Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog

The Great Pinot Noir Event

The International Pinot Noir Celebration is the grandaddy of American Pinot events. It's also the best wine fest I've been to. This year's IPNC is the 20th. I put out this announcement fairly early because the event always sells out fast.

The IPNC is held at Linfield College in McMinnville in Oregon near the Willamette Valley. It's a beautiful location surrounded by vineyards and wineries. But it's the tone of the festival that has always struck folks who attend. Those who attend have always had a very special love for the grape and the wines it makes. As a result there is a real camaraderie that exists among participants.

The events are always first rate. This year speakers will include Remington Norman--author of "The Great Domaines of Burgundy", Richard Sanford--founder of Sanford Winery and Leslie Sbrocco--Author of "Wine  For Women." Events include Burgundy Seminars, New World Pinot Noir seminars, winery luncheons, the always amazing Grand Dinner and the famed Northwest Salmon Bake.

If you want to go or are just interested I suggest you check out the International Pinot Noir Celebration website and get your money in quick. They limit participation and tickets go quick.

The Classic American (wine) Road Trip

Show me one wine blogger who wouldn't want to do THIS .

Taj James, the blogger behind "Cork & Demon Wine Blog" is ready to embark on a wine blogging road trip she's appropriately named, "The Cork & Demon Western Wine Tour 2006".

The idea? Travel through as many western U.S. wine areas talking to wine people and live blogging it. She explains, "I'm in search of America's finest Wine People.  People at all levels of winemaking, selling and growing, who love what they do for more than just the money it brings."

I'm hoping she blogs often. These days it isn't so hard to find WiFi access in some cafe.

The tradition of the "American Road Trip" is cemented in our culture in the form of literature and film and song. Now..blogs, with a wine twist. It's really a great story in and of itself that I hope the mainstream wine media, or even the regular wine media, will pick up on and write about here and there.

You can follow Taj on her Western Wine Tour by subscribing to her RSS Feed. I did. She leaves tomorrow.

Hit the road, Taj!

Big Balls

Sometimes you have to wonder how wine wholesalers can even walk straight given the enormous size of their balls.

This from a press release issued yesterday by the Indiana Wine & Spirit Wholesalers:

"Under their special niche within the regulatory structure of Indiana's three-tier system, farm wineries in Indiana had enjoyed a special status (being allowed to sell direct to consumers and retailers)."

"Special Niche"?  "Special Status"?

This from the wine wholesalers who have the most special of niches and most special and lucrative of statuses of perhaps any industry in Indiana. By state mandate, EVERY bottle of wine sold in Indiana must first go through the wholesalers hands. And the wineries have a "special niche" and "special status" because they are able to sell wine direct out of their tasting rooms?

This kind of attitude falls under the heading of "The Bizarre Way In Which The Wine Wholesaler Brain Works."

Just as I suspected, the wine wholesalers in Indiana are continuing a fairly feeble PR push with the idea that they can make the Indiana wineries look like bullies. They've issued a press release in which they "offer" to withdrawal their own litigation in the state (that seeks to keep in place a rule found to be illegally issued by the state's top alcohol commissioner stopping wineries from shipping wine direct) if the wineries will only stop all wine shipping related litigation ACROSS THE COUNTRY...of which the Indiana wineries have absolutely no control over.

Again, how do these multi billion dollar wholesalers who already are mandated by the state to have control of the entire alcoholic beverage distribution industry manage to waddle around with balls as big as their inflated heads?

You Are What You Terroir

Ken Garret has an interesting article in the Australian paper The Courier-Mail in which Terroir is the topic. Early on, Garret goes on about the various ways terroir is defined and it struck me in reading that one can tell a lot about the person by understanding how they define "Terroir".

Consider the following definitions of Terroir...and what they tell us about the Definer

1. Real Terroir Only Exists in France
Meaning: They own a French Vineyard or only drink French wine

2. Terroir is all about the soils and little else
Meaning: They have a piece of land they want to claim has the "best terroir"

3. Terroir includes all the natural influences on a vineyard including climate, soils and aspect.
Meaning: They own a vineyard or winery in the "New World" and want the entire world to know that great terroir can be found anywhere...especially in the New World.

4. "Terroir" means the entire "spirit" of the place where the grapes are grown
Meaning: "The history and culture of my region is more interesting than yours."

5. Terroir encompass not just "Mother Nature" but the impact of the grower and winemaker too.
Meaning: I'm not sure "terroir" even exists to the extent that it matters

6. Terroir is that "taste of place" one finds in unique wines
Meaning: That's not a flaw you taste in my wine, it's the "gout de terroir"

What's the point?

In most cases the point is that "terroir" is much more than a concept. It is a marketing tool for wineries and regions, it is a tool of the chauvinist, it is a tool of the publicist, and it is the excuse some use to explain away poor winemaking or vineyard management.

