A Curious Sweat Shop

I was recently lured out of the Lab to attend a local wine event that promised fine wines, vintage cars, diamond jewelry and an ex-Miss Hong Kong.

This seemed to be all the necessary ingredients for a quintessential Far East wine outing.

The invitation failed to mention that the event would be held in a garage in Kwun Tong, an industrial section of Kowloon, and that the temperature inside would be well over 90° F (32+ °C) even at 9 o'clock at night. Also not detailed on the invitation was the reality that the last bottle of white wine would be already half gone when we arrived. Or that the ex-Miss Hong Kong was actually an ex-Miss Canada. Or someone claiming to be an ex-Miss Canada. I searched "Miss Canada" on Google and fruitlessly scrolled through 20 pages of images in failed hopes I might find her.

Curious editorial aside: the search did return a picture of Robert Redford, one of an alpaca and this shot of a scary looking dude who would seem, at a glance, to have little to do with Miss Canada.

The part about the vintage cars was as advertised.

If I were a practitioner of understatement, I would say it was a curious event.

It was at least that.

The diamond jewelry was provided by a man who practices an orthodox formulation of Judaism, so roughly 1/3 of the sweat-drenched crowd wore yarmulkes. I'm sure it was the heat in the garage, but I had flashes back to my childhood when my buddy Howard Goldstein was bar mitzvah'd on a scorching July day in Arizona.

Another third of the crowd seemed to be photographers; the alleged ex-Miss Canada must have a sensational publicist to get a throng of paparazzi out in the late night Kowloon swelter.

The wines were provided by Altruistic Boutique Wines, a Hong Kong / Beijing based wine importer who seem keen to give a portion of their profits away to charitable organizations. The company's Managing Director, Rai Cockfield, was pouring the wines, or what was left of them, himself. He's an ex-Lehman Brothers banker who has left finance to chase Dionysus. He and his partner have assembled a very good list of small, mostly California, producers. I'm not sure what's the point of marrying philanthropy and wine sales. But the philanthropy as marketing seemed one of the least random details of the evening, so I let it pass without debate. Besides I didn't work at Lehman, so I have less to atone for.

He poured me a taste from the dregs of the final bottle of white wine. The 2007 8 Chardonnay from Vineyard 7&8. It was... curious. And gratifyingly cold.

Vineyard 7&8 is a boutique, ineptly-named winery in Northern California. The Chardonnay had nice cut on the attack, but way too much new French Oak everywhere else.

A check on the winery website leads me to believe, the owners are in fact Thurston Howell III and his wife, Lovey. They have outsourced both the viticulture and the wine-making, being one of several wineries to have have employed Luc Morlet since he left his illustrious post as wine-maker at the illustrious Peter Michael Winery. Morlet recently announced his own private label, so the skeptic in me thinks the Howells will soon be needing new staff. I'm sure the Professor could figure out how to stop malolactic fermentation before the wine became indistinguishable from a dairy product.

I couldn't bear to drink the red, a Cabernet Sauvignon also from California, in the dense, humid heat of the garage.

So instead I wandered around, dodging photographers and grease-jockeys, wondering about the tax advantages that were no doubt realized by pretending your antique car collection was a working garage.

Perhaps that's unfair.

Maybe it's not a tax-hedge?

Maybe the cars are merely a Hong Kong financier's indulgence to one of his many elaborate hobbies. A list which would seem to include not only vintage cars, but also diamond jewelry, culty New World wines and...

the Miss Universe pageant.

Update from the Lab Cafeteria

I know, I know. I'm falling behind on my Lab reports.

Look, there's a lot of work involved relocating a cutting-edge research facility. Plus I'm in a new sphere of influence and much in demand. If it's not this panel, it's that presentation.

But I'm aware of what my priorities should be and I'll soon have myriad reports to deliver.

In the meanwhile, I've been busy looking for a chef for the Lab's cafeteria. As you can imagine, this is an important detail in the Lab's operations. It's not just anyone who can whip up a paring menu for orange wines after all.

