Going organic in the vineyard used to be the big buzz, but when it comes to being green, the wine industry is stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. From the vineyard to the winery to packaging and shipping, wineries are adapting to a global economy that rewards eco-friendly business practices along with quality and value. Read more in my article in the September 09 issue of Continental magazine.

As to the wines I tasted for the story, they were all fantastic. Mike Grgich of Grgich Hills is the (infamous) Chardonnay winemaker from the (infamous) 1976 tasting in which the U.S. wines beat the pants off of the French wines. I’m going to see the movie, Bottle Shock, tomorrow, and can’t wait. The Chardonnay was so pure and fresh and acidic…lovely, and I don’t normally go crazy for Chardonnay. I also loved the Malbec in the Tetra-Pak box. It’s unconventional, but is a great value and I think will appeal to a younger audience. As proof, I’ll add that my 22-year-old friend, who was at the tasting, took that one home.

My favorite I’ve already alluded to on this blog: the Torres Salmos. I’m still savoring the memory of a perfectly-balanced, slightly earthy wine with a beautiful bouquet and finish. Salmos is Spanish for Psalm; Torres named the wine in homage to monks who arrived in Priorat in 1095 and cultivated vines. Even though it’s a new world take in an old world region, the wine sings like the monks of old.

The house was in an older urban neighborhood, the sort of place where you’re more likely to find rusty cars littering the backyard than bottles of fine wine stowed in a cellar. We walked through a peeling white painted wooden archway into the back garden, which evidently used to be a green thumb’s pride and joy but now was overcrowded with towering weeds and an undergrowth of neglect, and knocked on the back door.

A short, rotund woman, a cross between one of the Oompa Loompas and Violet Beauregarde in her blueberry phase on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, answered our knock. “Come in,” the woman said in her peculiar East Tennessee accent, turning to lead the way through a kitchen in an extreme state of disrepair and a hallway littered with items for sale. “The wine rack’s in here.”

Though the house was in terrible disarray, its good bones shone through the clutter and outdated furnishings. Dark oak floors in need of refinishing hid under stacks of pictures and ugly sofas and chairs; a glass-tiled fireplace in the front bedroom promised nights of warmth if a chimney sweep would just clean it out. The wine rack stood in this room, made of unfinished pine and resting against a dark-toned wall stark and clean amid the dirt and mess of the house.

Several rows were still filled with bottles of wine and bubbly. “Does the wine come with the rack?” I joked, imagining from the layers of dust and the general look of the house that the bottles were full of cheap wine were meant to be drunk a decade ago.

“Sure, I’ll throw one in,” the woman replied.

I still couldn’t swallow the idea that this woman was a wine drinker when we went home to get the car, having agreed upon a price of $20 for the rack. We had learned quickly upon moving to East Tennessee that there are few people between the extremes of non-drinking Baptists and always-drinking beer and whiskey lovers. This woman, this house…the wine and the rack belonged about as well as Yankee cheerleaders at a Southern Civil War reenactment.

I sent Derek to get the rack, figuring there was no reason for me to be there to pick out a bottle. Whatever is on that rack isn’t worth much, I thought. How could it be, covered with dust in a junky old house in serious need of some TLC or a razing party?

“You can have anything but the Asti Spumante,” the woman told Derek as they worked together to remove the bottles from the rack. He suppressed a smile, knowing I would rather he brought home nothing than an Asti Spumante, a sweet, light sparkler best for those with a palate too underdeveloped to enjoy drier, yeastier wines with subtle fruit undertones.

As they piled bottles in a spare corner, the woman told Derek that her friend, an older gentleman who lived in the house, had died, and she was up from Maryville (Mrvll, as they pronounce it around here, quickly and without syllables) to clean the place out. “Do you want anything else?” she asked hopefully, gesturing around the crowded room at other furnishings for sale.

“No, thanks—just the rack,” Derek said. He told her about the built-in cabinet in the dining room of our 1900 craftsman-style house that was to house my grandmother’s china. “Now we need a spot for my wife’s wine,” he explained.

When Derek arrived home with a bottle and the rack, I inspected the bottle first. It was sticky with dust, but when I wiped off the grime I discovered he’d brought home a 1999 Schramsberg J. Schram sparkling blend from California, a cellar-worthy wine that retails for around $90.

