Dr. Harry Oldman on Andy Warhol Wines

Dr. Harry Oldman recently got back into town after spending the past few weeks in Florida to help knock on doors before the March 15 primary. He tells me he had a successful time and drank some fantastic wine, but something has been bothering him. He just had to get this off his chest.

Dr. Oldman won't shut up about the Wine Bloggers Conference

Forgive me. I tried to talk him out of it, but he was insistent on chiming in again on the Wine Bloggers Conference.

Oh boy did I miss out by not attending the Wine Bloggers Conference this year. I saw a few bloggers complain about one of the sessions that was dubbed the, "grand-fatherly white male traditional print writer" session. That sounds like the perfect seminar to me, so I investigated a little more. Turns out that there was a second session dedicated to other older white male experts! Hot diggity! I was totally off in my initial assessment. Earlier this week, I watched a Youtube video of another seminar at the Wine Blogger's Conference titled, "How the Pros Taste." Oh, this gem could have been simply titled, "How to be Professional." I expect well-organized workshops at the Frontiers of Computational Physics Conference (which by the way is in Zurich next June if you're interested), but not at a conference devoted to the lowly art of blogging.

Dr. Harry Oldman on the Wine Bloggers Conference

With the 2014 Wine Bloggers Conference wrapping up over the weekend, I heard from Dr. Harry Oldman, my extern. I was actually looking forward to attending this year, but my wife was in Panama for a conference and I had to stay home with Ben. Having never attended a WBC, I don't have a whole lot to say about the event, but Dr. Oldman was insistent on chiming in. I know I shouldn't give the crotchety old guy the attention he wants, but I suppose everyone is entitled to their opinions.

So, apparently the Wine Bloggers Conference was held this past weekend in Santa Barbara County. I don't consider myself a blogger (more of a human chameleon that can become a master at whatever I choose), so the big event wasn't on my calendar. You know how I found out about the conference? I saw it all over the news. ABC, CNN, FOX and NBC all picked up on the story. It was all Bill O'Reilly and Brian Williams were talking about over the weekend. Even Wine Spectator published a special issue on the conference that arrived this morning.

Off to Premiere Napa Valley 2014

I'm headed to the 18th annual Premiere Napa Valley barrel tasting and auction today. Premiere Napa Valley offers some of the world's rarest wines, with wine winemakers pushing the limits of their creativity, offering one-of-a-kind limited lots. With a maximum of 240 bottles, and more often only 60 bottles per lot, the wines offered at Premiere Napa Valley are truly unique pieces of art. Vintners, members of the trade, and media are invited every February to taste the barrels of these special wines as a preview of the coming vintage release and to raise money for the Napa Valley Vintners trade association. The lots are purchased by retailers and restaurants and then occasionally made available to their customers.

The barrel tasting tomorrow morning will be somewhat of a preview to the 2012 vintage of Napa cabernet sauvignon. There will be the token chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and sparkling wine offerings, as well as a handful of Bordeaux blends showcasing cabernet franc, malbec, merlot and petit verdot, but the vast majority of donated wines will be varietal cabernet sauvignon. After a series of cool vintages (with 2011 being the wettest and coldest) the 2012 vintage has been proclaimed to be an excellent growing season. Fruit quality was high. Along with yield. From what I've heard from winemakers is that 2013 gets a slight nod to 2012, but I'm eager to see what the tastings today and tomorrow reveal and to see how much bidders are willing to spend on high-end Napa Valley wine.

When I get to California in a few hours (it's 5 am here at gate B37 in Denver), I'll make the drive up to Napa and weave my way throughout the valley visiting various appellation preview tastings and a few private parties. At these events, PNV lots will be previewed and other wineries not part of the auction will be pouring their latest released and maybe even a few library wines. While the introduction to vintage, and they opportunity to taste wines I can only dream of affording, are important parts of why I attend PNV, I am really looking forward to seeing friends and acquaintances in the industry. Colorado is kind of like an island in the American wine world. Most wineries and wine writers are found on the coasts. So at big industry gatherings like this it is fun to see familiar faces and meet new people. I of course am eager to taste a few key wines, but the informal and social dinner tonight with a few "New California" winemaking and wine-writing friends might be my most anticipated stop. I even brought a bottle if Colorado petit verdot to share!

