Wine Gods

By Craig Camp
Friday, June 27, 2003

I HAD just recently arrived in Heaven when my door harps rang. At the door was a messenger with a beautiful engraved invitation to a wine tasting hosted by God himself. As the messenger left, I realized some important information was missing; I called out to him, "Where are the date and time?"

"You are new here, aren't you?" he responded.

Realizing that perhaps time was not quite an issue here in the ever-after, I put on my best robe and headed off to the tasting that was to be held at the Heaven Four Seasons. I walked into the hotel and was stunned. To think I had thought the Four Seasons in Chicago was posh. The lobby was an infinite glass atrium and the music that was echoing off the glass was very familiar. Sure enough, as I rounded the corner by the bar there was John Lennon playing Imagine -- just with slightly different words.

I found my way to the tasting room, which was spectacular. At each of the twenty seats were six gigantic Reidel glasses. They were called the 'barrique' model because each one held 224 liters -- I guess when they said it was a barrel tasting they meant it. As I took my place I looked to my right and was amazed to see Robert Parker.

"Jesus Christ (I've got to learn to stop saying that here) Bob." I said. "What are you doing here? Are you dead?"

"No, I'm fine," said Bob. "I guess God has to sell his wine too, so I got an invitation and even I wouldn't miss this tasting."

On my left was Marvin Shanken, publisher of the Wine Spectator. I asked him what had happened to him and all he could say was, "Once again, too much foie gras at the Grand Tasting Gala this year and I could not stand to buy yet another tuxedo. So I decided to end it all by drinking our top 100 wines of last year, but I didn't even get close -- I only got to number 20, then I had some kind of allergic reaction to oak and here I am."

So there I was with Marv on my left, Bob on my right, and I let my eyes wander over the other guests. There was the Baron, the Barone, the Baroness, the Veuve, the Dom and, for some reason, Generalissimo Franco (must be that special Vega allocation he got) all dressed to the nines. I could only guess why I was invited, but I didn't care as it was just so cool to be here and I had confidence in my own palate -- God's wine had to be pretty good stuff right? "I can only imagine the prices," sang John Lennon.

All of a sudden everyone scurried for their seats, and a group of angelic sommeliers entered the room followed by God himself. After God gave a very nice multimedia PowerPoint presentation the sommeliers poured the first wine, which was white, and we all begin to swirl with reverence. I put the wine up to my nose and . . . nothing. Yes, that's right, nothing. It was clear, with totally neutral aromas and no flavor whatsoever. "This is new for us this year," said God. "We think this terroir is perfect for producing this 'food wine' style of wine. Everyone except Parker (who is more important than God when it comes to wines) nodded in agreement with comments like "elegant" and "refreshing." For my part, I just kept quiet -- perhaps my taste buds were out of practice after dying and all.

Then came the five single-vineyard red wines in a group. As they arrived, God went into a detailed presentation of the distinct terroir of each vineyard. It took me both hands to lift each glass, but I went through tasting each wine with maximum concentration -- although it was hard to ignore the oohhs and aahhs of the assembled angelic palates. My taste buds were in total confusion. Every wine looked and tasted the same. Dark purple, sweet oak, high alcohol, soft well-integrated tannins and . . . well, that was it. I could only think what the heck were you supposed to eat with wines like this?

Then God looked right at me and said, "What are your comments on these wines." Jesus Christ (I really have to stop that) -- Why me? I thought.

"Well," I stuttered, "the extract is amazing." "Exactly!" stormed God. "We cut yields to only one grape per vine!"

With that everyone in the room leapt to their feet with loud applause and at the same moment the first course of the luncheon arrived. It was foie gras, which of course now that Charlie Trotter had stopped using it was much cheaper and easier to buy than before. "Are you going to finish yours?" asked Marvin.

Lunch went on for a few eons or so and I forget the number of courses, but it finally came to an end. I admit to having a heavenly buzz after all that. Finally, God's marketing people whisked Him away to a consumer tasting that He was doing that evening at $10,000 a halo for some charity.

I left feeling a bit confused, very full and a little drunk. I had heard about these wines all my life -- they were the best and the most expensive; after all they were made by God. Yet as I flew home on my cloud I felt somehow let down. Yes, they were good, but not that good for that much more money.

I decided to walk the last few blocks (or whatever they are called here) to walk off the meal and suddenly from behind a dark cloud I heard a voice. I thought to myself, I've got to take it easy on that foie gras, but then the voice was there again and it was calling me. "Hey buddy come over here I need to talk to you," said the gravely voice. I was drawn to it and as I got closer I saw a reddish glow. All of a sudden the devil was in front of me.

"Jesus Christ," I exclaimed. (I'm never going to make it here am I?) "You're the Devil."

"No kidding, kid," said Lucifer. "Listen kid," he said. "Tell me about the tasting, are those wines as great they used to be?"

"What do you mean?" I asked the Devil. "Did you used to go to the tastings?"

"Hell kid," said the Devil. "I used to be the winemaker until one day I had an argument with Him about too much new oak and I got thrown out of Heaven."

All of a sudden I felt a sudden fear that Someone was watching me and I took off running. I could hear the Devil behind me shouting, "Wait! Wait! Did they use micro-oxygenation on the new releases? Wait! I've got to know, man."

I raced home and slammed the door, not knowing what to think. I guess there is just no arguing with God -- I mean, who is going to listen, and then you just get thrown out of Heaven or worse yet, tastings at the Four Seasons.

Simple vs. Complex

By Craig Camp
Friday, July 11, 2003

TODAY I am drinking a fizzy Lambrusco Secco without a specified vintage. For the last three weeks I hadn't let a wine pass my lips that wasn't at least fifteen years old. The change in experience is significant.

For the last month I was faced with the realities of actually moving my wine cellar. In the process I assembled about four cases of orphans, odds and ends, low-fills, forgotten bottles, and wines probably past their prime. These wines needed to be consumed not moved, and the deadline was quickly approaching. I figured I was just the man for the job.

The first week was wonderful. Our kitchen was still in working condition and we were still taking the time to cook. As the move was still three weeks away, we were still packing at a relaxed pace and inviting friends over to eat and to drink these old wines with us. Highlights of the first week were 1980 Girard and Fisher Cabernet Sauvignon, 1983 Poniatowski Vouvray, and 1980 Lafon Meursault. These were all extraordinary wines with multi-layered complexity. I was quite pleased with the dilemma presented to me and the solution I decided on. I was drinking great old wines at every meal. A wine lover's dream.

The second week started out well with an assortment of 1981 red Burgundy from producers like Domaine de la Pousse d'Or, Lafarge, and Rion. Each was a little past its prime, but they were still very nice wines with complexity of flavor that most pinot noir wines only dream about. That week also heralded the start of packing the kitchen. The wines were lovely old pinot noir from an average vintage. The kitchen was a mess. The food started to get simpler and faster as the impending moving date was starting to become a little more of a reality. I opened another case of wines and moved quickly through some disgusting old California chardonnay bottles from the late 80's. Girard Reserve, DeLoach OFS, Calera, and others were brown, foul-smelling wines most of which went straight down the drain. A pair of delicious chardonnays, 1988 Kalin LD and Matanzas Creek, saved the California chardonnay contingent from total embarrassment. We finished up the week with some Bordeaux. Several pretty petite chateaux wines from the early eighties were subtle, delicate wines and 1982's from Chateau Soutard (a favorite wine of mine) and Chateau Haut-Marbuzet were outstanding and exactly ready for drinking.

Then it was our last week and the kitchen was essentially in boxes. Cooking and entertaining were almost out of the question. There were still two cases of wine to go. In the refrigerator were bottles of white Burgundy waiting to be consumed. All the Reidel had been packed away and replaced by a few Libby glasses that were to be left behind. Our meals were coming from the deli down the street and other carry-out and delivery places. The 1985 Chablis Grand Cru Clos Domaine Laroche was excellent, but it seemed lost next to the Quizno's subs. The Drouhin 1988 Puligny Montrachet, rich with a firm mineral backbone, fared better with carry-out roasted chicken from Greek place on the corner. As I pulled the corks from bottles of 1983 and 1987 Valentini Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, I realized I had had enough. Drinking old wines everyday was getting, well, old. My palate was yearning for some simple, fruity wine from the latest vintage. We were leaving the next day and I had to give up. I taped up the remaining case and gave it to a friend.

I was wishing for fruit. Soon my wish came true.

We arrived at our new home in Italy with only our luggage. The rest of our belongings are on a ship somewhere on the Atlantic not scheduled to arrive for weeks. Our first mission was to get a car. We knew what we wanted so that was not a problem, but discovered it would not arrive for two weeks. Not a problem, we thought. After the stress of our move, hanging around the house for a week or so felt like a good idea. Although we live in a very small town there is a wonderful bakery, a small grocery store that would qualify as a gourmet shop in the United States, and an excellent ristorante and pizzeria, all within five minutes walk. Everything you need for a relaxing week at home.

The only problem was wine. The little grocery only has a small selection with most of the wines being from the 2002 vintage -- both red and white. These are young, bright, fruity wines, often vivace, which means they are a little bubbly. So my wish came true and I have come full circle. I have gone from drinking nothing but great wines with average food to drinking nothing but average wines with great food. Be careful what you wish for.

It Italy wine is mostly a casual beverage people don't think much about. It's just something you have with your meals. There are no full-service American style liquor stores here and you have to go out of your way to find an enoteca, or wine shop. This means only the local wines for us until the car and our shipment arrive. As we live right on the border with Piemonte most of the choices in town are barbera in one form or another, but they aren't the barbera labels you see in the United States. Most of these are from commercial producers who only sell here. The top quality brand available in our local store is Fontanafredda, a company that makes good, solid, unexceptional wines. The only Barolo offered is theirs and it's not bad -- especially at €12.00.

Last night I was drinking a barbera given to me by my new next door neighbor. He was quite proud of it as he had gone to the coop, "selected" the wine, bought several demijohns, and bottled it himself. We're eating outside and he can see us so I feel obligated to drink up. Drinking young wines everyday is getting, well, boring. My palate is yearning for some complex, complicated wines with some bottle age.

Much of what makes wine interesting and fun is the variety of experiences available. If you only have ordinary wine it becomes a simple beverage like iced tea or Coca Cola. If you only drink great wines your palate becomes jaded and snobby. The excitement comes in finding the right wine for the right moment. Sometimes a Lambrusco Secco is a better choice than Lafarge Volnay.

I wish my car would get here.

BORE DOE

By Craig Camp
Friday, September 12, 2003

bore doe

cab er nay saw vee nyon

mare low

saw vee nyon blahnk

sem eh lon

Not so many years ago if you could not pronounce these words you were out of it in the world of wine. Now cabernet and sauvignon have almost become English words, merlot has become the object of scorn by connoisseurs, and Bordeaux only gets attention for its most expensive wines: those about to go under Robert Parker's knife.

Bordeaux is so much more than just those wines classified in 1855 and the stars of Pomerol, St. Emilion, and Sauternes. The entire department of the Gironde is one huge vineyard, making it the largest single fine-wine region in the known universe (according to NASA). To give you an idea of the scale: Bordeaux exports more wine than the entire United States produces.

Food wines are in this year, and people like to talk about balance and elegance -- even if they don't mean it. Balance, elegance, and complexity are what made Bordeaux famous in the first place. It seems reasonable to assume that, out of the ocean of wine produced in Bordeaux, there might be some wines lower in price than the superstars and higher in quality than the grocery store plonk most of the cooperatives produce. Why not drink them?

In a time when merlot is the red wine of the moment, the more moderately priced wines of Bordeaux should be having their heyday in the United States because most of them are predominantly merlot. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your viewpoint) for them, the name merlot does not appear on the label so most consumers don't have a clue that Chateau This or Chateau That represents their red grape of choice.

Technology and new winemaking techniques have overrun Bordeaux in the last decades. For the top wines this is a matter of heated debate with many claiming these methods have robbed the best wines in Bordeaux of their unique character (sound a bit like Barolo Wars?). However, for lesser vineyards this influx of new vineyard-management and winemaking techniques has often greatly improved their wines, meaning there are more bargains than ever coming out of Bordeaux.

Even though these new-style wines from Bordeaux have more body and color than in the past, they don't have the dense ripe sweet flavors of their American and Australian cousins made from cabernet sauvignon and merlot. Well-made Bordeaux possesses a certain restraint and grace not possessed by many new world wines. Often, palates accustomed to the Eminem-style palate attack of a Rosemount or a Kendall Jackson will dismiss the wines of Bordeaux as too Jackson Browne in style. Ahh . . . but once you experience good Bordeaux with food you will change your mind and start thinking more of Ornette Coleman than Jackson. The wines of Bordeaux possess a certain potential energy that is realized when dining, and that energy requires a bit of attention on the part of the user to release its full power. These wines dance on your palate rather than attempt to conquer it.

Label-phobia may be Bordeaux's biggest problem. What does all that stuff mean? Let's try to boil it down. First, the classifications.

Cru Classe are the top wines of the Haut Medoc region, which is the home of the famous communes; Marqaux, St. Julien, Pauillac and St. Estephe. It's in these communes that you find the hallowed Chateau names like Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Latour, and Chateau Margaux. The wines classified in 1855 according to the historic prices they were commanding on the market are from this area and are broken down from top to bottom into first, second, third, fourth, and fifth "growths" (properties). These wines range from expensive to outrageously expensive. Just to confuse, Chateau Haut Brion from the neighboring Graves region was included in this classification in 1855 simply because it was too famous to ignore. The great sweet wines of the Sauternes region were also included in this classification with the incomparable Chateau d'Yquem being designated a "First Great Growth" -- a designation only bestowed on what many believe to be the greatest sweet wine produced.

Below this are, in descending order: Cru Exceptionnel, Cru Bourgeois Superieur, and Cru Bourgeois. Next down the ladder are the basic Bordeaux appellation controlee (controlled place names -- the name of French wine law) and Superieur for wines with one degree more than the minimum of alcohol required for straight Bordeaux and Graves. It is in these categories where the bargains are lurking.

Premier Grand Cru Classe are the top wines of the St. Emilion region and Grand Cru Classe are the second level. Their first classification was done in 1955, and it helped propel St. Emilion out of the shadow of the Haut Medoc. This classification has been more updateable than the Medoc classification, which is generally considered long out-of-date. Graves introduced a very simple classification in 1959 that includes just fifteen properties designated Grand Cru Classe.

You'll often see the terms "left bank" and "right bank" used to refer to the wines of Bordeaux. This refers to which side of the Gironde river the region falls on. So Pomerol and St. Emilion and their various satellite regions are "right bank" wines while the wines of the Medoc are "left bank" wines. Graves and Sauternes are south of the city of Bordeaux. Visit www.bordeaux.com for an excellent map and a good general overview of the Bordeaux wine region. In general, right bank wines use more merlot and cabernet franc and the wines of the Medoc have higher percentages of cabernet sauvignon.

