"Sideways" gets lost in translation

Rarely will you read a movie critique by somebody who was rooting for the film more than I was for the Japanese version of "Sideways."

I have a financial interest: my wife and I have a Japanese-language guide to California wine and wine country out right now. If the Japanese "Sideways," to be released at the end of October, is a hit, we'll probably sell a lot more books.

So I hope that Japanese movie fans don't see a translated version of this post (Don't look at me, I'm not gonna translate it).

The movie is not very good. The script has been dumbed down, one of the lead actors is awful, and the cinematographers somehow couldn't find beauty in Napa Valley (or, for that matter, in actress Rinko Kikuchi, who is far prettier in person.)

Moreover, wine has been de-emphasized and remystified. Almost anybody seeing the original "Sideways" would feel the urge to have a glass of wine. After seeing the Japanese version, one would be more likely to be too intimidated by wine to order it.

The focus of the film has changed, according to director Cellin Gluck, to a "fish out of water story." It's no longer about two very different but equally immature buddies who need a little of each other's qualities. Instead, it's about four Japanese people trying and mostly failing to fit into American culture. That's not a bad concept, but the producers would have been better off starting from scratch rather than adapting a movie which wasn't about that at all.

Acting quality is a big issue. Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church were brilliant as Miles and Jack in the original. Church's charm was particularly important because we need to like Jack while he's behaving as badly as a man about to be married can.

The Jack role (now named Daisuke) is played by bug-eyed comedian Katsuhisa Namase, who has no charm at all, and no chemistry with either Fumiyo Kohinata as Michio (i.e. Miles) or Rinko Kikuchi as Mina Parker (i.e. Stephanie). The script beats us over the head repeatedly with the fact that Daisuke and Michio were friends during a one-year homestay many years before, and it has to, because unlike with Jack and Miles, they don't seem to have any real affection for each other.

This is not the only instance where screenwriter Takayuki Uesugi tells rather than shows, and thus fails to convince. The film opens with such a long voice-over by Michio, telling us who he is, how he feels, who his friend is, why he's here, how he feels about that, where they're going, how his career is going, etc., that I wished for a Star Wars-like opening crawl to save time: "Michio teaches screenwriting in Tokyo and is trying to sell a TV drama screenplay. He used to teach English but even though he once spent a year in the US on a homestay he's unable to speak it. His girlfriend left him. Now he's attending the wedding of his onetime friend in an LA suburb, and they're going to go to Napa Valley together under an excuse that makes no sense."

One of the strengths of the original "Sideways" is that director Alexander Payne doesn't judge either Miles or Jack; they're both flawed, but he sympathizes with both, and Jack often gives Miles better advice than vice versa. That's not the case here. Maybe it's Namase's lack of charm as Daisuke (Jack), but we're clearly meant to side with Michio.

But Michio is a cipher; he doesn't have the amusing quirks of Miles. He's not as tightly wound either, so when he eventually drinks from a spit bucket, it comes off as unbelievable, a holdover scene from a movie about wine.

It's obvious that the people making this film were not wine lovers. Wine names are relatively interchangeable. We don't get Miles' instructional course on how to taste wine -- which was actually accurate and useful. Instead, we get Michio telling Daisuke he's doing it the wrong way, though Michio doesn't seem to have any appreciation for wine either; he's all about the form.

Just exactly what fledgling wine fans don't need: all worries and rules, no joy. In the original, Miles rants about the production method of some wine, and self-confident Jack says, "Tastes pretty good to me." There's nothing like that here.

What is here? Here's a blow-by-blow. Warning: I'm going to give lots of spoilers, including the ending, because I assume most Americans will never see the film, but may be curious about it.

* Daisuke, who tells Americans "call me Danny," is set to marry Laura, a real-estate heiress whose father also owns the French-Japanese restaurant he manages. In fact he hates her and bitches about her as soon as he and Michio leave her home together.

* Like Jack, Daisuke was formerly a TV actor. Random people recognize him as "Captain Ninja."

* First things first, Daisuke and Michio drive to Grauman's Chinese Theater and park right in front, where of course Daisuke is recognized. You know, whenever I'm in LA, that's where I like to park.

* Daisuke wants to go to Las Vegas for his bachelor party -- which makes sense. Michio wants to go to Napa because he has a guidebook (and sadly, it's not mine).

