Amocat Cellars

Hey France! Just send it over here if you’re not going to drink it!

While wine consumption is increasing in the U.S. — spurred on in part by the wine adoption habits of American Millennials (young adults aged 21 to 31) — the opposite is happening in France. Since 1980 French wine consumption has decreased by more than 50% from 120 liters per capita to today’s rate of 55 liters per capita.

Further reason for alarm is the ongoing crisis for some French wine producers who can’t find a market for their grapes. Grubbing-up schemes are still in progress, the appellation system is being re-organized, and global wine competition is becoming even fiercer with new wine countries coming on board each year. Though France does have commendable wine export records with solid marketing abroad, within France very few wine marketing efforts are occurring and most are discouraged by government regulations.

Why French Millennials Don’t Drink Wine

Here’s a great article on one of Washington’s best “cult wines.”

DeLille Cellars sits on a hillside overlooking the Sammamish Valley and Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery. The Lill family first bought the winery’s property in 1981, when it consisted of little more than a small house and rundown barn. At the time, Charles Lill saw it as a hobby farm and vacation property.

But Charles Lill liked the idea, and the whole family voted to give it a shot. The Lills located grapes from the Yakima Valley and rented a small warehouse in Woodinville to make the wine. In 1992, DeLille Cellars produced its first vintage. According to Greg Lill, the winery was the fourth to come to Woodinville, and the beginning of a wave of boutique wineries.
Founder Charles Lill’s death leaves DeLille Cellars to his son and co-founders

So, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to sell, because some guy wants to buy up all the wineries he can, or if it’s a good time to sell because there aren’t family members willing to take on running family-run wineries…

Thinking of selling the family winery? A man with $100 million to spend thinks now’s a pretty good time.

Between 500 and 1,000 family-owned wineries in California, Oregon and Washington could be sold in coming years because the next generation is either unprepared or unwilling to follow in the footsteps of their pioneering winemaking parents, Price said, citing a recent study.

Good time for wineries to cash in

I’ve been following the state-by-state passing of arbitrary laws affedting the transport of wine delivery. It’s funny how fast 75 years flies by, but for many states it might as well still be prohibition.

“Despite evidence and educated opinions to the contrary, America’s wine wholesalers have continued to insist that adult Americans should not have access to wines via direct shipment,” Wark reiterates. “Research shows that in the past 6 years, American wine wholesalers dumped more than $50 million dollars into state political campaigns to achieve their goal of keeping consumer from accessing the wines they want via direct shipment. Today, only 15 states allow retailer-to-consumer shipment of wine over state lines. The result is a diminished market for wine, loss of state tax revenues, consumer frustration and lack of confidence that the alcohol regulatory process is fair.”

75th Anniversary of Prohibition’s Repeal Shows Little Has Changed

Here’s an interesting take on a wine subscription:

When Kate Portanova of Scottsdale wanted to take part in a formal tasting at a winery, she didn’t have to drive to California or southern Arizona.

Portanova is one of about 50 people who have bought into PurVine, a rare approach to winemaking that asks wine lovers to commit to more than just a bottle or case of wine. The wine is sold by the barrel or fractions of a barrel, meaning dozens of bottles of wine.
Tempe vintner gets the buyer involved

Wine center expands to keep pace with Oregon vineyards -
Temperature-controlled storage and shipping are both growing

God I wish we had something like this up here!

Wine Village Will be Santa Cruz Destination
BonnyDoon forms nucleus for wineries, spirits, and beer tasting.

I didn’t know there were any still around, but it looks like a wine baron from France, with actor Gerard Depardieu, as one of the partners has snatched up a hillside vineyard on the slopes of… Mount Fuji in Japan?

French wine baron snaps up vineyard in Japan

Celebrity-driven alcohol beverage products - - those branded with the name of, or directly associated with a famous individual - - are gaining popularity in the U.S. and wine is emerging as the star of the show, according to The Nielsen Company.

Gaining marketing leverage from celebrities as diverse as film director Francis Ford Coppola, former NFL coach Mike Ditka, professional golfer Greg Norman and recent releases from Martha Stewart and Paul Newman, celebrity wines are on the rise. Celebrity wines are up nearly 19 percent in grocery store sales since last year and represent 0.9 percent ($41.8 million) of total wine sales. Celebrity spirits sales show the same growth rate (19 percent) in grocery stores and represent 0.3 percent ($7.5 million) of the total spirits category. In liquor stores, celebrity spirits are growing at an even faster rate, showing a nearly 21 percent increase since last year, compared to celebrity wines’ liquor store growth rate of 8 percent.