So I've been roaming the back streets and alleys of Hong Kong, looking for someone with the right skill set and disposition. My search carried me to ABC Kitchen, which isn't so much a restaurant as it's a food stall. On the uppermost floor of the Queen Street Cooked Food Market in Sheung Wan.

Whatever end of the grocery shopping spectrum Whole Foods is on, Cooked Food and Wet Markets are at the other end. The U.V. to the Whole Food's Infra-red. The ground floor is typically populated by half naked men who are cutting the heads off chickens or bashing huge fish into bloody pulp and slightly resentful looking women sitting next to fresh produce that might have been grown on Mars (dragon fruit?). If there is a second floor, it's usually a mixed bag of service-oriented stalls (shoe repair, dry cleaning) and small stores. The top floor is where the Cooked Food section always is. It often looks like a backwater Bingo Parlor sponsored by Marlboro.

So my expectations were low.

But the ABC Kitchen was sensational. They have a wine list that would be unexceptional except for the fact that finding a wine list at a Cooked Food Market is enormously exceptional. They pour a House Red and a House White that changes with supply, and I thought that a charming detail.

Joe the Owner was trained at M on the Fringe, which managed for 20 years to be Hong Kong's hippest restaurant. Joe loves having his own gig. And he seems to really enjoy cooking for the grandmothers who hang out at the Cooked Food Market.

So I am not confident I will be able to lure him away.

But I'll need to come back several times to try.

Biodynamics is Sexy/Bullshit

I'm far from agnostic on the subject of biodynamics. Regular readers know I drank deeply of the Buried Cow Horns kool-aid (you have to search "biodynamic" if you want to see the full catalog). Our second Lab Report even featured this photo of Rudy Steiner.

Regular visitors also know I have no truck with facile New Age charlatanism (unless I stand to make serious profits from claiming otherwise). We're even on record calling the patron saint of biodynamics an "all around weirdo".

For me, the simple facts are these. I like to buy wine from farmers. And I like to drink wine that says something about when and where it came from (terroir). Biodynamics is a good clue for me about what's in the bottle and how it got there. I'm also aware that biodynamics in practice is fairly fluid and very flexible. Unless practiced incorrectly, it's not a strict orthodoxy. In fact, some adherents don't even include biodynamic on the label (Chidaine, Huet, Pyramid Valley Vineyards, et al). And maybe it's many adherents. After all, how would you know?

There are other facts to consider. I've had some crap biodynamic wine. I've been told that biodynamic treatments include too much copper. I don't know jack about actual agriculture, but throwing a heavy metal around your fields doesn't sound like a super-great idea. And culty "wine" maker Frank Cornelissen told one of the Lab staff recently (Hi Annie!) that biodynamics is still lost in the wrong paradigm because, "It tries to be a cure."

So where do I come out on biodynamics? I find the whole mystical, occultish approach to making alcohol to be very sexy and totally inane.

But what do I know? Maybe giant vortexes from the dark side of the moon do have an impact on phenolic ripening. Maybe magnetic fields do wreck the complexity of intermingling polyphenols. Maybe it's not a coincidence that Druids and Jedi Knights wear the same sorts of cloaks.

But if the wine tastes great, who cares? That's where I am on this. Except I do care about the Jedi/Druid thing.

It is true my brand of studied indifference to all things religious is perhaps unique (you see what I did just there?). It certainly is at Stu Smith's house.

A little context: Stuart Smith is one of two brothers who run Smith-Madrone in St Helena. I think their Riesling is among the best in California; it might even be the best one. They farm steep, hillside vineyards with what seems to be a sustainable approach to viticulture. They make their wines in "artisanal" fashion. In the past, I've even swapped a few emails with Stu and he seems like a charming and interesting guy. I love everything about this producer.

