Wine on the iPhone

The Apple iPhone will be out in a few days. Unless you have been hiding under a rock you have probably heard about it. When I am not writing and teaching about wine, I am a Mac software developer. The iPhone will allow you to access an actual fully functional web page from your phone, and this brings up some interesting possibilities.

The games, all except the crossword puzzles, at WineEducation.com will work fine with the phone as is, as will the rest of the site. As a wine and computer guy who is itching to develop for the iPhone the question begs: What would you like to see?

There you are, in a wine situation armed only with your iPhone. Myriad choices assault you. Knowing it is your only hope, you click on your bookmarks, and help arrives in the form of WineEducation.com. You access maps, a glossary with pronunciation key (a real life saver) and if you have already signed up you access a data base with hundreds of my wine reviews.

Have I solved all of the world's mobile wine needs already? Does WineEducation.com contain everything that you will ever need to know?

You can take quizzes, you can play games, you can even watch my videos (on YouTube - once they are available I will put up a link). What else do you want to do with wine on your iPhone?

How about manage your cellar? Applications on the iPhone will be limited in their scope, but this is conceivably something I could create. The only real use I can think of for it is so that you could access your inventory from anywhere, say when you are buying wine.

A wine inventory is only useful when it is accurate. Other than in professional settings I have not seen a lot of people who are willing to run to their computer every time they take a bottle out of their cellar. This simple fact has kept me from devoting my life to creating the perfect cellar software.

So what is your next suggestion? Think outside the box. Drop me a line or leave a comment, and let me know what you want wine wise for your iPhone.

Box o' wine - no really!

I have been advocating screw caps for a few years now. They are not only easy to deal with, but they completely eliminate corked (TCA affected) wines. This nasty taste is all too common to me, but many consumers miss it. Instead, they simply think the wine is not good. Until consumers recognize the need for screw caps, and start accepting them, we will all be subject to the occasional (1 out of 20) tainted bottles.

Screw caps are not the only change we are starting to see in wine packaging. The wine in a box is starting to make an impact on higher quality wines. The concept makes sense - put wine in a collapsable bag that keeps it from being damaged by air. Just as with screw caps, the reputation of wine in a box has been clouded by the cheap wines it has heretofore contained.

New alternatives such as the mini-tank will soon be common. Great for restaurants, this self contained wine bar takes up very little room and it keeps the wine safely preserved under nitrogen. The wine stays fresh and the mini-tank does a great job of marketing the wine just by sitting there. Most importantly the consumer gets a decent glass of wine that is not spoiled.

Spoilage is really what it is all about. For millennia the wine industry has tried to find ways to preserve wine. They were much more successful at hiding the spoilage by adding things like pine tar (which brought us Retsina) or covering up the sour, nasty flavors with a touch of sugar and fruit (today's Sangria).

The clay amphorae served for thousands of years, but it wasn't nearly as effective as wooden barrels. Wine was not placed into barrels for any flavor it might impart, that would happen generations later. Barrels were used because barrels were used for everything. It was simply the shipping container of the day.

Eventually, we would start to see glass bottles. Glass was great, but the perfect closure remained elusive until cork came on the scene only a few hundred years ago. Ironically, it would take just a bit longer to come up with a cork screw.

Finally, an airtight glass container. This allowed wine to actually age for the first time. It was the beginning of modern wine, but it had a few drawbacks. Cork is a natural product, it takes years to grow and it can be of varying quality. Modern techniques helped make cork even more suitable, but it also pointed out the flaw of spoiled corks (contaminated with a substance usually referred to as TCA).

And so now we have wines that are sealed without the danger of being tainted by the cork, but the problem of air remains. A screw top is very convenient to replace, but it does nothing to stop the air in the bottle from ruining the wine.

Nitrogen systems, either huge wine bars or small self contained units like the mini-tanks, are a great answer commercially, but are hardly practical at the home level.

There are various devices that remove some of the air from the bottle, or even spray cans that add nitrogen, but none of these works exceedingly well.

Enter wine in a bag. In theory if you put decent wine in a bag, it will remain decent for some time. In practice the only wines I have ever had from a bag were pretty awful to start with.

Aspen is a great place to visit, and even better to live in, but it is not where one goes looking for quality wines in a box - at least not until they start putting $20+ a bottle wine into bags. And so I will have to wait until I can get to a big city wine store.

Once I do have the opportunity I plan on conducting a blind tasting of the box wines with other bottled wines of the same price range mixed in. I will decant all of the wines into new glass bottles so I can be certain that there is as little prejudice as possible. And then I will report the results here.

I will then try the box wine after it has been open several days vs. the same wine in a bottle with one of those vacuum sealers, and see how much the box helps, if at all. Stay tuned.

A free flowing flood of thoughts during the WIne Classic

So... We got flooded, again. Fans blowing everywhere, and water poring out of light fixtures. Oh my what fun. Of course, this all happens just as I am getting ready for the Aspen Wine Classic.