Consumers Attracted to ”Glitz” of Celebrity Wines -
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080305005634&newsLang=en

Intriguing concepts come to mind. What I want to know is how do you know which celebrities will increase sales… but also which might decrease sales? For instance, would you by Rosie O’Donnell Wine? Not sure that would appeal to me. Then again you could call it whine and then it might. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until someone tries it.

- 650-acres
- five miles above the Columbia River
- 3,000 tons of grapes

Wow. That’s impressive.

Wallula Vineyard purchase believed among largest ever -
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/901/story/115161.html

This is the aspect of wine making that appeals to me:

…as Crushpad grows (it’s in the middle of a round of fundraising right now), I hope that it finds a way to move beyond helping people with the physical aspects of making wine. It has real potential to build on its 5,000-odd customer base to create a community of amateur winemakers, both online through its Crushnet site and through in-person events. 

Links:

A toast to Crushpad’s do-it-yourself winemaking

Vindu’s View: Crushpad lets beginners make wine worry-free

Crushpad

The idea of a wine co-op has been on my mind lately. Now I see Robert Mondavi has started one in Cali.

Aside from some superboutiques offering wines at $100 a bottle and up, most of the wine made here these days is produced and distributed by multinational beverage giants or spirits manufacturers. Today’s wine start-ups are often “virtual” wineries, little more than a brand name and a label on a bottle, supplied by one of the state’s “custom crush” operations, which make wine to specification for numerous clients. These can lead to good wines, even great ones, but the individual nose-in-the-barrel element is missing.

Not only are the start-up costs of a bricks-and-mortar winery prohibitive for many small operators, but getting the finished product onto store shelves is an even bigger challenge.

The studio concept, Mr. Mondavi said, began with the Carlton Winemakers Studio, in Carlton, Ore., which opened in 2002. Rob Mondavi produced a pinot noir there before Folio acquired its own winery.

The Carlton studio has the capacity to produce 18,000 cases of wine, which is currently shared by 10 winemakers

“We’re all independent wineries working under an alternating proprietorship, and that’s what differentiates us from custom crush,” said Andrew Rich, who produced 7,500 cases last year, making him the largest winemaker at Carlton. “Custom crush is, ‘Here are my grapes, call me when it’s in the bottle.’ We’re all doing what we’re doing by ourselves.”

Another new model is Les Garagistes, a winemakers’ “village” that plans to break ground next spring in American Canyon, a formerly neglected area between Napa and Vallejo.

Les Garagistes will offer 12 winemaking spaces about 4,500 square feet in size, which can be leased by individual winemakers or groups. Capital equipment, like crusher/stemmers and wine presses, will be shared, and the wineries will surround a central courtyard with a café and a tasting room. 

NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/business/06wine.html?emc=eta1

Nine years ago, a couple writers for the Wall Street Journal started a new tradition of picking one day to open a bottle of wine waiting to be opened for a special day… one that never arrives. This year, the “event” is Saturday, February 23rd. I know I have at least a few bottles (6? 8?) that have been waiting very patiently to be opened. This is the perfect reason to open one. Now, which one will it be?

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OPEN THAT BOTTLE NIGHT PRIMER

If you plan to participate, here is a mixed case of advice:
1. Choose the setting. We usually celebrate OTBN alone because we enjoy discussing the very special, intimate memories that the bottles offer. But many people have dinner parties and others take their bottles to restaurants that allow BYOB (and some restaurants have special OTBN promotions; if you know one that does, drop us a note). It’s time to start planning. As Karen Stearns of Houston put it: “We love OTBN because it’s an excuse to open those killer bottles we’ve been saving, but also because we spend days and days with our foodie friends pulling out our most complicated recipes and staging the dinner that will accompany them. It’s the production and the anticipation we love, and then ultimately dragging out the evening into a four-hour dinner. That’s the best!”

2. Select the bottle. A huge part of the fun for us is choosing the bottle, pulling out these revered wines and remembering when, where and why we bought them. Each has a story. The point is not to show off with a great bottle or necessarily open the most prestigious bottle in the house, but to uncork a wine that holds cherished memories, the bottle that — admit it — you will never open otherwise. This is one case where it really is all about you, what the wine means to you, and not necessarily about its taste. We sometimes hear from people who don’t have a bottle that they’ve been meaning to open. In that case, we’d urge you to buy a bottle of wine that has special significance for you, but that you don’t often drink. For instance, Taittinger Champagne is important to us because it was our wedding bubbly. While we have tasted it many times over the years for this column, we can’t remember the last time we simply opened a bottle for fun. So on New Year’s Eve, John bought one and as we enjoyed it we talked about our wedding and our years together, past and future. That’s a good option on OTBN.

