mondosapore

Looking ahead

What will 2010 be like for Italian wine in the US?

Like 2009. Only more so.

Everyone's been hoping for a big rebound in 2010, but early indications are that the market will not snap back to "normal."  Retailers and restaurateurs in New York-New Jersey keep pushing for lower-cost wines; except for holiday gift shopping, the mantra will continue to be "under $20."  

With the weaker dollar, this has important ramifications for producers, importers, customers. 

Producers need to get serious about discounts. I'll go beyond that and recommend they lower their pricing domestically as well. Italian consumers are scraping by these days. Aspirational pricing is no longer feasible, and fashion should follow feasibility. In terms of international competitiveness, Italian producers must lower prices or continue to lose market share to the South Americans. (Talk about an ignominious fate.)

The Grim Discounter

I just got a price list from a Piedmontese producer who assured me that the 20% discount he offered was the best deal he'd offered any US importer. But 7 euros for a Nebbiolo d'Alba reduced to 5.60 -- it's not an attractive price. It would end up on local shelves for, what, $25? I wrote the poor guy back and suggested we start talking at a 30% discount. 

Another Piedmontese producer understood right away, proposing something close to a 50% discount. He's sitting on a lot of wine. Forget dreams of getting rich. These days it's about enough cashflow to pay the bills.

As a consequence, importers have to get very picky. 

How many times have I heard of such-and-such an importer who has an excellent book, but whose wines are too expensive for today's conditions?  And how many times have I heard of the distributors who represent them slashing prices to an extent that undermines the entire market for, say, Brunello? 

May I tell you that it didn't take a genius to see two years ago that the economy was overheated and was going to experience a hard landing? We saw it coming, and we're hardly Paul Krugman. Our mistake was to underestimate the depth of the depression or "Great Recession" -- which was what they called the Great Depression for its first couple of years. We thought $25 would be the cut-off, not $20 or even less, as it is now.

So we, too, have some very good wines that must be discounted for clearance. Whether we reorder from the producers in question is a matter of their realism on pricing. If they remain fixed on their 2007 prices, then ciao ciao, bambini.

Customers -- our customers, the retailers and restaurant guys -- are having their own brand of hard times. All you have to do in New York is look at the exalted restos that offer deeply discounted prix fixe menus, or those which have changed their name, menu and price points to cope with the new reality. One startling example is David Burke's new eatery on the Upper East Side, FishTail. It focuses on seafood and posts prices far less extravagant than its sister restaurant one block south, David Burke's Townhouse.

Plenty of these guys are just scraping by because their clientele no longer has the money or stomach for $100+ bottles at restaurant table or $40 ones at home. They want a nice bottle with dinner, but they're willing to trade down. And in many cases, no doubt, discovering that the bottle costing one-half what they used to pay is really about as good as the expensive one. The inevitable thought will occur: "Why should I go back to spending more than I need to?"

For those of us who haven't received any TARP money, this mentality is going to persist a long long while.

    

  

Stupid Americans in Tuscany

This is how dumb Americans can be --

No, no, let me set this up properly.

A few years ago I met a Tuscan landowner and producer of wine and olive oil (naturalmente). He had a posh agriturismo (let not the name dismay, an agriturismo is a tax dodge). His marketing person had told me that his goal was to get guests to pay to harvest grapes and, later olives. He confirmed this. We laughed. The marketing person then was an American too. "You're gonna make them pay to help you harvest!?" We talked about all those Poles and Romanians who would be jobless if this outlandish idea took hold.

FF to today. The producer and his current marketing person told me that, certo, Americans were paying 100 euros extra to spend 2 days "helping" harvest the grapes. OK, they probably got in the way more than they really helped. Still.

I asked what sort of idiots these people were.

"They're 60 year old people who have never done anything like this, and they were thrilled." 

"Oh, they're the sort of Americans who walk around with a smile all the time and are enthusiastic about everything - even being exploited?"

"Yes!" Then they told me I wasn't a typical American. Jesus, I thought, are we all supposed to be that dumb?

"They're not like you! You're not a real American!" What, they've been Twittering with Sarah Palin?

I wondered where these poor saps could have come from. Besides Ohio. Anybody from Ohio is just so tickled to leave the place. I asked, "Well, what did they get in return?" 

"Well, we gave them lunch."  (!!!)

"What did you give them?"

 "Lots of pasta."

"What else?" Blank looks. "A bottle of oil? Some of your cheapest wine?"

They looked at each other hilariously.

"You cheap bastards!"

