In the future I believe that Wine (and food in general) and Cars will diverge in two directions: super clean and not. Wine will be Organic/Biodynamic (grown and made with no man made chemicals) or conventionally grown (with chemicals like glyphosate which has been deemed a carcinogen), and cars/vehicles will likewise do the same. Look at the push for green/clean cars that has happened in the last few years.
The negative propaganda about wine runs counter to the "science." An article by NewScientist "Analysis of 85 animals reveal which are best at holding their alcohol" shows mammals have a gene named ADH7 which stimulates enzymes called Dehydrogenase 7 that removes alcohol from our bodies. Now why would ADH7 even be in mammals if we weren't suppose to drink alcohol. Turns out the earliest mammals survived on plants and fruits that had fermented and turned to alcohol and drank so often that evolution created the gene ADH7 to do this. We've even seen birds get into the act drinking alcohol from fruit that has dropped and fermented. They fly like they're drunk. Now I don't back this but it's funny to see.
Is this war on wine and cars about actually helping humanity or is it a form of control? Big brother telling you what to drink and how to move doesn't strike me as wanting to help.
Also with Wine and Cars the buying of both (while we still can) follow similar patterns. Clips by well known financial gurus point out for example which cars wealthy people really buy. Most millionaires drive regular cars like Toyotas, Fords and Subarus while only 8% buy cars like Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc. Much like car buying today, only a few will splurge for high end bottles unless they're bought for investments. A study by the wine conglomerate Constellation identified the group of "Price Driven Consumers" make up 20% (Pareto's law) of wine drinkers and this is growing because of today's economic outlook. But on the flip side you have the Image Seekers at 18% who act like the people that will buy a BMW but live in their mother's basement and can barely put gas in the car.
It is wonder that we live in a time that we can really choose what we drink rather than be told what to consume. Whether we're talking about wine or cars the best choices are the ones that help us improve out daily condition. Cheers and drink well.
]]>When one undergoes the specific practice of wine tasting, especially when deductive tasting, there is a literal reshaping of the brain where you gain superhuman powers! Just like the mythical Ninjas and modern day Daredevil with heightened senses of taste and smell. With daily training your speaking skills will improve also because of the articulation needed to convey the descriptions of wine.
In Spain, an institution called the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language decided to see exactly how intensive wine training materializes in the brain. When one is immersed in various pursuits like music, learning a new language and even playing sports reveals profound brain shape and function changes.
The crew in Spain had 2 groups of people in the study broken into experienced sommeliers and the other group social/non consistent drinkers. Then the fun part began! Blind wine tasting. During the tasting the volunteers were tested by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). There were two whites and two reds, Spanish of course. A gustometer system was used to send specific amounts of wine into the mouths of people during the MRI. All participants got the same amount of wine.
Then the folks were asked to describe the wine including smell, taste and how balanced a wine is. I can already see how the non trained people would be at a great disadvantage. The MRI illustrated that different regions of the brain are accessed depending if you were a sommelier or casual drinker.
The temporal region of the brain controlling tasting and language fired off more for the trained sommeliers than the casual drinkers. Casual drinkers needed more effort to distinguish differences verbally. Sommeliers brains were showing varied patterns when confronted with high complexity versus low complexity wines. Casual drinkers showed no change which mirrored their descriptions.
Non trained tasters spoke of all wines in a similar manner. Sommeliers had a greater ability to analyze the wines by how complex the wine was which proved that the perceptual and cognitive changes were real and exhibited by the test.
While it does take time to get skilled at blind tasting anyone with a willingness to taste wine can benefit from this information. Choose good wine and enjoy. It's good for your brain.
]]>Then Omar did the most honorable thing ever. No he didn't. He fled the country. Son of a diplomat from Pakistan, Omar was privy to various places where his father was stationed like NY, Japan and the Middle East. I'm guessing this is where our good buddy acquired some knowledge about wine. It's said that Omar went to Oxford. I wonder if he was on the Oxford Blind Wine Tasting team? I don't think so.
