Free ZAP tickets!

Hey Zinfandel lovers, I've got two free tickets to ZAP to give away!

This is San Francisco's biggest public wine tasting, and one of the biggest in the world -- 250 producers pouring Zinfandel at Fort Mason. The tickets sell for $59 each, so this is a $118 value.

The tasting details:

Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
Saturday, Jan. 30
2 -- 5 p.m. (These are non-member, public entry tickets)
Unlimited wine tasting is free, and you keep the glass.
No real food provided, though there will be free bread and cheese, and usually free coffee (helpful after all that Zin).
Parking not included; limited free parking available nearby (I always find it, but you're on your own). Consider taking public transport. I spit everything I sample and I still usually have to rest in a coffee shop for 2 or 3 hours before driving.
I am NOT RESPONSIBLE for you drinking too much Zinfandel and making a fool of yourself. Use the spit buckets!

More details about ZAP can be found here.

Now, here are the contest details. It's really simple: Post a comment below describing your best Zinfandel-drinking experience. I'm going to limit the entries to 100 words, and I will be strict about that -- if you post 125 words, even if you break it up into two comments and move me to tears, you will not win.

If you prefer to write in Japanese, you are welcome to do so, but because you can say more with fewer characters, I'm going to limit you to 75 words. No other languages accepted, sorry.

I thought I'd try to set an example with my own best Zinfandel experience. This is 96 words:

When I lived in Japan, one year on my birthday I was feeling lonely and homesick. Somebody recommended a California-style fusion restaurant, and though the term is overused today, it sounded just perfect then, because at the time the main American restaurant choices in Tokyo were Denny's and McDonald's. The night was rainy and cold, and the restaurant was in a concrete basement, with bare walls; I felt chilly in body and soul. But they had Ridge Geyserville, an elegant, terroir-driven Zinfandel blend I have always loved. I ordered a bottle and it tasted of home.

You don't have to register for anything to enter, but if you're not logged into gmail or blogger to ID yourself, I leave it up to you to let me know some way to identify you if you win.

Deadline for entries is Wednesday, Jan. 20 at midnight Dry Creek Valley time. I will announce the finalists on Friday, Jan. 22. Good luck, and remember: drinking Zinfandel will not actually make you more creative, but it might make you feel like you are, and that's worthwhile too.

A great cheap Chardonnay -- but where can you buy it?

The overall results are in from the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, and I won't list them here because you can get them from the source.

While I liked the overall sweepstakes winners, I would rather highlight some of the great bargain finds I personally blind-tasted.

For me, the best QPR (quality-price ratio) wine of the whole competition was the very first one I tasted, an $8.99 Chardonnay that was toasty with good lemon and apple fruit and excellent balance. This morning I tasted it up against Chards that cost up to 10 times as much, and I think it held its own. There were 8 price categories of Chardonnay, and the only Best of Class Chards I thought were clearly better cost $26, $35 and $95.

Turns out the $8.99 superstar was ...


drum roll ...


Motos Liberty California Chardonnay 2008!

And you say, what? I never heard of that.

Well, no wonder. It's a label started in August by the younger generation of the Franzia family, as in the folks behind Two Buck Chuck. I have to credit these guys, they do know good value.

What I don't know yet is where you can buy it. I spoke to managing partner Joey Franzia tonight and he said he expects it to be in a major California chain soon, but it's not there yet. It is apparently in a few smaller wine shops, so grab it if you see it.

I have to add one caution: There were, apparently, two batches of this wine made. I'm sorry to add this hedge, but this means that when you do find it, it might not be exactly the same as the wine I tasted. However, both batches were made by one of Bronco's winemakers, John Allbaugh, who knows what he's doing.

I'm going to write in more detail about this wine soon, but for tonight I want to quickly share some other excellent bargain wines I discovered in the blind tastings; wines that didn't win overall sweepstakes awards, but might win best QPR awards if such were given.

Korbel Brut Rosé ($11): I have always loved this wine, which got best of class for semi-dry sparkling. I voted for it as best overall sparkling over the eventual winner, a J Vineyards Brut Rosé ($35) that I think only won because conceptually, most judges didn't want to vote for a semi-dry bubbly first. When the J was announced as the winner, several judges within earshot of me said, "That was a rosé?" I think if judges had more carefully read the description of the dry sparkling, and had less bias against the semi-dry, this wine would have won best overall sparkling wine.

