French court ruling assailed

The fallout from a Paris court's ruling against a newspaper's stories on Champagne is building.

Denis Saverot, editor of the wine magazine Revue de Vin de France, has launched a scathing attack on French culture, including France's wine trade. Writing in the upcoming March issue of Decanter magazine, Denis Saverot asked what his country had come to. As the magazine reports on its Web site:

"His words came in response to the news published after Christmas that a newspaper, Le Parisien, had been told by a Paris court that an article on Champagne was considered advertising and as such came under the draconian Evin law, regulating alcohol and tobacco advertising. The court ruled the article should have carried a health warning and the paper was fined. The decision shocked many journalists around the world.

"In the column, Saverot attacked those he saw as responsible for current state of affairs. He blamed French politicians, the health and pharmaceutical lobbies, as well as the wine industry itself.

" 'This hygiene crusade is pushing the authorities to put wine in the same boat (as other alcohols and health issues), treating more than 1,000 years of culture with contempt,' he said.

"Some of his strongest comments targeted the wine industry itself. Calling the French wine bodies 'incredibly blind', he said the industry should have done more to fight the Evin law in 1991."

The full story is here.

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Diageo buying another California winemaker

Diageo, the world's biggest alcoholic drinks maker, is buying Rosenblum Cellars of California for $105 million.

Rosenblum, located in Alameda, CA, was founded in 1978. Its primary production consists of zinfandel and Rhone wines using grapes from vineyards around California. Its price range is in the $12 - $100 range.

It will become part of Diageo's Chateau & Estate Wines division, part of its North American business, joining such current holdsings as Edna Valley, Provenance, Beaulieu and Sterling.

"The acquisition of Rosenblum Cellars represents an important strategic fit for us, as it enhances Diageo's presence in the premium Zinfandel segment, one of the fastest growing varietals in the U.S," Ivan Menezes, Diageo's North America president, said in a statement.

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In court of public opinion, Champagne is fantastic

With sincere apologies to the late Dr. Seuss ...

I do not understand the French,
When sitting idly on a bench,
Or fighting in a muddy trench,
Or berating a writer for being a mench.

They are a people long known for their skills with food and drink. They often are observed, when anything French isn't praised highly enough for them, to fly into fits of pique. Pique, a French word by way of Latin meaning anger, annoyance, conniption, snit. All aptly descriptive.

Take Champagne, for example. The lovely bubblies made in that region of northern France have, by most laws even beyond La Belle France, been ascertained as the only true Champagne. Made anywhere else and they are mere pretenders to the throne.

Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992), the influential German-born movie star (shown above in a 1959 Paris restaurant), wrote that she loved Champagne because "It gives the impression that it is Sunday and that the best days will soon be upon us.''

Today's wine world largely goes along with the legal aspects as well as that attitude toward Champagne, but it is not a recent conceit. Throughout history the world has known of the French reverence for the wine. Even an Austrian like Johann Strauss the Younger kept it as a major part of his opera "Die Fledermaus'' ("The Bat'') which he adapted from the French vaudeville production "Le Reveillon'' in 1874. In the finale, all sing in praise of Champagne, the king of all the wines.

The French Enlightenment philosopher Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, writing in 1736, noted "the sparkling froth of these fresh wines is the sparkling image of us, the French.''

The French master of fiction Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) said he always put a glass of Champagne beside his inkwell to give his pen a sparkling inspiration.

What, then, are we to make of the recent decision by a civil court in Paris that a set of articles in the newspaper Le Parisien was liable to induce people to drink Champagne and, thus it would have to make a penalty payment to France's National Association for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Addiction (ANPAA).

Such a ruling in a nation whose motto is "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity'' seems to suggest wine articles in the media may be regulated in the same was as alcohol advertising.

The Evin Law of 1991 strictly controls such advertising in France. Messages are restricted to the quality of the product, and must carry health warnings.

The ANPAA had filed suit against the newspaper over a series of articles using the overall heading "The triumph of Champagne,'' published 24 months ago. Its contention was that the articles were too much in praise of Champagne and, therefore, the same as an ad and should be controlled the same way.

