of the word, which does not apply to these wines or any wines. The only way left to create a justification for the use of the term is to define what those outside the classification are, what they are not and what they represent. In this case, what they represent isn't good. They are at least the source of rashes.

But there is more too the denigration marketing tactics of the "natural" wine champions than simply justifying their semantics. A thread moves through the "natural" wine movement that is constant: Natural winemaking is the path to authenticity; it is the formula for making wine what it really should be—the expression of a place. But if this is the case, what are we to make of the expressions provided by "non natural wines"? If they aren't natural, can they too be authentic expressions of place? Of course not. That would de-legitimize the claims of the "natural" wine champions.

Yet we know without question that wines that are filtered, that are fined, that employ cultivated yeasts, that utilize sulfur, that are not made with grapes or processes certified as organic or biodynamic do indeed possess authentic expressions of place. The examples are too numerous to name.

But you rarely see champions of "natural" wines admit this. Rather, they imply and often outright say that these wines are "Manipulated" or "commercial" or "industrial" and can't, with the same authenticity express place or terroir. They are wrong. But if they admit it, their argument for the uniqueness and blessedness of "natural" wines is largely removed. What of the movement and its claims then?

Again, the only real choice the marketers of "natural" wine have is to define their wines against all others. Marketers are in the business of propping up their products. If you are going to prop yours up by defining them against others, then the others must be lesser objects. Hence, the kind of Denigration Marketing that is too often employed by champions of "natural" wine.  It is an inherently deceptive and fraudulent way of selling wine. Shame on them.

THE THREAT OF NATURAL WINE
I am want to reiterate the danger of the natural wine movement, its disregard of convention, its fraudulent descriptions of what it is, and its unsavory marketing methods. We live in a world confronted by a great deal of "new". This "new" is so often regarded as shiny and insightful and profound. It is often, with the help of media that does not fully understand the implications of that upon which they report, understood as being better.

The viral nature of news too is important to understand here. New ideas fly across geography and cultures in an instant. Communities of believers are created in days and short weeks and are supported by tools of communications that too often and too easily spread fraudulent notions.

The idea that "natural" wine is the savior of a wine industry stuffed predominately with unauthentic, unnatural, unhealthy, and industrial wines is a few prominent articles and broadcasts away from being believed. A blog at the Huffington Post is followed by a sympathetic article by a prominent wine expert, who is then featured along with a champion of "natural" wine on a network news program, that is then reported on by the morning new shows with ideas that spread across the Twittersphere and Facebookorama in an instant. All of a sudden artisan winemakers who have been seeking and making terroir driven wines for years and who use low intervention techniques in the vineyard and cellar, but are not calling themselves "natural wineamakers," are tarred with the idea that their products are making us all sick.

This is the danger and threat of the current state of the "natural wine movement".

GETTING THE NATURAL WINE HOUSE IN ORDER
Arguing that the term "natural" is now ubiquitous is not a reason for continuing to use the fraudulent term to describe these wines. It's lazy. Continuing to denigrate other "non natural" wines because you can't imagine the impact of admitting that yours is not so different than other wines is a gross excuse for marketing. And failing to appreciate the 1000s of winemakers that laid the groundwork for your own work and who had no need or thought of calling themselves and their wines "natural" is the kind of dismissive arrogance that good people don't engage in.

The proponents of and makers of what is being called "natural" wine ought to be extraordinarily proud of the wines they love and make. Many are extraordinary and they add fuel to the long and ongoing movement to create unique, artisan wines that has been a large part of the global wine industry for decades. If they can cause excitement (and they do) among winemakers, they ought to be lauded for that...and I do laud them for that.

But if these folks don't get their house in order, they will continue to face the kind of criticism and disparagement that they read in this post and from others.

The Pinot Producers Are Coming—PINOT DAYS SF

Who Doesn't love a good list?

Who doesn't love a good Pinot Noir?

Who doesn't love a great Pinot Noir Event?

Here you'll find all three:

PINOT DAYS SAN FRANCISCO
Saturday, June 16th
200 Pinot Producers
Below is the killer list!
Here's how you get tickets

