Daddy Winebucks

Whether you are watching live as I am right now, or somewhere else, Tivoing the inauguration of Barack Obama to watch tonight (as I’m also planning on doing) today is a historic day.

It’s been said already that the Capitol building as well as the White House were built, in large part, by slaves that were kept in pens beside both structures during their construction.  And in a little over fifteen minutes from now, a black man will be sworn in as President of the United States, taking the oath on the same bible used by Abraham Lincoln when he became President in 1861.

I’ve been known to say a few bad words about our government over the past eight years but watching a peaceful transfer of power in such historic fashion shows how truly great our country is.

So if you are gathering tonight to watch the inauguration with loved ones, making sure the kids are brought in to watch this magical moment, TODAY is the day to Open that Bottle.

You’ve saved it long enough, break out the corkscrew and pop it.  Then years from now, when your own kids vote in their first election or when you simply look back on the day when something truly special happened, you’ll be glad you did.

The idea for this post popped into my head a few months ago, when I realized that I had not bought a bottle of wine in an actual wine store for the better part of a year.

One reason for this is simple habits.  I no longer buy much wine that I don’t intend to drink right away.  So while I’ll happily eat lunch with the Sherry Lehman catalog open in front of me, and have even been known to accompany a friend into my local shop, Woodland Hills Wine Company, a place I really like, my wine money has only been spent in two places, Whole Foods and (obviously) Trader Joes.  And that’s merely because that’s where I buy my food.

But it was actually a trip to a third location, the Southern California supermarket, Ralphs (where my wife buys wine) as well as the closing of one of our friends & retailers, the Wine C.A.R.T. in Ohio,  that I was  reminded how much the landscape has changed for the wine merchant.

Full disclosure:  we sell wine through the Kroger Co. (who own Ralphs) and their specialty stores in Ohio are filled with knowledgeable wine folks who know their stuff.

My trip to the supermarket was eye opening because in my store, they’ve actually installed a climate controlled wine room, housing an unimaginative but solid roster of good wines.  It’s the kind of selection you might find in a typical upscale restaurant, who’s owners understand their clientele are looking for recognizable names.  Is anyone dropping $119.00 on some high end California Cab while simultaneously placing tortilla chips in their basket?  I can’t be sure.  And I suppose if I had a real reporters nose for a story I’d have simply asked.  But I’m not and I didn’t.

So that leaves me to speculate what the future holds for the wine seller, and by this I mean a real wine shop like The Wine House, Wally’s or that little gem in Beverly Hills, the Wine Valet.  On the surface I’m pretty confident they will survive, as booksellers Barnes & Noble did in the face of competition from Amazon.  It was not that long ago (well, 1994) that we all thought the apocalypse had arrived for any one who built their house of brick & mortar.  And to be sure mom and pop lost the store in many industries as big box operations captured the local interest with bright lights, big selection and of course low, low prices.

Now, places like BevMo (and to be fair I’ve never been in one – it may be great – I’m not singling them out as the bad guy) Costco, et. al., I assume, threaten to do the same to great people like the owners of the Wine C.A.R.T.

And given the current economic climate (read: something wicked this way comes) it seems unlikely that someone working in a cubicle as I type, will start planting the seed to open that little corner wine shop in their town.  At the same time I’m not happy that the cynic in me is leading here.

We’ve  become such a nation of convenience (and when I say we, I certainly have to start with me) that I guess the next place we’ll be able to pickup a nice $6.00 bottle of central coast Red Table wine or  Cote du Rhone will be the local Mobil station.

But my hope, as it always is, lies in our ability to look past the easy and instead steer ourselves towards the best.  Sometimes buying a book on Amazon is the best choice and sometimes going to a small, literary minded book store like Book Soup or Skylight Books is the experience you’ll be craving.  Both are okay.

So when you’re buying dinner for tomorrow night, sure, grab a handy bottle from the supermarket shelf, but alternatively when you’re out getting chips and salsa for a birthday party at that same store two weeks later and need a gift for the guest of honor, make an extra stop, head into your local wine shop and have someone who really loves wine help you make a special choice.

For years now, I’ve worn the fact that I’ve never watched an episode of Friends, The Simpsons, ER, CSI: Anywhere, Law & Order, Sex in the City, Lost, Entourage, Weeds, Dexter, Monk, or any of the critically acclaimed, rabid inducing bits of television entertainment, like a badge of hon0r.

