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Showing posts with label commentary. Show all posts

Showing posts with label commentary. Show all posts

The Mile High (Wine Disappointment) Club

Flying back to the States from the U.K. this past weekend, visions of Steelers touchdown passes dancing in my head, something occurred to me.

Actually, a few things occurred to me:

Flying West into the sunset (or East into a sunrise) at several thousand feet is a visual treat of unmatched proportions, with the cloud horizon fading gently from burning orange to pink, purple, blue, and finally the star-speckled obsidian black of space. Sort of like the visual equivalent to the flavors in a glass of sublime red wine.
Business and First class aside, the wines offered on most airlines totally suck.

At least, this has been my experience.

Not that I haven't had decent wine while flying in an aircraft - it's just that I've onl had decent wine while traveling in First or Business class.

What I don't quite understand is, given the proliferation of very good wine at very low prices, why the stock isn't better. Just because those in coach class are resigned to the fact that they will be herded around like sky-bound cattle doesn't mean that they want to drink like sky-bound cattle.

Not that I'm 100% sure exactly what wine a sky-bound bovine would drink... but let's just agree that it probably wouldn't be a discriminating choice, ok?

International carriers seem to have a leg up (glass up?) in the area of better-than-average in-flight wine offerings.

The venerable UK wine icon Jancis Robinson had been making wine picks for British Airways. Interestingly, some of the best wine choices available mid-flight are offered by airlines operating from countries that are not known for their wine - or so say the results of a 2007 wine competition by Global Traveler (which, also interestingly, only covered Business Class). Tops in that group were Taiwan's EVA, Thai Airways International, and Gulf Air (from the Kingdom of Bahrain). Not exactly powerhouses on the world winemaking stage (at least not yet).

Still, it's not all gloom and doom (and plonk), I suppose. Canadian wine writer Natalie McLean has detailed some of the better in-flight wine options offered (mostly on international long-haul flights), and last year the much maligned US Airways upgraded their wine list.

What's YOUR experience? Have you had more plonk or more perfection a mile high?

Cheers!
(images: travel.webshots.com, tonyrogers.com, popsop.com, tinnong24h.com)

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The Rise of Snooth.com (or "Get on the Virtual Wine Bus, Already!")

Now this is interesting. Well, interesting to me, anyway:

Venerable Internet tech. news site TechCrunch recently profiled Snooth.com (I'm an affiiate, so it caught my eye), detailing its growing popularity, and its impressive ability to secure angel funding during a very dank, dark, and dastardly economic climate. Getting featured on TechCrunch is newsworthy enough in and of itself, and the whole event garnered the attention of Kaz & Randy at WineBizRadio.com. I've had the pleasure of chatting (I say "chat" because he's British) with Snooth.com founder Philip James on a few occasions, and he is a generally approachable and nice fellow, so Snooth's success has been fulfilling to witness from a distance.

Apparently, according to TechCrunch and Snooth.com itself, Snooth.com is now the largest and fastest growing (in terms of website visits) wine community website. SNooth is now even bigger than Wine.com, which lacks the social media aspects of Snooth, and is still battling perception issues from over a year ago when they arguably put their own interests well above those of wine consumers and retailers.

What I found most interesting about the recent Snooth.com lovefest was not Snooth's success, but how the website has been classified.

TechCrunch called it "a social wine review site."

While this is certainly true, it's not the complete picture.

Folks, let's be clear: Snooth is in the business of selling wine. I know that it says on their home page that they don't sell wine. And they don't - not directly. But the fact is that they are in the business of getting wine into your hands, through retailers whose selections are featured in their search results.

And they do it well enough - and integrate it so well with the best aspects of social wine networking (sharing reviews and recommendations) - that they are seeing huge success during a time when being relevant on the Internet at all means being involved in social networking.

Snooth.com is not the Future of Internet wine sales - it's the Present. If you want to sell wine on-line (despite the headache introduced by arcane and unconstitutional state-run alcohol distribution monopolies getting in your way), then you'd better well understand the model that Snooth.com is quietly (well, not so quietly now I suppose) perfecting.

The King (wine.com) is dead. Long live the King (Snooth.com)!

Cheers!
(images: snooth.com)

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Judging the Judges: Study Shows Wine Judges Aren't That Reliable (or does it...?)

The Journal of Wine Economics has just published a study authored by Robert T. Hodgson titled An Examination of Judge Reliability at a major U.S. Wine Competition. The reported findings should make the fodder for about 10,000 wine blog articles over the next few weeks.

The study tracked the ability of wine competition judges to replicate the scores that they gave to wines (during blind tasting competition) at the California State Fair. The study found that (emphasis is mine):

...judges were perfectly consistent... about 18 percent of the time. However, this usually occurred for wines that were rejected. That is, when the judges were very consistent, it was often for wines that they did not like...

Let the blood-letting commence!

I fear that the media will take hold of this and start to sound the death knell for the ability of so-called experts to taste and rate wines (again), or use it to shake up an already arguably unfavorable view that wine appreciation and competition is the height of snobbery.

Neither are true, and this study does little to bolster either point. Why? Because wine tasting is, at its heart, heart a subjective exercise.

