FWIW, I'd like to see the gage R and R on this. I doubt the measurement accuracy is
much better than +/- 0.5% by volume, the accuracy reported for refractive based estimates.
Distillation is on the order of +/- 0.1%.
Oh, BTW, they're talking a.b.v. here or alcohol by (per unit) volume.
A.b.v. is the standard, unless your talking about 3.2 beer in
MN, then it's a.b.weight. 10.0% a.b.w. is about 12.5% a.b.v.
>From the SFJC:
As wines gain weight, Chronicle to print alcohol levels
Jon BonnéSunday, April 24, 2011
Rajat Parr praised Lee's high-alcohol Pinot Noir.
Adam Lee switched alcohol labels during a Pinot tasting.
Time for a small industry secret: Most of the nation's top winemakers spend their days making dessert wine.
In the eyes of the federal government, that is. As far as the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau is concerned, any wine with more than 14 percent alcohol must be classified type 88: dessert/port/sherry/(cooking) wine.
Marcassin Pinot? Dessert wine. The Cabernets of To Kalon? You got it.
Silly, perhaps, but wine's alcohol level is plenty serious. Why else would it be the one piece of technical data required by law to be on every bottle?
The easy answer - that taxes are higher on wines with more alcohol - ignores the fact that a lot of wine lovers pay keen attention to the big number in the tiny type.
And not just out of curiosity. It's a matter of debate whether high-alcohol wines go with food or show ample nuance. But what's beyond question is that the same-size glass of wine with even a bit more alcohol gets you drunk faster. That's giving pause to more wine drinkers for reasons that have nothing to do with taste.
So, starting next week, The Chronicle will print the listed alcohol levels of each wine we recommend in the Food & Wine section.
A handful of mostly niche publications have taken similar steps. And Britain's Decanter magazine will publish alcohol levels beginning in May. But few newspapers or magazines have routinely published this information.
High-alcohol debate
Including us. Occasionally we've noted alcohol levels where germane. But we resisted printing them regularly because the act of bringing alcohol into the discussion of a wine is inherently political.
Our decision comes at a time when it is harder than ever to understand the implications of alcohol in wine. Regulations reflect a world of decades past, when "table wine" was meant to hover around 12 percent alcohol and anything that dared surpass 14 percent was assumed to be fortified. Early examples that defied the trend, like the 1968 Mayacamas Late Harvest Zinfandel, left regulators stumped.
Yet, the origin of the 14 percent rule is a mystery, even to many in the wine industry. Wine attorney and historian Richard Mendelson suspects it may predate Prohibition.
Or it may stem from a hodgepodge of past practices. After all, the quaint remnant of the "table wine" designation - once meant for wines between 11 and 14 percent alcohol - lives on. Most European wines were shipped with labels that indicated them simply as "table wine," enough that Josh Jensen of Calera chose to emulate language from his favorite Burgundies in his inaugural 1975 vintage. Even then, the term was losing its meaning.
"Initially we didn't want to put the number on," Jensen recalls, "and then after about 10 years of doing that, people would say, 'Oh, this is just a table wine,' and I'd say, 'This is our best wine!' And so we started putting alcohol numbers on."
If 14 percent seems arbitrary as a dividing line, its financial implications are not. Currently the TTB assesses a tax of $1.07 per gallon, or 21 cents per bottle, for wines 14 percent alcohol or less; wines above 14 percent are taxed at $1.57 per gallon, or 31 cents per bottle.
For a large winery producing 100,000 cases of wine, nudging above 14 percent costs an extra $120,000. To the largest producers, there are good reasons to keep alcohols low. And for all the kvetching about high alcohols, most wine taxed in the United States remains in that "table wine" bracket: 440.6 million gallons of bottled wine were at 14 percent or less last year, compared with 50.2 million above 14 percent.
Hot topic in wine world
But for higher-end wines? Life above 14 percent is routine, and for the past two decades it was often a required path to critical success.
All this presumes truth in labeling for alcohol levels, which often isn't the case - enough so that we tested 19 wines to check their accuracy. (See story above.)
No other topic prompts so many flareups in the wine world. In 2008, Sacramento retailer and wine authority Darrell Corti, a longtime critic of higher-alcohol wines, drew flak when it was revealed that he would no longer consider wines that exceeded 14.5 percent. In the aftermath, Corti began publishing alcohol levels in his popular newsletter. His business survived what came to be called Zingate.
"I have never had a customer who has read any of this stuff say anything like, 'You're a fascist' or 'you're stupid' or 'you have your head up your ass,' " Corti says. "They all say, 'bravo.' "
In part, Corti was frustrated because he saw how higher alcohols have come to largely define California's reputation. While most alcohol regulations in Europe mandate a minimum alcohol content - premier cru Volnay must clock at least 11 percent - "in California, it should be the other way around," Corti suggests.
Corti's dustup would feel familiar to Michael Mina corporate wine director Rajat Parr, who was caught in a flurry of attention when, during a tasting at the World of Pinot Noir in March, he endorsed what he thought was a lower-alcohol Pinot made by Siduri owner Adam Lee. Lee had switched labels on two wines, and revealed that Parr had praised a 15 percent wine. (See sfg.ly/hyac9X)
The intentional switch stemmed, no doubt, from Parr's vocal role in the lower-alcohol movement - including a policy that limits New World Pinot Noir and Chardonnay at his San Francisco restaurant, RN74, to 14.5 percent. (The limit doesn't extend to other wines or other Mina restaurants.) And it prompted a long round of bickering about alcohol, including an online finger-wagging from critic Robert Parker, who suggested that "arbitrary cutoffs make no sense, and are nothing more than a form of wine fascism."
The use of alcohol as a barometer leaves many winemakers uneasy - especially since they acknowledge they often take advantage of the built-in leeway provided for wine labels.
"The emphasis on alcohol for me is a distraction from the larger picture," Lee says.
