Her wine shop’s mission is simple: She wants patrons to try new wines and find labels they’re not familiar with when they shop at Good Grapes. But to ease customers’ concerns about whether or not they’ll like what’s in her unknown bottles, Lucas has invested $5,000 in a machine that pours eight tastes from the bottle and functions just like a beer tap. On Saturdays, she chills a bubbly, too.

The 2007 Apaltagua Reserva Carmenere. Great to pair with summer grills or to enjoy on the patio.

The treasure I discovered at Good Grapes was the 2007 Apaltagua Reserva Carmenere from the Colchagua Valley in Chile. I was piqued by her description of the wine: “It’s peppery but light,” Lucas said. “It’ll go great with grilled meats this summer.” I was delighted at what I tasted and acknowledged Lucas’s accurate description. “In my opinion, south american wines are the most balanced wines,” Lucas said. “Their fruit, acidity and tannins match equally. One doesn’t overwhelm the other. I’m a big fan of wines from the southern hemisphere.”

I am, too. Especially when the price of the bottle is shockingly low. For $11, you can pick up the 2007 Apaltagua Reserva Carmenere at Good Grapes in Glencoe, or you can find it online at www.wine.com.

Enjoy.

“I don’t think it’s that much harder to make than other varietals; the difficulty is growing it,” Winemaker Andrew Vingiello said. “You have to really know what you’re doing.”

According to the article Pinot Noir Digs In, avaialble at thewinenews.com, Pinot’s thin skin makes it more susceptible to frost and hail damage than other grapes. “If you’re rough in the vineyard or in the winemaking, you may find a way to compensate with another grape,” Vingiello said. ”But not with Pinot.”

Pinot’s growing difficulty coupled with highly-variable growing conditions and climates in California have made it tricky to find the most suitable spot for Pinot Noir. This grape loves cooler climates, which is why it hails in Oregon and is becoming popular in cooler climates in Argentina. And while growers have been disappointed of its performance in Napa, Pinot does well in other regions like the Russian River Valley, Sonoma Coast, Monterrey and Santa Cruz mountains. “With history you inevitably make better wine as you get to understand your vineyards,” Jon Diaz of Vine Hill winery said. But others think that just because you understand Pinot better, you’re not guaranteed a good wine. “We treat pinot like the queen she is. It’s the one varietal you can’t mess with,” Renae Perry of Papapietro Perry Winery said.

One thing that is for sure is that Pinot is growing in popularity -partially from its Sideways fame, but also because it’s a versatile wine by itself and with food. Even though demand has soared, supply can’t keep up, which is why it’s so hard to find reasonably priced Pinot. “You’ll never see Pinot Noir have the commercial success of most other popular wines,” winemaker Brice Jones said. “At least not in terms of volume. We just can’t produce enough to meet a huge commercial market.”

When you’re trying New World Pinot, you’re playing around with a couple of things. First, good Pinot is expensive. Although you can find reasonable Pinot for less than $15, expect to pay at least $30 for a decent bottle. Second, the flavor is going to vary, and it will vary widely. If you like fruit, stick to California wines — particularly from Santa Cruz or the Sonoma Coast. For New World body and Old World taste, look to Oregon. Third, New World Pinots aren’t meant to be cellared like Burgundy. Although you can hang on to them for years, they’re going to be good today.

Traverse City is about just far enough from each major Midwestern city that you need  three days to enjoy your getaway. Think of an excuse you can tell your boss and start planning your itenerary. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Visit Traverse City in autumn when the leaves begin to turn. Image from www.visittraversecity.com.

1. Visit Traverse City in October after Northern Michigan has greeted autumn and the trees are surrenduring to cooler temperatures with changed color. This is one of the most beautiful times to visit, and it’s less touristy than the famed Cherry Festival in July.
2. Get acquainted with downtown Traverse City. “We live downtown and walk everywhere, but parking is possible in the parking deck on Front street across from State theater,” Traverse City resident Sheri Constantin said. From Front street Constantin recommends you visit the downtown shops and restaurants, which vary from gourmet to a modest hot dog shop. Buy your chocolates or visit the patisserie before you head out to taste wine.
3. Drive up the Lelanau and Old Mission peninsula where you will find about 35 wineries. According to the Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau, the area has earned a reputation for its Rieslings, sparkling wines, Chardonnays and fruit wines. Traverse City vintners are beginning to receive praise for their Pinot Noirs and ice wines. Go Chateau Grand Traverse to taste a variety of award-winning Rieslings. Stop by L. Mawby winery to taste their sparkling wines, and make sure you try all of them (this is the winery that got me hooked on Traverse City). And then visit Shady Land Cellars to taste more Riesling and sparkling wine. You can also get your fix of Pinot Noir at Shady Lane. Fill the rest of your tasting tour with wineries that interest your palate. Find a complete listing on  visittraversecity.com.
4. How should you finish your days in Traverse City? According to Constantin, you should be sure to have a drink at the Park Place Hotel rooftop at sunset. Wrap up your daily adventures with a beautiful view and reminisce on how you spent your time earlier in the day.

