Category:Wine news

Welcome to the fight, Wine Spectator

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine spectator
“C’mon, WC. You’re making this up.”

No, this isn’t a Dry January joke – the most Winestream of all the Winestream Media is endorsing “cheap” wine

Who says, to paraphrase the great Shirley Povich, that hell can’t freeze over?

The Wine Spectator, perhaps the most Winestream of all the Winestream Media, is endorsing “cheap” wine. On Friday, the magazine announced its first ever “Top 10 Values” list and its 2021 “Wine Value of the Year.”

Sound familiar?

Of course, because it is the Spectator, scores are involved and the wines on the best value list can cost as much as $40. Which, of course, is cheap only for people who read the Wine Spectator. But the 2021 top value wine is a $17 New Zealand sauvignon blanc, which wouldn’t be out of place in a review posted on a website run by a certain cranky ex-newspaperman.

So who am I to quibble?

And, no, I don’t know why the Spectator is doing this. Does it mean someone there actually knows who I am and thinks that what I do has merit? Which is actually kind of terrifying – the wine business is screwed up enough without the Spectator borrowing from me. What’s next? Someone in California admitting that premiumization is destroying wine as we know it?

Or, and which is more likely, someone did a marketing study and saw a need to focus on labels other than the stereotypical Spectator wine – which always seem to be red, made in Napa, and cost $80. Because, of course, young people.

Regardless, welcome to the fight, Wine Spectator. It’s good to see you acknowledge that wine doesn’t have to cost as much as a laptop to be worth drinking. Who knows? Maybe we can work out some sort of joint thing next year when I do the Hall of Fame and you do your next value list.

And, then to paraphrase my pal Dave McIntyre, I can declare victory in the cheap wine wars and retire to my back porch, where I will drink Gascon wine and tell long, boring stories about the old days.

Photo: Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash

2022 $10 Wine Hall of Fame

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

cheap wine
“Damn, this is Hall of Fame quality wine. That WC knows his stuff.”

Good news again this year – eight wines entered the 2022 $10 Hall of Fame

Call it luck. Call it the WC turning over every wine rock in the world in the search for quality and value. Or, maybe, call it a resurgence in cheap wine quality, as welcome as it was unexpected.

Somehow, despite the second year of the pandemic, the continued curse of premiumization, and supply shortages and all that inflation, eight wines entered the 2022 $10 Hall of Fame. Perhaps even more impressive: I could have added four or five more, but decided to err on the side of caution. And perhaps even more impressive than that: only three wines dropped out, all for availability.

That’s the good news. The bad? Only a couple of dozen wines merited consideration, and I typically get twice that many in a good year. And availability remains the biggest problem facing those of us want more than the plonk cluttering up supermarket wine shelves. There just aren’t enough wholesalers left who are big enough or nimble enough so that they can forgo mass market profits to distribute the most interesting and well-made cheap wines.

So let’s enjoy the good news. The inductees include:

• Four whites: the Spanish Condesa albarino; a South African blend, from MAN’s Essay label; an Austrian gruner veltliner, Wachau Loess; and the French Guilhem blend.

• Two roses: the French Les Dauphins Reserve Rose and a Portuguese vinho verde from Faisao.

• A pair of South African blends – the red and white from Boekenhoutskloof’s The Wolftrap.

The dropouts were Argentina’s Argento malbec, plus two Italian reds, the Tenuta Carpazo sangiovese and the La Valentina Montelpuciano.

The complete 2022 $10 Wine Hall of Fame is here. The Hall’s selection process and eligibility rules are here. I considered wines that cost as much as $13 or $14 to take into account price creep and regional pricing differences.

Photo: Los Muertos Crew from Pexels

Winebits 731: The “new year is a lot like the old year” edition

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine and health
“Math? We don’t need no stinkin’ math!”

