Great Grape News

Fingers crossed for the Wine of the Century

The drought in Europe this summer may be a boon to wine producers. The abundance of sun and up to 100 degrees temperatures could just contribute to one of the best vintages Europe has seen in years.
While European farmers bemoan a summer of drought and plead with local governments and the European Union to help them through the dry period, wine growers and drinkers may be treated to one of the best years ever.
"In the first half of 2003 we had a surplus of 340 sunshine hours compared to the average of past years," Ernst Büscher, a spokesman for the German Wine Institute, told DW-WORLD. "The conditions are wonderful at the moment."
To produce wine the grapes need to ripen in the sun. It disintegrates disagreeable acids and enriches natural sugars.

"In northern wine growing regions, like Germany, early ripening is helpful for a good vintage because the grapevines have more time to produce sugar in the grapes, and therefore the quality will be very good," Büscher explained.

The abundance of sun in Europe this summer has speeded up the process.
Throughout Germany's wine-producing regions the grapevines are two to three weeks further in their development than is normally the case. 

In Rheinhessen, one of Germany's traditional wine growing regions in the south of the country, grapevines haven't bloomed so early since 1934, Armin Göring, the head of the German Wine Institute, told DPA news agency. In Württemberg there were no records of the vines ever having blossomed so early, he said.

The benefits of drought
Drought doesn't affect grapevines like it does other crops. "It's not like grain, whose roots are near the surface, in the region of 30 centimeters. Wine is a taproot that goes 10 to 12 meters deep, straight down," Jürgen Stumpf, whose family has a vineyard in Franconia, in southern Germany, told Deutsche Welle. Long after other crops have died of thirst, wine still has access to its water supply. But the vines can get too much sun too.
 "At the moment, [German] wine makers are waiting for rain," Ernst Büscher explained. "In some regions the conditions are quite critical because the supply of water is very low. Wine producers need some rain but not too much at once."

It's not just that the grapes need water either. "When it's really hot the berries close down. Then they don't develop more sugar, they turn off. That's why it doesn't sometimes work when there's too much sun. In regions like La Mancha in Spain, for example, where there's lots of sun, the wine is sometimes boring," Stumpf explained. 

And this summer it may just be too hot in places like southern France. "But in these regions, like the Mosel Valley or the northern areas that normally get little sun, it's brilliant."

But it takes a lot more to produce an excellent wine.
"You need a good location. You need a good vine variety. You need someone who does it well. You also need to have a feel for it. Everything must be just right," Stumpf pointed out.

"The great wines grow in the north, where it's difficult and the conditions are not so straightforward," he said. "It's like with people: when they are under stress and constantly have to adapt to things they're livelier. That's how it is with wine too."

Don't applaud, yet
But as a German wine growers' saying goes, one shouldn't praise the wine before the autumn. The summer of 2000 started out well in Germany, but ruined wine experts' hopes when it rained for three weeks straight.
"But we're going the right way," Stumpf conceded. "The blossoming worked out; we didn't n eed to spray. There were few weeds and few damaging fungi. The stock is very good and healthy. That is, of course, a good basis for a good wine."
(Nancy Isenson - reported by Deutsche Welle 7/31/03)
 

Bourbon Maker Wild Turkey not Wild about local Winery Name
(Walla Walla Union-Bulletin)

When is a canary like a turkey? 
Whenever the makers of Wild Turkey bourbon say it is, apparently. 

A start-up winery in Spokane has bowed to the demands of New York-based Austin Nichols & Co. lawyers that it withdraw its trademark application to use Wild Canary as a brand name. 

The distilling company's lawyer contended in a letter to the winery that the brand name would cause consumer confusion with Wild Turkey, a 101-proof Kentucky bourbon, winery co-owner Mike Scott said yesterday. 

"I wouldn't want to sit down at that guy's dinner table on Thanksgiving Day," said Scott. "He could bring out a stuffed canary." 

But rather than fight — and further delay the initially scheduled July 11 grand opening of the winery and tasting room — he and partners Steve and Jeanne Schaub switched. They renamed the operation Lone Canary Winery and are now planning the grand opening for this weekend. 
Scott said a court battle with Austin Nichols could cost as much as $200,000 and take up to two years to resolve. 

Austin Nichols is a subsidiary of Pernod Ricard USA, which was formed in 2001 as the United States arm of Paris-based international wine and spirits giant Pernod Ricard. 
Sandrine Ricard, a member of the Ricard family and corporate public-relations chief, said the name similarity between the wine and bourbon was "getting fairly close." 
"Whatever we do, we want to protect our trademark," she said. "They are two different kinds of bird, but the problem was with the 'Wild.' 
"In any case," she added, "we wish them well with their new name." 