Except this. Stu Smith has started a new blog: Biodynamics is a Hoax. The vitriol is dense. He is seething mad about Rudy Steiner's posthumous success. I mean, he's seriously pissed off about this stuff.

Why does he care?

I have no idea why.

Are we seriously expected to debate this stuff? And what would that look like?

My vortex is bigger than yours. Your magnetic fields suck. I can't fight you because it's a root day.

Come on. Does anyone really care? I don't care. Please join me in not caring.

But whether I care is beside the point. Biodynamics is emerging as a major trend in viticulture. And the wine press, its new media arm in particular, is taking up the cause -- both for and against -- with verve.

So I thought the Lab should do its part and provide a small measure of community education on the topic.

Tomorrow we'll publish a short, reasonable/rational, and yet still passionate defense of biodynamics and all it's wonderful hippy mysticism and occult fantasia. It was written in counterpoint to Stuart Smith's new blog. And I think it's is worth reading.

May the Force be with you.

Viva Vino

I mentioned previously that the next few reports would be self-indulgent bravado.

None more than this one.

Before setting sail to Hong Kong, I had the opportunity to visit a resort development on Mexico's Baja peninsula. It is a spectacular and pristine 600 hectares on the Sea of Cortez. There is a plan to build an Aman resort and a number of luxury residences on the spot which features 360 degree views of... well...nothing. It is a place perhaps most amazing for the fact that in every direction, as far as you can see, there is the barest hint of humanity. I have never felt so wonderfully lost from the world.

Normally, I wouldn't include such a trip in the category of Lab Field Trip. Baja does have a wine growing region with some history and potential, the Guadalupe Valley, but we were nowhere near it. In fact, after we landed at the airport near the sleepy fishing village of Loreto, it seemed we were nowhere near much of anything.

And yet, just off the old town plaza, in the shadows of the Mission Loreto, there is a new tapas and wine bar called Cava. The menu looked great, but we were too early for dinner.

But we did grab a bottle of Argentine rose from the Cava wine shop. I'm sure it was good. But after 10 margaritas, it's hard to know for sure.

Yard Sale?

Okay, I need to admit something right here, right off the bat. The next few posts are just showing off.

In my defense, I will only say that I have been living in a serviced apartment in Hong Kong (courtesy of Li Ping) while the Lab and its contents cross the Pacific in a container on a cargo ship. It's not glamorous. I love my kids, but at close quarters this affection is regularly tested.

I hope you'll indulge me in a little escapism.

As we were packing the Lab's cellars, we faced an awkward quandary. We wanted to take as much of the contents as possible to Guangzhou, especially those bottles with experimental value. But we didn't trust our new benefactors to manage the shipping in climate controlled fashion. Crossing oceans can be perilous. Hate to lose the cellar to the deep blue. So we decided that some bottles in the Lab's collection would not, in fact, make the crossing.

The Lab's Director of Marketing proposed a yard sale.

He's no longer with us. I think the press release said he's taking some time to focus on his family.

My (much better) idea was to drink them.

So the Lab organized several dinners to do just that.

A report on the first -- a big vertical flight of fancy Chardonnay -- up next.

What A Difference A Year Makes?

More than a year ago, the Lab set out on a bold experiment in patience. We stored three bottles of the same wine in very different circumstances. We stored one in pristine, 57 degree, cellar conditions. We stored one in the bottom of my closet. And we left the third in the Lab break room with a "Do Not Drink" note taped to the label.


We planned to leave them in storage for a year and then taste the wines blind to see how each fared under these circumstances.

But we forgot about them, and now it's been more than 15 months. Time to realize the results of our experimental efforts.

One of the interns pointed out that wine years are sort of the opposite of dog years. After pointing out that unpaid volunteers aren't supposed to speak during our weekly meetings, I asked what he meant by that. I'm still not sure, and I have ordered a review our Cost Cutting & Productivity initiatives. The interns are really nice, but collectively... not a lot of lights burning brightly. We might need to rehire some actual scientists.