The court inexplicably agreed. Even more inexplicably, the ANPAA won the same sort of decision in the same court in December when it attacked Heineken for comments made about its own products -- on its own Web site!

So, here we are mere days from that hideously commercialized, yet still nice to have, holiday known as St. Valentine's Day. A day when Champagne enters into the consciousness of many who ignore it the rest of the year.

I was never impressed by the recent wave of anti-French sentiment that resulted in such foolishness as "Freedom fries,'' but I do advocate -- as a longtime journalist and defender of free speech in all situations -- saying that Champagne is recherche, French for excellent, delicious, discriminating, pleasing, splendid, superb. All aptly descriptive.

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Another reason wine judging is done blind

Perhaps it's because no one wants to think (s)he didn't get the best value for the money. Whatever the reason, the price of a bottle of wine influences how well consumers like it, according to a study just released by the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology (CalTech).

"What we document is that the price is not just about influences of quality, but it can actually affect real quality," said Baba Shiv, Stanford professor of marketing.

During the study, researchers ascertained that if a subject was told one wine cost $5 and another $45, that part of the brain that experiences pleasure became more active when drinking the "$45 wine" even though the subject was served the same wine both times.

The researchers, who used 11 CalTech male grad students as their subjects, said they relied on MRIs to conduct the study. They tested the students as they swallowed several different cabernet sauvignons through a pump attached to their mouths.

Not exactly conducive to relaxed wine tasting, but close enough for science.

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You dirty, dirty little wine, you

Dan Berger, who I've gotten to know over the years judging wine competitions together, doesn't stay in the middle of the road when it comes to thinking about wine.

The veteran California wine writer is a font of information on offbeat wine angles. His latest concerns dirt and wine.

Not a discussion of the dirt that wine grapes grow in, but the dirt that gets into the wine and, by extension, into consumers' mouths.

You can read his treatise on the topic here.

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Canada's ice cider sector growing fast

From the Canadian Press news service:

Bittersweet heritage apples like Kings, Gravensteins, Pippins and Winesaps still grow in backyards and orchards around Victoria, B.C. But instead of dropping to the ground to rot, many of the crops are being given a new lease on life.

Enterprising couple Kristen and Bruce Jordan are using them to make a variety of different fermented ciders at Sea Cider, their farm and ciderhouse in Saanichton, a rural area outside the province's capital city.

They aren't alone. Cider making is catching on in Canada. In Quebec, several producers are making ice cider, an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting the juice of apples that have been left to freeze in winter.

• Go here for the remainder of the story.

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We'll always have Paris ... to gripe about

It's getting so a girl doesn't know where to turn to make an honest buck.

Celebutart Paris Hilton, 26, often criticized for using her Hilton hotel chain family fortune to support a wild lifestyle, got herself dipped in gold, and nothing else, for a wine advertising campaign. The wine in a can, called Rich Prosecco, comes in original, passion fruit and strawberry flavors.

Right after it made its European debut this month, it came under fire by some Italian winemakers. It was just a couple of years ago she was cricized for being too sexy in an ad for a California hamburger chain.

"Hilton hotels are a sign of quality; Paris Hilton is not," Fulvio Brunetta, president of the wine growers association of Treviso, the Veneto region where Prosecco is made, told the Reuters news agency. "In the U.S. and Australia they toast with beer bottles. That's their culture. The culture of Prosecco is one of friends meeting around a good bottle."

If, in the interest of consumer research, you wish to get a better look at Paris and her ... cans, just click here.

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Nothing sacred in vodka- or winemaking

Tinkering and adult beverage creation seem to go hand in hand.

For example, the global explosion in vodka products in the past decade or so has caused no end of controversy.

Imbibers and producers alike seem to be divided into two camps. One regards any vodka made with anything other than potatoes or grains to be a pretender. In the other camp are those who see nothing wrong with using various fruits and vegetables.

That debate has been entered into at the highest marketing levels within the European Community as laws governing such things in international commerce are reviewed and rewritten.