The study is clear on its intentions, which was not to shake up the world of wine competition, but to "provide a measure of a wine judge’s ability to consistently evaluate replicate samples of an identical wine. With such a measure in hand, it should be possible to evaluate the quality of future wine competitions using consistency as well as concordance with the goal to continually improve reliability and to track improvements associated with procedural changes..."

To understand why this study doesn't ring so true with me, I need to give you a little detail on the mechanics of the study:

When possible, triplicate samples of all four wines were served in the second flight of the day randomly interspersed among the 30 wines. A typical day’s work involves four to six flights, about 150 wines... The judges first mark the wine’s score independently, and their scores are recorded by the panel’s secretary. Afterward the judges discuss the wine. Based on the discussion, some judges modify their initial score; others do not. For this study, only the first, independent score is used to analyze an individual judge’s consistency in scoring wines.

In summary: the judges weren't consistent when faced with tasting hundreds of wines in a day, and there revised scores (based on panel discussion - which can have a huge impact on how you would evaluate a wine) weren't used.

If the study proves anything, I think shows that trying to judge hundreds of wines in a day is a first-class non-stop ticket to palate fatigue, even for experienced wine judges.

Now that I think about it, blind tasting is so notoriously difficult that I give the judges in this study credit for being consistent almost 20% of the time. That would be a respectable hitting percentage in baseball (not sure... I don't follow baseball actually)...

While the media may latch onto this one, the study hinted that there is some modicum of possible salvation for the madness surrounding wine competitions in general - not by way of wine judges, but by way of the ultimate judges of wine: the Consumer.

...a recent article in Wine Business Monthly (Thach, 2008) conducted as a joint
effort by 10 global universities with specialties in wine business and marketing found that consumers are not particularly motivated by medals when purchasing wine in retail stores. If consumer confidence is to be improved, managers of wine competitions would be well advised to validate their recommendations with quantitative standards.

Interesting conclusion. And a hopeful one.

Cheers!
(images: legaljuice.com, wine-economics.org)

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Why Huge Wine Lists Suck

With the recent review I penned for WCDish.com, I've had restaurant wine lists on the brain lately.

Which means that this post will likely be ill-timed, given the dearth of restaurant-goers in an economy that is wading knee-deep in layoff announcements. Oh well - timing was never one of my strong suits.

Anyway, as a semi-educated wine geek, I fully appreciate that I might approach a restaurant wine list in a slightly different way than the average diner, in that I might have a deeper knowledge of what the foreign word mean, or what the wine is supposed to taste like from region XYZ.

Which is not to say that I think I'm smarter than the average restaurant-goer; quite the contrary, as I can tell you that 90% of them will be able to calculate an appropriate tip faster than I can (I like words - math... not so much). It just means that I'm probably geekier about wine than the average restaurant-goer.

But... at the restaurant table, while I may have more trouble with tip calculation due to my mathematically-challenged brain, my wine list perusal goal is no different than the average restaurant goer's: find a good bottle of wine at a decent price that will go well with dinner.
Which is why I think that huge-ass restaurant wine lists suck.

Tyler over at Dr. Vino recently posted an article about a Tampa restaurant (Bern's) that might be of interest to those who will be traveling to Tampa to watch the STEELERS trounce the Cardinals in Superbowl XLIII. Bern's boasts 6,800 selections and more than 500,000 bottles. I don't even want to see that wine list.

For me, dozens of pages detailing hundreds of choices of wine amounts to two things:

A brief curiosity as I look up something geeky say softly, to no one in particular, "Wow. They have a bottle of 1925 Chateau Légendaire Maison Pompeux that costs more than my car..." (this might have appeal to boring wine snobs, but if that's your clientelle then I am probably not coming back to your restaurant anytme soon)...
...that quickly becomes a big distraction. If I am at a dinner with a group of like-minded wine geeks, then by all means bring on the wine cellar curiosities. Chances are that I'm not, however, and a huge wine list distracts from the dinner conversation and enjoyment that I should be having while I try to reason with the weighty tome of vino choices.

And the wine geeks out there will appreciate that it's always you that has to pick the wine - and the larger the wine list, the faster it will get tossed your way by the other dinner guests.

Here's an example:

A few years ago Mrs. Dudette and I took a trip to Vegas (baby, Vegas) and caught up with some old college friends of mine. We decided to grab dinner at Aureole, the restaurant with over 800 bottles of wine, which are stored in a glass tower and retrieved by babes on hoists.

The wine list is a tablet PC with a touch screen, with which you can browse and search the wine offerings. Sounds like a time saver, but it turned into exactly the same type of curiosity / distraction. While trying to settle on one of the 800+ bottles, I spent too much time looking at the bottles of 1925 Chateau Légendaire Maison Pompeux* that cost more than my car, and not enough time enjoying the conversation with my friends.

And after all, what's better - oohing and ahhing over a list of stuff you can't afford to drink, or drinking something good and sharing it with friends?

In my book, there's no contest.

Kind of like there's no contest in the upcoming Superbowl...

Go STEELERS!
(images: picasa/chung, m-kerho.net)

* - Not a real producer. At least, not that I'm aware of, anyway...

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The State of Wine in America (or "A terrible amount of luxury and unease")

Frequent 1WineDude.com readers, as well as anyone who has conversed even momentarily with me on twitter, will know that I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

Fans of the Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots, and Baltimore Ravens may want to skip this post entirely, with all speed and probably extreme prejudice.

