III World Congress on Climate Change and the Wine Industry

Last April Marbella was also the scene of the “3rd Annual International Congress on Climate Change and the Wine Industry.”   Kofi Annan was the keynote speaker.  Loire Valley superstar and biodynamic guru Nicolas Joly was a feature speaker.  We learned about the effect of changing weather patterns on grape ripening and sugar levels; the search for new heat-resistant clones; the northerly migration of certain grapes to escape the heat.  Is tough-skinned Syrah really destined to replace delicate Pinot Noir in Burgundy?  Might the sparkling-wine epicentre really move from Champagne to southern England?  Will Napa Valley and most of Australia just get “too damn hot?”

Analysis of Metabolic fluids (of grapes, of course)

Yes, but what about square fermentation casks? ROC CUVE, one of the event’s sponsors, produces the things. Located in Castilla-La Mancha, the world’s largest wine producing area, this innovative company hopes square fermentation casks prove more practical than the ventures of Don Quijote, La Mancha’s great icon.  In a brief talk company delegate Pedro Jose Lopez Montero gave four reasons why their products were destined to be “the casks of the third millennium.”  They will save companies money and combat global warming.  (At last, something about climate change.) (1) The casks are 100% recyclable. The flat planks can be removed from the metallic frames, re-toasted, and used for fermentation.  Or winemakers can recuperate about 50% of their significant and substantial initial wood investment, by planing down the flat  planks and recycling them into, say, office furniture.  (2) The metal frames can be easily removed from the barrels and re-used, so they don’t end up on the junk heap. Economic self -interest again goes hand in hand with sound environmental policy.  (3) Space, like time, is money.  And these square barrels can snuggle up real close to each other and actually save “between 26 and 120% space in your cellar.”  So “instead of using up the Earth’s energy and resources building a new bodega, you just refit the old one with square casks.” (3) Similarly you save space, money, and energy during transportation.  (4) There is about 20% more contact than with the same amount of wood in traditional round casks. Less wood does more work, so a few more trees are saved.

Well, I was intrigued.  It seemed almost too good to be true.  In a private interview Pedro proclaimed that the days of the round barrel are numbered.  (He certainly hopes so; ROC CUVE holds the world patent on square wine casks.)  Round casks, “the technology of our ancestors” made perfect sense when they were rolled on and off trucks and around on wine cellar floors.  But  “mechanization has made them a historical anachronism.”  Then why, I asked, isn’t everyone jumping on the bandwagon?   “Tradition and a kind of romanticism about the round kegs.”  “Like the cork?” I asked.  “Exactly.”  Well…

The square cask of the 21st century

The concept of the square barrel isn’t exactly new; it had been knocking around the University of Bordeaux for a while.  But ROC CUVE worked through the technical details, got the patent, and is now experimenting in France and Spain.  They claim their square barrels work “with any liquid you put in a cask: ”red wine, white wine, brandies, whiskies…” And they can be made from any oak: French, American, Slovenian…  Are there any problems?  “No actual problems, but a few mysteries.” Wine itself seems a bit traditional.  It almost mystically seeks the form of the old round barrel and builds up pressure on the corners, so metal frames had to be further strengthened. I didn’t understand it either.

But does cask shape effect wine quality?  Absolutely not, according to company studies.  Serious journalists that we are, we organized an impromptu blind tasting.  The company has been making wines the old-fashioned way for years, so we could taste identical varieties, vintages, and processes in their square and round keg manifestations.  We couldn’t tell any difference.

Square-barrel wines will be hitting the market in Spain and South Africa this year.  So after screw caps and bag-in-the-box, prepare yourselves for square fermentation casks in the near future. But back to the big question.  Can we really live without “the romanticism of the round fermentation barrel?”  Well, I don’t think this particular consumer will suffer any Weltschmertz because of it.  Especially if I never know.  And if “the cask of the 20^th century” does its little part to keep the glaciers from melting, I’ll drink to that.

It goes something like this: Act I: Somewhere in France.  We experience The Great Awakening from boring American cooking, discover the joy of eating which enhances our joie de vivre. Steinberger´s revelation comes in the Loire Valley as an adolescent. The agent of his epiphany is the humble baby pea, drowned in butter, of course. Act II: We achieve The Ecstasy through a few truly sublime meals and become Francophiles. Steinberger amusingly relates such an experience. The three-star Au Crocodile restaurant in Strasbourg is the venue. The chef´s signature dish, a stew featuring “a gorgeous pink-gray (duck) liver with black truffles” leaves him “whimpering in such ecstasy” that he grins stupidly as the chef hits on his wife and whisks her off to check out his kitchen. Nothing untoward happens, and the experience confirms his affection for “(his) emotional touchstone.”  (France, not his wife.)  Act III: Fast forward a few decades to Disillusionment Creep. Periodic mediocre meals force us to admit that France just isn´t what she used to be. Steinberger chows

down at the three-star La Cote d´Or.  The chef is a proud member of the Légion d´Honneur but his classic frogs’ legs in garlic purée and parsley juice just aren´t what they used to be.”  They are “lacklustre and washed out.”  Now, Michelin Star Country is not my usual stomping grounds, so allow me to descend from the lofty heights and relate a couple of scenes from my own personal Act III.  About five years ago my friend Cathy Dittemore and I are travelling through Provence, on our way to a cooking school, one Michelin star.  We stop in the small town of Uzés for a little open-air dinner.  Pasta with sauce was the dish.  Now Cathy has a fine palette and a precise way with the words: “Gravy Train” was her verdict.  (See photo at right.) OVERBLOWN METAPHOR ALERT! A few days later I just had to visit the Marquis de Sade´s castle in Lacoste. Disappointing, nothing especial, just another grand castle in ruins.  Down the hill, at the aptly named Café de Sade, we had a truly disgusting meal fit only for the culinarily masochistic. Cathy reminds me to mention the Café

de Sade´s  “dank cellar-like decoration” with “its moth-eaten taxidemied  wildlife.”  True,  these are far from the Michelin anointed, but “you can´t find a bad meal in France.” Right?