They laughed and exclaimed, "They loved it! They thought it was a great privilege!"

I told them that if I ever visited them (and I do like their wines), I would avoid harvest time. If I didn't, I'd pretend I didn't speak English, because I'd be highly tempted to start an uprising of the exploited masses (of senior citz).

En bref, mes amis, that is how stupid Americans are supposed to be. 

Chinese people, your big moment is coming. 

   

Tuscan grape prices fall 50%

As if to validate my occasional screeds about overpriced Italian wines, Roberto Giuliani of Esilazioni Etiliche has published a post relating the "worst conditions in twenty years" for the grape growers and winemakers of Tuscany. One spokesman for a Tuscan property said that he was offered ten euros for a quintale (roughly 220 pounds) of white grapes -- less than the cost of harvesting them. He left them on the vine. (Click on the link above to read the entire piece in Italian.)

This isn't the first I've heard of viticulturalists leaving grapes to rot this year, nor is Tuscany alone in its plight. The market is so weak that even Germany seems to be taking a lot less Italian red wine than usual -- and if the Germans aren't buying there is a crisis indeed. 

The Italian Wine Guy also has written lately about the crazy, unrealistic pricing of so many Italian producers -- one of his periodic screeds on the subject, too.  (Click here for link.) Everybody in the business knows that this is a huge stumbling block.   

89 is not 90: a tale of medium woe

What happens when your wine gets an 89?  

It's like the sound of one hand clapping:  here.

Another dreadful podcast

I am a scemo.*

I intended to post another podcast of Dom & the Somm with Susannah Gold.  Somehow I recorded 'cast 2 over 'cast 1.  Really, I don't know what happened.  Forgive me, Susannah.  You should probably do the sound engineering thing next time. 

Anyway, here's the link to the latest thrilling episode of "Dom without the Somm":  click.

It's short -- 7-8 minutes.  

I tried the video version but the results were hideous to behold.  (Note to self: ALWAYS WEAR THE SHADES.)

 

It's all my fault!

* Halfwit, dummy, dope.

Qualcosa di nuovo

Something new

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the first podcast of a series that Susannah Gold and I are planning to create over the next fews months. 

 Susannah is based here in Manhattan but she lived in Milan as a financial reporter for 12 years, meanwhile discovering a great affinity for all things Italian -- not least of which was the wine.  She studied hard, became a certified sommelier there (and here) and now uses her wine knowledge to act as PR counsel to various branches of the wine trade here and in Italy.

Each in podcast we'll take on a different topic -- this outing devoted to a discussion of organic/biodynamic viticulture and wine-making in Italy, next time (unless we change our minds) one devoted to aging wine, specifically if wine people have made a fetish of older wines.  

We'll plan to publish every two weeks but, then again, it might not quite work out that way.  

Click here to listen to Dom & the Somm 1.  (26:23).  

Buon ascolto!

Poor Kiefer. And other tales of the bartender

I met Erick for dinner at In Vino a couple of weeks ago.  I hardly recognized him because I hadn't seen him in well over a year, and he had grown a "K" at the end of his name, which his mother and I wouldn't have considered for one second.  We discussed serious matters of family, health and money (or lack thereof), and then we talked about our economically productive lives.  Such as they are.

Erick/Eric's real vocation is heading up a neo-punk band called Golden Error.  One of their popular ditties is "Fucking in the Fitting Room."  Whatever you may think of the music (Eric writes the lyrics and...sings), I wholeheartedly wish him success.  My dream is that he will support me in a not-too-abusive nursing home some day.

To keep body and soul together, Eric works in the food-and-beverage-service industry, of late most often as a bartender.  He was at Employees Only on Hudson Street in the West Village after a couple of years.  Now he works at Dark Room on the Lower East Side -- on Ludlow Street just down the block from Katz's Deli!  He has many rollicking tales of the high life in the big city.

Eric says Dark Room is one of those places that is relatively cool on weeknights with lots of LES bohemians and NYU students and less cool but more remunerative on weekends, when the B&Ts (bridge and tunnel crowd) pours in from New Jersey and Long Island.  This group is young, rich and senseless, and they spend money like water.  They're also obnoxious.  Eric told me of one incident where the customer didn't think the bartender (Eric) was moving fast enough on his order. The joint was packed.  The guy started yelling at Eric, "Hey you fucking asshole, where's my fucking drink," etc.  At which point young Mr. Hughes pushes the guy off the stool, then runs round the bar to wale on him sprawled on the floor.  The bouncers toss the guy out and laugh when he screams from the street, "Come out here, you punks," etc., etc.  The guy eventually stumbled away, ears stinging with the sounds of much derisive laughter.

