An Argument for Dedication

How many things do you rely on your phone to do? On top of making calls, sending text messages, gathering emails, we expect our phones to wake us up, remind us of tasks and remember all of our friends' phone numbers, addresses, emails and screen names, even take care of our Facebook and Twitter accounts; that's a lot of responsibility for one device! But this seems to be the trend; with modern technology booming, and consumers eating up every advancement, dedicated devices are thought of as underachievers. Why have a machine that does just one thing, when technology can allow it to do 12 other things as well? Is more better?

Steve Jobs has said that people wouldn't be willing to pay for a dedicated device and that "general-purpose devices will win the day." Mr. Jobs may be onto something, but with the recent surge of Kindle, Nook and GPS sales, one may start to think "Why do we want a device that only displays e-books, when we can have one that can surf the web, play music, make calls as well?" My answer is simple. No, really, I mean it. Why would I want an e-book reader? Because it's simple. It provides me with the leisure of reading and lets me escape my world, which is already connected via phone, email, text, twitter, facebook, myspace, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.... I don't need twitter to push my @replies while I'm on chapter 7 of Alice in Wonderland...

I love my iPod and my smart phone, but I still want that dedicated device. It's nice to have a GPS in my car that I can rely on to do its one task. It's great to have a blender that does just that. My blu-ray player works just fine without connecting to the internet. These devices are not inferior, for the most part, these dedicated devices perform their functions better than the multipurpose ones. Multitasking is great, but we don't need it for everything. Imagine a world where your phone had a corkscrew built into the top, or if your computer mouse also stapled documents.... Nifty, but a little ridiculous.

Much to a similar tune, I think we can get lost in our wine and expect it to do too much. Wine already provides us with such a rich myriad of textures, flavors, memories. But some winemakers want more; they manipulate the fruit, the process and the art and sometimes it comes out confusing and overly-produced, much like a musical artist who relies on effects rather than talent. Like our dedicated devices, I feel that we should care less if these wines were made with steel barrels or grown in space. We should focus more on the grapes; the fruit should really shine and dictate the wine, not its process. (I know this is a pretty far stretch, but just my two cents.) It will be hard for you winos, but try this: next time you drink, forget the tasting notes, the charts, the reviews. Turn off your cellphone, forget the tweets and the wine apps; just enjoy the moment. I'm positive, like reading a good, simple book, that your experience will be just as enjoyable.


How many of you wouldn't be able to go a day without your iPhone? Maybe you know that a more complex wine-making process results in superior wine? Let me know what you think!

Love and Cheers,

-Tatum

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The Best Wine "App"

iPhones, Blackberries and Droids are being sold at a record speed and these smart phones are quickly digitizing the way we carry on day-to-day business. One of the nifty things about these phones are the applications that can be downloaded to them for a variety of functionality, connectivity and just plain fun. As a passionate pursuer of wine, I'm more than positive you guys with smart phones have ventured into a couple of apps for wine.

There is a myriad of apps that do everything from comparing prices, aggregating ratings and providing reviews and suggestions.
I've explored a few of my own, both purchased and free downloads, and originally wanted to write a post reviewing a couple I got to experience, to help you make a better choice in wine apps. But, after a few weeks of road tests, I just want to reflect on how useless these really are. Wine apps boast their ability to turn you into a connoisseur, hunt down the best prices, find the best rating, suggest the best pairing and everything in between. But the best app isn't on your smartphone and wasn't developed by some programmer; the best app is the staff in the wine store, who will converse with you, get a sense of your taste, the occassion and your interest, and be able to show you the wine that you need. (Or in some cases, never knew you wanted!)

Okay, so I'm being a little dramatic; not all apps are useless. We all want to save money and the apps that help me assess and compare QPR are the ones that I found most useful. But please take heed; these apps are only tools for helping you choose that perfect bottle. (I dare say, in wine, there are no perfect bottles, only perfect memories.) They should not make the decision for you. No one should walk into a wine store and shut-out the merchant -- they, above any app you can download, have the best knowledge about what they're stocking, how their bottles are drinking and how it might please you. Consumers have a notion that all wine sellers are trying to get you and make theirs. If you encounter a wine shop or a salesperson like this, please find a new store. One with a knowledgeable staff you can talk to, who want to get to know you and know your palate. This is the connection that is lost if we blindly look up every bottle in consideration on our phones.

