Drinking booze in Egypt: an old travel story

After tasting Israeli wines I made a detour to visit Wadi Rum in Jordan.

My trip to Israel earlier this year was all about wine. When my article about Israeli wines finally appeared in Food & Wine magazine, it made me nostalgic about my first trip to Israel, 20 years ago.

I had quit a great job as a newspaper sports columnist, sold all my stuff and was traveling around the world for a year, living out of a backpack.

I hadn't planned to visit Israel. I had a round-the-world ticket on Pan Am (never got to spend the frequent-flier mileage), but Pan Am didn't fly to the Middle East. Besides, I'm not Jewish and all I knew about Israel was that Arabs threw rocks at soldiers who shot at them. Didn't seem like a good time.

I was hanging out in Athens, having a bad time because all of Greece was on strike. Almost everything was closed, there was no public transit, and walking 10 miles to look at ruins before walking back again in 90 degree weather gets old fast.

The star is supposed to mark the actual birthplace of Jesus.

An Israeli in my hostel, Assaf, and I spent a long day walking to some ruins together. He insisted that if I was interested in history, ruins, culture, religion, basically anything at all, I should visit Israel. Jerusalem is the center of culture for Jews, Muslims and Christians. You can see the place Jesus was born, and where he died. What were Greek ruins compared to all that?

He had a point, and backpack travel is all about flexibility. We lugged our backpacks to a ferry terminal and booked cheap tickets on the deck for a 3-day trip to Haifa.

A lot of Israelis were on board; they shared their food with me, which was nice because all I brought was canned dolmades. A shiphand threw away my threadbare towel because he thought it was garbage, which is how I ended up traveling for the next few months with an official Israeli Army towel (no logo, which was just as well).

I spent a week on a big industrial kibbutz called Yagur, which convinced me that Communism will never work because people there greedily hoarded even communal items which were not in short supply, like freshly harvested cucumbers. Most of the other kibbutz volunteers were 17-year-old Americans sent by their Jewish parents to have a life-changing religious experience, which they were doing by partying as loudly as they could in the dorms every night. I found myself defending the dorkiest of them from bullying and hanging out with the few other volunteers over 20. I had thought about spending a month on the kibbutz, but after a week I'd had enough.

I moved into one of the greatest hostels I ever stayed in, in Jerusalem, for 10 shekels a night (this was $5 then), including endless tea, cheap white bread and jam for breakfast, and deep political conversation at any hour. Local college students would come in and take us on impromptu tours.

I won't go into detail on the magnificence of Jerusalem, but Assaf was right: I've now been to more than 50 countries, and there is no more awe-inspiring city in the world. If you like to travel, you really need to visit.

The Old City was tense in 1990 -- way more tense than on my visit this year. One of the two times in my life that I've lied about my nationality came when I turned a corner into what seemed like a dead end and suddenly Palestinians emerged from doorways. I was surrounded by more than 20 men, shorter than I, in dress shirts and ties and looking very serious. One stepped forward and said, "What country are you from?" I said, "I'm from Canada, eh?" (in my fright, I channeled Bob & Doug McKenzie)  The leader said, "You must leave here now." They opened a pathway for me to walk away, and I did.

I drank some Israeli wine in 1990, but it wasn't very good. I remember it being sweet and sloppily made, which is why the high quality of wines I tasted when I visited this year was such a pleasant shock. (Many Americans still think Israeli wine tastes like it did then. Read my Food & Wine article.)

I spent about a week in Jerusalem and then decided to visit Egypt. A bus direct to Cairo cost $17 US, so off I went.

I hated Cairo. The museums are great, with mummys piled floor-to-ceiling, even in the hallways. The pyramids and the Sphinx are awesome. But everything else is unpleasant. The food is lousy, the noise and traffic are unbearable, and everybody sees you as a giant leaky money bag.

But often capitol cities are the worst part of a country (ever been to Jakarta?) I shared a pyramid tour with an American couple in my cheap hotel -- we were extorted by a camel driver, who refused to show us how to get off the foul-tempered camels until we paid up -- and we decided to see another part of Egypt. We picked Alexandria, known for being low-key.