One of my favorite tales concerns Kiefer Sutherland, aka "Jack Bauer" on 24. One night he walked into Employees Only very late, already drunk, and managed to be served a couple of drinks.  He stood up on the bar and sang, then fell off.  The staff told him to go home, but he went outside and was too fuddled to hail a cab.  They took him back inside and, though it was closing time, tried to sober him up a bit.  "Where do you live?"

"I dunno."

Finally they discovered his address.  But he couldn't stand up to go outside and hail the cab, so one of the staff did and took him home in the dawn's early light.  I just hope Kiefer paid him back.

Good times, everybody, good times.  

Let's hear it for lighter bottles

Senselessly heavy, expensive wine bottles are bad business and ecologically irresponsible. 

For a heartening development anent lighter bottles, please check out this post on Muddy Boots:  Click. 

Wine producers in Fantasyland

I was talking with the ubiquitous Giovanni Bertagnolli the other day about the prices Italian wine producers are demanding for their products.  Actually, we were laughing and jeering more than "talking."  The gist:  What's wrong with these people?  Don't they ever get out?  Do they not realize that the world is in a crisis?  And do they really believe China is going to pull them through this severe slump?

There are so many ways in which Italian wine producers are deluded and wrong-headed in their approach to pricing.  Some of them are structural: if you set a price ex-cantina, that's the price you charge a restaurant or wine store too -- someone led me to believe that such is law in Italy. If not law, it's a pervasive custom.  

A lot of it is personal, a pride thing.  Or a desperate desire to claw back some of the immense investments they've made in everything from new vineyards to atmospheric tasting rooms.  Or both.

Anyway, let's imagine a typical exchange with a producer who has her head in the clouds.  (I use a female example only because there are so many good, earnest, ambitious young women making wine these days.  This is not to imply that they're any more unrealistic than their male counterparts.)

*****

"So, Alessandra, this is a nice little red you have here.  Clean.  Good fruit.  Good acidity and balance.  Great with food.  Should be excellent for everyday drinking.  Quanto costa?"

"This is 14 euro."

"Scusa?  How much?"  I nearly drop my glass.

"Quattordici.  Fourteen."  She smiles prettily.  "I use the best Alliers oak barrel."

"I'm glad you don't overuse the barrel.  Otherwise it'd cost even more."

Alessandra's face darkens.  "Good barrels are expensive.  This wine is a good wine!  They pay fourteen in Norway!"

"It is a good wine.  But it's Sangiovese.  From Emilia-Romagna.  To sell in America, it cannot cost me 14 euros a bottle!"

Sulks.  "Why not?  It is biodynamic!"

"It would cost about 60 dollars retail!  Maybe more!  No one would ever buy this wine.  Not one bottle."

She scowls.  "You are making too much!"

I patiently explain exchange rates, shipping, taxes, warehousing, delivery and the wonders of the 3-tier system.  Oh, yes, and the need for markups.  

She ponders.  Calculates in her head.  Sighs tragically.  "I give a discount.  But no one must know!"

"OK.  I'm glad you're getting realistic.  So what's the figure?  Three-fifty?  I could live with four euros.  It is biodynamic."  I smile in an encouraging, you-can-do-it, avuncular way.  

Alessandra steps back from the table.  She folds her arms.  Her eyes glint at me in the semi-darkness of the tasting room.  "Ten.  Not one cent less.  Ten euro.  If you buy five pallet."

I step back from the table, too.  I sidle toward the door.  "Interesting proposition, Alessandra.  Thanks so much for your time.  Let me go back and discuss this with my partners.  I'll' get back to you in a couple of weeks."  Which is me saying, You're nuts, lady.  This is an end-cap wine.  It's really worth 2.50.  And lay off the damn wood!  

 

Sediment? I love it!

I know that some people see sediment in their wine glass and go "eek!"  I know that welcoming sediment in your glass (if not your mouth) is somehow rather old-school. 

Well, what the hell, I'm old-school.  I'm old, so of course I'm old-school.  A couple of my favorite Domenico Selections, er, selections throw quite a lot of sediment.  One is Reale's Cardamone 2006 and the other is Boccella's Rasott Aglianico 2006, which has only recently started to throw a sediment.  ("Son, you are now a man."  A sort of vinous bar-mitzvah, eh.)

So, we have established that I like sediment in me vino.

