Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog

A Prohibitionary Moment est passe´

It looks as though the French wine industry and common sense dodged a barrel, according to Decanter

The French National Assembly passed a healthcare law that DID NOT include a ban on alcohol advertising on the Internet and DID NOT ban promotional wine tastings at Chateaux, wine festivals and promotional events. On the other hand, 16 and 17 year olds may no longer buy alcohol.

France is in the midst of what we would call in the United States a "Prohibitionary Moment". Binge drinking and irresponsible use of alcohol has led to a number of problems for that country which in turn has led to some pretty drastic measure taken by the national government.

Among those measures was the interpretation of an elderly, pre-Internet law that did not explicitly allow advertising of wine on the Internet to mean, well, that wine my not be advertised on the Internet. This meant no mention of wine on producer websites and quite possibly no writing about wine on the Internet.

The Internet issue in particular has dogged the French wine industry or a couple years as the anti-alcohol lobby in that great country as become more and more empowered. The vote by the National Assembly, which appears to be followed up by a similar vote by the French Senate, will finally put the threat of blinder-based stupidity, where the Internet and wine is concerned, behind the French Wine Industry.

But it's also important to note that the Health Bill now passed by the National Assembly also originally included a provision that would have banned free promotional tastings, a ban that would have extended to chateaux and wine festivals.

The blow to tourism in wine regions and the blow to the French wine industry that such a ban would have been really isn't calculable. It's a bit like trying to estimate the effect that a ban on the use of spoons would have on the breakfast cereal industry.

I can't see any such threat to common sense here in the States. We still have our blue laws and we still have laws that limit access to wine and delivery of wine. But the danger the French face passed us by about 70 years ago.

On the other hand, the same healthcare bill will raise the age at which one is allowed to buy alcohol from 16 to 18. I can't argue with this. Any age restriction on buying and drinking alcohol is arbitrary. Eighteen seems reasonable to me.

That the French lawmakers were able to stand up to the nonsensical lobbying of the anti-alcohol types means credit is due. And credit is due to those who fought so long and hard against ignorance born of fear.

Any Port in a (economic) Storm

I've been thinking about THIS POST from Steve Bachmann's "Wine Collector" blog since it hit. Maybe anyone else with a retirement portfolio or investments should also.

Like most folks in their 40s, I've got IRAs, savings, investments, etc. The idea is to save up enough for when you retire so that you don't have to fight for a place on Van Ness Avenue where you can stand all day holding a sign that says, "Former PR Exec Down and Out...Any Amount will Help."

Well, recently I've started to think about just how big my own sign should be.

The volatility in the equities markets and the downturn in the housing market really bites. It bites into one's retirement plan in particular.

What Bachmann points out in his post, however, is that maybe wine is a relatively safer investment; safer particularly than stocks. The bottom line: While all the stock indexes have plummeted over the past 8-12 months, the value of collectible wine is still up 5.5% for 2008. A 5.5% gain in value for your investments in 2008 is looking pretty miraculous at this point.

What's interesting about fine wine as an investment is that it's not too difficult to learn the ins and outs. Certain wines, and there are relatively few, are the ones that tend to be collected, held and go up in value over time. Also, they are easy to procure either by buying futures before the wines are released or by finding them on the open market.

Bachmann lists four reasons why investing in wine is better than investing in stocks. Go read them. But one of these reasons, I think, is critical to the future:

"The aggregate supply of fine wine is relatively fixed as most of the greatest European producers have little room to plant additional vineyards.  The trends in global demand for fine wine, on the other hand, are fundamentally going up (broader wine consumption, wealth creation in emerging economies combined with treatment of fine wine as a luxury good, and the likelihood of continuing decreases in import duties in these countries)."

Of course, the validity of the above reasoning assumes we are not going into a multi-year, Depression Era-like global economic downturn. I think that's a pretty good assumption.

When I worked at Winebid.com in the late 90s I had a chance to meet a lot of serious collectors. I liked them. They were, on the whole, a somewhat odd, eclectic bunch who collected fine wines for a myriad of reasons. Few of them, as far as I could tell, had wine as the primary portion of their economic portfolios. But many of them were in fact collecting wine (and selling it) as strictly as an investment.