Are they gone? Good, let's get started!

Okay, I want to talk to you about the current state of wine in the modern world. I figured that I could work the U.S. presidential inauguration of our 44th President, the Steelers entrance into Super Bowl XLIII, and, of course, Wine. And tie it all together.

C'mon, it'll be fun. I hope...

Anyway, it's natural that, as we in the good ol' U.S. of A. celebrate the (long overdue) 44th consecutive peaceful transition of executive power from one affluent male to another affluent male, that we consider the 'state of things' - not just of the country, but for anything that we hold dear.

Like wine, for example!

Ok, so that transition was a little abrupt...

...and speaking of abrupt transitions and startling segues...

Being a Steelers fan, I'm finding the state of American Football particularly rewarding at the moment. So it's surprising (to me, at least) that I was able to control my blinding exuberance to notice a reference to Alice Munro in a recent, eloquently written Post-Gazette article by Gene Collier. Collier's article describes the unique and conflicting emotions that engulf the Steelers faithful when they host the AFC Championship game at home - a game that, until this past Sunday, they showed an ability to lose like no other team (emphasis added by me):

...modern Championship Sundays in Pittsburgh deliver a seismic coupling of pride and wariness, something realist short story master Alice Munro might call "a terrible amount of luxury and unease."

So, to recap.: that's 44th Presidential innaguration to The Steelers to The AFC Championship to the Post-Gazette to Alice Munro. All caught up? Good. "A terrible amount of luxury and unease" - a beautiful phrase, and one that uniquely captures my feelings about the current state of wine, at least in America.

To be a wine enthusiast in the U.S. is to be someone that lives with the joy of having thousands of wine brands sold in a market that continually drives up quality at all levels, while simultaneously not being able to enjoy those wines depending on what state you live in.

It makes me so terribly uneasy that I'm ending sentences with prepositions!

On one hand, the quality and selection of American wine has never been better. There has never been a time quite like this in the history of America, when it comes to Presidents, and when it comes to wine. In terms of quality and selection, this stage of American wine development trumps all others in history.

On the other hand, the unfairness, dishonesty, and bile of the state wine distribution monopolies has never been greater. To protect the revenue streams afforded to them via their monopoly position on the distribution of alcohol, many states are screwing the wine consumer - high prices, limited selection, curtailing your rights, and handicapping the free market (which screws other distributors, wineries, and you).

So, to bring us all up to speed here: that's 44th Presidential inauguration to The Steelers to The AFC Championship to the Post-Gazette to Alice Munro to the State of the American wine market to unconstitutional wine shipping laws.

Anyway...

How does the future look to me?

If you're talking U.S. executive world relations, or American Football, the future looks pretty damn good. In the words of Steelers coach Mike Tomlin: "Barack is selling hope. And I'm buying."

If you're talking the future for the American wine consumer, the jury is still out.

Cheers!
(images: amazon.com)

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Wine and Health (or "Here We Go Again")

Here we go again.

The topic of wine & health is no stranger to the (virtual) pages of 1WineDude.com. Basically, I like to keep on the topic, mostly because it provides such great fodder for ridicule.

Ok, that's harsh. Let's not call it ridicule. Let's call it poking fun. That sounds better, doesn't it? Ok, now that we have that cleared up...

According to ScienceDaily.com, a recent announcement by a joint team from Oxford and Norway - at least, I think it's joint Oxford / Norway team; it's listed in the article as "The team from Oxford’s Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics and Norway", which I assume is a joint effort as it would be strange to have a Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics and Norway (nothing against Norway, of course; after all, they brought us the... uhm.... err... let me get back to you on that...) - dang... lost my train of thought there...

Oh, yeah, I remember now - The joint team (as in, the collaboration between Oxford and Norway, not a team researching ganja) announced study findings that showed that chocolate, tea, and, of course, wine enhance cognitive performance.

Now, before you go out and get amped up on Starbuck's, blitzed on your favorite vino and buy stock in Ethel's chocolate, you need to know a few things.

First, the study is based on data from about 2,000 participants in their 70s. You might not be in this demographic.

Secondly, while the team suspects that polyphenols (in the form of flavonoids) are the source of the enhanced cognitive ability for the mature audience in the study, the researchers caution that "more research would be needed to prove that it was flavonoids, rather than some other aspect of the foods studied, that made the difference." In other words, the negative health impacts of imbibing too much caffiene, alcohol, and sugar/fat probably far outweigh the benefits of the flavonoids; moderate consumption, as always, is best.

Finally, Ethel's is privately owned - so you won't be buying any stock (sorry).

Cheers!
(images: creativelydifferentblinds.com)

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Looking Back on 2008: Days of Wine and (Sometimes Dead Black) Roses

As we begin 2009, and start the time-honored tradition of incorrectly dating the first few bank checks of the new year, I find that I sense a bit of a rant coming on.

And this coming just after I wrote about relying on gratitude and attention (a.k.a. mindfulness) to help you truly appreciate wine as an expression of art (both the wine itself, and your enjoyment of it, for what is a wine without someone to enjoy it but so much unfulfilled artistic potential?).

Shame on me.

But it will end with love. I promise.

