Women Sommeliers

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.

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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"

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.

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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

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

• Basignani Winery
• Berrywine Plantations/ Linganore Winecellars
• Black Ankle Vineyards
• Boordy Vineyards
• Catoctin Winery
• Cove Point Winery
• Cygnus Wine Cellars
• Deep Creek Cellars
• Elk Run Vineyards
• Fiore Winery
• Frederick Cellars
• Fridays Creek Winery
• Little Ashby Vineyards
• Loew Vineyards
• Penn Oaks Winery
• Solomons Island Winery
• St. Michaels Winery
• Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard
• Terrapin Station Winery
• Tilmon's Island Winery
• Woodhall Wine Cellars

Wallet Card for Wine Aromas from Vinography

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

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.

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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

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?

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

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

Wine Library TV

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

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.