Parker and others often complain that alcohol rules are unfairly weighted against American producers - that often inaccurate labels on imported wines mask a boozier reality.
The trick of balance
Sommeliers swap tales of white Burgundies (to say nothing of ripe-vintage Bordeaux or Barolo) marked 13.5 percent but exceeding 15.
In winemaking, vintners must consider alcohol along with pH level, acidity and so on. This leads us to the tricky notion of balance in wine. A Parr-organized Pinot event, "In Pursuit of Balance," was further skewered for the word "balance" serving as code for less alcohol.
But that's not always the case.
Napa winemaker John Kongsgaard, whose powerful (but balanced) Chardonnays routinely exceed 15 percent, hasn't made a wine below 14 percent in a decade. Yet his concentrated flavors retain balance.
"We never hear complaints about the alcohol, ever," Kongsgaard says. "We hear about it as an intellectual idea from sommeliers, but I think the sommelier class are the people who are the most interested. I think that's fine. They're serving lots of wine to lots of people and they need to be careful about it."
Wine and dine
And that's where alcohol - regardless of balance - remains a defining element of a wine's style. For all the knocks against alcohol-watchers as ignoring the fundamental pleasure of wine, a balanced high-alcohol wine still won't please palates looking for a lighter touch.
Alcohol takes on a new dimension when you sit down to dine.
So sommeliers particularly have become champions of more - and more accurate - alcohol disclosure. Perhaps that's because diners have only their own assumptions to rely on when browsing a wine list. Perhaps it's because wine directors have to pair wines with food - there's a reason one Australian winemaker dubbed high-octane specimens "cocktail wines" - or because they want their customers to walk out the door, not stagger.
For his part, Parr - who makes wine in Santa Barbara - finds more customers, especially under 35, asking about alcohol content.
"I want to have a glass, two glasses, three glasses, and not feel that I'm going to be intoxicated," he says. "It's the wine I drink, it's the wine I make, it's the wine I serve in my restaurant. I never said the other style is wrong."
Increasingly, winemakers agree.
"I think every by-the-glass list should have alcohol listed on it," says winemaker Gavin Chanin, who apprenticed with Au Bon Climat's Jim Clendenen, an early scourge of California's higher-alcohol trend, before founding his Chanin label. "Not because it's the be-all end-all, but for those of us who know what kind of style we want, it's such a great indicator."
Which might explain why at least one restaurant in Wine Country is serving up hard numbers.
At Oenotri in Napa, wine director Sur Lucero lists alcohol levels for every wine he sells on a list that ranges from steely Italian whites to California Cabernet (and the occasional heavy-lifting Chardonnay) that top 15 percent. In part, this was a practical consideration - "there's no way I can keep alcohol levels for 650 wines in my head," he says - but Lucero also considers it a useful guide both for his patrons and himself in pairing wines to food with similar weight.
While those numbers might seem to target the muscle of California, Lucero notes that they can be equally helpful with Europe's high-alcohol offerings, including Barolo, southern Rhone wines or even Alsatian whites that can push 15 percent.
"Here in Napa we have a lot of educated wine drinkers," Lucero says, "enough that it doesn't take anything away from those who think that number is inconsequential, but it adds for those who find something in that number."
The end of 14 percent?
Whether you believe alcohol levels should come down or that the law should acknowledge a higher-alcohol reality, what's evident is that the arbitrary 14 percent barrier needs reform.
"Everybody starts to draw the line at the same place," says Wendell Lee, general counsel for the Wine Institute, the industry's main trade group. "But does it make any sense? Today it probably doesn't."
That could mean raising table-wine limits to 15 percent or enacting a sliding tax scale. Clearly the alcohols printed on labels could be far more precise.
For those who don't care? It's easy to tune out this particular bit of information. But for a lot of wine lovers, alcohol levels will remain a flash point.
So we're adding this one data point to our coverage. We believe that helps everyone make more informed decisions. And rare is the wine lover who doesn't want to be informed.
Inside
Label leeway: Only one wine label proves completely accurate in a Chronicle test. H6
Labels accurate? Often not
How accurate are those numbers in tiny print? Since we intend to begin printing alcohol levels, we wanted to check how trustworthy these numbers are.
We sent samples of 19 wines - all of them received for review by The Chronicle - to an independent wine lab in St. Helena for ethanol testing. Each test costs around $20.
Only one wine was exactly accurate (see chart below). Three were virtually a percentage point off - or more - flirting with the leeway the federal government allows from what's printed on the label (1 percent for wines above 14 percent alcohol; 1.5 percent below 14 percent alcohol).
The biggest gap came on the 2008 Pepper Bridge Walla Walla Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Washington, which we recommended last week. Its tested alcohol of 15.17 percent was far above the 14.1 percent on the label.
"I'm going to send it back" to the lab, said winemaker Jean-Francois Pellet when told of the results. Pellet said his own test landed the wine at 14.8 percent, but he had used an older technology called an ebulliometer. He said he would send another sample to his outside lab.
Another surprising wine atop the list: the 2009 Calera Central Coast Viognier, made by The Chronicle's 2008 Winemaker of the Year Josh Jensen, who prints fastidiously informative wine labels. It tested at 15.54 percent, but the label lists it as 14.5 percent.
"The discrepancy ... just blows my mind," Jensen said.
He ruled out one frequent cause of inaccuracy - alcohol levels are often tested months before bottling so that labels can be ordered - because Calera tests directly from the bottling tank.
Also pushing the 1 percent tolerance was the 2007 Chasseur Lorenzo Russian River Valley Chardonnay made by veteran winemaker Bill Hunter. A listed 14.8 percent alcohol was dwarfed by the actual number in our test, 15.79 percent - making for a nearly 16 percent Chardonnay.
Another significant discrepancy came from Siduri, whose owner Adam Lee vocally opposes focusing on alcohol levels.
