Does Queens have Terroir?

That's Queens, the New York borough. The climate might actually be okay--the other end of Long Island actually makes some decent wines.

Queens's Napa Valley (Wall Street Journal)

Grapes Gone Wild

This link came across a mailing list that I'm on today:

Valiant Vineyards: South Dakota's first winery finding international acclaim (Prairie Business Magazine)

I have kind of mixed feelings about this idea. On one hand, I really like the idea of making use of the species native to your region, of fruit harvested from the wild. On the other hand, I've actually had Valiant Vineyard's wild grape wine, and it tastes like, well, what you'd expect wild Vitis riparia wine to taste like. Which is pretty unpleasant. It's acidic and weird, and reminds me of many of the riparia hybrids I tasted when I worked in grape breeding (although 'Frontenac', which is half wild riparia, can produce a pretty quality wine). That's just my opinion, though, and people with much more sophisticated tastes in wine than me obviously think differently.

(I do think the port might work really well, though...)

It reminds me of the 'Munson' wine I had in Arkansas. 'Munson', better known as Jaeger 70, is a hybrid of two wild vines, V. lincecumii and V. rupestris. And much like the South Dakota wine, they charge an arm and a leg for it. And much like the South Dakota wild grape wine, it tastes like wild grapes, which is to say, not particularly good, at least in the classical wine sense. (Though I will confess to a certain fondness for some wines from American grapes, many of which are only a generation or two from wildV. labrusca).

Although I don't particularly want to drink the wine, I do have a healthy appreciation of Jaeger 70, though--it's in the pedigree of virtually all French hybrid grapes, and, through these, many recent hybrids as well.

And since I'm already sort of free associating here, I might as well mention the story of Herman Jaeger. Jaeger was a Swiss immigrant who settled in Missouri in the 1860's. In addition to setting up a vineyard and winery, Jaeger also bred grapes, and was instrumental in saving the French wine industry from the phylloxera disaster in the 1870s, for which he was awarded the French Legion of Honor. ('Munson' was named for T.V. Munson, his friend and fellow grape breeder). And, in an interesting final twist, in 1895, at only 51, he walked out of his home, saying he was headed for Joplin, and was never seen again. He left behind a note instructing his family not to look for him. No one knows what became of him.

'Educating Peter' by Lettie Teague

From time to time lately I've been getting invitations to review books, which I guess is one of the benefits of having a website that at least a handful of people read regularly. The problem is that for a long while they've all been cookbooks, and not even fruit themed ones, so they didn't seem terribly relevant.

Finally, though, I was offered a wine book, which was adequately fruit-centric for my liking: Educating Peter: How I Taught a Famous Movie Critic the Difference Between Cabernet and Merlot, or How Anybody Can Become an (Almost) Instant Wine Expert, by Lettie Teague. Ms. Teague teaches us about wine while teaching her friend, movie critic Peter Travers. They sample wines from assorted regions, cultivars, and styles, sometimes traveling to the regions themselves.

At the core, this is a perfectly adequate, even pretty good, book on wine, and for a relatively small book it's actually pretty comprehensive. But rather than livening things up and making this complex and intimidating topic more accessible and readable, the gimmick actually detracts. I generally found Peter's comments, often making strained parallels with movies and directors, to be superfluous and annoying, though he does occasionally come through with something amusing or insightful, particularly when addressing some of the more ridiculous aspects of the wine world.

My other problem with this book is that it doesn't really do what it claims to do. Contrary to the subtitle, the book hardly suggests that "anybody" can become a wine expert, nor is the process remotely instant. Peter hardly seems to me to represent the average Joe. First, he actually seems to know a fair amount about wine. Second, a movie critic, trained in the appreciation of another "art", is likely better equipped to grapple with the diversity in the art of winemaking. His training is time-consuming, world-spanning, and phenomenally expensive. After the first few chapters, I decided I was going to start tallying up the cost of the wines they taste, but my enthusiasm ran out before the end. Still, it seems like a minimum of half a dozen times per chapter they are cracking open a $45, $75, or $90+ bottle of wine, and the whole educational process is topped off with a $4,000 bottle of 1992 Screaming Eagle Cabernet (to be fair, this is given to them, not purchased as part of the Peter's education). Becoming a wine expert would be markedly easier if one had the option to taste almost any wine one liked, but that's really not a possibility most folks have.

