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WINE QUIZ

 

What Alsatian Wine/Grape can be legally labeled as a completely different wine?


In Alsace near the German border, where wine is typically labeled according to the grape rather than the place, a wine can be labeled "Pinot Blanc" and yet be 100% Auxerrois Blanc, an entirely different grape!

It could also be a mixture of Auxerrois, Pinot Gris (Grigio), Pinot Noir and Pinot Blanc. Or just Auxerrois, Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir, without any Pinot Blanc.

Enough said.

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Wine Consumer Supplies

 

In its 40-year history, the Wine Appreciation Guild has established itself as America's premier wine book publisher and leading wholesale distributor of wine accessories to the trade.



Wine Hardware is just what it says - a leading source for wine racks, refrigerated and non-refrigerated wine storage units, cellar cooling units, and glassware, books and other accessories. They also have bricks-and-mortar stores in Sonoma, South San Francisco, St. Helena, and Walnut Creek.

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Wine Retailers - New Jersey

 

Visit Brian Hammill at Brian's Wine and Liquor Emporium on Stelton Road in Piscataway, New Jersey, and tell him I sent you.

Brian really knows his stuff, and is as enthusiastic as I am about wine. You'll see and hear it when he takes you through the aisles to find you the perfect wine. And he'll find you a good bottle in any price range!




The Ultimate Wine Shop at Joe Canal's is one of the largest wine shops I've ever seen, with a tremendous selection from around the world. They are located on Rt. 1 in Iselin, NJ with another store in Lawrenceville, NJ.




Coolvines in Westfield, NJ and Princeton, NJ is...cool.  

Small stores with outstanding, truly hand-selected (more like mouth-selected) wines, personal service and one of the best layouts I've ever seen.  And each wine is tagged with great info including color, body, style, winery, grape varieties, region and proper serving temperature. Visit them or at least sign up for their newsletter and see what they have to offer! 





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Wine Books

 

There are thousands of books about wine, (I must have half of them), and if you were independently wealthy and had no kids to raise or football games to attend, my list would be a lot longer. But you do have those things with which to contend, so start with this list and I will add to it over time! And email me if you think I'm wrong (or right) in my conclusions.

Napa: The Story of an American Eden by James Conaway
This is a great narrative, that true oenophiles, plain old wine drinkers, travelers, and cultural historians will all enjoy. It's filled with compelling personal stories, enough details of the challenges and politics of the winemaking business, and a good sense of the times in which American wine pioneers labored. Read this before your first visit to Napa, or any wine region, really, and your experience will be all the more wonderful.






How to Taste: A Guide to Enjoying Wine by Jancis Robinson
If you have time to read only one book about the art and science of wine tasting and appreciation, this is it. This is an easy, enjoyable read and after you finish it you'll know more about wine appreciation than 99.9% of wine drinkers. And if you pay a little bit of attention while you read, you'll be able to describe in some detail what you are tasting, and why it's better or worse - or at least more enjoyable - than another wine.






Wine: From Grape to Glass by Jens Priewe

Some might think this a coffee-table book...and it is. But it is loaded with solid information, in lay terms, about the world of wine - winemaking, wine grape varieties, wine regions, and the storing, enjoying and serving of wine. There are many other books that offer the same approach, such as the Windows on the World Complete Wine Course (Zraly) and The World Atlas of Wine (Robinson and Johnson). Of these two, I would heartily recommend the Zraly book for people who are new to wine and it's a really good introduction, with just enough detail.


The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker Jr. and the Reign of American Taste by Elin McCoy
Ok, so the guy (Parker, that is) is more full of himself than Geraldo Rivera, if that's possible. And I'm not sure how good his palate really is, although I know how good he thinks it is. But there's no doubt that Parker has more influence on wine consumers than any other individual on the planet. Yes, the planet. So for those of you interested in the influence of wine evaluation more than its mechanics, this is worth a look. You can also get a good sense of what the 100 point wine rating scale means and how it is arrived at. And you'll learn some interesting details about the Judgment of Paris wine tasting in 1976 that changed how the world views American - and especially California - wines.


