Help at the 11th hour

If you need a last-second inspiration for your New Year's Toast or a bit of verse appropriate to the moment, just go to my "Toasts & Crumbs" blog and scroll down. I think you'll find something you like.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008!

Letters: I need my Gala Rouge

Bill:

I live in NY City and am having a hard, hard time finding Gala Rouge. Went on their website for info. re. retailers, but that section does not work either.

I tried sending them e-mail, but they are asking me to fill in information about me that has nothing to do with my search for the wine. Too nooozzy!

I am ready to buy a case. Are they ready 2 sell w/out extracting my s/s # from me...?

-- A. Nonymous, New York, NY

Dear A:

Try one of these online vendors:

• Jericho Wines
• Grand Wine Cellar
• Black Tie Wine & Spirits

P.S. For those unfamiliar with this particular wine, here's a link to a story I wrote on it last year.

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My 10 best beverage moments of 2007

In no particular order, here is a big chunk of my 2007 in review:

(1.) Best Drinking and Driving: Put down the protest signs. Some fellow writers and I did the drinking and the charter-bus driver did all the driving -- through Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia as we traversed the major portion of the American Whiskey Trail.

In addition to visiting such iconic distilleries as Jack Daniel's, Jim Beam, Labrot & Graham, Maker's Mark, Wild Turkey and George Dickel, we hit some historic sites and got to meet a wide range of people in all those states. True Americana.

(2.) Best Ad Campaign: The bust-a-gut-laughing set of TV commercials for the Irish whiskey known as The Knot. (See the whole batch of them here.) They feature a bantam rooster sort of guy in a pub who takes no nonsense about whiskey.

(3.) Best New-to-Me Whiskey: I had already completed, or so I thought, an article on American ryes for the UK magazine Whisky when I received this hard-to-find gem as a birthday present. It completely changed my mind on which ryes were the best. Black Maple Hill Rye is tough enough to find in the 18-year-old version, but the 23-year-old takes special investigatory powers.

An initial burst of brown sugar, heat and spice quickly transforms into a mellow, oaky smoothness. Despite the richness there is an ethereal lightness one seldom experiences in hot ryes. Fruit notes such as apple and pear dance around the edges, but the palate responds again and again to the varied spices. Utterly splendid, and worth every moment you spend tracking it down.

(4.) Best Appelation Visit: After participating in a wine competition judging in Napa, CA, I drove to nearby Lodi to experience a region in transition from wine grape producing to winemaking, sort of what Napa was like 20 years ago. The region is dotted with third- and fourth-generation farm families who have been moving from mostly supplying major winemakers to developing their own wines and brands.

They’re working hard at making the Lodi brand known outside the Pacific Coast and trying to develop tourism and ancillary businesses along with it, just as Napa did in its early days

(5.) Best New Cocktails Tried: This was a very interesting category to narrow down. In the course of my business I try a lot of different drinks in the course of the year. Some are very complex, some very simple. I like simple better. In two establishments -- T-Bar at Charlie's Restaurant in Lake Placid, NY, and the Reluctant Panther in Manchester, VT -- I coincidentally ran into signature drinks created for each place by Las Vegas-based mixology guru Tony Abou-Ganim then used by the on-premises bartenders to spin off their own versions.

At T-Bar, I enjoyed both the Gondolettes' Blackberry Caiprosca, a simple drink with a complexity of flavors from muddled fresh lime and berries with citrus vodka. Bartender Laura Keaney's recipe switched it to a raspberry recipe to take advantage of the availability of plump local berries.

At the Reluctant Panther, the signature drink takes on the name of the establishment. It's a mixture of Belvedere vodka, freshly-made lemon sour, chambord, champagne and blackberries marinated in Grand Marnier. Bar manager John Cohen created a spinoff using Stoli Blueberry vodka, freshly-made lemon sour, Blue Curacao, Sprite and fresh berries marinated in Grand Marnier.

(6.) Best New-to-Me Beer: Toña, hands down. This Nicaraguan beer is a lager brewed by Compania Cervecera de Nicaragua (CCN), made with German yeast and malt, North American hops and Nicaraguan deep-well water. The chief brewer is Rudiger Adelmann, who formerly worked for Steinecker GmbH, a German company that designs and produces brewing and filter technologies for the beverage production industry.

