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By Uncorked
| Friday, May 16, 2008, 03:46 PM
Robert Mondavi died this morning at the age of 94, according to this story from the Napa Register.
Mondavi’s name was virtually synonymous with California wine, and his contributions to the development of winemaking in this country are incalculable.
Click here for the San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage and here for Wine Spectator’s coverage of Mr. Modavi’s passing.
Do you have any personal memories of Mondavi or his wines? Please post a comment and share them with Uncorked readers.
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By Uncorked
| Friday, May 16, 2008, 07:44 AM
Most of you Dayton-area readers of Uncorked already know all of traditional reasons that the Fleurs de Fete has evolved over 17 years into this region’s premier wine-and-food event: the 400-plus wines, the food samples from 25 area restaurants, the great outdoor venue at Carillon Historical Park, the music, the highly entertaining live and silent auctions, and the, um … unparalleled people-watching.
Now, here’s another reason why this event continues to have such a good vibe: all of the attendees are on equal (if sometimes soggy) footing. No special VIP tastings, tents or events. Organizers of the Fleurs de Fete — unlike their colleagues who oversee the Cincinnati International Wine Festival — have resisted the temptation to make a few quick & easy bucks by setting up events that would allow a privileged few to separate themselves from the unwashed. (The Cincy winefest earlier this year offered a “Special Tasting Room” where festival-goers could, as the festival’s web site put it, “Enjoy High End wines for one hour prior to the Grand Tastings” for an “additional charge of $35 for 7 tastes.” As if the grand tastings didn’t offer enough wines?)
Why is that important? Because wine already has a reputation for snobbery and elitism that discourages people from learning about and enjoying this natural, potentially healthful mealtime beverage. The VIP events for high-rollers only just cement that reputation for snobbery and elitism. Wine doesn’t need it, and festival organizers shouldn’t promote it, even if it costs them some short-term gain.
I brought this up with Lynda Weide, vice president of corporate and community wellness for the Wellness Connection of the Dayton Region, the organization that promotes early detection and treatment of heart disease and cancer and which benefits from the Fleurs de Fete. Weide acknowledged that the idea of holding such separate VIP events “has been brought up” — but rejected.
“The philosophy of this event since its inception was to make it approachable to all people who wanted to learn about and explore wine,” Weide said. “We didn’t want it to be an event of privilege or make any part of it exclusive.”
I’ll drink to that.
Now it could be argued, I suppose, that the $60 price tag keeps out plenty of folks who want to learn more about wine, and while that may be true, just compare the Fleurs de Fete to other cities’ charitable wine events — many of which start at $100 before all the VIP stuff — and for all of the incredible food and great wines available at the Fleurs, our event comes off looking like a bargain. And Weide points out that the wine distributors and restaurants at the Fleurs de Fete are donating everything consumed at the event.
Oh, and one other reason to attend this year: at 1:30 p.m., half an hour into the event, there will be a tribute toast to Doug Simon.
The Fleurs de Fete will be held this Sunday, May 18, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Carillon. Advance tickets, which cost $60, are available at local wine shops through the end of the day Saturday. Or buy ‘em at the door for $65.
See you there.
Mark Fisher
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By Uncorked
| Friday, May 16, 2008, 06:06 AM
Tastings? Check. Dinners? Check. Other special wine events? You betcha. Just click on the “continue reading” link, and silently thank the Dayton-based wine listserv that compiles the list you’re about to read.
Continue reading "Best wine-tasting list in ‘murrica"...
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By Uncorked
| Thursday, May 15, 2008, 07:12 AM
The news out of Great Britain that playing a certain type of music can enhance the way wine tastes rather begs the question: What’s your favorite wine-drinking song?
No, it wouldn’t be “Red, Red Wine” by UB40 (among others). Too obvious.
I think that for both content and song title, I’d have to go with Supper’s Ready by Genesis (I know I’m datin’ myself here, but me and my buds were quite the prog-rock fans back in the day … )
I’m tellin’ ya, in the right context, that song could make Ripple taste like Lafite.