Bordeaux is the ultimate blended wine. For reds there are five main varieties with three of those defining wines of quality. Those three varieties are cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and cabernet franc, which can be joined by small quantaties of malbec and petit verdot. All the best red wines of Bordeaux are produced from various blends of these varieties. The style of the wine depends on the dominant varietal combined with the characteristics of the vineyard where it is grown. Merlot is far and away the most heavily planted red variety because, in addition to its round easy flavors, it is an early ripening vine and is therefore less threatened by poor harvest weather conditions. White Bordeaux (yes they make white wine in Bordeaux, tons of it, and it's good) is produced from three varieties: sauvignon blanc, semillon, and muscadelle. Semillon is by far the most widely planted and is responsible for the great sweet wines of Bordeaux. In Graves, sauvignon blanc often leads the way in many blends for the great white wines of that region, especially for the whites of the important sub-region Pessac-Leognan. Semillon brings a lush texture to dry whites while sauvignon blanc brings an herbal raciness -- a terrific combination. Muscadelle does not play much of a role in the production of great wines, but can produce lovely floral wines for early drinking.

That's the global view of a broad and diverse wine region, but where do you find the values? Just as in every other area, the really famous names have become wines for rock stars. That means finding wines from lesser regions that are produced by overachievers. Look for wines from some of these place-names:

Red Wines: Premieres Cotes de Blaye, Cotes de Bourg, Cotes de Castillon, Medoc, Haut Medoc (and Listrac and Moulis), Lussac-Saint Emilion, Montagne-Saint Emilion, Puisseguin-Saint, Lalande-de-Pomerol, and Canon-Fronsac.

Dry White Wines: Entre-deux-Mers and Graves.

Sweet White Wines: Cerons, Cadillac, Loupiac, and Sainte-Croix-du-Mont.

If you are ever wondering about the name "claret," which today refers to the red wines of Bordeaux, the word comes from the French word clairet, which is the name used for rose wines.

Repeat after me: bore doe.

Left Brain - Right Brain

By Craig Camp
Tuesday, December 2, 2003

THE LEFT side of the brain is the center of objective thought; it is logical, sequential, rational and analytical. The right side of the brain is the center of subjective thought; it is random, intuitive, holistic and synthesizing. Left-brain thinkers focus on logical thinking, analysis, and accuracy. Right-brained types, on the other hand, focus on aesthetics, feeling, and creativity. Most people favor one side or the other, while a few Renaissance people are able to use both with equal agility.

Perhaps this explains preferences in wine appreciation. Left-brainers love varietals like cabernet sauvignon, merlot, syrah, chardonnay, and sauvignon blanc. These varietals do well in many parts of the world. Their character is reliable, measurable, and predictable with flavors that develop in a clear and linear way. Right-brainers favor wine from grapes like nebbiolo, tempranillo, chenin blanc, and riesling. These capricious varietals only reach greatness a few tiny zones of the planet and are usually dismal failures outside their home zone. The flavors of these wines feature dramatic tannins, flavors, or acids and radically change in style from one small vineyard plot to the next.

Left-brain wines dominate auctions, collector's cellars, and press reviews. It is possible to produce excellent wines from these vines in large scale and they are the only choice to pursue for any cool-thinking, logical producer. A walk into a large wine shop will confirm the wisdom of their logic as the chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon sections claim more shelf space than all the other varietals of the world combined.

The creative but impractical right-brained winemakers chase their dreams at all costs, planting nebbiolo on this hillside or riesling on that in an all-too-often futile attempt to recreate the greatness that these grapes can show in their homelands. Often the market ignores the results of their struggles, but a few of these dreamers (Randall Grahm for example) even get lucky and hit it big.

Perhaps the ultimate illogical, but most artistic, of all varietals is pinot noir. No other varietal has turned the dreams of so many winemakers into a frustrating nightmare. It has become the Holy Grail of winemaking and right-brained producers the world over have become obsessed with creating pinot noir that can rival the wines of its native home, Burgundy.

The problem with pinot noir is that it teases winemakers with greatness. Unlike nebbiolo, which leaves no doubt that it can't make great wine outside of the Alba region, pinot noir can create outstanding wines in other regions . . . sometimes.

There is no doubt that pinot noir is one of the great wine varietals, but the question is, does it have to taste like Burgundy to be great pinot noir? For example, nebbiolo grown in California is a pathetic shadow of Barolo. However, pinot noir grown outside of Burgundy often tastes delicious, but it just doesn't taste much like Volnay or Chambertin.

Does a varietal have only one model; a model that is often defined simply because it was first? Does pinot noir have to taste like Burgundy to be great pinot noir?

Josh Jensen, proprietor of California's Calera vineyard, worked in the vineyards and cellars of Burgundy before returning to California where he began a search for the limestone soils of Burgundy combined with the right climate for pinot noir. It took him years to find the right spot high in the mountains of California's central coast and right on top of the San Andreas Fault. That was in 1975 and now almost thirty years later Calera Vineyards is recognized as a great producer of pinot noir. However, even after Jensen's quest for just the right location, do his wines taste like Burgundy? No, of course they don't, but they do taste like great pinot noir. Jensen's early struggles to grow and make pinot noir and to get anyone's attention were so difficult that it inspired Marq DeVilliers to write a book about it, The Heartbreak Grape.

There are producers throughout the world's winegrowing regions that have chosen to follow Jensen and people like him. Unfortunately for them, most have not attained the heights that he has with his great single-vineyard pinot noir wines: Jensen, Selleck, Mills, and Reed.

For years now you could find top examples of pinot noir from California, Oregon, New Zealand, Australia, and obviously Burgundy, but what was wrong with Italy? Italy has extensive plantings of pinot noir and many zones with the right climate and soil, yet the wines were thin and loaded with weedy and herbal aromas and tastes. These faults were created by heavy overproduction and an uncritical local market, but today this is all changing and there are winemakers throughout northern Italy chasing the Holy Grail of making great pinot noir.

However, most consumers greet the best in Italian pinot noir with the same lack of enthusiasm they had for the early releases of Calera. Just as New Zealand and Oregon produce unique and interesting styles of pinot noir, there are several Italian regions worthy of serious attention. As with excellent pinot noir everywhere, the number of producers making these top wines is few and the amount of wine they make is small -- required characteristics for right-brained winemakers. The best examples of Italian pinot noir are coming from Piemonte, Lombardia, Alto Adige, Trentino, and from one loner in the hills of Toscana.

Tino Colla, of the famous Barolo and Barbaresco producer Poderi Colla, planted a vineyard with pinot nero (pinot noir) in 1977 and the results have been exceptional. His wines are minimally handled and are bottled after about a year in a mixture of new and old Slovenian and French oak casks. The result is a fascinating blend of classic Piemontese flavors and bright, fruity pinot noir fruit. The Campo Romano Pinot Nero of Poderi Colla shows great promise for pinot nero in Piemonte. It is worth noting that this wine qualifies for a DOC Langhe designation although it is 100% pinot nero.

Vittorio Pancrazi planted a vineyard west of Firenze in Toscana in 1975 with sangiovese. The results where less than hoped for and the resulting wine was thin, lightly colored, and sold off in bulk. Then in 1989 a visiting enologist spotted the problem. The nursery had sold Pancrazi pinot nero instead of sangiovese. This lucky accident had given him the oldest plantings of pinot nero in Toscana and gave birth to his passion to create great wines from these grapes. The vines had been planted in soils high in iron that were excellent for pinot noir and today they have expanded the vineyards and have replanted with the finest clones for this terroir. As winemaker Niccolò D'Afflitto noted, "What's fine in Burgundy is not necessarily the best here." Today the Marchesi Pancrazi wines are well recognized as leaders in Italian pinot nero.

The Oltrepo Pavese DOC is in the southern tip of the Lombardia region and it was here in the early 1980's that the Braggiotti family purchased the Tenuta Mazzolino and planted pinot nero, chardonnay, and cabernet sauvignon alongside local varietals like bonarda. The family hired two French enologists, Jean-Francois Coquard and Kyriakos Kynigopoulos, who were well experienced in these varietals, and agronomist Roberto Piaggi, and the impact of this team is seen in the bright, juicy, and complex pinot nero they have created and named Noir. The success of Tenuta Mazzolino is bringing serious attention to the Oltrepo Pavese region.

So while left-brained winemakers in Italy are busily planting cabernet and merlot in Maremma, there are few right-brained dreamer types planting pinot noir on rocky hillsides in a completely illogical pursuit of their pinot noir dreams.

I can't wait.

The wines

-Poderi Colla, Campo Romano, Pinot Nero, Langhe DOC, 2001 ($26.00). Bright scarlet/ruby with just a touch of garnet. Translucent. Layered complex nose. Ripe spiced plums and strawberry aromas broaden into dark wild cherry. Racy and complex on the palate with wave after wave of flavor. Ripe cherry and wild strawberries expand into complex tar, porcini and oak flavors. Still a bit lean and closed on the mouth and nose but very promising. The finish is long and spicy with apparent but well integrated tannins.

-Marchesi Pancrazi, Villa di Bagnolo, Pinot Nero, Rosso Toscano IGT, 2000 ($40.00). Bright scarlet ruby. Translucent. Complex tar and cherry aromas that broaden into sweet plum with shitake mushroom and wood hints. Zesty and layered on the palate with lively acids and full tart cherry and strawberry flavors that evolve into oak, leather and tar components. The finish is firm but broad with the tarry, oaky flavors lingering.

-Tenuta Mazzolino, Noir, Pinot Nero, Oltrepo Pavese, DOC, 2000 ($35.00). Bright ruby with purple hints. Just translucent. Ripe spicy blueberries aromas lead the clean, sweet aromas that are balanced by a tart cherry note. Very perfumed. Bright and lively on the palate, The ripe dark fruit flavors are rich and sweet with an underlying note of toasty oak. Clean, long fruity finish with a firm grip of tannin at the finish which shows some hotness. The fruit flavors are mouth-watering.

A Round Trip Ticket to Introspection

By Craig Camp
Friday, August 22, 2003

"I'd like a round-trip ticket, please. It's my fiftieth birthday and I'm treating myself," I announced.

"Ah, then you'll be wanting a ticket to Introspection," said the old ticket agent.

"Yes, please. How much does it cost," I asked?

"Your ticket is free," he said with a wry smile. "It's the other passengers that have to pay."

All aboard! Yes I have hit the big five-oh and it is time for of a bit of obligatory introspection on what has happened to wine in the 32 years since I discovered it. It's worth noting that for 29 of those years it was legal for me to drink it.

I'm sitting and staring at two glasses of red wine. Behind them are two large brown paper bags, each containing a bottle. I have been sniffing, swirling, tasting, and re-tasting them for about an hour and diligently taking notes. Finally, having decided that I prefer the wine on the left I remove each of the bottles and place them behind the corresponding glasses of wine. Behind the glass on the left is a large funny shaped bottle of Almaden Claret and on right a large funny shaped bottle of Almaden Burgundy. It is 1975 and I am starting to really get serious about wine, but this is not the beginning of my connoisseurship.

My first experience with "wine" comes during my first week of college. I don't think I've ever seen anyone consume a drop before except in the movies. One of my new dorm mates arrives on the floor with a case of Boone's Farm and (as our throats are extremely dry for some reason I can't seem to remember) we promptly consume the case. My buddies and I spend a good part of that night driving the porcelain bus. As I'm not impressed with this new beverage, I return to my beverage of choice at the time: Leinenkugel beer ($1.99 for a 12-pack of longnecks). For the next few years the only wines that I touch are the Mateus and Lancers Rose wines from Portugal that we buy for special dates and because the empty bottles make cool candle holders.

Then in 1974 I go to Europe to study for a semester and that changes all that. One night in a weinstube in Strasbourg convinces me that wine is something special and before you know it I'm staring at those glasses of Almaden trying to discern the differences in two bottles that probably contain the same wine.

It was so simple then. Everyone knew most of the good wines were French with a smattering of good German, Italian, and California wines thrown in. Everything has changed: the wines, the people selling them, and the people drinking them. Was it really the good old days?

There's no doubt that wine is, overall, technically better today. There are no more disaster vintages like 1972 in Bordeaux, except when vineyards are devastated by hail as La Morra in Barolo was in 2002. There's also no doubt that wines have less individual character now that producers use technical market research and the media to determine the style of wine they make. On the other hand because of the sheer number of people making wine today you can still find producers that are committed to making wines of character as compared to wines of technology. Fortunately for us, you can find these dedicated wine producers making wines loaded with personality in literally every important wine growing region in the world. No longer can any wine region be ignored by connoisseurs as in the past when the entire attention of the wine world was focused on a few regions in France.

The worst changes over the last decades have been skyrocketing prices. Even adjusted for inflation the great wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy were at least within range for occasional tastings. It is much harder and more expensive to taste the great wines of the world today.

Combined with rising wine prices, the increasing size and cost of glassware is making wine seem even more of an elite beverage for the chosen few. I'm getting a little tired of glassware that can hold an entire bottle. I've always associated using good glassware with having good speakers on your stereo system. Why buy a great stereo and then buy cheap speakers? This analogy no longer seems to hold true, however, as wine glasses are now larger than speakers. There was an old cartoon in the New Yorker where a man sat at a table with a giant glass of wine. In the caption he told the waiter the doctor had told him to cut back to only one glass a wine a day. It was funny then, but it is reality now.

Today there's a widespread belief that California is in its "golden age." I'm not so sure. As I go over my old tasting book and I read my notes and scores from the late seventies and early eighties, those wines sound quite delicious to me now. All the cabernet sauvignons hovered around 12% alcohol and were often aged in large redwood upright casks. They were graceful wines made by wineries like Krug, Martini, Parducci, Wente, and Mirrasou -- and they went well with food. A few were aged in barrique, some of them French and some of them American. No, these wines would not blow away the jaded palates of wine judges today, but they were balanced wines that developed nice complexity after a few years of bottle age. Stony Hill was there making lovely pinot noir and chardonnay while newcomers like Stags Leap Wine Cellars and Chateau Montelena joined the already great cabernet sauvignons that had been produced by Beaulieu and Inglenook for years.

In the early eighties the Heublein corporation had absorbed the BV and Inglenook properties and the accountants and MBAs were busily starting to destroy these venerable old names. During this time they hosted an annual charity auction and had a series of tastings in major cities to promote the event. During one of these events they offered vertical tastings of every available vintage of BV Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon and Inglenook Cask Selection Cabernet Sauvignon. There were over twenty-five vintages of each wine lined up on tables for you to taste and re-taste to your heart's desire. I spent an entire afternoon just tasting up and down the rows of bottles again and again. This was an extraordinary experience with extraordinary wines. The hotel ballroom was also full of famous bottles from the great chateaux of Bordeaux and these two California wines held their own without a problem. They charged at what in those days was the outrageous sum of $15 to attend.