This week’s wine news: The French are furious over the alleged wine and cancer link, plus new EU rules for grape growing and plant-based wine bottles

• Who can blame them? The French wine business, which has a better sense of itself than we do in the U.S., has lashed out at the infamous wine and cancer study. The head of a French wine trade group called the study the same thing as declaring war on the wine business. The study, of course, is the infamous Lancet effort, which was later repudiated by another peer-reviewed report that called into question its defective math. Said the trade president: “Cancer is a disease caused by multiple factors. These are simplistic analyses… ,” adding that the same logic would prevent breathing, since the air is polluted.

• Different grapes? The European Union, which regulates grape growing for its member states, will allow countries to plant vines that will be better able to adapt to climate change. This is huge news, since it says it’s OK to plant something other than vitis vinifera, the traditional genus and species that includes chardonnay, merlot, and the like. Why is this such big news? It means that in regions like Bordeaux and Tuscany, where law – as well as centuries of tradition – only allow certain grapes to be grown, it’s now possible to plant new grapes.

• Goodbye glass? A new plant-based beverage bottle may bring the drinks industry one step closer to getting rid of glass. That’s the conclusion of the GlobalData consultancy, which says Suntory’s soft drink bottle for products sold in Japan and Europe “represents a step forward for the beverages industry towards the holy grail of biodegradable packaging,” Glass wine bottles, of course, have been under target for almost a year as one more cause of climate change. The Suntory bottles are made with what the company calls “bioplastic,” made from non-food biomass and non-food-grade feedstock. In other words, lots of garbage.

Winebits 730: The “end of the year, and aren’t we glad“ edition

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine sales
Where have all of wine’s customers gone?

This week’s wine news: More bad news about wine consumption, plus the origin of wine grapes and airline wine

• Struggles of wine: That headline on the third quarter alcohol sales report says it all, and if that’s not enough: “wine is still facing an uphill battle — let’s hope the holiday season gives it the boost it needs.” The report comes from the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association, which tracks wine and spirits sales from wholesalers to retailers. In this, it’s one of the most reliable sources of wine sales in the country. And the news isn’t good – table wine sales down 7.2 percent over the same period last year, and “wine is expected to follow spirits in having a strong holiday season but will most likely not see a positive trend before the new year.”

• Wine grape origins: The best wine grapes come from the genus and species vitis vinifera, which includes cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, and the like. The evolution of vinifera was always something of a mystery until DNA testing, which finally allowed scientists to start to make sense of where each grape came from. Now, a study in the journal Nature has solidified those beginnings even more: “all analyses support a single domestication event that occurred in Western Asia and was followed by numerous and pervasive introgressions from European wild populations.” In other words, every grape used to make wine today evolved from the first grapes planted in western Asia about7,000 years ago.

• In the air: Need extra wine? Consider buying it from an airline. Several have been selling off their wine collections during the pandemic, and American Airlines has gone a step further. Its Flagship Cellars wine club sells wine directly to consumers via a home delivery service, reports thedrinksbusiness. The service costs around $99 per month; consumers get three “premium” wines per month delivered to their doorstep. Once the excess inventory is gone, the service will end.

Winebits 729: Wine bottles, Eyrie Vineyards, robots

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Label lawsuits
Yes, lighter is better.

This week’s wine news: Bogle will use lighter glass bottles, plus a tour of the legendary Eyrie Vineyards and robots among the grapes

• Lighter bottles: Bogle, the one-time champion of quality supermarket wine, will reduce its bottle weight by 10 percent, starting next year. Bogle’s bottles were always a bit heavy, given the price of the wine, so it’s good news that it’s cutting down on their weight. Wine Business reports that the change will take place in phases, with the first lighter bottles coming to its being featured in Bogle’s chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, Essential Red, pinot noir, and merlot. Now, if the company would only stop sweetening the sauvignon blanc. …

• Touring Eyrie: Oregon’s Eyrie Vineyards is one of the great treasures of American wine, and Austin Beeman shows us why in this video, “Walking the Original Vines.” Eyrie’s Jason Lett takes Beeman on a tour of where his father David planted the winery’s first vines and helped change the way we made wine in this country. If you get frustrated and overwhelmed with the way wine is going these days, do what I do — drink a bottle of Eyrie wine. It reminds me what wine can be.