What a great decision. Alexandria has a fantastic history but no obvious tourist sites, so it's really off the beaten path. We rented the top floor of a 12-story hotel -- five bedrooms, three baths -- for $11 total per night, breakfast for three included. We had balconies on all four sides, and were close to the Mediterranean on the north. And the hotel people were so nice; they helped us visit wherever we wanted, and nobody had their palms out as they had in Cairo.

Check out perhaps my favorite travel photo ever. That's me in the green shirt. An entire elementary school rushed to cheer for us when they heard three Americans were in town. I daresay it's different now, but in 1990 Alexandria was a great place to be from the USA.

We were sitting on the balcony at sunset and one of us observed that the only way Alexandria would be more perfect would be if we could get some booze, so we could enjoy a drink before dinner. Bad Egyptian beer is widely available in tourist districts in Cairo, but there aren't really any tourist districts in Alexandria. So we decided to ask the helpful people at the hotel.

If they were disappointed in us, they hid it well. They told us to go to a nearby drugstore and ask. So we did.

The druggist, when asked if we could buy some alcohol, immediately frowned. "Not here. You go around back. Around there," he said, pointing to a dark alley that in 2010 I probably wouldn't enter. He then shut the store door, closed the curtain and threw up a sign in Arabic that must have said "Closed," although I guess "Infidels around back" was also possible.

He had a tiny window to the shop in the back alley. He asked, not pleasantly, what we wanted. We said, "What do you have?" He said, "I have alcohol. What do you want?" The couple got beer, but I said, "What else do you have?" which is how I ended up with a 750 ml bottle of brandy.

The brandy wasn't very good, but three of us finished it easily. So we were back the next afternoon, and we got exactly the same treatment. This time I got orange liqueur, which was horrible. Awful. Imagine crushed-up orange-flavor kids' aspirin with booze in it. We drank it anyway. Did I ever claim I was a discerning drinker? Not in Alexandria at sunset.

I wish I had seen some sort of product list. We stayed a week -- Alexandria was mellow, we were eating well, and man, that balcony with breakfast for less than $4 a day each was hard to beat. Every night we drank something different. The coffee liqueur was probably the least horrible. Only once did we get something so awful we couldn't choke it down; I thought it might be absinthe, but my American woman friend -- a nurse -- said she thought it might be paregoric.

I lost contact with that couple; travel friendships are so intense, yet so short-lived. Earlier this year, I spent an afternoon with a guy I met at Kibbutz Yagur who found me on Facebook, and that was fantastic. He is the only person I've ever seen again from my visit to Israel and Egypt in 1990.

But I think about that balcony and those sunsets and that horrible-tasting booze all the time.

As a wine writer, I get a lot of free wines to sample. I drink only the ones I like, and pour the wines I don't like down the drain. Visiting friends are often shocked by this. They're used to drinking an open bottle whether they like it or not. But I don't have to, not now.

Once in a while, after I've rejected a wine, somebody asks me, "Are there any circumstances under which you would drink this?" They expect me to say, "If I'm thirsty," or "If I'm on death row," or something like that.

My answer is often, "If I were sitting on a balcony in Alexandria, Egypt at sunset, I would drink this. And it would taste fantastic."

Christmas gift guide for wine lovers

Purchase 6 or more bottles of French wine and get 50% off shipping with promo code "blake53"

In "The Devil Wears Prada," the fictitious editor based on Vogue's Anna Wintour gives everyone on her huge Christmas list a bottle of wine.

You really can't ask for a better endorsement of wine as a Christmas gift. Here's a woman who can give scarves, unisex t-shirts, or anything stylish at all -- and she chooses wine.

Of course, she has an army of starving, ambitious women to shop and ship for her. You don't. I'm going to try to simplify your task with suggestions at every price level.