But he did get married and started name dropping some iconic labels down on his blog and his opinions on daily life. Then around 14 years ago, Khan relocated to New York and started to hypnotize people into thinking he's a wine guru. Omar had actually studied Nuero Linguistic Programming to aid in his lies. He charmed them so much, they ponied up millions.
He secured posh locations, wine education via lectures and wine tastings followed by dinner by a fancy chef. All it cost was $5 grand and Omar would feed and drink you out a few times a year. He did this at Michelin level restaurants and had interesting guest speakers and wine. What's not to love. Maybe that part wasn't so scammy. But I've read that he led discussions closely and I'm sure his studies in hypnotherapy helped with that. I wonder if that's why some people that attended his galas claimed it was the most incredible wine experiences they ever had.
Omar even had a Master of Wine eating out of his hand. Jennifer Simonetti Bryan called him meticulous. I wish she would elaborate. What was he meticulous about? Vintage, taste, vineyard, all of the above? If you can scam a MW the rest of the sheep will follow. This guy even bounced checks during this period.
After one of his wine dinners during the fall '16, one of the attendees was a storied winemaker from Bordeaux, Pierre Lurton. What he says will hold a lot of weight because he's made wine for Cheval Blanc (I hate Sideways) and Premier Cru Superieur Chateau d'Yquem. Lurton "invited" Khan and his group to Bordeaux and took him by the hand around the cellar and vineyards of Chateau Cheval Blanc. Not a lot of people get this treatment at Cheval Blanc. Don't believe me? Show up in Bordeaux and knock on their front door. Good luck.
But you have to hand it to this guy, he weaseled his way into Chateau Petrus, yet another fantastic right bank Bordeaux. Coaxing Olivier Berrouet, el jefe, to let Omar jog around the vineyard and taste. Ballsy. If you saw someone do this you'd probably think, this guy is "fixer" level. After this trip, Khan returned to NY and immediately started business dealings that may not pass muster in an audit, let alone repaying original investors.
Wash and repeat. To the tune of almost $10 million dollars. He does this until 2020 when he's indicted by the DOJ. This fool is now living in Sri Lanka trying to live his best life when he overstayed his visa and deported. Cut to early '24 in February at JFK and we see our main man Omar arrested. It's so crazy that the judge ruling the case said: "You're investing in someone else having dinner?" But he did actually swindle David Sinegal, at least, for $125,000 for wine (asset grade I presume) that he never received. He also left at one one bar tab unpaid at $5 grand, dick.
Choose your wine consultants wisely for 2024. Have a great spring everybody.
RJ
]]>Three days learning from 33 Master Sommeliers or M. S.s for short. We first broke down the elusive and legitimate art of deductive or blind tasting. Humbling is all I can say but my skill did improve. We then finished the first day with a deep dive into Barolo, concentrating on 5 of its major communes then honing down to MGAs (Menzioni Geografiche Aggiuntive). We were able to distinguish the differences in terroir because of soil and sun exposure, etc.
Day 2 was started with deductive Sake tastings. We tasted 8 styles of sake that represented various styles and process methods. I had no idea that some sakes had fruit profiles because of the polishing while other with more polishing exposed more of the center which has most of the amino acids and giving this style of sake a cereal or wheat nature. Then after small group deductive tastings we tasted various sweet wines of the world. South Africa and it’s Constantia started us off and we tasted wines affected with botrytis both aged in stainless steel and in oak barrels. The Furmint from Hungary was delicious as we tasted some Tokaij Anju. Canadian Ice Wines were next and a lovely Beaumes de Venice petit au grains. We even had an Australian sticky which was like drinking syrup.
