It’s HOT! In fact, climatologists predict that 2010 will be the hottest year on record worldwide, due in large part to El Nino, the tropical climate pattern that warms the Pacific every five to seven years. But, that didn’t stop the folks at the Finger Lakes Wine Festival this weekend in Watkins Glen, NY. In fact the Finger Lakes are doing very well in the heat. Winemakers in the region are enjoying advanced ripening in the vineyards this year, compared to the wet, challenging season of 2009. More time on the vine in hot, dry weather may give winemakers a chance to quiet a few more critics of Finger Lakes red wine. But, it’s doing great things for Riesling.

Global warming has been a boon for Riesling, according to last week’s Riesling Rendezvous conference in Seattle. The conference, hosted by Ernie Loosen, Decanter’s Man of the Year 2005, and Ted Baseler, the president of Chateau Ste Michelle, was attended by well over 350 professionals from all  over the world.

Speakers suggested that warmer temperatures worldwide were opening up new regions for Riesling and guaranteeing consistency in more traditional regions, although in time growers will be forced to adapt, or move.

Temperatures in classical growing regions such as the Rheingau, Wachau and Alsace have risen by just over 1 degree in the past 30 years, producing a welcome consistency in quality there.  At the same time temperature increases have stimulated a rise in production in areas less well known for Riesling, such as the Finger Lakes in New York, Niagara in Ontario and the Old Mission Peninsula in Michigan. And the folks in the Finger Lakes are celebrating appropriately.

Once a year, Watkins Glen International transforms from The Soul of American Road Racing into the Finger Lake’s largest wine tasting room, where over 600 New York wines are sampled. The celebration kicked-off Friday, July 16th, with fireworks, wine, and togas at “Yancey’s Fancy Cheese Launch of the Lakes.”  Saturday and Sunday the Festival featured a variety of wine, food, arts and crafts from across the state, culinary classes, cooking demonstrations, wine seminars, the Brewer’s Garden, pace car rides, comedy, and live musical entertainment. Of special significance was the Riedel Experience which included a private Sensory Exploration class with Georg Riedel, 10th generation and former CEO of the legendary wine-glass-making company. And a special 5 pc Riedel Vinum XL Tasting Set featuring the Finger Lakes exclusive Riesling glass as a souvenir.

Not to be outdone, Chateau Ste Michelle’s Summer Concert Series continues until the end of September and will include musical artists like Martina McBride, Ringo Starr, the B-52’s and Harry Connick Jr. Enjoy the fresh air, delicious wine and perhaps a picnic dinner while listening to live music from your favorite band.



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Forget about wine cellar equipment for their McMansions, the super rich have an underground wine vault 100ft under the Wiltshire countryside in Southern England. Formerly Eastlays mine, a source of honey-colored Bath stone, it is now Octavian Vaults’s Corsham Cellars, the place where the rich and famous hoard their most precious bottles of Petrus, Lafite or Latour. It’s like a bank storing liquid gold and run by one of the world’s relatively few specialist wine storage companies. Octavian Vaults is the only place you can get a “Certificate of Pristine Storage”.

Documented wine storage conditions along with provenance is vital to maintaining a wine’s value. A wine known to have crossed the Atlantic twice is likely to raise a much lower price at auction than one that has moved only once in its life, from chateau to a reliably cool wine storage facility. Other than the trip to Corsham itself, many of the wines at Corsham Cellars have moved only a few yards between different owners’ stacks in the wine vault, either through sales at auction, via merchants, or from one customer to another.

The caverns are 100 ft underground resulting in a constant temperature of about 13.5 deg C/56.3 deg F. They can be reached only by two heavily guarded, half-mile shafts, one of them serviced by a small, lumbering hydraulic-powered train that transports wine in and eventually out of the cellars. Many clients like to visit their wine to check its condition. They have to walk down 157 steps, carrying an emergency underground kit (i.e. gas mask and flashlight since the property is still officially classified as a mine) to get to the heart of the cellar. They can inspect the security measures if they choose, including motion-sensor beams used to protect bank vaults.

