You are the ones that find great wines for me, and the ones that enthusiastically greet me when I walk in the door.

You are the ones that I see come alive when a good customer arrives, and get excited when a good bottle is opened near you.

Shhhhhhhh…. come closer …. I want to fill you in on some secrets about your competition.  Secrets that, if you listen, will only make you better (and more successful as a small business).

Your competition (often right down the street) … 

• … has a sheet of paper somewhere in their store saying “Sign up on our email list!” but rarely sends out an email.  When I do get an email from them, it’s usually a typo-filled notification of a tasting happening the next day rather than anything deep, educational, or thought-provoking.  And never do they simply tell me about a wine and why they love it and why it is important to them.
  
• … has a horrible website with no thought, investment, or design acumen put into it.  And of course they don’t have a blog (or if they do, the last post was ten months ago).
• … has a Facebook page that they never update, or even if they do occasionally update they tell me things rather than ask me things. Never have I seen a wine retailer online in Minnesota ask me “What wines do you like?”
  
• … has a Twitter account that they never use.
• … has dust on bottles, boxes laying around, and a general sense of disorganization.
• … doesn’t greet me when I walk in.  If anything, the obviously hourly employees (who look like they slept on a bus) are annoyed I’m there.
• … has a confusing mix of shelftalkers, often out of date, that implies to me they want the shelftalkers to do the work rather than the store.
• … has a lack of employees that seem to give a damn about wine.  My standard question is “What do you have from Piedmonte?” to which I usually get lead to Pinot Grigio.
• … rarely has anything featured, on special, on sale, or promoted (and no, a stack of wine is not a promotion.  Go to Whole Foods or Macy’s to see what I mean by ‘promotion’.  Hint: a promoted item is one that they want to make sure you see, learn about, touch, and get tempted by.)

I split the class into two parts. The first half was tasting a variety of Pinot Noirs from widely different locations around the globe including Chile (Apaltagua Reserve), New Zealand (Momo), Burgundy (Drouhin Cotes du Nuits Villages), and California (Kosta Browne Russian River 2006). The goal was to discuss world differences in terroir, and see if we could find common links (or contrasts) in styles. Very eye opening.

The second half was focused on one winery, the wonderful Bethel Heights of Willamette Valley, Oregon, to examine winemaker and vintage influence and how it can impact Pinot Noir. We tasted the 2009 Willamette Valley, the 2009 Estate (the one with the black label), and the 2007 Casteel Reserve. It was a perfect way to examine the topic of vintage and winemaker influence, for each of these wines were made in a non-interventionist style but with different barrel treatments and aging regiments.

In the end, there were three wines that stood out for completely different reasons.

The Drouhin Cotes du Nuits Villages 2009 was stunning. For such a young Burgundy, it’s showing all the juicyness and punch that the vintage is delivering to these wines. The style was right down the tracks, with focused raspberry and moderate spices in the nose, and excellent acidity in the finish. It showed, perfectly, what a top quality young Burgundy is all about.

The second standout was the Kosta Browne Russian River 2006. Kosta Browne, if you’re not familiar with it, is a ‘cult Pinot’ and as I told the class I call it a ‘Sasquatch wine.’ (“There is a grainy 8mm film of a bottle of Kosta Browne running through the woods but nobody has proven that one exists! We have found evidence of bottles on the ground and have taken plaster casts of the impressions for further study.”) This wine, in this setting, was fascinating. I talk quite a bit about the context of a wine and how the aromas and flavors will shape-shift depending of a huge variety of factors, one of the them being other wines you are trying at the same time. All the other Pinot Noirs in the class were acid-driven with strong Pinot Noir typicity. The Kosta Browne was delicious but had less to do with Pinot Noir than the other wines. Higher alcohol, a rich style, and lower acidity all added up to a style of wine far more suited for drinking on a winter night next to a fireplace than having with a meal. It was a plump wine, but with amazing texture in the finish.

(Note: these Kosta Browne wines are basically impossible to find on a national basis. Honestly. But North Loop has a bunch right now due to a special purchase from a local distributor that is going out of business. Look into some past reviews and pick up a bottle or two to impress you score-chasing friends.)

The third great wine of the night was the Bethel Heights Estate Pinot Noir 2009. It has been a while since I’ve had a Pinot Noir that is singing pitch-perfect as much as this wine. The group all agreed, and it was the wine of the night. It’s young, but I like younger wines in general myself (I have a paranoia of a wine dying while I own it) and this wine with a charcoal grilled rack of lamb is about as perfect of a combination as I could imagine.

