Sips: with its ‘Layers,’ Australia’s Peter Lehmann produces a distinctive white blend

In the late-summer heat wave we’re having in the Northeast, any white wine that has a relatively low 11.5 percent alcohol is going to be at least be worth a try, which is why I pulled Peter Lehmann’s 2009 “Layers” White out of the wine rack here at our place in the  country. Beyond the heat, I’ll admit that I’ve been distracted in the last couple of days, which is why this is the first post of the week . (The chief distraction is an eight-week old puppy, a  cute little Lab/Pointer mix we adopted over the  weekend from a rescue program.)

But back to the wine. “Layers” is made from grapes from the Barossa Valley and Adelaide regions of South Australia and is a blend, which is, one may conclude, what they’re getting at with the name, although you might not know it because the bottle provides no clues except for images of five grapes on the front label. Peter Lehmann’s website reveals a mix of semillon, chardonnay, pinot gris, gewürztraminer and muscat. I had thought there might be some riesling in the mix. Oh, well.

The wine shows lots of component parts for  the suggested price of  $16 – a good deal of lemon-lime plus white peach, apricot, honey and some baking spices. I thought it might pair well with one of my favorite pasta dishes -- broccoli rabe sautéed with sweet and hot Italian sausage – and it did, providing a refreshing wash-down to this not unsubstantial dish, especially on a very warm night. It’s easy to drink with nice complexity – a winning combination for casual drinking and a range of white-wine foods. Imported by The Hess Collection New World Wines, Napa, California. (Received as a press sample.)

del.icio.us Tags: Barossa Valley,Australia white wine,Gewurztraminer,Chardonnay,Pinot Gris,Semillon,Peter Lehmann,Peter Lehmann Layers,Australian white blends,Edwad Deitch,Hess Collection

Swirls: wine in restaurants – some help in navigating the shoals

For the average restaurant patron, ordering wine can be a daunting affair; wine lists are full of extremes, on one end offering exhaustive lists with no clues on where to begin, at least not for the novice; on the other hand there are those cookie-cutter wine lists that offer few choices but with exhaustive descriptions and tasting notes that make every wine seem wonderful and experienced wine drinkers wince.

The more I think about this, I like the idea, embraced by a few  restaurants, of suggesting an appropriate wine or two with their dishes, giving customers at least a point of departure. As an alternative to specific wines, restaurants might propose specific varieties and regions with their dishes. Then, in consultation with a knowledgeable waiter or a sommelier, the choices could be narrowed down. All of this is just the beginning of the restaurant wine challenge.

Alan Richman of GQ has a useful and entertaining list of 15 tips on ordering wine in restaurants. Among those I like: letting you have a taste before ordering a wine by the glass (restaurants, he points out, aim to recoup their cost of a bottle with the first glass they pour, so a quarter-inch of wine, for those who ask for it, will hardly put a dent in profits, at least in my view);  other tips include making sure your wine arrives before your food, having your server pours you enough for your taste so you can actually get a sense of the wine, and frowning on the widely used practice of filling your glass almost to the brim in hopes that you’ll drink up and order another bottle.

Sips: Portugal’s Enoforum creates wines for export with some exciting releases

In wine, as in other areas of journalism, we sometimes get our ideas – or germs of ideas -- from savvy PR and marketing folks who know when they have an interesting story to tell on behalf of their clients and have a good sense when writers might be interested.  One of the more diligent and delightful of them is Jo Diaz, who runs her own communications company in Windsor, California in Sonoma County.

When Jo asked recently if I cared to meet a new client, a principle in a relatively new Portuguese wine company, I quickly took her up on her offer even though I don’t usually meet individually with winemakers or executives because I tend to shy away from being a captive audience of one. What happens if I don’t like the  wines? In any event, I had a hunch that Jo was on to something unusual. And so we sat down for dinner last week at The Modern, one of my favorite New York restaurants, with her  client (who picked up the bill, I will disclose right off the bat). But enough on the preliminaries.

The company is called Enoforum, and it is a partnership formed  at the end of 2004 involving half a dozen wineries in Portugal’s Alentejo region in the hot  south of the country. The general manager, Delfim Costa, explained that the company was created solely to produce wines, under a number of new labels, for export to the United States and, secondarily, to other markets around the world, including Poland, Holland, Russia and Canada as well as Brazil and Angola with their strong Portuguese connections.

Some 80,000 cases or so were exported last year and Enoforum draws on production from each of the six wineries to create its wines, all of them blends, under the direction of José Fonseca, the winemaker.

Swirls: Wine forgeries in China; aging wine; New Zealand’s wine industry hurting

SWIRL: This was probably inevitable, given the growing thirst in China for western wines. Some Australian winemakers are complaining about Chinese counterfeits of their brands, including but certainly not limited to the famed Penfolds’ Grange. One  Australian wine industry executive in China says he’s even seen the “P” in Penfolds changed to a “B,” as in Benfolds. Read more about it in the Sydney Morning Herald.

SIWRL: When is a wine ready to drink, or, for that matter, past its prime? It’s one of the great questions in the wine world, and Paul Gregutt has some interesting thoughts on the matter in the Seattle Times. His emphasis is on wines of the Pacific Northwest, particularly Washington, and he finds the cabernets, merlots and even the sangioveses quite worthy of aging. Alas, reading the piece and a long list of Washington wineries, I am reminded of how few Washington labels one sees on the East Coast. Hopefully that will change.