France seems to have gone to into some kind of schizophrenic fit over the last decades. Thirty years ago French wine had attitude. It was cooler than everybody else and it knew it. The bottles seemed to give you the feeling that there was something wrong with you if you didn't like what was inside. Then in one fell swoop French wine lost its confidence. There was that tasting Steven Spurrier put on in Paris in 1976, which was swept by Napa Valley wines, and then there was Robert Parker and the 1982 vintage in Bordeaux. It was not long before the high extract, high alcohol style overtook terroir everywhere -- even Burgundy. Thankfully, France seems to be getting back its attitude and confidence. Burgundy is once again Burgundy and the wines there may be better than ever. Bordeaux is still getting its courage back, but is starting to show some of that old aristocratic attitude that we used to know and love. One of the benefits of all this change in France has been the improvement in the wines of many lesser appellations. Today France produces a more diverse array of excellent wines than it did in the past. Thank goodness, given the prices of Bordeaux and Burgundy today.

Germany was the entry-level wine for many people thirty years ago. Retail stores bought thousands of cases of Liebfraumilch and Piesporter Michelsberg. They were sweet, light, fruity, and the perfect starting place for palates unaccustomed to dry wines. Then white zinfandel came along and destroyed the German market in the USA. It took decades for the German industry to recover. The good part of this is that now the attention is on quality German wines. Not so many years ago wine lists ignored Germany, but today fine German estate wine is a part of every top wine list. However, German wines are still ignored and misunderstood by most even as many wine experts argue that riesling may produce the greatest food wines on the planet.

The wine producing giants Italy and Spain have been reborn. The wines from these two countries bear little resemblance to those of twenty years ago much less thirty. In the past the massive grape production went mostly into innocuous jug wines for local consumption. Today they are leading the quality charge with a range of bottlings and indigenous vines that bring a wonderful and unique character to their wines. Fortunately, their marketing savvy is improving along with their wines. Remember the famous Chianti bottle wrapped in straw? That straw wrapping is called, in Italian, a fiasco. The disastrous marketing of poor Italian wines in the past introduced this term to the English language. Certainly no other wine producing countries offer the huge potential for such a broad range of quality wines. Italy has a head start on Spain, but I don't think Spain is going to be left behind.

There are so many other changes: The explosion of Australia and the emergence of New Zealand, South American, South Africa, Austria, and other names we never even considered to be significant wine growing areas in the past. The growth of these regions, which are not tied to tradition, has fueled huge advances in the technology and philosophy of winemaking. Some of these changes have been bad and some have been good -- depending your own interests and perspective.

In the past the wines were intimidating, but today it is the sheer number of choices that intimidates.

The first time I order wine in a restaurant I'm nineteen (hey, I look older) and I'm trying to impress a girl. I request a carafe of the house red from the tuxedoed waiter. Upon his return he pours a bit of wine in my glass and waits for my pronouncement. At first I'm unsure what to do, but almost instantaneously my mind recalls some image from an old movie. With calmness and style I lift the glass, swirl, and taste. I look up at the waiter and announce my approval. I'm cool.

Unfortunately wine has become more swaddled in style and pretense than ever. You have to have just the right wine; with just the right food; in just the right glasses; at just the right age; at just the right temperature; made by just the right enologist; with just the right score. Perhaps everyone should start with Boone's Farm and a ride on the porcelain bus.

Speaking of scores:

- N/V Almaden Claret -- 16 points / $1.99 for 1.5 L.
- N/V Almaden Burgundy -- 15.5 points / $1.99 for 1.5 L.

A Love Story: Iron Horse Vineyards

By Craig Camp
Friday, May 23, 2003

BARRY AND Audrey Sterling went to France for the first time in their thirties. They were already in love with each other. Then they fell in love with France. They still love France; the food, the wine and the lifestyle. In fact they still love Europe, having lived and worked in London and Paris and raised their children there. So why are they living on a farm in a sleepy corner of California’s Sonoma County?

The Sterlings searched long and hard to buy a winery in France, but found nothing with the right feeling. They wanted to make great wine, not just wine. After seven years of frustration they returned to their native California in the mid-seventies and on one rainy day were shown a muddy, hilly vineyard by future partner and son-in-law, Forrest Tancer, and discovered what was to become Iron Horse Vineyards.

Iron Horse is a world unto itself. Hidden away on a group of rolling hills, reminiscent of Tuscany, in the cool Green Valley, it is the opposite experience of visiting the tourist ridden Napa Valley. You have to watch carefully to see the sign for Ross Station Road and then you wind up that narrow country road, through the plum orchards. When you cross the small bridge, which often floods over when it rains, you have arrived at Iron Horse.

Life at Iron Horse is a hybrid between the international sophistication of Paris and the down-home country life of rural Sonoma County. This milieu of experiences and tastes have created not only a unique lifestyle for the Sterling family, but a collection of wines that are as elegant and intelligent as Barry and Audrey themselves.

The Iron Horse experience became a magnet for the Sterling family, pulling their daughter, Joy, from a career in television news and then their son, Lawrence, from a career in law into the family wine business. Joy and winemaker and partner, Forrest Tancer, were married in 1990. Lawrence's wife, Terry, has not only continued her law career, but designs most of Iron Horse's labels and graphics. Iron Horse is truly a family affair.

Life at Iron Horse is graceful and elegant. However, what makes Iron Horse stand out in the world of California wine is the single minded dedication of the Sterlings and winemaker Tancer to making wines that are designed to enhance and elevate the experience of dining. To be clear, I am not talking about the insipid wines that many try to rationalize as "food wines" in an unsuccessful attempt to cover-up the over-production in their vineyards. The wines at Iron Horse have nothing to do with those types of wine, as Tancer makes wines with complexity and depth -- they are just not palate burners.

The wines at Iron Horse are a little schizophrenic, but with good reason. They produce wines from two vineyards: the Sterlings' Iron Horse Vineyard in the chilly, foggy Green Valley, and Tancer's T bar T vineyard in the warmer Alexander Valley. The relatively cool climate of the Green Valley produces the ideal fruit for the Iron Horse sparkling wines and for refined chardonnay and pinot noir, while the T bar T vineyard has just enough warmth to slowly ripen cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, sangiovese, sauvignon blanc, and viognier. These distinct vineyard locations are why Iron Horse can produce wines with such multiple personalities making everything from delicate blanc de blanc sparking wines to Benchmark, a rich red produced from cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and cabernet franc.

Understandably, most people know Iron Horse for excellent sparking wines. For me, these wines, produced by the classic Champagne method, are among the few sparkling wines produced in the United States that can challenge French Champagne for complexity and texture. The secret of this is simple enough: not only do they have the right vineyards for producing classic sparking wine from chardonnay and pinot noir, but also they give their wines the extended bottle aging required to make truly complex sparking wines.

However, most people are not as familiar with their stylish and balanced still wines. Their chardonnay wines remind one of well made Chablis, with a hint of California fruit at the finish. Tancer's outstanding pinot noir has a Burgundian, almost Volnay-like balance and finish. The sangiovese and viognier are some of the few California examples of these wines that actually have varietal character. The various Iron Horse wines made from the classic Bordeaux varietals are structured, yet the tannins are well integrated into the ripe but not overripe fruit flavors. Tancer has also created his own blend of sauvignon blanc and viognier, called Cuvee R, which marries beautifully the racy flavor of the sauvignon with the exotic tropical flavors of viognier.

Tancer and the Sterlings have committed themselves to making wines with balanced alcohol, acids, and tannins that are not overripe or over-oaked. That means their wines have the 89 Point Disease. Critics tasting these wines without food and in large groups often miss wines like these that do not hammer their palates into submission. Wines like these are often presented in the press with great tasting notes, but with scores in the high eighties -- just under the radar of buyers driven by The Wine Advocate and The Wine Spectator. But Iron Horse has discovered the vaccine for 89 Point Disease in the dynamic and vivacious Joy, Iron Horse's director of sales and public relations, whose personal energy and belief in their vision can win over the most jaded tasters to their philosophy.

Lunch with Barry and Audrey in their restored Victorian home at Iron Horse is an elegant yet comfortable affair. First, Iron Horse Blanc de Blancs is poured. Soon Forrest and Joy walk up from their house to join. When the food is ready, Audrey graciously ushers each guest into the dining room and places him or her in just the right seat. Conversation is an art at the Sterling's table and topics range from politics to art, and of course to food. The idea of scores and reviews just don't enter your mind or the conversation as you sip on the silky, perfumed pinot noir, which is beautifully matched with roasted salmon. This is what wine is about. Robert Parker who?

A Wine List in an Italian Village

By Craig Camp
Friday, October 24, 2003

IT'S LIKE a war. Chicago is a tough town for business, even the wine business. Large retailers like Sam's and Binny's are in constant combat with each other, much to the benefit of consumers. However, some of the best wine values in Chicago hide away on the third floor of an old building in the Loop. To top off their bargains, even the proper Reidel wineglasses come with the wine you select from their extensive inventory of over 45,000 bottles.

They only have one restriction: you have to drink it there. The twist is that this is not a retail store, but the historic Italian Village group of restaurants: Vivere, the Italian fine dining location, and The Village and The Cantina Enoteca, both offering classic Italian-American cuisine.

"When I started we had Virginia Dare on the list," said co-owner Ray Capitanini who, with his brother Frank, took over the restaurants from their father, Alfredo, who founded the Italian Village in 1927. Virginia Dare, a sweet wine from the indigenous American scuppernong vine, was the most popular wine brand in the United States before prohibition and staged a brief comeback during the years after repeal.

"My father came to the United States and did not know a thing about restaurants," said Capitanini. "He got a job as a dishwasher, learned the business, and worked his way up to opening his own restaurant. The only setback he had was during World War II when he had to change the name to Alfredo's Village because of the anti-Italian feeling."

The Capitanini family has a wonderful collection of early menus that are in pristine condition. These menus feature items like Spaghetti with Meatballs for 80 cents, Veal Marsala for $1, Barolo at $3 a bottle and Corvo for $3.75 a bottle. Yes, the Corvo was more expensive than the Barolo. Times have changed.

In 1961 the brothers created The Florentine Room, Chicago's first Italian fine dining restaurant. "We were selling liter bottles of Chianti," remembered Capitanini. "We were the first to change to 750 ml. bottles and one of the first in the city to put vintages on the wine list. But you could only put on the list what was available."

With the arrival of the 1980's they wanted to push the restaurant towards even higher quality-levels. First, in 1981, there was the arrival of wine consultant Tom Abruzzini. "He was my mentor and tormentor," said Capitanini, referring to Abruzzini's legendary tasting marathons -- some lasting all night. Working together, Capitanini and Abruzzini created one of America's finest wine lists and won a Grand Award from The Wine Spectator in 1984, just three years after they started.

To bring the quality of the food up to the level of their new wine list, in 1983 the Capitanini family hired renowned cookbook author and expert on Italian cuisine Giuliano Bugialli as their consultant for a price that was staggering at the time: for $10,000 a visit, Bugialli would come in four times a year and redesign their menu for the season. "We were serious about trying to improve," said Capitanini.

They had redone the wine list and the menu, but in 1990 they decided it was time to bring the room to the level of the wine and food. The slightly worn, old fashioned Florentine Room was reborn as the visually dynamic Vivere. Vivere, which means "to live" in Italian, was created by Jordan Mozer, the hot restaurant designer who also conceived The Cheesecake Factory among many others.

Today the restaurants are run by a new Capitanini generation, but Ray, supported by consultant Robert Rohdin, has kept his touch on the great wine list he created. Sommelier Ron Balter has taken over day-to-day control of a wine list that has become a treasure chest for wine lovers. On taking over such a large list Balter commented, "When I arrived three years ago it wasn't like there was much to do with the list. It was like taking over as groundskeeper at Versailles. There was only a little trimming to do."

There is plenty of good food at these restaurants, and the current menu at Vivere includes excellent dishes like Pappardelle con Cignale Brasato (pasta with wild boar sauce) and Medaglioni di Carne di Cervo (grilled venison medallions), but the higher purpose for going here is to drink the wines. Balter presides over a list of more than 1,000 selections (and tens of thousands of actual bottles), and the restaurant is expanding the cellar so it can accommodate 1,200.

"When I first came we redid the whole cellar," recalled Balter. "It took a while. I had to move 45,000 bottles one-by-one. I also created a new inventory and wine-list system and created a full training curriculum for our staff."

Balter has put his own stamp on the list in the last three years. "I like wines that speak of terroir, that are not over-oaked," is how he describes his taste. "I don't like to buy wines for window dressing. I like to build verticals (multiple vintages) of wines and we need enough to both sell and age. We are not trying to just look good for awhile by buying a case. We need depth of inventory to age the wines."

What makes the wine list at Vivere such a bargain is the price of older wines. "We don't buy at auction, but only on release so the wines are always under our control in our temperature controlled cellar," observed Balter. "We also buy in quantity so we can negotiate better prices and have the wines on the list for years while they are maturing."

"When the 1985 vintage of single vineyard Gaja wines came out they were $250 a case and we have kept that reflected in our prices over the years," said Capitanini. "We decided right from the beginning to keep our prices down and that is why there are so many wines on the list that you can't find anywhere else and they are priced reasonably. We always wanted our customers to order a second bottle because they felt they were getting a good deal."

"We care about value," stated Balter. "For example, one year ago we took Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio off the list. Not that it is bad wine, it is just a bad price/value relationship. We can give customers 7 or 8 pinot grigio wines that are better wines and better values. The price was just beyond our comfort factor. Customers don't seem to care and love the other wines we recommend."

One of the unique aspects of the Vivere wine list is that it goes far beyond Italy and offers a deep selection of wine from every major wine growing region, including France.

"We made an investment in 2000 vintage Bordeaux futures and I asked our importers what other restaurants were buying futures," said Balter. "They told us that restaurants don't buy futures and said that only one other restaurant in town had ordered. Now those wines are 33% more expensive and we can pass those savings on to our customers."

The wine list at Vivere is a thick tome, but it is well organized so as to make browsing easier. In the Cantina Enoteca and The Village there is a two-page short list, but the main list and every wine on it, as well as the services of sommelier Balter are available in each of their three restaurants. Even with the thousands of bottles he has to deal with everyday, Balter can't help but get attached to them. "Sometimes I feel bad when we sell the last bottle of a wine -- like selling out one of our babies."

"For over forty years I have been trying to convince people to drink fine wines with their meals," concluded Capitanini. "This wine list is a passion for me."

Put It In Your Mouth

By Craig Camp
Friday, August 29, 2003

WHERE DO you start? Start at the beginning. Look before you leap as they say.

If you want to learn about wine you have to start at the beginning. So where is that? The beginning is the same for all things that are about taste. It's your mouth. To learn about wine you need to put a lot of wine in your mouth. Not all at once, but as many types and styles as often as you can: this is a tough class.

However it is not enough to put the wine in your mouth. You have to wake up that mouth and its close friend your nose to begin to comprehend why people like me can bore to death other humans at dinner by talking for hours about what's in the glass. By the way, I'm free for dinner tonight.

In order to understand what you have put in your mouth you need a sense of heightened perception. In other word, you have to pay attention. You have to take some time. Tasting is all about time and attention. As amazing at it may seem most people don't pay that much attention to the wine they just tasted. They don't go beyond a kind of vague pleasant fruity flavor before lurching back into that fascinating conversation they were having. This helps explain the success of Kendall Jackson.

