(a salad to die for) Scott Wilson, a practical-joking, golf-loving college buddy of mine, was an unlikely cooking teacher. Scott had no apparent interest in the culinary arts. He was, however, putting himself through business school by preparing Caesar salads tableside at a swish restaurant. One Saturday, in my quest to live beyond my means and impress a dinner date, I woke him up at two in the afternoon and begged for a tutorial. The heady aroma, pungent dressing and built-in theatrics had hooked me instantly. Twenty years, hundreds of salads and several truckloads of romaine lettuce later, I've fine-tuned the ingredients and learned to articulate the nuances that'll make or break a Caesar. I'm so obsessed with the ritual that I carry my well-worn salad bowl with me in a snare drum case when I take my show on the road. Pool sharks travel with their own cues; the concept is the same (and it doesn't hurt that flight attendants mistake me for a drummer). Most Caesar aficionados know where to find the best salad and are usually willing to trek miles across town to satisfy their craving. But few ever attempt to make one from scratch. Contrary to what anyone in a chef's hat might want you to believe, there are no secret ingredients or difficult techniques. However, a quintessential Caesar requires the harmonic convergence of several high-quality ingredients and some focus. In order to demystify the process, and make you the mac daddy of garlicky greens, I've isolated the most essential components. Since the recipe was published in my first book, The Surreal Gourmet: real food for pretend chefs, I've received dozens of letters from readers who've mastered the dressing and been deified by their friends. The ultimate compliment came from a waitress in Toronto who took me aside and whispered, "Every time I make your Caesar salad for a date, I get laid." I should be so lucky. 1) the bowl Most restaurants, and many home cooks, commit their first faux pas by selecting the wrong tool for the job. By using a blender or food processor to mix the dressing, they whip the yolk, giving the dressing an undesirable mayonnaise-like texture. The definitive salad begins with a large unfinished wooden bowl (i.e., not coated with a shiny lacquer). The rough interior wall of the bowl provides the perfect surface for blending ingredients. The best bowls are usually bored out of one solid slab of Vermont maple. (Martha would probably chop down the tree and chisel it out herself. But we have better ways to spend our time.) 2) the grind Once the aforementioned bowl's in hand, facilitating the successful marriage of the ingredients becomes an intensely physical activity worthy of Olympic designation. Use the back of a soup spoon and a healthy amount of pressure to grind the ingredients one at a time in a repetitive circular motion against the entire interior wall of the bowl. It should take approximately 20 seconds for each new ingredient to blend with the existing ingredients and form a smooth paste. 3) the garlic Accept no substitute. Use only fresh garlic. When buying garlic, look for a firm bulb. As it gets older and moves past its prime, the bulb loses firmness and green sprouts appear in each clove. At all costs, avoid dried, powdered garlic, the runt of the garlic family. And be wary of elephant garlic, a much blander version of the regular-size bulb. 4) the lettuce Pret-a-manger designer salad greens may be gracing fashionable plates everywhere, but Romaine remains the accessory of choice for Caesars because it wears the heavy dressing so well. If you must substitute, use another hearty lettuce. After washing the lettuce, use a lettuce spinner or towel to remove all water. For maximum crispness, return the lettuce to the refrigerator until just before serving. If you're preparing the lettuce several hours in advance, you can avoid browning edges by cutting the leaves with a sharp knife instead of tearing them. 5) the cheese This is probably the single most important element of a great Caesar. Imported Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano is produced exclusively in a small region of northern Italy. Its distinctive taste and grainy texture are unmistakable. Cheesemakers from this region adhere to a stringent code of rules regarding what the cows are fed and how long the cheese is aged (at least two years). A food writer at The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Once you get a taste of the real stuff -- crumbly, earthy and rich as wine -- there's no turning back: Everything else is sawdust." After you've added Parmigiano-Reggiano to your cooking repertoire, you'll be forced to adopt guerilla defense tactics to protect the ungrated cheese. Roaming dinner guests tend to circle the wedge like hungry sharks and will devour it the second you turn to spin-dry the lettuce. 6) the anchovy Don't be intimidated by the sight and taste of anchovies. When blended along with the other ingredients into a paste, the distinctive anchovy taste is unidentifiable. So why use it? Because along with the garlic and Dijon mustard, the anchovy provides the essence of the Caesar dressing, which all of the remaining ingredients serve to enhance. Modern technology has graced us with fish in a tube. Anchovy paste blends well and provides the perfect solution to the old problem of using one anchovy and tossing out the rest of the school. 7) the croutons Nothing's more anticlimactic than topping a finely tuned Caesar with store-bought croutons that were destined for turkey stuffing. Homemade croutons, cut from any leftover thickly sliced bread, are the hidden jewels of the salad (see recipe below). "Gourmet-style" croutons made by cottage industry suppliers are a suitable replacement if you have more money than time. 8) the legacy A great Caesar salad should knock you off your chair, then smack you again as you struggle to regain your senses. I can appreciate the fact that not everyone likes to wrestle with a salad, but that's why man created bottled dressing. If you elect to leave out the garlic or use the ingredients sparingly, please don't let anyone know it's my recipe.

