No Wine Over $20-Reviews and the LA Wine Scene

I'm a newbie to the wine thing. I'm one of those Johnny-come-latelys who were inspired by Sideways.

At my local wine shop, I discovered non-snotty counter personnel who know their shit and about 75% of the time, provide me with a bottle of something I've never heard of that makes an absolutely delightful accent to dinner and dates.

While tasting wines is a steady process of educating my palate to recognize the different components of a wine, it is my verbal sense that is the most inspired by some of Bacchus' (and others') comments about various wines that remain in my mouth long after my impeded anti-diuretic hormone has enabled the rapid excretion of said vino from my body.

As an example, from Wine Intelligence part 2: "dead-mouse nose"; or my personal favorite: "cat piss". Perhaps someday we'll find a wine described as "itchy & scratchy". A sweet mousy nose with a bloody cat aftertaste.

While one can and should begin by questioning the value of anything one would drink that tastes like something one would normally want to wash out of one's carpeting or upholstery, "cat piss" remains a sought after nose for some Sauvignon Blancs. Go figure.

The key point is this, while "dead mice" and "cat piss" remain low on my list of things that I want in my nose, I remain amused and amazed at how wine can inspire these perceptions in the first place. Wine-tasting has become a new way to enjoy poetry without all those dusty 'ole books and snooty academics in favor of dusty 'ole bottles and snooty academics.

-Dionysus

My idea of an outing with the kids is to jump in the car, drive downtown in 95° weather, eat dim sum in Chinatown, browse through Alex Cheung’s cool Chinese antiques, observe the “renaissance” of hip urban stores like Realm, Ooga Booga, and Flock Shop in the Chinatown plaza where the Hong Kong Café used to be….then go watch the USC football team practice.
I am absolutely certain Bernie Mac would approve.

That’s right. Watch the #1 team in every preseason ranking put on shoulder pads, cleats and shorts and rough each other up – gently but firmly – for three hours. Yes it was hot. We probably burnt the backs of our legs. We did get hollered at by a coach for taking photos and even 2 videos (page bottom) which are all posted here for your delight. We mean no harm to the team and Idaho will learn nothing from our fan-shots. Not that it would make any difference. We love USC football…almost as much as we love USC basketball. But that season does not get underway until December.

How does our team look? BLPN great. Practice is efficient with 10 and 15 minute drills and lots of movement from the side to the main field. Offense in red. D in white. Here is how the conversation went while absorbing the meaning of it all…

Quarterbacks: Who is #16? Mike McDonald. Hey he throws a nice ball. Yeh. Who is #15? Aaron Corps. Freshman. He throws a nice ball. I know. Here comes McDonald again. No that is Mitch Mustain. He also wears #16. He throws a nice ball. Yeh he does. JD looks ready. See how Sanchez thumb is wrapped? CONCLUSION? USC QBs win Heisman 3 out of next 5 years.

Running Backs: Who is #39? That’s Broderick Green a freshman. Tall. Big. Who is #22? Who is #13? There’s Chauncey. There’s Stafon Johnson. Where is Moody? At least Joe McKnight can field a punt (no runbacks this day). CONCLUSION? Somebody got to go. Report next day announced Moody would transfer.

Punters and kickers: Two long snappers. One rifles the ball back. The other gets it there. Two punters. One bombs it 60 and 70 yards. The other boots it 40 to 50 consistently. The onside kick was skillfully executed. CONCLUSION? Kicking game is solid.

Linebackers: If defense wins titles then it is all over. How many shutouts is the question that comes to mind. I know it sounds pretentious but you should see the first and second defensive teams. The first team features (from left to right) Cushing, Maualuga, and Rivers. This crew could start for a pro team. Think (in the same order) Seau, Butkus, and LT. Rivers had the hit of the day. He barely threw a forearm into Ronald Johnson and he hit the ground with a pop. The crowd let out a groan on Johnson's behalf. For Rivers it looked like a routine notification, like the sign you hang on your door when you want to the maid to clean up the room. CONCLUSION? Big, fast, hit very hard.