The House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Stiler
Bob Mondavi died in May 2008 but left as his legacy a remarkably influential and successful American Wine Industry that he helped shape more than any other individual. His story, told very well here in both its tragic and triumphal aspects, was that of a simple man who was also a dictator, yet generous to a fault. His quest for perfection and unswerving belief that his own judgement was infallible ultimately led to the loss of the wine empire that still bears his name. Tracing the family back to his father Cesare's jouney to the US in 1906, this is as much a famiuly narrative as it is the story of the transformation of Napa Valley into one of the world's great wine regions. Along the way, the players and sub-plots are interesting and compelling, and would make the characters in the 1980s soap opera Falcon Crest blush like a white zin. Take a sip.




I write about Robert Parker pretty often. He's a force in the wine industry, to be sure, and called the single most influential wine writer alive.  But I think of him more as a wine "rater" than a writer, and I just don't buy the notion that you can reduce the quality and pleasure of any particular wine to a specific number with mathematical certainty. For that reason, I was eager to get my copy of Alice Fiering's recent (2008) book, The Battle for Wine or Love or How I Saved the World from Parkerization, and plunge into it.  
I gotta tell you, I had a little bit of trouble with the premise to begin with. The truth is that I don't think Alice has saved the world from Parkerization, and her title, like a lot of the book, is too clever by half. 

In fact, throughout the book, she laments the fact that winemakers around the world hold their noses to Robert Parker's grindstone, praying that the Emperor of wine will grant them a 92 or above, pretty much assuring their commercial success. To get his attention as well as those ratings, says Fiering, these vignerons use technology to excess, grossly over-oak, focus absurdly on color, and just generally make a mockery of the "natural" winemaking practices used by their grandfathers. In the bargain, she says, many if not most wines have lost their nuance and finesse and amount to little more than syrupy-sweet plonk, one wine indistinguishable from another.

She clearly believes this and makes her case over a couple hundred pages...fair enough. But I suppose in an effort to make her book charming and "full-bodied," Fiering insists on telling us intimate personal details along the way, especially around her love life and the many men who find their way into and out of her journey along the wine trail from New York to wherever.  Worse still, she gives them each a pet name ("Owl Man") as she does a half-dozen female friends who often accompany her on trips to this symposium or that wine region.  Such stuff weighs down the book in much the same way Ms. Fiering says "modern" winemakers weigh down their juice with alcohol, tannin, oak and sweetness. 

Still, big parts of the book are a lot of fun - they read like a travel log and give you those rich and interesting back stories about why wines are made the way they are, and what those winemakers are thinking.  There are some insights here, and it's an easy-reading page turner. There's a little discussion about organic and biodynamic winemaking, but it's hard to tell whether she's applauding or making fun of the grape farmer who harvests according to phases of the moon and plants a ram's horn filled with cow dung in a corner of his vineyard. When all is said and done, my only real complaint is this: she has the opportunity on several occasions to tell Parker what she really thinks: that he's done huge damage in a quest for wines that appeal solely to his palate. But each time she approaches the line, Ms. Fiering backs off under one pretext or another -- not wanting to hurt the great man's feelings, or provoke him to walk away from the interview. If this is saving us, we ain't saved.  




By contrast, Adventures on the Wine Route - A Wine Buyer's Tour of France, is pure pleasure: personal but not uncomfortably intimate, written with equal or even greater conviction but with no sign of a chip on his shoulder by Kermit Lynch, a pioneering wine importer who just happens to have a gift for the narrative.

Like Fiering, Lynch is passionate about artisanal wines, but he makes his case more by talking about who is making them rather than who's not.  And his view that "Wine is, above all, pleasure. Those who would make it ponderous make it dull" courses through his chapters and paragraphs, which are by turns funny, absurd, colorful, quirky, and sometimes all at once. I think he's equally unhappy about the ascendance of ratings as the gold standard for wine consumers, oddly enough given that he's an importer and a commercially successful one at that. As you might expect, he trumpets as authentic a great many wines on which his own fortunes turn, and in this sense he's certainly not a disinterested critic like Alice Fiering.

