wine sooth

Blind games.

Steve Heimoff, today, wrote an interesting post about the importance of tasting blind. The core of his argument is that it eliminates taster bias and it levels the playing field.

I disagree vehemently. In short, blind tasting is a fun exercise and can make for an entertaining party game.

I believe tasting blind, while eliminating “cues” of reputation (from the label), relies primarily on the taster’s preferences. The idea of leveling the field disregards regional variation. This notion represents very misguided thinking which can only contribute to the much-decried homogenization and loss of diversity in wine. (more…)

Network.

I recently parted paths with a college friend. We had grown in different directions, become different people who valued different things. Time spent apart and out of touch made our personal and philosophical paths diverge ever more and the differences were painfully obvious when we occasionally spoke or met.

After college, we had gone our separate ways. I went to medical school and he became an I.T. guru and web designer and later developed his own e-commerce business. Numbers, and the bigger the better, seemed to take center stage in his thinking. I don’t blame him. E-commerce is a tough business and you have to be fierce to survive. (more…)

Giuseppe Battaglini in his tasting room.

Somewhere along the course of the evolution of our country’s wine culture, the notion that zinfandel does not age took root in the collective thinking. Every myth and legend has a seed of truth. So I suppose the direction a majority of zinfandel producers took in styling their wines contributed to the origins of this notion. But like wine made from any other variety, a zinfandel wine has to have the right stuff to allow it to last through the years and evolve into something complex and pleasing.

I must admit that much of what has typified many zinfandels available in retail had not only reinforced the notion that these wines won’t age but it also kept me from being a fan. Things began to change for me over the years as I pushed myself to not cling to assumptions.

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Paradox. From: http://dedroidify.blogspot.com

The last few weeks in the wine blogosphere have seen a large number posts taking the contest between Barack Obama and John McCain to realms previously unseen in political discourse. While some offer pretty humorous takes on comparing wines to the candidates, it is undeniable that others are stating their support for a candidate.

More often than not, that candidate is Barack Obama. That is fine by me (hey, the blogosphere is a free and unrestricted medium). But there is a painful philosophical paradox which many bloggers must face.

I would like to hear how many in the wine producing, wine writing, wine selling and wine promoting sectors explain the following paradox. (more…)

I have some questions.

I had been absent from the wine blogosphere through much of August and the first part of September. We moved and that always takes much of one’s time. Packing, unpacking, setting up the new place, finishing remodeling and dealing with plumbing emergencies leaves little time and energy for creative thinking or writing.

Each day went by in a flurry of work. Sweat and dust and new cuts and bruises marked the passing of time. The completion of yet another task marked progress. Somewhere in there, I had to do my day job (the one that actually results in a paycheck). I found that having a home office is fraught with some difficulties and can be scary when the network goes down.

At the end of each day, tired as I was, I would grind my teeth thinking about all the things I did not get to do and how much I was falling behind with my blog, web site and OWC commitments. I didn’t drink very much wine, either. Not even for the pleasure of it. I was just too damned tired. (more…)

"The Pour" header image.

Some time ago, I wrote about the homogeneity in blog design. Just recently, I noticed that The Pour has undergone a few infrastructure changes.

The hallmark of the blog, “The Thinker”, has been replaced by a generic looking wine glass - part of the original design: photo of Rodin’s “The Thinker” pasted into a drawing of a table with a glass of wine on it.

Eric Asimov kindly responded to my query about the change, saying that the NY Times had done some software updates on their blogging platform and the header image had been changed. (more…)

Jaguar X-type

The wine world is changing. Wine is changing. Amidst recurring discussions of trends and the globalization of wine (as a result of the influence of a purported small cabal of people), and murmurs that not every wine-producing region has the stuff to make world-class, complex wines, there is one essential point that goes unmentioned:

Democratizing luxury goods - making them appealing and accessible to the average consumer - devalues them and causes a decline in quality standards.

A luxury commodity is devalued by democratization because increased supply makes the good more common and, thus, less desirable. This seems to be the basic tenet of this book. Additionally, quality inherently declines with increasing volume of production. (more…)