Palate Press: The online wine magazine, The Best of the Press, Volume I

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Palate Press: The online wine magazine, launched on September 9, 2010, with the goal of publishing the very best available wine content anywhere. In our first year we ran stories from professional writers, winemakers, scientists, wine bloggers, chefs, and wine lovers. Our writers came from six of the seven continents and more than twenty different countries. We ran more than 800 different stories and wine reviews.

Here, in The Best of the Press, Volume I, we have collected our best stories about the wine, the vineyards, the grapes, the locations, but most of all, the people, behind the wine. Here you will find A Trip to the Rhone, described by Howard Goldberg, of the New York Times, as an ambling armchair reads that gracefully take them through lovely landscapes and enviable meals. You will also read perhaps the most level-headed and even-handed story ever written about natural wine making, Natural Wine: On a Practical Note, by Rémy Charest.

Whether you are reading about the science of wine in Tom Mansell's critically acclaimed Not Tonight: I Have a Wine Headache, or learning what it is like behind the wine counter in Louis Calli's delightful look at wine and gangster movies, Becoming a Made Man in the Wine Mafia, we are sure you will enjoy The Best of the Press, Volume I.

Pour yourself a glass of something wonderful, find a comfortable chair, and enjoy yourself as much as we did bringing you these wonderful stories and more in our first year at Palate Press: The online wine magazine.

David Honig

Publisher

Palate Press, LLC

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Part I - Wine Stories

A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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On Corkscrews, Blondes and Vending Machines…

Robert Rees

With the Christmas season winding down, perhaps you find yourself among those planning New Year`s Eve resolutions of having a dry-month. I fully expect mine to last ’til lunchtime on 1 January…

Most wine fanatics are anticipating the launch of the latest round of French En Primeur Offerings, (no doubt to be proclaimed as yet ANOTHER vintage of the short century by the ever aspirant marketeers.)

Just around the corner as well is the launch of Penfolds Grange 2005, which for most Australian wine drinking zealots is anticipated with the same degree of excitement as the birth of their first-born. Rumor has it that it is all going to be under screwtop this time, which fills me with shock and trepidation. Call me old school, but I am still a lover of the nonsense which goes with wrestling a cork out of a bottle at two in the morning.

I reckon we have all had at least one of those university student moments when we simply have to have another bottle, but have somehow lost the corkscrew in the back seat of the borrowed car - only to use all manner of approaches to getting the cork removed. Aaargh the good old, bad old days where cork was sieved through purple-stained teeth with relish...

Having recently finished a round of tastings for clients in other parts of Asia, I was really missing those good old, bad old days. At one particular event, I was opening and talking about a range of high end wines for a corporate client and their customers. One bloke came up to me and stopped my jaunty banter short with a sharp question – Yes this is all very interesting but which is the most expensive. Clearly after his pound of flesh, after getting his answer he proceeded without further comment to swan-dive into a series of decanters of a high-ticket Bordeaux from the ’90s. For me it encapsulated a lot of what is problematic in the wine business right now.

There are a lot of people chasing the mystique of wine value for status and commercial gain, without pausing to consider the simple joy of a wine well made and to be consumed. Believe me, I am not one to hug the vines and get all herbal about the wine business, but the often-told urban legend about Cola being mixed with Lafite is totally believable – given my recent experience in an uber chi-chi Hong Kong hotel.

After being ushered into a dimly lit wine bar (a kind of million-dollar shrine to designer Philip Stark) by a very serious looking blond with bodywork about as real as stelvin is to cork - and presented with a plastic key card. She then sternly pointed in the direction of a bunch of vending machines where I had my first strictly apportioned and oxidized taste of Lafite Rothschild 2002 . I have not felt as processed and depersonalized since buying a rail pass at Tokyo train station in rush hour.

Emboldened after tasting a strangely depressed Opus One 2005 and Tignanello 2004 the same way, I asked her if this system was popular. She beamed for the first time and announced that the wines can keep as long as 3 weeks in these machines, and that business is booming. I reached for the whiskey list with a sigh...

Moral of the story – trust your own palette, always have a corkscrew or two about and NEVER take a key card from a blonde with bodywork unless you are really sure of what you are getting yourself into...

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Are Blends the New Black, or Just More Blah-Blah-Blah?

Dan Berger

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past come the thundering hoof beats of the great horse, Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!

Uh, make that the thundering hoof beats of generic red wine. And the ranger is alone no more. He’s been joined by a cast of thousands—of wineries trying to get rid of wine grapes to a public that is simply swamped with boring varietals.

Those old enough to remember the 1970s and early 1980s may recall the fun we had with California Burgundy: Sebastiani’s with its core of Zinfandel, Foppiano’s with lots of Petite Sirah, Simi’s with a slug of Carignane, and dozens more.

