Note to wineries: Label alcohol percentage accurately

Wine labels in the US are allowed to be wrong about the alcohol percentage by up to 1.5%. There used to be a solid legal reason for this. But the government has adjusted the law, and it's time for the wine industry to adjust as well

Currently wines under 14% are allowed to be mislabeled by up to 1.5%, while wines over 14% alcohol can be mislabeled by up to 1%. This means a wine labeled at 12.5% alcohol can be anywhere between 11% and 14%, while a wine labeled at 14.9% alcohol can be anywhere between 14% and 15.9%.

This is why so many wines are labeled at 12.5% and 14.9%. It's a hedge, and until recently it was a reasonable one. The federal agency responsible for approving wine labels, the TTB, previously made it difficult for wineries to make any changes to labels without going through the time-consuming, unpredictable approval process again.

But now the TTB has had three years of staff reductions and has simplified its approval process. Wineries can change a lot of things on the label without new approval being required -- including alcohol percentage. Wine label alcohol percentages can go over or under the 14% dividing line without a new approval.

There's just no excuse anymore to be so inaccurate.

Re: Wine tasting is bullshit

Two of my non-enophile friends forwarded me the blog post "Wine tasting is bullshit. Here's Why," that's making the rounds of social media. Both of them apparently expected me to respond in some way.

Sigh. OK.

Let me explain it in terms anyone can understand.

Wine is food. People have different opinions about food.

Just because somebody is an expert doesn't mean you will like the same food they do. Some people think the Big Mac is the apex of cuisine, and would happily eat one every meal. A restaurant critic could praise pristine sushi or spicy curry, but that wouldn't mean the Big Mac fan would like it.

If you want to say wine tasting is bullshit, it's only true if all criticism is bullshit. Just because a movie critic or music critic likes something doesn't mean you will. Movie critics hate plenty of popular films, just like restaurant critics won't praise Big Macs and wine critics don't drink Charles Shaw.

I can nitpick the exaggerations of Robert T. Gonzalez' post, and they start early. The ridiculous wine review he quotes in the graphic -- "Overall character is that of a sex-loaded scarlet ..." -- is apocryphal.

How to make a boring wine documentary in 9 easy steps

A while ago I watched Terry Theise's film "Leading Between the Vines," a 58-minute documentary about some of the German wineries whose products he imports. Even at mid-day, I needed three breaks and a triple espresso to make it to the finish.

Theise got a lot of positive attention for his book "Reading Between the Wines," passionate ramblings about his desire to "remystify" wine. I like the wines Theise imports, but was not a fan of the book so it stands to reason that I would find the film difficult.

That said, what I didn't like about the film applies to most wine documentaries. There seems to be a template for wine documentaries, and it's obviously not an effective one because other than "Mondovino" -- which was very different from most -- no wine documentary has ever stayed in the public mind for more than a minute. (In the case of "Wine From Here," that's a shame.)

Here are the steps to make sure that your wine documentary is boring and forgotten like its predecessors:

1) Play insipid soundtrack music

When I started doing a weekly wine podcast for the San Francisco Chronicle, the producer added some banal piano-and-strings crap. I asked why he chose it, and he said because it was the kind of music he'd heard on wine shows on TV.

2) Talk a lot about dirt

A wine PR guy I know likes to say "Nobody ever walked into a wine shop and said, 'I feel like drinking something grown on calcareous soil'." Yes, the dirt under this vineyard is different from the dirt under that nearby vineyard. Fascinating! I'll bet that's going to affect the taste of the wine. I'm so on the edge of my seat.

The world's stupidest winery design

I've seen a low-ceilinged winery in Italy that's lit by candlelight, where the barrels must be moved by hand, but it's 500 years old. I've seen wineries that are little more than empty spaces in airline hangars, without air conditioning or even sufficient electrical power to run it. But those are used by people either inheriting family property, counting their pennies, or both.

The stupidest winery design in the world is being built in the 21st century by a guy with lots of money. And he's a building developer by trade. So there's no excuse.

The winery is Narbona, in western Uruguay. It's owned by Argentine developer Eduardo Canton. The wines aren't bad, despite the presence of Michel Rolland* as a consultant.

* Side note: Rolland told a Uruguayan newspaper earlier this year, "People have the right to drink the wines they want, even if they're shit."

Anyway, Rolland may be consulting on the wines, but he's too smart to have anything to do with the winery design. The on-site winemaker, Maria Valeria Chiola, is smart enough not to criticize it directly, but does say an elevator would make her job easier.