I think there is another component to enjoying wine that needs to be added to those I outlined in the post linked above, and that component is Gumption.

You will need grit, spunk, guts, and determination to get past the detractors, nay-sayers, and general sourpusses that you may encounter along the way on your journey to wine appreciation. Don't kid yourself - they are out there, and they must have some stake in keeping the average Dude and Dudette from appreciating fine wine, because they take any and every opportunity they can to screw it up for you. They do this either by telling you that your opinion doesn't count, is naively misguided, or isn't worth a hill 'o beans because it doesn't conform to some arbitrary standards that they have set forth themsleves.

You really need to ignore these people. They are like an illness that infects your wine appreciation, and if left to fester can kill it outright. The kicker is that the world of wine is so full of wonderful, generous, and pleasurable people that it would be a shame to let a few bad apples spoil the bunch, as they say.

I mention this because I lived through it in 2008. Well over six months later, so-called pundits are still talking about the Rockaway non-incident (more on this - both background and aftermath - can be heard on WineBizRadio.com). The only thing I can offer at this point is this:

For those of us who are wine writers (and I include any serious wine bloggers in that company), we need to remember something - We write about wine. It's not that important, and neither are we.

No, really. I'm serious.

It's just wine, people - it is NOT saving someone from a burning building, curing a wasting disease, or landing a crippled airplane. We so need to get over ourselves...

Why on earth am I drumming this topic up again? It's just to show that whenever you put yourself out there, take a risk, or try something new, you will run the risk of people (usually the ones who haven't done anything themselves) putting you down.

The wine world is no exception. Happily, for every detractor in the wine world, there are at least 10 great people who will help you, share their knowledge with you, and cheer you on.

How do I know this?

I've spent the better part of 2008 trying to expand as much as possible my knowledge of wine, be it through winery visits, reviews and sampling of fine wines, seeking wine certifications, or just hanging out with great writers, contacts who have become real friends, or talking to movers & shakers in the wine world. In a word, it's been amazing.

So many great things have happened for me since I opened up my own personal world to the world of wine that it would be literally impossible for me to recap them in one blog post. My world is exponentially larger and more full of joy for having hit the wine road with almost reckless abandon. You don't need to bring a thing with you on this journey - plenty of people are willing and waiting to help you along your way.

I simply cannot imagine my life without my wife, my daughter, my music, and now my contacts in the world of wine. If that's not a testament to all of the wonderful people out there working in wine today, then I don't know what is.

And for that, I will always be deeply grateful for 2008 - warts and all!

Cheers!
(images: sunsetgun.typepad.com, dailyphotobutcherfortheworld.blogspot.com, polyvore.com)

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A Toast: To Wine, Women and Song!

Ok, before you start writing me off as a hedonistic waste (at least, on the basis of this post title), please check out the post I wrote for Toast To Change, a web network brain-child of Schramsberg Vineyards.

As described by the TTC website:

Toast to Change... celebrates the power each of us has to embrace and inspire change. Join our community of wine lovers and raise your glass to making changes in our lives and championing others who bring about real change in our world.

I don't consider myself to be someone who is bringing about world-altering change, but I was invited to pen a toast so I decided to write about the things that had inspired me most in 2008: Wine, Women, and Song.

To get the (very un-sordid) details, you can read the entire post at the TTC website.

Cheers and Happy New Year!
(images: toasttochange.com)

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"Christmas With The Devil" Or "Why I Still Don't Hate California Wine"

"The elves are dressed in leather
And the angels are in chains
The sugar plums are rancid
And the stockings are in flames!"
- from "Christmas with the Devil" by Spinal Tap

Amidst the elite wine world personalities, there are a handful of famous names that hate the modern style of California wines. Actually, "hate" is a strong word. But hate them they do. They consider these wines almost evil, as if they were the tool (or at least the preferred quaffs) of Satan himself.

As for me, I am not among them (neither an elite famous wine personality, nor a hater of big, bold CA wines).

God knows that I've got no issue with a wine "fruit bomb," provided that big, bold, and powerfully alcoholic is the best expression of that winery's fruit. What I don't like is when wines are busty for the sake of the almighty dollar (as in, forgoing an expression of terroir and / or style to instead chase after the palates of a few wine critics, whose increased scores can mean a price point increase of 30% or more per bottle on the wine market). Homogenization is a perversion of this style of wine marketing. But it's not the fault of this style of winemaking in and of itself.

So, for the 2008 Christmas dinner at Chateau Dude, I decided to raid the sample shipping boxes for the biggest, boldest CA wines to pair with grilled lobster tail, bison steak, and various cuts of Angus beef (all expertly prepared by my brother-in-law).

The lineup?

Franciscan's 2006 Cuvee Sauvage Chardonnay (Carneros, about $40), and a 2005 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Reserve (where else... Napa, about $140).

The story behind The Franciscan (does anyone else think that name sounds like a potential Monty Python skit?): 15 months sur lie in 100% new oak, fermented with wild yeasts using 15-20% of the barrel wines, 14.5% abv; various 90+ point ratings ensued.

The Mondavi? 18 months in 100% new French oak, hand harvested & sorted, a tiny amount (5%) of Cabernet Franc thrown in, 15% abv; 90+ point reviews ensued.

You get the picture. Christmas with The Devil, I thought.