Oh, I almost forgot that I told Paul Mabray that I'd try to get a selfie of Steve Heimoff and me. I saw Steve last year in passing, but didn't have the opportunity to introduce myself. I am hopeful I can meet Steve this year and fulfill my promise to Paul.

Ok, time to get some sleep in the flight and I'll report back next week (I'm sure I'll be tweeting throughout the weekend)!

Dr. Harry Oldman: Damn right all these teetotalers should get out of my vineyard!

I really didn't want to weigh in on the recent Robert Parker rant, and I won't, but my extern, Harry Oldman, insisted that I publish what he has to say. Please, I'm just the messenger, so don't shoot me!

I can't sit idle any more and watch an idol be dragged through the mud. When I read Robert M. Parker, Jr.'s "Article of Merit," I stood up an applauded. I said, "Well, Parker's the best critic in the game! When you try him with a sorry wine like crappy trebbiano, that's the result you gonna get! Don't you ever talk about him! Crappy trebbiano! Don't anyone open their mouth about the best, or Bob's gonna shut it for you real quick! Legion of Boom!" Granted, I was alone in my living room drinking a delicious 2007 Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but it's the thought that counts. My balls are big enough, and sag low enough, that I am not afraid to stand by my man!

Marketing myopia in the wine world

This morning, my good pal Steve Heimoff published a blog post about how wineries can get famous. He raised some interesting points about the changes that have taken place in mass communication between the present and 1994 when the movie Disclosure "made Pahlmeyer a star." Obviously, he discussed the rise of social media, but concluded that a critic's score was the "best way to get huge notice by the public."

Dr. Harry Oldman has a Surprise Holiday Interview...

Dr. Harry Oldman generously unwraps a spectacular interview for us on this Boxing Day.

Kyle, as an old white man with a beard, I felt that it was only appropriate that I give you and your readers a present this year, but I couldn't quite figure out what would be a good gift. Then it dawned on me! I'm friends with a moderately notorious wine critic and we talk fairly often about wine and life in general. He was kind enough to answer the kind of tough questions no one has ever had the balls to ask him. I felt like Katie Couric! He didn't know that I was going to publish the interview, and I don’t want to name names because I don’t have his permission, so I'll just refer to him as SHhh (as in I'll never tell!). You can guess, but I'll never reveal my source!

HARRY: Hey, buddy! Thanks for agreeing to answer some questions. I know how much you hate answering questions, so this really means a lot to me!

SHhh: No problem, anything for you Harry. I actually love to answer questions, almost as much as asking questions! I write for the consumer, first, foremost and always. So when my readers engage with me, I make it a point to always respond. I learn so much from my readers! Blogs and bulletin boards are supposed to be back-and-forths, right? I mean, we live in this new age of participatory journalism. It is not uncommon for me to comment on other blogs, too!

Guest post from my extern

I've turned this post over to my friend and psuedo-mentor, Harry Oldman.

Dr. Oldman has been in the wine business for decades. He used to be a computational physicist at a national laboratory in New Mexico, involved in computational fluid dynamics of wine. But after getting sidetracked on a trip to California by Randall Grahm, he has never been the same.

He shares his thoughts and opinions on wine and wine writing on various online wine boards, but I of course don't listen to what he has to say (you know, with me being a Millennial and all).

Since 1WineDude and The Hosemaster of Wine^TM have occasionally handed their blogs over to their interns, I figured I’d open my blog to this extern. Plus, this will allow me to put in extra hours on social media and get my beauty rest all at the same time.

So, with out any further ado, here is Dr. Oldman:

Using social media to get laid.... or something like that!