You? What’s your favorite wine-sippin’ song?
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Just for fun
By Uncorked
| Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 06:55 AM
Scott Clark faced a daunting task last weekend: Come up with the perfect wedding toast for his good friends and fellow wine geeks Bob and Cathy, and deliver it in front of several dozen more wine enthusiasts who were enjoying a wine-rich reception.
Who ya gonna call? Robert Parker, of course. Because after all, a fine marriage is like a fine wine, right? So it stands to figure that the same adjectives used to describe a fine wine can apply to each of the members of the union, and to their marriage, right?
So to capture the essence of Bob for the crowd, Scott turned to Parker’s description of the 100-point 1990 Chateau Montrose:
… remarkably rich, with a
distinctive nose of sweet, jammy fruit, liquefied
minerals, new saddle leather, and grilled steak. In
the mouth, the enormous concentration, extract, high
glycerin, and sweet tannin slide across the palate
with considerable ease. It is a huge, corpulent,
awesomely endowed wine that is relatively
approachable, as it has not yet begun to shut down and
lose its baby fat. Because of (his) enormous sweetness,
dense concentration, high extract, and very low
acidity, (he) can be appreciated today,
yet this is a legend for the future.
And for Cathy? Scott turned to Parker’s description of the 1999 Lafite Rothschild:
A quintessential offering …both elegant and intensely flavored
and almost diaphanous in its layers that unfold with
no heaviness. An opaque dark ruby/purple color is
accompanied by a complex bouquet of lead pencil,
graphite, cedar, creme de cassis, toast and vanilla.
Medium bodied with extravagant layers of richness yet
little weight and a finish that is all sweetness,
ripeness, and harmony….
But how to describe the resulting union of these two friends and wine lovers? For that, Scott buckled down, poring over Parker reviews, borrowing bits of prose from the descriptions of many, many Bordeaux from, of course, the finest pedigree and vintages. And here, my friends, is a slightly pared-down version of how Scott — with a powerful assist from Mr. Parker — described Cathy and Bob’s future together:
… possesses a spectacular, young but
awesome smorgasbord of aromas … There are gorgeous aromas of creosote,
asphalt, camphor, cigar smoke, roasted espresso, new
saddle leather, and graphite; all intermixed with
black currants, acacia, liquid minerals, crushed
blackberries, creme de cassis, vanilla, hickory smoke,
scorched earth, and grilled nuts. … powerful, dense, and chewy, with
magnificent extract, excellent delineation, and
outstanding purity. … This brilliant
achievement satisfies both the hedonistic and
intellectual senses. … already showing great complexity and
accessibility … extremely difficult to resist.
The brilliant symmetry of the wine, extraordinary
purity, and seamlessness are the hallmarks of a
modern-day legend.
Anticipated maturity: Unknown
Aging potential: Unlimited
It brought down the house.
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Just for fun
By Uncorked
| Tuesday, May 13, 2008, 06:40 AM
The U.S. has threatened to block imports of all Brunello di Montalcino starting June 9 unless each shipment is accompanied by laboratory analysis certifying that the wine is “pure Sangiovese,” according to Decanter.com.
The U.S. is Brunello’s biggest market, importing 25% of total Brunello production, so the threat in a letter from the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has Brunello producers scrambling to arrange for lab tests to keep the Brunello pipeline flowing.
The Decanter story notes that, “Since Brunello must by law be 100% Sangiovese, adding other grapes would be a violation of a strict labelling convention between the U.S. and the EU that stipulates that what is on the label must guarantee what is in the bottle.”
I’m all for taking steps to ensure wine purity, but this smacks of selective enforcement, if not downright hypocrisy. Sounds like some government bureaucrat got frustrated that his office’s initial letters and threats were ignored, so he chose to rattle the saber a bit.
My question: How strictly are government authorities enforcing all of the other wine “purity” rules right here at home — the regulations regarding the mixing of wines from different appellations, and even from different vintages?