Croutons (enough to top one salad) 3 thick slices of slightly stale sourdough or rustic country-style bread cut into 3/4-inch cubes 3 T olive oil 1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 2) Place bread cubes in a large bowl and add olive oil. Toss and squish the bread like a sponge until the oil is evenly absorbed. 3) Place croutons on a baking sheet or aluminum foil and bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Try not to forget about them in the oven as I often do.

Seizure Salad (Serves 6) 1/4 t salt 1 t coarsely ground black pepper 3 garlic cloves, minced 2 anchovies (or 1 t anchovy paste) 2 t Dijon mustard (the real stuff, not the dried stuff) 1 egg yolk, coddled* 1 1/2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 t Worcestershire sauce 1/4 cup safflower oil, or olive oil 1 1/2 t red wine vinegar 1 large head romaine lettuce, outer leaves discarded, remaining leaves washed and thoroughly dried. If lettuce looks anorexic or is in need of a serious trim, buy two heads 1 1/2 cups croutons (see recipe that follows) 1/2 cup grated imported Italian Parmegiano-Reggiano * When I cook for others, the fear of a class-action lawsuit drives me to coddle. Place the eggs, in their shell, in boiling water 40 seconds. Remove, run under cold water 15 seconds to stop the cooking process, then use as directed. 1) Add salt and pepper to the salad bowl (this creates a sandpaper-like base that'll make the next steps easier). Using the back of a soup spoon, grind garlic against the wall of the bowl until it becomes a paste. Then add anchovies, and once again use the back of the spoon to grind it into a paste. Follow the same procedure, adding the Dijon, egg yolk, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce one at a time. Make sure that each ingredient is blended into a smooth paste with the previous ingredients before proceeding. 2) Add oil and vinegar. Blend well. 3) Tear or slice lettuce leaves into bite-sized pieces and add to the salad bowl. Toss thoroughly with dressing. 4) Add croutons and cheese, toss again, then serve immediately. Notes: If you don't have a rough wooden salad bowl, the dressing can be made (with some sacrifice) in a blender. Add salt, pepper, garlic, anchovies, Dijon, lemon juice, Worcestershire and vinegar. Purée. Then add the oil and pulse a few times. Add egg yolk and pulse a couple more times - just enough to blend it without causing the dressing to turn mayonnaisey. The lettuce leaves should be coated, but not soaked, in dressing. Adjust the amount of dressing as necessary to keep salad from becoming too "wet."

