Monthly Archives: July 2023

A Wine Emissary from Planet Bonny Doon

July 25, 2023 By in wine, wine brands, wine history Leave a comment

Sue and I had an unexpected visitor recently. He said he was an emissary from another world, a place called Bonny Doon Vineyard. He came in peace, bearing two very interesting Bonny Doon wines.

Was I happy to see the visitor? It doesn’t look like it from the photo shown here (and he looks pretty serious, too), but things aren’t always what they appear at first glance.

Wine from Planet Earth

The wines that the emissary brought were very good. Le Cigare Volant is fresh and delicious, a blend of Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault, and a bit of Petite Sirah. “Red wine of California’s Central Coast, USA, Earth” it said.

Le Cigare Orange, the second wine we tasted, is mostly Grenache Blanc with ten percent each of Grenache and Orange Muscat. “Skin-contact wine of the Earth,” the label explained. Nice peach aroma with the bit of tannins that orange wine lovers look for. I think someone has written that this is an entry or gateway orange wine and that’s not a bad description. A wine to appeal to both red and white wine drinkers.

Randall Grahm founded Boony Doon Vineyard nearly forty years ago. Its original mission was to make wines like those in Burgundy, but Grahm quickly shifted focus to Rhone-style wines. The first vintage of Le Cigare Volant was released in 1986 and it has headlined for Bonny Doon line-up ever since.

Flying Cigar?

Le Cigare Volant — the flying cigar? What kind of a name is that? It is complicated, so I will explain.

Grahm is serious about wine, but playfully creative, too. Le Cigare was meant to pay homage to the wines of Chateauneuf-du-Pape. It is a little-known fact that, during the flying saucer craze in 1954, the village of Chateauneuf-du-Pape adopted a law banning alien craft (called cigares volant in French) from landing, taking off, or flying over the vineyards. The label artwork shows a spacecraft casting a beam of light on a chateau and its vineyards. Beaming aliens down? No, I’ll bet they are beaming the wines back up!

Bonny Doon makes excellent wines and is a strong, distinctive brand. When Sue and I heard Grahm talk to a group of wine writers a few years ago, he seemed almost embarrassed by his ability to successfully build brands (he is also the creator of Big House wines, Cardinal Zin, and Pacific Rim wines). But there is no reason that good wines cannot exist along with popular brands.

Tale of Two Brands

Grahm sold off the brand rights to Big House, etc., to fund his various vineyard projects and in 2019 he did the same with Bonny Doon, selling it to WarRoom Cellars. WarRoom Cellars is in the business of building brands and making the brands that it acquires (like Bonny Doon) more marketable.

Brands are very important in the wine business and I will admit that it makes me nervous when brands are bought and sold like properties on a Monopoly board (which happens quite a lot these days). Some of the biggest wine industry transactions of recent years have involved the exchange of brand intellectual property with no vineyards or production assets attached. For example, Constellation Brands paid $285 million in 2016, the The Prisoner brand.

Sometimes brand transactions work out just fine, but I am haunted by the story of Paul Masson, which I recounted in a chapter called “Martians versus Wagnerians” in my book Wine Wars II. Once California’s most expensive wine, Paul Masson’s brand was sold and sold again, eventually becoming a cheap generic jug wine before slipping off the wine market map altogether. (The brand still exists, I’m told, in the form of Paul Masson traditional and flavored brandy). These days the wine is best remembered for its sometimes accidentally ridiculous television commercials featuring a possibly sober Orson Welles.

Good News Travels Fast

In this case, the good news is that the Bonny Doon brand transition seems to have worked out very well. The signature red wine is different, but certainly in the founder’s spirit. It is a bit lighter in weight and brighter, too, but has good fruit and some complexity. Significantly, it is a good deal cheaper, resting comfortably in the wine wall’s current sweet spot of $15 to $20 ($17.99 on the winery website).

