World's 100 Best Types of Wine: Group I

This is the next-to-last week of the main election for the World's 100 Best Types of Wine. For details on this election, read this.

Next week is our final group of 15 and, so I don't get cursed out from Italy unnecessarily, I will reveal that seven candidates are from there. This week, random selection pits Sonoma County against itself in what looks to me like a balanced group, difficult to choose from.

Please vote for 9 of the 15 candidates.




See the results for Group A, Group B, Group C, Group D, Group E, Group F, Group G and Group H.

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Weekend in Carmel: Eat local pork, taste clones and sleep under a vine

Views like this make Carmel the 3rd most romantic destination in the world, according to CNN

No longer just a quaint Republican enclave where visitors hope to catch a glimpse of former mayor Clint Eastwood, Carmel has suddenly become a great wine destination.

There are now 13 tasting rooms within a short walking distance in the cute downtown. Most opened within the last three years. There's good food, unique shops, a beautiful beach (though the water is frigid.)

The rise of Pinot Noir has played a role in the rise of Carmel as a wine hotspot. One tasting room staffer said, defensively, if you're looking for big Cabernets and Zinfandels, you've come to the wrong place. Monterey County seems finally to be figuring out where it fits in the wine world at a time when many Americans are ready to drink the wines it can do well.

I had never spent the night there, but when I was offered the chance by a motel with an interesting concept -- individual rooms have been decorated by different wineries -- my wife and I hit the road. It's only two hours from San Francisco, but Carmel feels like a trip somewhere very different.

World's 100 Best Types of Wine: Group H

We are coming down the home stretch of voting for the World's Best 100 Types of Wine. There are only two more groups of 15 after this week, and then we'll be at 90 wines elected, with just a correction/addition election left. So if you haven't yet seen your favorite candidate, it may be time to start wondering.

For details on this election, please read the introductory post Vote for the World's 100 Best Types of Wine.

This week we have an interesting group, very exotic and yet focused on France, with 7 candidates from there (these groups were all randomly selected). No U.S. west coast wines, but we have our second non-West Coast wine. We also have our first (and only) two-nation candidate.

Please vote for 9 of these 15 wines. Have fun.




See the results for Group A, Group B, Group C, Group D, Group E, Group F and Group G.

Follow me on Twitter: @wblakegray and like The Gray Report on Facebook.

Orphan Barrel removes the limits from limited production

Would you think "Orphan Barrel" means limited production? Guess again

Recently I tasted a delicious new whiskey from Diageo's new Orphan Barrel program. In theory it was distilled during the Clinton administration, which is appropriate because I had a discussion about it with three Diageo employees (two live, one online) that felt like asking Bill Clinton if he had sex with that woman.

First, the whiskey: Barterhouse is allegedly a 20-year old spirit that had been sitting in a former distillery, Stitzel-Weller, where in 1961 (says Bourbon expert Fred Minnick) the owner bragged that no chemist had worked on the whiskey. We don't need your stupid science!

Stitzel-Weller was closed in 1991 for distilling, but is still used for warehousing, which is a big deal in Bourbon country because the heat and humidity of the warehouse have a strong influence on the flavor. Barrels of whiskey get put in there that don't end up making it into the blend of Old Fitzgerald or Bulleit, and they just sit there getting older. They are "orphans."

Bourbon is trendy, although it must be noted that much of the sales growth is driven by flavored Bourbons. Nonetheless, Diageo sees an opening for a limited production Bourbon with a great backstory. So it created some of both.

World's 100 Best Types of Wine: Group G

We are voting for the world's best 100 types of wine in 11 installments; this is the 7th. Please vote for the best 9 of these 15 wines. For details on this poll, please read the introductory post Vote for the World's 100 Best Types of Wine.

This whole 3-month election started from a wine-fueled conversation I had with Alder Yarrow of Vinography. This week is a significant one; we'll see if Alder's initial theory is shared by the voting public.




See the results for Group A, Group B, Group C, Group D, Group E and Group F.

Follow me on Twitter: @wblakegray and like The Gray Report on Facebook.

Miracle Machine hoax shows many media organizations take pride in ignorance about wine

Philip James fooled a lot of media organizations with his hoax about a Miracle Machine, that would turn water into wine. That may not have been his initial intention. The ridiculous story was breathlessly leaked by a website that has a track record of writing stupid things about wine.

Moreover, the CEO and Editor in Chief of that website paid a $2 million fine in a securities fraud case and agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry.

Yet the world media, which celebrates ignorance about wine, saw no reason to question the story.

First, a brief summary.

After
foolingconvincing investors to put more than $40 million into a now-sputtering wine Internet business called Lot 18, James was looking for something to do with his time and golden parachute. He created a fake Kickstarter campaign for something called The Miracle Machine, which would make wine on a countertop in 3 days, apparently with water and raisins, that would be better than wine those fancy-pants winemakers could make with all their fancy-sounding varietals.

Just as he did with Lot 18, James tapped into a vein of people who prefer, even brag about, ignorance about wine.

I don't doubt that you can make wine in three days with raisins, yeast and water. Prisoners do it all the time in plastic bags in their toilet. What was amazing was how the media jumped all over itself reporting the story as if the wine might be good.

Even the food media -- most of whom would never lower themselves to eat a TV dinner -- never stopped to ask if good wine should require, at the very least, freshly picked grapes. A friend of mine, a restaurant critic for chrisssakes, called me a snob on Twitter for suggesting the wine-from-a-kit might not be that interesting.

The strongest current of ignorance runs through the site Business Insider, which broke the story. I don't know how bad Business Insider (not to be confused with the excellent Wine Business Insider) is at covering anything else; I don't read Business Insider until somebody sends me a link to one of its stories about wine. Every one has promoted ignorance.

Finally somebody showed everyone how terrible Business Insider is at journalism, and ironically, it was someone whose reputation it helped build.

Josh Jensen wants to ban 'domestic wine'

Josh Jensen, American winemaker

Calera owner/head winemaker Josh Jensen hates "domestic wine."

The term, that is. He went on a rant about it at In Pursuit of Balance earlier this week. He says "domestic" is a mildly insulting term, associated with household servants.

He says the equivalent would be to say "foreign" wine, rather than "imported." "When I first started making wine, Jack Davies at Schramsberg used to call European wines 'foreign' to make a point," Jensen said.

The term Jensen prefers for wines like his is "American wine."

Jensen says he has complained to restaurants that they should change their wine lists to read "American," not domestic.

"I ran down a list of our top 40 distributors," Jensen said. "35 of them used the word 'import' in their name. None of them used the word 'domestic'."

I think Jensen has a point. Words have power. I don't know if "domestic" still has the "Downton Abbey" feeling he's talking about, but when I roll it around in my head, it does feel lower in quality than "American."

Try it. Say it out loud. "Would you like a domestic Pinot Noir?" Now, "Would you like an American Pinot Noir." Try it with cars, with grapefruits, with any product.

Josh, you won me over: no more "domestic wine" for me, except in trade stories. But I don't care what you call yourself on your website, I'm not going to call you "generalissimo."

Readers, what do you think?

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