Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog

Wine Spectator Founder Passes Away

In 1976 Bob Morrisey created the Wine Spectator Magazine.

It was a fairly visionary move. He went out and hired some great writers, many of whom went on to become very successful. He and his writers created a tabloid on wine that was upbeat, at times humorous, and a long needed addition to the wine writing genre in America. In 1979 Marvin Shanken, a fan of the magazine, bought it and made it into the most important wine magazine in the world.

Bob Morrisey died last Saturday

According to Dan Berger, a wine writer who worked with Mr. Morrisey and who now publishes"Vintage Experiences",one of the best wine newsletters anywhere, reports on Mr. Morrisey's last words. His visiting family informed him that they were going out to get a bite of food and some wine, saying to him, "Wish you could join us, you always do appreciate a good glass of wine.

"I always do," he responded. Then he died

To Bob Morrisey...a wine pioneer.

No Parking in Sonoma-That's a Good Thing

I had a meeting yesterday on the Plaza in the Town of Sonoma yesterday. It took me five minutes to find a place to park and ended up having to walk quite a distance to get to the business on the plaza at which I was meeting.

THIS IS GOOD NEWS!

Clearly the tourists are back in Sonoma and in Sonoma County as a whole. And you can tell it's tourists who are taking all my parking spaces. They are wearing those cute, loopy shorts, are holding a small map in their hand, and the man is pointing off into the distance while his female companion is shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders.

It was recently reported that Tourism was a $1 Billion business in Sonoma County. In 2003 over 7 million visitors to the county were responsible for more than 15,000 jobs and an annual payroll of over $327 million.

The report produced by consulting firm Economy.com detailed tourism's impact in Sonoma County noting that wine is the main reason so many are coming to the county to spend money and leisure time. They caution however that wine tourism is particularly vulnerable to slowdowns in disposable income spending.

My services at Wark Communications are certainly linked to the health of tourism in wine country. When more people come to wine country the wineries sell more wine, they spend more on marketing, and more of them call me.

So you'll understand why we have no problem at all having to look for a parking space for 5 minutes and walking a distance to get to a meeting.

Rating Wines for Sweetness

How important is the sweetness of a wine when determining if you want to buy it? I think about this normally only when I'm considering a dessert wine or a wine I want to serve as an aperatif before a meal.

There is a wine writer and reviewer who thinks it's pretty important. In fact, so important that he has a special code he puts in his reviews to alert readers to the sweetness level in the wine. There is no special code for value. No special code for tannin. No special code for ageability. No special code for what food to pair it with. Just a code for sweetness.

Taylor Eason has been writing about wine for Creative Loafing Magazine for some time now. He writes well and his stories are interesting and well thought out. He knows his audience well. At the end of each article he reviews two or three wines, gives them 1-5 stars for quality, then....there is the Sweetness Rating, scored I believe on a 1-5 scale with 5 being the sweetest.

We expect our table wine to be dry, and for the most part it usually is. Some wines have more residual sugar than others and if it's a higher percent you tend to encounter it in the body of the wine. Then there are those wines, both red and white, that have noticeable levels of residual sugar. This is no mistake in winemaking. It's meant to be there either to beef up the body or to give the sweet toothes out there something to cling to. Yet I'd never thought of designing a reviewing system to account for levels of sweetness. I like.

Wine Loving Kids...Make More of Them

Being a person who works in the wine industry, who has lots of wine and alcohol in the home and who is a parent of two young children, I've given a good amount of thought to how the consumption of alcohol should be presented to the little ones (9 and 11) in the home. 

I've come down on the issue like this: It's important to demonstrate a respect for the effects of alcohol, as well as train the children how you can enjoy wine in particular without getting sloppy drunk.

So, we let them smell and sip a small amount of whatever wine we have at the table. We ask them what they taste, what they smell, what they like (the dessert wines are popular). It's an approach that seems to be working.

But his approach is not something that a large number of people in America would approve of. Most organizations and individuals concerned with minors and their exposure to alcohol take an approach that could only be called  TOTAL ABSTINENCE.

Well, it's nice to find an organization that take a more reasonable view.

The Sociology Department at State University of New York in Potsdam has this GREAT INFORMATIONAL SITE CONCERNING ALCOHOL, PARENTS AND MINORS

Wines To Drink...Not Write About

Neal Martin at The Wine Journal coaxed a fascinating quote out of Michael Broadbent in what is really a fabulous interview:

"What I cannot understand are these writers who write columns in the papers about supermarket wines. I guess it is horses for courses, but I, for one, am not interested in writing about Sauvignon Blanc for example. These wines are for drinking, not for writing about."

"For drinking, not for writing about"

I think I agree.

What is there really to say about a $5 "California" Cabernet Sauvignon or a $7 "Southwest Australia" Chardonnay? Most are serviceable, though unremarkable, wines that really don't engage the intellect or advance anyone's education in the vinious arts and sciences.

We do need these wines and they, in fact, are the what the vast majority of drinkers gulp on a daily or weekly basis. They lubricate the market. They serve as a diversion from beer and cola, and they often are the introduction to the world of wine.