Quick post on the Idea…

Marketing, the life I live outside of wine, is an interesting beast. And right now I’m speaking of the segment of marketing that inspires people and creates brands. In a traditional world, you have magazines or publications with editorial calendars and predictable subject matter. When the Web1.0 world came along, things were basically the same, predictable order of operations but with a much lower barrier to entry creating a flood of information. Search engines and intelligent algorithms began indexing this information and added a way to generate leads for business by setting up Ads based on the content. The theory goes if you’re searching for the content you might be interested some related products and/or services so here they are right next to your information. That’s great for lead generation. Interestingly enough, that has minimal branding value. You can ask anyone doing search engine marketing, paid ads are great for lead generation but they work fairly similarly to how stores are merchandised - similar items are next to each other so that you generate sales. It works, everyone’s happy in Web1.0 and the world creates a multi-billion dollar online advertising industry.

In comes “Web2.0″ where there is a shift. Really the type of fundamental shift that creates markets. It was subtle and natural evolution to end users but a disruptive shift for marketeers. This new e-commerce and publishing platform suddenly became less about broadcast and more about conversations. Less about a hyper-advanced information source and catalog and more about meeting people with common interests and creating “social” groups.

Robert at WineCulture blog pointed me to an article that talks about this quite succinctly:

When people are on MySpace, the activity they?re doing isn?t search. It?s something akin to ?hanging out? or ?networking?. Their task is almost the opposite of search. They are already on the site they want to be on. They don?t need to click on links to take them where they want to go.

In other words, the context is entirely different. When you?re in search mode, you are playing by different rules.

Social ads don?t work as well because people are being social, not searching for something.

What the Author is saying is that in the world of conversations, social networking that happens to be online, and interaction, understanding context of the situation is king. Automating the placement of a static ad based on certain keyword matches has modest success on blogs (but the blog has to be very popular because its only those doing some searching that will be interested in the ads) and much less success on an actual social platform. Ads based on keywords in content are worthwhile if the activity the “clickee” is engaged in is searching for information (Web1.0). But if the published word that is triggering the static ad is part of a conversation that Richard and I are having on his blog about the Wine.com direct shipping whistle blowing debacle…er…debate (hypothetically), then that ad won’t be of interest to me.

Additionally, straight forward ad networks won’t help either. They just lump conversations into categories (either Tags or worse), match advertisers with categories they want to serve ads to in an automated fashion, and then serve away. Its arguable that this is even MORE Web1.0 than keyword advertising.

Marketing is being disrupted and its going to take a disruption to this market, not just in the technology but in the approach to marketing, to make online marketing effective in a Web 2.0 world.

Cheers!

This is a dry, slightly sparkling wine, with a pleasent, rich, complex aroma. A pleasure to sniff and taste, there’s a fruity note and there’s quite an undefined spicy note, definitely requires another bottle of researching . The producer specifies it as a wine “with characteristic Muscat taste and smell carrying combination of spicy tones of incense, cinnamon, basil and fruit tones of pine apple and strawberry”.

Although it does have the muscaty taste it’s a dry wine, but still does go well with desserts such as nutty cakes. Also goes well with lighter meat dishes and on it’s own.

The Ivanovi? winery is a winery with a long tradition, one of those where the younger generation has embraced it’s ancestry recipes and combined it with modern trends. Some of the details are available online. It is located in the ?upa region in southern Serbia.

Score: 8/10
Price: 500 RSD (?6)
Retailer: Chardak, ?ika Ljubina 7, Belgrade

Technorati Tags: Serbian Wines, Tamjanika

When I read Inertia Beverage’s announcement of a change of CEO it was not only interesting but actually a very wise move by the current CEO and a friend of mine Paul Mabray.  I don’t want to get into a long post on my business philosophy but I thought I should post a short commentary as I saw some conversation breaking out that made it seem as if this was a negative thing.

I know many times press releases put alot of spin on a bad situation to make it seem like a good one.  I know because part of my role in various marketing jobs had been to do just that and I always put out the story before someone makes a "scoop" and spins it negatively first.  Thats just good PR.

But I view Paul’s announcement differently.  I’ve been in High-Tech since the 1980’s even before I was in college (when I was working for a software retail company).  But more importantly, my view is shaped by something my mentor, Don McKinney, imparted on me when I first moved to Silicon Valley.  Basically, if you want your company to really succeed you first have to recognize that the company will require different CEOs and RARELY does the same person have the personality to be all of these.

