Enjoyed this new article at DivineCaroline about women's physiology vis a vis that of men and how this impacts our ability to compete with guys in, oh say, a drinking contest. The results aren't in our favor (sorry, ladies) unless you happen to be a very buff woman paired off to compete with a fat guy of roughly your same height. Here's a brief excerpt from the piece, and link to check out the rest:

"Winning a drinking contest, or just being able to gauge how many drinks you can have while still remaining vertical, depends on numerous factors, including regularity of drink, that day's food and sleep intake, and genetics. But based just on gender...,

Photo Credit Simone Van Den Berg | Dreamstime.com

A hastily organised farewell dinner at Milsons in Sydney for a friend. My first time at this restaurant and both the service and food was excellent. I had the following;

Scallop and prawn filled zucchini flowers in prawn bisque with green asparagus, grape tomatoes and seeded mustard crustacean oil

Cherry wood smoked, 200 day grain fed beef tenderloin with fondant potato, baby green beans, aioli and red wine sauce with truffle oil

MV Krug (August 1989 Disgorgement):
Light gold colour with very fine bead. Citrus, ginger and cocoa on the nose. Rich flavour to the palate, but also some very youthful, fresh characters. Not as advanced or complex as a couple of the other late 80s MVs I’ve recently had, but lovely all the same.
94/100

1995 Jacquesson Signature Brut (May 2003 Disgorgement):
Very active bead. Lemon, toast, floral and some cookie dough aromas. Fluffy, creamy palate.Quite approachable, good length and very nice drinking but lacking in depth.
91/100

1981 Loosen Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese Riesling:
Smoke, rose petals and peaches on the nose. Medium sweetness present on the palate, slightly rounded mouthfeel and the acid isn’t quite there to lift it up entirely. Still, fairly nice to drink but not very complex.
87/100

1998 William Fevre Le Clos Chablis:
Straw coloured. Sesame seed oil, lemon, toast and grapefruit. The palate has some piercing acidity but also shows some malty oak influence and heat. Very good, but I don’t know what is going to happen with further aging.
89/100

1998 Olivier Leflaive Montrachet:
Muesli, vanilla, minerals and chalk to the nose. The palate doesn’t show the same restraint as the nose, it is intensely rich with a creamy mouthfeel. Great length of flavour. My first taste of the famed Montrachet vineyard, thank you Alex.
90/100

1999 Robert Chevillon Nuits St Georges Les Vaucrains:
Smoked meat, oak and charcoal aromas. Linear, dry and alarmingly short on the palate. I thought something was wrong here but I don’t know what - no sign of TCA, someone thought it may be brett, but half the table quite liked it!
81/100

1981 Chateau Trotanoy Pomerol:
Briar/bramble, blackberry and cherry aromas to the nose. Nicely weighted, medium bodied palate with tannins pretty much resolved and drinking close to its peak. Very nice, it needs to be consumed in the near future.
88/100

1982 Chateau Beychevelle St Julien:
Cassis, blackberries, cedar and spice form the nose. The palate is rich and expressive, though it retains good balance across the length. Still very youthful, it is a lovely wine now with the potential to be even better.
93/100

1995 Ornellaia:
On the nose there are aromas of raspberry, earth, tobacco and dark chocolate. Shows a very classy palate, it is long and has detailed texture. Still feels as though some promise is being held back, I think the next 10 years will prove very interesting for this wine.
92/100

1995 Chateau Pichon Lalande Pauillac:
Chlorine on the nose. Metallic palate. Undrinkable. A shame.
NR/100

1981 Ernst Bretz Bechtolsheimer Klosterberg Scheurebe Eiswein Auslese:
Toffee, honey and brown sugar nose. Hasn’t got the acid structure needed. Finishes short and simple. May have seen better days.
84/100

1980 J. Baumer Hochheimer Rotenpfel Silvaner Eiswein Auslese:
Toffee, spice, honey and peaches. Spicy on the palate, quite dense flavours but some acid remaining to lift the palate slightly. Decent length.
87/100

Enjoyed at Campanile for Mother’s day (thanks Carlos for the wonderful service!)

