Choosing a wine for Thanksgiving. | Posted on L.A. on Wine by Tigah in L.A. on Nov 17, 2009 at 1:39 pm |  | |
As I've said in this blog before, choosing a wine for a meal needn't be a complicated affair. Choose a wine you like and serve it with food you like and you're almost guaranteed to have a success.
However, for those who would like some suggestions for choosing a wine to go with your Thanksgiving meal, here are some thoughts:
If you want to serve a red wine, pinot noir is a great choice. The problem I have with pinot noir is that it's difficult to find a good one for under $25. One good pinot noir I found that is under $20 is the 2007 MacMurray Ranch Pinot Noir (Central Coast). This is from California's Santa Lucia area, just north of Santa Barbara. 2007 was a fabulous vintage for pinot noir in California. I don't think they're quite ready to drink yet, but if you're shopping for pinot noir in your local markets it's pretty much the 2007 vintage that you're going to find. The 2007 MacMurray Ranch Pinot Noir is available at Costco for about $13.
For my taste, red wines like cabernet sauvignon have tannins that are too pronounced to pair well with turkey. However, a nice California zinfandel would work well for those looking for red wine. Zinfandel has bold fruit flavor, without the tannins of a cab. I found the 2006 Howell Mountain Zinfandel (both the Beatty Ranch Vineyard and the Black Sears Vineyard) at Trader Joe's for about $15. Both of these zins are single vineyard efforts from the mountains above Napa Valley.
If you want to serve a white wine, give some thought to trying a Rhone varietal like viognier, roussanne, or marsanne. These Rhone whites are excellent with food and don't have the heavy oak that many American chardonnays have. Last year I served the 2006 Stolpman L'Avion (a blend of Roussanne and Viognier) and it was a perfect match with the traditional Thanskgiving fare. The 2006 L'Avion is tough to find, though, and the 2007 hasn't been released yet. A similar wine is the 2007 Treana Mer Soliel. It's a blend of viognier and marsanne and is a delicious wine that is very food friendly. It sells at Costco for about $17.
Another white wine that would match well with turkey is sauvignon blanc, especially the ones from New Zealand. One of the wines I'm serving for Thanksgiving this year is the 2008 Nobilo Icon Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough). It has a beautiful combination of lime, grapefruit and green apple flavors that should be a nice compliment to the meal. I found it at Costco for about $16.
If you do want to stick with a chardonnay, the 2007 Cuvaison is a delicious wine and can be found at most stores that have a good wine section. It normally sells for around $20, although I recently found it at Costco for $15.
Sparkling wine matches well with turkey and is popular choice with many families around this time of year. If you want to serve a sparkling wine, but don’t want to spend too much, the non vintage Mumm Napa Cuvee M is a good choice. It retails for $20, but can often be found on sale for under $15.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Category: Food & Drink
Australia's Wine Glut | Posted on L.A. on Wine by Tigah in L.A. on Nov 13, 2009 at 12:49 pm | | |
Here's a little more information about the crisis facing the Australian wine industry. L.A.
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The Wine Economist reports that Australia's overproduction of wine has reached a crisis point:
The report was issued yesterday in the form of a joint statement by four industry groups, the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia, Wine Grape Growers of Australia, the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation and the Wine Research and Development Corporation. It went out to all winemakers in Australia and will be followed by regional meetings in the coming weeks and months. The statement makes sobering reading.
Structural surpluses of grapes and wine are now so large that they are causing long-term damage to our industry by devaluing the Australian brand, entrenching discounting, undermining profitability, and hampering our ability to pursue the vision and activities set out in the Directions to 2025 industry strategy.
Coupled with inefficient and/or inappropriate vineyard and wine operations, oversupply is amplifying and exacerbating fundamental problems in the industry, notably our decreasing cost competitiveness. As such it is compromising our ability to adopt new pricing structures and market solutions and adapt to changing market conditions.
Comprehensive analysis and consultation suggests at least 20% of bearing vines in Australia are surplus to requirements, with few long-term prospects. On cost of production alone, at least 17% of vineyard capacity is uneconomic. The problems are national – although some regions are more adversely affected – and are not restricted to specific varieties or price points. The industry must restructure both to reduce capacity and to change its product mix to focus on sales that earn viable margins.
