Well-made, bad wines

There are a few new wines out, you'll be glad to know -- in fact a whole series of them, all boasting a uniform, eye-catching label announcing half their proceeds go to charity -- wines which I think I can describe as well-made, but bad. So sorry.

This revelation dawned on me as I sipped first one, then the next, then a third. The white was only sweet, fairly fragrant, and fresh. The reds, a cabernet and a merlot, were very much alike. Both had a clear, red jelly-like color that seemed strange for their variety, and both had the tinny, sweet smell of a traditional kosher Concord, plus a flat, half-sweet, off taste reminiscent of cheap, gummy milk chocolate. Awhirl with all this, I wasn't quite bright enough to realize what vital characteristic was missing from each of them until the nice salesman, we'll call him A, explained that both were kept low in tannins so as to seem friendly and soft to the new drinker. I thought, ah so. He's right, I don't feel any puckering or assertiveness or "structure" here. (We pause to remind ourselves that tannin is a touch sensation, not a flavor.)

A different nice salesman, we'll call him B, who was showing A around the retail neighborhood, further explained privately that he believes this is the direction "the entire industry is going." Winemakers want to reach out and capture that huge chunk of the market which does not particularly like wine yet, but wants to try some, not least because it also wants the touted health benefits gurgling in a glassful of some much milder-tasting liquid than a straight-up cabernet or merlot tends to be. As anecdotal evidence, he said he has noticed lately, for the first time in his career, that sales of white zinfandels are down. We jointly surmise this is because consumers who love the sweet workhorse tipple have other choices these days which are just as soft, friendly, and un-tannic. Like this one.

All this is said without a sneer, truly, because truly we should stop and acknowledge what skill it must take to craft wines which do a new, complex job well. They have one chance to attract the shopper. The shopper is going to make his decision, while at sea in the wine aisle of a grocery store, or having wandered away from the liquor store's beer or spirits sections, based on the look of a label, a price, and a brief glance at any descriptors either on the bottle or on what's called "POS" (Point of Sale, i.e., little advertising tags and explanatory blurbs and reviews) taped to the shelves nearby. And when he gets the bottle home and opens it, again it has one chance to impress him -- to persuade him that he might like wine, or at least like this one.

Let's assume that he's accustomed to the alcoholic strength of hard liquor, the fruity sweetness of cocktails (especially slushy summertime ones, now) and the bitterness and fizz of beer. How can the new wine please his palate?

Winemakers and other entrepreneurial types must have had to think this out, and form focus groups and run surveys and do all sorts of sensible businesslike things, before committing major resources to a new line no less than six varietals strong. While offering all possible respect to nice salesman A and his spiel, I frankly don't believe the story that the brain behind these samples started out as a retail stock kid who just happened to get the notion that if it's good to donate a wine's proceeds to some charity, then it's better to donate many wines' proceeds to many charities. There are other worthy causes available all year, the kid reckoned while busy at work one day,  besides breast cancer in October ....

Um, no. Sombody, the brain or a whole trust of them, had a look at the market first, devised some very specific winemaking recipes -- non-threatening, no acids, no tannins please, but not so sweet that even inexperienced adults will disdainfully think "Hawaiian Punch" on their first sip -- and then added the six charitable causes, one to each varietal, to close the hoped-for sale. Good old American zinfandel to support the troops, and chardonnay for the ladies (breast cancer, again) are both especially right pairings.

The trouble is -- so sorry -- that these wines don't taste very good. Certainly they don't taste like the beverages that their titular grapes will otherwise make when handled in the usual way, even allowing for differences of opinion on lofty things like terroir or too much oak, or the usual winery POS about "passion, integrity, and respect for the land." Once our samples introduce the beginning drinker to the idea that wine doesn't have to be harsh, they will have served their purpose. Will the new drinker then move on to what we really should call the real thing? -- to what professionals call the "varietally correct"? That means cabernets with tannin, or chardonnays with acidity; thin-bodied, horsy Chiantis, or Riojas that are not fruit-bomb, Marine-worthy zinfandels but, as Karen MacNeil puts it, "delicate and almost fragile." Or will he find those tastes disappointing, and will he, in turn, go back to this particular maker wanting him to expand his portfolio from six products to eight, or maybe fifteen?

And what business is it of mine? None at all. To our nice new friends, mix and blend and focus-group away, I say. I hope you all earn oodles of money and support as many good causes as you like. Did you all see my little joke in the sidebar, about wanting $300 to pay the taxes on Tara? A nice scuppernong would do.

Image from Technicolor Dreams 70

I have an idea

My idea is that the problem seems to lie, not with Blogger, but with accessing Blogger through Mozilla. Alas, how can Mozilla, which I like, have failed in this important way? Yet here I am, on good old Internet Explorer, having recovered access to my old drafts -- and still by the way enjoying that Powers Reserve cabernet, from Washington's lovely-sounding Horse Heaven Hills.