In any case, I think what he was trying to get at was the idea that storing a wine for a year is but a blip in wine-time. Oenophiles aren't quite geologists when it comes to measuring the march of the calendar. But if collectors will still pay top dollar for a fifty-year-old Bordeaux (48-years-old anyway), what difference does a year make?

It's a fair point.

But we're tasting the wine tomorrow anyway.

I do know Jack!

I might be having a mid-life crisis.

Lately, science hasn't had the same appeal. I don't get giddy with excitement about a new experiment the way I once did.

Yesterday, I was thinking about selling the Lab and sailing the Pacific when I opened a bottle of Sam Tannahill's strange "white" elixir Jack (2005).

Jack is a mix of Pinot Blanc and Gris and Chardonnay. It is, allegedly, a Josko Gravner inspired wine. Six months of extended maceration (where the juice remains in contact with the skins). And then a long spell in oak barrels (not clay amphora).

It is striking to see in the glass, a sort of dusty orange wine, but with a radiant pink core that seems to shimmer magically when it catches the light. On the nose it is apricot marmalade, clover honey and something grapey (as a side note: anyone but me find it strange how rarely "grape" is used as a wine descriptor?). I first tasted this a year and a half ago and it has fleshed out considerably since then; the then subtle orchard fruits have swelled into bright white peaches and apricots. There's still a strong mineral backbone and a tannic tingle on the long lingering finish.

But this wine is more than its parts. It defies precise analysis. It resists the experimental impulse. Jack just is. And it is a wonderful is-ness.

What did William Hurt's character say in The Big Chill? Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you...

Maybe that's the way out of my crisis? I need a break from analysis. I need to let a little more art just flow over me.

Or I could buy a Ferrari?

Shell Game

This could be a tale of two vineyards.

In our ceaseless search for dirt, we end up seeking out a great deal of single-vineyard wine at the Lab. Recently, we drank two outstanding North American Rieslings each from it's own vineyard.

The first is born of Randall Grahm's re-scaled, relocated venture. A 2007 Pacific Rim, Solstice Vineyard Riesling.

The nose is diesel, verbena and citrus pith. The terpenes dominate in a way that would make me nervous about laying this down. But at the moment, they're relatively tame and the palate is simply beautiful. Honeyed tangerine swells over pear and lemon and grapefruit. There's an unusual lingering, loamy minerality. Classic Riesling flavors with unique "specific-ness."

Next we drank the 2007 Smith-Madrone, Riesling.

There's a vinous nose of orchard fruit and litchee. In the mouth, a beautiful mix of crisp, acidic MacIntosh apple and sweet Bosc pear. There is a light glycerin touch evident on the attack that almost seems to coat the tongue, paving the way for the fruit. There is a sensation of sweet even though the wine is dry. Mid-palate you begin to notice evidence of a solid, mineral architecture which builds through a long finish. This is traditionally-styled Riesling with a clear and unique vineyard signature.

But here's the trick. While these are both beautiful, terroir-specific, expressions of Riesling. One, I bought at a shop. The other was a sample.

Does it really matter which is which?

All You Need To Know

I have milked my interview with Lou Amdur for content all week. Who would have known that I would get such terrific mileage out of three cliché questions?

When published on another wine blog, the interview with Lou elicited a number of enthusiastic responses. Some went so far as to claim that Lou was the "best natural wine bar in the world!" The discussion included the owner of Terroir in San Francisco, another amazing place for wine. At some point the suggestion was made for a throw-down of sorts to determine the true champion, a Vegas-style mud-wrestling for bragging rights (I'm assuming this event would necessarily involve paid surrogates in the actual arena of combat).