The Franciscan (I just love how that sounds) was the more unabashedly Californian. It doesn't get much bigger than this, it's a wine that struts it's stuff. There is so much vanilla and oak, I actually picked up a hint of cream soda-pop among the citrus, apple, and even banana (banana cream pie, anyone?). What rescues this potent beast from potenital oak hell is the acidity - for CA, the acidity is downright racy. Yes, it pairs amazingly well with grilled lobster. I'm not sure what else it would pair well with, and I enjoyed it, but I'm not gonna go so far as to call it a "triumph of viticulture and winemaking."

As expected, the Mondavi was a killer match with steak. I decanted this puppy for nearly four hours before serving it. At first, coming out of the decanter, it was all black cherry compote - and I mean, spread-it-over-toast first-thing-in-the-morning compote. With time in the glass, things got decidely more complex: figs, plum, red currant, hints of cedar, a little olive. The finish carried quality fruit and spice and was more than respectibly long. I really felt as though it needed abotu six years in the bottle to really integrate, and I didn't find the high abv too overpowering.

These are both very good wines. Whether or not they're worth the price is a discussion I leave up to you (more on my take on paying for the cache factor of CA wines can be found in my recent articles about Opus One).

The problem is not that wines like these are being made. The problem is that too many wines like these that shouldn't be made are being made.

If there's something to hate here, it's not the original CA blockbusters - it's the greedy drive of copycat wineries the world over chasing after a buck, forgoing the individuality of their vineyard sites and the best quality of their fruit. We can and should challenge those wineries to do better; if we end up with the ubiquity of the 'Bic Mac' of wines, then I have truly seen The Devil, and The Devil is us!

Anyway, let's fire up that grill, shall we?

Cheers!
(images: spinaltapfan.com, 1WineDude.com)

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Mutineer on the Christmas Bounty (Viva La Vino Revolution!)

Looks like the staff over at Mutineer Magazine has given 1WineDude.com a Christmas present and included 1WD in their list of Blogs You Should Be Reading (in December/January Issue #3)!

Some of you may recall that I wrote about Mutineer Magazine back in August in my post about Wine Mags that are Worth Reading, in which I called them the most promising up & comer mag: "Is it smarmy? Sure, it's smarmy, in the same way that MAXIM is a bit too pleased with itself - a style appreciated most by 20-somethings who don't know any better, but also appealing to 30-somethings who do know better, but don't care anyway and can therefore appreciate the small touches of irony sprinkled throughout the articles."

I'm happy to report that Mutineer is still going strong and appears to be unabashedly flying the youthful flag of new wine media and trying its best to live up to its namesake. I enjoyed Issue #3 (still a little smarmy, and still using a bit too much of the first-person perspective, but undoubtedly entertaining), and found it's varied content to be held together coherently by the theme of bringing fine drinks back to the masses (laid out in more detail in one of their December blog posts by Co-Editor in Chief Alan Kropf).

They also talk about some guy from NJ, and what blogs like his mean in terms of the impact of "new media" on the wine industry. Whatever (just kidding, GV).

From this issue's Letter from the Editors:

"What [Gary] Vaynerchuk represents is the potential of the growing efforts in new beverage media, yet these efforts remain largely ignored by mainstream beverage print media, which often seem more interested in becoming wine culture than covering it. These new media endeavors are achieving something never before realized in fine beverage, they are arming consumers with the knowledge and confidence to not have to rely on numerical ratings to replace actual understanding, which some of the largest print publications rely on for achieving any kind of relevance... The good news is that the Internet has leveled the playing field to the point where these publications’ lack of vision and connection with the culture they supposedly serve will be their own downfall, and through this failure will arise a new kind of fine beverage communication and culture."

If I have a complaint, it's that they listed my blog as launching in October 2008 (I wish!). Also, I was hoping for a goofier picture of me to be used for the article...

Anyway, thanks to Mutineer for the luv!

Cheers!
(images: MutineerMagazine.com)

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The Art of Tasting Artfully: Taste Wine Like a Pro

I advise you to taste wine like a Pro - a Pro at living, that is.

I was reading a nice little article about the Art of Living, by lifehack.org's Dustin Wax, and it struck me that two of Dustin's guidelines ("Pay Attention" and "Be Appreciative") are applicable to wine appreciation as well as being a useful as a general approach to living.

Too many people that I meet either a) don't give a sh*t about how to taste wine (i.e., they guzzle it) or b) are petrified that they are tasting wine the "wrong" way.

Neither approach will give you much true enjoyment when it comes to tasting wine.

These approaches both misuse the mechanics of wine tasting. You know the ones I'm talking about - Look, Swirl, Sniff, Sip, Spit - they're available all over the 'net.

The mechanics are important, but they will no more help you to taste artfully than knowing how to hold a paintbrush will teach you how to express yourself through painting.

Really tasting wine is a bit of an art that is built upon the fundamentals of those mechanics. And it's really no more difficult to taste artfully than it is to live artfully. The art of tasting really does come down to tasting with Attention and Gratitude.