Mitterand´s Last Supper

What distinguishes Steinberger from table-wine variety commentators is his structure and complexity. As comfortable with politics and economics as with food and wine, he puts gastronomic ennui in the larger context of France´s political and economic decadence. Francois Mitterand is his link between these two worlds. To his very end this “Champagne Socialist” would have done the most decadent Roman Emperor or debauched Renaissance Pope proud.  In his last dramatic gesture (“the most famous last supper since The Last Supper”) Mitterand gathers some thirty friends and relatives to his palatial digs near Bordeaux.  Seventy-nine and dying of cancer, he has to be helped to the table and can barely sit up.  But the sight of fresh local oysters miraculously revives him; he downs three dozen, dozes off, gets through his capon with foie gras, dozes off, and then comes back to life one last time for his final Earthly morsels: two ortolans, the tiny songbirds considered “the ultimate delicacy” by discerning French  gastromones and so rare that they are on the endangered specie list.  Then off to his just desserts.

Ironically, food-loving Mitterand plays lead villain in Au Revoir To All That.  His government raises the minimum wage, gives workers a fifth week of vacation, and lowers retirement ages, among other seemingly idyllic reforms.  But Steinberger argues that they were instrumental in turning “a weak economy…into a chronic condition” and that they especially shackled the restaurant industry.  Blend in a piquant 19.5% tax on sit-down meals and several giant dashes French red tape and scores of chefs and sommeliers are sent scurrying off to friendlier fiscal surroundings, especially just across the English Channel.  In 2005 Gourmet magazine declares London, of all places, “the best place food city in the world” thanks to a certain extent to these economic-gastronomic refugees.

We also get a tantalizing peek into the inner workings of the Michelin Guide, along with some juicy scandals.  Not so long ago each Michelin star from was “like winning the lottery.”  But now some younger French chefs were doing the unthinkable, giving back their étoiles.  Had The Guide become a tyrannous drag on creativity by favoring luxurious accommodations over good food?  Did Paul Bocuse´s get his third star because he “prettified” his bathrooms?  Did the aforementioned La Cote d´Or owner blow his brains out over Michelin pressures? Was the Guide handing out stars like promotional candy in Tokyo in order to sell more tires?

French wine is experiencing  its wine crisis: La crise viticole. Consecutive French governments have had a “neo- Prohibition mindset.” Their anti-alcohol campaign makes us “Puritanical Americans” seem downright libertine. France´s drunk driving laws, the strictest in Europe, have led to a significant drop in French restaurant wine sales.  A 1991 law forbade alcohol advertising on television and in the movies.  Liquor companies were barred from advertising sports events.  In-store wine tastings were discouraged. Furthermore, the huge inheritance taxes have made it difficult for many French small wine makers to keep their family vineyards.  And the internal market is shrinking;  wine consumption per capita has dropped 50% since 1960s(sic) and the trend continues.

Steinberger, a skillful raconteur, gives us some choice vignettes.  A small French wine maker who is slowly going bust sells his home and moves into a pair of mobile homes in front of his Bordeaux chateau in order to keep his family winery afloat.  Militant Languedoc “wine terrorists” from the shadowy CRAV (Comite Regional d´Action Viticole) highjack a Spanish truck and dump its 35000 liters of wine on the highway and then bomb a few supermarkets which sell imported wines. In 2006 an effort to have French cuisine declared “part of the world´s cultural patrimony” by UNESCO is met with sarcasm. The New York Times declares that French cuisine has officially entered “the gelid commemorative” stage and contrasts her nostalgic museum mentality with the vitality of “eclectic, playful” Spain, the new leader of culinary creativity. In 2006 The French Culinary Institute inaugurates its new International Culinary Center in New York.  It invites ten eminent foreign chefs. Led by contemporary icons Ferran Adria and Juan Mari Arzak, they are all Spanish.

Steinberger is crystal clear on one point; France has only herself is to blame for her woes. They are the fruit of home-grown stupidity and complacence, not the result of insidious forces beyond her control.  The steady drumbeat of anti-globalization is the “Big Excuse.” (For a passionate opposing opinion check out  American filmmaker Johnathan Nossiter´s “Mondovino” which was nominated for the Palme d´Or at Cannes and is a big hit in France. This epic docu-melodrama depicts the French wine industry as the victim of globalization, turbo-charged capitalism, and Robert Parker´s vulgar American palate.)

Au Revoir ends with an apocalyptic vision: a MacDonald´s fast-food restaurant in the food court of the Louvre. Many Frenchmen still profess great shock, but France is after all MacDonald´s second most profitable market and best-seller French Women Don´t Get Fat is now more nostalgic fantasy than fact.  40% of all French are now officially overweight, and looking more and more like the Michelin Man every day.

I liked this book a lot. Its tidbits are poignant, funny, and to the point.   We get food for thought, not junk-food journalism. And this no funeral oration.  There are glimmers of hope; the beloved patient still has life in her.  Gratefully we are spared cheap indignation and teary-eyed remembrances of meals past.  Like a fine mature Margaux, Au Revoir To All That is serious, yet playful; deep, yet approachable. It is an effortless blend of food, wine, and politics. I give it a 9.5.

P.S.  I for one have certainly not given up on France.  I am a card carrying member of the French Wine Society and certified French Wine Scholar.  And I still visit my old love  whenever I can.  In fact, I´m off to Carcassonne tomorrow for eight days of French wines and food.

Aptly named for gastronomic disillusion

St Trifon with nose

What saint do you immediately associate with February 14?  If you are not Bulgarian the answer is most certainly St. Valentine.  If you are Bulgarian another one might come to mind: Saint Trifon the Pruner, the patron saint of vine-growers and wine-producers whose pruning shears are the symbol of wine and fertility in Bulgaria.   Trifon is also called “the drunkard” because of his excessive love of red wine and “the noseless” because of a little encounter he had with the Virgin Mary.  According to popular legend,  Trifon was pruning his humble vineyard one day when The Mother of God happened by.  The future saint (hungover?) mocked and taunted her, saying she didn´t even know who the father of her son was.  The Virgin took offense and ordered Trifon to cut off his nose with his pruning shears, which he promptly did. Two questions come to my mind:  (1) Isn´t this an odd road to sainthood? (2) What would Dr. Freud think about having a man with a cut-off nose as a symbol of fertility? 

