Unexpected find: A great Semillon from Amador County

Mark McKenna

Sometimes you taste a great wine and you need to know more about it. I had a delicious Semillon -- fresh, with green fruit and plenty of character -- from the place in California I least expected that grape: Amador County. Then I had it again at a group dinner full of wine experts and I found myself overfilling my glass until ... hey, where'd that wine go?

So I had to talk to Andis Wines winemaker Mark McKenna.

The Sierra Foothills are known for ripe Zinfandel, and that has plenty of fans. But McKenna, the winemaker at Andis Wines, says that Amador County is so much more than people realize.

What do you like best about Amador County terroir? 
We have the most diverse series of microclimates of anywhere in California. We have a lot of different soils. There isn't a flat plot of land in the entire area. Zinfandel is a large part of what we do, but it may not be the best thing here. That might be Barbera.

Would people plant Zin there now, if they were starting from scratch?
I don't think so. My take on Zinfandel is this. You can take a map of California and throw darts at it, and wherever that dart lands, you can grow Zinfandel.
Foothills Zinfandel is unique, but it's just different, it's not necessarily better.

Partida is where Tequila meets Jack Daniel's

José Valdez

Partida is popular Tequila for several reasons: It's well-marketed, production standards are impeccable -- and it tastes a bit like Jack Daniel's.

Partida master distiller José Valdez was in San Francisco recently, and he talked about the Jack Daniel's effect.

Partida's Reposado and Anejo versions are matured in once-used Jack Daniel's barrels. And to ensure the JD flavor, those barrels are used only once by Partida before they're sold to other Tequila distilleries.

"We did some tasting with Cognac barrels and other types of barrels," Valdez says. "We found that with the flavor of our product, Jack Daniel's is perfect."

Valdez, 32, is the youngest master distiller in Mexico, with clean-cut movie-star looks. He got into the profession in what seems like a very Mexican way: his brother knew a guy.

"I was an industrial engineer," says Valdez, who graduated from Pan American University. "I used to work in electronic engineering: cellphones, computers, servers. I didn't feel identified with any brand."

Partida founder Gary Shansby and his partner went to visit Guadalajara, where Valdez' brother works as a lawyer.

"They said, 'I'm looking for an engineer.' He said, 'My brother is an engineer'," Valdez said.

How I use Twitter: A 6-point manifesto

I love Twitter, but I'm not going to tell you how to use it. However, I do have a personal Twitter manifesto.

A lengthy war of words on Twitter last week between UK and US wine writers prompted me to write this. I don't want to recap it; suffice to say the crux of the argument was the nature of Twitter and of writing itself. Are Tweets unedited snapshots? Should writers strive to be interesting even at 140 characters?

Should anyone be able to define what Twitter is for everyone else?

I tried to mediate the fight because I really don't care how you or anyone else uses Twitter. I can only control what I do. About that, I care a great deal.

My Twitter manifesto:

1. Every tweet, even in the middle of a conversation, should be intelligible if it stands alone. I never send a tweet that says "@randomguy @smithandwesson @cylon6 Yeah, me too."

2. I try to be interesting, informative or funny. Every tweet. I may not succeed, but to me, tweeting is writing. It's a different medium from a blog or a novel or a screenplay, but it is writing, and the limitations are part of what I love about it.

3. You don't have to follow me, and I don't have to follow you. Moreover, the two are not connected.

"Somm" review: The best wine documentary yet?

Thinking about "Somm," which is probably the best wine documentary yet, I tried to get outside myself. Would I like this movie if I knew nothing about wine?

The question might be moot. "Somm" is a documentary, not a dramedy like "Sideways," and in the US documentaries rarely cross over into the general market.

If you do love wine, "Somm" has all the elements of a terrific movie -- drama, humor, tension, great characters. And director Jason Wise introduces visual excitement into one of the most boring things in the world, watching other people taste, with gimmicks like wine glasses being smashed or shot to mark scene transitions.

"Somm" feels like a sports documentary; it follows the structure of a team working together to overcome an impossible opponent.

