Monthly Archives: November 2010
As we enter the last month of the year, let’s take a moment to salute the tasters (and, consequently, taste-makers) whose reviews and scoring help establish the hierarchy in the culture of wine collection. Each year these discerning journalists examine thousands of wines and offer expert opinions for consumers to consider when they’re buying their next bottles.
Wine Spectator is one of the most known and trusted names in the business of wine critique and lifestyle. Each year the magazine’s panel of tasters offers opinions on over 15,000 different bottles, and they hold themselves to a number of standards to maintain their critical credibility. This short video, produced earlier this year, gives you an inside look at the care and professionalism that has kept the magazine thriving since its inception in 1976.
After seeing their process, it’s easy to observe that Wine Spectator takes seriously both the tasting of wine and their own reputation as a cultural connoisseur. Whether you’ve agreed with their reviews or not, you have to respect their clear and efficient methods.
Today is Black Friday, the day when everyone seems to buy lots and lots of new stuff. Delicious wines, to be sure, but also other stuff.
In honor of the day – and the inevitable need to store all that stuff – we’re launching a new music video for Strongbox Wine and Self-Storage. Yes, that’s right, a music video.
We hope you enjoy it.
Maybe it’s not such a great idea for a wine storage company to show you ways you can store your own wine at home…but we absolutely had to tell you about these trapdoor wine cellars we’ve come across, with their elegant spiral staircases, because we’re just that impressed with the concept.
Trap doors and winding stairs both have a certain irresistible mystique, cultivated from decades of mystery thrillers across all mediums, so the idea of having one in your home might make it worth the high price it takes to install one. And of course, having a chamber that not only functions as conversation piece but also as wine bottle storage…that might be just too perfect for our wine-collecting clientele.
You can find out more about these here. If you do decide to add one of your own and leave Strongbox behind…we’ll miss you, of course, but we could hardly blame you. These trapdoor cellars are just way too cool!
 Yes: It's an iPad. And it's in in your kitchen. As everyone continues the countdown to Thanksgiving—either with delight and relief, if you’re a guest, or with delight and panic if you’re a host— we’ve been discussing the difficulty of pairing wine with the bounty one usually finds on the table. Although they may not necessarily solve all of your problems on this front, a few places online have produced widgets that offer suggestions with just a few easy clicks of the mouse button.
Wined In doesn’t have the most elegant-looking engine, but it does give you a long list of options and allows you to add your own suggestions for other users.
Wine Web Central has a unique “slider” mechanism, lets you search by type of food and type of spice, and also gives you suggestions on a scale of Good/Better/Best.
Canadian wine writer Natalie Maclean produced this widget using eight years of wine pairing advice and research.
Hello Vino uses a forking pathway style, asking you questions as you go along to try and narrow down the best wine for any occasion. It’s downloadable for use on your own website … and it even opens up a seasonal feature for Thanksgiving dinner!
Even the most talented of wine-and-food pairing experts find themselves perplexed by Thanksgiving dinner. After all, in most cases one is only trying to pick a bottle that goes with two or three items, and only one main course…whereas a traditional Thanksgiving might find the dinner table covered with heaping mounds of very different foods. When this feast rolls around, all bets are off—wine experts find themselves recommending reds and whites, trying to narrow it down to just a few different varietals.
We’re here to help you as best we can. Or maybe you’re fortunate enough to be going to somebody else’s house for Thanksgiving dinner this year. Still, it might be very generous of you to send them the following articles to help them solve this annual conundrum.
About offers a straightforward summary of possibilities…
Winegeeks give you three wine lovers’ ideas for the feast…
Wine blog Saignee, finally, offers a salty, irreverent—and hilarious—cry of frustration for all who are stumped by the dilemma (warning: strong language, one risqué image)
Good luck!
