The Week in Alcohol

We're Coming Back! (again)

2010-04-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

Archives from The Week in Alcohol's most recent home at Zoomer will be posted here a few at a time until we're back up to date and publishing anew. Stay Tuned!

We've Moved! (again)

2009-05-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

After a few more months on hiatus, you'll now find The Week in Alcohol up and running again bi-weekly or so over at Zoomer Magazine! It's good to be back!

The Week in Alcohol

2008-11-20T11:28:00.000-08:00

The 'she could end up rotting in Hell' part was taken out by his Firefox grammar-checker A Paris judge has filed charges against critic Robert Parker for defamation of his former assistant, Hannah Agostini, author of Robert Parker: Anatomy of a Myth. "The charges were filed Friday against Parker for writing on his Internet site that Agostini 'could end up stagnating in prison,' and for misrepresenting the penalties that she faces, officials said.... The critic declined comment about the case. He was fined €2,000 ($2,820) by a Paris court in March for violating Agostini's presumption of innocence."

As a sobriety test, you just have to type out "Super Saver Shipping" without slurring your words Amazon.com announced that they would soon be selling wine online

The return address on the rice bags to the Lepage factory in Mianzhu, China should have been a bit of a giveaway Japan's Sake supply has been compromised by tainted rice. "Shipments of pesticide-ridden, rotting rice, intended for use in glue factories, have ended up in the human food chain, principally as ingredients for brewing the national tipple. In the past week more than a million bottles of shochu and saké - drinks made from rice - have been recalled over safety fears."

Their "drink beer and be impotent" campaign didn't seem to work too well The Brewers association of Canada announced that over the next five years it would be donating $1 million to the study of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in Canada

...but especially when somebody's applying for a job as a T.T.C. executive The Toronto Transit Commission announced that it would soon be testing some workers for alcohol and drugs. The report "recommends that employees in 'safety sensitive' jobs like vehicle operators or track workers, their supervisors, and members of the TTC executive be subject to six stages of drug and alcohol testing: when applying for a job, when there is 'reasonable' suspicion of impairment, after an incident, after a violation, after treatment and randomly."

He then went on to observe that they had bad weather and produced crummy soccer players as well Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver complained that Britons didn't appreciate decent cuisine, and that "the only people who drink more than us are the Irish and the Scottish"

2008-10-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

The only problem is that Yellow Tail sets off the alarm as well Scientists in France have designed a technique to detect counterfeit wines. "The results reveal the age of the bottle, and the wine within it. This data is then compared to results from bottles known to be authentic."

Your ticket there on Air Canada will cost you $1259.99 Macau---which has recently eclipsed Las Vegas as the gambling capital of the world---has eliminated it's 15% tax on wine "in a bid to become a dominant player in the regional fine wine market".

It was followed by a sex-free orgy at Tommy Lee's hotel room Motley Crue played a concert at Toronto's Molson Amphitheater at which alcohol was banned.

However, the age of consent still stays at 10 France plans to raise it's drinking age to 18

It all happened when Becks and Posh left Real Madrid for Hollywood The Foreign Office in London released figures showing that the number of British tourists in Spain arrested for being drunk grew by a third over the course of the previous year

Racing in front of Gordon Brown will do that to a guy In Britain, a dozen jockeys have been caught drinking and riding by random alcohol testing. "But as only a tiny fraction of those who ride each day are tested under the system, it is thought many more jockeys are still slipping through the net and riding under the influence of alcohol".

He actually thought he was riding in the fifth race at Epsom Russian high-jumper Ivan Ukhov was banned from a Swiss track meet for jumping while inebriated. Film at 11:00.

No, We Haven't Moved! (But take a look at Larry's Page anyway.)

2008-09-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

The Week in Alcohol is coming back from it's hiatus at a new site! The Week... is now being hosted by Larry's Page, over down Spinnakers' way! Thanks for your patience and continued patronage! Come by and give us a look!

The Week in Alcohol

2008-04-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

Wonderful news! Big Brother has raised the bread ration from 500 grams to 250 grams! Initial signs are that prices for the mostly inferior 2007 crop of Bordeaux wines are going to be inflated: the first Bordeaux chateaus to declare prices have kept them at 2006 levels. Meanwhile, Robert Parker, the man who usually gets the blame for 20 years of upwardly spiraling Bordeaux prices, has called the majority of the wines coming out of Bordeaux in 2007 herbaceous and disappointing. In related news, Rising prices of European wine have been traced to a tax on... bunker fuel

At least neither's thinking of bringing out a Roger Moore line of products A dust-up has developed between Champagne houses Bollinger and Taittinger over which is fictional spy James Bond's champagne of choice. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bond creator Ian Fleming, both champagne-makers hosted self-promoting Bond-themed events in London.

She declined to lower the admission price to her private weblog, though Critic and wine-writer Jancis Robinson was quoted as calling wine critics "parasites". Meanwhile, Clive Coates, in The Wines of Burgundy, has come out against Robert Parker and The Wine Spectator: "Wine Critics are often misinformed or just plain pig-ignorant."

They were trying for Satisfaction but Keith and Mick were asking too much "Ex Nihilo Vineyards, in Okanagan Centre north of Kelowna, will be producing a limited release of an icewine labelled in honour of the Stones' hit Sympathy for the Devil."

Its makers had just arranged a deal with the Broken Social Scene to call it Finish Your Collapse and Stay for Breakfast Toronto police raided an illegal winery in Toronto and found tens of thousands of liters of wine stored in desperately unsanitary conditions, intended to be sold in local convenience stores at $15 a gallon

The Week in Alcohol

2008-04-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

It was just the homemade beer talking Premier Brad Wall of Saskatchewan apologized for derogatory remarks he made towards Ukrainians in general and one-time NDP Leader Roy Romanow in particular at a conservative gathering 17 years ago. In the 1991 video released to the media recently, Wall speaks in a bad Ukranian accent and jokes about sending bombs to labour leaders. In the same video, Saskatchewan MP Tom Lukiwski referred to gays as "faggots with dirt on their fingernails that transmit diseases." Prime Minister Steven Harper has declined to discipline Lukiwski.

They're sending in Silvio Berlusconi to investigate Several of Italy's top Brunello producers have been charged with adulterating their wines. "None of the producers has yet been charged, but investigating magistrates have blocked the bottling of 2003 vintage Brunello by three of the most important producers, Antinori, Frescobaldi and Argiano, and quarantined 10 vineyards and 600,000 bottles belonging to Castello Banfi. Top managers at two firms have received formal warnings of impending investigation."

If only it prevented dementia in Saskatchewan Tory politicians Evidence was recently presented that women who consume wine are up to 70% less likely than abstainers to develop dementia

Afterwards, lawyers arguing the losing position were heard to make rude remarks on the lack of wine consumed by female justices on the majority side In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the so-called "two-beer defence", where drunk-driving defendants bring in their own experts to claim that they metabolized alcohol faster than could be measured by a breathalyser.

Ex-Governor Eliot Spitzer's hookers could have told you something like that years ago A study found that the more expensive you think a wine is, the more likely you are to like it.

In a later statement, he tried to use the ten-beer defence In Wales, ex-Tory Minister Rod Richards got into a drunken punch-up with Conservative canvassers on his doorstep. "The conversation developed into a heated argument involving Mr Richards and four Tory canvassers. The ex-MP claimed he hit one of them after he was pushed to the ground and hurt a finger. He said: 'The guy who pushed me was rude and arrogant. I don’t regret clipping him.' "

The Week in Alcohol

2008-04-02T14:06:00.000-07:00

And we think you're full of shit about the '07 Bordeaux as well Robert Parker was fined 2000 Euros by a French court for uttering false accusations against former associate Hanna Agostini, author of The Anatomy of a Myth, which (among other things) claimed Parker often wrote about wines he'd not tasted. In related news, it was announced that Javier Bardim was to portray Parker in a new movie... oh---April Fool.

America drinks and goes home Bordeaux producers, faced with a less-than-stellar 2007 vintage to take to market this year, are seeing little but sour grapes in the American market. "'America is not the world, it is a bit bigger than that,' said Patrick Maroteaux, president of the Union des Grands Cru de Bordeaux, and organiser of the annual primeur tastings", when asked about the softness of the US market for the '07's. One American who will still be welcome is new felon Robert Parker: "If I get a good Parker score, which makes it so easy to sell my wines, that is great" according to Bordeaux producer Didier Marcelis

We're also asking the public to interpret $2.8 million in liquor industry contributions as mere public-spiritedness Against the advice of the state's Attorney General, the Maryland Legislature is considering a bill to regulate alcohol-pops (such as Mike's Hard Lemonade and Jack Daniel's Black Jack Cola) as beer rather than liquor. "If the legislation makes it through the House, the drinks would continue to be taxed at lower rates than alcoholic beverages such as rum and whiskey and would enjoy wider distribution than spirits."

It was followed by an alcohol-pop happy-hour at the student-union pub A judge has overturned Virginia's ban on alcohol-related advertising in college newspapers. "U.S. Magistrate Judge M. Hannah Lauck sided with the student newspapers at the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, which said the restrictions on alcohol references -- including phrases such as 'happy hour' -- in print and online media hampered their ability to make money because they've had to turn down potential advertisers".

Now if we can just keep him from songwriting when he's sober Hanna Alta. native and Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger (real name Chad Turton) was convicted of drunk driving and will be sentenced May 1st. He's been caught driving his Lamborghini 160 km/h through Surrey, BC at nearly twice the legal blood-alcohol limit.

The Week in Alcohol

2008-03-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

Another reason for Russia to join the European Union One million revelers marked St. Patrick's Day in Dublin, celebrating Ireland's status as the binge-drinking capital of Europe. Alcohol consumption in Ireland has risen 50% over the last 20 years, with binge-consumption now twice the average in the rest of the continent. "Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, often pictured drinking Bass ale, last week called for a crackdown on drinking. His initiative followed the murder of two Polish workers who were stabbed with a screwdriver in the south city suburb of Drimnagh on Feb. 23. The Dublin-based Irish Times said they were killed for refusing to buy alcohol for a teenage gang."

...But the Asian Tigers respond to the challenge The South Korean Health Ministry announced that binge drinking was costing the country 2.9% of its gross domestic product per annum. "They often continue boozing past midnight, entering a second round or a third round of drinking at karaoke bars or restaurants, drenching themselves with 'Bombshells' -- cups of beer mixed with whiskey".

A name that just had "wine" written all over it Niagara Vintners Inc., the Ontario winemaking co-op that produced "20 Bees", has gone bankrupt. Originally the brainchild of a group of 19 growers "they built a 43,000-square-foot winemaking facility near Niagara-on-the- Lake, Ont., opened a retail outlet and announced plans to hire 400 workers. They also set a target of producing up to 100,000 cases of 20 Bees and 20 Ice annually, roughly five times what many established wineries produce." The consensus of analysis is that they set their sights too high, too early: their ambitious first run was 30,000 cases, 21,000 of which remain unsold with the receiver---along with 3.6 million liters of bulk wine

They're going to call her first fragrance "hangover" Actress Eva Mendez, fresh from a spell of rehab at Utah's Cirque clinic, signed a new contract with Calvin Klein, which includes her own line of perfume

Flash! Australian nation now on suicide watch! Last year 1.3 million bottles of Arrogant Frog were exported to Australia, a 20 percent increase on 2006, according to Jean-Claude Mas, the wine's Languedoc-based producer.

Click on map to enlarge... In response to greater demand for Champagne, particularly from "emerging [read Asian nouveau riche] markets", France's Institut National des Appellations d’Origine has enlarged the official Champagne appellation from its current 270 villages to 310. "For those joining the exclusive club of Champagne producers, the move will be extremely lucrative, according to Gilles Flutet of the I.N.A.O. On one side of the divide, land is worth about $3,000 a hectare, but its value rises to nearly $1.5 million a hectare on the other side."

The Week in Alcohol

2008-03-06T12:05:00.000-08:00

I will do such things--- what they are, yet I know not---but they shall be the terrors of the earth! The French wine producer's lobby group Vin et Société has threatened French President Nicolas Sarkozy with industry-wide action if he doesn't act on a campaign promise to repeal or gut the 1991 Evin Law, which radically limited the industry's ability to promote itself. Recent court decisions have resulted in the closing down of Heineken's French website, Champagne house Moët & Chandon being fined 30,000 euros, and newspapers being forced to post government warnings along with articles about wine

That'll clarify things The Bordeaux Syndicate has voted to rename the Bordeaux Supérieur AOC "Bordeaux Premier Cru". Not surprisingly, the Medoc's 1er Crus from the 1855 classification are protesting. In other news, the appelation "Cru Bourgeois" is making a comeback

It seems smokers were spontaneously combusting In a voice vote this week, the Missouri Senate voted to ban alcohol vaporizers. The machines (also referred to as AWOL) allow users to inhale alcohol directly into the lungs and bloodstream. "Sellers promote it as a way to get a buzz without the calories, carbohydrates or much of a hangover."

You just have to flawlessly type "super-saver shipping" 10 times as a sobriety test Amazon.com has announced its intention to sell wine on its website.

They knew something was up when they found the alcohol vaporizer in the ladies room According to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "An administrative assistant whose job duties include testing Entergy Nuclear employees at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant for possible drug and alcohol use was suspended for two weeks after she was found to exceed allowable alcohol limits." According to Raymond Shadis, a senior technical advisor for the anti-nuclear New England Coalition, "You have real problems when those people who are in charge have a hard time staying straight and sober."

When they ask why I drink all day I'll say because I can Breathalyzer evidence against Nickelback front-man Chad Kroeger was ruled admissible by a judge, and the 2006 impaired-driving charge against him will go ahead. "When Kroeger stopped for police, an officer noted he had red, glossy eyes and a red, flushed face. He allegedly handed over his credit card when the officer asked for his driver's licence."

The Week in Alcohol

2008-02-20T10:23:00.000-08:00

He declined to discuss how little he settled for Massachusetts wine collector Russell H Frye, a litigant at the center of the notorious "Jefferson Bottles" lawsuit, has settled his suit against California's The Wine Library out of court. In related news, two movies about the case are currently in development; while the man at the center of the storm, Hardy Rodenstock, hangs out at his castle and giggles

That's kind of shameless for a start Wine commentator Jancis Robinson has started a "name and shame" campaign on her website, devoted to exposing wine producers who for arcane delusions of prestige, irresponsibly sell their wines in overly heavy (and environmentally insulting) bottles. Unfortunately, to either name a bottle or shame a winemaker, you have to be a subscriber to the pay portion (the so-called 'purple pages') of her site, at a cost of 99 Euros per annum. In related news, Southern France is suffering a glass bottle shortage

Miller found out that Britney was adding alcohol to hers after she'd opened it Several US Attourneys-General are demanding an inquiry into SABMiller Plc's Miller Brewing, whose "Sparks" alcoholic energy drinks contain double the amount of caffeine allowed under Federal regulations, and 17% more alcohol than stated on the label

Wait 'till they find out what they were fried in The food standards committee of the Muslim Council of Britain has called for an investigation of several snack-food manufacturers for using trace amounts of alcohol as a flavoring agent in their potato chips

Another reason to use screw caps A Surrey, BC man has been sentenced to 9 years in prison in Australia for smuggling two kilos of cocaine into the country. The drug was found dissolved in three 1.5 liter bottles of wine in the convicted man's luggage. Customs agents were possibly tipped off by the fact that the bottles were all a bargain BC brand, but were being brought in from Hong Kong. (Or the idea that nobody brings crummy Chardonnay to Australia and gets away with it)

The Week in Alcohol

2008-02-14T20:47:00.000-08:00

Good bloodlines Paris Hilton's weedy little brother, the ominously named 18 year-old Barron Hilton, was arrested this week for DUI. He registered almost double the legal limit on the breathalyser test, was found to be carrying a fake California drivers license, and was carrying a female passenger who had sideswiped a Ford Ranger earlier in the evening. The Hilton family declined to post bail.

But they have not yet banned the Fois Gras dispensers from the washrooms France has banned sales of wine, beer and spirits at gas stations. In a related story, a French court has upheld a lower court's ban on alcohol advertising on the internet in France.

Of course, he was only 7 1/2 times over the limit for Manitobans In Bosnia, a driver pulled over for zig-zagging blew 0.6 on a shocked police officer's breathalyser, which is both 20 times the Bosnian legal limit of .03, and well past the point where he should have slipped into a coma.

That's 'subtropical' as in backwoods Louisiana, right? According to Russia's National Alcohol Association president Pavel Shapkin, sales of bootleg alcohol in Russia last year dropped 14% from almost half of total consumption to a mere 28%. "Our country is shifting from a temperate pattern of beverage consumption to that of a subtropical way of life."

Taking them out of the gas stations forced them to raise prices Alain-Dominique Perrin, CEO of the Richemont Group (which owns Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Montblanc, Piaget and Dunhill, among other concerns), described high en primeur prices anticipated for the 2007 Bordeaux first growths as "immoral". Perrin noted that prices for top Bordeaux are generally 8000% above what it cost to produce them, whereas the standard markup in the luxury trade is closer to 1700%.

2008-02-06T13:13:00.000-08:00

A shameless plug for the Bill James of B.C. wine gurus, Larry Arnold---whose Blog for Spinnaker's Spirit Merchants has finally gone more-or-less live. We look forward to regular abuse and sermonizing from the ol' sage, and wish him the best of luck---or if he can't find that, a good ghostwriter. Good luck Larry!

The Week in Alcohol

2008-01-30T15:34:00.000-08:00

But it was when she called him "sugar tits" that he got really pissed off Actress Sean Young entered rehab this week after heckling director Julian Schnabel during a drunken episode at the DGA awards, yelling "hey, get on with it" when the director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly rambled on aimlessly during his acceptance speech

Those French Moet and Chandon were fined 30,000 Euros this week, essentially for making their champagne look too attractive in a poster advertisement

Let the pissing match begin Bottle Shock, the first of two movies about the infamous 'Judgment of Paris' winetasting of 1976, was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Steven Spurrier, who organized the original tasting and is a backer of Judgment of Paris (a competing movie whose production is currently held up by the screenwriter's strike) has gone on the record as being unimpressed with Alan Rickman's portrayal of him

Alcohol doesn't kill people, bad American comedies aimed at teenagers kill people David Reid, 22, died of alcohol poisoning when he and a friend attempted to recreate a 'last man standing' drinking game they had seen in the teen comedy American Pie. (In a related story, Rehab wannabees copycat celebrity screwups )

Gay customers didn't much like it either In Britain, Marks and Spencer has launched 'Pink Port'; a variation on the renowned Portuguese sweet wine, only lightened in color and aimed at the female consumer. Initial expert reaction has not been favorable

It's from bowing down before all those monster Cabernets Robert Parker is undergoing back surgery and will likely miss this winter's Bordeaux tastings, thus throwing their futures prices into chaos

RSVP Tasting: When the boss takes home what he wants

2008-01-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

Wine Golan Heights Yarden Cabernet Sauvignon 2003
From Israel
Price 39.64 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 14.5%
The first of the Parker 90’s from his Israeli tasting to make it to our table; wine exhibits a new-world style leaning more towards Chile than, say, Australia. No particular nose on opening; tannic finish. The philosophical taster is impressed by everything but the price: “this is nice and balanced… nothing out of place.” The Boss is less impressed: “there’s a reedyness up front… I’m going to have to think about it…” Which means he’s seen the price too, and isn’t going to think about it much past the next wine.

Wine Estampa Malbec-Syrah 2006
From Chile
Price $13.90 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 14.4%
Emphatic nose draws ohhs and ahhs around the table, with people finding everything from licorice to tobacco in it. The wine shows a palate that’s fairly typical of the blend if not the country of origin; tannins are still a bit green. Much enthusiasm; lead taster is even a little over-the-top: “Incredible---this is delicious.” He puts the cork in the bottle and quietly puts it aside to take home---either the most telling complement of all, or a snapshot of the poor state of his mutual funds.