Attention is simply being mindful of the wine in the glass. Every wine, even total plonk, is trying to tell you something. You need only "listen" to it, giving it as much natural concentration and focus as you can (even if this is only a few good seconds of real concentration). Connect with that glass of wine. Merge with it, give it a moment where it's just the two of you in all the universe.
Gratitude is just that - be grateful for the moment you have with that wine. If it helps, tell it "thank you" (I'm not kidding). If you thank everything in your day to day life (even red lights!), you will be amazed at how your outlook starts to shift.

Attention & Gratitude - two great tastes that taste great together, at least when it comes to tasting wine. Try them out, and put a little art into your next wine & cheese party this holiday.

Cheers!
(images: flickr.com: jimmy-joe, cryptography.org )

Related 1WD articles you might enjoy:

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Wine Cellar Management: Why It's Not Worth It

Well, not worth it to me, anyway.

But before we get into the concept of wine cellar management and its possible relative worth to you, we need to talk about the related but different topics of Wine Storage and Tasting Notes.

These are not the same things as managing your wine cellar.

Wine Storage: K.I.S.S. (Keep is Simple, Suckah!)

Most of us aren't planning on aging classified growth Bordeaux for 15 to 20 years. We've got wine that we plan on drinking in the next week, month, or year or two. This doesn't require a long, drawn-out treatise and list of rules for storing all of those new bottles of vino you'll hopefully be getting as holiday gifts.

Just follow a few simple tenants and you (and your wine) should be golden:

Minimize exposure to light, heat, and vibration (get the wine off the top of the fridge, STAT!), and don't store the wine in direct sunlight.
Try to find the place in your home that has the least year-round temperature variation (you want the temperature to increase/decrease gradually, not spike up or down).
Avoid areas that are too cold (under 50 degrees F) or too hot (over 70 F).
Go for an area that allows you to store the wine on its side to keep the cork moist.

Tasting Notes: You need to take then. Yes, even you.

If you want to up your Wine IQ, you have to take tasting notes. Tasting notes are essential to help you understand what you like (and, just as importantly, what you don't like) in wine.
You can make this as complex or as simple as you like, but I'd advise starting easy - easy as in Pen & Paper version 1.0. A small and portable notebook and a trusty pen are all you really need for this to get started.

As your budding wine collection grows, you will be tempted by all manner of progressively more sophisticated and complex offerings for both your wine storage and your tasting notes. Now we get into the strange and expensive world of Wine Cellar Management...

I don't manage my wine cellar. In fact, it could be argued that my cellar manages me sometimes. OK, most of the time. Anyway, here are the reasons why I don't actively manage my wine cellar:

I'm cheap.

Hey, the economy is in the crapper - who's got massive spare change set aside for an annexed basement room with mahogany wine racks, custom humidity controls, and designer lighting? Not me, baby. Custom wine cellars are massively expensive, and you probably don't need one anyway.

My cellar has cheap IKEA wine racks to hold the bottles that aren't still in their shipping boxes. In fact, one of my racks is leaning precariously ever more to the right, and I've yet to fix it. Wine cellar management solutions are also getting more and more expensive, especially the software versions - this is in part because in order for these to be useful, they need to pull from large databases of wine entries.

The point here is to ask yourself this: Do you spend any real quality time in the area where you store your wine? I don't - so I'd much rather put my money into the wine itself, not into its storage or management.
Many collectors and experts don't manage their cellars, either.

I offer by way of example RUSH front man Geddy Lee, who not only plays kick-ass bass and is still writing rocking tunes well into his 50s, but also has a massive underground cellar (he's partial to Burgundy and cru Beaujolais), housing thousands of wine bottles in his Toronto home. What method does Geddy, as an avid collector, use to track his wine?

His brain.

If you feel compelled to track your wine purchases and tasting notes using some sort of managed system, I recommend going for one of the free solutions available on the web. This approach has the benefit of keeping a history of you wine adventures, and allows you to interact with dozens or even hundreds of other wine lovers who might be trying some of the same wines as you.

If you get your wine from many sources, then it's hard to beat CellarTracker.com- it's free, and has over 65 thousand users who have logged nearly 11 million bottles of wine.
If you source your wine primarily from one of the many great on-line wine clubs (check out the sidebar on the right for links to a few of these), then I'd recommend using their websites to track your tastings and stored wine bottles. Most of the on-line wine club websites have this option, along with social-networking features to let you share your tasting notes and comments with other club members.

I wish you many hassle-free hours of not really managing your cellar, but better managing and increasing your enjoyment of wine. And, of course, many more KISS and RUSH references!

Cheers!
(images: epicurious.blogs.com, kissonline.com, musicintheabstract.org)

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Holiday Hangover Cures: What Works... and What Doesn't!

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Save a Prayer for The Morning After on 12seconds.tv
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It's that time of year again.

The time of year when websites far & wide gather together in solidarity to take part in the time-honored tradition of posting Holiday Hangover cures.

And not a moment too soon.

If you're like me, the stress of the holidays, combined with the outpouring of good emotion when getting together with loved ones and friends during the season, invariably leads to some drinking.

Rather than contribute to the cornucopia of hangover advice that will inundate your throbbing skulls this holiday season, I thought that I'd run through some examples of the sage advice and let you know what works - and what doesn't work - for the Dude's hangovers. This is based solely on my own experience, and is not intended as a warranty of any kind, expressed or implied. Your mileage, as they say, my vary...