 For fans of French wine, there are few more exciting days in a year that the third Thursday of November—Beaujolais Nouveau! For those uninitiated, this traditional rite of the wine world marks the release of the new wines from the Beaujolais and Lyons regions of France, and has a character completely unique from any other celebration of new wine. What began as simply a local custom of trumpeting the new bottles slowly grew into a worldwide phenomenon, and today the release has even become something of a competition among wine merchants and distributors. Tomorrow just happens to be Beaujolais Nouveau, so here’s a quick summary of the hustle and bustle that’s about to happen in France.
At 12:01 AM in France—possibly by the time you read this post!—over a million cases of new Beaujolais wine will be leaving their wineries en route to Paris, where they will then be sorted and shipped immediately throughout the wine-drinking world. It has become something of a friendly race among all distributors to get their allotment of the wine to their customers first, and for those customers to be the first in the world to taste it. This means that these wines are being transported by any means necessary to get them to their destination first. Stories of transport by balloon, by world-class distance runners, even by elephant have abounded throughout the history of Beaujolais Nouveau. As you might expect, eventually the French government stepped in to try and control some of the chaos of the day, but they manage to maintain the joy and spirit of competition engendered by the unofficial holiday—by French law, in fact, one may not pour a drop of Beaujolais until the third Thursday in November.
For Chicago celebrants, there will be (at least) three tasting events in the area tonight and tomorrow:
Vertigo Sky Lounge at the Dana Hotel and Spa will celebrate Beaujolais starting tonight at 10:30 pm and going well past midnight into the official Beaujolais Nouveau.
Bistrot Zinc will celebrate with both dinner and wine for a reasonable price: just $29.95 plus the price of the Beaujolais.
Bistro 110 hosts a tasting from 6 pm to 8:30 pm featuring not only the new Beaujolais, but four other wines from the region and a sample of head chef Dominique Tounge’s pumpkin menu.
However you celebrate, make sure you celebrate soon: Beaujolais is a wine that must be opened and enjoyed within weeks of its bottling, so curious wine lovers should jump on their chance now, or they’ll be waiting until the next Beaujolais Nouveau!
With the fight to pass HR 5034 heating up again in the wake of this month’s dramatic election results, it’s a good idea to examine the positions of both sides more closely. We’ve devoted quite a bit of space to discussing the chief concerns of wineries and other retailers interested in relieving restrictions on direct shipping, but it’s important to also understand why wholesalers are fighting just as hard to see the new legislation passed.
At the heart of the wholesalers’ argument is the idea that the current three-tier system of the alcohol market, which has been in place since the end of Prohibition, is still relevant and beneficial to all parties involved. Although wineries and wine collectors have protested that the current paradigm has made it difficult to fully explore the vast array of wines available for consumption in the United States, wholesalers point out that part of their function is to help small and mid-size wineries onto retail shelves where they might not otherwise have the resources to market themselves.
Wineries do concede this point but counter that HR 5034 goes too far in protecting wholesaler interests. Since the law would, in effect, make it harder to challenge state laws against direct shipping, it has the potential to establish the current system as permanent. Wholesalers believe, however, that the challenges—such as a ballot initiative in Washington state that was defeated on November 3rd—only serve to dismantle the three-tier system entirely, with the ultimate goal of removing wholesalers from the equation. In that sense, then, the wholesalers are fighting for their very survival. Direct shipping does not pose nearly the threat to their business, they claim, as nationwide deregulation of alcohol sales could. Individual states, after all, will still be responsible for writing their own alcohol laws after HR 5034 passes. Wholesalers are trying to make sure that these laws, once written, can stay on the books.
While HR 5034 opponents say that it may indeed be time for the three-tier system to be revised or done away with, wholesalers argue that the superiority of the three-tier system is in fact why it has survived for so long. In a series of recent interviews with Wine Spectator magazine, wholesalers acknowledge that there is some consumer frustration due to volume cap laws and others, but maintain that these are necessary difficulties that accompany what is possibly the most safe and effective system for alcohol sales the world over.