First, consider the basics of a great Christmas gift:
1) Something the recipient will use and enjoy
2) Something he/she wouldn't buy himself
3) Something surprising and fun

Re Point #1: Don't overspend! Most people will NOT open a $50 bottle of wine; they'll think it's too good to drink and will store it inappropriately as a trophy. Obviously there are exceptions, but save money by knowing your audience. $25 per bottle is the limit for what I would spend on anyone who doesn't drink wine at home more than twice a week.
A related point: I'm not a fan of wine gadgets, which rear their useless head at this time every year. There are some great wine accessories, but they're not really gadgets. No wine lover ever has enough glassware; decanters are nice; and if you're spending big bucks, everyone should have a wine fridge. More on this below.

Point #2 means that daily-use supermarket wines are no more exciting than any other product you can buy from the supermarket. Don't spend more than necessary, but do look for something that's not available everywhere.

On point #3: it's cool to expand people's horizons; give some dry Riesling to a Chardonnay lover. But there are limits; you're not going to turn a committed Cabernet drinker into a Blaufrankisch fan with one bottle. Still, it's worth attempting to rock their world, especially at $20 and under, where they're most likely to give something new a shot.

Here are some thoughts at different levels of spending.

$10: The key here is to get something interesting. Portugal and Spain are good sources of interesting wines under $10. From Portugal, I'm a huge fan of Vinho Verde. From Spain, try Marques de Riscal, red or white. For something outside the mainstream, consider a bottle of Fino or Oloroso Sherry, which has the advantage of lasting for more than a night or two after it's opened.
Alternately, one of the few wine gadgets that everyone should have are wine charms: little doohickeys that you attach to the bottom of a wine glass, so you can identify whose glass is whose.

$20: This is THE sweet spot for wine gifts. It's enough money to get a good bottle, but not so expensive that the recipient won't open it.
My top recommendation is for people who visit winery tasting rooms. Buy a case of a wine in this price range that you like, and give a bottle to 9 of your best friends (keep 3 for yourself). This says something wonderful about you: that you were thinking of them and went to some trouble to get a great gift at the source. Moreover, you can taste the wine first and learn its story; it's the best way to personalize a gift.
That's not an option for everyone. So here's the backup plan: A bottle of good domestic bubbly. Everyone should drink more bubbly but most people don't buy it for themselves. Roederer Estate, Scharffenberger, Gloria Ferrer and Gruet all give good value in this price range.

$40-$50: At this price level, I think about bottles that will last more than one night.
Madeira is a great choice because it's indestructible; your friend can open the bottle Dec. 25 and next Christmas, the wine will still be good. The Rare Wine Co.'s historic series is good value.
Tawny Port for me is best at 20 years old, and that's right in this price range. It won't last as long as Madeira, but it should stay delicious for a month or two at least.
It's also a good level to start thinking about spirits. A nice bottle of artisanal Bourbon or Reposado Tequila makes a great gift for somebody who enjoys sipping an occasional nightcap.
And don't forget glassware. You can get 6 good wine glasses from Cost Plus for less than this. Wine lovers always need glassware.

$100: It's rare for me to give someone a single bottle of wine this expensive. I would have to know the person and their tastes. But if I did, I would try to give them a single-vineyard Burgundy or tete-de-cuvee sparkling wine.
You might also consider a themed three-pack, such as three different Pinot Noirs from the same producer.
My number one choice in this price range is probably an upscale Scotch: an 18-year-old, such as Glenlivet Nadurra, should cost a little less than this.

$200 or more: Everyone should have a wine refrigerator; it's a lot more valuable than a case of wine.  Without one, you're at the mercy of the weather, because temperature variation is bad for wine aging, and a single day over 80 degrees can kill your wine.
I have three coolers myself: a 100 bottle unit that cost $1000, a 54-bottle unit that cost $500, and the 21-bottle Air & Water cooler, which at $220 is about as cheap as these things get. The last was sent to me to review; I wanted to see if it would make a good gift.
The short answer is that it would. It has weaknesses: the racks won't accommodate some of today's fat wine bottles, and the "on" lights are so bright that I have to keep paper taped over them.
But the pluses are its low cost, small footprint, quiet operation and light weight. My wife, who could drown standing up in a pool's shallow end, can lift and move it by herself. It's a great gift for somebody who's just starting to get into wine, particularly for apartment dwellers with limited space. Recent college graduates, perhaps?

