Gold Medal wines from Critics Challenge

Some people judge at wine competitions every month, but I only do a few I like. One is Critics Challenge, where a small roster of professional wine writers share tables for two, but don't have to agree on anything. The same wine is poured for both writers, and we can discuss it or not, but whoever gives it the better medal, that's what it gets.

I lobbied to sit with Michael Apstein, a Boston-based gastroenterologist and Burgundy lover who doesn't like the taste of fruit in wine. There's no critic I've ever disagreed with more fundamentally on what makes a good wine. So we're the dream team for both wineries and consumers: If it's a good wine, one of us will recognize it. And if neither of us like it, you probably won't either.

Having drunk with Michael, what surprised me was how forgiving he is when judging. He gave a lot of golds to wines he personally would not drink. I'm more personal than that. At Critics Challenge, medals come with tasting notes that wineries can use for marketing. I won't have "Gold Medal W. Blake Gray" on a wine I wouldn't drink.

We judged 150 wines in 2 days. A few general observations, then onto the wines.

* Sauvignon Blancs under $10 were a great category. Combined we gave 4 golds and 4 silvers out of 15 wines. The only category better for us was Mourvedres: just 3 wines and all medals, 2 platinums and a silver.

Winemaker-grower relations: the 8-point summary

Here's a quick 8-point summary of what we learned about current winemaker/grower relations by my turning anonymous comments back on last week.

A quick cautionary note: None of these observations, all from comments on a post asking for them, are universal. Just because some growers and some winemakers are doing something doesn't mean everyone is. And I'll say once again that without hard-working, underappreciated grape farmers, we wouldn't have great wines.

1) Grapes are definitely in short supply this year -- we knew that -- and some growers are taking advantage, demanding more money per ton and giving less control over yield, which might lead to lower quality grapes and lower quality wines. Some growers are even asking for more money despite signed contracts.

2) That said, many wineries have had an easy time cheaply filling bottles of mid-priced wine the last few years, buying declassified bulk wines from other wineries or ruthlessly underbidding on grapes that growers felt desperate to sell. Wineries that didn't plan ahead are suffering the most now.

3) Under-$20 private-label Napa Cabs and other such amazing values might disappear.

Low alcohol winemaking leads to big money partnership

Gavin Chanin

At age 26, winemaker Gavin Chanin has already worked 8 harvests at two of the best wineries in California, which doesn't even seem legal. He's already one of the best winemakers in California, and according to Forbes, one of the 30 best food professionals under 30 in the US.

And now, he's got big-money backing for his own winery -- his second winery.

Chanin and Bill Price, owner of Durell Vineyard in Sonoma County, announced a partnership Monday to create a new premium Pinot Noir-based brand.

Sorry if I sound like a broken record on the lowering alcohol trend in California wine, but that's what this was all about.

Durell Vineyard is known for ripe, rich wines. Its Pinots were big before big was hot.

Chanin, by contrast, makes beautiful, expressive, low-alcohol wines.

"Bill approached me after In Pursuit of Balance* last year about making some Durell Pinot in my style -- a low-alcohol style," Chanin said. "I jumped on it because it was outside my element, one of the great vineyards of Sonoma County."

Are California grapegrowers getting too cocky?

Last week, a California winemaker told me that he's having a hard time dealing with grapegrowers he's known for years.

The reason is that after two years of weather-related small crops, there's finally an end to the surplus of wine that has driven economic conditions in the California wine industry since the record-setting huge crop of 2005. Wine grapes are in short supply, so growers can finally make demands, especially if they're not under contract, but according to this winemaker, even if they are.

I asked for details and he didn't want to give them because he was terrified of being identified. If grapes are hard to buy now, how much harder would it be for somebody who complains about arrogant growers?

To be fair, grape growers always do most of the work in making fine wine, bear most of the risk, and get little of the credit. There has long been tension between what winemakers and growers want: crop size, harvest date, ripeness, etc. For the past few years, winemakers have held the cards, and growers -- being farmers -- generally didn't complain about them. So please don't see this post as some sort of anti-grower screed: it's not.

