Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog

I Can FEEL the Grape Pickers Here in Napa...It's Time

By this coming Wednesday, the vast majority of fruit still hanging on the vines here in Napa Valley (and in Sonoma County) will have been picked. There is a forecast for possible rain on Thursday and again on Sunday. Rather than risk more rot, growers are likely going to throw in the towel on the prospects of getting their grapes riper in 2011.

All in all the past few weeks have been VERY good for North Coast growers who feared the worst after an October 4th rainstorm hit this region, causing significant rot in many vineyards across Napa and Sonoma. Yet since there, we have had some pretty good weather including regular sunshine all the way up to today.

The 2011 harvest is going to be quite variable. Some wineries in the North Coast area I've spoken with are absolutely ecstatic about the quality of the grapes they've harvested. Others are dealing with significant rot among the grapes they've harvested. Still others have told me that "concentrate" will be the watchword of the 2011 harvest. In addition to this, we are seeing significant reductions in yield among a number of varieties of grapes.

All that said, while I can't see them from my window here at the world headquarters of Wark Communications in Napa, I can "feel" the crews in the field pulling the Cabernet off the vines. They are out there.

 

 

 

WA State Voters To Decide If Teens Should Die From Alcohol

On November 8th in Washington State voters will weigh in on a very important ballot measure: Initiative-1183. Though Initiative 1183 will allow a variety of things, most importantly it would actually remove the state from the sale and distribution of spirits and allow retail outlets to purchase spirits directly from the spirit manufacturer as well as from private distributors.

How do I know Initiative 1183 is a good thing? Because the Wine & Spirit Wholesalers of America have contributed nearly every penny of the $12 Million that have been raised in opposition to the ballot measure.

That's a bit cheeky, isn't it?...determining if a ballot measure is good or bad based on whether or not wholesalers support it.

OK...How about this? I know the ballot measure is a good thing when the opposition begins to argue that its passage will lead to the deaths of our teen-aged children.

The key to understanding Washington's I-183 is that: 1) it gets the state out of the business of selling alcohol 2) In doing so it gives retailers and suppliers of alcohol the opportunity to do business directly with each other rather than having to go through a middleman wholesalers. 3) Costco is funding nearly the entire Pro I-1183 campaign. Beer and wine wholesalers primarily outside of Washington State are funding nearly all of the NO on I-1183 campaign.

Make no mistake: Wholesalers across the country HATE this ballot initiative because it represents not just an instance of the scales in one state being slightly tipped away from their favor. They HATE it because it represents reform to the idea of the state-mandated three tier system and it is that system that sustains the wholesalers and which is the bedrock of their success. The great fear is that this move to get the state out of the business of selling alcohol and to allow sales directly from supplier to retailer will spread across the country.

The latest poll shows that a majority of Washington State voters approve of Initiative 1183. What will be interesting to watch is the fall out of 1183 passing. Wholesalers will respond that Costco "BOUGHT" the initiative in Washington State through their nearly $20 million contribution to the the effort. Yet, surely there will be be someone (or many) around to point out that wholesalers have been buying legislation that favors them for many years, only they do it through campaign contributions to candidates.

 

Wine Shipping and Serving Wine To Moose: Both Illegal

The Texas alcohol regulators happily report that they are successfully stopping Texas wine lovers from obtaining wines they can't find locally by ordering those wines from out of state wine stores.

Meanwhile, over in New York, the local wine regulators in that state report that they generated $5 million in taxes and fees from $54 million in direct wine shipments from out of state wineries.

What's interesting is that neither of these states collect taxes on, let alone legally allow, out of state wine STORES to ship wine to their consumers.

No one knows exactly how much commerce could potentially be generated if the top wine consumer states allowed consumers to purchase and have shipped to them wines from out-of-state wine stores. However, many people with close knowledge of the retail wine shipping trade believe it would be as much or more than wineries ship into those states. I can report on very good authority that when Illinois changed their law to bar their consumers from having wine shipped to them from out-of-state wine stores just five stores that stopped shipping wine lost over $15 million in sales. Those stores alone would have generate more than $1 million in tax revenue for the state of Illinois.