We tested two Siduri wines - the 2007 Keefer Ranch Pinot Noir and the 2007 Amber Ridge Pinot Noir. The Amber Ridge landed at 15.02 percent, nearly three-fourths of a percent above its stated 14.3; the Keefer tested at 14.66, well above its stated 14.1. Yet our numbers were within 0.1 percent of levels Lee tested in 2008.
His explanation? He rarely modifies the alcohol numbers on his labels, in part because of the cost of filing for a new label approval from federal and state agencies.
On the flip side, some major names were remarkably precise. The 2008 Migration Russian River Valley Chardonnay from Duckhorn was spot-on: 14.1 percent tested and on the label. And the 2006 Robert Mondavi Reserve Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon lists an alcohol of 15.5 percent, essentially the same as its tested result of 15.46. That seems painfully high for a wine that once landed in the mid-13s, but the number is accurate.
For our tests, the lab used an NIR Alcolyzer, which measures the absorption of a near-infrared beam in liquid to determine the amount of ethyl alcohol in a liquid - a new technology with precise results. The cost of an Alcolyzer is $16,000, according to Margit Svenningsen, a technical representative for Austria's Anton Paar, which makes the device, and an assistant winemaker at Calera.
Svenningsen echoed a frequent assertion that the new method supersedes more common means of testing: the gas chromatograph, which can test a wide range of winery data but has potential for inaccuracy, and the ebulliometer, a 50-year-old technology based on boiling points, which can be significantly hobbled by elevation and weather.
Sometimes even technology can't explain everything. The 2007 Hall Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon - 14.7 on the label, but 15.21 in our test - was tested by winemaker Steve Leveque at 15.0 percent with an Alcolyzer on its bottling date of May 29, 2009. Such discrepancies have become a way of life in the cellar.
"It's not perfect," said Leveque, "but I'm not terribly surprised."
- Jon BonnéWhy it's tough to trust the label
All labeling has some leeway. The Food and Drug Administration allows rounding on food nutrition labels by 5 to 10 calories, for instance.
But in an environment where even a half-percent difference in alcohol can chase away a customer, wine labels should be more accurate - especially because the numbers are self-reported and rarely checked.
Wines 14 percent or less in alcohol are "table wines" under federal law. They have a latitude of 1.5 percent in listed alcohol - a flexibility largely born out of the prospect that a 12.5 percent table wine could range from 11 to 14 percent. That range, frequently seen on imported wines from the 1960s and '70s, can still be used.
Above 14 percent, the leeway shrinks to 1 percent. But that still allows a 15.4 percent wine to be labeled as 14.5. (See the full regulations at sfg.ly/hherzG)
U.S. wineries that sell overseas also must comply with EU regulations that round alcohol to the nearest half-percent, which also explains why some European wines have less accurate alcohol listings. And some states and Canadian provinces also have their own labeling requirements - and penalties.
The federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which oversees wine labels, will occasionally test alcohol content using a time-consuming but accurate distillation method. But it rarely tests, and has little enforcement for those who exceed the stated tolerances.
Because any change to a label requires a winery to pay for a new label approval, many wineries leave labels unchanged from one vintage to the next - similar to a European practice to change only the separate vintage label.
Differences in testing technology make it hard to reach an exact number. But the leeway could be reduced to a half-percent without causing undue costs to wineries.
That certainly would come closer to truth in labeling.
- Jon BonnéThe test results
Wine Printed % alcohol Actual % alcohol Difference
2008 Pepper Bridge Estate Walla Walla Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 14.1 15.17 1.07
2009 Calera Central Coast Viognier 14.5 15.54 1.04
2007 Chasseur Lorenzo Chardonnay 14.8 15.79 0.99
2008 Siduri Amber Ridge Vineyard Pinot Noir 14.3 15.02 0.72
2007 Peachy Canyon The Vortex Paso Robles Zinfandel 14.8 15.47 0.67
2007 Siduri Keefer Ranch Russian River Valley Pinot Noir 14.1 14.66 0.56
2009 Pascal Jolivet Pouilly-Fume 13 13.51 0.51
2007 Hall Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 14.7 15.21 0.51
2009 Fritz Haag Brauneberger Kabinett Riesling 8 8.47 0.47
2009 Liberty School Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon 13.5 13.93 0.43
2008 Vietti Tre Vigne Barbera D'Alba 13.5 13.88 0.38
2008 Williams Selyem Central Coast Pinot Noir 14 14.36 0.36
2008 Bouchard Bourgogne Rouge 12.5 12.71 0.21
2008 Frog's Leap Napa Valley Zinfandel 13.7 13.89 0.19
2008 Duckhorn Migration Russian River Valley Chardonnay 14.1 14.1 0
2006 Robert Mondavi Reserve Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 15.5 15.46 -0.04
2010 Coppola Yellow Label Sauvignon Blanc 13.5 13.35 -0.15
2008 Chehalem Reserve Ribbon Ridge Pinot Noir 13.2 13 -0.2
2009 Rodney Strong Estate Vineyards Pinot Noir 14.5 14 -0.5
Jon Bonnés The Chronicle's wine editor. Find him at jbonne(a)sfchronicle.com or @jbonne on Twitter.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/24/FD311J4I7H.DTL
This article appeared on page H - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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* Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu *
* mobile : 651/645-0753 *
* Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *
* james(a)brewingnews.com James.Ellingson(a)StThomas.edu *
Sure, but does it work on plastic corks?
April 19, 2011
The $410 Corkscrew
By ERIC ASIMOV
THEY come in all shapes and sizes. Most often, they can be found stuffed into kitchen drawers alongside potato mashers, melon ballers and other seldom-used essentials of the kitchen. Wine lovers take them for granted, except when nobody can find one. Call a Boy Scout! He.s sure to be prepared with a handy multifunction pocket knife that includes one.
I.m talking, of course, about corkscrews, which, regardless of the screw cap, remain indispensable for achieving access to the wine within. But would you pay $410 for one?
Oh, please, why even ask? In an era when people pay hundreds of dollars for a bottle of mediocre Champagne, not to mention thousands for a bottle at auction, who would begrudge the Code-38 wine knife from Australia its retail price of $220 to $410? No, it.s not made of gold.