Abiouness Wines
Alma Rosa Winery & Vineyards
Alta Maria Vineyards
Amalie Robert Estate
Ancient Oak Cellars
Arista Winery
August West
Bailiwick Wines
Baxter Winery
Belle Glos Wines
Benovia Winery
Bien Nacido Vineyards
Big Basin Vineyards
Big Table Farm
Brandborg Vineyard and Winery
Buena Vista Winery
C.Donatiello Winery
Cameron Hughes Wine
Cargasacchi Wines
Cartograph
Chanin Wine Company
Clos Pepe Vineyards
Clos Saron
Clouds Rest Vineyards
Cornerstone Cellars Oregon
Couloir Wines
CRU Wine Company
Cuvaison Estate Wines
Davis Family Vineyards
De Novo Wines
De Tierra Vineyards
DeLoach Vineyards
Derby Wine Estates
Dierberg Vineyard
Domaine Chandon
Domaine Serene
Donum Estate
Dragonette Cellars
DUNSTAN Wines - Durell Vineyard
Dutton-Goldfield Winery
El Porteno Empanadas
Encanto Vineyards, LLC
Eric Kent Wine Cellars
Expression Pinot Noir
Failla
Farm Fresh to You
Fess Parker Winery
Fort Ross Vineyard & Winery
Foursight Wines
FOXEN
Freeman
Furthermore Pinot Noir
Gary Farrell Winery
Gloria Ferrer Caves & Vineyards
Goldeneye Winery
Grandstand Sports Inc
Gundlach Bundschu Winery
Gypsy Canyon Winery
Hahn Family Wines
Handley Cellars
Hitching Post Wines
Ideal 55
Inception Wines
Inman Family Wines
JCB by Jean-Charles Boisset
John Tyler
Joie de Vivre
Joseph Phelps Vineyards
Joseph Swan Vineyards
Kanzler Vineyards
Keefer Ranch Wines
Keller Estate
Kendric Vineyards
Kenneth Volk Vineyards
Kerrygold Cheese
Ketcham Estate
Kokomo Wines
La Follette Wines
La Rochelle Winery
Ladd Cellars
Landmark Vineyards
Le Cadeau
Longfellow Wine Company
Loring Wine Company
Lost Canyon Winery
MacPhail Family Wines
MacRostie Winery
Mahoney Vineyards
MANZONI ESTATE VINEYARD
Martinelli Winery
Masut Vineyard and Winery
Meiomi
Mercy Vineyards
Miner Family Winery
Morgan Winery
Native9 Wine
New Zealand Winegrowers
Olivia Brion Winery
Olson Ogden Wines
Orentano
Oris-Swiss watches since 1904
Pali Wine Company
Papapietro Perry Winery
Paraiso Vineyards
Parducci Wine Cellars & Paul Dolan Vineyards
Pessagno Winery
Peter Paul Wines
Philo Ridge Vineyards
Poe Wines
Ray Franscioni Wines
Rex Hill Vineyards
richard berridge wine
Riverbench Vineyard & Winery
Roadhouse Winery
Robert John Russo Gallery
Robert Stemmler Winery
Roessler Cellars
Romililly Wines
Russian Hill Estate Winery
Scherrer Winery
Second Glass Inc
Sequana Vineyards
Siduri Wines
Sierra Madre Vineyard
Sinor-LaVallee
Small Vines Wines
Sojourn Cellars
Stoller Vineyards
Stomping Girl Wines
Suacci Carciere Wines
Talley Vineyards
Tantara Winery
Test Winery
Testarossa Winery
Thomas Fogarty Winery
Thomas George Estates
Thorne Wine
Tolosa Winery
Tondre Wines
Truchard Vineyards
Truffle Gateau
Twomey Cellars
Veramonte
VML Winery
Wait Cellars
Waits-Mast Family Cellars
White Rose Estate
Willamette Valley Vineyards
Willowbrook Cellars
Wilson Daniels
Winderlea Vineyard and Winery
Wines of Germany
Wrath
Wren Hop Vineyards
Zagat
ZD Wines

How Awesome is that!!??

Uncomfortable Truths: The Wine Edition

Some truths are uncomfortable.

The Experts Are the Best Sources of Wine Info and Recommendations
The tendancy to disparage "wine experts" or "wine elite" grows as the role of social media and peer reviews grow. Yet the fact remains that the experts are the best and most reliable source of information on wine. Folks like Eric Asimov, Robert Parker, Jim Laube, Jancis Robinson, Steve Heimoff, Charles Olken, Dan Berger, Lettie Teague, Jon Bonne and other well known experts are the one's with the experience to best understand wine and best provide well-founded recommendations and critiques. There is no way around the fact that experience = expertise. It doesn't matter if you are talkinb about archeology, Rock n Roll, cheese, interior decorating or wine.

Expensive Wine Is Almost Always Better
While I realize that, like beauty, taste is in the palate of the beholder, it is a fact that a more expensive wine is likely to be a higher quality wine. The price of wine is generally dependant upon three things: the cost of production, the supply and the demand. More expensive wines almost always cost more to make because the they use better ingredients (grapes, barrels, winemakers, etc), because the demand for the wines are higher, and the supply is generally limited. I've argued in the past that pronouncements of quality are entirely subjective. But within the world of consensus understandings, we will almost always understand that more expensive wines are appreciated in greater degree than less expensive wines.

Few People Know What They are Talking About When It Comes to Terroir
We talk a lot about "terroir" and the taste of the soil in this business and industry. We all submit that translating the terroir into the bottle is paramount to the process. Yet the fact is, 99.9% of folks who talk about this sort of thing could not pick a Russian River Valley Pinot out of a line up that also included a Santa Barbara, New Zealand, and Carneros Pinot. And let's not even talk about trying to identify a Pinot from one vineyard and a Pinot from another vineyard a mile down the road. The implications of this uncomfortable truth are many, not the least of which is the role that faith plays in the area of wine appreciation.

Natural Wine Isn't Natural
Lots of talk of "natural" wine these days. More producers, retailers, wine bars and events are dedicated to the stuff. But "natural" is to wine as California Sparkling wine is to Champagne. It isn't that. "Natural" wine is processed grape juice and the processing and manipulation begins in the vineyard and ends with the marketing.

Ratings Sell LOTS of Wine
Despite the constant din of criticism of ratings and the 100 Point rating system in particular, ratings sell big time. And the 100 Point rating system is a huge driver of sales. If you don't think so, talk to the winemaker that just got their first 95 point rating from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate or the Wine Spectator. Then ask them, would you rather have a string of tweets about your great wine or a 95 point rating from Robert Parker.

Driving the California Wine Routes Can Be Dangerous To Your Health
Driving along Highway 29 in Napa Valley, Highway 12 in Sonoma Valley or Westside Road in the Russian River Valley around 5pm on a Saturday can be very dangerous to your health. The problem is that so many folks who have just consumed way too much wine are on the roads. They may have been sipping, but in many cases it has been an all day sipping affair that is in reality and all-day drinking affair. This uncomfortable truth has yet to affect the local hospitality industry in substantial ways, but it just could in coming years when the next terrible tradjedy happens.