One thing is for sure: the debate is far from over, and in fact may finally be about to truly begin. If you have a strong feeling one way or another, now is the time to make your voice heard.
Wine lovers know that when you’re hosting an evening at your home, the presentation of the wine bottle, glasses, and the atmosphere of the room are just as important to the evening as the vintage and varietal of the wine itself. You are, after all, trying to establish a proper mood.
Depending on the type of atmosphere you’re going for, you might consider going a step farther and trying out these charming LED Glassbulb Lights, which combine a comforting glow with the elegant wine glass design you’re already so familiar with. As you’ll see in some of the photographs, just a few of them can add a romantic, whimsical, or possibly even eerie quality to the room. It all depends on what you want your evening to accomplish.
Winemaking and wine enjoyment can both be complex arts, but sometimes it’s a good idea to look at one’s passion in simpler terms. Winery owner Joel Peterson and friends spent some time this summer talking to a variety of different wine enthusiasts in Paso Robles, California, and asked them to perform one simple task: complete the sentence “Wine is…”
The short film they produced from their answers is funny and inspiring, and may remind you of exactly why you’re a wine enthusiast yourself.
How would you answer the filmmakers’ question? What is wine to you?
 Pennsylvania state liquor laws are notoriously restrictive compared to liquor laws in other states, and have long frustrated the state’s wine aficionados. All wine is sold at Wine and Spirits shops that are owned and regulated by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, and supermarkets are prohibited from selling wine off their own shelves as they would be able to do in other states. For some time now, supermarkets have been trying out ways to circumvent these laws. One way has been to build an in-house restaurant attached to the store itself, which operates under other regulations but still permits the sale of wine. A new way, just now rolling out in Pennsylvania, is the automated wine kiosk.
Simple Brands LLC, a Pennsylvania company, has devised the “Pronto” kiosk, what amounts to a wine bottle “vending machine.” It stocks a variety of different bottles at prices ranging from $5.99 to $39.99—most of which one could readily find at supermarkets anywhere else in the nation. A customer will select his or her bottle, and then be required to go through the following steps in order for the machine to grant them their purchase:
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You scan your driver’s license to prove you are 21 years old.
- A Liquor Control Board employee, via high-resolution video communication technology, makes sure that the photo on the ID matches the person standing at the kiosk screen.
- The customer blows at a sensitive breathalyzer sensor to prove their legal sobriety.
After passing these tests, only then may they retrieve their selected bottle. Additionally, and notably, the wine kiosk also charges a $1 “convenience” fee.
While some wine buyers praise the opportunity that the new wine kiosks will afford them, others find the system convoluted and unappealing. The video screening in particular strikes them as something out of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, and the idea of paying an extra “convenience” charge on a process that seems inconvenient seems ridiculous. The ideal situation for these consumers, of course, would be to change the liquor laws of Pennsylvania entirely.
What do you think about the wine kiosk? Is it an idea that could work, with slight differences based on local liquor laws, in other states? Is it even a good idea, in your opinion for your fellow wine drinkers in Pennsylvania? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
 Even if you aren’t particularly enamored of politics, chances are you’re aware of the massive shift that just took place in our nation’s capital: Republicans claimed a majority in the House of Representatives while Democrats barely held onto their own majority in the Senate. With several new faces and voices set to begin debating policies, it’s worth examining what might be in store for HR 5034.
Within the last Congress, HR 5034 found itself stymied in the House, particularly within the House Judiciary Committee and from the podium of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Congressman John Conyers, who had chaired the Judiciary Committee, felt no great motivation to push the bill to a floor vote, and even if he had, Speaker Pelosi—who owns a winery in the Napa Valley—had vowed to never let the bill be given that vote. With the results of this week’s election, however, both Conyers and Pelosi’s power has declined substantially, and their successors, as it turns out, may be more apt to shepherd the bill through the House.
