I can’t recall a time when I’ve gone to see my doctor or dentist and asked them to do free work on me. Same with the guys who service my car. Call me a hopeless traditionalist, but I sincerely believe that anyone who makes a living with a certain skill-set ought to be paid for their expertise. So when I am asked for my “thoughts” on a particular wine or wine label or wine concept, I generally decline. My “thoughts” are all in my reviews, available when published. But other than that, I would expect to be paid as a consultant. Giving away hard-won expertise doesn’t feel right.

Even so, once in a while – like yesterday – I do it. A bottle of wine showed up in my storage locker, with a note attached, asking for such freebie advice. I am not going to divulge anything about it other than to mention that, except for the very pleasant note and a “Press Kit” CD, there was no information provided. I don’t have time to flip through CDs – the internet is faster – so I tasted the... ...
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The eagerly-awaited annual review of Washington wines in the Wine Advocate has arrived, and the blizzard of tweets and Facebook posts indicates a lot of very positive scores. I am going to take a day or two to digest the full report, before weighing in with my own comments. But I couldn’t help but notice that, despite years and years of hearing protests from folks in the wine industry about how consumers rely upon scores to make purchasing decisions, when they should trust their palates, it is those in the industry who trumpet the scores first, longest and loudest. Very few of these posts even mention the verbiage; it’s all about the numbers.

I have described at great length my own feelings about the 100 point scale. In the first edition of my book (Washington Wines & Wineries – the Essential Guide) I even went so far as to re-design the scale along broader, more complex parameters. Based on the feedback I got, I decided to abandon that somewhat quixotic effort in the... ...
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As we say goodbye to August (and in these parts, apparently, what little summer there has been), I’m wondering what else we are saying goodbye to these days?

In our daily lives, we constantly feed upon information that is delivered to us for free. It has become so ubiquitous and ordinary, that it barely deserves comment – unless, like me, you are old enough to remember how things used to be.

Newspapers? Basically free, online. Radio? Basically free, online. Music? Basically free or just about free, online. Books? If you need to actually see one, you visit your about-to-disappear neighborhood bookstore, then order it from Amazon for half the cost. Television? OK, you pay for cable, but only because you need to get high speed internet. You have to wonder, how long can the traditional media keep plugging along, losing money, and giving content away for free? And what happens when it’s gone?

Which brings us to wine. Hmmmm... In Seattle, neighborhood...

I am a founding member of a wine tasting group that has been meeting every month since 1989 (hey – we all started this in the sixth grade). The format is simple and never varies. The host for the month provides a location, stemware, and food. The group decides on a tasting theme, and everyone brings a bottle that fits. The host usually puts in a ringer, and without fail a few other members do the same. We taste the wines blind, one at a time, argue and discuss, make guesses about what they might be, cast votes on which is the ringer, and generally have a good time. Then a quick second round of tasting takes place, during which the bags are pulled and the wines revealed.

This week, in keeping with the late-breaking but lovely Seattle summer weather, the theme was Mediterranean whites. Fourteen different wines were tasted, and as usual, there was considerable disagreement among the group about the merits and flaws of many of them. I should mention that about half of us...

This weekend I received the hardcover copy of my new book. It's the second edition – extensively revised and completely updated – of “Washington Wines & Wineries: the Essential Guide.” It has arrived at the publisher’s warehouse and will begin shipping this week.

Though it has only been three years since the previous edition, it seems more like a decade. Despite all the doom and gloomers, growth in the Washington wine industry has continued at a record pace. Yes, there are some wineries for sale, some cancelled vineyard contracts, and some projects on hold. That is nothing new. I recently reviewed a manuscript that delved into the history of California grape growing and winemaking in the mid-to-late 1800s, and there were the same boom and bust cycles then, some caused by financial meltdowns, some by disease, some by accidents of nature. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Nonetheless, the impression I get from regular meetings with winemakers and...

