Short term wine storage: How warm is too warm?

Weather-wise this past week in Boston has been gorgeous. The high temperatures topped 80F yesterday and I started to get concerned about the boxes of wine I have sitting around that don't fit into my wine fridge. The room where I tend to keep wine got up to 76F yesterday afternoon so I decided to take the wine down to the basement where it's in the low 60Fs.

With quite a bit of wine in-flight across the country as spring shipping season is in full swing I've also been wondering whether those shipments might be exposed to more heat than we'd like.

It got me thinking I might be overreacting a bit.

The wine sitting on a retailer's shelf has, in some cases, been through much worse. Who knows what weather that wine was subject to when it was shipped? And how long as it been sitting on the retailer's shelf in a room that's usually air conditioned but likely hits the mid-70Fs during the warmer months?

And what about my friends who live in warmer climates? Wines stored on the counter spend most of their life in the high 70Fs. How long until those wines are spent?

I know first hand how extreme heat can destroy wine. When we were moving from Arizona to Massachusetts a few years back I had a couple boxes of wine in the $30-$60/bottle range. It wasn't enough to warrant exploring separate climate controlled transport - or so I thought - so I just shipped it with the rest of our household goods. The wine was totally cooked. Some wine seeped out of the corks as I could see on the capsules. The wine tasted lifeless and like stewed vegetables. After popping 2 or 3 spoiled Sterling SVRs (that blew me away at the winery) I was thirsting for anything fresh and clean. Anything!

So, for short term storage, how critical is it to keep wine cool? Here's Wine Spectator's Dr. Vinny weighing in on a similar question:

Is it OK that a bottle of wine was exposed to a temperature of 70-75 degrees for 24 hours? Answer: http://bit.ly/GH5HXo
My take is that I'm comfortable keeping wine in the mid-70Fs for a month or two. But if it's going to be longer than that I'd seek out some way to keep the wine cooler. Especially for nicer bottles that merit mid-term aging. 

Question of the Day: What's your take on this?


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Michael Mondavi really gets wine blogging

While searching for something else this week I came across this random video of an Italian blogger who did a short video interview with Michael Mondavi. Mr. Mondavi’s answer to a simple question about wine bloggers shows he really gets how we fit into the wine conversation. The best part is the last 10 seconds [...]

Michael Mondavi really gets wine blogging originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Winecast/~3/b6jgbhuqev0/

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Australian Wine:  The Once and Future King?

You’ve never heard of Campbell Mattinson:  He’s a young, urbane Australian wine wordsmith who forsakes the academically erudite and plaintive wine writing style of legends past for a muscular writing style that is jocularly loose yet incisive, showing every bit of the wunderkind talent of his global English-language contemporaries, Jamie Goode and Neal Martin.

Likewise, you probably haven’t heard of Mattison’s *new* wine book, Thin Skins: Why the French Hate Australian Wine first published in Australia in 2007 and now just released in America.

Seemingly stillborn upon its October publishing date in the states and updated with a scant epilogue where the author notes, “The headiness described in the early passages of this book is now long gone,” the book formerly offered in situ context on the boom and looming bust of the Australian wine landscape and is now something of an ipso facto think piece on the manifested reality. 

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With recency in absentia as one negative checkmark, Thin Skins as a body of work brooks no favors for itself either.  Even when first published four years ago, it represented a compendium of articles and profile pieces, individually quite good, but collectively never quite transcending its constituent parts, especially one that supports the premise of the title.  And, unlike its subject matter, time has not aged the book into cohesion.

Worse still, brought to the U.S. market by publisher Sterling Epicure, the book is likely supported with little more than the gas it takes a truck to drive a meager allotment of books to an Amazon.com warehouse and the dwindling number of Barnes & Nobles that still populate the landscape, a veritable line item in an editors’ fourth quarter publishing spreadsheet under the header, “wine.”

Thin Skins seems destined for a hastened half-life and quick retreat to the remainder bin at Half-Price Books…it’s an ignoble fate heaped upon by my damnation.

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But, I’ve feinted purposefully, misdirecting by caveat because, despite everything I’ve mentioned having some inherent truth(including the author being very talented), Thin Skins is a wildly entertaining book that delivers on providing a teasing glimpse into a distinctly Aussie viewpoint on the factors that led to the Australian wine boom (Parker points, market forces, greed and drought) and in so doing the author makes three key points worth repeating:

1) The Aussie wine industry, save for its Gallo-like equivalents, is NOT happy about their country’s production being viewed globally as syrupy supermarket plonk

2)  Our U.S. perception IS NOT reality regarding Australian wine; their wine industry has an abundance of refined, terroir-based wines from small vintners

3)  The Aussie wine business will rise again on the international scene (in an entirely different form).

One key takeaway for me from the book is that Australia is remarkably similar to the U.S. 

In the U.S., some reports indicate that 90% of the wine sold is “corporate” wine, the kind found at supermarkets across the country.  However, what IS different is that 90% of our national conversation about wine focuses on the 10% of the wine production that ISN’T in the supermarket i.e. everything non-corporate – the boutique, artisan and interesting.

Yet, when it comes to Australian wine, we don’t continue our conversation about the small and beautiful.  Instead of talking about the superlative, we view their entire country production through the lens of the insipid, the Yellowtail and other critters that cost $6.99 at Safeway.

American wine consumers would be rightfully indignant if the world viewed our wines not as we do, a rich tapestry, but as industrialized plonk from the San Joaquin Valley.

This is where Australian wine is at today—a ‘perception is reality’ mistake of colossal proportions.

While offering an abundance of stories from small producers along the way, Mattison suggests that while it may take time, with Australia having 162 years of winemaking history, the day will come, sooner rather than later, when Australian wine forsakes its near-term reputation and is viewed on the world stage as a wine producing country that can proudly stand next to its New World peers.