3. Stand it up. If you are going to open an older bottle, stand it up (away from light and heat, of course) for a few days before you plan to open it — say, on Wednesday. This will allow the sediment, if there is some, to sink to the bottom of the bottle.

4. Beware of the temperature. Both reds and whites are often better somewhere closer to cellar temperature (around 55 degrees) than today’s room temperature. Don’t overchill the white, and think about putting the red in the refrigerator for an hour or two before opening it if you’ve been keeping it in a warm house.

5. Practice your technique. With an older bottle, the cork may break easily. The best opener for a cork like that is one with two prongs, but it requires some skill. You have time to practice using one. Be prepared for the possibility that a fragile cork may fall apart with a regular corkscrew. If that happens, have a carafe and a coffee filter handy. Just pour enough through the coffee filter to catch the cork’s fragments.

6. Otherwise, do not decant. We’re assuming these are old and fragile wines. Air could quickly dispel what’s left of them. If the wine does need to breathe, you should have plenty of time for that to happen as you drink it throughout the evening.

7. Have a backup wine ready for your special meal, in case your old wine really has gone bad. Dr. Pearce and her husband will have a 2001 Rombauer Chardonnay from California standing by. That’s bound to create some pretty delicious memories of its own.

8. Share. If you are having an OTBN party, ask everyone to say a few words about the significance of the wine they brought. This really is what OTBN is all about.

9. Serve dinner. Open the wine and immediately take a sip. If it’s truly, irretrievably bad — we mean vinegar — you will know it right away. But even if the wine doesn’t taste good at first, don’t rush to the sink to pour it out. Every year, we hear from people who were amazed how a wine became more delicious as the night wore on. Is it the air changing the wine or the company changing the mood? Who cares?

10. Enjoy the wine for what it is, not what it might someday be or might once have been. This is critical. We know that many OTBN wines are old and tired — we wouldn’t bet a lot of money on Dr. Pearce’s 1985 Corbett Canyon Chardonnay, for instance. But this isn’t about delicious wine, ultimately, but about delicious memories.

11. Let us know. Drop us a note at wine@wsj.com about your evening. Be sure to include your name, city and phone number, in case we need to contact you so that we can share your account with other readers.

12. See us online. This year, for the first time, OTBN will be featured at wsj.com, on the new Food and Drink page. You can check in — and, we hope, contribute — at wsj.com/otbn. Take a look.

link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120121947092615219.html

Here’s some interesting news about more wine shops opening that feature region specific wine. I’m looking forward to a the day a shop opens in Tacoma featuring “wines of Cascadia.” Someday.

The Oregon Wine Tasting Room in McMinnville, Ore., opened Labor Day 1980 and says it is the state’s oldest tasting room selling wine exclusively from Oregon wineries. Officially known as the Oregon Wine Tasting Room and the Bellevue Market, it’s owned by Amity Vineyards and managed by Patrick McElligott, who teaches in the Chemeketa Community College wine program. Amity owns the tasting room under its winery license through a law like Colorado’s that’s intended to help local wineries market themselves and each other and the state’s industry. More than 100 wineries are represented, with about 20 wines open at any time for tasting, from dry whites to dessert wines. When it opened, Mr. McElligott says, the tasting room had “20-plus wines from 12 wineries. Now we have more than 300 from more than 100 wineries. The growth has been rapid with many, many extremely small wineries. Even I have a label, Pinot Nowar.”

The Lodi Wine & Visitor Center in Lodi, Calif., has more than 100 wines to taste and buy, all made from Lodi grapes. The center, which opened in 2000, is funded by the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission, according to Mark Chandler, the commission’s executive director. Open daily, the center offers nine wines that change every Wednesday. “Basically, we’re trying to keep the nine wines new and exciting,” says Michael Perry, manager of the center. The center, which has an interactive educational component to it, features the wines of about 80 wineries. Three tastes cost $5, and beyond that, $1 per taste up to six wines.

link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120302207155669373.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
 

Wine’s impact on Washington: $3B per year -

Washington’s wine industry contributes $3 billion a year to the state’s economy, according to a new study released by the Washington Wine Commission and Washington Association of Growers. The report, based on 2006 data, is the first time the Wine Commission has measured the wine industry since 1999.

link: http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2008/02/04/daily27.html

Here’s a good reason to celebrate with a glass of wine:

“The United States is now the second-largest wine market in the world, behind France, and the most lucrative market in terms of sales, with $30 billion of wine sold last year, Fredrikson said.While Americans’ thirst for fine wines has sent winery profits soaring, competition from imports is greater than ever. A bevy of slick new wine brands from overseas have flooded the U.S. market trying to entice Americans to look for new tastes beyond their borders.”