My thoughts go back to a conversation I had with David Phillips, co-owner of Michael David, the Lodi, California winery that I wrote about yesterday. With a twinkle in his eye, Phillips told me how, during harvest, the semi trucks would line up along the main highway between Lodi and Napa, be loaded to the brim with bargain-priced Lodi grapes, and head 90 miles to the west. Napa wineries are allowed to blend a percentage of grapes from outside the region — I believe it’s 15 percent — and still, perfectly legally, claim the “Napa” appellation. And Lodi was more than happy to oblige.
Now, I wonder how many “bargain” Napa producers pay razor-sharp attention to ensure they don’t exceed that allowable proportion of outside grapes? And I wonder how robustly our government monitors and enforces those rules?
What do you suppose might happen if some government agency demanded a freeze on sales and a laboratory analysis of every bottle that carried the Napa and Sonoma appellation on its label to ensure “purity?” How long do you think THAT bureaucrat would keep his job?
Consumers will be watching the Italian prosecutor’s probe into Brunello and in the end, I suspect the marketplace will decide this brouhaha more than courts and bureaucrats will.
Until then, the U.S. would do well to avoid engaging in saber-rattling and selective enforcement.
Mark Fisher
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By Uncorked
| Monday, May 12, 2008, 06:29 AM
David Phillips polishes off a slice of pie at his family’s market and restaurant at the Michael David Winery
LODI, Calif. — The Michael David Winery takes their winemaking seriously. The names of their wines — not so much.
The winery — one of the trailblazers in the quest for higher quality in California’s next up-and-coming wine region of Lodi — produces a broad array of wines with whimsical names such as Seven Deadly Zins (which naturally led to its companion wine, Seven Heavenly Chards), along with the Earthquake line of “ground-shaking reds” and luxury bottlings named “Lust” (zinfandel) and “Rapture” (cabernet sauvignon).
It all comes from the twisted and talented minds of David and Michael Phillips (why yes, they DID go to Catholic grade school, how did you guess?) and their families, the fifth- and sixth-generation farmers here in the fertile flatlands of Lodi, 90 miles east of San Francosco.
The brothers’ ancestors started planting wine grapes in the late 1800s to diversify the family farm, and by Prohibition, were loading railroad boxcars with grapes headed to Ohio and New Jersey for purely, um, sacramental reasons. Folks back east ate a lot of grapes — and churches held many communions — back then.
Through the 1970s and early ’80s, the Phillips family did what virtually all of their neighbors in Lodi did: grew lots and lots of grapes and sold them to the local cooperative, which in turn sold to giant producers such as E&J Gallo and Sutter Home. In 1984, though, the family, with Mike Phillips as winemaker, started bottling and selling a portion of their crop at $3.99 or $4.99 a bottle.
Growth and accolades followed, as the Michael David Winery helped lead a quality resurgence in Lodi. Winemakers and vineyard managers in the region discovered they could take advantage of the region’s climate — a break in the mountains to the west funnels in ocean air that cools the vines nearly every afternoon — and its winemaking heritage: the region boasts some of California’s oldest grapevines, including acres of zin vines that are over a century old. (The Phillips brothers themselves own some 135-year-old Cinsault vines whose juice goes into the “Incognito Red, a Rhone-style blend.)
The Phillips and their neighbors started pruning their vines more aggressively, limiting irrigation to stress the vines, reducing crop loads and taking other steps to enhance quality. The resulting wines boast lush fruit, very mild tannins, wonderful concentration and, more often than not, very attractive quality-to-price ratios.
Today, the Michael David winery is a bustling place. It produces 250,000 cases of wine per year under its own label and farms 500 acres of grapevines, while also growing other fruits as well as vegetables and herbs. It also operates a fruit and vegetable market and restaurant, with a menu that takes full advantage of the fresh produce. My wife, in fact, ate what she described as “the best piece of pie I’ve ever had” — an apricot pie still warm from the oven — at the Michael David restaurant. And let’s just say my wife does not praise pie lightly.
Thus proving that at Michael David, rapture isn’t limited to just the wines.
(Photos by Mark Fisher)
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As someone who had the pleasure of working for Mr. Mondavi for close to a decade, I can say that it