But having reviewed apps for weeks, I thought I might as well share my findings. Across the board, I found that most apps did not deliver. Consumer reviews on all of them were very brief and non-descriptive (not too many people post their tasting notes from their iPhones I assume) and a lot of times the wines being searched were not present in the databases. Most of them claimed to be able to do a lot of things, but rarely delivered. I found a lot of apps that were good at one thing but lacked in all other areas. I suppose you could hunt those down and have five different wine apps to go through, but what's the point? A few stood out, in my humble opinion, and were worth noting. Also, please keep in consideration that I used these apps only a few times to get a feel for how they work, so they are not thorough, wine-professional reviews; just me, a normal guy, walking into a normal wine store with some apps trying to buy wine:

The Wine Ratings Guide by Nirvino -- Apple Apps Store, $2.99 --
I included this app because of their very impressive and extensive database of wine. I found most of the wines I searched for and their average prices. But I had to say that the app name is a bit misleading; The ratings are on a five-star scale and there are no consumer reviews, which sort of make the app useless unless you just want to find the average asking price. Sort of expensive for a one-trick pony.

Wine Snob by 9mmedia -- Apple Apps Store, $2.99 --
Although the database seemed very limited (only 2 of the 12 wines I searched in the store came up) I had to add this because of its cool Geotag feature - every wine entry is logged through Google Maps with GPS Coordinates so you can literally trace your wine. The reviews were not very useful, and it does let you put in your own tasting notes... So, it's nifty and different, but not too great at the wine part...


R-Vintage Lookup by REGARD Solutions Corp. -- Blackberry App World, $3.99 --
I was disappointed to find no apps on the Blackberry that really was worth this post (if this post is worth anything at all...) but I did find this useful app. As the name suggest, R-Vintage shows you vintages, varietal, region, 100-point rating and a drink or hold status. This was helpful to me to see what years were good and helped me to stray away from some bottles that they came from less than preferable years. The layout was simple but again, this is a one trick pony; it doesn't have reviews, you can't see individual bottles, so at four bones, this was a disappointment...Way too expensive for what it offers.

Those were just a few of the many I road-tested. Here is a list of the rest --
Apple App Store:

Wine Ph.D
Wine Pad 2
Wine Enthusiast Guide

Blackberry App World:
Wine of the Day
10 Top Wines
Nats Decants Wine and Food Matcher

I wonder, has anyone tried any of these apps? What were your opinions on them? Do you have a wine app you use frequently? Please comment and school me!

As you can tell, although most apps did offer some helpful tools, an all-in-one app that can satisfy my need for consumer reviews, QPR, extensive databases and the ability to understand my palate, my personality and my wine-curiosity has not been developed... yet. Until then, I think I'll try the un-digitized version of finding quality wine; Stacy, a knowledgeable and helpful staff member at the local store :) Thanks for your time!

Love and Cheers,
-Tatum
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Beer from up There

Sapporo, the Japanese brewery you may be familiar with if you frequent sushi bars in your area, has announced the release of their new "Space Barely," which uses barely that has been grown on the International Space Station... Yes, in Spaaaaaaaaaaace!

I was super excited to try this out when I heard about it, but it doesn't look like I, and most likely you, will be able to anytime soon. According to them, you must be one of the extremely lucky 250 winners who are drawn from a lottery. If you are selected, you get to pay $119 for a six-pack, limit one-per-lucky-winner... That's almost $20 for one beer... Sweet... So yeah, you have to win first, then you get a chance to buy some high-priced six-pack >.<

The barely was harvested from the ISS space station as part of a five-month space mission that experimented with growing crops in space.

Here's a Reuters video-press release linked below if you want to take a peek of it yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXKa1EV1J4Y

Does this intergalactic barely have any affect on the beer? Maybe they used martian water and moon yeast to brew it? That will be something we have to wait to find out. If you are lucky enough to get one of these beers, please chime in and tell me how it is. (And feel free to send a sample.) Until then, I think I'm going to try to secure a few cases of Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout before they run out!

With Love and Cheers,
-Tatum Read More!

Biodynamic Wine: A first look

I wish I could go back in time to ask winemakers of past, "How do you think wine making will be affected by future technology?" They surely wouldn't know about our advances in computers.They might not mention the use of modern wine making trends like steel barrels, micro oxygenation, ultra-sound, computer chips in vineyards or extreme temperature control to make cheap wines palatable. However if I were to explained the new Biodynamic Wine trends sweeping the globe, they would think we have regressed back to medieval agricultural traditions!

