2009 Port of Leonardtown Winery, "1634" Chardonnay, Maryland

Terry post:

Those who know me and those who read my blogging know that I appreciate the challenges and efforts of small wineries who are working to determine which varietal grows where best and how coax the best wine from the grapes. I have particular interest in Maryland, Virginia as well as Iowa. For different reasons all are exciting grape growing areas where the jury is still out on which grapes are best suited to the soil and the climate.

My personal experience has been such that I have enjoyed Chamborcin, Vidal Blanc and Merlot in Virginia and Maryland and Brianna in Iowa. The coming decade will prove an interesting time as growers and consumers negotiate what they like and what they will try.

That brings me around to a Chardonnay grown in Maryland. There is always a challenge for any American winery when they enter into the realm of the varietals which are well-known and for which a certain expectation exists. This makes life challenging for the mid-Atlantic states when they create a produce which is well known and well understood by the wine drinking public but which is not optimized for the soil or the climate.

My impressions:

Pale yellow in the glass - lighter in color than most Chardonnays.

Bright citrus on the nose.

Overwhelming acidity across the the palate to the point where I couldn't taste anything beyond the acidity. Short tart finish.

I tried pairing the wine with creamy and butter-based sauces and found it's razor sharp finish too demanding of even the richest sauce Alfredo. Easily the most acidic tasting Chardonnay I have ever sampled.

I wished that I liked it more. I have drank three bottle and found that it did not vary in it's characteristics.

The Port of Leonardtown Winery is taking a big risk in growing Chardonnay in Maryland. I wish them every success. This offering is not up to their usual high standards of quality.

Not recommended.

$16ish at the winery.

~ Terry

2009 Port of Leonardtown Winery, Captain's Table, Dry Red Table Wine, Maryland

Terry post:

Note: This is my second review of this wine. The first review can be found here.

If it isn't already obvious, I am a fan of this Maryland brand as they dig and claw to create something new and wonderful as the state bureaucracy seems bent on destroying indigenous wine.

My Impressions:

Medium red in the glass. A middleweight fighting up one weight class against bigger bolder reds.

Spicebox on the nose with cherries and dark fruit across the palate. Interesting blend but lacking the punch I'd hoped for.

Short herbal finish.

The label is mute as to its constituent wines. My guess is that it is primarily Merlot and Chambourcin, with a low tannic red (Cab Franc, maybe) and maybe an off-dry white to fill in the cracks and round off the edges. Just guessing. But, I'd be surprised if Merlot and Chambourcin were not the primary wines in the blend.

I paired it last evening with pasta with marinara sauce, steamed artichokes and garlic bread. Despite it middleweight status it held up very well against the garlic-infused marinara sauce.

Recommended.

~ Terry

2010 Barton & Guestier, Vouvray, France

Terry post:

I have very little experience with Chenin Blanc wines having been turned off early by the crap which came out of California in the late 1970s. Having endured sweet Chenin Blancs from the likes of Ernest and Julio Gallo did, for a very long time, turn me off completely from the varietal.

Well. It is the 21st Century. Maybe it is time for me to give another Chenin Blanc a try.

My impression:

Very pale in the glass.

Off dry. Not razor sharp and crisp like a Chardonnay nor syrupy like so many of the U.S. Chenin Blancs.

A nimble combination of understated acidity balanced with a light floral and melon nose.

Slightly drying in the herbal finish.

I enjoyed this wine with seared sea scallops and an apple compote. They worked very well together.

Recommended.

$8.99 at the Fort Belvior PX.

~ Terry

What Eagle Outfitters can Teach the Wine Industry about Brand Ambassadors

Terry post:

Much as been written about the persuading customers to become brand ambassadors for a given companies product line.

A few years ago the clothing brand Quicksilver featured an outrageous video of surfers tossing dynamite into a river and then surfing the waves downstream. While innovative and an instant viral video, it did little to cause individual consumers to more closely identify with the product. It was sensational but did not customers to align with the brand.

Gatoraide a manufacturer of sports drinks, "...tweets good luck messages to star athletes..." and "...Girls Intelligence Agency...gives them free products...(to) organize a slumber party with their friends to try them out..." (Source: The Economist).

My favorite example of brand ambassadorship has to do with Eagle Outfitters on New York's Time Square where they employ a huge multi-story LED display to flash pictures of anyone who buys their products. This instant, albeit brief, celebrity enables the buyers to get pictures of themselves on the huge screen and then to share the images with their friends.

The Wine Industry has not been all that innovative with creating unique examples of brand identity. If you are aware of unique techniques being used in the Wine Industry to more closely align vintners with the buying public: I'd love to hear about it.

~ Terry

Source: "Hidden Persuaders II", The Economist, , September 24, 2011, p. 80.

2009 Penfolds, Koonuga Hill, Shiraz Cabernet

Terry post:

When ever I think of Australian wines I have two memories which come immediately to mind.

