http://www.goodgrape.com/images/uploads/A_Fly_on_the_Wall_-_Jon_Rimmerman.pdf
Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass…
American Wine Consumer Coalition
I am excited that Tom Wark - Man of Action - and also the Executive Director of the Specialty Wine Retailers Association, is taking the initiative to build the non-profit consumer wine advocacy group the American Wine Consumer Coalition (AWCC), as preliminarily announced at his blog last month.

I was privy to an early iteration of his business plan and if his ideas for the organization hew closely to his initial vision it will be a rock solid benefit for wine enthusiasts.
My understanding of the nascent AWCC is an organization that represents the voice of wine consumers on a myriad of issues, but will most specifically be linked to consumer shipping rights while also providing an umbrella offering of member benefits for those that live a wine-inclined lifestyle. In doing so, the AWCC addresses three woeful gaps in the wine landscape (my extrapolation not Tom’s):
1) Legacy groups like the American Wine Society have failed to implement technology and the cultivation of a member base under the age of 50 in the age of social networking and have forfeited the opportunities for connectedness that social media offers.
2) Wine social networking sites like Wine 2.0 and the Open Wine Consortium failed to regularly engage a captive audience and died an inert death.
3) Free the Grapes! has been very successful at coalescing a large number of consumers in support of shipping rights, but has largely failed at two key things: Transparency in where the money goes (a 501c(6) trade association doesn’t have to do any financial reporting to donors) and they provide no member benefit. Theirs is the “black box” of wine advocacy.
If the American Wine Consumer Coalition does even a half-hearted job of connecting and engaging with consumers with attendant non-profit transparency, the organization will be successful. Godspeed and cheers to that potential outcome…for the benefit of all wine consumers.
Pulling Punches
Over the last week or so, the wine blogosphere has been revisiting its annual tête-à-tête with the 100-point system. This time the lightening rod is a PR campaign from Hedges Family Estate in Washington called the, “Score Revolution” a sort of public petition against wine scores (and, by proxy, the critics who give the scores).
Folks have decamped to either side of the debate which is all well and good, but for one person whose livelihood has been based on wine criticism for decades, I’d expect a less flaccid (more rigid?) repudiation.
Charlie Olken, the Granddaddy of wine critics with his Connoisseurs Guide to California Wine, has this to say at his blog: “They want us all to abandon wine ratings because they have outlived their usefulness—or, in the case of one winery—because they got crappy scores for their crappy wines.”
Two problems here, folks: First, details make a story interesting. For the casual reader, who are you calling out Charlie? Hedges Family Estate? If so, call your shot. Second, facts are an important element to a story, as well. And, say what you will about Hedges wine, but a search of the Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate and CellarTracker ratings databases doesn’t bear out Charlie’s assertion – the scores that are available on Hedges are all in the solidly “above average, but not great” category.
Charlie’s post, instead of being a skilled defense of scores, actually typifies what’s wrong with a lot of blogs –they’re poorly researched ideological opinions that are barely defensible beyond the sound bite.
Methinks that if you’re going to wade into the court of public opinion then it’s best to name names and back up your opinion with some facts and in Charlie’s case, as an elder statesman, he should be raising the level of discourse instead of playing to the level of his competition.
On the Other Hand
On the positive side of the equation in regards to wine writing, Jon Rimmerman from Garagiste wrote a brilliant and insightful essay on the state of our national political climate. Available by signing up for the daily Garagiste emails, I’ve taken the liberty of creating a PDF of Rimmerman’s essay from Monday, August 8th. This link initiates a PDF download that is well worth the read.
Imitation is the sincerest form of Flattery?
Around the holidays when nearly every wine writer who writes for a masthead heeds the call of the wine pairing article, you might expect some columns to look similar… But, in August not so much…
Color me surprised then when I read Matt Kramer’s column in the current issue of Wine Spectator (August 31, 2011) called, “Keeping Your Cool” about chilling red wines and then I see Ray Isle (also Food & Wine magazines Executive Wine Editor) who wrote a syndicated wine post for CNN’s food section on their web site called, “Chilling with Red Wine.”
I’ll give Isle the benefit of the doubt in regards to lifting the idea straight from Kramer, and assume that it’s a situation of, “Great minds think alike.” However, for goodness sake, with wine, when there are a million things to write about, you might expect a slightly different twist on the same topic when they’re published in the same time window from two notable wine writers.
Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/field_notes_from_a_wine_life_jambalaya_edition/
Salma Hayek Samaire Armstrong Samantha Mathis Samantha Morton
Source: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/napablog/napa-valley-travelers-beware-harvest-is-near/
Shannyn Sossamon Shiri Appleby Sienna Guillory Sienna Miller
Wine Word of the Week: Blanc de blancs was originally posted on Wine Peeps. Wine Peeps - Your link to great QPR wines from Washington State and beyond.
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It weighs in well over five lbs. measures nearly a foot in length and contains over 2500 pages.
Bed time reading? Only if you have the energy to wrestle the massive tome into bed.
While it’s odd to consider such a book in an age where reading the newspaper is quaint, magazines are building their proverbial bridge to cross the digital divide and e-book sales are skyrocketing at the expense of their paper-based brethren, I’m here to encourage you to not only buy a relic of the 20th century, but to buy a used 1980s version before it’s too late; they won’t be available forever.
The Bern’s Steakhouse wine list is the stuff of legend and a worthy addition the wine enthusiasts’ book collection.
Bern’s boasts the largest wine list of any restaurant in the world and not so coincidentally they have the largest private wine cellar in the U.S. A winner of Wine Spectator’s Grand Award every year since the award’s inception in 1981, they have earned their wine bona fides.