Another rendition is this: Born of pious Christian parents in the third century Thrace, Trifon consolidated his reputation as a world-class miracle healer at the ripe young age of 17 by curing Roman Emperor Gordian´s daughter of a particularly hideous disease.  Unfortunately, when Christian-persecuting Decius succeeded Gordian, Trifon was immediately arrested, tortured, and decapitated: a more run-of-the-mill ticket to sainthood. (Let the record show I prefer rendition 1.) In any case ethnographers say St. Trifon and his festival have their misty roots way back in time of old friend Dionysios, the Thracian god of wine and fertility.

Stomping and blending Bulgarian grapes and saints

What seems clear is that these three traditions have been trod, mashed, and blended together like so many different grape varieties in a fine Portuguese Port (or Bulgarian red) and that the result is the immensely popular blend, St. Trifon the Pruner.  His day could legitimately be celebrated either on 14^th along with St. Valentine, or on 1^st of February which corresponds to the  Gregorian calendar. The Bulgarians, practical people, cut the Gordian knot and raise hell on both days.

Many thanks to Janet Hose for bringing this singular saint to my attention and to Mariana Oller, a Bulgarian by birth, for clearing up some obscure theological points.  Unfortunately, these revelations arrived a bit late for 2011, but I have already marked both February 1 and 14 on my 2012 Google calendar.   So, in honor of St. Trifon please join me in drinking as much Bulgarian cabernet sauvignon, melnik, and mavrud as we can keep down on these two days.  Wine  should “flow like a river;” the more we put away on these holy days the more abundant next year´s Bulgarian grape crop will be.  So, do your part and take the pledge!

We  bloggers were mostly tasting  whites  (see last post). About 80% of Austrian wine is white afterall: a lot of best-seller Gruner
Veltliner, some fantastic Rieslings, a few noble rotters. But we learned on a two-day road trip through Burgenland, which hugs the border with Hungary, Austria is producing quite nice reds as well.

Love at first sip backdrop

We were treated, in effect, to a 48-hour total-immersion crash course in Austria’s signature red: Blaufrankisch, In a nutshell: it can be “bold and spicy” to “soft and juicy” according to Karen Mac Neil who compares it to Zinfandel. It can be ”intense and zesty with flavors of blueberries, red cherries, and redcurrents” according to Oz Clark. Most common alias: lemberger in Germany and Washinton state. Etymology: Frankisch from the medieval Franks like Charlemagne which gives it a nice pedigree, and Blau from the blue color it gives your teeth, lips, and mouth after tasting 84 of them in one day.

At 10 a.m. at the Moschendorf wine museum we swirl, sniff, savor, and spit about 27 Blaufrankish from Eisenberg DAC.  Then 26 more from Mittelburgenland, and so on for two days. Okay, I didn’t really taste all of them and my tasting notes got a little sketchy and repetitive.  The great French food mystic Brillat-Savarin said: ”The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.” Well, that would be an exaggeration.  But a new grape can be fun, especially when you tramp through its vineyards on a rainy day, help the winemaker push his truck out of the mud between his vines, and stick your head into its empty barrels at the winery.

I was developing a certain fondness for Blaufrankisch, but tastings are just tastings and we were told over and over again that Blaufrankisch is a food wine, not to be drunk alone but enjoyed with a meal and good company. Its first real test came at the home of winemaker Hans Moser, he of the truck, mud, and drizzle. Three wine bloggers and four members of the Mayer family sat down to “a typical Austrian wedding feast” of beef broth soup with dumplings, boiled beef with potatoes,  vegetables, and horseradish, their entry-level “Blaufrankisch exclusiv,” and a chardonnay. And here  this uncomplicated red could really shine. And the chardonnay worked real well, too. Austrians, and Germans, have no problem pairing white wines and certain red meats. (So after the red-wine-with-fish craze, can white-wine-with-meat dinners be far behind?)

My second Blaufrankisch meal was at a small dinner party back in Barcelona. Hans Moser had thoughtfully put some Blaufrankisch von Leithagebirge in our doggy bags as we left his winery and it was eyed, sniffed, and tasted it with due respect: “Deep purple,” said Janet the photographer.  “A little aggressive at first,” said Francoise; the tannins were a little rough on an empty stomach. But when we started in on the Spanish sausage and jamon serrano it was just what the doctor ordered.

I wanted more of my new toy, so I hit the specialized Barcelona wine shops. First stop: the Vila Vinoteca with its extensive selection of imported wines, a rarity in Spain where drinking anything foreign can smack of treason. I asked for the Austrian-wine section and was directed to the darkest, dimmest, furthest corner of the shop. I got up on my tippy toes and peered into the entire Austrian selection: eight dusty bottles of Riesling and Gruner Veltliner; nothing red, no Blaufrankisch. My  last hope was LaVinia, another large foreign importer. Their Austrian selection was, by comparison,  huge; a dozen or so bottles mixed in with the Germans, and one was actually a Blaufrankisch. An ET 2002 from Ernest Triebauer in Burgenland to be precise; I snapped it up. The next night it was served up with a filet of beef. “Aging nicely”; “A good balance of acid and tannin.” Very good indeed.

According to the  official Austrian press “Blaufrankisch started off the Austrian red wine boom”. The boom still seems mostly in-country with a little wish fulfillment thrown in.  But The Austrian Wine Board has high hopes that Blaufrankisch will someday be for Austrian reds what Gruner has become for her whites: a popular wine the world over, immediately identifiable as Austrian. And there has been some recent international critical acclaim.  Hans Nehrer of the Austrian Wine Academy attributes this to a change in wine-making philosophy. “We used to try to make  big fruit bombs, but now we are letting (Blaufrankisch) be itself.”  Out of respect for its esence they are “resisting the temptation to imitate the ‘generics’”, which they ironically/dismissively calls international Cabernets and Merlots.  Wine writer Erin McCoy told me it was “the latest craze in New York City.”  But my spy back in Massachusetts reports finding only one Blaufrankisch after visiting her usual wine haunts. Stay tuned.