As buyers become more and more concerned about authenticity and the precise fill level in bottles before a sale (the lower it is the warmer the wine has probably been kept), or if they simply don’t care for a trip to Wiltshire to check on their investment, there are three photographic studios underground so that high-quality pictures of the wine can be taken at any time and sent to the client’s desktop. And should they have a special occasion to celebrate, customers can ask for a crate or even single bottle to be sent anywhere in the world to impress their guests.

Corsham Cellars already stores around 5 million bottles of fine wine, some worth thousands of dollars each. It’s the size of 20 football fields with tons of room for expansion. That’s good because with 2009 Bordeaux promising to be a particularly excellent vintage and lucrative markets booming in Asia, they’ll need it.

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On top of the immensity of the Olympic Winter Games, it appears the Canadians are planning an after party of equally biblical proportions. Thanks to Andre Saint-Jacques, owner of the Bearfoot Bistro and its extravagant underground wine cellar of more than 20,000 bottles (a perennial winner of the Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence), the Champagne will flow freely for gold medal winners. And to make things even more thrilling, the Champagne bottles will be ceremoniously decapitated by Saint-Jacques himself – the Guinness World Record holder for most Champagne bottles sabred in a single minute (21).

Opening a Champagne bottle with a sword or saber by hitting the lip of the bottle (its weak point) with the blade, thereby severing the collar from the neck is called “Sabrage” and dates back to the Napoleonic Era. Napoleon was quite the lover of Champagne and is credited with saying, “Champagne! In victory one deserves it; in defeat one needs it.” Saint-Jacques, also an effusive lover of the bubbly is Canada’s No. 1 importer of Moet & Chandon.

To celebrate the Games, Moet showed their love for their favorite Canadian with a gift: 100 jeroboams (3 liters) and 30 salmanazars (9 liters) of Brut Imperial (these big bottles are appropriately named for biblical kings). The salmanazars are for Canadian gold medalists and their guests, and the jeroboams will be given to the first Olympic medalists of each country. Saint-Jacques will also offer magnums (1.5 liters) of Champagne to the rest of Canada’s medal winners.

Much like the advice Saint-Jacques gives about beheading Champagne bottles – when drinking multiple glasses of Champagne “Its all in the wrist.” That also goes for swallowing the aspirin after.



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Bordeaux wine lovers may credit the 1855 Exposition Universelle de Paris and Emperor Napoleon III’s “Official Classification” with putting Bordeaux wine on the map. But, it turns out that his grandmother the Empress Josephine, first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte may have ignited French passion for the wine.

Prior to Josephine raising the status of Bordeaux to an elixer fit for nobility, it was seen as an inferior product suitable only for the English who had been stubborn lovers of claret, or red Bordeaux wine, for four centuries. At the time of the French Revolution, Burgundy and Champagne reigned supreme, in fact, not a single bottle of Bordeaux is known to have been kept in the wine cellars of King Louis XVI.

When Marie-Josephe-Rose de Tascher de La Pagerie (aka Empress Josephine) died in 1814, she left a heap of unpaid bills and a golden legacy to social historians. Marie-Josephe-Rose, was among other things, a great connoisseur and collector of clothes, and an innovative gardener and botanist. The written inventory of her final possessions at her chateau west of Paris has inspired studies and exhibitions on subjects as varied as the fashion trends and gardening styles of the early 19th century.

Josephine was also a celebrated hostess and, although not a great drinker, a great collector of wine. The official inventory of her possessions at her death includes more than 13,000 bottles of wine from all over the world, from Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal as well as South Africa and Hungary. The empress also kept hundreds of bottles of rum from her native Martinique, which she used in rum punches and served at dinner parties in gilded bowls.

Josephine’s chambermaid described her as a “very sober woman.” She was partial to very sweet wines including champagne, but drank it all with moderation – like Napoleon.

The Emperor Napoleon’s favorites were Burgundy and Champagne, but he also grew fond of South African wines during his time in exile on Saint Helena, the South Atlantic island where he died in 1821 at age 52 – not far from Cape Town.

