tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76851952008-08-28T09:00:11.390-07:00Various ruminations and observations regarding the bizarre and otherwise incomprehensible happenings in the wine industry.St. Vininoreply@blogger.comBlogger542125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-60028442222474169652008-08-22T11:41:00.000-07:002008-08-22T11:52:11.422-07:00

What I find most interesting about this week's Wine Spectator Restaurant Award debacle is not that WS was duped or their very defensive response. No, the most interesting part to me is the outright shadenfraude most people seemed to react with upon hearing the news. Its been known for a while that the WS Restaurant Awards are not only a huge source of revenue for the magazine (4,500 applicants

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-80075968785407787662008-05-19T09:19:00.000-07:002008-05-19T09:25:22.201-07:00

There have been many fine tributes to Bob already, I'll only share a page of quotes from him. There are some gems here: http://www.robertmondaviwinery.com/flash/docs/A-Quotable%20RGM%202008.pdf and share a quote of my own from my Grandmother: "If you can't say anything nice, say nothing" and dedicate it to Julia Flynn Siler who, on learning of Bob's passing, had this touching gem: "The

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-19313946333848269862008-04-18T05:39:00.000-07:002008-04-18T05:43:22.740-07:00

Here we are 102 years after the 1906 San Andreas earthquake which shattered San Francisco. I hear some of you saying..."so what does that have to do with wine?" Plenty! But first- attached are a few stereo-optic photos taken right after the 1906 earthquake: notice how everything is pretty much gone (fires consumed most of the wood the quake spared), how the people are living in the streets,

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-54581621448329216512008-04-08T05:27:00.000-07:002008-04-08T06:08:00.138-07:00

I can't imagine anyone still buying super unleaded these days, much less imagine someone buying 38 gallons of it at the same time.......but here it is: the $159 purchase! Maybe some kid in his new 4x4 thought he'd get a better burn with that higher octane stuff... Sure as hell wasn't me, as the only things I've ever driven with a 40 gal tank are tractors and vineyard trucks. But that leads me

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-48787683433060909032008-04-01T05:35:00.000-07:002008-04-01T05:54:20.304-07:00

And here just a few weeks ago I'd jinxed the season by mentioning that it didn't feel like we were likely to get a frost this season. And then the weather report came out on Saturday night suggesting that we might drop well below freezing on Sunday night... And so we did....the frost alarm here went off just after midnight. Not that it woke me up. Frankly, when I know it's coming I can't really

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-38786626870541735652008-03-21T06:07:00.000-07:002008-03-21T06:11:50.472-07:00

Saturday 3/22/08 is the Septuagesiquintennial (75th) anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition! And I'll bump my post from 2005's anniversary for the occasion: "Don't let this happen to you!" Every year I take a few moments to reflect on where we are now, thanks to all the hard work and sacrifice of those Americans who had to weather the crappy social experiment that was prohibition... After

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-64119297012137846782008-03-20T20:16:00.000-07:002008-03-20T20:39:41.650-07:00

This past weekend was the Savor Sonoma wine tasting event, and after inviting several friends to this barrel tasting event for the umpteenth time, I thought it'd be a good post if I had everybody gather all their impressions at each winery and put it all together. Here's a run-down of what the group found to be the best (& worst) of the weekend.....tasting staff and volunteers were all very

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-77742752593752795262008-03-12T00:13:00.000-07:002008-03-23T08:05:43.669-07:00

Eliot Spitzer, the soon-to-be-EX Governor of New York, provides an excellent reminder of the fallacy of "high price equals quality"... A recent article on MSN provides the story, one which even Freud knew to be true and which still bombards us everyday via marketers who wish to present their product as superior: Charge more for it! (click on the photo for the link) Where he spent $1,500 and

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-10195092422494847332008-03-11T05:39:00.000-07:002008-03-10T06:11:07.805-07:00

Well, I guess now there's no arguing that Spring is here. With daytime temps hitting the mid 70's, and lows in the high 30's, the trees and flowers have started blooming across the countryside. The air is thick with the smell of all the flowers, and even those dormant old vines are starting to look as if they may bust forth from their winter sleep very soon. Insects have reawakened, and have

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-18671751535180012832008-03-06T05:06:00.000-08:002008-03-06T05:46:13.300-08:00

Amazon.com is joining the interstate wine shipping debate...and in a huge way! By looking to ship wine via internet sales, they are joining the ranks of other relatively smaller retailers (e.g., Wine.com) which are already doing this. But while the folks at Amazon aren't divulging their long-term motives, it's easy to extrapolate their move as one to become the largest online wine retailer - and

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-1360638089527099622008-03-01T09:03:00.000-08:002008-03-01T09:49:50.389-08:00

You've got to give credit where & when it's due - and today the winner is....[drumroll...] ...Costplus! This wine series is created by someone else for Costplus, obviously, since they don't have their own winery operation, and custom labeled for the shelves. These shown are all California origin, but who knows, maybe they'll expand it to include foreign wines as well. I'm not sure yet who it is

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-38910272555546829432008-02-29T05:41:00.000-08:002008-02-29T05:48:56.169-08:00

I spent a few well earned weeks on a trip to Italy in the past month. Mostly it was for pleasure, but I did manage to get some wine tours and meetings with vintners into my schedule. Primarily I was in Rome for the wedding of a harvest intern who came over to work with us for two consecutive harvests. Vittorio was extremely talented, and when I got the invite to see him & Annalise get hitched

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-47807680470277518022008-02-25T20:52:00.001-08:002008-03-08T08:48:51.240-08:00