I have no idea what's wrong with Blogger, but something is very, very wrong. I am consoling myself with an excellent 2006 Powers Reserve cabernet, from Champoux Vineyards, Horse Heaven Hills, Washington state.

Exactly what you want

Some wines are just exactly what you want. You want and expect an Australian shiraz to be slightly peppery, slightly smoky, and full of gloppy, ooze-ful blueberries and plums. So you pick, and thoroughly enjoy, 2009 Shoofly shiraz. "Helping to deal with life's little distractions" is their marketing tagline, and it gets my vote as the cutest slogan I've come across in a long time. Retail, about $15.

Then suppose you want a California cabernet. So you pick, and thoroughly enjoy, 2007 Faust. Retail, about $45.

It too is exactly what you want from a very good California cab. One would be hard pressed to describe it as screamingly different from the shiraz -- delicious as both are, are they both also perhaps good candidates for our master Michael Broadbent's pejorative title "global red"? -- except to say that it has a certain tautness and firmness that the shiraz doesn't bother with. Shoofly is your loud, fun great-aunt Mabel, who wears purple clothes and takes you downtown shopping, where she encourages you to have a huge piece of chocolate cake in lieu of lunch; Faust is her prim, thin, well-preserved daughter, who married wealth and looks it. She quotes Goethe on her back label. She rolls her eyes and tells you to eat a good dinner -- including a green pepper salad -- first.   

There. I've set down a scene, a kind of story. You see, recently I read another great wine master's ideas, no less a personage than Hugh Johnson, who said that tasting notes full of our familiar fruit-basket metaphors are no use to anyone. He's not the first to say so, of course. But he went on to suggest that a wine should call to mind, and be described in terms of, an experience. Like shopping with great-aunt Mabel?

Perhaps. And I was struck by the opinion of one more wine drinker, this one a friend on Tom Wark's Facebook page. (Incidentally, I'm not his friend. I asked, but among all his 1400+ friends, he has not yet decided to include me. Still I see his activities posted to my own page occasionally. Facebook is funny that way.) A few days ago Mr. Wark, busy at a professional tasting, asked, "Should wine competitions judge varietal wines on their regional typicity?" In other words he is asking whether or not, at a competition of, say, Australian shirazes, the wines should be judged on how well they conform to being Exactly What You Want from an Australian shiraz. Would a delicate, un-fruity, un-peppery shiraz correctly get low marks at such a contest?

The wine drinking Warkian friend, one Donna Childers-Thirkell, responded crisply and devastatingly in the comment stream. "You wouldn't be able to find judges. I don't know why there are wine competitions anymore. Most of the judges would never be able to blind taste and you have to know typicity to blind taste."

Wow. I guess that's a No on the Warkian question. However, I think she meant to emphasize "most judges would never be able to blind taste" because (not "and") most don't know typicity, or Exactly What They Want.  

Well, I do. On a hot summer day, after sipping these fine but heavy-duty reds, here is exactly what you want.

2009 Polka Dot riesling, Pfalz, Germany. Cheap? Check (retail, about $8). Sweet? Check. Refreshing and delightful? Check, and check. A hidden Gallo product? Oh yes. Exactly.

2008 Freestone pinot noir, Sonoma Coast

Bursting, almost fizzy with cherries
dark purple
a little vegetable or herbal overlaying it
so good

Freestone is the legacy of Joseph Phelps Vineyards, which itself has constituted the second career of Joseph Phelps, circa mid-1970s construction company CEO from Greeley, Colorado. The average wine drinker interested in behind-the-scenes information will want to know that

the vineyards lie only 5-8 miles from the Pacific Ocean west of Bodega Bay, providing a long and cool growing season. Goldridge soils, dramatic elevations, careful attention to clonal and rootstock selections and use of biodynamic farming principles result in Chardonnay and Pinot Noir that is distinctly Freestone ... rich flavors develop while the filtered light provided by the fog layer ensures a nice backbone of natural acidity.

The average wine drinker who likes to leave technical details to that large and chummily circulating fraternity of professional consultants, growers, vineyard managers, winemakers, cellar managers, and assistants thereof, the good people who give us so much pleasure, will nevertheless prick up his ears at the name Bodega Bay. The movies, you see, are more familiar than wine production specifics, even if most of us don't keep track of that large and chummily circulating fraternity of directors, writers, sound editors, costume designers, set designers, storyboarders, makeup stylists, key grips and best boys, and assistants thereof, who give everyone so much pleasure. Bodega Bay. Isn't that where Mitch Brenner and Melanie Daniels get into trouble about some birds?