I grew to like Blaufrankisch, but it was not love at first sip. My Austrian arrow-in-the-palette moment was like this. It is 9:30 A.M. and we bloggers, old friends and new, are quietly floating down the blue Danube (brown, actually.) A lazy fog hovers over the river and clings to the terraced vineyards which rise straight up from the silent banks. An exquisite riesling materializes in our hands. It is a Smaragd Riesling from the Wachau. I like that it is a smaragd because this is the highest rank in the prestigious Wachau region. I like that it is a smaragd because a smaragd is an adorable emerald- green lizard native to those parts. I like that the wine is delicious with a nice early-morning acid pick- me-up. The experience is almost mystical. “Riesling Achleiten Smaragd from Weingut Karthauserhof” is scribbled down on my notes. But  wine can mimic life, and names can be meaningless in these irrepeatable  flash affairs of the heart and palette.

But back to Blaufrankisch. Let’s finish it off with a baseball metaphor: Blau Frankisch may not be a world beater. You probably shouldn’t bring him out to pitch game seven of the World Series. But he’s balanced, reliable, and a good change of pace from the usual international reds. And, while not cheap, he doesn’t break the bank. So, why not give this food-friendly Austrian rookie a chance to work his way into your red-wine starting rotation?  If you can find some, that is.

The Smaragd Lizard of the Danube

I just spent a week with the European Wine Bloggers in and around Vienna.

The Mayer am Pfarrplatz Heuriga

But isn’t that in Austria, and isn’t Austria like hop-happy beer-guzzling  Germany only a little further south?  Well, no.  Austrians prefer wine; put away a whole lot of it; and a lot of it is, as I found out, quite excellent.

Vienna has one unique iconic wine institution: the heurigen which are tavern/restaurant/ wine gardens.  It turns out here are about 1700 acres (sic) of active vineyards inside the city limits of Vienna.  No other city can really make this claim. Sure, Paris has a petit vineyard (Clos Montmartre), and a three-day Harvest Festival (see post).  But the festival is strictly for the tourists, and the wine itself  is best kept in the trophy case where it can impress, and out of wine glasses where it will disappoint.

But the heurigen are the real thing, and their curious history goes something like this.  Ever seen the Middle Ages monks and nobles grew grapes and made wine in the countryside around Vienna; the Viennese were notorious for their “prodigious thirst.” In 1784 the farmers from  Gorz complained that local nobles were forcing them to sell only the nobles wines, so the Emperor Joseph II generously decreed that winegrowers had the right to sell their own wines (and food) free from expensive licensing fees on two conditions.  They had to be sold and drunk at the vineyard itself, and the wine had to be drunk within eleven months of harvest. (The word “heurig” means “this year’s” in Austrian German.)  Vineyard owners jumped at the tax-free loop-hole, and a whole circle of wine-garden restaurants serving home-grown food and young wine sprang up around Vienna. When the city expanded these taverns, and their vineyards, found themselves surrounded by urban sprawl. So why haven’t these vintners succumbed  to  all-to-human greed, sold out to land developers, and pocketed a few quick bucks?  Well, they can’t; these residual splashes of the rural life inside the bustling metropolis are protected by the government, and I say thanks for the invention.

Another curiosity of traditional Viennese wine is that six white grape varieties have always been planted side by side with no rhyme or reason, and then harvested and vinified all together.  The grapes include the international (riesling, pinot blanc), the local (gruner veltliner and neuberger), and the charmingly named (spatrot and rotgipher.) The whole mess is called gemischter satz (the field blend) and can be a winemaker’s nightmare; the six varieties mature at different times, and some of them aren’t so great in the first place.  Its reputation for quality has been spotty.  Karen Mac Neil says gemischter satz is “rarely good”.  My guide book (Rick Steeves) goes further: “Many locals claim it takes several years of practice to distinguish between (it) and vinegar.” Ouch! But this is a protected-market fiscal paradise, so why should makers worry much about quality anyway?

Well, I was intrigued, so it was off  to Vienna icon Schubel-Auer.  We orderered up a bottle of their gemischter satz which wasn´t exactly vinegar. But it was a little harsh on the palette, so our second bottle was their house riesling, a discrete upgrade.  But we had no illusions about quality, and the tavern vibe was good, and the wines went well with the basic roast beef, stuffed pork, and other pig parts  I would be hard pressed to identify. (White wine with meat?  No problem; it doesn’t bother Austrians or Germans in the least.) So, it seemed, the heurigen were as advertised.  Relaxed  fun in a down-home atmosphere, with mediocre wines.

But meanwhile, back at the European Wine Bloggers Conference, this stereotype was about to be put to the test.  The Austrian Wine Marketing Board had cooked up  a brilliant promotional scheme. They had chosen eleven “undiscovered stars” from the Austrian wine world.  All were from small producers, none were being exported to the UK.  In a very interactive, hands-on-the-wine-glass tasting, we the blogger turned wine critics would choose one from the eleven which would then be aggressively marketed in the UK.  The competition would work something like this: In the three semi-finals, we judges would swirl, sniff, taste, and reflect.  Then, at the signal, we would wave our hands  and make various noises for our favorite.  In this way three wines would reach the finals where the ultimate winner would then be anointed using the same scientific method.  Well, this sounded like good clean fun to me, and it was. The first wine to reach the finals was my personal favorite, a 2009 Riesling from Lower Austria  made by Herbert Zillinger.  “High acid, very crisp, and refreshing, just a touch of residual sugar”, I scribbled down.   A biodynamic Chardonnay got my vote in Group 2. But the winner was… Wait a minute, not a vinegarized field blend from a Viennese heuriga! Not the gemischer satz from Mayer am Pfarrplatz und Rotes Haus.  But yes. It wasn´t my choice, but it was “very good!!” according to my sparse tasting notes (the emphatic double exclamation points due, no doubt, to  surprise and shock and imperfect spit discipline.)  The third finalist  was a decadently sweet botrytis  Ausbruch from Weingut Moser Hans in Burgenland.  By the time the finals rolled around our collective competitive juices were flowing, and we judges were getting more and more boisterously partisan.  I stayed true to my Riesling to the bitter end, and may have even snuck in a little mini yelp for the dessert wine.  But the winner was, you guessed it, the humble field blend from Mayer am Pfarrplatz. Well, no grousing from this quarter; I’m a good loser and this underdog half-breed mutt had defeated the noble  varieties both in decibel level and hand-gesture vigor.  And it was “very good!!”  So, coming soon to a UK wine shop near you….