I assure you this is not a statement on how TV has ruined our culture, that I gave ours up years ago in favor of books on Abraham Lincoln and by Malcolm Gladwell.  In fact, I watch a lot of TV.  But the more I’ve been told how much I should watch a show, how it will change my life, the more I’ve found myself holding off, claiming to wait until I can watch the DVD’s.  And maybe there is a kernel of truth there.  But more than that I think I’m just too lazy to commit to something else that I may or may not like, simply because the public at small has given a show their undying blessing.

So it was with great joy that I read Adam Sternbergh’s recent New York Magazine piece, “The Mad Men Dilemma.”  You see, I’ve not watched an episode of this show either, adding another notch on my, “I’m too hip to watch your hip show just because you tell me to” list.

But what this article really did was make me think about the recent Top 100 lists released by Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast.  These lists are not new but they seem to have been setting the tone for many in the wine buying public for at least as long as The Simpsons has been doing so for the culture at large.

On a base level I’m suspect of these lists, not because I think there is anything untoward about compiling them, but more about their trying to establish for us what is the “best” of a given year.  And just to prove there is no bias against the hand that feeds me (so to speak), I feel the same way about Rolling Stone’s, 100 Greatest Singers of All Time, every issue of Los Angeles Magazine, and of course in context, EW’s 100 Best TV Shows.

While some have taken a fair, semi-scientific approach to the process, none seems to have the potential purchasing punch that the wine lists do.  I know several people who look at the list and have a standing order on at minimum the first ten, to be bought on their behalf regardless of cost.  Again, this is not inherently a bad thing.  I guess my point is, is it a necessary thing?

Can we not, as wine consumers take more joy at finding those wines that tickle our palatel fancy, without being told what our palettes will like.  More importantly, how realistic (or humbling) is it for most of us to peek at the Top 100 wines of a given year only to see that a vast majority of the best ones are far out of our economic reach?  At least if I decided to buy the top TV DVD’s of all time, they’d be roughly the same price.

Don’t get me wrong, wine reviewers review wine.  This is what they do.  And I have no doubt that the Top 100 issues of both publications are their best selling newsstand sellers of the year.  I get it.

I’m a creature though who loved the joy of having discovered, “Arrested Development” on my own, before everyone was talking about it.  That allowed me to tell all my friends, co-workers and anyone who listened why they should be watching it, not the other way around.

So during this season, as it should be all year, it’s always better to give than receive!

Happy Holidays!

The whole family is sick in one form or another.

And when I say sick I mean we’re passing around a bug reminiscent of the alien in John Carpenter’s, “The Thing.”  When my younger son coughed the other day it sounded so other-worldly that I almost drew some of his blood and held it to an open flame.

Sadly though, life in the 21st century has a “show must go on” mentality so my wife and I have been working away and the kids are still at school with the rest of their coughing friends.

The one thing that I have given up during my last week of sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, and feverishness is wine drinking.  Actually that’s not true, I did go out to dinner a few nights ago (I’ve been feeling worse in the mornings, not when dark) and failed to enjoy two really nice Italian wines.  For me, my taste buds are shot right now.

But didn’t Poor Richard come up with some alcohol related remedy (the Hot Toddy?) for when we are under the weather?

I did a little research online and can save you the trouble of typing in, “drinking alcohol when sick” as it simply pulls up page after page of college kids trying to help each other out of “getting” sick when drinking alcohol.  Ah, the good old days…

I did find a bit of data conducted by Carnegie Mellon University (not by the binge drinking students, mind you) that showed a resistance to colds with moderate alcohol consumption.

More amazingly, researchers in Spain found that “…drinking eight to 14 glasses of wine per week, particularly red wine, was linked to as much as a 60 percent reduction in the risk of developing a cold. The scientists suspected this had something to do with the antioxidant properties of wine.”

If that’s the case I should be more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Alas, I’ve not drank much wine this week, have done no exercise and as such still feel like Paul Bunyan’s boot is stepping on my head.

So this humble blogger will try his best to get better before continuing the “Race for 57.”  For now, consider me on the DL…

One of the many benefits of reading, especially for a blogger, is the treasure trove of potential subject matter you come across.