Too Much Wine Marketing Relies On The Idea That "You Can Be Better Than Them"
If you drink this wine, if you consume wines from this area, if you visit this wine region, you'll be a better, more sophisticated person than your neighbor. That, in a nutshell, is the basis of a great deal of wine-related marketing: being a "wine person" makes you a "better person". It is not an unusual marketing message. In fact, it is a message common to most luxury good products. But it is a little distasteful.

 

Coupling Up in the Wine Industry—Lessons Learned

I wonder if the percentage of couples where both people work in the same industry is higher in Napa Valley than in other part of the country. I wonder this because my Kathy and I are such a couple and as I mentally survey our list of local friends and acquaintances, I note our condition afflicts many of them.

Today is the first anniversary of my marriage to my Kathy. Last year at this time I woke with an air of anticipation, knowing that in a few hours important vows would be exchanged in front of friends and family, public declarations of our commitment to one another would be expressed, our social status would be altered, the solemnity of our new bond would be reiterated and explored by the Rabbi, and I would stand in front of everyone and silently wonder how I got so lucky to have found Kathy while I simultaneously hoped and prayed she would not come to her senses.

The ceremony went off without a hitch and Kathy remained for all of it. We celebrated Kathy not coming to her sense wth a reception where food and wine were liberally dispensed. At that reception were numerous other Wine Industry Couples, a club Kathy and I had recently joined.

There are some very interesting things about being a Wine Industry Couple that I've noticed over the past 12 months. But the most prominent thing common to Wine Industry Couples (and likely common to couples who work in the same industry outside of wine) is the way in which your world becomes condensed.

You hear the same gossip, separately. You read the same news. You receive the same invitations to the same events. You work the same events, separately. You face similar occupational dilemmas. You develop a short-hand language for discussing daily happenings.

I cannot tell you how often either Kathy or I say  to one another, "Did you hear about xyz" and the other responds, "I did, Soandso told me." And the other responds, "Oh, I just saw SoandSo".

It all becomes quite normal after a while, this similarity of experience and people, places and events. But, having experienced conditions different from Kathy and mine, I've realized that being married to someone who works in the same industry results in something quite interesting too: You end up falling into discussions about things outside both your common daily experiences much more regularly.

You can only talk about what's similar and familiar for so long without coming to a conversational standstill. So, if you enjoy talking with your spouse, and I do, you end up moving to territory that is outside your daily experiience pretty quickly.

I've come to the conclusion that how often you talk to your spouse, what you share, how you talk about differences of opinion, how far afield from your normal experiences you are willing to go in talking to your spouse and how willing you are to sit and carefully listen as your spouse dig deeply into subject matter of interest to them, but not to you, will largely help determine how happy you and they remain.

This weekend, after quickly dispensing with a bit of wine industry gossip that Kathy and I had both been subjected to by different people, she sat patiently as I discussed the nuances of the 17th Hole at TPC Sawgrass and that particular hole's importance to the entire PGA Golf Tour. Kathy doesn't golf. She doesn't choose to watch golf. And yet there she sat, listening to me go on about the iconic nature of a single hole of golf and how fear can dictate what happens when a grown man swings a tool for the purpose of hitting a small white ball in a small hole. It was a spectacular display of love on her part.

I suspect Kathy and my approach to navigating the intricacies of working in the same industry aren't too different from the numerous other Wine Industry Couples that populate this Valley. However, I wonder how many of these spouses can sit so patiently and appear so interested while their mate prattles on about something that is so far outside their own interest. It's perfectly clear that I married up.

 

Minors Don't Buy Alcohol Online

Minors Don't Buy Alcohol On-line.

And yet, this fundamental fact has gone unnoticed in the wake of a recently released study that looks at minors access to alcohol conducted by Chapel Hill North Carolina and funded by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation.

While this study shows that 8 students attempting to buy wine from 100 unknown on-line vendors demonstrated that 48 out of 100 orders were delivered, the study itself and the media coverage that has followed somehow failed to mentioned that the problem of minors buying alcohol on-line is no problem at all.

First the facts.

According to a study done by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)—not exactly a pro-alcohol organization—minors said they obtain their alcohol in the following way:

1. From a parent, guardian or family member who is 21 or older (26 percent)

2. From someone 21 or older who is not related to the teen (25 percent)

3. From someone under 21 who is not related to the teen (22 percent)

4. Took it from home (10 percent)

5. Took it from someone else’s home (5 percent)

Please note that "online" doesn't even make it on the list.

Yet, the lead researcher for the Chapel Hill study, Rebecca Williams, had this to say in an interview with ABC News:

"The study provides evidence that illegal alcohol sales are a significant problem."

In fact this study provides no such evidence. Rather, the study shows that under certain circumstances, when not worried about getting caught (students ordering wine were given immunity from prosecution) and when parents are told about the experiment and not a deterrent, sometimes minors can get alcohol delivered. There is nothing about this information that suggests any evidence of "illegal alcohol sales" being a "significant problem".

In fact, no member of law enforcement and no member of the alcohol regulatory community has ever even suggested that on-line sales of alcohol to minors presents any existential problem whatsoever.

All this leads us to believe that just like snake oil was never really meant as a means of curing anything, this study was not meant to actually illuminate the reality of how minors interact with sources of on-line wine sellers.

It should also be noted that this new study showed that minors attempting to obtain alcohol on-line were no more successful at it than when they tried to obtain alcohol from a brick and mortar location. When you factor in the huge barriers to obtaining alcohol on-line that minors face, it becomes apparent why minors are not using on-line sources to obtain alcohol. Consider this scenario:

Little Pete wants to obtain some Chardonnay for his weekend drinking with friends. First, we have to assume that Pete thinks ahead far enough to order the wine a good week to two weeks in advance and we have to assume that Pete wants to drink Chardonnay.