The fact is most people pay corkscrews little mind. They.re perfectly content with the gimme corkscrew from the local wine shop; or the cheap double-winged corkscrew, in which you squeeze the arms together to extract the cork; or even the Swiss army knife. Ambitious types can find battery-operated corkscrews or tapered yet cumbersome models the size of restaurant pepper mills, which operate not on the principle of twisting the worm into the cork, but with a press and a pull.
In restaurants the world over, sommeliers, those exacting, extracting professionals, rely overwhelmingly on a simple, handy device known as the waiter.s friend or, sometimes, as the wine key. Essentially a knifelike handle with a spiral worm for inserting into the cork and a hinged fulcrum for resistance, the waiter.s friend has largely stood the test of time, with modest tweaks and improvements, since it was patented in Germany in 1882. Basic versions go for less than $10.
No product, though, no matter how successful, is immune to the fertile imagination of industrial designers. Enter the Code-38, in which the waiter.s friend is re-engineered, using the highest principles of design and top-flight materials. What does that get you?
Well, when I pick up my standby home corkscrew, a Pulltap.s double-hinged waiter.s friend, I.m not wowed by the black plastic handle, flimsy metal fulcrum and serrated foil cutter. It works fine, but I confess I don.t feel much of anything about it. When it breaks, I have others lined up ready to go.
The Code-38, by contrast, offers the satisfying, solid heft of a fine tool. It feels good in the hand, like a well-balanced kitchen knife, and it inspires a sort of confidence that I had been unaware of lacking. The basic $220 model, which I bought and tested for several weeks, is made of solid stainless steel, with a thick, strong worm. The foil blade is a curved steel arc that can be opened with one hand and resharpened on a stone.
The fulcrum is smooth and shiny. It.s a single-hinge design rather than the double-hinge I have on my Pulltap.s. The double-hinge is intended as a safety net for amateurs like me, who can.t always get the corkscrew in the right spot for a smooth, continuous extraction. Instead, the double-hinge allows you to pull a cork part way out, and then re-set the fulcrum to complete the maneuver.
The Code-38.s single-hinge, though, is so precisely engineered that I have yet to meet the cork I could not extract effortlessly, while (in my would-be sommelier.s imagination) bantering wittily with the table in front of me and simultaneously surveying the rest of the dining room for trouble.
That.s the basic $220 model. For $410, you can have the Code-38 Pro Stealth, the flagship model, .a complete blend of blasted textures and vaporized titanium-based finishes,. as the Web catalog puts it.
Ah, well, a fellow can dream. Of course, it.s fine for me, a writer with a (limited) expense account, to sing the praises of the Code-38. What would a professional say?
I lent mine to Michael Madrigale, the sommelier at Bar Boulud, a wine-oriented bistro near Lincoln Center. He liked it well enough, especially the way it felt in the hand, but paused when I told him what it cost.
.What, $220?. he said. .It.s like the $200 hamburger. It.s like reinventing something that.s already perfect..
He added that he was quite happy with his waiter.s friend, a French model, the Cartailler-Deluc, which sells for under $30. Like me, he also has backups on hand.
Not all professionals were as unappreciative. Chaad Thomas, a partner in U.S. Wine Imports and a former sommelier in Ann Arbor, Mich., read about the Code-38 on an Internet chat board and was so intrigued that he wrote to the designer, Jeffrey Toering, who sent him one to try.
.It.s a gorgeous piece,. he told me. .It was superb to be able to extend the knife with just one hand. You could use it really quickly, and it.s very durable. As a sommelier, I would actually wear wine keys out..
He said he plans to buy 10 or so to offer to top clients.
It.s not that the world of cork extractors has lacked high-end devices, or even expensive waiter.s friends. Laguiole, a French cutlery brand, has been renowned for its corkscrews for more than a century. Its waiter.s friends are lovely designs in an older, more ornate style than the minimalist Code-38. Laguiole also fills custom orders. Aldo Sohm, the sommelier at Le Bernardin in New York, designed a personalized Laguiole with an Austrian flag design, which also sells for $220. It.s an elegant corkscrew, and works beautifully, though it differs from the Code-38 in materials and in its serrated knife, which is more difficult to extend with one hand.
What drives a man to try to create the perfect corkscrew? Mr. Toering, the designer, was not in the wine business. He had learned about design as an instrument fitter in the Australian Air Force, which he likened to being a watchmaker, and he previously designed a portable massage table. The idea for the Code-38 came to him in a restaurant in the 1990s.
.I had ordered a nice bottle of something and was observing the waiter.s removal of the cork,. he said in an e-mail from Australia. .He was using a cheap plastic wine key. It was in this moment that it occurred to me that the caliber of corkscrew did not match the level of the wine or the restaurant..
So began an odyssey of trial and error, of testing designs and materials, and comparing sources. He inspected worms from around the world before settling on one made in France. Along the way he became the Australian distributor for Laguiole, but he had concerns about its durability in the heavy-duty use of the restaurant world.
.I have designed the product to withstand continual use over many years,. he said. .I.ve been testing prototypes of the product for over five years and many thousands of bottles, and all I.ve seen is the odd bent spiral, which is more a matter of technique than the product.s ability to survive the professional hospitality environment.. He says the Code-38 is .fully rebuildable. and covered by a lifetime warranty.
Mr. Toering assembles each one individually in his workshop. So far, he says, he has sold 137 Code-38s, each one to a sommelier (and apparently one wine writer). It.s not a lot, but he says the response has been great.
.I think the Laguiole and similar products from that region are brilliant, and I.d like to think that the Code-38 can sit among them as an equal,. he said. .In our world of cheap throwaway products, it.s just nice to use something that has been designed and made without consideration for just meeting a price point..
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* Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu *
* mobile : 651/645-0753 *
* Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *
* james(a)brewingnews.com James.Ellingson(a)StThomas.edu *
According to decanter dot com, the official Champagne of the royal wedding
will be NV Pol Roger.