Most of my reading comes in the form of magazines, of which I’m somewhat addicted (I’m talking to you Vanity Fair and New York) but most of my “material” has come from the daily enjoyment of the New York Times, still the best, informative, in the tank for Obama paper of record there is.

And I’ve found things to blog about in all its sections.

So today’s lucky winning article was a cinch, about an irascible twelve-year old food critic (on the Upper West Side, natch) who became a local chef’s favorite BFF, while giving the cuisine a 24 out of 25, and 23 of 25 on decor.  The wait staff did not fare as well though, 21 of 25 (“I asked you to refill my fruit punch five minutes ago!”).

But after reading the article, there was no nugget of wisdom I could impart, no parallel to be drawn to my own kids – though I have little doubt that if we lived in NYC and let my seven year old son, Bennett, out of the house on his own, he’d be mayor in a year’s time.  The inspiration actually came a page before in a piece regarding Breakfast in the Classroom.

In a (Honey Nut Cheerios) nutshell – that seemed like a better idea in theory than execution – some NYC public schools are now providing a free, healthy, breakfast for their students just before class begins.

Not only is this a great story, giving kids a chance to start their day right, be excited to get to school on time and then tackle the day to succeed, but it also gave me something to blog about, a dream really, though an admittedly far fetched and unlikely one.  And it’s this.  Could restaurants sell more wine if they gave out a little sample of something, say the way they might bring out, “something the chef made special for the table, etc?”

Now we all know that beverages are the big money makers at restaurants, and most I gather would not be keen on cutting into those profits with free wine, but I do believe that more people would purchase it if they were given some without the pressures of ordering it themselves.  I mean, isn’t that sort of what by the glass programs are all about?  Buy a glass and someone might be enticed to buy a bottle (or at least another glass).

This reminded me of a place for which this policy lived back in the day I was going there (but alas have not in years because it’s not that close to my house).  The place is 12 Washington in Marina Del Rey (no website at press time).  It holds a significant place in my life because I took my wife there on our first date and we had our first kiss sometime soon after.

But what I’ll also remember about it, and the two great guys who ran/run it (though their names escape me) is that they never wanted a table without wine on it.  At the end of your meal, if you had finished your bottle, they always made sure to fill your glass with something to wash down your dessert or finish your conversation with.

Like a free school breakfast at the start of the day, no one should be without wine at the end of it (well, no adults anyway)…

A few weeks ago I meant to blog about an article I read in the NY Times (can’t find it now) that followed a family who, even in this big economic downturn, were keeping the sailboat they bought with a second mortgage.

Their reasoning?  It brought their family together and the pleasure that they derived from the boat, far outweighed the thought of selling it though they could use the money.  I had forgotten about the article until I picked up yesterday’s Times and read a somewhat companion piece (at least I see them as similar) regarding the health, or lack thereof, of the book business heading into the holiday season.

We met two people at opposite ends of the literary buying spectrum, one person who has become a browser instead of a buyer with the stock market tanking and another who had just bought her second book in two days.

Jacqueline Belliveau, the book purchaser, (I’m printing her name because she’s really the “person” who this post is all about – and deserves a hip, hip, hooray)  and her attitude says a lot about where many of us consumers find ourselves these days when it comes to discretionary spending.

For what Jacqueline has said is that while she may scrimp in other areas of her life, the joy she gets out of buying books is more important than the other things she has chosen to give up while money gets tight.

I had conversations with people, as far back as last December, when there were early signs that the economy was heading south, about how I saw this affecting wine sales.  And to be honest, while I wasn’t nervous, I was prepared for something a few notches above bad.

Where I personally pinpointed this slow down happening was in wine club sales.  Over the past two years the club has been a driving force for us, as more people become familiar with our wines and want to ensure they get access to them (in the grand scheme of things our production is very small).  And yet it also seemed the easiest thing for anyone wanting to cut expenses to do without.

But as January rolled around and our first club e-mail went out, I waited for cancellation e-mails to come back to me. But none did.  And as the year progressed we actually saw an increase in club membership as the economy got worse and worse.

Loyal customers?  Sure, that’s part of it .  We really do have the best customers in the biz.  But I think it’s much more than that.  For them, wine is their recession buster, their line in the sand, their “I’m mad as hell but not going to take it any more” declaration.