People who use social media to make sales are like people who go to bars to get laid. It's a crude picture, but you probably aren't going to have a great experience. You may, but basically in both cases actually starting a relationship is what it's about. What social media is about is starting relationships, long-term ideally, with consumers who are actually going to listen to you and you're going to listen to them. - Robert Joseph during "The role of social media and traditional communication" at Savour Australia 2013.

Did any wine writer actually read the PNAS TCA article?

So, the buzz in the wine writing world the past few days has been the "surprising new research" that suggested 2, 4, 6-trichloroanisole (TCA) doesn't actually smell like anything, let alone musty. The authors of the acclaimed study suggested that their data show TCA actually suppresses odors. Is that really new news? If you actually read the article (I conducted the arduous Google search for you...), you might come to a different conclusion than some of the people writing about the article.

I can't be the only person that knows low levels of TCA will kill a wine’s aroma and flavor. In fact, I know I'm not as Ray Isle wrote the last eleven words of the previous sentence over four years ago in Food & Wine. Yet, over the last couple days, Steve Heimoff, Wine Spectator and Decanter all wrote about the research seemingly without actually reading the paper.

If you read the article with a critical eye (I know, that's a pain to do sometimes...) you will see two things that should make you question all the lazy pundits. First, the study was conducted on newts (Cynops pyrrhogaster), not humans (Homo sapiens). They clearly stated, "functional olfactory receptor genes is different between amphibians and mammals, so we cannot rule out the expression of receptors with very high TCA sensitivity in humans." Hmmm. That changes the conclusion a bit. Human olfactory receptors could interact with TCA differently than those of newts! Additionally, the authors stated that, "we cannot assume that we surveyed all possible olfactory receptors in the newt." Might there be other olfactory receptors that transduct musty odors? Humans have around 400 functional genes coding for olfactory receptors. The picture just got a bit more complicated...

[note: the following paragraph was re-added after my original post was published to better reflect the full content of the PNAS study]

The authors did in fact conduct an experiment on on human perception of TCA (and TBA) in wine. They investigated the concentration levels at which "the reduction of original odor and the extrinsic musty smell from TCA were discriminated." So, in fact, the authors were able to show that humans do sense musty odors in wine caused by TCA and TBA. The levels varied person to person and the musty odor was recognizable in red wine at a lower concentration than white wine. So why the media blitz about an article that basically supports what we all knew about TCA? I know PNAS isn't hoping to increase its advertising levels! [end revision]

I don't have any answers to the question of why olfactory receptor cells removed from a decapitated newt did not trigger a musty odor, but I think the idea that this research is somehow earth-shattering is a bit hyperbolic. It is interesting to know how TCA (and don't forget the often neglected 2,4,6-tribromoanisole, or TBA) interacts with neurons, but to borrow something I saw in a tweet from my chemical engineering buddy Tom Mansell: 

Maybe Steve Heimoff was right (I might have lost my mind...)

After giving it a week of thought, I'm going to argue something with which, on the surface, I adamantly disagree. Last week, my digital buddy, Steve Heimoff, wrote a blog post titled, "Saying Goodbye to the Golden Age of Wine Writing." His thesis was that with the rise of the "Age of Digital Information" (i.e., wine blogs) wine writers are finding it more and more difficult to earn a living writing about wine. He claims that the world of wine writing is no longer the utopia it was when he got into this profession and made a name for himself (I'd argue he actually has made his name via his blog and not as the California Editor for Wine Enthusiast Magazine). David White penned a great response to Steve's assertions and claimed that things are actually getting better in the world of wine writing. I wholeheartedly agree with David, but I want to take a deeper look into Steve's post.

Is the 100-pt system more confusing than helpful?