Study of Josephine’s 1814 “wine list” reveals something that may seem unsurprising but was, at the time, extraordinary. Almost half of her bottles and barrels came from vineyards around Bordeaux, little known chateaux that later would become some of the greatest names in wine: Latour, Lafite, Margaux and Haut-Brion.

Was the Empress Josephine the cause of the great switch in French wine tastes which allowed the vineyards of Bordeaux, and especially the great chateaux of the Medoc, to emerge by the mid-19th century as the most prized wines in France and the world?

This is one of the subjects explored in an entertaining exhibition, La Cave de Josephine (Josephine’s Cellar), which has started at the Chateaux de Malmaison, where Josephine lived for the last 15 years of her life, and died in June 1814, aged 50.

The exhibition, which will move to Germany and Italy next year, also examines other changes in the art de vivre of the French nobility which followed the fall of the monarchy. Before the Revolution, an aristocratic French dinner-party was a kind of immense, stand-up buffet in which all dishes were served at once. Wine glasses were kept on trays by servants and topped up as required.

After the revolution, France gradually adopted the “Russian” style, now universal, of serving different, sit-down courses one after another. Wine glasses began, to be placed permanently on the table. These changes were driven partly by the post-Revolutionary lack of legions of low-paid servants. France had also finally cracked the “industrial secret” of how to make crystal wine glasses, something previously known only to the British.



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At least since the Middle Ages. Due to warmer temperatures, a few British wineries have revived a red winemaking tradition which died around 600 years ago. Wine critcs’ opinions about the wine have been mixed, but some seem convinced that the finest red wines may in the future come from north of the English channel if this warming trend continues.

With soils similar to Champagne and an edgier climate, England is already producing world-class sparkling wines like Nyetimber (which recently won the  International Wine & Spirit Competition Denbies Trophy for the Best Worldwide Sparkling Wine for the 3rd time), Ridgeview and Camel Valley. But, red wine is a different story.

UK vineyards still struggle to ripen popular red grape varieties like Pinot Noir. They are rarely able to produce enough for a single grape variety wine. As a result, for the past decade or so UK growers have been making reds that blended Pinot Noir with other grapes such as Dornfelder, a Germanic variety which ripens in colder climates but isn’t as tasty.

So far, English winemakers have not managed to master the varieties behind the famous full-bodied wines of Bordeaux, such as Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, although some have tried to grow these under plastic sheeting. This has yielded reds that are generally lighter in color and taste, and less alcoholic than wines from warmer regions.

No wonder the English are looking up for help. A number of English vineyards have signed up for a satellite imaging service to optimize grape harvests, and hopefully wine quality. The Oenoview system, first launched in France last year, analyzes the images to determine vine leaf density, soil water content and grape bunch sizes.

The imaging system gives growers an idea of grape quality based on the quantity of foliage which is an indirect measure of the amounts of sugars and tannins contained in the grapes. It also tells winemakers which parts of the vineyard are ripening earlier than others so they can be harvested accordingly.

Unlike the French, the English are not afraid of technology and see it as a large part of their industry’s future. According to Julia Trustram Eve from English Wine Producers, “Innovation is at the heart of the English wine industry and vineyard owners are keen to use technology that complements their winemaking skills.”



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I don’t know if they still do, but at one time the Chinese called America Gum Shan, the mountain of gold, a symbol of opportunity and the chance to get rich. Today, the Chinese have found another symbol of opportunity whose very name beckons the ambitious. In French Lafite means small hill, in Chinese it is very similar to the word lai-fat or “come get rich.”

It is this association with wealth and opportunity that has made Chateau Lafite-Rothschild and it’s second wine Carruades de Lafite the currency of choice for negotiating Chinese business deals. Which bottle you get depends on who you are and what is “requested”. In China, anything with Lafite in the name sells be it Bordeaux or Burgundy. As such, both wines are becoming literal mountains of gold for owners of bordeaux futures.

Chateau Lafite and its second wine, Carruades de Lafite, continue to defy the fine wine market, with prices of both continuing to rise week on week. Lafite 2008 is currently trading at around $6,000 per case, rising in price by around $140 per week, even though it is not due to be bottled until next year. Margaux 2008, in contrast, is trading at just over $3200.

