Asia, as most of you are already aware, is THE NEXT BIG THING in wine consumption.  China, of course, is the current big thing in Asia, which means that the Chinese market is THE NEXT BIG THING in wine consumption.  So big, it must be stated IN ALL CAPS!

This is not news – it’s all over the place in print and on-line.  Most of the talk of the Chinese market in the wine community is cloudy, amorphous, and short on understanding of the real scope of the potential dollars involved.  And the real scope is real, real BIG.

Here’s a recent quote from Wines-Info.com on Chinese wine consumption trends, to give you some perspective on what a bold, capitalized and italicized BIG represents:

“The current situation in China is that domestic wine production doesn’t meet its market’s need, which has resulted in surge growth of imported wine. Statistics show that imported bottled wine to China has increased 2368% since 2002 to 2009. With bigger number of Chinese enterprises joining to wine importing business, more foreign vintners and wineries from France, Italy, Spain, Australia, U.S., Chile, Argentina, etc. also step into Chinese market, sharing the hope of wine bonanza in China.”

No, that’s not a typo. That’s an increase of over two thousand percent of wine coming in from other countries to fill the demand created by the emergence of a bona-fide middle class in the Chinese economy. In less than ten years. YOWZA.

My bruthah-from-anothah-muthah Jeff Lefevere over at the award-winning GoodGrape.com, recently highlighted some of the Chinese wine market numbers – and they’re similarly downright shocking:

“It’s anybody’s guess how China will impact the domestic wine business, but we know that the existing auction market and Bordeaux futures are largely being driven by the Chinese. According to reports, US wine exports to Hong Kong totaled $49 million in 2009-2010.  And, it’s been said that the U.S. wants to be the number one exporter of wine to Hong Kong and mainland China.”

That’s a fair chunk of change – and an impressive commitment by the U.S.  And one in which I think they should be deeply cautious, because our businesses are so busy looking at the dollar signs that they aren’t seeing the imprisonments, tortures, and executions that made those dollar signs so big…

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Special Report from the IP (Inebriated Press) – Constellactus, devourer of wine brands, appears to be heading towards Earth, with dire consequences for the planet’s wine industries.

Fueled by the mysterious “power cosmic” and a recent rise in market share, Constellactus Brands – devourer of wine brands and the largest wine producer in the known Universe – is expected to reach Earth in a matter of days, say world scientist and wine industry analysts.

“At this point, we know Constellactus is coming and we strongly suspect that he is interested in the wine brands of Napa,” Napa Valley Vintners Association Executive Director Linda Reiff told reporters yesterday at a hastily-organized press conference held at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, CA.  “What we don’t know what brands here will survive – if any at all.”

The wine industries in Napa and Sonoma have been sent into near-chaos this week after multiple reports of local sightings of The Silver Surfer, Constellactus’ primary brand ambassador.  It is widely believed within the global wine industry that the appearance of the Silver Surfer heralds doom for the independent wine brands of that local area.  When pressed about whether or not the Sonoma wine industry – which has yet to respond publicly to the coming threat – should also be concerned about the coming of Constellactus, Reiff responded, “I am not aware of a wine industry in Sonoma… but if they are making wine there, then they ought to be very, very concerned right now. All we know is, wherever the Surfer goes, two weeks later that wine industry dies.”

Constellactus is widely feared throughout the known Universe for its seemingly insatiable ability to devour a planet’s entire population of wine brands, in some cases leaving the Profit and Loss statements of those brands a mere husk of their former selves and laying waste to their market positions.

The Surfer was last seen on Sunday, flying low across the sky in the Carneros region which straddles both the Napa and Sonoma American Viticultural Areas (AVA).  At first mistaken to be a plane or some type of experimental aircraft, the Surfer eventually slowed down his flight to the point where it could be photographed and confirmed to be the harbinger of its galactic master, Constellation.  The Surfer was largely unresponsive to the mass of reporters seeking comment and asking questions about the intentions of Constellactus, pausing only on Sunday afternoon to address the media with the cryptic statement, “All the wine that you know, is about to end,” before speedily taking flight towards the East…

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Last week, the excellent (and hilarious) Tom Johnson published an article titled “Pennsylvania, Cradle of Liberty” in which he highlighted a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article about the expansion of PA’s wine kiosk device.

Besides Tom’s normally laugh-out-loud funny and on-point commentary, the post is worth a read (and a click-through to the article) if only for this well-meaning but (in my view) misguided quote in the P-G piece, regarding the expansion of the “automated” wine kiosks to more grocery stores throughout the state (emphasis is mine):

“I’m all for it,” said Marsha Cuffia, a member of American Wine Society of East Pittsburgh. “We should be up with the modern world.”

