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Winemaker TV

So there is going to be a new "Reality Game Show" show called TheWinemakers. The contestants will go through several challenges to produce and market a wine with the winner getting to produce their wine.

Since this is only open to American Citizens I will not be able to try out, but if I did this is what I would do so if one of the contestants steals my idea and wins could you please send me a case of the winning wine.

What type of wine should I make? I think the show is going to take place in and around the Santa Barbara area. Knowing this, I think you need to use a grape that grows well in this region and as anyone who has seen Sideways knows that this area is famous for Pinot Noir. So thinking that most of the other competitors would be coming up with a still wine I would decide to market a sparkling wine.

How to Market this wine? There are a lot of table wines being marketed but not many sparkling wines so I think marketing sparkling wine would be easier than a table wine. I would promote the drink by showing it is not just for celebrations. I would have tag lines like "Not just for New Years Anymore" or "Have New Years Anytime" or Have New Years ______, where the blank would be whatever picture accompanies the ad. It could be, "Have New Years at the Beach" or "Have New Years on Thursday by Yourself" or "Have New Years with Hamburgers". Think of the Absolut Vodka ads. Along with the ad campaign I would like to design a container, that would stand out and can be taken anywhere. I would like a tall thin bottle like the Voga Wine bottle. Also I would like to market the wine in tall thin cans, just like the ones that are so popular for energy drinks. To help promote the wine I would create a new term and society for sparkling wine, Tradaine. This is just like the term Meritage that was created for Bordeaux style blends. If you combine Traditional, as in Traditional Method, with Champagne you get Tradagne. I then changed the spelling so it’s not pronounced Trad-ag-knee and came up with Tradaine. In order to use the term Tradaine, you would have to sign up to the society with proof that you are making sparkling wine in the Traditional method where the second fermentation is in the bottle.

What will I call the wine? The term for Champagne made from Pinot Noir grapes is blanc de noir. Translated into English it is White of Black. So the name of my Tradine for The Winemakers would be called ‘Black’.

So with all of this you get;

Black
Tradine of Santa Barbera

Get a Six Pack of New Years!

Trying to Confuse Things More

I think we need to change the way we look at classifying wine countries. When I took a sommelier class I was told to classify wines as old world and new world. There are a couple reasons I don’t think this works any more. You can’t classify all regions in the same country as the same and you can’t classify all new world or old world countries the same. Should wine from Arizona be considered the same as Napa, or should Wine from China be considered the same as Australian. No, I don’t think so. So in order to confuse the wine industry more we should change the terms for old world and new world and add a new category. Old world wine country should be changed to Classic wine regions. This would include the traditional Bordeaux, Burgundy, Chianti, Rioja, Pfalz, etc. New World countries should be changed to Emerging wine regions, such as China, Arizona, and Canada. The new third classification should be Established wine regions. These are regions that are well known but do not have the history of a Bordeaux. I am thinking of regions like Napa, Australia, and Languedoc. This new classification system would allow us to split a single countries wine regions into classic, established and emerging. In France you would have Burgundy classified as classic, Languedoc as Established and and the Vin de Pays as Emerging. Although there is a problem with this classification, who is put in charge of deciding what is classic, established and emerging? Someone is going to argue that Napa should be classified as Classic. It can be said that Napa is a Classic American wine region, but only an established world wine region. So is it a Classic or Established? I guess it’s up for you to decide.

New Version of that College Game.

Remember that game you played in University, The Centurion. You drink an ounce of beer every minute for 100 minutes without going to the bathroom or spewing. Well there is a new sophisticated mature version of this game it is called The Wine Century Club. Drink 100 different wines made from different grapes and receive a certificate showing you have become a member.

The Wine Century Club has a list of about 200 varietals, so you don’t have to drink Concord Wine for one of the 100....and you don't have to drink them in 100 minutes.

at last count I am at 55. I will keep you posted.

The Return of the Grand Crew

Eight years in the making.
Five Wines from Five Years for Five People.
Three Primary Grapes; Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre.
One Wine Maker.
One Style of Wine.
One Good Night.
It was the Return of the Grand Crew!














and the
V T
E A
R S
T T
I I
C N
A G
L !

OK with the dramatic stuff over, a blind tasting was at hand where the vintage of each wine was to be determined.
The Vintages were; 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2003.

The wine was E. Guigal's Cotes du Rhone















I found the profile of each wine essentially the same well balanced, medium bodied with cherry, blackberry and slight spice. Although each one had a little something different, earthyness in the 1998, dustyness in 1999, pronounced cedar in the 2000, Licorice in the 2001 and herbs in the 2003. Suprisingly the newer vintages were not anymore jammy than the older ones. It was difficult to choose which ones were the older vintages and which ones were the newer vintages. The drinking window on these wines is around five years so I thought the 1998 and the 1999 would show thier age but they didn't and you can see by the results below that the most vintages guessed were 2.

Actual Order	Zep Queen	Composer	Bacon	Dude	Mistress Puffy
1998	2001	2000	2001	1998	Phooa
1999	2000	1998	1999	2000	99 or 00
2001	1998	1999	2000	2003	MothraFuckra
2003	1999	2001	2003	2001	2003
2000	2003	2003	1998	1998	98 or 03

As you can see only The Dude got the 1998.
Captain Bacon & Mistrees puffy got the 1999.
No one got the 2000 or the 2001.
Captain Bacon & Mistress Puffy got the 2003.
So all of us combined couldn't get them correct.

What I think this means is that the wine maker knows how to make consistant and tasty wines.

haphazard conscience 2

I think you get more wine in a bottle with a screwcap otherwise the air gap would be too large and lead to aging the wine quicker. Let's here it for the screwcap!

French wine to get cheaper!

Decanter reports that a new movie is in the works about the Paris Tasting in 1976. You know the tasting where Californian wines beat French wines in a blind tasting and subsequently made all California wine overpriced. The movie is good news if you are a French wine lover. This is because when the movie is released all of the lemmings will ignore french wine and only buy Californian Wine. This will cause a ripple affect increasing all of the problems the French are having trying to sell their wine, which in turn will make the price of French wine drop...You remember what happen to Merlot because of one comment from the last movie.