The Grocery Store Set

I was in Publix recently and took a gander at their wine department.  It never hurts to see what's selling at the competition and while it didn't look like much was going on there, I hung around for a few minutes anyway...because I had to.  I was paralyzed.  The brightly colored labels and whimsical names kind of perversely overwhelmed me for a minute before I got my bearings again.  Then I thought for a minute longer about what had just happened.

Here's the historical perspective: Fifty years ago wine labels were usually white with no nonsense information on the front like producer, type and vintage.  Usually the plainer the label, the better the wine.  At least that's the way it used to be.  Fancier labels evoked suspicion, like, Why are they trying so hard to sell this stuff?  Now I guess the MBA's and admen have transformed the industry into something sensational.  They've made that grocery store wine aisle into an adventureland.  And I get it.  The mass marketing of wine in grocery stores wasn't successful with the plain labels.  They needed to be dolled up.

What I don't get is the silliness in many of those labels.  The captivating colors I get.  You see something similar in other aisles; soups, frozen foods, breakfast cereals.  This is the way it is in the modern grocery biz.  Colors can be mesmerizing.  And I'm sure the appeal is dissected repeatedly in labs and boardrooms to get those color schemes just right.  It's just the way it is.

I remember a label from several years ago, Angry Housewife, or something like that.  I remember at the time thinking, What does that have to do with wine?  It's a distraction from what's in the bottle, which to my my way of thinking, probably means the wine isn't very good.  Like Yellowtail.  

If the silliness in wine labeling continues I'm left wondering how long before Tony the Tiger makes his appearance on a wine label.

Syrah

Back in the day we learned to appraise wines by recognizing the few grape types that were deemed to be noble by the experts and then, by default, seeing all of the others as ordinary types.  (Some were actually ignoble.  Ask me about Alicante Bouschet some time.)  That scheme has since fallen from favor once one acknowledges that most grapes are capable of producing superior wine in the right environs with the right winemaking hands.  But still, we maintain that some vinifera wine grapes are downright noble.   

Cabernet Sauvignon is a no-brainer.  It produces superior wine most everywhere.  Pinot Noir is also a for-sure winner even if it is only a select few acres that make the case, relatively speaking.  Syrah, on the other hand, has always been on the fence.  Some maintain its nobility while others just don't get it.  Its quality capabilities are more like Cabernet, forthright and deliberate, the inverse of the insipid Pinot Noir now populating chain store shelves everywhere.  You might say there is so much good Syrah out there we take it for granted.  It's just doesn't have the popularity of Cabernet.  

For as long as we've been in the business, the Cotes du Rhone as been the go-to region for any serious wine lover to find their affordable red meat dinner wine.  The southern Rhone is where Grenache dominates with a blending assist from Syrah and others.  The northern Rhone however, is where the Syrah grape shines.  These are the finest Syrah-based wines in the world.  They are refined, concentrated and elegant; structured and capable of improving for a minimum of ten years. Potency and finesse is the calling card.  But our all time favorite descriptor has to be violets and tar.   

In the nineteenth century the grape was exported to Australia.  Re-named Shiraz, the grape quickly became the signature grape of the continent.  In fact, like Cabernet, Syrah seems to do well in most places.  If it has soils of granite, schist or shale, that is, rocky, you get that intense northern Rhone black pepper and olive style.  If the soil is softer, sandy or clayey, you get a lighter aromatic, softer structured plum and chocolate wine.  In any event, it's all good.

History is fickle in this industry.  In the 1700s Syrah was esteemed in Europe and put on a par with Chateau Lafite in Bordeaux.  That estimation will probably come around again.  Syrah is a prolific vigorous vine, easy to cultivate and in need of regular pruning.  Those kinds usually get promoted by the industry, so we shall see.

By the way, we taste a lot of wines here.  The best we tasted last year was a Cornas from the northern Rhone. 

Estate Bottling

The highest predictor of quality you can find on a wine label is whether or not the wine is estate bottled.  You have to be careful though because producers will play with words to mislead the consumer.  For instance, the word estate by itself means nothing legally on a wine label.  Likewise, while it's always nice to see the words single vineyard on a label, that too doesn't signify estate bottling.  The key words for ascertaining estate bottling are grown, produced and bottled by on the back label.  If any of those three words is not there, the wine is not estate bottled.

So what's the big deal with estate bottling?  In short, it signifies quality control.  It means the viticulture on the property is intimate.  Someone is walking the vineyards daily throughout the growing season overseeing every element and aspect of production followed by hand harvesting at season's end.  Great wines are made in the vineyard and that production is protected in estate bottled winemaking.