In the end, I think "terroir" only matters if you can taste it over and over, vintage after vintage; if you can use it to explain why wine from one vineyard or small region ALWAYS has a particular character. If  terroir can't explain this, then I'm not sure it matters at all...regardless of the definition you give it.

Best Reason To Get Into The Wine Business

The reason you want to get into the wine business is not to enjoy the sun on your back as you walk through your vineyard, not to help educate people about wine from a well-stocked shop and not to produce wine in your own vision.

The reason you want to be in the wine business is to be able to attend the "Premier Napa Valley Tasting and Auction".

Held last Saturday at the Culinary Institute of America Greystone in St. Helena, Premier Napa Valley is one of the most fascinating tastings in California. The event is designed to raise funds for the Napa Valley Vintners association. Each participating winery creates a unique blend, something that simply doesn't get released to the public. They make 5 to 20 cases worth. The tasting puts these wines on display then they are auctioned off. The event is limited to members of the trade, mainly retailers, restaurants and wholesalers.

This is the Napa Valley event where the more famous as well as more obscure wineries take part. They are all looking not merely to help out their association, but to meet and make contacts with people in the business. The wineries take it very seriously.

Wineries pour "reserve" wines that are made from the best barrel of Cabernet, from the most interesting parcel of their vineyards, from blends they don't normally create. Essentially, you get to taste wines of tremendous quality and uniqueness. Interestingly, you don't see many members of the media at this tasting, probably because they know the wines they taste will never be offered to the public. So what's the point?

This year 181 wineries offered lots that eventually were sold for a record $1.87 million. A brief rundown of the auction lots can be found at this link.

This is the second time I've been to Premier Napa Valley. The first time was as a bidder while I was working as Director of Communications for Winebid.com. This time I was behind a barrel, working on behalf of a client who was pouring at the event. It's a very different perspective, but fascinating nonetheless.

No matter what kind of tasting you pour at you are always wondering who you are talking to. At large events such as Family Winemakers Tasting the odds are much smaller that you are talking to a decision maker. Still, you look at the badge they are wearing to have some idea of what the context of the encounter you are engaged in. At Premier Napa Valley nearly everyone who attends is the decision maker who comes with dollars and power in hand. You simply pay closer attention to who is tasting your wine.

I stood all day across the aisle from Ed Sbragia of Beringer ands next to Tony Soter of Etude. It was fascinating to actually watch people "pay homage" to these two giants of Napa Valley. They are creations of their own talent and expertise as well as the "star winemaker" system that was a huge factor in marketing wine back in the 1990s than it is today. Yet, it is fascinating to listen to people approach "star winemakers" that truly helped define wine for them.

Finally, the setting for the tasting is magnificent. The barrel room at Greystone where the tasting takes place is dark, cool, home to great old wine casks and easy to maneuver. You could never mistake it for anything other than a place of wine.

Follow your conviction...in wine AND FOOD.

If you believe in the idea of a community-based economy in food, in farmers markets, in finding a way to help support this important source of hand grown foods, then you need to take a quick glance at Adam Mahler's post at Untangled Vine in which he reports on the move among some Representatives in Washington D.C. to help the Farmer's Market Movement.

Adam has the background on the bill and it appears he'll be delivering more information in the form of interviews with the Representative that has introduced the bill.

What can be done to help encourage the development of more farmers markets as well as the success of those that currently exist is important to know. They represent a critical outlet for the few remaining, but growing, corps of devoted people who want to deliver fresh, unique, organic foods to the American table.

Here in Sonoma Valley and in Sonoma County as a whole we are very lucky. We have a wonderful network of farmers markets that take place nearly year round and in just about ever city in the country. In the Town of Sonoma alone we have two per week. The beauty of these events is not just in the remarkable produce and products that one has access to. It is a community event where you get to see your neighbors outside the context of a "drive by hello".

The Indiana Wine Dance

There must be a number of managing editors at Indiana newspapers that are somewhat pissed off. By no fault of their own they are having to update the direct shipping story in their state in such a way that makes them look like they got it wrong.

One day after a closely-watched and heavily attended committee meeting took place in the Indiana Legislature and a compromise on the direct shipping issue between Indiana wineries and the wine wholesalers was accomplished, the president of the Indiana Senate killed the pending legislation. The move effectively ends any possibility of a conclusion to the bitter shipping battle in Indiana until at least January of next year.

On February 23, the Indianapolis Star ran a story under this headline:
"Bill altered to allow wine shipping"

Not more than a few hours later, they ran this one:
"Wine-shipping legislation goes sour"

There is some real "insiders baseball" going on in Indiana right now.  And it's hard to really understand who is pushing which agenda. For same reason, Sen. Robert Garton, the President of the Indiana Senate killed the compromise legislation that would have allowed any winery in country to sell direct to Indiana retailers, a right only Indiana wineries have had. It was not a perfect compromise, but it did represent a good deal of work and politics by  a lot of interested parties. And if you are wondering, Garton appears to have accepted no or very little in the way of campaign contributions from wine wholesalers.

