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Now that’s a label. (You may have to use your imagination just a bit, because of the small size of the image — but I suspect you can).
What would you expect from a wine called “Playmates,” produced by Fetish Wines?
I mean — we are selling wines, right?
The holiday has sabotaged some of the regularly scheduled Friday tastings (sigh …) but there’s plenty going on to slake the thirst of Miami Valley wine enthusiasts over the coming week. Note there are some tastings and events coming up to benefit the family of Todd Nikolai. And Bruning’s Wine Cellar will have a Grand Opening wine tasting next Friday, July 11 from 5-8 pm with light hors d’oeuvres for $25. The Bruning’s folks would like you to RSVP by Monday, July 7 at 426-4950 if you’d like to attend. The shop is at 1481 North Fairfield Road in Beavercreek.
Continue reading "Go Fo(u)rth and taste on this Independence Day weekend"...
I’ve railed before about red wines served too warm — sometimes WAY too warm — in restaurants and at outdoor festivals, and from the comments you’ve added to those posts, many of you agree.
So, apparently, does Eric Asimov, the wine writer and blogger for the New York Times. In an entry entitled “Reds on Ice? It’s Not Heresy,” Asimov bemoans the tyranny of the self-proclaimed wine “experts” who proclaim red wine must be served at the notorious “room temperature.” Well, in Ohio in July, please don’t get near me with a red wine “at room temperature.”
I don’t like ‘em refrigerator-cold either, but if I had to choose, I’ll take ‘em cold. At least they can warm up in my glass, but I’ve yet to find a warm red wine that cools off in my wine glass in the middle of summer.
Eric’s post is a fine one, and it comes at just the right time, headed into a July 4th three-day weekend. Enjoy!
This piece from Washington Post business columnist Cindy Skrzycki is an absolute hoot.
The column details the efforts of a group of Napa County winemakers to add the designation “Tulocay” to theier wine labels. The winemakers who petitioned the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau were enamored of the sound and potential marketing cachet of the word “Tulocay,” and turned up their collective noses at a designation that would have been more geographically correct: “Coombsville.”
The petitioner who wanted the change, a winemaker himself, told the Post, “We felt Coombsville sent kind of a redneck vibe.” Even one of the winemakers who opposed the Tulocay designation (because he runs a winery by the same name) said, “Coombsville sounds like it ought to be in Arkansas.”
Well good heavens, we can’t have that, now can we?
In the end, the feds rejected the change.
Perhaps now the winemakers will all sit down and come up with a new AVA. Hootersville, anyone? How about “Mayberry RFD?”
A tip of the wide-brimmed straw hat to Dennis Hall for passing along this little gem of a story …
Prince Charles has apparently converted his Aston Martin to run on wine, according to a Daily Mail story.
Now yes, I know, technically the car is not running on wine, but rather, on biofuel that has been distilled from wine. Still, I wonder if the emissions have a certain, well, grape aroma, perhaps with subtle oak shadings or a hint of mango or lychee.
As my colleague Alexis Larsen — she of Lounge Lizards fame — puts it, the prince is proving that “Being green can be very cool.”
And who’da thunk Prince Charles would ever be the epitome of cool?
Last week, on a particularly busy day for wine news, I posted a quick little entry entitled “Governor vetoes wine-at-home legislation”, acknowledging I didn’t know much about the issue and inviting readers to help make some sense of it.
Reader response began with a trickle — then grew to a flood, with the bulk of the comments coming in well after the initial entry appeared (a phenomenon I like to call “secondary fermentation”).
Suffice to say this is a bigger issue for some folks than I realized. Suffice to say steam will rise from your keyboard when you read the comments on the post.
And suffice to say I’m still a bit confused.
But I’m sure the politicians in Columbus will be able to sort all this out and do what’s right for Ohioans. Right?
A newly released study conducted by Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research identifies overachievers and underachievers among Bordeaux producers and calls for an overhaul of the classification of 1855 to reflect the new reality.
The research also shows a very high degree of correlation in ratings by the three most influential critics of Bordeaux wines: Robert Parker Jr., Wine Spectator and Steven Tanzer. The three critics’ scores of classified growth Bordeaux are in a virtual lock-step with one another, although Parker is the most generous “grader” of the three.
The study entitled “An Analysis of Bordeaux Wine Ratings, 1970-2005: Implications for the Existing Classification of the Medoc and Graves” noted that the critical ratings and sales prices of several Bordeaux chateaux don’t live up to the lofty status bestowed on them by the 1855 classification, while others have evolved into relative bargains compared to their peers.
The authors rank-order every Bordeaux chateaux and offer up their own proposed classification update, which they say “can help guide wine purchase decisions of consumers and the restaurant industry.” A full copy of the report is available for free download, although free registration is required.
The proposed reclassification elevates Chateau Leoville-Las-Cases to First-Growth status and drops Chateau Mouton-Rothschild to Second Growth.
The biggest jumps are awarded to Chateau Lynch-Bages and to Chateau Pontet-Canet, both of which rise from Fifth-Growth to Second-Growth status under the revision. Only one producer drops three levels: Chateau Rauzan-Gassies in Margeaux, currently a Second-Growth, drops to Fifth Growth in the Cornell study.
Rising two classification levels from Fifth to Third Growth are Chateau Grand-Puy-Lacoste, Chateau Clerc-Milon and Chateau d’Armailhac. Dropping two levels to Fourth Growth is Chateau Brane-Cantenac, and dropping two levels to Fifth Growth are Chateau La Lagune, Chateau Cantenac-Brown and Chateau Boyd-Cantenac.
The study is based on 339 combinations of chateaux and vintage for which researchers found ratings from all three of the critics: Parker, the Spectator and Tanzer. The vintage years ranged from 1970 to 2005. Comparisons of the three critics’ scores through regression analysis and other research methods “showed high levels of correlation” among the three, prompting the authors to conclude, “consumers who refer to ratings need not consult multiple sources.”
But the study did note critics seemed to use a slightly different 100-point scale. Overall, “Robert Parker was the most generous in assigning scores, while Stephen Tanzer was the most conservative,” the study says. Thus, the study says, “… a 90-point rating from Stephen Tanzer is approximately comparable to a 91-point rating from Robert Parker.”
Mark Fisher is the author of Uncorked and a writer for the Dayton Daily News.
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