The wine list itself has grown in legend comparable to the cellar.
The story goes that as Bern Laxer’s wine cellar and wine list at his eponymous restaurant gained notoriety, the lists intended for patron perusal would frequently go missing by diners who wanted a souvenir of their meal (albeit a very large and unwieldy souvenir). Out the door these wine lists went covered by a dinner jacket or (in)discreetly tucked into a purse or satchel.
To combat the nicking, Proprietor Bern Laxer started publishing the wine list in book form and selling them complete with plenty of personally written wine region overviews, photos from travels and hand drawn maps.
Discontinued in its gargantuan form with the 1994 edition when the updating process became too cumbersome in an already cumbersome process, the handsome, large format leather-look books are entirely charming, comprehensive, personal in authorial style and, dare I say, a must have.

But, to repeat, you need to buy a used, vintage copy.
I only recently purchased my copy from Amazon.com. The 1984 edition came to me in nearly perfect shape for the absurdly reasonable price of $23 plus $4 in shipping and handling. The foldout maps are clever, the prose is folksy and to the point and the unpretentious historical perspective on the regions of the wine world and the great vintages dating to the mid-to-late 1800s is nearly impossible to find in other books.
It’s a tough sell these days to advocate buying a wine reference book. Who has the time to read a doorstop? These books are better used for occasional review and even then it’s better to know where to find the information then to have the book, or so goes conventional wisdom. Where do you even put it? It’s something else to collect dust…
Perhaps that perspective is valid, but there’s a lot to be said for looking at wine books, particularly vintage wine books, as equivalent to snatching up classic greatest hits of musicians in LP form – the recording as the artists intended it, a snapshot of a time and place that is entirely authentic.
You may want to buy a dictionary stand for it (another quaint relic of a bygone time) in order to have it at-hand and handsomely displayed near your wine, and you’ll have to sleuth out used versions on Amazon.com, eBay or your local used bookstore, but I can confirm definitively that having a copy of Bern’s Steakhouse Wine List from the 80s or 90s won’t be the most important wine book you own, but it will become your most treasured.
Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/the_best_door_stop_you_can_buy/
Minka Kelly Minki van der Westhuizen Miranda Kerr Mischa Barton
Portia de Rossi Rachael Leigh Cook Rachel Bilson Rachel Blanchard
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