SWIRL: New Zealand’s wine industry is being hurt by oversupply and other factors. While exports are up, prices are down, which, while bad news for New Zealand’s wineries, might be good for American wine drinkers who enjoy the country’s sauvignon blancs and pinot noirs, among other wines. Dozens of small to medium-sized wineries could soon fall into receivership. Read more details here.

del.icio.us Tags: China wine forgeries,Australian wine,Penfolds,Penfolds Grange,Edward Deitch,Aging wine,Wine aging,New Zealand wine,Sydney Morning Herald,Seattle Times,Paul Gregutt

Swirls: wine and brain function, a guide to ‘bad wine,’ Jack Nicklaus wine

SWIRL: I’m always careful when it comes the subject of wine (or other alcohol) and health benefits; almost all studies that find a link emphasize that the purported benefits or associations with good health are based on light to moderate wine consumption. And that includes a newly released report that finds a link between moderate wine drinking and a reduced risk of decline in thinking skills. The Norwegian study was large, involving more  than5,000 people over a seven-year period. You can read more about it at WebMD.

SWIRL: There’s an excellent guide to what can go wrong with wine, from cork taint to oxidation and other problems, by Will  Lyons of the Wall Street Journal. He reminds us that “more often than not there is no fault with the wine at all” and the wine “just doesn’t taste how the drinker expected it to.” Read the full article by clicking here.

SWIRL: There’s a fairly long list of sports figures who have parlayed their celebrity into wine ventures. They range from race  car drivers, including Mario Andretti, football players, including Drew Bledsoe, at least one basketball legend (Larry Bird), and plenty of golfers, including Greg Norman. Now, Jack Nicklaus has joined the group, launching a limited collection of Napa Valley wines called Jack Nicklaus Wines in partnership with Terlato Wines. Read more at  BunkerShot.com.

del.icio.us Tags: Wine and health,Wine and thinking,WebMD,Bad wine,Cork taint,Wine oxidation,Will Lyons Wall Street Journal,Bunkershot.com,Wine and sports figures,Mario Andretti wine,Drew Bledsoe wine,Greg Norman wine,Jack Nicklaus wine,Terlato Wines,Anthony Terlato,Edward Deitch

Sips: an exciting new twist for California’s Bien Nacido Vineyard

Until now, the name "Bien Nacido Vineyard" was found only on other people's wine labels. The famed vineyard located in the Santa Maria Valley of California's Santa Barbara County is the source of grapes for many well-known wineries that turn to Bien Nacido for its exceptional fruit. Much of that fruit, as I saw for myself on a visit to Bien Nacido a few years ago, is grown on fairly steep mountain vineyards in the cool-climate region, a combination that gives the wines both opulence and finesse. Wineries that draw on Bien Nacido read like a who's who of notable properties in the region: Ojai, Qupé, Au Bon Climat, Byron, Fess Parker, Villa Mt. Eden, Longoria, to name just some of them. Typically on the labels of these wineries you’ll see the Bien Nacido Vineyard designation. It’s a kind of badge of honor.

Now, for the first time, Bien Nacido is bottling wines, three of them, under its own labels – I say labels because two of the wines, a pinot noir and a syrah, are from the Bien Nacido Vineyard itself while a third, a chardonnay, is from the nearby Solomon Hills Vineyard, which Bien Nacido owns.

Swirls: Warming trends may change global wine map

In case you missed my video in this space a month or so ago on climate change and its effects on wine, I’ve expanded on it for my monthly column on Reuters, which you can read by clicking here. Dr. Greg Jones, a climatologist at Southern Oregon University who studies climate and wine, raises the prospect that the wine world as we know it, at least from from a geographical standpoint, may be forced to shift in coming decades as wine producers confront warmer temperatures and are forced into cooler growing areas. Alternatively, some existing wine regions  may turn to varieties that are more suited to warmer weather. All of this has far-reaching implications, which the column explores.

del.icio.us Tags: Clilmate change,global warming,Dr. Greg Jones,Greg Jones,Southern Oregon University,Edward Deitch Reuters,Edward Deitch,Wine and climate change,Wine and global warming,Wine regions

Swirls: wine news – wine-searcher.com, Lafite-Rothschild in Asia, Pa.’s wine vending machines,

SWIRL: Patrick Comiskey has a must-read article  in today’s Los Angeles Times  on wine-searcher.com, the price comparison and availability search engine that has transformed wine commerce. 

  

If you haven’t used it, you should. I’ve relied on wine-searcher  for years to find out what retailers charge for wines I review. It also give you a good sense of the availability of any particular wine. It’s simply the best reality check out there. The basic version is free and is more limited than the “Pro Version,” which costs about $30 and is money well spent. As of yesterday, by the way, wine-searcher had 18,072 wine stores listed worldwide with 3,952,617 wines offered.  In 2009 it had 56.5 million pageviews. You  begin to get an idea of the site’s scope and influence.

SWIRL: “No other wine has captured the imagination of the  Chinese wine connoisseur like Château Lafite-Rothschild,” begins   an item in artdaily.org. With that in mind, Sotheby’s in Hong Kong will hold an auction of almost 2,000 bottles of Lafite on October 29. The famed winery will supply vintages from 1869 to 2008 from its cellar. Estimates of the sale range from $1.5-$2.5 million.

SWIRL: On the other side of the sales spectrum, sales at Pennsylvania’s two pilot wine vending machines in supermarkets have gone better than expected, says the head of the state’s Liquor Control Board. Plans are moving ahead to  install almost 100 more of the machines, whose sales require a breathalizer test and are monitored by Control Board employees via a video hookup. Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek and my recent commentary on the machines.

del.icio.us Tags: Chateau Lafite Rothschild,Sotheby's,China wine market,Edward Deitch,wine-searcher,wine-searcher.com,Pennsylvania wine sales,Wine vending machines,Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board,Bloomberg Businessweek,Patrick Comiskey,Los Angeles Times,artdaily.org,Pennsylvania wine vending machines