Cycles Gladiator Central Coast Syrah 2008 ($9.99): This is another wine I've been a fan of in the past, and it's great to see it rewarded with a Best of Class in a blind tasting. It wasn't the best Syrah -- the Clary Ranch Sonoma Coast Syrah 2006 ($28) was awesome. But the Cycles Gladiator was the best under-$10 Best of Class red that I tasted.

Windmill Estates Lodi Petite Sirah 2007 ($12): This wine was so smooth, with such great mouthfeel, that I considered putting it in my top 3 overall. I think it really delivers what you want in a Petite Sirah -- rich fruit, great mouthfeel, easy satisfaction.

Wild Vines Frutezia California Strawberry White Zinfandel ($4.99): Here's a Gallo product, with strawberry flavor added to Zinfandel grapes, that none of the professional wine writers (including myself) would have put in our mouths had we seen the label. I tasted it in the "fruit wine" category, where it's kind of a ringer, and we all loved it -- it's refreshing, fruity but not sweet, a great porch wine for a hot day. It didn't get a sweepstakes award because it wound up in the Dessert category, where it doesn't really belong. But all the judges around me at the sweepstakes mentioned how much they liked it. Honestly, I'm not going to recommend it to my wine-geek friends. But don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

Syrah's strongest price point: $10 - $20

Don't spend too much money on American Syrah. That's a lesson I've learned from judging at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition.

My panel today had 80 Syrahs priced between $30 and $40. It was a good category in that we had few duds. I spoke to people who tasted Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in that price range, and they said they were miserable.

But we also had few stars. We picked only 7 gold medals, no double golds. Of the seven, two made it only because judges used their one daily "silver bullet," which allows a judge's vote to count twice. There simply wasn't a single immediately recognizable great wine out of all 80 entered.

Next door, another panel had Syrahs priced between $10 and $20, and they gave (I believe) 14 golds out of 49 wines. Now, it's possible that we were a particularly tough panel, but I don't think so; our gold percentage going into the day (an important stat for organizers, who get their money from entry fees) was a little above average thanks to a nice group of Sauvignon Blancs from $14 to $20.

I also spoke to someone on the panel that got Syrahs over $40, and he said that many were overextracted and overoaked.

There may be a lesson in this. Syrah is a pretty easy grape to grow and turn into wine cheaply; that's why it is the foundation of Yellow Tail, and is often Two Buck Chuck's best wine. But trying to tart it up might be counterproductive. The reason we gave so many silvers and bronzes, but so few golds, was excessive hang time; a lot of the $30-$40 Syrahs had nice fruit, but no acid. That's the kind of wine you think you like at first, but get bored with before your glass is done.

We also had 26 Muscats, and I spent my silver bullet to make one of them one of our four golds. I'm rather surprised we didn't have more Muscats to judge because many California wineries make a little Muscat to sell in their tasting room to people who only like sweet wines, and tasting rooms are where gold medals have the most sales impact. But after tasting wines with up to 7.8% residual sugar (and we gave that one a silver), my mouth was glad there weren't more.

We were just about to leave when the organizers asked if we would judge 9 fruit wines. I'm glad we did, because I got to taste a few products I would never otherwise try.

The first four had names that combined fruit and wine: Blackberry Merlot, Raspberry Zinfandel, Strawberry White Zinfandel and Tropical Chardonnay. We thought all four were good efforts at fruit wine: refreshing, not overly sweet, and accurately representing their fruit flavors (if you read "Tropical" as "Pineapple"). We gave the Blackberry Merlot and Strawberry White Zinfandel gold medals, and the latter nearly got a double gold. I liked it a lot more than most White Zinfandels actually made from Zinfandel.

We taste all of these wines anonymously, but the odd names made them pretty easy to look up.

**Edited from here** And I jumped to an incorrect conclusion when I first posted this, which just shows how effective blind tasting is. In fact, the wine we loved was a Gallo product, Wild Vines Strawberry White Zinfandel, which sells for under $5. During the sweepstakes round, I discussed the wine (still anonymous at this point) with the judges around me, and we all agreed it was delightful -- refreshing, nice strawberry flavor, not cloying at all. Turns out it was something that, yesterday, I would have mocked. This just goes to show you the value of an open mind, and open mouth. Congrats Gallo, that's a fine product for $5.

Sauvignon Blanc under $20 is good value

My group of 5 judges at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition drew two strong categories today: Sauvignon Blancs from $14-$20, and Rhone reds other than Syrah and Grenache.

