Dr Vino's wine blog

Last week, I was in the Cape, existing more or less solely on seafood. One dish, if you will, that has transcended New England appeal and now is making a showing in the trendiest spots in NYC (including out of basements in Brooklyn) is the lobster roll.

Simple in preparation, it consists of about four ounces of cold lobster meat, a mix of claw, knuckle and often tail. This is delicately coated with mayonnaise that may include a other herbs or secret sauce and placed on a bed of shredded lettuce in a hot dog bun, sliced from the top and often lightly grilled or toasted. The end result is lip-smacking, finger licking good. (I snapped the above pic with a cameraphone at Captain Frosty’s in Dennis; it can also come with fries as is standard in the delicious rendition at Osterville Fish Too in Barnstable.)

So, even if there’s no wine on the menu at most clam shacks, the wine geek’s mind wanders…which wine would you pair with a lobster roll? Or is it…impossible?!?

Have you ever lifted a bottle of champagne and thought, “Wow, that’s heavy!” Well, the bottles are heavy partly with good reason: to contain all the sparkly goodness, which can be six times the atmospheric pressure. (And, of course, there’s a little bling factor to the bulk.) Apparently, before sufficiently strong bottles were developed, cellar staff in Champagne would enter the caves with masks akin to a hockey goalie’s to protect against exploding bottles.

Thus physics is a main challenge of reducing the bulk the Champagne bottle. A detailed story in today’s NYT Business section traces the development of a new, lighter bottle, slimmed down to 835g from 900g. The bottle has taken years to design and the Champagne Trade Council (CIVC) is encouraging its members to use it starting with this harvest, all in the name of reducing the wine’s greenhouse gas emissions. The lighter bottle means 2,400 more bottles can be fit in the same sized truck, thus reducing the amount of trips needed. That also saves producers costs, although industry figures in the story say that the bottle is not cheaper–unless it is widely adapted, which would drive down costs.

“Champagne Producers Aim for ‘Greener’ Bottle” (with slideshow)

cropped photo attributed to Stéphane Lavoué for the International Herald Tribune

Who is man enough for an impossible food-wine pairing?

Well, for those with a set of steel, head on over to the seventh (!) annual World Testicle Cooking Championship in Serbia. There, the AP reports that chefs prepare bull, boar, camel, ostrich and kangaroo testicles in such dishes as testicle pizza and testicles in bechamel sauce. Outback oysters!

Needless to say, the AP ensures us that “visitors eat the dishes with plenty of wine or beer…” So what hedonistic fruit bombs would you drop on this menu to make it a perfect pair?

Cropped AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic

A couple of years ago, I had an op-ed in the NYT arguing for wine in a box. Since then, box wine sales have skyrocketed and many more selections, both foreign and domestic, have come on the market.

But one category that seems woefully underrepresented stateside is rosé. Given that it is perhaps the quintessential “here today, gone tomorrow” kind of wine, it seems particularly well-suited for the bag-in-box format. Fridges across France are stocked with box rosé in the summer; it’s almost a summer rite to come in from a warm day and squeeze off a nice cold one (rosé, that is). And, it’s clinically proven that having a box of rosé is also a great way to make friends with any passersby since it’s always cold and is likely a tremendous value.

Last week I was on vacation and wished I had a box of rosé in the fridge. But I couldn’t find one. Fortunately, we had some of the snappy Chateau de Roquefort, “Corail” 2009 from the Cotes de Provence. Maybe next summer, I’ll be able to squeeze off a glass when I’m on vacation?

Last fall, my younger brother, Conrad, sailed from France to Brazil. By himself. In a race. On a 20 foot boat.

He set off from Brittany, where, aged 25, he was living in a used electrician’s van. He sailed about ten days to Madeira where the fleet stopped for fresh supplies before setting off again for Brazil. However, the degree of difficulty was raised for him when he lost one of his solar panels, and had to choose between the long-distance radio or the GPS. Needless to say, he kept the GPS. But that meant that he only talked to a few freighter ship captains over the twenty days from Madeira to Recife, Brazil.

When he crossed the equator he had a half bottle of “some cheap cava” that he uncorked to celebrate. He said he was more concerned about it being small and light than being good. But that said, it was “absolutely fantastic.”

The video of him toasting the boat and King Neptune is above. (To clarify, we are half-brothers and he was raised in New Zealand, which explains his jubilation of about being “home” again in the Southern Hemisphere.) You can check out his site and read about his preparations for his 30,000-mile around-the-world race that he starts next year. Hopefully he’ll have some nice bubbly to celebrate the end of that accomplishment.

How often is the alcohol level stated on the label consistent with what is actually in the bottle?

Wines are allowed a certain fudge factor between what appears on the label and what is actually in the bottle. For wines under 14%, the wine can fluctuate by 1.5 percentage points, which explains why so many wines have traditionally been labeled 12.5% since that gave the maximum flexibility. Above 14%, the producer must pay a higher tax ($1.57 per gallon as opposed to $1.07 for the lower level) and the allowable wiggle room shrinks to one percentage point deviation from what’s stated on the label.