Wine Quinta da Espiga 2005
From Portugal
Price 12.99 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
A peppery nose and black cherry on the palate raises eyebrows all around; lots of enthusiasm---mostly for the price. One taster finds the tannins a bit green on the finish: “there’s a sort of under-ripe banana aftertaste to this.” But for the most part, never is heard a discouraging word; and Fearless Leader puts this one aside to take home as well.

Wine Glorioso Rioja Crianza 2004
From Spain
Price 16.95 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Not your mother’s Rioja, this: sweet fruit and a mild nature lead to shrugs from some tasters; enthusiasm from others. Context says a lot; coming on the heels of the Espiga above, it’s a relative letdown---although not for the boss: “I taste strawberries; there’s good acid and good structure to this.” One more reason to favor Spain in the great scheme of things; one more bottle for him to take home.

Wine Bogle Chenin Blanc 2006
From California
Price $17.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
A sniff, a sip, and the lead taster draws himself up to his full height: “You can quote me on this,” he says, “this is a fruity little bastard: crisp, tart… I like it a lot”. Noted, dude. Plenty of positive comment from the peanut gallery as well: sweet fruit but a tart, apple finish and decent balance even at room temperature. Pricey, perhaps, considering what you can get in BC already.

Wine Golan Heights Yarden Muscat 2005
From Israel
Price $24.77 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.9%
Sweet, aromatic, and terrific: a nose of candied pears; a complex palate with good, sweet Muscat notes; universal acclaim. The philosophical taster tries to sneak this one home and fails, settling for the Yarden Cab as a sort of consolation prize.

The Week in Alcohol

2008-01-11T11:57:00.001-08:00

Handing out speeding tickets can drive a man to drink for sure Northern Ireland Deputy Chief Constable Paul Leighton was criticized for envisioning extenuating circumstances for police officers caught drinking and driving

I guess it was the drunk driving through the carwash with the triple whopper that proved to be too much for them Fulvio Brunetta, president of the wine growers association of the Italian city of Treviso (where Prosecco is made) condemned ads for Rich Prosecco, featuring Paris Hilton

Warning: pregnant French women should not read this newspaper article A Paris county court ruled that an editorial piece in the Le Parisien newspaper entitled 'the triumph of Champagne' could be constituted as advertising, and thus must carry the same health warning that a liquor ad does.

Hey, Adam---you've got company Celebrated California winemaker Adam Tolmach of the Ojai Vinyard admitted that by chasing favorable reviews by Robert Parker, he now makes wines with so much alcohol that he doesn't like to drink them any more

All the a-list celebs were released from the show after serving 10% of their sentence VH1's reality series Celebrity Rehab continues to draw horselaughs and terrible press. In other news, DUI jailbird Michelle Rodriguez is now available if needed

Happy New Year: The Week in Alcohol

2008-01-03T09:48:00.001-08:00

Guess those cork closures are permeable after all The Sovereign General Insurance Company was successfully sued by a Vancouver couple after their $5-10 million wine collection was partly destroyed by a 2003 sewer backup in their cellar. Sovereign General had refused to pay off, claiming that they didn't know of the existence of the wine.

It seems she looked better with her clothes on than he did with his off Former OC star Mischa Barton was charged with possession of drugs, driving under the influence and driving without a valid license in West Hollywood. To add insult to injury, musician ex-boyfriend Cisco Adler was quoted as saying she looked "so hot" in her mugshot.

I guess the judge didn't like her performance in Girlfight Hispanic actress and Lost star Michelle Rodriguez began serving a 180-day sentence after violating terms of probation for a drunken driving conviction. For racial and class conspiracy theorists, that's 108 days, 21 hours and 16 minutes longer than Kiefer Sutherland, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Ritchie and Paris Hilton's DUI jail time combined. Update: Rodriguez was released after serving 18 days, or 10% of her sentence. So she's luckier than Paris, at least.

Now, if they can just get rid of those brass bands and short pants as well On January 1st, the state of Bavaria passed Germany's most stringent anti-smoking legislation, which will likely make Munich's famed Oktoberfest a non-smoking event.

What did we ever do to deserve this? Robert Parker's The Wine Advocate, in its "first-ever generic tasting of Israeli wines," awarded 14 scores of 90 points or higher, 11 to Kosher wines.

Happy Christmas---The Year in Alcohol

2007-12-18T20:58:00.000-08:00

Next month, David Lee Roth on the Super-Tuscans In The Wine Spectator, Ex-Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar the Horrible reveals an unexpected fondness for classic Bordeaux; together with praise for the guys he considers the greatest noses in rock-and-roll: Boston's Fran Sheehan, and The Year of the Cat's Al Stewart

I asked her if she was game---she said yes, so I shot her Organizers of the 75th Minneapolis Northwest Sports Show announced the innaguration of a "Women, Wine and Wild Game" day

That'll be $49.99 for your bottle of Yellow Tail It's official: the worst drought in living memory has cut Australia's grape harvest by 30%. Grape pickers have been referred to by commentators as 'search parties'.

But would you want to have a beer with him? An informal poll of French winemakers revealed a preference for right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy over the socialist Segolene Royal in the upcoming French Presidential election. Sarkozy has hinted that he might roll back the Evan Law, which bans most forms of advertising for alcoholic beverages in France. (A teatotaler, Sarkozy has also hinted at changes to France's 35 hour work week.)

Bring on the Asian Billionaires Part II On the heels of the third or fourth ‘vintage of the century’ in the last 50 years, and with prices largely beyond the reach of the mass market, top-rank Bordeaux growers are in a bind: how to keep prices up with a 2006 crop universally derided as a lousy investment? A hint at the answer is provided by Gary Boom of Bordeax Index. Describing the first growths as “completely overpriced”, Boom forecasts that the 2006’s “won't sell well and will be a bad investment” but might also prove to be “a classic vintage for new buyers – especially in the Far East – who want to secure allocations in future.” Translation: We’ll sell inferior, overpriced wine to the suckers of the nouveau riche, with the promise that this will give them entry into the club in time for the next vintage that’s really worth buying.

French Terrorists we can understand, part II As reported last month, France's Comite d'Action Regionale Viticole bombed grocery stores as an unorthodox method of forcing the national government to support prices in the flagging Languedoc wine industry. With the election of the tea-totaling but apparently wine-friendly president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy, the group has stepped up its rhetoric. In a tape sent to local television, balaclava-clad gunmen whipped up support for their industry: "Winemakers, we call on you to revolt. We are at the point of no return: If Sarkozy does not have the sense to support the wine sector, he will be responsible for what happens."

But they gave Jancis Robinson the pull-down baby-changing station in the business-class washroom US Airways will be laminating Business Week articles by Robert Parker into their pull-down tray-tables on their economy-class seats. According to BW Publisher Geoff Dodge, "This unique partnership affords Business Week a great opportunity to place our content in front of a captive audience of potential users."

I guess it helps her get through a day with Jamie Burke Actress and philosopher Sienna Miller recently stopped presses around the globe by claiming that the most meaningful relationship she has is with wine.

On the other hand, France now makes the better action movies According to a new report, the United States is on the verge of replacing France as the world's largest wine consumer. America remains only the fourth largest producer, after France, Italy and Spain.

Don’t drink and proselytize A survey published by the evangelical Christian firm Lifeway Research claimed that while the majority of lay Protestants believe consuming alcohol to be biblically sanctioned, three quarters of senior Southern Baptist pastors surveyed believed that drinking made evangelism less effective. (90% of Protestant clergy surveyed believed that “a Christian drinking alcohol could cause other believers to stumble or be confused.”)

Extra! New drug for alcoholic rats! An anti-smoking drug, varenicline, has been suggested effective in combating alcoholism. But “...no research on the drug as a treatment for alcoholism has been done yet on humans. But one study on rats shows varenicline cuts desire for alcohol by 50 percent. The rats do not exhibit excessive drinking even after they are no longer given the drug.”

Start with high-calorie beer. Please. Actress-tycoons Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are now old enough to legally drink in all 50 states.

Jeez, Brit, Rockstar comes with the alcohol already in it Songstress and mother-of-the-year finalist Britney Spears has been spotted recently pouring liquor into her energy drinks while out in public

Extra! Pot smokers drink lousy beer as well A study published by the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) claimed either that people who abuse malt liquor also tend to abuse pot; or that people who abuse pot tend towards cheap malt liquor as their beverage of choice (coverage is unclear).

Maybe if they'd just called it "Ol' Yeller" Disney Studios backed out of a product tie-in with Costco for their new animated film Ratatouille: Ratatouille Chardonnay.

Drink up the cider, George Singer, poet, and the best friend a bottle of Guinness ever had, Tommy Makem died of lung cancer this week at age 74

Depends on what you mean by 'occasion' A new study released by the US Centers for Disease Control shows that two-thirds of adult binge drinkers prefer to go on their benders with beer. On the other hand, teenage binge drinkers prefer hard liquor. The study defined 'binge' as five or more drinks on one occasion.

Put down the Brunello with its gobs of soft fruit on the nose and sweet tannins on the attack, and step away from the table with your hands up According to Decanter Magazine, Twenty-five members of the Italian military police have qualified as sommeliers in order to combat fraud in the industry.

Living in the same province as Gordon Campbell will do that to you A study published by Toronto's Center for Addiction and Mental Health found alcohol abuse in British Columbia to be almost 20% above the national average and 50% above the level observed in Quebec.

But we're allowing alcohol at the shark-wrestling tank Authorities have forbidden the organizers of an Irish St Patrick's Day skydiving event from selling liquor

Meanwhile, for hangover sufferers, science shows that the cure really is worse than disease The journal Chemical Research in Toxicology published a study linking the combination of Red Bull (or other heavily-caffeinated energy drinks) and Tylenol to liver damage

But Bullwinkle, that trick never works Lindsay Lohan emerged this week from two months in rehab. It was her third crack at alcohol treatment this year

So that’s what killed him England’s Prince Harry, soon to be publicly immortalized in marble as a dead soldier in a tribute to servicemen not allowed to participate in the gulf war, was photographed this week snorting vodka

You want that bottle in paper or plastic, you drunken scumbag BC Liquor Stores announced a campaign to encourage alcohol consumption in moderation by making “those who abuse alcohol feel rejected/marginalized.”

No, I’m stupid like Mickey Rourke, Robert Downy Jr. and Courtney Love In an interview with FHM Magazine, failed television host, notorious party animal and Paris Hilton satellite Tara Reid distanced herself from celebrity last-days- of-Pompeii culture by claiming not to be as “stupid” as Hilton, Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan

But that's pretty much average for a night out in Cardif Journalists came upon the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby coach passed out in a washroom before the World Cup quarter-finals in Cardif, Wales. In related news, Australian Rugby Union chair Peter McGrath was forced to resign his position when "one of Australian rugby's major sponsor complained in writing that McGrath was so affected by alcohol he could hardly speak at a function on the eve of Australia's quarter-final defeat by England in Marseille, France"

Good thing Parker didn't call him a New Zealander Documentary filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter (2004's Mondovino) has released his first book, Le Gout et le Pouvoir (roughly, "Taste and Power"). Not unexpectedly, Robert Parker has thrown a fit, calling Nossiter a "narrow-minded zealot" a bigot, and a member of the "scary wine Gestapo". (This may be no more than simple tit-for-tat; two years ago Nossiter accused Parker's partner Pierre-Antoine Rovani of being "a Mussolini apologist, indirectly fascist and anti-semitic, 'monolithic and unscrupulously self-serving.' ")

She was really trying to draw attention to coke-snorting Bengal Tigers A story claiming that Paris Hilton was taking up the case of binge-drinking elephants in India ("The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them. There would have been more casualties if the villagers hadn't chased them away. And four elephants died in a similar way three years ago. It is just so sad....") later proved to be false.

The story that he raped a stable-girl in celebration was later dismissed as a mistranslation French actor and noteworthy pounder Gerard Depardieu was named this year's "Pope" of Bordeaux's Chateau Pape Clement

It was around about then that a bottomless pit opened up and an evil host led by Abaddon the King of the Abyss came forth A major British supermarket chain reported that in the lead-up to Christmas, English wine was outselling wines from Bordeaux, California, Portugal, Alsace and Germany

The Week in Alcohol

2007-12-13T20:31:00.000-08:00

In a related study, they were unable to see any significant difference between Steven Harper and Dick Cheney The University of Victoria's Center for Addictions Research published a study which found that a group of university-aged males couldn't tell the difference between regular-strength and low-alcohol beer

Well, when you're pissed, you can't tell whether the glass is half full or half empty The Australian Wine and Brandy corporation released figures which were interpreted in the Rupert Murdoch-owned The Australian as saying that "wine exports grew 8% on pricey reds", while its competitor The Age interpreted the data as saying that "wine export growth slows again."

It was around about then that a bottomless pit opened up and an evil host led by Abaddon the King of the Abyss came forth A major British supermarket chain reported that in the lead-up to Christmas, English wine was outselling wines from Bordeaux, California, Portugal, Alsace and Germany

The John Belushi Blues Brothers Speedball was an especially hot seller Former funny man Dan Aykroyd spent the week barnstorming Atlantic Canada promoting the Dan Aykroyd Discovery Series of wines

The "I will kill you" to the police officer was interpreted as simple high spirits 24 star Kieffer Sutherland began serving his 48 day prison sentence for driving while intoxicated

RSVP Tasting: Six Wines in Search of a Character

2007-12-10T11:16:00.000-08:00

Wine Marley Farms Novine White
From Saanich, BC
Price $14.95
Alcohol Content 10.4%
An Ortega – Pinot Grigio blend from a producer best known for non-grape fruit wines. A big Ortega nose gets everybody’s attention; what follows on the palate gets pleased murmurs from all around the table and a smile from Fearless Leader: “Crisp, clean, fresh, and there’s even some weight to it. This is very pleasant.” “Lychees” observes a guest taster, and the silence that greets him is taken to imply consent.

Wine Golden Beaver Gewurztraminer 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $19.00 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
A case where you first have to digest the label (see above) before you get to the taste of the wine: According to the agent who represents their wines, these are nice people trying to do serious wines in modest amounts (and who also seem to be trying just about everything on their 8 acres) but they’ve chosen an image so at odds with their purpose that it’s tough to get past it to what’s in your glass: in this case, a big nose, good Gewurz sweetness on the palate, followed by a twiggy/stemmy/seedy aftertaste that’s made more emphatic by hot alcohol. “Young vines,” our host reminds us. "Compassion is a virtue" replies the Philosophical Taster, quoting early David Byrne, "but I just don't have the time."

Wine Lotusland Enigma
From Abbotsford BC
Price $21.99 (MSL)
Memory does not preserve the group’s thoughts on the Lotusland Pinot Noir that preceded this, except that for everyone, this Pinot Meunier-Gamay combination represented a step in the right direction---up. There is a big, sharp, fruity nose which renders the winemakers purpose transparent----this is a way-station between Beaujolais-Gamay and Pinot Noir: more substantial than the former; more fun than the latter; with the stakes lower in each direction. Cunning stuff, which everybody finds simple and pleasant.

Wine Lotusland Zweigelt 2003
From Abbotsford, BC
Price $32.90 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 12.6%
Nothing is by the book with this Austrian hybrid---a grape in search of a better name---and nobody has any idea what it’s really supposed to taste like; happily, everybody thinks it a larger version of the Enigma, above. “Bigger, rounder, fleshier---I like this!” are the Boss’s words. “How much does it cost…?” A strangled cry when he finds out. Very pleasant, but in this price range you’re going to get much more than just pleasant elsewhere.

Wine Tinhorn Creek Cabernet-Merlot 2005
From Okanagan, BC
Price $16.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 14.1%
Tinhorn is a big brand and thus easy to take swipes at. The comments come thick and fast: “Very weedy.” “Like green peppers.” “I taste mint.” From the Boss: “Refreshing. Very nice… on the rocks.” Light on the palate and not at all unpleasant, there are a lot of indistinct proto-flavors, and a feeling you can’t shake (especially when you’ve just gone through a dozen other wines) that there’s something not quite right; that things are happening on the palate in the wrong order. It feels tannic, but the tannin’s not at the right place in the profile. Maybe it needs some age? The Boss shakes his head: “There’s a lot of winemaker intervention in this; these guys are notorious for stripping everything out and then building their wines up again from scratch. So this is as good as it’s going to taste; there’s no benefit to aging it; this is always going to be a reliable, picnic-chicken red and no more.” At that point, everybody notices the price, counts their blessings, and shuts up.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-12-03T09:03:00.000-08:00

That's nothing--- Marilyn Manson once bought Dita von Teese a distillery in Bryantsville, Kentucky Actor Johnny Depp bought his girlfriend a vineyard in Plan de la Tour, near the French resort town of St. Tropez

The story that he raped a stable-girl in celebration was later dismissed as a mistranslation French actor and noteworthy pounder Gerard Depardieu was named this year's "Pope" of Bordeaux's Chateau Pape Clement

But for only $149.- they'll give you the phone number of the police The extremely moneyed American wine collector Russell H. Frye (a business associate of fellow high-end collector Bill Koch, who was burned in the Hardy Rodenstock phony 'Thomas Jefferson bottle' scandal) has started a website that holds out the promise of authenticating the lineage of those dubious bottles you and I sometimes purchase at auction. Wineauthentication.com is not cheap---membership costs for serious users run from $499.- to the thousands for commercial customers. And while a business plan is being worked out, there is of yet no word on how the system will work, or who will attempt to do the on-line authenticating.

RSVP Tasting: Only in restaurants you say?

2007-11-25T11:33:00.000-08:00

Wine Blue Mountain Reserve Pinot Gris 2004
From Okanagan, BC
Price $25.90 (MSL)
High hopes for any Blue Mountain product arise at least partly from the difficulty in getting them: Allocations are tight enough to make a retailer asking for more to sell feel like an envoy sent to lobby King Darius of Persia. Also, previous experience with their Pinot Blanc boded well. Unfortunately---perhaps because of over-praise from Darius’s rep, insults here fly thicker and faster than at a little-league baseball game: “Reminds me of a Sauvignon Blanc… or old sneakers” is Fearless Leader’s take. “Sweaty armpit” is another. The floodgates open: “I expected something softer.” “The fruit isn’t showing well.” “No varietal character whatever.” But mostly, the sense is one of irritation towards a ho-hum wine that’s been given a Paris Hilton-sized promo.

Wine Church and State Chardonnay Decleva 2005
From Twilight Zone, BC
Price $23.00 (MSL)
Young Grasshopper floats a theory for the lead taster: Expectation is not merely the source of all misery; expectation is the source of all everything. In tasting a wine, your sense of its quality will depend entirely on how it fits into your expectation of what that type of wine has come to taste like for you. (F'rexample, a Pinot, however terrific it tastes, will seem weird and disconcerting if it doesn’t taste like what you’ve come to expect from a Pinot.) So, after several faceless whites, the reason the group grabs onto this Church & State offering like a drowning submariner is because it actually tastes pretty much the way it is supposed to: New world-style Chard with hefty fruit in balance with big toasty oak. But under different circumstances, we might not have been able to pick it from a dozen others just like it. (History does not record the lead taster's response.)

Wine Orofino Chardonnay 2006
From Similkameen Valley, BC
Price $23.00 (MSL)
Orofino makes in-your-face products, and this one is no exception. We’re told that it’s a mix of 75% barrel-fermented and 25% in stainless steel, and this information leads to some hemming and hawing in the peanut gallery---among mere mortals, the distinction between 50-50 and 75-25 percent barrel/stainless fermentation is justifiably a teeny bit obscure. As a result, most taster's expectations are in limbo, and the comments become tentative: “Well, it tastes fairly sweet.” (And yes, it does.) “It has a sort of rhubarb aftertaste.” “Tastes more like a Pinot Blanc.” It’s left to the Boss to make sense of it all: “That bubble-gummy aspect you're tasting is a preservative.” He pours the rest of his glass out. “Terrifying.”