(Good choice if you can't acquire a sufficient stock of the 1998, 1996 or
1995, say I. Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana chose Bollinger;
so, perhaps that marque would have been regarded as bad luck.)
As Champagne fans know, Pol Roger had many twentieth century associations
with the British government, although generally with commoners rather than
royalty, particularly Sir Winston Churchill after whom their prestige cuvee
is named. One of my favorite stories is about Lord Soames, giving a press
conference during Rhodesian peace talks way back when, predicting that the
talks would be concluded within less than 30 days. Asked how he could be so
confident of an early conclusion, he revealed that his remaining stock was
only twenty-something bottles of Pol Roger.
Cheers -
History and philosophy from one of the United States greatest winemakers,
for decades now, Paul Draper: the 4-19-11 posting at
http://blog.ridgewine.com/. Eminently worth a read. A votre santé --
OK, Now that I have your attention.....
Web address:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/
080804100254.htm
Electronic Tongue Tastes Wine Variety, Vintage
enlarge
A new device can detect substances characteristic of a certain wine variety. (Credit: iStockphoto/Kirby Hamilton)
ScienceDaily (Aug. 12, 2008) . You don't need a wine expert to identify a '74 Pinot Noir from Burgundy . a handheld "electronic tongue" devised by European scientists will tell you the grape variety and vintage at the press of a button.
Designed for quality control in the field, the device is made up of six sensors which detect substances characteristic of a certain wine variety. Components such as acid, sugar and alcohol can be measured by this detection, and from these parameters it can determine the age and variety of the wine.
The tongue was invented by Cecilia Jiméz-Jorquera and colleagues from the Barcelona Institute of Microelectronics, Spain, and is reported in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal The Analyst.
Wine industry specialists told the researchers they lacked a fast way to assess quality of wines . it takes a long time to send samples to a central laboratory for processing.
This new tongue is not only swift, but also portable, cheap to manufacture, and can be trained to "taste" new varieties as required.
Jiméz-Jorquera says "the device could be used to detect frauds committed regarding the vintage year of the wine, or the grape varieties used."
Email or share this story:
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A woman is sitting on the veranda with her husband and she says,
"I love you."
He asks, "Is that you or the wine talking?"
She replies, "It's me ... talking to the wine."
FYI on a bill limiting mail order wine and beer.
Wholesale Robbery in Liquor Sales
By DAVID WHITE Washington
IMAGINE if Texas lawmakers, in a bid to protect mom-and-pop bookstores, barred Amazon.com from shipping into the state. Or if Massachusetts legislators, worried about Boston.s shoe boutiques, prohibited residents from ordering from Zappos.com.
Such moves would infuriate consumers. They might also breach the Constitution.s commerce clause, which limits states from erecting trade barriers against one another. But wine consumers, producers and retailers face such restrictions daily.
Last month, Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, introduced a bill in the House that would allow states to cement such protectionist laws. It should appall wine snobs, beer swillers and even teetotalers. In this case, the law would protect not small stores and liquor producers, but the wholesale liquor lobby.
Like virtually all of America.s liquor laws, this proposal traces its origins to the temperance movement. When Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933, states were given the authority to regulate the .transportation or importation. of .intoxicating liquors. within their borders.
States were allowed to decide whether they wanted to remain dry. As alcohol again started flowing freely, states either assumed control over its sale and distribution, or created a wholesale tier to sit between producers and retailers.
Before Prohibition, many bars were owned by brewers or distillers. Temperance advocates blamed these bars for some of the ills associated with drunkenness, and believed that keeping the producers away from the business of selling directly would help society.
Lawmakers hoped this wholesale tier would weaken producers. And indeed, the wholesaling industry grew quickly, as most alcoholic beverages had to pass through it before ending up at liquor stores, bars and restaurants. It was, essentially, a state-mandated middleman.
Today, wholesaling is big business. Together, the nation.s two largest wholesalers . Southern Wine & Spirits and Republic National Distributing Company . have revenues of about $13 billion.
A chunk of that cash is funneled to lawmakers. The National Beer Wholesalers Association maintains the nation.s third-largest political action committee, and since 2000, it has donated $15.4 million to candidates for federal office . about $5 million more than the A.F.L.-C.I.O donated in that time.
In the past decade, it spent $5.6 million on lobbying Congress; the Wine and Spirit Wholesalers of America spent $9.3 million. The expenditures make sense. The wholesaling industry.s survival depends on maintaining today.s highly regulated system. It is estimated that because of wholesalers, consumers pay 18 percent to 25 percent more at retail than they otherwise would.
And in recent years, the industry.s dominance has been threatened. Last year, the United States passed France as the world.s largest wine-consuming nation (in bottles, not yet per capita). America.s love affair with wine deepened in the early 1990s, when many people developed a preference for high-end wines and started ordering directly from producers.
Wholesalers didn.t like being cut from these transactions, so they pushed state lawmakers to prohibit .direct shipping.. Many did. By 1999, just 19 states allowed consumers to order wine from out-of-state producers.
But in 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in Granholm v. Heald that the 21st Amendment .did not give states the authority to pass nonuniform laws in order to discriminate against out-of-state goods.. Thus, lawmakers could prohibit out-of-state wineries from shipping into a state only if they were willing to block their own wineries from shipping out.
In the six years since, several states have liberalized their wine laws. But many restrictions remain. Alabama oenophiles can order wine only from an out-of-state producer if they have received written approval from the state.s Beverage Control Board. Wineries can ship into Indiana and Delaware only to consumers who have visited the winery and made a purchase in person. In 37 states, residents are prohibited from ordering wine from online retailers or auction houses or even joining wine-of-the-month clubs.
The bill under consideration in Congress will make things even worse.
This proposal would allow discrimination against out-of-state producers and retailers if lawmakers can prove that such laws advance .a legitimate local purpose that cannot be adequately served by reasonable nondiscriminatory alternatives..