Lou offered this to conclude the debate:

We’re (Lou) not a better natural wine bar than Terroir because we have more interesting wine — we have the same wines, mostly (though because I pour everything by the glass you won’t see Bea’s wines or good grower Champagne at Lou, but you will find these wines at Terroir). We’re better because our sans souffre, all-analog hi-fi system is powered by 300b single-ended triode monoblocks fed strictly by low-hour moving coil cartridges and an old Audio Research tube head amp. Lowthers or rebuilt Quad electrostats, bien sûr.

Enough said.

Things I Know That Are Not True

1. This is not a blog.

2. Los Angeles is not much of a wine town.

3. I do not have much of a local readership.

I'm not all that sure about #3. I quit looking at my traffic logs a while ago. Something zen-ish, having to do with not why I maintain the Lab. But if #2 is accurate, then it stands to reason that #3 would be true as well.

If I did have a significant local readership, I know this would be true: I definitely would not write restaurant reviews. In part because this is a serious pseudo-scientific research institute and we don't have time for that sort of thing. But mostly because I don't want to wait behind any of you for a table.

Nevertheless, I feel compelled to follow up on my interview with Lou Amdur of Lou that we collaborated on for saignee's 31 days of natural wine. According to the long established etiquette of gift exchange, I feel kind words are due, especially since Lou did most of the work.

Lou is on Vine, just north of Melrose in mid-town Los Angeles, just up the street from Paramount Studios. The restaurant has the corner spot in a multi-function, L-shaped strip mall.

Lou has the most interesting and eclectic wine list in Los Angeles. Every time I stop in, I learn something I didn't know before. He is passionate about wine and goes to great lengths to find interesting, characterful (his word) things to pour. If you're looking for a great educational resource, take a photo of the menu with a spy camera, develop the microfilm and then google every wine on the list. It's a journey through biodynamics, old and ungrafted vines (yes!), dry-farming and wild yeast ferments.

Oh, the food at Lou is fantastic too.

Los Angeles has altogether too few, great neighborhood bistros. We drive around too much chasing trends here. But Lou is a special exception.

So please, don't tell anyone about it.

Lou on Lou

In support of saignée's 31 Days of Natural Wine, I ventured out from the safety of the Lab's crenelated, ivory tower and sat down over a bottle of Chablis with Lou Amdur of Lou.

Sometimes you serve a wine and it needs context and description. Sometimes you serve a wine that is so good, you just pour it and let it speak for itself.

The interview, or more accurately, Lou's answers to my questions, are like that. I don't think this needs any introduction.

And if reading this doesn't make you want to go to Lou immediately (it's at the corner of Vine and Melrose in Los Angeles), then there's really no helping you. Is there?

LAB: Can you describe your "conversion" to natural wines?

LOU: My conversion experience to natural wine is on on-going and didn’t emerge from a single epiphanic moment of eureka. And I should say it’s an on-going conversion, as the natural wine movement itself is a moving target—with a vigneron like Thierry Puzelat, for example, it’s clear that he’s having an on-going conversation from vintage to vintage with his vines and his winegrowing process. Certainly a big thing for me was attending the huge Nicolas Joly natural wine road show a few years ago at the Skirball Center; that gave me an opportunity for the first time to taste a great many natural wines (I realized, after three hours, that (a) I was only half way through the tasting, (b) I was drunk, even though I was dutifully spitting, (c) I had been so enraptured by the wine that I’d been ignoring the klaxon horns of my poor bladder, and was on the verge of peeing in my pants, and (d) I had to somehow get back to my wine bar in Hollywood by 6 PM).

My palette is following an arc that I think is familiar to some who grow up with wine, but perhaps not very interesting wine. You fall in love with big, chunky wines, but end up preferring wines that are made with a lighter touch. As a kid this meant the big, chunky, sticky sweet Concord grape kosher wines of Shabbos and Pesach. But when I was four or five my Uncle Eli gave me a small glass of the very good wine he had been making in Minnesota starting in the late 50s—he was a serious-minded hobbyist and pioneering quality wine grape grower in Minnesota, plus he had a doctorate in chemical engineering so the wine making process was not something foreign to him. I remember that first taste of Eli’s wine; compared to the Manischewitz Concord grape wine I was accustomed to it tasted bitter to me but I liked it! And that’s the beginning of the arc.

