Harry Oldman on Killing the Geezers that lay the Golden Eggs

Hello, friends, Dr. Harry W. Oldman here! It has been a while since I've come here to put pen to paper - or do these young whippersnappers call it fingering the computer - partly because I wanted to see what the reaction would be when I said to myself I might cease writing. About a year ago, I took a position with a big-name wine producer, but recently left. My non-disclosure agreement only allows me to say good things about them, but I can't identify them by name. Anyway, I'm back because the wine world needs more old white guys to keep it from destroying itself. Without us, I'd be surprised if the wine industry would survive more than a few weeks. Millennials and bloggers - scum of the earth - are intent on destroying what we worked so hard to achieve: delicious wine.

There used to be hedonism in the wine business. I know, because I know some wonderful women winemakers who... well, let's just leave it at me knowing them. I don't want to get in trouble because the FCC won't let me be, or let me be me. So, let me see... well, we don't have hedonism anymore. No, now, because of all those slack-line-walking bloggers, we have another form of prejudice that’s just as pernicious: asceticism.

Read, for example, this piece, from The New York Times Magazine, that refers to "a band of upstart winemakers ... trying to redefine what California wine should taste like." This group of self-proclaimed arbiters of taste wants wine to be minerally and flavorless. They think wine should have no perceivable alcohol! We are basically living a second-coming of the temperance movement.

Okay, let's break this down.

Wine as a food or a lifestyle?

In the New York Times last week, Eric Asimov wrote an article about how little consumers pay attention to what ingredients are actually in wine. This article sparked a 6-page long (and still going) thread on the Wineberskers online forum about ingredient listings on labels and was the catalyst for a multi-day Twitter discussion between Bruce Schoenfeld, Keith Levenberg and myself (there were a few others in there, but those were the principals) about marketing wine as a food. Asimov pointed in his article out that Americans "weigh the nutritional, environmental, humanitarian, aesthetic and even political consequences of what they cook and consume," but do not do the same for wine. He concluded that perhaps if we were to start considering wine as a food that "standards for quality and authenticity" may start playing a part in wine consumers' purchasing decisions. I figured that this post would be much more conducive to laying out my argument than the restrictive nature of Twitter.

I actually disagree with Asimov on two points. First, many, many Americans don't give two seconds worth of thought about any consequences of what they eat. More than one in three Americans is obese; and that number is rising every year. Cheap and easy is easily more important to more people than any nutritional, environmental, humanitarian, aesthetic and even political consequence of food (or food-like product). Why would people care what is in their wine when products like sodas, hot dogs and chips are considered a traditional American meal. How many people look at the ingredient lists of those foods? Those three "foods" aren't even food. Now don't get me wrong, I've consumed all three in the last week, so I definitely live in a glass house. But wine is already confusing enough to the average consumer that they don't want to think about what's in their bottle of chardonnay.

On top of that, and as Asimov started his article, wine is still considered to be "natural" product. I don't have the numbers to back me up, but I'd be willing to bet that most people think only grapes are used to make wine. Just as when you buy an apple or orange juice, you probably assume that's all you're getting. I think people actually consider wine a food. People might like chardonnay more than merlot just like they like Golden Delicious more than MacIntosh. Perhaps wine is not thought as a natural accompaniment to the nightly dinner table (well, Europeans might, but not most Americans), but neither are apples. Consumers also think of wine as a glamorous lifestyle choice. But can wine be both?

When I saw Bruce Schoenfeld (who I often agree with, but love to argue with) tweet, "promoting wine as a lifestyle adjunct comes at the expense of promoting it as a staple food ... Not saying one or the other is better, but they're kind of mutually exclusive," I had to jump into the discussion. Bruce (for some reason I just can refer to him as Schoenfeld) was hitting on the point in Asimov's article that treating wine as a food would cause more consumers to care about the ingredients that go into making a bottle of wine (not all remain in the finished wine). Asimov and Bruce both are correct in there assessment that in America wine is most often marketed as an aspirational product and not generic food. "Drink my wine because it'll make you fun or make you more alluring," is the premise of most wine ads. There is the occasional, "drinking my wine will make you feel like you're at this beautiful, pastoral place when you're just on your couch." But by and large there is no "Got Wine?" campaign in the United States. There is no push to make a place for wine on your dinner table.

That's not to say there couldn't be. And that happens to be my main point in my argument with Bruce. He can think what he wants, and I'd love to shake the hand of a person that has actually changed Bruce's mind. Commodity and luxury are not mutually or intrinsically exclusive of each other. Why do people buy those asinine 2002 Chevrolet Earnhardt Signature Monte Carlos? The car itself serves the same purpose of a regular Monte Carlo, but offers the aspiration to be like a NASCAR driver (yay, I know how to make left turns...). Same could be said about designer jeans or lots of other products. Even foods like bison, heirloom tomatoes and farm-fresh eggs could be considered luxury staple foods. Marketing wine as a generic foodstuff and a glamorous aspirational good can and does happen.

Does it happen often in the U.S.? Nope. But travel to Europe. In Spain, ask for a glass of tinto at a bar and you'll be brought a glass of red wine and a tapa. The bartender most likely will not tell you anything about the wine. The wine's brand is a mystery, yet the brand exists. And I'm sure the winery that made that wine has several other wines that they market as a premium wine. Wine is both a staple food and an aspirational good in Europe. I've only spent an evening in France (and I ate pizza...) and never been to Italy, but I've heard anecdotes about house wine there too being just a generic wine.