Image from Daveland

It surely is. And then, speaking of unusual places, consider the village of Atacheo, Michoacan, Mexico. Freestone's vineyard manager originally came from there. This would be unremarkable except for the further fact that, as the winery website explains, more than eighty percent of this small town's population works far away in the California wine industry. Atacheo's Facebook page (yes, it has one, assuming this is our Atacheo) cheerfully announces that the community has a population of "about 1,500 with 4,000 living in the USA  and around the world." So the Facebook page's ad hoc census numbers roughly agree with this one winery's claim -- but, on a logical level, how do these figures compute? Atacheo, Michoacan, Mexico, looks to be more than two thousand miles from Bodega Bay. Even a California wine job closer to the border still would require a long trek.

So why on earth would the majority of natives of this one obscure place happen to work so far from home, and all in one particular foreign industry? Do they trek back each night? It would be as if I worked in Sonoma, and yet still counted as a resident of Lansing. And I wouldn't trek back every night.

The explanation has to lie in something more than a strange Atacheo-an coincidence. If you think about it, it must be more a sort of microcosm of ....

Image from Orange Juice

Oh.

What I'm reading...

... A day in the life of a Missouri winery -- they are growing Seyval blanc and traminette there, and winning awards, too. They don't update their blog too often, but perhaps it's because everyone is too busy making good wine and winning awards. Go to Sainte Genevieve Winery for a virtual visit.

... Alder Yarrow's travelogue of his half-week at the winemaking island of Santorini in the Mediterranean. Remote antiquity knew this shattered remnant of rock as the lovely island Thera (but how do we moderns know the ancients called it Thera? -- the man to consult about it, it seems, is the great English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, or if you are in a hurry you may simply cheat and glance into Norman Davies' Europe) until it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in the year 1628 B.C. On the barren, windswept pumice, Santorini's farmers grow grapes to produce a vinsanto, a sweet white dessert wine, which is not to be confused with Italy's better known Vin Santo, a sweet white (usually) dessert wine. Speaking of which, I'm reading --

Lost Desserts: Delicious Indulgences of the Past by Gail Monaghan. Here you will slaver over pictures of and instructions for making Marbled Rose and Raspberry Fool, Pruneaux au Pichet (prunes in a pitcher), and Pear and Ginger Crumble with Lemon Curd Ice Cream. Unfortunately the very first treat in the book, Auguste Escoffier's "Mont Blanc," is accompanied by a positively disgusting photograph that will make you shudder at offers of chestnut purée and whipped cream for life (p. 18). Luckily the publishers saved the splendid picture of Red Wine Jelly for the book's cover.

... And finally, Paula Peck's Art of Good Cooking (1966). I found it in a thrift shop and seized it instantly. Why does the name Paula Peck seem to ring faint bells of memory? Could she have been a celebrity chef of the era? Heaven knows where this copy of the book, inscribed "Property of the Waltons," has been kept for forty years -- in the Waltons' chicken coop, by the smell of it -- but when I hold my nose and read from a height, I find Miss Peck's recipes are interesting and adventurous. Squid in its ink, Indian scramble made with moong beans. And this, from the chapter "Homemade Foods in Reserve."

Paula Peck's Middle East cheese bits

1 pint sour cream
1 pint yogurt
1 Tbsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground pepper
2 tsp caraway seeds
olive oil

Line a strainer with cheesecloth, and place over a  bowl. Mix sour cream and yogurt together, and pour into strainer. Place in refrigerator for at least 36 hours, or until the mixture is very firm and a good deal of the liquid has drained into the bowl.

Discard the liquid and place the firm mixture into a bowl.Stir in salt, pepper, and caraway seeds. Return to a cloth lined strainer and allow to drain 12 more hours (in the refrigerator again, I presume).  

Place the contents of the strainer in a pastry bag fitted with a large plain round tube. Cover a baking sheet with a clean towel or three layers of cheesecloth, and pipe rounds of cheese onto it, no bigger than 2/3 inch in diameter. (You can also shape the cheese into balls with two teaspoons.)

Cover the cheese balls with another clean cloth and allow to stand at room temperature for at least 24 hours, until they are firm enough to pick up with the fingers.(Problem: keeping these delicacies safe from curious insects for 24 hours when the windows are open in glorious midsummer.)

Pack the balls into a clean pint sized jar, and add enough good olive oil to cover them completely. Close the jar tightly and store in the refrigerator ("for months") until needed. 

Miss Peck says, "They make a most satisfying first course plate served with crisp greens, a slice of salami and a few black olives or capers." I'm sure they do, but I may wait to try them until a season when insect life is less curious.

2004 Terra Valentine cabernet

I savored it over the course of three nights, but took no notes because no specific or startling (or overdone?) fruity, spicy adjectives came to mind for it. It was just very good.

It seems that the best wines are like this -- no one taste stands out, hollering "licorice" or "plum," but every sip and each glassful is luscious, soothing, and sophisticated. This won't surprise us too much here, as we have met Terra Valentine before. 

Retail, about $40.