Pete must first either have his own or must steal a credit card to make the purchase on-line. Next, Pete must get through any on-line age verification systems on-line. Finally, Pete must have the extra money to pay not only for the wine but for the shipping of the wine and he must find a way to hide this transaction if the credit card is not his.

If Pete is a long term thinker, if he does like Chardonnay, if he does have or has stolen a credit card and if he is confident the transaction will not come to the attention of his parents, he must then be ready to be at the door in a week or two to meet the driver that delivers the wine. If Pete is at home, he needs to make sure he answers the door and his parents don't and even then he must convince the driver he is over 21 with a fake idea or some fast talking or with the hopes the driver hasn't been well trained or is somewhat dull.

On the other hand, Pete could call his friend, Carole, who is 21 years old, and ask her to simply go down to the store and buy him some beer. The other option is sneak the stuff out of the parents liquor cabinet while they aren't around.

No....Minors don't buy wine on-line.

Of particular concern is another portion of the Chapel Hill research that seems to indicate that the researchers have an agenda. Toward the end of the discussion part of the paper they note that by "working at the federal level to cut off vendors from their established shipping and payment-processing partners could, as it did with ICVs (Internet Cigarette Vendors), lead to an increase in vendors going out of business and a substantial decrease in vendors using banned shippers and payment processors."

I have a hard time believing that the administration at North Carolina at Chapel Hill would endorse a study that concludes actions that could "lead to an increase in vendors going out of business".

To address the fact that in the Chapel Hill study it was determined that 48 of 100 orders placed by minors did actually occur, we can offer some happy news: decreasing this number is a pretty simple process that requires no legislation, no hearings, no hyperbolic claims of an epidemic and no outrageous claims by researchers. It merely takes some additional training in ID checking by common carriers and the continued increase in use of on-line age verification services.

What we have here, in this study, is evidence that a potential problem does not exist and to the extent that minors can order wine on-line, their ability to actually get it is easily diminished by some simple tasks.

Unfortunately, this study will be used and abused by those who see on-line wine purchasing as a form of competition they do not like and as a means to burnish resumes by appearing to have uncovered a problem that does not exist.

Wine Wholesalers Insist You Were Born Yesterday

Barry Nolan over at Boston Magazine makes a point that flies in the face of what many politicians will tell us:

"The business sector actually desires regulation and corruption."

Interestingly, his primary evidence for this seemingly counter-intuitive conclusion is the wine industry, and particularly the Massachusetts regulatory scheme:

"Massachusetts is one of the few states where you can’t get a special bottle of wine delivered to your house by FedEx or UPS. Some may try to tell you that this is because people are looking out for your well-being. But unless you were just born yesterday, you know it’s actually because Massachusetts’ liquor wholesalers are trying to protect their profit margins and burden their competition with regulations. They don’t want competition from out-of-state wineries. As the Globe recently pointed out, since prohibition:… 'liquor laws in Massachusetts have tilted in favor of the only group with the money and organization to shape them — the wholesalers who distribute alcohol to bars, restaurants, and package stores.' "

I would contend that those who defend protectionist regulatory schemes like the three tier system, based on the idea that we all were born yesterday, play a significant role in the cynicism and disgust that plagues our political culture today.

As the Boston Magazine article points out, it's not merely the wine industry in which smoke screens consisting of cries of "protect the public" arise from those protected by the regulations they ask for. Other industries possess similar poorly cloaked cries by the protected that their protections are good for the public. But, what I know is the wine industry...so, I'll stick to that.

For many years, wine and beer wholesalers anxiously informed lawmakers, the media and the public that if direct to consumer wine shipping were allowed, minors would actively consume more alcohol, state tax coffers would be ripped off by bootleggers, and the entire regulatory system, "that has served us so well for so long," would fall to pieces. None of this came true and those who bought into and extolled these claims now look particularly stupid.

But in all these cries about drunk children, lost taxes and a broken regulatory system, the promoters of this dystopian fantasy world never mentioned that their concern for the public good also happened to square up perfectly with their own economic interests. What do you know?

The result was that you got these really weird discussions in state committee hearings, at meetings of alcohol regulators and in the media where where the possibility that direct shipping of wine was really a potentially dangerous thing was actually discussed, when everyone knew it was not a dangerous thing. Everyone in the discussion, from wholesalers to alcohol regulators to politicians and even those that wanted to ship direct indulged in a conversation they knew was off point, rather than addressing directly what was at issue: whether it was good policy to reward campaign contributing wholesalers with the restrictions on competitive commerce, while screwing consumers, retailers and wineries.

This discussion of winery to consumer shipping is over. No one talks about the practice of winery to consumer shipping in this surreal way, with the exception those in a few states like MA. There is still silly and surreal talk about retailer to consumer shipping as that battle rages on, despite the fact that a retailer shipping wine across state lines is in no way different than a winery shipping wine over state lines to a consumer.

Today, the focus of the con artists that would replace "our own interests" with "the public interest" in discussions of alcohol regulations has turned to a doubly surreal subject matter: "Deregulation".

Recently The Center for Alcohol Policy held a sparsely attended forum in Michigan to discuss alcohol policy in that state and nationally. A number of public officials, industry representatives, researchers, lawmakers and others spent an entire day essentially discussing how important it was to hold firm in the face of "deregulation" efforts. They sat in the metaphorical circle, pointed their mouths at each other, and spewed on about how public safety would be endangered, how people would fall into abusive patterns and how states would loose significant revenue if any changes came to the three tier system. There was not a dissenting voice in the room.

The Center for Alcohol Policy is a creation of and funded entirely by...wait for it....beer wholesalers.

This is a perfect example of the kind of thing that Barry Nolan at Boston Magazine is talking about in his article when he notes that "Some may try to tell you that [they] are looking out for your well-being. But unless you were just born yesterday, you know it’s actually because...wholesalers are trying to protect their profit margins and burden their competition with regulations."