That means that if a state.s discriminatory liquor laws produce tax revenues, for instance, they can.t be challenged in court. But instead of burdening consumers by foisting more restrictions on alcohol sales, lawmakers should free the market and expand consumer choice by scrapping this bill and letting wholesalers know that it won.t be considered again, as the commerce clause reigns supreme.
Nationwide, there are more than 6,000 wineries, and about 7,000 American wine retailers have Web sites. Wine clubs affiliated with newspapers (including this one), gourmet stores and even rock bands are taking off. Yet most Americans have access to only a small fraction of what.s available.
The wholesaling industry is right to be nervous. After all, consumers have shown that they will order directly from producers and specialty retail shops if given the chance. But that.s no reason to save an antiquated system that gives Americans fewer choices and makes them pay more.
David White is the founder and editor of the wine blog Terroirist.
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* Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu *
* mobile : 651/645-0753 *
* Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *
* james(a)brewingnews.com James.Ellingson(a)StThomas.edu *
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Drawing new lines for wine on the Sonoma Coast
Jon Bonné04/03/11
For Pinot Noir, Joseph Phelps winery banked on Freestone,... Peay Vineyards in Annapolis, an area that could have its ...
When is the coast not necessarily the coast? When it's marked on a bottle of Sonoma wine, apparently.
In wine terms, the Sonoma Coast appellation has been a mess since its approval in 1987. It stretches over 750 square miles, from the eastern end of San Pablo Bay, on Napa's edge, to the far northern reaches of Sonoma's actual coast, near the hamlets of Annapolis and Gualala. Along the way it engulfs most of Russian River Valley, Green Valley, the Sonoma portion of Carneros and nearly half of Sonoma County.
The original motives of the appellation are draped in the sort of politics that attend so many American Viticultural Areas, or AVAs. The original intent, as always, was to delineate a growing region with unique character. But the map for this particular sprawl of an appellation was largely sketched to include the vineyards of Sonoma-Cutrer, which needed an area that encompassed its winery and farther-flung vineyards for the "coastal" Chardonnay it promoted in the 1980s."It's big," says Brice Jones, Sonoma-Cutrer's founder, of the Sonoma Coast, "but it's true to the purpose of having appellations."
In subsequent years, every logical twist has been applied to explain this draw-outside-the-lines appellation: the predominance of certain soils, the impact of ocean wind through the gap in the coastal range near Petaluma (the Petaluma Gap is now pushing for its own appellation, of course), the presumptive cool climate.
"We felt the Sonoma Coast appellation was beginning to be used on wines for marketing purposes, and wasn't being used on wines that showed the natural style of the area," says Carroll Kemp of Red Car, which has vineyards in remote Fort Ross. "In that sense, it is deceptive."
So there's what has come to be called the "true" Sonoma coast - vineyards within a few miles of the Pacific coastline that, as it happens, are defining spots for some of the country's top Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. This includes names like Hirsch, Peay, Flowers and Marcassin, along with wineries like Littorai, Williams Selyem, Kistler and Freestone - all together a litany of California outperformers.
At long last, many have had it with the funny geography. Last month they unveiled a new organization, the West Sonoma Coast Vintners (see more at westsonomacoast.com) with two dozen members and its own festival to be held in August in Occidental.
This is hardly the first attempt to bring order to the gerrymandered blob of the Sonoma Coast. Around 2002, several of the group's founding members submitted a proposal for a Fort Ross-Seaview appellation that included coastal ridges from Cazadero to Annapolis. That effort was shot down after concerns were raised by Jones, some of whose vineyards were excluded, along with Fort Ross Vineyards, who saw its brand name imperiled, and Hartford Family Winery, who similarly had vineyards outside the dotted line.
There are hopes that Fort Ross-Seaview will rise again. Efforts for Freestone-Occidental, an appellation south of the Russian River, are coming along, as are plans for an Annapolis appellation to the north, a Sebastopol Hills area south of the Bodega Highway (see sfg.ly/dRRaxo) and the Petaluma Gap.
But for now, the new group's creators have moved to other tasks. They would rather promote the common culture of West County than start marking up maps once again. So they have devised a large, and unofficial, "West Sonoma Coast" area, with Highway 116 as a dividing line that cuts northwest through Sebastopol and Forestville.
Their hope is that rather than mire themselves in more bureaucracy, they can take their case directly to their customers.
"Looking at it from my point of view and some of my neighbors, we don't really care anymore," says David Hirsch of Hirsch Vineyards, who spearheaded the original Fort Ross-Seaview effort.
"There's been a learning curve around the real Sonoma Coast versus the generic, so I'm not sure how much interest there'll be in putting these AVAs on the label."
Hirsch's point is salient: When you look at the roster of the West Sonoma Coast posse, most names are easily recognizable. And you realize the repercussions of this bureaucratic mess: Vintners who couldn't get brand leverage with an appellation simply built their own reputation. People might seek out a Hirsch or Peay or Flowers, but probably not because it says "Sonoma Coast" on the label.
Still, there are good reasons to begin the subdivision. While there is some similarity among the jumble of soil types, the moderating influence of the ocean and relative elevation of these various areas make the biggest difference in style.
According to Patrick Shabram, the geographer who wrote both the Fort Ross-Seaview and Freestone-Occidental proposals, a major divide exists between Fort Ross' ridgetops, generally above 1,000 feet, and lower-elevation vineyards in Annapolis. Most Fort Ross sites, including Hirsch, Flowers and the eponymous Fort Ross Vineyards, receive full days of sunlight, while lower sites are often stuck in the fog.
"You can think of it a little bit like the Napa Valley," Shabram says. "Everybody realizes that there is the Napa Valley, which is this great wine-growing region, but there are differences between Carneros and Calistoga."
The Coasters have taken a key lesson from Napa's own geographic wars, plus the battle between the east and west sides of Paso Robles. Napa's subdivision largely by town boundaries left the feds skeptical about the abuse of the appellation process. So the West Sonoma Coast has opted to step back and sort out its business before getting mired in another tangle of red tape.
