For all its tradition, wine is still evolving...
April 21, 2006
Wine has been around about 8,000 years, so far as we can tell. Granted, that's a long time, but only because our individual lives are so brief. Compared with something like the Pleistocene Epoch, our Wine Era is only a tick or two of the second hand.
For all its elaborate traditions, wine is still a living thing that's in a state of constant change. The "traditional" 750 ml bottle with its cork seal became the standard only after mass-production made it feasible to make so many small bottles in the first place. Depending on who you ask, the Industrial Revolution didn't begin until 1760 and didn't reach its peak until 1850. If you split the difference, you see that what we think of as tradition is probably less than 200 years old.
For the preceding 7,800 years, wine lovers stored their wine in big wood barrels, huge ceramic jars, super-sized glass bottles, or anything else that worked. Whenever I hear people complain about un-classy screwcaps and cheap bag-in-box wines, I picture some 18th century sages sitting around saying, "Sure, cork and glass may be good, but they'll never top the goatskin bag for romance."
Almost Totally Screwed
No, that wasn't the earth moving under your feet last week, just a major Portuguese winery announcing its intention to start selling its wines under screwcap instead of cork. Portugal is the world's largest producer of cork, and for Quinta do Cotto to go all screwy naturally raised issues of patriotism and national pride. As always, however, it comes down to the money. Reuters quoted owner Miguel Champalimaud as saying, "Today a cork is more expensive than a liter of wine. We have become cork salesmen instead of wine sellers," which pretty much sums it up.
On the other side of the world, about half of Australia's recently harvested 2006 vintage will go out with screw caps, and 90% of 2006 New Zealand wines will be cork free and loving it.
"To Go" Wine
Massachusetts wine law is changing with the times, sort of. The legislature has amended the law of the land to allow restaurant diners to take home unfinished bottles of wine. There are, as always, stipulations to this kind of good-sense statute.
First of all, the wine has to be purchased as part of a meal, which the law now defines as "a diversified selection of food which... ordinarily cannot be consumed without the use of tableware and which cannot be conveniently consumed while standing or walking." Does this mean an upscale lamb or beefalo burger wouldn't qualify, or do the curly fries on the side make it diversified?
Furthermore, the bottle has to leave the establishment "in a one-time-use tamper-proof transparent bag that insures that the patron cannot gain access to the bottle while in transit." This is probably the same kind of evidence bag we see the police use on TV shows like "CSI: Wine Investigation Unit."
Drinking & Driving
Since a lot of my family is southern, I understand things about NASCAR that many of my Boston neighbors do not, mainly that it's just a game. After a weekend at the races spent waving flags and acting like insane yahoos, NASCAR fans put on clean clothes and go to work Monday morning just like everybody else, even those shirtless fat guys who paint themselves red and blue for Patriots games.
The wine world is slowly but surely realizing that NASCAR is more than a race: it's a market that can be sold anything, even wine. Bennett Lane Winery in California has been a sponsor since 2003. Indianapolis 500 legend Mario Andretti has his own Napa winery (www.andrettiwinery.com). And according to a press release I received last week, NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon is now selling a $50 Carneros chardonnay to his fans.
It goes without saying that you may drink NASCAR wine, just don't drive as well.
2004 Childress Vineyards "Gianni Vineyard" Sangiovese (about $17, available online at www.childressvineyards.com)NASCAR team owner Richard Childress opened his winery a couple of years ago in Lexington, North Carolina, about halfway between Winston-Salem and Charlotte. My first thought when I heard this news was that it must be some vanity project, the kind of thing outrageously rich people do when they're tired of losing money the old-fashioned way -- until I tasted the wine, especially the first release of this delightfully surprising North Carolina sangiovese.
It comes from a five-acre plot called Gianni Vineyards, owned by Childress' wine partner Greg Johns (Gianni, get it?), and it's real good work. The wine is bright and ruby colored, and it smells rich and peppery. Sangiovese is the main red grape in Chianti, but this version is softer and rounder with less grippy tannin than you might expect. I taste red raspberries, plenty of oak, and lots of creamy vanilla. All these Childress wines are just going to get better and better, but this one deserves a victory lap today.
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