$500: Rather than a single bottle of wine, consider a hand-blown decanter. Eisch makes some beautiful ones; you could get hand-blown glasses to go with it.
You could also see about a wine from your recipient's birth year. Madeira would be my first choice because it ages so well and would last for a couple years after opening; vintage Port is another good option. That said, the last time I had a bottle from my own birth year, it was a birthday gift, it was a Lopez de Heredia red, and it was magnificent.

$1000: Hire a private chef to cater a meal at your friend's house.
Or, buy a 6-pack of age-worthy wine. Know your audience: it's easy for me to say fine Burgundy, but most folks who receive gifts in this price range would much prefer a 6-pack of well-regarded Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons.
A gift certificate for a top B&B in wine country is a great gift if you know your recipients will travel there.

$10,000: For this amount of money (plus travel expenses) I will come to your house and sing "Puff the Magic Dragon" while pouring you and your guests a wine I personally select for its deliciousness.

$20,000: Same as $10,000, without the singing.

Dry Riesling is a family tradition at Müller-Catoir

My column for Wine Review Online this month is about how global warming is affecting two different German regions, the Pfalz and the Mosel.

This is a column bonus, an extended interview with Martin Franzen, winemaker for the excellent Pfalz winery Müller-Catoir, which makes some of the best dry Rieslings I tried.

"Dry wines were never under 60% at this estate," Franzen said. "But we sold only off-dry wines in America in the '80s and '90s.

"Germany has started to produce outstanding dry wines. We have reached a level that didn't exist in the '80s and '90s. Climate change helped us. It wasn't possible to vinify dry Rieslings at this quality in the '80s. The climate was too cold and it wasn't possible to get the structure we can today."

Something that's not obvious about German wine, unless you follow the writings of Terry Thiese, is how many people there are committed to terroir-driven, low-intervention winemaking. This is also a recent development.

"In Germany we lost the philosophy of terroir in the '60s and '70s," Franzen said. "We didn't work in such detail in the vineyards, and we didn't pay as much attention to the good vineyards."

Why? Franzen blames the bad post-World War II economy, which led to a focus on cutting costs and increasing production. This is what brought the world Blue Nun.

"We have recovered the things our grandfathers knew," Franzen said. "The biggest technology changes we've made are to be able to press and work in the cellar like in the 19th century. We've changed to smaller tanks. We also reconstructed our cellar with traditional 1000-litre wooden barrels. With these barrels you don't need special temperature control."

Franzen doesn't have to research in books to find out how his grandfather made wine: his family owns a tiny winery in the Mosel region.

"I learned a lot from my father, who made Rieslings that were very much on the point and were not so easy to understand, but that aged very well," Franzen said. "My father had an oak press over 100 years old. He had some oak barrels and nothing else at all. He made wine with no pumping. His tradition was maceration, one day. He learned it from his father, and it makes the best Riesling. No temperature control. These are Rieslings that show well after four or five years."

"In the Mosel region, my father made dry wines in the '70s. He made over 50% dry wines. He knew that you had to use the best grapes for the dry wines. Normally in the Mosel, the best grapes are used for the residual sugar wines. But if you want to make a dry wine in the Mosel, you have to use the best grapes. Here (in the Pfalz) it's possible to make a dry wine with other grapes. There's a little bit lower acidity."

"We work here with a modern press but the philosophy and the treatment of the grapes is the same. My father didn't have modern education and he didn't know about it, but he felt it."

But not everything is back to the past. Franzen has farmed organically, uncertified, for the last several years because he believes it gives him better quality.

"We work more in the vineyards today. In the past we didn't make this 'green harvest'. We are outside more now. We select more."

