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Trust your Retailer!

On May 21, 2009, in Blog, Lessons, by ngorevic

While working in a wine store, one thing has become clear to me-- a lot of people don't trust retail wine store workers. I think there's a fear that somoene's lack of knowledge will be dangled in front of them, or that they'll be forced to spend more on a bottle than they want to. Worst of all the retailer might actually make you taste some wine! Gasp! You might think I'm being funny, but there are a lot of times when I have a bottle open, and I'm greeted with looks of shock and fear when I offer someone a taste from it.

What I'd like to get across in this post is that you really shouldn't be one of these people. While there may be stores that intimidate you, and that try to push bottles of wine on you that don't want, you'll never know if you're in one of those stores until you open your mouth and talk to them. I can tell you that the people who do open themselves up to us end up with better wine. And that's not some secretive backroom elitist transaction, it's just that we start to know their palates really well, and every time they walk in the store we can give them a new wine that they'll like, and maybe even expand their tastes little by little as they explore the world of wine with us as their guide.

This is the kind of relationship a retailer can provide for you. And I really believe that the retailer is unique in the world of wine for what we offer to the consumer. Now I may have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about this, but I often feel that the retailer is the least respected wine professional out there. In comparison the sommelier is lauded above all as the gatekeeper of all things fancy and tasty, even though there is absolutely no standardized international certification to qualify one for the job. My point here is not the sommeliers don't know what they're doing. It's just that there is just as much chance of a sommelier being snotty,intimidating or uneducated, as there is of finding the same qualities in a retailer.

The retail perspective is unique because we have to be laser-focused on price and value, and we have to know all palates, disregarding our own personal tastes. The prices on our shelves have to provide quality and value, because there's very little barrier to a customer walking out the door and going to the store down the street that has better wine at the same or lower price. When you're in a restaurant, you're pretty much stuck with what they have on their list, and price distinctions become much less obvious. Sommeliers do a fantastic job of pairing the specific food in their restaurant with the specific wines on their list. But that's a very deliniated decision. They spend a lot of time (hopefully) tasting each dish and each wine in their cellar, to come up with the best matches. When they've found a pairing that works, they can go back to it again and again, because food and wine pairings will taste good to somoene, even if they wouldn't normally like that wine on its own. But as a retailer, we have to match wines with any cuisine in the world, and a lot of times we have to be able to pick wines to go without food, while knowing very little about the buyer's tastes. That's a lot harder and more nebulous. The only way for us to do it well is to get some help from you! If you're worried you don't know how to talk about what you like, that's OK. Just trust us and see how we do. If you don't like what we gave you, come back and tell us and we'll try something different.

Retailers also have a leg up over wine critics. It's not a new idea to say that each critic, be it Robert Parker, Steve Tanzer, or Eric Asimov, have preferences for certain styles of wine. In the Oxford companion to wine, Jancis Robinson says over and over again that a certain grape finds it's best expression in this particular plot of land in France, or somewhere else in the world. And I might even by inclined to agree with her, as far as my personal tastes are concerned. But as a retailer, I have to disregard my tastes. Just because I think Loire valley cab franc is the most expressive funky wine on the planet, doesn't mean a thing to someone who loves an oaky buttery chardonnay from California. So I have to be able to evaluate that chardonnay against all the other chardonnays on the market. All we do as retailers all day long is taste and spit and talk to each other about, is this particular chardonnay a better example of the grape from California than this other one? Is this one priced at $15.99 really that much better than the other one priced at $12.99? Once in a while we come across the $12.99 wine that really is better than the $15.99 one, and that's why we push you to buy it, because we know you'll like it, and the low price will keep you coming back for more.

But if you don't open your mouth and talk to us, we can't even start to tell you about these special wines, and you'll miss out on getting something you really like.

So my message today is to open yourselves up a little bit, and start talking to us! Granted, you are taking a risk here. What if you do this in one of those intimidating snotty wine stores and they encourage you to buy a wine that costs more than you wanted to spend? Here's what you do: Don't buy it! And if it bothers you, don't go back to that store! They're probably not spending nearly enough time focusing on bringing a wide array of wines tailored to diverse palates if they're that snotty, so it's probably not the store for you. Now you've learned something about the store, and you're that much closer to finding a retailer you can trust.

The perect retailer to me is one who can remember what they sold you, and why the next time you come in. Ask them if they have a way to track your purchases though, just in case. Or keep your receipts and remember what you bought so you can tell them if you liked it or not. You might even want to keep a log of what tasted and whether you liked it or not. But the most important thing is you have to be willing to open your mouth and speak your mind to get any of this done. And once in a while, you might want to try the wine we're pouring. It's ok if you have to go the gym afterwords, it's only a little taste! And even if you don't like it, that's a great place for us to start to figure what you will like that's different in some way from what you just tried.