Currently, only 14 states allow out-of-state retailers to legally ship wine to their residents compared with 37 states allowing out of state wineries to ship in. It should be noted that the difference between the transaction that occurs when a winery ships directly to a consumer and when a wine store ships to a consumer is exactly nothing.

The other issue is this: while consumers who are allowed to have wine shipped them from domestic wineries have access to a great diversity of American-made wines that never show up on local store shelves or on restaurant lists, consumers in states where it is illegal for out-of-state retailers to ship only have access to those imported wines that show up on store shelves and restaurant lists. And in most locations this selection of imported wines on store shelves is pretty pathetic.

You'd think the National Association of Beverage Importers would be pretty upset about this blatant form of discrimination against imported wines.

In Texas it's tempting to blame the assault on consumer access to wine on the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission, which is actively pursuing a crackdown on wine shipped into the state by out-of-state wine stores. However, those folks are just doing what they are told. And in this case it is common knowledge that it is the state wholesalers and their lawmaker friends, flush with campaign contributions, that are insisting on the crackdown on out-of-state wine retailer shipments.

The great utility of interstate shipment of wine by retailers isn't understood by many people. It's the important market-based tool for adjusting the gargantuanly inefficient distribution patterns brought on by the three tier system. Retailer-to-consumer shipping across state lines moves fine wine from markets where its demand is less into those markets where its demand is greater. The three tier system is incapable of efficiently doing this because wholesalers in one state can't move wine into other states' markets.

It is only the great increase in access to information brought about by the Internet that has allowed the re-distribution of goods from markets where their numbers outpace demand to markets where their demand is unmet. Consumers in states where the wholesalers and retailers have mis-read or ignored the demands of the local wine consumer base are able, through retailer-to-consumer shipping, to satisfy their demand. This practice represents the workings of a highly efficient modern marketplace.

Yet in most states, wine stores only have access to the inventory that wholesalers choose to make available. The wholesalers' choices of which wines to bring into a state usually take very little account of the fine wine consumer and focus more on the casual wine buyer looking for the $5 to $15 bottle of wine. While this satisfies the majority of consumers, it satisfy the minority of consumers who are looking to obtain more expensive, smaller production wines.

Still, those retailers—often after being cajoled by their inefficient wholesalers, loudly oppose legalized shipment of wines into the state by their out-of-state brethren simply because they don't want the competition. What they fail to appreciate is that these shipments are no competition at all. Consumers agree to pay the premium of shipping only when they can't find the wines they want at a local retailer.

Then of course there is the lost tax revenue to the states that ban interstate shipment by retailers. Texas, New York, Illinois, Florida, Washington, and Michigan alone are forgoing millions of dollars in tax revenue that would happily be remitted by out-of-state retailers were they able to legally ship into those states.

Based on the reports out of Texas, it's clear that a good number of local consumers are engaging out-of-state retailers to sell them wine then illegally ship it to them. No one should be surprised that this underground trade is occuring. Texas has a law in place that both consumers and out-of-state retailers understand serves no legitimate purpose and attempts to protect a practice that harms no one.

Consumers who understand that having wine shipped to them from out-of-state retailers is illegal look at the law the way they look at those ancient laws that prohibit giving a moose a drink of alcohol, getting a fish drunk or consuming three sips of beer while standing up. They understand the purposeless nature of the laws and their silliness and are inclined to ignore the law because they are purposeless and silly.

I know all these things primarily because I act as the executive director of the Specialty Wine Retailers Association and because I was born with a brain—smallish in size, but a brain nonetheless.

Still, congratulations to Texas for their semi-successful thwarting of consumer demand and their continued allegiance to well-paying special interests. It is, no doubt, an accomplishment of sorts.

 

Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir and the Varietal Revelation

Santa Cruz Mountain Pinot Noirs are really very pretty wines. They tend toward the elegant rather than bold, mineral over leafy, cherry over berry. These wines, based on my tasting of a selection primarily from the 2008 and 2009 vintage, possess a forward acid structure, evident but not overwhelming tannins and are capable of carrying a broad and complex set of flavors from the front to back of the palate.

