LENNDEVOURS

"Green" is Not a Logical Prerequisite for Good Wine

By Jason Feulner, Finger Lakes Correspondent

Sometimes, seems like we are in the midst of a green invasion, rather than a green revolution.

The term is used all over the place nowadays and has cropped up in several Finger Lakes stories lately:

• Democrat and Chronicle staff writer Karen Miltner discusses green grape growing here
• In a special report to the Democrat and Chronicle, freelance wine writer Thomas Pellachia outlines the effect of global warming on Finger Lakes vintages (Pellachia is also the author and publisher of the Vinofictions blog). 
• The Finger Lakes Weekend Wino has also unearthed this report on Finger Lakes green space from MPNnow's Bryan Roth.

My first attempt to gather some thoughts on this topic came off like an expository essay, which I quickly abandoned with the assumption that there is enough preaching going on in the green movement already. The crux of it, from my perspective, is that like many trends "green" is largely a good thing. But within the discourse there is plenty of bad as well.

The good is easily recognized, of course.

In terms of agriculture, the advent of the motor took farms that were previously run like artificial but efficient ecosystems and allowed for faster, less-expensive work, thereby producing more waste. Better transportation spurred the development and distribution of chemical treatments that could be delivered cheaply, creating a dependency on these methods.

Green, on some level, is the acknowledgment that efficiency has been lost from the system, and that farms of any kind can benefit from careful planning and a dedication to allowing the natural systems and by-products to work with one another to keep the farm clean, sound, efficient and sustainable. It just makes sense, doesn't it?

The bad part of green is a little more complex, but is also obvious to many observers. Those who espouse "green" the loudest run the risk of hypocrisy since the reality of what is possible with current technologies and market demands is never quite up to speed with the rhetoric.

In the wine industry, the wineries that have embraced "green" and market it like crazy sometimes seem to lose sight of their main purpose--creating the best wine possible. What if the best wine from a given year requires both conventional and green techniques? Those who want to buy wine based solely on whether it is green or not are not buying wine, but a concept that is emotionally satisfying. That is their right, but they are in the minority.

I am far more impressed with winery operations that go green because it makes sense but promote it as a secondary consideration. Green is not a logical prerequisite for good wine.  A sense of modesty about green indicates an acknowledgment of the challenges inherent in such a venture. Over-marketing of the term is simply tiring and serves to dilute the meaning of such a commitment.

To Drink or To Blog?

By Jason Feulner, Finger Lakes Correspondent

Jamie's recent post about being a little "sick" of wine grabbed my attention, not only due to the fact that she chose to reveal the private nature of her own wine-related thoughts, but also because she hit upon a chord that I see reverberating throughout the wine blogosphere.

I'm nowhere near the wine blog reader that is the guru Lenn, but I've noticed in my own limited searches that many blogs seem a bit, well, down recently, and some writers are making sentiments known that mirror Jay's.  One blogger who I have come to respect for his level of knowledge recently offered the dour query as to whether there is anything new or exciting about wine being talked about on the internet.

I've kept these observations in the back of my mind, only to have them resurface when I came across a notice on a Rochester newspaper website announcing the creation of a new blog and interactive user's forum dedicated to Finger Lakes wine. To herald this new online forum, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle has begun feauturing the "Riesling Rebels," two experienced wine women who are now in the employ of the paper's online site.

A wine blog run by a newspaper? Rebellious indeed.

I have absolutely no reason to suspect that the aforementioned bloggers will be anything but entertaining and enlightening, but I have to admit that the whole idea of a multitude of virtual wine communities is beginning to wear on me a bit. Lenn and I recently came across a Finger Lakes tourism site that was running a so-called blog that was nothing more than a cut-and-paste job featuring some of my LENNDEVOURS work without permission.

Wine Chick Wednesday: I'm in a New York State of Disconnect

We New Yorkers are a weird bunch.

To start, we can’t even agree on what being a New Yorker means. A former NYC resident myself, I always found it beyond comical that NY1 would devote an entire 60 seconds to the “World Beyond New York” – be it Long Island, Louisiana or Lithuania, it was all the same upon exit from the five boroughs. Is that, then, the true New York?

Not likely. Despite the heavy tax-base and votership in that small speck of real estate, the rest of the state ends up feeling neglected and overlooked. For example, when I first moved to New YorkCity, I was astounded to see how few wine shops and restaurants carried Long Island wines.

Not much had changed when I found myself working in such a shop five years later; the owners swore the wines would never sell because no one knew them or trusted them. Sadly, such proclamations were more often true than not and it was only the daring customer who would take my Long Island recommendations. I found it surreal that consumers would trust wines hailing from entirely different hemispheres over those from their geographical backyard.

