Wine: Are locapours hitting their stride?

Date: Tue, Jul 27, 2010 Wine Tasting Wine Business

The "drink local" movement is gaining steam. When my buddy Jeff Siegel, aka The Wine Curmudgeon, received a press release last week touting a dinner with cookbook author Diana Kennedy to be held next month at the Modern Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, he immediately asked the organizers if Texas or Mexican wines would be among the "carefully selected" wines for the Mexican menu. The museum's chef emailed him that although the menu had not been finalized, Texas wines would be involved.

In April, the Park Hyatt in Washington added a Virginia winery to its Masters of Food and Wine program after I criticized the all-California selection for an event touting regional Mid-Atlantic agriculture. The Lettuce Entertainment restaurant group did the same for a Chesapeake Bay-themed dinner at their Wildfire restaurant in Tyson's Corner, scheduled for July 27. Once I inquired about it, they quickly lined up Barboursville Vineyards as a co-sponsor and featured winery for the dinner.

The message is getting some big media play, too. Jon Bonne wrote about "justifying local wine" in the San Francisco Chronicle -- "local" meaning California, of course. And Steve Heimoff, a senior editor and very distinguished wine writer with Wine Enthusiast magazine, recently blogged about a plea from a vintner for wine lovers to support their local wineries to help them through hard times. Of course, Heimoff lives in California wine country, and "local" for him also means California wine, but the message translates. The vintner Heimoff cited was Oded Shakked of Longboard Vineyards, who criticized restaurants for touting their local produce but ignoring local wines.

And that is precisely the message Todd Kliman eloquently espouses in a withering essay posted last week on The Daily Beast. In "The Locavore Wine Hypocrisy," Kliman takes on some of the most famous restaurants in the country for talking a good local game on their menus and not following through on their wine lists.

If these are heady days for the local cheesemaker, butcher, and farmer, they're head-scratching days for the local vintner, who has been largely shut out of the feel-good foodie fad. If the wine lists at the country's most prominent locavore restaurants tell us anything, it's that "what grows together, goes together" - the mantra of the movement - is meant to refer to what's on the plate, not what's in the glass. Local and regional wines are seldom to be found.

Kliman, the food and wine editor of The Washingtonian magazine and author of the new book, The Wild Vine, rips apart the most common excuse for ignoring local wines: that they are too expensive and better values abound from California. Chefs are willing to pay extra for organic eggs from chickens just up the road, he points out. And sommeliers are supposed to align their wine lists with the chef's menu, even if it means a little extra work to suss out the better wines from the area. But many somms seem unwilling to take a chance on local wines that don't seem trendy.

"The idealism of their mission statements notwithstanding, what locavore restaurants are telling us is that quality matters much less than cachet when it comes to assembling a wine list - the perception that a given product is the best, most exquisite example in its class," Kliman writes.

Maybe once local wines gain a little more cachet, the sommeliers will wake up. What's interesting to me, however, is that momentum for local wine is coming from writers -- bloggers, especially -- and consumers, rather than retailers or sommeliers. When I eat out, I want my sommelier to be taking chances and to seek out unusual wines. Even if they come from just up the road.

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Wine Dinner Under the Stars at Del Rio Vineyards

Date: Fri, Jul 23, 2010 Wine Tasting Wine Business

This year marks Del Rio Vineyards' third annual Dinner Under the Stars Wine Dinner. The menu will be prepared by the Jacksonville Inn. The five course meal is sure to be a hit, as each wine has been selected with care to offer the best possible dining experience. Tickets are on sale now and are available online or you can purchase though their Tasting Room.

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The Beautiful Truth

Date: Tue, Jul 20, 2010 Wine Tasting Wine Business

I originally wrote this for my personal blog, but discovered it had value to share with Southern Oregon wine enthusiasts as well. We have many organizations in the Rogue and Umpqua Valley focusing on sustainable food production and education. Chris and I attended the inaugural Farm-to-Fork dinner back in early June and it has been amazing to see that program spread so quickly by selling out multiple dinners each month highlighting local farms and wineries. We also stumbled upon Jeff Weissler of Conscious Wine, headquartered out of Ashland,at the Wine Bloggers' Conference and it has been very fascinating following his "4 principles."