D-backs: Killers. I wanted to see Taylor Mays, Josh Pinckard or especially Will Harris deliver a hit. Instead I saw Fred Davis catch one over the middle about 20 yards downfield and shed Will Harris like he was light rain. Harris did strip the ball and Davis had to run a lap…very casually. It was hot. And Kevin Thomas took his picture with PeeWee. Thanks Kevin. Run back 5 picks for TDs!

O line is big and D line is bigger. We had lots of fun and share our pics for your enjoyment.

I will try not to post another Trojan entry for a few months now that I have scratched that itch.

Lay the points against Idaho. This is what it is all about!! National football title #11 on the way!!

Here is the video of McDonald going long to Johnson!!!

McDonald lays one out to Bradford in the flat.

So the LA Times ran an article in the August 7 Food section on rosé wines. Good for them. The theme is familiar to readers of tBoW....rosés are for summer. They connote fresh, sunny, summer splashy wines. The article went into how pretty rosé wines can be. We have seen shimmering orange the color of transmission fluid this summer in addition to salmon pink, light copper almost terra cotta and the more standard brilliant red almost ruby.

There was a second topic that was even more interesting...the idea that wines can correspond to the season. We posed this idea under Wine Intelligence Part 1: Time of the Season. Sure we love the Zombies too; we just don't have to act like one when selecting wine for the occasion...whatever it is.

Well of course wines match the season. But how can one be certain s/he is not bringing a dunderheaded wine to a special occasion (like dinner?) Why advertise your ignorance with the safe chardonnay and/or cabernet bets? Here is a chart I have developed to illustrate this basic concept and provide guidance to the dunderheaded oeno-snob-wannabe. Of course, I have made it a bit complicated but I hope in the end this will help illustrate how to match the wine to the season with corresponding foods and seasonal characteristics. Some of these wines cost more than $20...especially around those money-draining big holidays.

This is not terribly original. There are tons of sites with tasting instructions. Here is one that covers "cat piss". Worth a look for fun and info. Actually, before embarking on this project I had no idea how many of "wheels" are available for sale on the Internet. You have the Aroma Wheel developed by a UC Davis PhD (I have linked to her sniffing biz site); there is a BBQ wheel and cheese wheel and several food/wine pairing wheels - I have linked to the one I liked best. I even found two wine wheels at a German wine institute. How's your Deutsch? The most original is a wine industry wheel that is quite serious!! Yeh, I looked at lots of them. No, I did not rip any off. The wheel as metaphoric platform is downright ancient standard. Master webmeister Dr. Dionysus contributed graphics and suggested a color palate. He's good. Real good.

Here is what we came up with. With our wine intelligence egg you will always be the smarty-pants who wins praise from the wine-snob host because you will always know what wine to bring to the Xmas or July 4th party. Send praise and/or outrage as applies. Just remember, this one's on me! Click on the image to download the full sized version suitable for printing, framing, and placing on the wall where you store your vino.

The popularity of Santa Ynez Valley vineyards and wineries exploded following the 2004 release of "Sideways". [ed. especially Santa Rita Hills, aka SRH] The California Highway Patrol blames an increase in wine country drunken driving arrests and crashes on the “Sideways Effect". [ed. Kermit Lynch covers the same story in his current newsletter]

Apparently, the hit movie started a stampede to the wine region's 90 tasting rooms which, in turn, may be associated with a simultaneous and dramatic rise in drunken driving incidents. That's why the Santa Barbara California Highway Patrol sought and received a $658,000 grant to crack down on drinking and driving in the wine country.

CHP Officer Donald Clotworthy says the popularity of “Sideways” led to a burst of wine-related activities. He says “Santa Barbara County has become wine country for Southern California”. [Source]

I wonder if the "Sideways" effect has resulted in local wine bar pourers resembling Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen among whose best features are being incredibly well-versed in wine and wine related topics?

Here is my favorite wine bar server (the lovely Erin) from the notorious wine shop and tasting bar just outside of Los Olivos owned by Bob Sean which closed in 2006. [ed. November 2004 photo.]

The Los Olivos Wine Shop, located at 2905 Grand Ave, was the first tasting room to offer wines from small wineries that do not have their own tasting room. The shop carries more than 45 different labels and specializes in pinot noirs which they are able to pick selectively and preferentially. Worth a stop if you are in town.

