2006 McCrea Cellars Syrah – $25 @ Cellar 46

Rating: 4

I loved this bottle at the McCrea tasting a few weeks ago and so decided to pick up a bottle for proper evaluation and enjoyment.

Imagine in front of you a rare roast beef sandwich with a side of blackberries. For lunch, maybe a bit odd, but on the nose of a Syrah, just right. Great, bloody palate, with dark fruit and black licorice. Grippy tannins, moderate acid, and surprisingly silky mouthfeel.

For $15 Washington Syrah, go with the Substance. But if you’re willing to pay the ten extra dollars, you can enter into a different world of complexity and deliciousness with McCrea. This is McCrea’s entry-level Syrah, receiving less oak and less time in barrel than their other Syrahs. It’s a combination of Boushey and Elephant Mountain fruit, all from Yakima Valley.

Sign of the Times II (Washington wine)

I wrote earlier in the week about the conumdrum faced by allocated, mailing list wineries (and their customers) in Washington state. Now comes another signal that economic conditions are not sparing Washington wineries, this time in the form of a winery that is not fully allocated, but is plenty boutiquey.

Nicholas Cole Cellars is a Walla Walla winery focusing on Bordeaux-style blends from excellent vineyards, and their wines have been roundly praised. And just tonight, I received an offer from one of my e-mail lists selling their 2004 Camille for $28. We stock this wine at Cellar 46. This wine retails for $50. And it sells at $50!

This is a serious wine. Robert Parker scored it 92 points. Gary Vaynerchuk scored it 91+, and he has only reviewed a handful of Washington wines. Paul Gregutt gave it 92 points. Wine Spectator gave it 90 points. It is bloody difficult to make any wine that scores 90+ from multiple critics, and now it’s 5 years old, just coming into its prime, and selling for 56% of full value?!?

That, my friends, is a sign of the times.

I will be picking up some bottles of this. If you would like me to pick up any for you, just shoot me an e-mail (see the Contact section).

Why Wine 1: Wine as Pleasure

“Why did you choose wine for a career?”

It is a question I hear regularly these days, and a fair one, considering I have spent a good portion of the last ten years over-thinking what I am going to do with the remaining forty (if average life expectancy holds).

On this and each of the next four Wednesdays, I am going to attempt to answer that question. I have distilled my love of wine into five reasons why I find the topic so endlessly fascinating. I envision the final document as something that is partly my own personal wine manifesto and partly a raison d’etre for my future business.

1. Wine as Pleasure
2. Wine as Rebellion
3. Wine as Barbiturate Delivery Device
4. Wine as Misunderstood
5. Wine as Life

Wine as Pleasure

It begins this simply: wine tastes good. But we should not ignore our other senses, all five of which are engaged by wine. Wine smells good (sometimes), looks good (often), and makes us think we look good (almost always, if consumed in enough quantity). Does wine engage the sense of touch? If you have ever had your cheeks puckered by a tannic powerhouse Cab, then your answer is yes. If you have ever described a Merlot’s texture as silky, then yes. If you have ever accidentally dipped your nose into a glass of wine while trying to elicit that faint aroma that escapes your mind, well, then your answer is yes, in an admittedly non-traditional sense. And finally the sense of hearing. If your reaction to the sound of a popping cork is not somewhere between a) barely noticeable upturning of lips and b) outright, wrinkle-producing grin, then I’m not sure what to tell you.

Some wines bring pleasure all by themselves. These are the wines that are lower in acid and tannin, meant to be savored on their own and appreciated for their richness and decadence. People who advocate on behalf of these wines are frequently called “hedonists;” those for whom the pursuit of pleasure is the ultimate goal. While I wholeheartedly support the pursuit of pleasure, I don’t count myself as a hedonist. I am more of a utilitarian, a believer in the words of John Stuart Mill: “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Being in the wine business, to me, means being in the happiness-promotion business, and I can think of no more suitable pursuit for my personality.

Other wines bring pleasure by enhancing our meals. As Americans we tend to place emphasis on the perfect food-and-wine pairing. This compulsion is not really shared by Europe. In most regions of the mother continent, the wine of that region is eaten with just about any food. Burgundians, for example, happily gulp down flagons of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir with everything from light to hearty fare. I try to tame my OCD side when choosing wine with a meal and simply seek out wines that are high in either acid or tannins (or both). High-acid wines tend to go well with just about any food. The acid serves as a palate-cleanser, helping to avoid palate fatigue and make each successive bite of food taste as good as the first bite. High-tannin wines go great with rich foods, as the gum-puckering tannins tend to pull oils and fats off your palate, again leaving it ready for new sensations.

As a former counselor of mine once asked me (while reviewing my resume; this happened to be a career counselor): who cares? This is a valid question: who cares about sensory experience? Why does it matter whether we actively engage our senses? I’m afraid that to answer I have no choice but to mount my high horse and say this: the great gift of humanity is sensory experience. We are born and set about recording our sensory lives, and we convince ourselves that our recording is digital: that our brain stores perfect replicas of our best moments. We think we’re recording DVDs, when in reality we’re taking snapshots, using eyes, ears, mouths, noses, fingers. The shortcuts that we use to convert our snapshots back into video are these discreet sensory experiences. Why, for example, are Thanksgiving dinners so memorable? Because they’re events that tend to blissfully overload the senses, with the smells and tastes of foods, and the cacophony of well-loved and well-tolerated family members. My memory is inextricably bound up in food and wine. Meals with friends and family are the chapter headings for the narrative of my life.

