If you’re a budget-conscious wine consumer like me, you know that wine at restaurants is frequently overpriced.  A great way to save a few bucks when dining out is to bring your own wine—hopefully a wine with an outstanding QPR that you discovered on Cheap Wine Ratings.  But how do you find a restaurant that will let you BYO?  That’s where GoBYO.com hopes to help.

GoBYO.com is a new website designed to help diners find BYO-friendly restaurants.  It let’s diners search restaurants by region to find those that will allow them to bring a bottle of their favorite wine.  Additionally, GoBYO posts a few different ratings.  At first I found all the different ratings to be overwhelming, but after a couple minutes it starts to make sense.  They post a “composite” rating, which is an average from multiple published restaurant guides, Yelp reviews, and they have their own “wine-friendly” rating based on the restaurant’s wine list, allowance of BYO and corkage fees.

Speaking of corkage fees, I hate them.  They put me on total tilt.  My favorite thing about GoBYO.com is that they list the corkage fees so you know what you’re in for before you get there.  Of course if the corkage fee is more than you’d pay for a bottle of wine to begin with, you may not want to go to that restaurant… and some do charge that much.

Another feature that I appreciate is if a restaurant uses OpenTable, GoBYO provides a direct link to make reservations online.  If you’re not yet familiar with OpenTable.com you should be.  It lets you make reservations online, and you earn reward points toward dining discounts—another way to stretch your dining dollar.

GoBYO.com currently only has information for 10 major metropolitan regions: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Fransisco, Southest Florida and Washington DC.  Unfortunately for me, my region is not on their site.  And they don’t currently have plans for expansion, but I’m hopeful that they will eventually have info on restaurants in my neighborhood.

Although I’m sad that I can’t use it yet, it seems like a handy website.  And so I thought I’d give them a shout out so you can check them out.

I’ve commented to friends in the past that wine has become a commodity. There are so many options, that wine producers need to do something different to break through the clutter. If you read the copy on wine labels and advertising, it all starts to sound the same. In order to do something different, some producers are looking at enhancing the wine drinking experience, and I think this is an area that’s ripe with opportunity.

I came across a company from The Netherlands that is seizing this opportunity with a wine package design that unfolds and converts into a wine tasting game. For those consumers who want to learn more about wine, they provide all the tools you need for a small wine tasting party in one package (except for the glasses).

The package includes four bottles of wine, stickers to cover the wine labels, a pamphlet with instructions and descriptions of the wines and a box that unfolds to become the game board. The idea behind a wine tasting party like this is fairly simple and anyone could do this on their own, but having it all come in one package makes it convenient for a last minute party activity.

They are selling the wine tasting game to consumers in the Netherlands under the 4 x Proeven name. And they’re marketing the concept as “TryVertising” to wine producers in the US under the name Taster Game.

I’m sure you’ll be seeing these in wine shops near you in the not-to-distant future.

According to an article published yesterday in the Financial Times, Amazon.com is gearing up to enter the online wine sales market. 

Amazon is currently recruiting a Senior Buyer “responsible for the acquisition of massive new product selection, as Specialty Foods is an emerging segment and the Sr. Buyer will work to build out entirely new selection from the ground up.”

This isn’t the first time they’ve tried to get into wine sales.  In 1999 they invested $30m in wineshopper.com, which failed a year later.  Bad timing?

What does Amazon entering the wine market mean for all of us?  We can only speculate, but here are my predictions.

Incredible Selection - Amazon is known for being big… very big.  If I need something and I can’t find it locally, I go to Amazon and it’s usually there.  I would expect that they will bring the broad selection they provide in other categories to the wine space.  After all, the job description does say “massive new product selection.”

Unmatched Online Experience – Everything Amazon does, they do well.  Well, almost everything.  They are leaders in online usability and information architecture.  I can’t wait to use their interface to search for wine.

Free Shipping – They have it for everything else, why not wine?  This alone is a barrier that will bring in loads of business for them.  I think a lot of people are intrigued by online wine sales—until they see the shipping charges.

Competitive Prices – Let the price wars begin!

