Beware the continuing “Bobification” of wine
In DECANTER’s August issue, under their “Good Month…Bad Month…” section at the front of the magazine, there appeared the following “newslet”:
Bobhuggers
Maryland luminary Robert Parker’s wine notes are to be printed on the backs of U.S. Airways seats, revealed when the tray table is deployed, causing the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE to muse on the ‘omnipresence’ of the the ‘wine god’.
Now let me immediately state that this is NOT another attack, veiled or otherwise, on Robert Parker, and the phenomenon that has grown up around his criticism. Now while my tastes more often than not clash with Mssr. Parker’s, I freely admit that he has done great things in shining the flashlight into the dusty corners of the wine world, and further, to bring every day wine drinking and wine appreciation to “the people”. And this is, after all, the good old USA - a place exhalts both the self made man, and the celebrity, when there is a coincidence of the two, a certain segment of the citizenry just falls all over itself to follow the leader, but, like the old saying goes “Hey, it’s a free country”. More power to HIM. Robert Parker has built HIMSELF a little empire, but he’s had more than a little help from us…
No, it’s not Robert Parker that I have a problem with, but rather the sycophants who sniff his chair like it was their jobs, and this development with US Air DEFINITELY doesn’t help matters…In the end, if you want to be an optimist, this development is the simple case of siding with a winner. If you’re a bit more circumspect, it’s pandering to the least common denominator, or even just “piling on”. But again, whatever you call it, who can blame anybody for striking such a deal? No, in the end, it’s our job, YOUR job to resist the seemingly irresistable avalanche of homogenization.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve recommended wines to folks in the shop, and after walking away, and casually glancing back in the customer’s direction, have caught them surreptitiously sliding out a copy of THE WINE ADVOCATE to see if they could find my pick amongst Bob’s. If you trust Mr. Parker more than you trust me, I don’t blame you, but then why ask me in the first place? Maybe this is a bit of paranoia on my part, but it FEELS like the customer is checking the official “answer sheet” to see if you’ve misled them or not. THIS is the problem, i.e. the notion that there is actual, “right” and “wrong” in wine, and worse, that there is only one man who knows just which is which…
Once again, I don’t mean to impugn Mr. Parker’s accomplishments in any manner, but I simply cannot understand why anyone would kowtow to anyone else’s OPINIONS about something so readily and completely. Americans are often nearly pathologically independent and contrary with almost everything else in their lives, so why do so many of us just roll over and accept the OPINIONS of one man as Gospel? I really don’t get it. Putting Mr. Parker’s opinions on wine on airline seatbacks only serves to further the notion that Mr. Parker is not only the greatest wine critic of all time, but that he also DESERVES to be…no one else could even get whiff of such a deal, so he MUST be “the best”, right? To me, those that hang on Parker’s every word are nearly exactly analogous to “bandwagon” sports fans, i.e. those that believe that if they side with a winner, it will grant them immediate credibility and status. In my eyes, however, all it makes you is a lemming.
And there are surely those out there that say “So what that Parker’s got the wine world on a string, he’s just one guy.” And my retort would be that he is indeed just one man, but a man with the sort of power in his field that Ruppert Murdoch has in mainstream media - grossly disproportionate. And even THIS might be fine if this disproportionality weren’t eventually driving the kinds of wine that winemakers are actually turning out onto the market. More than one winemaker has admitted, off the record of course, that he makes a special barrel for Robert Parker that is deliberately dialed in for Parker’s palate, and that is substantially different from the rest of the production of the “same” wine. When “one man” elicits this sort of response from the world’s finest winemakers, some of whom are working out of literally hundreds of years of tradition, you know that things gone bass ackwards.
Here’s my prescription: read Parker, but ALSO read Steven Tanzer, and WINE SPECTATOR, and FOOD & WINE and THE WINE NEWS and THE WINE QUARTERLY and DECANTER. Learn and compare what one publication values versus another, but MOST importantly, compare their values with YOUR OWN. Parker is indeed a major force in the wine world, but it is only the blind followers of his every word that allows him to, albeit figuratively, to reach right down into vineyards worldwide to determine, at least in part, what grapes get planted, how they are cultivated, and how they are handled in the cellar, and to my mind, that is EVERYONE’S loss. So the next time you feel Parker’s hand guiding yours to this or that bottle, smack it away. Take the advice of your favorite shop’s consultants. Take the advice of another publication or pundit. Take the advice of a friend, family member or colleague. Cast dice. Flip a coin. Eeenie meenie miney mo, just be a LEADER or at least a dissenter and resist the opinions of the man whose reputation was made by the herd.