1. the "$0 to $10M" CEO - this CEO thrives on the startup situation.  Risk taker, entrepreneurial, big-game hunter, and business developer (as well as visionary and marketeer), this CEO is usually one for the founders.  The key here is to have a sales person in this role and drive the initial products to be customer-oriented with a saavy product team.  This CEO recognizes that getting A+ players on the team is more important then having the right structure or hierarchy.
2. the "$10M to $100M" CEO - This CEO can take those first few BIG customers and nourish them such that they can be cash cows for the company.  At the same time he/she starts to pull in trusted sales and business development folks as well as marketing folks to compliment development and empowers them to do their job.  What can happen to a company that may cause it to fail is if CEO #1 thinks he/she is CEO #2 but isn’t really and has trouble either getting help to create new business, create a polished brand, or both because he/she still thinks he/she has all the best ideas and no one else can do it for them.  Its the beginning of scaling the company.
3. the "$100M to $1B" CEO - This CEO recognizes that the company is going to go BIG TIME and needs processes that allow the organization to scale.  Oh the dreaded "P" word, but its true.  At this point, customer care is still job #1, but setting up the structure to scale operations is becoming more and more important and this CEO needs to allow that to go to a professional A+ COO type.  Again, failure can happen here when a CEO doesn’t appreciate what an operationally oriented person’s value is (i.e. can make the organization scale in ways the CEO never dreamed up).  This CEO also has to be able to attract the investment levels that typically the founding CEO doesn’t have access to.  This is usually when you see a CEO finally step aside but it can be too late.
4. the "$1B to $10B" CEO - Now your talking about the professional CEO that you see at the top of Cisco, GE, and companies like that.  Charismatic and oozing leadership that can rival Bill Clinton in his prime.  This CEO still focuses on his top customers but there usually are so many that the top 10 are likely the only he/she gets to visit.  This CEO could be very very smart but is really removed from day-to-day so is fed development information and status from a staff of A+ lieutenants but likely has a big company filled almost 50% with B players (inevitable at this size).  The hope is that CEO #3 created solid enough processes that the company will thrive and compensate for some incompetence that has inevitably creeped into the the ranks of the company.

Thats the idea in a nutshell.  You can move the revenue bands up and down a little but this is generally true.  I had this wisdom passed on to me in the early 1990s and I’ve seen it proven out time and time again.  What I see in the Inertia announcement is a smart man that wants to see his company do great things.  But I say "smart man" because from my conversations with him, he intuitively sensed he wasn’t CEO #2 or #3, checked his ego at the door, and did the right thing.  He’s still working in there directing strategy and given his history in the wine business thats probably a good move.

The employees of Inertia should be excited.  As a Silicon Valley veteran, I can tell you more often then not that a move like this initiated by the CEO prevented this from happening later in your lives when the Board of Directors forces this decision (and they always do) because the CEO isn’t scaling the company for the big time.

Cheers!

This wine reminds me again that Torrontés made in the Cafayate Valley could well be considered the benchmark for Argentine Torrontés. For being in the $10-$12 range, this Torrontés boasts a great deal more complexity and balance than some French and Italian varieties costing more have sadly failed to exhibit. Although I am a lifetime fan of European wines, I?d like to drink more intelligent value wines made by producers who don?t take me for granted due to some sense of entitlement. I sometimes worry about that and I?m not sure whether it?s that exactly or perhaps the fact that wine prices for Burgundy and Bordeaux are incredibly inflated, but I?m finding it more difficult than ever to put down $15 for a bottle of white wine from prestige regions that won?t underwhelm.