Wine Larch Hills Mad Angie 2006
From Shuswap Lakes, BC
Price $9.99 (MSL)
“Mad Angie” equals Madeleine Angevine, a cool-climate white varietal. This example has an indistinctly fruity nose and a musky finish on the palate, with nothing particularly memorable (or, to be fair, unbearable) in between. Everybody sips and catches up on their conversation, except Fearless Leader, who grumbles that it “smells like my old aftershave.” And I suppose he ought to know---he’s drunk enough of it.

Wine Summerhill Cabernets 2003
From Okanagan, BC
Price $22.95 (MSL)
A 50-50 mix of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc turns out to be a killer blend: Everybody likes it---even the most dyed-in-his-Aussie-wool Steven-Cipes critic among us is impressed. The Boss, having rinsed the after-shave from his glass, finds himself moved to plain-spun profundity: “Wow, is that ever good!” And it is---swell fruit, nice tannins and a wonderful, lengthy aftertaste. Will it ever come to a BC Liquor store near you? Stay tuned.

Wine Blue Mountain Pinot Noir Reserve 2004
From Okanagan, BC
Price $39.50 (MSL)
For once, the winery rep’s effusive praise doesn’t seem like overkill: This sends everybody’s eyebrows halfway up their foreheads. A very pale colour (almost a rosé) sets the tone for a far more elegant new-world Pinot than anybody felt they had a right to expect, with subtle fruit and a candy-like (but bone-dry), almost mystical finish. Everybody lingers over their glasses, nobody spits, and we all groan when we find out that restaurants have snagged every single bottle.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-11-18T13:19:00.000-08:00

Je me ne souviens pas The Quebec government tabled legislation lowering the threshold for impaired driving to .05. The same legislation also outlaws the use of hand-held cellphones while driving, and bans trucks from traveling more than 105 km/hr.

Well, it's better than drinking the stuff Following the release of this year's crop of Beaujolais Nouveau, a spa opened in Japan that allows patrons to bathe in it.

He didn't want Gore Vidal to have done something he hadn't Pugnacious author, filmmaker, one-time NYC mayoral candidate, and world-class pounder Norman Mailer died this week of non alcohol-related illness.

She was really trying to draw attention to coke-snorting Bengal Tigers A story claiming that Paris Hilton was taking up the case of binge-drinking elephants in India ("The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them. There would have been more casualties if the villagers hadn't chased them away. And four elephants died in a similar way three years ago. It is just so sad....") later proved to be false.

RSVP Tasting: The Jadot Rep Comes to Call

2007-11-12T08:30:00.000-08:00

Wine Jadot St. Veran 2005
From Burgundy, France
Alcohol Content 13.0%
It is explained that St. Veran is the Burgundy AC next door to Pouilly-Fuisse, which immediately leads to some skeptical conversation about the Burgundian worship of terroir: somebody insensitively comments that bragging about your neighbor like this is a bit like claiming the player with the locker next door to Sidney Crosby for your fantasy hockey team; fortunately, the rep doesn't really understand the reference and we move on. Biggish Chardonnay nose without the oaky/buttery notes you'd get from a new-world style; the rep helpfully suggests notes of grapefruit, which the rest of us unfortunately can't get out of our minds. Fearless Leader likes its restraint; other comments range from an appreciation of its single-mindedness and lack of winemaker hanky-panky, to finding it a bit anonymous. People look around the table for the oysters that will complete the experience and are chagrined to find that this week, they aren't there.

Wine Jadot Couvet des Jacobins 2004
From Burgundy, France
Alcohol Content 13.0%
Somebody notices that we've tried this wine a few weeks before, but only the Boss can remember chapter and verse about it; and he's not talking. To most of the rest in the peanut gallery, this shares a lot with the first wine, except that you could taste the intervention of the winemaker: you could smell and taste the oak (very nice) and there was more... flexibility; sophistication. You could taste the winemaker---although that may not be the best way to put it. Sprightly acid and fruit aftertaste; some latitudinally-challenged tasters accuse those who think it's worth the extra bucks of cultish behavior.

Wine Domaine Clair-Dau Rosé de Marsanne 2006
From Burgundy, France
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Attempts to bait the rep about rosé in general ("don't you guys make this kind of stuff when there's a crop failure...?") fall on stony ground; although he admits this to be a rosé made from Pinot Noir grapes. Smells like Pinot, too: minty-peppery---almost peppermint. Some shuffling of feet---European restraint in a rosé is a diminutive of a diminutive; this is sort of like going to the Paris Prèt a Porter the day that they're modeling winter raincoats. Underwhelming.

Wine Jadot Cotes de Nuits Villages "Le Vaucrain" 2001
From Burgundy, France
Alcohol Content 13.0%
There is a sense that we're moving up in the world now: this has a nice, slightly gamy nose; light and balanced on the palate; tastes just the way you'd expect a basic Burgundy from a legit producer to taste. No huge depth, but a pleasant, longish aftertaste. The Boss: "It's all downhill from here."

Wine Jadot Combe aux Jacques Beaujolais-Villages
From Burgundy, France
Alcohol Content 12.5%
...Or not. Fruity nose... yup, it's Beaujolais all right. But it also has structure, which pushes some tasters back into their seats in confusion---structure in a Beaujolais is like structure in peanut butter; a sign that something's not quite right. This is a little less fun than you usually hope for; a serious younger brother to the prodigal Beaujolais son---and who tries to score A's in grade 2? Categorical confusion that nevertheless tastes pretty good.

Wine Jadot Couvent des Jacobins Bourgogne 2004
From Burgundy, France
Alcohol Content 12.5%
The nose is very much like the white---shows signs of both the barrel and the winemaker. But the fruit is muted---at this point, uncomfortably so; this wine is stylistically austere and acid to boot---too acid for the hemispherically challenged in the crowd. As is often the case with better wines tasted under these just-opened conditions, it's quite possible that it just needs to open up a bit---and with that optimistic thought, the Boss bundles the bottle up and heads out into the night.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-11-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

We'll know it's a trend when Conrad Black buys the Don Jail Graeme Alford, a former inmate of Australia's Pentridge Prison, (8 years for armed robbery) has purchased his old jail cell there. A section of the prison, decommissioned in 1997, is being converted into a storage facility for rare wine. Alford no longer drinks alcohol.

Good thing Parker didn't call him a New Zealander Documentary filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter (2004's Mondovino) has released his first book, Le Gout et le Pouvoir (roughly, "Taste and Power"). Not unexpectedly, Robert Parker has thrown a fit, calling Nossiter a "narrow-minded zealot" a bigot, and a member of the "scary wine Gestapo". (This may be no more than simple tit-for-tat; two years ago Nossiter accused Parker's partner Pierre-Antoine Rovani of being "a Mussolini apologist, indirectly fascist and anti-semitic, 'monolithic and unscrupulously self-serving.' ")

In a related story, the Museum of Modern art responded to the demand for more Warhols by purchasing a bigger photocopier France has responded to the worldwide growth in demand for Champagne (consumption in India alone grew 126% last year) by expanding the growing area that may market its grapes as Champagne grapes. 40 new villages are to be added to the Champagne AC, an increase of roughly 15%

And that was just in class A study undertaken by the American Public Health Association found that university students who mixed alcohol with energy drinks like Red Bull drank more (and more often), were twice as likely to get injured, ride with a drunk driver, sexually take advantage of another, or themselves be sexually taken advantage of.

On the plus side, sales of Red Bull are down Alcohol consumption in Ireland rose 17% in the last 10 years, according to a recent study by the Ireland Health Research Board. During the same period, hospital admissions for alcohol-related problems nearly doubled, with liver disease rising 147%

My brain hurts With 50% of young New Zealanders admitting to regular binge drinking, the Alcohol Related Brain Injury Australian Services ( ARBIAS ) recently claimed that one in five New Zealanders will eventually suffer serious brain damage from alcohol abuse. "Claims of brain pain will now be taken to top New Zealand health officials as experts, who are meeting in Auckland on Monday to discuss the call for action on the looming crisis." In other news though, New Zealand's abuse of illegal drugs is waning

RSVP Tasting: A nice meaty red with your carcinogens?

2007-11-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

Wine Le Paradou Cotes du Luberon 2005

From France

Price $16.23 (Spinnakers, BC)

Alcohol Content 14.0%

When France meets the new world half-way, the results are usually better than the other way around---here we've got a shooting guard adding a little muscle rather than a crash-dieting boxer trying to make his weight. It's pretty well balanced (if unsubtle) on both nose and palate: Pepper and backbone from the Syrah; fruit and body from the Grenache. The Philosophical taster wipes his fevered brow in relief: there's no goofy fruit---"no steroids" is his way of putting it.

Wine Poplar Grove Cabernet Franc 2004
From Okanagan, BC
Price $42.52 (Spinakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14.4%

This spent 18 months in French oak, and 403 cases of it were made. A gaggle of noses in glasses detect a potent Cab Franc scent; somebody sips... and a cry of disbelief erupts: "This tastes like dill!" Well, maybe. Over the next couple of minutes, people discover hints of a lot of things, actually---all of them good and most of them a combination of tannin and oak. A meditative state envelops everyone, broken by the boss: "This is quite lovely." And it is: Universal acclaim; only the price is an issue.

Wine Chinon Remy Pannier 2005
From France
Price $17.34
Alcohol Content 13.5%

The Boss: "A picnic red!" The Philosopher: "Yum---tastes European." The Southern-Hemisphere taster: "Akk! it's thin, and it's weedy---and it's bitter on the finish, and it's too tannic... grumble, grumble, grumble." Much controversy---the young 'uns hate it; the Eurocentric palates like it. Conversation dies out when the Boss wonders aloud which wine "you could afford two of". Nobody quite understands the reference, and thus intimidated, everybody moves on.

Wine Sommerhill Solus Foch
From Okanagan, BC
Price $22.95 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 14.9%

No nose to speak of. "Try it with chocolate", offers the eager-young-space-cadet taster, with memories of a trick that worked once with this wine. But not this time---the alcohol's so overpowering that even the tannins are smothered; going by the Philosophical Taster's favorite steroid metaphor, this isn't even Arnold Schwarzenegger---it's Sylvester Stallone. Other, representative comments from the peanut gallery: "Dim"; "dodgy"; "forget it". Even our server, who has never met a wine he hasn't tried to sell us, doesn't like it. (So of course, the rest of the crowd harasses him.)

Wine Yalumba Shiraz-Vigonier 2005
From Australia
Price $19.48 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.5%

As you might expect from the source continent, this is big and fruity, but arouses mostly indifference from the crowd. Even the normally chauvinistic hemispherically-challenged taster feels it's less than the sum of its parts: "This tastes like two wines that haven't come together." The lead taster is less sympathetic: "Yum! Cherry-raspberry cordial!" The consensus around the table is that even a Cotes du Rhone does a better job with these types of grapes at a fairer price.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-10-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

That's about 220ml more than you need The LCBO in Ontario announced that they would start selling French Rabbit in 250ml tetra-pacs

But that's pretty much average for a night out in Cardif Journalists came upon the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby coach passed out in a washroom before the World Cup quarter-finals in Cardif, Wales. In related news, Australian Rugby Union chair Peter McGrath was forced to resign his position when "one of Australian rugby's major sponsor complained in writing that McGrath was so affected by alcohol he could hardly speak at a function on the eve of Australia's quarter-final defeat by England in Marseille, France"

Those Parisians sure know how to put on a party English fans were surprised to discover that the 250,000 pints of beer sold at the Stade de France during the Rugby World Cup contained no alcohol---despite costing more than six pounds apiece

He fruitlessly claimed he'd just come from the Rugby World Cup in Paris Police at Heathrow airport swarmed onto a Virgin Airlaines Airbus A340 and arrested the co-pilot for being drunk.

Gee, expectation really is the source of all misery According to inthemix.com, "underground alternative star Paul Raven from Ministry and Killing Joke died expectedly [sic] this week. Though numerous blogs immediately speculated that drugs might have been involved, no mentions of drugs except alcohol have emerged in subsequent press reports"

In a tell-all biography, Wine Critic and demigod Robert Parker's former assistant Hannah Agostini reveals that the palate-that- walks-like-a-man would frequently recycle his writing; write about wines he hadn't tasted; and was far too cozy with the winemakers he was supposedly a critic of. In a related story, Bordeaux gros frommage Alain Renaud unsuccessfully sued to have all passages concerning him removed from Agostini's book, entitled Robert Parker: the Anatomy of a Myth

RSVP Tasting: "Absolutely Terrifying"

2007-10-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

Wine Blue Mountain Pinot Blanc 2005

From Okanagan, BC

Price $17.95 (MSL)

Alcohol Content 13.0%

It's the first wine of the evening and everybody is receptive: "Beautiful nose---like a Pinot Gris" says the Boss, and heads nod around the table: Yes indeed; it has a nice, fruity nose of honey and apples, tart acid on the palate, and an aftertaste of apple peels. "I could drink this," the Boss gravely concludes. "And I will." Everybody bows their heads.

Wine La Franz Sauvignon Blanc “Small Lots” 2006

From Okanagan, BC

Price $22 (MSL)

Big, goofy nose---it certainly doesn't smell like a Sauvignon Blanc. Palate is mushy and indecisive: "Too much sugar---no finish" is the way one taster puts it, and the philosopher of the group goes him one better, complaining of an icky aftertaste. This sets on edge the teeth of the taster from the wrong hemisphere: he declares it superior to the Blue Mountain above. He is of course deluded, but the rest get the point: it's the new-world style with plenty of oomph, and for a lot of consumers, that's plenty.

Wine Santa Carolina Chardonnay 2006
From Chile
Price $8.35 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.5%

For what turns out to be merely the first time this evening, Fearless Leader is thunderstruck by his first sniff: "Terrifying!" Cooler heads and palates detect something both green (as in stemmy and herbacious) and oaky (as in "they used the big tea bag---it ain't barrels.") Nobody says "I like it", but there's some grudging backpedalling on the lead taster's initial judgment: "This isn't so bad," says the boss. "It's OK for the price," says his side-kick, praising with faint damnation.

Wine Summerhill Galaxy White
From Okanagan, BC
Price $12.95 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 11.5%

The lead taster is feeling magnanimous in his criticism: "there is a place for a wine like this... just not at my table." Point is well taken, though---with its big, goofy fruit this is a patio sipper, not a table wine. (Although the actual restaurant foot-soldiers at the table both like it.) "This would be good for sitting on a log at the beach," is the way the philosophical taster puts it, and everybody nods sagely.

Wine Summerhill Ehrenfelser 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $21.32 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.2%

Some ohhs and ahhs from the peanut gallery ("Spicy!" "Big fruit!") betray a crowd-pleaser that stuns the snobs at the table into disrespectful silence. There is a bit of the wine-for-dummies feel to it: there's not much acid and it's over-ripe and a bit cloying; but nevertheless, Steven Cipes sells this by the case to the busloads of tourists who visit his winery. It's sweet enough to seem tailor-made for a spicy Asian meal, which is probably just what those busloads of tourists have in mind.

Wine Runaway Bay Chardonnay 2006
From Australia
Price $12.03 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.5%

Either tasters are getting shell-shocked, or we're going through a particularly bad patch: "Oh my God" moans Fearless Leader. "Absolutely terrifying!" For running that catchphrase into the ground, he will be mocked for the rest of the evening---because frankly, the Runaway Bay's not that bad; it's chief sin is tasting more like a Semillon than a Chard, and being on the whole no better than the Santa Carolina, which is three bucks cheaper. But the damage is done, and the insults cascade down from all the yes-men in the bleachers---the most gentle of them calling the wine "a suicide note." Oh, the humanity.

Wine Alamos Chardonnay 2006
From Argentina
Price $18.40 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.5%

Starts rough, but gets better as it goes, finally snapping into new-world-big focus after a few minutes. The blond taster at the table likes it ("I wouldn't pay $18 for it, though"), but the voice that counts is the boss's: "I like this wine."

Wine Catena Chardonnay 2005
From Argentina
Price $25.00 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.5%

This was made by the same producer as the Alamos above, and everybody notices at least a change in the nose; "not as obvious---more European" in the words of one taster. The latitudinally-challenged comrade (who shares a hemisphere with the producer) claims that he can taste a big difference between the two bottles, but he is pooh-poohed by the philosophical type: "It's got more finesse, but it's still a big, new-world chard.". The remaining conversation comes down to dollars, which the lead taster and his hangers-on figure would be better spent on the Jadot they tried the week before. It's tough being from the wrong side of the equator.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-10-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

You want that bottle in paper or plastic, you drunken scumbag BC Liquor Stores announced a campaign to encourage alcohol consumption in moderation by making “those who abuse alcohol feel rejected/marginalized.”

But on the plus side, all those boozed-up male freshman students from the Aberdeen suburbs will look a lot better to you A “Boozy Betty” P.R. campaign directed at female first-year students at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland aims to discourage binge drinking by telling girls that it will give them bad skin, make them fat, and lead to unsafe sex and missed essay deadlines

No, I’m stupid like Mickey Rourke, Robert Downy Jr. and Courtney Love In an interview with FHM Magazine, failed television host, notorious party animal and Paris Hilton satellite Tara Reid distanced herself from celebrity last-days- of-Pompeii culture by claiming not to be as “stupid” as Hilton, Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan

We’re gonna do it by catering to overweight first-year university students with bad skin Johnny Walker’s parent company recently told its wholesalers that they intended to increase sales over the next three years by an unheard-of 400%

She had Tara Reid as a reference on her CV Britney Spears applied for a job as a barmaid at Santa Monica’s Viceroy Hotel

RSVP Tasting: Belle des Jacobins

2007-10-13T13:14:00.001-07:00

Wine Jadot Couvent Des Jacobins 2004
From Burgundy, France

Price $24.99 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.0%

The Boss is on this one like a limpet right from sniff one: "How much is this one?!" He makes his point---this is one nice Chard for the dollars: crisp, intelligent, more old-world than new (Catherine Deneuve rather than Madonna); balanced with an aftertaste of lingering fruit. Nothing out of place; nothing huge. C'est logique ca: You merely have to get used ot the idea that bang is not what you always want for your buck.

Wine Seven Hills Riesling 2004
From Washington, USA
Price $27.83 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 12.0%
Lead taster once again articulately throws his weight around: "I like this one!" Nods from the Mosel fans scattered about the table---this goes in a more Germanic direction with some subtle sweetness up front and a lingering, fruity aftertaste. As an American immitating a German inevitably does, this one skates very close to the edge of goofyness... but pulls back from the abyss.

Wine Henschke Julius Riesling 2003
From Eden Valley, Australia
Price $37.50 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 12.5%

Sharp and angular, rather than posh like the Seven Hills above; potent but divisive---a couple of tasters find it big but generic; others admire its guts and expressiveness. A minor controversy erupts: one taster is quite over the moon in his priaise; he gains some deciples until everybody remembers that he's the rep for the brand. At that point people start to notice the price and his support crumbles like the ice on the Thompson River in February.

Wine Church & State Church Mouse Sauvignon Blanc/Semillion 2006
From Saanich, BC
Price $16.90 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.2%

A close look at the text on the back label leaves you prepared to taste lemon-lime grass-melon cantaloupes. Fortunatly, the label's claims are inflated---what you have is a white Bordeaux combination done up to taste mildly German. Nobody in the peanut gallery finds anything much on the nose; palate is sweet, easygoing... and faceless. A definite step up from Blue Nun, but they're chasing a pretty crowded market in that kind of field.