Let us take a list from the self-help site Lifehackery.com, from their post 9 Ways to Deal With a Hangover. For the purpose of making my post more humorous, I've combined and condensed the list into 7 methods, and added my own two to start. So we're back to nine hangover-related items, just not the same nine as on Lifehackery.com though all nine from Lifehackery.com are actually included. Got it? No? Crap. Oh well, let's get started anyway.

9 Methods for Dealing with a Hangover - What Works, and What FAILS

Abstinence

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is really and truly only one surefire way to prevent a hangover, and that is to Abstain from drinking alcohol, or at least to drink in moderation. If you're like me, this may start out as a well-intentioned option during the holidays, but the road to Hangover Hell is paved with the puke of the well-intentioned holiday party-goer...

Dude's experience: RECOMMENDED (but unlikely).
Hydration

Most hangover symptoms are caused by dehydration. So, logically, drinking oodles of water to hydrate yourself when drinking alcohol will, in theory, help to prevent your hangover. This is really only effective when combined with a) relatively moderate consumption (of the booze, not the water) and b) maintaining adequate mental capacity to remember to drink oodles of water while you're drinking your oodles of wine. Whoops!

Dude's experience: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Sports Drinks & Fruit

Fast-forward to the dreaded morning after your revelry. The theory behind these suggestions is that they a) help to hydrate you more quickly than water alone, and b) contain Vitamin C, both of which may help to decrease the length and amplitude of your hangover pain curve.

The problem is that they also typically contain a relatively high acidic content - good luck keeping that down when you're nursing a fragile hangover stomach.

Dude's experience: NOT RECOMMENDED
Sleep/Puke

Sure, sleep will help, and it has the added benefit of delaying a possible awkward meetup with the person that hooked up with the previous evening. You're just not likely to get enough of it. Personally, I find it very, very difficult to sleep once the alcohol starts to leave my system (note: additional alcohol intake to promote further sleep is NOT recommended here).

You might feel better when you yak, but when I toss the cookies, it lays me out and I'm useless for the next 30 hours or so. Not everyone feels better when they puke - some people actually feel worse.

Dude's experience: USE CAUTION
Swim / Cold Shower Hmm... uhmmm.... riiiiight. I suppose that hypothermic shock would make you forget about your hangover for awhile. This so-called advice feels more like the prank of sick and twisted miscreant. Bottom line is that if someone recommended this "remedy" to me, and I was insane enough to actually try it, once I recovered I would hunt that person down and kick the living crap out of them.

Dude's experience: NFW. EPIC, EPIC FAIL!
Sweat / Urinate

People, this works. First, you need to ensure that you get water into your lame hungover self pronto after waking up. More water will help you flush out the nasty stuff in your system (like ethanol!) that is fueling your hangover. Additionally, moderate exercise (don't overdo it there, Hercules!) can help get you moving, get your blood flowing, and get your sweat carrying off some of that nasty stuff as well. Just don't forget the water!

Dude's experience: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Hot & Spicy Food

You need to be careful with this one, but I've found that it does, indeed, help to mitigate the effects of a hangover. Hot food - in terms of temperature and spice, will promote sweating, which will help to flush out your system. Go for a hot & spicy soup for bonus points, since that combo will also help to rehydrate you.

Dude's experience: RECOMMENDED (just not first thing the monring!)
Baking Soda

Apparently, mixing Baking Soda with water and drinking it is purported to help ease a hangover. I've got no idea if the science behind this is sound - or even if there is any science behind it. I just know that baking soda seems like something I would NOT want to be tasting when I'm nauseous.

Dude's experience: UNTESTED (but NOT recommended)
Magnesium

Magnesium is a migraine treatment, and therefore consuming foods high in magnesium might help to mitigate your hangover headache (assuming you're not too nauseous to eat, that is). Veggies, nuts, and some teas are good sources. I haven't tried this one myself, but I like veggies, nuts, and tea so I'm going to go ahead and recommend it - at least it's good for your diet if not your hangover!

Dude's experience: RECOMMENDED

Here's wishing you a happy (and hangover free) holiday time!

Cheers!
(images: 1WineDude.com, joemonster.org, sororitysecrets.com)

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Ditch Your Wine Tasting "Training Wheels" (The Trouble With Wine Ratings, Part 3)

"Scores are like your training wheels - hopefully you take them off at some point." - Joel Peterson

I've never been a big fan of wine ratings or wine scoring systems. Mostly because I don't know anyone who speaks in ratings. Even sports fans (who, justifiably, love numbers, rankings, and comparisons) don't really speak in ratings.

"Man, the Steelers offensive line was totally an 87 in last night's game..."

Preposterous.

I also find it odd that wine rating talk generates so much passion when it is discussed. As cases in point, I offer two recent examples:

Wine Enthusiast editor Steve Heimoff's critique of Mutineer magazine's critique of wine ratings (and Mutineer editor Alan Kropf's response).
A thread on the excellent wine social networking website OpenWineConsortium.org, titled "What are the faults with the 100 point [wine rating] system" which, as of this writing, has eleven pages of responses.

I shudder to think of the cross-talk that might ensue on the web in response to the granddaddy of wine rating lists, Wine Spectators' Top 10 Wines of the year (only five of which I've actually sampled...).