Reflecting more upon possible Argentine wine import trends, I am really looking forward to seeing more wines from Argentina?s provinces outside of Mendoza given that producers are avoiding bulk production like the plague and still very much feel that they have everything to prove. For one, crafting wines in Salta isn?t exactly for the faint of heart?stony, sandy soils on steep Andean inclines and almost 360 days of sunlight. Wines produced in Salta don?t even account for a tenth of Argentine wines, and this especially underscores the fact that bulk producers have stayed away for some time.

I?ve recently noticed lots of new and exciting things which I?ll report on later in terms of Argentine wine imports. Interestingly enough, these wines don?t exactly fit the typical ?Wines of Argentina Awards? formula for success (Bordeaux-style blends with Malbec playing a role to some degree). I am seeing more general Patagonia appellation Pinot Noir, Tempranillo from San Juan and now, more Torrontés producers from Salta stepping up to deliver. I have a feeling that things are looking up for smaller Argentine producers who may want to share their work with export markets such as the U.S., since an open-minded changing of the guard, taste-wise is afoot. For now, here?s my take on the don Rodolfo Torrontés:

In the glass, it is a clear, pale lemon color. The nose is perfumey and stays true to the nature of the aromatic Torrontés variety?clean, pronounced floral aromas (elderflower dominating), stone fruit (apricot and peach), and lemon. The style is dry, with high acidity, light body and an impressive balance of flavors for the price point. The elderflower blossom aspect that dominates from the nose on through to one?s afterbreath really captivated me, as it?s one of my favorite scents/flavors in general. The acidity from the lemon zest is very refreshing and nicely accompanies the stone fruit flavors.

The importer of the don Rodolfo wines is Cabernet Corporation, out of California. Check with them for distribution information if it doesn't seem to be available in your area.

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.

And apparently, Yulia is the Upset Queen. She's adept at bringing $7 bottles that end up winning blind tastings. Either that or we all have cheap tastes... not quite sure.

So last night was the Mourvedre/Monastrell showdown. And honestly, it was pretty disappointing. We blind tasted 5 wines and none of them were particularly stellar. As per my normal accuracy, I guessed 3 out of 5. I knew we had 2 cheap Spanish, 1 pricier Spanish, Cline's Ancient Vines, and Thomas Coyne. I did not know the vintage of any of them.

Wine #1: Blackberry/blueberry nose, with a touch of herbs. A bit of funk wafting through. Tight tannins. Thin fruit, but very ripe. Smoke on the finish. I guessed it was a cheap Spanish from 05. I gave it 2.5 out of 4 stars.

Wine #2: Smells exactly like sweet boysenberry pancake syrup from IHOP. Blast of fruit on the opening palate and then... nothing. Kind of gross, really. I guessed another cheap Spanish from 05. I gave it 1 star.

Wine #3: Much lighter in color (the previous two were densely purple-red). White chocolate and sweet cinnamon on the nose with blackberry/raspberry fruit. Same fruit on palate with spicy-herbal finish (sage, thyme, cinnamon). Lingering cocoa. I guessed a CA from 05, and I figured it was Cline. I gave it 2.75 stars.

Wine #4: Ripe blackberry, some astrigency on the nose - kinda like band-aids. Also lighter in color than the first two, more red than purply. Cassis fruit, smoke and lots of herbs. Lingering tea. I guessed a CA from 03 or 04 based on color and herbality. I guessed it as Thomas Coyne and gave it 3.25 stars.

Wine #5: Smelled just like... dish soap? Seriously. Or cheap rose perfume. Sweet raspberry also present. On the palate, pretty tasty mulberry fruit with mint and thyme. I guessed it as the pricier Spanish and placed it as an 05. I gave it 3 stars.

So, it turned out that:

#1- Cambra's 03 Uno! Shit, we all got that one wrong. And quite frankly, it is NOT worth the price.

#2- Chonchelo 06 - Cheap Spanish, indeed. We just poured this straight down the sink.

#3- Cline 05 Ancient Vines Mourvedre - Got it right, but it's not as good as I recall. Much lighter and much leaner on herbs.