I just want to know what it's like out there. Winemakers: are growers getting too cocky this year? Growers: Are winemakers the overly demanding ones? Both sides: Is this year very different from the last seven?

I have turned anonymous comments back on to try to get a feel for the situation. Feel free to use anonymity. Please identify what your role in the industry is, but if you don't give a name, nobody can trace it back to you, and I give you my word as a journalist that I'm not going to try. No insults, please: Just tell us what the grower-winemaker climate is like now. Thanks.

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

Why I stopped allowing anonymous comments

A number of readers have complained to me that it's more difficult to comment on The Gray Report than before. I'm sorry for that, so I'd like to explain why I stopped allowing anonymous comments -- and why I'm going to let them back in, briefly, tomorrow.

I've thought a lot about my policy on anonymous comments since winemaker Charles Smith sued some of my readers in 2010.*

(Brief non-update: Smith has never sued me, has not yet hit me hard enough to knock out my diaphragm, and since I'm not a party to the suit, I don't know what's going on. If you do, email me.)

The thing about anonymous comments is that the most valuable of them are not actually anonymous: they are simply people who haven't registered for whatever comment program one uses (I use the one provided by Blogger) but sign their name anyway.

An old-school journalistic adage is to allow people you have written about a chance to respond. I liked having a low barrier to that. I'd say comments like this only accounted for about 2% of the "anonymous" comments I received, but they were important to me.

Other signed comments from non-affected parties brought the total of anonymous-but-actually-signed comments to about 10%.

Another important category is people with inside information. I got a lot of these relative to other blogs because winemakers would report techniques they use that they didn't want associated with their wine brands. (Ask me how chocolate wine is made some time -- I just learned recently.) I love these comments, but they were probably less than 5% of my anonymous comments.

The remaining 85% of my anonymous comments were generally:

Make your own plum liqueur

Japanese plums (ume) are in season right now; shochu and vodka are always in season

Umeshu -- plum liqueur -- was my first DIY booze project. In Japan, supermarkets make it really easy. So I was pleased to visit Nijiya in San Francisco's Japantown, and find it's almost as easy here, right now.

And if you can make umeshu (often mistakenly called "plum wine;" shu actually means alcohol), you can make liqueur from practically any fruit, and you don't have to go to any special Asian supermarket to do it. But I'll start with the umeshu recipe, which is how I started, and then tell you how to riff off it.

The hard, bitter, acidic plums (ume) needed for this sweet drink are in season right now. Nijiya sells them as well as bags of rock sugar, and has a sheet of instructions there for you to take notes. The only thing Japanese supermarkets do better is selling the container right there also; you'll have to find a large sealable glass jar somewhere else.

But making the stuff couldn't be easier. Here's how.

High alcohol wines are bad for your sex life

Dr. Ruth Westheimer

Dr. Ruth Westheimer orders White Zinfandel, but prefers ginger ale. She admits she doesn't care much about food. She's not somebody you'd normally go to for wine advice.

But Dr. Ruth knows sex, and she knows what's bad for it -- high-alcohol wines.

Dr. Ruth announced earlier this week that's she's launching a line of crappy doctored-up wines at just 6% alcohol made from California grapes called "Vin d'Amour." She hasn't tasted them, and probably doesn't care what they taste like. The whole goal is to get you laid.

She told the New York Post:

“A little bit of alcohol is welcome because it makes people not only relax, but communicate better. They will talk about their feelings, their hopes and their dreams easier than without alcohol, because there is less censure. But when people get drunk, there is no way they can be good lovers. And nobody wants to go to bed with somebody who gets drunk, vomits and wakes up with a hangover. With this [low-alcohol] wine, I am saying: ‘Relax, but don’t do it [drink] too much.’ If sex follows or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s about finding and communicating with a significant other.”

Let's forget about the Vin d'Amour wines themselves; these are completely manufactured products. Plus I defy anyone to name a dry wine that tastes good at 6% alcohol. But think about the message. 

Which is better for your sex life: Riesling at, say, 11% alcohol, or Merlot at 15.5% labeled, 16.5% actual?