Suddenly the old man who lived there was a much more interesting character. It’s easy to stereotype someone: old man, old neighborhood, old house in a city with Appalachian roots. Not much money, not much class. Clearly he had taste, a palate as refined as any urban wine connoisseur: Derek told me there was at least a case of this particular bubbly on the rack. Did he drink it by himself, or was he waiting for a special occasion? With only a friend (from a city half an hour away, no less) around to clean out his belongings, I wonder whether he had anyone in his life who would have enjoyed such a fine wine with him.

A sommelier once told me that our perception of how good a certain wine is has a lot to do with the occasion itself. We instinctively perceive value and taste in a wine, however inexpensive, served in good company.

I’ll never know how the old man drank his—alone in his crumbling house next to the fireplace, sitting on a peeling painted bench in the weed-infested garden, or surrounded by friends and family who took just as much pleasure in a rich, nuanced bubbly as he did.

Derek and I saved our special bottle for our seventh wedding anniversary. I had no expectations of its quality—who knows what the storage conditions were all these years? We were pleasantly surprised. The wine was a medium straw color with small, exquisite bubbles climbing the sides. I breathed in the aroma of crisp green apples and ripe pears, and tasted the creamy, yeasty, tropical flavors that swirled around my tongue before ending with a long, creamy finish.

We toasted our seven years together and our great find on Craigslist. And in my heart, I toasted the old man in the old house in the old neighborhood who collected ageworthy sparkling wine in spite of my stereotyping.

P.S. Today is our 8th anniversary. We don’t have nearly as nice a bottle to celebrate with, but we ourselves are better aged than ever.

Prepare to laugh yourself silly: Steve Heimoff, west coast editor for Wine Enthusiast, decided he was being taken too seriously as a critic, so he made a hilarious parody video of how it’s done. First of all, he’s parodying Gary Vaynerchuck of Wine Library TV; second, he pokes fun at how critics assign ratings and the process involved. My favorite bit: when he pulls the rating out of a brown paper bag, which should have been used to bag the wine itself. Great work, Steve!

(If you’re reading this post by email and don’t see the video, click on the post title, which will take you to the website, where you can see the movie.)

i just ran across one of the most hilarious articles on the wine path…ever. It’s hilarious because it’s spot-on, but it’s not exactly what people talk about when they’re talking about wine. I’m a Professional, and I agree 100 percent with both the upside and the downside to that category. Which category do you fall into?

Ever gone into a restaurant, looked over the wine list, seen the “Wine Spectator Award of Excellence” stamp of approval, and thought to yourself, “Hey, this place really knows its stuff.” Turns out, that might not be the case.

The Wine Trials author Robin Goldstein, in an experiment for a paper he presented at the second annual conference of the American Association of Wine Economists last week, submitted a fake wine list from a fake restaurant to WS’s awards program–and got the award. Adding to the fun, the wines on his “Reserva” list were, with one exception, so bad that none scored above an 80. I’ve never even seen a score for 60 points, but here it is.

Goldstein said he wanted to see the relationship between actual value and consumers’ perceived value. He does much the same thing in The Wine Trials, which I’m reading right now, discussing the role that status, marketing, and the perception of being good plays into our ultimate enjoyment of wine.

As to the Award of Excellence, almost any restaurant that ponies up the $250 fee can get that. More important than an award, in my mind, is finding a good value wine on the list that pairs well with your meal. Bonus points if you’ve never tried it before and discover something new. More bonus points if you love it. And if the list is eclectic enough to keep you coming back, then you and the restaurant have won the game.

Dianne asks: Do you know what the average shelf life is of wines? More than once we’ve bought a special bottle of something to have on hand for a special occasion and then forgotten about it for a few years or more, and then found the wine was more like vinegar than wine. Is there a way to know how long a certain wine can be kept before opening, or even how fresh it is when purchased at the store?

A: This question has a two-part answer, because there are basically two categories of wines when it comes to aging:

1. Wines that are made to age (maybe 10 percent of all wines)

2. Wines that are not made to age (the vast majority of wines, up to 90 percent)

Wines in the second category are most wines you’ll buy for everyday drinking. In general, whites are freshest when drunk within a year or two of the vintage date; reds may last a little longer, but not much. The easiest thing to do when you’re dealing with a regular table wine is to not buy it if it’s more than two years old (unless it’s in the bargain bin and you want to take the chance), and try to drink them within that two year timeframe.