It sounds easy right? You just have to pay attention. Yet it seems one of the hardest things to do. The first step in paying attention and really starting to learn about wine is taking notes. You have to write it down. Writing tasting notes forces you to focus on the tastes, textures and aromas of wine. There is no one way to take notes. Some anal-retentive types keep a database (hey, I think it works great), others keep drawers full of crumpled napkins with their notes in between the stains. I still have my first tasting notes book and boy is it cute. When I look at in now it reminds me of some school project kids bring home to their mothers on Mother's Day. I took a photo album with paper pages then soaked off the label of each bottle, pasted them in the book and wrote my notes next to them. The point is not the format, but the act itself. This alone will teach you more about wine and your own palate than any other technique.

Notes need not be complicated, but you will want to record a few things:

1. Name and vintage of the wine. If it is imported write down the name of the importer because if you find an importer you like looking for their label can lead you to many new wines.

2. Color: Red, white or rose? Dark or light? Try to describe the color: Scarlet or ruby? Green or gold? Brilliant, dull or cloudy?

3. Aroma: Spend the most time here as what we call taste is actually mostly smell. Here is where you get to be creative and search for words that describe what you smell. Is that boysenberry or black cherry? The most important thing is to use your own words and associations. Just because everyone says syrah smells like black pepper and nebbiolo smells like tar and roses does not mean those will be your associations. Other aspects to note: Are the smells are strong or weak? Is alcohol evident? Over ripe or under ripe fruit? Sulfur?

4. Taste and Texture: Here is another opportunity for flowery prose. Stretch a bit to find the right words to describe the flavors you taste. Remember there is no "right" answer. Taste is personal and what you are writing down is how it tastes to you. Make sure you note the textures of the wine: astringent, soft, light or heavy -- or a combination textures. If you sense a little alcohol burn, note it here. Pay attention to acidity and tannins. Acidity is the tart taste on the tongue. In very high acid wines you almost have the impression of bubbles on your tongue. Tannins are for all practical purposes a red wine thing. Tannin is that drying taste you get in a cup of strong un-sweetened tea. It leaves a dry taste in your mouth.

5. Food: Describe how well the wine matches with the food you are eating.

6. Give the wine some sort of score. You need a personal reference point. Some use the 100 points scale others use grades like they use in school: A+, B-, C and so on.

The notetaking process can be as short and quick as you want or as the situation permits. For instance I do not recommend taking long detailed notes while on a first date or while enjoying your 20th wedding anniversary with your spouse and to answer your question, yes I'm divorced.

Now that you're taking notes it's time to wake up that palate even more and to do some comparative tastings. In the beginning, I would not suggest setting up side by side comparative tastings of wines to determine which wine is the best, but as a method to learn the flavors of wines by tasting wines with diverse characteristics in relation to each other. Get a sweet, a medium sweet and a dry white wine and compare them. Get chardonnays from Australia, California, South American and France and try to discern the stylistic differences. Try a zinfandel, a syrah and a cabernet sauvignon from California and look for the distinct varietal flavors. The possible combinations are endless. Be sure when you are comparing wines in this way, to learn their basic characteristics, that the wines should be of the same vintage, similar price and the whites should be the youngest vintage available. These kinds of tastings are great excuses for dinner parties.

Keep an eye out for tastings hosted by restaurants and wine retailers as they are a great opportunity to taste many wines at reasonable (hopefully) prices. I am always amazed that the vast majority of people that attend these events take no notes at all. Take the time to write down even very brief comments at these events. You will be astonished at how much more you remember.

Okay, now you are tasting, taking notes, and comparing different wines and that palate of yours is finally getting out of bed. What's next?

What's next is a good book or two. Normally people think you should start with a book, but for wine novices I think it is a good idea to taste a bit first so you have some idea of what the heck the author is talking about. In the very beginning it is more important to find a local wine merchant that you can trust. A good wine merchant can get you started in a way no wine book can and with wines that are available in your market. Too often wine books talk about wines that are not available in every market. Ask your wine merchant to help you put together the types of tasting listed above. Often small wine shops are a great place to learn because of the individual attention you receive and are worth a little extra driving time.

Finding the right book to start with is almost as hard as buying wine. Often novices are put off when they go to the book store and see the long, dry tomes that fill the wine section shelves. Then there are the books for morons. If you are not a moron or a geologist whose hobby happens to be wine most of these books don't seem to fill the bill. What wine novices need is an Avenger: someone to protect them from getting ripped off and to help make wine fun to drink and buy. Fortunately for us there is such a force. The Wine Avenger lives and he is Willie Gluckstern, the opinionated and cantankerous New York based importer of good wines with funny labels -- that happen to be excellent values. Gluckstern has put together probably the best book in the market for wine beginners. His book The Wine Avenger debunks many of the myths that scare people away from wine and steers readers to wines of great value. For more information on The Wine Avenger visit his web site at: www.winesforfood.com. If you get the wine bug badly enough after reading Willie's book there is a long list of excellent wine books to strain your book shelves.

If you take notes, attend tastings, find a good wine merchant and read The Wine Avenger before you know it you will be held in high regard by all your friends as a wine expert and when you enter the largest wine shop or open the thickest wine list you will be able to select wine with confidence.

There remains one more talent you need to acquire on your way to becoming a wine expert. You must learn how to spit. Get a glass of water, go to the sink, pucker up and practice. No notes required.

Fried Chicken Liver Salad

By Craig Camp
Friday, September 19, 2003

IT'S HOT, I'm a bit jet-lagged and it's lunch time. I'm not very hungry, but refuse to miss a meal here. We stop at the first restaurant we spot in this tiny village because it's not likely there will be many others. We order a bottle of the local wine and then attempt to order light. My salad arrives quickly and I can only smile as I looked down at my "light" salad. This salad is a hefty affair dotted with fried chicken livers and dripping with a barely poached egg. I take a sip of the local wine: Meursault Charmes from Michelot-Buisson. Not bad. Not bad at all.

You've got to love Burgundy.

Burgundy is all about eating and drinking. Everyone there is growing or raising something to eat or drink, and when the Burgundians aren't at work they're eating and drinking what they grew and raised. Come to think of it they eat and drink at work too. Burgundy is a gently beautiful pastoral expanse, ideal for contemplating some of the world's most complex wines.

After lunch we're off to visit Dominique Lafon, an old friend and producer of what many feel are the greatest wines of Meursault, a Montrachet beyond compare, and red Volnay wines that equal the best of that appellation. Fortunately the winery is only a mouse-jump away and we're there in minutes. Dominique emerges from his house smiling broadly wearing tall rubber work boots. He's thin with a shock of uncontrollable hair and has one of those faces that will make him still look like he's 29 when he's 50. He looks quite the farmer: a very different impression than the business suit and tie look he had while visiting the United States representing the selections of shipper extraordinaire Becky Wasserman. He worked with Becky for a few years after university and then returned to his family estate, Domaine des Comtes Lafon, and took over the reigns from his father. Although the wines of Lafon were famous before, Dominique has taken wines of exceptional quality and dramatically improved them. No small feat.

He's wearing a sweater in the intense heat of the afternoon and we soon find out why. As we descend the short stairway into the tiny cellar the temperature drops at least 30 degrees. In the dark and cold of his cellar Dominique dips his glass wine thief into the first barrel of Meursault. Although the wine is ice cold and has barely finished malolactic fermentation, the extraordinary breed and complexity of the wine are already clearly showing. As he leads us from one barrel of chardonnay to the next I'm getting the same feeling you get when listening to Ravel's Bolero: the theme repeats but grows, intensifies, broadens, and gains energy with each passage. At the end we arrive at the Montrachet. The wine feels almost solid instead of liquid in your mouth, so concentrated is it. It's not possible to produce chardonnay wines of more exceptional quality. These wines are other-worldly.

So much for the tease: today the wines of Dominique Lafon are almost impossible to buy and the prices are as other-worldly as the wines. This was not always the case. Not so many years ago in the early 80's, when Dominique was selling wine instead of making it, he actually hosted a winemaker dinner at Froggy's restaurant in the Chicago suburbs. The guests sampled all the wines of Lafon except the Montrachet along with an elaborate dinner and personal commentary by Dominique -- all for about $50 (US) per person. As hard as it seems to believe now, there was a time that even small Burgundy estates had to promote. Today this is not the case. Dominique no longer does winemaker dinners and can safely stay at home devoting his attention to the vines he loves.

Burgundy is recognized the world over as making incomparable red wines from pinot noir and incomparable white wines from chardonnay. It is recognized thus despite the reality that most people never drink these wines. Some of the reasons are clear. Red and white Burgundy are produced in tiny amounts compared to other French regions, and they're usually expensive. Out of the tiny amount produced, most is of quite ordinary quality sold at prices too high for what is in the bottle -- simply because of a famous name on the label. Then there's the added confusion of vintage variation, which is a real concern in Burgundy, although, as in most regions, technology prevents the total disasters that used to occur.

Besides the danger of getting ripped off there is the other intimidation: the Burgundy fanatic. This intensely competitive and obsessed breed will use any means to obtain just a few more bottles of the object of their obsession at seemingly any price. It's a dog eat dog world. Hey buddy, two falls out of three for those last three bottles of Lafon.

So the question is why bother with Burgundy? There are certainly many fine chardonnay wines produced throughout the world and serviceable pinot noir is made in California, Oregon, New Zealand, and a few other spots. The answer is that the wines of Burgundy are so unique in character and have the capability to be so complex that the homework and effort required to buy and drink fine Burgundy is more than worth the effort. You will be rewarded.

Now when I talk about effort here I don't mean some awful dreary toil. This is not a statistics class. The first step is to find a good wine merchant. (How many times do I have to say this?) If there is one thing in all of your wine buying that will bring you the most benefit it is finding a merchant who cares about wine and who cares to learn about your palate. Nowhere is this more important than with Burgundy where in great vintages some famous people make average wines and in poor vintages a really dedicated winemaker can still make an excellent wine -- at a good price.

Often these dedicated Burgundy merchants are small shops like Howard's Wine Cellar (773-248-3766) located on the north side of Chicago. Here Howard Silverman uses his thirty years of experience to seek out not only the obvious choices, but excellent wines from small producers. Establishing rapport with someone like Howard will greatly reduce the number of disappointments you experience in the quest for great Burgundy. Taking the time to seek out and establish a relationship with a merchant in your market is essential.

The production of wine in Burgundy is divided between two types of operations: the "negociants" that grow and buy grapes and wines then blend them, and the "domaines" that make and bottle wine from their own vineyards. The vast majority of the domaines produce minuscule amounts of wines, usually from only their own sub-region, and quality can vary from the pinnacle to the pits. The negociants produce much larger volumes, often from every sub-region of Burgundy. Because of their larger production they often have the latest in winemaking technology and rarely make really terrible wines, but often their wines are on the bland side, losing the character of the vineyards in favor of a more consistent style. Some negociants can produce individual wines of the highest quality, and they rarely produce undrinkable swill.

If you are just starting out with Burgundy the wines from the negociant Joseph Drouhin consistently and well represent the regions where they're grown. While not cheap they are always fairly priced and exceptionally reliable. You will find excellent maps and an overview of Burgundy on Drouhin's Web site at: www.drouhin.com.

Buying negociant wines takes just a little research before you discover the houses whose styles you enjoy. The domaines are another matter. There are now hundreds of individual domaines bottling their own wines and the quality can vary wildly. How do you work your way though this maze without memorizing everything written by Clive Coates? (A worthwhile activity for any Burgundy fanatic.) Once again we return to the basics for buying good imported wine: you have to learn the names of shipper/importers that work with wines you have enjoyed.

That's where someone like Aunt Becky comes in. American expatriate Rebecca Wasserman moved to Burgundy in 1968 and opened Le Serbet, her Burgundy shipping business, in 1979. From day one, Becky has been dedicated to finding wines of varietal purity that clearly sing of the vineyards where they were born. No one has been as dedicated to the essence of what makes Burgundy unique.

"The wines of Burgundy are suffering. Graded, scored, compared, analyzed, auctioned, undervalued, overpraised -- they are losing their 'raison d'etre' and their mission which is to be savored at table and served with food. Try this little experiment, an exercise in free association. Inscribe the names of several of your favorite Burgundies, red or white, on index cards, and place them face down. Turn the first one up and write down (honestly) the first thoughts that come to mind. If those thoughts are not primarily culinary, you and your Burgundies may need help in the form of some serious book therapy involving wine literature written before the language of advertising, the wine bite, infected our favorite topic of conversation," writes Becky on her Web site, www.leserbet.com.

Look for the "Selected by Rebecca Wasserman" on the back of a bottle of Burgundy and you can be assured of experiencing a wine made with great passion and respect for its place of birth.

If you find Burgundy intimidating try working your way through the wines of Joseph Drouhin and the wines selected by Becky Wasserman and after a while you will have developed your own lists of preferences with little risk and be ready to broaden your search. As I said, this will not be a chore.

Last but not least in importance (excuse the prejudice) are journalists that can reliably guide you to the finest bottles. British writer Clive Coates has proven the most reliable resource on Burgundy over the last several decades. He is to be commended for focusing on excellent tasting notes instead of scores. His publication, The Vine, is available through his Web site, www.clive-coates.com. The best source in the USA is easily Claude Kolm and his Fine Wine Review that is available though his Web site, www.finewinereview.com. Both guides are money well spent not only for Burgundy, but for dependable recommendations from many other wine regions.

At their best there are few wines that can match the red and white wines of Burgundy for sheer complexity, and wine regions that produce equally great red and white wines are indeed a rarity. Be forewarned, though: quality can be addictive and once your eyes open to the layered complexity of Burgundian chardonnay and pinot noir there may be no going back. Burgundy is dangerous.

I think it's time for a light lunch.

Predator Sommeliers

By Craig Camp
Friday, August 1, 2003

THE RESTAURANT was elegant and deservedly famous. My large group arrived almost as one and we were ushered to our table by the overly gushing maitre d'. Almost at once the owner arrived and deposited himself at our table, obviously pleased by the presence of several winemaking celebrities in our group. It was a typical business dinner in the wine trade. I was starting to get paranoid and could feel my American Express card starting to twitch excitedly in my wallet. The sommelier soon arrived at the table and the look in his eyes would have scared my accountant to death.

"I would be pleased to select your wines for the evening," said the sommelier.

"Great," responded everyone in our group except me.

My AmEx card was champing at the bit so hard now that I could barely stay seated.

"Perfect," oozed the owner. "I'll have the chef make you a special menu."

"Wonderful," shouted my guests whose charge cards where safely hibernating in their wallets.

The sommelier returned to our table with a dusty bottle. "Here is a real treat for you," cooed the sommelier. "This is the only bottle they had available in the auction, but the other bidders gave up when they saw we were determined to have it at any cost."

This was the climax for my American Express card and I felt an intense pain in my . . .

Then I woke up with my heart pounding fast and a gripped by a cold feeling of fear. It was only a nightmare, even if one through which I'd lived repeatedly.