It was a great event, and thanks to all who came. Next up is the Blind Syrah Challenge on November 7th. We’ll pop Syrah from Australia, France, and California ranging in price from $15 to over $50 and serve it all blind to determine what we really are looking for in this great grape. See you then!

***

Disclosure: During the day I work for The Wine Company, the local distributor for two of the labels in this article (Drouhin and Bethel Heights) but I do not sell wine to North Loop and have no financial incentive in discussing the products.

Things, thankfully, are changing.  Smaller family run Australian producers are getting more and more market share.  Wines with individual personalities are being made and fewer ‘critter’ wines with a cute label being the main attraction are produced.  Balance is starting to be found.  Never has the bang for the buck from Australia been so great.

The new way to taste and enjoy Australia wine is (like most great wine countries) by region first and foremost.  Australia is not one big vineyard.  Like the west coast of the United States, it has hot regions, cool pockets, geologic diversity, and climatic influences.  Learning these regions is relatively easy, especially because they have great names like Coonawara and Mudgee.  Discovering the pockets of quality suddenly opens up a whole new world of Australian wine appreciation.  A few highlights in a brief primer on Australian wine geography:

•    “South Australia” vs. “Southeast Australia”: Australia is a huge region, as big as the lower 48 in the United States.  When you have a wine labeled as “Southeast Australia” it is the same as if we had wines labeled “West Coast” as in from anywhere from San Diego to Seattle, including Idaho, Utah, and New Mexico.  Yes, the region is that big.  However when you see “South Australia” it’s a far more constricted area, focusing on the regions around the beautiful city of Adelaide.  It is from this spot that many of Australia’s top wine comes from.  The Yalumba “Y” Series wines are a perfect example.

•    Barossa Valley vs. Eden Valley: When the quality of the juice in the bottle matters (and when should it not?) these are two go-to regions to seek out.  They are right next to each other, but have very different characteristics.  The Barossa is a flat region with hotter weather, and contains some of the oldest vines in all of Australia (many planted in the late 1800′s).  The expression of Barossa is concentrated, intense, but polished wines from old vines.  Geographically next door but a world way stylistically is the Eden Valley, which is not really a valley but rather big hills rising hundreds of feet above Barossa.  This is a region of huge geologic diversity and cooler temperatures, thus you can grow top quality Riesling and Pinot Noir (grapes people rarely expect from Australia).

•    The two best kept secrets: Margaret River and the Clare Valley.  If you want to be a wine insider, these are the two spots to know.  Margaret River is on the western edge of Australia, where the Indian Ocean and the Pacific crash together (making this one of the top surfing spots in the world).  It was Robert Mondavi who identified this as a nearly perfect region for Bordeaux varieties (and interestingly, this spot is the most climatically similar spot to Bordeaux in the entire world).  Seek out Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignons (a good one is Ringbolt) for big bang for the buck.  The other ‘insider’ region to know is the Clare Valley, about an hour north of the Barossa.  Clare is high elevation winemaking, with a specifically cool microclimate combined with high levels of sun energy.  What results is a tiny pocket producing some of the best Riesling and Shiraz in the entire world.  These wines, of this quality, would be at least double their price from anywhere else in the world.  A top producer is Jim Barry, who produces the Lodge Hill Riesling and Shiraz from his family’s old vine property.

Fifteen years ago, less than 400,000 cases of wine from ‘Down Under’ were shipped to the United States.  In 2009 that number topped 20 million.  That’s an enormous amount of wine, but more and more of it every year is inching up in quality.  Seek out these specific wine geographies and in particular family owned production.  You’ll be amazed at what you find.

This is what I’ve walked into for the last twelve years, as I get ready to do my duty for the State of Minnesota and carefully examine, rank, score, and detail a menagerie or wines the variety of which a screenwriter couldn’t make up.  Not just grapes (which breaks into white, red, and fortified and further into native Minnesota and “other source”) but also chokecherry, elderberry, raspberry, dandelion, apple, pear, peach, apricot, and the list goes on and on.

There are two rounds of judging: a preliminary round to weed out the truly awful bottles that we wouldn’t wish upon our worst enemies, and the final round where a team of judges covers multiple categories to issue the ribbons.

