? Texas wine pioneer: Pierre de Wet, who died last month at the age of 61, was one of the bravest Texas winery owners I knew. He planted vinifera — chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, and so forth — in the heat and humidity of East Texas, even though Pierce’s Disease kills vinifera just as surely as I drink coffee in the morning. This never deterred the South African native, and he used to enjoy taking visitors around his Kiepersol Estate vineyards in a golf cart to show them where Pierce’s had destroyed the vines and where it hadn’t. And, somehow, Pierre’s daughter, Marnelle Durrett, used those grapes to fashion quality wine, including a very nice syrah. The other thing about Pierre that I admired? He understood the scourge of tasting room palate, a regional wine affliction that blinds winemakers to the flaws of what they make, and worked hard to overcome it. He was constantly asking others for their honest assessment of his wines, a quality all too rare in regional wine.
? Lots and lots of grapes: Most of the reporting detailing the 2015 California grape harvest said it was five percent less than the 2014 harvest, which got the panic mongers started. One even went so far as to say there would be a grape shortage thanks to the smaller harvest and wildfires that gave the grapes smoke taint. Fortunately, the Wine Curmudgeon is here to point that the smaller harvest was still the sixth biggest ever, and that grape prices have actually declined — which wouldn’t happen if there had been a shortage. So if wine prices increase this year and next, it won’t be because there aren’t enough grapes. It will be because producers are trying to make up for the last decade, when they didn’t raise prices.
? Pink fraud: It was bound to happen, given the increasing popularity of rose. One French producer has been fined some $11,000 for making rose by mixing red and white wine, which is not only illegal in France but results in crappy wine. Rose is typically made with red grapes, and the grape skins give the wine its pink color depending on how long they’re left in the grape juice. Ironically, reports the France 24 news site, there was a 2009 proposal to allow rose to be made by mixing red and white wine, but it was rejected after protests by French winemakers.