(music slowly raises in the background - the theme from Jaws)

Yes I had been there face to face with that most fearsome of creatures: the predator sommelier.

The predator sommelier is a deadly hunter with a keen sense of smell that can discern gold, platinum, and black cards from the dining room's remotest regions. Their natural habitats are over-decorated dining rooms with big reputations, outrageous prices, and food that makes you expect Louis XIV's imminent arrival. They are a species closely related to the predator captain and the predator waiter, but are more vicious because of their exceptional speed. A master predator sommelier can kill an expense account in a matter of seconds; while it takes a predator waiter's an evening's toil to draw a tenth as much blood.

Scientists have been unable to determine how the benign non-predatory sommelier becomes a predator sommelier, but there are several theories. One study pointed to daily exposure to foie gras. Another study by a well known psychiatrist blamed extended exposure to snobby customers begging to be looted. This last study was recently questioned when it was discovered that the good doctor had been sold a bottle of 1972 Petrus for $600.00 in a famously stuffy French restaurant the evening before he proposed his theory.

Before there are too many howls of protest, please read the following disclaimer: The vast majority of sommeliers are honest, hardworking people who take great pleasure in discovering exciting wines that are great values and in passing those wines and values on to their customers. It is their passion to share their knowledge with their clients.

This does not negate the fact that there still are plenty of predator sommeliers, waiters, and restaurateurs out there who approach their customers with the same love and respect that P.T. Barnum had for his patrons.

The predator sommeliers weapon of choice? His victim's dining companions.

The strategies are simple, but effective. The sommelier arrives at the table with a bottle already in hand. After a short but lovely story about the wine, the sommelier asks if you are interested. The host does a quick survey of the delighted faces of his guests and agrees without knowing the price. Quick as a wink the $170.00 bottle of Chablis is in the Riedels. However, there is just a bare taste for the host when the sommelier arrives back to her glass.

"Would you like a second bottle," he asks the host with a pleased grin?

A European wants to try an American red and asks the sommelier for a zinfandel recommendation. With enthusiasm the sommelier raves about a new zinfandel that has just arrived, but it's not on the list and would he like to try it. Glancing at his now drooling guests he orders the bottle. Though no one mentions a price, the zin adds a zippy $150 to the tab.

It is a simple process. The host does not want to look cheap.

The long gone Le Perroquet restaurant in Chicago had one of the most successfully organized wine selling systems I've ever seen. Everyone on the floor was a consummate wine pusher and they worked as a seamless team.

The rules of service were:

-Keep the glasses full so guests can't count the number of glasses they drink. There's no surer way to cut consumption than to let the guests know how many glasses have gone down their gullets.

-The first bottle must be emptied before the main courses arrive.

-Pour heavy on those drinking slow and light on those drinking fast.

-Use large glasses and if at all possible empty the bottle before you arrive back at the host.

-If one person at the table is considered the wine expert make sure you short pour on that glass so the expert needs to order another bottle.

-If there is one guest that is obviously into wine and the host is not, make sure that person's glass is empty while the host's glass is full.

It was a thing of beauty for a wine salesman to see them push bottles through the dining room. This type of institutionalized pack predatory behavior is far more dangerous that the occasional rogue predator sommelier.

You see many examples of this, but several stick out in my mind. In one famous restaurant there is a dedicated sommelier who seeks out unique and interesting wines which are often great values. The 400% mark-up that his restaurant's owners demand turn the otherwise civilized fellow into an unwitting predator sommelier every time he sells a bottle. It is painful to order wine there as the interesting bottles start at $100.00.

Institutional predatory behavior is amazing in its audacity. Once I was hosting a luncheon for Angelo Gaja at the Chicago location of a famous Italian restaurant group, when the manager burst into our private dining room just as our pasta course arrived and announced that white truffles had just been delivered and who, of my twenty-five guests, would like some on their pasta. As you might have guessed every hand in the room went up. When the bill arrived the manager had added $25.00 per person for the truffles. The same restaurant was famous for buying off-brand wines with famous place-names and then selling them to unsuspecting customers at outrageous prices. The waiters also approached the table as soon as you sat down and asked you if you preferred still or sparkling water while forgetting to mention they charged $6.00 a bottle for water that they would keep replacing as soon as you finished the bottle.

Why do we allow ourselves to be so readily taken? Insecurity, intimidation, and the desire to please their guests make diners easy targets for predators.

My most nerve-wracking experience occurred when I took well-respected Master Sommelier, Joe Spellman, to lunch at Alain Ducasse in Paris several years ago. Spellman not only has a great palate, but is the exact opposite of the predator breed of sommelier. As Ducasse had recently visited Charlie Trotter's, where Spellman was working at the time, we were ushered into the fabled kitchen dining room. I was excited to say the least and prepared to drop the big bucks on such a rare and exciting dining experience.

Then the sommelier arrived and announced he had selected a particular wine for each of our courses. I felt a sharp pain come from inside my wallet. For over four hours course after extraordinary course arrived at our table and with each course the sommelier would arrive and open an equally extraordinary bottle: old Salon Champagne, Grand Cru red and white Burgundy, Premier Cru Classe Bordeaux, ancient Vouvray and Sauternes . . . there was even a range of old vintages of Vega Siclia. At the end we retired to the bar for old Cognac and coffee.

This was the single greatest wine and food experience of my life. When the time came for the check to arrive I reminded myself this was a once in a lifetime event. With a deep breath I opened the check expecting to see a bill in excess of $2000.00 -- and that was for two at lunch.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I opened the bill. There was just a note saying "With our compliments," signed by Ducasse and his sommelier. The entire thing was free.

There is a God and just as I had been told: his name is Ducasse.

Super Whites: Friuli reaches for the top

By Craig Camp
Friday, June 13, 2003

A MILD-mannered white wine entered a phone booth next to a winery and with a swirl of color and a whoosh of air a superhero suddenly appeared. What's that in the sky? Is it a white Burgundy, a Napa chardonnay? No, it's Super Whites!

Named by Slow Food and backed by its public relations machine, the Friuli "Super Whites" tasting tour once again rolled through the United States. Over thirty wine producers from Friuli, the most northeastern region of Italy, left their red wines at home and showcased their best whites. Fruili has become justifiably famous for excellent white wines and producers are doing their best to get the story out.

The real superheroes of Friuli are their indigenous vines: ribolla gialla and tocai friulano for the whites and refosco, schioppettino, and pignolo for the reds. That is not to say the wines from French varieties can't be excellent, but the unique flavors and textures of Friuli's own grapes offer a distinct style and balance that make them stand out in a world dominated by vines of French heritage. It also means that they get little more notice than Clark Kent.

The late Mario Schiopetto revolutionized the winemaking of the region more than thirty years ago by introducing stainless steel fermentation and aging, which allowed the expansive fruit flavors produced by the regions vineyards to express themselves. Soon he was followed by now-legendary winemakers like Silvio Jermann, Livio Felluga, Nicola Manferrari (Borgo del Tiglio), and Josko Gravner.

Today Fruili is recognized as the finest white wine region of Italy, and recent surges in the quality of its red wines have made this region the only area of Italy to produce both world-class red and white wines. Small producers, in the hills on the border with Slovenia, in the sub-regions of Collio, Colli Orientali del Friuli, and Fruili Isonzo are relentlessly pushing the quality envelope, and with each vintage are producing wines of complexity with a balanced power that is the hallmark of these vineyards.

The artistic passions of these winegrowers found the production of single-variety wines too limiting. Inspired by the success of Silvio Jermann's splendid wine, Vintage Tunina, a blend of chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, tocai, and picolit, it is now almost impossible to find a top winery that does not produce a "super-blend." Each winemaker sees this wine as a personal statement and each blend is a unique melange of the varieties in the vineyards. Although these blends are usually a producer's most expensive wines, only varietal wines made from a single grape qualify for D.O.C. status. So they are labeled only as I.G.T. Leading "super-blends" include: Jermann Vintage Tunina and Capo Martino, Miani Bianco, Vie di Romans Flor di Uis, and Bastianich Vespa.

Friuli has recently gotten a big public relations boost in the United States as Joseph Bastianich, partner of celebrity chef Mario Batali and son of the celebrity chef Lidia Bastianich, began producing excellent wines from the estate he purchased in Collio. Needless to say his wines are getting huge exposure at all of their restaurants. To his credit, all the wines under the Bastianich label are of the highest quality.

Stainless steel may have created the foundation for Friuli's modern success, including the rare wines of Gravner. However, the never-satisfied Josko Gravner left stainless steel behind for barrels, and now has left the barrels behind for amphorae and an ultra non-interventionist style of winemaking. These are radical wines often causing heated debates because of their brownish color and intense flavors. They have to be tasted to be believed.

The last decades have seen the emergence of a bevy of inspired wines from estates ranging in size from small to tiny. In addition to those mentioned above, look for Le Due Terre, Dorigo, Villa Russiz, Borgo San Daniele, Dario Raccaro, Ronco del Gelso, and Radikon among many others producing excellent wines loaded with personality.

In a mere three decades, Friuli has gone from making simple wines for local consumption to being Italy's most diverse producer of super-premium wines. Now that is a super feat.

Some Super Stars from Super Whites 2003

-2000 Bastianich Vespa: A new-style wine blended from chardonnay and sauvignon blanc with a touch of picolit and just the right amount of oak.

-2001 Borgo San Daniele Tocai Friulano: The wine of the tasting. Exceptional depth and power and a finish that will not go away, this is an extraordinary white wine.

-2002 Girolamo Dorigo Ronco di Jeri: A round, rich, and creamy sauvignon blanc without a hint of the (in)famous cat pee aroma.

-2001 Schiopetto Tocai Friulano: A classic wine. Very firm in style with clean minerals balanced with lively ripe fruit flavors.

-2001 Vencia & Vencia Sauvignon Blanc: Racy, zesty and fresh with crisp grapefruit balanced by rounder ripe peach flavors.

-2002 Villa Russiz Tocai Friulano: Round and complex, exceptionally perfumed.

-2002 Jermann Capo Martino: Always exceptional, this wine did not disappoint. Beautifully balanced with exotic honeysuckle aromas and a texture that is creamy and zesty at the same moment.

-2001 Vie di Romans Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, and Sauvignon Blanc: If the Borgo San Daniele Tocai was the wine of the tasting, Vie di Romans was the table of the tasting. All three of these wines are exceptional and this may be the best chardonnay of the region.

Fear of Wine: 100 Points of Perfection

By Craig Camp
Friday, October 10, 2003

SURVEY AFTER survey says that people's number one fear is public speaking; number two is ordering the wrong wine in a restaurant.

See those guys behind your back chuckling over that pinot noir you're having with your salmon while you chuckle about the Sonoma-Cutrer Chardonnay they're drinking with theirs?

When ordering wine in restaurants, what most people want is not to be wrong. The situation is always the same: One guy at the table is considered the wine expert. He usually isn't, but as he once pronounced merlot correctly during an office coffee klatch he has been anointed the company wine expert. From that moment on every time there's a business dinner the 46-pound wine list is deposited in his lap. Everyone at the table stares at him waiting for the pronouncement. The sommelier leans expectantly forward. Damn, that Jordan Cabernet Sauvignon sure looks good. (Better safe than sorry.)

It's very profitable to be the safe choice. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been made by wineries that have succeeded in becoming safe to order. Mondavi, Opus, Jordan, Santa Margherita, Louis Latour, Sonoma Cutrer, and many others make a tidy living by making wines that taste consistently pleasant -- also known as just good enough. In return for their lofty goal of pleasantness, they are rewarded by grateful consumers who happily pay ultra-premium prices for the privilege of ordering a wine that will not offend. These wines do have the added benefit of keeping the conversation on the business at hand -- nobody will be talking about the wine.

These wineries keep their star status by producing a few cases here and there of a super-cuvee chosen from a few barrels of the thousands of barrels of wine in the winery. These modern recipe wines then capture a high score somewhere and the PR machine goes into high gear. (They learned this method from the Chicago Cubs who know that a few playoff victories will keep the fans packing Wrigley Field for another hundred years. Silver Oak and the Cubs have a lot in common.)

The same fear does not exist in Europe. In Italy if they want to have fish after a first course that called for a robust red there is no problem. Either they continue drinking the red or change back to a white depending on their whim or if the first bottle is empty. No one is watching you.

In the United States wine has become either an icon or a lighter cocktail than beer instead of a mealtime beverage. This is confirmed by the fact that most American wine drinkers do not regularly drink wine with their meals at home during the week and perish the thought of even a single glass at lunch. Wine has become a public image that suggests status and education, and the bottles you order confirm or destroy your status as an intellectual and a financial success.

With the intensity of the newly converted we are sure that there must be an absolute right and wrong. This zeal has created the cult of scores. Wine religion fanatics will go to outrageous lengths to obtain a wine scored 98 points while ignoring a wine scored 93 points at half the price. The focus on only the elite and most dramatic of wines tells people with normal well-adjusted minds that there must be an absolute truth when it comes to wine quality. Being that absolute truth can be hard to find it seems much safer to stay with the famous and expensive bottles that all will recognize.

There is a law of inverse relationships when it comes to food-and-wine matches and wine scores. It seems the higher a wine's score, the worse it is with food. Wines that score in the 90+ point range have become incredibly similar regardless of their place of birth. The recipe for high-scoring wines is well-known by enologists and throughout the world they are creating technically perfect specimens that reach towards exactly the same image of 100 point perfection instead of lower-scoring individual personality. It is easy today to line up expensive cabernet sauvignon- or chardonnay-based wines from Australia, California, France, Spain, and Italy and to not be able to guess which came from where. It's as though they want there to be one wine in the world that everybody is trying to make. What fun would that be?

If you want to make wines like this, let me save you several years of study at UC Davis followed by several apprenticeships: the recipe for top scoring wines is simple and easy to do with enough money and sun . . .

1. High alcohol -- for big flavors, sweetness, mouth feel and texture.

2. New French oak -- heavy doses of high-toast French oak to boost bouquet and add sweetness on the palate.

3. Massively high solid extract for even more body, often attained by technical means in the winery.

4. Big color -- also often reached by technical means in the winery.

While this recipe is great for making wines that stand out to a taster faced with a line-up of 100 wines to judge, it also makes wines that just don't taste that great with foods other than barbecue and wild boar -- wild boar barbecue?

All of this hype and precise rating is a bit intimidating for the person who just wants a nice bottle of wine with dinner, and that means yet another bottle of Jordan Cabernet gets its cork pulled.

The king of wine reviewers is Robert Parker, whose recommendations are awaited breathlessly by subscribers who then fight it out, going from retailer to retailer to get a wine that scored two points more than another.

But if people are so obsessed by his opinions then why don't they listen to him?

In the Wine Advocate, Robert Parker writes about his scores, "80 to 89 (points) is equivalent to a B in school and such a wine, particularly in the 85 to 89 point range is very, very good; many of the wines that fall into this range often are great values as well. I have many of these wines in my personal collection."