For many years (since 1999) I’ve worked on the first round and I’ve always been prompt to my judging duties in order to get category number 22: Miscellaneous Other.  Anything that doesn’t go into the normal categories ends up here, in a wonder cacophony of fermented science.  It is here that you’ll find wines from carrots, beets, watermelon, thistle blossom, and more.  It’s a wonderful grouping with no standards, which I find invigorating.  The two oddest entries in this category over the years were an army worm wine (which was pretty disgusting but I sent it to the final round simply out the hutzpah it took to make it) and a blueberry Hi-C Kool Aid wine.  It was neon blue in color, like glass cleaner, and the entrant mixed in extra sugar and fermented it to dryness.  My guess was about 8% alcohol or so.  It was great, the best blueberry Kool-Aid wine I could imagine.

To judge wines in which there is no benchmark or ideal is fun (if it’s the first cactus fruit wine you’ve ever had, how do you know it’s good?).  What it comes down to is competent wine making (or the lack thereof).

We judge first by sight: is the wine muddy and cloudy or clean and bright?  I don’t might a little cloudiness myself as long as it’s natural (I’d rather have that than something sterile filtered to the point of not being interesting).  Next up comes the aromas and the first search is for faults: volatile acidity (a big problem in home winemaking), skunkiness (usually from unsterile practices), or any other of the dozens of things that can go wrong with fermentation and bottling.  The taste, honestly, is a minor part for me in the first round but mainly I’m looking for a fruit/sugar/acid balance that keeps everything in harmony.

This year, for the first time, I judged in the Final Round which was a thrill.  Shoulder to shoulder with Nan Bailey, Sam Haislet, Annette Peters, Tom Gill, and Ted Ferrell amongst others.  We worked in teams of three (I was with Nan and Sam) and each team of three judged five categories.  We had chokecherry, raspberry, lambusca (concord), chardonnay, and my favorite miscellaneous other.  A few notes and observations:

•    Every year for the last ten years the quality of home winemaking goes higher and higher.  It’s amazing just how good some of these wines have become.

•    As I told Nan Bailey, “Remind me to never get into the raspberry wine business.”  Raspberries have a harder time making quality wine than other fruit, it seems (except in the case of dessert wines).  There was an off-balance aspect to many of the wines that was a result of the fruit itself never dancing well with the acids.

•    Lambrusca (concord) has always produced sub-par wines with mousy aromas and untamed acids, but this year there was a breakthrough.  One wine was, hands down, the best lambrusca I’ve ever tasted.  Comparing notes with Nan, she felt the same way.  It was clearly superior winemaking and I think we are starting the see the taming of the beast happen.

•    If you make beet wine be prepared for quite a bit of constructive criticism (starting with the question “Why?”).

•    Whoever made the Thistle Blossom wine might have a future in the wine business.  It was outstanding!

You can attend stemware comparison tastings.  You can listen to Mr. Riedel lead you through the nuance of a Sauvignon Blanc glass versus a Pinot Noir glass.  You can open up the stemware catalogs of your favorite suppliers and gaze longingly at all the selections.  You can fuss for days or weeks on end trying to find the perfect glass for your wine bar.  And in your mind, always, is that you are doing this for the love of your customers that are already sitting down and enjoying wine.

Guess what?  You are wrong!

The number one reason to take stemware seriously is that it is the first visual impression you make to the die-hard wine geeks — the ones that you spend so much time and money courting.

Walking in an urban area like Chicago or San Francisco or Sydney, where wine bars are piled up one after another, my only quick visual analysis about the quality of an establishment is the stemware — anybody can have ambiance, great lighting, candles, good music, etc.  If I see great stemware, I know wine is taken seriously and I am much more apt to walk in.  If I see clunky, junky, thick glasses (which are so often used by even the best restaurants in the country …  Urgh!!!) I will never even set foot in the establishment. We’ll cover the idea of “one perfect stem” in a future post, but for now be sure to take a careful look at your current vessels.

A tremendous amount of energy is spent on all the ‘in the room’ details of a wine bar or restaurant.  But don’t put the cart before the horse … you need to get people in the door before you can show them how great you are.

Last August and September we took a blissful ten days off and went to the Black Hills of South Dakota. No cell phones, no laptops, a complete unplugging of our life in order to recharge the mental batteries (and it worked).

While in Rapid City (population 59,607) we visited a place I’ve had my eye on for a few years: Wine Cellar Restaurant.  I could give the address (you can find it on their website) but the easier way to describe the location is “right on the main drag.”  Rapid City should be named Rapid Village or Rapid Town.  It’s small in the glorious and wonderful sense, and not hard to find something when your only direction is “downtown”.