For those not familiar with biodynamic agriculture, let me give it to you straight from the Wikipedia article: "Biodynamic agriculture, a method of organic farming that has its basis in a spiritual world-view , first propounded by Rudolf Steiner treats farms as unified and individual organisms emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, animals as a closed, self-nourishing system."

What this means is the vineyard is considered in it's entirety as a living thing and seen as an organism in it's own right, but one that is in consistent with lunar and cosmic patterns and rhythms and not merely a substrate for plant growth... Wheew...

Wine makers are taking weird, unconventional methods of viticulture and wine making and following a strict biodynamic calendar of harvesting, planting and etc. because they believe it will help their vines and ultimately their finished wines. These methods are broken up into several preparations that all seem a bit odd and skeptical. Such examples include Preparation 500 where cow manure is buried into the soil for a period of time, dug back up and spread over the fields. Other examples include fermenting yarrow flowers in a deer's bladder or oak bark in a skull of a domestic animal and applying them to compost or spraying the vines with horsetail tea, according to the biodynamic calendar. Weird stuff you thought you'd see on Taboo, huh?

But what definitely has the world in shock and awe is that no matter how medieval, superstitious or unreasonable these methods seem, the winemakers (all notable and renown in the wine making world) are producing outstanding wine with biodynamie. These producers include Domaine de la Romanee Conti, Zind Humbrecht, Huet, Beaux Freres , and Benziger among numerous others. (For a list of more producers check out http://www.wineanorak.com/biodynamic3.htm) I think what really has people going is because there is almost no way to prove this advantage scientifically... They just seem to be better. Here's an excerpt from wineanorak.com that sums up the whole thing:

Despite these problems, proper studies have been carried out, and generally they seem to suggest that biodynamics really does work. In 1993, Reganold and colleagues compared the performance of biodynamic and conventional farms in New Zealand, a report published in leading scientific journal Science. They found that the biodynamic farms had significantly higher soil quality, with more organic matter content and microbial activity. In 1995 Reganold published a review of the different studies that have examined biodynamics and have met basic standards for scientific credibility. The conclusion was that biodynamic systems had better soil quality, lower crop yields and equal or greater net returns per hectare than their conventional counterparts. But what could the mechanism be? A tantalizing clue is offered by some experiments carried out by a graduate student of Reganold’s, Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, on the effects of biodynamic preparations on compost development. In an experimental setting, biodynamically treated composts showed higher temperatures, faster maturation and more nitrate than composts that had received a placebo inoculation. Reganold is clearly impressed: ‘Of all the farm systems that I’ve seen, biodynamics is probably the most holistic.’

As I conclude I will state that biodynamie on vineyards does work... They seem to produce greater environments, grow superior grapes and make tastier wine. The hard thing to conclude is why does this all work? Ancient civilizations have planted, harvested and celebrated with the phases of the moon and the cosmos for centuries. Perhaps there is something there? Perhaps it is some sort of spiritual, holistic reason for this all to make sense. Or perhaps it's just with biodynamic procedures, wine makers are paying close attention. They are giving their land, their resources and their environment the attention it deserves; the close attention and observation that is needed to produce superior wine. That's something this world could never have too many of; devoted, passionate and dedicated wine makers who "listen" to their vineyards. For further research on Biodynamic wine I urge you to google up on the subject and be sure to check out http://www.wineanorak.com/biodynamic1.htm for a great resource on the subject.

Cheers to you,
-Tatum
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Wine Maker has it right: Make sure you read the last Paragraph

I just saw this news story on the NYT website and it sort of made me feel better about wine makers. So often do we forget that wine makers are grueling, working year round, night-and-day to deliver us such an awesome glass of wine. Credits always go to the critics or distributors or that LWS that finds the wine, but how often do you really think about how the wine maker feels?
Please read on to discover a wine maker who was strongly disappointed when he found out how much his wine was being sold for! Make sure you read the last paragraph!

Cheers!
-Tatum

A Winemaker Sees Red
By Nick Fox


Not long after my recent column on Paso Robles zinfandels I got a phone call from Ehren Jordan, the winemaker for Turley Wine Cellars. A phone call from Ehren is always a pleasant prospect, as he is one of the more insightful and articulate winemakers around. But this time he was indignant.


The problem was not what I had said about his wine, which precedes the usual indignant winemaker communique. In fact, I had really liked the 2006 Turley Dusi Ranch zin, and had said so in print. No, the problem was the fact that we had said the bottle cost $115. As with all wine panel tastings, our coordinator, Bernard Kirsch, buys the bottles through retail sources, and $115 was the price of the wine at Morrell & Company, a high-end New York retailer in Rockefeller Center. Really high-end, in Ehren’s view.