• Winery robots: Because, of course, who doesn’t like robots? Traxx will come in two types — to till vineyards and to spray them. It’s unique because it’s what called high-clearance, that it is taller than the vines. It will undergo field trials in France next year. No word on whether or when it will be available in the U.S.

Winebits 728: Wine snobs, wine and health, French wine

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

wine snobs
“Of course, I don’t know anything about wine. But why should that stop me from faking it?”

This week’s wine news: Wine drinkers are notorious snobs, plus we’re drinking less (honest) and why there will always be a French wine industry

• Bring on the snobs! About one-half of Britons think discussing wine while you’re drinking it is pretentious, and about one-quarter say they have pretended to know more about wine than they do. And we wonder why wine has the reputation that it does? The survey, given that it was done by a company that makes celebrity wine, may not be the most reliable. Still, the results reinforce what non-wine drinkers think about those of us who drink wine. And what does it say about wine drinkers that the survey noted that one-quarter of respondents said screwcaps are still used to judge the quality of a wine?

• Less wine drinking? Almost 40 percent of regular wine drinkers are actively moderating their consumption, particularly younger consumers, according to a study from the Wine Intelligence consultancy. This should only be staggering news (yes, bad pun fully intended) to the neo-Prohibitionists, who have insisted for some two years that we’re all passed out on the sofa each night after dinner – if we bother to eat dinner at all. The report noted that moderation could be “drinking less alcohol at certain occasions, or reducing the strength, or choosing not to drink at all at some occasions.” In the U.S., this included drinking lower alcohol wines and participating in things like Dry January.

• Only in France: The Wine Curmudgeon did a Zoom tasting last week featuring wineries in Bordeaux that make dessert-style wines. The tasting, given how rarely I get to sample these kinds of wines anymore because of higher prices and limited availability, was especially worthwhile. But the other thing that stuck out: The description of Chateau du Cros, one of the wineries. Only in France would someone describe their family as newcomers to the wine business, since they’ve only owned the winery since the World War I. Which is not just more than 100 years ago, but coincides with the beginning of Prohibition in the U.S.

Winebits 727: Restaurant wine, wine scores, wine trends

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

restaurant wine This week’s wine news: More bad news for restaurant wine, plus the new editor at the Wine Advocate says scores are staying and who knew organic wine is the next big thing

• Restaurant wine: Not good news, according to a study from a consultancy called Vintage Economics. The report is full of jargon and tries to sugar coat the results, but the news is there: Wine “has been struggling in the on-premise for some time,” with on-premise the trade name for restaurants. The study found that wine’s restaurant “penetration” fell by about five percent during the 2010s, and things only got worse during the pandemic. This is not good news for wine; a restaurant recovery is crucial to wine’s return to popularity. But the same thing hurting wine overall has hurt it in restaurants: lack of interest among younger diners and those who aren’t white. Do you think charging $35 for a $12 bottle of supermarket wine could be one of the causes?

• 100 points forever! The new editor of the Wine Advocate, Robert Parker’s legendary wine magazine, has said scores are here to stay. Joe Czerwinski told Esther Mobley of the San Francisco Chronicle that: “We’re quite old fashioned, I suppose. We see ourselves as being the independent consumer’s guide to buying wine. This is why we exist. That central mission hasn’t changed at all.” Interestingly, the headline on the article calls the 100-point system “notorious.” Which, of course, we know here. Sadly.

• Bring on organic? I’ve been writing about wine for more than 20 years, so I wasn’t surprised to see this in a trends story for 2022: Organic wine is the next big thing. Because, of course, it’s always the next big thing, seemingly popping up every couple of years. That it has never become the next big thing (organic wine sales in the U.S. may be in the mid-single digits) speaks to the way the business works – which was neatly summarized on the blog here. So, no, I wouldn’t bet on organic wine taking off in 2022.