Which is why last week Kemp and Andy Peay of Peay Vineyards found themselves traversing another coast - the East Coast - with a road show about the new game plan for what previously was dubbed the "true Sonoma Coast."
The new group's informal boundaries have their own arbitrary issues, but to Peay there's a more crucial definition of the West Sonoma Coast - the inability to make cheaper, large-scale wine out in the far coastal reaches, in part because of farming costs and perennially low crop yields prevent it, and in part because land regulations in former timber areas limit possible new plantings. Most wineries in these parts are actual estates willing to take financial risks for high-dollar wines.
As you've probably deduced, the fight for the coast is hardly over. New appellation filings haven't exactly been frozen, but first the association's founders would rather try to really cmprehend what makes each slice of the far coast unique. They want to compare their wines, share farming notes and - crucially - finally convince people who live farther afield that "Sonoma Coast" doesn't actually mean that much at all.
"We're at the exploratory stage of this. We're at the beginning," Peay says. "I'm not sure why our wines are the way they are. We're learning."
After the years of bureaucratic battles, perhaps that's the smartest way forward for the true Sonoma coast.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/03/FD821IMPRL.DTL
Sonoma Coast Chardonnay: The Chronicle Recommends
Jon Bonné04/03/11
Valley of the Moon wine as seen in San Francisco, Califor... Hirsch Vineyards wine as seen in San Francisco, Californi... La Follette Sangiacomo Vineyard wine as seen in San Franc... Failla Estate Vineyard wine as seen in San Francisco, Cal... More...
Plenty of good could be found in 2009 as a vintage on the coast - a moderate late season and relatively smooth sailing after a hope-crushing 2008 vintage. So as coastal Chardonnays emerge on the scene, here's a chance to get a first snapshot.
There is much to like - in some corners. Our tasting almost seemed divided in half, between wines that use the omnibus nature of the enormous Sonoma Coast appellation to make large-lot Chardonnay, and tiny, brilliantly crafted efforts that largely relied on the hard-to-farm parcels within a few miles of the coast.
The coastal appellation is big enough to embrace both approaches. The quality from '09 indicates that in addition to the Sonoma Coast being prodigious Pinot territory, it's a spot to rely on for benchmark Chardonnay.
2009 Valley of the Moon Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($14): A proper example of the wide-reaching Sonoma Coast approach from this Korbel-owned label, using fruit from Russian River Valley, Carneros and other far corners that fall under the coastal appellation. A steely lemon and chive profile.
2009 Hirsch Vineyards Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($50): Hirsch's latest estate effort relies on its dramatically powerful fruit from 3.9 acres planted in 1994 and 2006. New winemaker Ross Cobb oversaw this vintage, once again made in a unique mix of oak, steel and small glass vessels. A touch shy at first, but then its eloquent power hits with a saline, mouthwatering presence. Glossy stone fruit edged with thyme, green apple and quince, and layer upon layer of tangy fruit.
2009 La Follette Sangiacomo Vineyard Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($30): For his own label, consultant Greg La Follette turns to the vineyard run by the Sangiacomo brothers outside Petaluma. An impressive and restrained stony crunch, with toasted oat, thyme and fig, and a honeyed touch that enriches an edgy core of fruit.
2009 Failla Estate Vineyard Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($44): Ehren Jordan's own vineyard sits on the far west near the coast, producing intense dry-farmed Chardonnay. No surprise this taut effort takes time to emerge from its shell. A hint of savory wood on the nose and stony accents: granite and marjoram amid kaffir lime, lemon confit and pear skin. Then comes tremendous power on the palate - an intense core of mineral-accented fruit, with awesome density. Give it another two years to approach its peak.
2009 Peay Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($40): Vanessa Wong and the Peay brothers mixed 60 percent fruit from their Annapolis estate with 40 percent from the Hirsch and Campbell Ranch sites - a trio of coastal heavy hitters. The texture sells it: plenty of fruit richness without relying on lees or wood notes. Intense, precise flavors, with a smoky and stony countenance. Pine bark, fig and key lime, with melony richness to balance. Give it a good three years to improve.
2009 MacPhail Gap's Crown Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($45): James MacPhail brings his full-bore approach to Chardonnay from this well-known Petaluma site. A florid, oak-touched style - creme brulee, tree fruit and lemon rind, with a savory punch.
2009 Flowers Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($45): Flowers' larger-production bottling uses its own Camp Meeting Ridge site and a handful of other far-west coastal properties, fermented mostly in older French oak. Wonderfully opulent, with Cavaillon melon, lime zest, honey and vanilla curd, plus a stony twinge. Its power comes from that density of fruit more than evident oak (25 percent new).
2009 Sonoma-Cutrer Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($24): This large-production - over 80,000 cases - effort from the label that first lobbied for the Sonoma Coast name uses a wide mix of sites, with a slice (20 percent) of new oak. This is a prototype for built-to-please Chard: heathery and citrus-driven, with weight to the pear and zesty lemon fruit.
2009 Cartha Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($27): Winemaker John Raytek (Ceritas) paired with vineyard manager Glenn Alexander for this new Petaluma Gap-focused project, the name of which is Sanskrit for "those who do the work." Cool and minty, with an emerging toast, plus dried peach, sandalwood and hay. Dense and almost cloudy, with powerful fruit all through.
Panelists: Jon BonnéChronicle wine editor; Pierre Gulick, sales representative, Dee Vine Wines; Luke Kenning, wine director, Farallon.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/03/FD821IMGQF.DTL
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* Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu *
* mobile : 651/645-0753 *
* Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *
* james(a)brewingnews.com James.Ellingson(a)StThomas.edu *
I can vouch for the three I've had...
Germany's beer traditions? Prost to that!
