Everything you need to know about cheap wine from someone who has made it his life’s work

I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about my friend Jeff Siegel, aka The Wine Curmudgeon. Jeff has decided to write a book about cheap wine. Not bad wine, not inferior wine, but good wine that won't break the bank. Jeff, who also is the co-founder of Drink Local Wine, has devoted the majority of his blog to the topic of cheap wine. He believes (correctly) that wine made from places other than California and wine that costs less than $10 per bottle can be very enjoyable and shouldn't be scoffed at.

Unfortunately, many consumers are intimidated by the overwhelming number of choices at the local liquor store (or those of you not in Colorado, your grocery store). Wine is a product that is meant to be enjoyed by more than just the Chablis and Brie crowd. But there are lots of choices when it comes to wine. Once you get past the funny tasting notes and meaningless scores, wine offers many different pleasures. You can share it with friends and families. You use it to complement meals. You can celebrate or console yourself. Jeff is writing this book to help regular people (the 99% if you will) feel confident about buying and drinking wine. Jeff loves wine and wants to share his passion with others.

But to do so, Jeff needs your help. He has decided to use Kickstarter (a crowd-funding website) to raise funds for the design and publication of the book. I already made a pledge and now it is your turn. I think what Jeff does (and says) is important, and so should you. You've probably seen the recent stories about how 3 large wine corporations control 51% of all American wine production. Most of those companies brands are amongst the cheap wine category. But they're not the only wineries making cheap wine. Jeff's book should provide a much-needed insight into how you can make sure that you'll enjoy and feel good about the cheap wine you buy. Plus, it is always fun to make a self-proclaimed curmudgeon smile just a bit!

VinCO comes into its own in 2013

Last week in Grand Junction, CO the Colorado wine industry gathered for the third annual VinCO conference. The Colorado Association for Viticulture and Enology (CAVE) hosts the three-day event in concurrently with the Western Colorado Horticultural Society’s Annual Convention. VinCO brings together wine producers, winemakers, winery suppliers, industry leaders and expert speakers for a dynamic three-day wine industry forum that offers information, tools and networking opportunities vital to the success of the Colorado wine industry. In just three short years the conference has shown just much the industry has improved.

A different 100-pt system compromise...

Image from http://www.arvi.ch/

Amongst the few of us who write about wine, the 100-pt system is a contentious topic. There are many reasons that people like me don't like it; it projects a false sense of precision, it implies a false notion of objectivity, it removes context from a highly contextual product, and of course there is the issue of score inflation. Oh, sure there are many other problems, but those were the ones I could easily think of off the top of my head.

With the release of the Wine Advocate issue #204 a few weeks ago, the problem of score inflation has come to a head. Mike Steinberger wrote a great piece about it on his WineDiarist blog and Antonio Galloni even chimed in on a heated discussion over on the WineBerserkers forum. To summarize the latest “scandal,” Galloni handed out 95-100 point scores to almost a quarter of the 2010 Napa Valley wines he reviewed. Robert Parker added 17 100-point scores from the Rhône Valley from the 2009-2011 vintages. Just in the past year, Parker has given 100-pt scores to more than 50 wines from Bordeaux, Napa and the Rhône! Perfection (and near perfection) aren’t that hard to come by anymore. Apparently it isn’t obvious to Galloni and Parker that giving too many high scores is going to make high scores meaningless. Like the boy who cried wolf, this duo is quickly turning into the critics who cried classic!

Other articles...

One of the things associated with quality wine blogs is consistently posting new content. One of the best bloggers at doing so is Steve Heimoff. I don't always agree with what Steve writes, but I do give him credit for putting in all the work that goes into his blog. I enjoy being able to go to his website everyday and have the opportunity to share my objects with him. I have to admit I am sometimes jealous of the amount of comments on Steve's blog. Perhaps if I were to post more here I would receive more comments. Or maybe I could just be more controversial...

Nevertheless, I have not been able to write daily posts, though I attempt (unsuccessfully) to at least post weekly. There are many reasons for my inability to post more often (child, new house, job, laziness), but the excuse I most enjoy is that I have been able to write for other publications. I try to post those articles on Facebook and Twitter, but for those of you who do not follow me via social media you may not be aware of these works. To help share these articles with you, I've created a new page called Other Articles that lists (with links) other places that I've written about wine. I will also try to do a better job of posting on the blog when I've written an article elsewhere. Cheers!

Five predictions for 2013

2012 has been an eventful year in the wine industry. There are more licensed American wineries than ever before (almost three times as many wineries as breweries...). California (and Colorado) had a bumper crop of high (not exceptional) quality. The Rudy Kurniawan story made headlines in the non-wine world after he was arrested for producing and selling millions of dollars of fraudulent wine. And in probably the biggest news that wasn't really wasn't that big (see yesterday's post), Robert Parker, Jr. announced that he was stepping down as editor-in-chief of the Wine Advocate, opening a second office in Singapore and sold a share of the ownership to three Asian investors (rumor is they aren't all Asian...). So what will 2013 bring in terms of worthy wine news?

Here are five prognostications:

So I lied... (or at least a change of heart)

Yesterday, I tweeted that I was abstaining from writing a blog post about Robert Parker, Jr.'s announcement regarding the changes taking place at the Wine Advocate. I had a change of heart. This seemingly game-changing news story has been so blown out of proportion that I figured I had to throw my two cents (and common sense) into the bloggers' ring of buffoonery. Yes, the way this announcement was handled could have been improved, but that seems to be Lettie Teague's fault (which comes back to Parker for personally selecting her to write the story). Aside from that, this news isn't really worthy of the massive attention it has received.

Celebrating a safe return

Sparkling wine is all too often reserved only for celebrations. New Year's Eve, promotions, weddings and the birth of a new child are all typical occasions for open a bottle of bubbly. I most certainly believe that sparkling wines should be drunk as often as white and red wines. As regular readers will now, for most of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, I opened a bottle of sparkling wine every week to continue the celebration of the birth of my first child, Benjamin. While each bottle was in a way a celebration of Ben, sparkling wine became a regular part of our routine for one year. This journey allowed my wife and I to explore a style of wine that we often neglected. It was quite eye opening that changed the way my wife and I approached sparkling wine.

One thing that didn't change throughout that year was the fact that sparkling wine is still the go-to wine for commemorating significant events in our lives. So, when my younger brother returned from a nine-month tour in Afghanistan it only made sense to open something sparkling. Any soldier's safe return home is something that should be celebrated, but showing my, and my family's, bias my brother's return is all the more special. My brother and I don't always see eye-to-eye politically and I wasn't a huge advocate of his joining the Army a few years ago. And when he decided to become an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technician, my whole family wondered why he wanted to do perhaps the most dangerous job in all of the Army. For those who don't know what EOD is, watch The Hurt Locker. My brother has been to Iraq and Afghanistan and most likely seen things that most of us only get a Hollywood version of on the big screen. Having him home is a wonderful feeling that only others with family members in the military can fully understand.

Ben saying, "Welcome home!"

After the Captain retired to bed following a long series of flights home, my parents and I went back to my house and opened a bottle of 2005 J Vineyards & Winery Vintage Brut to celebrate his safe return. It didn't matter that the wine offered a wonderful toasty and appley nose. The rich yeasty, fruity palate didn't mean much. The long finish that followed delicious marzipan and butterscotch apple flavors seemed trivial. All that mattered in those moments were that my family, along with a handful of other families, was able to celebrate the safe return of a brave individual who risked his life so that we could enjoy something as insignificant as a wonderful bottle of wine.