Getting the lowdown on high quality sake

• From Esquire magazine

By DAVID WONDRICH

Sake is different from what we're used to drinking on an almost genetic level. That difference has to do with fermentation, the process whereby yeast eats sugars and excretes them as alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Anything that has sugar in it can be induced to ferment with no trouble at all. To get any grain to ferment, however, be it the barley used in beer and whiskey or the rice used in sake, you have to first convert that grain's starch, which yeast can't eat, to sugar. In the West, we've always done that by malting -- allowing the grain to sprout, which releases enzymes that turn starch to sugar, and then toasting the sprouts to kill them to keep that sugar from being consumed in growth. In Asia, however, they found quite a different way of doing things. A moldy way.

There is, it turns out, a strain of fungus (Aspergillus oryzae, if you want to get technical) that feeds on starch, releasing enzymes in the process that accomplish the necessary starch-to-sugar transformation. Asian brewers domesticated it millennia ago, and indeed, its use forms the basis of most Japanese, Chinese, and Korean brewing.

While very efficient at producing alcohol, particularly when turned loose on as pure a starch as polished white rice -- at 14% to 20%, sake has the highest percentage of alcohol of any fermented beverage -- it does have a strong tendency to impart a characteristic musty, funky fragrance to the finished product. Properly handled, that can be pleasing even to the untrained Western palate -- a good sake has a unique balance of refreshment and savoriness, with the sweet, clean graininess of a German lager and the palate-cleansing minerality of a good pinot noir. But finding one that fits your comfort level ain't easy.

The classification system is dazzlingly complex. Is it, like most cheap sakes, blended with alcohol, sugar, and various edible acids, or is it pure (junmai; the good stuff)? Or is it basically pure with just a little alcohol added during fermentation (honjozo; also the good stuff, pretty much)?

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Finger Lakes winery takes label competition

The winning artwork.

The Lamoreaux Landing entry in the 2011 International Wine Label Design Contest has emerged as the grand prize winner.

The Volunteer Center of Napa Valley, CA, sponsor of the contest, announced the results today. The Finger Lakes, NY, winery's design by Veronica Martin won the Overall Award.

Entries were judged on overall originality and creativity, use of typography, and use of graphics.

Says Paul Wagner, one of the judges and co-author of "Wine Marketing & Sales" and wine marketing instructor at Napa Valley College, "The single most important interface between the winery and the customer is the label, on the shelf or in the restaurant. This competition brings attention to the people who are breaking new ground, and developing the most successful designs in the world. The winning labels were fun, dramatic, creative, and most of all, effective."

A call for entries for the next competition will go out in spring 2012. The proceeds of the competition, which are in the form of submission fees, go directly to benefit the Volunteer Center of Napa Valley.

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Chinese infusion rescues Aussie winery

The Ferngrove winery by the Frankland River.

• From Bloomberg News Service

Ferngrove winery, which grows Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Semillon grapes in Western Australia’s Frankland River, last year faced declining sales and the prospect of breakup if business didn’t recover.

As it sought partners, a Chinese investor visited last October and bought 14,000 bottles of wine to test on friends and associates back home, said Ferngrove Managing Director Anthony Wilkes. They liked what they tasted. In February, the winery received a $1 million investment from the investor’s private firm, which has since increased to $10 million, giving it about 60% of the winery, Wilkes said.

“If they hadn’t come in, the business would potentially have been sold, or parts of it been divested,” Wilkes said. “At the end of the day, we looked at what the alternatives were and this was definitely the best outcome.”

Australian vineyards such as Ferngrove, facing a wine glut, slumping exports and rising competition from countries including Chile and Argentina, are turning to China for salvation. Chinese buyers are proving receptive as they seek to meet surging demand among the nation’s rich, who are developing a taste for grape wine and the expression of wealth it conveys.

Vineyard values have lost as much as 50% since 2008 across Australia’s 60 wine-producing regions -- including the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale in South Australia known for their Shiraz; the cooler Yarra Valley in Victoria, famous for its fruity Chardonnays; and Western Australia’s Margaret River, renowned for its Cabernets -- according to Toby Langley, director of Adelaide-based winery broker Gaetjens Langley.

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New York State winery going underground

WURTSBORO, NY -- Bashakill Vineyards, the Sullivan County winery that won "Best in Show" honors in the recent Hudson Valley Wine Competition, is going underground.

That's no reference to hiding. Rather, it's the implementation of a project owner Paul Deninno has had in mind for a while.

He's constructing a wine cave that measures 9 by 16 feet, with a 40-foot depth. That will be room enough for a tasting bar as well as 20 to 25 barrels.

Deninno plans to age some of his red wines in the cave, which should be an interesting evolution for the likes of his Black Bear Cabernet Franc that won a double gold and best red wine honors, as well as top show honors, in the aforementioned test I helped judge.

Bashakill is located at 1131 South Road, Wurtsboro. Phone: (845) 888-5858.

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'Confessions' of a wine business insider

W. Blake Gray

Getting an insider's point of view on virtually any topic can be illuminating. In the case of W. Blake Gray, I found that to be the case.