Sideways was released January 2005. [ed. Photos of Babcock and Foley vineyards.]

-Dr. D.

tBoW webmeister Dr. D posts these thoughts on a recent research publication that has received a bit of press. Several reviews follow that further investigate these findings.

"Perceived added value" is a term used in marketing that describes how a consumer might look at oh, say a bottle of shampoo with two free ounces for the same price as the smaller sized bottle.

You get more for the same price, thus there is the perception of added value or better bang for your dirty-hair buck. In this case, the perception of added value is actually true, you get two more ounces of product for free. However in many product categories, the added value is only perception, nothing tangible. When it comes to the price of wine, it is often about perception, not a tangible value. This is the essential reason for our "No Wine Over $20" call to arms.

A recent study performed by the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows how the perception of wine enjoyment actually arises from a different part of the brain than where tastes are registered.

In this study, participants were given two wines to sample. One was a high priced wine and the other was a low priced wine. At least that was what the participants were told. In reality, the two beverages were identical. It's kind of like a reverse placebo. Instead of giving two different pills that masquerade as the same medicine, we have two identical wines that are being presented as different vintages. Brilliant.

As any marketer could predict, the perception of the more expensive wine received higher marks for "enjoyment" than the cheaper wine. This is a classic example of "perceived added value" and one reason you can find two products in a grocery store that list identical ingredients (with presumably identical quality) but have two very different prices that no doubt resonates with their packaging. Perceptions are hugely important in how we make our purchase choices.

To put this more simply, the default setting in our brains is that if something is more expensive, it must be better. Obviously, this is a glitch in the human psyche that is easily exploited by marketers.

Interestingly, the study also tracked which part of the brain was effected by the expensive wine. Expectations of quality triggered activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain that registers pleasure. This happens even though the part of our brain that interprets taste is not affected. Amazing, but not surprising.

I think that what we need is a pill to stimulate that part of the brain that registers pleasure. The only problem is that it would have to be very expensive .

-Dr. Dionysus.

...if you read this blog then your palate is probably inverted...in other words you value quality in fairly priced wines and find most high-priced bottles simply high-priced...so here are the relevant wine reviews...and a couple ideas about operationalizing the quality/price or VALUE ratio

2006 Jest White $0.99: Could this be the ultimate perceived wine value? At a recent party I attended I found myself sitting next to a fellow wine geek named Cam. We talked some wine poop and he poured me the wine he brought. WhadoIthink? Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, what else? Colombard he suggested. Nose is nice enough. Fruity and a little dry. Decent acid. He tells me the story. He bought it months ago for $10 at The Wine House (West LA emporium), liked it, but decided once was enough. Then he saw it at the 99 Cent Store for $11.88 a case. "Would you buy it for 99 cents"? No. I wouldn't. I would rather pay $15 for the Robert Chadderdon Selection below. Here is what I found about Jest White on the Chowhound website.

"The Jest White site says it is a blend of Viognier, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Symphony, Pinot Gris, Riesling, Muscat and Gewurztraminer but as the site says ...Jest White is neither too dry nor too sweet. Jest as it is neither too heavy nor too light, nope, Jest White is Jest right. It went well with this cream cheese/fig appetizer I put together. Listen, I have NO wine creds other than I just can't stand cheap white wine. I will drink boxed red ... there is very little red I won't drink, but white has to be drinkable. I thought this was more than just drinkable and is a worthy match for any $10 white out there."

2004 Chateau du Sueil Graves Blanc $15: This Robert Chadderdon Selection represents what I would call great value. I know I am wrong in the eyes of others. But they shop at TJs (I covered the decline of Trader Joes in my October 25 07 entry). In fact Cam pointed me to the Quaffability blog where TJ wines are reviewed saving lots of wasted $$ for folks who buy wine there (unless they stick to twoupchuck). I covered this in an earlier post on how Costco has replaced Trade Joes as the go-to value wine retailer for the masses (snobby eh?). When I praise Costco I do so with tongue in cheek. One can buy good wines at very good value in Costco. They are just not interesting wines. This Sauvignon Blanc is perfect in many ways. It is balanced and has bright acid (lights up the mouth). Flavors are lemon peel, sour orange. Alcohol is 12.5%. I do not hesitate to push the Lincoln and Grant over at the cash register. Is this 15 times better? It is probably 50 times better.