1999 Betz Family Winery Clos de Betz – $35 @ Winebid.com

Before I get into this wine, I want to welcome new readers who discovered this site through the pipe over at Wine Press Northwest. Thanks to Andy Perdue for adding me to the pipe, and I hope you enjoy my occasionally coherent ramblings.

Rating: 4

Exuberant nose, with strong tobacco notes, plum, orange, clove, and (after some time) cocoa powder. After reading other tasting notes on CellarTracker, I was expecting this wine to smell like Secretariat’s undercarriage, but I got just a faint whiff of barnyard, which only added to the complexity of the nose on this wine. If you read those CellarTracker notes and are wondering who Brett is, Brett is not a person, but a yeast. Or rather, an abbreviation for a yeast called Brettanomyces bruxellensis. If you want to wine-geek out for a bit, here is a good article on the controversy around Brett.

On the (surprisingly juicy) palate, raspberry and forest floor, along with perfect, orange-blossom acid. Tannins are totally integrated. If you’re sitting on this wine, now is the time. 42% Merlot, 42% Cabernet Sauvignon, 16% Cabernet Franc.

This is another one of these Winebid gems that occasionally pops up. As a person whose cellar consists of a series of cardboard boxes in a guest bedroom, I’m willing to take the risk on questionable provenance in order to try mature Washington wines, and I have not yet been disappointed.

Sean Sullivan also drank an older (and schmancier) Betz this week, and his tasting note is, as always, entertaining.

2005 L’Ecole 41 Syrah Columbia Valley – $24 @ Cellar 46

Rating: NR

Nose of blackberries and lots of oaky vanilla. On the palate, blackberries, spice, and some minerality, but all of that is masked by the wood.

I have been looking at Redhook beer for my Brands class, and L’Ecole reminds me a bit of Redhook, in that they exist in that tricky position between boutique and commercial.

While I have really enjoyed some of their white wines and LOVE the fact that they believe in and support multiple Semillon offerings each year, I haven’t yet been blown away by their red wines. To be fair, I have not yet tried their highest-end wines, Apogee and Perigee.

In Other Alcohol News

Let’s take a quick break from wine and move to another lovely beverage: beer.

I have a beer-related survey up for my Brand Management class, and I figure there is solid proportion of the readership of a wine-related blog who would enjoy spending 10 minutes of their day answering questions related to beer.

If so, click here; and thanks!

Sign of the Times (Washington wine)

There are five wineries in Washington that I know of with closed mailing lists: Abeja, Betz, Cayuse, Leonetti, and Quilceda Creek. As Sean Sullivan pointed out in a recent post, when wineries like these sell direct to consumers, they reap a much higher portion of the profits than when they sell to distributors or retailers. While there is a little doubt that these wineries are in an enviable financial position, they also face unique business challenges around pricing, minimum buying requirements, and maximum numbers of bottles to allocate.

My theory is that these wineries made many of their decisions during boom times, and what seemed like good strategies in a bull market might not look as favorable under the shadow of the bear. But before I get into all that, I should tell you what picqued my interest in this topic. Yesterday, I received an e-mail from McCarthy & Schiering (a very well-respected Seattle wine retailer) announcing their February newsletter, and it contained the following passage:

In the good old days, as in less than a year ago, the usual method of selling many of our more sought after wines was that our suppliers would tell us how much we were “allocated”, and then we would have anywhere from 30 to 60 days to bring them into the shops. With the economic conditions of the last six months, this style of wine sales has been changing. Many wines that were previously allocated to us are now being sold as “first come, first served.” The following wines are no longer being allocated to us, we can buy as much, or as little as we see fit. We have no way of predicting how long supplies will be available to us.

Two of the wines to which they were specifically referring are Abeja’s 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon and 2007 Chardonnay, and this is especially interesting to me, because I managed to get onto Abeja’s mailing list just before it closed last year. To remain on Abeja’s list, I need to purchase at least 12 bottles every 2 calendar years. I joined in Autumn 2008, which means that I need to purchase 12 bottles from their Autumn 2008, Spring 2009, and Autumn 2009 offerings. The Autumn 2008 offering was solely their Reserve Cab, which is out of my price range, and I presume the Autumn 2009 offering will be the same. That leaves me with their current (Spring 2009) offering to put together 12 bottles, and the current offering has 5 choices: Cab, Syrah, Chardonnay, Viognier, and a Red Blend.

So I am left with a choice: a) purchase 12 bottles at full price and either pay $30 in shipping or drive to Walla Walla to pick up; or b) purchase 3 bottles of Cab from McCarthy & Schiering (3 is the number of bottles of Cab that I actually want).