Here's part of what is written about sediment in the Oxford Companion to Wine:

Sediments in bottled wines are relatively rare, and usually signal a fine wine that has already spent some years in bottle. So unaccustomed have modern wine consumers become to sediment that many (erroneously) view it as a fault. Many winemakers therefore take great pains to ensure, through clarification, stabilization, and filtration, that the great majority of wines made today, and virtually all of those designed to be drunk within their first few years, will remain free of sediment for at least a few years. Wines designed for long periods of bottle ageing, on the other hand, frequently deposit crystals of tartrates, white in white wines and dyed red or black in red wines. Red wines, in addition, deposit some pigmented tannins that are the result of phenolic polymerization. The heavy deposits in bottles of vintage port are a particularly dramatic example of this phenomenon. Winemakers deliberately leave more tartrates and phenolics in wines designed for long ageing in bottle so that they are able to develop the compounds that constitute bouquet. A bottle of wine containing sediment needs special care before serving.

(Gay color emphasis mine.)

OK, I've prejudiced the discussion.  

Still, what is your Position on sediment in your wine?  Inquirin' minds wanna know.

   

Podcast now in mp3 format

I'm concerned that some of you may have experienced some difficulties in accessing the original podcast, which is in .ogg format.  I've converted it to .mp3, so you can play it with zero fuss using iTunes or some other .mp3 player.

The file is a big one, so instead of re-uploading it here, go to Muddy Boots to access it.  Click!

The problem of authenticity

Many thanks to the provocative comments some of you left after my post of April 13.  I'd like to reprint Rachel Black's in its entirety, with some emphases added by the editor (me):

This is a very interesting post. First, yes, I agree with Lynch that the Maremma is very different from the rest of Tuscany in every way. Again, yes, most consumers are too ignorant (as in lack of education) to grasp diversity in wine--it is confusing. If you don't know it, it can't be good, right? There is something essentially human about fearing the unknown, especially when it comes to things we ingest. This is truly the omnivore's dilemma but we have recently reached an extreme where our narrow tastes have seriously harmed biodiversity and cultural diversity more generally. 'Native' grape varieties are a case in point: as you note, this trend is bolstered by wine marketing, and I would argue a great deal of uninspired wine journalism.

Second, the question that interests me most is why it is important to determine origins? There is obviously no answer to at what point a grape can be considered 'autoctono'; however, what is interesting here are the political and economic reasons for trying to determine origins. In the case of Sangiovese, origin myths seem to be attached to ideas of authenticity and, in turn, economic gain based on the popularity of a very modern creation--'Super Tuscan' wines. It really is odd. At the same time, the vitigni autoctoni movement in Italy seems to be a call back to age-old regional diversity and greater local identity in the face of industrial homogenization. Yet, like all calls to arms, this will be a struggle.

Finally, humans have been messing with plant genetics for a very long time. Since vitis vinifera is a favourite, it is one of the plants we have messed with the most. I would argue that genetically origin myths are quite difficult to nail down. We would probably learn a great deal about human movements and settlements around the Mediterranean and of our dependence on wine as a social and economic good. Maybe we could tell something of the ongoing relationship between humans and vines as the two adapted to new social, climatic and economic circumstances.

What is most interesting here is why we search for origins and why diversity is often resisted.    

I love the confluence of "origin myths seem to be attached to ideas of authenticity" with "a great deal of uninspired wine journalism."  And here's why: I am sick to death of all the blathering about "real" and "authentic" and "local" and all the rest of the magic words that seem to characterize the "progressive" wing of wine marketing/writing/fandom these days.  The terms have lost whatever meaning they might have possessed in days of yore.  Or even 2-3 years ago.  

To me this is all of a piece with the holier-than-thou ideology of Zluffud (Slow Food as pronounced in Italian), the monastics of the local-ingredients-let's-eat-more-root-vegetables movement and so on.  

Here's the thing.  The measure of quality in wine is neither its precise chemical metrics nor its mystical qualities as bearer of all traditional agrarian-goodness quiddity.  (Analogous to the simpletonian opposition of "industrial" to biodynamic winemaking.)  Excuse me, but there is a middle ground.  Quite a broad one. And nuanced.  

To me as a wine-drinker and importer, the really important criteria of a wine are in a positive response to these questions: 

Does it have character?  (Is it distinctive and not like a heap of other wines?)

  

Do you want it again -- and again?

Do you want to share it with your friends?

Can you afford to buy it?

Fashionable constructs like "tradition" and "authenticity" and "purity" tend to fall away as irrelevant as you contemplate this approach to appraising wine. 