I get pretty cynical about restaurants, for I’ve worked in, operated, organized, and dined in my fair share of them.  Big mistakes piss me off to no end (before wandering to Wine Cellar we were at a good Italian restaurant around the corner … one of those places that is open for lunch but awkwardly shuts down between 2:00 and 5:00 … and basically got forced out when I tried to order more food and the indifferent waitress said ‘oh, we’re closed and the chefs went home’… urgh!!!).  Little mistakes I’m very good at picking up on but also dismissing … I’ll never short tip a server for forgetting that I asked for no ice in my water, for instance.

However, it is truly rare that an establishment simply does everything right and does it in a pleasant, confident, cool manner.  Wine Cellar Restaurant did it.   A few of the highlights:

• Over forty wines by the glass including wonderfully obscure varietals like Fiano and Lemberger, on top of a serious line up of Rhone Varietals, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blancs, and more.
• GREAT STEMWARE … the number one issue at most places trying to be ‘wine serious’. The Wine Cellar served everything in Riedel, with different stems for lighter whites, fuller whites, lighter reds, fuller reds, bubbly, and dessert.  I find it amazing (and inexcusable) how many restaurants in the Twin Cities refuse to take stemware seriously.
  
• A personable server who was perfectly fine with me ordering just glasses of wine and no food.
• Hours of operation were 3:30 to close.  This is simple, and genius. You get the post lunch crowd and the early off work crowd.  I can’t tell you how much money many wine bars miss out on by opening at 5pm. Many people want to rush from work to the wine bar for a quick one with friends.  If it’s 4:40 they are not going to wait for you to unlock the door.  Open at 3:30 and I guarantee you it will be worth it.

Mad props to Pamela Light, owner and chef, for putting a gem of a wine bar in a city that most people would not expect to find one.

The wine business is not unlike other industries: more often than not, it’s who you know. This can be a daunting thing if you’re trying to change careers and really have no contacts in the business. But how you meet these contacts, how you network, is a bit different in the wine world than other businesses.  This is because it’s an industry that has been romanticized, and is constantly being entered by people who envision tasting wine all day while looking over a beautiful vineyard as a hard day at work.

If you want to work in the wine industry, you have to plant seeds early on, cultivate them carefully, and make great connections and contacts.

Many times people think the way to make these contacts is at wine tastings (especially the big tastings in major cities — here in Minnesota it’s the Twin Cities Food and Wine Experience which occurs in February), and that is wrong. At the big events the people pouring wine are 1) Usually not enthralled with being there. 2) Possibly just guns-for-hire for the event. 3) Tired of talking about wine with everybody. And 4) looking forward to how good a beer is going to taste after hours or days of wine. You need to meet the players on their own turf, be they wholesalers, retailers, or restaurants.

So how do you network your way into the wine business? Again, more than other industries, it takes time. The nature of the wine business is shaped by the calendar — a huge amount of the year’s sales are done in the last four months of the year (known as “SOND”), and therefore very few personnel changes happen in the last half of the year. Salespeople stay where they are at, brands and labels stay with their wholesalers, and everybody churns right along. But as soon as that first week of January hits, things start happening. So if you’re trying to network into the distributor side, a good time to start is summertime and keep up contacts and communication through the holidays. If jobs are going to open up on the supplier or distributor side, it’s going to happen after the holidays, and if you are already on somebody’s list you have a good shot.

The best way to meet these contacts and shake hands and get to know who is who, is to work on the retail or restaurant side during this busy season. Notice the inversion here. To get into the wholesaler or supplier side (January through May job openings), then work the busy retail and restaurant side (September through December). Many retailers, especially, will jump at a personable, flexible, temporary hire who is interested in wine and willing to have no job guarantee after Christmas. It can make for a great experience, learning how to ‘talk the talk’ while making some extra money.

HOWEVER, and here is something important — when approaching a retailer, a restaurant, a wholesaler, or a winery about getting a job, avoid the phrase “I would just love to get into the wine business” or any form of it (such as “I love wine” and “I can’t imagine a better thing to do than taste wine all day” etc. You get the idea). We hear that phrase all the time, and it’s a red flag that somebody doesn’t realize that it’s a tough business with real issues and real problems that need solving. Instead, link your past experience to the wine business in some fashion (no matter how convoluted it is), and show how your problem solving abilities in one industry can be translated into the wine business.

One final note, and this is probably the most important. The wine industry is incredibly small.  What you say, especially if it’s negative about any particular winery, wholesaler, retailer, or restaurant can zip through the channels instantly.  Twitter has nothing on the speed of wine gossip in the industry!  If you chose to go down the path of negativity, you are quickly going to find your reputation in shreds and you will not be able to repair it.  We’ve seen this happen several times in the local scene, and it’s not pretty.  So take the high road and be the person people are happy to see walk through the door, and you’ll be on your way to entering the wine industry.

