(images: wpsignsystems.com, organic.lovetoknow.com)

Those of you who have been following the Dude’s blog know that when it comes to organic wines I have been, let’s just say, less than kind in the past on the quality and viability of these products.

To provide yet another perspective in my ongoing love/hate affair with all things organic. my partner in crime Jason Whiteside has offered up some comments on the organic trends impact for wine consumers.

Jason fully acknowledges the marketplace trends towards organic products, even though he is not influenced by it himself per se (according to Jason, “I am not a vegan. Whatever the opposite eating style to vegan is, that is what I am.“).

Organic-minded consumers should be aware of the hidden dangers in their wine bottles. According to Jason:

“Along with the wave of social food consciousness, it is natural to wonder about the wine we drink. Is it organic? Is wine OK for vegans to drink? What do we really know about the contents of any given bottle? Consumers who are sensitive to the use of animal products should know why and how animal products are used in the manufacture of wine. Eggs whites, isinglass (the powdered swim bladders of fish), and other proteins are used in the fining process, which helps make a wine clear.“

“Often times, when wine is made, it has a hazy or cloudy appearance from suspended particles. Nobody wants to drink hazy wines, for most of us are rightfully programmed to believe a good wine should be clear and bright. So the winemaker will use a carefully measured amount of protein to help remove the haze. This works because the protein carries an electrostatic charge opposite to the particles in the haze. They cling to each other, and fall out of the wine as sediment. The clear wine is then racked off the sediment, which means that for practical purposes there is no clarifying agent (egg whites) left in the bottle.“

For those who are over-the-top-serious about their organic shopping, even these fining procedures may not be enough:…

“But, who really knows if there is absolutely none left? Testing for that would be more expensive than it is worth.“

All is not entirely hopeless for these consumers, however: “As a consumer, it is relatively easy to find a list of wines that are either unfined or fined without animal products. This website lists vegan wine, and I have found it to be very helpful: http://vegans.frommars.org/wine. I recommend the wines from Rosenblum (especially their Petit Syrah) and Houghton Chardonnay, in particular.“

As for the current state of organic winemaking, Jason leans towards my assessment that good examples of these wines are harder to come by (but well worth the effort once you do finally get your hands on them):

“For consumers who look for organic or vegan wines, my hope is that more skilled winemakers take up the challenge of green winemaking. It is not an easy undertaking. Sulfur dioxide buys a winemaker a lot of time by keeping the grapes fresh, and fresh grapes mean better wine. If you want to see how fast harvested fruit starts to spoil in your own home, cut an apple in half, and see how long it takes to start to turn brown. The ‘browning’ is the effect oxygen has on fruit; sulfur dioxide protects against this. It will be difficult for winemakers to forever put away their chemicals, eggs, and fish bladders, and I for one would not ask them to. But, for those to whom this matters, know that quality wines are being made without the extra stuff. You just have to go out and find them.“

Cheers!

Well, after nearly two months, I’ve (finally) finished off my sample case from the fabulous Moore Bros. As for why it took me so long to review these – hey, there’s a lot of wine to be had out there!

As promised in a previous post, I’ve recorded my thoughts on each wine in my Wine Mini-Reviews, available on twitter.

Below you will find the detail (such as it is on twitter, with its 140 character limit) on each wine. In summary, Mr. McDuff and friends certainly know their stuff; I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the majority of the wines in the sample case, especially when you contrast that with their relatively low price points.

My favs? France did well with the Dude this time around, as both of my favorite picks from this batch were French:

• In the whites, I loved the `06 Touraine Sauvignon La Pointe from Domaine Ricard.
• Among the reds, the `05 Le Premier Pas Domaine Le Pas de l’Escalette came out on top for me.
  

Read on for the twitter review round-up…

	1WineDudeReview `04 Ch. Bellevue (Fronsac): Progressing nicely. Soft for Bord’x, & approachable. Aroma is promising, palate doesn’t quite live up to it.
	1WineDudeReview `06 Emrich-Schonleber Monzinger Riesling QbA trocken (Nahe): Minerals galore but low on florals. Think my bottle was flawed though.
	1WineDudeReview `05 Ch. les Fromenteaux Muscadet de Sevre-et-Maine Clos du Poyet (Loire, Fr): Minerals. Fruit. Body. Nice – but not quite harmonious.
	1WineDudeReview `04 Corzano e Paterno Chianti (Colli Fiorentini, It): It’s what’s on *top* of the fruit – orange & spice – that makes it special. Decant it.
	1WineDudeReview `06 Corte Gardoni (Custoza, Italy): Fruity, austere, with a tiny bit of spice & nut. Who knew Garganega could be so bold? Killer with salad.
	1WineDudeReview `06 Domaine Georges Trichard Chenas (Beaujolais, Fr): Candied cherry, plum & flowers. But it’s got some heft as well & could age. Fine stuff.
	1WineDudeReview `06 Brunori Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi “Le Gemme”: Nutty, pleasing acidity & Chardonnay-esque fruit. I’m startin to like this producer!
	1WineDudeReview `05 Rosso Piceno Tourquis Brunori (Marche, It): Classic Sangiovese nose, & the Montepulciano provides a little kick. Could get used to this!
	1WineDudeReview `04 Domaine André Bonhomme Viré-Clessé (Burgundy): Apricot & oak. Like meeting a bourgeoisie madam in a proletariat nightspot. Classy.
	1WineDudeReview ’06 Lorenzino Ettore Germano Dolcetto d’Alba (Italy): Cherries & tobacco in great balance. Nice, but I prefer Dolcetto to be a bit livelier.
	1WineDudeReview `05 Le Premier Pas Domaine Le Pas de l’Escalette (Cot. du Languedoc): Harmonious blend of S. Rhone grapes. French red without the shackles.
	1WineDudeReview `06 Touraine Sauvignon La Pointe Domaine Ricard: A pink grapefruit grenade hurled from the heart of the Loire at your nose. Very good SB.