It's also an example of public policy experts and politicians and regulators playing along with the industry's nonsense because they see something in it for themselves, be it more campaign contributions, more grants for studies of England's drinking culture that are of limited value other than for propaganda purposes, or as a way to protect their positions in the alcohol regulatory establishment.

So, here's the rule you need to be aware of:

Whenever an alcohol industry person advocates a policy by saying that it is good public policy or that they are simply looking out for the public good, but don't make note of what sector of the industry the policy they are pushing will help, they are almost certainly assuming you were born yesterday.

Don't give them a pass. Point out their hypocrisy. This is particularly important if you think of yourself as a consumer since those who play the "You Were Born Yesterday" game have never taken into consideration what is best for consumers, but rather only their own bottom line. That makes them not only enemies of reason, but also enemiies of the marketplace and the consumer.

How To Buy Wine Online Safely

The Wall Street Journal makes a good point. When buying wine online—Buyer Beware!

Actually, the WSJ Digital Network made a number of good points in a video featuring Tom Geniesse, owner of New York City's wine shop Bottle Rocket Wine & Spirits, in which advice is given on how to buy wine on-line.

I haven't seen a good video primer on how to approach on-line wine buying in some time. This particular video hits a lot of the high notes that novice on-line wine buyers ought to keep in mind:

1. Indeed, Buyer Beware

2. It's best to know the wine or the seller before hitting the "purchase" button

3. Look for lots of detail about the wine in any on-line or email offer

4. Ratings are helpful, but remember, they are generally one person's opinion.

These are all the points that Geniesse makes in the WSJ video. And they are good ones. They got me thinking about the wide spectrum of points that ought to occur to folks before they buy on wine. So, let me add the following to Geniesse's points

1. If you have never heard of the marketer or store or winery involved in a wine purchase, do a bit of research first. At the very least, Google the marketer, store or winery and look for numerous positive endorsements of the seller

2. Check the price. Is the deal coming through your email or featured on-line a good one? You can do this on-line using wine-searcher.com or Snooth or other price comparison sites. But take the few seconds it might use up to make sure the deal is as good as it seems.

3. Look for Endorsers if You Don't Know the Wine. If you don't know the wine that has piqued your interest, then look around and discover if anyone else does. Cellartracker.com is a great place to see what a wide variety of consumer palates think of a given wine. You may find the vintage being offered was a dud. Or, you may discover you are looking at a wine that is dearly loved and coming at a great price.

4. Get a phone number. If I can't call the people with whom I'm looking to spend money, I don't spend money and these are words to live by, particularly with an on-line purchase. There are any number of reasons you may want or need to contact the sellers. Make sure you can

5. Have the wine delivered in the quickest way you can afford. The fact is, the wine you ordered could easily end up sitting in a hot truck that will render it un-tasty. The faster it gets to you the less likely it is you will end up with cooked wine.

6. Don't buy inexpensive wine on-line. If the wine costs less than $10, it's likely that you can find it in a nearby store. Do so. The costs of shipping are likely to make the wine much more expensive on a per bottle basis and by purchasing it at a local store you don't have the risk that it is damaged in transit. More expensive wines tend to be more difficult to find and this is one of the main reasons folks shop online—they can't find what they want locally.

The reasons so much wine purchasing has migrated on-line are many. It's convenient now with efficient logistics. It's easier to find exactly what you want in an on-line environment simply because your local wine shop can't stock all the wines there are to sample. You can easily search for the best price on-line. Of course, buying on-line doesn't put you face-to-face with a real person with whom you can talk out your preferences. So, there are trade offs. But there is no question that on-line purchasing is here to stay and likely to grow. So, if you buy on-line, do it right.

A New Alcohol Toy—And Why It Will Be Banned Quickly

"The advantages is to enjoy the drunk sensation with none of the harmful effects of alcohol on the body."

This sounds a bit like a description of love.

It's not. It is a description of a new product called "Wahh"created by scientists that allows a user to administer a dose of alcohol via aerosol spray to the mouth that gets the user INSTANTLY drunk—but, the effects wear off in seconds.

When I first read this it immediately sounded to me like one of the odd features of a society in decline described dystopian tale of the future; something that the narrator describes in passing to drive home the decadence of the society in question. The article continues:

"The 'Wahh Quantum Sensations' delivers just a miniscule dose of alcohol - 0.075ml - directly in to your mouth, but thanks to the aerosol effect, the effect is instantaneous. With a typical drink containing 40 to 60ml of alcohol, the scientists say it would take a thousand sprays to get the equivalent amount of alcohol into your system."

This device goes on sale in Europe soon for 20 Euros and will deliver 20 doses.

I've never been a big user of drugs. Nor have I actually indulged in alcohol all that liberally in my life. But, I am not without experience in the effects of a variety of mind altering substances. This experience tells me that this new device will be an immediate hit when it comes to market. It will sell out where ever it is sold. It will be the center of parties, the active ingredient in newly devised games and will be a constant on every college campus in America.

It is also likely to be regulated out of existence.

Phillipe Starck, the designer of the Wahh noted yesterday, "The question is how to do good without doing harm. Wahh is an alternative that offers the idea of ​​intoxication without its adverse effects."

This begs the question, what is the "good" of this device and what is the harm?

I've always contended that if you could make a wine that mimicked in every way —taste, aroma, texture—the greatest wines in the world, but did not contain alcohol, the majority of people would still choose the alcohol-laden beverage. I believe this is the case because I believe that one of the great attractions of alcohol is that it is magic. Ingest it and it physically changes you in ways that can be felt and observed and heard by the user and that this transformation brought on by the magic substance can be witnessed by others. Alcohol, as well as other drugs, have a near alchemic affect on the user.