Advantages of option a: it keeps me on the mailing list; the range of selections is better (my ideal order would be 3 Cab, 2 Blend, 1 Syrah, 1 Viognier).

Advantages of option b: price per bottle for the Cab is $36.52 (as a member of the Mc&S wine club) vs $42 per bottle through the winery; I could get the bottles immediately and at no shipping or driving costs; I don’t have to purchase additional bottles to meet a minimum threshold.

I’m really not sure what choice I will make. I suspect that in this new economic paradigm, there are hundreds of consumers like me making decisions like this, and some percentage will choose to be dropped from the mailing list. So now let’s return to my theory: that strategies pursued during boom times might not be as favorable in bear markets. In a bull market, it seems prudent to take the following steps:

• Increase prices every year;
• Set a high minimum for annual number of bottles purchased; and
• Set a high maximum for number of bottles allowed to be purchased.

This creates a narrow, deep, mailing list, which is profit-maximizing if you can pull it off,  because fewer customers means lower costs, both in managing the mailing list and in sending fewer shipments. While this approach might maximize profits in the short term, I’m not sure it maximizes brand loyalty in the long term. As prices go up each year and the minimum number of bottles increases, I believe it can create a perception among the mailing list that every last dollar is being squeezed out of them. And when times get tight, those members are more likely to jump ship.

I would argue that for long-term growth, a broad, shallow mailing list is best, with price increases that closely parallel inflationary increases. By decreasing the minimum annual purchase size to 3 bottles, wineries can serve more people and alienate fewer. Who will this anger? Perhaps the customer who really wants to buy a case each year, but even within that subset, there is a smaller subset that actually wants that case to drink over time. I know plenty of mailing list members who buy a case of wine, keep six bottles for themselves, and sell the other six at profit to help offset the costs of cellaring.

Given that a lot of my thoughts here are based on personal opinion and conjecture about the choices these wineries make, it would be great to hear from others on these mailing lists, and it would be fantastic to hear from someone with actual insight into how allocation decisions are made at these wineries.

2006 Milbrandt Merlot Traditions – $16 @ Cellar 46 (Washington wine)

Rating: 3

Expressive nose of cherries with earthy notes in the background. On the palate, moderate amounts of WMM (Washington Merlot menthol), lots of cherry, some coffee. This is round and rich, with easygoing, fine-grained tannins. Very pleasant wine to drink, and great value for the price.

Butch and Jerry Milbrandt are brothers who have been growing grapes since 1997, and those grapes have turned up in a number of excellent bottles from other producers. The most notable is the K Syrah Milbrandt Vineyards, which is consistently K Vintners’ least expensive Syrah (usually coming in at around $25, and consistently a delicious, flower-draped blueberry bomb).

It wasn’t until the summer of 2007, however, that the Milbrandts began producing wine for their own label. They have a few different lines, and the Traditions line tends to retail in the $14-$16 range, which is a sweet spot given the current economy. This “Merlot” is 75% Merlot, with the remainder Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Malbec, and Barbera; the majority of the grapes come from the Wahluke Slope AVA, although the wine is labeled “Columbia Valley.”

2004 JLC Winery Syrah Spofford Station – $40 @ Winery (Washington wine)

Rating: 5

Infinitely complex nose that began with notes of blackberry, coconut, green olives, and bacon, moving with time towards blueberry liqueur. Those aromas were expressed gorgeously in the mouth, with flavors of smoked ham hock, blueberry, and cabbage on the front and mid-palate, and a  clean, herb-and-apple-skin finish. This wine was well-structured, with fresh, minty acidity and fine-grained tannins. Absolutely dazzling.

This is pure Syrah from Spofford Station vineyard, which is located right on that sweet spot in the Walla Walla Valley near the border with Oregon. That area (not too far away from Cayuse) seems to be nirvana for Rhone varietals in Washington.

I wish I could tell you where to find the wine, but production was very small (2004 was the freeze year in Washington), and Paul Gregutt scored this wine 95 points, so I’m pretty sure it’s completely sold out. I’m trying to figure out what happened to JLC. Their website is down, and CellarTracker doesn’t seem to show any recent releases. Lynne Chamberlain is the winemaker and owner of Spofford Station vineyards, and she was recently elected to the board of The Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers, so she is clearly still active. If any reader has info, please leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

And everyone should keep an eye out for new JLC releases, because this bottle was outrageous.

One More Reason to Drink Wine: Lubrification

The Italian scientists and one of their test subjects.

This post covers the all-too-rare nexus where wine, science, and human sexuality come together. (hat tip to Dr. Vino for identifying this)

Italian scientists recently conducted a critically important study measuring the correlation between red wine consumption and sexual function in females. Their conclusion, presented at the 9th Congress of the European Federation of Sexology:  “women who reported drinking 1-2 glass of red wine daily have higher FSFI scores for both sexual desire, lubrification and overall sexual function.”

Now this begs a few questions: What is FSFI? There is a European Federation of Sexology? They’ve already had 8 previous Congresses?

The answers: Female Sexual Function Index, yes, and yes!

So, ladies, the next time someone describes a red wine to you as “dry,” you tell them there’s no such thing.