Changes in Wine Shipping Laws - Money talks and Amazon has it.  State legislators don’t give a hoot about the dull roar of wine consumers who want open shipping to their state.  It takes big business to make legislative change happen and Amazon has the clout to get folks to the table.  I don’t think this will be an immediate change, but I expect Amazon will chip away at it over the next few years. 

Who knows if my predictions will come true, but one thing is for sure: It will be interesting.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology hypothesized that marketing factors, such as the price of a product, could have an impact on experiential perceptions such as pleasantness. And they put the idea to the test with wine.

In the study, recently published by the National Academy of Sciences, researchers told participants that they would be tasting five different Cabernet Sauvignons. Using functional MRI, the researchers measured neural indicators of pleasantness which showed that subjects experienced higher levels of “flavor pleasantness” when they were told that wines were more expensive.

In reality, the subjects were given only three different Cabernets. Two of them were presented twice, at different price levels. A $90 bottle of wine was presented at both its original price and at a $10 price level, and a $5 wine was presented at its original price and a $45 price level.

In both cases, the testers’ brains showed higher levels of pleasure at the higher price point than at the lower price point.

The results of this test don’t surprise me at all. I know when I’m served a glass of wine that I know is more expensive there is a heightened level of excitement—even before I taste the wine! I feel as though I’m taking part in something special, but that doesn’t mean that the wine really tastes any better than a less expensive bottle.

This is one of the reasons “professional tasting” is done blind. It’s hard to put aside your perceptions about a wine and judge it in an unbiased way.

I also find it interesting because I think that people are often afraid to look stupid by saying an expensive wine tastes bad, or a cheap wine tastes good. What’s great about this study is that it eliminated those social factors and measured brain activity.

But those social factors need to change.  Let go, my friends. Cheap is OK. Quality is what matters—and you don’t always have to pay a lot to get good quality.

I’d like to see a follow up study where they present participants with a bill for the wine, then see if levels of pleasure go up when the bill is higher versus lower.

Here’s my advice: Buy a high-quality, low-price wine but tell your friends that it’s a bit more expensive when you serve it. Or, do a blind tasting where you serve them the same wine three times at three different price levels. It’s sure to be entertaining.

2½ bottles of wine a week can save your life

That’s the headline from a story published in The Times today.  According to this article, those who drink up to 14 drinks each week have a lower risk of death from heart disease than than both heavy drinkers and non-drinkers. 

“A weekly moderate alcohol intake reduced the risk of all-cause mortality among both men and women, whereas the risk among heavy drinkers was similar to nondrinkers.”

Additionally, those who exercise regularly and consume 14 drinks weekly were the healthiest with a magnified health benefit from the exercise.  Would you care for a bit of pinot grigio in your exercise water bottle?

The article is based on a study published in the European Heart Journal in which some 12,000 Danish men and women were evaluated over several years in the 1970s and 1980s.

I love reports like this that make me feel a little less guilty about enjoying my wine.  And lucky for me, I exercise for over an hour every day.

While I’ve seen numerous reports like this that highlight the heart-health benefits of wine, I still struggle with the calories and the impact on metabolism.  I’ve never seen a report on wine’s effect on metabolism, but I’ve always been suspect that it does have a slowing effect.  I’ve personally cut back my consumption just so that I can keep the spare tire at bay.  Of course that’s also why I exercise.

In a similar story, Wired Magazine recently reported on a “red wine drug” that combats aging.  The drug is a derivative of resveratrol (an ingredient found in red wine known for anti-aging qualities) and it reportedly is showing promise to lower blood sugar in diabetic patients.

Yay! Good more good news for wine drinkers!

I’ve been seeing more and more organic wine in stores lately, but I haven’t been motivated to try much of it.  Why?  Because they tend to be unstable and I’ve never really found a good one—by current US “organic” standards anyway.  The reason is that sulfites cannot be used in the production of wines labeled “organic.”

Sulfites protect wine from acetic bacteria and give it stability and consistency.  But they aren’t permitted in organic wines.  That means that the entire grape farming process can take place without using any pesticides or other chemicals, but once sulfites are added it can no longer be considered organic.  And without adding sulfites, there’s a good chance that the taste of the wine will change rather quickly in the bottle and it just won’t be very good.