Then there were the flippers. These were the folks who found their way on to the Screaming Eagle, Grace Family, Bryant Family, Maya, and Harlan mailing lists. They'd put down the Winebid shipping address as the location to which their wines should be shipped when released. Their instructions were "put it up for auction upon release." They'd usually double their money.

These people eventually started taking a lot of crap from "authentic collectors" and "real wine lovers" who were pissed they could not get on these lists while the flippers did get the wine and just turned them over. They thought the flippers were uncouth gold diggers. I never had any problem with the Flippers. They always struck me as very entrepreneurial folks. I don't know the extent to which this still goes on because I've not followed the Cult Wine market that closely of late. But I suspect it does and if it does I can't see why anyone who can afford to be on the right lists wouldn't follow the same strategy.

However, flipping new releases isn't what Bachmann is talking about in his post. He's talking about a buy and hold strategy. And based on his stats and history, it appears to be a pretty good one.

Wine Handyman Needs Advise

I'm not much of Handyman or Do-it-Yourselfer. I can mow a lawn like nobody's business and hammer a nail. But taking a space and creating something in it? Not me. I didn't get the "spacial" or "engineering" genes.

So it's with great trepidation that I have decided to attack the space you see in this post and create a place to store up to 10-15 cases of wine. However, before I begin and potentially dislodge the house from its foundation, I thought I'd run it by readers of FERMENTATION.

My thought is a simple one: nail pre-made wire wine racks against one side of this skinny space under the stairs and put a few lights (battery powered—I wouldn't touch wires if my life depended upon it) on the walls. As for that funky space way in the back...maybe an unbroken case or two can be slid back there. The key is being able to access whatever wine goes into this space.

So here's my question. Is there any reasonable way to assure this space does not get over 65 degrees?

The closet is in the middle of the house and under a flight of stairs. The furthest back part of the space where the case goods go backs up to the outer wall of the house that faces northwest.

This is really the only problem with wine isn't it? It's so damn temperamental. It's not enough that you get nice little racks for the bottles to lay down comfortable upon. It's not enough that you inventory the stuff and keep track of it. It's not enough that you organize it so you can find what you want and so that the Chardonnays aren't forced to mingle uncomfortably with the merlot (what would they talk about about?). No. You also have to keep the stuff at a fairly constant temperature or they'll go and die on you...or at least ripen quickly into old age. They are very ungrateful guests.

I figure I could buy some fancy refrigerated unit that might fit into this weird space, but it would block access to the back of the space and not hold the amount of wine I need to place in here. Or I could invest in turning an entire room in to a place to store wine. But I'm not that nice of a host and not all the wines that will be staying with me have proven themselves worthy. So, it's this little closet and simple wire racks.

Anyway, I'm building these guests their own home and want to see if I can accommodate their basic needs while they are at rest.

Any advice would be appreciated.

It Was So Damned Good It Was Scary

I ate a PopTart today. Specifically, it was a strawberry-filled, glazed PopTart that was toasted. It had been a while, quite a while, since I'd eaten one of these things.

It was so God damned good it was scary. I felt felt compelled to drop at least two more in the toaster and gorge myself on a breakfast of..of...well, I don't really care what they are made of...of PopTarts

The key to the PopTart's amazing goodness, is it's combination of sweetness, with something more than a hint of savoriness with that hint of toasty-ness that results from the slight toaster burn on its edges.

I  realized something as I ate it. If there was a wine that satisfied me so completely as this Strawberry-filled, glazed PopTart did, it's very likely I'd spend my days drunk and useless.

I tried to think back to remember if I ever so fully enjoyed a wine as much as I enjoyed this Strawberry PopTart. The closest thing I could recall were a few icewines that I've devoured in the past, caring nothing for the inebriation they brought on. So I wonder if, in my case, it's just a matter of having a sweet tooth? I don't think that is it because I've not taken to other types of sweets the way I took to this PopTart this morning.

I'm wondering if there was some sort of secret ingredient in the PopTart; if there was some sort of chemical or drug pumped into it brought on cravings and satisfaction. I wondered if such a thing was illegal and what affect it would have once injected into wine.