But most of all, they are Pinot Noir.

This last point, which I didn't expect to stick with me when I sat down to the Santa Cruz Mountain Pinot Noir seminar prior to last Sunday's Pinot on the River events on the Healdsburg Plaza, speaks to something important about the notion of terroir:

The differences between Pinots produced from grapes grown in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Russian River Valley, Carneros, West Sonoma, St. Rita Hills, Santa Lucia Highlands, Anderson Valley, Burgundy's Cote d'Or, Austria, New Zealand and just about every other place are minimal...or at least subtle.

Another way of putting it is that Pinot Noir produced from the Santa Cruz Mountains and from the Grand Cru vineyards of Burgundy will have far more in common from a characteristics, flavor and aroma perspective than Pinot Noir and Merlot produce from the same vineyard in either the Santa Cruz Mountains or Burgundy.

Nothing is more important in giving a wine its most basic and often its most interesting characteristics than the variety of grape used to produce it....including the soil in which it is grown. Terroir is a secondary factor in nearly every wine you drink.

Here's another way of understanding this basic principle too often overlooked: A $4 Cabernet with a "California" appellation will taste much more like a $200 Napa Valley Cabernet, than a $200 Napa Syrah will taste like a $200 Napa Cabernet.

Or how about this: Red Burgundy tastes much more like Pinot Noir than it tastes like Burgundy.

Right about now you are probably thinking, "Well, duh, Tom....What's the big revelation here?"

The big revelation is this: Using Burgundy as an example, we really don't know what Burgundy taste like other than to say that it tastes like Pinot Noir. If we really want to know what Burgundy tastes like, then we'll need to plant more than two or three grapes in the region. We'll need to plant lots of different varieties of red grapes in Burgundy before we can even begin to suggest that "Burgundy" means anything more than Pinot Noir.

This is why it strikes me as FAR more likely that any real understanding of a piece of ground and what it might impart to wine is going to be discovered in the New World where for the most part, economic and regulatory factors don't dictate mono-varietal planting across regions and where we can look for local characteristics distributed across varieties planted in the same area—or vineyard.

Consider the Santa Cruz Mountains. It's a large appellation with relatively few acres planted to grapes. Nonetheless, you'll likely find numerous different varieties in the appellation from Pinot to Merlot to Chardonnay to Cabernet to Syrah. This so totally unlike Burgundy or any other mono-varietal wine region that has given its name to the wines produced there, rather than the varieties that are used to produce the wines.

Terroir is an extraordinarily difficult idea to nail down. It is even more difficult to taste a wine and say, "oh, these characteristics result from this soil composition, while those characteristics derive from the the regular fog events and this particular characteristic is a result from the specific aspect of the land and hillside. It's nearly a fools errend."

And yet...it's this foolish quest that consumes the winemaker, the farmer, the media and the wine junkie consumer. Wines of a variety are so similar in character that to justify the great number of different ones we speak of the differences that terroir makes in every wine. But who among you can absolutely guarantee that you could identify the wine when faced wilth a glass holding a very nice Red Burgundy and glass holding a very nice Sonoma Pinot Noir?? Sure, you'll easily say they are both Pinot. But will you be able to instantly spot the region?

The Santa Cruz Mountain Pinot Noirs I tasted Sunday were very nice wines. I'll seek them out in the future and buy them. But despite the fact that I'd never tasted them before, I have tasted them many times before...in wines from Sonoma Coast, from Anderson Valley, from New Zealand, from Burgundy and elsewhere.

 

Identifying and Mapping CA's Greatest Vineyards

I don't want to tell you how much time I've spent playing with GoogleEarth and GoogleMaps. It's one of the most amazing timesucks on the Internet. However, I'm pretty sure I've not spent as much time with this enormous source of geo-information as Daniel Opalacz, the creator of Vinosum.com

Suppose you wanted to know what vineyards Siduri uses to source grapes for their single vineyards wines. Vinosum.