Me, I've changed my tune slightly on wine ratings since I wrote two articles about the trouble with wine ratings (Part 1 and Part 2). That's because I've come to realize something very important when it comes to wine ratings...

There is no trouble with wine ratings.

Think about it - there is no harm at all in rating a wine. In fact, wine ratings have played an integral part in wine criticism, which itself has played an integral part in furthering wine into the incredibly exciting state that it's in today. There are over 7,000 wine brands available to U.S. wine consumers - somebody has to help consumers make sense of it all. As former wine writer and Ravenswood founder Joel Peterson told me recently over lunch (much more to come on that, by the way, in an upcoming post): "If we didn't have wine critics, we'd have to invent them!"

The trouble comes in how the ratings are used.

"A rating system makes an assumption that there is an absolute," said Joel. "We know that there are no absolutes. It's a more measure of like than of absolute quality."

To back up his observation, Joel told me a story about a tasting experiment that he performed with a group of experienced wine tasters: he took all of the Zinfandels that he could find that scored 90+ points in the big wine mags, and had them taste the wines blind. The result: all of the wines scored between 85 and 96 points.

Joel then took all of the 90+ scoring wines from that tasting and had them taste those wines again at a later time. The result: the wines scored between 85 and 96 points!

Scoring is relative, and it's naturally tailored to the taster's palate. The trouble is, people put too much faith in scores without reading the fine print.

Joel's take: "Robert Parker was really the change-over point. A wine critic can make make or break a wine in the same way that a music critic can make or break a live music performance. Scores are like your training wheels - hopefully you take them off at some point."

Would you ride down the street proudly on your shiny Schwinn bicycle with banana seat, handlebar horn, and red sparkle paint job with training wheels still attached? All the while bragging to your friends about how you only ride bikes with training wheels on them?

Well, that's pretty much what you're doing if you decide to only buy wines from the Wine Spectator top 100 list, or if you insist that a sommelier only show you wines rating 94 points or above when dining at a restaurant.

Where you goin', training-wheel boy??

Far better, I think, to discover your own palate.

And then ditch those training wheels.

Cheers!
(images: allposters.com, ehow.com)

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Some thoughts on Californian Wine (from Across the Pond - Guest Post)

Following is a guest post from Andrew Barrow, the brains behind the venerable (and excellent) wine & food site Spittoon.biz in the U.K. While we North American wine bloggers were toiling (aka drinking) away and working hard this week at the first NA Wine Bloggers Conference in Sonoma, I asked Andrew to provide a different perspective on the California wine scene than what we typically experience (good or bad) here in NA. Check out Andrew's thoughts bellow - it's a much different, and enlightening, scene than you might be used to here in NA - and check out his excellent writing (and superb photography) at Spittoon.biz. Cheers!

As I write I’m sipping a glass of Californian red – a Robert Mondavi Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 to be precise...

It’s fairly typical of the type of Californian wine readily available in the UK. Following the 1WineDude's request for some foreign thoughts on Californian wine, the Woodbrige is ‘research’. A day or so ago, more research, with a bottle of Zinfandel – the only interesting Californian red available in the UK’s largest high street chain of off-licences.

Both wines display a certain richness, demonstrate varietal characters and are both very drinkable on their own.

"I look at many blogs – most are American – they talk of making hit wines, of boutique vineyards, limited edition bottlings and so on – names that get the writer (and their readers) excited and lustful. The same names mean nothing to me. The wine just do not make it across to the UK."

I don’t know what the sales figures are on these wines but they will certainly be eclipsed by the likes of Gallo White Zinfandel, Chenin Blanc etc. There is no escaping these critic-derided wines. They sell at basic prices by the case load. The vast majority of Gallo drinkers wouldn’t know and wouldn’t care where they come from. How ever much we deride them, they are the bedrock of California wine in the UK – both in terms of style and in sales. Drinkers of these are highly unlikely to trade up to the Mondavi or the Zinfandel.

I look at many blogs – most are American – they talk of making hit wines, of boutique vineyards, limited edition bottlings and so on – names that get the writer (and their readers) excited and lustful. The same names mean nothing to me. The wine just do not make it across to the UK.

We are blessed with a multitude of specialist wine merchants in the UK – many are holding their own against the supermarkets and the high street chains. Only a couple though offer a decent range from California. And don’t even begin to look for Arizona or Long Island, although a smattering of wines from Oregon and Washington have found their way to these little islands. But those specialists are offering the wines at eye-wateringly high prices. You have to ask why would anyone bother – the range of wines readily available from across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa often provide much better value for money [in the U.K.].

"[The CA wines available in the U.K. lack] texture and perhaps a little complexity that similarly priced wines from say the South of France or Italy, so readily available here, provide in spades."

With my evening meal I switched to the Mondavi Woodbridge Chardonnay 2006. This retails at about £7.50 [roughly $12 USD]; the average price of a bottle of wine is half this. The wine is lightly oaked, again highly drinkable but lacks texture and perhaps a little complexity that similarly priced wines from say the South of France or Italy, so readily available here, provide in spades.

And that about sums it up really – you CAN get various Californian wines in the UK but they come at a price that doesn’t often stack up well against similar wines from elsewhere. And those Gallo wines, at the cheap end of the scale, must be enjoyed by someone. You can’t really be saying they are brought solely on price can you?

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