When I served up Toña at a beer blind-judging session, among the comments were: "It's much smoother than the Budweiser, and with a bolder flavor. ... I'd drink this beer all night ... It's very rich and creamy. ... Plenty of taste but doesn't overdo the carbonation so it goes down easy. ... This is easy to evaluate: It's an excellent beer!"

(7.) Best News Story Comment: When I reported that an illegal cache of Jack Daniel's whiskey products, including some old and rare ones, had been seized in Tennessee and probably would be destroyed by the authorities, one of my readers e-mailed this perspective:

"When the authorities in Tennessee recover stolen art do they burn it?"

(8.) Best Host's Revenge: I've often wanted to find a way to get even with guests who reply to "What would you like to drink?" with the non-committal -- and unhelpful -- response "Anything" or "Whatever." A Singapore company called Out of The Box came up with soft drinks called "Anything," a carbonated drink, and "Whatever," a tea-based non-carbonated product. So, when someone makes the appropriate inappropriate reply, you can hand them a can of what matches their response. But that's only one level of revenge.

The second twist is that the flavors inside the cans remain a mystery. They could be cola with lemon, apple, root beer, lemon, peach, jasmine, apple, white grape and chrysanthemum , but there is no indication on the exteriors of the cans which flavor is inside. Gotcha.

(9.) Best New Old Beer: Most brewers strive to come up with something new. Sam Calagione, owner of the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery group in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, is using a 9,000-year-old recipe for his latest offering, Chateau Jiahu. He explained it this way: "Preserved pottery jars found in the Neolithic villiage of Jiahu, in Henan province in northern China, has revealed that a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey and fruit was being produced that long ago, right around the same time that barley beer and grape wine were beinginning to be made in the Middle East."

So, in 2005, molecular archeologist Dr. Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania asked Dogfish Head to re-create their second ancient beverage and Chateau Jiahu was born, and went to market in '07. It's an 8% beer.

(10.) Best New Old Distillery: No contest here. While some distillers were pumping millions of dollars into new or expanded facilities, the historic-minded folks at Mount Vernon, VA., rebuilt George Washington's original distillery, based on his diary accounts of the operation that burned down nearly 200 years ago.

Washington's rye whiskey has been recreated there, and the new structure is being used as a tourist attraction several miles from the mansion. I was privileged to be part of the invited group attending the official opening of the facility, and sampled some of the young rye.

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Nollaig shona duit!

That's in the old Irish tongue. Put in plain English, Happy Christmas!

If you're looking for toasts and salutations for the holidays that will make friends and family smile or laugh out loud, check my "Toasts & Crumbs" blog, the sub-title of which is "When Words Fail You, Try These."

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Raising a lot more glasses to cognac

PHOTO BY WILLIAM M. DOWD

Cognac may not come immediately to mind when one thinks of the rapidly growing niches of alcoholic beverages. It should.

A little background. Cognac is a brandy, a grape-based product -- an "eaux-de-vie'' fermented like wine then twice distilled. By French law, supported by the World Trade Organization, the spirit can originate only in the town of Cognac and six surrounding viticultural areas.

There is more than one kind of cognac due to the variety of soils in the region. The grapes used are from several white wine varieties, principally the Ugni Blanc, known elsewhere as the Trebbiano grape. Cognacs must be aged in wood at least two years. Most producers use Limousin oak. Martell, for example, prefers the more aromatic Troncais oak.

According to the 2007 edition of "The U.S. Distilled Spirits Market: Impact Databank Review and Forecast" the market looks like this for cognac:

• It has posted 13 consecutive annual U.S. consumption gains.

• The U.S. remains its largest market despite its popularity in Asia with 4 million cases consumed annually.

• A demographic shift is holding steady in which younger Americans are consuming cognac as a main drink or main ingredient in a cocktail rather than merely as an after-dinner digestif.

• Cognac accounts for one-third of all brandy consumed by Americans.

Hennessy, Remy Martin, Courvoisier and Martell combined for 94% percent of the U.S. market last year, according to the report. While three-quarters of cognac volume in the U.S. is standard-priced VS (very superior) brands, much of the recent sales growth has been with VSOP (very superior old pale) and more upscale cognac, such as Napoleon and XO (extra old), according to Impact Databank.

Go here and type "cognac" into the search box to see my tasting notes on a couple of cognacs.

