Judging a Wine by it's Cover

If you're like most people, you pick a lot of your wines based on the label. Without cheating, choose the wine you think you'll enjoy the most by the label. Both these wines are excellent, being rated over 90, but one is significantly nicer. I'll reveal the results at a later date. Simply post your vote in the comments section below:

Removable Wine Labels, Wine Makers Take Note!

When you walk into a typical wine store or even a wine superstore, you're often struck by the sheer number of bottles on the shelves. You probably think yourself "where do I start looking!?"

When you find a bottle you like from the jungle of grape juice, you often want to purchase it again, but have since forgotten the name or only remember there's a cute koala or some other recognizable object on the label. If you happen to find your favorite bottle on aisle Q shelf 47, you're presented with several vintages, 2005, 2006, 2007... Which one was it?!?

Introducing the removable wine label... Many collectors and amateur oenophiles steam the labels off their favorite bottles, often matching them beside tasting notes. This would be MUCH easier. Imagine the peel out label you find on over-counter pharmaceuticals (for lack of a better example). I came up with this idea several years ago and I'm surprised it hasn't been implemented in one form or fashion, particularly with so many brands and bottles vying for our palates. This would go a long way in making repeat buyers a reality. Simply peel the label, bring it in to your local wine store and find a friendly clerk to assist you. With larger Brands the makers could even implement a bar code on the inside of the label for easy scanning.

Image courtesy of Labellaughs.com (currently a gag gift, but it doesn't have to be!)

Cheers

The Judgment of Paris! 1976-2006

Several months ago I was listening to NPR's Marketplace Morning Report, a great show. They mentioned the 30th Anniversary of something called the "Judgement of Paris". Let me preface this story by saying I was NOT one of the jackasses calling French fries "freedom fries" during the invasion of Iraq, but I did experience a little "American" pride as I learned more about this competition:

The "Judgment of Paris" was a wine competition in 1976 organized by Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant, in which French judges did blind tasting of top-quality chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon wines from France and California. As you may know the French are very passionate and proud of their wine, which made the French judges faces as red as their Mouton Rothschild when the results were unveiled. The results revealed the California wines rated best in each category, leaving many of the French judges thinking the competition was rigged! According to Wikipedia several judges tried to get their voting cards back. I imagine a judge crumpling up his card, chewing and swallowing to get rid of the evidence...

The French insisted that age is what really made their wines stand out, so the competition was repeated 10 years later in 1986 with the same wines. California came out on top again. 2006 rolls around and another tasting, again California gets top billing. As The Times reported "Despite the French tasters, many of whom had taken part in the original tasting, 'expecting the downfall' of the American vineyards, they had to admit that the harmony of the Californian Cabernets had beaten them again. Judges on both continents gave top honours to a 1971 Ridge Monte Bello Cabernet. Four Californian reds occupied the next placings before the highest-ranked Bordeaux, a 1970 Château Mouton-Rothschild, came in at sixth".

Perhaps if I fall backwards into money I can do a similar tasting with a group of friends... I wonder what palate would say? In the end we really do owe the French. They gave us the Statue of Liberty, but also many of the vines growing in California today were grafted from French vines. We're not unlike the Japanese of the 80's, they took our technology and made it better, we took French bordeaux and did the same. Merci!

Cheers!

A Glass a Day Keeps Dementia Away

A new study out on wine. Purportedly up to three glasses of wine a day cuts your chance of dementia by half. Got wine?

Cheers!