Crabernet

Archive of Crabernet

2008-01-01T20:17:00.000-08:00

Future posts on this blog's subject matter will appear at Crablaw Maryland Weekly's new homepage at http://www.crablaw.com/weekly. This blog is being preserved as an archive only.

Thanks very much!

Vinography: Watch Out for Wasps!

2007-08-17T13:54:00.000-07:00

Vinography, August 16, 2007:

Most winemakers are looking for a very specific reaction to their wine -- somewhere between an "aaah" and a "wow!" Which is another way of saying that I'll bet most of them would want to avoid a reaction called Wine-Induced Anaphylaxis and Sensitization to Hymenoptera Venom. Unfortunately, this problem seems like it may be hard to avoid.
You see, apparently some people in Spain have been admitted to the hospital with severe allergic reactions to wine, or so they thought. Instead of being allergic to wine, however, these folks seem to be having reactions to trace amounts of wasp venom contained in the wine or grape juice they drank.

...

The problem here will be immediately apparent to anyone who's ever been around a winery crushpad in mid-harvest. For those who haven't seen such an operation let me paint a picture: huge bins of grapes being dumped into crusher-destemmers or into tanks, and above all the crushed fruit, a lot of sweaty, exhausted winery workers, and inevitably some swarming, dive-bombing yellow jackets, wasps, and other creatures who are out for a free lunch.

Vinography: The Science of Wine

2007-08-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

Vinography, August 3, 2007:

The fact is, such scientific findings always run smack up against the brick wall of wine romanticism. People don't like thinking of winemaking as chemistry, despite the fact that it is very much so. The wine world lives in a strange dichotomy, where different wine lovers tend to draw very arbitrary and personal lines about just how much "science" they're willing to tolerate in their wine before it stops being wine, and starts being an engineered beverage. Hence the ominous nature of our increasing knowledge about why wine tastes like it does. The more we know, the less magic it seems.

My own view is that knowing the chemistry adds, not subtracts, from the appreciation of the wine. Knowing that orange juice has citric acid or beer carbon dioxide never lowered my enjoyment of either. And we have gone far, far afield from "non-engineered" wine; even shoes and forks are engineered.

But then I am cold-blooded rationalist Yank. What do I know?

Women Sommeliers

2007-07-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

Washington Post, July 18, 2007:

Forget the image of the stuffy male sommelier. These days, diners at many upscale restaurants in Washington will encounter a woman when they need help navigating a wine list.

...

A Jamaica native, [sommelier Elli] Brown sees a benefit from her background in social work and thinks her opening line -- "What are you in the mood for?" -- creates an emotional tie with the customer. "I don't think a man would say that. The tone of my voice is reassuring."

The average bottle at Charlie Palmer Steak costs $60, she says, but "if I sense someone is worried about spending $400, I can say: 'Trust me. I've had this.' It's easier for women to be more sincere."

I could not find a fair-use excerpt that did the full article justice. The article goes on to discuss, inter alia, how women have been more successful breaking into the upscale restaurant industry as pastry chefs than into the beverage/restaurant industries as sommeliers.

I may keep this in mind as my wife Sunday and I have some respite care coming in August and we will have a "tourist" weekend in DC, rather than for me a workday there. Happily, her father generously lent us his home in Alexandria while he is away on business, so we will get a cheap mini-vacation with relatively few hassles. We will have a little money left over to do maybe one nice restaurant. We just don't know DC from that angle.

Forbes: Corking Europe's Socialist "Wine Lake"

2007-07-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

After the election of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in May, five masked members of the guerrilla wine-growers' group known as CRAV, famous for dynamiting groceries and burning cars in the name of French agriculture, issued a call to action. "If in one month, nothing has changed and the price of wine has not increased, the vintners will come out of hiding," their leader said, warning Sarkozy that he would be held entirely responsible.

One month later, action is being taken, but not in the way the ultra-protectionists would like. Mariann Fischer Boel, Agriculture Commissioner for the European Union, last week unveiled a plan for complete reform of the wine-growing trade, from vineyard arrangements to bottle-labeling. The aim? To pull the plug on Europe's 1.3 billion liter "wine lake" surplus, deepened by subsidies and awkward regulatory measures.