Spain, for example, is a country whose wine industry has made heavy investments in marketing its wines in the United States, and younger wine drinkers have come to see Spanish wines as “sexy,” Proctor said.”

Americans bought a record amount of wine in 2007 — and more imports -
http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080131/NEWS/801310400/1033/NEWS01

Looks like the time couldn’t be better for that overseas marketing plan for Northwest wine. Now if we can just make our wine “sexy” to the Spaniards…

Great news for Northwest winemakers!

“For several years, money has been given to Washington and Oregon so that they can boost awareness of Northwest wines on a global scale.

This year, $650,000 dollars will allow close to 40 wineries to promote their blends overseas.

Right now, the commission is targeting their key markets which they say are Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom. This funding helps them drive the influence. Without it, promotion would be tough.”

link: http://www.kndo.com/Global/story.asp?S=7753236&nav=menu484_2_8

I thought this was an interesting article. I don’t read Parker, but I am aware of the influence he has on the wine market. Ratings are everything and he has them. Keep your eyes open the next time your in the wine section at the super market for “Rated bla bla bla by Parker.” The influence he’s had on chaging the way winemakers make wine is amazing. But now, there seems to be a reaction happening.

“Adam Tolmach of Ojai Vineyard told newspaper the Los Angeles Times that his wines had ‘lost their rudder’ in trying to please the palate of the American wine guru Robert Parker.Tolmach, who has made wine for 25 years, says that although he ‘got the scores’ he wanted, he found his wines moving further away from his own tastes.‘I’d stopped drinking my own wines,’ he said.Tolmach says he is looking to harvest his grapes earlier and pick less-ripe grapes in the search for balance.

Some of my favorite wine names and labels come from this winery. It’s great to see them take on the issue of wine ingredients disclosure. I was amazed to learn how widespread the use of color and flavor enhancers is:

news release: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20071218006080&newsLang=en

Bonny Doon: https://www.bonnydoonvineyard.com/index.html

1. Wine of the Year: Leonetti Cellar 2004 Reserve ($110)

I can’t disagree with the top choice here! Check out the rest of the list:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/foodwine/2004081147_winecol19.html

http://oregonwinepress.com/index.php?pr=1207_02_Harvest

excerpt:

“I would say, since I came on board in 2002, that 2005 was the best looking fruit I’ve seen as far as chemistry and flavor go, and this year is as good as, if not better, than 2005, especially with respect to the fruit that typically ripens early—the Tempranillo, Albariño.

“If you look at heat summation data from the first of June to about the middle of September, heat accumulation was nearly identical to 2005. What that has meant for us is that we have had weather that was optimal for enzymatic activity in the grapevine, which means phenological and physiological ripeness in the fruit, but it was not so hot that the sugar accumulation outpaced the ripening schedule. So we got beautifully ripe flavors but at generally lower sugars and higher acids, which is what every winemaker wants. In fact, the Tempranillo, Albariño, Viognier, and Malbec are phenomenal and the Syrah and Dolcetto are exceptional.

“I’ve been very happily surprised at the Port varietals, Graciano and Merlot. Not that I’m literally surprised, but my impressions and expectations after sampling, walking the rows and tasting the fruit prior to harvest were far surpassed by the wines during fermentation and as they went to barrel.

“It’s been a serious crunch this year but I’ll take another 30 vintages of this if it means this kind of quality.”

-Kiley Evans, WINEMAKER • Abacela Winery, Roseburg

Why didn’t I think of this?!

Nude Paris launches ‘wine in a can’ -
Socialite Paris Hilton has posed naked in a new advertising campaign to launch her luxury sparkling wine in a can brand.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4322799a1860.html

Seattle PI

Washington state’s wine grape crop, second only to California nationwide, was a record 127,150 tons this year, an industry group reported.

“The grapes got as ripe as we wanted and the color was really good for the reds. The wines are going to be really good,” said Scott Williams, winemaker at Kiona Vineyards & Winery on Red Mountain near Benton City.

Final reports on new plantings from the state Department of Agriculture won’t be available until next year, but the area devoted to premium wine grapes has grown about 11,000 acres in 1993 to 31,000 last year.

According to the Washington Wine Commission, the state’s wine industry provides about 14,000 full-time jobs and contributes more than $3 billion annually to the state’s economy. In 2006, more than seven million cases of wine were made in Washington, worth about $685 million in retail sales.

California growers expect to harvest 3.2 million tons of wine grapes this year.