A three-day weekend can turn into a wine tasting adventure without getting too far from home. If you’re not a Midwesterner, your state’s wine country is nearby. Just find it, and enjoy it.

First held in 1855, the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition is the oldest wine competition in North America. Some industry leaders say it is the most meaningful of the major competitions restricted to solely judging California wines. More than 2,600 wine entries were received from more than 600 wineries at this year’s competition. Sixty-eight professional wine judges awarded 1,895 medals, including 43 Double Gold, 220 Gold, 1,028 Silver and 604 Bronze awards. “The goal of the California State Fair Commercial Wine Program is to recognize the importance of the grape grower, the vineyard manager and the unique agricultural contributions made to a bottle of California wine,” G.M. Pucilowski, California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition chief judge said.

This post will only cover a portion of the ‘best of’ wines from this year’s competition. To see a complete listing of “best of” award winners visit www.thebestofcaliforniawine.com. What’s so wonderful about the wines on this list is that they won’t cost you $100 a bottle and better yet, some won’t even cost you $20.

Line em' up. Tasting wine at the California State Fair.

The Best of Napa – Red award went to Used Automobile Parts 2005 Bordeaux blend. More than half of this wine is Cabernet with almost equal parts Malbec and Petite Verdot, and a small amount of Merlot and Cabernet Franc in the blend. I’m going to be honest: I’ve never heard of this wine, but it’s not nearly as cheesy as I would expect with a name like Used Automobile Parts. It comes from the wine company that brings you Smooking Loon and Pepperwood Grove, and with a ‘best of’ award, it’s probably worth it.

Gloria Ferrer made the ‘best of’ list on a couple of occasions. I have always been a fan of this winery, primarily because I’m a sparkling wine drinker, and Gloria Ferrer, which is in south Sonoma county, makes great sparkling wine. The 2005 Carneros Brut Rose won the Best of – Sonoma White award. The non-vintage Carneros Brut Blanc de Noir and 2005 Carneros Brut Rose both won the Best Sparkling Wine award. Gloria Ferrer isn’t just a sparkling wine house, and their stills – although not on the ‘best of’ list – are worth the buy.

Folie à Deux is an example of winery that understands how to market wine, and their Ménage à Trois label is just about as marketing sexy as it gets in the wine industry. I will refrain from comments on what the name Ménage à Trois must make young twenty-somethings think about as they wine taste their way through Napa because this bottle of wine – where a party of three is better than a party of two – won the Best Specialty White Varietal Blend award. The award went to the 2008 vintage, but I could only find notes for the ’07 blend, which consists of Chardonnay, Muscat and Chenin Blanc. I’m a fan of these types of white blends. They’re interesting and unconventional, and you can buy this wine for less than $10, so why not?

Are you one of those wine drinkers who loves old-world varietals and intense California fruit? You may want to plan your next wine tasting trip to Amador County, an area that’s gaining a reputation for making great warm-weather variety wines. This year’s Best Sangiovese award went to Obscurity Cellars for their 2007 Amador County Sangiovese, and the Best Tempranillo award went to St. Amant Winery for their 2006 Amador County Tempranillo.

Where are the best California Rieslings? According to the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition, there’s a great one from Temecula Valley. North of San Diego and just East of the Pacific Ocean, you’ll find Falkner Winery; their 2007 Temecula Valley Riesling won the Best Riesling award. According to crazyaboutwine.com, the Riesling that comes out of California tends to be softer, fuller, and has more diverse flavors than a typical German Riesling. My rule of thumb is to give it a try if someone else tells you to, and a ‘best of’ accolade is enough in my book.

Experiment with the wine winners from the California State fair. It’s another way to learn about the diverse selection of wine from the Golden State and to better understand its wine-growing regions and the wines they make well. Cheers.

Today, there are 274 MWs worldwide. Nearly two-thirds of them reside in the U.K. (For 30 years, only United Kingdom residents could earn the MW title), but the United States, France and Australia have their fair share as well. “It’s always interesting for me to talk about the Master of Wine process because people talk about how rigorous it is or how expensive it is,” Barbara Philip, Canada’s first female MW said. “I just loved every minute of it, and I think that it’s a great thing to do for someone who’s really curious about wine.”

