So Why California?

Wine is made commercially in all 50 states, but California makes roughly 90% of the wine in the United States. There are a few reasons why this is the case, although a large amount of that is bulk wine coming out of the Central Valley. When it comes to fine wine, most of that is made in the coastal regions of California – Sierra Foothills and Lodi (maybe) are the main exceptions.

On Saturday I attended a session put on by Darek Trowbridge of Old World Winery (a brand I’m intimately familiar with) and two other speakers including Mark Greenspan of Advanced Viticulture. He raised some good points as to why California’s climate, and the Russia River Valley in particular, is well-suited to wine production.

The three main reasons wine grapes enjoy California’s climate are its moderate temperatures due to coastal influence, its lack of summer precipitation, and its correspondingly low humidity. Nowhere else in the world has the same climate (except maybe Chile). In other wine growing regions latitude is king, with cooler regions farther from the equator, but in California it is all about the Pacific Ocean. Some of the coolest growing regions of the state are near Santa Barbara where the valleys run east-west, allowing the cool Pacific air inland.

The Russian River Valley is on the same latitude as southern Spain and Portugal, the tip of Italy’s boot, and Athens, Greece – a far cry from Europe’s most prominent Pinot Noir region of Burgundy. The Pinot region of the Santa Rita Hills misses Europe all-together and lands one ashore in central Morocco. As curious as I am to try Moroccan Pinot Noir, I’m assuming it won’t work as well.

I’m not a meteorologist, and therefore won’t try to explain why this is true, but California (along with Chile) has unusually cold waters off of its coast for its latitude.

The climate here is perfectly suited for wine production, but it is very different from Bordeaux or Burgundy. It’s understandable that many new world winemakers are attempting to emulate the style of the greatest wines of the old world, but we need to start embracing our differences and making wine that is true to California, not France. The United States is still a young wine-producing area, and as we find our identity perhaps we will stop selling jug wine labeled “Burgundy”, but instead mass-produced Barbera/Merlot/who-knows-what-else blends from the Central Valley will be labeled, “Walla Walla”.

Movies that tell of wine

This is coming completely out of boredom and my lack of activity on the blog in the past couple weeks. We have covered the realm of wine and music and I see it only fair to talk about wine movies. Some of you may enjoy the movies discussed here, and I am sure about as many of you won’t and will probably give me hell about it for a long time to come. Let’s get started.

A Good Year: Some might consider this to be a borderline “chick flick”. However, I would like to see any of you say that to Russel Crowe’s face and then prepare to have your face strategically removed from your head by way of a punch or perhaps a telephone. For those of you who don’t know, Russel Crowe has been known in the media to have a bit of a temper. The movie itself is set in southern France and tells the take of Max, a rich wall street type a**hole who inherits a small French wine estate from his late uncle. He then goes to France with all plans of selling said property, and……I’m not giving away anymore, other than the fact that Marion Cotillard is in it, and she is hot.

Bottle Shock: This movie has more flaws than Shelly Duvall’s face (she is not in the movie). On the bright side it does happen to be a extremely wine-based movie, which is extremely hard to come by. The movie itself is a very hollywoodized version of the Judgement of Paris. For those of you unfamiliar with the Judgement of Paris, let’s just say it had a huge impact on the reputation and sales of California wines. It’s a heart-felt tale which can be quite funny at times. If you find yourself to be like us or otherwise be heavily educated in wine, then you will pick this movie apart like thanksgiving turkey.

Sideways: Last but best, Sideways is the wine lovers wine movie. I’ve never met a male wine fan that doesn’t like this movie. However, to those belonging to the sex known as female, apparently this movie can be quite offensive. The story is of two friends Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church). Jack is planning on getting married and Miles wants to show him one last hurrah of sorts in the wine country of California. Let’s just say things go from horribly wrong to worse in the span of 126 minutes. I could easily sit here and quote the whole movie to you and im pretty sure Steve could too. I’ll just let you watch it if you haven’t

Happy Viewing.