Me too, in fact now that I think about it, most of the wines I like to drink on a regular basis fall into this slot. Don't get me wrong, I get impressed by flashy show wines just like everybody else, but I spend my own money on wines whose scores from the Wine Advocate and the Wine Spectator average in the high eighties. For me this is the sweet-spot for wines of regional character. I also think a wine that sells for 20 bucks retail ought to be pretty damn good. Who said the starting point for great wine should be $50? Twenty dollars for 750 milliliters of wine is hardly a drop in the wine bucket.

Ask yourself a serious question: what is the difference between a 92 point wine selling for $75 and an 89 point wine selling for $20. Statistically the answer is zero or insignificant -- so the only answer would seem to be $55. However, it can be so much more than money. The differences also include varietal and vineyard character -- things that many a ninety point wine has given up to reach join that exclusive club.

It seems there is a lost world of producers making excellent wines mislaid between the famous safe names and the hot 95+ point wine of the moment. One camp of consumers loves the rock-solid vintage-to-vintage continuity and safe boredom of neutral wines like Santa Margherita while the other camp likes flamethrowers like Turley. Between, there is a universe of outstanding wines, loaded with individual personality, that sell for a fraction of the price you pay for famous mediocrity and today's fashion statement.

Today for lunch I made risotto con rucola and gorgonzola piccante. For fun we tried a white and a red to see which best complimented the dish, which clearly went both ways. Each was delicious with the risotto and both are equally unknown. The red, 2000 Ronchi Barbaresco, may never see 95 points, but was bright and delicious and sells for around $34 (a bargain!). The white, 2000 Il Feduccio Yare from Abruzzo, was deep, complex and sells for $30. Both are wines that will give you hours of enjoyment at the table and you will feel good about the $30 or so they set you back. The world is full of such wines once you get beyond the brand names and the brand name scores.

Now, how many points should I give them?

ABPG - The struggles of fine Pinot Grigio

By Craig Camp
Friday, July 4, 2003

YOU REMEMBER ABC, that insider phrase used by serious wine types when asked what wine they would like to taste. Their response is ABC, anything but chardonnay. ABC seems to have been recently joined by another varietal: ABPG, anything but pinot grigio. The wild success of pinot grigio in the United States has made it another grape that's too popular to like among those in the know about wine.

As recently as the late 1970s pinot grigio had no foothold in the American market and only local importance even in Italy. As the story goes, Tony Terlato, owner of Paterno Imports, changed all that when he ordered 18 bottles of different pinot grigio wines, while dining alone, to taste one night at a restaurant in Alto Adige, and discovered Santa Margherita. How he found eighteen wines bottled under the name pinot grigio in those days remains a mystery, but the rest, as they say, is history -- or at least legend. Terlato's successful marketing of the Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio brand created not only the pinot grigio market in the United States, but also in Italy. Less than 30 years later, Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio is the number one selling premium imported white wine brand in the United States, reaching combined sales of 445,000 cases in 2002 according to Adams Beverage Dynamics magazine.

This accomplishment has earned Santa Margherita the privilege of being the brand that serious wine folks love to hate: the number one ABPG.

"At first pinot grigio was a chic new name. A name that turned on sophisticated customers," says Ray Capitanini, owner of the Italian Village and Vivere restaurants and creator of the first great Italian wine list in Chicago. "Pinot grigio was the ice breaker for good Italian white wine."

"When I first started in the wine business, I could not figure out why they were so popular," says Seth Allen, president of Vin Divino, a prestigious fine wine importer. "Many were oxidized and were made by people with a commitment to quantity not quality, but then I tasted wines like Eno Friulia and Jermann."

But Santa Margherita is just the tip of the iceberg these days. Pinot grigio sales have exploded in the United States and new domestic examples from California and Oregon are popping up every day. More than 6 million cases of pinot grigio, or about 12% of total wine imports, were projected to be sold in 2002 according to the forecasts of the 2002 edition of The U.S. Wine Market: Impact Databank Review and Forecast. This followed a 40% increase in sales over the previous three years as reported in the same trade journal. These huge surges pushed pinot grigio to the position of the number one imported category of table wine in the United States as it raced past former import leaders merlot and chardonnay.

There's nothing like success to earn you the scorn of connoisseurs.

This scorn is causing a serious marketing problem for Italy's best pinot grigio wines. Howard Silverman, owner of Howard's Wine Cellar in Chicago, observes, "Pinot grigio has become an entry-level wine for inexperienced wine drinkers. The ones that graduate to better wines don't want to go back to the wines they started with and don't try the top wines. The problem for serious Italian pinot grigio is that most pinot grigio drinkers don't want to spend any money. It's easier for me to sell high priced California or Oregon pinot grigio than the best Italians."

The name pinot grigio, or pinot gris as it is called in France, means "gray pinot." The grapes are not actually gray at all, but rather have a light reddish color similar to the flame tokay table grapes you see in American supermarkets. If you buy the classic pinot grigio from Livio Felluga you will notice the wine has a light salmon tinge that it gets from a brief period of skin contact during fermentation. Pinot gris is part of the same family of vines as pinot noir and pinot blanc. The finest examples of this variety are produced in Alsace (France), Friuli and Alto Adige (Italy), and Oregon (US) -- the latter, in particular, seems to be betting its white wine future on it.

"You have to open a lot of bottles to sell premium Italian pinot grigio," says Vin Divino's Allen. "People don't want to spend money on a wine category with a bad image. You have to convince them." Apparently he's doing that with some success: his Peter Zemmer and Villa del Borgo brands each sell more than 50,000 cases per year in the United States.

Yet, as with all mass produced products, somewhere there are keepers of the original flame that created all the heat in the first place. If you look hard enough, you can still find the true believers. Finding good pinot grigio is difficult, but the quality of wines produced by the finest pinot grigio producers in Italy makes it worth your efforts to seek them out.

The best of Italy's pinot grigio wines come from only a few zones in the two northeastern-most regions: Alto Adige (which borders with Austria), and Friuli (along the border with Slovenia). The wines from Alto Adige have a wonderful freshness and acidity from the alpine climate, while the wines from Friuli are richer and more complex. The best Friuli wines come from the zones of Colli Orientali del Friuli, Isonzo, and Collio. As with all things, quality doesn't come cheap and the best examples of Italian pinot grigio start at around $18.00 and can approach the $40.00 mark -- a hard sell indeed.

When it comes to vintages, stick to the youngest wines available for inexpensive pinot grigio wines: not more than a year old. For instance, the crisp, fresh, zesty 2002 Peter Zemmer from Alto Adige is already in the market and is a refreshing aperitif. However, for the more complex pinot grigio wines listed below, two or three years of bottle age will reward you with a more interesting and multi-layered wine.

At the end, we must return to the beginning. Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio is a crisp, clean wine that will not offend anything except your wallet and your intelligence. It is true it sells in Italy for about €5.50 in a store, but like all brands that establish a category it demands a premium. Sure you can buy facial tissues than cost less than Kleenex, but we still have a tendency to call all the tissue brands Kleenex don’t we?

The finest pinot grigio producers

-Livio Felluga, Collio

-Castello de Spessa, Collio

-Russiz Superiore, Collio

-Cantina Produttori San Michele Appiano, St. Valentin, Alto Adige

-Schiopetto, Collio

-Villa Russiz, Collio

-Borgo San Daniele, Friuli Isonzo

-Viticoltori Caldaro, Soll, Alto Adige

-Alois Lageder, Benefizium Porer, Alto Adige

-Ferdinado e Aldo Polencic, Collio

-Isidoro Polencic, Collio

-Ronco del Gelso, Friuli Isonzo

-Pierpaolo Pecorari

-Bastinaich, Plus, Colli Orientali del Friuli

-Jermann, IGT (Collio)

-Vie di Romans, Dessimis, Friuli Isonzo

ABC as easy as 123

By Craig Camp

Thursday, May 1, 2003

ABC, easy as 123
Oh, simple as Do Re Mi
ABC. THAT'S wine lingo for Anything But Chardonnay. Chardonnay is too popular to be cool to drink. At least that's what people say. This proves once again that what people say and what they do -- or in this case drink -- is not always the same. It's hard to fight fashion.

Yet chardonnay is popular for many reasons. Along with cabernet sauvignon, merlot and now syrah they can almost grow it anywhere -- and I mean almost anywhere. Chardonnay is easy to grow and to make, and the winemaker can greatly influence the outcome. Because the winemaker can have such a strong influence it is often technique that defines the flavors of chardonnay wines more than terroir. This is why so many chardonnay wines are boringly similar, or just plain boring. Most are created by winemakers taught the same unimaginative standards of flavor, quality, and technique at enology schools the world over.

The grand exceptions to this are the great white wines of Burgundy, where it all began for chardonnay. There the expression of a unique terroir is raised to the highest level, as are the prices.

The wine trade follows the fashion trend of chardonnay without giving it much thought. Sure there is a lot of sauvignon blanc and pinot grigio out there, but most producers are using the same strategies for producing these varieties with similar scintillating results. For instance, at many chain restaurants in the US you are presenting with a wine list consisting of four American chardonnay selections, a pinot grigio, and a sauvignon blanc balanced off with some white zinfandel and interchangeable merlot and cabernet sauvignon wines. Sometimes things are spiced up by the inclusion of Australian or South American wines that are trying as hard as they can to taste just like the California wines.

I was recently in a massive new grocery store in Ohio and the wine manager proudly showed me his wine section. It was gigantic, featuring over 600 different selections. You needed binoculars to see the end of the chardonnay section, which represented almost two thirds of the department. The problem was he could have replaced all the dozens and dozens of chardonnays on the shelf with just four or five of his selections and still have offered his customers the same diversity of styles and price points. They just would have had fewer pretty labels to choose from.

This ocean of identical chardonnay wines with different labels has made serious wine buyers adopt the ABC anthem and to do their best to ignore chardonnay -- except top Burgundies when someone else is buying. Yet we should remember that the reason chardonnay is so popular in the first place is that it tastes good.

Yes chardonnay tastes good and matches well with a broad variety of food. I confess that although it may not be cool, I like chardonnay. What I hate is the cookie-cutter, plastic-tasting swill that most companies spew out onto the market and that most people think is what chardonnay tastes like. It is not as easy as 123 to find wines that really taste like chardonnay. The mass of wine labeled chardonnay would seem to make it easy, but it is in fact harder because the good ones are camouflaged by all the chaff.

At the lower price levels of the chardonnay spectrum, oak is the enemy. That goes double for wood chips. Inexpensive wines should be all about fruit and drinking young. Oak has become the curse of chardonnay wines -- many think the flavor of oak is actually the flavor of chardonnay. At the higher price level, it is well proven by history that the judicious use of oak broadens and adds layers of complexity to chardonnay in a way that that it can do to no other white variety. What constitutes a judicious use of oak is a very broad category. Dominique Lafon can put his powerful and structured chardonnay in barrels for 18 months in his very cold cellar while the same treatment would (and does) destroy a California chardonnay. You can still taste the intense fruit of the Lafon while the California wine would effectively become oak juice.

To find the best bargain in chardonnay today you have to go back to the beginning. That is back to Burgundy. Yes, that Burgundy that is so famous for its hyper-expensive chardonnay is also home to the best deal in chardonnay today and most everyone ignores it:

The Maconnais offers many consistently fine chardonnay wines for under $15 (US). What anyone is doing drinking the Kendall Jackson chardonnay potion of sugar and wood chips when these wines are around is a mystery. I know that Pouilly Fuisse is a notoriously bad buy, but wines under the various Macon appellations like the Macon Village, Macon Vire, Macon Clesse, Macon Lugny, and Macon Fuisse appellations have to be the most interesting, inexpensive chardonnays that are produced. I know many of these wines have committed the sin of not actually putting chardonnay on the label, but rest assured Macon is chardonnay. The best part is you don't even have to buy these wines on sale to get a great deal.

Macon chardonnay offers a firm acidity and a complex mineral flavor balanced with just a touch of green apple fruit. This balance, fresh flavor, and most of all the crisp finish makes these wines not only exceptionally food friendly, but great aperitifs in the American style.

Some of my current favorites are:

- 2000 Macon Clesse, Les Acacias, Cave de Vire, a Christopher Cannan Selection
- 2001 Macon Chaintre, Domaine de Lalande, a Martine's Wines Selection
- 2001 Macon Village, Vieilles Vignes, Domaine Jean Touzot
- 2000 Macon Village, Domaine de Roally, a Louis/Dressner Selection
- 2000 Macon Charnay Franclieu, Jean Manciat, a Louis/Dressner Selection

No, these wines are not Lafon Meursault, but for everyday drinking wines that offer real complexity, they kick oak chips in the face of those flabby new world chardonnays.
Come on gonna teach how to sing it out, sing it out, sing it
Oh oh oh, ABC
ABC? Not necessarily.

Dancing Lessons: matching food and wine

By Craig Camp
Monday, October 20, 2003

IT'S LIKE the Tango; precise and intertwined.

Maybe it's is more like a waltz; stately and controlled.

Some think it's like a Salsa; all energy and movement.

There are others that think it is a folk dance -- all costumes and traditions -- and others that think it should be modern dance with no rules at all.

Whatever dance it is, it requires lessons and practice. This foot after that; lead this way and follow that way. It requires concentration and agility to dance well.

We're always trying to dance perfectly: the dance of which wine goes with what.

There are those that argue for contrast, others for harmony, and still others that demand flawless synchronicity. Many others are bound by legend and tradition or, worse, by reviews and fashion. The debate makes knowing the next step seem like your first Tango lesson.

Thirty years ago, Le Francias, in a northern suburb of Chicago, was the ultimate restaurant in the United States. Chef/owner Jean Banchet was on the cover of every American food magazine and the private planes were arriving at the nearby airport every night, where limos were waiting to whisk the passengers to the pleasures of his tables. The sommelier there told me the story of an older gentleman who would come in once a week to dine. He was always alone and would always order the same thing: an old bottle of Chateau d'Yquem and a steak -- finishing every piece and drop of both. The sommelier loved serving the old man because he loved the steak and the great sweet wine equally. "It was a pleasure to serve someone having such pleasure," he told me.

Pleasure, after all, is the only rule that counts.

When I was converted to wine (conversion in the religious sense is the proper reference point for those new to the wine sect), I set off to convert the heathens. The first and easiest target is your own family. At Thanksgiving I served the best Beaujolais Cru I could find. When Christmas dinner overloaded the table I opened fine Bordeaux and Burgundy. They always politely nodded and said "very nice" when I was obviously waiting for them to comment about the wine. Then Easter came and through an oversight I forgot to buy the white wine and, out of necessity, served a cheap California chardonnay. The response was overwhelming. They couldn't say enough good things about the wine. I had to soak the labels off for all of them so they could buy more.

This shook my faith in the true religion. They were experiencing more pleasure from the inexpensive chardonnay then they were from the Lafon Meursault I had served them at Christmas. Personal preference had reared its ugly head to confront all my certainty, not only about what was good or bad, but what was right with the food I was serving.