If it only takes curiosity to motivate an individual in this pursuit, that curiosity has to be deep and relentless. According to the Institute of Masters of Wine Web site, the education leading up to the exam is a self-study program of three or more years. After those years of education (and the money spent to get those years of education), MW pursuits take a four-day exam. The exam has a theory section, which is composed of four three-hour papers. It has a practical section where students taste three twelve-wine blind tastings and assess wines for variety, origin, winemaking, quality and style. If a student passes these sections, they write a ten-thousand word, original study dissertation. “The exam forced me to open my mind to wine,” Philip said. “I had to learn about the business and the wine and the farming, and that absolutely hooked me.”

The public sees MWs as supertasters, but they are also incredibly informed about the entire industry from marketing to viticulture and everything in between. “If you don’t know the state-run distribution system in Scandinavia, you’re screwed,” Phil Bilodeau, a MW candidate and communications director for the Sonoma County Vintners association said in 2006.

“It’s so wide-ranging. You need to have a broad worldwide understanding of viticulture, vinification and business,” Philip said. According to Philip, one of the reasons there are so few MWs is that people are often resistant to learn the other areas of the wine trade. While they may be great tasters, they don’t understand the wine distribution system in China.

The Master of Wine is like the gold medal of the wine industry: It’s only given to a few select professionals, and it takes years and years of practice and study to obtain. The MW title is highly regarded, and it’s reputation is alluring, but it’s not necessary for career success in the wine industry. Rebecca Chapa, a wind educator in San Francisco, doesn’t feel like she needs the MW title anymore to get where she wants to get professionally. “It’s almost not really necessary to have (the credential) anymore,” Chapa said. “But it is that goal.”

View an interview with Barbara Philip, Canada’s first female Master of Wine.

The debate over the cork and screw caps and which is better for a bottle of wine is still raging. The screw cap is gaining traction as more wineries in the United States and abroad using them to bottle wine. For some this is a relief — it’s reducing awkward wine-opening moments such as yanking half the cork out of the neck of the bottle and going in for round two to retrieve the rest. But for others, it’s taking away from a tradition and the ritual of slowly pulling a cork out of a bottle, having an opportunity to look at it, and saying something fancy like, “This cabernet has been breathing well.”

Preferences aside, let’s review what corks and screw caps offer to you when you go out and search for your next bottle of wine.

Has cork run its course as the primary sealer for wine bottles? Image from www.yemmhart.com.

Cork’s biggest blunder is that it corks wine. Nearly 10 percent of all wines are corked or have a musty, flat smell and taste that makes them undrinkable. According to Wine Press Northwest, wine is corked when it’s tainted with TCA (2,4,6-trichloro anisole), a compound that can occur when chlorine comes into contact with wood products. Chlorine is used to bleach cork bark, and if TCA occurs in a cork, it can ruin a wine quickly. Novusvinum.com says winemakers have asked the cork industry for better quality, but the cork industry has been slow to respond, and instead winemakers and wineries are turning to screw caps. “It just makes for bad customer relations when you get a bad bottle of wine,” Joel Tefft, Yakima Valley winemaker said.

Screw caps eliminate corkiness and oxidation. Hogue Cellars completed a 30-month study in 2004 comparing natural and synthetic corks to the screw cap. They found that screw caps hold fruit and maintain freshness more effectively than natural and synthetic corks. “After scientifically researching the effects of two kinds of screw caps, two brands of synthetic corks, and the traditional natural cork, we have come to the conclusion that Stelvin screw caps best preserve the quality of wine in the bottle,” David Forsyth, director of winemaking at Hogue Cellars said. As a result, Hogue began bottling 70 percent of its total production with a screw cap in 2005. Hogue isn’t alone. Bonny Doon Vineyards in Santa Cruz has given up on cork completely, and Plumpjack has been using the screw cap since the late 90s to bottle their high-end reserve Cabernet.

If the screw cap is so superior to the cork, why doesn’t every wine come with one? The biggest argument against the screw cap is its ability to let a wine age.  The cork has a wonderful ability to let the wine breathe, and the screw cap is like a seal — it vaults wine away until it’s opened.