In my late teens I drank mostly beer and cheap hard liquor (1 dollar shots of vodka at Verkhovyna in the East Village!). At that time the drinking age in NY was 18, and most delis had a decent selection of imported beer, and I found that I enjoyed more complex beers like Reinhardt Wild Ale. I did enjoy drinking what I referred to then as “big” wines, big oaky Napa zinfandels like Hannah’s. These big wines have sweetness, less from any residual sugar and more from the alcohol. And I understand completely why many people gravitate to such wines and never seem to move beyond: they’re wines that don’t make you think. And by “think,” I mean thinking with your tongue, not your brain. Émile Peynaud has a long description of how the tongue “thinks” in one of his books, and it’s actually quite disturbing to pay attention to the physiology of taste when you’re drinking wine. There’s a Stereolab tune with the line, “We need so damn many things to keep our dazed lives going,” i.e., we have a lot of shit to attend to in our lives and for most folks, wine is a field of non-controversial pleasure, they don’t want to think about wine, just enjoy it. You see the same attitude toward food among chefs like Bad Boy Bourdain, who’s attacked Alice Waters in the most embarrassing way—how dare you make me think about what I put in my mouth!

When you drink a massive, high extract, high alcohol wine, its overwhelms your palette; it’s a very atavistic pleasure that I liken, as a vulgar Kleinian, to the overwhelming feelings of deep satisfaction that blot out everything else that an infant feels when it suckles. And it makes it difficult for some people to enjoy a new wine, especially a lighter-bodied wine for which they lack reference points. It pains me when 20 somethings profess that they’re “pinot grigio” drinkers, as if pinot grigio is a brand, like Coke. They’re young geezers, many of whom will never drink outside their comfort zone. Jeremy Narby, when asked about the safety of taking ayahuasca, responded in an interview that we’re too safety obsessed in our culture—ayahuasca isn’t safe, it might just teach you something about yourself that changes you forever. I don’t want to live as a crabbed old coot like the character that Edgar Buchanan played in Petticoat Junction. I try to become more receptive to new things and experiences. Wine is my ayahuasca.

In the early 80s I worked at a restaurant, long gone, that was connected to the New York Wine Center in Manhattan. We were allowed a shift drink and we mostly drank Mondavi cabernet, but one day a wine rep sent back to the kitchen a half-full bottle of Lafarge Clos du Château des Ducs, ’78, and that was my transcendental wine experience. I didn’t know what I was in for—it’s like the first time you get high, you’re always chasing that first time. I kept looking for that bottle for years (only later did I learn that ’78 was a great Burgundy vintage, and that only way I was going to find a bottle of that Volnay was if someone opened a bottle for me—still hasn’t happened).

LAB: How do you go about discovering the wines for your list?

LOU: How do I learn about new wine? To be sure, you’re not going to find satisfying coverage in Wine and Spirits, Decanter, and of course, Wine Spectator. I learned a lot from reading two of Patrick Matthews’s books, The Wild Bunch and Real Wine. There are a few blogs I enjoy reading, and the discussion groups that I lurk around on, like Wine Disorder, are populated be folks who have had their conversion experience a long time ago. I depend a lot on the superb distributors and importers I work with to do the hard work of locating new growers: there’s Farm Wine (distributes Dressner and José Pastor in California), Peter Weygandt, Michael Sullivan, Hiram Simon, and Betty Dunbar, to name a few. Note that these are importers who mostly import French wine (though Weygandt, for example, brings in some great Austrian wine, too). Sometimes, I find an importer that brings in a single biodynamic wine that I love (I’m thinking of one grower from Roussillon), but the rest of their book is not interesting. I’ve been trying to get a distributor for Jenny & Francois here in Los Angeles for a couple of years, and so far, no go, so when I order their wine, it’s a large order (for me, at least—30-50 cases). Another source are my friends and customers who bring me wine to try. I have a regular, now friend, Martin Marquette, who is good friends with Azzoni, and I first tasted three of Azzoni’s wines that Martin brought back from France for me. Finally, whenever I travel abroad (rare for me since I signed the lease for my wine bar in 2005), I visit wine bars, shops, and if I’m in wine country, vignerons, though I find organized tasting rooms a la Napa dull—I like talking to vignerons, not tasting room staff. We were in Paris last December and enjoyed visiting La Cremerie, it was just down the street from our hotel, and also Racines.