We had 88 Sauv Blancs (before lunch, which built up an appetite) and gave 13 gold medals, with a low proportion of no-medal duds. I think this is a great value point for Sauvignon Blanc. It's expensive enough for good grapes, but too cheap for new oak, which would ruin the wines. Ironically, the Best of Class winner we picked was, I believe, fermented in used oak barrels; it had a mellower mouthfeel, though I personally prefer ripping acidity.

Re good groups: Most judges have been complaining about Zinfandel, but I spoke to the people today who tasted $30 to $35 Zins and they said it was a great group. It's interesting: their theory is that Zins cheaper than that are casually made, while Zins more expensive than that are over-oaked. I haven't tasted Zin, so I'm just passing this along.

After lunch, my group tasted 20 Mourvedres, 5 Carignanes and 1 Cinsault as a single category with no price restrictions. Every one of the Carignanes got some kind of medal. I guess that if a U.S. winery is bold enough to put Carignane on the label, it must at least be decent.

My panel has given only one double gold -- that's when every taster agrees it's gold -- after two days and more than 350 wines. This is a very low percentage, but we've learned that we have very different opinions on wines. I know that some believe this makes wine competition results invalid, but I disagree. I think this is a realistic representation of the fact that peoples' tastes differ. Sure, I respect Robert Parker, but does that mean I always agree with him? What about you -- is there any critic whose opinion you always agree with?

Anyway, on that double gold: We all thought the Cinsault was a great effort, and we fairly quickly agreed that it was a double gold. But we all also agreed it wasn't the best Rhone red we tasted; our favorite Mourvedres were better. So we had another statistical anomaly: one double gold in a group, but it didn't take Best of Class. (A Mourvedre did.)

I can't wait to find out the identity of these wines on Friday. But we have one more full day of tasting tomorrow. Our group starts with 90 Syrahs from $30 to $40. I believe this will be a great group, but we'll see. Then, we finish with about 25 Muscats. Pray for me.

Some cheap Chardonnay maker owes me a lot

Today my panel of 5 judges at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition was assigned two categories: Chardonnays under $10, and Pinot Noir from $20 to $25.

The Chards turned out to be less dreadful than we thought, but the Pinots were disappointing. What was most interesting, though, was how the Best in Class wines were decided.

You probably imagine wine judges tasting and ultimately agreeing that a few wines are standouts. In fact, the Chardonnay winner at first had only one advocate -- me. And the Pinot winner never had more than two advocates (I wasn't one, I hated that wine.)

Here's how it happened. We were scheduled to taste 67 Chardonnays under $10 to start the competition. I liked the very first wine of the day a lot -- I thought it had nice toastiness, good lemon fruit, and was well-balanced. It was everything I want in a $20 Chardonnay, even better at under $10.

But when it came time to vote, I said Gold, two judges said Bronze, and two others said No Medal.

I argued for it (saying essentially what I wrote above) and got one other judge to go up to Silver, which would have given it a Silver.

At this point, I threatened to use my silver bullet -- a rather bogus new idea in which a single judge can make his vote count twice. Each judge is allowed one silver bullet per day. But it was pointed out to me that I still couldn't take the wine to a gold medal. So I held my bullet.

The wines came in flights of 10. After we had tasted 40, some of the other tasters realized they had been too harsh on the first flight, which is a hazard -- you have no perspective yet. So we all agreed to retaste the wines we liked from the first 10.

On the retaste, again I threatened to use my silver bullet. The passion of my argument, or who knows, maybe I look like Charles Manson with the new goatee, convinced two more judges to agree to give Chardonnay No. 1 a gold, though grudgingly. This made it one of six gold medals in the group.

We tasted this group blind and voted by acclamation for them. The upshot is, retasted without the stigma of being wine No. 1 -- about which we had been arguing for some time -- this Chardonnay won Best in Class. I'm sure the winery that made it will be bragging about (and marketing) the award. If they ever read this, they'll know who to thank. However, I won't learn the identity of my Chardonnay protege until Friday.

As for the winning Pinot, to me it was bretty and nasty, and I gave it no medal. Two judges agreed with me. But two other judges liked it a lot, and gave it Gold. One of them spent his silver bullet to give it a Gold overall -- ironic, in that three of us hated it.

We gave only 4 golds out of 51 Pinot Noirs from $20 to $25, and none of them were unanimous. The category was disappointing. My theory is that while there are some good corporate Pinots under $20, and good small-producer Pinots over $30, we were in a pricing dead zone.