What really shook me up as an old hippie was that I now felt a certain kinship with Richard Nixon, who would serve his guests domestic wine while he was drinking Chateau Margaux out of a napkin-wrapped bottle. Tricky Dickie seemed somehow more human to me after that.

Believe me I know to what depths this all can take you. I admit it: I am a recovering match-oholic. That's right I was obsessed with matching exactly the right food and wine. More than once the restaurant's kitchen would close before I had even gotten through the first 150 pages of the wine list. I was getting ulcers trying to decide if this Sancerre or that Chablis would be exactly right with the first course. At first it wasn't bad. Most meals followed classical formulas, but then with the onslaught of "new-American" restaurants picking wines soon became a nightmare. During the same course one person could have pasta with a tomato sauce, one spicy pot stickers, one foie gras, and another six types of fresh oysters. What was the perfect wine for all of those things? The answer is simple: there wasn't one. After a few meals like this I was on the road to recovery for match-oholism.

The truth is that wines are much more adaptable to many types of foods than many wine experts would like you to believe. It is far safer to stray from 95 point wines and the safe choices of the world than you think. Few matches are really bad.

This is true. While there are some matches that really sing, most of your options fall into the more than acceptable "pleasure" category. This is great news unless you are more obsessed with ego and conspicuous consumption than about pleasure.

Let's look at a line-up of California wines -- assuming each bottle is of high quality. One bottle is a cabernet sauvignon, one merlot, one zinfandel, and a syrah. Now imagine we are sitting at Morton's and the waiter has just deposited almost two pounds of sizzling aged steak in front of you. Which wine is better with the steak?

The answer is clear: it depends. If you return to Morton's four times and have only one of the wines with your steak your perception will be much different than if you only went once and served all the bottles at once. The fact is they all go very well with the steak and on their own will give you a very high pleasure score. The differences in the wines are what make wines interesting, but the reality is that they all enhance your $30.00 steak with about the same dexterity.

To match wines with foods you only have to break them down into basic categories and find your preferences. Big wines go with big foods; sweet wines go with rich and sweet foods. Delicate dishes need delicate wines. Spice needs some sweet and hates tannin. Most of all you just have to experiment. You will find many matches that you just love and your friends don't. The main thing to remember is this experimentation is not dangerous. Few really disgusting matches imperil your palate although there is some danger to your pocketbook.

This is not to say there are not great matches. There are certainly harmonies of texture and flavor that are broadly appreciated and for good reason. Elegant and complex cuisine matched with just the right wine raises dining to an art form. When faced with the financial risks of ordering wine in restaurants great sommeliers are there to guide you to these gustatory summits. Sommeliers like Mark Slater at Citronelle in DC, Robert Bansberg at Ambria in Chicago, and George Cossette at Campanile in Los Angeles can introduce you to great experiences with wines you have never heard of and that don't require you to tap into the kids' college funds -- if you are open to the experience.

One of the great pleasures of food-and-wine matching is what I call elevation. Often when dining at home alone on some re-heated leftovers I'll open an extraordinary bottle of wine. While the match may not be classic, the wine itself elevates the entire experience of the evening. In this instance the wine matches the person more than the food. To me this is the most important aspect of matching food and wine. There is no arguing taste. If you like Chateau d'Yquem with your steak or Marcarini Barolo with your poached sole your are within your rights: even if you are wrong.

So we conclude by answering that ageless question: which wine is best with popcorn? The answer: the coldest one.

No Respect: Barbera Bursting Out

By Craig Camp
Monday, November 3, 2003

I WENT to a Rodney Dangerfield performance the other night and a barbera tasting broke out.

The wine that Piemonte produces of more than any other is an afterthought for most consumers and a nightmare for importers and distributors. Everybody wants to buy Barolo and Barbaresco and in order get their allocations they also buy the barbera and dolcetto wines of those producers. If you are an importer and decide to carry 5 Barolo producers and 3 Barbaresco producers that can mean you have 14 or so Barbera wines and 10 or so Dolcetto bottlings. They are usually all very good wines, but how many Barbera and Dolcetto selections can your customers put on their wine lists or on their shelves?

In northwestern Italy barbera is everywhere. It is a cheap, often fizzy and mostly thin acidy wine with barely more color than a dark rose. The Italians love it and fill up their shopping carts when it’s on sale at the Ipermarket at € 4.00 for a four liter jug. My neighbor buys it even cheaper as he heads out to a cooperative and buys a demijohn (56 liters -- sort of an Italian kegger). Some Italians will even splurge spending as much as 4 or 5 Euros for a single bottle.

To most Lombards and Piemontese the concept of an expensive Barbera is – well laughable.

The combination of a local market that won’t take you seriously and an overloaded export market can make life tough for serious barbera and dolcetto producers who don’t own Barolo and Barbaresco vineyards and so have no leverage.

Yet like the Union troops at Fredericksburg, serious Barbera producers keep charging the wall of trade and consumer resistance: often with similar results. In spite of this, barriques are purchased, gorgeous labels designed, heavy bottles ordered and old vineyards acquired all with the goal of making great barbera.

All this investment and attention has changed the entire concept of what barbera is and what you can expect when you pull the cork. Famed for its tooth jarring acidity, producers have taken to the barrel to soften out their barbera wines. Barriques combined with lower yields and old vines are producing wines that are lush, giant, deep purple that are out-and-out soft. The 11% and 12% alcohol levels of the grocery store brands become 14% or higher in these new style barbera wines.

Nebbiolo and barbera have opposite attributes. Nebbiolo has low color and high tannins. Barbera has high acids, low tannin and high color. Perhaps this is why they follow each other so well. The naturally low tannin of barbera means that this variety has a totally different relationship with aging in barriques made of new oak than the tannin laden nebbiolo. Oak aging can soften the sharp acidity and add a dose of needed tannic structure.

Giacomo Bologna changed everything for barbera when he released his Bricco dell’Uccellone in the early eighties. He selected grapes from the best vineyard and aged them in new French barriques and the results started a revolution in Piemonte.

This means that there are basically two types of barbera available in the export market as the cheap stuff fortunately tends to stay in Italy. The first is a fresher, fruity style that is aged in stainless steel. The second are the barrique aged powerhouses. Which one to pick depends on what is on the table, how much is in your wallet and your deep personal feelings about strong oak flavors in wine.

I say basically two types because there is in fact a third type: many producers are blending nebbiolo and barbera. It is in these blends you will find the Piemonte answer to the super-Tuscans. These super-Piemonte wines, that fall under the Langhe Rosso DOC, tend to be around 60% barbera and 40% nebbiolo and feature loads of toasty new oak flavors from many months in new barrique. Another thing they have in common with the super-Tuscans are their super prices and they often cost as much (if not more) than Barolo and Barberesco. Famous examples include the Sandrone Pe Mol and Altare La Villa, but take the time to search out the Suo di Giacomo of Eugenio Bocchino as it delivers the same punch for much less money. There is yet another dimension to blended barbera to be found in the various L’Insieme bottlings – some of which include dolcetto, cabernet sauvignon and merlot.

It can’t be denied. Good barbera is fun to drink. A wine full of life, zest and just begging for a good meal to be paired with. I know that some producers want to make a wine to challenge nebbiolo, but for me the pure joy reflected in the flavor of barbera is what makes it a wine I go back to again and again.

Few wines match so well with food. The fruit and structure of barbera in all styles lends itself remarkably well to a wide range of dishes. The fruity stainless steel wines are one of the best choices you can make for classic Italian-American cuisine and the oaky bottlings take on grilled and roasted meats in ways most merlot wines can only dream of all the while offering the same lush fruit that has made that variety so popular. Wine lovers outside of Italy are always in the hunt for search for the perfect pizza wine -- a concept Italians don’t understand. There are few better matches for pizza than a zesty barbera.

Eating in Piemonte is similar to running a marathon: you have to pace yourself. The antipasti can seem endless. At one restaurant when we ordered the house antipasti assortment they brought an extra table to hold them -- not a cart a whole extra table. If barbera did not exist the Piemontese would have had to invent it to handle this onslaught of appetizers. The refreshing acidity of barbera is just the thing you need to keep that palate in shape for the main course – and the Barolo.

The vast majority of the best Barbera wines come from three DOC’s: Barbera d’Alba, Barbera del Monferrato and Barbera d’Asti. Barbera d’Alba tends to be what you most frequently see in export markets as these are the Barbara wines made by the Barolo and Barbaresco producers. However, in the other two zones barbera is king and produces the best wines from those zones. It is in Asti and Monferrato and from small Alba producers that are without Barolo and Barbaresco vineyards that “bountiful barbera bargains” (©) can be found – by bargains I do not mean low prices, but that you get a lot of wine for the money.

Some barbera recommendations:

Big and Rich

-Roberto Ferraris, Barbera d’Asti, La Cricca

-Scagliola Barbera d’Asti, SanSi

-Sciorio Barbera d’Asti, Reginal

-La Zucca Barbera d’Asti, Martizza

-Alfieri Barbera d’Asti Superiore, Alfiera

-Arbiola, Barbera d’Asti, La Romilda

-Martinetti Barbera d’Asti Superiore, Montruc

Zesty and Fruity

-Destefanis Barbera d’Alba

-La Zucca Barbera d’Asti, I Suli

-Arbiola, Barbera d’Asti, La Carlotta

-Bricco Mondalino, Barbera del Monferrato Superiore

-Vinchio-Vaglio Serra, Rive Rosso, Barbera del Monferrato

-Tenuta La Tenaglia, Barbera d’Asti, Bricco Crea

There are literally dozens and dozens more. Every year there are more and more producers improving both their basic barbera for everyday drinking and their top-of-the-line barrique aged old vine cuvee.

Barbera may not get the respect it deserves, but at least no one is laughing anymore.

Nose to Nose: The debate over high-tech wine

By Craig Camp

Monday, November 10, 2003

THEY ARE nose-to-nose and the sparks are flying. The argument has gone on for the better part of two days. What started out as an intellectual debate has dissolved into exchanges of not-so-subtle insults. Luckily, the combatants are mouse-to-mouse instead of face-to-face. It started out simply enough when one of them declared Domenico Clerico (the famed Barolo producer) a genius. However, the other guy took exception to this as he is convinced that Clerico and people who think like him are destroying one of the world's great wines. The battle between old and new never ends.

Winemakers love to promote the idea that they are simple farmers. Romantic images and bucolic country scenes of happy grape pickers, hillside vineyards, and dusty bottles in old cellars are featured in all the brochures. However, if they were more honest the pictures would be of roto-fermenters, reverse osmosis equipment, and the oxygen tanks for micro-oxygenation.

Are the new-style wines better or are they blinding us with science? Why do wines taste so different now than they did twenty years ago?

First of all, there's little agreement about what's right and what's wrong. Hi-tech equipment like reverse osmosis systems can be found in giant commercial Australian wineries and small Burgundy domaines. What one winemaker swears by is anathema to another. The wine media confuse the situation further by railing against high-tech winemaking and then promptly rewarding, with the highest scores, those who make wines by those methods.

Contrary to the quiet country gentleman image most wine producers like to project, those from the most famous wine making districts are usually savvy and experienced business people. They know all too well how to take market research and translate that data into a product that sells. In Hollywood they have tours past the homes of the stars: in Napa they could have tours past the homes of past and present Fortune 500 CEO's -- people who understand the positive results you can get by providing people with pleasure easily attained. Bordeaux and Tuscany have become equally corporate and other great vineyard regions are not far behind. It should be no shock that wines produced in Napa, Maremma, and Pomerol can be difficult to tell apart -- the owners belong to the same vinous country club.

So, why do so many wines taste the same? It's simple: too many winemakers make it in the same way using technology to overwhelm vintage, variety, and terroir (the taste the specific vineyard microclimate gives the wine).

Just as the Vatican is the center of Catholicism, Australia has become the center of the religion of high-tech winemaking. For an example of pure high-tech, just taste the red wine lineup of the well-known winery Rosemount. The portfolio includes cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and shiraz, but the differences in the flavors and textures of these wines is insignificant and, in fact, they are basically interchangeable. The different varietals only exist for marketing purposes. Each of them is made according to a recipe that will appeal to the lowest common denominator, and the result is essentially the same wine in different bottles with different names. Australia may be the holy see of this kind of winemaking, but Bordeaux, Tuscany, the USA, and South America are right there with them -- and the rest of France, Italy, and Spain are trying as fast as they can to become Cardinals. One real danger of all this technology is that as flavors become more standardized, many less popular grape varieties could become even more unimportant because they don't fit well into the grand marketing scheme. Why make a gamay that tastes just like your pinot noir that tastes more or less like your syrah.

Here's a look at some of the winemaker's bag of tricks:

-Roto-fermenters: just like it sounds, these are fermenters that rotate during the fermentation of red wines so there's a more continuous and even interaction between the grape skins and the fermenting grape juice. In standard fermentation tanks the skins form a hard "cap" floating at the top of the tank which has to be "punched down" back into the juice to be sure that color and other components are extracted from the skins. More modern methods include "pumping over," which means simply that: gently pumping the fermenting juice over the cap of grape skins at the top of the tank. Supporters point to quicker color extraction and softer tannins, but detractors complain of over-extraction of obvious flavors and under-extraction of subtle flavors that add complexity.

-Micro-oxygenation: the extremely slow release of tiny (micro) amounts of pure oxygen through wine. Proponents note rounder mouthfeel, better color and reduced vegetal characteristics. This new technique was introduced in 1991 in France. Critics claim it strips the wine of individual personality and texture. The truth about micro-oxygenation is that it is still a concept in its early stages of development with techniques constantly being adjusted and no one is sure about the future. Most of the people making wine with this method are not worried about the future as they want wines than can be consumed immediately.

-Reverse Osmosis and Must Concentrators: an ultra-fine filter that allows liquids -- water, acid, or alcohol -- to pass through, but will retain color and flavor components. You might remember the principle of osmosis from high school chemistry and biology. That is where if you sleep on your book during class the information will somehow pass to your brain. If reverse osmosis has occurred and you have forgotten, basically if you put pure water and wine at the same pressure separated by a semi-permeable membrane, water will flow across the membrane from the water side (more concentrated in water) to the wine side (less concentrated in water). Though this is not what you want in winemaking the principle is useful. The trick is to increase the pressure on the wine side, which reverses the flow. Too much rain during harvest: no problem, filter it out. Overripe grapes giving you too much alcohol: no problem, just filter it out. Too much acetic acid: no problem, just filter it out. This technology can be applied before or after fermentation and if used before fermentation is known as must concentration. As the equipment is expensive this technology is more common among large wineries or producers that can charge super-premium prices. It has become popular among top Chateaux in Bordeaux. Seemingly a winemaker's dream, reverse osmosis has become the most hated of the new techniques by traditionalists.

All of these can be applied with good result in certain circumstances. Contrary to the cookie-cutter results achieved by corporate winemaking, like you see at Rosemount, Antinori, Latour, and Rutherford Hill, some of these techniques and others are being applied with success (okay, controversial success) by top winemakers throughout the world.