Well, by chance, the next night’s gala tasting and dinner was at the very same Weingut Mayer am Pfarrplatz.  I must repeat that I suspect no electoral hanky panky. The voting was as clean and transparent as their 2009 Reisling Alsegg and their 2009 Gruner Veltliner Muckenthal, the two whites I sipped with great relish while “interviewing” the champion winemaker.  I was especially curious about Vienna’s traditional vineyard promiscuity. Over the jolly background racket he explained that  his grandfather had planted the usual six varieties in the traditional way, at random. They have a general idea of the composition of the vineyard today, but nobody has ever bothered to actually count the vines.  What would be the point, after all?  The six grape varieties mature at different rates, so in one year you have more riesling, the next year more gruner veltliner, and so on. But one thing was very clear, excellent wine is being made with the traditional method.

By the way the heuriger Mayer am Pfarrplatz is known in the tourist world

"Roll over Beethovan..."

as Beethovanhaus.  It seems Ludwig van himself stayed there while working on his 9^th Symphony.  Local legend has it that a mystical flash revealed that he could cure his deafness if he returned to where he had composed his 6^th Symphony .  Be that as it may, “roll over Beethoven”; from now on you’ll be playing second fiddle to the 2009 Mayer am Pfarrplatz’s  gemischter satz, the people’s choice at the 2010 European Wine Bloggers’ Convention!

She portrays Parker, both the man and the myth, as typically American.  Raised on meatloaf and soft drinks in Monkton, Maryland he doesn’t drink wine for anything except a cheap drunk until, as a college student he follows his future wife to Paris. There his supernatural nose  “the oenological equivalent of Einstein’s brain” experiences fine wine for the first time and the rest, as they say, is history.  In a telling anecdote his father claims he can tell the breed of a dog by sniffing it.  And his son, it seems, inherits his extraordinary gift; his mythical schnoz is both superhuman and profoundly of the earth. Later Parker studies law and falls under the spell of his hero, consumer-advocate Ralph Nader; he names his wine sheet “The Wine Advocate,” refuses all advertising, and buys all the wines he tastes.  As a wine critic he sees himself as a kind of “Long Ranger,”  a fearless idealist who “waxes indignant over retailers price gouging,” gets exasperated with winemakers for “sloppy practices” or indulging in “intentional wine fraud”, and thumbs his nose at the gentlemen thieves of the established wine authority, a dig at dominant British writers of the time.  When rich and famous he continues living modestly in small-town Maryland, watching college basketball games on TV, close to his roots and far from the corrosive influence of the NY wine writers, whom he slams as “hacks“ and “charlatans“ and “too cozy with the industry.”

The event which catapults him to fame is the now famous 1982 Bordeaux vintage.  Mc Coy minutely chronicles how Parker throws caution to the wind and in his typical manic tasting notes pronounces this vintage “prodigious, heavyweight, incredible” and encourages his readers to “buy as much as you can afford” and you will have “liquid gold in your cellars.”  Parker proves right and so much American money follows his advice that 1982 becomes known as “the American vintage”.  The third great age of Bordeaux” is ushered in.  In one of the many ironies of his career the self-proclaimed champion of the average consumer makes it big by selling the super-expensive Bordeaux, the international aristocrats of fine wine, to wealthy Americans who often buy them as trophy wines or as mere investments.  Plain talking Parker is the ideal salesman.  Many of these “masters of the Universe” are nouveau wine drinkers with that endemic American fear of being snookered by debonair Frenchmen or the smooth-talking British. But they trust their fellow American, the straight-talking incorruptible country boy with the super-human nose.

Ms. McCoy details the intense passions Parker has aroused.  To his numerous detractors he is a shameless self-promoter who insures his nose for a million dollars, a boastful and dogmatic ego-maniac, and a border-line paranoid who responses to criticism him with vindictiveness.  Those who dare disagree with him are mere malicious midgets “motivated by jealousy,”  quite possibly corrupt.   To the anti-Parkerites he is the major cause-and the ultimate personification-of the most toxic recent trends in wine.   His 100-point system, they say, reduces the mystery and poetry of wine to a mathematical formula.  They deny that anyone can “objectively” evaluate wine, but Parker sees himself as just the man for the job.  They bemoan the evil effects of his 100 points on the whole industry. If a chateau gets a 100 they simply multiply their prices by four which is exactly what Chateau Mouton did in 1982 with its wine futures after Parker bestows his blessing of perfection.

All admit that Parker knows what he likes and that he can flawlessly sniff it out.  He goes for “blockbusters”–big-fruit, big-alcohol, soft tannins. But his critics claim his preference for this style is dogmatic and that he haughtily rejects other wines as just plain inferior.  And this, they say, has lead to “Parkerized” wines. In their pursuit of lucrative Parker points, winemakers around the world are crafting wines for the great critic, making wines they themselves neither like nor drink.  And this in turn has led to a globalized wine style to the detriment of local grapes, eccentric styles, and subtlety. His defenders are not so intense; they usually admit that his power is excessive and unhealthy and that he has been responsible for some unfortunate globalization.  But they insist that he is rigidly honest, hardworking, and supremely talented and has contributed substantially to the broad overall rise in wine quality over the last couple of decades.  Is it his fault that he is so influential?  Their message: don´t get hysterical, get a grip,  get over it.