Nonetheless, if you really want to get a feel for old world winemaking I would run out and buy this book. You can read a lot about Bordeaux and Burgundy elsewhere, but you won't often find these kinds of stories about winemaking and wine styles of the Loire Valley, the Languedoc, Provence, Chablis, or Beaujolais for that matter. And if you really like the culture of wine and not just the taste of it (or the buzz you get from it) this book will enrich both your mind and your spirit.

 
 

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Do-it-Yourself Winemaking (NJ)

 







California WineWorks is a premier DIY winemaking facility in Ramsey, New Jersey. I know the owner, Craig Cicciari, a dedicated winemaker and someone like me who is all about wine education and appreciation. I've tasted barrel samples from some of Craig's own vintages, and I'm here to tell you this is good wine. And it's an ideal place to do a genuine team-building exercise with colleagues from work, or just have fun with a group of close friends, or your family.

Don't take it from me; read this article from NJ's 201 Magazine to learn more about this great place: CA WineWorks in 201 Magazine.pdf









Vintner's Circle is a New Jersey-based company that offers winemaking supplies, education, and even facilities in which you can make, age and bottle your own wine.

Right now they are located in Hackettstown, NJ and Easton, PA and are looking for franchisees.

In any event, if you've ever thought about making your own wine, this is one great place to start. Tell Dave that...Dave sent you!


Other New Jersey DIY Facilities

There are a number of other DIY winemaking facilities, sprinkled around the Garden State. Most of them hold individual or group winemaking classes, and sell winemaking equipment and supplies. Many, though not all, also sell grape juices and juice concentrates, and some even allow you to order whole fruit from Napa and Sonoma among other places, which is then shipped to you for your own personal "crush."

You can often choose the type of barrel to age your wine in, design and print your own labels, and of course bottle the wine when it's time. You'll learn a lot along the way and it's a lot more fun than digging ditches or pulling weeds, if you ask me.

A fairly complete list of NJ winemaking facilities is here.

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Wine Countries - Websites

 

ARGENTINA















http://www.vinsdeloire.fr/en_EN/
http://www.vins-rhone.com/pages/home-en.asp






GERMANY







http://www.tangoitalia.com/wine_piemonte.html





NEW ZEALAND
http://www.nzwine.com/









PORTUGAL
http://www.vinhoverde.com/en/default.asp
http://www.madeirawinecompany.com/






SOUTH AFRICA
http://www.wosa.co.za/









SPAIN
http://www.winesfromspain.com/
http://www.vibrantrioja.com/
http://spanishfood.about.com/od/drinks/a/sherries.htm



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Wine Magazines

 

Click on the image to go to each website.


Decanter is a British magazine that's a bit snooty at times -many of the articles are written by Masters of Wine - so it's not always a good fit for wine novices.

They also tend to ignore the "vinous offerings" (wines) of a lot of us "colonials" (American wineries).

There are some good articles in here, though, and some insights you won't get from the Yankee rags. Michael Broadbent is always fun to read, and Steven Spurrier, the guy who held the "Judgment of Paris" tasting in 1976, also has a column. I subscribe.










Wine Enthusiast often seems more like a vehicle for promoting its "wine paraphernalia" business of the same name.

Thing is, the gear is pretty good - I've bought more than my share - and the really good thing is that wine paraphernalia is legal, unlike pipes and bongs!

I find the writing and photography a level below Wine Spectator but hey, they just did a nice article on my old Chicago haunt "Pops for Champagne." So I gotta give 'em their props. I really don't talk like this, by the way.

I don't subscribe, and frankly they ought to give me a free subscription for all the stuff I've bought, including the cooling unit for my wine cellar.





 Wine Spectator is a little full of itself at times, but never dull, and the long features are often really fun and fascinating.

Good emphasis on food here, too, which'll give you some good ideas for entertaining, and the photography is excellent.