Bailouts are not an option and neither governments nor industry bodies should be expected to provide the answers; tough, informed decisions must be made by individual growers and wineries, from as early as the 2010 vintage.
Australia has an accumulated surplus of 100 million cases of wine that will double in the next two years if current trends continue, according to the report. The annual surplus is huge – equal to all UK export sales and there is no clear prospect of finding additional demand, either domestic or foreign, to fill this gap.
New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, I understand, is now the best-selling white wine in Oz. Not the best selling import, but outselling any category of Australian white wine!
In fact, wine exports have fallen by 8 million cases or more than 20 percent in the last two years, according to the statement, with the largest declines in the high value wines that Aussie winemakers hoped would be their future.
Inexpensive and bulk wine sales have grown, but at prices that are unsustainably low. One of the messages here is that a great deal of the Australian industry is the red, unable to meet operating costs. Even the domestic market is under attack, with falling consumption and rising imports.
The problem is structural, not cyclical or temporary. The surplus won’t be cured by a return to global economic prosperity, for example. The demand is not responsive enough to rising income.
Better weather will make the surplus worse, of course, by increasing supply and not even bad weather will make much of a dent in it. Drought, water shortages, global warming – these factors that continue to plague Australia — would reduce the surplus by 10 percent at best.
Continued over-production will put further pressure on price, the report says, making all the problems worse. There is only one solution: restructuring.
LINK
Category: Food & Drink
Australian Wine Industry Delivers Crushing Blow To Growers | Posted on L.A. on Wine by Tigah in L.A. on Nov 12, 2009 at 1:09 am | | |
Australia has an oversupply of 100 million cases of wine and the country's main industry bodies have put together a plan to correct it.
A new report released by Australia's four main industry organizations says that 17% of vineyards are uneconomical and that there is a surplus of wine equal to 75% total annual production or annual exports to the UK.
The 'Wine Restructuring Action Agenda' - sent to all producers - said that at current production rates, that figure will double within three years.
'Oversupply is having a debilitating impact on Australian wine businesses and restructuring the supply base is both essential and inevitable,' the Agenda says.
The Agenda has been prepared by the Winemakers' Federation of Australia, the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation, Wine Grape Growers Australia and the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation.
The findings are based on detailed national and regional data. This will be presented to each region together with assessment tools to help growers decide whether to stay in the industry, restructure, change their varietal mixes - or quit.
The organizations are not releasing details for specific areas, but all regions are understood to be affected.
The largely self-help Agenda also proposes a renewed marketing push in Asia and in core markets including China, sections of the UK, US and European markets, and in Australia.
But it says that the industry can't trade its way out of the crisis, citing currency rates and increased competition from other new world countries, particularly Chile and Argentina, as key reasons.
The agenda rejects a government bail-out, instead proposing a federal government exit grant.
LINK
Category: Food & Drink
Friday's Featured Beer .......... Pliny the Elder | Posted on The Beer Blog by BEAUXREGARD on Nov 6, 2009 at 2:34 pm | | |
A request was made earliertoday that I feature something that can be bought in Louisiana, but I'll have to save that for next week because I haven't drank it yet. But rest assured, the beer next week can be bought in Covington. Now, for today's beer. Another great offering from the folks at Russian River brewing is on tap today. This double IPA is just damn good. I don't know how else to describe it. It perfectly balances hop and grapefruit- like citrus to create one of the best double IPA's I've ever had. For some reason I was expecting it to be hoppier than it was but they've created a perfectly balanced beer. I would think for a double IPA, it could probably be a little higher with it's abv (it's 8%) but I'm not going to complain about that. Look for it and enjoy it when you find it.
Category: Food & Drink
California's 2009 grape harvest filled with problems for growers | Posted on L.A. on Wine by Tigah in L.A. on Nov 6, 2009 at 12:55 am | | |
The soft economy, sluggish high-end wine sales and unusual mid-harvest rains have conspired to bring the 2009 grape harvest to an unceremonious end for many grape growers.
