The Wine Curmudgeon

It's not a New Yorker cartoon, but it will do

The cartoon is from On the Wine Trail in Italy, using a Creative Commons license.

Technorati Tags: cartoons,wine business,wine trends

Wine, the recession, and the Wine Curmudgeon Sample Index

The wine business is in trouble by any number of measurements, but the one that strikes me the most is the Wine Curmudgeon Sample Index.

This summer, I have received more samples than ever before, including samples from wineries that would not have noticed my existence in the past. I have received so many samples, in fact, that I’ve actually declined offers of many more. That’s the first time in my 20-some odd years of writing about wine that I’ve had to do that.

How weird has it been?

• I got four bottles from a major Napa winery, including its $100 and $80 cabernet sauvignons. The catch, of course, is that I almost never write about those kinds of wines, and there was no real reason to send them to me.

• A couple of weeks ago, a leading California sparkling wine producer sent me samples of the same wine it had sent me in the fall.

• Double samples – that is, two bottles of the same wine in the same shipment – are rampant. One of the biggest producers in the world sent me a case of wine, two bottles each of six wines.

Why this is happening and what it means after the jump:

Whoops

Some of you may have seen a post on Sunday with a very bad picture of me and some type about testing blog editors. It wasn’t supposed to get posted, but did (not quite sure how). Feel free to ignore it, laugh at the picture, or hit delete.

More Wine Curmudgeon and Internet radio

Olivia Wilder has asked me back for The New Art of Living on Sunday. I should be on around 8:50 p.m. central time (though the show has been running late).

And Olivia’s effort was the second most popular program on the network a couple of weeks ago. I was on that one, so the question becomes: Would it have been first without me?

Technorati Tags: Internet radio,The New Art of Living,Olivia Wilder

Wine terms: Hybrid and native grapes

The wine grape world is divided into three main categories – vitis vinifera, or European-style wine grapes like cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay; native grapes like concord and catawba; and hybrid grapes like chambourcin, and seyval blanc.

Why don’t you hear more about native and hybrid grapes? Because most wine made in the world is made with vinifera. It’s the easiest to grow in most of the important wine regions, easiest to make wine with, and mostly makes the best wine.

But this doesn’t mean that hybrids and native grapes (the ultimate list is here) aren’t legitimate wine grapes. More, after the jump: