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Words of Wine

The Scandal of Wine Spectator Awards of Excellence

 

In 2003, New York Times writer Amanda Hester noticed that it wasn't real hard for restaurants to get a wine list "Award of Excellence" from Wine Spectator magazine. She wrote:

"...with such a large number of winners, perhaps competition is too strong a word. Of the 3,360 awards granted this year, from a pool of 3,573 entrants, 2,808 received the basic award. Only the winners of the Grand Award, the magazine's top award, of which there are 89 this year, are ever inspected; 3,271 restaurants simply sent in copies of their wine lists and menus, a cover sheet describing their wine programs and a check for $175 - and walked away winners."

This means that 94% of the applicants "earned" an award on some level.

Fast forward to 2008. The entrance fee is now $250, and this year more than 4000 restaurants, uh, earned the award. And Wine Spectator, well, booked more than a million in fees.

Ironically, though, this isn't really the scandal I'm referring to. That was the work of one Robin Goldstein, a wine blogger and writer who manufactured a nonexistent restaurant in Milan, Italy, paid the fee and "won" an award. Frankly, it doesn't really bother me, and it shouldn't bother you too much. After all, Goldstein put a lot of work into appearing legitimate - he built a website, created a extensive menu and wine list, and even established a working Milan phone and fax number as required by the application.

For its part, Wine Spectator did call the restaurant to verify the information, and left a voicemail (although the voicemail was after the "award" and it was a sales pitch for an ad). So you might say that what Mr. Goldstein did is entrapment - unfair to Wine Spectator and to consumers. And hey, had I been preparing to visit Milan, and run across his website, I might have made reservations at his non-existent establishment myself.

So you might conclude that the fictional Osteria l'Intrepido restaurant's award was an exception, and the result of an elaborate scam. And you might further still think that a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence still represents, oh, I don't know, maybe good value, wide selection, and good pairing opportunities with things on the menu. After all, they're still conferred by experts at one of the world's leading wine consumer publications, right?

Wrong. All it really means, in most cases, is that the restaurant paid the price of admission and sent in some paperwork. And as Goldstein adds in his blog, "it's also troubling that the award doesn't seem to be particularly tied to the quality of the wine list, even by Wine Spectator's own standards. Although the main wine list that I submitted was made up of fairly standard Italian-focused selections, Osteria L'Intrepido's 'reserve wine list' was largely chosen from among the lowest-scoring Italian wines in Wine Spectator over the past 20 years.

The lesson here? Don't depend on others to tell you what's good - not Parker, not Broadbent, not me, not Wine Spectator or Wine Enthusiast, not your neighbor. It's ok to read reviews but remember they are someone else's taste buds and someone else's opinion. Instead, learn the basics and then enjoy the experience of tasting wines and thinking critically about why you like them, and how to pair them up with the foods you like. And before you head to a restaurant, do a little homework. As homework goes, it's not as bad as digging ditches.

And frankly, too, this isn't that big a deal, warranting such outrage, is it? We've got military men and women dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. An economy in the toilet. And people losing their houses, jobs and health insurance daily. Wine is supposed to be about fun.

 

Learning about Wine

 

In September, I took a 3-day Intermediate Certificate wine class at The International Wine Center in New York. Without sounding arrogant (I hope), I was probably the most experienced student in the class and was taking this 3-day rather than the 5-day Advanced Certificate class only because I just couldn't give up five full days of my day job. Having said that, though, I still learned a lot...not so much wine "facts," really, but more in the way of focusing on the subject and exposing myself to new and different points of view. And the three days of tasting really was a great refresher for me, not having been in a formal class in two years. The class was organized by geography, with an hour lecture/presentation followed by an hour of tasting wines from that region. We covered the US, Spain, France, and Italy among others.

For beginners as well as experienced wine students, I recommend the solid but friendly approach of Keith Wallace, founder and President of The Wine School of Philadelphia.

Keith knows, as I do, that wine has been made into something mystical and, as wine writers sometimes say, "unapproachable." He and his team of teachers have a way of fusing fun with practical knowledge, and his Foundation Course, one of the best available anywhere, is always sold out. I know...I took it a few years ago, and it's gotten better and even more popular. The Wine School also offers a full range of intermediate (Certificate of Global Wine Studies) and advanced classes, including The Diploma Oenotrope, an advanced program that requires completing three certificate programs (Foundation, Global, and Advanced) along with a a senior project and a four month internship. All of Keith's classes include tasting, which is an important part of any rigorous, professional wine course.