Suppose you wanted a mapped out display of Syrah vineyards in Santa Barbara County that found their way onto labels of single vineyard designated wines? Vinosum.

Suppose you wanted to find where those vineyards in Napa Valley were located that resulted in single-vineyard designated wines that that average 95-points or more from Robert Parker? Vinosum.

What Opalacz, a former student of geology, has created is a searchable map of California that identifies vineyard plantings that have appeared on single vineyard designated wines and mashed it all up in a database along with winery name, name of winemaker, vintage (2007-2009), appellation and variety. It's a project that Opalacz originally embarked upon after studying soil formations in Napa Valley. As Daniel describes the project:

"I started building Vinosum while reading Jonathan Swinchatt's 'The Winemaker's Dance'. As a recently graduated student of geology (Colby College '10) I found Napa terroir to be fascinating - especially Swinchatt's soil and bedrock analyses and their influence on fruit quality. I wanted to see if there was an actual correlation between vineyard soil/bedrock and wine quality. I decided to use Parker's wine scores as the proxy for quality - fully aware of their bias and profound impact on wine sales. I then combed through Parker's wine scores, sifted out all the single vineyard bottles, and added them to my database. I find the distribution of purple wine bottle icons (representative of vineyards creating wines with an average score of 95+) across the Napa valley fascinating and in accordance with Swinchatt's theories. The purple vineyards are only located on bench break alluvial soils or remnant mountain soils. Besides my intellectual pursuit of  wine geology experiments I also wanted to learn about all the great vineyard sites in California and catalog them for others to do the same."

The result is a Wine Geek's/Terroirists fantasy and sure to be another huge time suck.

For the truly geekified or those with a profound interest in terroir and particular its soil component, what's missing from Vinosum is an overlay of soil types in the variously mapped appellations where Daniel has identified vineyards, those who make wine from their grapes and the scores that Robert Parker has given wines from these vineyards. If that soil composition overlay existed (and Daniel says he's very interested in incorporating it) then you might be able to use Vinosum to draw interesting conclusions about top vineyards and their likely soil compositions.

That would just suck more of my time and I never studied geology.

The mash-up that is Vinosum is another example of how the wine industry and wine consumers find themselves confronted with an enormous number of tools with which to more fully explore their business and their hobby. It is also just one more example of they way technology more than ever has given folks ways by which to explore their ideas then turn those ideas into legitimate and highly useful artifacts for others to explore.

A Great Find In The Wine Blogging World

Difficult as it is to keep up with the new wine blogs that regularly come on the scene, I try. The most basic element I look for when evaluating a blog new to me is the level of commitment the author gives to their effort, something most easily measured by the frequency with which a new entry is posted. After this, I look for "voice". It's an issue of writing style. I favor writing and commentary that depicts an authentic and unique perspective. Finally, I look for evidence the author has a talent for identifying intriguing ideas, uncovering interesting subject matter and making connections between seemingly separate subject matter.

BLOG YOUR WINE is all these things and by far one of my favorite wine blog discoveries of 2011.

Written by Kris Chislett of Jacksonville, Florida, Blog Your Wine delivers a steady stream of personal observations, wine reviews, humor and news all filtered through what is clearly Kris' love of wine and learning about it. It helps that he is both a Certified Sommelier and Certified Specialist of Wine.

A Brit by birth, Kris has apparently spent a great deal of time working in the hospitality trade. That experience, combined with his social media skill, has put him in a position to consult for local restaurant and hospitality concerns, delivering social media expertise.

Blog Your Wine is the kind of wine blog you can easily return to day after day and find something new, something easy to read, something intriguing and even the occasional personal aside. It is, in this sense, a prototypical blog, yet it stands above the vast majority of wine blogs due clearly to Kris' commitment to keeping it current and the real love of wine and learning about wine that he puts on display.

Kris is moving into his second full year publishing Blog Your Wine. I hope he garners a much larger readership that inspires him to keep going through a second year and on in to his third and fourth year.