Share This

Best of the wine blogosphere for April 20th through May 3rd:

• 2005 Piña Napa Valley
• Score Whore!
• Industry vs. Non Industry
• Vin de Napkin - Wine Snob
• SFGate: Wine : Label watch: Heribert Kerpen
• A Century of Riesling
• Wine Twitters
• Wine Critics are Parasites, But That Doesn’t Mean We Can Be Bought
• Vin de Napkin - Frankenwine vs. Spoofulation
• Wine and Spirit magazine on
• Earth Day thoughts on sustainability in the world of wine
• Wine Journalists, might consider using Wordpress if you decide to join us!
• An Open Letter and a Call for a Merger in the Wine + Technology Space

ShareThis

The much-promised, overly hyped Riesling Review has now arrived (brought to you by Mylanta)

Jill, Yulia, P-Cat, and myself (Jay) converged at Boozer Headquarters (my place) last Wednesday for the Riesling blind tasting. P-Cat's writing a column for a local newspaper and needed to taste through a bunch so we decided to make it A Thing. We each got a bottle from a different geographic locale, figuring the areas that needed representation were Germany, Alsace, Austria, New York, and Australia (don't blame me for the last one, ok?)

AND, since we live the malt liquor lifestyle, we tasted them blind, each bottle wrapped lovingly in two layers of plastic bags. Ghetto super star, that is what we are.

Here are my rather lame notes:

Wine #1: Apricot, honeysuckle, rose petals on the nose; palate is lime, tangerine - stones, touch of cream, but thin.

Wine #2: SULPHER! Yikes, burned my nose hairs. V pale in glass. Diesel, swampy nose. Palate of bitter green orange, lemon zest, pink grapefruit. Long finish due to acidity.

Wine #3: Light, aromatic greens - fresh, sweet grass, white flowers, honeydew. Melon-apricot palate with stone minerality and balanced acidity. Yum.

Wine #4: Diesel, wet stones. Sweet apricot, honey.

Wine #5: Swamp water. Grape-lemon pucker candy. Sour Patch kids. Yuck. We no like.

Results:

1: Paul Blanck 05 from Alsace (score 1 for me!)

2: Grosset 05 from Australia (upset of the CENTURY, folks!)

3: Domaine Wachau 06 from Austria (amazing value - our favorite, hands down, at only $12.99)

4: Fritz Haag 05 Kabinett from Germany (which we all guessed because of the residual - oops, sorry, forgot it was supposed to be a dry Riesling tasting..)

5: Red Newt Cellars 06 Reserve from NY State (surprising only in that is sucked so badly for the money - tasting like bad NYState wine, so I guessed this one immedately...)

It was interesting too in that every wine except the Red Newt was screw cap. Go figure.

Still not a huge fan of Riesling, especially since I tasted all these the night before some serious food poisoning that had me leaving pieces of myself roadside throughout the state for the next two days and I can't help but link the two incedents.

Screwed indeed.

Since everyone loved my review of the Fish Eye Merlot, I figured I’d give the Cab a shot.

Ringing in at 13.5% alcohol by volume, this cheap wine was an equal match to the FishEye Merlot. From Ripon, California, this wine lets the fruit speak for itself. Along with the dark plum taste, I also experienced a little pepper in the nose.

At only 8 dollars a bottle, I found this to be a great wine. I had mine with Spicy Montreal seasoning. Try it!

Rating: 7/10
Price: 7.99
Place of purchase: L&L Grocery
Vineyard Info:
FishEye Winery
Ripon, CA
www.fisheyewines.com

In my old age I’ve really been turning the dial on skeptical cynicism.  To that end, nothing rankles me more than more government.  Well, at least more government where it shouldn’t be.  Saving people from themselves, yes.  Helping those that need help, yes.  Ensuring children can maximize their potential, yes.  State-run liquor stores, no.

So, it was with much shock and chagrin that I read an article about the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PCLB) spending $3.6M dollars for store design improvements and general recommendations designed to improve the shopping experience ... in order to become a world-class retailer.

The upshot is that the Governor of the state, Ed Rendell, told the head of the PCLB, PJ Stapleton, to, “Run this place like a business, not a government bureaucracy.”

Gee, I can’t imagine anything as government-like as a $3.6M dollar contract with a branding firm.  Now that I think about it, it’s awfully corporate, as well.

I want to say: guys, I’ll take a consulting fee of 10% on that $3.6M and save you the balance.  With the savings, the PCLB can do one of two things--either drive to New York City with a bunch of MBA students who need a capstone project and go to every retailer in the city.  Subsequently steal ideas from all that is good. Alternatively, head to Costco, the largest wine retailer in the country, and study how to sell high-volume low qty. sku’s to an adoring public.