TOM CIOCCO
The long and the short on corks
Let me open this piece by making it perfectly clear that this is NOT the umpteenth “CORK VS. SCREWCAP” debate (not there’s anything WRONG with that…). No, this is a little number about judging a wine by its cork…
Well, I guess that it’s not strictly a “judging” scenario, but rather one of gleaning information…The next time you open a bottle of wine (and hopefully it’s today!) pay a little extra attention to the cork. One of the easiest things to note about a wine’s cork is its length. Some may say: “Big whoop - this one’s short and this one’s long, and this one measures somewhere in between - they all do the same job.” This is true, but without even putting a drop of wine to your lips, you can often get SOME idea of what the winemakers intentions are (or were) for this bottle. If the cork is short, one can be reasonably sure that the winemaker intends or expects that the wine be consumed sooner rather than later. Why? Well, as is almost too obvious to even note, corks keep air out of wine bottles. If a cork is short, there is that many fewer millimeters of neck/cork contact. And as we all know, eventually, EVERY cork degrades and ultimately fails, but shorter corks make it just that much easier for air to meet wine, ergo you’re probably dealing with a wine that was intended to be drunk young. Concomitantly, if one encounters a particularly long cork, one can be just as sure that the winemaker expected this particular wine to have a chance at a long life.
Another thing to note about corks is quality. The ultimate quality of a cork can play into cork length, but this aspect is another indicator of what the winery thinks that they’ve put into the bottle. A very dense, smooth cork is generally of higher quality than one that is more spongey and covered with pits or “eyes” (the former is more resistant to expansion and contraction). But there also needs to be a stronger caveat regarding this aspect too, and this is where it dovetails with cork length. For example, a winemaker might choose a long, but lesser quality cork over a shorter, but higher quality one for reasons that involve both wine preservation and the winemaker’s ultimate budget. He or she may feel that if the prices of these two cork styles are equal, that one or the other is more approriate for this or that particualr wine, and depending on just how good and just how long the corks actually are can give the drinker a keyhole view into the winemaker’s mind.
The last, and perhaps the least important but still informative aspect of the cork is what it “says” or what is printed thereon. Now clearly, this aspect has little to no effect on how the wine ages, but it DOES tell you a little bit about what the winery or the winemaker thinks of it/himself, and where it thinks it’s going. I’ve pulled plenty of corks that have precisely NOTHING printed on them. Some corks have a generic message for the drinker - “Mis en bouteille au chateau” (”estate bottled”) is a common French message. “Vini di qualita`” (”wines of quality”) is a frequently encountered Italian printing. Still other producers pay the extra scratch to have their names, logos, and even some bons mots, special symbols, sketches, the vintage, etc., etc. printed onto the corks. Now clearly, it’s harder to actually QUANTIFY just what all of these inclusions and omissions mean vis a` vis what’s in the bottle, but it can provide the base for a bit of educated speculation…
As is true with every pursuit, the more examples of “X” that one has seen, the more one can begin to classify and differentiate just what’s afoot, so don’t get too discouraged if at first you can’t tell “long” from “short”, or “good quality” from “bad quality”, but as you continue to drink wine, and notice exactly what’s emerging from the necks of the bottles that you’re drinking - both familiar and unfamiliar - the more you can “read between the lines” and consequently begin to have fun guessing what this or that bottle holds in store before drop one evn hits your tongue…
TOM CIOCCO
A wine term - “CLOS”
I was sitting at my desk the other day thinking about the “rare grape series” that I’ve been writing over the last year, and it occured to me that a similar series featuring wine terminology (especially foreign language terms) might also be entertaining as well as interesting for one and all, no? And so we proceed…
The FIRST wine term in this new series is the French word “CLOS” (pronounced “Cloh”). I’m relatively confident that most of you have seen this term on labels from everywhere in the world, but the term is most closely associated with France (it’s a French word after all), an even more particularly, with Burgundy, though it is by no means exclusive to this region.
So what DOES it mean? It’s a very simple, but still very specific meaning - the term “clos” refers to nothing more or less than a walled vineyard. Intuitively, one knows that simply putting a wall around a vineyard doesn’t actually DO anything for the vines, but it definitely is a SYMBOL for something, and that something is prestige and quality. French wines that include term “clos” are “select” wines. Think about it - if you put a wall around your vineyard, you’re clearly calling attention to it, and apart from the protection that the wall provides from the “rabble”, and some grape-eating four-legged critters, the attention the grower is seeking is recognition for the unique and finer qualities of that particular site, and a wall gives such a powerful visual symbol to all who see it. Further, the ability to use this word on one’s labels conveys the same level of prestige to the buyer and drinker that it does to the local who can actually eyeball the old pile of bricks in situ…
Just as an aside, in Catalunya, the word is “closa”, and in the Veneto region of Italy, the word “brolo” is used to mean the same as “clos”.
TOM CIOCCO
Everybody’s trying to get into the act…
Ninty-some percent of the lands under vine are found, not surprisingly, in vitis vinifera’s traditional homelands that range from certain pockets in the near east out as far as Portugal. As I said, no surprise - the vine has had thousands upon thousands of years to populate this part of the world.