The Bordeaux Classification of 2010

Has anyone else bothered to look at the prices for 2009 Bordeaux futures? They are absolutely absurd. I’m sorry, but I’m not paying $2600 for Chateau Petrus, $1100 for Chateau Cheval Blanc (especially when the 2004 was offered at $259 this morning), or even $300 for few glasses (which are at least 5 years away) of 2009 Chateau Cos d’Estournel. (All prices courtesy of Wine.com)

Regions of Bordeaux

Today’s most expensive Bordeauxs are coming from the Merlot-heavy right bank, but it’s the Cabernet-heavy left bank which still relies so heavily on a system that was put in place in 1855. As many winos have done, I’ve memorized the five first growth Chateaux on the left bank, and it’s fun to dream about drinking Latour with a Tuesday night meal, but somehow I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Since we live in a time where the status-quo is constantly being questioned and overthrown (100 point scale, for example), maybe it’s time that we rethink and rewrite the Bordeaux classification. This time there won’t be any first growths or second growths, but rather an autonomous collective, which rotates power weekly, and through the power of the people creates a database of Bordeaux wines.

This is my vision:

With the help of every wine lover out there, we are going to create a listing of Bordeaux wines with visual guides to style and one other dimension. I was about to settle on “quality”, but I think “complexity” is more fitting (I appreciate any input on this). Wines which are quite simple may be quite enjoyable, so this isn’t going to be a system to simply score the wines. Rather, I’m trying to classify them to help guide purchases according to the preference of the buyer.

2004 Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte

The impetus to all of this is a comment left on “Ask a Terroirist” (and please, ask us something, anything) questioning whether we had a list of “terroir-driven” Bordeaux wines as opposed to more new-world style versions. Well, with the internet (thanks to Al Gore), and the legions of wine geeks among it, there is no reason this shouldn’t be able to be completed. The problem is, I don’t know enough C++ or Java or whatever it would take to make this work. Wino tech geeks, please email me. I vision a world where all Bordeaux wines could be searched for in accordance of style and price, so that the consumer could know what lay beyond the cork. If we aren’t giving more power to the consumer, then what is the point of wine blogs?

Back to the Future of Wine Scoring

It is that time of the day where one has to decide between watching “Hot Tub Time Machine”, or reading a wine blog post. I’m thinking both at the same time is the answer. With that, start up the movie and read this post – here we go!

Decades ago, wine competitions meant more than critics’ reviews, but along came Robert Parker with his 100 point score and times changed. Since then other publications conformed, such as Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, and Wine and Spirits. This went on for a while, and then in the mid 2000’s wine blogs began to attract significant attention. Why pay for professional reviews when blogs can do as good of a job for free?

"Did you hear the 2005 La Landonne got a 99?"

It’s now 2010 and the call for the end of the 100 point system has grown strong, especially from the blogs. Every scoring system imaginable is out there – 5 glasses, 10 points, 20 points, 1 million points, highly recommended (what does that really mean?), you name it, it exists. Most recently, however, there is a movement to change all of this completely by creating a badge system for scoring. For readers who are on Foursquare, there won’t be any “I’m on a boat” or “super-swarm” badges, but rather badges such as “crowd pleaser” and “legit juice”, according to this post by Josh Wade of Drink Nectar.

The future will decide how this idea actually functions, but I have to first question the faults of the 100 point system. One particular blog I read (won’t name any names) cited the 100 point system as impractical, saying the difference between a 93 point and 94 point wine are not significant and completely judgmental. Instead, he uses the 20 point system, but he also rates wines to the half-point – so a 16.5 is significantly better than a 16? The 100 point system has a minimum of 50, and most critics would admit it’s rare a wine falls below 70, making it more of a 30 point system. The difference is we grow up with 100 point scales everywhere, in class, money, iPhone batteries, etc… I have to say; is it really all that bad? Wines change based on food, mood, and time, so in the end every scoring system is judgmental.

As far as the Terroirists are concerned, we have used the 100 point scale in the past, but currently we aren’t assigning any scores to wines. Perhaps we’ll re-adopt a system in the future, but the perfect wine scoring system doesn’t exist and we don’t accept any less than perfection. If any readers have an opinion on the right scoring system, please let us know – we’d love some new ideas.