You see, Turley wholesales the bottle for around $20 and the suggested retail is $40 or so. Now, Ehren is not naïve about how the wine market works. He understands that Turley zinfandels, especially the single vineyard wines, are in high demand. This means that retailers must often look beyond the distributors to obtain bottles, and the extra transactions along the way drive the price of the wine up. A lot of highly sought-after wines flow through this so-called gray market. Nonetheless, he didn’t like it.

“We pride ourselves on the fact that we try to sell wines reasonably,’’ Ehren said. “When I see it for $115, I think, that’s not what we intended. I don’t buy $115 bottles of wine. And the other side of it is, somebody just made a lot more money than we did, and we put all the time and energy into it.’’

I spoke with Nikos Antonakeas, the managing director at Morrell, to hear his explanation of the pricing.
“It’s very simple,’’ he told me. “I bought it from a customer who is on the mailing list who sold it to me for $85. There was nothing else out there, and our customers demand it.’’

Typically, Nikos said, Morrell would get an allocation of two mixed cases — 24 bottles — of Turley’s single-vineyard zinfandels through Turley’s New York distributor, Michael Skurnik Wines.
He said those bottles were sold at Morrell’s usual retail markup, which would mean about $45. Not surprisingly, those few bottles sell out very quickly.

“Unfortunately, we have 240 requests,’’ he said. “So I go to auctions, and private individuals. Some are on the mailing list and they just want to make a buck, and sometimes we say yes if we know the customer.’’
Demand drives the market, and for wines made in minute quantities the demand is overwhelming, and people for whom money is of little object are willing to pay a lot. It’s why a single bottle of 2005 Screaming Eagle can be found in a New York retail shop selling for $2,500, and why a bottle of Krug Clos d’Ambonnay is selling for $4,500. (By the way, if you think $4,500 is too much for a bottle of Champagne, you’ll be relieved to know I found it at another store for $1,000 less, which in fact was its suggested retail price.)

In that context maybe $115 is not too much to pay for a bottle of $40 zinfandel. On the other hand, maybe it is. After all, as Ehren pointed out, somebody’s making a lot of money, and it usually is not the producer.

“I know wineries that have raised their prices when they see stuff like that, and I wonder whether we should be making that money, but we just don’t want to go there,’’ Ehren said. “I think it also engenders the feeling that Turley is really expensive, and it’s really not true. Then they show up at the winery and it’s just a bunch of guys making wine, nothing fancy. That’s who we are.’’

He said the idea that people are buying his wine as an investment pained him.
“Investment? We make the wine to drink,’’ he said. “It’s zinfandel, just drink it!’’

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NYT: Sulfur

Here's something I read from a NYT article I thought was interesting. Enjoy!
August 5, 2008

A trick using a copper penny can work for all sorts of sulfur-related ills. (Photo: David Zalubowski/Associated Press)