Some restaurants in the U.S. also have brand-less house wines, but wine is definitely on fewer tables. My in-laws drink lots of house wine. They don't care what brand it is, they just order a glass of white wine at a restaurant. The fact that many fewer tables are graced by wine is not from wine being inherently incompatible as a lifestyle good and a staple food, but more from America's puritanical history. European history is steeped in wine. American history is not. In fact, it was outlawed for more than 13 years less than a century ago. Nudity and sex are also taboo in the U.S. (though slowly becoming less so) whereas in Europe or Asia the naked body or a sexual act is not something mutually exclusive from decency. Our culture is the reason wine is not usually considered a nightly dinner accompaniment. Marketers in the U.S. know this and have used the wine as a lifestyle campaign to their advantage. But that's not to say wine couldn't be marketed as a food. Wineries would just be barking up a tall tree if they were to attempt that approach.

Though someday the wine as a food campaign may not be so difficult in America. Take the Drink Local Wine movement. All 50 states now have wineries. Today, America wine isn't as much as a special product from the mystical land of California, but something that is much more approachable. Much of the argument for local wine supporters is that wine can be every bit as local as local cheese or local vegetables. Local wine should be considered (considered, not mandatory) when thinking about eating locally. The locapour crowd is much more wine as a food oriented than people that only want to drink top Napa or Bordeaux wineries. Yet, the locavore movement is also about aspiring to a certain lifestyle. And so the circle continues...

The true wine dichotomy

In his recent New York Times column, and subsequent blog post, Eric Asimov boiled the choices for describing wine down to two words: sweet and savory. Asimov declares that many tasting notes "only succeed in making wines incomprehensible" and suggests using one of those two words to describe all wines. While he is being overly simplistic in his descriptive efficiency, he is also has the dichotomy wrong. If wine descriptions are to be reduced to two choices, a better dichotomy for the consumer is whether the wine is worthy of buying or not.

As people experience sweetness and savoriness in different ways, and if two broad categories are able to "explain more about the essence of any bottle than the most florid, detailed analogies ever could," what better categories are there than saying a wine is worth your hard earned money? After all, that really is the reason for all the descriptive words, badges and scores thrown around by every critic, writer, journalist, blogger and wine guru these days.

Many consumers have a mental rubric into which they input all those data just to compute the binary purchase decision (to buy or not to buy?). Why don't all tasting notes tell consumers whether they should buy a wine or not? The answer may or may not surprise you. It is because wine is a complex and dynamic product. I don't mean so complex that consumers can't understand it, but complex in the sense that tastes, preferences and circumstances are varied and change over time. They change as both a person's palate and wine's characteristics evolve. If wine description is stripped to its simplest elements as Asimov attempts to do, then the discourse and individual choice that it evokes will be lost.

Wild Wine Lists

In this week's New York Times, Kevin Sack discussed the emerging trend in restaurants of using touch-screen electronic devices, such as the iPad, to deliver their wine lists instead of the traditional book, binder, or sheet of paper. However, this isn't a new idea; Aureole in Las Vegas began using wine tablets in 2003 to navigate the near 10,000-bottle wine list housed in its four-story glass wine tower. While I have not yet lay my hands on an iPad, Aureole's tablet was easy to use for quickly identifying specific wines that meet your requirements (i.e., price, region, vintage). While not a crutch for a poorly designed wine list, such technology can make perusing a wine list even more fun.

So, I pose this question: what is the most interesting and inspirational wine list (technologically enhanced or not) from which you have had the pleasure of ordering?

Summer of Colorado?

In today's NY Times, Frank Bruni wrote about sommelier Paul Grieco's interesting wine proposition for this summer: The Summer of Riesling. In short, Paul decided that he would change the wine menu at Terroir, in NYC, to only include Rieslings in the wine by the glass selections. If you want a Chardonnay: buy a bottle. If you want a Merlot: buy a bottle. Paul's goal with this endeavor is to educate the public about the differences and nuances of the noble Riesling. Many people believe that all Riesling is sweet uncomplicated wine. While Riesling is responsible for much lackluster sweet fermented juice, it is also responsible for some of the world's most highly prized and expensive sweet wines. Surprisingly to some, but not all, Riesling can also be a esoteric dry wine. The sugar, acidity, and aromatics of Riesling allow this single grape variety to be made into a plethora of styles! Germany, France, New York, and even Colorado produce wines along this spectrum that are sure to find a place within your palate; so give a Riesling a try.

Back to the original impetus for this post! Paul Grieco was bold enough to force patrons at his restaurant to buy only a particular wine by the glass. So many restaurants and retail stores do the exact opposite. They buy the brands that the distributors want them to buy and then turn around and sell these, often, dull wines to the public. In the wine industry, it is often said that regional (in the US this means wines NOT from California, Oregon, Washington and those on the east coast, New York) wines are difficult to sell because either the quality is low or the public has no demand for wines from terra igncognita. However, examples can be found all across this country that shoot holes in this argument. Just last week, I was dining with Jeff Siegel, aka The Wine Curmudgeon, at Jonesy's Eatbar in Denver and we discussed the idea of "locavore" restaurants not serving local wines. As both Jeff and I have posted, Jonesy's serves, almost exclusively, Colorado microbrews. While Colorado Wines are not a majority on the wine list, they are present in more than just token numbers.

What if a restaurant put Paul Grieco's and Jonesy's ideas together and took it a step further? Could a restaurant flourish by only serving Colorado Wines on its wine list? Could a happy middle be reached with only CO wines available by the glass? Would patrons stop dining if they couldn't find their favorite bottle of Clos du Bois hiding amongst a bunch of Argentinian, Australian and Spanish wines that are nothing but international? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy wines from all over the world (Spanish wines would have to be at or near the top of my list). Are local wines hard to sell because restaurants and retailers don't actually TRY to sell them? I think that if a restaurant that prides itself on using as many local ingredients and foods as possible took the initiative to devote itself to this idea it would work, and work well, with CO wines. Afterall, wine is and should be thought of as a food.