Individual tastes differ: About 10% of drinkers prefer corked wines

Quality control at Amorim's cork factory in Portugal

The cork industry is always sending me interesting data on how bad screwcaps are for wine. Recently I got an even more interesting study: that some consumers prefer corked wines.

Granted, this study, published in Food Quality and Preference journal,
was commissioned by the cork industry. But I don't doubt it.***(see update below) Peoples' tastes differ, dramatically so. Do you like your neighbors' music? If so, you're lucky, or you live next to radio host Dennis The Menace.

Update: This study was paid for by Hanzell Vineyards, not the cork industry. More details at bottom of post.

What the study was trying to establish is the threshold of TCA, the chemical that causes "cork taint,"* that would cause consumers to notice and reject the wine. A 1995 study estimated that tainted corks cost the wine industry $10 billion, so a data point like that is worth having.

* That's "cork deliciousness" for you 10-percenters

Grade inflation at a glance: a look at Robert Parker's 1987 Wine Buyer's Guide

Chateau Le Pin: 81 points. Ridge Vineyards Cabernet: 75 points. Heitz Chardonnay: 55 points.

The fascinating thing about flipping through Robert Parker's 1987 Wine Buyer's Guide, which I bought for a song on Ebay, is the way he rated wines all the way from 50 to 100.

The wines he reviewed in 1987 are mainly from the 1981 through '84 vintages, and include the '82 Bordeaux vintage that he loved. His palate preference is already on display, with quotes like this:

"Lanessan produces wine of a big, rich, gutsy style that often lacks finesse but more than compensates for that deficiency with plenty of power and flavor authority."

This is a period when some wineries released flawed wines, something that rarely happens today, and Parker dings those wines with scores in the 50s. That's admirable, part of the good role he played in helping force wineries to make improvements in hygiene.

Those aren't the noticeable scores, though. In today's world, where scores under 85 are rarely published, it's shocking to flip through the book and see so many wines with scores in the 70s, often with no comment at all. He calls 1981 Iron Horse Cabernet "acceptable" and lays a 72 on it. This is the exception, though: most scores under 75 get something like this comment about Gerin Côte-Rôtie: "Both the 1978 (72 points) and 1980 (75 points) exhibit annoyingly high acid levels and sinewy, compact personalities."

I cherry-picked that one to play into what we know about Parker today, though "light" is a frequent complaint about wines he scored in the 70s. It was a legitimate concern in a cooler era with less precise farming, particularly in France, wineries often struggled to get their grapes ripe enough. More common are comments like this:

"The '81 (Léoville-Barton) is good, but not special in this vintage." (78 points)

"Sauvignon Blanc is a winner here (Robert Pecota Winery), and if you should see the 1985, be sure to drink it within the first several years of its life because this is not a type of wine that ages at all." (79 points)

The point is, wines Parker scored in the high 70s back then were wines he probably wouldn't reject at his own dinner table.

Turkey fights for the right to drink alcohol

Better days ahead for Turkey? The seaside at Izmir, a cosmopolitan town near Istanbul

Turks have rioted in the streets for the past few days in an uprising that might have big repercussions for the US.

The cause -- anger at repressive government -- is similar to the Arab Spring uprising we've seen in other Muslim countries. But this is different for a lot of reasons, and one is that the right to drink alcohol was the spark.

Some US media are reporting that protests took off when the Turkish government announced plans to convert a park into a shopping mall. But that wasn't the real beginning. Ten days ago, the socially conservative Turkish government pushed through a bill banning retail alcohol sales between 10 pm and 6 am and also banned alcohol advertising of any kind, and protests began.

This was the last straw for the many social moderates who live in Istanbul. They took to the streets in a protest that we haven't seen the last of yet.

I went to Turkey last year for the European Wine Bloggers' Conference, and stayed on to visit a number of Turkish wineries. I had some interesting off-the-record discussions. Turks with a government license to make and sell wine do not want to be quoted criticizing the government. Some people told me that the reason the EWBC was in Turkey in the first place is that the government wants foreigners to get interested in Turkey's wines so there will be less of them to sell at home.

Official response to draconian DUI proposal

Last week I promised I would ask three key lobbying organizations for their official response to the NTSB's proposal to create a new nationwide standard of DUI.

The proposed new standard, a BAL of 0.05, is reached by the average woman after just one drink, according to the American Beverage Institute. If adopted, it could put an end to dining out as we currently know it.

The proposal worries me, so I contacted the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association, the National Restaurant Association and the Wine Institute. I wanted to know what their official response is.

Apparently for the WSWA and NRA (not that NRA), it is to ignore the question. They never responded.