Good luck and happy wine buying!

Reflections on Long Island Wines

On May 4, 2009, in Blog, by ngorevic

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of being invited to Taste Camp East, which Lenn Thompson, the creator of Lenndevours, put together. We did a whirlwind tour of what seemed like 10 wineries in a day and a half. In reality, it was probably only 6, but it felt like more. I thought I would go over some of the highlights of the trip, for those of you that are interested in heading out to Long Island Wine country.

For the most part, my take on the wines of Long Island is that they are made in an earthier french style, sometimes featuring lots of new oak, and sometimes a moderate amount. Most of the wines are good solid table wine reds that would appeal to people who don't like the fruit forward style of California, but who don't mind some oak in their wines. The main problem I have with the area is that the prices these wines are selling for are completely off the charts. Probably because of the swanky surroundings of the Hamptons, these wines have developed a certain cachet, and small quantities sell out completely every year. The wineries have reacted to this demand by raising their prices to levels that rival Napa Valley. So for the most part, I have a hard time recommending very many wines for people to purchase. Most of the time, you can just get better quality wine from somewhere else for a lot less money.

As far as visiting the wineries, there are a few places that I think stand out above the rest. The wineries I woudn't miss are Channing Daughters and Shinn Estate. Both of these wineries are doing their best to make sustainable, naturally made wines, and are not afraid to experiment in the vineyard. They haven't gone quite as far as being fully biodynamic, but they're getting as close as they can. The great thing about spending time at these two wineries, is that the experimentation and artistic passion really come across. You leave these two wineries with a feeling like you've been allowed to tour around inside an artist's studio, rather than just walking through a factory.

So, if you're heading out to the Island, and only want to spend a little bit of time going to cp,, don't miss those two places! As far as wines, there's really one one bottle I can recommend as a great value. This is the Channing Daughters 2007 Scuttlehole Chardonnay, which retails at just $16 a bottle. It's unoaked, crisp and refreshing with lots of minerality and a delicious yeasty quality that reminded me of a really good Muscadet, or a nice bottle aged Champagne. That's not to say that I didn't taste plenty of other very tasty wines out on the Island, but they are almost all way overpriced for how good they are.

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Fruit in White Wines

On December 3, 2008, in Blog, Lessons, by ngorevic

Now that you have a little vocabulary lesson, you're ready to taste some wines! FInally, you're thinking. I thought this guy would never shut up and let me drink something! I have a few recommended wines for this lesson, that will give you a good sense of what fruit tastes like in a white wine:

Cape Mentelle Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon (any vintage will do):

Casamaro Verdejo from Rueda (in Spain):

Both of these wines display a great deal of fruit quality. I should note that these wines also have other flavors besides fruit, but it's really pretty difficult to find a wine that only tastes like fruit, and it's probably not a wine you'd be that interested in. The fruit qualities in both of these wines should be pretty obvious.

Again, if you'd like to order these wines so you can do this tasting at home, please email me at nick@homewineschool.com. Very soon you will be able to order them online through Frankly Wines, but for now we'll just work out the order over email.

When we talk about fruitiness in white wines, it's usually divided into a few subcategories of fruit. These categories include citrus, stone, and tropical. Wine geeks and sommeliers love to talk about specifically which of these fruits they taste in wines, and they can really get specific. They might say a wine tastes like an overly ripe horned melon:

Or they might say it tasted of underipe peaches. It's great fun to list out all these fruits, but to be honest there's never really one correct answer with these things. Taste to a degree is very subjective. You should, however, if you concentrate, be able to say whether something tastes tropical, or whether it is more citrus-like. Citrus fruits include lemon, and lime; Tropical could be pineapple or bananas; and stone fruits are things like peaches and pears.

In the Cape Mentelle Sauvignon/Semillon blend, you have a prime example of a wine that has lots of citrus flavors, which is typical of Australian Sauvignon blancs. Big grapefruit is here particularly in droves. You may also detect elements of tropical fruits. As far as the other aspects besides fruit, it should be noted that this wine has a fair amount of what we call herbaceousness, or aromas and flavors of fresh cut grass. This is a signature of the Sauvignon Blanc grape, and it's very sought after. I'll leave it to you to decide if you like it or not.

The Casamaro Rueda, which is made of the grape Verdejo, by contrast, is much more about stone fruits, peach especially. It also has a fair amount of earthiness (or minerality, as it is usually referred to in white wines), but the fruit qualities still reign supreme here.