Last evening I sat down with the wine buyer and manager of Sen Yai Sen Lek, Nicole Pappas-Stanoch, to taste through a variety of lighter bodied red wines paired with a selection of the most popular dishes from the kitchen.  It was an eye opening evening to say the least. Those not familiar with Sen Yai Sen Lek can check out a nice article on The Heavy Table profiling chef-owner Joe Hatch-Surisook (pictured with wife Holly and kids).  Joe’s knowledge base of Thai food runs deep, and for many years his classes at Kitchen Window were some of the most popular around.  Joe’s connections in the cities go way back, mainly through the channel of Jim Grell of The Modern Cafe and Mike Phillips, now of Green Ox Meats.  The food at Sen Yai Sen Lek is complex, intriguing, and most of all an amazing pain in the ass to pair with wine … but we did it!

Holly and Joe Hatch-Surisook of Sen Yai Sen Lek

The theme was lighter bodied reds, so we tasted through a variety of Pinot Noirs (Mohua from New Zealand, Angeline from California, and Drouhin Bourgogne from Burgundy), as well as many Italians (La Valentina Montepulciano, Saladini Pilastri Rosso Piceno, Sant’ Antonio Scaia, and Cetamura Chianti).  We also had a bottle of Mohua Pinot Gris as a palate cleanser (which was absolutely delicious, by the way).

Nicole’s tasting method is very specific (years of practice have perfected the system): taste through all the wines first without food, and form general opinions.  Then taste back through the wines with three select dishes (the same dishes every time … “A perfect cross-section of our menu” says Nicole).  The dishes include fish cakes, a spicy shredded chicken with sticky rice, and a slow roasted pork dish with noodles.

Pairing Thai cuisine with wine is a tough process.  Thailand has an advanced and old food culture, but one that never evolved with grapes and wine.  As a result, the synergy of the food and wine combinations rarely announce themselves in a way like having the perfect slow roasted meat and potato dish with a beautiful wine from Alsace.  With Thai food and wine, there is a disconnect but it is not a dealbreaker (though, honestly, this is an instance where the beer geeks might win most of the time).

What we found out through the tasting was that acidity was the clear key, for the plumper and juicer wines that had lower acidity were simply blown apart by the cucumber-vinegar-chile-cilantro combinations.  However, the most acidic of the wines accented the spice even more.  A middle ground was needed.  The winner of the night for me was the La Valentina Montepulciano d’Abuzzzo, a wine made on the Adriatic side of Italy with the versatile Montepulciano grape.  With a strong core of black raspberry fruit and firm but not overpowering acids, it seemed to be able to envelop the flavors of the food as opposed to fighting with them.

Sen Yai Sen Lek is a gem, and should be explored by people wanting to get out of the box of French or Italian night after night. The wine list, like the list at Alma, is tight and carefully curated.  Good stemware is used, the staff is knowledgeable, and they can lead you on a culinary journey that will open your eyes.  Trust the staff — tell them how much food you want and the styles you wish to enjoy.  They will take it from there.

Sen Yai Sen Lek
2422 Central Avenue Northeast (just off Central and Lowry)
Google place page

The “Sips For Smiles” event includes:

A variety of wine tasting stations sommelier selected to pair to a number of outstanding hand crafted food stations!

An artisan cheese station provided by France 44, handmade appetizers with chef demo’d stations provided by Chefs Mike Shannon & Maggie Lyon of Cooks of Crocus Hill and hand-rolled truffles and caramels will be served by Randy Kingsbury of Randy’s Candies – all have which have been organized to provide a number of fabulous treats paired to a corresponding wine station.

Auction lot items include:

A number of originally hand-signed John Lennon Lithographs
A selection of autographed professional guitars by artists:  Rascal Flats, Sugarland, Cheryl Crow and Styx
A selection of handmade clothes, bags and art pieces provided by citizens of the countries the Smile Network has assisted

AND a $250,000 wine collection including a number of world renowned verticals. Verticals and single bottle vineyards include a number of First Growth Bordeauxs, Cult Status-ed Californian Wines (like Screaming Eagle and more) – along with a smattering of unbelievable international wines that most have only ‘heard’ about!  This is truly one opportunity you may never have again – outside of a Christie’s Wine Auction!!  And, all available for you to bid on and take home…”

For more information on this incredible event, visit the Smile Network event website.