The Wine Institute sent me an official statement. Here it is:

Wine Institute supports education and the strict enforcement of laws to address drunk driving. The legal threshold of .08 BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration) was established as a safe level of consumption based on science and law enforcement guidance.  Lowering the legal threshold would effectively criminalize moderate social drinking by responsible adults and divert resources that should be used to target drunk drivers.

I asked a followup question, about the Wine Institute's strategy to fight the proposal, but they didn't respond. Which is fine. That answer is an answer: the official strategy, at this point, is to ignore the NTSB recommendation and hope it goes away.

I'm in favor of that result. So I'm putting this post out here on a Friday, the Internet's lowest readership weekday, and I'm going to leave this issue alone after this, unless/until the threat seems more active. If the expert lobbyists say let's just forget about it ... what were we talking about?

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The Vienna culinary tourist: Tafelspitz, Sacher Torte and Wiener Schnitzel

I had 36 hours free in Vienna recently, and the last thing I wanted to do was one of those airline-magazine death marches: museum, lunch, shopping, tea, shopping, etc. The weather was brilliant, everyone was outside enjoying it, and the only reason I wanted to go inside was to eat.

Vienna does interesting coffee drinks and is mad for ice cream -- I saw 30 people queuing patiently at one shop -- but those are also passions in San Francisco. I wanted to be a culinary tourist and try the city's three most famous foods: tafelspitz (boiled beef), sacher torte (chocolate cake with apricot jam) and wiener schnitzel (deep fried veal).

The only one I ever tried before was sacher torte. A Viennese person (shouldn't they be called Wieners?) might say I've never tried any of them, as only the Hotel Sacher is legally authorized to sell The Original Sacher Torte. I accepted no imitations on any of the three: I went right to the restaurant most famous for each.

The beef is boiled with root vegetables and served on a warming tray

Plachutta Wollzeile was so packed on a Wednesday night that even at 9 pm there was a wait for a single seat at the counter. I'm not sure how many locals eat there. On my left was a pair of Japanese businessmen; on my right was a Virginia lawyer on an 18-hour layover from the Ukraine. I think he was a spy; when I mentioned that I liked the TV show "The Americans," he said he knew former KGB sleeper agents who had been resettled in the US. He was much more interesting than the Japanese, who were merely talking about how much beef they had eaten. But even after a large Austrian beer and a coma-inducing amount of beef, marrow and fat he wouldn't spill any details; these guys really are well-trained.

Naturally I ordered the Tafelspitz: that's why I was there.

Qupé proves California Roussanne can age

Bob Lindquist likes Syrah and the Dodgers. Both are troubled these days

Qupé winemaker Bob Lindquist has been making Rhone variety wines in Santa Barbara County for 30 years. He was making Syrah when it was on its way up here, and is still making it now that he, like everyone else, can't sell it.

Recently he held a lunch where, in addition to plenty of older vintages, he introduced MaxTap, a blend of Syrah, Grenache, Tempranillo and Mourvedre. It's red, earthy, a little plum. It's not glorious, like his Marsanne or Edna Valley Syrah, but it's OK. I say this not to blast MaxTap, but to illustrate how hard it is to sell Syrah.

"I was in Sacramento yesterday and visiting accounts, and everyone said, I love Syrah, I love your Syrah, but we're having a hard time selling Syrah, so I'd like this MaxTap (for) by-the-glass," Lindquist says.

Roussanne is an even harder sell; at least people know what Syrah is.

"My sales manager says with Roussanne, (sommeliers) say they can't sell it, but they buy a 6-pack to take home for themselves," Lindquist says.

Teaching kids to drink

Oh boy, am I going to catch hell from somebody for this post. But this is an interesting idea I saw in Slovakia I thought I'd pass along.

Slovakia currently drinks twice as much wine as it produces. But per capita consumption isn't great, at 11.9 liters per year, which puts it near the bottom of the European Union. (The US drinks only 9.4 liters per year per capita, but we have 60 times as many people.)

So Hubert, the largest winery in Slovakia, is concerned about its future. Hubert is a 188-year-old sparkling wine specialist that has dominated the market since the Communist era, when it was nationalized. Check out its video history in English; the highlight is women with hammers pounding in corks in the 1970s.

The government in that era was proud to make better sparkling wine than those capitalists in France -- heck, Emperor Franz Joseph said so in 1896 -- and put out a steady stream of propaganda about how Czechoslovakians could celebrate their milestones with the finest wine in the world. For older Slovaks, that's still powerful.

But Communism has been gone for 23 years, and people under 30 don't remember the Hubert campaign. So Hubert, which was purchased by the German wine company Henkell in 2002, has to reach out to the next generation of customers.

Hence, Bambino Party.