PopTarts Make me think. So I decided I needed to look through the ingredients:

ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACINAMIDE, REDUCED IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), CORN SYRUP, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, DEXTROSE, VEGETABLE OIL (SOYBEAN, PALM, COTTONSEED AND/OR HYDROGENATED COTTONSEED OIL† WITH TBHQ AND CITRIC ACID FOR FRESHNESS), SUGAR, CRACKER MEAL, CONTAINS TWO PERCENT OR LESS OF WHEAT STARCH, SALT, DRIED STRAWBERRIES, DRIED APPLES, DRIED PEARS, CORNSTARCH, LEAVENING (BAKING SODA, SODIUM ACID PYROPHOSPHATE, MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE), CITRIC ACID, MILLED CORN, MODIFIED WHEAT STARCH, GELATIN, CARAMEL COLOR, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, DATEM, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN AND/OR COTTONSEED OIL†, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, XANTHAN GUM, SOY LECITHIN, COLOR ADDED, NIACINAMIDE, REDUCED IRON, RED #40, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, YELLOW #6, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), FOLIC ACID, TURMERIC COLOR, BLUE #1.

Maybe the secret ingredient is in there somewhere, but translating this amazingly long list of stuff I'm not familiar with nor understand is well beyond my pay grade.

I don't know if I'll ever find out what the secret ingredient or combination of ingredients is that makes my heart go crazy upon biting into the chewy, sweet, savory goodness that is a Pop tart. Nor do I know whether that secret ingredient might be somehow foisted upon wines.

The only thing left to consider is what wine goes with Glazed, Strawberry Filled PopTarts.

CATS Strikes Again

News out Sacramento is that the State Legislature has passed a law banning Trans Fats in Restaurants by 2010. I feel blessed to live in a state where someone is watching out that I don't enjoy my food too much.

Oddly, the morning paper somehow missed picking up this other bit of news out of Sacramento:

BAN AGAINST SUGAR IN ALCOHOL PASSED

(Sacramento, CALIF)—California is posed to become the first state in the union and first political entity in the world to ban sugar in alcohol. Known to cause both tooth decay as well as excessive delight, sugar must be absent from all alcohol produced in California by 2010

The ban includes a limit of no more than one half of one percent sugar in  California-made wines.  Vintners, who opposed the law primarily by pointing out that grapes naturally come with sugar, are scrambling to figure out how to incorporate artificial sweeteners into their dessert wine.

The measure, passed by a 2/3 majority, was supported by a coalition of doctors and other health professionals Calling themselves CATS (Coalition Against Tasty Stuff) and who for months trumpeted the now familiar slogan, "Alcohol Shouldn't Be Tasty".

California vintners were slow to organize against the anti-sugar measure thinking for months that the movement was a practical joke. However, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome joined the movement, vintners saw the threat was real.

"When Mayor Newsome lined up those bottles of Late Harvest Wines like bowling pins on Market street and rolled the CATS-labeled bowling ball through them, we knew it wasn't a joke anymore," said one Napa Valley Vintner. "I cry every time I see that video because those were damned good wines Newsome struck down."

The Coalition Against Tasty Stuff celebrated yesterday with what was at first promised to be a bacchanalian celebration featuring dry, sugarless wine. But in a somewhat odd turn of events, the celebrants found themselves only sipping the dry gewurztraminers and dry rose they had lined up for the post vote celebration.

"I think the nature of this very celebration proves the point of the whole movement," said Darby Doolittle, chairwoman of CATS and creator of the "Alcohol Shouldn't Be Tasting" slogan. "There is no question that without a little sugar wine doesn't taste nearly as good and none of us could get down more than a half glass of this stuff."

Stock prices of Nutrasweet and other artificial sweeteners rose on news of the newly enacted ban on sugar.

On Presidents & Wine

I know there are people who determine who to vote for in an election based on a single issue. "Do they or do they not support abortion rights?"..."Do they or do they not support unfettered access to guns?"...."Do they or do they not support gay marriage?"...

I don't think I like single issue voters. They give me the creeps because anyone so single minded probably can't be trusted think clearly. In my mind, clear thinking is a good thing.