Yes, the economy is bad but perhaps the badder it gets, the more we want to cling to the things that make us happy, whatever our place on the economic totem pole.  For some that means keeping the sailboat, buying the books, drinking the wine, or even making sure the Friday night family dinner/movie on the couch is held onto at something else’s expense.

So while I’m skeptical that what does not kill us makes us stronger,  I do know that what makes us happy, certainly does…

I have nothing against celebrity wines.

I mean, rich people looking to spread their money around could do worse than buy up some land in Napa or take a few tax write-off trips to Italy in order to get into the wine biz.

And while there are numerous examples of wines that bear a famous name, sadly the only one I’ve ever had was created by the adult film star, Savanna Samson (it was really good, BTW).

(Note: I could not find any links directly to a wine site but did find one devoted to her film career – 18+ only please)

But I read with some skepticism today about a wine collection named after the “Iron Chef” TV series.  Lorraine Bracco or Ernie Els making wine makes a little sense.  But will we now have to endure TV show wine brands?

Is anyone out there clamoring for something called, “Desperate Housewines”, or “The New Adventures of Old Vine Zindandel?”  I’m going to venture out on the plank and say no.

I guess what’s even more disconcerting (because in fairness I’ve not tasted these wines) are the simple – almost comical – labels you see to the left.  It’s as though the makers (nay: marketers) behind this new venture are so positive that:

a. the wine is so good

b. the Iron Chef brand is so powerful

That barely any thought needs to go into the look of the bottle.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those for whom a label will get me to buy a wine (okay, full disclosure it has happened once.  Check these bottles out…

The ones above though are so generic, so uninspiring, that I cannot imagine the wines being anything but the same.  Perhaps I’m wrong.

I guess at the end of the day, I’m not a gimmick guy.  The wine industry is filled with great people who work really hard to eke out a living while doing something we love.

So the thought that some of my calls won’t/don’t get returned because the person I’m calling is already being pitched on a new wine label based on each host of “The View” well, just makes me want to turn off my computer, stop working and go watch TV…

In an age when the 24-hour news cycle forces even the smallest, most inconsequential items to become “newsworthy” there are other things to be found on the web that just cry out for analysis and commentary.

The wine industry has certainly contributed to this climate, perhaps due to the fact that there is a mystique that has surrounded it for upwards of 5000 years.  I’m confident that no other beverage the human race has ever produced, either by accident or design has filled so many memories positively.

Perhaps because of this, those who would try to create such memories inorganically are always of interest to me.  Whether it’s winemakers styling their wines to appeal to a certain demographic (see: Mondovino) or the hiring of consultants to study what color labels (or cute animals) will appeal to the broad wine buying public at large.

And yet the Australians seem to have cracked the palatary secrets of the coveted Chinese wine market.

It’s not that I think the Aussies have could not have come up with something representative of what they believe the Chinese want to drink, I just think it’s bad business to make decisions based on the current trends.  Yes, China is an emerging market for wine but one need only look at the rest of the world and see how tastes have changed.

Heck, lets just look at my preferences.  When I first started buying wine I did so like many do, filling my cellar with age worthy California Cabernet, respected vintages of Bordeaux, etc.  Now years later, virtually all the wine I drink is bought and consumed in days, not years.  Not only that but I’m obviously drinking certain wines with certain foods.

Maybe the scientists in Oz are saying that the Chinese diet is not nearly as diverse as that of other parts of the world.  If that’s the case, then yes, maybe they can better craft wines that appeal to the population at large.

But the landscape is littered with say movies with $100M price tags that bombed, while the studio heads searched for reasons why a movie with lots of explosions, starring Bruce Willis and appealing to the masses did not hit their projections.  Could it be because the script was lousy, the director a hack or just that the public had tired of formulaic drivel?

And like with films, the enjoyment of wine is purely subjective.  What I like you might hate and vice versa.  The true pleasure of wine is in the experimentation of seeking out what is not the most obvious.

Good wine finds its audience, bad wine never does and the rest of it is about as predictable as a video poker machine…

I’m not a fan of critics who (perhaps of no fault of their own) become the de facto last word when it comes to passing judgment on all manners of things.

Whether writing about movies, or restaurants, or Blue Ray players, anyone with an opinion can be a reviewer.  Some do it better than others, or have a certain style that the public responds to, but at the end of the day those that partake in this exercise – this humble blogger included – should do so knowing that their opinion does not mean a whole lot, that it can’t take the place of personal experience.  Many of us – this humble blogger included – probably just like the “sound” of their own words.