These were the original two-buck chuck wines because, well, they were all about $1.99 a bottle and they went well with ground chuck. And they assiduously avoided the use of varietal names, since that was reserved for fine wine.

Today, however, we are faced with a terrible dilemma: too much generic varietal wine.

What’s that you say? There is no such thing as a generic varietal? Well, let me direct you to your nearest wine shop, supermarket, gas station convenience store or pharmacy where you will find shelves groaning with hundreds of California varietal wines all vying for your attention with aroma and taste profiles that are essentially exactly the same. Prices are about $12 a bottle or less. With emphasis on the less, especially lately.

There are many complicated reasons for the utter uniformity (and blandness) in the aroma and taste of so many California wines, mainly reds. Without addressing that, we now can all agree on one thing: There is too much sameness in too many varietal wines.

With red wines, at price points all the way from the lowest to highest, Cabernet Sauvignon now smells and tastes about the same as Merlot, and neither smells or tastes like the grape from which they supposedly came. The higher you go on the price scale, the more over-ripe and oaky the wine becomes, and the less varietal character you get. And the less said about Mega-Purple the better.

Syrah? It’s all pretty much the same sort of thing. Except for a tiny handful of cool-climate Syrahs, most everything is a boring, simplistic and indistinct red.

With whites, it’s almost as bad: Chardonnay that’s flaccid and lacks much food compatibility; Sauvignon Blanc so bland you’re hard pressed to identify it; Pinot Grigio that would lose a taste-off with San Pellegrino.

Is it any wonder than Americans are spending more of their money on imports today (31%) compared to 15 years ago (20%)? Is it any wonder that U.S. wine sales are flat and that a record number of U.S. wineries are for sale?

So where do wineries go when they have an excess of so-so Cabernet and Merlot and Syrah and a whole bunch of other stuff?

They make blends.

The word blend once was déclassé. It was seen as a mishmash, a cuvée fit for a café, not for a white tablecloth and crystal. We first started seeing upscale blends emerge from California with the Meritage wines of about 20 years ago, the Cabernet-Merlot wines that sold for as much as Reserve wines.

In the last few years, since about 2005, we have seen many red wine blends from California wineries that may make some sense to the winemakers, but to me they act a bit like the old red table wine and Burgundy blends of the past.

The main difference is that some of these wines are priced to compete with those winery’s higher-end Cabernet bottlings—and I’m left shaking my head and palate alike.

Now, I’m all for blends with a philosophical idea behind them, such as the Coro Mendocino wines, which must be at least 40% but no more than 70% Zinfandel, and which allows the winemaker to create from that partially painted canvas a wine that leans in the direction of the Rhône, Barolo, Chianti or even California.

I’m all for Rhône blends such as Ventana’s superb Grenache-based Rubystone, using Syrah to great advantage. And then we have Cabernet-Syrah blends and Syrah-Cabernet blends, some of which can be very nice, but many of which are simply brutes, lacking the character of either grape.

But what do you make out of Lava Cap’s American River Red Celebrated Cuvée, the 2005 of which has in it Zinfandel, Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet Franc and Barbera? The fact is, it is a nice wine and sells for $15.

Then there is Three Alarm Cellars’ non-vintage blend of Petite Verdot, Syrah, Petite Sirah and Merlot; it costs about $8. Save room in the pantheon of blends for Rutherford Ranch Rhiannon, which has 64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 29% Merlot, 5% Syrah and 2% Petite Sirah; this one costs $28.

Meritage wines are in vogue in many places, but a wine like Zerba Wild Z from Washington has 47% Merlot, 35% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Syrah and 3% Petit Verdot. And Vina Robles’ Signature is 66% Petit Verdot, 22% Cabernet Sauvignon and 12% Syrah. Not Meritage exactly.

To make a blend because it tastes better than a varietal is a noble tradition, and wines from the south of France often are based on blends with a regional tradition behind them. That tradition, however, was to make more interesting wines—not necessarily more expensive or sophisticated ones. But I am afraid that blending for blending’s sake is spinning out of control in California. A blend of Cabernet, Zinfandel, Gamay and Viognier is kind of a hodgepodge that oughtn’t cost $25. Too often such a wine does.

Maybe if producers were not aiming so high they’d be able to deliver some blends that shake off the sameness that is burdening their varietal palette. More like the old Beaulieu Burgundy, which was made up of 15 or more varieties. And which wasn’t made to compete with Cabernet Sauvignon.

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When Is Wine Ready?

Adam Japko

To age or not to age? With wine, the question is hardly simple—the complications are practically countless, and the risk/reward quotient naturally intensifies over time.

Personal taste, of course, is a key to determining if one should even be holding wines for the long haul at all. Peter Adesman—a savvy Medford, Oregon, collector with 4,000 bottles resting quietly in a cellar first established in the late 1970s—refers jokingly to the risk of cellaring wines over long periods: Somebody once said that there are no good old wines, just old bottles. Continuing on a more serious note, he adds, When you decide to lay down a wine in your cellar, you are making the decision to sacrifice fruit for secondary nuances that approximate site and soil.

