Category:Wine Curmudgeon

Valentine’s Day wine update

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Just in case you missed my suggestions (and my take on the holiday), as well as some other thoughts floating around the cyber ether:

? The strangest bit of Valentine ?s Day advice I ?ve ever seen: ?The new Valentine's menu is heart-shaped hamburgers any style. The bubbly is beer. ?

? If you insist on pairing wine with chocolate (and I ?m sorry, Gil.)

? A solid, always classy suggestion from Dave McIntyre.

? Sandra Silfven ?s take ? bubbly and more bubbly.

Judging a wine competition

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Judging a wine competition is not an easy thing. This does not mean that the Wine Curmudgeon is complaining about doing it; as noted several times, what I do beats working for a living. Rather, I mention it in context with a study in a learned journal that says wine competition judges are not always consistent.

This is particularly relevant because I judged a competition last weekend, the San Antonio Wine Competition, part of the city ?s very well received wine festival. I ?ll post a podcast later this week, featuring San Antonio wine critic John Griffin. My thanks, also, to John Costello, who put together a fine event, for asking me to judge.

The study, which looked at the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition between 2005 and 2008, found that just 30 of the 65 judging panels produced similar results. In other words, judges gave the same wines different scores, including one instance when a panel gave one wine a double gold after rejecting it in two previous tastings.

Which makes perfect sense. Competitions, by their very nature, don’t allow for leisurely discussions of a wine’s merit. It’s sniff, sip, swirl, and spit, and then move on to the next wine. If there are inconsistencies, they aren ?t intentional. My panel judged about 120 wines in six hours on Saturday, including a category with 20 pinot grigios and 29 merlots.

Working through 29 merlots is a difficult task ? they taste alike, they look alike, and you don ?t have a lot of time to poke around for differences. And that doesn ?t include what ?s called tasting fatigue, in which the more wine you taste makes it harder to tell what you ?re tasting.

In this, I think judging is more honest than wine scores, since judging is more collaborative and is done blind. All we know is that this is a merlot, and we go from there. But that doesn ?t mean that we wouldn ?t like to improve the system.

The study ?s author, Robert Hodgson, says that ?s one of the reasons he did the study. The California competition ?s chief judge, G.M. Pucilowski, told Wines & Vines magazine that he hopes other competitions do similar studies, with the goal of establishing a baseline for judges that would reduce inconsistent results and improve the quality of results.

Everyone should be in favor of that.

Wine tasting season starts today

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

When this posts, I ?ll be tasting 2006 Bordeaux, the first event of the 2009 wine tasting season in Dallas

During the wine tasting season, which will run for the next three months or so, I could go to a lunch or tasting three or four times a week. This is the time of the year when producers and winemakers make the rounds to plug their products, and are forced to answer the same questions and endure the rigors of travel in the post-modern U.S. They have the Wine Curmudgeon ?s sympathy. I wrote about wine tasting season — and its ethical implications — last year, in case anyone has any questions.

The season is starting a couple of weeks earlier this year, which may be a coincidence or may be part of the recession. Regardless, I ?ll have updates, reviews, reports and probably a podcast or three over the course of the next several months.

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Wine trends 2009: “$10 wine is the next $100 wine,” part II

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

2009 wine trends This is the second of two parts looking at wine prices and consumption this year, and how they will affect those of us who drink cheap wine. Part I is here.

Talk to the experts and parse the numbers, and it doesn ?t look like wine will suffer during the current recession. Some high-end wineries may fail, some cute label imports may go away, and prices may drop a little, but otherwise, all will be well. Consumption remains at an all-time high, Americans are more knowledgeable about wine than ever before, and the industry has done an excellent job of marketing its product. Wine isn ?t seen as nearly the luxury that it used to be.

And maybe this is all true, and wine will ride out the recession with, at worst, minor losses. But this is what makes me wary. U.S. wine consumption has increased every year since 1994, topping out at around 3 gallons per adult last year. Not coincidentally, we ?ve only had one recession since then — the short, sharp slump around Sept. 11. And this period of almost unparalleled economic growth may be skewing a lot perceptions.

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Donald E. Westlake, 1933-2008

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

image In the early 1990s, during one of my other careers, I moderated a panel about mystery writing. It was my great good fortune that Donald Westlake was on that panel. I barely had to moderate at all.

Westlake died last week, and the obituaries described his talent and his proficiency ? more than 100 books since his first novel was published in 1960. But what struck me about Westlake in the couple of years we kept in touch was how much he enjoyed actually being a writer ? not the seeing your name on a book or signing autographs part, but the staring at the typewriter or going to the post office to see if a check had arrived part. To this day, I can ?t believe that Westlake, who got movie money (a huge, big deal, which made him more secure than the rest of us) would come home and bellyache that some publisher had not sent a promised payment.

Westlake was also incredibly gracious and generous with his time and knowledge. He told about working with director Stephen Frears on The Grifters (Westlake got an Academy Award nomination) and his less happy experience as one of the writers for a TV disaster called Supertrain (he said he got fired). He also shared writing advice and recommended agents, neither of which he had to do.

The author Jo Walton put it best: ?He is a writer that writers like. ? There aren ?t many better epitaphs than that.

The 2009 $10 Hall of Fame

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Break out the bubbly -- it's time to celebrate the new $10 wine hall of fame. And it ?s full of good news, detailing one of the best years for cheap wine since I started doing this almost 10 years ago.

The full list, with links to previous Hall of Fames, is here. You can also click on the link on the left sidebar. Briefly:

? No wine dropped out because it dropped in quality,  the first time in three years that has happened.

? I added five wines, including the Yellow+Blue malbec; Meridian ?s chardonnay; the Les Jamelles wines from southern France; Domaine du Tariquet from Gascony; and Lockwood sauvignon blanc.

? If I wasn ?t such a curmudgeon, I could have added 10 or 12 wines. The quality in 2008 was that good. But I don ?t want this to turn into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Comments are most welcome on the selections.