Franzen let me taste a trivia question (I hope he's right, because I don't have access to all of Robert Parker's scores). The question is: what was the first German wine to get 100 points from Parker?

The answer: A TBA (trockenbeerenauslese) made from Rieslaner, a hybrid of Riesling and Sylvaner that actually has more acidity than Riesling. I liked it, but I liked the winery's dry Rieslings much more; unlike the TBA, a special-occasion wine, they're superb, complex wines that would sit well on the table at practically any meal. Parker's 100-point wines are rarely the winery's best. (I'd love to share my own scores of the wines with you, but that's what Wine Review Online is paying me for.)

What I really wanted to taste was one of his father's wines: the winery name is, of course, Franzen. But his father is retired and he didn't have any on hand.

"He is 78, and I didn't come home to make wine. We had to close the winery. That's the modern times."

And yet, sometimes the past is modern again.

(Read the Wine Review Online column here.)

Vintage charts for California are worthless

Vintage charts make a lot of sense for Bordeaux, and to a lesser extent for much of Europe. But for California, they're worse than worthless. Here's why.

The idea of a vintage chart comes from English aficionados trying to get a handle on which French wines to collect. And in France, they're still important, even though Frank Prial of the New York Times declared them dead a decade ago.

But California is not France. Magazines that breathlessly talk about the '07 California Cabernets -- and decry the 2010 wines before any have been released -- are at best mindlessly wasting space, and at worst misleading their readers.

There's not a single vintage in California over the last decade I would avoid, and not a single vintage I would rush out to buy either. It all depends on the winery -- and that's completely unlike France.

It's not just because French weather is unpredictable year-to-year. In France, many regions are planted with grapes that won't ripen in poor years. So a bad year really is a bad year, with many wines that aren't (or shouldn't be) released.

Moreover, very good years in France are strikingly universal. When I visited Bordeaux in 2009, every winery's 2005 tasted better than every winery's 2004 and 2006. It was amazing how consistent this was. And every winery's 2003 was noticeably overripe. I don't need to know anything about two Bordeaux wineries to know how to choose between a 2004 Chateau Mysterio and 2005 Chateau Beret on a wine list.

This simply isn't the case in California for two main reasons: 1) The weather isn't as extreme here. We don't get much spring hail and summer rain. 2) Very few grapes are actually planted in marginal areas.

As a subset of point 2, consider this: the main variety covered in vintage charts is Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Napa Valley is not Bordeaux -- it's hot, dry and sunny. In the few areas that aren't, notably Carneros, vineyards have mostly grafted their Cab over to Chardonnay or Pinot Noir. Most Napa Valley Cab vineyards aren't at risk of not ripening, even in an unusually cool year like 2010. They might not get ultra-ripe this year, but that's exactly why I think 2010 will be an exceptional year from some Napa producers.

Sure, there are Pinot Noir grapes out on the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts that won't ripen this year. I'm getting tweets every day now from people worried about grapes in fringe vineyards.

But more than 99% of the grapes in California are planted in areas comfortably warm enough to ripen -- even in a year like this. Do you think Lodi Zinfandel and Paso Robles Syrah aren't going to ripen?

This is why California vintage charts are worse than worthless. They're a shorthand that will convince some consumers to avoid perfectly good wines while creating artificial interest in other wines that aren't any better. To me, bad information is worse than no information.

Let me try an analogy. Suppose you're at the DVD shop and you have a chart that says all movies with George Clooney are good while all movies with Kevin Bacon are mediocre -- that's a fair approximation of what wine vintage charts say. So you pass up "Frost/Nixon" and "Mystic River" and instead rent "The Men Who Stare At Goats." Your loss.

I believe vintage charts exist for the same reason that every Valentine's Day we're subjected to a barrage of stories about pairing wines with chocolate. Editors like to schedule certain types of stories to fill out a calendar. The Bordeaux vintage report matters, and this is America, so let's do a California vintage report. And since we have these reports from every year, let's put them in an easily portable format with our publication's name on it.

Let me ask you this: When was the last year California had a year so bad that many wines weren't released? I'll tell you -- 1998.

