Rebel Rose

Before you are deluged with responses like "drink water instead," why do you ask? Does your spouse insist on drinking it? Can't have your own vino? A host serves it and you feel obliged to at least accept a half-glass?

Police used teargas last week on rampaging Burgundian winemakers demonstrating against government-imposed cuts on wine yields. What do you think?

Are labels getting more informative? Or are there more wines with pure bullshit on the front and back label? Do you think American producers are "dumbing down" their labels? When you look at a label, what do you want to know? (And don't cop out by saying oh, if you know this [regional] producer, you know all about their wines, yada yada. Imagine you're opening a new experience from a producer new to you . . .) From James Laube's column Labels Should Tell Us More in the October 15 Wine Spectator: Are ordinary Americans ready for all that data? Do we care? Wine Industry Suffers 'Curse of Orson Welles'

Summer is over. Tomatoes are still going strong, and the yellow pear tomatoes I planted around the compost bin are very happy. Due to our late, wet spring I didn't plant as large a garden as I would have liked, so instead of summer bedding flowers in the half barrels in front of the winery, I planted leftover garden seeds. Now I have a nice autumnal look in the half barrels, with tomatoes, tomatillos, squash and gourds, baby corn, nasturtium, marigolds, celosia, and few stray petunias all "squashed" together and spilling over the barrels. Kids particularly like the baby pumpkins and Baby Boo (miniature white) punkins. Pumpkins and sunflowers are maturing earlier than usual here. What's up with that?

There's a thin line between a casual touch and a subtle grope. I do not approve of strangers and unfamiliar waitstaff putting their arms around me while I am dining, or placing a hand on my back or forearm. In a fine dining restaurant, anything above a handshake or a light touch on the shoulder or back by the owner would be improper. Once I become a regular at a local spot, and the waitstaff still love me after putting up with my boisterous SO and friends, then it's more than fine with me. And I have learned to make really, really wide exceptions for chefs and Frenchmen.

Ah, the Beaujolais season approaches . . . I just thought I'd add a quick link to our own intrepid Jon Bonne's article, which won an American Food Journalist award this year. (Jon won second and third place in the internet food coverage category. As Kathleen Purvis pointed out in Food Media & News, he is beside himself!)

Good one, Kathleen. Congratulations to everyone, and way to go Jon!

From Madrid: Saboteurs hit at heart of cava region in Spain

Organic Wine as Clear as Mud

Biodynamic Berries -- Ancient Ways are the Next Step in Organic Winemaking Little "bug highways" . . . does anyone else get the sense that this article is condescending and dumbing down these concepts?

Alto Adige producer converts to glass stoppers

The most northernmost vineyard on earth 500 miles from the Arctic Circle South African winery launches Braille bottles to help wine lovers without vision choose their own tipple 7-11 Convenience stores join the "Walmart Wine" trend

I'm not at all familiar with Novozyme, but I would like to caution against assuming that any use of enzymes in winemaking is bad. For instance, we use a product called Lallezyme, which is a natural product extracted from egg whites. It is used to prevent premature activity from unwanted and uninvited malolactic bacteria. It is gentler than SO2, which tends to pretty much kill everything and bleach the wine, to boot. It's action is specific to ML bacteria, and the more tannic a wine is, the greater the preventative activity. It drops out quickly, allowing us to finish primary fermentation cleanly and control the amount and timing of ML fermentation. We don't use it on every wine; we just keep a resealable bag in the fridge in case the cellar gets crowded (which, duh, happens every harvest) and we don't want certain wines, notably whites, to take off on ML until we're ready. Reading a yeast catalog can be like a reading a menu. Some yeasts bring out floral aromas in reds, some, like Assmanhausen, extract spicy overtones, some soften the skins more, creating darker pigments. A winemaker can also sprinkle his raw must with a yeast nutrient made from yeast hulls--very high in B vitamins, it gives yeast a delicious and healthy start in their (short) life. But these are not "additions;" they are a natural and carefully chosen part of the winemaking process, like a chef carefully choosing herbs and spices to accentuate food. There are wineries that use artificial enhancements--powdered oak, liquid tannins, and that kind of thing. As Sarah pointed out, it's just not cricket. I've even seen 20# bags of C&H sugar in some wineries--totally illegal. I guess you just have to learn to trust a wine producer, the same way one would come to trust a chef.

Lowered acidity is my personal bugaboo. Related discussion: Phat Wines - Enuph is Enuph

Wow. I thought we had pretty much covered the terroir subject here, but . . . I'm glad they oversimplified. The full text is available on the "rant" page at Full Glass Research. And yes, it is at least partially tongue-in-cheek.