An historic day! The 147th Birthday of Rudolf Steiner! Born Feb 25th, 1861, we can see from the following astrology chart that he was destined for greatness right out of the womb.... Note how the "inter-connected-osity" of his planetary alignment provided a superior complex polygonic network of communication pathways -an über-functionality, if you will- allowing him to commune with Nature and

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-5054958514349944492008-01-01T08:30:00.000-08:002008-01-01T10:56:22.970-08:00

It's a new year, and intelligent people will continue to find differences of opinion between themselves as they have throughout history. In fact, even though we find ourselves another year away from our superstition ridden past, it's not uncommon to find otherwise reasonable people who might still hold onto "quaint, old fashioned" ideas - like astrology actually being accurate, etc. But to find

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-45798276042090240982007-12-21T05:01:00.000-08:002007-12-22T16:48:03.003-08:00

BD (biodynamic) wines are better for you and don’t have any "nasty additives", right? What’s the difference between "BD wine" and "Wine made from BD grapes"? Can someone "spike" his BD wine with common "organic" wine? From the DEMETER website come these delightful documents to help us all understand what they're attempting! First, since I’ve parodied this topic many times before, I feel it

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-52235857271553684402007-12-17T21:05:00.000-08:002007-12-17T22:48:16.327-08:00

It's been a bit since I posted, and for good reason. With the nights being as cold as they have been, it was perfect weather to shut down the vines, and therefore a perfect time to get out and prune all the vines before the start of the wet weather. Having just finished with that -actually I got lucky and finished on Sunday morning, as the rain was just starting- I can now relax (just a little)

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-83086867768332738542007-12-04T20:05:00.000-08:002007-12-04T20:41:28.482-08:00

FLASH !! "Biggest Bottle of Wine ever produced in Australia Exported to USA." New York - Biggest bottle ever to leave the Southern Hemisphere filled with Aussie Shiraz, results in immediate wine shortage on the Australian continent. Aussie producers herald the idea as a new way to use up excess supply of Alice Springs Sparkling Grenache, or other non-market performing blends to help keep the

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-43693113101669629482007-11-23T07:13:00.001-08:002007-11-23T10:08:27.872-08:00

From an article on Decanter.com, we have a theory that new oak barrels are the source of Brett infections in wineries...that "infected wood" has been harvested, and that... “[Consultant winemaker Matt] Thomson believes that the incidence of brettanomyces has increased in recent years. 'I think it's a relatively new thing in many Old and New World regions,' he said, adding that he thinks the

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-35717027616715031432007-11-21T05:23:00.001-08:002007-11-21T05:47:42.866-08:00

This is why I live here... No matter where I've been, I just can't seem to get these images out of my mind, and always get drawn back to Northern California.... And to be fair, there ARE plenty of beautiful places in the states and in the world with plenty of local color, but this place is just the supreme magnet in that sense for me. As always, I'll be giving thanks tomorrow for a wonderful

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-55714013931820350762007-11-13T04:45:00.000-08:002007-11-13T05:22:57.225-08:00

With Beam sold off, acquisitions are now (again) the hot topic of conversation... (In reality, they're always a hot topic, just usually invisible to those outside the industry.) Rumors have persisted for the past few months that higher-end producers in Sonoma and Napa counties are eyeing deals that would have been heresy just a few years ago. Apparently, the high prices paid for Screaming Eagle

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-62117986467643268852007-11-12T06:01:00.000-08:002007-11-12T06:57:18.770-08:00

The past two weeks have seen rather low temps at night, which have slowed my ML fermentations down quite a bit. Harvest is when my energy usage is at its peak, most of it going into cooling during the early part of harvest, which then turns to a need for heating at the end of harvest. A winery’s heating and cooling is generally the lion’s share of the total energy usage of any winery.

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-80583040077808719102007-11-02T06:32:00.000-07:002007-11-02T06:15:31.494-07:00

I know....Halloween is over. But I came across this just today...a report on CNN by AP/IPSOS: Ghost poll finds that 1/3 of the population believes in ghosts... Weird, but that's roughly the same percentage of the respondents in the recent Demeter poll who believed that seeing "biodynamic" on a wine label conferred some higher level of quality than a wine without that branding. The revealing

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-51607913671909924782007-11-01T22:00:00.000-07:002007-11-01T22:26:31.857-07:00

I get quite a few emails...well, OK, I get a few sporadic emails - most of which involve Ministers of Finance of small despotic African governments with large sums of money... But every once in a while I get something pretty cool. Like the following one from Jon, who had an old barrel on hand, a sawsall, and some time.... Ok! That's pretty cool, and I'm gonna bestow the first ever Zinquisition

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-62060668153424899602007-10-24T05:13:00.000-07:002007-10-24T05:46:44.129-07:00

Yes, time yet again for a reminder that Grandma & Granddad didn't have it as easy as we imagine they did. (if you're ever in doubt, re-read the book Rascal by Sterling North, and think about the influenza ridden hospital wards back in the 1910's...) We're light years ahead of where viticulture and winemaking were a century ago, and our technology has brought us better tasting and more stable

St. Vininoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7685195.post-91772671184997594212007-10-23T05:16:00.000-07:002007-10-23T05:58:58.456-07:00

"VIANSA Sells for Double Net Worth"... "Marketing Genius gets Owners Out of Bankruptcy"... "LOOPHOLE Saves Family Winery"... Great headlines, eh? From the local paper? No...just a pipe dream that Jon Sebastiani and his mother Vicki are still envisioning for Viansa as it struggles out of its failed relationship with Global 360. More news from Rich Cartiere's Wine Market Report about Viansa

St. Vininoreply@blogger.com