Value Alert: 2007 Ruffino Modus

Italian wine - Buy 6 or more bottles and get 50% off shipping with code "grape70"

A couple weeks ago we were discussing a $25 wine Spectator rated 97 points - the 2009 Carlisle Sonoma County Syrah. After appearing in a Wine Spectator Insider email, the wine evaporated from the market as quickly as any I've ever seen. Sometimes it's like that - where a rating comes out of nowhere and the wine has been on the market for a while. Other times the rating has been around for a long time before the wine comes to market. That's been the case with the 2007 Ruffino Modus Toscana.
The $35 Modus received a 96 point rating back in the fall of 2010. There was considerable speculation it might become Wine Spectator's Wine of the Year. (Interesting side note on our Scoop the Spectator contest - the winner recently had a piece of writing published by the magazine - very cool!). The metrics were all there - especially the production level. 7,000 cases of the wine were imported to the US.

The wine ended up with a respectable showing finishing in the Top 25. When a wine has favorable QPR metrics but then ends up not making their Top 100 list it makes me think it didn't show very well when tasted across a wider audience. I liked the 2007 BV Tapestry (93WS/$50) and thought for sure it would make the Top 10. No such luck - it didn't make the Top 100.

The point chasing wine deal hound market hasn't received the 2007 Modus with the kind of enthusiasm the Carlisle garnered. I have a few theories why:

  • The 96 point rating the Modus received kind of came out of nowhere. They've been making the wine since 1997 and the best Spectator rating a prior vintage received was 91. It makes one wonder whether the bottle Suckling tasted got lucky.
  • Speaking of Suckling the rating come out right around the time he was leaving the publication to start his own thing. There was also some conjecture Spectator wouldn't feature the wine favorably to bring attention to a wine he rated.
  • No other major publication rated the wine as highly as Spectator - if they rated it at all. This lack of a second rating reinforced the concerns Spectator's 96 was a fluke. By the way, if the idea of having 2 or more major publications favorably rate a wine appeals to you check out the Wine Blue Book.
  • The wine wasn't on the market when the rating dropped. After a while I kind of forgot about it and I think other deal hounds did too.
  • The Modus is a much higher production wine. Scarcity makes people go a little nutso sometimes and what's more readily available is less precious. Perhaps there's just as much demand for the Modus but there's less supply for the Carlisle so the Carlisle is the hotter wine.
Perhaps there was some intentional delay on the part of the distributor in Massachusetts to sell through the 2006 vintage before releasing the 2007? Of course that didn't stop Costco from trying to leverage the 96 point rating for the 2006 in the mean time. I enjoy shopping at Costco but beware of their shelf talkers - they can get rather shady with them. The rating was crossed out in this shelf talker but the tasting notes were still for the 2007 while Costco has been selling the 2006 the past few months:


A couple weeks ago I tried the 2007 for the first time at the Wine Spectator Grand Tour stop in Boston. I thought it was quite nice but the context of 200 other wines it was hard to say for sure what it would really be like to drink a glass with a meal.

I got a chance to do just that La Famiglia Giorgio in the North End last week. We were in a bit of a hurry so table-top signage was effective in making our decision:


They poured each bottle through an aerating funnel into a decanter. Pretty nice treatment for what the waiter called one of the more expensive bottles. $46 at a restaurant is a very nice price point. And I thought the wine was great.

The wine is 50% Sangiovese, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 25% Merlot. Ruffino positions Modus as "modern interpretations of historical territory". I'll go along with that. Tons of fruit. Not austere at all. Some acidity. Nicely balanced. Call it 90-93 points?

I spotted the 2007 Modus for the first time at Costco in Waltham, MA yesterday. $22.89 (and no tax in MA). There were only 6 bottles in the bin and the cashier said they didn't have any backup:

Update: As 10:00 am Saturday morning Waltham is out of Modus. I hear they have 100 bottles in Danvers.


If you're in the area and interested in buying some it might be worth giving them a call or stopping in. If not there are plenty of retailers in the country that have it for a little more.