Carruades 2008 is still at around $1600, but it is predicted to keep climbing closer to the other first growths once in bottle. Gary Boom, managing director of the Bordeaux Index, told decanter.com, ‘Today a case of Carruades 2004 would set you back $2900, which is considerably more than the $2600 you would pay for a case of Mouton 2004.

The September Liv-ex report also looks at the phenomenon of the “seemingly unstoppable Brand Lafite”, reporting that Carraudes has bucked the trend of price drops during the financial crisis, and that on average, recent vintages are now 22% more expensive than they were at the peak of the market in June last year.

“Asia has made up its mind on this brand,” said Boom, “and completely ignores either vintage effect, or Parker scores.”



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Chateau D’Arche, a Grand Cru Classe producer of Sauternes (dessert or sweet wine of Bordeaux) has started bottling its La Perle d’Arche wine in 100ml test-tube shaped bottles aimed at young drinkers in nightclubs. On the whole this seems to be a good idea since Sauternes is not well known outside the wine community, not to mention that french wine sales are on the decline so they’ve got to do something to shake things up.

But what’s troubling is their marketing, once again targeting women. Managing director Jerome Cosson told decanter.com: “We want to work with nightclubs to give customers the choice between vodka for the man and Sauternes for the lady. The idea is to put lots of them in a big ice bucket on the bar.”

A winemaker targeting women usually goes the low calorie wine route, like the just released French Wine Research Center’s “So Light” at 60 calories a glass and 9% alcohol. A 100ml serving of Sauternes is about twice the calories and 13% alcohol minimum. So while women may be relieved that they don’t have to deal with yet another winemaker trying to jam tasteless wine down their throats, seriously, do women have a problem with choice in alcoholic beverages at a bar? If a woman wants a glass of wine instead of vodka, she can simply order it.



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Even worse: 

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Premium winemakers argue that plastic is inappropriate for their product because it is seen as cheap, not to mention that it can’t be used for long-term wine storage. A recent study supports their argument. A study commissioned by Australian plastic wine-bottle maker, Portavin revealed the green alternative to glass was only good for wines that are drunk within a maximum of 12 months after bottling, with some wines starting to oxidize as early as 8 months.

“Simply put air travels through plastic but not through glass,” according to Portavin’s Managing Director Ian Matthews. “PET is fine for wine you plan to use under 12 months, but not for wines that are designed to improve in the bottle. It’s highly unlikey plastic will ever take over from glass because the PET format doesn’t suit every style of wine.”



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There’s a book too, but apps for your iPhone are cooler, assuming you have an iPhone. Apps like Wine 101 by FuzzyBeta claim to educate the uninitiated and remove the stress of wine selection. At the cost of $3, (of course not including the cost of the iPhone and service) Wine 101 provides a list of names for red wine when you launch it. Tapping on a varietal opens a window detailing where the grape comes from, how the wine smells and tastes, and foods it might pair with.

A similar service is provided by Hello Vino, a free app, available through iTunes, which selects the perfect type of wine to go with a meal or occasion, or to give as a gift. Wine shoppers need only install the app, and answer a few simple questions to get a specific wine recommendation.

These days, I hope the only stress you have is which wine to serve with dinner. But if you’re concerned about ordering wine in a fancy restaurant, I have one word for you, Sommelier. Providing this information is their job. Ditto for a manager in a wine shop. Tapping on your iPhone for a wine recommendation while on a date is not very suave.

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Another set of taxes would hit sugar-sweetened drinks, which are not currently taxed by the federal government. Although the exact rate has not been set, the Senate Finance Committee has proposed taxing per 12 oz container of these beverages. It would cover carbonated and noncarbonated drinks sweetened with sugar, high-fructose corn syrups and similar sweeteners. These would include sodas, iced teas and coffees, energy and sports drinks, fruit and vegetable drinks and flavored milks. It would not apply to artificially sweetened drinks. The Congressional Budget Office estimated a tax of 3 cents per 12 oz container, which would raise an estimated $50 billion over the next decade.

Rep. Mike Thompson is dubious. The St. Helena Democrat and co-chairman of the congressional wine caucus said the proposal “would be trading tax dollars for jobs and makes absolutely no sense for the wine and wine grape community, health care reform or our economy.”