Eew. I don't like a lot of oak, but we'll see. Maybe I'll just take the budget allocation the first time and see if I like it first. I haven't yet gotten to try a Leonetti, so I am at least excited to have the opportunity. I'm particularly curious about the sangiovese. Edited to add: Although . . . I do like Stefan Asseo's L'Aventure wines, which are all new oak. His wines are big, big, big, in all respects though. Not my choice for food wine, but lovely, powerful statements that make great "conversation" wines. ************************************** Which in turn reminds me . . . several of the local winemakers enjoyed a poker night this last weekend, which of course involved a sort of traveling barrel sampling party. The guys were tasting through Stefan's reds and he commented in his (still very strong) French accent, "I think this wine has a lot of whet papear." Dan thought, wet paper? He sniffed and sniffed, but didn't get it, so he asked the others. Stefan had moved on to another barrel, but Dan said, "You know, Stefan, I don't get any wet paper in this wine at all." The others concurred. "Yes, yes!" Stefan cried. "It's there. It's so obvious. Can you not smell and taste the wet paper?" They said no . . . no wet paper at all. Stefan muttered to himself. "Yes, yes, definitely paper, but you know, it is, how you say, blanc, ze whet paper." Ah, white paper! However, Dan still wasn't very enlightened. What's so special about white paper? The kind with blue lines that we used to chew into spitwads? He looked at Rich Hartenberger who also shrugged, thoroughly confused. By this time Stefan was getting frustrated, "Yes, yes, it is spicy but delicate, you know? Like ze whet papercorns." Hilarity ensued as half a dozen relieved winemakers realized he meant white pepper. I hope Stefan won't mind me sharing this story. At the very least, you will perhaps be relieved to learn that by professional consensus there is NO "wet paper" in L'Aventure wines.

I just heard today that I have graduated from the waiting list to the mailing list. I've been on the wait list for about 2 1/2 years. Amazing! The full customer allocation is a case of cabernet, case of merlot, 3 bottles of reserve cabernet, and 3 sangiovese. I'm excited. Do you think it will be worth the wait?

Thanks, Michael. Now I will not be afraid to try it, should I ever be, uh, lucky enough to be presented with one. Yeah, yeah. I forgot the classic eG Joke #2.

Okay, not to be morbid, Michael, but you've got to tell us more than "I've eaten it." How does one eat a chicken head? Is it crispy? Do you pierce the skull and slurp out the brains? Do you suck on it? What does it taste like? I dunno . . . is it an experience you would happily repeat?

Is the chicken head edible? Why do they serve it with the dish? (Cool photo, by the way.) How is the melon soup prepared?

On August 24th, three of us met at Vinoteca Wine Bar in Paso Robles to taste a flight of wines made by Churck Ortman, the founding winemaker of Meridian. Here's a pointer to the California thread. If anyone here would like to organize an MOE (member-organized event) wine tasting, please contact me. We're working up a template to help make organizing events efficient and easy.

There's an interesting article on Sokol Blosser's weblog, written by winemaker Russ Rosner: Why We Still Use Natural Cork at Sokol Blosser Winery (about halfway down the blog page).

I had to work on Saturday and my SO actually bestirred himself to go to the local market. He's become addicted to caramelized sweet onions and grilled summer squash. He did, however, refuse to carry my red J.Jill market bag. When he returned I asked if he had stopped at Maria's stall. "I hate that woman," he said. "She's too bossy." "Oh," I said, looking at the array of fresh greens in his bags. "What are all these different eggplants?" "I dunno," he said. "They're Japanese and Fuji, or something like that." "What are you going to do with them?" "I don't know. Grill, maybe?" "Well, if you don't know, why did you buy them?" "She MADE me!" They were delicious grilled with orange olive oil from Pasolivo, and lemony Trinidad spice from Penzeys.

Veraison in the syrah is developing quickly now. Harvest is only a few weeks away. Most of the berries are deep lavender to purple already. I didn't take a refractometer with me, but the ripe berries taste as though they are approaching 18 deg. Brix. The syrah is trellised up and exposed to the sun more than the zinfandel--we also have a very heavy crop for four-year-old vines, even though we thinned shoots to every 4", and clusters of grapes to 2 per spur. Alto Pomar Vineyard, one of our sustainably farmed source vineyards, reports an aggravating mold problem this year, and a 50% reduction in crop load due to the fact that infected clusters were cut off and removed from the vineyard to prevent spreading the mold. Judy Starr at Starr Ranch in the Adelaida Hills reports that her cabernet franc is outracing the cabernet, which is uncharacteristic. After abundant and energetic spring growth due to heavy and prolonged rains, the vines experienced our usual summer heat spikes and some locations raced toward veraison and ripening. But now things seem to be slowing down again. Judy describes it as "a feeling in the air. The days are getting shorter and the air cooler. The sun angle is lower now and I think things are going to stabilize for awhile." Here you can see some shots of the head trained zinfandel. Some clusters are still tightly green, but fat. Some are only halfway through veraison, and some are more advanced. We are probably looking at two pickings this year. Some bushes, like this one, still have green fruit, but the vines are starting to slow down and show signs of stress. Although our walnut trees are already turning golden and pumpkins are nearly ripe, our neighboring vineyards here are reporting that harvest dates should happen as regularly scheduled, although not in the order they usually appear.

I always look for bacon or roast beef in a syrah, and am disappointed if I do not find it. But raw blood and iron aromas are generally a turn off for me . . . if that coppery/iron thing is very evident it's a tipoff that the wine may have been oxidized before bottling and was tarted up with copper. Copper sulfate (see this SF Gate article on wine additives) is used to remove H2S (rotten egg) from wines, but is also used to "brighten" oxidized wines with higher volatile acidity and any kind of funky aroma. Many wineries will simply stir the wine with copper rods or pour the wine over copper rods or grates, but some wineries simply use a few drops of liquid copper sulfate.