* Daisuke tells Laura's family that Michio is a famous screenwriter and "his next movie will be directed by Kurosawa," because nobody in the LA area would possibly know that Kurosawa is dead; it's not like anybody there works in the movie industry. Unless he meant Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

* The boys visit Michio's former homestay, and kindly old Mrs. Russell gives them -- "just take it" -- a bright red vintage Mustang convertible, which was buried under boxes in the garage but is miraculously shiny and clean. Americans do this all the time; I have so many BMWs now because my neighbors are generous that I don't know where to park them all. Maybe I should just leave one outside Grauman's Chinese Theater.

* Mrs. Russell has an address for Mayuko, who Michio tutored in English 20 years ago. It's in Calistoga, so Michio wins the anti-Las Vegas argument.

* Mayuko now works at Frog's Leap, where owner/winemaker John Williams has inexplicably turned French. Director Cellin Gluck explained that the real Williams was out of town and Gluck had a French friend who would be good in the role. I guess it's fair play, as a Korean-American guy just played Sulu in Star Trek. I've drunk with John Williams, though, and he does speak pretty fluent English in real life until the last glass or two.

* The French John Williams wants Mayuko to move to Tokyo to open Frog's Leap's new branch office there. Go Frog's Leap! But she wants to make it here.

* Meanwhile, the boys go wine tasting, learn nothing and don't enjoy it. In fact, Daisuke's driving so Michio won't let him taste, only smell. How much fun Napa Valley is!

* Mayuko is dining with her good friend Mina (Kikuchi) at Bistro Don Giovanni when the boys discover them. Mina's supposed to be a half-Japanese American, and maybe her Japanese can maintain the illusion, but her English sure can't. Michio has a bottle of Beringer red (can't see which) after their visit to the Beringer tasting room. Product placement!

* Michio isn't initially attracted to Mayuko because she's not 18 anymore.

* Mina works at Cafe Sarafornia in Calistoga. Daisuke goes there for breakfast. She arranges tickets for the boys to a mud bath at Golden Haven Hot Springs. Mud baths are funny-looking, but that's the only joke the unimaginative screenwriter can get out of it.

* Mayuko gets a letter from her ex-husband Ichiro saying she can pick up their anniversary wine at Newton. She doesn't want to go alone, so she brings Michio. Meanwhile, Daisuke heads to Darioush to pick up a case of wine for his wedding.

* Mayuko and Michio talk about their relationships. Mayuko had a quickly failed marriage to a department store heir. Michio's girlfriend took all their cookware when she left, leaving him only a Le Creuset pot with curry in it. Michio and Mayuko begin to have a little chemistry. Michio says of the Newton wine -- an entire case, of what variety we don't know -- "The wine hasn't done anything wrong. Let's drink it." All of it. In one night. With other wine.

* The plot begins to turn around Michio trying to convince Mayuko to move back to Japan. Why? Because it's Japan. That probably will make sense to many Japanese viewers.

* Michio does a short, weak version of Miles' Pinot Noir soliloquy at a party, but doesn't bother telling us what Pinot Noir he's drinking, or what it tastes like. It's Pinot Noir. That's enough. (Central Valley Pinot Noir farmers rejoice.)

* Mayuko likes Cabernet. So she's in Napa Valley. Just as in the American version, she's the sensible one. And amazingly, on her tasting-room salary, she's able to buy or rent a huge house.

* Oops, forgot her part-time job; maybe that's how she bought the house. Mayuko also works at a wine shop and has a wine emergency -- she needs to get a truckload of specific older vintages of wine for a wedding that very night. Because, you know, Americans never plan ahead for weddings. Michio has that "Do-your-best" spirit and says, "We'll just go to the wineries themselves!" So they do. We never learn which specific wines they have to have, but we know nothing else will do. Talk about terrorizing novice wine drinkers -- you can't even get married unless you can find entire cases of wines that are no longer in stores!

* Michio steals Daisuke's wedding case of Darioush, which is on the list. Little by little they fill the truck with wine for this wedding we never see, driving all over the most nondescript parts of Napa Valley. "Bottle Shock" wasn't a great movie, but at least it had pretty vineyard scenes. This doesn't.