And here's something you should know about tasting in a professional or academic setting: wine tasting's a tough job. That may sound absurd, but I'm here to tell you that writing down one's specific impressions about 60 wines, using an accepted vocabulary, and then explaining and justifying them to your fellow students isn't as easy as it sounds. You learn in a tasting class because you're required to think in a focused way about what you're tasting and describe it in meaningful terms, rather than just say you liked or didn't like it. Anyone can do that.


 I've also taken classes at The Culinary Institute of America, in St. Helena, CA in the heart of Napa Valley. Great classes, instructors who make and sell wine for a living (such as Jeff Morgan and John Buechsenstein), and you are surrounded by wineries and vineyards!

So, what I'm saying here is that if you're really interested in wine, you ought to take a class. One approach is the W&SET way and I recommend it.


Another great way to learn about wine is simply from reading. My website, sure, and I guess if you're seeing this, you are. But there are a lot of good books out there. I personally wouldn't read Wine for Dummies or any of the other "Dummy"series, as I don't like giving money to people who insult me at the start - at least wait until you know me a little bit. And I'm not a dummy, and neither are you. You're probably just new to wine, or perhaps you've been around the vineyard a bit but just not had the time to focus.

So perhaps you can focus with a half-hour or hour of reading at night before you tune into The Daily Show with John Stewart (which I never miss, and was in the studio audience once), or instead of watching the dismal 11:00 pm news programs with stories of market and automobile crashes. There's a host of good books out there, some of which I mention in my posting "Suggested Reading." I'll add some more this weekend.

Either way, take some time to enrich yourself with some wine learning.

 

Good Wines for Tough Times

 

To say that we're in tough economic times would be a gross understatement. Of course, the wealthy and the genuinely rich will never have to worry - they may have lost a couple hundred million in the stock market, but that just means they have "only" several hundred million left.

For the rest of us, our concern about retirement savings evaporating, home values underwater, and the future of our jobs is genuinely disconcerting. And although gasoline prices are dropping a bit lately as the economy slows, when it still costs 60 bucks to fill up our gas tanks, we tend to start thinking about wine as a luxury more than we ever have before. You might remember how, after September 11, restaurant spending and wine purchases went way down too. That downturn even took some famous restaurants with it, such as the famed Lutece in New York City.

Now I don't know about you, but for the foreseeable future - except for the rare occasion - I'm going to be looking even harder for value-priced wines, those in the $10-$20 range that still represent high quality and solid craftsmanship. Sort of like the Bob's Furniture of wine, if you will. And that doesn't mean buying swill. In fact, there's a lot of excellent wine to be had under 20 bucks, although I'll forewarn that you a great deal of it comes from France...and Spain...and Australia.

I hope you won't judge me too harshly or throw charges that I'm unpatriotic here. Napa and Sonoma are two of my favorite places on earth and I sing the praises of their wines on Wine-Flair.com, elsewhere and whenever I talk publicly about wine. I'm a big fan of Washington and Oregon, and I even appreciate and write about how some amazingly great stuff comes from the Hudson Valey, Finger Lakes and Long Island regions of New York, driving distance from my home in NJ.

But the truth is a lot of American wineries, especially in Napa Valley, have just simply priced themselves out of the market, gaining a cultlike status in the process and relishing it. But in doing so they shot themselves in the foot. For example, I'm reading an article from the Napa Valley Register dated late September 2008 that describes "an affordable, lush Cabernet" - for $60. For a lot of folks perhaps that is affordable, yet to me it seems continuing evidence that Napa winemakers haven't seen a dictionary in quite some time. Nor are they in touch with anyone but the highest of high-end customers. The extreme, probably, is Screaming Eagle, which can fetch two, three or four thousand. A case? No, a bottle. But not from me.

For the rest of us there are still lots of great wines to be had that won't add to our financial woes. Here are a few, with more to come:

Laboure Roi Macon Villages Saint Armand 2006 (Unoaked French Chardonnay) $12-13

Las Rocas de San Alejandro Garnacha 2005 (Spanish Grenache) $12

Bodegas Castano Hecula 2005 (Spanish Mourvedre) $12

Chateau Turcaud Entre Deux Mers Blanc 2007 (French Sauvignon Blanc) $13

Pillar Box Padthaway Red 2006 (Aussie Shiraz/Cabernet mix) $13

Martin Codax Albarino 2007 (Spanish Albarino from Rias Baixas) $13-15

Geyser Peak Sauvignon Blanc 2007 (Sonoma Valley) $15

Pine Ridge Chenin Blanc - Viognier 2007 (Napa!!!) $15

Foppiano Estate Petite Sirah 2004 (California) $18