Drinking and looking at wine
By Jack Heeger
The hundred or so people who attended the Napa/Sonoma Film & Music Institute reception last Thursday had an unusual treat. As they sipped Sterling Vineyards sauvignon blanc and Grgich Hills Cellar chardonnay, they looked at microscopic photos of those same wines.
The photos are the work of Sondra Barrett, a former cancer researcher who now puts droplets of wine under a microscope and photographs them. Each wine has a different characteristic (see the article in last week's Weekly Calistogan) and the images are beautiful.
In addition, fashion designer Stessa Thompson has created a dashing "White Wine Skirt" featuring several of Barrett's images. She debuted the skirt during the reception.
Sparkling Wine Night
Last year Ron Loutherback, who operates three very successful wine shops under the name The Wine Club, realized that the month of August has no holidays and was most famous for "the Dog Days of August." So he created a holiday and, according to last August's issue of his company's newsletter, decreed that the third Saturday of August (this year it's Aug. 19) shall henceforth be known as "National Sparkling Wine Night," when every one of his 9,000 readers should open a bottle of sparkling wine "and toast our good luck to be living in the United States."
Sounds like savvy marketing - let's see, 9,000 bottles equals 750 cases. My friend who passed this along to me urged everyone on his list to send it along to 500 more people to start a "glass roots campaign." That can empty inventories of a lot of wine shops.
(Consumers in the U.S. drink sparkling wine only for special occasions. Okay, folks, this is one, so get a bottle and celebrate.)
Everybody/thing is
a wine critic
A small robotic wine taster called the Wine-bot, about twice the size of a 3-liter wine box, is being developed and its inventors claim it can correctly identify organic components of wine and can also even tell its origin.
A small sample is poured into a tray in front of the robot, infrared light is aimed at the wine and photodiodes sense the reflected light. According to allheadlinenews.com, "By identifying the wavelengths of infrared light that have been absorbed by the sample, the Wine-bot is capable of distinguishing between 30 different varieties or blends of grape correctly within 30 seconds."
(I wonder if Wine-bot will also give numerical ratings.)
Bye bye, Big House
Randall Grahm's Bonny Doon Vineyards has sold its Big House and Cardinal Zin brands to The Wine Group, the world's third largest wine producer by volume.Grahm, who has long entertained wine enthusiasts with his esoteric newsletter and his off-the-wall sense of humor, said the sale reflects a return to Bonny Doon's roots. He's an advocate of terroir and said the sale will allow him to "re-focus on the production of unique and distinctive, biodynamically produced wines, ones that will truly express a sense of place."
Big House and Cardinal Zin will be part of The Wine Group's Underdog Wine Merchants division and will fit right in with the wild names of the division's other brands, which include Pinot Evil, Tempra Tantrum, Killer Juice and Herding Cats.
Grahm will continue to produce his best-known brand, Le Cigare Volant, among others.
(In his news release announcing the sale, Grahm said, "I envisioned a catchy headline like 'Big House escapes the shackles of the tyranny of terroirism,'(cq) but thought better of it.")
Top restaurant wines
Ronn Wiegand's "Restaurant Wines" newsletter has just published its lists of the top 60 individual wines and the top 100 wine brands, based on Wiegand's research.
The top 60 wines accounted for 19.3 percent of all on-premise sales in the U.S. last year, out of more than 25,000 SKUs, and chardonnay was the dominant varietal, accounting for 21 of the 60 wines and more than a third of all sales. White wines outsold reds by two-and-a-half to one, and 59 of the top 60 brands sold 100,000 cases or more to the on-premise market.
For more information, to go www.restaurantwine.com.
He said the information came from "reliable industry sources, and from hundreds of interviews with restaurateurs, distributors, importers, and wineries throughout the USA."
(That's a lot of wine lists to examine.)
More regulations?
Vintners who use egg whites or isinglass (derived from fish bladders) as a fining agent in wine can now place a label on the bottle to warn people who may be allergic to eggs or fish. At the moment the warning label is voluntary, but a movement is afoot that will make it mandatory.
It's estimated that 30,000 people make trips to the emergency room annually to be treated for allergic reactions, and 11.4 million suffer from various food allergies.
(If only the government would put a warning label on trees and grass to warn folks who are allergic to pollen.)
French get cutesy
In an attempt to boost lagging wine sales, some French producers are turning toward cutesy-type labels. Elephant on a Tightrope is so-named to emphasize the wine's balance; another is Arrogant Frog, and both apparently are trying to capitalize on the popularity of animals on labels, ala Yellow Tail from Australia.
(What about Theory of Relativity to emphasize complexity?)
Brief notes
Alpha Omega Winery has opened just off Highway 29 in Rutherford (where Quail Ridge and later Esquisse were located) and will specialize in Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon. Partners in the winery are Robin Baggett, who also owns two wineries in San Luis Obispo, and Eric Sklar, a Napa Valley winegrape grower.
Saintsbury Winery celebrates its 25th anniversary this year with the introduction of three new vineyard-designated pinot noirs. The founders, Dick Ward and David Graves met at UC Davis and decided to open a winery to specialize in pinot.
Stan Zervas has been named a partner in Silverado Farming Co., a Napa-based vineyard management firm.
Delicato Family Vineyards, with headquarters in Napa, has formed a partnership with Chateau Maris from France's Languedoc region to import limited-production biodynamically-farmed wines.
Richard Choate is the new director of sales for Folio Fine Wine Partners.
Jack Heeger writes a weekly wine column for the Weekly Calistogan.