* Meanwhile, off camera, Daisuke has apparently made it with Mina, even though they showed no affection for each other (that's not a cultural difference -- if you want to see couples attempting to break the law of physics about two bodies not being able to occupy the same space, head to Yoyogi Park in Tokyo on a weekend).

In the original, Jack makes a great passionate speech about Stephanie. Forgive me if I make mistakes, this is from memory: "She smells different, she tastes different, hell, she even fucks different. She fucks like an animal!" Daisuke says about Mina, "We talk to each other in Japanese. You can't beat that." Wow, limited worldview.

* Mayuko and Michio cook dinner together and have a pathetic little peck of a kiss: barely any lip, much less tongue. Then Michio wonders why isn't she coming back to Japan, because if not, what did that kiss mean? Wow, limited worldview.

* Daisuke decides he's going to move to Japan with Mina and open a Japanese restaurant. We never hear him say anything nice about Laura, though she seemed nice enough, unlike Jack's lovey-dovey phone calls (cynical? or polyamorous?) in the original.

* The four of them have a picnic. Considering it's Napa Valley, it's surprisingly unbeautiful. This is where Miles inadvertently tells Maya about Jack's engagement in the original. No such realistic subtlety here.

* Mayuko finds out about Daisuke's engagement from a note in the purloined box of Darioush. She confronts Michio about it.

* Meanwhile, Daisuke's out of condoms, so he runs to a drugstore where everyone recognizes him as Captain Ninja. While he's gone, Michio calls Mina and tells her directly that Daisuke is engaged. What kind of friend does that? How can you have a buddy film without buddies?

* Daisuke and Mina argue about his engagement and he's yelling at her when she whacks him with a frying pan. Much, much weaker than the shockingly sudden attack by Stephanie in the original. I suspect the screenwriter thought that just knowing the guy who was fucking her was secretly engaged wasn't motivation enough for Mina to hit him. Cad. And I don't mean Daisuke.

* Driving back to the hotel, with his face bruised, Daisuke is pulled over by a motorcycle cop for an expired tag. Turns out she's a hot blonde who knows Captain Ninja, and happens to be a dominatrix. The next thing we see is Daisuke showing up at the hotel room in bondage gear. It's funny, and is what happens in almost 10% of all traffic stops in California, I believe.

* The boys go back to the CHP dominatrix's house to retrieve Daisuke's wallet and wedding rings, while she audibly (but not visibly) punishes her boyfriend or husband. It's not unfunny, but it's not as subtle as the humiliation fetishist from the original version.

* The boys are at a winery when Michio's ex-girlfriend calls and announces she's married and wants the Le Creuset back. Then a producer calls and says his drama screenplay has sold, has been rewritten by one of his students, and his credit has been downgraded to "story by," though his writing fee is unchanged. He screams and that leads to the spit bucket-drinking scene. Much, much weaker than the original, in which Miles' novel was rejected. And since the boys haven't been tasting and spitting, I'm not sure all audiences will even know what's in the bucket.

* The boys go to a fountain (at Darioush, I think) where the still overwrought Michio takes a swim in his clothes. Whiner. Michio throws away the screenplay he has been working on but Daisuke retrieves it.

* Daisuke decides that Laura is "the sum of my possibilities" and he's going to marry her after all. But he makes it sound and feel like the end of his life, not something to look forward to -- another big contrast to the first movie, where Jack strayed but ultimately decided he loved his fiancee.

* Daisuke runs the gift Mustang into a tree outside Oakville Grocery. Easy come, easy go.

* Daisuke leaves Michio's script for Mayuko. She reads it and likes it. Michio calls her from LA and leaves her a long love message, saying he'll drive back up to her house and, "If you feel the same way I do, leave the door unlocked."

* At last a subtle point: the door's locked, and Mayuko's gone.

* Cut to an airport (by the way, did you know LA is near enough to Calistoga to just pop on up?), where Mayuko is in ANA's business class lounge, waiting for a flight to Tokyo. We hear Mina's voice advising Michio, "Don't let her get away." We don't know if he does. The end.

That's it, that's the Japanese version of "Sideways." It's weaker than the original in almost every aspect of filmmaking: screenplay, acting, cinematography.

And yet, I'm in the position of rooting for it, of hoping that somehow this movie becomes a hit in Japan and gets thousands of Japanese interested in visiting Napa Valley so they'll buy this book.