While I famously no longer exhibit at the Wine Classic, I am exhibiting. Just a block east at my wife's store Stefan Kaelin, I am set up and pouring wine. I am doing a little component tasting, and signing books, so if you are in Aspen, stop on by.

A big part of this wine weekend is dining out, and while I may be missing out on the fun in the tents, I am availing myself of the Aspen restaurant scene.

Last night we enjoyed a little patio dining and a great bottle of wine. The service was wonderful, the food was... well, I am picky.

The wine was a Zinfandel from Howell Mountain. Twenty years ago Ridge Howell Mountain Zin was one of my favorites, but it is long gone.

It is great to see that other producers are starting to rediscover not only the marvelous Howell Mountain appellation, but Zinfandel in general.

The beauty of Zin is the abundance of fruit. The intense jammy flavors without a hint of tannin. At least that is what I like about it.

I recently tried another style of Zin that was it not to my taste. The producer, a younger son of a famous wine family, seems to think that what is missing in most Zinfandels is oak aging.

And so the wine was oaky and a bit tannic. What it was not, was jammy. The fruit was completely overwhelmed by the oak.

A common complaint at least out of this wine writer, is that too many wines taste more or less the same. Big and oaky is not my favorite descriptor for Chardonnay, and it is even less desirable, to my taste, in a Zin.

Save the big and oaky for Cab.

As I sit here writing this I have spread out before me six bottles of wine that have been purposely taken out of balance, to better recognize the components of wine. One of these bottles, and certainly a component of many wines, is oak.

Oak is a wine making flavor, not a flavor of the grape. This would seem obvious enough, and yet counting the number of oaky wines, it seems many prefer the buttery oaky flavors of wine making, over the fruity, tart flavors of the grape.

I think wine should taste like grapes, at least predominately. And not just any grape, the primary grape of the wine. The grape juice flavor of Concord grapes is not what I am after, but rather the complex subtle flavors that each grape variety offers.

Few grape varieties can stand up to the intense flavors of new oak. Fortunately new oak barrels are expensive and so until recently, oak was not too often over used.

Barrel alternatives have changed all that. I am on record of saying that barrel alternatives are not a bad thing, and I am not about to contradict myself here, but it is a matter of judicious use.

Over oak a wine, and it tastes like oak. Do it to a Zin, and I am liable to think it is a sin.

25 Years of Wine Tasting in Aspen

Next week is the 25th annual Food&Wine Classic, here in Aspen. Regular readers will remember that I was locked out after 20 years because I can not afford to buy 3 full page ads in Food & Wine Magazine (on top of the exhibitor fees). In between temper tantrums I remind myself that it is all water under the bridge.

If you are one of the lucky ones that are going to be visiting Aspen, come by Stefan Kaelin's (two blocks east of the Main Tent) where I will be signing books. And make sure to read about how to get the most out of the Wine Classic or any tasting. For the rest of you, let me tell you why you aren't missing a thing.

Sour grapes seem appropriate for Wine Whines, but I would like to think I am rising above that, and presenting a list of what to watch out for to organizers of other events.

First and foremost, the Classic has gotten big, really big, huge in fact. That means many bodies jostling for a taste of wine. This has really changed the user experience from the days when one could actually meet and speak to the winemaker. Now you are lucky to get a few words in with whoever is manning the booth, before being elbowed out of the way.

The grassy knoll. The main tasting area for the Wine Classic is in a series of giant tents, placed in the middle of our downtown rugby field. Grass smells fight with the aroma of people and food, but that is not the worst of it. A sprinkle of rain turns the entire affair into a woodstock-like fight for survival. Elegant, well dressed people taking a spill with wine glass in hand may have its slapstick appeal, but it isn't much fun when it happens to you.

Food has always been a big part of the event, so I don't begrudge those that are cooking in the main tents, even if the smells tend to overwhelm the wine. It is the giant automobiles and airlines exhibits that are in the way. I understand that the demographics at wine tastings are attractive, but it does seem to dilute the space that could be used by more food and wine oriented booths.

There didn't used to be hard liquor either. This has really changed how inebriated people tend to get. For those trying to "get their money's worth" this is an easy opportunity to get much more hammered then they ever could on wine alone.

I miss the old Aspen Wine Classic as it was once called. It may not be possible to go back, but anyone planning a wine event would do well to emulate those early days.

The Classic was once small and personal enough that winemakers and winery owners would come themselves. They would be met at the airport and escorted by volunteers, some of who would even host the winemakers in their homes. The loss of these personal touches, and the zoo that the Classic has become means that we are much less likely to see winemakers or owners, than we are to see the same ole sales representatives.

Finally, the cost has become insane. For both the exhibitors and the participants. It has become a celebration of an elitist lifestyle, rather than the joy of food and wine. This is punctuated by the $1,000 price tag.

And for all that, I miss it terribly.

P.S. I have donated a Aspen Wine School course to the online charity auction. You can search for it, and bid on it here.