...

In a bid to reduce production, Boel's five-year plan calls for the destruction of 200,000 hectares' worth of vineyards, known as "grubbing up." Growers will be encouraged to quit their trade thanks to a "grubbing-up premium," initially 7,714 euros ($10,488) per hectare but gradually decreasing to 2,938 euros ($3,995) per hectare.

I guess it's politically easier to slash the vines themselves than to slash the subsidies that caused this perverse glut of apparently undrinkable plonk, wine so bad that it is being reduced to industrial solvents. Why do wineries produce at unprofitable levels and unprofitable quality? Because it is profitable to do so with perverse subsidies. Having paid wineries to overproduce, the EU will them pay them more to kill their productive capacity.

Perverse. They don't have this problem in California or Maryland, where undrinkable plonk dies a natural market death.

Maryland Wine Festival 2007

2007-07-08T16:31:00.000-07:00

Save the date - the 2007 Maryland Wine Festival will take place at the Carroll County Farm Museum on September 15 and 16, 2007, Sat 10-6, Sun 12-6.

Adult admission of $20.00 includes a souvenir glass and twenty samples of wine.

I still recall the 1991 Wine Festival fondly. It was my second or third week of first semester, first year of law school, when I probably should have been studying criminal law and Civ Pro. But I caught the subway out to Owings Mills where my parents met me and took us out from Finksburg to Westminster for a great day with outstanding weather.

Maryland Winery Links

2007-07-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

Wallet Card for Wine Aromas from Vinography

2007-07-03T21:46:00.000-07:00

Ahh. A good idea - a wine aroma chart in .pdf for the light-traveling connoisseur. Deep link with permission of Vinography.

Israeli Wine Blog: Mevushal Wines Need Not Be Nasty

2007-07-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

Richard Shaffer of Israeli Wine Direct, July 2, 2007:

Most of you have heard that kosher wines are inherently bad and cough-syrupy (which our readers know just isn't true)...but probably even most of us would argue that Mevushal wines (those flash pasteurized so observant Jews can drink them after having been served by non-Jews) often have a sort of burned taste and are much less likely to be high-quality.
...

Ernie Weir is the winemaker-gentleman of Hagafen Cellars. If you're in the area you need to visit. The tasting room is located near the southern end of the Silverado Trail so they're easy to get to.
...
Ernie's good wines put to shame anyone who argues that Mevushal = Monstrous.

Top Ten Things Tom Wark Learned About Wine Blogging

2007-07-03T21:30:00.001-07:00

From Tom Wark's Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog:

1. The more you post the more readers you will have.

2. If you can't show an interest in your peers' blogs, why would they show an interest in yours?

...

4. HTML and style sheets aren't as difficult to learn as you think, but they are very hard to master.

...

7. The best post are [sic] those that provoke polarized responses from your readers.

Wine Library TV

2007-07-03T21:19:00.000-07:00

Not that I am looking to link to a wine blogger who can "out gun" my little blog by about 500 to 1, but wow! Talk about high energy!

HAT TIP to NPR Online.

Pairing Maryland Food With Maryland Wine

2007-07-03T21:09:00.000-07:00

Most of us are probably familiar with the idea of pairing white wine with chicken or red wine with beef.

But what goes with crabs eaten Maryland style with OLD BAY®?

In my view, Natty Boh is the only true answer.

But the Maryland Wineries Association would suggest a Pinot Gris or a Seyval.

Oysters? Shrimp? Take a look at their interesting pairings with foods not commonly associated with the fruit of the vine.

Meta - What's Going On?

2007-06-03T19:58:00.000-07:00

I have been neglecting this blog for too long.

Due to work pressures and financial goals, I have been downplaying the finer things, like wine. My wife and I get a bottle about every other week, often an Australian red or some such, and relax and enjoy. But I cannot enjoy wine during the week; my commute and work schedule and family responsibilities make that not work very well. One would not know it from my waistline but I can actually feel one glass of wine strongly, sometimes the next day.