     

Native grape or interloper?

When does an imported grape become a native grape -- or, as they say in Italy, autoctono (indigenous)?  

In certain wine-producing regions this is no idle question.  These days the rage for indigenous grapes is such that it's easy to acquire a snobbish, narrow-focused attitude toward interlopers like, say, Cabernet Sauvignon or Sauvignon Blanc.  I admit to have succumbed to it from time to time, and I've been sorry.  ("Well, thank you, Mario, but I really don't want a Merlot of all things from this part of the world."  Taste. Re-taste.  Consider.  "God, this Merlot is fantastic!")

In Alto Adige and Friuli, for example, Merlot and Pinot Blanc, to name two varieties, have been present for at least two centuries.  The wines made from those grapes certainly possess a clear regional stamp; you'd never confuse a Pinot Blanc from Alto Adige with one from New Zealand or, indeed, from anywhere in France.

All of this was brought home in a recent article in Wine & Spirits magazine (April 2009).  David Lynch's story, "Bassa Maremma," points out that Sangiovese isn't the right grape for much of this sandy coastal area with its dry, mild climate.  The Morellino di Scansano subvariety has its own DOC, but Lynch quotes enologo Maurizio Castelli as saying, "Sangiovese does not go well in locations near the sea."  Castelli looks to other grapes to give the local wine character -- alicante bouschet, syrah, alicante/grenache and other vitigni introduced by the Spaniards 500 years ago help give the wines of the "deep" or truly coastal Maremma their special Mediterranean character.  (Think about it.  "Mediterranean" and "Chianti" are two concepts that rarely cross paths.)  

Lynch's question distills the problem well:  "Is five centuries of history in an area enough to make the grape variety indigenous?"

He goes on to answer the question by deferral:  

Corrections

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea minima culpa.

It's Good Friday, Lent is winding down, and I must admit my errors of information before my own personal resurrection on Sunday, i.e., my birthday.  Don't ask the number.  Suffice it to say that if you tried to clap through the years, you'd wind up with some nasty blisters.

First, when I walked up to the Vinitaly stand where Nunzio Aurisicchio (Angelarosa) and his wife were on duty, the missus immediately exclaimed, "Why did you call me Matilde?" She was referring to one of my posts. I got her daughter's name right, but somehow managed to understand Matilde for hers.  "My name is Flavia!"  

Oh snap.

"Matilde", allegedly Flavia, with Dalila and Nunzio 

*****

There are a few more errors on the Domenico Selections site, which I swear will be corrected rather soon.

* On the specs page of I Stefanini's Monte di Fice, I wrote -- again unaccountably -- that the wine resides a while in oak.  No, not true.  No wood.  It's the minerality of the volcanic soil and the holding-back of the wine for over a year before release that creates the impression.  And the partial malolactic fermentation.

* On the Borgo di Gete page of Reale's winery, I incorrectly wrote that the wine spent 10 months in oak.  No, no, it's 15 months.  

To err is human, to forgive uncommon.

Five simple rules for surviving Vinitaly

Love it or hate it, if you're somehow involved with Italian wine, you have to be at Vinitaly. 

If you've never been there, try to imagine a trade show at McCormick Place in Chicago, only blown up to about 10 McCormick Places.  Compared to Vinitaly, those colossal halls by Lake Michigan seem cozy and intimate.

So, Vinitaly is big.  It's spread out, way spread out.  It's packed, especially on the weekend, when the day-trippers and "civilians" looking to score free drinks pile into the place. (Avoid on Sunday if you can.)

I could give you a ton of tips.  But I'll give you just enough to be useful if you are going for the first time.

1. Get there as early as possible.

Granted, even to journalists and exhibitors, the gates don't open till (I seem to recall) 8:30.  If you have one of those badges, get there before 8:30 if possible and stand in an impatient knot of people.  Why?  Parking.  Parking.  And, oh yes, parking.  The closer you are to the entrance, the happier you'll be when it's time to leave when you're footsore, cranky and hungry.  Traffic is something of a Gowanus Expressway nightmare.

 

The sweet spot for parking.  Maybe I should sleep in the car all night?

2. Plan your visits.

I mean really plan them. Make specific appointments with as many of the people you need to see and stick to your schedule.  Do not tolerate a casual approach to your time. 