It is not the wine that Grahm made when he first created the brand, but it is not ridiculous to think it might be the wine he’d make now if he were starting up today.

So cheers to Bonny Doon and its alien emissaries for making planet Earth a better place for wine lovers.

Portuguese Wine is for the Birds

July 18, 2023 By in Portuguese wine, wine 3 Comments

Portuguese wine is for the birds, or at least that’s what we think at the Wine Economist. The birds? Well, duck is the specific bird we are thinking of and duck rice is the pairing we have in mind. Here are some thoughts on the success of Portuguese wine in the U.S. market and a shortcut if you want to check out the duck rice pairing.

>>><<<

Jancis Robinson’s recent Financial Times column on the rise of Portuguese wine in the US and UK markets focuses on the importance of personal experience in shaping attitudes toward various wine regions. Portuguese table wines were for years pretty much undiscovered territory for most wine drinkers, except for bright, inexpensive Vinho Verde. Other wines and regions weren’t on the radar because of unfamiliar grape varieties, unfamiliar appellations, or pre-set notions (Douro Valley? You must be thinking of Port!).

Destination Wine

Many wine enthusiasts didn’t even think about Portuguese table wines. But this changed in the last few years, Robinson argues, and many of us agree, with the rise of Lisbon and Porto as tourist destinations. Visitors try the local wines with the local cuisine and are delighted. A light goes on, a door is opened, and suddenly Portuguese wines, unfamiliar names and all, are on the radar.

One great memory that Sue and I have from a visit to Portugal a few years ago was sitting atop a hill overlooking the Douro and having lunch with George Sandeman. The meal featured duck rice (one taste and Sue was hooked) along with wines from Casa Ferreirinha, including the Papa Figos red and white wines shown here. Both wines are blends of native grapes from the Douro regions and both feature a bird, the Papa Figos, which migrates from Northern Africa just about in time for the grape harvest season in the Douro Valley. According to the label:

“Of all the birds found in the Douro, the Papa Figos is one of the rarest. It is a migratory bird with vivid, attractive colors and the female of the species, with its greenish coloring, perfectly symbolizes this unique Casa Ferreirinha wine.”

Voyage of Discovery

Sue and I have been trying Portuguese white wines this summer and having a great time exploring the many possibilities. There seems to be something for every taste and, with the many native grape varieties, it is kind of a voyage of discovery.

For example, the Quinta de Chocopalha Arinto Branco 2020 is made from Arinto grapes from a vineyard northwest of Lisbon. It spent 5 months on the lees before bottling. It was bright and flavorful and would pair well with seafood or your favorite bird.

We recently popped the cap off a bottle of Quinta da Raza Branco Pet Nat, a naturally sparkling wine made from the Trajadura grape variety, which is native to northwest Portugal, It was both fizzy and mellow, with flavors of peach, pear, and apple. A bit cloudy as Pet Nat wines are, it was just the thing to pair with a salad of grilled shrimp, English peas from the garden, and Israeli couscous.

The flying object on the Raza label is a lacewing, not a bird. A side note explains, “The lacewing represents our holistic approach to viticulture. Its efficiency in biological pest control is remarkable.” The wine was surprising and remarkable, too.

My Duck Rice Shortcut

Duck rice is delicious and pairs well with Portuguese wines. There are lots of recipes on the internet, but the basic idea is that you need duck meat, duck broth, and duck fat. And rice, of course. You sauté the rice in the duck fat, cook it in the duck broth, and combine it with the duck meat in a casserole. Duck. Duck. Duck. Rice.

The usual approach is to get a whole duck and cook it in a big pot of water, take off the meat, skim off the fat, and use the broth. For some reason, I find the idea of the whole raw duck and the big pot of water a bit intimidating.

My shortcut is to go to the local Asian market and buy a whole roast duck there (there are at least three places to buy whole or half of a roast duck in the international district of my town). I strip off the meat and the crispy skin, then make stock out of the bones and the fatty skin. The rest is according to the standard recipe. It is delicious. And great to serve with your favorite Portuguese wine!