This question of New York viniferal loyalty was further compounded by my move to Buffalo.

Sure, I’m from Long Island, but I’ve lived in both NYC and the Hudson Valley (I skipped the Finger Lakes, but give me time...). I almost innately found myself turning my nose up at local wines without ever having tried them. “They’re from Lockport..." I'd sigh. "How good can they be?"

While I’m certainly not writing this to boast one area over another, I’ve come to find it quite curious that we don’t band together more as an entire state. We’ve got an uphill battle here, folks. California is out-fruit-bombing us, France is out-prestiging us, South American is under-pricing us, and Italy is out-experimenting us.

New York, my fellow/femellow (which, by the way, is the new moniker attached to cool chicks like myself) bloggers can testify, produces fantastic wines when the winemakers do not attempt to coerce them into being something they’re not. It damn near breaks my heart every time I taste an overly oaked NY Chardonnay. Why is this happening?!

Wine Chick Wednesday: Sour Grapes

By Jamie Gabrini, Special Columnist

I’m sick of wine.

I don’t quite know how this happened, but it’s true. At some point during the past year, I lost interest in wine and – quite frankly – don’t give a fig anymore. Or at least at the moment.

I certainly have not been in wine all that long. I think it’s been five years now since I decided that Chateauneuf-du-Pape was heaven in a glass and that I simply could not live another day unless I worked in wine.

In hindsight, I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe my ego would not permit me to linger in the ‘wine lover’ margins; I’d grown to lament feeling like an ignorant git when I’d go into a local wine shop and not know what 80% of the wines were. French wines – despite my linguistic background – remained a complete mystery beyond knowing what ‘rouge’ and ‘blanc’ meant. Germans were thankfully not a concern as I never was a fan of riesling, even though I didn’t even know what that meant at the time. Chiantis were easy enough to know, as were Riojas, but beyond that, I didn’t even attempt to remember all of the intricacies of European wines. Like many before and since, I determined that the best and most serious wines were BIG REDS and wanted to learn more from there.

Enter my tenure at Chambers Street. I distinctly remember nearly spitting out my five-dollar-Tribeca-bought chai tea in horror when a colleague professed her love of Beaujolais. This moment should’ve been immediately followed by a healthy serving of humble pie (which, if bought in the neighborhood, would have no doubt been handcrafted with artisanal humility and set me back a ten spot) as it dawned on me that she was not alone. At Chambers Street, I was able to enter the hallowed halls of wine knowledge, and now, I’m not so sure if that’s a good thing.

Picture, if you will, a wine store. Most people have an idea of what they like in general – merlot or pinot grigio, for example – and they’re content to buy within their comfort zone, or to work with a wine-savvy worker to discover something new. I go in and I’ll know just about every wine on the racks or – in better shops – I’ll at least have a good handle on the region/grape and can take a stab at how the vintage was and how it’s holding up. I’ve even gotten to the point where I’ve tasted at a vertical at an unknown Canadian winery and plucked out the rainy vintages without hesitation. Sure, it’s a cool parlor trick, but does anyone really need to be able to do this?

I suppose the major reason I’m feeling so jaded is that the mystery has gone out of wine for me. I miss sipping one of those big reds and enjoying the rich sensuality filling my mouth and the tinges of heady intoxication setting in. Instead, I’ll scan a wine list, knowing damn well that I’ll be underwhelmed by just about anything on there, but I’ll order a glass anyway and search like hell to find anything other than toasty vanilla/cherry cola/smoky chocolate notes in there. And those notes won’t be there. And it’ll be too warm anyway. But I’ll drink it anyway since I’m paying far more than it cost and call it a night. It’s worse when I’m out with non-wine people because it’ll be assumed that I can get the best wine in the world for them. Not having created the wine list, I don’t want the responsibility of having to find that unicorn, nor do I want to pretend to really like something that is crap just so that I don’t appear to be the jaded snob that I am.

Give me a bourbon. And let’s hope this bitchy bout of bitter passes before I find myself unemployed. (But make it a Hudson Baby Bourbon… because apparently, this snobbishness is deeply engrained…)

A Sad Tale of the Drunk and Idiotic in Wine Country

When it comes to Long Island, or any other wine country, it's important to remember that there will always be times when—no matter steps a winery takes to avert unfortunate, drunken incidents—a pathetic subset of losers will still act like jerks and ruin the fun for everybody else.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a story I heard via email over the weekend from a tasting room manager who will remain nameless for obvious reasons. Out of respect for this individual and other parties involved, I’ll keep my version of the story appropriately anonymous—except for an interesting piece of information at the end.

The tasting room manager and his staff did all of the right things here, but drunk imbeciles caused a problem anyway.