Sigh. I need a drink. Maybe from a spit bucket.

Most Napa wineries say no to Japanese "Sideways"

Just got back from the world premiere of the Japanese remake of "Sideways." It's after midnight so I will write a long, drawn out, descriptive yet opinionated post -- tomorrow.

Director Cellin Gluck and actress Rinko Kikuchi (far right) took questions after the film, which was shown outdoors at the Napa Valley Expo. Though nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for "Babel," Kikuchi doesn't really speak English, so Gluck gave all the answers.

To me, the most interesting came when he was asked how they chose which wineries to shoot at. Frog's Leap, Darioush and Beringer are shown prominently in the film, but few other wineries are.

It turns out that most of Napa Valley still holds a grudge against the original "Sideways" for that one line of Miles', "I'm not drinking any fucking Merlot."

"We had many people hang up on us," Gluck said. "We tried to tell them that the script was different, but they weren't listening. We actually drove up to a vineyard where we had a shoot scheduled and we were at the gate and they said, 'Why are you here again?' We said, 'We're making the Japanese version of 'Sideways'.' We just stared at the gate and it didn't open."

In the Japanese version, while the Miles character (now "Michio") likes Pinot Noir and Maya (now "Mayuko") likes Cabernet, neither is as passionate about it as in the original, and nobody slams Merlot. At one point, we hear a Merlot described favorably in a tasting room. But this wasn't enough for most Napa vintners.

"The famous wineries didn't want anything to do with us," Gluck said. "Some wineries asked us to pay them $20,000 location fees to shoot for the day. We cost 1/5th as much to make as the original 'Sideways.' We don't have the money to pay location fees. So the people who welcomed us in, we went to."

Mayuko works at Frog's Leap, and we see more of Frog's Leap than any other winery. That's no coincidence: owner/winemaker John Williams was "the first winery owner to welcome us," Gluck said. "I can't give you the list of people who turned us away. But I hope they watch this film and say, 'Damn'."

Here's a brief note to the people on this unwritten list before I sleep: Are you out of your bloody minds? Don't you know how many bottles of wine were sold by the first "Sideways"? Don't you know that Calera can sell as many bottles of its Jensen Vineyard Pinot Noir in Japan as it can export over there, for better prices than it fetches here, because of a single mention several years ago in a Japanese manga?

Don't you want Japanese tourists? They're polite, they spend money and they're brand loyal.

I guess with the booming economy, and Napa Valley wines flying off the shelves, getting a little free publicity in another country just isn't important. Isn't it great to be living in such times!

Kermit Lynch's album "Man's Temptation": a review

Kermit Lynch's first album seemed like a lark, a wine importer following a lifelong dream. Now he's done another, "Man's Temptation," so is it time to take him seriously as a musician?

Maybe. Lynch is smart enough, and has a good enough wine cellar, to have lined up a stellar list of mostly alt-country session musicians for this Nashville-recorded album. This makes his voice, by design, the weak link.

But in most cases, it's his only link. Unlike his first album "Quicksand Blues," on which he wrote all the songs, Lynch wrote just 3 of the 12 songs on this album and adapted two others. So he's coming at us not as a wine importer with a notebook full of thoughts, but as a singer.

Fortunately, even without the involvement of Boz Scaggs, his friend who put together the band on his first disc, "Man's Temptation" is a well-balanced, easy-to-drink-in alt-country album that's a little harsh on the intro but has a nice gentle finish.

In fact, I've been playing it in the background when friends are over drinking wine, and each time they've asked, "What is that album? I like it." Its judicious, intuitive instrumentals and absence of sharp edges make it an disc that's easy to keep going back to.

There are times when Lynch really comes through vocally. He sounds genuinely lonely on the hillbilly sway hymn "Rank Stranger," which might be the best song on the album.

He also has the courage to take on a song made famous by Patsy Cline, changing the gender to "Why Can't She Be You," and pulls it off because his voice is so plaintive. It's ironic that a guy who has dedicated his life to pleasure does his very best singing on songs of lamentation.

