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Red Wine, Purple Teeth & Silver Linings: Premiere Napa Valley 2010

1WineDude — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:00:00 +0000

Sometimes the best way to convey the essence of an event is via comparison. Especially when that event might be too noisy and hectic to capture on video. Or, when you’re video recorder isn’t fully charged, so all you have are pictures, words, and memories.

And teeth stains.

Honestly, I think that my dentist is about to have a windfall…

Such is the essence of Premiere Napa Valley, which recently took place (February 20th) at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, and is the spot where members of the Napa Valley Vintners Association hock ultra low-production amounts (often only one barrel / 5 cases worth) of (presumably) ultra-premium red wine.

Winning lot bidders obtain a unique product available nowhere else on the planet, specially bottled for their restaurant / merchants / stores / etc., along with (presumably) bragging rights at achieving the exclusivity. In other words, it’s a (very stiff) competition, presenting (presumably) the best-of-the-best from 200 of Napa’s most storied and well-respected producers; a tooth-staining, mouth-puckering wine spectacle orgy of Cabernet-based California goodness.

As for the comparison: PNV is like a cross between Best In Show, the Superbowl, the Emmys, Calligula, and (with a lot of Japanese buyers thrown in for good measure) a Godzilla movie.

It will make sense, in a minute (or two)…

Of course, an event like PNV draws in wine personalities from around the globe, from the famous (Andrea Immer) to the banal (me) to the passionate (volunteers who happily hang coats for three hours just to be able to get some time in the tasting room for the hottest ticket in town).

There is something thoroughly surreal about hanging out with your press pals, talking shop with a famous winemaker (or two), giving social media advice to big-brand wine directors (damn… I should have charged for that one…) and then getting business advice from the owners of some of the most recognized wine publications in the world (not to mention having gourmet buffet lunch at the CIA, followed by dinner at In-N-Out Burger) all in the same day.

Among all of the red wine and purple smiles, there lingered the Godzilla in the room (told you it would make sense in a minute). Mainly, an undercurrent of down-and-dirty blues to go with the overcast, gray skies that covered the CIA during the noisy and crowded SRO auction (which followed a very noisy and crowded SRO lunch, which followed a very noisy and crowded SRO lot tasting). As in, singing the blues.

Most involved in this year’s PNV probably didn’t expect the money to come pouring in when they filed into the bidding area, after lunch in the CIA kitchen was interrupted by a large man in CIA standard white hat and apron, banging on a large pot and calling out “The auction is ABOUT TO BEGIN!” Why? A lousy economy and its even more lousy impacts on the high-end wine market.

But that’s not how things turned out.

In the end, the purple teeth met up with a silver lining of sorts in those gray clouds, as the auction brought in about $2 million, a 30% increase vs. 2009 and the third-highest tally ever.

Shafer Shrader Shafer finished the day with the highest-bid lot, 5 cases sold to Winebid.com for $37,000. Second place went to Ovid Napa Valley‘s five cases purchased by Capitol Cellars for $33,000.

What does it all mean?

Optimism, according to the Napa Valley Vintners. From their post-auction press-release:

“The story, however, is not about the funds raised as being the benchmark of the Napa Valley wine industry’s price stabilization in the current economy. It’s about the confidence buyers for resale have in Napa Valley wines today, and the optimism and viability they feel about Napa Valley wines in the months and years ahead when these wines will be released for sale to consumers,” said noted wine industry analyst Barbara Insel, of Stonebridge Research, who was at Saturday’s event.

I guess those purple teeth are smiling after all.

Tomorrow – my fave wines from the tasting.

Cheers!

The 2010 Wine Writers Symposium in 10 Easily Digestible & Tasty Morsels

1WineDude — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:00:00 +0000

Alternative title: “What I Learned (So Far) At the 2010 Professional Wine Writers Symposium in Napa”

Symposium Chairperson and Wines & Vines editor Jim Gordon, may, in fact, be the sweetest and most patient person on the planet (there remains one more day of symposium activities in which to properly test this theory).
The amount of downtime built into the entire week of Symposium activities is approximately 47 seconds.
The amount of raw talent and brain power among the symposium attendees is staggering, but is immediately doubled in terms of IQ points the moment that AbleGrape.com founder, Yahoo search pioneer, and twitter search guru Doug Cook walks into the room.
When you read aloud (over a loudspeaker) a tasting note that you’ve written in which you compare a glass of Syrah to an uncomfortable satin thong, you will piss off famed author, wine educator, and television personality Karen MacNeil [ Editor’s note: this was recently substantiated via personal experience. ]
Both Eric Asimov and Steve Heimoff are practical, warm and charming in person (meaning that I have lost at least two bets and the week isn’t even over yet).
Harlan wines will be poured judiciously at Symposium after-hours gatherings, but only when I am not available that evening to attend any of them.
Journalism jobs, freelance writing gigs, and book deals net you more money than Amazon.com affiliate fees. But not much more.
If you take the ethical standards of critical writing / wine review writing, combine them in number, double that number, square the result, and divide by 0.0002, you will arrive at roughly the number of ethical violations that I might have inadvertently committed. Before lunch. On day one.
When Alder Yarrow uses the term “folks at our level” and you realize that he is talking about wine blog writing and is including you, you have to suppress the urge of performing a double-head-fake and then blushing.
If you are serious about wine writing, then you should get serious about attending the Symposium in 2011.

Cheers!

Whence Cometh Napa Cabernet?

1WineDude — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:00:00 +0000

Today I’ll be starting my week-long Napa excursion (the itinerary of which I’d hoped to have posted today, but since all those West Coast hippies are so damn laid back, as of the time of this writing my schedule still isn’t totally finalized… if I’d been dealing with uptight, anally-retentive East Coast types I would have had this all nailed down within 15 minute intervals weeks ago).

