critical path

I can’t recall a time when I’ve gone to see my doctor or dentist and asked them to do free work on me. Same with the guys who service my car. Call me a hopeless traditionalist, but I sincerely believe that anyone who makes a living with a certain skill-set ought to be paid for their expertise. So when I am asked for my “thoughts” on a particular wine or wine label or wine concept, I generally decline. My “thoughts” are all in my reviews, available when published. But other than that, I would expect to be paid as a consultant. Giving away hard-won expertise doesn’t feel right.

Even so, once in a while – like yesterday – I do it.

selling the score

The eagerly-awaited annual review of Washington wines in the Wine Advocate has arrived, and the blizzard of tweets and Facebook posts indicates a lot of very positive scores. I am going to take a day or two to digest the full report, before weighing in with my own comments. But I couldn’t help but notice that, despite years and years of hearing protests from folks in the wine industry about how consumers rely upon scores to make purchasing decisions, when they should trust their palates, it is those in the industry who trumpet the scores first, longest and loudest. Very few of these posts even mention the verbiage; it’s all about the numbers.

are we killing the golden goose?

As we say goodbye to August (and in these parts, apparently, what little summer there has been), I’m wondering what else we are saying goodbye to these days?

In our daily lives, we constantly feed upon information that is delivered to us for free. It has become so ubiquitous and ordinary, that it barely deserves comment – unless, like me, you are old enough to remember how things used to be.

cheap wine rules

I am a founding member of a wine tasting group that has been meeting every month since 1989 (hey – we all started this in the sixth grade). The format is simple and never varies. The host for the month provides a location, stemware, and food. The group decides on a tasting theme, and everyone brings a bottle that fits. The host usually puts in a ringer, and without fail a few other members do the same. We taste the wines blind, one at a time, argue and discuss, make guesses about what they might be, cast votes on which is the ringer, and generally have a good time. Then a quick second round of tasting takes place, during which the bags are pulled and the wines revealed.

new washington wine book

This weekend I received the hardcover copy of my new book. It's the second edition – extensively revised and completely updated – of “Washington Wines & Wineries: the Essential Guide.” It has arrived at the publisher’s warehouse and will begin shipping this week.

Though it has only been three years since the previous edition, it seems more like a decade. Despite all the doom and gloomers, growth in the Washington wine industry has continued at a record pace. Yes, there are some wineries for sale, some cancelled vineyard contracts, and some projects on hold. That is nothing new. I recently reviewed a manuscript that delved into the history of California grape growing and winemaking in the mid-to-late 1800s, and there were the same boom and bust cycles then, some caused by financial meltdowns, some by disease, some by accidents of nature. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

pet peeves

Everyone has them. The thing that grates, annoys, rankles, sticks in your craw, is a burr under your saddle. Mine is terrior. There’s no such thing as terrior! There are terriers – smart little dogs. And there is terroir – sometimes – an inconveniently French term that is supposed to represent “the murmuring of the earth” or some such notion.

But if you start reading back labels and websites and press releases, you’ll find that in the wine world, it’s terrior that rules. As in this tech sheet for a perfectly fine, inexpensive California pinot noir. I quote:

is washington pinot noir an oxymoron?

Anyone with an interest in the history and development of the American wine industry should have a copy or two of Leon Adams “The Wines of America.” The book went through many printings and several revised editions in the 1970s and early 1980s, and its author exhaustively chronicled the who, what, when and where of American winemaking from Prohibition onward. Though Washington and Oregon get few pages, the timing of Adams’ research was spot on – he was an eyewitness to the birth of the modern era of wine grape growing and wine production in both states.

I quote liberally from the revised second edition of the book, which came out in 1978. Bear with me a moment and you’ll see where this is going.