Price and Wine Enjoyment

I heard a story on NPR the other day about how people get better results from taking expensive pills — even when the "expensive pill" is a placebo with no active medical ingredients. It’s amazing what our minds will do when we anticipate that something is better.

The same results were discovered from research done on the correlation between enjoyment of wine and the price of the wine. The majority of the time, when people drank what they thought was a more expensive wine; they enjoyed it better than the less expensive wine. A wine that retailed for $90 was sampled by different groups of people. When they were told the true price, they loved it. When other people were told that the wine was just a $10 wine, they didn’t rate it as highly.

What’s even scarier to me is what was going on inside the test subjects’ brains. While the subjects tasted and evaluated the wines, their brains were scanned using an MRI, focusing on the activity of a brain region that is involved in our experience of pleasure. The researchers concluded that, "prices, by themselves, affect activity in an area of the brain that is thought to encode the experienced pleasantness of an experience”!

So much for trying to be objective about wine.

I’ve been facing a choice lately as my budget gets stretched with rising gas and food prices. Do I buy cheaper wine or quality wine less often? This study makes me think that perhaps I just need to learn more about what wines I like and find the great bargains out there. If I can learn to ignore the price tag and concentrate just on the wine itself, I may be able to drink wine with every dinner meal after all.

I wonder if that’s possible given the following statement from one of the researchers:

"If you think about it, the brain should only be influenced by the core components of the wine — its chemical composition. It should not be influenced by something like price," Shiv said. "But in the study we found a functional change in activity in different areas of the brain despite the same chemicals being experienced."

Maybe I need to have my wife buy all the wine and label each bottle with a price tag that says $100!

There's a Cheetah in my Bottle

Certain parts of the world are known for a particular grape. Pinotage is that grape for South Africa. I’d bet that not many people consider Pinotage their favorite grape, but I found my first sample of a wine made from this grape interesting.

Pinotage is a cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsaut created in 1925. The hope was to create a grape with the great flavor of Pinot Noir and the hearty growing strengths of Cinsaut. In South Africa, Cinsaut was called “Hermitage” which explains how the grape is called Pinotage and not Pinotaut.

From what I’ve read about wines made from the grape, they can range from “light and fruity and best consumed young to heavy and tannic examples that needed years to reach maturity.” Flavors of pepper, black fruits, spiciness and acetone are used to describe these wines. It appears that these wines can have an unattractive earthiness. One site said that Pinotage has “has enjoyed great success in a short amount of time but may have had its 15 minutes of fame.”

The wine I tried was a Sebeka Syrah-Pinotage blend. The wine is 60% Shiraz, 40% Pinotage. It reminded me of a cross between a Syrah and a Zinfandel with nice fruit (but not sweet) a little jammy and some pepper flavor. At times the wine seemed to turn a little harsh (maybe the earthiness of the pinotage) on the back of my tongue as I swallowed it. It was almost the same experience as drinking an earthy French wine, but not quite as pleasant.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy this wine, but for the $5 I was able to buy it for, it was a nice wine. I found it interesting that the same wine was $10 at another store in town. It probably would not have picked it up for that price. The chettah on the label normally would put me off as a little too much marketing effort to sell a wine that can’t stand up on its own merits. Jerry Hall who used to have a wine blog called Wine Waves reviewed a wine from Sebeka and posted a great picture of the over for the Sebeka brand (though the yellow cheetah spotted cork is cool!) Gallo Wineries owns the Sebeka label, but the grapes are grown in South Africa and made into wine there. There is even a cheetah endangered species fund associated with the wine, but I don't know how much of this is marketing and much it really helps the animals.

I bought a bottle of 100% pinotage to get a better taste of what the varietal is like. But I think I can call Pinotage my grape # 57 in my Century quest.

Tasting Notes:

Sebeka Syrah Pinotage "Cape Blend" (13.5% alcohol)

Color: Dark cranberry

Aroma: Cherry, zinfandel and syrah like

Flavor: Cherry, like a jammy syrah with a hint of black pepper

Finish: Mild tannins but an earthy bite, unpleasant at times

This wine went really well with garlic, pepper spiced Tri-Tip.

You Only Live Twice

"Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone
in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning.
But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives
everything a second time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it.
Looks at the texture and detail."
Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones, page 48

I have not been posting about wine for almost three months now. There are several "reasons" but the biggest one has been lack of funds. I was buying wine and blogging about them at a rate beyond what my budget was able to handle. I decided to stop blogging to decrease the temptation to buy so much wine.

Then I came across Natalie Goldberg's quote, the one at the top of this page. If I really want to cut back on my spending but still enjoy wine, what better way than to drink each bottle twice!?! I still drink wine, I still want to learn more, I still want to share in this cool blogging world.

I may have ruined my credibility as a blogger by abandoning my blog without a warning, but I'm back and I will keep posting. I can't wait to read everyone else's blogs like I had been doing so regularly. What better way to experience wine than by sharing it with others.

Sorry for the absence...hope to read from you soon!

Wine Blogging Wednesday: French Cab Franc

This month's host for Wine Blogging Wednesday is Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV and the topic is French Cabernet Franc. I wasn't able to find a wine that was from a majority of this grape but I did find a nice wine. First, a little information about the grape. (Click on the Wine Blogging Wednesday logo to learn more about this monthly blogging event.)

Cabernet Franc (Cab Franc) is one of the six red grapes permitted to be grown in the Boredeaux. Depending on how it's grown, Cab Franc can be both fruitier or more "vegetative" than Cabernet Sauvignon, although lighter in color and tannins. Wines made from 100% Cab Franc tend to have a spicy aroma and plums. The grape is usually blended with either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot instead of as a stand-alone wine. It "contributes finesse and a peppery perfume to blends with more robust grapes."

The wine I tried was from the Fronsac region on the "Right bank" of Bordeaux. The Fronsac is located where the Isle River flows into the large Dordogne River. This creates a microclimate that reduces night frosts in spring and cools the summer's heat. The steep slopes in Fronsac help the Bordeaux grape varieties grown here create powerful and complex wines. The soils are clay mixed with limestone.

Fronsac wines are described as being "masculine" and full-bodied. Grapes were grown in this are before the more famous Saint-Emilion just down the river. Merlot grows better here than Cabernet Sauvignon, so like other Right-bank areas, Fronsac is know for it's Merlot blends. Cab Franc is used to add spiciness and enhance the tannins.

The Bordeaux blend I tried for this WBW is from Chateau Villars, a two hundred year old winery in Fronsac. For the past two decades, the owners of Ch. Villars have been modernizing their vineyards and wine making practices. One example of this is that grapes are picked at maximum ripeness, causing the harvest to spread over several weeks. I learned from the book Nobel Rot (the Wine Book Club selection for April) that traditionally grapes were picked to insure maximum harvest before rains came. By waiting for maximum-ripeness, wines with fuller, fruitier flavors are produced.

The Ch. Villars wine I had was 75% Merlot, 18% Cab Franc and 8% Cab Sauvignon. It was 100% barrel-aged for a year in oak barrels, a third of which were brand new. This was a really nice Merlot, though it was different due to the amount of oak used. I had never been able to detect oak in a red wine before this wine, but it was definetly present in the Ch. Villars (Gary would make a comment about the "Oak Monster" I'm sure!) When I first smelled the wine, I could detect cherry and a fresh bread aroma. I couldn't name the fruit I tasted but there without being "fruit forward."

The wine has a medium mouth feel and really nice tannins that don't overpower the fruit or my toungue. Then just before I was about to swallow I could detect the oak. It wasn't excessive, but contributed to make the wine seem fuller. Some may not like it, though. The finish left a pleasant sour cherry taste and lasting tannins. This wine would be really good with food.

Its interesting how the oak effect the middle of my tongue more than any other area of my mouth. The oak also came back again in the finish. I've had other Merlots before, but I'm not sure what part the Cab Franc contributed to this wine to make it different. The oak was more detectable for me. I'll have to read other WBW posts today and try to find some of those wines to get a better feel for what Cab Franc offers. It would be cool to taste a 100% Cab Franc, a 100% Merlot, and then my Ch. Villars blend to see if I could then pick out the different varietals in the blend. I would definitely buy this wine again. The winery website said the wine will be best between 2012 to 2025. It would be nice to try it then to see how the wine deveolops.

Tasting Notes:

2005 Château Villars Fronsac ($19.99)

Color:  Dark purple

Aroma:  Cherry and bread (wonderful Merlot nose)

Taste:  Fruit and oak, medium mouth feel

Finish:  Sour cherry, medium tannins and oak

April 2008 Events

This month holds several wine events for me, three in this week alone! Here's a run down of what April holds for me:

April Fool's Day:  Two events

The first event today is a virtual wine tasting being hosted by Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV fame titled "Gary's April Fool Surprise."



Gary has picked three different wines to review in this virtual tasting. Viewers cchoose to buy in advance and then taste along with him to compare notes. Shipping was free and you could buy either a one bottle pack, a two bottle pack or all three.

I went with the one bottle pack and I was VERY pleasantly surprised. Not only is it a great wine, there is a tie in with the Wine Blogging Book Club book of the month! I'll be drinking the wine and watching today's episode so I can compare notes with Gary and other viewers. I'll share my observations in a future blog post.

Midtown Winers:

Today is also the monthly meeting of an old fashioned wine tasting event where people actually gather together and taste the same wine and talk about it. Strange concept, but it's been working for quite a while at the Midtown Winers in Sacramento, CA. This month's topic is "Obscure Varietals," defined as the lesser know Bordeaux varietals of Petite Verdot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc. I bought a Petite Verdot to share. I also bought a Cabernet Franc, but that has to do with the next event.

April 2:  Wine Blogging Wednesday

This monthly virtual wine tasting event is also hosted by Gary Vaynerchuk and the theme is French Cabernet Franc. What a coincidence! I was not able to get a 100% Cab Franc, my wine only has 18% Cab Franc. I hope it counts. Maybe I'll run across a 100% Cab Franc at the Midtown Winers tonight. Either way, I enjoyed the Bordeaux wine I tasted for WBW # 44.

April 20:  Winery Event in Clarksburg

I'm going to need a break after this week! Fortunately the next event isn't until the middle of the month. A local winery, Scribner Bend Vineyards, is having a "release party" in Clarksburg. They have a varietal I've never tried a white wine from the Fiano grape! I enjoyed my trip to Clarksburg in March and it will be great to see the vineyards in full bloom a month later.

April 29:  Wine Blogging Book Club

The second book of the Wine Blogging Book Club is Nobel Rot. I've really been enjoying reading this book. It not only details a year in Bordeaux, but it gives great history of Bordeaux and details about making wine from grape to bottle.

Dates Through April:  My first Garagiste delivery

Dr. Debs, from Good Wine Under $20, wrote a post back in January about the hush, hush web-site Garagiste. The owners of the site get hard to find wines from all over the world for affordable prices. I intended to buy a case of Italian wines from Corti Brothers, but my plan was put on hold when I discovered this web site. I'll be receiving my first case from Garagiste this month. There are several wines from varietals I've never tried, some great sounding wines from great regions like Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rioja and Scilily to name a few. I'll have even more interesting wine to blog about once the bottles start arriving!

Here's hoping your April is as promising looking as mine and that your April Fool's day is uneventful!