The Most Embarrassing Wines (For a Snob)

Nobody wants to be labeled as a wine snob. Most wine blogs attempt to be anti-snob, this one included, but in the end anyone with good knowledge of wine is seen as a wine snob by anyone who knows nothing about wine, and this is a fact we have to live with.

As I was sipping on a Chignin Bergeron out of my Riedel glass (which costs more than a case of Two Buck Chuck) while listening to a collection of splendid Austrian composers, one of my non-wine friends (why I have any, I don’t know) sent me a link to this David Sedaris article in The New Yorker. Sedaris writes, “It is here that I’ll identify myself as a Kool Mild smoker. This, to some, is like reading the confessions of a wine enthusiast and discovering midway through that his drink of choice is Lancers, but so be it”.

The interesting thing about this quote is that until tonight I’d never heard of Lancers. Upon finding their website, all I can say is there’s some cheesy music playing and it’s not an experience I long to repeat (although I’m still jamming out to the music, which is oddly Transport Tycoon-esque). This got me thinking, what are the wines which the wine snob would never be caught dead enjoying. Well, this list isn’t one of them, as any wine snob should enjoy what follows (and it’s not a wine, thus disqualifying it).

The Top 5 Embarrassing Wines (For a Snob)

5. Blue Nun: This sugary German white dons the shelves of almost every grocery store across the country. It is simple, unassuming, cheap, and well, sweet. That’s about all there is to say about it, besides that it’s not present in my wine collection, but then again, a quick trip to Safeway could remedy that.

4. [yellow tail]: Potentially the most successful wine brand in the United States, [yellow tail] was especially prevalent during my stint at a four year university in the south. Perhaps this is because their website used to display a dry to sweet scale, with many reds falling on the sweet side. Unfortunately it seems this has been removed, and let it be known I was on the [yellow tail] website purely for business purposes. Truth be told, I have never once tasted a [yellow tail] wine, which prevents them from making it any higher on this list for ethical reasons.

3. Arbor Mist: I admit to having once purchased Arbor Mist (I believe it was the “pinot noir” flavor), but if memory serves me correct, it was consumed after a heavy metal concert with the same non-wine friend who inspired this article. This wine “beverage” almost didn’t make this list because it’s just that – a beverage, not a wine. At this point I’m ashamed it’s taken up so much space on this blog.

2. Carlo Rossi: After having visited the Carlo Rossi website (don’t say I don’t research), I nearly keeled over in laughter. Of course, wine snobs never laugh, so that didn’t happen. The item which struck me as humorous is their claim, “Pruning, weeding, cultivating… that’s hard work, but that’s why our wines taste different.” I suppose whoever drives the tractor through enormous Central Valley vineyards which are likely cropped at 20 tons per acre might break a sweat. This wine is made to be cheap, not special, I’d rather they just embrace the insanely cheap buzz which many receive from this beverage on a weekly basis. Oh, and bonus for still making a white wine called “Chablis”, which has ruined the image of this great French Chardonnay region for decades (not to mention “Chianti”, “Burgundy” and “Rhine”).

1. Any white zinfandel: This is an obvious choice for the number one spot on the list. No wine in the history of our country has been more popular by the general public or more hated by wine snobs. As the story goes, we owe the invention of this beverage more aptly referred to as alcoholic fruit juice to an “accident” at Sutter Home in Napa when their attempt at rescuing the saigneé juice from their [red] zinfandel experienced a stuck fermentation. Now it’s more likely that over-cropped Central Valley zinfandel is thrown into a press and inoculated, only to have fermentation halted by an addition of sorbic acid, leaving behind plenty of sugar. The color is then perfected by adding a touch of red wine to the base, making a consistently putrid product every year.

Due to my extreme snobbishness, there is likely a worthwhile wine which has been left off this list. Please let the Terroirists and the world know, what is the one wine you would not be caught dead drinking?