I wrote recently that I’ve noticed a slow change in tenor from American influencers regarding Aussie wine, they’re becoming more sympathetic, they’re starting to speak less dismissively and more optimistically and holistically about Australian wine, discussing the merits and great diversity in the land of Oz.

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Recent Symphony IRI sales data bears this out as well.  According to a Shanken NewsDaily report from this week, Australian wine in the $15 - $19.99 category rose 23% in September.  In addition, growth is coming from varietals not named Shiraz (see also syrupy supermarket plonk).  Instead, Semillon, Riesling and Pinot Noir are showing growth.

Still, it’s not the land of milk and honey here in the states for Aussie wine, as it once was.  Overall sales are down by volume and dollars, but as Mattinson alludes the correction in the U.S. market isn’t going to be pretty, but it will be healthy and it’s quite possible that Australia will decrease in overall volume and dollar sales from persistent decline at the low-end for years to come as the high-end grows, but not at a rate to replace what was lost.

The net sum of that doesn’t balance a spreadsheet, but it does balance mindshare.

Pick-up Thin Skins if you want to get turned on to a great wine writer while also enjoying a greater understanding of Australian wine – where it has been and where it’s going—perhaps not as a future King, but definitely not in its current role as court jester.

Campbell Mattinson’s Wine Site:  The Wine Front

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/australian_wine_the_once_and_future_king/

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Columbia Crest Reserve: Cream of the Crop from Washington?s Largest Winery

Columbia Crest, located in Paterson, Washington, has been one of our favorite sources of value wines for many years. Last year, Juan Munoz Oca took over as head winemaker from Ray Einberger. Einberger had been at the helm since 2002 when he took the reins from Doug Gore who had been the winemaker since Columbia [...]

Columbia Crest Reserve: Cream of the Crop from Washington’s Largest Winery was originally posted on Wine Peeps. Wine Peeps - Your link to great QPR wines from Washington State and beyond.

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Social Media Quick Tip: Tag Your Favorite Wine Brands on Facebook

This is old news for some, but if you haven’t explored the status tagging feature (similar to photo tagging) on Facebook, take a few minutes and check it out. Status tagging can help your winery’s Facebook fan page to become more engaging and vibrant.  Facebook users can type the “@” symbol before a Facebook fan [...]

Source: http://familylovewine.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/social-media-quick-tip-tag-your-favorite-wine-brands-on-facebook/

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Do Case Discounts Actually Stifle Wine Purchases?

This question has been on my mind for some time so I thought I'd get it out there for discussion both from consumers and retailers alike.

If you're like me and many of my friends, your cellar is full, you've got more wine than you need and yet you're always in the market for certain specific wines. If a retailer has a wine you're looking for, and that retailer has a pricing model where for example a mixed case is 20% off - what do you do?

Do you put together a 12 bottle case of other wines you know you'll eventually drink? Do you get together with friends to split a mixed case? Or do you consider the whole production a hassle and delay the purchase indefinitely?

Are case discounts actually having the opposite effect they're intended to have?

There are basically three pricing models in stores in this respect: Low, medium, and high case discounts.

  • Low
    On the low side we have operations where the first bottle is offered at the maximum discount. There are no case discounts.
  • Medium
    In the middle is a more moderate 10% - 15% discount for a mixed 12 bottle purchase.
  • High
    At the other end of the spectrum are placed where 25% or even 30% discounts are offered for mixed case purchases of 36 bottles. Typical margin for a retail wine shop is 33% so when a retailer offers a 30% discount it's usually what's required to get the prices down out of the stratosphere.
For both the middle and high discount case purchase models, sale items are typically excluded because offering a wine for 30% off would create a situation where the retailer would sell a product for less than they paid for it. Not that a retailer would like to do this, but it's illegal in Massachusetts. Sale items usually count towards reaching the required quantity of bottles, but they're not discounted below their sale price.

Which model works best for consumers? And which is most effective for retailers?

My reason for writing this is I often find myself not buying from retailers whose model requires hefty case purchases for favorable pricing.

If there's one thing a deal hound hates it's paying more for something than he has to. Even if it's just a few dollars here and there, it's a percentage game because over time the dollars add up.

Some retailers will give you a case discount if you're a regular even if you buy just 2 or 3 bottles. While this sounds good in theory in reality it's annoying to both consumers and retailers. It's annoying to consumers the first time they visit a shop and the employee who typically gives them the discount doesn't ring them up. And it's annoying to retailers because once a customer gets a discount they expect it forever.

What do I Like?

I like a model where I only have to buy what I want, and everything I buy is at the best possible price. I like receiving emails offering specific wines at very aggressive prices that I can pick and choose from, buy what I want, and over time build towards a case purchase. Then, I'll either pick it up at the store or arrange for shipment a couple times a year.

This is different than what I look for when buying, for example, a bicycle. Or tires. I don't buy bicycles or tires often enough to sweat it. I just visit a local shop or two, consider convenience and service, and go with my gut instinct.

But when you're buying wine again and again it pays to think about this stuff. 

Consumers: What do you think? Looking back over the past couple years which models have earned more of your business?

Retailers: What are your thoughts on this? How did you decide to go with the case discount model you're using? And what trends have you seen as you've run specials offering deeper discounts with lower quantity purchases?


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46-years old Glen Garioch 1958 priced at $2,600

An ancient and rare bottle from a limited stock of 336 bottles; it is a unique identity for a 46-year old vintage bottle of Glen Garioch 1958. Among those 336 bottles which were produced in 1958 from an excellent Highland distillery, only 60 of these single malt bottles were released in the UK. Created and [...]

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