Category Archives: Wine

Fake corks

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I can’t afford to spend a whole lotta money on wine. I tend to buy bottles in the $10-15 range (below that price point I seem to run into wines I don’t find particularly drinkable); I drink them a glassful or so a day to make them last; and I generally only buy a bottle or two at a time.

I hate opening a bottle and finding it skunky.

That’s never happened to me with bottle that’s been closed with a fake cork.

Here’s an piece by Mark Fisher of the Dayton Daily News about fake corks — read the comments, too, a number of knowledgeable people chimed in.

Unfortunately, phasing out cork wine stoppers may have an environmental price: as long as cork wine stoppers have value, it’s a good bet cork oak tree forests will be left intact.

These scattered pockets of cork oaks, mostly in Portugal and Spain, thrive in the hot, arid conditions of the southern Mediterranean, sheltering a wide array of biodiversity and helping to protect the soil from drying out. In addition, some wildlife depends upon cork oak forests for their survival, including the Iberian lynx and the Barbary deer, as well as rare birds such as the Imperial Iberian eagle, the black stork and the Egyptian mongoose.

Figures, doesn’t it?

(Hey, can I drink fake corked wines with a clear conscience if I install cork flooring somewhere? I’d love to install cork flooring somewhere . . . )

’76 all over again . . .

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A blind tasting of wines first compared 30 years ago was deja vous all over again.

In May 1976, nine French wine experts judged New World cabernet sauvignons and chardonnays against their beloved red Bordeaux and white Burgundies in a blind tasting.

Judges ranked the California wines as superior. The French were shocked.

They were also a tad unsporting about the whole thing. During the tasting

the French judges made now-infamous aspersions about the wines. Comments such as “That is clearly from California!,” when tasting a sub-par French wine, and “OK, back to France!,” when their taste buds were actually craving a California wine, have haunted the French to this day.

The French consoled themselves at the time with a new twist on sour grapes — they said well, okay, maybe, but the California wines surely wouldn’t hold up as well, over time.

But they have. In this new tasting, which included the same wines compared in ’76, the “top four winners were Californian.”

Ridge Monte Bello 1971, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973, Heitz Martha’s Vineyard 1970 and Mayacamas 1971 (in a tie), and Clos du Val 1972.

I actually drink a fair amount of French wine, and I delight in finding delicious, modestly-priced French bottles. (I’d delight in the expensive bottles too, if I weren’t on a budget, but that’s a whole other subject.) I’m also enough of a romantic that I’d be heartbroken if the French wine industry ever collapsed.

But I also think it’s silly for the French to think they have a corner on the intelligence, refinement, and commitment to esthetics that it takes to craft fine wines. Obviously, they don’t. And you know what else? That’s okay. Because the fact is, we ought to be celebrating our common culture and heritage and values, rather than projecting our insecurities and letting ourselves be pushed about, pawn-like, by our baser impulses. Don’t you think?

Robert Parker

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The New York Times has published an article about him (registration required).

I predict the man will be understood, one day, as having importance far beyond the world of wine; as somehow epitomizing the late 20th century boomer generation American.

Getting buttered in Rochester

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Searching for the perfect Friday post, and lo, I discover that Rochester’s own Century Discount Liquors made The Wall Street Journal‘s Friday Tastings column: “Taking Sides in the Butter Battle” (subscription required).

Turns out, a rebellion is brewing amongst wine drinkers, who are demanding the return of the buttery Chardonnay. Good for them, I say! Butter Lovers, Unite! So columnists Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, being gracious & tolerant sorts, phoned wine shops in various cities around the country

and posed this question: “If we walked into your shop this minute and asked you for a buttery American Chardonnay, what would you sell us?” We said they could choose one over $20 and one under $20, but they had to answer right away from wines that were on the shelf.

One of the stores they called was Century, where Michael Misch, general manager, recommended a Chalk Hill ($28) and Franciscan ($14).

So isn’t this grand? Now if you’re looking for bottled butter, you don’t have to say so out loud — and attract sneers from the anything-but-Chardonnay shoppers — or resort to passing a note to a clerk, which could get you mistaken for a criminal.

Otoh, pairing a Chardonnay, buttery or not, with the cold front that’s moved in today may well be the height of gauche. I’d better Google that, I think . . .

I’m shocked, shocked

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It was a happy day when I discovered that there really is a way to keep an opened bottle of red wine around for a week or so without it spoiling. Wine is, after all, is good for a woman’s brain, plus it tastes nice. Well, some of it tastes nice.

Lately I’ve been drinking a 2001 Chateau de Lavagnac that a nearby wine shop is carrying, and discounts to a reasonable price if you’ve signed up for one of their customer cards. It’s a nice wine, friendly, very drinkable. When I stopped in tonight to pick up another bottle, though, I was temporarily waylaid by a salesman who was set up behind the shop’s tasting counter. He had a couple of Australian and California wines there. I tried a California Merlot. No sale. It tasted harsh to my palate. Chain restaurant wine.

Perhaps it needed to be electrocuted.

Or perhaps it would be okay if I just ate cheese with it:

NEXT time you are organising a cheese and wine party, don’t waste your money on quality wine. Cheese masks the subtle flavours that mark out a good wine, so your guests won’t be able to tell that you are serving them cheap stuff.

“Cheap stuff”?

Do they mean, like Mad Dog 20/20 cheap stuff?

lol

“Better serve the strong cheese tonight, dear . . . “