But I need to start bringing the snark I take to Crablaw Maryland Weekly here as well. It's time to get out of the doldrums and start blogging like I mean it here. So I will.

First step will be a revamp of the new layout. I put it together in too much of a hurry, and it showed, but some basic changes are now "live" and imminently underway. The wine feed at the left was a little dull, so I have decided to show some "wine love" to some fellow wine bloggers including the previously mentioned Wine Girl and Vinography and to toss the NY and SF newspaper wine feeds aside.

Washington Post: Maryland Wineries Rising in Number, Geographical Spread

2007-06-03T19:41:00.000-07:00

Washington Post, June 3, 2007:

Let's be honest: The state is more associated with crabs and beer than wine and cheese. Its winemakers can't compete with the big-time producers on the West Coast, or even the medium-size guys one state to the south. According to 2006 figures from WineAmerica, the national association of American wineries, Maryland churned out fewer gallons of wine (230,163) than New Mexico (535,376) and not much more than Colorado (206,497) or Tennessee (204,607). And don't expect to find any Gallo malls here: Most of the state's operations are small-scale and family-run. Staffs of two to four, plus the neighbor's kid, are common. But that doesn't seem to faze Maryland's ardent wine operators, or dampen their passion.

...

The state has 25 licensed wineries concentrated in four growing regions (Central Maryland's Piedmont Plateau, the Eastern Shore, the Southern Plain and the Western Mountain). Atticks expects at least eight more wineries to be licensed within the year, five of which will be open to visitors. (So far, 20 are.) In addition, five new wineries near Ocean City plan to welcome guests within the next 15 months.

...

Add to that spurt the Frederick Wine Trail, which debuts this weekend. (The state's other organized route, the Mason-Dixon Wine Trail, links eight wineries, but half are in Pennsylvania.) The Frederick trail, which mixes roller-coaster country roads with fast interstates, extends 30 miles from end to end and wraps around five wineries. A sixth, Black Ankle Vineyards, will join next year.

HAT TIP and a raised glass in good health to Isaac Smith of Free State Politics for this optimistic catch on a day when I needed some good news. This reflects the good news of another recent post about Maryland wineries.

I recall when the Maryland Wine Festival boasted a total of 12 wineries. Glad to see the growth and diversity, including wineries near Ocean City, which climate would not have struck me as ideal It's warmer, wetter and flatter than Western Maryland, and grapes usually love slightly cooler, dryer weather and a south-facing hill on which to maximize sunlight and minimize shadows. Not that most wine is grown on hills, but that's how a lot of wine in northern latitudes (Germany, for example) is grown to compensate for short summers and cloud cover.

I am not an economist or wine marketing person but the wine world is driven by appellation and region in most of the world, less so here. But even here, the recognition of Maryland as a growing, not shrinking, wine region with internal geographic diversity will probably help all Maryland wine sell more, in a marketing psychological sort of the same way that car dealerships often aim to be right across the street physically from their competition in a "dealer zone." Even plonk from a known plonk region with many other plonkeries will move better than isolated plonk without heritage or appellation.

"Maryland Appellation" List of Maryland Wines

2007-03-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

The use of regional appellations for U.S. wine is less well developed than appellations in France, Italy and other countries, in part because while the sale of wine is heavily regulated, the use of marks and labels is governed mostly by general trademark and consumer protection laws. The misuse of geographic descriptions for wine here is punished as a consumer protection matter more than as a trademark infringement matter or its equivalent.

But Appellation America, Inc. has a list of wines bearing its designated "Maryland appellation." Enjoy.

Ouch!!

2007-02-11T09:34:00.000-08:00

Take a look at this frustrating photo of a broken corkscrew sticking out of what appears to be a bottle of rosé. Photo and link belong to fellow Marylander Soccer Dad.

Gazette Newspapers: Wine Growth in U.S., Maryland

2007-01-20T17:29:00.000-08:00

Gazette Newspapers, January 19, 2007 (HAT TIP to Isaac Smith of The Old Line):

The Maryland wine industry is budding and Americans are decanting, sniffing and sipping more wine than ever before, according to the Congressional Wine Caucus’ first nationwide economic study of wine and grape products.