The wine industry is a big culprit when it comes to these critics.  There are the mighty and powerful, those that have willed their tastes onto the culture at large and have even effected industry beliefs, thus changing the landscape.  And then there are others, who through creativity and irreverence have done exactly the same thing.

I’ll always prefer the latter, which is why as usual, the hippest culture shocks seem to come from Japan.

Whether it’s the music of bands like Love Psychedelico, those crazy game shows that are fun even if you don’t speak the language or now in the form of wine critic, Shizuku Kanzaki.

That he’s now become the guiding voice for much of the wine buying in most of Asia is remarkable.  His musings on the wine he enjoys has caused a seismic shift in the wine preferences of those from Tokyo to South Korea, which had not allowed any wine imports until the late 80′s.  He’s responsible for a new generation of wine fans springing up, using his lingo and buying up, in droves, the wines he rhapsodizes about.

What’s even more remarkable is that Mr. Kanzaki is not even a real person.  He’s a comic book hero of oenilogical proportions.

It’s as if the long running comic, Apartment 3-G, took place in the world of wine instead of where it does take place (which is where exactly? – the strip has been running since 1961 and I think they just celebrated the moon landing).  Okay, think of Lucy from the Peanuts hanging a sign that says, “The Wine Critic is In” and having her dispense lovely words about a Gevrey Chambertin or Sancerre.

I guess my point is, what does it say about the biggest wine critics here in the States when the most influential one in the most populous part of the planet is a comic book character, created not even by wine experts but by an average brother/sister duo who simply love wine?

It says to me that the enjoyment of wine does not require an expert’s guidance, that the power to take pleasure in drinking it is well within our own means.

So hail to the great Shizuki Kanzaki, for after all, he is just us in comic book form.

I’ve been a vegetarian longer than I’ve been a wine lover.

This has meant almost a whole life of never knowing what a great Cabernet tastes like with a porterhouse, being unaware of the pleasures of a Vouvray with a nice piece of roast chicken or a Riesling with some spicy, sizzling scallops.

And while my love of animals has not tempted me away, nor has the love affair with meat affected the way millions of Americans view the most basic dietary staple of our daily lives.

Yet, the environmental impacts of meat consumption are getting hard to simply reconcile with an uneducated trip to the supermarket or local McDonald’s.  Its been reported by the UN that the greenhouse gas emissions emitted by the world’s meat production industry exceeds that of every car, truck, bus, train and plane on the planet.  Yikes…

I’ve never been a militant vegetarian.  I like to joke that the cuter a creature is, the more likely my wife is to eat it.  This said, I’ve never once thrown blood on her or accused her of being a murderer.  I’ve sat stoically while she ordered pigeon (okay, *not* a cute animal) in Paris, while my declaration of, “Je suis vegetarian” was met with questions of what fish I eat.

But I’ve not gone thirsty for wine in any of these culinary minefields (and in fairness, restaurants having a few non-meat choices on the menu has become much more common over the last fifteen years).  In this time, I’ve discovered that really good wine goes almost perfectly with really good food, no matter the combination.  Yes, sweet wines do pair well with spicy food but you know what, so does Pinot Noir.

Maybe it’s as simple as the old commercial for Reeses Peanut Butter Cups.  No one thought of putting them together until two unsuspecting souls rushing somewhere, one with a jar of peanut butter (because who doesn’t carry a whole jar around with them to the office), the other with a chocolate bar, collided in the hallway, thereby creating the candy juggernaut we know and love today.

And I certainly don’t mean to suggest that a well thought out wine/food pairing can not be transcendent.  I’ve been lucky enough to have chefs create full course vegetarian pairings that made me feel like ever the gourmand my dining companions were.

Once again the theme is all about finding ways to get along.  Not only with those of us who share different feelings about the food we eat, but also just our relationship with the rest of the world’s creatures too.

Maybe I’m being a bit high handed here (though it wasn’t my intention going in) but if you’re an animal lover or maybe you just want the air we breath to be clean enough for your grandkids to enjoy one day, the next time you think about ordering a big, fat, juicy steak to go along with your Cabernet why not give the globe a break and order the pasta instead…