This alteration of the mind and body that comes with the use of alcohol in its many forms is, I believe, at the heart of the fear and scepticism that society has directed at alcohol and drinking. Sure, the stupid stuff we humans do when experiencing the effect of alcohol causes many to possess disdain for drinking alcohol. But go to the heart of the matter and it is the remarkable transformative effect alcohol delivers that repels and worries so many.

I've never been surprised or confused by the disdain for alcohol that many religious communities possess. Here is a substance that has a sure and obvious effect on a person; a real transformative effect that often soothes trouble minds and bodies or acts as cloak covering ones troubles; something that is supposed to happen when you embrace the holy spirit—but doesn't always happen. Many religious folks understand alcohol as a usurper.

But, in order to feel the effects of alcohol, one always had to work at it. Even with spirits one would need to throw back a couple quick shots, then wait to feel the effects if that's what was desired. And wine takes even longer and even more to get the user where they often want to be. With this new product, there is no more waiting. Granted, the effect is apparently momentary, which means that it is unlikely to to encroach on territory claimed by wine, beer and spirits. Nonetheless, Wahh brings on the magic transformative effects of alcohol without the work: instant alchemy.

Even if the Wahh is shown to have no harmful side effects, I'm having a hard time imaginng how it won't quickly get the attention of government agencies who will respond quickly to the calls of the prevention community to ban the product, or at least regulate it in the extreme.

The "Counter Culture" of the 1960s and early 1970s got its name because many of its facets ran counter to prevailing wisdom and the prevailing culture. Near the center of the Counter Culture was the use of drugs to alter one's view of reality. We saw how this offset culture went over with the mainstream. This new product is meant to do one thing: alter one's reality, albeit, for a moment. There is no reason to believe it's use  won't be viewed in the same way marijuana and LSD were viewed by the mainstream.

What's really interesting is that it appears that altering one's consciousness is not always viewed as bad. It's only when something is ingested to that affect when the recoiling begins. For example, roller coasters change the way we feel and experience the world. They are just fine. Fun houses, with their skewed mirrors and tilted floors do the same. They are OK. But ingest something that fucks up your perspective and society starts to worry not only about the existential threat, but about the spiritual effect.

Wine's ability to alter our mind and body largely gets a pass and always has for a number of reasons: It's made from the benign and tasty grape, it has been an important part of many cultures, it has provided medicinal effects, it tastes delicious and its manufacture has added substantially to economies. But when you strip away all this, you have a mind altering substance.

Wahh is a straight forward mind altering substance without anything  like history, culture, and economies to protect it from the ire of those who worry about easy alterations of the mind. What makes it unique is the instant arrival of its effect and its equally—apparantly—retreat. This makes it a toy. But a toy that will need to be highly regulated if it arrives on our shores.

What I'm looking forward to—besides trying the Wahh—is the intellectual excursion that will be taken by those who will argue to ban or highly regulate the Wahh. Given the mind altering effect is quickly gone, how will it be argued that the Wahh is too dangerous to be easily sold and used? Taking leave of one's senses can lead to dangerous outcomes? That's too purely a double standard when set net to so many other experiences. The health risk? Maybe, if it exists. At the very least we will see its use banned by minors who, it will be said, are incapable of handling an alteration of the mind, no matter how brief.

The Wahh is something relatively new. And something relatively interesting.

A New and Hidden Code of Wine Tasting

Almost all of my wine tasting education has been practical. That is to say, what I know about evaluating wine and how I evaluate wine has resulted from tasting wine a lot. Beyond that, my inquiries into the practice of wine tasting and evaluating wine has been done on a philosophical and aesthetic level. That is to say, I've done a good deal of reading and thinking about the epistemology of wine or what it means to embrace a "position" concerning what is "good" wine or "better" wine.

These guys however have introduced me to something quite new in the world of wine evaluation. But hang on. What Master Sommelier Tim Gaiser wants to explain to you from his work with Tim Hallbom of the Everyday Genius Institute may seem daunting at first given the way it is described via the Sommelier Journal's headline on the story:

Olfactory Memory and Submodalities: Unlocking the Hidden Code of Tasting

It would be a little foolish of me to attempt to re-explain what Gaiser lays out in the above article. It's pretty complex stuff that requires you think about the connection between aroma, taste, memory and a form of mental image retrieval and manipulation that connects it all

That said, consider this:

"Olfactory memory is triggered by internal visual images....The structural qualities of these images, or submodalities, are of critical importance....Professional tasters can keep multiple images of different aromas in mind at the same time. Once we create an image, we quickly move it to another location in our inner field of vision to make room for more. When we’ve found all the aromas we can, we mentally step back from the montage of images we have created to assess them collectively, identify or evaluate the wine, and, ideally, enjoy it."

The article in Sommelier Journal give concrete examples of how this method of wine evaluation works by looking at the visual image field that wine experts Karen McNeil and Evan Goldstein create in evaluating wine. It's a fascinating perspective on wine evaluation that holds great potential not only for the wine professional and wine aficionado, but also for marketing and education.

This article is highly condensed version of a much larger explanation of how we can evaluate wine more successfully using this approach that is laid out in The Everyday Genius Institutes's educational module, "Taste Wine Like a Pro: Think Like a Genius Wine Taster"

The subject of how to taste and evaluate wine is gargantuan and takes into account not just the neurological processes that are discussed in this article, but also issues of judgement, terroir, the philosophy of aesthetics and, for some, cultural palate preferences. What's outlined here, however, is a method of undertaking critical evaluation of wine that I've not seen explained before. That fact that it is modeled out by Tim Gaiser along with the behavioral scientist Halborn is what gives the technique the kind of authority you ought to consider more than enough to drive you to at least read through the article, if not investigate further.