Questioning Authority: The Philip James Edition

Philip James is an entrepreneur...and a good one. In the case of his history as a wine industry entrepreneur, he has brought us Snooth and, most recently, Lot 18. In the case of both companies, James focus has been on addressing the complications of consumer demand through technology. However, it appears that given his want, he'd throw all that away for the chance to go on an adventurous quest.

QUESTIONING AUTHORITY: THE PHILIP JAMES EDITION

Job Description?
Founder of Lot18. Prior to that, Founder of Snooth

Profession other than current you'd like to claim?
Explorer

First Act as The King of Wine?
Unpopular, but needed for DTC to really grow - mandate pricing parity, so customers can buy a wine from the winery at the same price as they can from a retailer. As it stands right now, most wineries discriminate against their own most loyal customers.

Last book read?
"Sahara" by Michael Palin (see my alternate profession answer for why)

DeathBed Wine?
Sticky and sweet - Taylors Port from '78

Your hero or heroine?
Richard Branson. You might be seeing a theme here - he's an entrepreneur and an explorer, the original Adventure Capitalist. 

Where does your one roundtrip ticket in a time machine take you?
Into the future. I spend my time building companies that I hope will be useful in the months and years to come. There are times when I'd like to skip the waiting and just see how things played out.

Is the 100-point wine rating scale a good thing?
No, but like uncorking a delicate wine, you can't go back.

Late night Snack?
I have an awful habit of eating raw pasta. Its terrible on my teeth, which are British to start with.

Your new winery is named…?
"Bojago". The same name as my too infrequently updated blog, it means "of James" in the dead Celtic language of where I grew up in Cornwall, South West England.

A Survey of Significance In the World of Wine Publishing

I’ve been arguing for some time now that we live in the Golden Age of Wine Writing. My case is made in this fashion: 1) Never before has the wine lover had access to so much wine information. 2) Never before has the wine lover had access to such a diversity of wine voices from which to choose. 3) Never before has the wine lover had access to such a diversity of wine related subject matter. 4) Never before has the wine lover had access to so many talented wine voices.

I’m happy to debate any of these points with anyone who wants to dispute them and I’m sure I’ll take that debate going way. But what I’ve not mentioned before and what I’m sure is equally true is that today’s most important and successful wine publishers are living in the Golden Age of Wine Writing Talent.

This was driven home to me when Jancis Robinson reached out to me to help her get the word out that she had hired Alder Yarrow of Vinography.com to be a new columnist and contributor to JancisRobinson.com, one of the most successful online wine publications in the world.

Started in 2000, JancisRobinson.com immediately gained a significant following for the access that it gave to Jancis herself, one of the most celebrated and accomplished wine writers of the 20^th century. She followed up the launch of JancisRobinson.com with the launch of her Purple Pages in 2001, a subscription-based section of JancisRobinson.com that has become one of the only truly successful pay-to-read wine sites on the Internet.

Here’s the thing. It’s not significant that Alder Yarrow, one of the best wine bloggers, has a new writing gig. And its not significant that Jancis Robinson is augmenting her website with new writing talent to help cover the American wine scene. However, it is significant that Jancis Robinson reached into the wine blogosphere to tap Alder Yarrow to be that new columnist and it is an action that underscores my points that we are living in the Golden Age of Wine Writing and the Golden Age of Wine Writing Talent.

The advent of Low/No Cost publishing, particularly via the blogging platform, demonstrates that there exists around the world a bevy of writing talent that chooses to focus on wine. And what’s important to understand is that it is not the development of the blogging publishing platform that has given rise to this writing talent. This bevy of writing talent has always been with us. But prior to easy publishing, this pool of talent had practically no way of putting their prose and thoughts on wine in front of the wine-loving world. And, they had little or no way of letting those that publish wine-related information know of their existence.

Publishers like Jancis Robinson, M Shanken Communications, Wine & Spirits Magazine, Wine Business Publications, Conde Nast, Decanter, TimeWarner or any other major publication or publisher now have a significantly increased pool of writing talent to reach into—due to the blogosphere.