#4- Thomas Coyne 04 Mourvedre - Pretty good stuff. I'd feel ok about recommending this.

#5- Finca Luzon Verde 06 Monastrell- And with that, Yulia's cheap Spanish trumps us all. This is a great bargain. 

Are you the Mac-daddy/-mommie when it comes to creativity? 

Have you ever looked at all the blasé wine labels out there and thought, "I could do so much better."? 

Well, here's a chance to explore your creative side and score a case of a soon-to-be classic red wine - Juice Crew Red.

So far, the J.Crew has nicknamed our maturing vino, "The Mighty Brick."  I think we'd like the label to reflect her personality (perhaps listening to a little Rick James could inspire potential label designers out there):

"So all and all, the blend has resulted in what we wanted - a rich rhone style wine with some backbone. The different varietals playing nicely in the sandbox. Great dark color, long sexy legs and built to party"

Here's the deal - submit a label design, which reflects our sexy Rhone brickhouse and you could win...1 case of JC Red.  Now that's what I call a case for creativity!

Details: Submit* your design entry by November 15, 2007.  The editor will select 3 designs to be voted on by Juice Crew members and Basic Juice readers.  The winning designer will receive the case of Juice Crew Red when it's released (we award no wine before its time).

*by submitting a design, designer retains no rights to design, but will be credited by name

Gentlepeople, start your creative engines..

Perhaps it is serendipitous that my Amazon.com purchase of Alice Feiring’s new treatise, The Battle for Wine and Love, came at approximately the same time that I pulled the cork on a winery sample from Cooper Mountain Vineyards.

Feiring’s book is a broadside against technology in winemaking and the Cooper Mountain “Mt. Terroir” is as about as natural of a wine as they come.

(Cooper Mountain) Mountain Terroir (Five Elements Pinot Noir) is a blend of some of the best grapes harvested from our three vineyards sites (Grabhorn & Meadowlark & Johnson School). Singled out in individual barrels for aging, the contents of this bottle have been carefully brought together to convey what we hope to be the best expression of Cooper Mountain’s terroir, of our environment.

And, frankly, you have to love a winery that produces only 90 cases of a biodynamic Pinot Noir Cuvee from estate-grown grapes and they decide to sample some to the blogosphere.  It is a bold choice and demonstrates an incredible insight into old-world winemaking technique and the new market dynamics of the modern day. And, it helps that it is a fantastic wine. 

I feel like I was a part of an experiment.  Ostensibly, this sampling was a litmus test by Cooper Mountain.  The wine is certified organic and biodynamic, fermented with native yeasts.  They wanted to know whom the rube is, who does not “get it.”

It is not hard to “get” this wine.  And, in parallel to Feiring’s book, it is not hard to see the immediate point of natural winemaking.

Of all the biodynamic wines that I have tasted, each of them has expressed a certain “it” factor.

Now, mind you, just like NFL quarterbacks, it is very difficult to describe what “it” is.  Sometimes you just know it when you see “it.” The liveliness, the je ne sais quoi … the LeBron James or the Peyton Manning factor at work, as opposed to the merely good, at the highest level.

Biodynamics wine is a controversial subject, some view it as poppycock, a skepticism about some of the mysticism. 

Here’s where I come down on BioD wines – there’s room enough in the world all variants of winemaking, but it’s hard to argue with what frequently gets delivered in the bottle.  BioD wine is hard to describe, but you know “it” when you taste “it.”

That is a point that Alice Feiring argues and Cooper Mountain delivers.

My review is found here.

Merlot lovers, rejoice! A new documentary film made in response to the post-Sideways Merlot backlash (read more on that here) is about to debut. That's right, Merlove, made by Napa filmmaker Rudy McClain, is set to screen Tuesday, May 27th at COPIA in Napa. The film apparently includes footage of renowned Merlot makers from...