The Give and Take of the Natural Wine Debate

I am always excited when I see an article or blog post on-line that was written in response to something on this blog. At the very least it means someone is reading me. Even better, it could mean that what I've written inspires someone. More Better: It could mean they took my thoughts seriously.

So, I was pleased to see that Janice Cable over at "Inside IWM" (IWM = Italian Wine Merchant—a GREAT wine merchant) had a long and thoughtful response to my various thoughts on "natural" wine. And her thoughts in turn inspire me to respond here with comments and clarification.

After acknowledging some of the definitional problems with the term "Natural" and appreciating the way the term can be abused by marketers, Ms Cable writes: "In short, it’s hard to define “natural.” And perhaps it’s this very slipperiness as applied to natural wine that Tom Wark of the Fermentation blog has taken to task so repeatedly and so vehemently." In the end, she isn't in agreement with me that the "natural wine movement" is a gimmick."

Actually I'm not concerned with the difficulty of defining the term "natural". Rather, I'm concerned that the use of the term "natural wine" is unjustified, that many of its champions are willing to denigrate what they would consider "non-natural" wines for the sake of promoting their own wines and that champions of "natural wine" are unwilling to use far more accurate words, terms and phrasing to describe what they are doing in order to take advantage of the positive connotations of the term "Natural" despite the unjustified use of the term in the first place.

As for the wines that fall under this unjustified heading, I think they are just great. I think it's wonder that more and more winemakers are determined to use more non-interventionist techniques that have been incorporated into winemaking by artisan winemakers now for years. I think many of these wines are tasty as all get out.

In defense of the "Natural" wine movement Ms. Cable goes on to say:

"I...dislike the 'purple' taste that often accompanies seriously manipulated wine. It’s a thing, and maybe it’s pretentious, but all things being equal, I like a wine that’s made with minimal crap added to it."

I don't know what "purple" tastes like, but that may be a deficiency in my own palate/vocabulary skills. But I do know that wines that are not marketed as "natural" or organic or biodynamic do not necessarily have "crap" added to them. Unfortunately, the impression that many champions of "natural" wine are keen to see left with the wine trade and wine consumers is that if it's not "Natural" it has "crap" in it and may even be dangerous for your health. I have previously offered up a number of such comments and can point folks to these and others that indicate what I'm talking about.

Ms. Cable ends with this:

"For all of these reasons—personal, professional, and ethical—I don’t see natural wines as a marketing gimmick. Sure, it can happen. But mostly it’s about an informed choice about what we put in our bodies, whom we want to support with our money, and what happens on the earth around us. I know how I make my choices, and when I can, I opt for wine made by people who understand the fragile beauty of nature and who honor it."

I think she's written an excellent essay here and I recommend it. But I would be remiss in not pointing out that even this moderate and personal expression of her preference and appreciation for "natural" wines implies that if it's not natural, it's not unlikely to be of dubious content.

Finally, there is an aspect to the way the champions of "natural" wine talk about their object of affection that presumes to suggest that only these "pure" and "raw" wines can play the role that fine wine is supposed to play: to tell the story of the terroir in which the wine's grapes were grown. Consider this nugget:

"Natural wines are as diverse as the places they are made. Natural wine lovers are people who celebrate this diversity. Conventional wines have little or no sense of terroir, because it is all but destroyed by conventional winemaking practices."

What is "conventional" winemaking? Is it the same as "industrial" winemaking? It is entirely different than "natural" winemaking or only a little different? If commercial yeasts are used year in and year out on a specific single vineyard wine and if that wine displays similar characteristics year in and year out, must that characteristic be a result of the commercial yeast used to ferment the wine?  If a bit of RoundUp is used on weeds, will this obliterate any terroir that might be displayed in the wine? If the wine is fined with some natural element, will this obliterate any display of terroir in the wine? We rarely if ever get specifics when claims like the one above are made. We don't have wines being named.

To argue that you must indulge in "natural" wines in order to taste terroir is every bit as silly and denigrating to winemakers around the world as is suggesting that what "natural" winemakers are producing is natural at all.

UPDATE:
Another example of a "Natural Wine" champion that does more than imply that anything but "natural" wine is artificial. This time it's accusing any wine not made with natural yeast to smell artificial and like shower gel. I wonder if this producer can guarantee that none of the yeasts floating around his vineyard and winery are manufactured? More marketing of one's own wine by denigrating others. What's worse, the claims are unsupportable. #nastyhabit

Costco Wine: Shall I Be Offended?

Over at The Eater, Talia Baiocchi is a bit offended, or at least disheartened, that America's most powerful wine buyer doesn't believe that wine is much more special than toilet paper or tin foil. Talia, a keen observer of the wine world and a very good marketer, has reason to be offended by this.

Talia's moment of virtual head-shaking comes in response to a CNBC video featuring Annette Alvarez-Peters, Costco's head wine buyer, who responds to an interviewer's query about wine perhaps being more special thant toilet paper or tin foil with: "I don't think so".  Alverez-Peter's conclusion is, "People can look at it that way. But at the end of the day, it's a beverage." I suspect that more than a few other lovers of the grape were equally offended upon learning of this view of wine held by the wine buyer at Costco.

Here is a woman responsible for the selection from which vast numbers of Americans will choose their wine. Costco is the leading retailer of wine in America. And she doesn't think wine is that special...or at least not much more special than toilet paper.

Now, I'm not much of a connoisseur of toilet paper, but, like with wine, I can tell the difference between ordinary toilet paper and superb toilet paper. And I suspect that Ms. Alvarez-Peters is no different than me.