Italian Wine and the Paradox of Scale: Three Case Studies

July 11, 2023 By in cooperatives, Italian wine, wine, wine markets Leave a comment

Most of the world’s wine is produced by a relatively small number of very large wineries. But most wineries are very small. So wine is both big and small at once. That’s wine’s paradox of scale.

You can see the paradox at work here in the United States. According to the annual Review of the Industry issue of Wine Business Monthly (February 2023), there were 11,691 wineries in the U.S. Eighty-three percent of the wineries, however, produced fewer than 5000 cases of wine in 2022 and 49% produced 1000 cases or less.

Most of America’s wine was made by the less than half of one percent of makers in WBM’s “Top 50” list of wineries that produce at least about 300,000 cases a year. Gallo tops the list with an estimated 100 million cases, about as much as the next four producers combined (The Wine Group, Trinchero Family Estates, Delicato Family Wines, and Constellations Brands).

The situation isn’t exactly the same in other wine-producing countries but the paradox of scale still generally exists. How can small wineries compete in markets dominated by big ones? There’s no single answer to this question, so Sue and I are always very interested when visiting small wineries that seem to thrive alongside much larger and better-financed competitors. Herewith are three case studies from our recent tour of the Lugana DOC and Garda DOC regions of Northern Italy.

Location, Location, Location

Sirmione is a pretty special place, no matter how you look at it. The people are special, or at least the ones we met are. Maria Callas, the famous opera star, was born here 100 years ago. The land is special, too, flat as a pancake right on the edge of Lake Garda, with a small peninsula jutting out into it. The land, with its thick clay soil, and the lake effects mean that the wines are special. Distinctive and intense.

Four generations of the Zordan family have been farming grapes here since 1924, so their roots in this particular location run very deep. As the region has developed, however, the challenges they’ve faced go beyond the usual list of natural and market woes. The land here is terrific for wine growing, but it is also in demand for hospitality and tourism. It is a beautiful location if you are staying in the Garda region. So it was, in fact, a little bit surprising when we came upon the four-hectare vineyard and winery as we navigated through the otherwise fairly built-up streets that surround them.

The family business, Cascina Maddalena, has evolved over the years. The basic business before 1999 was selling bulk wine and that is still a source of revenue today. But it became clear that the family needed to capture more of the value added if it was to sustain the vineyards and the business through more generations. So a few hectares of the land were sold off to pay for a small but useful winery, producing about 35,000 bottles per year, and an attractive agritourism center for tastings, group events, and direct sales. “Cascina” is Italian for “farmhouse” and that’s the warm feeling you get here.

Farming grapes and making wine is hard work. Running an agritourism business is hard work, too, and the whole family pitches in to make it successful and to make the family business sustainable.

Is all the hard work worth it? From our perspective, the answer is a clear yes. The Cascina Maddalena Lugana DOC wines we tasted over lunch were stunning, displaying an intense and memorable minerality. I was especially impressed by the wines they call “Clay,” which are only produced in special vintages (we sampled 2020 and 2018). The wines spend a year on their lees in stainless steel tanks and another year in the bottle before release. Incredible.

Location in terms of both the vineyards and the winery and its hospitality facilities is key to Cascina Maddalena’s success and it is one successful strategy for smaller wineries to consider.

Sharecropper Roots

Cantina Gozzi shares some interesting similarities to Cascina Maddalena along with clear differences from it. Gozzi is also a multigenerational family winery that was founded about 100 years ago. The family were sharecroppers, working the owner’s land in return for half of the crop. This is not exactly the easy road to fortune, but it was a common practice in Northern Italy for a long time.

Somehow the Gozzi family managed to find a way to buy the land to farm for themselves as a mixed agricultural enterprise of cattle and cereals along with wine grapes. The farm is several kilometers from Lake Garda in the rolling hills closer to Mantova. The soil is different here with clay in the lower spots and more stoney and calcareous near the hilltops, the result of ancient glacial action.