That said, what if one was a single issue voter who only asked, "which candidate is best for the wine industry?"

Is it possible to look at the two major party candidates for President of the United States and answer this question definitively? How would we best engage this question? What factors and stated positions would give us a the raw material to evaluate the question? I'm thinking the following questions would yield the best information for answering this question of which candidate is best for the wine industry:

1. Which candidate supports lowering the drinking age to 18?
2. Which candidate is more apt to support heightened regulation in general?
3. Which candidate is likely to support Free Trade measures
4. Which candidate is likely to support more liberal immigration policy?
5. Which candidate is likely to be more visibly supportive of wine in general.

Asking which candidate is likely to improve the economy in general seems like a foolish question to ask in this context. I don't believe that a president is capable of guiding the economy in any specific direction and this is why I don't list it as a question to consider.

So, these seem to me to be the critical questions where the wine industry is concerned. Frankly, it's unlikely that this presidential campaign will see any substantive discussion of alcohol related issues, let alone wine-specific discussions. If the question of alcohol is ever brought up, it almost always is done so to ask if a candidate has or has had in the past a problem with alcohol or to use wine and beer as a metaphor for the candidates' demographic orientations and to characterize their supporters: Chardonnay Drinkers vs. Beer Swillers.

It strikes me that some media outlet connected to the wine industry, say the SF Chronicle, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Seattle Intelligencer, Oregonian, Wine Business Monthly, Wine Spectator, Wine & Spirits, Wine Enthusiast, etc, really ought to submit a series of wine related questions to both campaigns.

If it were FERMENTATION submitting the questions, they might look like this:

-What is your favorite kind of wine?
-Do you collect wine?
-How would you describe "Terroir"?
-Is it good policy to allow Americans to buy fine wine via the Internet?
-Will you commit to serving exclusively American Wine at White House functions?
-Chardonnay or Chablis?
-What do you think of the 100 Point rating system?
-Do you ever read FERMENTATION: The Daily Wine Blog?

Time-Related Malady Yields Results

One thing we've all learned about bloggers is that they have way too much time on their hands. What I did not know is that those who work at newspapers and in television are also inflicted with this time-related malady.

Mark Fisher at Uncorked, the man who live in between these two worlds, confirms that, yes, indeed, those who work at newspaper and TV also have too much time on their hands. However, Mark alerts us to the fact that in his paper-based realm that extra time is used productively.

Evidence is this informative video: SHAPE UP AND DRINK AT THE SAME TIME.

The Shortest Way Out of Manchester

Joan Acocella offers an observation in the latest issue of the New Yorker that is so fundamental and so critical to those of us who possess an over abundance of interest in wine, it's hard to believe you don't see it noted more often:

"historically [the hangover] is not a subject that has captured scientists’ hearts."

For those of us with that over abundance of interest in wine, the importance of this observation should be obvious. But Acocella, in her fine article entitled "A Few Too Many", notes there is another reason why this point is curious: "anyone who discovered a widely effective hangover cure would make a great deal of money."

How much money? Certainly more than they need but not quite enough to buyout Constellation.

One of the things this seeming lack of scientific interest in finding a real cure for the hangover demonstrates is that sex is more desirable to Americans than the desire to stop the clanging bell in our heads and the throbbing temples that come with, say, a bit too much White Burgundy. Otherwise, instead of Viagra we'd have a drug likely called something terribly inappropriate, like "Drinqitalis".

I for one would be quite happy to fill the coffers of the company that produces this new wonder drug. There is nothing I hate more than a hangover. Besides the departure from my normal tolerance for sounds and people the hangover causes, it's one of those things that happens to stay with me a very long time. In all honesty, I'm not even a big fan of the feeling that comes from ingesting alcohol except under certain very controlled circumstances.

And that brings me to a bit of speculation: what would be the impact of a drug that would negate the effects of alcohol on the body? Would the makers of this wonder drug make any money?

I think the answer is very little money. I think for the most part it would be folks like me who adore the taste of wine but really don't care for the affect of alcohol that would buy this drug. The problem is I think I'm strange. I think even among those that love the taste of wine, like just as much the buzz that comes with drinking wine. Moreover, I think the vast majority of people drink FOR the buzz, no matter what the choice of liquid.

