Dr Vino’s wine blog

Grapes, freshly pressed, often need a good bit of time to be enjoyed as wine. For olives, I was reminded the other day, freshly pressed is A-OK.

I tasted the “novello” 2008 oil from Tenuta di Caezzano in Tuscany, where 26,000 olive trees grow on 145 acres. As is visible in the photo, the new oil just popped with lively green compared to the one year old extra virgin on the left. The olives are hand harvested and pressed that evening to ensure freshness and a low acidity. Indeed, the novello has great intensity of flavor is a great treat. I briefly thought about becoming a modern day sharecropper when I learned that the harvest workers receive about half the oil made from olives they harvest. Hmm, how long to earn my weight in olive oil?

The property also has 100 acres of vines. At a tasting at the offices of the wine’s US importer, LVMH, I chatted with Beatrice Contini Bonacossi about their wine that particularly caught my fancy, the unctuous sweet 2002 vin santo (find this wine). The delicious, caramel colored wine is rich and thick, with notes of hazelnuts and sultanas, but surprisingly light given the 15.5% alcohol.

The grapes, mostly Trebbiano but wth some San Colombano and Canaiolo, are harvested in September and then dried on straw mats in their own, large climate controlled room until about March, when the concentrated juice is finally pressed pressed out of them. They ferment in chestnut and cherry casks and continue to age in barrel for five years.

She recommends having it by itself. But if you do pair it with food, she recommends biscotti, fruit tart, or a hard cheese like pecorino adding that panna cotta is a total flop. I’ll take her word since it seems like a lovely finish to a wintry meal to me all on its own.

Buyers wanted
The IHT reports that fine wine buyers “are pushing back.” Separately, wine auction house Acker Merrall gives potential buyers come hither eyes and cuts their buyer’s premium to 18 percent; Zachys responds by going to 17 percent.

Adieu, Copia
Copia, the wine, food and art museum and restaurant in Napa City, closed on November 21 and has filed for Chapter 11. The original $55 million in funding came at least half from Robert Mondavi. The NYT promises more coverage tomorrow. [Diner's Journal]

Biodynamics is poop
In what promises to be a salty interview, French actor-vintner-restaurateur Gerard Depardieu–who once joked that his mother’s amniotic fluid was actually wine–disdains biodynamics claiming the vineyard treatment “doesn’t exist.” Then he claims that he uses biodynamics at his Chateau de Tigne property in Anjou only because he is “poor.” [Decanter]

Michigan: no delivery?
A federal court struck down Michigan’s law that prohibits out-of-state retailers from shipping to Michigan residents while allowing local wine stores to deliver. While the case is on appeal, a new bill in the legislature tries to create a level playing field–by preventing local wine stores from delivering! See the op-ed against the bill in Crain’s Detroit Business.

With little new wine bling rolling out for this holiday season, I had a brief encounter with the bling of Christmas past. No, it wasn’t the $10k white gold Dom Pérignon jerobaum we brought you (photographically, at least) last year.

Instead, a few days ago I stumbled on an actual bottle of the Hennessy Beauté du Siècle cognac (find this cognac). Introduced last year in its display case designed by ten artists using mirrors and molded aluminum (!), the cognac is supposedly hand delivered in a limousine by one of the directors of LVMH when a bottle is, in fact, purchased. I twisted the Baccarat crystal bottle around in its holder (I didn’t lift it because I thought it might trip a sensor and since I’m not Indiana Jones, I didn’t have a 750g bag of sand to put in its place). There’s no label, save for the government warning! Ah, the surgeon general’s reach escapes no one.

Perhaps there is an aluminum lining for those interested in purchasing: introduced at €150,000 last year, the price has gone down based on exchange rates alone!

Dear Dr. Vino,

My parents live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and are huge wine connoisseurs. I would like to give them a copy of “Wine Politics” for the holiday season, and it would be quite special if I could procure a signed copy; do you sell signed copies of your books for fans and admirers?

Thanks! All the best,

- Leigh

Absolutely! Getting into the holiday spirit, I’d be happy to sign copies of my books for site readers. I’ll do what I did for Leigh: just ask you to PayPal me $25 (tyler at drvino dot com), which covers the Amazon price, New York sales tax, and then USPS priority shipping back to you (domestic orders only). Please note that I can fit two books in a flat rate mailer so you can supersize your order and get two signed copies for the bargain $45–woohoo! Unfortunately, my elves can’t do gift wrapping for you so you may want to have it sent to your own address. Make haste since this offer expires on December 20!