But they don't inspire.

Yet they do get written about, don't they. We read they represent value. Ok. That's fine. We read that there are more and more of them in the market. Very true. And we read that they have lovely forward, sweet fruit. Indeed they do. But after that I'm not sure what there is to say.

What Mr. Broadbent believes is that a certain category of wines are worth writing about: wines that inspire you to think, to consider their cultural context, wines that have history, wines that provoke us to look to their sisters, brothers and cousins for confirmation of style, pedigree and quality. And there are indeed a great deal more interesting ideas associated these kind of questions than the question of value and how fruity they are.

Broadbent is old school, a monsieur I offer that comes with the highest esteem and great pools of envy. Probably no man alive has tasted as many pre-1900 wines than he. His personal knowledge of Bordeaux, Burgundy, and German wines is really remarkable. He's a man whose memory of wine as it has been presented over the past half century is nearly unparalleled.

The kind of writing Michael Broadbent would endorse is the kind you often see in The Wine Spectator, Wine & Spirits Magazine, Decanter Magazine, Wine News and the many newsletters that focus on fine wine through either reviews or probing articles.

There is an argument to be made that writing about affordable, though probably simple and adequate, wines goes the greatest distance toward addressing the largest group of wine drinkers. Or, that by writing about these "supermarket wines" the writer helps those who don't need to hear the elitist ramblings of the wine cognoscenti.

My experience as a wine snob and a former newcomer to wines tells me that while these arguments might make sense, they don't overcome the problem that Supermarket wines are just plain boring. They should be drunk....not written about.

Why I Get Paid The BIG BUCKS!

Here is the challenge:

Describe what Chardonnay tastes like in 50 words.

This was my charge earlier today as I was in the middle of working on a project that demanded I describe the characteristics of a number of different grape varieties. I sat back, staring at the blank white computer screen holding the letters C-H-A-R-D-O-N-N-A-Y, followed by a colon. I was stumped.

Now, I've drunk a number of wines made from Chardonnay grapes. Given a particular chardonnay I could describe it in great detail and probably with a bit of flourish to the prose. But describe Chardonnay, in general?

Which do I describe? The high acid, citrusy, minerally Chards made in Chablis? The more lush, but still acid based green apple, melon and vanilla chards of Burgundy's villages? What about the over the top, alcoholic fruit bombs laden with oak that often come from California. Then there are the unoaked, tropical fruit and lemony chards that can be made anywhere. What is chardonnay? And in just 50 words, please.
Well, here's why I get paid the big bucks:

"Known for the great wines it produces in Burgundy and Chablis, Chardonnay in California is a chameleon. Its tropical, citrus, fresh fruit and floral aromas can all take center stage. Depending on the winemaker's aim and the terroir at their disposal, Chardonnay can be opulent and rich or crisp and refreshingly lean."

If you are going to be good at wine PR, you've got to learn to pass the buck, cop out AND give the facts...all at the same time. Chardonnay is so diverse that depending on who makes the wine it is nearly impossible to describe beyond it being white.

Notice how I describe varietal by citing not the character, but where it's made. Notice how I blame the winemaker for my frustration (inabilities?). Notice how I display the palate of paints rather than the painting.
I think I finally did fabulous work here by choosing not to do the work at all. Yet, it could be argued that this is the only intellectually honest way to describe Chardonnay. And that's exactly how I think I'll argue it.

(By the way, if you think you are up to it...give the challenge a whirl and post it here in a comment)

The Best Collections of Wine Lovers on the Net

Let's make a bold assumption here: Those who come to read Fermentations like stimulating wine talk. I do to. For years now, the very best, most stimulating, collection of wine talkers have been gathering on Wine Forums across the net.

I remember the Wine Forum at Prodigy. Then came the AOL Wine forum. Then the wine forums started to appear across the Internet. Today there are a number wine-related, internet-based wine forums where everything about wine is discussed, argued about, deconstructed and put back together again. They are gold mines for wine lovers who like to discuss wine as much as they like to drink it.

Here are the best:

West Coast Wine
Brad Harrington started this site...oh..years ago. It tends to focus more on California wine. It was my forum home for years. It still hosts lively debates and is often the source of information on wines that have yet to be discovered

Wine Lovers Page
This forum is the construct of Robin Garr. It is among the longest running wine forums on the Internet. Both Wine Lovers Page and West Coast Wine have a variety of wine information outside the context of the forum. Robin's page is a full fledged wine website that also has a great forum.

The Wine Spectator Wine Forum
Again, one of the oldest running wine forums on the internet where interest seems to ebb and flow. It's home at the wine spectator web site makes it a place that will always be popular. I like the clean layout here a lot. It can be a contentious group of wine lovers. But I like that.

Mark Squires Bulletin Board on E-RobertParker
I think is is one of the best utilized wine forums at the moment. There seems to be far more tasting notes posted on this site than the others. The collection of people who make up this community is amazingly diverse. Occasionally Robert Parker and Pierre Rovani of The Wine Advocate chime in on different topics. A very good, very active wine forum

Vino Cellar
Vino Cellar seems an up and coming wine forum where the posts are intelligent. A number of winemakers frequent this site, as they do other wine forums.