Needless to say, given the sheer size of the venue, you have to be smart about clustering appointments on a regional basis, e.g., given the number of current/future producers from Campania, I've scheduled all the first part of Friday ("Good Friday," I've called it) with those folks.  Tasting, talking, negotiating -- on a schedule.  If you run over, cut it short and pick it up again at dinner or, better, via phone and email when you've returned home.  A plus: a no-nonsense attitude can strengthen your bargaining position.  It's a buyer's market.

If you're traveling with colleagues, you must at least occasionally split up and proceed on whatever basis makes sense, for example, a regional basis if you're scouting new producers.  

 

"If this were Germany they'd have put in a monorail by now."

More about Amarone and the question of quality

Lately I wrote about Amarone in the wake of Sandro Boscaini's presentation at the Wine Media Guild luncheon.  Here is the link to an excellent elaboration of the subject of Mr. Boscaini's concerns over expanding Amarone production and maintaining quality standards.  It was written by Julia Harding MW, on Jancis Robinson's site: click here to read.

 

Julia also posted a tasting roundup of Amarones, "2005 Amarones by the Score."

In the tasting article, I'm very pleased to see the high scores given to some friends -- Stefano Accordini and Villa Monteleone in particular.  Bravi!

Yes, this would be Julia Harding.

Photo stolen specially for you from JancisRobinson.com

Quoted!

Yours truly was extensively quoted in the Italian Sommelier online magazine just recently.  Franco Ziliani quoted my comments this week on the Benvenuto Brunello event, I daresay approvingly, here in New York, and my rather dyspeptic remarks about aged Amarone.  The latter ties in eerily well with Eric Asimov's posting on age-worthy wines.

Here's the link to the Sommelier column authored by Ziliani:  here.

Here's the link to Franco's often incendiary blog, Vino al Vino.

And to article in question on The Pour, of course.

By the way, Ziliani also quoted New York-based writer and sommelier Susannah Gold from her blog Avvinare.

Grazie mille, Franco.

Domenico Selections Website: Live at Last!

Domenico Selections dot com.

We asked for something simple, clean, functional.  With a warm, sunny look.  Suggesting Mediterranean light and vitality.  Free of red-white-and-green clichés.

Yes, we do have the useful traditional map of Italy with clickable regions where we have producers.  Short but sweet regional intros - not the standard boilerplate, either, but a personal viewpoint based on our experiences and observations.  Ditto the producer profiles.  Short, factual wine spec sheets.

And watch this site grow. More producers are on the way.

Still missing: the Muddy Boots blog.  Soon, kids, soon.  And the listing of where you can find the wine, mainly because this is in flux. 

Bookmark this link.

Baci per May Matta-Aliah, who designed the Domenico Selections corporate identity program as well as the site.  She is the owner of Red-Dot-Solutions here in New York. 

Schmoozing with the enemy

Some might say I've gone over to the Other Side. 

Some might say I've come to my senses.

I say, what the hell, it's interesting and fun.

I joined the

What I learned about wine in New Jersey

I was at a big 4th of July party yesterday, the 5th, over in the Garden State.  I learned many things as I shopped for the party's wine (my contribution) and as I chatted with the folks who were getting tipsy with me.  Here are the top 5 things -- instructive to us all.

1. The defeat of bigoakysmoky Chardonnay is just about complete.  Now the ladies want light, refreshing, almost tasteless whites.  While Pinot Grigio is the undisputed champ, yesterday's  ultracheap Vermentino from Sardinia was a delightful new discovery to many.  Let's call it the vodka of wine.  Clear, neutral, still alcoholic enough to set you on your bum.

2. People declare that they like "rich, full wines".  This means woody, sweet and jammy, etc.  Grape soda with happiness added.  So the news is no news.  Bacchus wept.

3. Don't make them learn any new names.  Someone said to me, "Chardonnay just seems so simple." Americans seem to like proper names that end in an accented syllable.   Maybe we should call Greco di Tufo Tuffot.  I won't mention sciascinoso to them any time soon.

4. Here's a shocker: they buy on price.  They loved the $8.99 Vermentino from Sardinia in large part because it was $8.99.  Show someone two _____, one at $11.99 and one at $15.99, they'll go automatically for the cheaper one.  No thought as to why the prices might be so different or the names of the aziende.  Even when you say, "No but this one really is worth the extra money."  They look at you like you're from Afghanistan and put the cheapie in the basket.

5.   Everyone says, "I don't know anything about wine."  Then they proceed to prove it with every word from "I like Two Buck Chuck" to "I always liked Cold Duck." 

Such is the state of the homme moyen sensuel (and femme moyenne sensuelle) in New Jersey today. 

What must it be like in flyover country?