TO: wine shop managers and their webmasters
FROM: Dr. Vino
RE: adding importer information to e-shops

I was surfing the sites of a few online wine retailers today looking for some specific imported wines when I should have been working. Some of the sites generated other imported wines suggestions that sounded good but I hadn’t heard of the producers. Since you already list tons of information about the wine including the producer, region, vintage, possibly grape variety, and a critic’s opinion, how hard would it be to add a field to list the importer as well? I, for one, would be more likely to throw a bottle in my virtual shopping cart if I knew it was from one of my favorite importers. If I am in a shop I can look at the back label, which provides that info, but not online…

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Brilliance is a word that can mean many things: luminosity, intelligence, perfectly executed and, when it comes to flavor, lively and electric. All of those things come together in these two seductive, brilliant wines that are great values to boot coming in at under $25.

• 2005 Clos de la Roilette, Fleurie, Imported by Louis/Dressner Every time I’ve served this wine each person at their first sip is taken back for a second as they ponder what has crossed their palate. Each knows that they have experienced something special. This is an extraordinary wine is that is is just so alive that it makes you take more pleasure in living. Concentrated elegance and finesse.

• 2005 Bourgogne, Pinot Noir Vieilles Vignes, Domaine Joseph Voillot. Imported by Vintage ‘59 Imports – Anybody who thinks there are no great values coming out of Burgundy be prepared to be proven wrong. This racy, bright pinot noir also comes packed with loads of flavor and complexity on its rather electric acid frame. Here’s a pinot that can both sing and dance. A short stint in your cellar of two or three years will give you quite a bottle of pinot.

A pair of 5’s may seem a long shot to those that think a lot of chips are required to get great wine, but sometimes a pair is all you need. These days it’s hard to imagine such a winning hand at this price range from anywhere other than France.

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Alice Feiring....You GO!

I think it's great that the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Times would give Alice a fairly large stage to bitch and moan about California wine not being to her tastes and the contention that a single, Maryland-based Palate is the reason for her California Discontent.

Alice is in the midst of promoting her new book that takes the art of bitching and moaning into a book length format. Feiring's "The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization" has a whimsical looking cover design that might just as easily be translated to a publishing effort on how pandas and tulips can save the world. But it seems behind the happy cover lies another approach:

"Join her as she sets off on her one-woman crusade against the tyranny of homogenization, wine consultants, and, of course, the 100-point scoring system of a certain all-powerful wine writer."

Just for the record there is no tyranny of Homogenization in the world of CA wine. There is only disappointment that most wines don't appeal to one's palate. It's also true that Alice's call for more "natural" winemaking and "natural" wines is really just a a reflection of her philosophy of life and not a critique of winemaking. It's highly doubtful she or most others could consistently identify wines that are made with and without "natural" winemaking techniques.

Still, I love to see Alice, this artful writer, make a full frontal assault on those wineries and critics who like to drink and make wines that don't appeal to her. There is a passion here that transcends and makes secondary work of the disappointment that is at the heart of her recent screeds and editorials. It's good writing, it's controversial, it engages the reader and it demonstrates that the politics of preference is alive and well in the world of wine.

As I read the good news today that the California Supreme Court overturned the law prohibiting same-sex marriage, I saw similarities between Feiring's position that California wine should be more subdued and natural and the opponents of the California Supreme Court ruling who believed marriage should be what it always was, between a man and a woman. Both Alice and the conservative, anti-gay camp believe there has been some brainwashing going on. But in the long run, both the opponents of same sex marriage and Alice will lose their battles. America is not, and never was, a place where traditions were forceful enough to squash the aspirations of those who choose to simply do what they want as long as it's not hurting anyone.

The big, bold wines that Alice believes are imitations of what real wine should be will be with us forever and will continue to be made because California's climate allows this as does technology, and because other people like them. But she should take take heart. There will always be Cathy Corisons, Steve Edmunds, Stony Hills and many, many others who, if Alice wants to seek them out, will demonstrate that there is no winemaking region in the world more diverse in the style of wines it produces than California.

UPDATE:
Nice review of Feiring's New Book at The Women's Wine Critic Blog.