When it came time to vote on Best in Class, we again had the sharp divide: two judges chose Bretty Pinot as their favorite; the other three of us split our votes. One judge ended up having the deciding vote between Bretty Pinot and a fruity Pinot, and she picked Bretty Pinot. I think I've never disagreed more with a panel verdict at a wine competition.

But hey, I got to see the Chard I liked awarded, so the day wasn't all bad. Wine competitions are a lot like politics, a series of compromises that may or may not be for the greater good.

Name 3 wines you don't want to taste

This week I'll be judging wines at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. The organizers sent judges a questionnaire that included this thought-provoking request:

Please designate three (3) wines you favor in evaluating and three (3) wines least desirable

What would you choose?

Which type of wine I like to drink most was not always the deciding factor. When judging, you're not drinking, you're sampling, up to 150 wines a day. Under those conditions, it's easier to sample lower alcohol, lower tannin, dry wines.

Like every other judge, I also have my own agendas. Do I want to write a story about a certain category? If so, this is a great time to find gems I wouldn't otherwise encounter.

Here were my choices, and the reasoning behind them.

Categories I want to taste:

Pinot Noir: Personal preference plays a role here; I love Pinot Noir. I also think it varies a lot from year to year, and I don't want my knowledge of California's best to get outdated. Plus, Pinot Noir is low in tannin and lower in alcohol than most reds.

Sauvignon Blanc: In my experience, this is the easiest category to taste; my palate stays fresh for twice as many wines, perhaps because of the acidity (though my dentist might cast a dissenting vote). It helps that I'm a big fan of Sauv Blanc.

Sparkling wine: These are also low in alcohol and thus easier to taste than most wines, but that's not why I chose this category. I just love bubbly, so asking me to taste 100 of them is like asking Tiger Woods to audition groupies.

Categories I don't want to taste:

Cabernet Sauvignon: This might seem like a strange choice, given that Cabernet is, overall, probably what California does best. To me, though, there's no harder wine to taste in big groups -- and there will be hundreds to taste in this competition. Cabernet Sauvignon is so tannic and so alcoholic that I start struggling after as few as 30 wines, and it makes me feel guilty. I would hate to miss out on some gem at wine number 73 because I had lost my palate already. I didn't list this one without some regret at all the great wines I'll miss, but my mouth will feel a lot better without them.

Merlot: This was the easiest wine for me to choose to reject. I've done a couple of major stories on California Merlot and I believe I know where all the good ones come from -- Rockpile, the hillsides and mountains of Napa Valley, a few mountains in Sonoma County, and nowhere else (sorry). There are hundreds of other Merlots out there, but few I find interesting. I like having a bottle of Merlot now and then, but please, not 100 of them.

Zinfandel: This was the hardest wine for me to reject because I really like tasting Zin. There's great Zin grown in many places, and I love the way Zin's flavor changes with its terroir, from the black pepper of Russian River Valley to the big black fruit of Napa to the red fruits of Amador County. But the wines are high in alcohol, which wears me down. And there are just so many of them. I considered rejecting Petite Sirah, which I don't like tasting anywhere near as much as Zin. But the Petite Sirah category is so much smaller that I could take a deep breath and blast through all the wines in a couple of hours. Zinfandel might be two days, and that's overkill.

I don't know what I'll end up being assigned to taste. But I'll bet that because I didn't reject Chardonnay, I'll get at least some. About 20% of all California wines are Chardonnays; somebody has to taste all those wines. I considered rejecting Chard just because I fear getting nothing but Chardonnay for days if everybody else rejects it. But I rather like tasting Chardonnay, when at least some of them are good; there's a lot of interesting variation between lean unoaked wines and butter bombs.

I ran this question by a few of my wine-loving friends today and they mostly concurred with my choices. One said he'd like to taste Pinot Gris, which I agree is an easy category, but from California I generally like Sauvignon Blanc better. Another said she'd like to taste Rhone reds, which is a good choice.

One friend suggested she would like to taste only wines over $50. I don't know if that's an option, and if it is, I don't know if I would take it. The sessions would probably be more pleasurable, but I would learn a lot less about the state of everyday wine in California.

However it turns out, one thing is for sure -- by the end of the competition, I'll be ready for a nice bottle of junmai ginjo sake.

Happy New Year, with Ass Cookies

As this is my first blog post of the new decade, I'd like to show off the type of incisive, thought-provoking journalism on wine and food you can expect from The Gray Market Report over the next 10 years.

These cookies taste like ... I got a hint of ... nah, can't do it. The picture says it all.

Happy New Year.