So, why not tax fast-food instead of further damaging an already frail California economy or slugging a wine industry that’s already on the ropes? Because at this point, McJobs are the only avenue left for job growth, and the Big Mac is subsidized food for the poor.



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The first comprehensive survey of women’s attitudes toward wine has overturned several preconceived notions. Over 4,000 women in the UK, France, Japan, Germany and the US responded to a survey commissioned by Vinexpo, revealing a preference for red wine and skepticism for marketing campaigns that target them specifically (e.g. White Lie and Slender Wines). Among the more surprising results were that women prefer red wine to both white and rose, and consider wine compatible with a balanced diet. 79% of the women said they drink wine because they like the taste – as opposed to its compatibility with food or fashion status. Of the 1300 UK-based respondents, 80% choose the wine for their household, with price as the main criterion, followed by varietal and country of origin; and 54% said they were undeterred by government health warnings. Consultant and presenter Angela Mount said other results, notably that women continue to be more price-led than brand or quality-led, was worrisome, with only 10% choosing wine over $15 a bottle.



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1. The longest recorded Champagne cork flight was 177 feet and 9 inches, 4 feet from level ground at Woodbury Vineyards in New York state, on June 5, 1988.
2. Marilyn Monroe was said to have once taken a bath in 350 bottles of Champagne. Vintage not confirmed.
3. The largest cork tree in the world is known as The Whistler Tree. This tree is located in the Alentejo region of Portugal and averages more than 1 ton of raw cork per harvest, which is enough to cork 100,000 bottles of wine. Or one really big keg of beer.
4. Demi Moore tried to seduce Michael Douglas in the 1994 movie Disclosure with a bottle of the limited edition Pahlmeyer 1991 Chardonnay (Napa Valley, California). She seduced Ashton Kutcher in real life with a case of Red Bull.
5. A jar of red wine was found in Tutankhamen’s tomb, inscribed with the winemaker name, Khaa, and the vintage, “Year 5.” Those who tasted it remarked that it was “kinda funky.”



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According to an obituary published yesterday by the Corriere Fiorentino, Bettino Ricasoli, 87, the great-great-grandson of “Iron Baron” Bettino Ricasoli and steward of one of the leading families of Chianti Classico, has died.

Although he never published a “formula” or “recipe” for Chianti (as many erroneously claim), Bettino Ricasoli (1809-1880) reshaped the history of Chianti and Tuscan winemaking in the 19th century when he famously declared that Sangiovese (or Sangioveto, as the Tuscan clone of Sangiovese was known then) was the ideal grape for the production of fine wine there. In an often cited but rarely revisited 1872 letter to Professor Cesare Studiati of Pisa, Ricasoli described the process of study that led to the replanting of his Castello di Brolio estate in Gaiole in Chianti (one of the core townships of Chianti Classico).



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The wine industry was battered and bruised in 2008, the astronomical prices for top-level wines plunged, and as if in an act of repentance more winemakers went green. For example, Boisset, the second-largest producer of Beaujolais Nouveau, bottled its entire 2008 harvest in lightweight plastic bottles. Biodynamic and organic wines increased. Yet many still doubt the wine industry’s sincerity when it comes to carbon neutrality because they still ship wine in wooden crates as opposed to the much lighter corrugated cardboard. The Liv-Ex 100 Fine Wine Index, the wine world’s Dow Jones Index, has fallen more than 20 percent from its all-time high. Among the hardest hit was Domaine Romanee Conti 1990, which commanded more than $20,000 a bottle in November 2007, but sold last fall for $6,500 – a 67.5 percent drop. The global credit crisis has threatened Bordeaux’s en primeur sales. And as wine buyers search for bargain-priced bottles, Bacchus seems to be favoring Chile and Argentina.



