Choosing a wine for Thanksgiving. | 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 | 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 | 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
California's 2009 grape harvest filled with problems for growers | 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 | 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
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