One idea for measuring VALUE...

Quaffability is a wine review website that uses a sensible wine scoring system. The ubiquitous 100 point system is moronic with no real scale properties. If you never have a score less than 85 then you really have a 15 point scale. And if nobody cares about wine rated below 90 then the scale is really only 10 points. This is Dr. D's point and one of the long grieved problems with Wine Spectator, Parker and other touts using the 100 point scale. Think about it. Explain the difference between 92 and 93 points. Isn't this all about perception? It looks stupid to rate wine as 6 or 7 on a 10 point scale. Imagine a 1 score. Ratings in the 90s are perceived as more desirable.

John G is the Quaffability taster and I have to guess the man behind the MUCH MORE SENSIBLE rating system (let's call it the Qscore). Here is how JG 'splains it.

"The ratings are on a percentage of value scale tuned to reflect the Cost-Price-Ratio of the wines, with 100% as the minimum acceptable score. So a $6.00 wine that tastes like a $6.00 wine, earns a 100%, while a $6.00 wine that tastes like a $12.00 wine gets a 200%."

Cost-Price-Ratio scale? I would describe this as the Cost-Value-Ratio or the Price-Value-Ratio or even the Taste-Cost-Ratio. The $0.99 Jest White wine tastes like a $5 wine to me so its Qscore is 500%. Now we see the problem with this scale. It is not well suited for really really cheap wines. A $5 wine is already cheap. But a $1 wine is ridiculously cheap!! The $$ difference is small enough to be irrelevant. In this case, the perception of a 500% value grossly exceeds the quality value.

The white Graves costs $15. It tastes to me like a $25 wine. Its Qscore would be 167%.

One more wine...

1997 George Breuer Rudesheim Schlossberg: This wine was dumb for a long time. It started to come around in the past year. This is a legendary winery. Riesling is my favorite wine in the world. They age wonderfully. And nothing else tastes like Riesling from Germany. While I favor Mosel wines I have tasted wines from other regions in Germany such as Nahe and Rheingau that are delightful. This 10 year old Reisling is yellowing although there is still a touch of green present. The nose has petrol (which is characteristic of Riesling although with great Mosels it seems to disappear) and baked bread. The flavors are exotic. Lime, soda crackers, arugula (bitterness) and a creaminess that is fighting to be released. It is almost gaseous. Who left the stove on?!?! I love it. Small production of 300+ cases. Classic.

And the Qscore? I like to drink young Rieslings but I love to drink properly aged Rieslings. I prefer Ausleses. I really do not have a taste any more for the super sweet BAs and outrageously sweet TBAs. I would love to have my 1983 selections back. I am sure they still defy gravity (like the photo above of Berg Schlossberg vineyards hanging over the Rhine) and to me might as well be priceless.

[ed. tBoW webmeister Dr. Dionysus practices Chinese Medicine in his "pro" life. He shares some wisdom concerning balance in life and wine drinking.]

In the practice of Chinese Medicine the topic of lifestyle choices and their impact on health comes up on a regular basis.

Our lives can be shortened and otherwise undermined by choices such as a sedentary lifestyle, smoking cigarettes, and of course drinking. Healthy choices include the obvious ones such as exercising, quitting or not smoking and not drinking. However, a balanced lifestyle also recognizes that enjoying life also contributes to a longer and happier life.

That's why I use the 80/20 rule. If you really want to prevent disease, live a long healthy life, etc., simply do the right thing 80% of the time, and the remaining 20% go ahead and drink wine. I still think you should get off your butt and put out the other butts, but enjoying life and drinking wine have both been shown to interact well, so 20% seems like a reasonable apportion. As long as you balance with the 80%.

I recently happened upon the aisle pictured below at a local bookstore which prompted these thoughts. It tickled me at the time, and I believe it will tickle you too. :)

Dr. Dionysus