WineDiverGirl made a blog post about wine bloggers and wineries working together. Famous, or infamous, Wine Enthusiast writer Steve Heimoff cut up her thoughts on his blog.

I posted this response on Heimoff’s blog and would like to share it with you:

Steve brings up some good points about the perception of independence and objectivity. As a former CPA I worked with that issue daily. CPA’s doing financial work are supposed to be independent of the clients who are paying them directly. Mostly this works, except at Enron …

A “Going Concern” opinion in a financial statement will often tank a company and the CPA may not get paid. However, we do it when standards require it, except at Enron… I’ve had to fire large clients who tried to hide financial deals from me. Terminating 10% of your annual revenue is a far more important action than a bad wine review.

I believe that bloggers can develop the same integrity that CPA’s do. Like CPA’s, bloggers can dig into the operations as WineDiverGirl suggests. (She works for a winery by the way.) Bloggers need to develop some professional standards to do that but it can work and can have value for the consumers.

Steve is applying standards from wine writing which I support. Steve is not seeing the world from a perspective outside his discipline. Wine blogging can be a very different discipline from wine writing that Steve is invested in.

I have no clue if wine bloggers will make this type of objectivity a goal and achieve it. However, I’m experimenting with such CPA type concepts with my blog.

Last point, are casual wine bloggers or professional wine writers more like the average consumers? I think this matters because I am strongly against the point rating system process and any other kind of evaluation that is out of the context that the average consumer would taste in. Tastes change dramatically with context.

Wine bloggers are the mainstream consumers by definition. Social media is the average consumer rising up to be heard. Few are paid anything and almost all have a net outflow of cash for their efforts. They are widely dispersed culturally and rarely, if ever, review wines in the meaningless sterile environments that the “pros” do. Bloggers ARE the consumer rabble rising up to be heard.

I appreciate Steve’s thoughts and hope he continues with blunt criticism. I enjoy and respect the discourse.

Jim @ WineQuesters.com
The wine tasting road trip lifestyle
California

Santa Rosa in the middle of the Sonoma County wine reginos is at 59% of normal as of November 20, 2008.  San Jose, not far from Gilroy, Santa Cruz Mountains, and Livermore wine regions is at 37% of normal!!  Further south at Salinas in the Monterey wine region with the huge vineyards of the Santa Lucia Highlands and Salinas Valley the rainfall is at 44% of normal.

This is serious yuck!  Grapes need water.  However, one of California’s best vintages for Cab was 1978, the 2nd year of a drought. If anything grows it should be great.

I taste a lot of wine all over California but rarely blog about wine.  All the wine is very good with only subtle differences.  However, sometimes I bump into a winery that crafts their wines differently.  I’m not giving a value judgment or rating but instead a heads-up that you may want to try these for a little taste adventure:

1. Rousanne 06 – slightly sweet with a dry finish.
2. Chardonney 06 – no butter and only a tiny hint of oak but soft and smooth.
3. Valdiquire 06 – heavy on the cranberry with a neutral sweet fruit and soft finish.
4. Pino 06 – strong nose with a little bit at the end of this highly tasteful and aromatic Santa Cruz Mountains wine.
5. Petite Sirah 04 – stronger flavors than most of this varietal.
6. Late Harvest Cab 06 – WOW, this is a serious treat that is only slightly sweet but without a sweet finish.

Cinnabar’s tasting room is in Saratoga, CA and we have it mapped at Santa Cruz Mountains wineries map.

Katya and I enjoy winery picnics with gourmet food, beautiful table settings, and of course the winery’s wine.  I’m thinking, should we publish our next picnic on Wine Questers, Twitter, etc. and see if a few folks want to join us pot luck?

Then the issue is where?  We are surrounded by great winery picnic sites in all directions here in Silicon Valley.  Maybe south into Monterey County?  Hahn as the capacity and the view.  Selecting a site is tough with so many wonderful choices.

- jim

Compared to the fun times we have at other regions’ passport events this Santa Cruz Mountains event sucked.  We’ve experienced better there.  We visited Ridge, Pichetti, Naumann, Savannah-Chanelle, Loma Prieta and Silver Mountain.  Two that were on the passport weren’t open which was an inconvenience.  None had interesting food.  I’m disappointed with my native wine region.

The slight advantage of buying a $40 passport is that you may find a discount here and there and you get to visit mountain wineries that are normally only open by appointment without calling ahead.  However, because some were closed anyway we had to call ahead.  Passport days are more social and that is a benefit but only if you go to the wineries that are normally closed.

The generally remote mountain wineries of the Santa Cruz Mountains ARE worth visiting.  The wines are bold with lots of flavor and aroma.  You can actually taste the Pinots. They aren’t too soft.  The people are often interesting to talk to.  The views can be incredible!  The narrow winding mountain roads are a treat to drive and explore.  The redwood and oak forests are deep and beautiful.