Proponents of the 100-pt system for often claim that the main advantage of the system is that it provides consumers with a clear, concise and relative measure of a wine's intrinsic quality. The problem with that statement is that a wine's intrinsic quality is completely subjective. Every person is born with a unique palate and a distinct set of experiences from which to conjure aroma and flavor comparisons from memory (how else does one know what an "intense sensation of ... gunflint" tastes like? Those experiences also make relative scoring inherently flawed. Do you enjoy green tobacco or do you find it off-putting? Acidity, oh don't start a debate about acidity amongst wine writers! Sure, one person's opinion is easily defensible, but when two (or more) prominent wine publications diverge dramatically on their assessment of a wine (more often than you would expect), the result for consumers could be more confusing than helpful.

Congratulations, not condescension are in order...

I'll go ahead and say it. Congratulations, Charles Shaw Winery on your three gold medals at the Orange County Fair Wine Competition. I commend the judges for not being influenced by the label and I commend the winery for (mass) producing a drinkable $2.49 wine.  I don't see why so many people in the twitterverse and blogosphere have decided that this is the worst thing since socks with sandals. But if you do wear socks with sandals, please stop!

Sure, wine competitions aren't the best arbiter of wine quality, but neither are Robert Parker, James Laube or Steve Whatshisname. I've had 100-pt Parker wines that tasted like dilly dishwater. I've had wines from Iowa that were pretty damn good. All competitions do is give feedback to a select set of wineries about how their wine fared against a few other wines on a given day as decreed by people that think they know a lot about wine, but don't know as much as they think they do. Yes, I count myself as a member of the illustrious club.

I think a lot of the angst has do do with the obnoxious "triple gold" headlines. It is a bit misleading. All that happened was three Charles Shaw wines earned gold medals. None were chosen as Best in Category or even 4-star gold medals (whatever the hell that means). 70% of the wines entered in this competition received a medal (1765/2521). Only 15.8% of the entries earned gold or better. Not bad for a sub $3 bottle of wine. But no wine competition is as influential as the major publications, and few consumers know what competition medals mean (if they mean anything at all). So lay off the criticism, people.

Now I won't make any claims to the quality of any Two Buck Chuck (as Charles Shaw is affectionately called). The last time I tried one, probably 4 years ago, it didn't impress me, but it wasn't the "beyond dreadful" or the "watery, alcoholic null set" that two respectable personalities claimed on Twitter. If I remember correctly, the glass I had was simplistic and uninteresting, but varietally correct and not flawed. I wonder when the last time any of the naysayers on the Internet actually tasted a bottle of Charles Shaw.

What should be praised, but is overlooked is the fact that this blind tasting showed that a wine can be judged by what's in bottle and not what's on the label. Preconceived notions should not influence what a judge thinks about a wine. Too often in the world of wine criticism, writers judge a wine by the label and not the wine. None of the judges that reviewed these wines knew what they were tasting. It's not like they lined up the wines themselves, put them in bags, moved them around their desk and magically forgot the identities of the bottles. Had the judges known they were tasting Two Buck Chuck, I'd bet gold medals would not have been awarded. But that is the beauty if blind tasting. A $3 wine can stand on equal footing with a $30 wine.

So, I say lets celebrate the idea of a quality cheap wine. It's not like Charles Shaw is going to raise its prices to $850 a bottle because of these accolades. This competition isn't the most important source of consumer information and in fact is open only to "wine produced from grapes grown in California and commercially available for sale in Orange County." Charles Shaw will still be loved by its fans and loathed by most wine snobs...

An antagonistic approach (a reputation you get when you question authority)

This weekend, a colleague of mine introduced me to a friend of his at the third annual Colorado Urban Winefest. Part of his introduction include a reference to my wine writing. He referred to me as an "antagonistic blogger." Both of those terms are used pejoratively in the world of wine writing. Now I have no problem being called a blogger. I write about wine on this blog. I have also contributed to Palate Press, Sommelier Journal, Wine Spectator and Decanter. So I am a wine blogger, and I also consider myself a wine writer.