Gray is chairman of the Electoral College of the Vintners Hall of Fame. He once was wine writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, and has been published in several other major publications. In a "confession" written for the online wine magazine Palate Press, he lists "10 Things I Learned in the Wine Business."

He explains that in addition to writing about wine, he "also spent a little over a year working in the wine industry, as a vice president for a startup that bought unsold wine cheaply and sold it to wine shops in the Northeast."

Among the 10 things he talks about in detail:

• Publications like this love unusual varieties. Consumers do not.
• Most people don’t care about wine-food pairing.
• Nobody cares about gold medals.
• Wine writers like to explore lesser-known regions. Consumers do not.

You can read Gray's entire "confession" by clicking here.

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Poll: Consumers want truth-in-labeling

NEW YORK -- Representatives of 15 different wine regions have issued a joint call for policymakers to move ahead with wine truth-in-labeling.

Results from a recent poll of U.S. consumers, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, released today found that Americans, in particular, have very strong feelings about the role of location in making wine-purchasing decisions. Key findings from the poll of 1,000 U.S. wine drinkers include:

• 79% say they consider the region from which a wine comes an important factor when buying a bottle of wine.

• 75% say they would be less likely to buy a wine if they learned it claimed to be from a place like Champagne, Napa Valley or Oregon, but in actuality was not.

• 84% say they think the region a wine comes from is extremely important in determining its quality.

• 96% say consumers deserve to know the location where wine grapes are grown is accurately stated on wine labels.

• 98% say they support establishing worldwide standards for all winemakers that would require they accurately state the location where wine grapes are grown on wine labels.

"In over 20 years of polling, rarely have we seen such strong feelings on an issue like this," said Rob Autry, partner of Public Opinion Strategies and the lead pollster on this project. "Consumer sentiment this strong is a clear signal that Americans care a great deal about the location a wine comes from and clearly want ready access to that information when looking at a bottle.

The poll was released by the signatories to the Joint Declaration to Protect Wine Place & Origin, a coalition first formed in 2005 when the initial global declaration was signed. The organization has since doubled in size, welcoming its two newest members -- Long Island and Rioja, Spain -- at this year's meeting.

Says Ron Goerler Jr., president of the Long Island Wine Council, “The signatories of the Joint Declaration to Protect Wine Place & Origin have worked to produce world-class wine regions and preserve the integrity of our unique vines and lands. United with Napa Valley, Sonoma County, Jerez and the many other wine regions across the globe, we are committed to educating consumers about the importance of location.”

"The 15 regions gathered here today agree that great wine is made in unique places all over the world and that these unique place names must be protected. A failure to do so undermines all of these wine-growing regions and, as the research shows, runs counter to the expectations of the consumer," said Bruno Paillard, representing the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne. "People want to know where their wines come from."

The 15 international wine regions including Long Island; Champagne, France; Chianti Classico, Italy; Jerez, Spain; Napa Valley, California; Oregon; Paso Robles, California; Porto, Portugal; Rioja, Spain; Sonoma County, California; Tokaj, Hungary; Victoria, Australia; Walla Walla Valley, Washington; Washington state; and Western Australia.

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$4.5M to help Cornell next-gen grape research

Experimental grape clusters.

GENEVA, NY -- The next generation of improved grapes grown in New York State will be nourished by $4.5 million in federal grants.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture Specialty Crop Research Initiative has awarded two grans toitaling that amount to subsidize a pair or projects.

One is headed by Bruce Reisch, Cornell University grape breeder and professor of horticulture. The other is led by Tim Martinson, Extension senior associate. Both projects are taking on the question of how to make grape breeding more efficient ande come to market faster than the typical 15- to 20-year timeline.

"We are focusing on developing wine, juice, table and raisin grapes with three attributes: fruit quality, cold hardiness and resistance to powdery mildew, a fungal pathogen that is costly to control," Reisch told Farm&Dairy.com.

The website reports that "Reisch is working with 24 scientists at all six publicly funded U.S. grape breeding programs on a $2 million project to streamline genomewide DNA analysis and trait-screening methods to more efficiently identify promising progeny. His project team also includes Cornell plant pathologists, enologists, scientists with the USDA-Agricultural Research Service in Geneva and Ithaca, and experts with Cornell's Life Science Core Laboratories got genomics and computation biology.

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NY entry is 'Best American Riesling' Down Under

CANBERRA, Australia -- The folks from Sheldrake Point Vineyards know they produce a great Riesling wine, but that was underlined when their 2010 Riesling Ice Wine won the USA Perpetual Trophy for Best American Riesling at the recent Canberra International Riesling Challenge.

That came after it had earned a "Top Gold" designation in that category, en route to the big award.

The honor came just a year after Sheldrake Point's 2008 Late Harvest Riesling was named Best Sweet Wine in the World at the same event.

A gold medal went to Anthony Road Winery's 2008 Martini Reinhardt Selection Riesling Berry Selection. Other New York wineries won one silver and 10 bronze awards in this Riesling-only competition.

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