Tag Archives: screwcaps

Winebits 284: Wine prices, wine bottles, soft drinks

? Too many grapes? During the wine price panic a couple of years ago, the wise guys kept mumbling that there weren ?t enough wine grapes planted in California, and that, psst, I ?ve got a deal for you if you want to buy some vineyard land. That wasn ?t necessarily the case then, and it ?s probably not today, either. The president of one of the biggest grape grower trade groups says the number of acres in production could be 25 percent higher than the official figures. If true, this would explain why prices never took off, even after the so-called short harvests in 2010 and 2011. And it would also explain why production rebounded so quickly to a record in 2012. And, for those of us who care about wine prices, it also means they aren ?t going up any time soon.

? Do we really need glass? No less than the pre-eminent British wine writer Jancis Robinson asks this question, wondering ?why we need a material as heavy, fragile and resources-hungry as glass for everyday wine, wine that is consumed within months of being bottled. ? Why not juice boxes and pouches? Good questions all, but ones that overlook the role of tradition in the wine business. Screwcaps are not new, and are cheaper and more efficient than corks. But most wine is still closed with corks, and for no other reason than that ?s the way it has always been done.

? Rot those teeth: The Wine Curmudgeon does not drink soft drinks, dating from my days as a young reporter who wrote a story and learned that Coke, Pepsi, and the rest are among the most nutritionally bankrupt foods on the planet. So I was not surprised to see this study, which claims that diet soft drinks rot teeth like cocaine and meth. The story that describes the study doesn ?t go into much detail about how it was conducted, and I ?m curious why only a handful of women were studied, but it does make great reading and something to point out to those who tell me I drink too much wine. And why my teeth are in such good shape.

Bicycle pumps and screwcaps

We've run a variety of videos on the blog featuring unique ways to open a wine bottle. Oddly enough, many of the people in the videos, whether sabering a Champagne bottle, using a pliers to pull out a screw embedded in a cork, or bashing a bottle against a wall, have not been completely sober.

This video, however (courtesy of Household Hacker on YouTube) may be the best yet. For one thing, the guy opening the wine is completely sober. For another, he offers seven alternatives to a cork screw — one of which involves a bicycle pump. Frankly, that makes sabering seem almost irrelevant.

He is missing the eighth — and best — way, however. That's a screwcap, and the wine business has finally started doing studies to figure out where screwcaps works best and how to best use them. That may even be better than the bicycle pump.

Winebits 230: Italian wine, wine fraud, screwcaps

? Those were the days: The Italian Wine Guy remembers when no one had heard of Santa Margherita pinot grigio. Hard to believe, no? His point, and he makes it well, is that the Italian wine world (and, by extension, all of the others) has changed significantly in the past four decades ? sometimes, even more than we realize. Or, as he writes: ?Anyone who complains about not being able to get an Italian (or any other) wine of their choice is either lazy, unimaginative or just plain silly. Go down the aisles of a local liquor store, and see the immense selection we have now that we didn ?t have in 1977."

?  Fooling the wine world: This epic story from New York magazine (more than 4,000 words) is entitled ?Chateau Sucker ? ? which should tell you everything you need to know about the Rudy Kurniawan case. He ?s the fellow who has been selling counterfeit wine to the experts for years, and is currently under federal indictment. Most of the big names in the wine business are in the story, and the question it raises is whether they wanted to be fooled ? a question that speaks volumes about that part of the wine business.

? Yes, screwcaps are here to stay: In which another wine drinker wonders why they have to put up with those silly screwcaps.Though it does offer one of the best explanations of screwcaps, which the Wine Curmudgeon wishes he had thought of (and will now update and steal). Think of corks as music on CDs. Think of screwcaps as digital music. Doesn ?t make the music any worse, does it?

Winebits 181: Rose, Madoff, screwcaps

? French gulping down rose: The French, who have cut wine consumption by more than 20 percent over the past decade, like rose more than ever before. Journee-Vincole reports that 1 out of 4 bottles of wine sold in France is rose, up from 1 in 10 bottles in 1990. Apparently, the French see rose as a lighter and healthier alternative to red wine, and it appeals to the younger audience that doesn't drink as much wine as their parents or grandparents.