We particularly enjoyed our late afternoon with vintner Jerold O’Brien of Silver Mountain.  This winery is remote but the people are worth the drive.  Jerold is 68, single, fit, and very personable.  We really enjoyed his wines and the interesting after-hours kitchen “tour” with a few other tasters. Definitely going back someday.

For wineries with views to die for try Loma Prieta, Silver Mountain, Burrell School, Ridge, and Byington.  Yesterday the air was clear over the SF Bay Area so the view from Ridge was perfect and the fog burned back from Monterey Bay so the view from the wineries on the west side of the mountains was outstanding!

- jim

I hang out on Twitter with a bunch of wine biz and wine blogger folks.  Late Friday PM I noticed a little post offering two free tickets for the Silver Pass.  What’s that?  I googled it and found that the Silverado Trail wineries have a passport weekend twice a year.  Not many participate but the 18 wineries that do are more than enough for an adventure.

Early Saturday morning 11/8/08 Katya and I met our benefactor at the farmer’s market in Healdsburg and picked up our tickets.  After some photography in the Alexander Valley for our video series we headed down Highway 128 to Calistoga and the wine questing adventures began.

We visited 10 wineries in two days.  All of them offered a limited selection to taste and the small wineries offered only 2 or 3 wines.  Most offered food.  Most of the wineries we visited are open by appointment only.  All had great wine, usually Cabernet. A few highlights:

• Pina (pinya – Spanish)  Winery is a small family-owned winery with a Spanish heritage.  This was our favorite.  They offered a sequential tasting of 2000 to 2006 (barrel) Cabernet’s from the Buckeye Vineyard and it was to die for.  Their wines are expensive but were real Big Reds, not this smoothed out stuff that is in fashion today.  The Cabs had real finish that lasted and the old robust aromas we used to enjoy.  Somehow they accomplished this without the biting tannins of the past.  Their Cabs are art in a bottle and we’ll be back.  Oh, I almost forgot to mention the huge pan of paella that tasters were gorging from.

• Midsummer Cellars is a micro-winery just off Silverado Trail where Highway 128 heads east from the Napa Valley.  They were gracious hosts with fine gourmet food and an incredible carrot cake, backyard ambiance under a 600 year old giant oak, and two Cabs worth your time to investigate.  Don’t pass them up on the next Silver Pass weekend!

• Titus Vineyards is a tiny winery on the Silverado Trail that is by appointment only and had a selection of 5 wines to taste as I recall.  This was a lively and friendly place and we’ll return.

• Athalon hides north of Calistoga and is by appointment only.  They are extra friendly, gourmet munchies, and had several wines to taste, along with a frisky winery cat to entertain us.  Great views of the lava cliffs on Mt. St. Helena.

• Conn Creek is one of the older wineries in the region and is open daily.  What was extra special about this winery for the Silver Pass is that they opened a barrel room display venue for us and we were able to taste Cabs from different vineyards that they source grapes from.  That was both interesting and fun!  They plan on expanding this service and will be remodeling their room in the near future.  Make an appointment in 2009 to taste in this room.

If you are curious we also tasted at Zahtila, Signorella (a favorite for the view!), Judd’s Hill (friendly family-owned), and William Hill which is open daily with good prices and a great view.

- jim

There was a time when you didn’t need to concentrate the aromas of wine to get a good nose full.  Wine aroma was robust.  However, modern wines have a much softer nose.  To the rescue comes Vino Chapeau and their disc. The clear plastic disk sits on top of your glass and blocks the aromas from escaping the glass.  Simple enough and effect.  Pull the disc, insert nose, and get a good sniff.  Simple physics.

We have other discs that are hard and tend to slide off.  The Vino Chapeau disc is pliable and clings to the glass rim.  Yes, it is easy to wash.

They are launching November 15th.

We use ours frequently.  Nice gift, to yourself or other tasters.

- jim

At the start of the Wine Bloggers Conference in Santa Rosa a couple of weeks ago we were treated to a picnic and tasting on a hill in the vineyard.  It was a special time and wonderful to taste wines from grapes grown all around our picnic and tasting site. It was also a reminder that good wines begin in the ground, not the tank.

We tasted the wines of a dozen vintners who source their grapes from Kick Ranch.  Check the Web site for more info.  I think this list is complete, or mostly so:

• Bedrock Wine Company
• Carica Wines
• Enkidu Wines
• Erna Schein
• Loxton Cellars
• Lynmar Winery
• Pax Wine Cellars
• Renard Wines
• Rosenblum Cellars
• Sanglier Cellars
• Silent Morning Cellars
• Shane Wines

Every one was a treat.  For an interesting tasting party try to pick up their Kick Ranch wines and do comparisons. The vineyard owner is interested in hosting events at the ranch.  I’ll notify Wine Questers if he schedules an event.