Jason Wilson
04/03/11
These innovative brews rebut the idea that German beer ha... Adam Lamoreaux, brewer/owner of Linden Street Brewery pro... Adam Lamoreaux, brewer/owner of Linden Street Brewery pro...
It's become fashionable in American beer-geek circles to talk about the dire state of beer in Germany. The story is usually based on this fact: Germans are drinking less beer, about 101 liters per capita last year, down from more than 130 liters in the mid-1990s.
The story usually then leaps to questionable assumptions about why this is happening. Chief among these: German beers have become boring because the big six Bavarian beer producers make exactly the same beers. A conclusion is arrived at: What Germany really needs to regain its former glory is some gosh-darn, rootin' tootin' American innovation - namely in the form of American-style craft brews.
The latest appeared a few weeks ago in a Slate piece by Christian DeBenedetti titled "Brauereisterben" - literally "brewery death," a term used since the 1990s and named after a term for Germany's dying forests. One of the few actual Germans he quotes happens to be a brewer who left his homeland to work for a U.S. craft brewer.
The reason for Germany beer's malaise? According to DeBenedetti, it might be the famed Reinheitsgebot, the 500-year-old "purity law" that stipulates that beer can only be made from barley, hops and water, hamstringing innovation and experimentation. "This taboo rules out trying Belgian, French and New World styles," he writes. He does mention that a European court repealed Reinheitsgebot nearly 25 years ago.
He cites a couple of collaborative projects between U.S. and German brewers, and ends on this note: "Innovation is happening, slowly, but German brewers and the drinking public will need to truly embrace change to get the country out of its rut. Blind adherence to a centuries-old edict isn't working anymore." Ahem.
DeBenedetti recently published a guide to U.S. craft beer called "The Great American Ale Trail." I'm guessing he heard a lot of this kind of talk while researching. A few weeks ago, at a craft beer festival, I heard an American brewer telling the audience an apocryphal story about enraptured Germans who tasted the promised land upon taking their first sip of a good old, hoppy American IPA.
Call me an unrepentant Europhile, but I get a little uneasy when I hear Americans talk about how our innovations can save the world's oldest beer culture. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Coors' "cold-activated can" also a so-called American "innovation"? And let's be clear about beer consumption: The United States consumes a little over 80 liters per capita. Even with the decline, Germans are still drinking significantly more beer than we do. Until I walk into the average bar and see everyone drinking barleywine or barrel-aged sour beers rather than Bud Light or PBR, I suggest we should be a little more humble when it comes to commenting on other established beer cultures.
When I read these German-beer-in-decline pieces, they sound a lot like the braggadocio we heard from New World winemakers - and the wine critics who loved them - in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, there was a lot of talk about "boring" French wine, about how innovation was trumping tradition and terroir. The French wine industry managed to survive.
Yes, offerings from big German breweries like Spaten or Paulaner or Augustiner can be similar - there's always a helles and a dunkel and a weizen, some kind of strong seasonal bock and, of course, the Oktoberfest beer. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I happen to enjoy many of these beers. Perhaps most of the misgivings about German beer stem from the 1980s, when German beers were cast in the United States as "skunky" and Lowenbrau made the grave misstep of licensing its name to Miller Brewing Co.
I am still looking for an American craft brewer to blow us away with a domestic variation of traditional German styles produced by the likes of Weihenstephan or Ayinger or Schneider Weisse. I've been disappointed in the American-German collaborations to date, such as Sam Adams' recent Infinium (made with Weihenstephan) or Schneider and Brooklyn Brewery's Hopfen-Weisse. I love the breweries, but these projects seem too high in alcohol and out of balance.
Above all, I've found that there is diversity in German beer. I don't know too many American brewers making the smoky rauchbiers traditionally made in Bamberg. I would love an American brewer to focus on making zippy, low-alcohol Berliner Weiss styles. Or perhaps a schwarzbier better than Kostritzer. And outside of beers such as Magnolia's Kalifornia Köh, I'm always surprised I don't see more American attempts at a refreshing köh that truly rivals Reinsdorf or Sü
All of which is to say that we can still learn a lot about beer making from Germany, regardless of whether tradition is fashionable.
A German six-pack
These beers show the innovation of German brewers. Many of them can be found at Bay Area BevMos and Whole Foods, and at City Beer in San Francisco.
Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Mäen ($5.29/500 ml): This "smoke beer," traditionally brewed in Bamberg, takes its flavor from malted barley dried over a fire of beechwood logs. If you like peaty scotches (or smoked bacon) you will love this. 5.1 percent alcohol.
Dr. Fritz Briem 1809 Berliner Weisse ($6.49/500 ml): Briem, who works for brewing consultancy Doemens, is reviving a series of historic but forgotten brewing styles. Zippy, cider-like, assertive. Like saison, it's bottle-conditioned with lactobacillus, unfiltered and unpasteurized. 5 percent alcohol.
Dr. Fritz Briem 13th Century Grut Bier ($6.49/500 ml): Another Briem effort - brewed with spices, fruit and herbs, a historic style that predates the Reinheitsgebot and the use of hops. Beautiful notes of anise, caraway, ginger, gentian and bay leaves. 4.6 percent alcohol.
SüKöh ($3.49/500 ml): There are American köh versions, but none better than this. Surprising tart fruit and a hint of sweetness, but a clean, crisp finish. 5.3 percent alcohol.
Pinkus MüOrganic Pinkus Pils ($3.49/500 ml): Earthier, maltier and spicier than most Pilseners. From one of the few remaining breweries in the northern German town of Mü. 5 percent alcohol.
Georg Schneider Weisen Edel-Weisse ($4.49/500 ml): Extraordinary, smooth weizen from a historic recipe made with organic barley and hops. Lots of flower and pepper aroma, and rich flavors clove and orange. 6.2 percent alcohol.
- J.W.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/03/FDOQ1IJSS3.DTL
This article appeared on page H - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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* Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu *
* mobile : 651/645-0753 *
* Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *
* james(a)brewingnews.com James.Ellingson(a)StThomas.edu *