As the harvest draws to a close this week, many growers are heaving a sigh of relief. Most of the crop was harvested before the rains interrupted what had been a nearly ideal growing season. And most growers had contracts to sell their fruit at last year’s record prices.
But many growers without grape contracts were unable to find buyers for their fruit. Some were offered such paltry prices that they were either forced to crush the grapes themselves or leave them to rot on the vine, a sorrowful sight for one of the nation’s most prized crops.
“Between the economy and not have any contract and the rain hitting just as the fruit was ripening, it pretty much did us in,” said Lyle Hatten, owner of Silverwolf Vineyards in Kenwood.
Virtually all of Hatten’s four acres of merlot, 16 to 18 tons worth, succumbed to mold after no buyers stepped forward. The heavy rain in mid-October, followed by several days of humid, warm weather gave the botrytis mold a foothold in Hatten’s vineyard. By last week, the sugar levels in the grapes, diluted by the rain, inched back up, but the mold was growing faster and destroyed any chance of salvaging some of the crop. “By the time we picked on Friday, there was a lot of mold,” Hatten said. “It was everywhere.”
Estimates of how much of the North Coast’s grape crop will go unharvested this year are hard to come by.
The increase in activity at custom crush facilities is a clear sign that more growers lacked buyers for their fruit and are turning it into wine themselves, said Nick Frey, president of the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission. “It’s less clear how much got left out there,” Frey said.
Shannon Gunier, executive director of the Lake County Winegrape Commission, estimates about 20 percent of that county’s crop may be left on the vine because sellers never showed up. It was a wake-up call for many Lake County growers and a sign to some that lean times lie ahead. “It’s not business as usual,” Gunier said. “Some people are thinking it will bounce back, but we don’t think it will.”
Brian Clements, a grape broker with the Turrentine Brokerage in Novato, said the total amount of grapes left on the vine is tiny compared to the North Coast’s overall crop. Last year, growers in Sonoma, Napa, Lake and Mendocino counties harvested 356,000 tons of grapes valued at $860 million. “I would say there’s still a couple thousand tons out there — a very, very, very small percentage,” Clements said.
The vast majority of the uncontracted fruit wasn’t left on the vine, but rather was sold to wineries at low prices or turned into wine by the growers, often through innovative partnerships with wineries and custom crush facilities, he said.
Some large wineries stepped in at the last moment and purchased grapes, but at abysmal prices and lower levels than growers had been praying for.
“The wineries were coming in an offering the picking costs plus a little,” Clements said. Instead of thousands of dollars per acre, growers were offered a few hundred, and many desperate growers took it, Clements said.
The low prices, lack of buying by wineries, and long, painful process of helping growers come to grips with the new reality of the market made 2009 a brutal year, Clements said. “I’ve been in this business, like, 21 years, and this is darn near the toughest I’ve seen,” Clements said.
Stanley Feingold has been growing grapes on Sonoma Mountain for nearly two decades and he’s never seen anything like this, either. “It’s the first time in 18 years I haven’t sold my grapes,” said Feingold, 77.
When he failed to find a home for his 15 tons of syrah and merlot, Feingold just decided to give them to Glen Ellen winemaker Tony Coturri.
“My options came down to throwing them on the ground or giving them to Tony, so I gave them to Tony,” Feingold said. He trusts Coturri will make them into great wine, and they’ll strike a deal down the road over how to split the profits, Feingold said.
But in the meantime, Feingold is out about $60,000, a payday he and other growers worked toward all year only to see it vanish before their eyes. A former attorney and civil engineer, Feingold said he’s lucky he can afford to carry those costs, but many may not make it, he said. “It’s a supply and demand issue, and it’ll work itself out, but some people won’t survive the work-out,” he said.
The suffering of a few growers should not overshadow the numerous positives of the 2009 harvest, several growers and winemakers said.
While things looked grim mid-harvest, with plenty of fruit still unsold, Sonoma Valley grower Ned Hill said he ultimately was able to sell all his grapes to existing winery clients, albeit by slashing prices.