Jancis has known this for some time as in addition to being a prolific and busy writer, she has also been a keen observer of the wine media world. It is not insignificant that she appeared as the keynote speaker at this year’s North American Wine Bloggers Conference in Charlottesville, Virginia. Among the established wine writers around the world, Jancis had been one of the closest watchers of the development of the wine blogging community. Those of us who know Ms. Robinson aren’t so surprised that she reached into the blogosphere to choose a new contributor to her publishing venture. And those of us who have read Alder Yarrow at Vinography since its founding in 2004 aren’t surprised that Jancis reached out to him.

Yet, this move is significant because it is one more endorsement of the wine writing talent that exists across the wine blogosphere. This is not the first time that an established publisher has reached into the wine blogosphere to find wine writing talent to augment their offering to their readership. And it won’t be the last time, either. Who will be surprised that when Eric Asimov or Jon Bonne or Jim Laube or Steve Heimoff or Bill Daley or Peg Melnik or Cyril Penn retire, their parent publications choose someone from the wine blogging world to replace them?

Chatter Matters: The 2011 Vintage and Key Conversations

We are on the verge of a discussion that could turn out to be of some import.

As the California grape harvest begins to move into its final phases, it appears that this could be a year when grape sugars come in significantly lower, particularly for late ripening grapes like Cabernet. This in turn means we may be in for 2011 Cabs with lower alcohols. If this does occur, look for an industry-wide discussion asking, "Is this harvest good for Californian wine?" If fact, it seems this discussion has already begun with this fine peice at WineSpectator.com by Tim Fish and Augustus Weed and with this article at the SF Chronicle by Jon Bonne.

Now, I say "could" because I'm not yet convinced that we will see significantly lower sugars. It's entirely possible the next couple of weeks could be steady low 80s temperatures like today. This would work wonders. Average temps for this time of year are in the mid 70s to high 70s.

For many years now there has been a slow and steady drumbeat of opinion that California wines, and particularly Cabernets, have become too big, too soft, too alcoholic, too extracted. And many vintners have responded by either talking about or implementing a program to bring more balance back to the category. If 2011 is a vintage of lower sugars and lower natural alcohol levels it will be interesting to see if California vintners choose dip into the concentrate container to try to bring the style back to what have been perceived norms. Or, will they work with what they have and lead a move, beginning seriously with 2011, to move the style of California's wines back to what is perceived by many to be "balance".

What's interesting to contemplate is what would be the impact of a significant amount of chatter and writing and talk that advocates a loosening of the belt where California wines are concerned. Chatter matters.

In this case, what would matter is media and vintners and trade publicly weighing in on and advocating that California vintners take the opportunity of less ripeness to demonstrate that balanced, complex, structured wines can be produced under California skies. Stylistic changes and winemaking trends move much more slowly than they do in the beer and spirits industry. The opportunity to move winemaking styles one way or another occur once per year. Beer and spirits styles can be pushed this way or that at any time, regardless of the month or seasons. That's why 2011 could represent a seminal moment in the course of California winemaking...if winemakers consider the opportunity, if they are encouraged to do so and if it appears they will be championed for their efforts.

While most won't be tasting the 2011 Cabs and Syrahs until they have been in barrel for a while, winemakers will know within weeks what kind of vintage style they will have on ther hands and they will need to make decisions here rather quickly. That means if any kind of an industry-wide conversation is to take hold and if vintners are to be encouraged to try something different, rather than try to "fix" and push the vintage using odds and ends and additions, that conversation has to take place soon.

No one should underestimate the courage it would take for, say, a Napa Valley Cabernet producer of note to make a stylistic change dictated by the vintage. Napa Cabernet works. No varietal brand in America is more important, watched closer or celebrated more frequently. It's hard to find well regarded Napa Cab that comes in under $50. That's a testament to the success of Napa Cabernet and the style it has been made in for the past 20 years. Why change things up now? Why not make the effort in the cellar, if necessary, to use the various tools to push the 2011 bottlings as close to what they have been? It makes monetary sense and that means it makes sense for the consumer.

But the consumer is easily guided down any number of paths. If winemakers and the trade want to see California wines evolve into something less stylistically extravagant, consumers will follow...as long as they are carefully guided.