Rather than demystifying wine, the books seems to revel in the mystique, which is a common flaw of wine books. I'm hardly an expert, by my advice on wine would be considerably more brief: Be adventurous in what you try, remember what you like, particularly the cultivar, and, most importantly, drink what you like.

On top of all that, the book sometimes cries out for an editor. The same thing is often explained repeatedly (we are told that Peter's term form tannic wines is "aggressive" over, and over again, for instance), and strange, irrelevant facts pop up here and there. For example, after learning that Beaujolais nouveau is only meant to last a season or two, Peter compares it to a summer release movie: "Nobody will want to see The 40-Year-Virgin six years after its release in August," he declared, naming the movie that stars Steve Carell that got a lot of attention on its release with the premise that the hero had never had sex until he was forty years old." How on earth is that all relevant? Is there some other movie out there named The 40-Year-Old Virgin that was a weighty classic of cinema, requiring the author to clarify which movie is being referred to? It's not horrible, it's just distracting, and kind of surprising from some one who has been a professional writer for a while. (And yes, to all my regular readers, I realize I am occasionally guilty of the same things. But I don't have an editor. And you're not paying for any of this.) (Although you're always welcome to send me money.)

Anyway, if you are a fan of either Lettie Teague or Peter Travers, you might enjoy this book, as would people with a beginning or intermediate knowledge of wine who are anxious to improve. Readers with a more advanced knowledge of wine will probably want more detail, and possibly less Peter Travers.

You can buy Educating Peter here.

Outlaws of Viticulture

In a fit of horticultural xenophobia seven decades ago, the French, followed by much of Western Europe, decided that they could not trust the free market and people's tastes to choose the best grape cultivars. American cultivars, mostly introduced during the phylloxera crisis of the late 1800's, were now forbidden. Minor vinifera cultivars were strictly controlled. Geographic areas were limited to their own specific selections of the great vinifera wine cultivars. To me it seems crazy, to them I guess it seemed like preserving national treasure. The government ordered the offending vines torn out, and European viticulture was permanently frozen in an idealized state. Or at least that was the idea.

Defying the law, brave bands of rogue viticulturists persisted in their cultivation of the forbidden cultivars. Varieties like 'Jacquez' (also known as 'LeNoir' or 'Blue French'), an old V. aestivalis hybrid from the American South known for its disease resistance, 'Isabella', one of the oldest American cultivars, as well as V. riparia x V. labrusca hybrids like 'Noah' and 'Clinton'.

Now, with emergence of Eastern European viticulture on the European scene, these brave few see a potential ally in their quest to free European viticulture from these shackles.

Winemakers protect outlawed vines: the grapes of wrath (International Herald Tribune)

(This article is a few years old, but I just found it and believe the issue still exists)

Winemaking in Florida

Florida is not an easy place to grow grapes. It's too wet and too hot for most of the standard cultivars, and the spectre of Pierce's disease is an ever present danger. Even the 'Blanc du Bois' vine next my house, bred for Florida, is constantly being devastated by some pest or malady. One way around all these issues, however, is growing muscadine grapes. Muscadines are natives to the American South and cousins of the old familiar grapes, belonging to the species Vitis rotundifolia, and are set apart from the rest of the grape genus by the fact that they have 40 chromosomes, rather than 38. They're also rather distinct in taste and texture, though quite a few people like them for it.

Anyway, my reason for mentioning them is that I just happened across this blog dedicated to them:

Muscadine Musings

I haven't decided whether it merits a place in the sidebar, but there's a fair bit there (including the entire Wikipedia article on muscadines...ugh.)

How King Tut Got So Funky

Apparently it was white wine:

White Wine Turns Up In King Tut's Tomb (USA Today)

Actually, it was white and red wine, but mostly white. The fact that some of it was labeled as coming from a vineyard near Alexandria makes me wonder: Was it 'Muscat of Alexandria'? The cultivar is undoubtedly ancient, and Egyptian, so it's a distinct possibility. I just think it's tremendously cool that through the wonder of vegetative propagation, we can eat virtually the same grapes and drink virtually the same wine as King Tut (okay, probably the wine-making is a little different, but still...) I wonder if there's enough residue to do DNA testing?