This post concerns the domestic wine industry and the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms regulates that industry.  Estate bottling in America must meet three qualifications: 100% of the grapes used must be grown on the estate or on land in the same appellation and controlled by the estate; 100% of the wine is vinified, blended and aged at the winery and 100% of the production is bottled at the winery.

It should be no secret that the wine industry has become big business.  More than ninety percent of wine sales are controlled by the thirty largest companies in the world (overwhelmingly American) and the largest company on that list dwarfs all of the others.  If you hear of a winery that has just sold for some exorbitant amount of money, it is often just the wine label that has been purchased.  The buyer already has the wine in inventory and depending on the quality of that inventory the label may resemble what it was previously or a noticeable drop off in quality may be in the offing.  In any event, it is not the same product it was before.  

Our recent posts on Torbreck and Januik wineries seem to indicate estate winemaking but neither declares it on the label.  Both use estate fruit and seem to exercise control over nearby other-owned vineyards so you would think they qualify as estates.  Torbreck is Australian so American wine laws don't apply there but Januik apparently falls short of the estate bottling qualification.  

It should be noted that with specificity in wine production, quantities of production become limited and with all that is required in labor, prices are higher for estate bottled wines.

The Hafner Vineyards website provided much of the content for this post.  They are justifiably proud of their estate bottling bonafides...and they should be. 

Jorge Ordonez

The Quadrum three liter Spanish boxed wines have just had a twenty percent price reduction.  (Yes, you heard me right.)  It was almost a year ago when we blogged about them, encouraging everyone to try them because after all, it was picnic season and the three types were way better than grocery store fare.  AND they're Jorge Ordonez wines, so you really ought to try 'em!

Jorge Ordonez Selections is a family-owned importer of Spanish wines produced on twenty-seven winery estates.  The company was established in 1987 when Spain was not regarded as anything special in the wine world.  Jorge fixed that.  Spain is actually the planet's largest viticultural region with a 2,700 year history of wine making, the oldest in Europe.  

Jorge grew up in a wine wholesaling family and understood early on that Spain had something special to offer the wine world.  Yet in 1987 it was the large corporate-run, profit-driven cooperatives that were shipping to America and that wine was often tainted by poor transportation and storage.  There was a lot of room for improvement.  They weren't even trying to make fine wine.

Having been raised in the wine industry, Jorge looked around at all of the historic family-owned vineyards and wineries and wondered why this honorable and honest approach to the industry wasn't valued for what it is.  He reached out to many of these owners beseeching them to maintain the traditional ways AND update their operations with whatever needed to be done to improve their product.  Cleanliness in the winery, limits on harvests, and organics in viticulture and winemaking were stressed.  After these improvements Jorge would have his work cut out for him.  He would insist on refrigerated trucks and warehouses wherever his wines were sold.  Then he had to challenge the international palate to try wines made from the indigenous grapes of Spain, something decidedly outside of the American comfort zone.

Spanish vineyards are traditionally dry farmed, meaning tap roots have to find water deep in the earth.  Trace elements of different minerals and nutrients would then find their way through the plant and ultimately into the wine creating a complexity of flavors.  Through Jorge's uncompromising efforts these new and unfamiliar flavors have found a market share in America's wine culture.  

The Eternal Question

Not really eternal, of course, it's just that the question has been around for as long as we've been in the business.  And the question is - How long should I hold on to this bottle?   And for the sake of narrowing things down, let's say we're talking about California Cabernet Sauvignon.

Fifty years ago Hugh Johnson in his Encyclopedia of Wine would have said only three percent of French wines would improve with age.  That is all.  No others.  Now in the modern, more sophisticated wine culture of today, we have recently read that maybe one percent of the great wines of the world, regardless of national origins, will actually improve with age.

But what about that bottle of Cal Cab we just bought?  We want to hold it until we think it will show its best.  Well, it's complicated.  Most cabernets are intended to be consumed within five years.  That is, most California wines feature the popular forward-fruit style with soft tannins and low acidity and therein lies the rub. 

Tannins are astringent compounds that come from grapes skins, pips, twigs and contact with the oak barrels the wine is aged in.  These compounds soften with time and new flavors develop from them.  Citric acid is a natural preservative and a higher acid wine aids the aging process.  The California climate is warmer than Europe and most other fine wine regions so grapes ripen faster leaving lower levels of acids than elsewhere.  Aging isn't needed for most of these easy drinking wines.

So how long should I hold this wine I just bought?  The prevailing wisdom is no more than ten years.  If it's a great cab from an acclaimed producer and made in the old world style, up to twenty years.  And that's if the wine is laying down in a dark, temperature-controlled, humidity-regulated, vibration-free environment.