Cheers!

The following is a guest post from Jason Whiteside. Jason was previously a Sommelier & Wine Consultant on the Dutch/French Island of St. Martin, and was the original Wine Director of Cosimo Wine Bar in Malvern, PA. He is part of the Wine Educator staff at ChaddsFord Winery, and holds the Level 3 Advanced Certificate in Wine & Spirits (with Distinction) from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust. He is also a member of the Society of Wine Educators, holding their Certified Specialist of Wine qualification. Most importantly, he is Joe’s partner in crime over at 2WineDudes!

(images: jupiterimages.com, www.csc.gov.sg)

HOW 1+1 CAN EQUAL 3

In my business, I field a lot of questions about wine. The hardest questions to answer are the ones that start like this: “I was in Tuscany on vacation, and we had this incredible bottle of wine. We brought some home, and it doesn’t taste the same. Why is that?”

The answer is difficult to explain. Different atmospheric pressures can alter the taste of a bottle. The same wine that was great high up in the mountains can taste flat if drank at sea level. Or, maybe the wine hadn’t recovered from the trans-atlantic jostling at 35,000 feet. But the reality is usually just this: they aren’t on vacation anymore. Since most of the other parts that made up such a great overall drinking experience are still back in Tuscany, the answer is usually that simple.

The reason, in other words, is that a glass of wine is an experience, not just a taste…

I believe that any extraordinary wine experience is usually a combination of a few different contextual factors: the food that accompanies it, the people with whom you drink it, and the atmosphere in which this all takes place. For example, maybe it was a decent bottle of wine you had on vacation, but it lacked that special quality it had in Italy when you drank it at home. So why do you have such fond memories of that wine? Maybe because you spent the day with your loved one walking around the hills of Tuscany, climbing the medieval towers of San Gimignano, and ended your day with a delicious meal of bistecca alla fiorentina. All without a single thought of your emails piling up at work. Good wine with the right people, in the right place, or with the right food, allows the combination to be greater than just the sum of the parts.

So, the question becomes, how do we make a good bottle of wine taste extraordinary at home? This starts with finding a quality wine. An example of an exceptional bargain is Rolf Binder’s 2004 Fetish The Watcher Australian shiraz. This wine, packed with red fruits, ripe raspberries, and a hint of spice on the nose, is on sale for $9.99 in PA, marked down from roughly $26.00. I tried it months ago, and I thought it was a good buy at $26.00, so consider it a steal at $9.99!

Now that you have the right wine, add the right surroundings, have the right food. Leave the frozen food in the freezer and make some hamburgers by hand, working some fresh flavors into your ground beef. Slice fresh tomatoes, lettuce, maybe sauté fresh mushrooms. Choose gruyere cheese instead of using those Kraft Singles. Invite over a few friends, fire up your grill, and open up that bottle of Shiraz. If all the right parts are in place, you’ll have an amazing wine experience, and a wonderful time.

And everyone will see how one plus one can equal three.

(images: weblogs.nrc.nl, gizmag.com.au)

The AP reported an interesting tidbit recently in the world of winemaking – interesting enough to be picked up by several other news sources, anyway:

Ilja Gort, the flamboyant Dutch owner of Bordeaux’s Chateau de la Garde, has insured his insured his nose (and sense of smell) with Lloyd’s of London, to the tune of 5 million euro (which my sources calculate to be close to $8 million USD – but by May could be more like $4.7 billion, if the U.S. dollar keeps dipping at its current nasty rate!).

Those of you who follow along with this blog even semi-regularly would likely deduce that the Dude here would be planning some blithe and pithy schnoz-related jokes about this topic, make you laugh a bit, and then be on his way.

Understandably so!

But you’d be way wrong…

Sure, it would be a blast to spend a page or two pointing out Gort’s insurance policy caveats that prevent him from doing some things that would look totally awesome on a resume (most notably, he is not permitted to be employed as a knife thrower’s assistant or as a fire-breather – two things that I would kill to be able to put in the hobbies section of my CV).

But I think it’s much more interesting to discuss what Gort’s policy represents in the grander scheme of the winemaking world.

To me, Gort’s actions highlight a interesting – and keenly relevant – fact: in a marketplace that seems obsessed recently with trying to scientifically quantify the components that make up a truly excellent wine, winemaking remains (more than ever) more Art than Science.

Sure, Gort is no stranger to publicity, but he’s no dummy either. Part of putting the value of his schnoz on such public display was to make the point that “his sense of smell is his wine taster asset.”

This is a stark contrast to non-human techno tasters that can supposedly distinguish a wine’s quality and origins, or to robots that can “taste” quality wine. Not to mention robot wine tasting machines with bee noses (ok, that one’s a stretch, but read the article and it will make a bit more sense…).

I found it refreshing that, in an industry where so many sciences are required to be mastered just to make a quality product (geography, geology, agriculture to name but a few), someone is calling attention to the fact that a winemaker’s nose and intuition are the simplest – and greatest – tools that she or he can bring to the tasting table.

That’s because the greatest machine ever constructed for the purpose of wine appreciation is all organic – it’s called the human.

Man vs. Machine?

Puh-leeeze. No contest!

My money’s on the guy with the real nose (all $8 million worth of it).

Cheers!