---

Jacques Menier (seen above), Asia Pacific sales director, presenting the new Martell Creation Grand Extra at an invitation-only dinner I attended earlier this year in Las Vegas. Go here to read my report on the event.

---

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Italians crack the pinot noir code

The creation of hybrid lines of grapes goes on around the globe. But what happens if researchers digging ever deeper into the science of grapes finally crack the genetic code of the famously fickle pinot noir grape and begin tinkering?

That day is here. Researchers at Italy's Istituto Agrario San Michele all’Adige this week announced they have mapped the pinot noir genome and may some day be able to breed disease-resistant grapes without losing taste.

Riccardo Velasco, head of genetics at the institute, told the journal PLoS ONE, "Discovering these 2 million molecular markers is a tremendous tool which will help in the breeding not only of pinot noir but every cultivated grape variety.”

Velasco said the genome had been mapped in draft form before, but he and his team are the first to catalog the myriad single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, found scattered among its 30,000 genes. SNPs are single-letter changes in the genetic code. And, he said, the team also has identified a large number of genes related to disease resistance, 289 of which contain SNPs.

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Hilton's new product is golden

First it was '60s movie sex siren Mamie Van Doren coming out of retirement to bare it all for a new line of wines bearing her image. Now, as if to show that the younger generation can take a marketing hint, celebutart Paris Hilton is showing up in the nude to push her new canned wine brand.

In a sense, she's not strictly nude. She is covered in gold paint, as you can see.

The wine in a can, called Rich Prosecco, comes in original, passion fruit and strawberry flavors. It will make its European debut this week, and be introduced to the U.S. soon after the first of the year.

This follows Hilton's other products, including perfume, shoes, jewelery and handbags as well as the occasional film or pop album.

While she and her people may know a thing or two about marketing her, they're not terribly original about how they do it. English actress Shirley Eaton beat them to the gold gimmick as an ill-fated James Bond girl back in '64.

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EU wine reform may be derailed

The world of European wines probably won't be turned upside-down as some had feared after the European Parliament this week voted to dilute a planned reform of the European Union wine sector.

Even though the Parliament's role is only as a consultancy, it usually sets the tone for EU actions. EU agriculture ministers are scheduled to meet next week to create a final compromise on wine industry reform in an attempt to reverse falling sales and remove trade-distorting measures.

Among the most controversial points that were eliminated was a proposed blanket ban on adding sugar to wines. That practice is common in cooler countries such as Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic, to boost alcohol content in mass-market wines.

In addition, the Parliament, meeting in Strasbourg, France (its headquarters is seen above), also called for:

• Subsidies for distillation to be maintained.

• Aid to producers of lower-quality wines who decide to stop production to be disbursed within three years instead of five.

• Subsidies to be maintained for wine enrichment with pure "must" grape juice, something practiced in southern countries as opposed to the northern nations' sugaring of wine.

• Rejection of a proposal to fully liberalize by 2014 planting rights for vintners producing quality wines on areas previously not used as vineyards.

Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU farm commissioner, said she would not agree to a complete watering down of her proposals to boost sales by producing more quality wines and to reduce "wine lakes" that cost hundreds of millions of euros to get rid of.

Background: The European Union (EU) is a union of 27 independent nations based on the European Communities and founded to enhance political, economic and social co-operation. It formerly was called the European Community or the European Economic Community. The European Parliament is directly elected every five years by EU citizens to represent their interests. The present parliament has 785 members from all 27 EU countries.

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Prohibition repeal anniversary, or not?

Today is the 74th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. Or is it truly the day that hideous experiment in social control ended?

Beer historian Bob Skilnik has some strong thoughts on the topic, which he has posted online as he does from time to time in debunking other myths. Even though he specializes in beer, Prohibition affected wine as well, so let's look at how he begins:

"December 5, 1933 notes a 'first' in constitutional history. It was on this day, 74 years ago, that American voters, through state referendums, added the 21st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It was the first time in our history that a constitutional amendment was passed, not simply by the will of legislators, but instead through popular mandate, i.e., the power of the U.S. citizenry. For some of us, December 5, 1933 might even be remembered as the end of National Prohibition. Unfortunately, there are too many writers and trade organizations who should know this, but have chosen, instead to revise U.S. history for their own purposes, and if I might, usually for self-promoting ones.