Wine Stag’s Hollow Simply Pink 2005
From Okanagan, BC
Price $13.91 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 12.9%

Gamay, Pinot, Cab and Merlot went into the vat; what came out was mixed with Chard. Eyebrows raised around the table: this is a Rose that actually smells like something! Skins were kept in the vat for only a day, so the palate is all fruit-driven; acid is nicely under control---tart without being sour. Feels like a Gamay, only more fun; a Rose that doesn't feel like an accident or a rabbit the winemaker pulled out of a lousy harvest hat.

Wine Staete Landt Sauvignon Blanc 2005
From New Zealand
Price $31.52 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14.0%

Ho, hum; another New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. While the palate was thankfully free of tall grass and the like, bottle claims of passionfruit and gooseberries were not hugely in evidence to many tasters. Wears its alcohol pretty well, actually; most comments have it tasting big, pleasant and grapey; although there's some muttering about the price---especially in the face of a half-a-dozen other NZSB's with as many virtues.

The Week in AAlcohol

2007-10-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

But Bullwinkle, that trick never works Lindsay Lohan emerged this week from two months in rehab. It was her third crack at alcohol treatment this year

Clean water was too hard to find an investigation by Labatt Brewery discovered that bottles of Stella Artois with high concentrations of ethyl alcohol had been taken from displays and sold to the public. Their explanation for the adulterated bottles: “It was to keep the beer from getting cloudy.”

No, it’s not about former Ontario Solicitor-General Ken Keyes Students at The University of Calgary introduced a video game called "Booze Cruise", which aims to simulate the experience of driving while at up to three times the legal blood-alcohol limit

I will kill this beer Ford of Canada announced that 24 star Kiefer Sutherland’s recent drunk driving charge will not alter his position as voice-over spokesman for Ford products in Canadian TV commercials

So that’s what killed him England’s Prince Harry, soon to be publicly immortalized in marble as a dead soldier in a tribute to servicemen not allowed to participate in the gulf war, was photographed this week snorting vodka

OK, that’s it---Mugabe’s gotta go The price of beer in Zimbabwe was doubled by Government fiat

We don't like that she's calling her latest album Blackout, either People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are calling for noted---and now childless---alcohol abuser Britney Spears to have her dogs taken away from her

RSVP Tasting: I'm dreaming of a red Thanksgiving

2007-10-03T15:45:00.000-07:00

Wine Chateau Grossombre 2003
From Bordeaux AC, France
Price $17.95 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
A Lurton wine with a mix of 67% Cab and 33% Merlot that spent one year in oak. Smells and tastes like a Cab-driven Bordeaux, at least; tannins still a bit green on the finish, so this could possibly wait for a year. Middle drops out, which indicates too many grapes to the acre---or too few to the bottle. Those who stuck around for a second glass noticed that the nose had picked up some meaty complexity and the palate had stabilized a bit. Pleasant, but no big deal---another case where price rules: If it costs you no more than a bottle of Ol’ Yeller Tail, it’s a steal. (Unfortunatly, Ol Yeller Tail doesn't reach this price even in the Yukon.)

Wine Chateau Cabaron 2003
From Bordeaux AC, France
Price $22.95 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 14.0%
Wine is a mix of 90% Merlot and 10% Cab, which with the high alcohol content (high for Bordeaux AC, that is) makes a couple of tasters nervous: Is this going to be new-world goofy? A nose in the glass allays some fears by finding a rich, classically Bordeaux scent---bold but not dopey. Major tannin on the palate, but not offensive; fruit is there to smooth it out. Lovely finish induces even the cranky taster to declare it “a winner”. The rest of the conversation dances fitfully and inconclusively around: Is the alcohol too hot; too present? Is this wine too Parkerish? Could it have used a bit more Cabernet Backbone? But mostly, how many more bottles of this should we buy?

Wine Flagstone “Dragon Tree” 2005
From South Africa
Price $15.95 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 14.5%
A mighty, wild mix of Cab, Merlot, Shiraz, Petit Verdot and Pinotage gives a big, assertive Bordeaux-on-steroids nose. A pretty complicated fruit-bomb, actually, with good big tannins, and every note appearing in the right order---which usually indicates that the winemakers have done their vineyard work honestly and have resisted the urge to meddle in the process too obviously. Too huge for food, really; and as it goes along, the high alcohol fries your taste buds, making it taste less multi-dimensional as it was right after the bottle was opened. But that’s the only problem, really---spread this out among more than ten guests and everybody will feel as if they’ve died and gone to Cape Town.

Wine Torrederos Crianza
From Ribera del Duero, Spain
Price $18.95 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 14.0%
Subtle Tempranillo nose leads to a big (too big?) but sweet, oaky attack. Still, no complaints from the peanut gallery about what is a nice, single-minded statement. Tannins are present and still pretty green, which means that this should also improve---and it’s pretty nice already. It also worked with food much better than the wine above.

Wine Cline Zinfandel 2005
From California
Price $19.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 14.0%
Biggish, but anonymous nose. On the palate… what the…? Candy floss! Strange faces made around the table: This is actively unpleasant---is there any such thing as over-blandness? The distilled essence of every Scooby-Do cartoon ever made squeezed into every gulp, perhaps? A desperate attempt to be analytical produces the following notes: Fruity, callow, youthful nose; stemmy undertaste on the opening with a kool-aid-fruity attack. Smoky aftertaste, but no tannin---so age is going to offer no improvement. Cline’s Zins didn’t always taste like this, so it looks like they’ve unfortunately made a conscious decision to go with the nutrasweet effect at this grade, and transferred any profundity they might achieve to their Ancient Vines collection. In short, they’ve just priced themselves out of the field.

Wine Chateau la Freynelle 2005
From Bordeaux AC, France
Price $14.49 (Kensington Wines, Calgary)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
60% Cabernet-40% Merlot blend from Entre-Deux-Mers in Bordeaux is from a single vinyard but doesn't seem to give much of a sense of any borders more specific than those around Bordeaux itself. Yet people finish what's in their glasses before moving on: Balance, depth and plain ol' high standards make up for what this lacks of that terrior thing. Or in the words of the lead taster, "all faceless Bordeaux's should taste this good." Better value than the Grossombre above; its makers also have the guts to use a screw cap. But we'll see what they do outside a fabulous year like 2005.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-09-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

Aged 5 months in the Alderson Federal Woman’s Prison Martha Stewart has announced a partnership with E&J Gallo Wines to release 15,000 cases of ‘Martha Stewart Vintage’ wines. There will be three varieties (Cab, Merlot and Chardonnay) and all will be sourced in Sonoma County, California

So two drinks a day helps you better remember to do your monthly self-examinations A recently-published study claims that three or more drinks a day increases the risk of breast cancer for women by 30%. An unrelated study published at virtually the same time claims that moderate drinking actually enhances memory. ("People often drink to 'drown sorrows,'" one of the study’s authors says. "Our results suggest that this could actually paradoxically promote traumatic memories and lead to further drinking, contributing to the development of alcoholism." )

Guess I won’t stop drinking, then A study released by the Center for Addiction and Mental Health revealed that for people who quit drinking, it took two decades for their risk of developing cancer of the larynx, esophagus, and oral cavity to fall to the level of those who had never started drinking

Meanwhile, for hangover sufferers, science shows that the cure really is worse than disease The journal Chemical Research in Toxicology published a study linking the combination of Red Bull (or other heavily-caffeinated energy drinks) and Tylenol to liver damage

Don’t drink and proselytize A survey published by the evangelical Christian firm Lifeway Research claimed that while the majority of lay Protestants believe consuming alcohol to be biblically sanctioned, three quarters of senior Southern Baptist pastors surveyed believed that drinking made evangelism less effective. (90% of Protestant clergy surveyed believed that “a Christian drinking alcohol could cause other believers to stumble or be confused.”)

RSVP Tasting: Stuff the boss brought back from his holiday abroad

2007-09-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

Wine Guado Al Tasso Il Bruciato 2004
From DOC Bolgheri, Italy
Anticipated Price $30.00 - $35.00
This Tuscan DOC makes reds which blend either Cab, Merlot and Syrah; or Cab, Merlot and Sangiovese, depending on whom we believe---our Fearless Leader, or Hugh Johnson. The palate seems to favor the latter, combining the concentrated raspberry fruit of a Sangiovese with the supple tannins of the Bordeaux varieties. Big, intense nose bops you with more of a Australian/Chilean fist than traditional Italian; oak is obvious but seamlessly integrated. A lingering finish keeps tasters lingering over their glasses; nobody accuses the boss of being self-serving when he pronounces the result “outstanding”.

Wine Bodegas Nazares Tempranillo 2005
From Spain
Anticipated Price $10.00-12.00
Almost a palate-cleanser in comparison to the wine above: Nothing huge in the nose but lots of cheerful spice-and-strawberry on the palate; a mature stylist thinking back on younger days. Spain seems to bridge the gap among old-world and international-style fans at these tastings, tending towards lively wines that don't carry the aggressive dopeyness of so many new-world steroid-bombs. The style rubs off even on the lower-priced quaffers like this one, which had the budget-minded among us scribbling down its name---and price.

Wine Fattoria Di Vetrice Chianti Rufina Riserva 1990
From Italy
Anticipated Price $50.00-55.00
You read that vintage right: 1990---a good year in Tuscany, but a rare one to see on a label today at this price. Quality turns out to be up there as well; this is outstanding Chianti without the warts; medium-bodied with acid nicely in balance, smoothly textured with silky, mature tannins providing a sweet kick in the finish. Flavor-spotters were ripping page after page out of their enological lexicons, leaning particularly on things like dry earth, hay and cherry. For people with the bucks who like their maturity right away.

Wine Chateau Fuisse Saint Veran 2004
From Burgundy, France
Anticipated Price $26.00-30.00
The boss's explanation of the distinctions between a St. Veran and a Pouilly-Fuisse (and how a top producer of the latter came in this case to be bottling some of the former) proved as impenetrable as an account of the various editions of the Bruckner symphonies, and so will not be reproduced here. The wine itself was a pale yellow and had concentrated notes of citrus (the adventurous cited “lemon and crushed grapefruit”) and grass (“hay” to the erudite) on the nose; nice minerality and fully ripe fruit flavors on the palate with balanced acid on the finish. The boss: “Classic, understated white Burgundy”. Perhaps fearing another dissertation, nobody argues.

Wine Araldica Piemontese Cortese 2006
From Italy
Anticipated Price $14.00-16.00
This wine is made from the same grapes as Gavi, a subtle Piedmont white. Introducing it, the lead taster said “It's not Gavi, but it's not thirty bucks, either”. With this set of atrophied expectations (especially to those among the group for whom Gavi was as familiar as the terrain of Moomin Valley) tasters noted a medium-bodied wine with hints of a variety of things on the nose and palate: citrus, lemon, Granny Smith (not Spartan) apples, mineral notes and grapefruit. Acidity was zippy and oysters made a fine accompaniment---at least until the philosophical taster noted that so far, the group has in its six months of existence failed to find a white wine that doesn't go brilliantly with oysters.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-09-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

We were wondering what Courtney Love was up to these days Owen Wilson, recently released from hospital after a cry-for-help style suicide attempt, has hired a $750-a-day "sober companion" to keep him on the straight-and-narrow

Now seeking employment as a private consultant to Owen Wilson Ewen McLeod, the former director of a New Zealand alcohol rehabilitation center, was jailed for 5 months after committing three drunk-driving offenses in just over a week – two of them on one day. He had previously been jailed for breach of bankruptcy laws after his rehab clinic failed, leaving debts of $300,000.

And absolutely no more than 20 beers apiece---I'm firm on that A report on teenage drinking commissioned by Health Canada quotes one teenager's father who buys beer for his son's basement drinking parties. "I put some rules in place, though. I tell them no more than 15 people and I'm absolutely in the house."

But we're allowing alcohol at the shark-wrestling tank Authorities have forbidden the organizers of an Irish St Patrick's Day skydiving event from selling liquor

Good thing they didn't call it "the Toronto Maple Leafs" The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario forbid the owners of the Prohibition Gastropub and Oyster Bar from naming their bar the Booze Emporium. "The licensing officer found that the name implied promoting the immoderate consumption of liquor," according to a Commission representative

RSVP Tasting: L'Affaire petit-dejeuner du chien, Deuxiem Partie

2007-09-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

Wine Painter Bridge California Zinfandel 2005
From California
Price $13.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.0%
Sometimes, you can see why California winemakers rebel against the idea of Zinfandel being declared the state grape: This is a bubblegum wine that would be dismissed as an embarrassment by the serious-minded Cabernet grower---“what, you're going to drink it with a milkshake dinner, maybe?” Plenty of cherry kool-aid nose and a candy-floss palate (as opposed to the serious candy you get with some of the better California Pinots) almost makes you want to blow bubbles; but a herbaceous finish suggests that you could leave this in the cupboard for another year or two. Kid stuff, but then, in Sam Peckenpah's The Wild Bunch a sage observes that “we all wish to become a child again---even the worst of us. Perhaps the worst of us most of all.”

Wine Dr. Zensen Riesling Spatlese 2005
From Germany
Price $17.01 (MLCC, Manitoba)
Alcohol Content 9.0%
Immediately attractive: Classic, sweet Riesling nose; hints of apple on the palate; sweet without being cloying to start with. But subsequent sips lead you to backpedal: should this have more acid? Should this have been made as a Kabinett? Actually, the acid balance is OK; the body just isn't up to the sweetness---perhaps another casualty of the curious German wine-law where the only thing that matters to a wine's grade is sugar. This example is the equivalent of a redheaded wine bleaching its hair blonde---is it true all Spatleses have more fun? Not this time.

Wine Pierre Sparr Pinot Noir Reserve 2005
From Alsace, France
Price $18.95 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Enigmatic but emphatic nose tests the crowd's spot-the-flavor skills, (and more tellingly, individuals' powers of suggestion), with the most persuasive personalities arm-twisting a judgment of “notes of dark chocolate”. Otherwise, the wine manages to come off as subtle and unique---both recognizably Pinot and recognizably Alsace. Perhaps a bit pricey, although it should be remembered that the true Pinot-fancier generally has a pretty masochistic sense of relative value, and is willing to pay twice as much for a wine that may well prove only half as good. On the other hand, when asked why he kept returning to this particular bottle when there were 6 other wines on the table and work still to be done, the group's philosophical type replied after a profundity-inducing pause, “because I like it.”

Wine Chateau Grossombre 2003
From Bordeaux AC, France
Price $17.95 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
A Lurton wine with 67% Cabernet and 33% Merlot which has had one year in oak. Not surprisingly, it tastes like a Cab-driven Bordeaux, with the tannins still a bit green on the finish. A few alarmed tasters noticed the middle dropping out of it, although a couple of more persistent souls who put their glasses aside a few minutes found on returning that it had developed a meaty nose and a stable profile all the way through. On the whole, pleasant, but at close to $20, no big deal. At $14.- it would be a steal.

Wine Chateau Carabon 2003
From Bordeaux AC, France
Price $22.95 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 14.0%
For some, a 14% alcohol content in a Bordeaux that's also 90% Merlot is a warning flag: either some Aussie winemaker has been brought in as a consultant, or yet another traditionalist has caved in to the International Style. The wine displays a potent Bordeaux nose and rich fruit kept from flabbiness by the presence of lots of tannin---which unsurprisingly leads to a lingering finish. Debate thereafter centered on: Is the alcohol a tiny bit too present? Would it be a bigger winner at 13%? Is it too ripe and too fat? Too Parkerish? Would a bit more Cabernet have firmed things up a little? The consensus that emerged was that it was a largely successful compromise between a new and old-world style. In the words of an up-till-then cranky taster: “A winner.”

Are they worth it? Part 3: Beppi Crosariol's “Wine Butler” in the Globe and Mail

2007-09-06T14:13:00.000-07:00

If, like me, you find the Globe and Mail too depressing a read to buy the newsprint edition, yet you still start your day with the online version, you may have caught a glimpse of a new feature currently being promoted in the left-hand sidebar to the front page. It's called the 'Wine Butler', and it's being pushed as a sort of consumer treasury of Globe wine writer Beppi Crosariol's collected sniffs and gulps from years past, gathered together in a searchable database. As such, it represents the Globe's first tentative foray into the kind of online data treasury currently occupied by heavy enological hitters like Jancis Robinson and Robert Parker, both of whom have pay sites promising unlimited access to their private notes to give you a leg up on fellow wine-fanciers competing for the good stuff at your local wine retailer. Unfortunately, if early shakedown runs are anything to go by, it's pretty clear that if this wine butler actually was a flesh and blood creature at your service, you'd have handed him his walking papers by now.

I suppose we could have seen it coming: such a project must be really attractive to a critic with ten years worth of tasting notes that have been publicly viewed just once, and have since faded from view like the tannins in a big Aussie Cabernet. Here's a chance for the man to turn his knowledge into searchable cyber-wisdom; his life-experience into a database. How could anyone resist?

The trouble is, as a useful consumer tool the Wine Butler's a bust; worse yet, as a means of putting Crosariol's wine-writing on display (a sort of 'Beppi's Greatest Hits') it's so flawed as to prove a mere annoyance to anybody seeking either a glimpse of his personality or a whiff of his intelligence. As a database, it doesn't give you the information you want; and as a sampler of wine writing, it's an exercise in frustration to browse.

Even the most cursory search---either by wine type or by wine name---reveals that the database is woefully short on useful data. To take just one example, Wine Butler lists no Bordeaux between $15 and $25, which is preposterous: Even in B.C. Liquor Stores there are a dozen examples available; at the LCBO even more. Or, a search for a Burgundy priced between $15 and $25 missed several in current release, and instead listed two which were not available any more---one of which was incorrectly priced to boot. And when you do squeeze out a hit searching by type, as often as not you are steered to an older review of a vintage that was never available except at a small circle of LCBO Vintages stores for two days in 2005.

As a guide to wines that actually are out there, Wine Butler falls down even more badly. As a thought experiment, I tried typing in the names of all the bottles in the last couple of cases I hauled home from the LCBO, with nary a hit. (The no-shows included: Domaine de la Solitude; Tommasi anything; Clos du Bois anything; Mouton anything; Kenwood Pinot Noir; Domaine Monoertuis; Chateau Gaillat; Chanson Bourgogne; Chateau Saint Auriol Corbieres; Marchand Fixin; Drouhin Morey St Denis; and Chateau du Pavillon. As far as I know, they're all still out there on LCBO shelves.)

As well, Wine Butler offers up promises to the nose that just aren't followed up on the palate; what on the surface appear to be user-friendly and useful little touches but turn out empty---like the little “match with food” toggle, which requires even more raw data to be effective. (Find me the best $25 Bordeaux to go with a chicken pie? Why not something genuinely useful, like overcooked squash?)

All in all, at this stage of its evolution, Wine Butler is pretty much a corked bottle: There is potential for a site like this---it's always useful to have access to any accumulated wisdom; but the potential it holds out to the reader is as a library. The Globe is courting horselaughs by parading it in front of the public as a tool.

RSVP Tasting: A relief expedition from the LCBO finally arrives in town

2007-09-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

Wine Chateau de Corneilla “Cuvee Prestige” Cotes de Roussillon 2004
From Pyrenees, France
Price $15.95 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Earthy nose with notes of game; perhaps a tiny hint of the ocean (or at least Lake Superior) had the metaphor fans abuzz: leaves, forest floor, that kind of stuff; later evolving to truffles, plums, dates, mature tree-fruit and mature trees themselves. A mix of 30% each of Mourvedre, Syrah, and old-vines Carignan with a pinch of Grenache tastes ancient and earthy---an old, off-color joke you still love. Very dry---not dried-out, but naturally austere and purely expressed---this was consumed with lamb, and made it even more fabulous: Young and tender, old and gamy all at once. (The flavor that dare not speak its name.)