This got me thinking about Napa Cabernet, of which I plan to have tasted so much by the time I leave Napa that I will probably need emergency dental work to deal with the teeth stains as soon as I land back in Philly.

And since I’m heading out there for a writers symposium, it got me thinking about the origin of “Napa Cabernet” – not in terms of the wine, but in terms of the words. I’m a sucker for words and I own more than my fair share of dictionaries and etymological resources. I’m geeky that way.

You’d think that this would be pretty easy, right? A bit of Google searching, or a trip to the handy-dandy unabridged dictionary, and we’d be all set, right? Surely there isn’t much to the origin of such words, the kind that are so nearly ubiquitous that they instantly call up various mental and sensory images for wine lovers worldwide, right?

Not so fast, Buck-O. As it turns out, the etymology of both “Napa” and “Cabernet” is far from being etched indelibly in stone…

Surprisingly, no one is 100% sure of the origin of either Napa or Cabernet.

I had to go to a specialized resource for this one, namely Charles Hodgson’s excellent Wine Words. According to Hodgson, when it comes to the word Napa, all of the sources he investigated for the word’s origin suggest a Native American word, but no one knows exactly what that word meant.

Napa is often cited as meaning “plenty” but without corroborating sources. It may have meant “grizzly bear” (an apt descriptor for some overly-extracted Cab?) to the Patwin people, or “home,” “near mother” or “house” to the Suisun. And while baptismal records dating back to the late 1700s cite Napa as a place, the first known mention of a connection to a Native American word comes from an early 1820s diary entry.

Cabernet is no more secure in its origins. References to Cabernet appear in the late 1700s and early 1800s, but the spelling is inconsistent (cabrunet, carbonet, carbenet…), and French sources cite the etymology as unknown. Hodgson offers a tantalizing (well, tantalizing to word gees like me, that is) clue of the word’s origins, however.

French has its roots in Latin of course, and carbon is Latin for “charcoal.” Adding a “t” would make the word diminutive, so carbonet would give you “little coal.” According to Hodgson:

“… with French’s Latin roots, plus the dark color of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc grapes, it’s easy to conceive that the the name could have evolved from carbon…”

There you have it – about as clear as the opaque juice that runs from those Napa Cabernet grapes!

None of this stuff prevents us from enjoying our Napa Cabernet, of course, though it does remind us just how little we can take for granted as known quantities in the wine world.

Cheers!

Wineries and Social Media: A Totally Unscientific Case Study (Franciscan)

1WineDude — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:00:00 +0000

A funny thing happened on my way to the 2010 Pro Wine Writers Symposium.

I did some research, and found what I was looking for, just not where I expected to find it.

Since my Symposium fellowship was underwritten by Franciscan, I’m planning on a visit to the winery when I’m in Napa next month. So I was digging around on the ‘global interwebs’ to get my bearings on all things Franciscan before the visit. Reasons being that I wanted to get a solid starting point of Franciscan knowledge from which to branch out when I ask them questions and generally get all, you know, in-depth on them (you know how I am); also I’m a total geek and that kind of stuff is fun for me.

Not that I am without some knowledge of Franciscan – I’ve tasted some of their flagship wines, and their website is chock full of background on their Napa legacy (and with a past that featured Agustin Huneeus and one of the first real “Meritage” wines, your bragging rights around having a ‘legacy’ are pretty safe) and their take-it-to-perfectionist-extremes focus on blending.

As for what’s happening now (and I mean, right this second) at Franciscan… not so much. I didn’t find anything at their website to connect me to the current happenings of the people there.

Nada.

I did find some of that information, though – just not at Franciscan.com, and not without a bit of digging…

Boku amounts of this type of Franciscan info. exists on-line, thanks mostly to the brand being part of the Constellation portfolio. Presumably, this info. was put together for the internal use of Constellation employees, but it’s not locked down in ay way so you can freely access what’s out there – if you’re willing to put up with the fuss of searching for it.

Take, for example, a more-or-less traditional Corporate America slide deck that provides an intro. to Franciscan (with a quiz at the end to ensure you were paying attention and not Facebooking instead when you were supposed to be learning). The presentation isn’t mind-blowing, but it does have links to videos where Franciscan winemaking director Janet Myers talks about current releases and the winemaking approaches behind them.

The videos are cool, if only because they put a human face on the brand – a human connection.

Why isn’t this stuff on the Franciscan website? Dunno – seems a missed opportunity to me. I guess I’ll have to ask them next month.

Wineries are sitting on such a potential wealth of information that could connect them to their consumers, and it’s easy and very inexpensive to get started on it. And yet… hardly any of them do it.

Sigh…

During my research, I also came across a few other interesting items that might tickle your wine geek fancy:

If you’ve ever wondered, while driving through Napa, what winery brands have their hands in what vineyard locations, the Oakville Growers Association have put together a handsome and handy interactive appellation map that tells you just that.
If you dig the Franciscan presentation linked above, Constellation has similar material on nearly all of their other wine brands at their Academy of Wine website – well worth a look if you happen to be sampling one of their wines and are curious for more info.
The Academy is also available in a mobile format, which looks smart-phone-friendly and offers quick facts about the brands and their wines. Looks like a salesperson’s tool to me, but I could see value in it if you’re at the wine shop considering a purchase and want to check out some more facts about the brand. Considering how big the Constellation portfolio is, I’d wager that this link could come in handy even though it has info. only on the Constellation brands – especially considering that it also contains vineyard profiles, pronunciation guides, and links to wine-related vids.

Cheers!