Blog de Blogs

Our latest round-up of the big issues in the blogosphere takes a look at baffling supermarket wine aisles, questions the 100-point scale rating system and asks whether there’s too much Pinot Noir coming out of California.

Clueless About Wine

A self-confessed lack of expert wine knowledge makes this blog all-the-more interesting for the trade in that it gives an insight into what the average consumer really feels about the various nuances of plonk.

Our regular Joe last week found himself confronted with that most daunting of supermarket aisles – the wine aisle. After a long search for the store’s Italian offerings, our exasperated blogger eventually finds them sitting next to wines from New Zealand.

“Given a map of the world a two-year-old could most probably tell you where Italy is,” he laments. “Where oh where is Italy in the confounded wine aisle? Ah there it is, next to New Zealand. Let me think, yes if you rotate New Zealand about 120 degrees clockwise it does look lots like Italy, eerily so, boot and all. That would be the only obscure basis for that aisle neighbouring I can think of.”

Having something of a “eureka!” moment, our blogger comes to the conclusion that, seeing as most consumers look for price above anything else when making their purchasing decisions, wine aisles should be structured to reflect this.

“Remove the countries of origin groupings and simply order all the wines by price, cheaper at one end of the aisle and more expensive at the other,” he says.

“Within the price bands perhaps sort where possible by country/vintage. Sit back and watch the crowd of people gathering at the midway £4.99 mark. Wine buying would become a status sport. Like turning left boarding a transatlantic flight."

Steve Heimoff

Steve Heimoff wonders whether there’s too much Pinot Noir growing in California.

Looking at the 2010 crush report, he points out that the quantity crushed is more than double what it was just six years ago in 2004, compared to a 23.6% increase in Cabernet Sauvignon and 24.5% rise in Chardonnay over the same period.

As a result, he points out that Pinot Noir “was the fourth highest red grape in tons crushed in all of California, beaten only by Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Zinfandel.”

In terms of where it’s planted, using 2009’s figures, he records a total of 36,000 acres, adding that “most of it was right where you’d expect: Sonoma County, where extensive plantings have gone into the Petaluma Gap region. Monterey County, too, has exploded in Pinot acreage, as has Santa Barbara County, Mendocino County and Napa, San Benito and San Luis Obispo counties.”

And it’s not just overplanting that worries Heimoff, but pricing too. He writes that, on average, Pinot Noir is the costliest Californian wine, with a weighted average dollars per ton in 2010 of $1,641. “No other major grape variety is that high,” he states.

David J. Duman

A lively online debate has ensued about the 100-point rating scale peddled by Robert Parker, and whether it is now an outmoded way of judging wine.

David J. Duman tackles the issue head-on in his Huffington Post blog.

The nub of the lengthy blog is this: “The 100-point scale is meaningless, because the use of it provides no net benefit to any party other than he who awards the score and he who receives a “good or great” score, commonly held to be 90 points or more.”

Duman attacks the process behind the scoring system as “being so transparently corrupt as to be laughable”.

Part of the problem, according to Duman, is the scale’s short-sightedness, and insistence on focusing on the same wines year after year, with only Spain and Australia able to muscle in on the Parker-pleasing usual suspects: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Napa, Piedmont, and other so-called ‘classic’ regions, since the scale’s inception.

By marginalising the rest of the world, the 100-point critics do their audience a disservice, states Duman, shutting off wine enthusiasts from the complete scope of global wine. If the scale were to disappear, he opines, buyers would become more engaged in their wine tasting and with their local merchant.

Duman ends with a plea to improve wine discourse at all levels by “finally burying the long-dead 100-point rating system”, and urges Robert Parker et al. to take a more active role in exploring all of the world’s wine regions and assessing them on their own merits.

Vinography

A trip to the Premiere Napa Valley auction allowed Vinography editor Alder Yarrow the chance to sneak a taste of the region’s 2009 vintage while looking on as many of the US’ top wine retailers purchased wines at “staggeringly high” prices in an effort to support the non-profit Napa Valley Vintners Association.

He approached the tasting with trepidation following fears that less-than-favourable weather had adversely impacted the vintage, but his worries were soon dispelled upon embarking on a “several-hour-slog” through the 200 wines on offer.

“With regards to the 2009 vintage in Napa, there have been some less than enthusiastic reports, largely due to the rains that hit mid-October of that year, which was in the middle of harvest for some, but did not really spell disaster for any,” he writes. “Somehow this rain overshadowed a largely perfect, even deliciously cool, growing season which made for excellent fruit development.

“My experience tasting these auction lots found in general that 2009 was an excellent vintage for those who knew what they were doing in the vineyards, in particular for the nice acidity and very fine grained tannins that many wines seemed to possess.

“Some of the wines were excessive in their tannin, not to mention ripeness, which is to be expected from any cross section of Napa, but on the whole, the 2009s are excellent wines, which I think I even prefer to the 2008s. The best wines are bright and juicy, and quite accessible even in their pre-bottled state.”

db, 04.03.2011