Now to the first category, which is smaller, more expensive, and more complicated. Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules on aging (besides keep your wine at cellar temp with the proper humidity level) because wine is a living product that went into the bottle with certain characteristics that help determine its age-worthy potential, and that changes in the bottle over time. The only way to know if it’s ready (or not) is to drink it!

How do you even know if you have an ageworthy wine? Look for these clues:

1. Price: if it’s over, say, $30 it may be made to age.
2. Type: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Napa Valley Cabernet, Barossa Valley Shiraz, vintage Port, Barolo, Barbaresco, Sauternes, Super Tuscans, Hermitage, and some German Rieslings above a certain price point are typically made to age.
3. Vintage charts: Many wine magazines publish vintage charts that can help you determine, say, if your 2005 Bordeaux should age for 5 years or 20.
4. Your wine retailer (or tasting room manger, if you’re buying at the winery) should be able to give tips on specific bottles.

My advice is, if you’re going to make the investment in a cellar-worthy wine, then do your research to know how long it should likely age, and make sure the conditions are right (ideal cellar temp is 55 F with 75 percent humidity to keep corks moist). If you’ve only got the bottom of a dark closet to store wines, realize they’ll age much sooner in 72 degrees than they will in 55 and drink them sooner.

If you’re the type who tends to forget they’re down there waiting for you, or when they should be drunk, try doing a backwards list: note the dates you think you want to try certain wines by, and put a little note on your calendar. Then open that sucker up and pour it out, because it’s much better to drink a wine that could age longer than one that’s over the hill.

Photo by khoogheem.

Monday nights are always chaotic in my house, and I try to make it a little easier by planning a simple meal that can be whipped up in half an hour or less. Southwestern Eggs, a 15-minute, one-pan vegetarian recipe from Real Simple magazine, fits that bill, and it’s one of our favorite quick meals ever. If you like eggs, do try it. You just heat salsa in a pan, add eggs, and then garnish with avocado, sour cream, cilantro, and chips. Yum. Here’s the dish:

I found a Finger Lakes Gewurztraminer in my wine rack that I thought would go well with the spicy quasi-Mexican dish. Gewurz is a cool-climate grape grown most often in Germany, and its name gives a clue to its flavor: “Gewurz” (there is supposed to be an umlaut above the u, but darned if I can get my blog program to do it) means “spice” in German, and typically Gewurztraminer has an overwhelmingly fragrant bouquet and flavor of roses, lychees, and spices. The only thing that saves it from being horribly flabby is its bright acidity due to the cool climate. Gewurztraminer is touted as the go-to wine for spicy Asian dishes, because its spice accents and its slight sweetness softens the spice of the food.

This particular Gewurztraminer was made by Glenora Wine Cellars in New York’s Finger Lakes region, which is basically smack dab in the middle of the state. Cool-climate varietals like Gewurztraminer and Riesling do well in this region, and the Glenora Gewurz is no exception. It’s bright, acidic, and elegantly spiced. The bottle was labeled as off-dry (meaning slightly sweet) but the acidity keeps it from being cloying. I smelled and tasted lychees and honeysuckle, roses and peach. It was a great match with the eggs, cutting the heat of the salsa, the creaminess of the avocado, and the salt of the chips.

Price: $16.99 (about prices)

Rating: Experiential (about ratings)

If you read diet and nutrition stories you’ve probably heard the term “mindful eating.” It’s the opposite of mindless eating–shoveling food into your mouth without thought to the taste, texture, and temperature of the food and the process of chewing and swallowing.

Mindless drinking is just as bad as mindless eating. The latter will expand your hips; the former will expand your beer belly and kill your liver and brain cells. Mindful drinking, on the other hand, gives you the chance to evaluate, contemplate, savor the taste, texture, weight, mouthfeel, and flavors of the wine. When you’re drinking a well-made wine, this is more important than ever.

Our last night in Walla Walla, my parents treated us to a bottle of Fort Walla Walla Cellars 2005 Treaty, a Bordeaux-style blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. We began the bottle over nachos (admittedly not the best pairing, but it was already on the menu when we got home with the wine), but everyone quickly stopped drinking it with dinner. We could all tell that this bottle was too special to waste as a wash-down for cheese and chips. Instead, we saved our glasses for after dinner, when the kids were in bed, the heat of the day had given way to a cool, dry breeze, and the rockers on my parents’ porch called us outside.