LAB: You're stranded on a desert island, what three natural wines are in your cooler?

LOU: Three desert island wines: I’d pack a sparkling wine, a red wine, and a white wine. If there was room, I’d also pick a dessert desert wine. For a sparkler I’d go for a good grower Champagne, like Leroy’s zero dosage cuvée, or Drappier. For white I’d select something refreshing but also complex that might work well with my desert island fare of raw fish and coconut, perhaps one of Tissot’s non-sur voile wines (I love Tissot and Puffeny’s sur voile wines, but I don’t want to drink them every day), or maybe something really straight forward, like J.P. Brun’s Beaujolais blanc. For red, again, it’s a desert island, hot and dry, so I’d select Foillard’s Morgon Côtes du Py which I’d shove in the ocean for a few minutes before opening so that it’s nice and cool, or possibly one of Gauby’s wines, his vielles vignes. Both are wines that I have had over several vintages, and I never tire of drinking them, and always find new facets to enjoy. Finally, for dessert, Suronde’s Quarts du Chaume, or the Jurancon that Dageneau made (I have a six pack sitting my cellar—well, I’m down one bottle that I gave as a gift).

Notes on the natural wine and a reprise of the interview will be available tomorrow at saignée.

5 More Days in Joly

As many of you know, the Lab celebrated an anniversary recently. And to commemorate the event, we have recreated the Lab's introductory experiment.

The results are in line with my recent experience with Joly's wines, which is to say, ripe with potential but disappointing in the end.

For the test, we drank Joly's Les Clos Sacres, 2005.

This time around, we also implemented a "control" wine which we (unnecessarily) decanted vigorously (though not with a blender) and tasted alongside the Joly wine over the five day stretch.

To make it a fair contest, we thought we'd pick another legend -- which is not easy to do at an equivalent price point. But we think we've done well with Domaine A. et P. de Villaine's Rully, Les Saint-Jacques, 2005. Villaine is a legend for being part-owner of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

Full notes and the tale of our disappointment up next.

Mosel 101

For anyone interested in Riesling and Wine Science, Lars Carlberg, who exports fantastic Rieslings under the Mosel Wine Merchant Imprint, has generously provided a graduate seminar entitled: "On Aromatics: Wild Ferment, Sulfur and Slate" at the Brooklynguy College of Wine.

Lab Employees will receive 10 (ten) Continuing Education Credits for attending.

Help Wanted

Fellow wine scientist and Auburn University postdoc, Tracy Rickman, is working on wine and something called blogging.

At the Lab, we're signing on to sponsor her research. Because Tracy needs a job, and we'd like to see her get one.

The flow chart looks like this:

Collect Data > Write Article > Get Published > Gain Employment.

So please, let's help Tracy get her data, so she can get to work.

Take her very short (3-4 minutes) SURVEY.

(After the fact note: Turns out it's more of a medium survey (7-9 mins). But it is serious research -- unlike most of our Lab activities -- and would be a big help.)

The survey is available HERE.

If you're still not getting it, this is another LINK to her SURVEY.

Everyone here at the Lab appreciates your time and thanks you for your effort.

Lab Road Trip

I've perhaps gone overboard in taking my own advice about getting out of the Lab more often.