I was one of many writers who panned that vintage when it came out. And I was wrong.

The '98s that are still around are drinking great; the '97s -- a universally lauded vintage -- are mostly dead. One of the few times that back-to-back California vintages were really different, and the media got it wrong. We did so because we didn't recognize the age-worthiness of the tighter, more tannic '98s, and we thought the sexier '97s were more exciting. But we were wrong, and you shouldn't trust us on this issue any more.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and predict this very unpredictable 2010 vintage for Napa Valley Cabernets: Most good wineries will make good wines. Some will make great wines. Some will inexplicably -- or explicably -- not be up to snuff. Amazingly, this is exactly the same as 2009 and 2008 and 2007.

If you want "drink/hold" recommendations, you have to know the style of the winery, because Corison wines will outlast Shafer wines no matter what vintage they're from. That has nothing to do with quality or point scores, because Shafer makes good wines in the full-bodied style. But how can a vintage chart that combines the two give good recommendations on either?

So throw away your California vintage charts, folks, unless you really enjoyed "The Men Who Stare At Goats."

Blog Writing 101: How to self-edit

Yesterday I posted a poorly written item. I screwed up an interesting interview with an NFL player-turned-winemaker by refusing to self-edit.

I had two different stories, and should have written it that way. Instead, I threw everything together.

Today I'm posting this meta-post to show others the error of my ways, hopefully so you can avoid the same mistakes.

Here are three links:
Original post: The meandering brain dump
Rewrite #1: The question story
Rewrite #2: The winemaker profile

Now, how did I get from the lousy original post to the rewrites?

It didn't take long -- less than 15 minutes (not counting time needed to write this). I added almost no copy; it's all subtraction.

If you're taking Writing for Social Media or a similar course, and want to delve into it, look at some of the things I took out.

I took out redundancies. Why say the same thing twice? Or again and again?

I took out my pretended fear at the interview subject hitting me. In real life, if an ex-NFL player hit me, I would get back up on my knees and thank God for securing my financial future before shopping around for a lawyer.

Moreover, it undermines my online persona. Am I a coward? Maybe in real life, but I don't usually play one on the Internet.

I wrote a bad lead to the original post; the story is not about Buddy Ryan. Terry Hoage worships him, so he's worth including, but I probably lost half my readers with the first sentence.

I took out NFL minutiae, such as the years Hoage played for each different team. It's visually distracting, particularly that early in the story. And this is not an NFL blog.

One thing I did add was a link to Hoage's website. That should be de rigueur; I just forgot.

Hoage's question was the whole reason I wrote the post, but I took forever to get to it. And then, while I'm happy enough with my own answer to it, I didn't give my readers a real chance to answer it. Ending away from the question is a conversation killer on a post that was supposed to be a conversation starter.

If I had it to do over again, I could run just the question post -- that's the stronger post about wine, and this is a wine blog. I could also run both posts on separate days.

For me, though, the best solution would have been to cross-pollinate on multiple online platforms. I could have offered an expanded football player-turned-winemaker post to Wine Review Online or Palate Press, and used the shorter question post on my own blog as a way to plug the other site.

So I blew a good posting opportunity. At least I've created a teaching opportunity.

Did anyone learn anything from this?

Hoage rewrite #2: the winemaker profile

Terry Hoage

Terry Hoage played defensive back in the NFL for 13 seasons; now he's a grape farmer and winemaker in Paso Robles.

He played for Buddy Ryan, known for his ultra-aggressive defenses, on three different teams: the Philadelphia Eagles, Houston Oilers  and Arizona Cardinals.

Hoage played for other coaches too, but he never stops talking about Ryan, whose goal was to hurt and terrify the opposition. He even named his top-end $50 Rhone blend wine, "The 46," after Ryan's defensive scheme.

"It was fun to see the fear in the quarterback's face," said Hoage, who recalled that for one particular game, his orders were on the first five plays, no matter where the ball went, to hit wide receiver Michael Irvin as hard as he possibly could. "He didn't show up the rest of the game," Hoage said.