And only until about 400 years ago, this was the ONLY place one could have found the vine being cultivated. But with the rise of the age of European colonialism, these old time wine cultures, in an attempt to re-create each nation’s respective wine cultures in their new lands (surprising to many, South Africa was the first place in the “New World” in which the vine was extensively cultivated!), “New World” wine was born: The aforementioned South Africa, the South American countries, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, etc. And before the first root was sunken into the earth in any of these places, none of them had any more connection with the vine than Timbuktu’s DPW now has with snow ploughs, apart from just one thing: CLIMATE. All of the viticultural areas in the “old” New World were climatically similar if not nearly identical with climate zone from which the vine originated. Certainly there are some differences, and I guess that it could be said that if one looks at the extremes, some fairly significant ones to be sure, but at the end of the day, there have always been more similarities than differences.
But now the world is witnessing the birth of “New New World” wines, and like James Brown said “…comin’ from some funny places…” too. The new New World wines that are spilling onto the scene are emanating from places like Brazil, Virginia, China, India, and even Thailand! So I guess that the obvious question is “why”? Well, the first reason is now they can. As both vineyard and cellar technologies make advances in clonal selection, soil and pest management, engineered yeasts, temperature controls, etc., etc., regions that for reasons of climate and soil that had always been off limits for vine growers have been put within reach for local and adventuresome farmers. With contemporary technology, India is no longer impossibly hot, and Thailand is too humid no more…
The main IMPETUS however for the creation of these “New New World” wines, if there can be said to be just ONE, is at least for my mind, seated in the attempt to generate status and prestige. Like it or not, wine is a powerful symbol worldwide for affluence, sophistication, and education. Wine-producing countries are also often considered to be among the world’s most respected and sophisticated, and it is thought that developing a wine culture can be a shortcut to such global prestige, and this may be right, but this path is clearly fraught with dangers…If these wine newbies can begin, after of course the requisite start-up difficulties that any new winery faces, to produce decent or better wines, there is an equally decent chance that at least among the local gentry, that the winery will survive if for no other reason than from local pride. But, if these wineries that are, let’s face it, fighting mother nature, cannot produce a product that is worthy of export, they will survive as little more than local curiosities, or worse, might slowly slide down the slope of diminishing returns into eventual oblivion. Running a successful winery in California or Argentina or New Zealand is hard enough without the added difficulties of a less-than-cooperative terroir, and a local culture that has little to no historical interest in anything as esoteric and expensive as wine…
So what is the future for Chinese wine, for example? Right now, it’s hard to say. The initial successes have been there for some producers in these non-traditional wine growing areas, but the question remains whether this is just a fad or a curiosity for the local markets, or if indeed these upstart producers are truly on the threshold of making wine a fully GLOBAL phenomenon. Can these folks produce a product that is either priced properly and/or offers enough unique characteristics to cut a sustainable channel into the market? If so, they’ve got a chance, but for now, if I were betting on it, I’d wager that this is one sun-drenched slope that might be just a bit too steep for most growers in Maharastra or Chiang Rai to climb…we shall see…
TOM CIOCCO
Croatina - The grape that shall remain mis-named
The “Rare grape series” continues…In this installment, we consider…Croatina…
Croatina - the name almost always “isn’t”, but the grape most definitely “is”…so what the hell am I talking about? Well, first things first - Croatina is a black grape that hails from the confluence of the borders of the three northern Italian regions of Lombardia, the Emilia part of Emilia Romagna, and Piedmont. So back to the nomenclature…Croatina is the most proper name for this grape, though there are very few producers that actually use this name (it’s a long story). The name that they DO use most often is BONARDA. “So what’s in a name?” you ask? Well, in many cases the subjects still do smell as sweet, but in this case we’ve got something rotten in the state of Italy (sorry)…
The essence of the problem here is that there are four different varieties called “Bonarda”, but in fact there is only one TRUE Bonarda. First, we’ve got our subject, Croatina. Next, there is a variety called “Bonarda Novarese” which is also not true Bonarda but rather a variety most properly called Uva Rara. Then there is the Argentinian variety with the moniker “Bonarda”. This grape is actually a variety called Charbonneaux (AKA California’s Charbono). And then (drumroll) there is the REAL Bonarda, which is most fully called “Bonarda Piemontese”. It is an aromatic variety…
OK, enough writing about things OTHER than our subject. Croatina is a thick-skinned variety that buds and ripens late, and produces very deeply colored wines that are more tannic than acidic, but are often known for a supple, dense, dark fruit with good tannic grip. Croatina often shows aromas and flavors of plums, black cherry, and ground cloves.
The Craotina grape appears most commonly in the Oltrepo` Pavese DOC, but it makes an appearance with Barbera playing a supporting role in the Gutturnio DOC, and in the excruciatingly obscure San Colombano del Lambro, Colli di Parma appellations in Emilia, and the Bramaterra, Colline Novaresi, and Coste della Sesia appellations in Piemonte.
Croatina pairs well with egg pastas with meat and tomato sauces, boiled and roasted poultry, especially the more “noble” varieties (turkey, duck, pheasant, et al.), beans with sausages, and salamis.
The link below will take you to the two Croatina wines (yes, I know, they’re labelled as Bonarda - I thought that we went over this;-)) As always, if you pick one or both (or some other) of these wines up, please post your tasting notes here as comments.
TOM CIOCCO