I was curious how often consumers get what they think they are getting. To gain some idea, I oversaw the analysis of a random sampling of 80 wines from the offices of Wine & Spirits magazine, half foreign and half domestic wines. Although we treat the findings as anecdotal, it was interesting to note that half the wines we sampled were almost spot on the stated level, deviating only 0.3 percentage points from the stated level. However, a full ten percent of the wines tested were in the wrong tax bracket, that is to say, they were steering the consumer quite wrong as well as costing the Treasury revenue.

There’s also a perception that wines north of 14% have become more prevalent. In order to determine the extent of this, I examined reports from the Treasury’s TTB unit, which regulates the alcohol industry. Their data showed that wines over 14% alcohol comprised six percent of the still, bottled wines in America in 1995. By 2009, these higher alcohol wines had risen by 50% to account for nine percent of still, bottled wines.

The TTB is in the first year of a market compliance study, examining wines randomly sampled from the retail shelves around the country. The results of this study will be available next year. The TTB currently has 14 investigators nationally involved in enforcement and inspection; There are over 6,500 wineries now in the United States.

Be sure to check out the current issue of Wine & Spirits for my full story. The issue is entirely dedicated to “the buzz around alcohol” and has articles by David Schildknecht, Jamie Goode, Fiona Morrison and others. Read more…

Chilled red. It sounds like an oxymoron. Or something that would get your membership revoked at the club.

But, in fact, it works. The key is to choose a red wine that is low in tannin, which explains why Beaujolais from the thin-skinned Gamay grape, often is the prime red candidate for chilling. Bringing the wine’s temperature down to say 55 degrees, gives the wine an added refreshment value (you can slip one of those ice sleeve things on for about 10 minutes). However, it does cut down on the wine’s fruity aromas–and also the perceived alcohol (which may be welcome depending on the wine in the glass). And if there are a lot of tannins in the wine, they stand out since that’s all that’s left.

Here are three reds worth a chill.

Clos du Tue-Boeuf, Cheverny (red), 2009. $15
The Puzelat brothers–leading natural winemakers–have made this delicious blend that combines the fruit and fun of gamay with a bit of the structure of pinot noir. I’ve poured this wine a lot this summer and it has won plaudits from wine geeks and newbies alike. Pour slowly or decant since this wine has thrown a sediment. (Bottled with extruded synthetic closure.)

Valle dell’ Acate, Frappato, 2008, $20
Similarly, I’ve poured this red native to Sicily wine a fair bit this summer–always chilled–and people love it! One group was intrigued by the idea of chilling red and the wine was gone way too fast. Another group suggested it reminded them of sangria–and meant that as a compliment. To me, it has bright red fruit but enough structure to be interesting. (Bottled with bright orange injection molded closure.)

Torre dei Beati, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Cerasuolo Rosa-ae, 2009 $18
Technically, this wine is a rosé. But it’s a dark a rosé as you’ll encounter, so we’ll throw it in here with the chillable red since it also likes to chill. Hailing from (red) Montepulciano grapes in Abruzzo, to the east of Rome, the juice gets “bled” off after a couple days maceration. The resulting wine has notes of ripe cherries overlay surprisingly good acidity for this juicy, fun wine. (Bottled with cork.)

The other day, I was waiting for a train or a plane, flipping through magazines at a newsstand. I picked up the August copy of Food & Wine and saw Ray Isle’s fun, simple graphic suggesting changing white wines as the weather heats up.

Since I wrote a whole book centered on pairing wine with the seasons, I applaud all outdoor-temperature related pairings, which add more of the context of consumption. Generally, as the temperature rises, I prefer wines with leaner structure and lower price tags; here’s how I sliced up this summer more or less. It feels wrong to exclude fun wines such as Muscadet, riesling (!), assyrtiko, albarino or txakolina but there’s always next year–and raising a glass to parsimony.

Heat: 60°. Chenin Blanc
Layered and rich, a good example will turn heads.
Try: Domaine Huet, any of the 2007s or 08s, which start around $25.

Heat: 70°. Godello
Excellent mineral qualities combine with richness in this grape indigenous to northern Spain.
Try: Benaza, godello, 2008, $13

Heat: 80°. Gruner Veltliner
Gruner Veltliner of Austria is clean and refreshing, the uncola. No caffeine, never had it, never will.
Value: Berger, 2009 one liter $12, now with a crown (beer) cap

Heat: 90°. Vinho verde
Vinho verde is cheap, low in alcohol and gulpable.
Try: Aveleda Fonte, 2009 at $6

Heat: 100°. beer
Beat the heat and try a local lager or a Kolsch. I had an excellent one from Captain Lawrence Brewing Co ($12.50 for a growler).

Heat: 110°. Get some AC
And sparkling water.

How have you sliced up your summer whites?

Today’s summer wine factoid: Nomacorc, a purveyor of plastic wine closures that require a corkscrew to remove, was the brainchild of a Belgian businessman who made a fortune manufacturing extruded plastics, including pool noodles. So if you’ve been floating around in the pool this summer and sensed a connection, you’re right.

In related news, plastic closures were the closure that consumers disliked the most by a two-to-one margin over all other closures in our recent poll.