That was the point of an article published today on salon.com titled, Does Organic Wine Taste Bad?  I totally agree with the perspectives shared in the article.  Sulfites are necessary to ensure the quality of the wine and I’ve never been concerned about consuming sulfites. 

The article notes that sulfites are mostly a concern for asthmatics.  I expect that the alcohol in wine is more detrimental to my health than the sulfites—of course I’m no scientist.  I’ve heard some people state that they don’t drink wine because the sulfites give them a headache or a hangover.  Again, I have a hunch that it’s the alcohol that’s doing that.

I think it’s also important to note that sulfites occur naturally in wine.  The natural levels are typically too low to give the wine stability, and so additional sulfites are added.

I recently did a review of Melania Colleccion Cabernet Sauvignon, which is produced with organic grapes but isn’t labeled as an organic wine because they still used sulfites in the production.  “Eco-friendly” is an area where I think there is opportunity for the wine industry.  I am a fan of organic farming and minimizing the use of pesticides on crops, but I also concede that there are benefits from chemistry.  It’s a matter of finding the right balance and using chemistry to our advantage where needed, but minimizing over-use.

To learn more about eco-friendly viticulture check out Low Input Viticulture & Enology, the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance, Vinewise and VineBalance.

For now, I’m sticking with my sulfite-laden wines.  But I may pick up some wines “made with organic grapes” from time to time.

Just a few days ago I was commenting on how it amazes me that with shipping costs and all we are able to get inexpensive wines all the way from Australia.  Well that may not be the case for long, but not because of shipping costs, drought is the culprit.

Australia has been suffering its worst drought in more than a century and the wine industry predicts grape production to be cut in half by the drought.  This means that by the law of supply and demand, Australian wine prices will be going up.

This is a big change for Australia, where for the past few years we’ve seen a glut of wine grapes resulting in good cheap wine available worldwide.

While it’s bad news for consumers of inexpensive wines, it’s worst news for Australian wine grape growers, many of whom may be driven out of business by the drought.  Read more in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Aside from driving up prices, the other side effect of the drought is that the wine that is produced is likely to taste different.  The drought is creating vines with smaller grapes that have higher sugar levels and lower acidity.  In some cases this could be good, in some cases bad.  Read more in The Australian.

And my own two cents… even if you don’t normally drink Australian wines this could impact your pocketbook.  Again, I go back to the law of supply and demand.  If we see a dramatic decline in the quantity of Australian wine entering the market, that will drive up demand for wine from other regions and consequently drive up prices for wine from all regions.  Yikes!

Scientist Roger Corder has just released “The Red Wine Diet” a book that touts the benefits of drinking red wine.  Corder recommends three glasses of red wine daily to stave off heart disease, diabetes and dementia.

He attributes the health benefits to a polyphenol chemical called procyanidin.  This differs from some other scientists who credit resveratrol for the health benefits, but Corder argues that resveratrol levels are too low in wine to bestow such benefits.

He even gives some specific wine recommendations, the most affordable of which is Altos Las Hormigas Malbec Riserva (Argentina, ~$19).

read more

Charles Shaw Chardonnay, often referred to as “Two Buck Chuck” recently won double gold honors at the California State Fair wine competition.  It beat 350 other Chardonnays for the honors and was rated at a 98.  It goes to show, cheap wine can be enjoyable.

 Full Article

Lesley Reidy of www.winefairy.co.nz writes about a topic near and dear to my heart, finding good cheap wines.  The title says it all.    I agree with all the recomendations in this article:

• Individuality
• Drinkability
• Not ’soft drink sweet’
• Tasty
• Look beyond the label

Of particular note: “smaller, lesser known vineyards are making some great value for money wine.”  How true.  Time and time again I’m finding myself more pleased by smaller vinyards than the larger one’s.  I think I should start phasing out major vinyards from my reviews… they are just underdelivering, and I have some bad reviews for them in the queue.