Wine Chateau Constantin-Chevalier Cotes de Luberon 2003
From Provence, France
Price $21.95 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 14.0%
When your back label is a lot bigger than your front, we've got trouble. Mealy-mouthed rear-label prose by Peter Mayle (author of A Year in Provence) very gingerly points out the possible health benefits of red wine and invites you to consume this bottle with your doctor “in good conscience”. Not with your friends, mind you: This has no spectacular nose; big generic fruit; is big and anonymous and doesn't evolve through the bottle---OK with food, but no more than that. Same grapes as the Corneilla above, but a different universe entirely! This wine is a slap-you-on-the-back kind of guy from sales that you meet once at a party and then never see again. One philosophical type wondered aloud how the winemaker arrived at the idea of this wine; how something so generic could be the end point of a rational or artistic plan; that this is what a real wine-maker makes only by mistake. (It has to be said that he found virtually no solidarity in this conclusion, showing once more that while most excellent wines have the same virtues, every ordinary wine is crummy for reasons all its own.)

Wine Chateau du Perier 2004
From Medoc, Bordeaux, France
Price $17.95 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 12.0%
Good, rich, identifiably Medoc nose. Well-balanced on the palate with tannins already smooth and sweet. This is a well-managed, well thought-out wine, where the wine-maker went with what the vineyard gave him---which in this case cashes out to relatively light alcohol, low acid, and a wine whose fruit is at its peak 3 years after being put into the bottle. A good name to remember, especially since under the new laws it won't be able to call itself a Cru Bourgeois much longer. Pricey only inasmuch as it's not a fabulous bargain; but you get your money's worth.

Wine La Fleur Leroy 2004
From Bordeaux AC, France
Price $14.80 (Sale price, LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 13.0%
No, not that Leroy. Immediately after the bottle is opened, it has a meaty nose with traces of game. On the palate, more game, rich fruit, mild tannins, identifiable Bordeaux flavor and a lingering finish. Promising.

15 minutes later, that's all history: fruit has disappeared and the wine has dried out completely, leaving a stemmy, unpleasantly herbaceous finish that had tasters dumping their glasses on the lawn. The nose is still acceptable, (food helped somewhat, though not much) but it's a slippery slope from then on---the great disappearing wine. Later, the purchaser admitted that he had bought it on sale---no wonder.

Wine D'Arenberg The Galvo Garage 2002
From Australia
Price $26.95 (LCBO, Ontario, current release)
Alcohol Content 14.5%
A big nose punches you in yours. But a strange, acid-forward palate reminiscent of grape-skins without tannins (if such a thing is possible) leads some in the peanut gallery to think the wine's been diddled with somewhere in its production. No huge enthusiasm, (a Parker score of 90 notwithstanding) and since there are no Voodoo merchants among the tasters, the question of whether it's a botched bottle or merely one that's still too green goes unanswered. Nobody asks for seconds.

Wine Doudet Naudin Bourgogne Vicomte 2005
From Burgundy, France
Price $19.95 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 13.0%
Nose a mix of nice Burgundy and old socks ('shoe leather' to the polite.) Balanced on the palate with some scratchy acid and tannin---this needs some time in the bottle---but finishes nicely. A tough wine to really appreciate with a dozen others at a tasting, since at this stage of its life it needs to be open a couple of hours to start making a persuasive case for itself. It's also going to be a tough sell for the fans raised on New World Pinots: Too light! Too thin! Too subtle! But for people who appreciate structure and balance and subtlety above all (and who have a basement) this will make an nice, discreet accompaniment to some sweetbreads prepared in time for Bastille Day, 2009.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-08-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

Y'see, freezing the grapes allows the water to disperse, which concentrates the diethylene glycol, melamine, and other toxins in the final product for shipment abroad China's Tonghua Grape Wine Co. announced plans to acquire the Canadian King's Court Winery for $6.6 million. In related news, the Yantai Changyu Pioneer Wine Co. of China announced a $20 million initiative to produce ice wine in China with Canadian technology.

They forgot PissinaCan To compete with such popular imported wine brands as Fat Bastard and Cats Pee on a Goosebery Bush, Megalomaniac Wines of Canada has introduced their Narcissist Riesling and SonofaBitch Pinot Noir.

He claimed he was chasing down a gopher Actor Bill Murray refused to give Swedish police a breath sample after being stopped while driving a golf cart through downtown Stockholm, and smelling of alcohol. Police took a blood sample instead, and charges are pending.

Living in the same province as Gordon Campbell will do that to you A study published by Toronto's Center for Addiction and Mental Health found alcohol abuse in British Columbia to be almost 20% above the national average and 50% above the level observed in Quebec.

There was a run on the unwooded chardonnay Babeland, a New York City sex-toy store owned and run exclusively by women, has started offering winetastings. "The novice feels welcomed by the trendy atmosphere and the down-to-earth demeanour of our Sexy Sommeliers," one host said, "and seasoned oenophiles are intrigued by the unique angles by which we analyse, decipher and present our wines."

California Winemakers claim that recently proposed, stricter Homeland Security regulations will put the state's wine industry at risk, since the vast majority of the state's 50,000 grape pickers are illegal migrants. In other news, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger prepares to kick off September as California Wine Month

RSVP Tasting: Stuff we found in the cellar while the boss was away, Part 2

2007-08-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

Wine Vasse Felix Cabernet Sauvignon 1997
From Australia
Alcohol Content 14.1%
Color is getting a little brickish. Nice, singular, tannic nose leads you to expect that big fruit's a-comin', but no go: fruit has largely dried out---most of this wine is in the nose, now. (It also turns out to be terrible with any food we throw at it; maybe as a chaser for shot-glasses of olive oil..?) Robert Parker gave this one a lifetime of 10-12 years, but that doesn't seem even close; this is likely about 4-5 years past its due-date. Mind you, the international style is simply not designed to age gracefully---a genuinely age-worthy wine will always have a few years at the beginning of its life when it simply doesn't make sense to drink it. And that's a thought that terrifies most new-world winemakers: They're going after a big (and fickle) market, and the big market never waits to drink. So, their wines have to be drinkable the day they're released, which means sacrificing any middle age the wine might otherwise expect to have. (Actually, it's fascinating to contrast this wine with the Estancia Cabernet a couple of posts back: same price-range; same grape; lighter and more one-dimensional in its ambitions; but it does that middle-age thing beautifully, trading potency for grace. The winemaker cared about that: There's probably a lesson there for all of us.)

Wine Chateau du Pavillion Haut Gros Bonnet 1998
From Canon-Fronsac, Bordeaux, France
Price $21.95 (LCBO, Ontario; current release)
Alcohol Content 13.0%
Brooding opening on nose and palate. (A small guy can brood, too.) Fascinating: ten years old, and yet it tastes like it could have been made yesterday; fruit seems to have receded a bit, but in no way does it taste dried out. But it also shows no signs of having ever being big to start with: It's more the quiet, older tough guy who sits in the corner of the bar and doesn't say much. You go over and you sit down, and you have to listen hard to hear his tale---you really have to work at it---yet you have a hard time pulling yourself away. This is a tough, wiry wine---sort of a Charles Bronson Bordeaux... civil, experienced; power held under wraps. You think, “how could this have survived ten years in a bottle?” and then it gives you that knowing, nodding, Charles Bronson smile. The Vasse Felix above, you struggle to get through a glass of; this stuff, you finish up the bottle out of pure curiosity. An inscrutable and engrossing $20 philosopher.

Wine Chateau les Cabannes 1998
From St. Emillion, Bordeaux, France
Price $23.95 (LCBO, Ontario; current release)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Sweet, tannic, tobacco-leaf nose with hints of game. Low-acid, mature, middle-aged fruit. No huge complexity, but a lovely finish. Lush, reclining, very flexible backbone (one emboldened taster: “I'd stick in some Cabernet”.) Pleasant, one-dimensional, nothing inspiring, although the nose comes close.
Postscript: an hour later, some hangers-on finished the bottle, which by then had opened up wonderfully, and was fuller, richer and more complex: like the Miss Havisham played by Charlotte Rampling in the 1999 Great Expectations---wiry, but unexpectedly seductive. This transformation gave the thoughtful among the group pause to think about typical tasting conditions, where a bottle like this is opened, immediately passed around and the point of it largely missed. With truly age-worthy wines, most tastings are either myopic, on not much more than voodoo forecasting. No wonder fruit-bombs rule.

Wine Chateau Carbieres 1998
From Chateauneuf-de-Pape, France
Alcohol Content 14%
Very brickish colour. On the nose, soil and potatoes baked over a campfire. Lush, rich, balanced (though still not completely open) on the palate. Long finish. Posh stuff, this! Bottle was put aside for the meal to come. 40 minutes later things had opened up considerably: notes of cherries and candy on the nose; alcohol perhaps a bit hot; fruit has possibly dried out a little (was this fabulous enough to keep ten years? Maybe not.) But with lamb it was subtly brilliant: a candy-like attack and finish and a nose that keeps yours in the glass. Rock, paper, scissors competitions for what remained in the bottle. Last glass was thick, unctuous and sweet with a likewise-sweet and gamy nose. Lovely.

Wine Chateau Fourcas Hosten 1996
From Listrac-Medoc, Bordeaux, France
Price $31.95 (LCBO, Ontario, current release)
Alcohol Content 12.5
Nice, rich Bordeaux nose when the bottle's opened; fruit's there, although still pretty Clark Kent-ish---smooth and clean-cut but it hasn't hit the phone booth yet. From there on, everything slips away under our very noses: By the second sip, the tannin is out of balance with what remains of the fruit; by mealtime a little later, everything's dropped out of it. Somebody consults a dog-eared copy of Robert Parker and finds that he rated this particular bottle somewhere between dishwater and turpentine for its potential cellar-life , which leads to much grumbling around the table: “The boss should have given this to us sooner.”

The Week in Alcohol

2007-08-20T07:06:00.000-07:00

Then my date told me she was from Fargo and I couldn't finish my desert, either A study by Cornell University researchers found that restaurant patrons consuming a $24 prix fixee meal, when told that their glass of house wine was from North Dakota, ate 11% less food, rated both their meal and wine as tasting less good, and were less likely to make reservations to come back.

Their audiences, on the other hand, will drink and drug themselves into a nostalgic stupor Spice Girl Mel C. Has asked her bandmates not to drink on their upcoming tour. In related news, two audience members were killed by alcohol at a recent New Jersey concert by reformed drinker Ozzy Osbourne.

Thereby lowering average male life expectancy there from 48 to 43 years A study of 65,000 Chinese men aged 40 or over found that the heaviest drinkers had a 22% higher incidence of strokes, and a 30% higher risk of mortality.

Put down the Brunello with its gobs of soft fruit on the nose and sweet tannins on the attack, and step away from the table with your hands up According to Decanter Magazine, Twenty-five members of the Italian military police have qualified as sommeliers in order to combat fraud in the industry.

Another reason to hate Beaujolais Nouveau The New England Journal of Medicine reports that some peoples' allergic reactions to wine may be a reaction to wasp venom coming from insects crushed along with mechanically harvested grapes in wines consumed too young for the poison to deteriorate.

RSVP Tasting: Stuff we found in the cellar while the boss was away

2007-08-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

Wine Chateau Bel Orme Tronquoy de Lalande 1997
From Haut-Medoc, Bordeaux, France
Price $39.99 (BC Liquor Stores; current release)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Wonderful, outrageous, gamy nose! “Who knew that rotting pheasant could smell so seductive?” was one comment from the peanut gallery. Very smooth follow-up on the palate as well: Soft tannins and mature fruit, with the emphasis being on 'mature'---the appeal is specifically the fruit's aged quality; it's on a journey evolving towards dust and currently halfway between youth and death. The fruit in your typical big, internationally-styled wines seems locked in perpetual adolescence, capable of saying no more than “here I am”; in a wine like this, the fruit says “this is where I've been”.

Wine Hester Creek 'Selected Barrels' Merlot 2001
From British Columbia
Price $16.99 (BC Liquor stores; current release)
Alcohol Content 14.0%
Widespread suspicion of the way the wine looks in the glass: “That's the most brickish-looking red wine I've seen that wasn't oxidized” was the lead taster's way of putting it. But no, a lovely big nose of fruit and sweet, sweet tannins. (Sweet tannins are always more interesting than sweet fruit---it's akin to the difference between mere high spirits and real wit.) Six years old, this wine is at the perfect age, and went spectacularly well with pork and fried apples. Better new-world wines like this one tend to have the career arc of a Lindsay Lohan: sweet childhood, spectacular adolescence, premature burnout, but still impressive for the one or two great performances you can get if you pick your spots right.

Wine Chateau des Anneraux 1998
From Lalande de Pomerol, Bordeaux, France
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Gamy nose. Peppery attack; fruit not very big; tannins OK. Doesn't follow up on the palate what it promises with the nose. Consensus is that it should have been fetched out of the cellar a couple of years ago: while it's now showing that distinguished gray hair around the temples, it didn't really have that much of an intellect to start with. Another case where price is everything: at $12 this is a steal; at $25, move on.

Wine Condado de Haza 1997
From Ribera del Duero, Spain
Price $25.15 (LCBO, Ontario; current release)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Gamy, sweet tannic nose---quite lovely. But on the palate... something's up. Tastes almost...soapy? Soapy and fizzy, almost---as hard on the tongue, at least. The remainder of the (disappointed) discussion revolves around Alejandro Fernandez, who produces this wine and its more famous older cousin Pesquera---once compared favorably by Robert Parker with the finest chateaus of Bordeaux. Both of these wines are brands now, and sell out as soon as they're released---at least in this country. One of the things that comes with being a brand is that people look to you for reliability, and the maddening thing about both Pesquera and Condado is that in our experience, they've varied alarmingly from bottle to bottle. The nose on this bottle (the taste of which improved a bit with later glasses) says that winemaker's doing something right. But Parker's praise has turned into a curse for the purchaser. Our emminance griese asks: “Anybody feel like investing in this any more?” The sound you hear is that of people sitting on their hands.

Wine Capcanes Costers del Granes Tarrangna 1998
From Spain
Alcohol Content 14.0%
Wow! Rich, ripe, opulent nose! Fruit, tannin and sweet oak on the palate---tannins almost overpoweringly sweet. Fruit has faded a bit, albeit gracefully (when the sweetness all seems to come from the tannins, you feel you're somewhere in the Twilight Zone.) One shaken taster who'd tried this wine 5 years before is humbled by the experience, and is now convinced that forecasting what a wine will taste like in the future is some kind of voodoo: “How could I have seen this coming?” Big humidity the day this was consumed (it even went gracefully with barbecued ribs) gave the wine an almost viscous, rain-forest kind of scent. Memorable---although the rookie taster thinks it “smells like something you'd rub on a cut.” (Although any time something you rub on yourself smells like this, you really are in the twilight zone.)

Wine Estancia Cabernet Sauvignon 1997
From California
Price $23.99 (BC Liquor Stores; current release)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Gorgeous tannins and strong Cabernet character---gloriously one-dimensional, actually; a very enjoyable, pure statement. This wine showed good bloodlines when sampled at a much younger age, and it's just possible it's been in the bottle too long; it's perhaps become too fat; too simple. Or perhaps it would simply have been even more fabulously enjoyable if the winemaker had tinkered a bit with his straight-ahead Cabernet formula. As it is, at this age it's a terrific bottle to split between four people; it's just not quite interesting enough for two.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-08-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

Depends on what you mean by 'occasion' A new study released by the US Centers for Disease Control shows that two-thirds of adult binge drinkers prefer to go on their benders with beer. On the other hand, teenage binge drinkers prefer hard liquor. The study defined 'binge' as five or more drinks on one occasion.

I guess FC Cardiff has been losing lately Meanwhile in Britain, recent research has shown that sales of beer there are declining. But sales of rosé are up more than 180% since 2005, according to one analyst, because "rosé is an easier drink to drink than white or red wine. It has also become popular to drink it super chilled, over-ice, so that the taste is not so important."

Too bad Brit's gonna be on tour then Nothing's officially confirmed yet, but it's been announced that VH1 will run a new show next season called Celebrity Rehab.

Never mind the alcoholism, get somebody to work on the eyebrows Singer Amy Winehouse checked into The Priory rehab center in England, which also serves as a home away-from-home to Kate Moss and Pete Doherty

Don't drink and execute Police in New Jersey arrested a suspect in an execution-style triple slaying on the evidence of a fingerprint left on a bottle of malt liquor found at the crime scene

RSVP Tasting: L'Affaire petit-dejeuner du chien

2007-08-08T20:15:00.000-07:00

Wine Red Rooster Pinot Gris 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $18.36
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Initially light and sweet, but too-hot alcohol punches in on the finish. Some hardness as well (perhaps the high alcohol is there to conceal it, though at some cost), but it would certainly have benefited by being conceived more completely in a lighter style. Pleasant if you're constantly being distracted by the conversation; unbalanced the moment you pause for contemplation.

Wine Apollonio Squinzano Rosso 2001
From Italy
Price $19.17 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14.0%
Big fruit and the kind of nose you want to keep dipping your own into. Lead taster noted notes of licorice and dustiness; others gave him the benefit of the doubt. Very Southern Italy, this, with persistent fruit and dry-your-mouth-out, yet sweet tannins. Big, friendly, earthy and unfiltered---like the winemaker...?

Wine Geherenger Private Reserve Pinot Noir 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $16.90 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13%
Peppery nose; softer attack than, say, Church and State's competing offering (one theory, proposed to the shocked silence of the group, was that the milder tannins let the fruit escape more completely). More acid would better focus the fruit, and it's still a bit green on the finish, but nobody spit it out on the lawn, either.

Wine Chateau Haut Perthus 2004
From Bergerac, France
Price $13.95 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.0%
Bergerac used to be regarded as Bordeaux for bargain-hunters; in the current era, where provincial liquor boards decree that there shall be no bargain wines, Bergerac has to make it’s case going head-to-head with its southern neighbor. This example does a pretty decent job: gamy nose hints at some depth; good fruit backs it up. Low acid and friendly tannins carry through to a (slightly herbaceous) finish that goes on and on. A deal: punches above its weight class.
Update: A new batch appears to be percolating its way through the system---same vintage, but a higher (13.8%) alcohol content. Fearless Leader, acting on a tip, tasted and was unimpressed. Beware.

Wine Great Wall Cabernet Sauvignon 2003
From China
Alcohol Content 12%
You read that right: China has about a hundred wineries attempting to make modern-style wines from vinifera varieties. This offering, courtesy of a particularly zealous distributor’s agent, proved more-or-less in line with expectations: drinkable (and actually identifiable as Cabernet Sauvignon) but awfully rough going. If they produced tens of millions of bottles of this at virtually no cost to the proletariat, there might be a place for it; but in this country it’s going to retail for more than ten bucks, making it more of a novelty for the anti-Sino set.

Wine Chateau Coucheroy 2003
From Pessac-Leognan, Bordeaux, France
Price $18.15 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Serge Gainsbourg nose---assertive and seductive. Is this the scent of Graves? Or the winemaker? Who cares---good fruit is held together with gentle tannins and a nice dollop of finesse with a lingering finish. Fearless Leader: "I would have actually bought this."

The Week in Alcohol

2007-08-04T13:23:00.000-07:00

Flash! Big brother has increased the bread ration from 200 grams to 50 grams! A British Columbia Provincial order in council of July 18th has created the BC Wine Authority, one of whose mandates is to slacken current VQA regulations for BC Wine producers. A new category, the "BC Wine of distinction" has even less stringent requirements, and can include wine made from non-BC grapes.