Strictly from a numbers perspective - 96 points for a Tuscan red you can buy for $25 vs. 97 points for a California Syrah that's nearly impossible to find at this point makes this Modus a no brainer for the point chaser. And all kidding aside I think it's a really nice wine for around $25.

Related Links:
CellarTracker
Wine-Searcher

Question of the Day: Why do you think the market reacted so differently to the 2007 Modus compared to the 2009 Carlisle?


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/9AQ-Ax3XjMI/value-alert-2007-ruffino-toscana-modus.html

Piper Perabo Poppy Montgomery Portia de Rossi Rachael Leigh Cook

More Wine.com 50% Off Deals (this time excluding Masschusetts)

At least a couple more Wine.com 50% off vouchers are currently active.

One comes from the lesser-known site Bloomspot and offers $30 for $60
Another comes from BuyWithMe and offers $35 for $70

As with other offers Wine.com has run, shipping is not included so keep that in mind when considering the offer.

Also worth noting is the list of excluded states: OK, GA, IN, KY, MD, ME, TN, UT and MA. It appears Massachusetts has been newly added to the list of excluded states which is peculiar because Wine.com can ship to Massachusetts otherwise. They're one of the few (if not the only) national retailer who has secured a Massachusetts retailers license which enables them to ship to Massachusetts residents. All the wine they sell to Massachusetts must be purchased through Massachusetts wholesalers.

The fact that MA is excluded from these offers is therefore interesting and may be related to the Massachusetts ABCC cracking down on alcohol deals. The ABCC is of the opinion that retailers may not use coupons to sell alcohol:

(click to enlarge -or- see the Fines/Misc Information tab on the MA ABCC's site for more information)

Bottom Line: These deals may present an opportunity to snag a nice bottle of wine on the cheap, but make sure to read the fine print before proceeding.


Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/EVIJ2JNumuY/more-winecom-50-off-deals-this-time.html

Laura Prepon Lauren Bush Lauren Conrad Lauren German

The Lost Symbol, Quantum Mechanics and How Randall Grahm helped me Reconcile Biodynamics

By a country mile as the crow flies over a buried cow horn on the vernal equinox, Biodynamics is the subject I’m most interested in amongst a myriad of conversational issues that compete against each other in the wine business.  Yet, I’ve never been able to square with Biodynamics – the benefits or the bunkum – until now.

When Stu Smith of Smith-Madrone winery and author of the blog Biodynamics is a Hoax said in a recent interview, “It’s a fight between religion and science.  There’s no question about it.  The people that are mostly Biodynamic supporters are post-modernist skeptics of science” I paused and took it in.  Yet, I was also confused about the boundary lines that he drew.

We live in a complicated world.  It seems too tidy to draw boxes and say that BioD detractors are pragmatic and progressive in matters of viticulture who resent the piety of Biodynamic practitioners whilst the BioD folks shrug their shoulders when asked how Biodynamics works, eschewing modern day viticultural practice, gazing at a moon chart.

Meanwhile, as we’re noodling on these neat assignments, let’s also throw in secondary dubiousness with Demeter as the arbiter of standards (and depositor of checks), mix in the Biodynamic father Rudolf Steiner as an alleged charlatan and add a dash of societal convention that relies on burden of proof for outcomes. 

With this heady stew, we now have perfect assignments along with swirling sub-issues that force the interplay of capitalism, spirituality, philosophy and science that is nearly impossible to reconcile amongst even the most reasonable people.

Harrumph.

The problem-solver in me needs to transcend partisan Biodynamic views.  The facilitator in me wants to find common ground. 

I want to know the truth about Biodynamics.  Not necessarily THE TRUTH, but my own truth, a personal reconciliation even if it is: “There’s a lot in life we don’t understand and this is one of them.”

I’m okay with living in the space between so long as I’ve assigned value to the black of, “It’s a hoax” and the white of, “It’s religion.”

Why? Because unlike Smith’s assertion, there has to be more to Biodynamics than accepting the use of BioD practices as an article of faith.