There, sipping slowly as we talked, I could truly savor this wine. The act of taking a small sip, letting the wine linger on my tongue and slide slowly down my throat, and savoring the long finish literally hours after I’d finished the glass, was amazing. It was so good that I didn’t even want to brush my teeth before bed, to ruin that incredible finish. [Side note on the wine: it turns out the winemakers are neighbors with my aunt and uncle. Small world!]

Not all wine will be so wonderful when sipped slowly, but if you pour a glass and gulp it down without really thinking about it, how will you know? Good wine, like good food, takes time and effort to appreciate. McDonald’s burgers and White Zinfandel do not. Which would you rather indulge on?

Photo by oooh.oooh.

This month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday (in which bloggers from all over the world write about a pre-selected wine theme) is hosted by Lenndevours, who throws down this challenge as the founder of WBW, which completes its fourth year this month: Go back to your wine-drinking roots.

We’re all wine lovers, but we have gotten where we are today in a variety of ways on a variety of paths. These long, windy paths are littered with wines the world over. I just want you to pick one of the wines from the beginning of your journey, taste it again for the first time in a while, and tell us about it.

Maybe you remember the very first wine you ever tasted. Try it again. Or maybe there was one wine that you drank a lot of when you were still a wine neophyte.

Most wine drinkers, especially women, start out on the sweet white path and gradually progress toward drier reds, but I’m afraid I did things backwards. I started to get into wine post-college, when I was dating my now-husband. Derek always ordered a beer and I’d grown tired of Midori Sours, my college drink of choice. So I started ordering Merlot. House Merlot, that is. The first time Derek kissed me after I’d had a Merlot, he said my mouth tasted good. So I kept ordering them.

I did some sleuthing to find out what the house Merlot brands were at restaurants we used to frequent in those days, but never did find a brand I could get here in Tennessee. I finally picked up a $6.99 Penfold’s Rawson’s Retreat Merlot 2006 from South Eastern Australia, suspecting that even that was a likely step up from the house wines I used to drink.

Now here’s the part you can either define as “snobby” or as “boy, has my palate matured”: I haven’t bought a $6.99 wine in a long time. Before tasting it (ok, I cheated…but I was curious) I looked up some ratings. Wine Enthusiast rated the 2005 an 81, noting its “sweet cola, blueberry, and syrup aromas.” Those characteristics were probably appealing to me at age 22; now they sound as vaguely nauseating as a deep-fried Snickers bar at the county fair.

I decided to try the wine two ways: first, as Present Me, with all the knowledge and maturity I’ve gained since I used to drink this sort of thing, and then as Past Me, a new drinker with a wide-open palate and a whole world to experience.

Present Me: Not as bad as Wine Enthusiast said, but certainly nothing to write home about. Too sweet, too cloying, too much overripe fruit and yet a tinge watery with a distinct lack of harmony between acid, fruit, and oak. Practically no tannins to speak of.

Past Me: Mmm, this Merlot is nice and smooth and fruity. When I swallow it gives me a warm feeling all the way through my body. I like the taste it leaves in my mouth.

Conclusion: Thanks, Lenn, for the opportunity to go back in time. This little exercise has just underscored how I feel about most aspects of my life: It wasn’t so bad being there, but it’s much nicer being here.

Photo by Martin LaBar.

Addendum: Just read a piece in the Sacramento Bee that says Millennials drink red wine off the bat, typically a smooth Merlot. Guess 8 years ago I was just at the cusp of a trend!

I’ve said before that, unlike most women, I don’t buy wine because it has a pretty label, but this is the second time I’ve been suckered into buying a pretty bottle: A nonvintage Segura Viudas Brut Reserva Cava. This Spanish Cava is made from Spanish grapes using the traditional Champagne method (which basically means that the second fermentation, where the bubbles are produced, is done in the bottle, creating a more complex wine and smaller bubbles).

This bubbly has been in my fridge for a few months now, and I opened it the night we got back from vacation, when the laundry was piled up, the fridge was bare, and sushi takeout sounded like the best post-vacation meal idea ever. The Cava was fruity, fresh, and fragrant, slightly yeasty but not overly so, and a perfect accompaniment to the sushi.

The bottle has a grapevine-inscribed metal coaster on the bottom and the Segura Viudas crest on top. Of course, the heavy bottle isn’t doing much for my carbon footprint, but it’s so lovely, I think I’ll keep it since I can’t toss it into the recycling bin anyway.

Price: $14.49 (about prices)

Rating: Great value (about ratings)