Yellow Tail just ordered up a few tons of the stuff Australian researchers have recently isolated the chemical which gives many finer examples of Australian shiraz their so-called "peppery" aroma.

I'm waiting for the version where Daniel Craig plays Steven Spurrier Two separate large-ticket feature films are currently being produced about the infamous "Judgment of Paris" winetasting from 1976, where California wines were picked by a French panel as being superior to the finest French examples. The two productions are not unsurprisingly feuding, with original J of P organizer Steven Spurier referring to the movie competing with his 'authorized' film as "false, defamatory and disparaging."

Anybody ask whether it had anything to do with spending your life in Cardiff? Cardif University in Wales published the results of a survey involving random breathalyzer tests in the city center, showing, among other things, that 40% of the men who'd been drinking at all were drinking at a level that was harmful to their health.

He wants to invade Pakistan; she wants to go into Darfur Angelina Jolie reportedly soaked down husband Brad Pitt with a glass of red wine during an argument over the current American Presidential election campaign

Drink up the cider, George Singer, poet, and the best friend a bottle of Guinness ever had, Tommy Makem died of lung cancer this week at age 74

RSVP Tasting: Everything old-world is new-world again

2007-08-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

Wine Cousino Macul Sauvignon Gris
From Chile
Price $17.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12%
You read that right---a clonal relative of Sauvignon Blanc meant to evoke ideas of SB and Pinot Gris. (Given that the international styles of these respective wines are often indistinguishable, you wonder what the point is, though.) Light color; largish, slightly citric nose. Assertive, almost aggressive palate doesn’t do badly with oysters; but the general anonymity of the flavor lead Fearless Leader to note that “every time I taste this, it tastes different.” Given the all-things-to-all-people ambitions of the international style, mission accomplished.

Wine Vina Chocalan Carmenere 2005
From Chile
Price $12.49 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
A toasty nose (smell that oak!) leads eventually to a stemmy finish, detouring past both body and finesse in between. Carmenere is done better elsewhere (starting with two Concha y Toro offerings at competitive price-points), and this example of it seems to have driven our eminence griese to irrationality: “weedy, tomato-leaf herbaceous… but not bad.” Hell, if that’s not bad, what is?

Wine Tribal Pinotage 2004
From South Africa
Price $10.49
Alcohol Content 13.5%
No nose to speak of; rough on the palate and rocky in the old South African style. Notes on the bottle claim “earthiness”; “ugly” more approximated the consensus of the group. (One despairing taster moaned: “is there any such thing as a good pinotage…?”) Our host’s advocacy of the wine fell on deaf ears and dead palates as the group moved on to vines anew.

Wine Bests Great Western Shiraz 2003
From Great Western, Australia
Price $24.87 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content
“Not your typical hot-country Shiraz!” in the words of one taster. Indeed not: an almost minty quality on the nose; the rest medium-bodied with decent balance, a good deal of finesse, and a lingering finish that doesn’t pound your taste-buds into submission. This bottle is actually two or three steps down from what Bests considers their best; as with a lot of new-world producers, the second wine often provides consumers with relief from the ambitions of the first. Consensus was that the modest weight and ambition of this wine was a virtue.

Wine Altos las Hormigas Malbec 2005
From Argentina
Price $15.95 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13%
The sages who composed the wine’s back label call this a “terroir-driven fruit-bomb”; which is sort of like promoting a building as a ten-story bungalow. Big, friendly and generic, it aroused mild interest at best; indifference at worst. Wines not aimed at pleasing everybody tend to arouse passions whether they succeed or fail; but when a wine made in the international style succeeds, you only think “I can sell this.” A lot of us shrugged and thought “I can sell this.”

Wine Yalumba Y-Series Viogner 2004
From Australia
Price $17.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 14.5%
Straw color. Then, one sniff leads to an explosion of scatological comment: “This is stinky!” “Arrgh! This smells like burning skin!” “Bad perm smell!” Some confusion as well: a spoiled bottle doesn’t usually smell anything like this, but can this possibly be what its maker intended? If so, it’s very badly botched. In the kindest words the lead taster could summon up: “very disappointing---peroxide-driven rather than fruit-driven.” Tastes batter than it smells, but somehow that didn’t provide anybody much comfort.

Wine Rio de los Pajaros Tannat 2005
From Uruguay
Price $18.95
Alcohol Content 14%
Sharp something-or-other on the nose had tasters sniffing like a pack of bloodhounds. A borderline-gamey nose leads ultimately to a woody finish; in between it begs for food to complete it. Not bad stuff, but much of the conversation ended up being about Uruguay instead of the wine; a sign that tasters lacked the context into which to put the flavors they found. The overall consensus was that everybody wanted to try more Tannats, so it’s at least that successful.

Wine Colonia las Liebres Bonarda 2005
From Mendoza, Argentina
Price $12.95 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13%
(92 points from Robert Parker and a price of under $13? What can we say here that will possibly make a difference…?) No special nose. Fruit big but not easily recognized; nice tannin on the finish. Fruity but anonymous---it hasn’t developed a language or much of an identity, but it’s introductory words seem pretty friendly.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-07-28T08:55:00.001-07:00

Now you just stay here, and ol' Buckie'll be back before you can say "blast off!" A NASA investigation found that astronauts were often drunk on takeoff

Maybe if they'd just called it "Ol' Yeller" Disney Studios backed out of a product tie-in with Costco for their new animated film Ratatouille: Ratatouille Chardonnay.

Extra! Pot smokers drink lousy beer as well A study published by the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) claimed either that people who abuse malt liquor also tend to abuse pot; or that people who abuse pot tend towards cheap malt liquor as their beverage of choice (coverage is unclear).

We didn't know she was gonna go out Accused carjacker, Courtney Love wannabee and failed actress Lindsay Lohan is back in rehab following her latest arrest for drunk driving and possession of cocaine. Meanwhile, the makers of her infamous alcohol-monitoring anklet admitted that the device effectively monitors alcohol consumption only within 50 feet of it's base station, in this case, at Lohan's home.

90% of them couldn't distinguish Lindsay Lohan from Nicole Ritchie, either According to a test conducted for the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, people who were more likely to pronounce wine from a screwcapped bottle "corked" noticed no such problem when the wine was served to them blind.

RSVP Tasting: Bordeaux on $20 a day

2007-07-25T00:11:00.000-07:00

A leisurely car-trip from Calgary to Victoria, with a few stops at liquor stores along the way yielded the following selection of modestly-priced Bordeaux for the group to try:

Wine Chateau de Callac 2001
Appellation Graves, Bordeaux
Price $18.79 (Superstore, Alta.)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
The slightly higher-priced 2000 vintage proved a bargain when it came out a couple of years back: nice power, with enough finesse that you lingered over your glass. The lower price of the 2001 proves a step down rather than a greater bargain: Not much nose; gentle attack and very mild tannins; hints of earth and gravel. It tastes like it was picked as late as possible in a lesser year---the fruit is there, but it's dull because there's no acid left to set it off. Easy to like, but the conversation's definitely at the high-school level.

Wine Chateau Sainte Marie 2005
Appellation Bordeaux Superieur
Price $13.59 (Superstore, Alta.)
Alcohol Content 13.0%
Even warmer and friendlier than the Callac above, (and with a more tempting price) but with the same basic virtues and vices: A cheap but dull date with a nice guy who has money but no brains. You're left with the same choice, too: stay with the inexpensive and unchallenging; or risk a bit more for some enlightenment and excitement?

Wine Chateau Roc Taillade 2002
Appellation Medoc, Bordeaux
Price $17.99 (Superstore, Alta.)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
....and sometimes, the enlightenment comes at relatively little extra cost: from a vintage universally regarded as lousy comes this wise little product that had some tasters reaching for their metaphors: notes of cedar and leather littered the conversation about the nose; an astringent attack with tannins still tasting a bit green; (the vintage in question speaking) but nicely in balance with the fruit and even some complexity to the finish. Of the bunch, this one turned the most heads.

Wine Chateau Cote Montpezat 1998
Appellation Cotes de Castillon, Bordeaux
Price $11.49 (Co-op Liquor Stores, Alta.)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
The kind of impulse-buy you can't turn down, even when you know what you're in for: Any ten year-old Bordeaux at this price has to be past it; the only question is, how good was it to start with, and how much can it afford to lose before turning insipid? In this case, the first answer was "pretty good" and the second "not much more". The fruit is starting to fall away from what is still a pretty robust structure; the result on the palate is beginning to feel dried-out. Food helps a lot; in fact, something rich will have the pretense nicely taken out of it by this aging small-college cynic.

Wine Chateau Le Marquisat La Perouse 2003
Appellation Bordeaux
Price $9.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
More than almost anywhere else, Bordeaux is the place where a year can make all the difference in the world---even at the budget level. Chateau Marquisat la Perouse is the perfect example: the 2003 vintage was a fabulous overachiever for a $10 wine, carrying a gamey scent worthy of an adolescent Chateauneuf de Pape. Then in 2004... rien. It was back to a nothing-special, entry-level Bordeaux. We'll see if it amounts to anything in the 2005 version (that is, if the BC Liquor Distribution Branch ever makes its way through the warehouses of 2004 they were bait-and-switched into buying.)

Wine Chateau de Courteillac 2005
Appellation Bordeaux
Price $11.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.0%
Something of an instant-replay of the Marquisat above, only two vintages further down the 'pike: The Courtillac from the great 2005 vintage represented a terrific bargain, carrying with it the poise and power of a Bordeaux a class above it. Then, the moment you dared to dream of reasonably-priced Bordeaux on demand... bang! in comes the 2006: watered-down vin ordinaire by contrast. The Buddhists have it right: Expectation is the source of all misery.

Wine Chateau de Parenchere 2004
Appellation Bordeaux Superieur
Price $18.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.0%
Catastrophically matched the day it was consumed (green chicken with Jalapenos---some of us Bordeaux fanciers never learn) this nevertheless showed some genuine weaknesses: one taster found it dry to the point of tasting dried-out---what fruit there was had already faded into the background. What remained was basic Bordeaux for the austere-minded: if you found it for ten bucks (and matched it with the right food this time) you'd count yourself lucky. In its favor: It improved a bit in the hour or so it was open.

Conclusions
1) Even at this price level, vintage years can make a huge difference in Bordeaux; and 2) price figures heavily in your evaluation: $12.99 is fine for competent Bordeaux; but for $20 there is so much competition from interesting wines from (at least) Spain and other parts of France that it’s not worth it. And it’s not the Bordelaise that are to blame; these are the people who are going broke at this level of commerce. It’s Canadian, provincial-government wholesalers, who either have an interest if protecting local wine industries (like BC and Ontario) or simply love the revenue (like Alberta). Every wine in this group would be a world-beating deal if Provincial markups were reasonable. As it is, the world-beating budget Bordeaux gets to you mostly by accident.

The Week in Alcohol: Special 'Girls Gone Wild' fold-out section

2007-07-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

I was just getting it ready for a visit from Pete Doherty Singer and noted rehab munch-card holder Courtney Love recently trashed her 5-star suite in London on drunken rampage

Jeez, Brit, Rockstar comes with the alcohol already in it Songstress and mother-of-the-year finalist Britney Spears has been spotted recently pouring liquor into her energy drinks while out in public

All the washroom mirrors will be laid horizontally Supermodel, coke fancier and Pete Doherty velcro girlfriend is reportedly opening a pub in North London

It was recently tested for six months by Martha Stewart After her recent release from rehab, actress and party-hound Lindsay Lohan has been spotted in bars wearing an alcohol-monitoring anklet. In other news, Lohan is considering an offer to endorse bottled water.

Start with high-calorie beer. Please. Actress-tycoons Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are now old enough to legally drink in all 50 states.

Wrong Osborne, dudes Persistent stories of American Idol host Paula Abdul's on-set drinking have led to rumors she will be replaced next season by Sharon Osborne

RSVP Tasting: The Gray Monk comes to call

2007-07-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

Wine Gray Monk Pinot Blanc 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $16.49 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 12.9%
Grapefruit bashes you on the nose, but it’s otherwise balanced and easygoing on the palate, to the point where it would be overpowered by too-assertive food. (Although as a note on just how subjective such things can be, our eminence griese pronounced it heavy, rich, and that it had great viscosity besides.) Its maker claims versatility for it, and the above clash of (universally positive) opinions may just bear him out.

Wine Gray Monk Riesling 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $15.49
Alcohol Content 12.2%
Light Riesling nose. After that, opinion was divided: ranging from “delicious” to “underwhelming”. Good residual sugar skates perilously close to cloying, although that may simply mark taster expectations of a more robust style. Its maker considers it ageworthy, and the naysayers were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Wine Gray Monk Siegerrebbe 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $16.49 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 10.9%
1300 cases were made of this too-little planted variety. Or, too-little planted considering the results here: What its maker describes as “a light desert wine” is far more flexible than that, responding nicely to oysters with a fresh, almost Muscat-like nose and a balanced, refreshing palate. In the June 4th RSVP tasting we complained that if only Cedar Creek could have held the alcohol down, their 2006 Riesling would be “a willowy blonde”. This is that willowy blonde.

Wine Gray Monk Ehrenfelser
From Okanagan, BC
Price $15.49
Alcohol Content 12.2%
White chocolate nose! Very pleasant, late-harvest style---in fact, the winemaker confessed to the group that Gray Monk had removed the late-harvest designation from the label and dried the wine out a bit this year. Nevertheless, still potent, balanced, and makes a great case for a grape that often makes big, goofy wines. Lovely finish as well---bring on the Thai curry.

Wine Gray Monk Late Harvest Kerner 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $16.49
Alcohol Content 13.3%
Fresh nose; sweet on the palate with a hint of residual CO2. Fresh, but after the Ehrenfelser, uncompelling.

Wine Gray Monk Odyssey Merlot Dry Creek Vineyard 2003
From Okanagan, BC
Price $23.99
Alcohol Content 13.4%
Sweet---almost feminine?---nose (“beautiful aromatics” was the way the lead taster put it), with a little toast from one year-old French oak. Tannins still a little stiff on the palate, but will soften with a couple of more years in the bottle. Firm and meaty, this could use food to round out the experience; as is often the case, the tannins went really well with (wait for it) chocolate. Tasty stuff---pretty much exactly the flavor profile you would expect of a red made by people whose soul is really in their whites.

The week in alcohol

2007-07-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

President Nicolas Sarkozy was seen building an ark Two months of steady rain has put the 2007 Bordeaux vintage in peril. Many growers have already lost their entire harvest to mildew. Many forecast higher prices for the already overpriced 2006 Bordeaux as a result.

Extra! New drug for alcoholic rats! An anti-smoking drug, varenicline, has been suggested effective in combating alcoholism. But “...no research on the drug as a treatment for alcoholism has been done yet on humans. But one study on rats shows varenicline cuts desire for alcohol by 50 percent. The rats do not exhibit excessive drinking even after they are no longer given the drug.”

We're all about dignity in the Hamptons Virtually all Long Island wineries have stopped offering free tastings, because busloads of visitors were getting drunk and damaging property. '“All of a sudden it’s five deep at the bar with people knocking into each other and pushing each other out of the way to get to the tasting,” said Kristen Venasky, 27, who has been pouring for two years at Palmer. “Saturdays,” she said, “are for people who want to get sloshed.”'

I guess Courtney Love couldn't make it that day Nicole Ritchie's DUI trial was postponed a month because a drug expert to be called as a defense witness was going to be out of the country.

Picnic at Rocky Creek (with a side-trip to Church and State)

2007-07-10T10:38:00.000-07:00

Wine Rocky Creek Pinot Noir 2005
From Vancouver Island
Price $19.90 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 11.9%
Seductive (rather than aggressive) peppery, new-world style Pinot scent makes you want to keep your nose in the glass. On the palate, there’s an acid-forward, candy-like opening leading to some nice, tasty oak---too much of it, but tasty nonetheless. The oak unfortunately gets more emphatic and unbalanced the longer the wine stays in the glass. (Later explained by the winemaker as a problem with the wine being aged in Hungarian, instead of the expected French, oak---chalk up another one for Central-European belligerence….)

Wine Rocky Creek Pinot Gris 2006
From Vancouver Island
Price $14.90 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 11.9%
Peach-like colour and peachy, soft-fruit nose. Palate is Chablis-steely, with acid nicely in balance and fruit a bit recessive---certainly true to itself with no attempts to be all things to all people.This is for serious eaters; not a patio wine. Mature winemaking.

Wine Rocky Creek Blackberry Port
From Vancouver Island
Alcohol Content 16%
Gosh, smells like blackberries! Some tannin, but mostly a big, sweet explosion of fruit---jammy to say the least. No port-like complexity, just big fruit and alcohol to show it off, which means you may appreciate it even more over ice-cream than in a glass.

Wine Rocky Creek Ortega 2006
From Vancouver Island
Price $14.90
Alcohol Content 11.9%
Made from grapes harvested at just over one ton per acre to produce 150 cases---a Romani-Conti-like yield which at these prices may just yield bankruptcy for its producers. But the care shows: Emphatic nose with good aromatics; grapefruit notes on the palate; good, almost Muscadet-like weight. Fearless Leader: “I think this is a heck of an Ortega!”

Wine Church and State Church Mouse Chardonnay 2005
From BC
Price $16.90 (BC Liquor stores)
Alcohol Content 14.3
Soft fruit presented in a big (and these days, generic) international style; finish still a bit green and alcohol a bit hot. Nothing unique, but that’s not what’s being attempted, which is ‘we can do this here, too.’ Still, at this price, nobody goes home unhappy.

Wine Church and State Church Mouse Pinot Noir 2005
From BC
Price Stay tuned
Alcohol Content 13.6%
This divided tasters, though not to the point of fisticuffs: Fearless Leader gave it a thumb held reasonably high; others found it mismanaged with an over-oaky nose and palate, and too-green tannins in the aftertaste. In the words of one harsher critic, “When the sweetness comes from the oak instead of the fruit, you’re in trouble.”

Wine Church and State Church Mouse Merlot 2005
From BC
Price Stay tuned
Alcohol Content 14.98%
Fun nose! (Not dull, that’s for sure.) Good fruit lingers on palate; soft tannins and sweet, well-balanced oak---this handles the oaky intervention much better than the Pinot above. Claimed alcohol content more a measure of winemaker ambitions than reality; a bit like James Cameron’s claim that Titanic had a running time of ‘two hours and 76 minutes’.

Wine Church and State Saddle Ridge Vinyard Syrah 2005
From BC
Price $26.- (MSL)
Alcohol Content 14.4%
In a word, aggressive. Rough, persistent tannins make it almost impossible to read, except through the crystal ball. Come back to this space in a couple of years.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-07-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

E. U. moon-shot: We want to make Yellow Tail by 2010 European Union Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel outlined a plan for member countries to rip out half-a-million acres of grape vines, end quotas and export subsidies, and promote sales of European wines outside Europe. Currently, the equivalent of 1.7 billion bottles of European-made wine are estimated as surplus and unsellable.

I guess they didn't go for the idea The French terrorist/ winemaker support group CRAV (see earlier reports here and here) bombed a union building in the Languedoc. CRAV has been attempting to pressure the French government to resist calls to end subsidies to grape growers in the south of France, and has previously bombed supermarkets.

Let's see now, how long has W. been in power...? According to the Archives of General Psychiatry, more than 30% of Americans have abused alcohol for a mean duration of four years at least once in their lives.

But I swear, I'm not an American Israeli businessman Simon Charvator, after guzzling half a liter of duty-free Scotch Whiskey on his transatlantic flight, assaulted two flight attendants, repeatedly banged his head on the seat in front of him, and exposed himself to passers-by. The plane had to be diverted at a cost of $70,000. Charvator is currently being held without bail.