Here's the problem: The building is two stories high, but the top floor, at ground level, doesn't extend all the way across the building. In fact, not a single walkway extends all the way across the building.

Weird new spirits: green sparkling wine, prison liquor and Vodquila

I just spent three days at the Wine & Spirits Wholesaler Association convention in Orlando, Florida, where I was a judge for their wine competition. I got an immediate hint at what I was in for when the first flight of wines arrived. See that second glass from right? The photo is unretouched: that's what it looked like.

How to judge it? It was the best green sparkling "wine" I've ever had, though after the competition I learned it's not wine, it's Zider, presumably made from zapples, maybe with added zugar. We gave it a silver medal, and you could argue that we were penurious, as it was the best of its class.

Wine is only a small part of the WSWA convention, though, as some of the forlorn-looking foreign wine producers learned. Spirits are what people there care most about, and particularly new products, which are driving most of the growth of the industry.

Producers pay thousands of dollars to attend, rent hospitality suites at the Ritz-Carlton -- that's not cheap -- and hire hot young women to walk the halls in as little fabric as possible, promoting their brands. It's hard not to be impressed by the endless parade of babes; I wondered often where they find them all, and if the Orlando area, in marketing mouse ears, is missing its true selling point(s).

Vodquila was actually a 19-year-old girl's class project.

This will not surprise you: Almost all wine and spirits distributors are men, mostly middle-aged, mostly wearing dark suits even on 93-degree Orlando days, although the outside temperature doesn't matter if you never leave the Ritz-Carlton. The WSWA convention has, literally, unlimited booze. That said, I'm not sure I saw anybody drunk -- these people are professionals. But still: give a man even a little booze, and a buxom woman's smile becomes even brighter.

If a booth was peddling aged Calvados or wines made from Portuguese native grape varieties, the spokesman was most likely an older man in a checked suit. But if the product was called something like Booze Cupz, you could count on two women in swimsuits and high heels handing out sample cups. (Lots of weird product photos after the jump.)

How to get 90 points for your Cabernet in Wine Spectator

Rich, creamy mocha: 92 points!

Flipping through the current (May 31) issue of Wine Spectator, I noticed a trend in the rating of California Cabernet Sauvignon and blends by Mr. James Laube: the ones he likes taste like "mocha."

He reviewed 29 Cabs in the issue. He gave no scores of 90 or 91. Everything was either 92 or above (salesmen's manna) or 89 or below (discount store, here we come).

Here's the breakdown:

Wines mentioning "mocha" in the tasting notes:

95 points: 1/1
94 points: 4/6
93 points: 4/5
92 points: 2/4 (including "mocha-laced oak;" also "rich, creamy mocha and vanilla-laced oak")

89 points: 1/4 (not counting "melted chocolate at the center")
88 points: 1/8 (and that one has "subtle mocha." I guess it's too subtle.)
87 points: 0/1

Above 90 points: 11/16
Below 90 points: 2/13

In sum, if you want a good score on a Cabernet from Wine Spectator, it's best to stop by Starbucks on your way to submitting the sample.

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Marichal's two unique Pinot Noir blends: with Chardonnay and Tannat

Juan Andrés Marichal with the Tannat vines outside his winery

Outside of Champagne, few wineries admit blending Pinot Noir, and when they do it's usually in a low-end wine. Marichal winery in Uruguay makes two exciting blends of Pinot Noir I hadn't previously imagined, much less tasted.

The first is a commonplace blend for bubbly, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, but I don't think I've ever seen it in a still wine.

Marichal Reserve Collection Uruguay Pinot Noir Chardonnay blanc de noir 2012 ($16) is a very light pink that tastes like a fairly full-bodied white wine (though just 13% alcohol) with a few pink notes. Rarely do you taste leesiness and tannin in the same wine. It's not fruit-driven, but fresh, with great texture. You taste fresh vanilla bean on the finish (the Pinot Noir, 65% of the blend, is all barrel-fermented) and you have to strain to taste a little strawberry. The closest thing to it are white wines made from Pinot Noir in Oregon, which I love, but this is more Chardonnay-like than those.

"We wanted to make a Pinot Noir, but we thought on its own it didn't have enough acidity," says Juan Andrés Marichal. "It wasn't interesting. Not enough character. So we added Chardonnay."

Marichal made less than 100 cases of the first vintage in 2007, but the wine proved popular, so he's up to 750 cases.

But as with most Uruguayan wineries, his expansion potential seems limited because it's a small family operation.

His great-grandparents, immigrants from Lugarno, Italy and the Canary Islands, started Marichal winery in 1916.