At the other end, the musicians here are so good that there are moments when if I could mix down Lynch's voice, I would. Specifically, the Carter Family song "Bear Creek" has such pretty guitar playing by George Marinelli, Michael Spriggs and album producer Ricky Fataar that Lynch is out of his league. That said, it is amusing to hear him nearly choke while trying to sing "It tastes like cherry wine," as if those last two words hurt.

You have to have patience with this disc because the first track, "Gare de Lyon," is the worst. I'm not sure what Lynch was shooting for with these lyrics, but he comes off like a guy with a hip-hop ego. He sings that he's in a Paris railway station, fine, but not for his day job: "I'm on my way to the next concert stage." Then a little later, "Well the whole town loves me/They come to my shows/They clap and they stomp and my audience grows."

What's next: I got a gat/in the back/of my ice-crusted Cadillac?

But you leave the train station and the album settles in for a smooth ride. There are points when Lynch is good enough to make you forget that this isn't his day job: the weary ending to the title track, the muscular bar-band sounding "Buckle-Up Boogie."

On the whole, I like "Man's Temptation" and think I'll be playing it at gatherings for a while. But please don't give up your day job, Kermit: we all like the wines too much for that.

Kermit Lynch is performing a one-time-only concert of this album on Oct. 7 in San Francisco, with a menu designed by Alice Waters and wine from his portfolio. I saw his one show for the last album and it was a blast; we danced and noshed and drank with the San Francisco fooderati. That said, it's $125, so use your own judgment. Click here for more information.

Serve me your best wine, says Mayor Bloomberg

Do you ever wonder who drinks the $300 Cabernets that get 97 points?

In many cases the answer is "no one," because if it's a famous brand like Screaming Eagle the wine might enter the auction/investment market, where it will be tossed around every few years like a Gucci football, too valuable to drink.

But some of these wines make it to restaurants, where eventually they find a high roller. Who are these drinkers?

One is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who loves to eat, according to this fine New York Times article.

The end of the article describes Bloomberg's wine-buying process:

One dinner companion recalled that after Mr. Bloomberg asked for the best bottle of red wine in the house, the restaurant’s manager wanted to describe the wine to the mayor, have him taste it and smell the cork.

The mayor politely interrupted. “Is this your best bottle?” he asked. The manager said yes. “O.K., then pour it,” he said.

I hope something was lost in the translation about making the Mayor check for bacterial contaminants by breathing them in. "Smell the Cork" reminds me of the Spinal Tap album "Smell the Glove."

What this anecdote really tells me is how much attention the Mayor pays to wine. This is a New York restaurant; its "best" red wine could be anything at all, from a first-growth Bordeaux to one of Manfred Krankl's creations at Sine Qua Non.

And he drank it without even knowing what it was.

I don't mean to pick on Mayor Bloomberg, who seems from afar to be doing a reasonable job. He's not unusual in the ratio of spending to knowledge. It's like baseball-fan seating: People in the luxury suites usually don't know anything about the game.

I remember going to a Baltimore seafood house once that had seven wines: a half-dozen under $60, and one at $300, a Cab that wouldn't go with the food at all. The waitress told me they sold at least a couple bottles every week.

Wineries that have been successful in the very-high-end cult market know this, and market accordingly: their wine is a must-have lifestyle accessory. A lot of the schadenfreude we're hearing lately about the collapse of the expensive wine market comes from the fact that wine lovers don't buy or get to try these wines. As a critic, I've tasted Screaming Eagle, but I've never had a whole bottle, nor has anyone I know, and I know a lot of people who drink a lot of wine.

I may be alone in this, but I think the high-end wine market will recover with the rest of the economy, and drinkers like Mayor Bloomberg are the reason. The brand names may change, but there will always be people who simply ask for "the best wine," which the server is free to translate as "the most expensive."

Advice to Mayor Bloomberg: Stay away from Bern's Steak House.

San Francisco's best wine tasting event

The last time I attended the Wine & Spirits Top 100 Wineries tasting, I thought it was the best wine-tasting event in San Francisco all year. I expect this year's event on Oct. 14 will be just as good.

The wine selection is fantastic. There are 100 wineries, not 100 wines, and most pour 2-3 of their best selections.

Hate domestic wines? There are plenty of imports. Love Cabernet or Chardonnay only? There's a roomful. If you can't find a dozen wines here you think are great, you don't love wine.