On the other hand, France now makes the better action movies According to a new report, the United States is on the verge of replacing France as the world's largest wine consumer. America remains only the fourth largest producer, after France, Italy and Spain.

RSVP Tasting: Sauvignon Blanc

2007-07-02T23:45:00.000-07:00

Wine Chateau Des Charmes St David’s Bench Sauvignon Blanc 2006
From Ontario
Price $16.15 (LCBO, Ontario)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Opening wine of the tasting unfortunately took a shellacking, as wines in that position often do: Fairly rich but indistinct nose; clean with a bit of grass on the palate… but unmoving. One taster called it ‘unbalanced’; the rest merely wanted to move on without comment. Curiously, not a good match with the accompanying oysters, either.

Wine Dourthe #1 Bordeaux Blanc 2004
From France
Price $19.77 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 12%
Distinguished, mild-mannered, light---ingratiating but past seduction. Sweet, pleasant aftertaste with notes of grass well under control. This played like an old pal at dinner, and sent people off in search of metaphor: “Towering Inferno-period Fred Astaire or Dark Eyes-era Marcello Mastroianni”, suggested one cinematic soul. Or in the words of one blushing young taster, “dating a guy that’s super nice but doesn’t have that edge.”

Wine Henri Bourgeois MD Sancerre 2004
From Loire, France
Price $21.95 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 12%
Clean nose and an attack that the eminence grise described as ‘steely’. (Roughly translated, that means a wine that’s not out to seduce you, but that has confidence that you will eventually come around to its way of thinking---having a plate of oysters nearby helps.) Balanced and leaning towards the minerally end of the spectrum.

Wine Chateau de Sancerre 2004
From Loire, France
Price $27.99
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Still the French rationalist, but with a bit more Pepe le Pew to its attitude: fruit more forward and a bit more residual sweetness than the Bourgeois above. Stampeded somewhat in the rush to the next wine, unfortunately.

Wine Domaine Fouassier Sancerre “les Romaines” 2005
From Loire, France
Price $25.28 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Big, fruity nose; persuasive without being aggressive; acid nicely balanced and under control. This is the closest of the three old-world SBs to new-world-style bigness; also the most complex in presentation. A complete wine and a nice statement.

Wine ‘Zed’ Sauvignon Blanc 2005
From New Zealand
Price $13.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Wild flavors! Aromatic, herbaceous; all sorts of nutty stuff. Lead taster was moved almost to poetry, or at least paused a long time before giving out with “a herbaceous canned asparagus finish.” Aside from winemaker assurances that this was indeed made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes, no one is sure whether this belongs in the same category as all the other wines. Still, lots of personality, and the most modest price so far. Everybody likes.

Wine Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2006
From New Zealand
Price $18.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.0%
Categorical confusion over the Zed above notwithstanding, the nose of the Oyster Bay plays like a near relative, or at least from the same tradition and style---either a more sober older brother of the Zed, or a wilder, younger cousin of the Dourthe. Classic grassy SB nose; acid taking over on the palate demanding food---salmon works. For the table rather than the patio, which for most tasters was a good sign.

Wine Blasted Church Sauvignon Blanc 2006
From BC
Price n/a
Assertive nose, though not so weird as Zed. Big and… faceless on the palate---a distillation of the international style. Generic and nice enough, until the next bottle comes along. “Not much to it---but it’s got a great label” was the way one unkind taster put it, and there was no real disagreement from the rest of the peanut gallery.

Wine Sandhill Estate Sauvignon Blanc 2005
From BC
Price $16.29 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Subtle nose, but then…. Silence. From the end of the table: “If I was looking for a glass of apple juice, I’d buy a cheap chard.”

Wine Jackson Triggs Estate Sauvignon Blanc 2004
From BC
Price $13.99
Alcohol Content 13.7%
The nose is distinct from the other BC SB’s… what is it? Mint leaves, freshly bruised. Big, soft fruit follows, together with the kind of creaminess that usually comes from being barrel-fermented. The winemaker claims that nothing but steel went into the mix, so where did it come from? Unnerving, if you’re after something reminiscent of Sauvignon Blanc; bland in the face of the Zed challenge if you’re not.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-06-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

Watch out for those rosé-colored teeth, though A new study claims that in addition to preventing heart disease, inhibiting certain forms of cancer, and making you a swell person to be with, red and white wine can also prevent tooth decay

They then presented a retroactive 1994 Best Actor Oscar to Governor Schwarzenegger Charles Shaw Chardonnay--- infamously known as Two Buck Chuck because of its $1.99 price when introduced at retailer Trader Joe's---recently won a blind tasting as Best Chardonnay from California at the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition

Meanwhile, it was raining frogs at Vinexpo when Philippine de Rothschild refused to lower prices for 2006 Mouton Rothschild en primeur Large tracts of the Cote Roti and Alsace were recently wiped out by hail

But they were able to agree that billions and billions of neutrinos were passing through their bodies at that very instant The first International High Altitude Viticultural and Winemaking Symposium in California failed to arrive at any agreement as to what "high altitude" was

I turned 21 in prison, doin' life without parole; no one could steer me right, but Mama tried Lindsay Lohan extended her stay in rehab, canceling her wildly promoted and highly anticipated, July 2nd, lost-weekend 21st birthday boozefest at Las Vegas' PURE nightclub

I guess it helps her get through a day with Jamie Burke Actress and philosopher Sienna Miller recently stopped presses around the globe by claiming that the most meaningful relationship she has is with wine.

RSVP Tasting: Italy on $20 a day

2007-06-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

Wine Salmagina Verdiccio Classico Superiore 2004
From Italy
Price $18.84 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14%
Verdiccio is a white grape capable of red-grape seriousness, and this example tastes like it’s been designed to age---the emphatic fruit seems to have seen some oak, and a tannic finish asks for another year or two in the bottle. Still a work in progress; one taster compared the nose favorably to “wet wool flannel”---possibly a flashback to a combination that figured prominently in his youth.

Wine Tommasi Valpolicella 2006
From Italy
Price $18.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12%
Whoopie! Busy nose is a mixture of butterscotch, caramel and nutrasweet that screams winemaker intervention, although the tasting’s eminence grise swears that Tommasi’s winemaker is above such things. But it’s agreed that the fun, candied-fruit intensity of this wine will easily stand up to any wine-killing food you’d care to throw at it---bring on the garlic-and-tomato sauce. Borderline overkill, but everybody likes it.

Wine Sangiovese di Majo Norante 2004
From Italy
Price $14.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Good Sangiovese fruit (although less of a punch-in-the-nose than the Valpolicella above) is nicely balanced with the tannins; you get all of the grape here in a very pleasant package. Our host sums it up: “this tasted like Italy”. He understates: put this alongside a higher-priced Chianti and see how many eyebrows you can raise.

Wine Bolla Soave 2005
From Italy
Price $14.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12%
The nose on this Soave had the metaphors dropping from tasters’s lips like so many cans of tomatoes from the shelf: “smells like Sax Point at low tide”; “wet canvas in a greenhouse”; “benevolent socks”. The nose proved the most interesting part---palate was unassuming but not refreshing, with a dusky finish. Consensus seemed to be that this was the wine to drink with crummy food---you’ve got nothing to lose, and there’s nothing to interfere with the taste of the french-fries.

Wine Plozner Tocai Friulano 2003
From Italy
Price $15.99 (Kensington Wines, Alta.)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Mineral nose leads to a palate of an Alsace-like balancing act between sweet fruit and rocks. Sophisticated: One eager young taster wondered aloud “is this the first Italian white I actually like?” First-rate.

Wine A Mano Primativo Puglia
From Italy
Price $16.51 (Spinnakers BC)
Alcohol Content 14%
Almost Pinot-like cherry nose. Uncomplicated, but not, well, primitive. The big alcohol is not a factor; this is not a Primativo parading its genetic brotherhood with Zinfandel. A subtle, dusky fruit-sweetness predominates, with a good dollop of acidity keeping the finish in balance and the tannins under the radar. Made by a North-American winemaker, and has a clean, new-world style. Nice combination.

RSVP Tasting: What our agent had in the cupboard

2007-06-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

Wine Concannon Limited Release Central Coast Pinot Noir 2004
From Livermore, California
Alcohol Content 13.2%
Wine is 15% Syrah, which possibly accounts for the slightly gamy nose. Classic pre-steroid era modestly-priced California Pinot taste: sweet-yet-dry, seductive, but not really educated. The nose may be the high point.

Wine Lehman Wildcard Unoaked Chardonnay 2006
From Australia
Price $15.44 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13%
Light, easygoing, a little faceless. No oak means it actually tastes like the grape, with the added virtue that it doesn’t taste like the caricature Aussie chard either. Doesn’t taste like anywhere in particular, actually—which was probably the point. Nice, generic chard.

Wine Gehrenger Estate Classic Dry Riesling
From British Columbia
Price $13.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Floral notes on the nose according to one taster; a punch-in-the-face style hobbled a tiny bit by some greenness on the palate; but helped by acid freshly in balance. Fearless Leader: “Not bad—but why isn’t it in a Riesling bottle…?” Producer trying to sneak this one in under the searchlights?

Wine Orofino Gewürztraminer 2006
From British Columbia
Price $19.22 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.6%
Big lychee nose! Rich, fruity, unctuous gewurz flavors, in the beat-you-up style favored by this winemaker. A nice definition of the grape, aged in Ontario (!) oak. This wine caused the lead taster to resort even to Southern-Hemispheric complements: “ripper, eh?”

Wine Orofino Riesling 2006
From British Columbia
Price $19.22 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.8%
Big nose is soft and pleasant; leading to a user-friendly (i.e., acid-muted) attack and bigger-than-usual Ries flavors. This is in line with the style of the house: made to beat you up but keep you smiling. Perhaps tries a little too hard to make you smile, but manages its strength admirably.

Wine Marques de Gelida Brut Exclusive
From A.O. Penedes, Spain
Price $22.99 (Distributor List)
Sparkling Cava is a mix of Macabeo, Xarel-lo, Paradella and Chardonnay. No nose to speak of; very clean attack. A agreeable, non-geographic flavor builds to a mild crescendo and slowly fades. Decent fruit; not too brutal (not cloying either); has a sense of universality in its aspirations; very pleasant.

Wine Lehman Wildcard Shiraz 2005
From Australia
Price $16.58 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14.5%
Big alcohol on the nose! Tastes as planned as a Soviet-era housing development—cloying candy notes lead to an alarming, tannic finish. (Why didn’t they strip that out as well?) So fruity-sweet and alcoholic that it feels like they’re going after the Gallo Thunderbird market. A sumo wrestler on the cricket pitch.

Wine Cave de Tain St Joseph ‘Esprit de Granit’ 2003
From Rhone Valley, France
Price $33.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content13.5%
Peppery nose; subtle but strong. After a handful of new-world pretenders, this comes on like Serge Gainsbourg proposing to Bridget Bardot. Plenty of happy oohs and ahhs around the table; but there’s skepticism from our expatriate Southern Hemisphere taster: “But is this twice as good as the Lehman…?” Everybody else, as with one voice: “YES!”

RSVP Tasting: Rhone Varietals Abroad

2007-06-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

Wine Chateau de Serame 2004
From Corbieres, France
Price $18.21 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
New-world style well-managed by an old-world producer: fruit is big both on the nose and the palate, but somehow avoids the kind of steroid-induced muscle that overwhelms you. Designed for the multitudes; the multitudes around this particular table all enjoyed it. One caveat: a bit pricey; but then, this is BC.

Wine Peter Lehman Barossa Shiraz 2004
From Australia
Price 24.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 14.5%
Big, big, big. Did I say big? This is a bulldozer of a wine—forget your meal unless it’s mutton with 1000 cloves of garlic. Or chocolate. Well-made, and the strength isn’t ham-handed either, but you get a dazed rather than lingering finish—you’ve been laid out by what came before. Pretend it’s a dry desert wine and drink it from tiny glasses.

Wine Torres Catalunya Sangre de Toro 2004
From Spain
Price $12.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Slight nose; sweet attack not unlike a more modest version of the Corbieres above, although the tannins are a little harsh; a bit older-world. Our host even found notes of “green tobacco-leaf”; consensus was that it was not bad for the price, although we were reminded by our Godfather (and merchant) that he sold four equivalent labels for less. “Torres hasn’t kept up.”

Wine Chateau de Valcombe Costieres de Nimes 2003
From France
Price $16.40 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Grenache/Syrah blend. A slightly fishy, gamy nose hints at a seriousness of purpose not really followed up on the palate. Biting tannins led to a quick finish in a fashion described by one taster as ‘linear’. No huge enthusiasm from the group, although at least one person wanted to try it with food employing thyme and rosemary.

Wine La Veille Ferme Cotes du Ventoux 2005
From France
Price $13.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.5
Widely available and widely known (116,000 cases of this were made in 2005) this wine nevertheless repays your attention—especially in the context of the BC reds with which it’s competing. Briefly, their ‘simple and pleasant’ is better than our ‘simple and pleasant’—this is a meant to be a younger cousin to a Chateauneuf-de-Pape, and the Cotes de Ventoux growers and winemakers have enough skill and tradition to draw on that they nail it beautifully. At Ontario prices ($11.65) this is a world-beater.

Wine D’Arenberg The Stump Jump Grenache/Shiraz/Mourvedre 2005
From Australia
Price $16.06 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14.0%
Nose hints at the big fruit to follow; palate big, but a bit dumb and one-dimensional. Sweet fruit skates along the edge of blandness. Serviceable.

Wine Boekenhoutskloof The Wolftrap 2004
From South Africa
Price $16.06
Alcohol Content 14.0%
Dry mineral nose; lots of fruit on the palate, but not over the top; nicely balanced with some tartness and a more savory fruit style. Comments (everybody had something to say) ranged from “funky” to “rustic—not a techie wine” to “bridges the old and new worlds”. Consensus favorite of the tasting; people hung around to finish the bottle.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-06-07T09:26:00.000-07:00

But they gave Jancis Robinson the pull-down baby-changing station in the business-class washroom US Airways will be laminating Business Week articles by Robert Parker into their pull-down tray-tables on their economy-class seats. According to BW Publisher Geoff Dodge, "This unique partnership affords Business Week a great opportunity to place our content in front of a captive audience of potential users."

By the time you get through the bottle, the code on the back of the label looks pretty damn sexy A dating service called Soif de coeur ("Thirsty Heart") puts out a line of wines (one each of red, white and rosé) with a hidden code on the back of the bottle's label. Clients register with the service and provide personal details and biographies to its database. Clients can see the code through the glass of the empty bottle, and that unique code will provide a match with another registeree.

And on the inside of the label is a code that gets you a date with a chicken Wine That Loves... is a new line of table-wines from The Amazing Food Wine Company. It comes in opaque bottles with a picture on the label of whatever food it's designed to pair with.

...And, of course, Lindsay Lohan started her second week in rehab.

RSVP Tasting: New Quails among the Cedars

2007-06-04T08:04:00.000-07:00

Wine Cedar Creek Proprietor’s White 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $9.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.8%
A kitchen-sink blend dominated by Chardonnay, this has a fresh, citrus nose with some herbaceous overtones. Not unexpectedly, no particular fruit-type really steps up, but there’s plenty of it. Aims to be a good $10 patio bottle and succeeds.

Wine Cedar Creek Proprietor’s Red 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $9.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 12.8%
Wine is 100% Gamay Noir, and seemingly not potent enough to market as such. No nose to speak of; pleasant and indistinct fruit; not meant to be a big deal—and isn’t. (Too many of the group pronounced it “light” for that to be seen as a complement.) There are other Okanagan producers competing in this price and product range, and so far, they’re winning.

Wine Quail’s Gate Chasselas/Pinot Blanc 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $15.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Healthy nose and a palate of sweet fruit on a dry background. A very pleasant patio-mixer, although the winemaker’s agent’s claim that it was “simple and seductive” brought with it unfortunate images of Ellie Mae Clampett. (Not helped by promotional notes describing the acid as “racy”) Still, in the words of the eminence grise: “very refreshing”.

Wine Cedar Creek Estate Select Chardonnay 2005
From Okanagan, BC
Price $20.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 14.2%
Wine was barrel-fermented and left sur lees for 11 months. Smoky, buttery oak on the attack dominates the fruit, but is still pleasant. Slightly stemmy finish; one taster noted what seemed a “slight hint of botrytis” (presumably a good thing). All in all, a good, big-style new-world effort.

Wine Quails Gate Chenin Blanc 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $18.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.5
Mix is 86% Chenin Blanc with 14% Sauvignon Blanc. “Rapier-like acidity” in the words of one hyperbolic taster; some green overtones to the mid-palate. Simple, but as advertised, good with oysters.

Wine Quails Gate Gamay Rosé 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $14.99(MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Stemmy nose, although what followed on the palate moved one philosophical taster to dub this “a white wine that feels it should be red”. (The consensus was that this meant that the wine had a sense of structure above its place in the food-chain.) Thankfully lacking the over-acidity of so many rosés (which are, after all, largely failed reds.) User-friendly.

Wine Cedar Creek Ehrenfelser 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $15.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.8%
Big and sweet. (Alcohol-hot as well, but in this case, it brings out the fruit.) “Mouth-watering acidity” in the words of one taster moved to poetic feeling. Almost late-harvest in its strength; fruit is big, dopey and friendly. (Is Ehrenfelser still a marginal grape because at its best it tastes like a mix?) 1427 cases produced; coming soon to a store near you.

Wine Cedar Creek Estate Select Pinot Noir 2005
From Okanagan, BC
Price $26.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 14.1%
Smoky nose. Not much fruit—like many Pinots, this tastes like it’s been worked to within a centimeter of its life. (Winemaker Tom Di Bello has developed an interventionist reputation as the Jack Bauer of anti-terroirists.) A strange nutrasweet-burst of sweetness bizarrely appears at the finish and disappears just as promptly; in the words of one taster, “the math doesn’t come together.” After the bottle had been put away, he group’s eminence grise put a fatherly arm around your correspondent and whispered “I didn’t like that at all.”

Wine Quails Gate Dry Riesling 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $16.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.0
Decent Riesling nose; fruit a bit underpowered, but has finesse. One taster, surely near the end of his rope, observed that “salmon makes this wine taste fishy.” Cooler heads noted that the alcohol was overpowering the fruit, and wished that more winemakers making Riesling in the New World would follow the lead of the Germans: “9% alcohol, and this wine becomes a willowy blond.”

Your Dinner With Conrad

2007-05-31T09:03:00.000-07:00

As we all know, the clinically insane have so far invested enough in '05 Bordeaux futures to drive the price of the more prestigious wines out of the reach of all but the Conrad Black/David Radler set. So for the merely wealthy, who want to guzzle a bit of the action by placing themselves somewhere between the Moutons who produce and the muttons who buy, it's becoming fashionable to sniff out a Wine Investment Fund. Unfortunately, like a lot of other hedge funds, when you dig a little, a lot of WIF's smell pretty corked.

Take the International Wine Investment Fund---please. While their website paints a picture of a company where every day is like the 2000 Bordeaux harvest (a disclaimer that the site's authors can't actually vouch for the truth of their claims is a particularly nice feature) a look at the books shows a lot more red ink than red wine. (Further oxidizing details here.)

Independent journalism about WIF's can be hard to come by---a typical press-release-disguised-as-news can be found here---although at-home research can start as simply as a Google search. Still, it's a grim subject, and you're never really able to shake the feeling that arm's-length investing in classic wine amounts not only to a guarantee that you'll never drink it, but that you'll ultimately end up selling it to somebody you don't like.