So for fans of unctuous young wines, shorter-term cellaring is the ticket, aimed at softening tannins and acids for better access to ripe fruit flavors. Most wines across the varietal spectrum with decent balance and structure, with only a few exceptions, should withstand two or three years of this softening process without much risk of the fruit fading or drying out.

But if you are like me, vivid fruit is not the goal of cellaring. I prefer pursuit of brown-tinged reds and orange-hued whites that have little resemblance to the wine's early life characteristics. Whenever I see people guzzle current-vintage, hundred-dollar Cabernets or commit juvenile genocide on newly released Bordeaux and Rhones, I realize that my mission of silky, round and unapologetically funky wine is not shared by a wide swath of collectors.

Maybe if I lived in the UK I would have more company. A few years ago I joined Clive Coates for a tasting and dinner in Boston and his words about the European/American cultural divide on approaches to maturing wine never left me. His thesis was less about cellaring potential for specific wines and more about patience levels and disposition to funkiness uncharacteristic of young wines. Coates drew a diagram similar to this reflecting his experience with collectors on both sides of the Atlantic.

The schematic reveals the natural curve of a wine's life moving from bottling date to a point of maturation where the wine will no longer technically benefit from further age. The period following maturation through the end of a wine's life shows off the wine's DNA to the willing and patient. Some view wines entering this stage as in decline; others will celebrate the flavors that emerge. Coates believes there is an Old World tendency toward admiring wines through these late stages, contrasted by less patience or preference for secondary characteristics in the New World.

Exploring this cultural divide introduces further variables: varietal and regional durability. There should be little argument that the cabernet and merlot grown in Bordeaux and the nebbiolo that makes up Piedmont's Barolos and Barbarescos are proven champions and best bets in the game of long term cellaring. Beyond those, debate remains and it's fools' poker to generalize broadly about any new or old world wine region. Wines of higher pedigree offer consistent track records, exemplified by DRC in Burgundy, Guigal in Cote Rotie, Grange in Australia and Vega Sicilia in Spain but none are representative of the broader regions' ability to consistently produce juice that can improve through extended bottle age without risk of ending up dead.

To confound matters more, Zinfandel is a good example of a wine that most enthusiasts do not acquire with long term aging in mind, yet it can perform admirably for fans of its secondary flavors. Fruit-laden Zinfandels provide immense immediate enjoyment and it seems irresponsible to gamble with the bright, lush, berry character. Levent Bozkurt and family, founders and proprietors of the Stonehedge Inn in Tyngsboro, MA, a Wine Spectator Grand Award of Excellence winner, shared with me their preference for old Zinfandels from the 1970s and '80s personal cellar that are holding on just fine. Now there are Ridge, Rosenblum, and Ravenswood Zins from the early '90s squirreled away in my cellar and I have been rewarded with flavors that are partly reminiscent of old Barolo or Bordeaux. I sacrificed the ripe fruit for funky fun.

Champagne is another unlikely suspect that can be surprisingly rewarding with cellaring. Sir Jay Tidmarsh, of Bristol, England who received his knighthood in the 2008 New Year’s Honours is a British collector who validates (perhaps epitomizes) Coates's Old World theory. While Tidmarsh is an avid collector of Bordeaux, and in particular Latour (I tasted a bottle of 1907 Latour, that was topped and recorked by the winery, at a tasting in his home and it was still alive and showing stuffing), he asserts that Champagne:

....can be drunk at some age . The oldest I have had is 1853, it had lost all its effervescence but was still exciting to taste - for me it was a cross between old white burgundy and mellow sherry! People seem reluctant to buy old Champagne for fear it will have gone flat. More fool them!

As far as non-vintage is concerned, I buy and keep for at least two years. You will be surprised how much the non-vintage has improved over the period. Of course if you cannot resist the temptation to try it after say a year , you will find that even the 12 months waiting have been rewarded. The important thing to remember is that you will not achieve satisfactory results with cheap champagne!

It is fair to theorize that the Old/New world distinction may be more of a generational than continental issue. The hyper growth in consumers entering the wine market over the last ten years resulted in new and younger generations latching on to fine wine at a time when prices for ageworthy classics were further out of reach than ever before. Enthusiasts in the 50+ age range were more apt to be exposed to classic old wines as novice collectors and become motivated to replicate those effects with their own collections. Younger wine enthusiasts appear more comfortable with wines showing youthful vibrancy. It's interesting to consider this phenomenon; is it evolutionary taste preferences, different generational patience thresholds, or just dissimilar palate training and experiences?