Folks would much rather have a drug that removes the ugly after effects of drinking than remove the ultimate source of the problem.

Acocello says it better than I can:
"A truly successful hangover cure is probably going to be slow in coming. In the meantime, however, it is not easy to sympathize with the alcohol disciplinarians, so numerous, for example, in the United States. They seem to lack a sense of humor and, above all, the tragic sense of life. They appear not to know that many people have a lot that they’d like to forget. In the words of the English aphorist William Bolitho, “The shortest way out of Manchester is . . . a bottle of Gordon’s gin,”

Tales of the Obsessed

How does one measure the damage done by someone's pursuit of their obsession?

I think inevitably it is a measure of the disregard one shows toward those other parts of the obsessed one's life that suffer as a result of otherwise due amounts of attention being spent on the object of the obsession. This begs the questions, can any obsession be healthy and can an obsession really be termed that if the those other parts of one's life remains intact, functioning or happy.

I think the answers are "no" and "no".

I have to bring this up because I know a fella who is going through a divorce instigated by his soon to be ex-wife. Among her complaints is "an obsession with wine and wine collecting that has disconnected him from his family and created an undue degree of debt attached to the family's finances."

Wow!

If not directly involved, one never know the true extent of claims made in the course of a filing for a divorce.  But knowing this fella as I do, it's unlikely that the claim is untrue and it's further unlikely that he'd ever try to deny this claim.

-He maintains two off-site wine storage facilities.
-I've watched him join three winery wine clubs in a single day
-He has two credit cards devoted entirely to wine purchases
-He will not drink out of anything other than Riedel and he has a different glass for every varietal
-He's always the last person to leave a tasting
-He sold a car to pay for 2005 Bordeaux futures
-He went to Napa for last summer's vacation, while his wife took the kids to Orlando.

I don't know if this tale gives any of my readers pause. It did me.

In fact, it made me examine my own life to make sure my own interests are not in danger of becoming obsessions. I think we slide slowly from an "interest" to "obsession" often without even knowing it's happening. And I think an interest in wine can be particularly prone to becoming an obsession given the variety of wines that exist and the fascination that this variety can breed.

Lesson: If you are going to start a family, make it your only obsession.

Who's Surprised??

If I had a dollar for every time I heard a person say "If you don't charge more for the wine they won't take it seriously" I'd have enough money to fund a research project on why people believe the more expensive it is the better is.

Of course no one does give me a dollar every time I hear such a thing so it's a damn good thing we have the folks over at the California Institute of Technology to do this research for us.

For some of you reading this the following will fall into the category of "duh, tell me something new": Research shows people get more pleasure from a wine when they know it costs more.

The research was carried out by Antonio Rangel and colleagues at California Institute of Technology. Basically they had subjects taste different wines and all the people new was the prices of the wines. However, in some cases less expensive wine was labeled as much more expensive than it really is and vice versa.

"They [researchers] asked 20 people to sample wine while undergoing functional MRIs of their brain activity. The subjects were told they were tasting five different Cabernet Sauvignons sold at different prices.

However, there were actually only three wines sampled, two being offered twice, marked with different prices.

A $90 wine was provided marked with its real price and again marked $10, while another was presented at its real price of $5 and also marked $45."

Folks liked the wines they were told were more expensive.

"Our results suggest that the brain might compute experienced pleasantness in a much more sophisticated manner that involves integrating the actual sensory properties of the substance being consumed with the expectations about how good it should be."

Ya think?

OK...so to those of us who know wine and the wine industry well this isn't much of a shocker, but it's nice to have scientific confirmation of what we already know. But how about this part of the research:

"On the other hand, when tasters didn't know any price comparisons, they rated the $5 wine as better than any of the others sampled."

Why would this be the case? Americans like sweet, smooth liquid and most certainly like their wine that way. That's why inexpensive wine, the kind most often bought, is smooth and sweet.

But here's my favorite part of the article that reported on this research:

"Next step: pain.

Rangel wants to see if people perceive pain differently, depending on their expectations. He hopes to administer mild electric shocks to subjects and measure their reaction when told a shock was going to be stronger or weaker."

Any Volunteers?