 Lamar Smith (R-TX), as ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, is expected to ascend to chairman. Smith was also an original co-sponsor of the bill, so it’s safe to presume that he is more motivated than Conyers to move it out of committee. John Boehner (R-OH) will presumably be the next House Speaker, and counts among his financial backers a number of alcohol wholesalers and distributors who have an interest in seeing the bill passed.
On the other hand, there are a number of major problems still facing the nation that require more immediate attention, so the emergence of new allies for HR 5034 won’t necessarily make its passage either certain or speedy. Tom Wark of the Fermentation blog notes today that one major potential hurdle to the bill’s fate is that 40 of the bill’s 151 co-sponsors were voted out of office in this election cycle.
We’ll be keeping track of the bill’s progress – especially if it finds its way out of the judiciary committee – and keeping you informed.
 If you’re past the point of just starting to practice wine collecting, you’ve probably met a lot of different and interesting people who share your passion. Maybe you’ve spent a lot of time at an online forum conversing energetically about a recent vintage of shiraz, or spent a half hour longer than you expected at your local wine shop getting a crash course on the best white wine to serve to your dinner party. Through wine clubs and wine tastings, you may also have met a number of people who are involved in direct wine shipping, who have as much to say about the business of wine as they do about the aesthetics and taste of it. If you have such friends and acquaintances, you might want to send them a heads-up about a useful seminar occurring next week.
Shipcompliant is a software company that caters specificially to the needs of wine-shipping businesses, providing programs that make their work more efficient, effective, and profitable. They also offer virtual seminars for industry professionals a few times per year. Their next such “webinar,” Direct Shipping Updates and Compliance Best Practices, will be taking place this coming Monday, November 8 from 1-2:30 pm PST (3-4:30 pm CST). Among the topics being discussed are state-by-state compliance changes and the current status of the legislative battle being fought over HR 5034.
With free registration and the ability to attend just a few clicks of a mouse away, this is one of the most convenient ways to learn more about the state of the direct wine shipping business today. You might not necessarily be interested in the particulars yourself, but chances are that somebody you know is—and their knowledge is likely to help your own wine experience the next time you come to one of their events. So pass it on!
 Wine collectors know and accept that their passion can be an expensive one, but they pursue it in part because they believe in living life to the fullest. One of the nice things about such a personal philosophy is how easily it leads to philanthropy—many wine collectors would be only too happy to make the lives of others better while pursuing their own love of wine. This Thursday, November 4, Chicago Lighthouse gives you the opportunity to do just that with their annual Uncorked wine tasting benefit.
Uncorked promises to be an enjoyable and fascinating evening of wine and food, with special celebrity guests. For $125 per ticket (or the discounted group rate of ten tickets for $1000), guests will enjoy a robust Italian meal and dessert bar, complemented by an impressive selection of fine wines. The guests for the evening will be local on-air news personality Ginger Zee from NBC-5 and Fernando Beteta, the highly regarded Master Sommelier who made a splash last year by ranking as the number two sommelier in America (as well as one of Crain’s Top 40 under 40) .
For over a century, Chicago Lighthouse has provided social services to people in need. While focusing primarily on the concerns of those who are blind or visually impaired, they also reach beyond that mission to help children with multiple disabilities and military veterans throughout the country. The event helps generate funds both for Lighthouse programs and for other organizations with similar concerns—this year’s proceeds are to benefit the Illinois Association for Parents of Children with Visual Impairments (IPVI) and Seeing Is Believing, a Lighthouse program that works in Chicago Public Schools to help identify vision problems in young students and correct them.
Many wine lovers are some of the most generous people one could ever hope to meet, willing to donate time and money for no other reason than for the satisfaction of helping others. Uncorked allows these people to get something in return, by bringing them a delightful evening with their favorite pastime. If you are or you know somebody who would have a great time at this event, make sure to get tickets now.
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