It wasn’t until 1985 that the family decided to make wine the main focus, which required new investments in both vineyards and cellar facilities. Given the farm’s history, it must have been a difficult decision to give up the security of diversified production and put all the family’s eggs (I mean grapes) in one basket. But they have made it work through the sort of energy and focus that must have been necessary to buy the land in the first place. Total production is about 120,000 bottles per year.

Gozzi is in the Garda DOC zone, which means that both native and select international grape varieties are permitted. Our tasting, therefore, featured a pair of Garda DOC Chardonnay wines, one fresh and floral after a time in stainless steel tanks and the other, the Garda DOC Riserva Colombara, a richer style from a single vineyard with a year in French oak. There is also a Frizzante Chardonnay that we enjoyed at lunch at Trattoria La Pesa in Castellaro Lagusello which specializes in local cuisine (you should try the stewed donkey with polenta).

Hard work, clear focus, and a generational perspective. These are some of the qualities that impressed us at Cantina Gozzi and I even think you can taste them in the wines if you close your eyes and open your imagination.

Strength in Numbers

Cantina Colli Morenici is a cooperative winery, a type of business organization that we don’t often think about here in the United States. But cooperatives are enormously important in global wine markets, especially in Northern Italy. You may not think about cooperatives when pouring a glass of wine, but you should. You may have poured yourself a glass of wine made here, for example, although chances are that there was a different name on the front label.

Cooperatives tend to be formed in times of crisis, when winegrowers and small producers band together as a protective measure, seeking strength in numbers in the face of unfavorable market conditions. Such conditions existed in Italy in the 1950s and Cantina Colli Morenici was born in 1959.

The “strength in numbers” strategy continues to drive Italian wine to a certain extent and in 2021 Cantine di Verona was formed through a merger of Cantina Collie Morenici and two other cooperatives: Cantina Valpantena and Cantina di Custoza. Together they have three wineries providing both scale (1800 hectares of vineyards) and scope of production (a wide range of wines and styles)  for their 500+ members.

The wines are meant for everyday consumption, not cellaring and investment. The wines we tasted were good and good value. The most memorable was a limited-production Amarone from Cantina Valpantena that sold for €49 at the winery. The shop at the winery sold bottles, bag-in-box, and pumped directly into your container using a machine that looked like it would be at home in a gas station: €1.35 per liter, rosato or bianco. Yes, the wine was cheaper than gasoline.

We were told about 70 percent of production is exported, with most of the wine bound for the U.S. market destined for private label brands. That made sense to me when I tasted one particular wine and had an “ah-ha” moment. I know that wine, I thought. I’ve bought it at Trader Joe’s (or something very much like it, I’m sure) under a different label.

The future? Custoza Superiore DOC is underappreciated in the U.S. market and the winery sees potential to develop the market for this wine. Custoza is the wine region between Lake Garda and Verona and its signature wine is a blend of native varieties. A lot of potential there, I think.

Strength in numbers gives the wineries of Cantine di Verona the volume they need to support export investments and the resources to market their wines at home. We were pleasantly surprised to see an advertisement for Cantine di Verona when we were watching a bit of television at our hotel in Verona during a thundershower. It was during a Food Network Italy show featuring Italian nuns cooking traditional dishes. Cooking nuns? I’ll drink to that!

Independence Day Flashback: Have Some Madeira?

July 4, 2023 By in history, Portuguese wine, wine, wine history 1 Comment

Today is the day we raise a glass to celebrate American independence and our friends and neighbors sometimes ask what wine is appropriate for this occasion. There are many possibilities. Sparkling wines are traditional for celebrations and pair well with picnic fare. We often favor Zinfandel because America is a nation of immigrants and,  while the Zin grape is not native to the United States, it has found its home here. Or perhaps a wine made from the Norton grape, a hybrid first grown in Richmond, Virginia, about 100 years ago? Tough to choose!