Also of note, there’s also a Kindle edition of A Year of Wine! I can’t sign that one though.

Thanks for your support of this blog with your purchases of my books, either signed or unsigned! Cheers.

After so many suggestions in magazines, food and dining sections about which wines should be on your table, and probably a fair amount of going back and forth, which wines did you pour for Thanksgiving? What worked and what didn’t?

Some local friends and their extended family welcomed us to their celebration this year so it was an “away” Thanksgiving for us. We brought some wine, which included a Taittinger brut nonvintage champagne (find this wine), a magnum of Marcel Lapierre Morgon 2007 (find this wine), and a bottle of the (in)famous Palin syrah (find this wine). The Champagne was very good and well received. The Lapierre was lighter than I recall the ‘06 being but still excellent and even my friend who really prefers “big reds” admitted that it was a really fine wine (someone else said it was the most beautiful wine bottle he’d ever seen!). The Palin syrah was horribly corked, not much different than the erstwhile veep candidate. Fortunately some more Champagne emerged from the other guests.

In case you’re curious what other people around the world tried, click here to see the 5,500 bottles consumed on 11/27/08 and entered (so far) into cellartracker. Domestic wines prevailed with Kistler, Kosta Browne, Peter Michael, Ridge, Seghesio, and Turley coming the first six places.

Now that you’ve worked out of your calorie overload torpor from yesterday, it’s on to the mall! Oh wait, we’ll leave that part for you. We’re concerned about your lunch here and with it being a quasi-holiday and all, wine with lunch sounds like a great idea. So just which wine would you pair with a leftover turkey sandwich? Or is it…impossible?!?

Barbera is one of the most food friendly red grapes since it can have wonderful red and black fruit aromas, invigorating acidity and lightness in tannin. Sandwiched between the “lesser” Dolcetto and the late-ripening Nebbiolo in the hierarchy of Piedmont red grapes, Barbera sometimes gets overlooked. But after tasting two impressive examples recently, I’m going to keep an eye out for it.

Old school choice
G. Conterno, Barbera d’Alba, Cascina Francia, 2005 ($30; find this wine)
A traditional producer, Giacamo Conterno makes some of my favorite Barolos and this Barbera from the Cascina Francia vineyard is also a gem–at a fraction of the price of the Barolos. Light in color, with aromas of dark fruits and some savory notes, the terrific wine has great poise through good acidity, some youthful vigor, and a well integrated, lingering finish. I really liked it now (a great choice for fall) and bought some extra bottles for continuing to watch it evolve over the next decade. Pairs well with fatty foods–how could you go wrong with a mushroom risotto?

Less old school choice
Sandrone, Barbera d’Alba, 2006 ($35; find this wine)
Luciano Sandrone is a self-described modernist and a traditionalist. This is another style of Barbera, one with more oomph, but attractive nonetheless in its more sultry rendition, particularly for drinking in the nearer term. Barbara Sandrone told me that they had good acidity but ripeness in 2006; the twenty day fermentation occurred in stainless steel then the wine proceeded to a malolactic fermentation in 500 liter oak barrels. The aromas really soar from the glass in this showy wine with richness and integration on the palate.

Friend of the blog and über travel blogger Mark Ashley sent in this photo from his flight from Munich last week: yes, he ordered the infamous Rich prosecco in a can! (We captioned their poster girl Paris Hilton last year.) Oddly enough, I’d just been noticing an increase in wine appearing in airline ads from Qantas to Air France to Lufthansa. Your theories as to why are welcome in the comments; perhaps it is because wine is a relatively cheap feelgood for marketing, certainly cheaper than giving you a seat that could, say, comfortably fit a human being.

In a jab at other airlines, Mark writes, “In Lufthansa’s defense, despite the wine being… middling… at least the wine is free.”

The most recent session of my six-week introductory wine class at NYU wrapped up last week. We like to end the class in style: a giant edition of show and tell and taste. For some odd reason, Mrs. Vino always refers to this as the party, but no! It is an assignment!

Each participant brings in a wine to present to the class, which means we get to taste about 25 wines that evening. Good times! And ever since I banned people from getting wines at the closest store to our venue, a store that seems to specialize in unearthing wines that have been stored next to the boiler for several winters, the quality of the wines has risen tremendously and people really have a lot of run exploring the wine shops of the city. Some people brought in bottles from trips to wineries in New York and California, and others were looking to try something out on us before pouring it at Thanksgiving. Here are a few of the highlights from last week: Read more…