“The potential was there for very big losses,” Hill said. “I’m happy to say we did work through it.”
Chardonnay grapes that Hill sold for $2,200 a ton last year, in one case, only sold after he dropped the price to $1,800 to an established customer, a 20 percent cut.
On the quality front, however, all agree the season was stellar. The cooler weather allowed the grapes to mature more slowly, letting the complex flavors develop before sugar levels got too high, Frey said.
Frey predicts the Sonoma County crop will return to an average yield of 200,000 tons following last year’s unusually light 168,000-ton crop.
While it’s shaping up to be a big crop, it’s also going to be a beautiful one for winemakers, said Cory Beck, winemaker at Francis Ford Coppola winery in Geyserville. Early tests on the Sonoma County fruit show it to have strong color and tannin levels, up about 20 percent over last year, Beck said.
“We’re ecstatic about the quality,” Beck said. “It’s a phenomenal vintage.”
Petite sirah grapes rot on the vine at Ron De Natale's Healdsburg vineyard on Monday. De Natale estimates he left 1 ton of petite sirah and sangiovese grapes on the vine.
Category: Food & Drink
Wine Sales Up 7 Percent in October | Posted on L.A. on Wine by Tigah in L.A. on Nov 3, 2009 at 6:12 pm | | |
October wine sales are up 7 percent from September. Sales for October were also up 4 percent from the same period last year in The Nielsen Company-tracked data. This is the second month of increase in a row; and since August, sales have risen 8 percent.
As shown in the chart, the upcoming two months are a crucial period as wine sales traditionally greatly increase during the holiday season.
Retail sales data for November will be available around December 1.
Category: Food & Drink
Quick review of 2008 Columbia Crest Grand Estates Chardonnay | Posted on L.A. on Wine by Tigah in L.A. on Nov 3, 2009 at 3:24 pm | | |
Yuck. I could stop right there I suppose.
Thin, slightly unpleasant, and disappointing are other words that come to mind.
I had the 2006 Columbia Crest Grand Estates Chardonnay and it was an excellent wine for the price. Robert Parker gave it 90 points and it was one of the best values in white wine that year. I didn't have the 2007, so I don't know what happened with that vintage, but the 2008 left me flat.
The only good thing about this wine is that I got it on sale for $7 at Trader Joe's.
This is normally a very consistent winery, so I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. However, the wine wasn't corked and it wasn't oxideized, so I'm at a loss to explain what happened here.
"C" only because it's not very expensive. If you have $10 or less to spend, I'm sure you could do worse. If you have more than $10 to spend, look elsewhere.
Category: Food & Drink
Wine Industry in the...Red | Posted on L.A. on Wine by Tigah in L.A. on Nov 3, 2009 at 12:04 am | | |
If you love wine, it's a very good year. Not only is the 2007 vintage coming out of California an excellent one, but prices have collapsed. You can get good wine for cheap.
"This, I think, is a major correction that's happened," says Richard Sanford of Alma Rosa Winery & Vineyards. His grapevines are tucked in the Santa Rita Hills of Santa Ynez, the central coast region made famous in the film "Sideways". Sanford planted his first vineyard 40 years ago. He'd come back from Vietnam and decided to do something a little more uplifting. Sanford studied the topography up and down California and decided that the Santa Rita hills, a range that moves west to east instead of north to south, might provide the best equivalent to Burgundy, France. It took a while to get people to believe him, especially investors. But these days, Pinot Noir from the area commands a high price.
Or it did.
Now the world is swimming in wine as people are trading down, or just not buying at all, and higher priced wines are gathering dust unless they go on sale.
"I think we're going to see a lot more Two Buck Chucks hitting the market," says John Krska of Krska Vineyard and Winery Management. "We have some winemakers who've skipped a whole vintage, and that's to get their warehouses caught up to sell wine." For example, Krska says high-quality Chardonnay grapes usually sell for $2,700 to $3,500 a ton. But this year, low-to-mid quality Chardonnay grapes in other parts of the state can be had for only $200 a ton. "If the wineries up north can't sell that, they're paying for tank space and the refrigeration, it's gone for a buck a gallon," to Trader Joe's.