? Bernie Madoff's wine collection: The serial swindler liked wine, but wasn't very discriminating. That attitude didn't help the federal officials who are selling Madoff's assets to re-pay his victims. They raised just $41,000 when they auctioned Madoff's wine. How pitiful is that? I've probably got a couple of thousand dollars worth of wine in the house, and I never swindled billions from anyone.

? Green screwcaps: Today's shoutout to our friends in the cork business comes from the San Francisco Chronicle, which notes that screwcaps are the most environmentally friendly wine closure. Says a San Francisco recycling official: Screwcaps "are relatively easy to recycle and can be made almost infinitely back into metal screw-tops." Plus, as we all know, you don't need a corkscrew.

Winebits 167: Grape prices, Robert Parker, corks

? Grape crush third highest ever: California crushed 3.7 million tons of grapes in 2010 — the third-largest crush to date, reports WineBusinessNews.com. The good news for consumers? California grape prices fell by almost seven percent, and so wine prices should continue to be "consumer-friendly" for the next couple of years. Otherwise, the figures are quite contradictory, and trying to make sense of them is not easy. Some of the numbers show that the price for Napa grapes declined by more than seven percent, which would be a crisis of epic proportions. On the other hand, says the magazine, looking at another set of figures, maybe they increased one-half of once percent.

? Changes in the Robert Parker empire: Jon Bonne at the San Francisco Chronicle details key changes in the way Robert Parker — the most important person in the wine business — will review wines. The story is very long, and a lot of it is very inside baseball, but there are a couple of things worth noting. Parker is going to review fewer California wines, which Bonne called "stunning news," and the critic who will take over California probably won't be all that different from Parker. "Those awaiting the demise of big, hedonistic cult wines are probably out of luck," wrote Bonne.

? Corks to shoes: Our friends in the cork business, who keep insisting that you're not one of the cool kids unless you drink wine that has a cork closure, have enlisted the Grammy Awards to spread their message. Wines sealed with cork will be served at a fundraiser honoring Barbra Streisand and at the official Grammy celebration. Plus, the corks will be recycled to make shoes. Which raises an important question: When did the Grammy awards become cool again?

Winebits 166: State budgets, global warming, screwcaps

? Sunday booze as budget panacea: Since 2002, 14 states and numerous municipalities have repealed their blue laws banning Sunday alcohol sales in efforts to spur revenue growth for their governments. Now, 36 states allow such sales, and a host more want to end Sunday bans in an attempt to raise cash without raising taxes. The biggest hurdle the states have to clear? From liquor store owners, who like their legally mandated day off. The irony to all this is that adding an extra day of liquor sales doesn’t usually increase tax revenue in the long term. There’s a short term bump, but most people drink the same amount of wine, beer and liquor regardless of when it’s sold, so the only thing that changes are buying habits. If I drink a bottle of wine a week, I’ll buy it on Sunday instead of Saturday.

? Wine and global warming: Spain’s Pancho Campo, the country’s pre-eminent wine expert, says people who still doubting the existence of climate change are outdated, and points to changes to grape growing as one reason why. Campo says climate change could result in a change in grape quality, and that average temperatures in some wine growing regions have increased so much that grapes grown in particularly hot countries are too alcoholic, ripen oddly, and produce wines that lack aromatic complexity. During my trip to Spain last month, global warming was discussed several times, and winemakers and vineyard managers say they’ve seen significant changes to their grapes over the past 20 years.

? Jancis Robinson on screwcap quality: “While traditionalists may still be reluctant to embrace them, there is now plenty of scientific evidence that indicates money spent on wine sealed with anything but a screwcap is a game of risk” — or so says one of the most influential wine critics in the world. Which, frankly, I’m going to believe more than another news release or video from the cork producers. This article, from Robinson’s Web site, is as good an overview of the history of screwcaps that I’ve seen.