There, I just saved them a bunch of money.  I’ll wait for my check to arrive.

More gewurtz. The good news is that this is an excellent wine. The bad news is that it is sold out. I thought I would review it anyway because it is worth reviewing and you might spot it on a restaurant list somewhere or other. This is barrel femented in old French oak and left on lees for an extended period. All very interesting and artisanal.

Aromas of lychee, ginger marmalade, musk and roses. On the palate a lighter more delicate style with flavours of ruby red grapefruit, peach, lychee, ginger and spice. Distinctly dry chalky texture. Not a big fat impact wine like many but rather more subtle, spicy and lean. Finishes with spicy grapefruit flavours. A food style with style.

The wine book category continues to be one of the most oft published categories in the book world.  Large publishers have published six wine-related books in the last five weeks alone.  Yet, have you ever wondered if these books actually sell?

Thanks to a couple of dollars out of my pocket and the graciousness of a couple of publicists, I have five out of the six books in my possession.  They are in the reading queue behind “The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I saved the World from Parkerization” by Alice Feiring, a title that I am dog-earing because there is a years worth of blog fodder contained within—inspiration for me offering up scathing counterpoints and beseeching requests for an acknowledgement of conventional wisdom while imploring rationality, mostly. 

The recently published books include the aforementioned and the following:

Reflections of a Wine Merchant by Neal Rosenthal

The Wine Trials by Robin Goldstein

The Billionaire’s Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace

Passion on the Vine by Sergio Esposito

And
Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines: Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World by some dude named Gary

Based on legitimate (albeit confidential) industry data, it looks like all are performing admirably, though I have to keep the actual sales data under wraps.  Herewith, your wine book leader board based on actual cumulative sell-through sales (this is what a consumer actually buys, not what is sold to a bookstore):

1) Passion on the Vine – a likely bestseller the way this title is moving
2) The Wine Trials – Strong performance with big numbers in the last week or so
3) The Battle for Wine and Love – narrowly beat out by The Wine Trials, good performance overall and trending upward
4) Reflections of a Wine Merchant – overall good performance on this title, as well.  However, it has a couple of bad Amazon.com reviews, which can stop book sales in their tracks
5) Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines - Gary has a couple of weeks less sales opportunity and having 9 or 10 Amazon.com reviews bodes well as this gathers momentum
6) The Billionaire’s Vinegar – This title is coming out of the gates slooooooow despite a ton of promotion.  Not quite a stinker, but not helping any Editor make their bonus, either.

If you asked me ahead of time, I would not have guessed that Passion on the Vine would have started so strong, but I think it is because it is a crossover title that appeals to armchair travelers in addition to wine fans.

Two additional things are interesting to me, and, of course, they have to do with Vaynerchuk.  The first is that if you look at the “Customers who bought this also bought” listing on Amazon.com you will quickly see that Gary is appealing to a whole ‘nother demographic. Amongst items that customers also purchased from Amazon.com alongside his book include video games like Mario Kart for the Nintendo Wii and Grand Theft Auto. 

Another interesting aspect of Vaynerchuk’s promotional tactics for his book is some of the marketing tactics he is employing.  Consider this promo in conjunction with an Internet marketing consultant (Full post here and you do want to follow the link):

Hours after the day’s activities had come to a close, I was walking past the empty ballroom hours and happened to glance inside.

I looked at my watch. The conference had ended nearly 6 hours earlier.

The post from the Internet Marketer continues with the following offer:

–If you purchase 2-4 copies of Gary’s new book, you’ll receive a special invite to an exclusive invite-only call I’m holding with Gary on May 27th at 3:00 PM Eastern time to talk about social media.

–If you purchase 5 or more copies of Gary’s new book, you’ll not only get exclusive access to the call, but you’ll have the opportunity to ask Gary direct questions about how to apply social marketing to your business.

This is all interesting to me.  I’m not sure if Gary’s social marketing is going to work, but if I had to bet my money it would be on the crossover title – Passion on the Vine—that appeals to a wide swath of an audience—Italianates, travelers and wine lovers and not on sweaty palmed guys that buy five books to listen to a conference call and ask questions.

As somebody who feels like they have a book inside them, I wish all of these authors continued best wishes and hopefully I will get through all of these books before Dr. Vino’s two books hit the shelves.