Likewise, Biodynamics can’t be debunked as an article of faith, counter to science.  If so, it presumes that the base of our collective human knowledge is at an end point.  We know everything there is to know and so Biodynamics doesn’t fit because it’s not rooted with a base of empirical proof.

So, what if Biodynamics is neither religion nor science, but rather a hybrid of the two that isn’t fully understood?

After all, by its very definition, Biodynamics relates to:  the study of the effects of dynamic processes, such as motion or acceleration, on living organisms.

That’s what I’ve been exploring.  Undoubtedly, it’s not leading me to THE TRUTH, but it is leading me to a truth different than, “science” “hoax” and “religion.”

Katherine Cole’s new book Voodoo Vintners (see review) does an exceptional job of framing Biodynamics in a balanced manner, yet there’s one chapter that I found sticking with me long after finishing the book.

In Chapter Four titled, “Science … or Sci-Fi” Cole explores the emerging scientific realm of quantum mechanics – the idea that our bodies, minds and physical environment are a symbiotic elements of energy that interact and that our consciousness, our thoughts, can impact our world. Specifically, she cites a book called, The Field:  The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe by Lynne McTaggert.

The framework for Cole’s mention is the notion of “intention” in the vineyard.  The idea that, as she notes and deftly discredits in the paragraph, “The belief is that the preparations aren’t merely herbal treatments for plants; they’re carriers of the farmers’ intentions, which have been swirled into them through the powerful act of stirring.  While it isn’t a requirement for Demeter certification, intention is that little bit of witchcraft that separates the most committed practitioners from the unbelievers.”

Yet, what energy forces and “intention” distills down to is not a rejection of science, but an embrace of the most cutting edge of science.

Randall Grahm, the founder of Bonny Doon Vineyard, is quoted from his blog in the book noting, “The world of wine exists in a non-Euclidean space, and certainly partakes of the quantum universe; there are great discontinuities in what we know or imagine we know.”

With that, I made a mental note to pick-up, The Field.

Later, I read Ideal Wine by David Darlington, which covers some of the some topical area with more insight into the scientific quantum mechanics link and Biodynamics, including Steiner’s founding of the philosophical area of anthroposophy, a pre-cursor philosophy to the more scientifically-rooted, legitimized quantum mechanics.

After I purchased The Field, I noted that it had a cover blurb that said, “The author and science featured in The Lost Symbol.”

The Lost Symbol is author Dan Brown’s follow-up after the wildly successful book, The DaVinci Code.

By now I’m deep into the proverbial rabbit’s hole. The Lost Symbol is a mediocre story, but an incredible mix of historical insight, cutting edge new science in quantum mechanics and its relation to modern day man’s role in seeking spirituality.  And, unlike the DaVinci Code that took some liberties with the line between fact and fiction, Brown is quick to point out in the preface of The Lost Symbol that, “All rituals, science, artwork, and monuments in this novel are real.”

And Brown does, in fact, lean on the ideas in The Field and McTaggert’s subsequent book called, The Intention Experiment whilst the cottage industry of “decoding” The Lost Symbol books gives validation to the basis for the ideas presented.

For the two people that have read this far, all of this is pretty heady stuff and not easily explainable, which might partly account for the obfuscation in Biodynamics and wine.  You have to be really, really intellectually curious to spend the time, but here’s where I’m at and here’s my recommendation if you want to follow a similar path:

Biodynamics isn’t about science vs. religion or “post-modernist skeptics of science” as Smith put it.  The entire conversation is wrong.  It IS about science that isn’t fully understood – quantum mechanics.  In fact, there’s a growing body of evidence that science and religion are one and the same.  This may be pseudoscience to some, but, regardless, the wine and Biodynamics conversation needs to be about whether you believe in the cutting edge of science or whether you need empirical proof in the here and now.  Talking about anything else is bloviating with half-truths from ideological positions. 

