FunctionalAmbivalent

Bet It Pairs Well With Cheese Food

The European Union is refusing to allow the distribution of a British-made wine that has been subject to an alcohol reduction process. Spinning cone technology is widely, though quietly, used around the world to make wines lighter, purportedly without affecting flavor or aroma.

The EU says the wine can still be sold; it just can't be called "wine."

The bureaucrats suggest, as an entirely reasonable marketing alternative, "grape product."

Isn't This How Prince's Career Tanked?

J Winery is removing the "J" from it's labels. There is apparently no truth to the rumor that they should now be referred to as "the winery formerly known as J."

Conflicting Signals

Last year, as my regular reader remembers, I donated a wine tasting to a local charity auction. This year, because I am apparently emotionally needy, I did it again.

Here's the thing: the same people bought the tasting, but they paid less for it. I think that means they liked me, just not that much.

Wine of the Times

Crushpad is selling its 2007 Napa Cab into the futures market at $39 a bottle. The deal is, you get $2 back for every 100 points the Dow drops between now and the wine's release in August.

I, Personally, Just Don't Get Japan

While in America we're suffering a peanut butter recall, in Japan they've got a food scare of their own.

Blowfish testicles prepared by an unauthorized chef sickened seven diners in northern Japan and three remained hospitalized Tuesday after eating the poisonous delicacy.

First of all, I find the idea that the Japanese government licenses poison blowfish testicle chefs amusing, since it implies that somewhere in the Japanese bureaucracy there's a Ministry of Repulsive Foods. And secondly, it seems to me that making testicles of any kind poisonous is a good idea for two reasons:

1. Knowing that they're poisonous would prevent me, even in my weakest moment, from trying to eat any testicles I might come into contact with
2. I, personally, would sleep easier knowing that there's a powerful disincentive for anyone or anything that might be considering eating my particular testicles

Apparently, none of this has any effect on the Japanese, for whom poison blowfish testicles are some kind of delicacy or something. Even though the testicles are life-threatening, and even though they're testicles, "thrill seeking gourmets" can't get enough of them.

And here I am with testicles that aren't even poison. I'm going to sleep on my stomach from now on, that's for damned sure.

One More Reason To Like Diana Krall

Via The Smoking Gun, the list of acceptable wines from Diana Krall's contract rider. The list ranges from intelligently inexpensive (any Ravenswood) to the possibly opulent (Paul Hobbs), wandering by lots of nifty little surprises in between. Giving promoters a long list like this means, among other things, that approaching the dressing room bar every night is going to be a bit of an adventure, albeit a safe one, since the promoter will be operating under tight constraints.

The list includes a couple of my personal favorites: Paso Robles Rhone blend Edmunds St. John and Domain Tempier, the original Bandol. To my eye, it's most striking when it wanders over to Spain: Bodegas Mauro, Pesquera and Abadia Retuerta all kick serious ass.

Clearly, Diana Krall knows her wines.

Why Having a Basement Full of Wine Makes Sense: Going Vertical

Tonight we're drinking Marques de Riscal Reserva 2000. It's one of our house favorites, a $16 Spanish red from Rioja: tempranillo grape, lots of time in American oak giving it big, big vanilla to go with the cherry nose.

The significance of this bottle isn't that it's such an awe-inspiringly good wine. It is, in fact, a fairly run-of-the-mill Rioja. The significance is that tonight's the night we crack a new vertical.

A vertical is, in wine parlance, a selection of bottles of the same wine from different vintages. One of the things we do, down in the basement, is build verticals. We've got a half-dozen Chateauneufs going, a couple of off-beat Bordeaux, an Alicante Monestrell, an Hermitage, a Cote-Rotie and a couple of Bandols. For the last few years we've been building a vertical of Marques de Riscal.

We start with a case of one vintage. After a year, we take out six bottles and put in six bottles of the next vintage. The next year we take out four bottles -- two from each of the previous vintages -- and put in four bottles of the third vintage. And so on. We drink what comes out of the box as we go, thus getting to know the wine well over a long period of time.