Garton claimed he just learned that there was pending litigation on the issue and announced the Indiana Legislature tries not to impose on the judiciary's duty. It's highly unlikely that the existence of pending legislation was only just discovered by Garton. Hell, I knew about it and I live in California.

Without addressing the issue of which branch of government should take the lead in addressing concerns of the state, you have to wonder what is gained by putting off a legislative fix to the problems of Indiana wine distribution until January 2007 when the legislature will presumably take up the issue again after the court rules on a lawsuit that is challenging Indiana distribution laws as discriminatory and unconstitutional. It is unlikely the various parties involved will have changed their minds or views in ten months: wine wholesalers want all sales to go through them but are willing to compromise while wineries everywhere want the right to sell to whomever they want, in any way they want and as much as they want, but they two will accept a few restrictions.

In other words, why Garton killed the compromise is unclear to most people right now. There's lots of speculation. But this post is already filled with enough speculation and machiavellian "to-dos" for now.

No matter what happens, it's likely that the controversy will arise in Indiana again in 2007. What might make the difference in terms of what either side in the matter can achieve for themselves and their industries is what they do in the mean time to turn public and political opinion to their views.

Undoubtedly the wine wholesalers can revert to their tried and true method of gaining support: campaign contributions. Wineries being so small as an industry don't have this option. Wholesalers spent upwards of $600,000 on campaign contributions during the 2004 Indiana election cycle.

But I think the impact of more wholesaler contributions is overrated. I think that the public relations battle can be won by either side between now and next January depending on if they choose to continue to fight it. The wholesalers are already on the ball. Not more than a day ago they released  the results of a "push poll" they conducted that was designed to produce a specific opinion from the public that was favorable to their interests. It's well done, but phony in it's obvious slanting of the issue. Nonetheless...the poll is out there and suggests that Indianans just won't abide direct shipment from wineries to consumers or retailers.

These kind of polls aren't cheap. And they are effective. If the wine wholesalers choose to continue the PR battle without any organized response by the wineries you could easily end up with a public that believes minors are boozing it up using the Internet and that somewhere located in the depths of the Bible there is something about how wine wholesalers will inherit the earth.

My hope is that while the court works its way through the lawsuit and legislative matters are reinvigorated next year, the wineries will rally around a few strong voices to keep alive the messages of economic fairness, the work of the family farmer and the corruption of mandated power .

Meanwhile, I think we are going to see one more federal court rule that allowing in-state wineries to sell to retailers but not out of state wineries is unconstitutional. The Indiana case is really set up to do that and the precedent exists. Yet for Indiana, this issue is able to turn on a dime because there are others that might weigh in on the matter. You might have the state Liquor authority move to hold hearings on what would be their desire to see all shipping in Indiana shut down by the fiat of the Liquor authority rather than by the work of the legislature. The head of the state authority on liquor already tried this back in May, but was stopped from implementing his plan when a court found that he had issued these new direct shipping rules outside the bounds of his authority. The court's injunction on his rules ends this month. While the wineries are likely to ask for a continuation of the injunction that won't stop Liquor authority commissioner David Heath from trying use proper channels and rules to shut down direct shipping.

The growing Indiana wine industry is up against lot.

But, others have lot at stake too, besides wineries and wine wholesalers. If you open up sales by wineries to retailers to any producer in America you really unlock some great opportunities for wineries in the big wine producing states like California, Washington, Oregon and New York. I image in time a pretty good sized trade between wineries and restaurants/retailers would develop, providing greater margins for both wineries and retailers, and potentially better prices for consumers.

Yet, there doesn't seem to be much interest by California wineries in getting behind the Indiana wineries in their fight to keep direct sales open to them and to open it up for others. It may be that I'm simply not privy to any help that may be going on behind the scenes. But I've not heard of any. I have heard that CA's largest association of wineries, The California Wine Institute, has made efforts to oppose shipping bills in different states that place restrictions on the size of the winery that is allowed to ship. If this is true then it seems pretty clear that the Institute is more concerned with only taking care of its medium to largest members rather than working on behalf of a more open and liberal national wine trade.

This is understandable and it's hard to blame them for this. It takes the kind of vision that few associations possess to work on issues outside the most immediate view of their members.

There are other reasons why out-of-state wineries might not involve themselves in the Indiana battle and may not even be welcome to it. There is little of PR value to be gained for the Indiana wineries by having wineries from out of state express their desire to horn in on the Indiana market. It's just much easier to depict the desire to liberalize the wine trade into some conspiracy by large California wineries.