Meanwhile, flying below the radar at the moment, are artisanal vodka makers in various parts of the U.S. who don't give a fig -- and, indeed, may even be using them -- what the EC thinks, blithely going on about their business with anything they can turn into a neutral grain spirit.

The same seems to be going on with wine. While the most common base by far is grapes, various fruits have been used for centuries to create wine. A couple of examples in a cluster where New York, Massachusetts and Vermont come together near Albany, N.Y.: The Brookview Station Winery at the Goold Orchard near Albany turns out a line of apple wines. The North River Winery has a tasting room in Bennington, VT, where you can try some of their 18 different wines made from apples, raspberries, pears, blueberries, cranberries ... even rhubarb. And, nearby in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, the Furnace Brook Winery at Hilltop Orchards makes wine and cider from apples to supplement its line of grape wines.

While not widely known, these places are anything but secret. What is getting little notice is winemaking using very unusual ingredients in places not usually thought about in connection with wine.

Like India and Ethiopia.

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

In strife-torn, starving Ethiopia, a medical doctor/scientist has developed wine from khat, a leaf commonly chewed in East Africa and parts of the Middle East to extract its narcotic properties.

Dr. Eyasu Haile Selassie, who has made and distributed 500 bottles of the wine so far and is working on plans for full-scale commercial production, told the Retuers news agency, "Khat wine is just as good as any wine produced from grapes and has been well-received by wine drinkers.''

Lest you think his wine would have a double-whammy from khat's amphetamine properties and the alcohol, Eyasu says khat leaves lose their narcotic qualities within 48 hours of harvest.

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San Antonio wine test dropped

The San Antonio Express-News Wine Competition, an international championship event held in the Texas city for the past seven years, has been discontinued.

The newspaper that had sponsored the February event dropped it from its calendar after a series of financial cuts at the Hearst-owned publication were put into place.

Go here for a look at what turned out to be the final event, held last February.

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California winery gets top domestic honors

Delicato Family Vineyards (DFV Wines) of Manteca, CA, has been named "American Winery of the Year" in Wine Enthusiast magazine's 2007 Winestar Awards.

Over its 80-year existence, Delicato made the transition along with many other California entities from grape provider to winemaker, and currently offers nine different brands. Among them are Gnarly Head Zinfandel, Clay Station Viognier, Irony Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, 337 Cabernet Sauvignon, Delicato Shiraz and Joe Blow Red.

Symington Family Estates of Portugal was awarded the "European Winery of the Year" title. It is a leading producer of premium-quality Port with eight brands, including Dow’s, Warre’s, Quinta do Vesuvio and Smith Woodhouse. It also is the world's largest producer of Madeira and has a small range of table wines.

Other awards (details available on Wine Enthusiast's Web site):

INDIVIDUALS
• Man of the Year: Ray Chadwick, president, Diageo Chateau & Estate Wines.
• Lifetime Achievement: Dr. John F. Mariani Jr., Banfi Vintners.
• Winemaker of the Year: Carlo Ferrini, Italy. He consults for approximately 40 estates.

OTHERS
• Wine Region of the Year: Rioja, Spain.
• New World Winery of the Year: Villa Maria, New Zealand.
• Distiller of the Year: Casa Herradura of Tequila, Mexico.
• Importer of the Year: E. & J. Gallo Winery.
• Retailer of the Year: Whole Foods Market of Austin, TX.

The awards will be presented at the awards event Jan. 28 in New York.

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Vineyard area won't be dry much longer

Aquinnah, MA, more commonly known as the Martha's Vineyard community of Gay Head despite its 1998 name change, has been known for more than a century as a tourist haven that allows no alcoholic beverages to be sold.

That should change now that Gov. Deval Patrick has signed a home rule petition submitted by town selectmen to grant beer and wine licenses to restaurants that seat 15 or more people. Unless a whole lot of people change their minds.

A 132-79 vote at the town meeting held in May supported the plan, and it then was passed by the state legislature. Now, a second vote is required to put the new law into effect.

Only two establishments, the Outermost Inn and the Aquinnah Restaurant, are large enough to quality for the exemption.

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