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A San Francisco cooperative is selling futures in a new wine called “Bailout,” inspired by the economic crisis. Crushpad, a custom crush facility, will sell the Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon at $39 per bottle. But there’s a twist, for every 100-point drop in the Dow Jones from the date of purchase to the projected bottling date of 14 August 2009, the final price will be discounted $2 per bottle. If the Dow is higher on the bottling date, the price is still $39 a bottle, making Bailout futures a minor hedge on the economy. Only 500 cases will be produced. Crushpad is doing this for fun and exposure, but it may be instructive for high-end Bordeaux winemakers who refuse to lower their exorbitant 2008 futures prices given the current environment. According to those in the wine trade, Bordeaux must lower it’s prices by 50% or the 2008 en primeur campaign could be a disaster. Crushpad is an urban winemaking facility that enables budding entrepreneurs to make their own wine with the expert help of the staff.



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Recent research indicates that different types of music stimulate different parts of the brain, and prime us to taste wines in a corresponding way. For example, powerful rock music like Jimi Hendrix or The Rolling Stones is a good accompaniment to a Cabernet Sauvignon, while opera buffs might prefer a 2006 Syrah. “This is the first time it has been scientifically proven that music can affect perception in other senses and change the way wine tastes,” said Professor Adrian North of Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. The idea for the study was triggered by Chilean winemaker Aurelio Montes, who plays Gregorian chants to his maturing wines, arguing that the gentle vibrations improve the quality of the wine. Researchers recommend the following wine / song pairings: Cabernet Sauvignon – All Along The Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix; Chardonnay – Atomic by Blondie; Syrah – Puccini’s Nessun Dorma. Merlot – Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay by Otis Redding. Sorry, no Reggae.



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When People magazine reported seeing an unopened bottle of Kendall-Jackson chardonnay in the Obamas’ kitchen, the California winery fired off a couple of cases to No. 44. Just another gift? Hardly. Winning over the presidential palate is a big deal for the wine industry, leaving vintners and vinophiles curious about what’s on tap for the next occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Wine and the White House go back to No. 1, who tried his hand growing vines at his Mt. Vernon estate in Virginia. But it was Thomas Jefferson who really embraced enology, building and stocking White House Cellars. He also introduced guests, not always successfully, to fine, dry vintages vs. the sweet, fortified wines then in vogue. Kendall-Jackson hasn’t heard back about its shipment. But Lettie Teague, executive wine editor for the magazine Food & Wine, said K-J chardonnay seems a good choice for modern times, popular and reasonably priced at around $11 a bottle.



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Who woulda thunk it? That a small organic wine from Chile would cause such an uproar. Palin Syrah, now in its second release, and named for the ball used to play Chilean field hockey is losing sales, at least in San Francisco. The reason? The similarity of its name to Sarah Palin, the now famous hockey mom and Vice-Presidential candidate. Before politics played a role, Palin Syrah was described as a good organic, affordable wine, now it’s likened to moosemeat and gunpowder, and it doesn’t help that it’s red. Perhaps a white wine would do better. Obama Sparkling Wine, made by Larry Mawby in Suttons Bay, Michigan might fit the bill. However, unlike Palin Syrah, this wine has political purpose. For every bottle of Obama sold one dollar is donated to the Obama campaign. I wonder if San Franciscans are also boycotting Budweiser. Given Cindy McCain’s family business, there’s no doubt Sen. John McCain’s a Busch man.



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So what’s the new thing in the wine world these days? Plastic Bottles. That’s right the same PET bottles used for fruit drinks and soda pop, with a nudge from environmentalists, has become a viable wine-packaging alternative to glass. One of the latest producers to embrace the new trend is French wine giant Boisset who recently announced that all Beaujolais Nouveau wines imported to the US this year (for their annual November release date), will be shipped in plastic bottles. According to Jean-Charles Boisset, PET bottles, would reduce shipping weight by 42 percent (and thus fuel use), while PET packaging would produce 50 to 60 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than glass throughout its life cycle. The company is also unveiling Fog Mountain Merlot, a domestically sourced California wine, also in PET. It already sells its Mommessin Beaujolais Grande Reserve in aluminium bottles.

Click here for more information on plastic wine bottles and the carbon-neutral wine trend.