Wine Therapy
I just recently discovered this very active site. While it appears to be a good place to rant about this and that, this veil of venting only slightly obscures what is a very active site with informed and opinionated wine lovers who don't' mind if your writing includes a cuss word here and there, as long as the profanity is used in the context of a well formed sentence about wine. Very nice site.

Many wine lovers bounce between forums, posting here and there. Yet, each of these forums do have a distinct personality. Also, they all pretty much work the same with topic listing organized by most recently updated. These are dynamic forums that would probably more than satisfy anyone who finds themselves reading wine blogs on a regular basis.

All the forums are free and it takes no more than 30 seconds to register  on each.

Now....Go forth and Post!

How Wine Was Removed From the Bible

At The Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples passed a common cup, drinking wine from it. Yes, real honest to goodness wine. This act set the stage for a ritual known as Communion that has been with the church for more than 2000 years.

I'm not much of church-goer myself. However, I've always been attracted to the ritual and ceremony of the catholic church. And as an avid wine drinker, I've always appreciated connection that wine had to the particular ritual of communion. It is the powerful image and meaning of the wine representing the blood of Christ that has kept wine a part of this ritual for so many years.

But powerful are other movements. So powerful as to remove wine from holy communion. It started in the late 19th century when the temperance movement grew out of evangelical revival movement and began to spread. The notion that alcohol was poisonous to both the body and society began to take hold, eventually leading toward prohibition in America.

At first, it was hard liquor that became forbidden by church leaders in America. Beer, cider and wine were not considered social ills, nor particularly harmful to the body. Add to this wine's connection to communion and the fermented beverage of the vine was safe for church goers.

But the abstinence movement and prohibitionism gained steamed. Questions began to be raised. If alcohol was a poisonous and tempting beverage to be avoided, who could it be a part of the communion. To take care of this contradiction a nifty theory was offered and accepted far and wide.

A number of theologians and Christian scholars began to theorize that Greek and Hebrew words meaning wine had actually been mistranslated in the course of the bible being retranslated over the years and centuries. They argued the original meaning of these words was not wine, but rather "grape juice".

Thus, the justification for wine being removed from the Holy Communion was put forth and spread through out the protestant churches in America. It was an American Methodist dentist who created a way to mass produced grape juice that would eventually end up in the the cups in American Churches. His name was Thomas Bramwell Welch.

Today, many churches have moved back to wine for use in Communion as the prohibitionist debacle faded away.

Prohibitionism has not entirely left American life, nor finished with its effects on our culture. Perhaps this short little history might be illustrative of the kind of power a movement that is seemingly back by science and revisionist history can have, even on the most powerful of institutions.

Guide to Great PR 1.0

The public relations business can be frustrating. You can never be sure if your efforts will yield results. Advertising is different. You choose the medium to advertise in. You know how many eyeballs you are paying for. And if you are good, you have a decent idea of what the response will be.

Publicists spend their day, essentially, standing on the roof top and yelling, "hey, look at me!" You are bound to get someone to turn their head and look. And if you have a sharp voice and know what direction to shout in, there's a somewhat better chance that the right head will turn in your (or your client's) direction.

So if you've ever wonder what success looks like to a publicist, you should look at this story over at MSNBC.com. I honestly don't know if this story on Sonoma Valley was a result of a publicist's work. It may be that the writer had been looking for an opportunity to write about Sonoma Valley for a long time because it's one of their favorite places to go. What I do know is that some publicist will take credit for it and I do know that this story is about as good as it gets for a little region like Sonoma Valley.

Today is a Good Day...A Very Good Day

Today I'll take my mother home from the hospital she has been in since having a stroke a little over two weeks ago. So, today is a good day. A very good day.

You think about a lot of different things when you see a parent lying in a hospital bed. Priorities come to mind. The debt we owe to those that offer us unconditional love. These are things that really ought to come to mind as a matter of course. But they always don't.

My mother's stroke was brought on by a combination of high blood pressure and the development of diabetes. The nurses and physical therapists at Sonoma Valley Hospital have been amazing. They've been friends. Even confidantes. They'll be getting a box delivered to them with a stash of my best bottles, as well as my support and gratefulness.

In the course of the last two weeks I've learned a lot about high blood pressure, diabetes and strokes. Naturally, I learned a bit about the connection between wine and these medical conditions. The connection is a good one. I recommend you read:

-This About Wine and Strokes
-This About Wine and Diabetes
-This About Wine and High Blood Pressure.

My mom has never been much of a wine drinker. But this Easter, when my wife, son, daughter, sisters and I are at my mothers house to celebrate Easter together I'm going to bring over a bottle of one of the best White Zinfandels I've ever tasted. A really amazing wine. She might have a sip or two. I don't know. But she'll at least have a glass in front of her when we toast to her speedy recovery.