What should be noted, however, is the potential for conflict if winemakers heard a call for something new and took the opportunity of the 2011 vintage to heed the call. Were America's top wine critics and publications to pan the 2011 wines for their lightness, while at the same time the trade and the chattering class celebrated the move, we can see the winemakers' efforts go down in flames since, as always happens, the most important critics will be quoted by the mainstream, non-winemaking press and the vintage will be ranked a failure it the general public's eyes. Nothing would stop the move in its tracks faster than this.

Still, its very interesting times with interesting possibilities for California wine. A discussion, at least, should ensue.

Defining Audacious in the California Wine Industry

As reported by Dr. Vino, California's Sea Smoke Cellars out of Santa Rita Hills has placed the following wording on six of their 2009 vintage labels and on one 2008 Sparkling Wine label:

"CALIFORNIA GRAND CRU"

This is, in my mind, the most audacious packaging move I've ever seen a California wine ever make.

According to the good Dr., Sea Smoke explained its unique new labeling message by referencing a March 2008 blog post at the WineSpectator.com in which Jim Laube said of the Sea Smoke wines, "it is an important part of Santa Barbara's wine scene and one of its "grand cru" properties."

By this Mr. Laube meant to say that the Sea Smoke estate is one of the Santa Barbara wine region's best properties. The reference is to the Burgundy "Grand Cru" classification. In Burgundy, the term "Grand Cru" has a very specific meaning. Only those wines that are produced from vineyards that are legally classified as "Grand Cru", which make up about 2% of Burgundian vineyards, may say "Grand Cru" on their label. More importantly, "Grand Cru", though not a wine quality designation, has come over the years to be recognized as the designation that the best Burgundian wines carry.

Serious wine drinkers will denigrate Sea Smoke for bastardizing the term "Grand Cru". Yet, it should be noted that there is nothing that legally stops them from using this term on their label as I'm sure their lawyers told them. It is akin to using the term "Reserve"—from a legal stand point—though significantly different too. The term "Reserve", while also having legal meaning in other countries, does not have the hugely importantly meaning that "Grand Cru" maintains in the wine world and in the world of Burgundian wine.

It would not be an issue if Sea Smoke had used the term "Grand Cru" on their back label, where oftentimes wineries make claim about their wine in a descriptive manner and in the context of prose writing. Here they could have noted that "the Sea Smoke vineyard, from which the grapes from this wine were grown, has been described as one of Santa Barbara's 'Grand Cru' vineyards". This would have been entirely accurate and unlikely to stir controversy, condemnation or even a second glance.

But note also that Jim Laube's description of the Sea Smoke estate identifies it as one of SANTA BARABARA's "Grand Cru" properties. Not one of CALIFORNIA's "grand cru" properties.

Who wouldn't understand the thrill of seeing a critic the caliber of Jim Laube describe their vineyards as a "Grand Cru property". I certainly understand it and given the opportunity would have touted that description far and wide in my promotional materials and communications. It's an amazing endorsement.

But on the front label of a wine?

Consider the other information on the Sea Smoke labels with the "California Grand Cru" designation.

Each of them possess the following information:

Name of the Winery: Sea Smoke
Name of the Varietal: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Sparkling Wine
Vintage: 2009 or 2008
Appellation: St. Rita Hills
Alcohol Level
Proprietary Name: "Southing", "Gratis", "Ten", "Botella", "Sea Spray"

In each case these items of information possess very specific meaning for the consumer. What does "California Grand Cru" mean?

The only way to save this audacious labeling move is to put quotation marks around the term, indicating that the term is appropriated from another source, rather than implying it carries the same weight and meaning as the rest of the information on the front label. I'm sure the folks at Sea Smoke had this very discussion when they determined to put "California Grand Cru" on their front label, just as they surely had the discussion of the merit of adding "California" to Jim Laube's "Grand Cru" comment. In the end, they decided it was in their best interests and would have little downside to omitting the quotation marks and adding the "California" wording.

Both decisions were mistakes.