According to novusvinum.com, the majority of wine in the United States is consumed within eight hours of its purchase. If consumers are buying wine to drink it, the industry should give those consumers the highest quality product they can, and that product comes with a screw cap. But I think the industry knows something else, too, which was summed up nicely by a friend of mine. “If I see a bottle with a screw top on it I won’t buy it. It’s my way of boycotting the screw tops. There’s something nostalgic about the cork, not to mention that the screw tops just remind me of wine coolers or Boone’s Farm.”

Perception is everything, and right now, the cork may still have that edge.

The list is divided into sections, covering reds, whites, sparkling wines and rosé, and gives recommendations that vary in price for the wallet conscious and not-so-conscious. And for the overly cost-conscious consumer, they offer a top 20 wines under $40 list. It includes labels like Calera, Hirsch Vineyards and Tablas Creek Vineyards – wines I’ve confidently recommended to friends and family before.

Jon Bonne, the Chronicle’s wine editor wrote that the wines on the top 100 list are all showing their mettle at a time when it’s hard to stand out. “There are more West Coast wineries than ever before – 3,345 in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington state, up over 15 percent in just a year,” Bonne wrote. “The proliferation of new names can be dizzying. And yet the competition is propelling the most talented vintners to do their very best.”

And the best is what Bonne and the San Francisco Chronicle want to capture in their list. Print it out, take it to your favorite wine store, and let it be your guide to new wine.

Why?

Because wine has too many rules. It has etiquette and that etiquette is intimidating for someone who is beginning their relationship with wine. One such rule is that when is poured into your glass, you will swirl it. If you’re a newer wine drinker, you might wonder why you’re being told to do this. That’s a fair question.

“The reason you swirl wine in the glass is to allow it to fall down the sides and create the vapors that you smell and perceive as aromas,” Denver-based restaurant wine consultant and wine journalist Randal Caparoso wrote on wineloverspage.com. “McDonald’s doesn’t recommend this for their coffee; but for wine, it’s tantamount to tasting.”

According to Caparoso, the idea is that if you can smell a wine, you can taste the wine since flavor is pretty much a byproduct of smell.  And a wine’s taste is nuanced from taster to taster and from glass to glass, making swirling a part of everyone’s unique process.

Now, if you’re drinking a glass of wine just to drink it, not to taste it, do you need to swirl? It’s up to you. Pour yourself a glass, and try it. See if you taste different flavors after a swirl. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. Maybe your beer-drinking friends will call you a snob, but you can let them know there’s a legitimate reason for your new custom.

According to NapaNow.com there are approximately 400 wineries in the Napa Valley alone. That’s a lot of wineries to choose from, and they want you to sign on with them. “Wine club members are our best ambassadors throughout the country and often our biggest promoters,” Helene Weiss, hospitality director of Nickel & Nickel said.

If you’re not one of those romantic types who simply tastes a wine and falls in love, you might want a few tips to help you make your big decision.

You need to find wine that you love, and you – and only you – are able to make this decision. Don’t join a wine club because your Lexus-driving neighbor told you to, or the girl wearing the giant Prada sunglasses said a winery is the next ‘it’ place. Join a wine club where the wines please your palate, and you’re delighted by the idea that every couple of months, you’ll have a wine shipment waiting at your door.

Find your palate’s soul mate or group of soul mates (you don’t need to be monogamous when it comes to wine). Ted Bennett founder of Navarro Vineyards gives a simple, solid recommendation. “My advice is to spend some time and find a reviewer that has a similar palate to yours,” Bennett said. “Join a wine club when the person selecting the wine or making the wine shares your palate.” A wine store like Back Room Wines in Napa has a wine club; they also have a 600+ item wine inventory to offer. This is a wine club example where you want to make sure your wine reviewer knows your tongue like the back of their hand.

Get more than just wine when you’re a wine club member. Take a look at what you’re being offered with your wine club membership. Is it just a 15 percent discount on wine? Or does it include free tastings for you and your friends (limit four additional people) four times a year, with a 30 percent discount, invitations to the best events in wine country, and first dibs on wine before it’s released to the public? This comparison is a no brainer. “We want our wine club members to feel like they’re part of our family and be confident that they are getting value for their membership, both in wine selection, pricing and benefits,” Weiss said.

Now, go wine tasting and find the wine club that’s right for you. After all, you have to taste some lemons before you find the perfect match.

1. Pinot Noir from Patagonia. This arid region in Argentina is attracting world-renowned Pinot makers.
2. Torrentes from high-altitude Salta. This white wine grape is a delight; it’s medium-body and viognier-like fruit flavors make it a wonderful white alternative.
3. More Malbec from Mendoza.  A softer, fruitier style of Malbec is all the rage these days.

So, which Argentinean wine trend will you follow?
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