Saturday, January 22, 2011
Hyper-Value: A $7.99 Pinot Noir and a $13.99 Napa Cab
It reminds me of the clothes in my closet. I only wear about 20% of the things I own and the rest just sit and wait for an occasion that may never come. This being the case, determining which daily drinkers find a slot in our rotations can be as meaningful as the wines we splurge on.
For me, 2010 was a year where Pinot Noir zipped past Cabernet Sauvignon as the most frequently consumed varietal with Nebbiolo in 3rd place. Since these continue to be popular categories in my house I thought I'd share my thoughts on two wines I picked up at the store yesterday, popped open immediately and enjoyed:
13.9% Alcohol
$7.99 Purchased at The Wine Cellar of Stoneham
A little bashful upon opening, but after just a little time it delivers round candied fruit backed by vanilla. Scores points for revealing a variety of aromas as it evolves. However, it lacks acidity, depth, and length of finish so it's hard to be taken seriously. But as a daily drinker it may deserve consideration in your line-up. At least once.
Picked this one up on an adjacent recommendation in the comments section of Jason's Wine Blog's piece on the 07 Picket Fence Pinot Noir. The tip was for an 08 Beringer California Collection Pinot Noir - I found the 09 Beringer Founder's Estate Pinot Noir and went with it.
Interesting side note: On their website this wine is listed as a Pinot Noir/Syrah blend, although Syrah isn't mentioned anywhere on the label. Very interesting to see this especially considering Syrah is the steroids of Pinot Noir.
Bonus: Beringer donates $1 for each bottle of Founder's Estate sold to charity.
WWP 84/100: Good
2,600 Cases Produced
14.1% Alcohol
Cabernet Sauvignon 76%
Merlot 19%
Cabernet Franc 4%
Petit Verdot 1%
$13.99 at The Wine Cellar of Stoneham
Based on the information on their website RouteStock "crafts wines from the signature varietals grown along the wine routes one travels when visiting the world?s most celebrated wine regions" ... "sourced from family-owned vineyards."
The thing I like about this wine is how its aromas and flavor profile align with what I associate with more expensive Napa Cabernet. As I smell an empty glass I get black currant, rich generous fruit and savory aspects that are extremely appealing. Cinnamon too. Makes me want to refill the glass.
The things separating this wine from one that's more expensive are occasional off notes, a lack of density, and a need to be aged in order for the tannins to soften. But for immediate consumption I think it would fare better than a lot more expensive wines. It's delicious and approachable.
Overall, the combination of the flavor profile with its convivial daily drinker nature make it a slam dunk at $13.99. Well done.
WWP 89/100: Very Good
Question of the Day: What are some hyper-value wines you've discovered lately?
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LauncherPro for Android hands-on: it works, but it won't wow you
The most popular home screen and 'app drawer' replacement app for Android is LauncherPro -- but I'm not sure why.I mean, sure, it gives you a scrolling dock, and up to seven home screens -- big whoop. Maybe I'm just a bit jaded. I have recently reviewed two very good home screen apps, after all. The truth is, though, except for a nifty scrolling, customizable dock, there's simply no reason to use LauncherPro instead of ADW.Launcher -- and Zeam, which is lighter-weight and easier to use, also has a very nice scrolling dock.
In fact, the only unique feature in LauncherPro costs $3, and you can't even try it out before you buy.
Continue reading LauncherPro for Android hands-on: it works, but it won't wow you
LauncherPro for Android hands-on: it works, but it won't wow you originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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How to Blow and Pour Liquid Smoke [Video]
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AppSumo Supercharge OS X bundle giveaway
Unless, of course, you win our giveaway! We have 10 copies of the excellent AppSumo Supercharge OS X bundle to give away. You can enter the giveaway by simply leaving a comment. Full terms and conditions follow after the break.
Bear in mind, if you really want the bundle, you only have 36 hours left to buy it. You can still enter the giveaway -- and if you win, you can give your license keys to friends and family!
Continue reading AppSumo Supercharge OS X bundle giveaway
AppSumo Supercharge OS X bundle giveaway originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/01/17/appsumo-supercharge-os-x-bundle-giveaway/
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Friday, January 21, 2011
Untangling Lineage: The Gray Market of the Wine Industry
With the rise of Groupon, an increase in wine imports into the U.S. and a preponderance of private label wine with mysterious provenance, now is a good time to unravel the backstory of a bottle of wine, Food Network “Unwrapped” style, with, perhaps, more unsavory results and even less understanding.