The second part of the book deals with the  new “reign of American taste.”  Some Parker criticism seems part of  a  British-American wine-culture clash, perhaps inevitable as America replaces Britain as the world’s most important market.   For some Parker embodies the unsophisticated tastes of the common man and the self-absorption of the me generation. According to the unflattering stereotype we Americans seek  the massive, the powerful, the mindlessly hedonistic.  We love “plush, easy, and somewhat obvious flavours…you don’t have to work hard to get.”  The wealthy new American wine drinkers were seeking luxury products and trophy wines and Parker’s “super rich, opulent, dramatic wines” were just the ticket.  And we certainly prefer his simplistic 100-point number system to the more scholarly and subtle approach of British critics who are often Masters of Wine who usually write with care.  We cannot deal with  subtlety in wine writing anymore than we can deal with subtlety in wine itself and so prefer Parker’s overblown hyperbolic tasting notes.  We also are suckers for gurus and Parker is our natural leader.  

Mc Coy is not  in this camp but she does explicitly explore Parker’s dark side in her “warts-and-all portrait.”  A supremely self-confident man with a “dogmatic certainty that he is always right”, Parker goes to Italy a total of three times in 20 years and famously says he “understands Barolo wine better than the people who have actually been making it for several generations.”  He publicly scolds fellow American icon Robert Mondavi for ignoring his advice by trying to achieve “euro-elegance against what is natural in California”, his big “blockbusters.”  He carries on a running feud with most of Burgundy proclaiming their wines over-rated and heretically dismissing terroir, which is gospel in Burgundy, as “a hazy, intellectually appealing notion”– more marketing hype that reality.  Then he gets himself sued by the highly the respected Domaine Faiveley when he allegedly “dishonours” the Burgundy icon by implying that he is giving critics different wine than what he is putting in the bottles.  In his turn hyper-sensitive Parker threatens to sue California Red Zeppelin over a wine label which reads “The Emperor has no nose” and has a picture of Emperor Bob III.  The winemakers laugh it off and declare this wine “The Emperor’s Reserve”.   He gets into a cat fight with Jancis Robinson over garagiste wines in Bordeaux.  These public scandals and personal feuds, serious business or high farce depending upon your point of view, are  some of the most entertaining parts of the book.

McCoy paints Parker as very much a man of his time and place; the go-go big-money America of the ‘80s and ‘90’s, the era of “sensation, luxury, and sex”.  So, did “The Great Man” mould the taste of the times?  Or, was he a creature of it, his following due to his perfect embodiment of the emerging American taste bud? In either case, the pendulum seems to be swinging back, both against Parker himself and his style of wine.  Maybe Parker and his exuberant blockbusters just don’t fit restrained economic times. If we must live within our means, so must our wines.

First published in 2005, The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. is hardly hot-off-the-press.  But it does seem to be aging well.  True, Parker has mellowed a bit and is not the overwhelming force he once was.  But this is still a must read for anyone curious about the colossus or for those who just wants to take a peek at the passionate cultural and personality clashes of the not-so-distant past.  Some have seen this book as a Parkerized rollover by a star-struck writer.  I don’t agree.   Mc Coy has done meticulous research and presents both sides fairly.  She doesn’t really explain the Parker phenomenon to my satisfaction, but then probably nobody could;  It seems as freakishly mysterious as Parker’s famous nose itself.  We have a dramatic plot line with flamboyant personalities and bitter personal feuds, but McCoy’s writing is measured.  She shies away from alcoholic vitriol and her occasional fruity sentimentality is balanced by her muted acids. We are not dealing with a “galumphing blockbuster”. If it were a wine Parker would probably pan it.  But I like these muted tones-in wine and books-and I’ll give The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. and the Reign of American Taste 92 points.

Legend and exclusivity go way back to 1864.  The founders of Vega Sicilia built a grand chateau in the Bordeaux style and surrounded it with unknown French varieties like cabernet sauvignon and malbec (called “exotic plants” on the import boxes). When in the early 1900s the original owners went belly-up the rich Basque bankers who held the mortgage took over the property.  They proceeded to make a very limited amount of very expensive wine. Actually way beyond expensive.  Mere money couldn´t buy Vega Sicilia; it was given to the select aristocratic friends of the family, like the present Spanish king’s grandfather who was a frequent guest.  In 1982 the property was bought by the Alvarez family who have even since guarded the mystique of the winery as jealously as they have fanatically preserved the fabled quality of the wine.

And there I was with a busload of the chosen few on our way to the legendary Vega Sicilia for tasting and tour.  It was late last April and we were attending the Fine Wine Congress 2010 (Aranda del Duero, Ribera del Duero.)  We had heard that these tastings were few and far between; Vega Sicilia is not open to the public and their Olympian aloofness adds to their mystique.  Our initial reception was a bit chilly.  The winery gates were well guarded and we were kept waiting in the bus. (Had they changed their minds?)  Finally we were escorted to the impeccable Japanese-style gardens in front of the chateau where we were to taste.  Back on the bus my friend Andre and I were fantasizing about a once-in-a-lifetime vertical tasting of numerous vintages of their superstar flagship Único going way back to some mythical vintage or other.   That proved too much to ask, but head wine maker Xavier Ausás did lead through four quite tasty red wines.

1. Alion 2007, a “modern style quality wine of 100%-tempranillo-grape with little oak made for early drinking.”  (All quotes are from Ausás). This is made at a nearby estate Vega Sicilia bought a few years back so they could make just such a wine without depleting the exclusive grapes used in the great Único.

2. Valbuena 2006, which features “purity of fruit aromas.” “Definitely not a second label … but rather a high quality wine which doesn’t need as much aging as Único,” Ausus insisted despite the difference in price.