So all this begs a somewhat important question: Does one need to hold a feeling of reverence for wine in order to successfully choose a selection for the buying public? Given what we know about the success of the Costco wine program and about Ms. Alvarez-Peter's disposition, the answer is certainly "no".

Though it's fairly clear from the CNBC video that despite her view of wine being not any more special than toilet paper or tin foil, Ms. Alvarez-Peters does know a little something about wine. But more importantly, she knows a good deal about what her customer base wants from the wine selection in her hundreds of Costco stores around the country and that this knowledge is far more important than possessing a reverence for wine.

So, all this begs an important question: What are the paramount requirements for a professional wine buyer? I think we can break them down to this:

1. Knowledge of your customers' desires
2. Knowledge of the product
3. Knowledge of buying and market trends

I honestly don't think that if there is a 4th on that list, that it is likely to be a reverence for wine or the view that wine is any more special than most other consumer products. No matter where I shop for my wine, I don't need the person putting the wine on the shelf to have any special love for wine. What I need is for them to put the wines on the shelves that I want and understand why I want them. Beyond that, they need to be able to answer my questions and understand why I ask them. I won't be be clasping my hand in theirs, bowing my head with them, and praising the magnificence of the bottles.

Golf in Napa

You could spend your entire trip to Napa Valley doing nothing but eating and drinking. It's a good plan. The food is tasty here and the wine delicious and copious. And we make it easy for you to do nothing but eat and drink. So have at it.

However, there really is more here than food and wine. You could go golfing between sips and bites. For those inclined to spoil a good walk, the Napa area provides some pretty interesting choices. And many don't require you to mortgage your home. Here are some excellent choices.

Eagle Vines Golf Club
Located about 15 minutes east of the town of Napa in American Canyon, Eagle Vines is a challenging but fair Johnny Miller-designed track that will give you the opportunity to swing away and practice your target golf. It's a pretty course, surrounded on many holes by vines and water coming into play on eight holes. It's nicely groomed and the greens tend to be quite true and of moderate to quick speeds. The two putting greens leave something to be desired. And be careful, in my experience, the putting greens tend to be slower than the course greens. You can find green fees ranging from $39 to $80. My favorite hole is #11, a par five with water to to the left off the tee and a second shot that requires first a carry over a stream then a carry over a lake to reach in two; or a precision shot between water and bunkers to set up a pitch to the green.

Chardonnay Golf Club
Located direct adjacent to Eagle Vines is Chardonnay Golf Club. It, like Eagle Vines, is incorporated into a vineyard landscape with vines coming into play on a number of holes. The views from many of the elevated tees are spectacular. Uniquely, Chardonnay presents six par 3s, six par 4s and six par 5s. Beware that the par fives are difficult holes. Many of them are long and demand a careful carry over ravines and washes. The practice facilities here are quite good with a large putting green and a grass range. There are numerous elevated tees here, some of them monumentally elevated. And like its neighbor, Eagle Vines, wind can be a serious factor later in the afternoon. My favorite hole is the elevated par 3 8th that hits to a undulating narrow and wide green. Given the wind factor, I've hit everything from a 52 degree wedge to a 7 iron on this hole.

Napa Golf Course at Kennedy Park
This is Napa's local municipal course, and it's a good one with lots of challenges. Like most municipal courses it's not in absolutely pristine shape (some sand traps remain "rock traps"). However, water comes into play on 14 of the 18 holes and in many cases, this isn't just incidental water. It's you-better-hit-your-tee-shot-straight kind of water. As you would imagine, prices as Kennedy are lower. You can easily get on for $35 or less. There is a driving range with mats as well as a fine putting green. My favorite hole is #8, a medium length par 5 with water on both sides and lake about 100 yards out that must be traversed. You can get to the green in two with two good shots, but you'd better not be errant.

Vintners Golf Club
This is the Valley's local 9-hole track located smack dab in the middle of the Valley in the culinary haven of Yountville. They keep this little nine holer in very good shape and it is mightily popular with locals not only for the quick round it provides but also for the driving range that allows for hitting off mats as well as grass. Water comes into play on three holes but only on number 4 is it of any consequence. The folks that run this place are fantastic and the local pro, Jeff Dennis, is outstanding. Rates range from about $20 up to $40 for a round of 18.

Hiddenbrook Golf Club
This one is located about a 25 minute drive from the town of Napa and it might be the best course around that you can easily get on. It's an Arnold Palmer-designed course that has hosted LPGA events and it is a challenge, well-groomed and well worth an afternoon.The course features some huge elevation changes, a number of holes with wide open fairways and holes that require you traverse water to reach the green. In my mind, it is the most challenging of the easy-to-get-on-courses in the area. From the blue tees you have a 71.1 rating and 133 slope. This course comes highly recommended. Rates for a round range from $40 to $100 depending on when you play. Hiddenbrook also provides a driving range, an undulating putting green and a chipping green.

Mare Island Golf Club
Located about a half hour from Napa in the town of Vallejo on a former army base located on an island of sorts, Mare Island Golf Club is unique. Opened in 1892 as a nine hole track it claims to be the oldest golf course still operating west of the Mississippi River. In 2000 an additional 9 holes were added providing for two very different golfing experiences between the original nine and the new nine holes. The front nine is a traditional layout with tree-lined fairways and greens like postage stamps. The new back nine opens up, and provides a more links-like experience Much of Mare Island is target golf, made even more difficult by the frequent afternoon winds that can turn a 9 iron into a 5 iron. The green fees are great values ranging from $15 to $45 depending on day and time of play. A small putting green is provided with an irons only driving range.

There are other courses in the area, most of which require membership or a stay at the connected resort. All of the courses described above require no more than a tee time. I tend to rotate around these course and find something to like about all of them. For golfers coming to Napa, a few hours away from the food and wine will be rewarding. And the wine will always be here.