Wine collectors are the scourge of wine lovers

Wine collectors are as bad for wine lovers as irresponsible mortgage brokers were for house buyers.

You'd think there would be considerable overlap between the two groups: wine collectors and wine lovers. All wine lovers have some wines stashed away, and many wine collectors genuinely enjoy drinking, not just bragging about, great wines.

In thought process, though, the overlap is less than you'd think. The wine collector position was perfectly stated in a column for Barron's last weekend by Thomas Ryder, the former head of American Express Publishing.

Ryder's column includes what might be the most arrogant statement about wine I've ever read, yet I believe it encapsulates many collectors' views. That statement is why I don't mind Rudy Kurniawan's crimes.

Ryder starts off by talking about how he fell in love with wine, sitting at the table with Paul Draper and Joe Heitz and the like; taking tasting trips to France. Stuff wine lovers do.

Then, this paragraph:

The world's biggest wine bottle

I'm just there for size comparison

If you create the world's biggest wine bottle, you get to name it. So Michel Drappier calls the 30-liter wine bottle the "Melchisedech."

He makes 25 Melchisedechs a year, and six to seven burst from the pressure. The rest he sells for 4500 euros (about $6000 each).

That might sound like a lot, but the bottle alone costs 1500 euros (about $2000) to make. And 30 liters, that's 40 normal-sized bottles of Champagne. Drappier says he doesn't make a profit on them; he just likes being the biggest.

Because of the potential for explosion, a Champagne manufacturer is an unlikely candidate to make the world's largest wine bottle. There's a good story.

"We had a good customer, a doctor whose name was Balthazar," Drappier says. "So he wanted a Balthazar (a 12-litre bottle) every year for his birthday. But he had more and more friends, and his birthday celebration got bigger and bigger. The Balthazar was too small. We created a Nebuchadnezzar (15 liters) for him. Still too small. His birthday party just got bigger every year."

Other companies make Nebuchadnezzars; not a whole lot, but they're out there. Go past 15 liters and you're into the realm of true exotica. I could not find evidence of a still wine made in anything larger than a Melchior (18 liters). Drappier blew past that years ago, special ordering from Italy a 27-liter bottle he named the Primat, and finally, the Melchisedech.

Industrial art: The beauty of fermentation tanks

These photos are from Nicolas Feuillatte, a large co-op which makes some very nice Champagnes, particularly the Palme d'Or Brut Rosé 2004, which is one of the best Champagnes I've had. I don't think they make that wine in these tanks. But this just goes to show there's beauty all around us, and sometimes you need a camera to realize it.

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California vintners: Brag about your low pH here

Hey California vintners, are you making refreshing, well-balanced wines? Then brag about them here.

Harvest threads usually tout brix level. But everybody knows California wines can get ripe, especially after a warm and dry summer like this year.

What is sometimes questioned, particularly by Europhiles, is how refreshing the wines are. The clause I get tired of reading is "California Chardonnays are ..." It's a big, diverse state, and the Chards from Sonoma Coast are nothing like each other, much less like Chards from Napa Valley.

So help me out here. Prove a point, brag, and tell the world about the low pH of the grapes you just picked for a still wine (we know sparkling grapes have low pH). Of course technical numbers aren't an assurance of a delicious wine any more than mainstream critics' numbers are. But they are an indicator of what you're trying to do.

You can list it like this: Showalter Winery, Markakis Vineyard, Anderson Valley, Pinot Meunier, Sep. 22, 3.11 pH.

As an incentive, I will write profiles on The Gray Report of the winery and/or winemaker who post  three of the lowest pHs here: white, red and a wild card, perhaps selected by other commenters. There's no end date for this; I'll start working on the profiles about Halloween. 

Don't leave me hanging out here, defending the state's diversity. Please, please, post your freshly harvested grapes' pH here. Thank you.

(Note: I'm going to clean up the comments section by deleting those that aren't about specific wines' pH.)

LEADERBOARD:  White wines
Grgich Hills, Sauvignon Blanc, American Canyon estate vineyard, 2.96 pH
Siduri, Sauvignon Musque, Russian River Valley, 3.08 pH
Bello Family Vineyards, Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley, 3.10 pH
Forlorn Hope, Gewurztraminer, Russian River Valley, 3.20 pH

Red wines: 
Siduri Bucher Vineyard Pepperwood Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, 3.35 pH
Siduri Lewis Vineyard, Russian River Valley, 3.39 pH

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A delicious 30-year-old rosé

Christophe Defrance holds the '82 Rosé des Riceys

Last week in France, I had perhaps the most delicious and interesting wine I've had this year: a 1982 Jacques Defrance Rosé des Riceys.

You don't expect most rosés to be good after three years, much less 30. But Rosés des Riceys are unique, a connoisseur wine that economically doesn't make sense to produce.

The Riceys region is tiny, just over 3 square miles. It's in the southernmost part of the Champagne region, less than 5 miles from the Chablis border.

It's interesting how the perception of "cool climate" changes at the border. In Chablis, the coldest part of Burgundy, we always hear how the chilly weather leads to fresh, lean, minerally wines.

Just north of the border, where it's actually colder, it's Pinot Noir country: 95% of the plantings in Ricey are Pinot Noir, and they can be some of the ripest grapes in Champagne.

The main reason Rosé des Riceys is so hard to get is that growers can easily make the same grapes into Champagne, which sells for a higher price.

Jean-Charles Boisset shows cojones by mocking Wine Spectator

Jean-Charles Boisset is a dynamic force, coming from Burgundy to buy and transform California wineries and marry Gina Gallo. You'd think he and his wife would be afraid of pissing off Wine Spectator when they have so many bottles to sell. But the man has both a sense of humor and some serious cojones.

The video is my favorite in Jordan's "Real Winemakers Read Wine Spectator Reviews" series. Lisa Mattson's work for Jordan recently won Best Winery Blog and when you see this video, it's no wonder why. Jordan's wines are perennially underrated by Spectator so perhaps the winery feels there's nothing to lose.

I feel a little bad for Spectator's Thomas Matthews because the feature they're mocking, "What We're Drinking Now," is a balance to a weakness I find in the magazine. Spectator's reporting is as good as anyone in wine, but their writing about the wines themselves often seems passionless. Matthews clearly enjoys the wines in these online reviews, and if I smoked cigars I might have written the Madeira review John Jordan mocks in another video myself.

But this one ... well, OK, just let Boisset read it to you:



I also feel a little bad running this just after my poll last week produced some embarrassing results for Wine Spectator, but the video was just released, and what the hell, it's funny. If this feels a little bad for Matthews, may I recommend some grilled prawns and an 89-point bottle of St. Aubin?

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81% of readers don't believe Wine Spectator

My readers clearly don't believe Wine Spectator, by a resounding margin.

However, that may actually be good for Wine Spectator.

When I posed the poll question, "Do you believe Wine Spectator bases its ratings solely on blind tasting?" I expected some cynicism. I didn't expect a landslide "No" vote. But that's what it was, with 81% voting No. Only 9% voted Yes; 10% voted I'm Not Sure.

Let me state the obvious, that this poll proves nothing about Wine Spectator's rating practices; it's only about my readers' beliefs.

Plus, this is not a random poll of wine consumers. Based on my general blog readership -- I did just win Best Industry Blog -- I assume that a lot of voters were people in the wine industry.

One popular rumor, mentioned in the comments, is that advertising in the magazine can raise scores for wines.

If most people in the industry believe that, that can only be good for Wine Spectator's bottom line.