Today’s special Flashback Wine Economist column makes the case for Madeira, perhaps the most American wine of them all even though it isn’t produced in the United States. Why Madeira? Read on. And happy Independence Day to all.

Have Some Madeira?

Wine Economist (November 13, 2018)

It is in a way the most American of wines, even though it comes from a Portuguese island off the African coast. When it came time to toast the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, this is the wine that filled the Founding Fathers’ glasses.

Workers at the Liberty Hall Museum in New Jersey recently discovered three cases of the stuff dating from 1796 — too young to be the wine that Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams raised for their toast, but old enough that they might have sipped it a few years later.

Oh, Madeira!

Madeira (because you have already guessed the name of the wine I’m talking about) has a glorious history here in the United States. Once upon a time, you could find it prominently displayed on the top shelf of any reputable drinks shop, it was that popular. But when I went looking for a bottle at my local upscale supermarket I had to go deep into the corner where the fortified and dessert wines are kept and then stoop down to the bottom shelf.

O, Madeira. How far you have fallen!

But looks can deceive and Madeira is alive and well even if it’s not as prominent as it was in 1776. Madeira was America’s wine back then in part because America didn’t make much wine of its own and imported wine often suffered badly on the long sea trip from Europe to North America.

Live Long and Prosper

Madeira’s secret was (and is) its unique production process, where the wine is both heated and oxidized. The wines used to be conditioned by sending the barrels on round-trip ocean voyages in hot cargo holds. The movement of the ship and the heat below deck did the job very well.

Now it’s done shore-side in the lodges. The wines start with high acidity (the island soils are part of that) and end up both fresh and nearly invincible. A bottle of Madeira has a very long half-life after it has been uncorked. You’ll certainly drink it up before it goes off.

There’s not a lot of Madeira wine produced, which is one reason you don’t see oceans of it in the shops.  Vineyard land is not plentiful on Madeira — about 500 hectares in total cling to the steep mountainsides. Just enough to provide raw materials to eight producers.1928

France is the number one market for Madeira wine, where it is a popular aperitif (France is the top market for Port wines, too, for the same reason). Tourists visiting Madeira enjoy enough of the wine there to make it the number two market followed by Germany, the UK, Japan, and the United States. U.S. demand has been slowly ratcheting up in recent years, now accounting for about seven percent of total production.

You Don’t Know What You’re Missing

Sue and I traveled to Madeira about a year ago and learned a lot by visiting Blandy’s and Justino’s, two of the most important producers. We were fortunate to be invited to refresh our memories last month at a seminar and trade tasting in Seattle. We tasted the range of Madeira wine types including the one pictured here from 1928. Here are some impressions from that experience.

If you haven’t tasted Madeira in a while, you need to get to work. Chances are you’ve forgotten the balance and lifting acidity that characterize the wines. These aren’t  sticky sweet fruitcake wines, (although there is such a thing as a Madeira cake,  which is meant to be eaten with a glass of Madeira.)

You can make Madeira as simple or complicated as you like — it is up to you. By far the majority of the wines are sweet or semi-sweet 3-year-old blends. Sweetish or drier — those are your basic choices. Drier Madeira, like Fino sherry, is pretty versatile and might surprise you.

Only small amounts of aged Madeira is made from white grape varieties like the Sercial in the photo and these wines have very distinctive characteristics that anyone who wants to take a deeper dive would appreciate. Because the wines basically last forever once opened, you can pull the cork on several different ones and enjoy the kind of comparative tasting that we experienced in Seattle without being anxious about finishing up the bottles before they go off. On-trade readers take note!

Madeira was once the Big Thing in American wine. Is it The Next Big Thing today? No — can’t be. There’s not enough of it to go around. But it is a unique wine of time and place that deserves a closer look.

>><<<

Special thanks to Bartholomew Broadbent for his help with this column.