A Good Wine Seldom Mentioned Is Soon Forgotten

As I begin to read Doug Shafer's A Vineyard in Napa, a motto he attributes to his father, John, and founder of the renowned Shafer Vineyards made me think of the current debate about the state of wine criticism. "A good wine seldom mentioned is soon forgotten." To me, this maxim speaks volumes to me about how both we as writers/critics and consumers talk about wine.

Quick note on Premiere Napa Valley

The weather in Napa last week was almost perfect and the results from the 17th annual Premiere Napa Valley wine auction fell just shy of last year's record. Sixty seven bidders spent almost three hours purchasing 211 different lots of wine for a total of $3.04 million. The most expensive lot was a 120-bottle lot collaboration from Bevan Cellars and Chateau Boswell Winery that brought in $75,000. Shafer Vineyards' 2011 Sunspot Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon was the highest per bottle price with just 60 bottles selling for $50,000.

My trip was jammed packed with tastings. Friday started with a blind Vintage Perspective Tasting of 2008, 2009, and 2010 cabernets (I skipped the chardonnay portion). My quick takeaway from that tasting was that 2008 is in a good place right now. Almost across the board, 2008 yielded fantastic wines. Wines from the 2009 vintage were a bit lighter and more floral, but with rougher tannins and shorter finishes than 2008. The 2010 wines were spotty, with many showing green aromas and flavors. I had private appointments with Lou Kapcsándy and Stephane Derenoncourt as well as attended preview receptions at Ovid (Pritchard Hill Wineries), Shafer Vineyards, Far Niente (Oakville Winegrowers Association), Silverado Vineyards (Family Owned Wineries) and Corison Winery. Friday finally ended with a Vegas meets Disney World meets Napa party at Raymond Vineyards, palate fatigue and a black mouth.

Saturday was the main event. The barrel tasting portion of the auction showcased lots mostly from the 2011 vintage. I found the vintage to be quite varied in quality. Many of the Premiere wines were under ripe, some were overly massive, but just a few were really spectacular. Granted, the wines were not finished products, but with wines that will retail for $100 to $1,000 per bottle I wanted to be wowed at every turn and I was not. My favorites wines of the week included BRAND PNV Lot 162, Continuum PNV Lot 199, Corison PNV Lot 118, Derenoncourt 2009 Red Hills Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Inherit the Sheep 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, Kapcsándy PNV Lot167, O'Shaughnessy PNV Lot 116, Oakville East Exposure PNV Lot 148 and Revana PNV Lot 92. I also enjoyed meeting Alder Yarrow, Roy Piper, Doug Wilder and Adam Lechmere for the first time.

On another, and hopefully a final note on this subject, I was congratulated by more than a handful of writers, winery owners and other industry members for my post from two weeks ago. I had no idea that so many people would would actually care (and support me) that I called out Steve Heimoff for censoring his website. I was hoping to meet Steve, but the opportunity never appeared. It is too bad more of those people don't feel comfortable speaking out publicly, but I guess that is the problem with such an insular industry.

Steve Heimoff doesn't like me...

Last week, Steve Heimoff wrote a book review of two new books. In the review, he accused Jancis Robinson and Linda Murphy of receiving money for placing labels in their soon-to-be-released American Wine. He also gets in a bit of name-calling as he says Robinson's name is "over-exposed," but that is not my fight to fight. Though I do not agree with is opinion of the content of the book, he is more than welcome to it. However, Heimoff seems content to only make mention the California regions he surrounds himself with, and I have to wonder (I’m just raising the question, not making any allegations) if Heimoff actually read the whole book. It is pretty sleezy to review a book without actually reading it.

Of wine writers and idiots

A few days ago, I read something that both puzzled and impressed me. Steve Heimoff wrote a rambling article about the Alma Wine Academy and orange wines. What caught my attention was that Steve professed his ignorance of this rather unusual, and small category of wines. Orange wines actually have a long history, but they have seen an increased awareness in the media (and not just no-name bloggers like me but big hitters like Ray Isle and Eric Asimov) for more than a few years. Sure, these skin-macerated white wines, often aged in clay amphora, are not the next-big-thing in the wine world that even my mother knows about, but they're not a new, unknown phenomenon.

