Belhurst is NY's label & package champ

Belhurst Winery wound up as the best of the best in the 2009 New York State Wine Label & Packaging Competition.

The Geneva winery was awarded "Best in Show" for its cabernet franc, which had won the "Traditional" class title followed by its Carrie wine, and its Dry Rosé took "People's Choice" honors.

The competition was held at Sonnenberg Gardens & Mansion State Historic Park in Canandaigua, and was sanctioned by the New York Wine & Grape Foundation. The entries were on display at Sonnenberg since May, and ballots cast by visitors throughout that period determiend the "People's Choice" award.

The full list of award winners, by category:

Best in Show: Belhurst Winery Cabernet Franc.

People’s Choice Award: Belhurst Winery Dry Rosé.

Traditional: Belhurst Winery Cabernet Franc, winner; Hunt Country Vineyards Alchemy, honorable mention.

Natural/Nature: Arcadian Estate Winery 2 Roads Chardonnay, winner; Dr. Konstantin Frank Vinifera Wine Cellars Salmon Run Chardonnay, honorable mention.

Art Illustration: Fox Run Vineyards Arctic Fox, winner; Atwater Vineyards Stonebridge Red, honorable mention.

Innovative: Belhurst Winery Dry Rosé, winner; Belhurst Winery Carrie, honorable mention.

Contemporary: Miles Wine Cellars, winner; Miles Wine Cellars Call Me A Cab, honorable mention.

Wine Label Series: Ventosa Vineyards Cabernet Franc/Pinot Noir/Tocai, winner; Adirondack Winery Autumn Brilliance, honorable mention.

Restaurateurs fight PA wine boutiques plan

• From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

PHILADELPHIA, PA -- It could end up being a case of sour grapes for some Philadelphia restaurateurs.

A small but vocal group, mostly of Center City restaurant owners, is organizing against a Liquor Control Board plan to open wine boutiques in gourmet groceries.

Among other concerns, those in the group worry that the proposal will siphon off customers and give the high-end food shops -- selected by the LCB -- an unfair advantage.

"I feel like the state is trying to sell houses when they make tractor-trailers. It's not their job to play with the culinary landscape of an area," said Jason Evenchik, owner of Vintage Wine Bar & Bistro, 129 South 13th Street.

Evenchik has joined with the owners of more than 50 establishments, most in Philadelphia, who have formed Restaurants for Fair Competition. They are asking the state Senate to derail the plan. The House has approved the legislation.

[Go here for the full story.]

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Going against the grain -- and the grape

William M. Dowd photo

Pairing wines and foods can sometimes be a puzzling process for those who don't do it very often. Or, when the foods are widely disparate and only one or two wines are desired.

Sometimes guesswork is as good as anything until you find what most pleases your palate. I usually advise going against the conventional wisdom of white with fish and poultry, red with beef and pork.

That came home to me once again when I was one in a party of four meeting recently for dinner at the restaurant Dale Miller two blocks from the stately Capitol building in downtown Albany, NY. The restaurant has an excellent wine list, and my assigned task was to decide on what one wine to drink with appetizers and entrees that ranged from a vegetable sampler to beef carpaccio to scallops to beef tenderloin.

I ended up selecting a 2006 Marques de Casa Concha Cabernet Sauvignon Puente Alto from Chile's Maipo Valley, a rich, fruity bold wine that a good cab should be, one that held its own against the beef dishes but had enough subtlety and delicacy of finish to complement the scallops and vegetables without overwhelming either dish.

In the same week, I had to come up with a pair of wines for a dinner party for eight -- meaning a lot of different personal tastes -- for which I'd cooked a three-course Mexican menu.

This time I was in control of the menu, unlike at the aforementioned restaurant, so I could be more precise with what was needed to complement a wide-ranging dinner.

Starters were guacamole and a pico de gallo salsa, followed by tortas de cangrejo (lump Pacific crab cakes on a bed of micro-greens, dotted with a coarse mustard-mayo sauce).

Entrees were a carne de cerdo machado (herb-rubbed, oven roasted pork tenderloins, accompanied by a sauce of fresh cream, raisins, apricots, white wine and beef and chicken stocks) and estefado de pollo y tomatillo (a savory light stew of herbed chicken stock, thickened with a butter roux and studded with diced green tomatillos, yellow bell peppers, scallions, shallots, cilantro, served with brown basmati rice).

Dessert was a simple banana sauté in a sauce of rum, brown sugar and fresh orange juice.

[Go here for the rest of the story.]

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Electronically pairing wine and food

• From the Reuters news agency

Don't know which wine to have with a pepperoni pizza? There's an app for that -- as well as websites and Twitter.