...

Maryland wineries have followed the industry growth trend recently, including a 19 percent increase in sales in 2006, which is above the national average, according to Kevin Atticks, director of the Maryland Wineries Association.

‘‘We’ll have 32 wineries by the end of this year,” Atticks said. ‘‘Four years ago there were only 12.”

Welcome news. I do recall seeing a paltry number of wineries at the Maryland Wine Festival some years ago. Thirty-two wineries is a welcome number.

Robert Parker's Wine Glossary

2007-01-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

Maryland-based wine expert Robert Parker has a useful glossary of wine terminology on his website. Sample definition:spicy:

Wines often smell quite spicy with aromas of pepper, cinnamon, and other well-known spices. These pungent aromas are usually lumped together and called spicy.

Baltimore Examiner: Grape Glut Forces Down Prices for Win

2006-12-23T09:29:00.000-08:00

Cross-Posted at Crablaw Maryland Weekly.

Baltimore Examiner, December 23, 2006:

Some wine drinkers likely feel ready for New Year’s celebrations now that a glut of grapes on the market has sent wine prices plummeting.

An unprecedented glut of wine grapes, the result of years of aggressive planting in many of the world’s top grape-producing areas, is to thank for this bounty.

...

Maryland has some of the nation’s stricter buying laws, but that doesn’t bother many retailers, including Mitchell Pressman, owner of Chesapeake Wine Co. in Baltimore.

...

Other area retailers, including Peter Finkelstein, general manager of Bay Ridge Wine & Spirits in Annapolis said he would take advantage of the prices if wholesalers followed the price filing regulations, which require them to file price changes with the state 25 days before they take effect.

Baltimore Sun: Robert Parker on Wine Glasses

2006-12-20T21:37:00.000-08:00

The Sun has an article about the variety and importance of wine glasses, their shapes and functions, with excerpts from world-wide noted wine expert and Maryland resident Robert Parker.

Moscato D'Asti: Like the First Hit of Crack (I Am Told...)

2006-12-19T21:10:00.000-08:00

One summer before my wife and I became parents, we enjoyed a chilled Moscato d'Asti for the first time. We don't remember the label, but bought it at an Italian restaurant that opened in the "cursed" building in Pikesville, Maryland, that once held the Pikes Theatre and since who knows how many restaurants since come and gone. Sweet, light, sparkling and delicious especially on the hot, muggy nights for which our region is infamous in the summer. Perfect for out on the deck in the summer breeze.

My personal favorite is Bartenura's Moscato d'Asti, a Italian kosher mevushal wine (flash-boiled for general consumption under Jewish law). Wine lovers who don't particularly love sweet wines would do well to try the Bartenura; it is less sweet than some Moscato and very refreshing. On Crablaw's Maryland Weekly, I published a more detailed review of Bartenura about a year ago.

Other Wine of 7,000-Year Vintage: Iran's Zagros Mountains

2006-12-11T19:33:00.000-08:00

Not only in Georgia, apparently, but in the mountains of relatively nearby northwestern Iran, there is evidence of wine production going back approximately 7,000 years.

WineGirl Online

2006-12-09T07:40:00.000-08:00

I like this blog. WineGirl Online is smartly designed and refreshing in its perspective. Check them/her out.

Tasteless Gifts: Wine Onesies

2006-12-09T07:33:00.000-08:00

Crabernet is, not surprisingly, pro-wine.

But we are also pro-common sense.

If you cannot "go to the potty" on your own, you are too young to drink wine and too young to advertise its virtues. This gift item makes no sense.

Oh yeah, the price. $29.95 for a set of two onesies. Way above market.

For those without children or who otherwise don't know the term, a "onesie" is a one-piece clothing item for a baby, covering shoulders, abdomen and bottom, with snaps on the bottom for easy diaper retrieval.

Test Post for Beta Blogger

2006-12-08T16:23:00.001-08:00

This is to test the new Blogger Beta system.