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Is the wine cellar passe? Some French wine buffs believe there’s a better place for storing wine, at the bottom of the sea (OMG!). A couple years ago, French winemakers began submerging hundreds of bottles of wine at a depth of 30ft in Saint-Malo Bay off the coast of Normandy. After being “massaged by the sea” for a year, it is said that “underwater whites” have more obvious wood aromas, and “submerged reds” evolve more slowly than cellared wine. Recently, Champagne house, Louis Roederer, sent divers to place several dozen bottles of its Brut Premier at a depth of 50ft in Saint-Malo bay (hidden of course). In a year’s time experts will assess if they have matured with a different or better taste than in the traditional cellars of the Champagne region. The sea may be the ideal wine cellar (i.e. constant temperatures, high humidity, no UV light), but it seems more like bored winemakers playing “Pirates of the Caribbean”.

Click here for more information on wine bottle storage.

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Click here for more information about Bordeaux wine appellations and classed growth system.



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Click here for more information about the damage caused by heat and wine oxidation (maderization).



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Bollinger is a major Champagne house in France. They produce several labels of Champagne under the Bollinger name, including the vintage Vieille Vignes Francaises, Grand Annee and R.D. as well as the non-vintage Special Cuvee. Ever a favorite of the British, Bollinger became the official supplier to the British court in 1884, receiving a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria. It’s even the choice of James Bond (i.e. Bollinger Grand Annee Champagne 1988, in “Golden Eye”). Well, it’s not often that a major Champagne house releases a new champagne but Bollinger has done just that with the release in London of Bollinger Rose. The creation of this non-vintage rose has been long in the making and a dream of the House for almost a decade. This Special Cuvee is 60% Pinot Noir, 25% Chardonnay, 15% Pinot Meunier, and will be widely available May 1st.



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Click here for more information on the effects of global warming on the wine industry.



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“If anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving.” Remember that line from “Sideways”? Called the “Sideways Effect” it made one of America’s favorite wines uncool while boosting the sales of Pinot Noir. Well apparently the disdain has worn off. After years of plummeting sales Merlot is recovering. During the 12-month period ending December 7, 2007, dollar sales of domestically produced Merlots rose 6%, led by category leader Blackstone Winery, whose benchmark Merlot jumped 11.6% in sales in the last four week period alone. Blackstone Merlot is the best-selling Merlot and the single best-selling domestic red wine in the United States. Despite Pinot Noir’s recent growth in popularity, sales of the variety are less than half those of Merlot.



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Schramsberg Vineyards in the Napa Valley makes sparkling wine that many believe is the rival of French Champagne. It has been served at White House dinners, and famously in 1972 President Richard Nixon took Schramsberg’s Blanc de Blancs to China for the “Toast to Peace” dinner with Premier Zhou Enlai. Unfortunately for everyone, the winery is now embroiled in a family feud that threatens to tear apart the wine dynasty. Considering the winery’s historic connection to China, from its caves, which were hand-dug by Chinese immigrant laborers in 1880, to President Nixon in 1972, perhaps the Chinese can send some wine to help settle the dispute (and I don’t mean sake). Labeled by some as the “new Chile” China is the sixth largest wine-producing country in the world.



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Click here for more information on the high-alcohol wine trend and its effect on wine balance.



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OK, let’s turn Don Ho off (great New Years Eve party tune by the way). Tiny bubbles may make Don happy, but they make oenophiles pretty giddy too. An old adage about Champagne is, the smaller the bubbles, the finer the wine. The tiniest bubbles are the result of long aging, as well as the temperature of the aging cellar. The cooler the wine, the smaller the bubbles. Generally, really tiny bubbles are found in Champagnes known as prestige cuvees. A prestige cuvee is a wine manufacturer’s best wine, and it is always given a special name. Dom Perignon, for example, is the prestige cuvee of Moet and Chandon.
Click here for further discussion of wine temperature.



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“Three kraters (shallow bowls used as wine cups) do I mix for the temperate: one to health, which they empty first, the second to love and pleasure, the third to sleep. When this bowl is drunk up, wise guests go home. The fourth bowl is ours no longer, but belongs to hubris, the fifth to uproar, the sixth to prancing about, the seventh to black eyes, the eighth brings the police, the ninth belongs to vomiting, and the tenth to insanity and the hurling of furniture.”