The number of ways to discover the most suitable wine for a particular dish can be as overwhelming as walking into a large wine shop.

More than a dozen apps claiming to be the equivalent of a sommelier in your pocket are available for iPhones and iPods. And there are others for the BlackBerry and other mobile devices.

[Go here for the full story.]

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Time for a down-to-Earth 'Moonwalk'

Monday, July 20, will mark the 40th anniversary of astronaut Neil Armstrong’s historic walk on the moon.

The publicity mill at Grand Marnier is making sure everyone remembers its liqueur was part of the first cocktail Armstrong and his crew enjoyed upon their return to Earth in 1969.

The cocktail, called the “Moonwalk,” was created by Joe Gilmore, who was the head barman at the Savoy Hotel in London. Here is the recipe:

1 part Grand Marnier
1 part fresh grapefruit juice
2 dashes rosewater
Moët & Chandon Champagne

Shake ingredients well and strain into a wine glass. Top off with Moët & Chandon.

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New winery in an old brewery

For people who like both wine and beer in equal measure, Mansfield, OH, has the perfect recycling project to brag about.

Cypress Hill Winery has just opened in a former brewery.

Gary and Janice Jones and Rick and Carol Taylor are the owners and operators of the new enterprise, located at the rear of 37 East Fourth Street in the former Wooden Pony brewery.

They have been making wine informally for more than a dozen years, but as they got serious and began competing in Cleveland area amateur winemaking contests their skills expanded. Last year their 2006 zinfandel won best-in-show honors.

They now are licensed to sell their wines, once made in the Taylors' wine cellar, thus the need for expanded facilities. They are offering four different wines -- syrah, barbara, zinfandel (seen above) and cabernet sauvignon. All are made from 2007 California grapes and are barrel matured for at least one year.

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PA wine vending machine plan on hold

A Canadian wine-vending kiosk

You really do have to pay attention 24/7 in this fast-changing world.

One example:

• A Google headline on July 8:

Pennsylvania governor supportive of self-serve wine kiosks

• A Google headline on July 9:

Pennsylvania governor put stop to wine kiosk plan

So, which is it?

Both, as it turns out. Gov. Ed Rendell's office says he still supports the theory of selling wine via vending machines in grocery stores, but he has decided to temporarily put the state Liquor Control Board plan on hold.

He says he wants to see if the technology really works. No timetable has been announced, and no word on how one does this without giving it a trial run.

The idea is that the wine kiosks would scan a buyer's driver's license and use face recognition technology to verify the picture matches the buyer. The devices also would include a breath detector to make sure buyers are not inebriated.

The Liquor Control Board said the kiosks will be monitored by remote video and can cancel sales.

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Long Island wine country in a growth spurt

• From Newsday

Recession or not, a new crop of wineries, tasting rooms, vineyards and wines is making its way to Long Island wine country this season, suggesting that the business of sipping may not only defy but thrive in tough economic times.

From the planned September opening in Southold of a 10,000-square-foot tasting room and winery called Sparkling Pointe devoted exclusively to sparkling wines to a quaint red tasting shed across the road called One Woman Wines & Vineyards, Long Island will play host to nearly a dozen new winemaking operations over a one-year period, pushing the total to more than 60.

The "newcomers" include some stalwarts in the business. Just this week, Jason Damianos, the winemaker of Pindar Vineyards fame, plans to open a two-story, 5,500-square-foot winery and tasting room called Jason's Vineyard in Jamesport. His plans preceded the economic downturn, Damianos said. But financial changes since then actually have helped, because interest rates are down. "I'm hoping they stay low," he said.

[Go here for the full story.]

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Law breaking tastes good in New York

If you're a New York resident who orders wine online from retailers outside the state, you also are a criminal, according to a federal appeals court decision handed down this week.

A Second Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled that New York State's law permitting in-state retailers to ship wine directly to consumers but forbidding out-of-state retailers from doing the same is constitutional and within the state's rights under the 21st Amendment.

However, it is doubtful the ruling will mean much. Online sales are notoriously difficult to track and most retailers simply ignore the rules.

The ruling upheld a 2007 district court decision (Arnold's Wines Inc. v. Boyle). In it, an Indiana store and two New York consumers sued to overturn the state law. Their argument is that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the 2005 case of Granholm v. Heald, which bans states from discriminating between in-state and out-of-state wineries, also applies to wine retailers. The district judge dismissed the case and the Court of Appeals has now concurred with that decision.

The case is just one of several in the battle between retailers and wholesalers. Since the Supreme Court handed down the Granholm decision, suits and countersuits on both sides of the debate have popped up around the country.

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