I don't subscribe, but only because my friend Brian Hammill of Township Wine and Liquor gives me free copies.













Wines & Vines is an excellent magazine, but it's really for people in the wine business, or interested in it. Serious wine novices will find articles about the techniques and challenges of winemaking that they'll enjoy. Others who just want to purchase, taste and enjoy wine risk being bored to tears.

I subscribe to, and heartily recommend this publication if you want to learn more about how wine gets into the botle as opposed to what you smell and taste in the glass.









Do it yourself-ers will find a home at Wine Maker.

This is a fun magazine that focuses on making wine at home, which seems to be increasingly popular.

There's a bit of wine science and microbiology, articles on topics such as making your own labels, blending tips, and wine competitions. It's for people who are truly serious about being vintners, whether in their backyard, on a family farm, or merely a corner of their basement.







Vineyard & Winery Management is another wine trade publication that serious wine novices might find interesting.

This pub seems to specialize in wine PR, marketing, and the ins-and-outs of dealing with the myriad of regulations that wineries face today.

I subscribed for three years and found it worthwhile.














Food & Wine is just what it says, and the cooking gets equal if not greater play than the quaffing. Here you'll find lots of ideas for entertaining, one of the big pleasures of wine, and lots of tips on food and wine pairing.

I subscribed to this for a couple years and stopped only because I felt bad about not being able to try all the recipes.

I do recommend Food & Wine to wine novices and especially those who like to throw dinner parties!











The World of Fine Wine is a publication for people who see the larger context and are deeply interested in history, culture, sociology, and other factors that have influenced, and have been influenced by, wine. As one observer put it, "Which other magazine would dare to treat intoxication, synaesthesia, linguistic muddle, arrested fermentation, Champagne riots, Rabelais's laughter, van Gogh's madness, and gout?"

This magazine is also very different in the size of its larger features - some up to 10,000 words, which is several times larger than the larger features in the high-end wine consumer magazines such as Decanter.

I'm not saying don't try this, but if you're just looking for modest features, crisp tasting notes with prices and short, witty columns, look elsewhere. This is a long, luxury read that you can't and won't want to hurry through.



Wine News magazine is built on extended features illustrated with great photographs; extensive (maybe too extensive) coverage of wine auctions around the country; long and well-written profiles of wineries, winemakers and their grapegrowers, the often unsung heroes of this art; and of course tasting notes with obligatory 100-point scores. The Buyline section mimics buying guides in The Wine Enthusiast, Decanter and other consumer wine pubs, but doesn't have enough value-priced selections in my view, although as the economy continues to tank I suspect the editors may change that. Thoughtful editorials and wine news "vignettes" share space with trade ads that are consumer-oriented, as fits the style of the magazine. All-in-all, a well-done publication.



Published monthly, Imbibe is really all about the culture of drinking, and by no means focuses on wine. For example, the May/June issue cover story is "Your Ultimate Home Bar Guide" illustrated with a (rather delicious-looking) martini, while other cover stories include "75 Cocktails You Can Make at Home, How to Entertain Like a Pro, and Tequila Cupcakes."

Fun stuff is inside, such as bartender's tricks involving setting drinks afire (don't let your high school-age kids see that), bar gadgets, extensive how-to's, recommendations on coffee roasters, and soap made from beer. Fret not, they do have wine stories, but if you're not fond of beer, spirits, coffees and entertaining, this ain't the read for you.




The cover of the quarterly In the Mix says "Innovate/Indulge/Explore" on its cover...but it's really a trade magazine rather than a consumer pub - with articles about promotion and education, entertainment marketing, mixology and restaurant cooking.

Still, there's a lot of stuff of interest to wine lovers, but again by no means is this a wine-oriented publication. Frequent pieces about the world's best lodgings, from large resorts to boutique B&B's are useful for wine travelers, and the wine features when you find them are excellent (such as the recent one about discovering an old wine cellar and equipping it to modern standards).

But if you're looking for wine news and reviews, you won't find them here.

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