But I've booked a drinking tour of Tasmania. Off the Southeast coast of the Australian mainland, Tasmania affords the perfect combination for making sparkling wines: A cool climate and a bunch of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay planted in the ground. I begin my assault tomorrow, map in hand (my Aussie readers will tell you that's a pretty good line).

I'll be gone until after tax day.

At least.

Me and My Decanter

This comment:

"I personally find decanting, vigorous or otherwise, generally unnecessary"

...in our most recent commentary, sparked a fair amount of correspondence, and a comment from Ned.

So allow me to qualify my meaning.

I don't drink much 30 year old Claret. I do drink a fair amount of Champagne. I tend to drink more white wine than red. This is because I tend to eat more fish and chicken than beef and wild game. So for me, decanting is generally unnecessary. I suspect, gentle reader, that you were looking for something with more implied controversy.

Something like: I think decanting is largely a showy bit of theater that doesn't improve a wine to any greater degree than just opening it, pouring off a taste and letting it sit.

As it happens, I think that's true as well.

Generally.


Blender results up next.

Bad Judgment

This is really an appendix to the Lab Quiz from yesterday.

For those of you who thought the correct answer was B, an LA Times report from a few days ago notes a study demonstrating that wine judges are not particularly good at judging wine.

"Only 10% (of judges) in a four-year study of California State Fair judging were able to consistently give the same rating, or something close, to the same wine sampled multiple times in a large blind tasting."

So that 98 pointer you had your eye on in the shop window? Just keep walking.

The rest of the article is here.

(Thanks Herby; gold medal : © Tom Schmucker | Dreamstime.com)

No Resolve

I'm not big on resolutions. They seem so small and trivial compared to other things you can declare, like... Independence. I'd rather spend my time on manifestos and social contracts.

That said, I do want to highlight a few things we'd like to get around to doing during the Lab's 2009 Research Calendar.

1. We hope to finally get our, old/new mini-vertical program off the ground; where we taste the same wine from two different vintages, side by side. We have "Ten Splits" to indicate two wines separated by a decade; "Wide-gaps" when one wine is really old and the other really young. There's "Tight-knits" when the vintages are just a few years apart. And "Three-fers" where we have a vertical featuring more than two wines. I think this sort of thing can be very educational, but mostly we do it because it's fun to name the pairs.

2. We thought it would be interesting to recreate the Lab's inaugural experiment but this time with a rigorous control in place. We'll pit the crazy-funky and long lingering wines of Nicolas Joly against a wine that doesn't come with instructions "to decant vigorously" and drink after several days standing on the counter. Which leaves a lot of wines to consider as the control.

3. And of course we'll continue our tireless search for dirt, weigh in on topics we know almost nothing about, train our palates, and extend our pointless investigation into time travel, voyaging to ancient Rome, fin de siècle France, mid-century Paris, amongst other fanciful destinations.

And just maybe, we might even get around to that manifesto about ungrafted wines we keep threatening to write.


(image: © Janpietruszka | Dreamstime.com)

Do Not Deliver

I just happened to notice this. It was on the box that was used to ship the wine for our first Bottle Shock Trial.

Note the proscription: "Do not deliver to an intoxicated person."

So how'd we get it?

PS. A group at the Lab has suggested we expand our Shipping Shock trials in the New Year. More bottles, more time intervals, red/white, etc. If I don't approve their request, it might affect the quality of my Christmas gift from the Staff.

So we're on it.

BFC in the Bubbledome

One of the younger guys in the Lab called me an old dork. Because, apparently, I know next to nothing about kick-boxing, the sport of the future. You may know it as MMA. Or, like me, you may have no idea what I'm talking about.

He told me if I wanted to be cool (and who doesn't?), I'd refer to our occasional battles between sparkling wines in the McDuff's Food & Wine Trail Bubbledome as BFC.

Okay... Done.

But Junior, better get ready for my guillotine choke submission hold. Coming when you least expect it.


(image: © Aloysius Patrimonio | Dreamstime.com)