Then there's the food. Last year there were unlimited oysters along with superb little bites from some of our best local restaurants. Looking at the lineup of restaurants this year, there's no reason to expect that to be any different.

In fact, after telling you to buy tickets in advance so you don't miss out, I'm going to post an abbreviated version of what I wrote about it last year. Note the ending.

Ever wonder what these events are like? Here's what you got for $125 on Tuesday night in San Francisco:

You grab a Wine & Spirits logo glass and walk between various theme rooms. Each room has small tables holding two (or occasionally 3 or 4) wines from each winery listed in the top 100. Pours are more generous than in tasting rooms, and some people ask for seconds, although with all these wines to sample, it's easy to just keep moving.

Each room also had 2-4 items of food prepared by local restaurants. I wish I had taken better notes on these foods, because some were outstanding, like pancetta-wrapped chicken with sage skewers, tarako potato salad, and roast duck mini-sandwiches.

Bubbly and crisp whites are outside; that's where I started, sampling '03 Iron Horse and '97 Diebolt-Vallois just to warm up. The 1988 Veuve Clicquot Brut was one of the best things I had all night, rich and Sherry-like on the long finish.

Crisp wine highlight: 2007 Santorini Assyrtiko, an amazing Greek white with plenty of Meyer lemon and fresh herb character. One of the best Greek whites I've had.

In the "rich whites" room, I got into a depressing conversation with the importer of 2006 Tahblik Marsanne. Great wine, earthy and interesting, but he admitted that it keeps getting dropped by different distributors because few consumers risk $15 on Australian Marsanne.

The "floral whites" room allowed me to try the 2006 Fox Run Seneca Lake Reserve Riesling, which stands up to good German Rieslings in its price range. This is one grape New York does better than the West Coast.

I loved the 2005 Hartford Court Far Coast Vineyard Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, a very pretty wine with nice cherry fruit. On the other end of the scale, the 2004 Lucien Le Moine Les Epenots Premier Cru Pommard was the most intensely aromatic wine I sniffed all night, with graphite and smoked pork jumping out of the glass along with black and red fruit.

In the Rhone Family room, the 2007 E. Guigal La Doriane Condrieu was a revelation: bright and beautiful, with plenty of apple and floral flavors and a rich, long finish.

I didn't spend much time in the Cabernet room, but who can pass up an opportunity to taste gems like the 2004 Diamond Creek Red Rock Terrace Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon? Great wine, quite complex and elegant.

I tasted maybe 80 wines until I found myself explaining how to find a good eyeglass shop to somebody who clearly didn't care. You know you're absorbing a little too much alcohol when you sound loud, even to yourself. So I bailed, having one last sip of '88 Veuve Clicquot for the road.

If you get a chance to attend this event next year, do it.

Michael Mondavi at DRC: a short anecdote

This is heresay, so I'll never be able to use it in a print story. Hence, a blog tidbit.

Michael Mondavi was visiting Domaine Romanee-Conti a few years ago during harvest season. He happened to be carrying a thermometer -- don't you always have one? -- and he stuck it into a vat of fermenting Pinot Noir grapes.

The temperature was high, and Michael immediately sought out the winemaker, because cold fermentation is what everybody was taught in enology school to do with Pinot Noir. You've got a problem with this vat, Michael said. These grapes are so valuable, I'd hate to see them screwed up.

The winemaker disappeared into the cellar and reappeared a few minutes later with a 20-year-old bottle. Tell me, he said, as they sampled it: Did I screw this one up too?

A kingdom of pink wines: Navarra rosados

The most famous event in the erstwhile kingdom of Navarra is the running of the bulls in Pamplona, which starts each year on July 7. For at least one day, every television station in the world shows the region. Who could ask for better publicity?

And yet, Navarra's wine industry has never capitalized on it.

It's not because Navarra has the wrong climate. Navarra is just east of Rioja, not far southwest of Bordeaux. It's attractive enough that links with French winemakers go back more than 800 years, when French monasteries planted cuttings from their home across the mountains.

The Pyrenees and their cooling influences are at Navarra's northern edge. And the southern part of the kingdom can't be so bad, because 8 villages in the governmental region are part of the Rioja wine region.

The grapes grown in Navarra represent its position between Bordeaux and Rioja: 37% Tempranillo and 24% Garnacha are classically Spanish, while 15% Cabernet Sauvignon and 13% Merlot would seem to have Navarra prepped for the world wine market.