One thing is certain; laying wines down or buying older wines is a game of experimentation and risk. Adesman reported recently drinking a 2001 Inama Soave and by all rights this wine from the Veneto should have been dead based on regional reputation alone. But the wine was alive and magical. 1985 Lynch-Bages was a wine from a high yield vintage so alluringly smooth and decadent after bottling,I had to struggle to protect some for the cellar. It is still alive and evolving in spite of the critics who advised early consumption in this year of forward and soft wines. While I am still drinking it in 2009 and plan to hold some for ten years hence, after tasting the wine in 1992 Robert Parker shows the risk even professional reviewers face in predicting bottle age potential when he wrote:

This was the finest showing yet for this seductive, immensely appealing vintage of Lynch Bages. I have had fully mature bottles of the 1985 that suggested it should be drunk over the near term. This particular offering, shipped directly from the Chateau for a vertical tasting, was also ready to drink, but built well enough to last for 15 or more years.

Indefinite cellaring will often produce greatness, but things don't always turn out that way. A bottle of 1991 Williams Selyem Allen Vineyard Pinot was dead and cooked after 15 years in my own cellar. The wine did not taste corked and there was no leakage; it just thinned out to the point where the missing fruit made the wine unenjoyable. Some 1984 Monticello Corley Reserve Cabernet drank poorly last month but the 1984 Montelena, another Napa Cabernet out of the same spot in my cellar, was promising another 10 years of life. I purchased both on release.

A few of us bought Togni Cabernet from the early '90s, and a recent taster I spoke with reported that the wine was worthless, retaining none of the virtues that made it compelling in its early days. On the happier side of surprise, I pulled a bottle of 1989 Coudoulet de Beaucastel last year to bring to a dinner featuring high-powered Rhones, thinking it was actually the real Beaucastel. Had I known the bottle was there I would have uncorked it years ago and not have put it to the 20-year test. And yet it showed wonderfully and held its own in the secondary nuance department. Who knew?

The issue of cellar conditions also can't be avoided, and for long-term cellaring dark spaces in the mid fifties (Fahrenheit) with prescribed humidity is smart. Still, wine can hold up in less than perfect conditions so long as there are minimal temperature swings. Brooklynguy, a knowledgeable collector and blogger with a penchant for aging wines, and an admittedly young cellar without enough ready-to-go advanced juice, recently wrote about an experience after stashing wines in his parents' hall closet:

For a few years I was in the habit of giving my parents a case of wine for Hanukkah...it sat in their hall closet indefinitely....Sitting there amidst some Trader Joe's plonk were several bottles of sparkling wine that I gave them at least two years ago, perhaps three years ago in one case....The closet is not exactly cellar temperature and we're not talking about vin de garde, here. I'm talking about the 2005 Bisol Prosecco Crede, (current vintage is 2007) the 2006 Bisson Prosecco Colli Trevigiani (current vintage is 2008), and a NV Zucchi Lambrusco Rosato. How could these wines be any good, at this point?

They were great. Not good, great! I opened the Bisson first and it was full of fresh purple grapey fruit, not too sweet but not entirely dry either. I opened the Lambrusco. I remember not loving this wine a few years ago, but this bottle was fantastic. I opened the Bisol. It was tragically and most vehemently corked. But think about it - two out of three of these old Italian sparklers, wines that were not properly cared for, nor were they meant to be cellared in the first place, were fantastic. And the Bisol might have been too, who knows?

The moral of the closet experience and advice to the many like me who dream of adding something to the mastery of vineyard and winemaker through judicious cellaring is to set your targets, bet heavily on old reliables, and experiment like mad with undiscovered candidates for long term improvement.

Note: As a reaction to my latest cellar disappointment, the 1991 Williams Selyem Allen Vineyard Pinot, I have vowed to systematically open and taste wines of ten years of age or more that are sitting in my cellar. And I plan to share and archive my impressions each month in a new section of my own blog. I hope it might contribute to the more successful management of all of our inventories.

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Points, Counter-Points

Rémy Charest and W. Blake Gray

A few weeks ago, we asked Palate Press readers to tell us how they felt about rating systems. Did they prefer the 100-point system, stars, or badges? Or would they rather have no ratings at all? The result?

I like reviews without ratings 49%

I want good wines given badges of approval 20%

I want wines rated on a 5-star scale 16%

I want wines rated on a 100-point scale 13%

I want a system other than those listed above 3%

No rating system received a majority, though ‘no rating at all’ got a large plurality. There was a near-perfect 50-50 split between ratings and no ratings, so we asked two members of our Editorial Board, Rémy Charest and W. Blake Gray, to take their ongoing argument/discussion on-line.

Rémy: In the world of wine, point scores are stupid.

If you’re going to buy a wine because it scored 90, you might as well buy it because it’s on special for $9.99. Is that really a reason to buy or drink a wine?

A score says nothing. It may say 95 – implying awesomeness – but