3. The fabulous Único from the 2002 vintage “still very much a work in progress” as “Únicos should really not be drunk before ten years.”  Then, the 1995 Único, the pièce de résistance.

I have no tasting notes. I was too busy taking in the general vibe and, in any case, mine is not one of those privileged palates that that can predict what a wine I sniff and sip today will be like years down the pike when it reaches its peak.  But they all seemed real good to me.  I would love to get my hands on a couple of full bottles of Unico for dinner with friends sometime.  Not too likely; curiosity led to internet research. Unicos were coming in at around $450, if you could find them; the Valbuena for around $150, if you were lucky.  Oh well, maybe a humble Alion some time.

Then we toured of the facilities.  The over-all feel was one of hospital-like cleanliness (their Valbuena had a problem of TCA cork infection in 1994), close control over every phase of the wine-making process (their third generation cooper makes all their American-oak barrels on the premises), and deep pockets.

Our guide explained their strategy for high quality.  First, keep yields incredibly low by practicing green harvest on the “the world´s greatest grape”, super-Spanish tempranillo which has a phenomenal ability to age in oak.  Then conjure up the magical masculine/feminine balance, their wine´s essence.  The explanation was a bit mystical; throughout fermentation and aging, the wine goes back and forth from cement casks to new American oak barrels to used American oak barrels, and thus is alternated between “muscle-izing” (masculine) and “education” (feminine).  To finish the tour Ausás showed us the staff’s private stash of super-exclusive Burgundies. He casually held up a bottle of Domaine Romanee-Conte. Vega Sicilia is the exclusive Spanish importer of super-expensive DRC and it slipped out that of the 15 or so bottles of it that are imported into Spain anually, only about five of them ever get off the premises.  The other ten are simply drunk up by the staff.  A nice little coup de théâtre to finish off my brief peek into how the other half lives and drinks.

Billionaire´s Vinegar features a fascinating cast of characters starting with Jefferson himself, the man who would go on to spend 25% of his presidential budget on wine while trying to get Americans to drink healthly wine instead of demon rum. We get to know Hardy Rodenstock, the debonair German wine expert with a mysterious past and an uncanny penchant for happening onto very old, very expensive, wines. Is he the extraordinarily “charming, generous, and knowledgeable true wine lover” that Robert Parker describes? Or a devious con artist?  Michael Broadbent is the universally respected member of Christie´s board of directors with “the most experienced palate in the world” who puts his professional credibility on the line when he  vouches for the authenticity of the Jefferson wines. Prime skeptic, Cinder Goodwin, is a full-time scholar at Jefferson´s Monticello and the only woman of note in this macho world of the trophy wines and wine one-upmanship. There is even a cameo for Dodi Al-Fayed, Princess Di´s  playboy boyfriend, who spends $56,628 on a bottle of white wine, the record at the time.

It is yet another fascinating peek at the filthy rich of the 1980´s and their fabulous excesses, this time in the exclusive world of wine snobs, wine trophy hunters, and wine fraud. This episode seems an ironic retelling of the more serious frauds of that gilded decade: the second part of Marx´s axiom that: “History repeats itself. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” I suspect most will consider wine fraud a victimless crime: Who really cares if the $2500-sip (sic) of a Jefferson Madeira is a fake. In fact most of us enjoy a delicious shiver of Schadenfreuden (“the pleasure we feel in seeing others feel pain”) when the “awe-inspiringly vulgar”  make asses of themselves. And we often pull for the scam artist who bilks the rich no matter how much of a weasel he may be.

In Billionaire´s Vinegar our own petty embarrassments and misfortunes are raised to levels unimaginable to us mortals. We´ve all spilled wine. But did our guests lap it off the floor like dogs and then dump on the wine as “cooked” or “like mud”? Some of us have even broken bottles at dinners. But were we suspected of insurance scam because we had had the bottle insured for $212.000?

I highly recommend Billionaire´s Vinegar. It is medium-full bodied with good crisp acidity and a lengthy finish. 92 points.

I was at the Wine Pleasures´ Wine Tourism Congress near Barcelona. This is serious cava country and we visited local winemakers and tasted Irish whiskeys and Catalan bubblies; Italian, Hungarian, and Rumanian reds; local eno-innovations  from Terra Alta, Rueda, and Alt Penedes.

So what am I writing about? You guessed it. Persimmon Solera, a fruit wine made in the Spanish sherry style in the southern Illinois town of Birds. No, this is not some joke, but rather a sweet dessert wine from Brian and Joy Neighbor´s White Owl Winery. And it is not just some weird curiosity; Persimmon Solera has won the award for excellence at the Illinois Governor’s Cup, a silver medal at the AWS Wine Challenge at Vienna, and a bronze medal at the Japan Wine Challenge where it was one of only ten American prize winners.

Brian is an ex-engineer turned full-time fruit winemaker. His wife Joy, an ex-radio personality who studied acting at the Second City in Chicago, does the promotion. They make a fascinating wine couple. The three of us spent some time together at the congress, an hour or so over a microphone, and a fun evening at some of Barcelona´s best watering holes.

Brian explained how he makes his persimmon sherry.  Like many of Brian´s ventures this was “an experiment of opportunity.” They were a start-up company and fruit is expensive. But persimmons grow wild all over the place in southern Illinois; “You just have to pick them up”.  After the first frost, the wild persimmons are foraged, like wild mushrooms. This “fruit of the gods” is then turned into persimmon sherry using the solera system used to make sherry in Spain. Using this system different vintages are blended together. They have been making this wine for seven years, so there are seven different vintages mixing it up in their casks and bottles. And each new year will add its own layer of complexity. Along the way the fermented wine is fortified with persimmon brandy which is distilled from a portion of the original wine. Then, to increase the sweetness, Brian adds a touch of what Joy calls “persimmon honey”, which is the “blubber” which drips out from right under the skin. It is then aged in new French barrels to give just of touch of oak. Some years the wine shows more caramel, other years more butterscotch.