The Marques de Riscal box had three each of the  2000, '01, '02 and '03. Now the '04s are out, so tonight I moved one bottle of each of the previous vintages to the ready-to-drink shelf to make room in the box for the '04s. We'll drink the vintages in order, though not necessarily on consecutive nights.

Verticals also make great gifts. We have a friend who loves Qupe syrah, and when he started med school five years ago we started putting away bottles of Bien Nacido to give him as a gift. When he graduated last summer we gave him five vintages. It was an awesome present that had the impact of much more expensive gift.

So, anyway, tonight we've cracked into another year's worth of one of our favorite wines. In the next couple of weeks we'll enjoy four vintages -- five, actually, because we'll down an '04 at the end as we put a couple of bottles back into the box.

Next year, we'll enjoy six.

Alternate Top 100

Wine Spectator's Top 100 wines has a huge impact on the wine world. This year's is, according to a friend of mine who rins a wine store here in Louisville, "kind of random." It's as if WS is aware of the impact of its list and wanted to call attention to some different wines, just for a change.

For the record, I have five of the Top 10 wines (3, 4, 5, 6 and 8) but only seven of the top 100, so depth isn't exactly my problem.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a Top 100 list that is entirely American. I have exactly one of those, but am heartened to see an Alma Rosa chardonnay on the list. Alma Rosa is one of my pet wineries. It's owned by pinot pioneer Richard Sanford, who got screwed out of the winery that bears his name and started over at an age when most of us are pricing golf carts and deciding whether now's the time to start pulling our pants up to our armpits. I don't know Alma Rosa's chardonnay, but the pinot was really the first pinot I ever bonded with. I'm still not much of a pinot guy, but I'm rooting for Sanford all the same.

The one that I do have on the Chronicle list is Grgich Hills Fume Blanc. It's yummy, as California fume blancs go. Oak seems to me to be a horrible thing to do to sauvingnon blanc, but Grgich has a light enough touch that it doesn't kill the fruit.

Economic Indicator

I get email from people selling wine. In the last couple of weeks I've been offered what would have been, a year ago, insane bargains. The bargains seem centered in the $40 to $60 range, the kind of premium-but-not-trophy wines that are most sensitive to economic cycles.

Just today, I've received email from two different retailers offering 2005 CaMarcanda Promis, an opulent Super Tuscan that's exactly the kind of showy fruitbomb that appeals to the McMansion crowd. Promis normally goes for about $50 a bottle; both retailers are now offering is at $39 with a discount on shipping.

I also got an offer from a third retailer touting 2003 Chateau Grand-Puy-Lacoste, usually over $50, suddenly marked down to $43. All the price pressure on Bordeaux for the last 10 years has been upward, with classified growths reaching absurd heights. GPL is a Robert Parker-approved 5th Growth, so seeing it suddenly marked down is attention-grabbing.

My guess is that the market for premium-but-not-trophy wines is shrinking fast as people grow mindful of money going into a recession, and the distribution system is purging itself of inventory acquired during the boom that might well not move at all during the bust.

Which presents a buying opportunity -- except, of course, that like almost everyone else I'm scaling back. Six months ago, I'd have picked up a few bottles of both the Ca'Marcanda and the Grand-Puy-Lacoste. Now, I think I'll stop on the way home and pick up a couple of bottles of The Tillerman. $15 is a lot more my speed these days.

Hillbillies at the Gate

Broncho Wines, déclassé manufacturer of mass-market wines like Franzia and Two Buck Chuck, has endowed a chair at Cal State Fresno. Cal State Fresno's wine department is, of course, the déclassé program that has always taken a back seat to the much classier program at U.C. Davis.

As if that weren't good enough, the first professor to fill the Broncho Chair in Viticulture will be a professor of winemaking from -- I tingle in anticipation -- the University of Kentucky.

Is there a more déclassé wine region in the world than Kentucky?

Is this beautiful or what?