Call me crazy, but I don’t see how the use of technology equates to being modern, especially when it doesn’t go hand-in-hand with modern common sense.

For example, wouldn’t it make more sense to get “modern” by catching up with some more basic items than the technological marvel of the wine kiosk?  You know, lower-tech things like the free market system, and increasing profits across the state.  Before dumping money into a technology that requires over ten steps, a breathalyzer test, and takes two-and-half minutes to make a single purchase, I mean.

I know, I know… I’m a real pimple on the ass of progress, right?

I’m just not a fan of throwing tech (or money) at a problem when there’s potentially lower-hanging fruit.  Like being more profitable, offering more consumer choice, improving customer service, and (last but not least) getting a bit more in-line with the U.S. Constitution…

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I don’t normally read press releases that are e-mailed to me (usually they are destined for the Delete key), but this one hit my (perpetually overflowing, groaning from the strain and taxed beyond all logical, sane measure) Inbox last night and it caught my eye for reasons that will appear obvious in just a minute.

First a bit of background: A few days ago, the Mutineer Magazine blog pointed out a unique contest being held by Washington producer Hedges Family Estates, in which they (HFE, not Mutineer) were offering magnums of HFE wine and other culturally-minded prizes to seven contest winners who would be chosen after submitting mission statements for the terroir of the Red Mountain AVA on Hedges’ Facebook page.

Oh, yeah – and also agreeing to tattoo the Red Mountain AVA symbol (a red triangle with sunbursts surrounding it) somewhere on their bodies.

No, I am not making this up.

In any case, it was substantiated by the press release that I received last night.  What really struck me, though, was not the call to ink (I’ve certainly got nothing against tattoos, and in fact have been waffling on getting my own for about, oh, four or five years now), but that the AVA tattoo itself was being proffered as an act of rebellious defiance.  Against the 100 point wine scoring system…

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Last night, Mrs. Dudette, the Dudelette and I tried out a relatively new family-dining-style BYO Italian bistro in our area.  Just about everything at this new-ish joint was very, very good – from the friendly service right on through to the tasty, looks-like-it-just-came-out-of-grandma’s-kitchen pasta. 

I say “just about everything” because, as you will see in the inset pic (with apologies from me including crappy-ass cellphone shots here), when I pulled out out BYO wines, the restaurant handed me a nice metal “waiter’s friend” style corkscrew (I want one!), along with two wine “glasses” that looked as though they’d serve better duty as flower vases.

Are those glasses pretty?  You bet.  Are they decent glasses for drinking wine?  No way.

I’m not trying to be a wine snob here (it comes naturally after a while!) – you’re reading the words of someone who regularly tries wines out of small plastic cups at outdoor events (you can take the kid out of Elsmere, but you’ll never take the Elsmere out of the kid, baby!) – but trying to get a sense of a wine and really enjoy it out of these things was just about impossible.  Even our potentially kick-ass dinner wine selections (Matthiasson releases – and we all know those folks know what they’re doing because they’re getting mentioned here on an almost weekly basis now) tasted downright pedestrian from those things.  We probably would have had better luck tasting them from our daughter’s sippy-cup (seen in the background).

For my tastes, those vase-glasses have a rim that’s way to wide and so thick that it dumps the wine into your mouth at a strange angle.  All that pretty carving action? No way to really dig on the wine’s color and clarity through that stuff.  The goblet style shape?  More suitable to specialty beer brews than wine – give me a tulip-shaped glass any day.

Think the Dude doth protest too much?  Had a head-on run-in with restaurant wine glasses?  Shout it out in the comments!

Cheers!

Lately I’ve found myself at (what I’d consider to be) a lot of (what I would call) professional (or, at least, semi-professional) environments in which I am expected (or at least it seems that way) to taste wine in the hopes that I might critically evaluate it (but with fewer parenthetical interruptions if I do).

I’m rarely alone at those moments – I’m usually part of a small group of bloggers, traditional press, or some mixture thereof. But I am usually alone in at least one respect at those tastings: I’m the one asking for a spit bucket.

Or the one looking around for an open outside door, empty unused glass, drainage grate, or random patch of grass so that I can spit. More often than not, I feel as though I’ve got to explain myself, and/or am left wondering why a winery or event coordinator hasn’t thought to at least provide a plastic cup for spitting purposes.

More concerning to me is that the majority of my peers at these tastings don’t seem to feel the slightest need to spit.

Now, I’m not about to tell someone how they should evaluate wine, and I’m certainly in the "wine tasting is more subjective than objective" camp – but I’m baffled as to how someone can taste several wines without spitting and think that they can remain cogent enough to provide an ounce of objective viewpoint about it all later…

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