- jim

I mentioned to the Cameron Hughes guys at the Wine Bloggers Conference that my wife’s birthday was that day (Saturday) and I didn’t have a present.  So they gave me two bottles of their 2006 Cab Sauv.  One from Chalk Hill and the other from a Mt. Veeder vineyard.

This rainy afternoon we are trying them both.  The taste and nose is very different.  We really like both.  We slightly prefer the Chalk Hill.  Just fun to taste the difference between two AVA’s in the same mountains between Russian River and Napa regions.  Both are worth trying and do them together for more fun.  I have no idea what the retail prices are but you can sort that out online.  Costco carries these wines.

Now, what was Katya’s reaction to receiving two free bottles of wine from her husband?  She was excited as always.  They may as well have been diamond rings.  She’s always happy when her hunter-gatherer husband brings home the goodies. 

- jim

Last weekend, October 24th – 26th, we had the first North American Wine Bloggers Conference.  It was held at the classic Flamingo Hotel in Santa Rosa north of San Francisco.  It is a fine hotel and the location in the middle of Sonoma County was perfect.

I expected California bloggers but we had people from all over the Western Hemisphere attend.  The original target of 85 bloggers swelled to 176!  The activities expanded also. My wife Katya joined me for the 3 days but didn’t sign on for the conference.  Still, she was able sneak into some tastings.  You know Russians, they’ll never miss a chance.

Friday afternoon was a tough boot camp.  The tasting schedule was brutal.  Just look at the tasting hell I had to survive!

12:00 noon – Tasting and lunch at the beautiful Kick Vineyard near Santa Rosa.  About 10 wineries that source their grapes at the vineyard presented their wines at shaded tables above the vineyard.  I was careful and didn’t taste at every table.  We could have stayed there the rest of the day.  Incredible picnic spot under huge oaks with BBQ smell and a great view.  However, duty calls.

3:00 – The usual conference welcome thingy back at the Flamingo.

3:30 – Live wine blogging tastings.  This turned out to be wild.  Each vintner had a few minutes to pour and explain their wines for a typical conference table of about 9 people. Then they all rotated to other tables.  Some called it speed dating.  There was a dump bucket in the middle of the table but no one felt brave enough to reach out and use it for spitting so we swallowed.  I think we tried 16 California wines.  A few were live blogging on their computers with WiFi but most of us could barely keep up with notes.

5:15 – Blind tasting.  I skipped and went for food at the hotel restaurant with Katya.  We had tasty gourmet sandwiches at Kick Ranch but I only found time for half of one.  Not enough considering the tastings.

6:00 – The wonderful folks from the Dry Creek Valley wineries hosted a tasting in a hotel suite by the pool.  I lost track of the wines poured.  Katya joined us.  I love Dry Creek Valley wineries and had tasted many of them before but there were surprises.  No convenient spit buckets.

6:30 – Self-paced New Zealand wines tasting.  There must have been 200 bottles on tables around the hall and no chaperons.  I focused (?) on reds.  Katya went for whites.  No convenient spit buckets.  The wines were good but I would like to taste them without the previous tastings.  Never turn down an opportunity to taste New Zealand’s wines!  I moved on to the conference dinner and left Katya with the NZ wines.

8:00 – Dinner at the Flamingo, nice steak and fish, and you guessed it, more wine.  Again the Dry Creek folks carpet bombed the tables with bottles of their wonderful wines.  We were kids in a candy store with all this exploration and discovery.  One dump bucket in the middle of the table was awkward for spitting, so no one did.

10:00 – Belly up in bed like a dead fish.  Katya was already very belly up like a dead fish when I arrived.  Next time we bring our own spittoons.

Not all U.S. participating wineries were from Sonoma County.  Twisted Oak from Murphys / Calaveras County and Clos La Chance from the Gilroy region were there along with others.

Saturday morning we had to leave the conference to shoot photography for our Discover California Wine Country video series that is now in production but returned for the sessions.  The rest of the conference was far less tasting and more discussions and information.  Not everyone recovered from Friday.

The hosts and wineries want us to blog about them which is fair.  I’ll try to cover some of them in a future post.  The PR folks in attendance and our hosts think of bloggers as a type of wine media and expect us to behave remotely similar to old wine media and rate and review.   Most of us have our specialties and ratings and reviews aren’t included.  Everyone is trying to figure out how we work together to bring real value to consumers.  I’m certainly not going to be rating those wines, especially after THAT MUCH.

The support from the hotel and various sponsors such as the Dry Creek and other Sonoma County wineries and biz groups was incredible.  They really went out of their way to make this an exciting conference.  I’m seriously considering hosting the first Wine Questers Convention with those sponsors. Join our conference group if you are interested in this project.  I’ll be posting a possible agenda soon.

- jim