So how did a defensive back become a winemaker? Hoage has a degree in genetics from University of Georgia, so he's no tackling dummy. He and his wife Jennifer, a New Orleans native, weren't looking to get into the wine industry at all; they just wanted a farm community where they could raise their kids, but both spent enough time in cities that they wanted nearby urban pleasures like good restaurants.

Hoage played for the 49ers in 1993 and liked California, but didn't see himself in Napa or Sonoma. One day he was driving through Paso on his way someplace else; he stopped for lunch, and liked the feel. Soon he was asking around about property, and found a spread that included 5 acres of Syrah that had been planted for John Alban.

Paso is still a small enough community that Hoage already had friends; one was Saxum's Justin Smith, who promised to mentor Hoage in winemaking if he bought the property.

Shortly after buying it, Hoage was offered a coaching job in Tennessee by Jeff Fisher, who had recently become head coach of the Tennessee Titans. "Football is transient," Hoage said, not wanting to follow Fisher around the country from job to job as he had Ryan when he was playing.

Ironically, Fisher is now in his 16th season in Tennessee, and the coach who accepted the position Hoage turned down is now defensive coordinator. And Hoage is out working in the fields. I hope he's loving it; he seems like he is.

So how is his wine?

"We want our wines to be fruit-forward," Hoage said. "I don't see the point of making a wine that doesn't taste like it was made from grapes."

Terry Hoage Vineyards "The 46" Paso Robles 2007 ($50) is a 50-50 blend of Grenache and Syrah that's so ripe that it smells sweet, although it doesn't taste it. It's a straightforward palate blitz of ripe black plum very much in the New World style, but it's also eminently drinkable. You can order it here.

Hoage rewrite #1: The question story

Terry Hoage

A former pro football player tackled me with the toughest question I've faced in wine this year.

Terry Hoage played defensive back in the NFL for 13 seasons; now he's a farmer and winemaker in Paso Robles.

Sitting next to Hoage, even in a nice restaurant, is like facing a blitz. He wears grubby clothes from harvest and won't take polite demurrals for an answer.

I was yakking about the natural wine movement, which hasn't made a lot of headway in Paso Robles. I don't remember what I was saying people should try -- biodynamic farming, dry farming, wild yeast; it doesn't really matter.

Hoage's question was this:

"If you like a wine, is there anything you could learn about it that would make you not like it anymore?"

It's a fantastic question.

If I like a wine already, I guess I don't care what was done to it in the winery.

That means that if the wine tastes good -- keeping in mind that my "tastes good" isn't the same as Jay Miller's -- and I later find out it was treated with oak chips, reverse osmosis, fining with fish bladders, or even (sigh) blending with unlisted varietals (hello, Pinot/Syrah), I forfeit my right to complain once I give it the thumbs-up.

I might not buy such a wine, if I know that stuff beforehand. But once it's in my glass, and I like it, I'm not going to unlike it. That would be hypocritical.

However, there is a whole category of stuff I could learn about a wine that would make me unlike it, and all of it has to do not with winemaking, but with farming.

If I learned a wine was made from vineyards heavily sprayed with herbicides and/or pesticides, I would unlike it.

If I learned the winery washed its chemical waste into a river, I would unlike it. If the winery abused its grape pickers, I would unlike it. (This could also apply in a winery but cases are rare.)

If a proprietor bulldozed pristine forest land to plant the vineyard, I might unlike it, depending on the story. And I confess, I'm enough of a wine geek that if I learned the winery grafted over 100-year-old vines of some native variety to, say, Chardonnay, I might just unlike it.

Here's a heavy implication. Writing about wine, I want as much accurate information as possible. But what if there's a story like this? The winery would be better off not telling me.

So what would you do if you first liked a wine, then found out that how it was made goes against what you believe in? You're a hypocrite one way or the other: either you forswear your palate, or your beliefs.

I told you it was a tough question. Terry Hoage still hits hard.

How would you answer it?