Perhaps the biodynamics movement in winemaking can be seen as a backlash against these innovations by some producers as they take on an anti-techno attitude to differentiate their wines and to reflect their belief in wine as a natural product as compared to an industrial one. The wines they produce are bound to create debate when contrasted against highly manipulated ones. To point out yet another contrast between organic and biodynamics, most of the technical manipulations mentioned above would be completely in accordance with organic requirements.

Not so many years ago the debate focused on chaptalization (adding sugar before fermentation) and acidification. There was not much more winemakers could do besides choose what age barrels to use from what forest. The French looked down their noses at the Californians because they added acid to their wines and the Californians complained that the French cheated by adding sugar. However, as much as people argued about this point, it is clear that great wines were made in both places by a few passionate winemakers who knew how to employ these methods with just the right touch. It would seem logical that we could expect the same results from these new technologies.

Wine is a part of our history and it has always changed with the times. Jazz no longer sounds like it did in the days of Louis Armstrong, but it is still a powerful art. Baseball has changed from the days of Babe Ruth, but it is still extraordinarily entertaining. Wine, which combines both art and entertainment (an appropriate if not often accomplished match), is no different.

There are always a few who can innovate intelligently. Most use technical innovation to make more money: making wine trying only to never offend that will avoid more than a perfunctory swirl and sniff. Yet there are always a dedicated few that are trying to open new horizons. It takes a keen eye and an open mind to appreciate art that is pushing the envelope.

The arguments are sure to continue: fun, huh?

A Wine Without Fear: Amarone

By Craig Camp
Friday, September 26, 2003

IT'S MACHO. It's big, tough, and strong. It's not afraid of really moldy, stinky cheese. It's Amarone.

Amarone: it's the massive, powerful, high-octane Italian wine that is the darling of wine drinkers in Italian-American steak houses and restaurants across the United States. For some strange reason the same customers that are addicted to the "delicate" flavors of Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio love to order Amarone as their red wine. Not that they care which Amarone it is as long as it says Amarone on the label. This has created a huge demand in the USA for Amarone -- any kind of Amarone. As you might have guessed this uncritical demand doesn't inspire a lot of producers to make great wine.

Amarone is the king of the ocean of wines produced in Veneto, a region cursed by its own fertile soils and benign weather. It's easy to grow grapes in Veneto. Unfortunately it's also easy to grow a lot of them on the same vine. The result has been the destruction of famous names like Soave, Valpolicella, and soon Amarone by producers willing to settle for the minimum qualities required by the liberal DOC rules. Some of the best producers, like Anselmi in Soave, have left the DOC, while others are ignoring the new DOCG Soave with studied boredom. Veneto is a mess. This is a shame because the region has not only the capability, but actually does produce some of Italy's best wines.

To understand Amarone you have to understand Valpolicella. Yes, that light, cheap, easy-drinking wine sold by the big Veneto wine companies is a direct relative of the powerful Amarone. Valpolicella, like so many Italian wine regions today, is a work in progress even though its wines can be directly traced back to Roman times. The Valpolicella region stretches across the hills north of Verona. To the northwest of the city is the Valpolicella Classico zone where most of the best vineyards are located. In Valpolicella they use grapes not likely to be on the Wine Spectator Who's Who of Grapes: rondinella, molinara, and the leader of the pack, corvina. For you old Steppenwolf fans that is corvina not corina corina. Corvina joins a long list of Italian varieties that makes great wine in only one spot in the world: barbera and nebbiolo in Piemonte, aglianco in Campania, sangiovese in Toscana, montepulciano in Abruzzo and Le Marche, nero d'avola in Sicilia, negroamaro in Puglia, garganega in Soave, ribolla gialla and refosco in Friuli, teroldego in Trentino, and lagrein in Alto Adige to name a few.

So how does that light red wine on sale at the grocery store become the powerful Amarone? It's a complex process. It's hard, time-consuming, and expensive. What does this say? Avoid cheap Amarone.

Like most regions, Valpolicella mostly makes bulk commercial wine. But for a small additional investment there are many wonderful red wines from this region, ranging from excellent light everyday wines to some of the most complex and expensive wines produced.

To make great wines here, first you do the basic things. You use mainly the best vine (corvina), you cut yields, you use old vines for your best selections, you don't pick until the grapes are very ripe (a big gamble), and if you're really dedicated you do something beyond all of these risky choices: after you pick your grapes late you take them and put them on racks for several months to dry. When they dry, water goes and sugar stays. More sugar means more food for the yeasts to eat during fermentation, and more yeast food means more alcohol. It doesn't only mean more alcohol, however. When done with care and proper selection it means more of everything: more fruit, more body, more complexity . . . and that means Amarone. The drying of the grapes is called appassimento and is a process used to improve most of the best red wines of the region.

So the producers take their best grapes and dry them not only to make Amarone, but to create a full range of their best wines. The ultimate expression of the vintners art here are Recioto della Valpolicella and Amarone. In a simplified way they are the same thing, but Recioto is a sweet red and Amarone is dry. Amarone is Recioto della Valpolicella fermented out to dryness. Hence its name from amaro or bitter -- meaning dry. Both Recioto and Amarone are strong cheese wines without rival.

The best producers take portions of the wines and grapes they are drying to make Recioto and Amarone and blend small portions of them into their normal Valpolicella wines to make wines of more character. In one technique the lees (leftovers in the barrels) of Amarone and Recioto are added to the wine to restart fermentation and in another a small percentage of Amarone is added to the Valpolicella blend. The end result is the same: a stronger, more dramatic and complex wine called ripasso. As is so typical these days, the best producers often no longer use this designation and you'll just have to let you palate tell you the truth. When you taste a regular Valpolicella with a dramatic depth and roundness you can be sure that the wine has been super-charged by ripasso to some degree.

So there's a broad range from massively overproduced Valpolicella to ultra-complex concentrated and everything in between. And the only way to tell the difference before you drink is to learn the producers.

There always seem to be cherry trees surrounding the best vineyards in Valpolicella. The growers say the cherry trees add the cherry flavors to their wines. High on the highest hill in the area sits Corte Sant'Alda with the steeply sloping Mithas vineyard below. Although not in the classico zone, owner and winemaker Marinella Camerani has transformed these vineyards into some of the area's best. She has single-mindedly taken this formerly ignored property and, through sheer determination and passion, created some of Veneto's bests wines and an Amarone that has received the highest awards possible. Although all of her wines are excellent her ripasso, Valpolicella Superiore, "Mithas," Corte Sant'Alda, and her Amarone are some of the best examples of the modern style produced in the region. While her wines are not inexpensive they are tremendous values considering the quality. One sip of Corte Sant'Alda and you will realize how hollow commercial Amarone can be. In certain great vintages she also produces a Mithas Amarone. It is not to be missed.

In the heart of the classico zone, Speri has been quietly producing some of the best wines of the region. The Speri Valpolicella Classico Sant'Urbano is as close as you can get to an Amarone without actually being one. This wine is one of the greatest values in the entire region. Speri's exceptional Amarone is produced in a classic style with layered complexity and an unending finish. Speri is incapable of making bad wine, or even mediocre wine.

The peak experience of the region lies in two extraordinary producers -- one old and one middle aged, one exceedingly modern and one exceedingly traditional.

Dal Forno Romano makes wines of exceptional power and concentration. They approach Port in power and exceed it in price.

The other is a quiet gentle old man. You approach the winery that looks not much more than a house. The cherry trees surrounding the house are covered in the early spring smoke of cuttings being burned in the vineyards. You enter the winery through what could be a garage door. Inside these unexceptional surroundings are the extraordinary wines of Giuseppe Quintarelli. The immense fame of the name seems neither to fit the simple surroundings or the gentle old man who greets you with a quiet smile. However there is something about his demeanor that demands your respect and you feel almost humbled in front of him. The wines of Quintarelli have been recognized as the finest of the region for decades. These are the opposite of the Dal Forno wines, not because they're not powerful, but in the sense that they don't hit you over the head with drama. These are wines that demand something from you. As you taste wines with him, Signor Quintarelli watches you to see if you understand. If he feels you understand the wines, he draws from the huge barrels behind him wines that have been resting there for six or more years. You get a small smile when you say arrivederLa. You quietly leave with the feeling that you have somehow grown, just as you do when leaving the presence of a great work of art.

Today, the region has exploded with fine producers and much-improved older ones: Tedeschi, Allegrini, Tenuta Sant'Antonio, Bussola, Bertani, Tommasi, Le Ragose, Le Salette, and Accordini are all making excellent wines. The entire ranges of wines from these producers are worth seeking out. Today, Valpolicella is interesting from top to bottom -- if you stay with the best producers.

I have some really mature gorgonzola waiting for a challenge. Have no fear -- I know just the wine.

Oasi degli Angeli and Kurni

By Craig Camp
Thursday, May 15, 2003

THERE SEEMED to be one less chicken in the yard than there had been in the morning, but my mind was too satisfied to think of much else besides the beautiful afternoon. We had just finished a wonderful lunch at Oasi degli Angeli, an agriturismo and home to Kurni, a wine rapidly becoming the most famous wine in Marche and one of the most collectable wines in Italy.

Eleonora Rossi and Marco Casolanetti are Oasi degli Angeli and Kurni. They are the creators of the wine, food, and sensations that surround this hidden spot in the often ignored Marche region. The Marche is an extremely beautiful region on the Adriatic Sea with Romagna to the north and Abruzzo to the south.

Oasi degli Angeli, located just outside of Cupra Marittima, is an estate that dates back three generations when the great-grandfather of Eleonora created a small farm in the Marche dedicated to the growing of grapes, olives, fruits trees, and vegetables. In the middle of the 1990's Eleonora and Marco, her companion in life and a winemaker, decided to dedicate the farm to the cultivation of wine grapes and to make an agriturismo (a small guest-house in the countryside) out of the family estate. They chose to call their wine Kurni, nickname of the family of Eleonora. Although Kurni has been released only four times, they have already been awarded the prestigious Tre Bicchieri (three glasses), three times by the Gambero Rosso, their top award, and barely missed a fourth in the difficult 1999 vintage. The Gambero Rosso will have to come out with 'four glasses' award to keep up with the exceptional Oasi degli Angeli Kurni as Marco and Eleonora continually strive to improve their creation.

When I asked Marco and Eleonora what they thought the difference was between Oasi degli Angeli and other estates, they enthusiastically and spontaneously answered: "Us!" I agree with them.

Marco and Eleonora bring a unique level of passion and energy to their work and the results of this intensity are clear to see -- and to taste. Eleonora directs her energy to the kitchen and Marco to the winery, but the results of their partnership creates a symbiosis that brings the food, the wine, and the hospitality to peak levels.

The small osteria at Oasi degli Angeli offers the best the estate can grow, all prepared with great care and creativity by Eleonora. This is country food prepared at a very high level with exceptional ingredients. A simple chicken roasted with fresh picked herbs makes you think you have never before tasted chicken. Marco has assembled a wine list that not only offers the best of Marche, but wines from cutting-edge winemakers from all over Italy. The room may be rustic, but the shelves filled with Riedel crystal alert you to the pleasures soon to arrive at your table. Four lovely rooms await those who decide that one meal is not enough.

The Marche has been ignored by generations of wine lovers as a region that only produces a simple white wine, in a fish-shaped bottled, called Verdicchio. Like so many forgotten Italian wine regions, however, the Marche is making a strong comeback, with many small producers emerging to make some excellent wines, both red and white.

Reds are leading the way with fine examples of montepulciano and sangiovese blends being produced in Rosso Conero and Rosso Piceno. In Rosso Piceno, Saladini Pilastri is producing some of the best values in Italy with single vineyard wines, Piediprato and Monteprandone, which are dominated by montepulciano. Sangiovese in Marche can be thin and sharp, but in blends dominated by the powerful montepulciano the tart Marche sangiovese brings a refreshing liveliness. Even in the much-maligned Verdicchio there are producers like Villa Bucci making extraordinary wines.

Kurni is on a whole different level of being. A garage wine in the true sense, the 1.4 hectare vineyard yields a miserly 4,000 bottles in a good vintage. Kurni is produced from 100% montepulciano with the vines averaging over 35 years of age, grown at an altitude of 80 to 100 meters above sea level, with a sun-bathed southern exposure. The soils here are calcareous with clay and sand. Marco has cut yields to brutally low levels and as a result these vines yield grapes with concentrated and powerful flavors unrivaled in Marche or in any other montepulciano.

Then Mad Marco the Winemaker takes over in the winery, making wine in a way that can only be calculated to drive his accountant insane. Marco reduces the yields further by taking a small percentage of his few remaining grapes and makes them in a passito fashion much like they do when making Amarone. The rest of the wine is given a long maceration and fermentation in stainless steel vats (approximately 40 days) at a temperature of about 29 degrees centigrade. After fermentation the wine goes into 100% brand-new 224-liter French-oak barrels for 9 months. Then, just to be sure, after 9 months all the wine is racked into a completely new set of 100% brand-new 224-liter French-oak barrels for another 9 months. That's right, all new barrels -- twice. "It's not for the oak flavors, but for the oxygen," says Marco, referring to the fact that montepulciano needs to be oxygenated well to open up and develop finesse. After another four months of bottle age, Kurni is ready for sale.

Selling the wine is the least of Marco's problems, as Kurni has become the darling of the European wine press and demand far outdistances the 4,000 bottles he lets escape from the vines.

Kurni is a majestic, powerful wine most decidedly in the modern camp of Italian winemaking. It is a dark ruby-purple with a rich bouquet redolent of ripe wild berries, sweet vanilla oak, and the rugged earthiness of montepulciano. It is a mouthful of a wine, but the intense flavors are carried wonderfully by a zesty acidity. Drinking Kurni is both a profound and a hedonistic experience -- just like Marco and Eleonora.

As we walk off our lunch with a stroll through the vineyard, my mind goes back to that missing chicken. I wonder where she went?

Pinot Report?

The Pinot Report

Pinot Noir of the Year

Loring Wine Company

Pinot Noir Santa Rita Hills Cargasacchi Vineyard 2004

“Deep ruby purple color; deep, slightly closed aromas with hints of pepper and cassis; big, bold flavors of black cherry and cassis, deep layers of pepper and spice notes; moderate tannin; smoky oak; great structure and balance; very long finish.” The Pinot Report

The tasting notes above come from The Pinot Report. This Loring Pinot Noir is their selection for the best pinot noir released in 2005. I mean to take no issue with this wine in any regard as I have never tasted it or any other wine from Loring. It may be wonderful. However, the tasting note itself reflects the dangers faced by pinot noir today. Let’s take a look at his comments;

• “Deep ruby purple color”
• “aromas with hints of pepper and cassis”
• “big, bold flavors of black cherry and cassis”

There must be some mistake here as these descriptors certainly can’t describe great pinot noir. Where are the references to the brilliant light garnet color, the elegant and complex bouquet and the haunting delicately long finish. Here we have an opaque purple wine tasting and smelling of cassis. Isn’t that Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon?

The Loring may or may not be a great wine in its own right, but if it tastes anything like The Pinot Noir Report says, great pinot noir its not. If you are going to report on pinot, report on pinot.