Scott said he was surprised when he received the letter demanding the Wild Canary name not be used. The winery had already designed its logo, printed graphics and received federal approval of the Wild Canary label, he said. 

"We acted in due diligence researching the name," with a copyright attorney making sure it was not already in commercial use, he said. "Everything came up clean. Nobody had Wild Canary as a name." 

The English-born Scott, 49, and his partners decided to replace "Wild" with the word "Lone" to maintain a Western, "Clint Eastwood-like" feel, he said. And he doesn't expect any challenge from the Texas makers of Lone Star beer or from "Lonesome Dove" author Larry McMurtry over the Lone Canary name, which Scott said also has been thoroughly researched. 

"We were more concerned about whoever owns the 'Lone Ranger' name more than anything else," he said. 

What Does a Wine Critic know that you don’t?
The Webster Dictionary defines a critic as: “A person who forms and expresses judgement of the qualities and comparative worth of books, music, paintings, sculptures, plays, motion pictures, etc” and “ …especially one who writes such judgements professionally” and “ a person who indulges in faultfinding and censures”.

So what does it mean when a well known wine critic such as Robert Parker assigns 90 points or more to a wine or Janice Robinson tells us that she ended up poring a wine down the drain? How does Parker define “wine critic”? In 1999 he wrote that anyone with a pen could become a wine critic. He further explains that there are several attributes a critic should possess, including: Independence, courage, experience, and accountability.

How do critics come up with scores that make some wine enthusiasts run out to their local retailer and garble up 90 points and above bottles? Do professional critics have the time to taste and write hundreds or even thousands of different wines every season? Most of us that participate in wine tastings are used to taste 6-8 different wines. We take our time to examine the wine, taste it and talk about it in a social setting. Normally we don’t publicize our notes and there is no pressure or concerns to make the next printing deadline.

Professional critics (and I loosely use the word “professional”) many times taste dozens or even hundreds of wines during one sitting. At one tasting I observed one person taste about 60 wines in less than an hour. A quick sniff, a sip, a little sloshing, spitting it out and writing quick notes on a “fill-in the blank” form, then on to the next wine. In my mind I was not convinced that I would follow that person’s judgment. Most professional tastings are mass tastings where a large number of different wines are judged and have only a short moment to evaluate many wines.

We usually consume our wines for enjoyment and more often than not with dinner. We have an hour or more to enjoy and evaluate the wine. We experience the wine from the time the bottle is opened and an hour later when most have opened up and are at their peak.

Us amateurs define a wine to be “good” or  “better” based on our experience and palate. We look primarily at aroma, taste, texture, after-taste and how well a wine drinks today (and sometimes price). Remember the last tasting you attended and how different people reacted and the various scores assigned to each wine? Most likely one of the wines stood out and everyone agreed, but the remaining wines were all over the scoreboard. Why is that? Of course, we all have different palates and expectations. We judge a wine by several attributes, but in the end it’s our own unique taste that determines whether we like it or not.

We all have our own bias and some of us may dislike certain types of wines and that's OK. Not to hammer on Mr. Parker, but it is known that he dislikes rich overtly herbaceous red Loire Valley wines, acidified New World whites and vegetal-tasting New World Cabernets. Does this mean he scores these wines below average? I believe not, but neither do I believe these wines get their fair chance. Again we see that each one of us has a different palate and our favoritism towards certain types of wines may influence how we judge the ones we dislike.

Interestingly enough, more often than not consumers disagree with wine scores given by professionals. Many times wines are over-scored. It also appears that low-cost wines do not get their fair chance to compete to the more expensive ones. I am thinking of about $15 and below wines vs. $20 and above wines.  It seems professional critics place low-cost wines in their own class, afraid to compare them evenly without consideration of price.  Just imagine what would happen if a $10 wine would outclass a $100 wine, simply based on attribute, the end of wine society, as we know it?

Now that we are at the end of this column, what is the morale of the story? When it comes to wine we all have subjective opinions. There is no good or bad wine, there is only wine that we like or dislike. There is nothing wrong with reading professional tasting notes and trying wines that may agree with your palate, but we need to keep in mind that our individual taste counts the most. Don’t just write-off a wine because it received less than gratifying scores. If you are one that is into the high-end wines, turn it around and look for the least expensive wines that offer the most pleasure to your palate. Isn't that the objective of every wine enthusiast, finding the best tasting wine at the least price? Most importantly remember:
All the gold medals and trophies and all the rave reviews by wine writers and magazine tasting panels, are worth NOTHING if you do not like the wine!