I figured, and so did a lot of other readers, that a "fairly well-known, a big fish" like Steve would be in the know. However, I was even more impressed that Steve was willing to share his ignorance with his readers. It is not too often that the biggest names in the wine writing world admit that they don't know something. It takes a lot of confidence to undermine one's expertise. If only more critics would admit when they get something wrong or don't know something, we'd all trust them a bit more. Well done, Steve.

What real wine consumers think about alcohol in wine

Steve Heimoff gets off his rocker and takes a stroll around the crazy ward quite often over on his blog, especially when he is trying to drive traffic. Of his usual group of controversial topics, alcohol in wine is one that tends to get the 50 people in the U.S. that comment on wine blogs riled up. Alcohol is the second biggest component in a bottle of wine and relatively small changes (roughly +/- 10%) in its concentration seem to cause a large debate in the wine community. There is a large group of wine aficionados that scoff at wines that exceed 14% alcohol by volume (abv). This group claims that too much alcohol causes a wine to be unbalanced and "hot" (not Paris Hilton "hot"). On the other hand, many California-centric wine cognoscenti tend to not care if a wine exceeds 15% or even 16% abv. These high-alcohol wines tend to be low in acid but full of fruit flavors. Those with this purely hedonistic point of view, led by über-critic Robert Parker, tend to refer to members of the low-alcohol party as Anti-Flavor Wine Elites.

Steve was mostly correct in his assertion two weeks ago about the "anti-high alcohol revolution," or lack thereof, and I commend him for that. He claimed that "there is no trend against high alcohol in California." He may be technically correct, but he failed to acknowledge that there are more than a handful of winemakers in California that are intentionally making wine with lower levels of alcohol than they had been. However, California is known for its big, bold and fruity wines and that is not going to change because a small minority of wine consumers don't like those types of wines. There is a reason California wine is so popular.

This whole idea of a low-alcohol winemaking revolution is an interesting conversation piece amongst wine writers and the most devoted wine enthusiasts as we love to quibble over the minutia of pH, total acidity, residual sugar, rootstock and percent new oak. However, most of the wine buying public don't give two hoots about any of those details. The real question we should be asking is, do regular wine consumers think about alcohol levels in wine?

Oh yeah, I have a blog... (and notes on the NextGen Wine Competition)

Wow, it has been quite a while since I've written a blog post! The few weeks have been busy, but mostly I've been lazy. I've got a lot to catch up on though! I was in California judging at a competition and made a few winery visits during my free time. I got back to Denver just in time for the Colorado Urban Winefest. And to top it off, I had a couple of great dinners with some impressive wines with friends and acquaintances the past few days.

I'll get to those stories in due time, but this post is about the NextGen Wine Competition. For the second year, I was invited by Vineyard and Winery Management (VWM) to judge at the NextGen Wine Competition. The competition was designed specifically with younger (and increasingly more important) wine consumers in mind, and was judged by qualified and knowledgeable wine industry millennials aged 21-35. Most of the judges were from California, but there were a handful from the likes of Colorado, Wisconsin and Illinois. One of the things that Rob Merletti, CEO/Publisher of VWM, mentioned in his speech at the judges' dinner was that he wanted to use the NextGen (and the other 5 competitions VWM owns) as a way to introduce the rest of the wine industry to the grapes and wines of the other 47 states not named California, Oregon and Washington. Being from the east coast, Rob explained that he was introduced to wine via the likes of Chambourcin, Norton and Baco Noir and he hopes that many of America's new wine consumers will discover wine via a similar path of non-traditional varieties from their local wine regions. I was pleasantly surprised that a few of the Cali judges knew what traminette was, but still too many were not aware of how brianna, muscadine and cayuga should be judged. Nevertheless, I applaud Rob and VWM for being so progressive with their vision of the future of the American wine industry. Oh, and vidal blanc made it to the sweepstakes tasting!