As I said, it's "Insider's Baseball". However, what's really interesting about the Indiana battle over who gets to sell wine to whom is that so many of the arguments and procedural weapons that are or will be used across the country are right now on display in Indiana.

Wine Blog WATCH....Truly

The future of Television is certainly linked to the Internet. Is the future of the wine blog linked to video.

I encountered my first Video Wine Blog today, produced by the Wine Library, an Internet-based wine retailer. While its production value was not on par with what you might find on cable TV, Wine Library TV certainly demonstrates that the technology is here to exploit video via the Internet to educate people about wine (and sell more wine).

We've discovered centuries ago that the intricacies and interest generated by wine can be expertly communicated through the written world. We know too that audio is a capable medium for delivering information about wine. Yet both these mediums have one thing in common: they rely on words, on literacy, to create a mental picture.

Video is different, it seems. For a Video Wine Blog to go beyond what can be accomplished through mere words the producers really need to exploit the potential of the moving image. Otherwise, you have a podcast that just takes up extra bandwidth and delivers distracting movement on your computer screen.

This is not to say that Wine Library TV won't succeed. Clearly there is motivation and wine experience behind it. But for it to truly work I need them to deliver something to my computer screen that makes me WANT to WATCH. I'm not sure a very educated wine guy sipping wine, spitting it and talking into the camera accomplishes this.

For video to work it needs to take us places that mere words cannot. It needs to put us in the vineyard, in the winery, on the street. It needs to show us things we can not fully appreciate with mere words and sound. Accomplish this and you succeed with the Video Wine Blog.

In earlier posts I've been very bullish on wine blogs, suggesting that they will grow tremendously in 2006, that more and more wineries will adopt them for marketing purposes, and that more and more consumers will come to rely on them. I see the emergence of the Video Wine Blog as part of the same phenomenon that is driving the success and production of mere wine blogs: technology allows us to communicate individually more efficiently with a wider circle of like minded people.

Taking On Wine Cliches

Frank Prial, the venerable and former head wine writer for the New York Times, has an article running about the Internet that takes on the issue of Cliches in wine writing. To take his poke at the ever overused phrases that populate the wine writing genre he channels "Mr. Arbuthnot", the persnickety creation of Frank Sullivan who wrote for the New Yorker in the 1930s. As Mr. Prial explains, the creation of the cliche expert Mr. Arbuthnot was done to "set out to do battle with the inane and the banal in popular writing."

It's was an easy target for "Mr. Arbuthnot" then just as it is for Mr Prial today.

So, what does Mr. Prial's "Mr Arbuthnot" have a problem with when it comes to the wine lexicon? He starts with the term "Nose". Too overused to be of any value he thinks. Perhaps. Luckily we can easily substitute the term "aromas" or "bouquet" and easily satisfy Mr. Arbuthnot.

The term "Hand Crafted" comes in for particular scorn and I have to agree with this assessment as well as with the observation, "How else would you 'craft' something than with your hands?"

The poking that goes on in this article is directed at a lot of different targets, not just the wine writers and wine marketers who use the phrase most often. It's a good read.

The RE-Judgement of Paris

We've all known it would happen some time. Thirty years hence is as good a time as any, I suppose. Yet, I can't help but think it's being undertaken as a form of vengeance, rather than what it's being called: "A Celebration".

Decanter Magazine reports that the famed Paris Tasting of 1976 will be recreated, this time simultaneously on two continents and hooked together via video link. The original tasting, when French tasters choose California wines over French wines in a comparative tasting, was the ultimate wine PR coup. It was widely reported on and both raised the reputation of California wines while bringing into question the supposed dominate position of French wines. It changed everything.

The 30th anniversary recreation will feature the same wines that were originally poured as well as a comparative tasting of wines from the 2001 and 2000 vintage from both countries. Steven Spurrier, the man who organized the first tasting and who will be on hand for the new one, believes the French will finally be vindicated:

"I fully expect the longevity of Bordeaux to show up well in the first round of tasting. But it's wide open for the more recent vintages."

Meanwhile, Ben Howkins, the "wine advisor" to Lord Rothschild, is lowering expectations going in: "The wine world has changed so much in the past 30 years, and this is really intended to be a celebration of all that has happened."

I wondering if the French really see the original tasting and what has transpired since as a reason to celebrate. While the French reputation for making classic, world class wine is intact, they have been caught up with in the minds of many since 1976...and not just by Californians.

What's interesting is the guts on display. As too often seems the case, its the French who have everything to lose and very little to gain. What happens if the French tasters choose the old California wines over the old French wines? Ands what happens if Time Magazine covers it again. You might find some French wine makers somewhat unhappy with Mr Spurrier for once again placing the French wines too close to the edge of the pedestal.