The Deal is On
It all started innocently enough, as most dabbling’s do: When a Groupon was announced in Indianapolis for a wine web site called Barclay’s Wine (their tagline: “In Vino Veritas”) offering a $75 Groupon credit for a $25 expenditure, well, you might as well have pulled my wallet out of my pocket for me.
Despite having never heard of Barclay’s before, I figured a bet that pays off 2:1 can’t be that bad. They have a very small selection of wine – 50-ish selections from $12.95 to $78.50, with a heavy lean towards imports. In a thought process that I presume is natural for their customers, I became particularly interested in Barclay’s offerings of more expensive wines – a chance to experiment with aged “Super Tuscan’s,” Barolo’s and Rioja’s. Library wines? From a 2:1 credit? Yes, please. It’s like gambling with house money, the smart way to go, or so I thought.
I had never heard of most of the wines on offer, which is not unusual for me with international wines, nor for legions of other wine enthusiasts. I pressed on. I purchased a 1996 Gran Vino Enologica Rioja designated as a “Gran Reserva.” Typically only designated in the best vintages, of which 1996, according to most, was a good, but not great year, Gran Reserva’s are the highest designation for Spanish wines and must be aged a minimum of two years in oak and three years in bottle. This 1996 therefore had about nine years of age from the point in time in which it was ready to release to market. Not bad for $62.50 nor the $25 it actually cost me.
Oh? That’s a surprise
Color me surprised, however, when the wine arrived on my doorstep and the bottle, faux-aged label and the wax and straw adornment were pristine – pristine to the extent that unless the wine was aged in a hermetically sealed box absent light there is no way this wine was bottled in late 1998 or early 1999, particularly so because the bottle itself was incredibly light, the kind that would be from an “Eco” series from a bottle manufacturer, a recent development to reduce bottle weight.
I opened the bottle – It had a terribly flat nose with whispers of licorice and no other discernible characteristics. The wine was oxidized, the fruit was gone, tannins were very soft, but the acid was integrated. In a word: Disjointed. And, impossible to analyze objectively. Could it be aged? Perhaps, so. Regardless, it was bad.
I looked online for this wine—a practice I’ve become accustomed to doing AFTER trying a wine (and not before) in order to maintain a sense of objectivity.
My sleuthing go-to’s of CellarTracker, Wine-searcher, and Snooth yielded very little information on the wine that wasn’t Barclay’s related. It must be a private label.
But, a private label makes very little sense for an aged Rioja, particularly one with a brand-spanking new label that denotes that my bottle is number 762 of 12,000. What Spanish winery would be sitting on 1000 cases of wine in bottle from a Gran Reserva year nearly fifteen years prior?
The Unraveling
I did a TTB COLA label search and found the label registration from 2004, registered to American Wine Distributors in San Francisco with Keron Lenz as the contact. I contacted Keron, who is, in fact, an independent wine compliance consultant and she deferred me to American Wine Distributors.
The label yielded a couple of bits of investigative information. First, the name of the importer – The Dominion Wine Group. Second, the Rioja authenticity label and, finally, the name of the Spanish winery.
In checking out the importer, their address, via Google maps appears to be a small, non-descript office in Corte Madra, CA. Dennis B. Canning, the only known contact I could find, is listed as having a relationship with American Wine Distributors, one of just a few references online for Canning whose company doesn’t have a web site.
They’re probably an import paperwork business, of which there are many in the wine business, set-up for the sole purpose of legality and making a couple of bucks a case on legal rubber-stamp based importation.
Checking out Rioja certification related to a specific wine proved more difficult, but what I did find out is that the certification labeling on the bottle does represent new Rioja art as of 2008, so this 1996 was certified by Rioja sometime in between ’08 and present.
Finally, I investigated the winery, Bodegas Rioja Santiago, who appears to be a legitimate wine company who is in the business of growing, making and aging wine. Presumably, they sell a handful of labeled wines, and sell-off the rest of their inventory.
Circling back to Barclay’s wine, more investigation yielded that not only is Barclay’s doing Groupons in Indianapolis, but also many other major markets across the country; virtually all of their wines are of the private label nature.
How it Works
Based on educated guesses – here’s how it works: Barclay’s Wine operates in the gray market of the wine world—legal, yes, but also on the fringes of what our traditional understanding of wine provenance is.
Barclay’s, an ecommerce retailer, works with American Wine Distributors (AWD) to source finished, bulk wine from around the world. In this case, AWD already had a label approved and an importer in place to have the wine custom labeled, going through the TTB with compliance as necessary. Strictly a paperwork deal with the importer, the wine comes into American Wine Distributors who distributes to a network of their distributors across the country, ready to drop-ship to consumers via retail partners like Barclay’s.