Everyone has them. The thing that grates, annoys, rankles, sticks in your craw, is a burr under your saddle. Mine is terrior. There’s no such thing as terrior! There are terriers – smart little dogs. And there is terroir – sometimes – an inconveniently French term that is supposed to represent “the murmuring of the earth” or some such notion.

But if you start reading back labels and websites and press releases, you’ll find that in the wine world, it’s terrior that rules. As in this tech sheet for a perfectly fine, inexpensive California pinot noir. I quote:

“This wine was crafted from two different vineyard blocks of Monterey pinot noir and Clarksburg pinot noir. These appellations bring different nuances to the table. The 2008 Clarksburg pinot noir is very fruit forward which is balanced by the terrior driven 2008 Monterey pinot noir.”

Believe me, this is not unusual (what is unusual is how very pleasing the wine is, a rarity in a $12 pinot). I...

Anyone with an interest in the history and development of the American wine industry should have a copy or two of Leon Adams “The Wines of America.” The book went through many printings and several revised editions in the 1970s and early 1980s, and its author exhaustively chronicled the who, what, when and where of American winemaking from Prohibition onward. Though Washington and Oregon get few pages, the timing of Adams’ research was spot on – he was an eyewitness to the birth of the modern era of wine grape growing and wine production in both states.

I quote liberally from the revised second edition of the book, which came out in 1978. Bear with me a moment and you’ll see where this is going.

Page 470: “In 1966, I visited the Yakima Valley and saw several vineyards of such pedigreed varieties as Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. I was amazed to find the wineries were wasting these costly grapes, mixing them with Concord in nondescript port and...

Yesterday I posted notes from the first half of a vertical tasting of Northstar Columbia Valley Merlots, done at the winery with winemaker David ‘Merf’ Merfeld. I made tasting notes as I would for new releases, and just for fun, I scored the wines, based upon how they are presently showing. Later, I went back to my original reviews and scores and compared them. In the notes below, you’ll see two numbers; the first is the score from this recent tasting, and the second is the original score from my initial review. Why the discrepancies? I think it has a lot to do with the way the wines have evolved. Scores for the more recent vintages line up pretty well, but the wines from 2001 – 2003 show a big variation.

Could be that I’ve become more consistent with time. Could also be that, as I’ve often noted, good Washington merlots really hit their prime at about 8 years of age – putting these vintages exactly in the sweet spot.

I also noted percentages of the...

Earlier this week, I sat down with Northstar winemaker David ‘Merf’ Merfeld, and together we tasted through a vertical of Northstar Columbia Valley Merlots. The vintages tasted were 1995 – 2007, missing only the initial (1994) bottling. One wine – the 1998 – was very slightly tainted with TCA; otherwise all were quite sound. The wines were poured from 750’s, and tasted one at a time from oldest to youngest.

I made tasting notes as I would for new releases, and just for fun, I scored the wines, based upon how they are showing presently. Later, I went back to my original reviews and scores and compared them. In some of the notes below, you’ll see two numbers; the first is the score from this tasting, and the second is the original score from my initial review. (I did not review vintages prior to 1998, and seem to have missed 2000). Obviously, many wines seem to have benefited significantly from additional bottle age.

Overall, these wines showed really...

Just for grins, I popped this question up on my Facebook page over the weekend. “Celebrity wine projects – for ‘em, or agin’ ‘em?” Comments were generally not favorable. “Mostly silly” wrote a fellow wine scribe. “If they actually made their wine it would be worth interest,” another friend opined. And this, perhaps the most telling of all: “Who cares whether it is a celebrity project or not, and why on earth would anyone who is serious about wine care? It is about the grapes and the art of the élévage into wine from the grapes, not the celebrity who maybe attached to the project. Celebrity status does nothing for the quality of the grapes…”

I share these sentiments, and perhaps, unfairly, tend to look askance at any wine with a celebrity attached. Most are simply marketing ploys, sometimes very successful, even if exploitive (see Marilyn Merlot). Living celebrities may be offering up their names and images simply for the money, and have nothing to do with the wine....