The film follows four students as they prepare to take the Master Sommelier exam, arguably the hardest exam in the world. Three of them -- Ian, Brian and Dustin -- study together, with a locker-room mentality. They're teammates, not opponents, but they're also frequently teasing, and guessing wines blind with on-the-fly tasting notes is a daring area where you leave yourself open to feeling foolish. This isn't reality TV; it's surprising that they don't bicker more often.

The first time I hear one of them describe a flavor, not an aroma, as "a freshly opened can of tennis balls," I'm reminded of the supportive environment you need to state such an impression. If I wrote that on this blog, I'd be ruthlessly mocked. MS candidates need friends, not just to show them flash cards with the names of sub-regions or approved grape varieties on the back, but to indulge them in the immersive culture of wine obsession.

Wine Spectator is wrong: adding sugar to California wine should remain illegal

Last week Wine Spectator published a blog post  titled "Why California Winemakers Should Be Allowed to Add Sugar."

The reason: because California wine is not ripe enough. Geez, if we could only get rid of these weak-sister wines under 16% alcohol and get us some real he-man drinkin' bottles!

Writer Ben O'Donnell, an assistant editor, doesn't exactly say that. His point is more nuanced, and I think he expressed it better Friday under the 140-character restriction of Twitter:

"The notion that 'California terroir' is one all-encompassing thing is a fallacy and that's what I pointed out in the article."

O'Donnell also said on Twitter:

"I'm for anything that could help people explore/experiment/develop in these 'frontier' regions."

I have to write this as a tiny voice in opposition to Wine Spectator just in case there becomes a serious move in California to legalize chaptalization (adding sugar to fermenting grapes to raise the alcohol level of wine).

Chaptalization in California is Spectatorization. It's winemaking on PEDs (performance enhancing duplicities). And it's wrong.

Croatian and Slovenian wines: a cross-border tasting

Croatian winemaker Ivica Dobrinčić and family will soon have EU passports

Politically, Croatia and Slovenia are at odds with each other. But wine-wise, they share a lot -- some of which Croatia will have to give up when it joins the European Union on July 1.

Both countries are known mostly for aromatic white wine, but like the nearby Alto Adige region of Italy, they also make reds.

I had the opportunity to taste some of the best of these borderland wines recently at an event organized by importer Blue Danube Wine Company; tasting notes are below.*

The history of Croatia and Slovenia has been intertwined with neighboring Italy and Austria for centuries, as both were often part of the same larger country (Austria-Hungary; Yugoslavia). Grapes in the area sometimes have names in four different languages.

That's a battleground now. Slovenia joined the EU in 2004 and its wineries immediately and successfully petitioned to own the name Teran, a red grape. You'd think this wouldn't be a problem, but EU bureaucrats don't really understand wine. Italians had to stop calling one of their grapes "Tocai Friulano" to avoid a conflict with Hungary's Tokaji dessert wines. Isn't this the same?

Well, no. Italian wineries apparently actually did rename a local grape after the famous Hungarian wine to sell it. In this case, Teran in Slovenia and Croatia is actually the same thing, grown a few kilometers apart. It's like saying the word "banana" can only be used for fruit from one country.

Sexism in the wine industry: Observations from a blog post

Last week I wrote a post asking people how common they think sexism is in the wine industry, and asking for insider stories of sexism that people have actually witnessed.

I got very few of the latter, even though the post was widely read and I opened my blog to anonymous comments, which meant I spent the whole week deleting unrelated crap. (A little inside-blog thing: if you have lots of pageviews and you don't check your comments, bots will place links to weird gibberish sites.)

I ran a very unscientific opinion poll, and while about 30% of respondents believe sexism is common at all levels in the wine industry, about the same number of people think it is not unusually common.

Here are the highlights of the observations I did get:

* Women are underrepresented in management. This is the most serious point.

* Women viticulturists may not always be included in men's discussions of vineyard management, even if that is their job.

* Some male winemakers joke openly about sex with female interns.