In addition, it is inspiring to see our wineries take action in sustainable agriculture with many having LIVE certified vineyard and winemaking practices, farming biodynamically like Cowhorn Winery, implementing a refillable bottle program like Troon's Trifecta Thursdays, or completing theCarbon Neutral Challengelike Abacela.

The purpose of the post is just to mindfully chose your food and wine, because there are so many great examples of positive change right in our own region.

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Troon Vineyard Introduces New Bottle-Your-Own Program

Date: Wed, Jul 14, 2010 Wine Tasting Wine Business

If you are a regular and thoughtful wine drinker you realize that although wine may be one of the most natural alcoholic beverages, it is not without carbon inputs and emissions. Whether it's the cork versus screw cap debate, or the recently popular keg programs, it makes sense to work towards a clean(er) conscience, both environmentally and economically.

Trifecta is a brand made by Troon Vineyard’s sister company, Applegate Wine Company, to be both earth and pocketbook friendly. The Trifecta wines are sourced from all over Oregon. The current over supply of varietals like Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris, combined with historically high pricing, lead to the first bottling of Trifecta Pinot Noir in 2007. The goal was for the consumer to be able to enjoy a quality glass of Oregon Pinot at a reasonable price in a restaurant. The evolution of this program came in the form of kegs in 2010, which allows for 25 bottles worth of wine to be poured by the glass without the excess packaging, cutting both cost and waste.

It is important to recycle to minimize the amount of trash going into our landfills. But, recycling isn’t the greenest approach, as it does require a significant amount of energy to break down materials which can result in large amounts of pollution. In addition, environmentally friendly products should be financially accessible, and not over priced just because they have an association with being green.

After putting their heads together, Team Troon came up with yet another way for Trifecta to be offered in an eco-friendly fashion – by reusing bottles. Now, every Thursday will be you will be able to reuse your clean wine bottles and refill them straight from the Trifecta dispenser, time and time again. If you’re planning to drink a wine straight away, why waste all of the packaging provided to ensure the wine ages when you could drink it fresh from the source, save money and be green all at the same time?
It is great to see a winery putting the "growler" approach to good use!

Here’s how it works:

Bring in (or purchase one from us) a clean wine bottle, any bottle will do – screw tops are accepted as well.

Use our filling station to refill, label, and cork your used bottle, with your choice of the Trifecta Red Blend, or the Trifecta Pinot Gris.

Your first bottle is $15, every bottle you bring back to refill you can do so for only $10 a bottle.

For more information on Trifecta Thursday’s at Troon please stop by the Tasting Room at 1475 Kubli Rd. in Grants Pass or call 541.846.9900.

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Roseburg Plans Contribution to Wine Institute

Date: Tue, Jul 13, 2010 Wine Tasting Wine Business

Reported by Inka Bajandas of The News-Review:

The city of Roseburg plans to use revenue earned from motel and hotel taxes to invest $100,000 in Umpqua Community College's Southern Oregon Wine Institute, based on discussion at Monday night's Roseburg City Council meeting.

UCC on July 1 asked the city of Roseburg to contribute the money to a capital campaign for the Southern Oregon Wine Institute's Danny Lang Teaching, Learning and Event Center. In response, the Roseburg Economic Development Commission recommended the city set aside $10,000 in economic development funds for each of the next five years for a total of $50,000 for the center.

The remaining $50,000 of the investment would probably be contributed through funds appropriated from the Roseburg Visitors and Convention Commission, said City Manager Eric Swanson. Both contributions come from money raised through hotel and motel taxes, he said.

Lee Paterson, president and director of the UCC foundation board, gave a presentation to the Roseburg City Council Monday evening outlining the viticulture center's economic impact on the city. Paterson, who is also chairman of the capital campaign for the center, said development of Southern Oregon's wine industry is the greatest economic opportunity since the initial rise of the timber industry. And Roseburg will be right at the center of it all, said Dennis O'Neill, UCC foundation board president.

“No city stands to gain as much in this as the city of Roseburg,” he said. “This building will be right in your area.”

City councilors responded favorably to the proposal, agreeing that it would be a worthwhile investment.

“In some ways, it's a small amount of funds that will provide a tremendous amount of benefit to our community,” City Councilor Mike Baker said.



Read more about the Southern Oregon Wine Institutes in my previous post.