Further, anybody interested in wine and trying to understand Biodynamics from a wine perspective is wasting their time by reading about Biodynamics through the lense of the agricultural practices.  Don’t spend any time on Nicolas Joly, or Monty Waldin, or any of the leaders in the field.  You’ll never get past the weird preparations and the attempt at the explanation thereof.

Instead, any attempt at understanding Biodynamics needs to come through a view of the emerging science side.  Get a notebook to take notes.  Read The Lost Symbol first.  Then, read a decoding book about The Lost Symbol.  This acts as an accessible introduction to a number of ideas.  Again, the ideas and facts are real, the story is fiction.  From there, read The Field and skim The Intention Experiment.  Then read Voodoo Vintners and Ideal Wine. 

Once this has been completed, fill in the gaps with internet research on Steiner and some of his history with Theosophy and later Anthroposophy and then wade into Google and Amazon.com searching for, “Quantum physics, God, Consciousness.”  Balance all of this with some quick searching on metaphysics to understand the delta and overlap between science, religion and philosophy.

If, after having done this, you haven’t completely confused the shit out of yourself, you’ll have gained a new enlightenment the least of which will be akin to Oliver Wendall Holmes quote, “Once the mind has been stretched by a new idea, it will never again return to its original size.”

As I mentioned earlier, when seeking a truth, I’m okay with “There’s a lot in life we don’t understand and this is one of them” and that’s where I come down on Biodynamics, but the conversation must not be framed in black and white terms.  Everybody around Biodynamics – the proponents and the detractors are operating in the gray and there is no one particular truth, but, and this is a big but, we might not be too far away from a deeper understanding.

A Partial Journey in Exploring Biodynamics:
image

Other stuff to read:
The science behind The Lost Symbol

Quantum Mysticism

Institute of Noetic Sciences

Space photo credit:  Wired.com

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

Naomi Watts Natalie Imbruglia Natalie Portman Natalie Zea

Neptune, cellarmaster

Into the abyss. You might think that’s the metaphorical direction of our country these days, with the economy on the shoals, an earthquake and hurricane rattling the east coast, and the great Steve Jobs retiring. But it’s actually where an Italian sparkling wine maker is storing wine. The NYT had a good story about Piero [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/GuSC/~3/KlAK0OvJrSE/

Leighton Meester Leila Arcieri Lena Headey Leonor Varela

Happens Every Year

I’m not even 40.  Yet, every year (and since the recession more than once a year), I get a stroke of contemplative melancholy that lasts as little as a day and often longer than that.

It’s not depression, nor is it even a crisis in the, “Buy a two-door red car and a pair of hip jeans” kind of way, but, more importantly it’s about, “What the hell am I doing with my life?”

Sometimes it’s precipitated by the absolute inanity of work and office politics – people that would rather look good then be good or the office drone that views the world so narrowly and rigidly through her own rose-colored glasses that she can’t possibly empathize with another’s viewpoint.

I have a rough go of it sometimes with these white knucklers who cling so desperately to a false truth of right or wrong and perceived security.

Then, I go online for some mental respite and I hit the wine blogosphere and see the same goddamn conversation going on (and on…) about scores and points or Parker and suddenly what brings me joy turns into déjà vu all over again.

What this leads me to is a desire to channel my inner Buddhist and chuck the trappings of a material life, head out to a cabin in the woods with a laptop, a stash of wine and a vegetable garden in order to create something new, unique and powerful; something real: a piece of art as I know it, words on figurative paper.  I want to create something that’s not a critique of something or somebody that has already created their own value, nor a piece of work that is dependent on somebody else’s expectations. Something that just…is…

Through this, I think I understand the affinity people feel for natural wine.  In a world in which our inherent truth is a derivative of the expectations others have of us and, by proxy, the expectations we’ve subsumed for our own life, the rootedness, the anchor that we can find is in rejoicing in the simple beauty of something that is principally unadultered, a respite from the hair shirt that is life – wine that is barely shepherded from vine to glass and an idle idyll.

Or, this might be just me.

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/happens_every_year1/

Lorri Bagley Lucy Liu Luján Fernández Magdalena Wróbel