Day 3 rounded out with the business end of sommeliers and attitudes on wine management and cellar storage. The last tasting was a short beer flight and 5 different spirits which we had to blind taste and correctly call. The best thing for me was seeing exactly what I had yet to learn and I have until April of next year to prep. Wish me luck. Drink well. RJ
]]>You heard that right. People are purposely putting many multiples of bottles in the ocean. A company in California called Ocean Fathoms claims that a bottle of wine stored on the ocean floor for a year tastes better than one aged on land. The claims are that the seafloor temperature, darkness, pressure and gently swaying currents makes it so. Also it makes for a great photo op when an octopus clings to the bottle when retrieving.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Other wineries from other countries are experimenting the same aging system. To this, there have been informal tastings where the sunken ocean wine actually gets the positive nods from skeptics. Wines aged in the ocean have been described as more silky, mellow and even more angular. Since the different aging protocol would involve a separate molecular path than normally aged wine. In my humble opinion if you have the cash, do it. Otherwise stick with the normal stuff, we don’t all have to go into the ocean.
Not all things are strange, take ‘fine wine’. We all think we know what that is but are we too much of the opinion that wines from X are great and others do not rank as well. There is an excellent Master of Wine named Tim Atkin who wrote that, ’Fine wine’ is outdated. He goes on to say that wines normally put in ‘asset’ classes only come from certain places. He goes on to suggest that we “rethink” our idea of a fine wine. Atkin’s wrote: “That’s the problem with the fine wine world as it stands. It’s profoundly conservative: slow to adapt, timid in its judgements, afraid to back emerging superstars or new regions until the “market” has confirmed its opinions.”
The wines Tim spoke of were listed on the Liv-ex’s Power 100 as an example. The wines there and in general are terrible value for the money. With a legit palate you can switch out a left bank fancy pants Bordeaux for a Cab Sauv from Le Rich Reserve in Stellenbosch for much less dough, but you don’t get the bragging points. Second is the fact that most wine is French focused. Like Tim, I adore Bordeaux, the Rhone and Burgundy but France is but a tiny portion of the wine world. I agree with this because there are so many wines to try out. So have a glass of your favorite wine wherever it’s from and see you soon at Wine Republic.
]]>The good weather contributed to a 45% increase in the wine harvest in Champagne, this is almost double from last year’s take because of mildew fungus. This year posses its own unique challenges particularly the cold. Some wine news coming from up north in Canada: Liquor branches in BC, Alberta sue after drink shipments freeze en route from Montreal. You know, isn’t it enough that flights were canceled and driving was nuts but now nature freezes my wine! Usually it’s the trucks that transport wine are usually too warm but now in areas that are prone to cold, distributors claim that transporters use heated trucks to protect bottles. I get it but that will raise prices. But I do want my wine intact and not exploded and frozen in the truck, not to mention cleaning up the glass and frozen vino.
In other news across the pond in Paris, it seems that wine consumption is back. The Vinexpo Paris 2023 and Wine Paris have greater than 100% attendance. Oh yes, I wish I was going to Paris to drink wine. This year’s activities will happen in February, the 13th to the 15th. There will be more than 3000 exhibitors. I’m not big on new year’s resolutions but this year I’ll make an exception and travel more to drink great wine with equally lovely people. And on that note, I wish to be imbibing with more people in my immediate area as well. Love to all that read this and have a happy and safe new year. Cheers.
]]>The Lançon family, owners of Domaine de la Solitude, descend directly from the 12th Century Barberini family of Rome. The best known of the family, Maffeo Barberini, was a papal nuncio, or diplomatic representative, in Paris from 1604 to 1606, and was made Pope in Rome under the name Pope Urban VIII.
Two of his nephews became cardinals and a part of the family then settled down in Avignon. In the 1980s, brothers Michel and Jean Lançon took the future of Domaine de la Solitude in their hands, focusing attention on the vineyards. Over the past several years, Michel’s son Florent Lançon has taken over the day-to-day operations of Domaine de la Solitude, continuing to make improvements while preserving the traditions of his father and uncle.