RSVP Tasting: Pinot Gris

2007-05-24T11:43:00.001-07:00

Wine Val D'Adige Santa Margherita 2005
From Italy
Alcohol Content 12%
Price $21.35 (Spinnakers, BC)
Modest nose; a bit watery on the attack. Pleasant, nothing obnoxious, no huge acid (no huge fruit, either.) Mostly pretty indifferent--- you don't learn much about either the grape or where it's grown. Is inoffensiveness worth 20 bucks? This is a big seller, so there are obviously drinkers who think so.

Wine Lurton Pinot Gris 2006
From Argentina
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Price $11.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Nose is a bit indistinct but it's there; tastes a bit green---both in the sense that something's unfinished, and the wine's tendency to veer towards notes of stems and seeds, as opposed to mineral on the palate. More intense than the Santa above, although its personality a bit unfinished. Nicely balanced overall (even the colour is attractive) and altogether a package that the group's eminance grise pronounced ‘a steal---a gorgeous wine for eleven bucks.’

Wine Mission Hill Pinot Grigio 2006
From British Columbia
Alcohol Content 13%
Price $18.30 (Spinnakers, BC)
Pretty big nose---big everything else, too. Citrus on the palate; decent balance; overall, this is nicely managed. But there are murmurs from the table that this doesn't really taste like Gris... (one taster: ‘there's been muscat added!’) Wine has been manipulated, possibly so you can pair it with anything; more likely to broaden its appeal. Still tasty; although it's more of a marketing scheme than a wine. Intelligently designed rather than compelling; tries for the big audience and will likely get it.

Wine Cedar Creek Pinot Gris 2005
From British Columbia
Alcohol Content
Price $16.99
Nice, balanced nose leads to an attack watery enough to seem more like a retreat. Recovers for a nice, dry finish with hints of wood. The overall effect convinces you at least that the grapes came from one place (the Mission Hill above was widely-sourced and tasted it), tasting both of grapes and geography. But the taster-in-chief was unconvinced that it was more than a one-dimensional flash-in-the-glass: '20 bucks? I wouldn't do it.'

Wine Tinhorn Creek Pinot Gris 2005
From British Columbia
Alcohol Content 13.7%
Price $16.06 (Spinnakers, BC)
A mild nose and good finish that divided the room about everything in between. Reactions to the impression this wine stamped on the palate ranged from 'too acid' to 'sweet' to 'flabby' to 'an everyday party wine'---this last a potentially-deadly veiled insult. There was a consensus that it tasted tinkered-with (one taster thought it tasted like Chardonnay), and none too successfully.

Wine Mezocorona Pinot Grigio 2006
From Italy
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Price $17.11 (Spinnakers, BC)
Light, user-friendly, generic, not-unpleasant afternoon spritzer-stuff. Easygoing, but nothing to make a case for the grape. In the words of one (perhaps rapidly-tiring) taster, 'redundant'.

Wine Gehringer Private Reserve Pinot Gris 2005
From British Columbia
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Price $16.02 (Spinnakers, BC)
'An almost... happy nose' in the words of a now-unidentified taster. Big and sweet in every way with all flavors nicely in balance. From virtually the same location as the Tinhorn Creek, but with an obviously different game-plan. Consensus best B.C. Gris amongst those tasted.

Wine Willm Tokay Pinot Gris 2005
From Alsace, France
Alcohol Content 13%
Price $23.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Why did we drink all the others? Sweet and structured; rich fruit, gobs of finesse; wine for grown-ups. This is how it's done.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-05-22T20:27:00.000-07:00

They celebrated with a jug of Gallo Hearty Burgundy The European Union has recognized the Napa Valley as a unique geographical designation, and will forbid the name's use on wine labels from any of its 27 member countries. (At issue were a total of nine European brands using the word 'Napa' on their labels.) The action was widely seen as a warm-up to the California industry's real problem down the road: China has a burgeoning low-cost wine industry, and as yet no agreement over forthright geographical designation with anybody.

No news yet of any reciprocal action on the part of American producers to keep false geographical claims like 'Burgundy', 'Chablis' or 'Champagne' off American wine-labels.

That's nothing---a week before, they offered absinthe to George W. Bush Recovering alcoholic Keith Urban was offered a bottle of wine while flying Quantas airlines; the press overreacts somewhat with 175 papers at last count covering the incident.

We'd noticed that Keith Urban's skin has looked better recently A transdermal patch has been developed to deliver resveratrol, the alleged anti-aging and anti-everything ingredient of red wine, through the skin. One patch delivers the medicinal equivalent of 85 bottles worth of wine. Meanwhile, in other health news this week, red wine has been found to reduce the incidence of prostate cancer; and bulk wines were announced to have a smaller carbon footprint than bottled.

French Terrorists we can understand, part II As reported last month, France's Comite d'Action Regionale Viticole bombed grocery stores as an unorthodox method of forcing the national government to support prices in the flagging Languedoc wine industry. With the election of the tea-totaling but apparently wine-friendly president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy, the group has stepped up its rhetoric. In a tape sent to local television, balaclava-clad gunmen whipped up support for their industry: "Winemakers, we call on you to revolt. We are at the point of no return: If Sarkozy does not have the sense to support the wine sector, he will be responsible for what happens."

And we've got some Languedoc wine-people to chat with you as well In his second trip down Mount Ararat in a month, Robert Parker has predicted disaster for the 2006 Bordeaux futures---at least in North America. The folks at Decanter at least have a sense of levity about it all, attaching an ad for Ducru-Beaucaillou to their coverage.

RSVP Tasting Mk. III - Spanish Reds

2007-05-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

Wine Altos de la Hoya 2005
From Jumilla, Spain
Price $17.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 14%

Mix of 90% Monastrell and 10% Grenache. Monastrell was once thought synonymous with Mourvedre; as of this writing, the sages now have it pegged as Graciano. Whatever its heritage, this wine is close to Southern Rhone in its ambitions, though speaking with a definite Spanish accent. A peppery scent in balance with berry (raspberry?) fruit inclines you to keep your nose in the glass; dry and somewhat tannic on the palate—if the fruit lasts, balance will be extremely nice in a couple of years.

Wine Ercavio Tempranillo 2004
From Toledo, Spain
Price $20.29 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.5%

The grizzled veteran among our tasters commented that ‘this smells like Burgundy’. Righto—wine was aged in 1 year-old Burgundy barrels. Gamy nose skillfully straddles the borderline between gaminess and what’s usually referred to as ‘barnyard’ notes (and what an unsympathetic nose might find reminiscent of sewage) without falling in. Yummy old-world palate with a nice finish of gentle oak. A crowd-pleaser.

Wine Gos Monastrell (Bodega Juan Gill) 2004
From Jumilla, Spain
Price $13.91 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14%

Nose reveals another trip past the barnyard without actually opening the gate, with the additional advantage that it smells like the fruit more than what was done to it. A friendly tannic finish to a mild, balanced Cotes-du-Rhone style—at a better than Cotes-du-Rhone price. Perhaps a tiny bit faceless, simply because there are a lot of other decent Spanish Grenache-Syrah combos out there these days.

Wine Joven Valdelosfrailles
From Cigales, Spain
Price $13.07 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 14%

Wild, semi-insane nose that the eminence grise among us described as ‘fishy’, which is pretty close to the truth, but almost beside the point. Who would want a wine to smell like this? But it’s fabulous. Not quite so impressive on the palate, but still pretty crazy: tannic, a bit acid, and almost nutrasweet-sweet. Confused, although it might be set straight by some food. ‘Earthy fecundity’ (eminence grise again) like this doesn’t often come your way for 13 bucks.

Wine Arrocal 2004
From Ribera del Duero, Spain
Price $23.48 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14%

A couple of terms in reform school might see the winemakers of the Valdelosfrailles above turn out something like this: nose is a much saner; a more elegant class of gaminess just hinting at the pasture over the hill. Elegance and style all the way through, actually; for impressing your guests rather than laying a sink-or-swim religious experience on them. (This is the bottle everyone wanted to take home with them.)

Wine Conde de Valdemar Reserva 1999
From Rioja, Spain
Price $24.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Marvelous nose redefines the notion of 'gamy': usually a euphemism for the scent of an unraked dairy-barn floor, 'gamy' here actually means the smell of wild game---and game that's been hanging for a while, to boot. Why a scent like that is so fabulously attractive in a wine, was a mystery that the mere mortals present around the table had a hard time putting their collective finger on---although they were so intently maneuvering for seconds most didn't stop to ponder the question. Lovely, classic Rioja: Manly, balanced, subtle, old enough for the oak and tannin to have softened and melded into the fruit. Like late-period Clint Eastwood: an enological Bridges of Madison County.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-05-10T10:44:00.000-07:00

Sun judged largest star in solar system In their annual survey of the worldwide alcohol trade, Intangible Business found Gallo to be the most powerful wine brand in the world. Unfortunately, this makes it merely the 17th most powerful brand of alcoholic beverage in the world market, far behind #1 Smirnoff’s and barely ahead of #19 Jagermeister. The five most powerful wine brands were calculated to be: Gallo, Hardys, Concha y Toro, Robert Mondavi and Yellowtail. Intangible Business bases its power ranking on a complex formula in which sales and market share play only a modest part.

Flash! People with small brains drink more! A study presented to a gathering of the American Academy of Neurology in Boston showed that people who average more than 14 drinks a week had a reduction of their brain-volume-to-skull-size ratio of 1.6%, compared to non-drinkers.

Bring on the Asian Billionaires Part II On the heels of the third or fourth ‘vintage of the century’ in the last 50 years, and with prices largely beyond the reach of the mass market, top-rank Bordeaux growers are in a bind: how to keep prices up with a 2006 crop universally derided as a lousy investment? A hint at the answer is provided by Gary Boom of Bordeax Index. Describing the first growths as “completely overpriced”, Boom forecasts that the 2006’s “won't sell well and will be a bad investment” but might also prove to be “a classic vintage for new buyers – especially in the Far East – who want to secure allocations in future.” Translation: We’ll sell inferior, overpriced wine to the suckers of the nouveau riche, with the promise that this will give them entry into the club in time for the next vintage that’s really worth buying.

RSVP Tasting: Australia with a side of Island Pinot

2007-05-08T19:21:00.000-07:00

Wine Jacob’s Creek Shiraz 2004
From South-Eastern Australia
Price $14.56 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14%

A big wine that aims for an international style had the berry-identifying types in the crowd hopping up and down: big, jammy, forward fruit (but not much else); strawberry jam with hints of smoke and pepper; noticeable alcohol. A short finish one taster described as ‘tart’ and a peculiar dryness leading to speculation about winemaker acidulation. A fruit-bomb for the masses, though the consensus was that the wine was unstructured and ham-handed.

Wine Jacob’s Creek Shiraz 2005
From South-East Australia
Price $14.56 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14%

Less on the nose even than the ’04, but a much better wine nonetheless: more tannin, better balance, fruit better integrated into the whole. (Better winemaking, rather than better grapes—their technique caught up to their ambition.) Makes the ‘04 taste cloying—and unlike the ’04, you might want to drink this one with food. At this price, good competition for Ol’ Yeller Tail.

Wine Jacob’s Creek Reserve Shiraz 2004
From South Australia
Price $22.17 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14.5%

Casts a wider geographical net for its grapes than its little brother and comes up with a wine that’s a step more elevated in most respects: Fruit is as big as the regular ’04 but with an extra element or two; friendlier tannins (although the wine could use a couple of years more in the bottle) and more obvious Shiraz overtones. Great nose—I spent a lot of time with mine in the glass. Similar in many ways to the kind of thing the Gallo of Sonoma line of wines gives you: high on quality; low on individuality. Well-made, but it could have been made anywhere.

Wine Memsie Waterwheel 2004
From Victoria, Australia
Price $19.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 15%
Shiraz-Cabernet-Malbec combination packs a wallop, but with surprising grace and footwork; a bit like discovering that Sylvester Stallone has learned to tap-dance. Gobs of fruit for the berry-spotters; alcohol is not at all overpowering and nicely integrated. In the words of the group’s Philosophy grad: ‘a hot kiss at the end of a wet fist.’

Wine Waterwheel Shiraz
From Victoria, Australia
Price $24.99 (Distributor List)
Alcohol Content 15.5%
Hot alcohol; big but one-dimensional; coming at the far end of a tasting it may simply have scored a TKO over intimidated palates. Robert Parker wants you to buy this ‘by the caseload’; if you’re tough enough to carry a case on your back up the Coquihalla highway from Hope to Merritt, you may be tough enough to love this.

Wine Primo Estate Shiraz-Sangiovese 2002
From McLaren Vale, Australia
Alcohol Content 14.0%
Interesting, if a bit Frankensteinian: one taster thought the two competing grapes don’t feel as subtly dovetailed as they might have been in an analogous Italian experiment (La moglie di Frankenstein).

Sidebar: Island Pinots (Part 1)

Thrust into the midst of this tasting as a sort of seventh-inning stretch were the following intriguing trio of BC Pinots. They turned out to be wines that turned heads: people hung around after the main body of the tasting had finished, and polished these ones off.

Wine Garry Oaks Pinot Noir 2004
From Salt Spring Island, BC
Price $25.46 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Nose was fleeting at first but opened up nicely in 40 minutes to a classic pre-steroid new-world Pinot aroma. Sweet-yet-dry, cherry-pitted flavor on the attack moved on to a subtly smoky middle, and an elegantly persuasive finale. (One taster’s naming it an old-world style can possibly written off to over-enthusiasm, and interpreted instead as the wine’s thankful absence of the usual new-world muscle-and-pretense.) Yummy.

Wine Salt Spring Island Pinot Noir 2004
From Salt Spring Island BC
Price $21.89 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.0%
A more immediately emphatic nose than that of the above wine brought enthusiastic (though not universal) claims of barnyard or forest-floor notes on the nose; but the sense of the soil is certainly part-and-parcel of the overall flavor. Intelligent mix of subtle oak and smoke nicely in balance with acid and fruit; elegant structure. A sophisticated effort for which the group’s eminance grise, in his best analytic form, summed up the group consensus: ‘I think this wine is swell.’ At 22 bucks, the best buy of the tasting as well.

Wine Orofino Pinot Noir 2005
From Similkameen Valley, BC
Price $31.89 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.1%
A harvest of 2 tons/acre, aged 17 months in a 50/50 mixture of new and not-new French oak, produces a vigorous nose that you keep returning to the glass to sample. Bigger and more tannic than the Salt Spring or Garry Oaks, this Pinot throws its weight around enthusiastically without actually beating you up; one taster even referred to it as ‘polished’, although the (very user-friendly) acid may be just a wee bit too intense for that. This stands to get better with some time in the bottle. Pricey, though.

New frontiers in Euclidian wine-tasting theory: The exponential tasting

2007-05-06T15:59:00.000-07:00

How should you describe the taste of a mouthful of wine to someone?

Over the last couple of decades, two separate theoretical camps have evolved: First, that group we might call the Parkeristas, who aim for a universal and accessible wine language, based on teasing out and analytically identifying components of taste and bouquet (i.e., ‘this wine has a palate of lychees, saddle leather and earwax.’). Facing them are the people whom Robert Parker has benevolently dubbed the terroirists, who believe the best way of conveying meaning when you’re talking about a bottle of wine should be how it meets the standards of its geography, (i.e., ‘this tastes like a well-made, medium-priced right-bank Bordeaux ought to’).

The distinction between these groups is largely a decision about what you’re going to take as your wine-taster’s fundamental atomic particle; that descriptor that can’t be understood in terms more basic than itself. What makes a good Bordeaux? An enological Bill Clinton might say that it all depends on what you want to mean by ‘Bordeaux’: is it a progressive time-space nexus leading to the wine in your glass: France→Bordeaux→ Medoc→Margeaux→Chateau Giscours→1995; or is it “aromas of licorice and sweet, smoky new oak intermixed with jammy black fruits, licorice and minerals”?

A fundamental element of the descriptive discipline for each side has to be a familiarity with those most basic elements of your vocabularies—if you’re going to talk about licorice and lychees, (or if talk about them is to have any meaning for you) you need to experience what they taste and smell like, and learn to distinguish them in the wine you’re drinking. Similarly, if type, geography, style and terroir are going to be the most basic elements of your wine vocabulary, you need to experience what they taste like, and learn to distinguish them—you need to first know what, for example, that well-made, medium-priced right-bank Bordeaux tastes like. The rest of it is simply zeroing in—and then at some point of specificity, resolution fails and you have to shut up.

If the tastings in this blog are going to lean more towards the topographical winespeak of the terroirists, it’s because this is largely how the most interesting wines come to you—by geography, not fruit-genre. While you can certainly go out and buy yourself a multitude of, say, Tempranillos, when you start to seek out real distinction of winemaking expression, you end up getting geographically specific; you start exploring estate-made Riojas and Ribera del Dueros.

So here’s a relatively inexpensive method—a party-trick, almost—to get familiar with the fundamental elements of a region. Take Bordeaux as our thought-experiment: Eight people each kick in $25 to give a total kitty of $200. (And before you gulp too hard at that entry price, remember what an average evening at a bar usually costs you.) Find a reputable store and spend half the pot on the best bottle of Bordeaux you can get for that price. Spend half of what remains on the best bottle you can get for that price. And so on. Geometrically, it’s called the Golden Spiral.

You can also follow that spiral in reverse: find the cheapest bottle of Bordeaux you can. (In my regular store, it’s about $11.) Find a bottle that’s approximately double that ($25) and so on through $50 to $100. You should find that as the price goes up you zero in on a more precise geographical designation. Walk your spiral from cheapest to most expensive and back, and by the end of the tasting, you’ll be well on the way to mastering the fundamentals of your chosen language—or at least one dialect of it.

A sample exponential Bordeaux tasting assembled from BC sources might look like the following:
Chateau de Courteilliac (Bordeaux AC) $11.99
Chateau Greysac (Medoc AC) $25.99
Chateau d’Aurilhac (Haut-Medoc AC; Cru Bourgeois) $32.48
Chateau Grand Puy Lacoste (Pauillac AC) $98.60

Or from Ontario retailers:
Christian Moueix Merlot (Bordeaux AC) $14.95
Chateau Les Cabannes 2004 (Saint-Émilion AC) $23.95
Chateau Villemaurine 2001 (Saint-Émilion Gran Cru) $56.45
Chateau Troplong Mondot 2003 (Saint-Émilion Gran Cru) $99.00

The variations are endless: all you need to remember is, spiral in geographically. And if you’re dealing with a good retailer, don’t hesitate to ask for advice—it may be the most fun the proprietor has all day.

The Week in Alcohol

2007-04-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

Moses comes down from Ararat Robert Parker releases his judgments on the 2006 Bordeaux crop in The Wine Advocate today. London merchants are panicking, but the Bordeaux negociantes are more hopeful. To the North American wine-seller who counts on using shelf tags covered with Parker raves to sell his wines, the early scores look catastrophic.

It’s all the fault of those damn secular humanists, again 75% of the Texas wine crop was wiped out by a late spring frost. Texas is the US’s fifth largest producer of wine, having 139 commercial wineries and 3700 acres under vine. (There are more wineries in Texas than in British Columbia.)

Bring on the usual billionaires Non- subscribers to The Wine Advocate looking for a succinct summing-up of the prospects for Bordeaux 2006 will find a friend in Jancis Robinson, who notes that (contrary to producer claims) yields were higher in 2006 than 2005 or 2004; quality was spotty at best with wines generally being over- tannic, over-acidic and short on fruit; and that the negociantes are going to have to rely on the suckers, marks and wannabes to keep prices up.

But would you want to have a beer with him? An informal poll of French winemakers revealed a preference for right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy over the socialist Segolene Royal in the upcoming French Presidential election. Sarkozy has hinted that he might roll back the Evan Law, which bans most forms of advertising for alcoholic beverages in France. (A teatotaler, Sarkozy has also hinted at changes to France's 35 hour work week.)