The wine, at this point is likely very margin rich, meaning that Barclay’s sets retail prices based on what they think the market will bear after paying for the wine costs downstream – purchasing the wine, labeling via AWD, importation fees to an affiliated importer and taxes.
Responsible for demand generation, Barclay’s uses a Groupon offering to generate consumer interest—giving a $75 dollar value for $25 plus shipping means there is still plenty of money to be made on downtrodden wines purchased for pennies per gallon.
Then, insert the rube who thinks he’s buying wine with nearly free money whereby a splurge on a $62.50 bottle of wine is okay when it’s “house” money coupled with the fact that he probably doesn’t have a reference point for a 1996 Rioja Gran Reserva, nor the inclination to check, and it’s game on.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Sadly, however, there are more open-ended questions for me to reconcile:
* Is the supposed ’96 really a ’96?
It’s Impossible to determine without carbon testing, a matter I’m unlikely to pursue.
* How to reconcile the very light bottle?
Was it bottled by the winery and then re-bottled to reduce shipping costs, placed in a vessel that was lighter and less expensive for shipping 1,000 cases? It’s possible, but nearly impossible to find out.
* Is the wine even predominantly Tempranillo or lesser blending grapes?
Because of DO laws and no information on the label, it’s impossible to determine short of lab testing or calling in a Master Sommelier. Tempranillo is an ageable wine, yet, again, the wine wasn’t overtly oaked by presence of tannins. The notes on the site say it’s Tempranillo, but ...
Summary
Despite my sleuthing, the reality is this tale of woe happens every day in the wine world with mostly unchecked by the wine consumer. The gray market is an under-acknowledged, but omnipresent part of the wine trade very similar to the closeout marketplace that allows name brands to end up in the dollar store. Yet, the wine world has the added peculiarity that branding is even more stridently protected while anybody can register another anonymous wine label in a sea of wine labels.
The takeaway for me is that while Barclay’s uses the Latin phrase, “In Vino Veritas” (There is truth in wine) as their slogan, it could just as easily be another Latin phrase, “Caveat Emptor” (Let the buyer beware).
Ed. Note: I’ve purchased two more bottles of the Enologica (continuing a streak of personal idiocy) to ensure I didn’t have an off bottle. Regardless, I have many more questions about this luxury-priced wine than I have answers.
Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/untangling_lineage_the_gray_market_of_the_wine_industry/
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Deal of the Day ? HP Pavilion Elite HPE-570t Core i7-2500 3.4GHz Desktop
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XBMC comes to the new Apple TV, we go hands-on (video)
So you jailbroke your new Apple TV, only to realize that there's not all that much to do at the top of Everest except rest and enjoy your accomplishment, eh? No need to trek back down the hill -- there are a great many minds at work to leverage your new-found power into something truly useful. Like what, you say? Take a gander above. An second-generation Apple TV appeared at our doorstep this weekend with XBMC on board -- decoding our 1080p HD content, complete with hardware acceleration, on Apple's ARM silicon, and with only occasional choppiness.
If your sense of self-entitlement is wondering what took so long, don't. We're told that this isn't a simple port, as the new Apple TV doesn't share much with its older brother, and is an entirely different animal to develop for. The bulk of the work has been done, though, and as you can see in the video above, once you launch XBMC from the new Apple TV it is the same great experience you've come to love. The difference is, this time, the hardware you're running it on costs just $99. This tiny box is finally beginning to feel magical... now, we're just waiting on a simple installer so we can load it up ourselves.
Update: And just like that, the wait is over. If your jailbroken second-gen Apple TV is ready and you have the foggiest idea what "apt-get" does, you can install XBMC right now. Find instructions at our more coverage link below.
Continue reading XBMC comes to the new Apple TV, we go hands-on (video)
XBMC comes to the new Apple TV, we go hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 20:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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No, You Can't Drink From This Cork iPad Case [Ipad Cases]
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Does The Wine Industry Face A ?Luxury Drought??
Does The Wine Industry Face A ‘Luxury Drought’? originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.
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UNITED ONLINE VARIAN SEMICONDUCTOR EQUIPMENT ASSOCIATES Diane Kruger Dido
Samsung Galaxy S 4G for T-Mobile official, details are scant
Continue reading Samsung Galaxy S 4G for T-Mobile official, details are scant
Samsung Galaxy S 4G for T-Mobile official, details are scant originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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