Have a Safe and Happy Christmas!



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Wine is known to protect against strokes, diabetes and dementia. So Roger Corder, professor of experimental therapeutics in London and author of “The Red Wine Diet: Drink Wine Every Day and Live a Long and Healthy Life,” performed tests to learn why. He found that procyanidins (protective anti-oxidants that improve blood-vessel function and prevent heart disease) are what make red wine so healthy. Made of Tannat grapes from the southwest of France, Madiran wine has been shown to have the highest procyanidin levels. Other beneficial grape varieties are Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and Barolo.



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It usually starts right before Thanksgiving, there’s a huge increase in demand for Champagne, not just in stores but in restaurants and bars. This increase in demand puts incredible pressure on Champagne prices. Avoid the price hike. If in December you’re thirsting for a popular brand like Veuve Clicquot, choose a high-volume, warehouse-style store. Distributors try to get a premium in December, but larger stores that have the space and the buying power buy in September or October, when they can take advantage of the lower cost. Smaller stores that don’t have room to store the stuff and may not have the budget to buy in advance have to pay more and therefore charge more.



This is a post from: The Wine Cellar Blog

Who knew that a hippopotamus on a wine label symbolized something good to the consumer? Cute and colorful “critter labels” may seem more fitting for a box of “Animal Crackers,” nevertheless, new table wines with animals on the label outsell all other new table wines by more than two to one. Yellow Tail wine is a perfect example. Yellow Tail from Australia (with a wallaby on the label) became the number one imported wine in the US in just two years. Yellow Tail Shiraz is the best-selling red wine in America (not just imports but ALL red wine) and it took just five years.



This is a post from: The Wine Cellar Blog

That expensive case of Burgundy has been stunning so far, then all of a sudden, a bad bottle. Same wine, same case, it’s inexplicable. Or, maybe you’re drinking on a “Root Day.” Every day is designated either a root, flower, fruit or leaf in Maria and Matthias K Thun’s Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar (flower and fruit being best for wine tasting). This concept may cause some snickering, but biodynamics is taken very seriously in the vinyard these days. Many world-class estates such as Domaine Leroy in Burgundy, Michel Chapoutier in the Rhone have become committed biodynamic properties over the past decade. Click here for a more indepth discussion of organic and biodynamic wine.



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For the wine investor, absolutely! But for the wine drinker, it’s much more complicated. Hugh Johnson (the world’s best-selling wine writer) declares in his 2008 Pocket Wine Book that, “Vintages used to be really crucial but the difference now is not so much in quality as reputation, because the most famous ones are traded up to ridiculous prices. The reasons people buy a particular wine are complex but have a lot to do with snobbism.

“If you sold a nonvintage bordeaux nobody would buy it. It would be just as good, but it would not have the romance and the interest.”

More Info on Bordeaux Wine Vintages and Their Effect on Pricing



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No, not the Bruce Lee television series. Absinthe, also known as the Green Fairy, the muse of 19th century artists (like Van Gogh) and the bane of the early 20th is making a comeback. This 140-proof liqueur reached its height of popularity at a time when wine prices were skyrocketing. Later on, murders reminiscent of the Amityville Horror ignited hysteria about its effects. After 95 years, “Lucid” is  the first genuine Absinthe made with real Grande Wormwood to be legally available in the United States.



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Beaujolais Nouveau is a wine synonymous with November. This wine has made it’s way onto many Thanksgiving tables as a result of the huge marketing blitz that takes place this time of year. Beaujolais Nouveau has a reputation for being Kool-Aid wine: easy-to-drink, fruity and one-dimensional. But Beaujolais can be much more than this, Cru Beaujolais wines (like Moulin-a-Vent and Brouilly) can be mistaken for Burgundy in a good vintage. As a rule of thumb, fruity wines with lower tannin levels like Beaujolais are perfect for Thanksgiving fare, as are Zinfandel, Riesling and Pinot Noir.

Ch. de la Chaize 2004 Brouilly (Gamay) – Beaujolais Red Wine



This is a post from: The Wine Cellar Blog