Sulfur
By Eric Asimov
My column in Wednesday’s newspaper is on some mouthwatering white wines from Greece, and in the course of our wine panel tasting I ran into a vexing problem that has taken me deeply and perplexingly into the realm of wine and sulfur chemistry.
It began simply enough. As often happens, particularly when tasting a large number of white wines, especially those that are fermented and aged in steel tanks, I detected in several of the wines the aroma of burned matches.
If I could offer a hyperlink to this aroma you would recognize it right away – that flinty smell after you strike a match and blow it out immediately.
Often, but erroneously, that aroma is attributed to an excess of sulfur dioxide in the wine. Sulfur dioxide has for eons played an important role in both preventing the effects of oxidation and inhibiting microbial growth in wine. Judging by the scientific treatises I’ve buried myself in, that’s probably a gross oversimplification of the role of sulfur dioxide. Suffice it to say that, while a few great wines are made without the addition of sulfur dioxide, the chemical is almost universally used throughout the wine world. But, while the matchstick smell is related to sulfur, sulfur dioxide is not the guilty party.
The issue came up because one of the wines we rejected due to the matchstick smell turned out to be the one Greek white that I have regularly enjoyed at home. In fact, I’ve mentioned it twice in posts, once in the spring, and once last summer. It’s the Thalassitis from Gaia, a white made from assyrtiko grapes grown on the island of Santorini.
I’ve really enjoyed this wine. It’s got a floral and mineral character, with the faintest suggestion of honey, and it’s not only refreshing but interesting. I wondered why in the blind tasting I was turned off by it. One difference was significant – my two posts were about the 2006 Thalassitis, while the bottle in our tasting was the 2007.
I knew I had a bottle of the 2007 at home, so one night shortly after the tasting I opened it. Again, the smell of struck matches. At the panel tasting, the smell had not dissipated after an hour of swirling and sniffing, so I decided to decant the wine. Often the smell disappears with exposure to air. But even after decanting and leaving the wine for 10 or 15 minutes, it was still there.
Now, let’s be clear – the aroma is certainly not harmful. It’s simply off-putting. To understand why it occurs I checked in with Prof. Roger B. Boulton at the School of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California at Davis. Dr. Boulton explained that matchstick aromas are caused by thiols, sulfur compounds that can result from the yeast fermentation.
When these aromas develop, he said, many winemakers try to solve it by aerating the wine after fermentation is complete. Instead, the aeration converts the thiols into disulfides, compounds that are heavier than thiols and more difficult to eliminate. In effect, the aeration simply buries the aroma in the wine.
“You’ve converted something that was very volatile into something not so volatile,’’ Dr. Boulton told me. “You think you’ve gotten rid of it, but you haven’t gotten rid of it at all.’’
Strangely, the aroma thereafter surfaces periodically but unpredictably. Exposing the wine to air — by decanting, for example – can suppress the aroma enough to make the wine enjoyable, but it doesn’t eliminate it. Even with the aroma, the wine is palatable — some people aren’t bothered by it at all.
“Once it’s in the disulfide form, you can’t treat it,’’ Dr. Boulton said. “The irony is that if a wine is aerated to get rid of it, it just makes it more difficult to get rid of.’’
While winemakers do not want the thiols to convert into disulfides, also known as mercaptans, it’s beyond this post to explore what can be done about it. Dr. Boulton suggests that winemakers treat the wine immediately with copper sulfate. Of course, that’s after the fact. A fermentation that does not produce thiols is the best solution – but apparently that’s easier said than done. For a more in-depth look at the chemistry issues, Jamie Goode, whose excellent wineanorak.com contains a wealth of information of all kinds, has written this essay.
So what can the consumer do? Dr. Boulton says copper or silver can both help to eliminate the off aromas. The copper penny trick works for all sorts of sulfur-related ills, from the matchstick aroma to the rotten egg aroma, which is a completely different problem. You simply find a clean copper penny, which is not so easy anymore. Since 1982 (according to wikipedia.com) the American penny is 97.5 percent zinc, with a thin copper plating. Previously, the penny had been 95 percent copper. Simply swirl the penny, even the newer penny, in the wine and the sulfur effect should dissipate.
Alternatively, you could carry a silver spoon around and use it to stir the offending wine.
“If somebody sees you they might think you’re weird,’’ Dr. Boulton said, “but it will clear it up.’’
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Why Not Us?

Those of you who are personally connected with me might have already heard me say I was trying to bring a wine club to Towson University. But, as I would do with any young wine, let me pour this rant into the DeRanter to let it open up a bit...

Many universities across the nation, and probably internationally as well, have their own wine club. They have school funding to sanction wine events and spread wine knowledge. So I ask, "Why can't we?" What makes us different than Princeton, Duke, Cornell, Davidson, UCLA, Berkeley, or any other school in terms of wine? Someone from the WLTV forum, Rajiv, showed me the way. He is the founder of the wine tasting group at Princeton. You can look at his WLOG here. He's a chemical engineer at Princeton, so be warned, this guy will probably go over your head! But he has been very supportive of me in my endeavors, and all I can do is thank him. Rajiv, I hope to share a glass of wine with you someday!

I have already got the ball rolling to start a wine club here at Towson. It will be called the Wine Enthusiast of Towson University, abbreviated WETU. I've made a proposal/mission statement, and got myself connected with a fellow named Matthew, who is a TU alumni who has signed on to be an alumni advisor. My next step is to get a staff advisor, turn 21, and then propose this to the boards. If things go as planned, maybe we can have a WETU next semester, and by the end of the year, we can look into getting funded. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on this one. I hope to have an argument if they blindly deny my right to start this club, due to it being involved with alcohol.

I will have the proposal up shortly for anyone interested to read. Let's all hope this university realizes that to become better, we need to keep an open mind, even if it is about alcohol. Cheers!

-Tatum Read More!