So why has Rioja prospered internationally while Navarra made cheap wines for the domestic market?

One answer is internal politics. For many years, Navarra's grape growers and wineries had separate associations, and they distrusted each other. This held back the wines, because grape growers following their own agenda of high yield and safe early harvest, without winemaker input, won't make it easy to achieve excellence.

It also held back the marketing. Navarra has little image of its own now. Does it make Tempranillo? Bordeaux blends?

One thing Navarra does as well as anyone is rosado (pink wine). This makes sense. More than 95% of the grapes grown there are red varieties, so they have the raw material. Look on the map: Navarra is not far from the south of France, which is probably the world's acknowledged pink-wine leader.

However, Navarra hasn't come to any kind of internal agreement to throw itself behind the banner of rose, and a glance at the prices explains why. Unless you're Domaine Ott, you can't sell pink wine for $20, whereas you can easily charge $50 or more for a Bordeaux blend in a heavy bottle (whether or not you can sell it is another story).

The Kingdom of Navarra held a tasting last week in San Francisco, and I concentrated on the rosados. As a group they were quite good: most were dry and refreshing, with good balance. Maybe it doesn't seem macho enough to celebrate pink wine, but these come from the same place as running with the bulls, and you just don't get mas macho than that.

Tasting notes

Bodegas Campos de Enanzo Navarra Garnacha Rosado 2008 ($10)
A burst of bright strawberry fruit with a longish finish, but a touch of sweetness makes me think this might be a better wine for tasting than drinking. Still, very good value at the price. 89

Bodegas Chivite Gran Feudo Rosado 2008 ($12)
Simple but likable dry rosado, made of 100% Garnacha, with flavors of wild strawberry and pink grapefruit. Readily available, won't disappoint. 88

Bodegas Chivite Gran Feudo Rosado sobre lias 2007 ($15)
Aged on its lees for 6 months, this is one of the most unusual wines I've ever had. If I had tasted it in a black glass, I'm not sure whether I would have guessed white, pink or red wine. It's made from Tempranillo, Garnacha and Merlot, but it smells more like Chardonnay than anything else, although that's mainly because I associate the strong smell of lees with Chard. The fruit is rosado-like, wild strawberry, but it also tastes more of lees (or brioche dough, if you prefer) than fruit. Good balance, and even enough tannins to give it a touch of firmness in the mouthfeel. Unique. 90

Bodegas Marco Real Rosado 2008 ($10)
Unbalanced, with cement-like aromas overpowering the raspberry fruit. 86

Bodegas del Romero Malon de Echaide Rosado 2008 ($9)
This is for people who like their wine a little wild. It has the expected elements -- pink grapefruit and wild strawberry notes -- along with strong pine needle character and a hint of animalistic muskiness. In a red wine that would be a plus; it's harder to say about a pink. It has excellent crispness, so it's refreshing as well as interesting. Not for everyone, but I like it. 89

Bodegas Ochoa Rosado ($9)
Fruity on the nose; a bit austere on the palate -- to me, that's a great rosado for a hot day. It's dry and refreshing, with the wild strawberry and raspberry character much more giving aromatically. I can see polishing off multiple bottles of this under a sun umbrella, with or without food, and that's a mouthwatering vision. 90

Bodegas Piedemonte Rosado 2008 ($9)
An initial wild strawberry flavor gradually segues into pink grapefruit with hints of gooseberry. Solid, good value pink. 88

Bodegas Principe de Viana Cabernet Sauvignon Rosado 2008 ($9)
This might be the best pink Cabernet Sauvignon I've ever had. Generally I'm not a fan; Cab doesn't usually have the acidity to make a good pink wine, and pink Cabs are often overextracted until they become baby reds. This, though, is all rosado -- pink grapefruit and raspberry flavors, a light-medium body, and a surprisingly long, raspberry finish. Excellent wine, especially at this price. 91

Bodegas San Martin Ilagares Rosado 2008 ($7)
Tightly wound wine with grapefruit and raspberry flavors and some mustiness. 87

Finca Lasierpe Vino Rosado Garnacha 2008 ($7)
Blood orange flavors with a savory, meaty note. Dry. Not bad at the price. 87