I was fascinated by their water problems. Persimmons themselves are short on the stuff, so more has to be added. In the initial just-playing-around-with- persimmon-wine stage, Brian and his father each made a batch of exactly the same wine in exactly the same way, but using the water they happened to have on hand. The results were radically different. This unexpected development sent Brian on the quest for the best of all possible waters. He mixed his persimmon must with ten different waters including bottled French water, Mountain Spring, and well water from around Illinois and Indiana. Again the wines were dramatically different. The perfect water, it turned out, came from right next door, a neighbor´s well. The solution: buy the well, and the whole property around it, and turn it into a full-time winery.

Persimmon Sherry forms part of the upper-end line of White Owl Winery which is called Purgatory Cellars. This charming name comes from a 1779 Revolutionary War episode. Hero George Rogers Clark dragged himself and his long-suffering disease-ridden troops through this very swamp for a crucial sneak attack on the British at the Battle of Vincennes.  The drainage ditch into Purgatory Swamp is right in front of the winery. But don’t worry, it is clean and can even be fished. Joy´s slogan: “One hell of a wine, with a heavenly taste.”

In addition to Persimmon Solera they make a whole range of fruit wines. Their best seller is Cherry Pie which is both sweet and tart; “You can almost taste the crust”. And how about Pink Grapefruit Spumante, another “experiment of opportunity” which came about when a cartload of grapefruits was unexpectedly dropped at their doorstep. They are also experimenting with the famous Paw Paw (“way down yonder in the Paw Paw patch”) which was named the world´s sixth most luscious taste by the International Horticulture Conference. (Unfortunately they couldn´t remember what luscious flavor numero uno is.)

Total transparency requires that I reveal that I have never actually tasted Persimmon Solera or any of the others, and I can only vaguely imagine what they might taste like. But some bottles are on the way. But I feel that anyone making “organic wild-fruit-harvested” wine in southern Illinois merits all our curiosity, encouragement, and respect.

“White Revolution” Rioja style

I was covering the Wine Future congress in Logroño, Spain with catavino.net. It was being billed as “the greatest wine congress ever.”  Wine´s  heavy hitters  and glitterati were present: Robert Parker, Jancis Robinson, Gary Vaynerchuck, and Barack Obama.  President Obama? Well, yes. His  “yes, we can”  face was everywhere: on T-shirts, posters, everywhere.  But with a new-twist second slogan: “The White Revolution.”   Our first black president linked to a white revolution?  Was this some kind of weird, surreal image rip-off?  Had I wandered  nto the Rioja chapter of the KKK by mistake?  Was last night´s red Rioja messing with my head?

None of the above.  Not only were these two slogans a brilliant bit of catch-your-attention marketing, they actually made coherent sense. I interviewed Ricardo Amarbarri of Castillo de Maetierra a family-ownedwinery of Valles de Sadacia, a virtually unknown vino de la tierra (vin de pays)  in the Rioja region.  Ricardo said that between 1985 and 2005 white grapes in Rioja were in free fall, going from 23% to 7% of total production. The majority opinion was that the Rioja just wasn´t suited for white wines.  The Amarbarri family disagreed: the problem, they maintained, was that “… the usual white varieties grown in the Rioja D.O.C. (like Viura) just aren´t fruity and aromatic enough for the taste of today´s consumers”. So in 2002 they planted some Muscat a petits grains, a variety which had been extensively grown in the Rioja before the phylloxera plague wiped it out in the late 19th century.  This muscat which is the base of super aromatics like Moscato d´Asti came through with flying colors: “fresh and fruity.”  So they introduced seven more white varieties into La Rioja region: two Spanish ones (Verdejo and Albariño) and five international favorites (Chardonnay, Viognier, Gewurtz, Riesling, Sauvignon blanc). I asked if “any of these experiments had been “difficult”?  Ricardo said that Albariño and Viognier were still in “the experimental stage,” but all were proving “a great success”. They had passed all the requisite quality tests for five years and had won prestigious prizes including “best Spanish white wine” at the Wine and Crayfish contest in Holland and a gold medal at Mundus Vini.   So the Amabarri family has “introduced the greatest revolution in white wines in the entire history of the Rioja”: The white revolution.

And “Yes, we can?”  Ricardo maintains Castillo de Maetierra should be cruising toward a status upgrade from their humble vino de la tierra appellation to a prestigious Denominacion de Origin. But instead they find themselves in a ”David and Goliath struggle” with the Rioja Consejo Regulador (The D.O.C. official governing body). “(The Consejo) has always maintained that Rioja could not compete in the white-wine market” and now they are afraid of “looking stupid”, explained Ricardo.  So they throw up bureaucratic hurdles.  First, they refused to officially authorize the muscat grape in the Rioja.  Then, they tried to keep Valles de Sadacia from expanding throughout the province.   Now, “the beast” is waging all-out war to keep Valles de Sadacia from getting their own D.O. and becoming a rival in the Rioja region.  Can they defeat” the complacent giant”?  Valles de Sadacia says, “Yes, we can.”

So, how are the wines?  We found them pretty much as advertised: “Good wines for bars, aromatic and fruity, wines you can drink alone.” In any case  nothing like some traditional oaky Rioja whites. We especially liked the Riesling.  The Albariño was quite good, the Viognier  fresh and chuggable.  Their market is now “about 80% in bars and restaurants…mostly in the immediate area.”  But they have plans to expand to a place near you.

Well, now I am back in Barcelona and I see that an enterprising young Chinese entrepreneur has come out with a whole line of Oba-mao T-shirts featuring Chairman Mao´s body and clothes with Obama´s face.  So, tonight I will lose some sleep mulling over the following: (1)Will Obama  some day be as ubiquitous an international marketing icon as Che? (2) Will a triumphant Valles de Sadacia put white Rioja back on the international wine map? (3) How long will it take the Fox News troglodyes  to pounce on Oba-Mao in China and the white revolution in Rioja as even more proof positive that Mr. Obama is not only a commie, but also an alcoholic?

For a complete line of Oba-Mao products check out Google Images “Oba-Mao”