In an e-mail to bloggers, the organizers of the recently-concluded Walla Walla conference posted this wrap, headlined “How Did Sponsors View WBC10?” The post describes an “official survey” that drew responses from 16 sponsors. In summarizing, they issue a couple of disclaimers:

“In looking at the results, keep in mind a few things. First, these sponsors did not include wineries who participated in the Saturday morning wine country excursions. That event was coordinated by the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance directly and we did not even know which wineries were participating. Second, in dealing with sponsors, we are always trying to balance two things: giving them enough exposure and access to make them happy and not giving them so much that it overwhelms the conference. Remember our number one focus is blogger satisfaction. Third, sponsors have to take some responsibility for their own success. We provide a Sponsor Packet to all sponsors but know not all...

There are many winemakers who are artists, who make wine from the gut more than the lab, and who display a refined sensibility akin to a fine painter. But there are very few visual artists who are winemakers. In the Northwest I can think of only James Frey at Trisaetum winery in Oregon, and Tim Stevens at Stevens winery in Woodinville.

I’ve been drawn to Stevens wines since I first visited the tasting room some years ago. It was not just the dark intensity of the artwork, which adorns the walls of the winery and its labels as well, but also the dark intensity of the red wines. Tim Stevens quickly accomplished what most winemakers cannot do in a lifetime – he established a distinctive and personal style, a stamp that is placed upon all his red wines, that does not interfere with the amplification of site and vintage, but infuses them. I liken it to a great guitar player, who not only has the chops, but the tone. You need to hear just a single note or two to identify...

Sitting in an airport, waiting to board, gives you time to make some odd connections. In this instance, the trail led me from a note about the jailing of Lindsay Lohan, to the recipes for making wine in prison, to a brand new cure for hangovers.

Ms. Lohan, as the world surely knows, has been hauled off to prison for a variety of offenses that include missed court dates, drunk driving charges, and general rowdiness. She will probably be out in just a couple of weeks, and sadly will not have time to gather the necessary essentials to make her own wine. But just in case, I will pass along this link, which may or may not lead to fine wine, but certainly will help her (now in lockdown) pass a pleasant half hour or so just in the reading.

“How to make Wine in Prison” is the title of a long-running string of recipes from prison inmates, posted on the HubPages blog site. It’s a fascinating read, though I hold no aspirations to such arcane craftsmanship myself. The...

One of the grapes widely planted during the 1970s-era expansion of Washington vineyards was chenin blanc. By and large these vineyards went into to most fertile Yakima valley and Columbia basin sites, were heavily watered, and produced large crops. The chenin blancs that resulted were off-dry, fruity and simple, quaffable white wines with no aspirations to the greatness of which the grape is capable.
Chenin blanc from the Loire valley in particular is as versatile as the greatest rieslings. It produces complex, ageworthy wines, in a full spectrum from bone dry to achingly sweet. Honey, flowers, stone and herbal elements combine with the stone fruits that are the core of these wines. Vouvrays have a tangy tension, a lovely dance of sugar and acid, the makes them especially vivid.

Why then can’t Washington chenins rise to such heights? Well, I’m not certain that they can’t. But economics – basically the price that consumers are willing to pay for a bottle of chenin... ...
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A reader in Florida posted a thoughtful comment regarding the electronic version of my book. Here is what he wrote…

“Please, please consider an iPad or Kindle version. Presently the only electronic version available is in Adobe Digital Editions format which in not compatible with any of the portable reading devices. Bought the Adobe version before my last vineyard trip and found that I had to lug my laptop in addition to my iPad. Total waste, I could have just brought the hard copy of the book and saved $28 to boot. That said, great book, I really appreciate your work.??”

I confess I had not done the research on the e-version of my book. It was introduced quite awhile after the print edition was released, and I do not yet own an e-reader, and I was pretty wrapped up in writing the new edition. So things slid. As I pondered what to do I received a follow-up e-mail from the same reader.

“My wife and I just returned from our first trip to Washington.... ...
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