The first memory is that of being Officer of the Deck on the USS ENGLAND (CG-22) during a mid-watch in the South Pacific Ocean as we steamed South. It was a calm, cloudless and moonless evening as we sliced quietly through the dark waters en route to Australia. I recall standing alone on the starboard bridge wing and looking up into the universe above me. The ocean was pitch with only the slightest phosphorescence as the bow pierced the occasional wave. The sky was the clearest I have ever seen and the millions of stars which shone upon the sky seemed close enough to touch. My place as a human being on a ship in the ocean seemed so utterly small and meaningless that I laughed out loud. It was humbling and an experience that I hold close in my heart twenty-six years after the event.

My second memory was tasting red wines from South Australia. They were not very good.

Thankfully, in the nearly thirty years since my one, and only trip, to Australia things have improved in the Australian red wine scene.

My impressions:

Big nose on this one. Eucalyptus, dark fruit and cherries dominate.

A middle-weight on the palate with dark fruit quickly displaced by thin tannins and a brief finish. There isn't really anything wrong with the wine, but it isn't the sort of shiraz-blend powerhouse which I have recently come to expect from Australia.

That said: I like it. I paired it with a dinner of leftover Beef Bourguignon, pecans, dates and cheese. It stood up very well with the hearty beef offering.

All-in-all a great value providing a full, dry red wine experience at a bargain basement price. It is not full-bodied monster like some of the Yalumba shiraz blends, but at $8 to $10 at retail you'd be hard pressed to find a better value.

Recommended

$7.99 at the Fort Belvior PX.

~ Terry

What Steve Jobs has to tell the Wine Industry about Quality

Terry post:

It would have been five, or so, years ago when a winery rep showed up at the door at Restaurant 213. She was rep'ing a mid-sized winery located in the beautiful rolling hills West of Baltimore and brought along twelve different wines.

We tasted them all and chose not to add any to our wine list as none were sufficiently interesting and they were pricey given the quality of the product.

I was thinking about this wine rep's visit this past weekend as I visited my brother in Iowa. He'll shortly be taking on rep duties for a Iowa winery and I was sharing my thoughts on the matter.

Forbes magazine recently carried a short article regarding a telephone conversation between Steve Jobs (Apple CEO) and Mark Parker (Nike CEO) in 2006 regarding quality. According to the article, Mr. Jobs recommendation to Mr. Parker was quite succinct: "...you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff".

It sounds like common sense advice: do what you do well and get rid of the stuff you don't do well. But, how many of us would be willing to discard a large portion of our product line to focus on a few select items.

As a good comparison take a look at the web site for Apple and then Nokia and search for their phones. Both Apple and Nokia sell smart phones but it is evident that Apple follows Mr. Jobs advice to focus on the good stuff. The Nokia site is complicated and once you get to the telephone section you'll note that there are twenty-two phones to choose from. Apple has one phone, their best product, the iPhone 4.

Now how does this apply to the wine business? In my wine tastings it is far too common to see ten, twelve or even more wines being produced at a single winery: this is the equivalent of Nokia providing twenty-two cell phones.

It takes guts to reduce the size of any business portfolio be it consumer electronics or wine. When Mr. Jobs returned to Apple, the company had more than 300 different products. Today you could place the entire Apple product line on a small dining room table.

Apple's elimination of low margin products allowed the company to focus on their core competency of innovation and design.

It is inconceivable that small capitalized wineries have the time, expertise and experience to field a wide portfolio of offerings and that over-reach results in underperformance. The Apple model of concentrating on a small portfolio, executed well seems to provide the best example for the small winery.

Perhaps, just perhaps, small wineries could benefit from Mr. Jobs advice and, "Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff".

~ Terry

Source: "Steve Jobs: Stop Making the Crappy Stuff", Forbes Magazine, May 16 2011

What the Dresden Codex has to Tell us About Wine Rating

Terry post:

How about a little experiment?

I'd like you to begin counting. Speak the numbers to yourself or out loud: it doesn't matter. Count out five or six numbers which are consecutive. Now ask yourself, "why did I begin where I began"?

If you are like the overwhelming majority of people you'll have begun counting with the number one and proceeded through two, three, four, five and six. You'll have started at the beginning and worked outward from there. But did you really begin at the beginning? What about zero? Why did you begin at one and not at zero?

One of the great mathematical breakthroughs was developing the concept of zero as a value. In the earliest times the value of zero was represented by the absence of a value in a chain of values. It took time, a lot of time, for the concept of a zero value to have taken hold.

The Aztec's and Greeks appear to have both come upon the concept of zero as a numerical value sometime between 32 B.C. and 150 A.D. with the New World and Old World both laying claim to the honor.

Reading through Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast and other wine rating publications I am reminded of the value of zero.

When reading these magazines I see page after page of 80s and 90s with a scant few 70s. What happened to the 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s? Are these wine-rating values the equivalent of zero in the pre-Columbian ages?

If Wine Spectator and others rate limit their ratings to a 30 point band between 70 and 100, then why don't they just do so? What is the point of having a 100 point scale where no one scores below 70?

When I was in high school in Greenville, Michigan I had a math teacher who one day explained how the grading system worked. Simply by showing up and taking the test you'd score 50 points. The remaining 50 points were earned by working the problem. So the test was really a 50 point test and not a 100 point test. Never really understood why that was.

So, maybe wine ratings are more akin to taking a high school math test were everyone is given 50 points just for showing up.

~ Terry