So what makes a wine fruity? The short answer to that question is the climate of the area the grapes are grown in. The warmer it is, the more fruit flavors tend to develop. To reduce the fruit flavors in wine, winemakers will often take steps to reduce the yield of grapes each vine produces. When vines are starved have to struggle to survive, they send their roots shooting deeper into the ground to search for nutrients, they pull more minerals out of the ground, and send those minerals into the flavors of the grapes. As a result, fruity wines tend to cost less. It's generally true that the warmer the climate and the cheaper the wine, the fruitier it will be. So if you like these fruity styles a lot, be thankful, because you're saving yourself a bunch of money!

So now that you've smelled, swirled, and tasted each of these wines, what do you think? Do you get the citrus and the peaches? Do you like these styles? If you don't, it's ok, because in the next lesson we'll get to taste some very different wines that you may like better.

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How to Taste (and Smell!)

On December 1, 2008, in Blog, Lessons, by ngorevic

Before we can get started describing Fruit, Earth, and Spice, we need to make sure that you're tasting things correctly. This is the part when you get to find out why those people keep swirling their glasses and making funny sucking noises after they drink the wine!

The first important thing when tasting wine is to get a really good smell of what's in your glass. The tongue can actually only taste 4 things- sweet, salty, bitter, and acidic. The rest of flavors that we taste all come from our nose as the aromas of the wine waft their way up our nasal canal from inside our mouth. So, don't skip smelling the wine, it's a really important part of tasting, and it's a lot of fun too. Breathing deeply and focusing your mind on something is a form of meditation, so not only will it help you discern the wine better, it will probably help you relax too.

So, first we'll start with some swirling. This is easiest to do when the glass is on a surface. You'll want to swirl the glass in circles strong enough so the wine really gets going far up onto the sides of the glass. What you're doing here is activating the aromas of the wine by integrating air. When the wine touches the air, it releases a powerful dose of aromas, that the right kind of wine glass will funnel up to your waiting nose.

Now that you've swirled the glass, pick it up and tilt it at as far as you can without spilling the wine all over yourself. Stick your nose inside the glass as far as it'll go and point your nose so it's parallel to the wine, and take a few careful sniffs. It's better to sniff lightly, like a dog does, as you'll actually get more information that way than one big long smell. You'll also protect yourself in case there's something wrong with the wine that smells really terrible. If you want to look like you really know what you're doing, you can tilt the glass up and down and to either side, adjusting the angle of your nose compared to the wine. You may pick up more or less fruit or earth at different angles, but most importantly, your friends will be really impressed with you.

Now that you've smelled the wine, it's time to actually drink some! At this point, you probably thought that point would never come. Take a little sip into your mouth. What you want to do know is swirl the wine all over the inside of your mouth including your cheecks, gums, tongue and the back of your throat. Some people like to actually pretend they're chewing the wine, really mashing it all over their mouth. The different areas of your mouth will tell you different things about the wine, and I'll get into all those details at some point later.

You can also combine taste and smell, by breathing some air over the wine. This is tricky at first. Tilt your head back a tiny bit, open your mouth a little, and slowly breath in a little air over the wine. If you do it right, it should make a shlurping sound as the air runs through the wine. You may be initially shocked by the intensity of flavor that rockets down your mouth. When you do this, you're essentially doing the same thing you did when you swirled the glass, but now it's happening inside your mouth.

This whole process of swirling, smelling, and swishing inside your mouth serves to really slow down the whole process of tasting wine. You'll notice a lot more about the wine when you taste like this. Sometimes I find it valuable to just take a quick swig without doing any of this as a reference for what the wine tastes like normally. You might be surprised to notice the difference. But slowing it down this way will really help you later on when you try to quantify what it is you like or don't like about a wine.

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Fruit, Earth, and Spice

On December 1, 2008, in Blog, Lessons, by ngorevic

When you're first starting to learn wine, it can be really confusing! I've developed a system that does a really good job of clearing up the confusion. A lot of wine classes start off teaching about France, and its very confusing labeling laws. If you really want to learn everthing about wine, it's true, you need to learn all that. But if you just want to be able to order things you'll like at a restaurant, I don't think you really need to burden yourself with all that information. If people knew what they liked and knew how to describe their tastes to someone else, they should be able to enjoy what they get. Sounds simple right? The problem is that there's a lot going on inside a wine glass, and combine that with the fact that a lot of people have their vocabulary mixed up and backwards sometimes, it can be really hard to put into words what you liked about a wine so us professionals can understand you.