"You might recall my rants back in April when organizations like the Brewers Association, the A&E network, Anheuser-Busch, with its pimping of 'The American Brew' an hour-long movie commissioned by the St. Louis brewery, and beer geek sites like Beeradvocate proclaimed April 7 as the day that Prohibition was 'repealed today in 1933.' The Jacksonville Business Journal went so far as to proclaim that 'The 21st amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect April 7, 1933 …' -- an amazing feat since the states hadn’t even gotten around to setting up constitutional referendums and state conventions to vote for delegates who would set the constitutional change into effect.

"They weren’t alone in repeating this historical inaccuracy, but the list of offenders would probably be longer than this entire blog entry. So once again, let me beat this dead horse of a canard one more time. The passages below are from my book 'Beer: A History of Brewing in Chicago,' and gives the perspective of events leading up to December 5, 1933 from a Windy City perspective. But throughout the story, the thread leading up to the end of Prohibition can be found."

You can find his full essay here.

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Washington wine grape harvest a record

Washington state's wine grape crop hit a record 127,150 tons this year, a 5.5% increase in the harvest of cabernet, merlot, riesling and other varietals.

That puts the state's output at No. 2 in the nation, well behind California's 3.2 million tons.

Vicky Scharlau, executive director of the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers, said: "Mother Nature smiled on Washington state once again this year and provided an ideal climate for grapes. She provided us with a fast start, a slow middle and a long finish to produce a vintage to remember."

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Wine from pure tea? India says yes

Did you hear the one about the Indian company that brewed wine out of pure tea?

Now you have.

Experiments conducted at the Tea Research Association's Jorhat, Assam, facility have resulted in a new product that will be put on the market in about six months.

Mridul Hazarika, director of the TRA’s Tocklai centre in Jorhat, claims, “We brewed wine out of pure tea. Of course, we have used some other requisite ingredients to whet the fermentation.”

“The uniqueness of our product is that unlike the Japanese tea-based wine we don’t mingle red wine with the beverage," Hazarika told Commodity Online.com. "The Japanese tea based wine producers mix the red wine in specific proportion to make the drink. But our base would be pure tea with some added flavors to exude the exotic aromas of Darjeeling and Assam teas.”

The TRA earlier created tea tablets, ready-to-drink tea and tea biscuits.

Pradeep Ghosh, a TRA senior consultant, explained: “The tablet is basically a fine form of quality brew carrying the flavor of popular varieties like Darjeeling and Assam. Consumers can chew it or can dissolve it in a cup of hot or cold water and then relish it as a drink.”

No one at the TRA explained precisely how its new product differs from other "wine teas" made and consumed in Asia and Oceania. For example, here is one recipe I picked up from the ABC Tasmania television station which featured it on a broadcast several years ago after it was submitted by a viewer.

TEA WINE

4 pints cold tea
2 pounds granulated sugar
½ pound raisins
2 lemons

Cut the raisins and slice the lemons thinly, and put them in a large bowl or jug. Add the sugar, then pour on the cold tea. Stir till the sugar has dissolved, then cover the bowl or jug and leave it for a month. After this time you will find a scum on top, remove this carefully, then strain off the liquid and bottle.

Serving suggestion: Tea wine can be drunk at once, but is best when kept a few months. Keep it in a cool dark place, and don’t push the corks in too hard at first.

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Full-disclosure labels in the works

Most wine labels tell you (a.) what grapes were used in creating the product, and (b.) whether it containes sulfites.

Beyond that, other than the usual terroir references, there's not a lot of detail. Bonny Doon Vineyard is changing that.

The Santa Cruz, CA, winemaker is working up a list of ingredients to be placed on the back labels of some of its wines as of 2008. It is believed that will be the first major American brand to do so.

The lists will include the wine components, such as grapes and the preservative sulfur dioxide, as well as products used during winemaking, such as yeast.

"(Owner) Randall (Grahm) feels that it's important to openly share with consumers any additions made to the wine, and by extension to make other winemakers responsible for [acknowledging] their own additions and interventions," explained Alison Davies, marketing associate at Bonny Doon. "We hope for a number of results: by stating all the ingredients, this could lead the industry in the direction of full disclosure and encourage winemakers to be more hands-off and less interventionist."

Grahm's first wines with the new labels wil be the 2007 Ca' del Solo Vineyard Albariño and Muscat, both from the Monterey County AVA. They'll be released in March.

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