Krska says he's been able to sell all of the grapes under his management this year, but he's a concerned about next year. "I think it's the economic woes in the background, saying 'Do we make more wine, or do we not make more?'" Even the region's vaunted Pinot Noir may come under pressure in the next few years as some already-planted vineyards start to produce a crop.
CalPERS, the nation's largest public employee pension plan, has invested $200 million over the last few years in two vineyards in Santa Ynez. Those investments have lost money.
Richard Sanford has seen many booms and busts in the wine business, but this time, he says "we're competing on a world stage with wine." Sanford says the wine business is very capital-intensive, and investors have to learn that it takes years to see a return. New money is hard to come by these days. "A lot of people are finding that there isn’t a lot of capital available," he says. "I don't think there are new operations starting out these days."
Category: Food & Drink
Friday's Featured Beer .......... Russian River Damnation | Posted on The Beer Blog by BEAUXREGARD on Oct 30, 2009 at 9:01 am | | |
Let me go ahead and get this out of the way: You're not going to find this beer in Louisiana. I'm not sure how far West they distribute, so you'll just need to be on the lookout for it if you travel towards the Left Coast. This beer is brewed in California. The Damnation is a Belgian style strong ale. Think Duvel. But, the thing that makes this beer better than Duvel, at least in my mind, is that it's not as carbonated. As good as Duvel is, it bloats me with all of that carbonation. It's a little sweet with a nice dry finish. It's just hoppy enough for the style. This beer is dangerous because it's so drinkable. And at about 7.7% abv, it will sneak up on you in a hurry. I drank a few of these at some hipster bar in Portland. If you ever run across this beer, you definitely need to give it a try. If you especially like Duvel, you'll love this beer. Enjoy.
Category: Food & Drink
Why Fish and Red Wine Don't Mix | Posted on L.A. on Wine by Tigah in L.A. on Oct 30, 2009 at 12:37 am | | |
For ages, diners have been told that drinking red wine while eating seafood can produce an unpleasant fishy aftertaste. The rule of thumb has been red wine with meat, white wine with fish. But the rule is not hard and fast. Seafood can taste fine with some reds, whereas some whites can ruin the meal. What's the common factor?
Researchers at Mercian Corp. in Fujisawa, Japan, a division of which produces wine and spirits, decided to find out. They conducted an experiment with seven experienced wine tasters who were offered 38 varieties of red and 26 types of white. Over four sessions, the volunteers tasted the samples, along with pieces of scallops, the seafood most likely to produce the fishy effect. Then the researchers chemically analyzed the wines for a possible link to the aftertaste.
The culprit appears to be iron, the team reports in a recent issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. When the element's content rose above 2 milligrams per liter or so, the seafood-dining experience turned sour. The team double-checked their results by soaking pieces of dried scallops in samples of wine. Scallops dunked in wine with low iron content smelled normal, but pieces soaked in samples with high iron content reeked of fish.
The researchers report that they haven't yet isolated the compound in the scallops that reacts with the wine, but they suspect it's an unsaturated fatty acid, which could be breaking down rapidly and releasing the decaying fish smell when exposed to iron. How much iron a wine contains depends on the amount in the soil where the grapes were grown, as well as other factors such as how the grapes are harvested and processed. Red wine tends to have a higher iron content, hence the admonition against mixing it with seafood.
"We were surprised in our finding," says research chemist and lead author Takayuki Tamura, "because we thought that polyphenols or sulfur dioxide [produced] the unpleasant sensation." These components represent a larger percentage of wine content than does iron. He explains that because iron does not "induce color change, accelerated oxidation, or cloudiness," vintners tend to ignore its potential role as a meal-spoiler. But the new findings, he says, offer winemakers the opportunity to reconsider the downside of iron contamination.
The paper's science is sound, says enologist Gordon Burns of ETS Laboratories in St. Helena, California. And, he says, there's another reason to avoid red wine with fish: Any robust red wine, regardless of iron content, would likely overwhelm the delicate, subtle flavor of many seafood dishes.
Category: Food & Drink
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