To help simplify this whole thing, I like to group wines into three different qualities-- fruit, earth, and spice. Every wine basically has some of each quality, and if you can start to identify these flavors in what you try, you can begin to develop a sense of which quality you like more of. Some wines will be very fruity, with just a touch of earth and hardly any spice. You might find that you love that style, and then the next time you're in a wine store or a restaurant, you can ask for something fruity, and the person you're talking to will definitely know what you're talking about.

Now of course these three categories are just a starting point and wine does get a lot more complicated than that. There are other qualities in wines that are important, like body, tannin, acidity, and sweetness/dryness. But for now let's just focus on defining these three categories. The lessons that follow will talk about each of these qualities, and I'll tell you about some wines that exhibit the qualities, so you can follow along at home with the wines if you like.

Happy tasting!

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Grapes are like Tomatoes?

On July 28, 2008, in Blog, wine geeks, by ngorevic

This might not fit into the rest of my posts on this blog, but I had this amazing experience last night, so I feel like I need to share it. I went to eat at Blue Hill at Stone Barns near Tarrytown, NY. This place is absolutely astounding. The restaurant is in the middle of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, a small farm where they raise almost all the animals and grow almost all the vegetables that are served in the restaurant. They don't even have a real menu, just a list of potential ingredients the cooks can use to make your meal. But I don't really need to write a full review of the experience there, that's been done already. Here's a really good review, for starters.

What caught my attention was this moment when our waiter brought out a rather large tray of about a dozen different tomatoes, which he referred to as "varietals." As a wine person, that caught my ear. To me, a varietal starts with a plant carefully cloned in a lab to match the terroir. The process of growing and harvesting a varietal is a combination of art and science, and it's the only way to make really amazing wine. But tomatoes? Ok, now I was listening! He proceeded to name each varietal, and let me tell you, there were some crazy ones, including accordion tomatoes like these:

He went on to explain that the farm had planted about 80 different varietals of tomatoes, and then subsequently narrowed them down to 35 that they liked, and were presenting about 11 or so to us for our viewing pleasure.

This sparked a question that had occurred to me recently when I was in the South of France. My wife and I went on a market tour and kitchen tasting with a Michelin starred chef in Cannes. The vegetables I saw there were like nothing I had ever seen before. And I grew up near farms where we'd often stop by little roadside stands to buy freshly picked produce. That farm produce was great, but the produce they had in the Cannes market was an entirely different animal, bursting with flavors that made you weak in the knees. Every bite made you feel blessed to be alive. Obviously they understand something different about growing vegetables in France. I found myself wondering what they did differently, and whether or not it had anything in common with the way they grow grapes. As I've written here before, wine makers in France (as well as everywhere else good wine is made) know that stressing the vine and reducing yields makes the flavor of the grapes more concentrated. The vine thinks it is dying, so it pours all its energy in to making its fruit, resulting in higher sugar levels and flavors.

So, my question for the waiter was, are there similarities between growing good wine grapes and growing great tomatoes? Does reducing yields make for more flavorful tomatoes? His answer-- Yes. He said apparently there is a lot in common, and they have discovered that reduced yields do make for better tomatoes. I had so many more questions, but there really wasn't time to go into it all in the middle of dinner. Do farmers know that reducing yields makes better vegetables? Do our farmers over-irrigate their crops to increase yields so they can make more money? Do they do that because they're afraid Americans won't buy them because we don't know what we're missing? Do vegetable plants need to be as stressed and starved for water and good soil as vines do, or is it just a question of pruning at a certain point during the growing cycle to reduce the yields? My questions go on and on.

I've perused the Stone Barns website, but it doesn't seem to have much information readily accessible about this sort of thing. Places like UC Davis have made great efforts to bring French wine making techniques to the United States, and we're all the benefactors of their work. Hopefully that's what Stone Barns is trying to do now. This is important to me, because when I tasted that produce in Cannes, my immediate thought was that I need more of this, and how much can real estate really cost on the Riviera? It was astounding to me that people who live there can eat like that every day. This market wasn't some special secret place hidden away like Stone Barns. It was right in the middle of town, and it was open every day except monday! The food and wine movement in this country is moving along quite well, but it's clear to me that we have a very long way to go and a lot of education to do.

So I put it to the community. Who knows about this stuff? Are there websites that talk about this? What if I want to grow my own amazing tomatoes? How do I do it? There are a lot of resources on the Stone Barns website, but on a casual perusual it doesn't appear to me that any of them talk about something as simple as how to grow amazing fruits and vegetables. It seems to me that it's a lot easier to find out how to make amazing wine than to grow this quality of produce, but maybe I'm just ignorant. What do you think?