Young Winos of LA

Over the years, the Young Winos have reliably held forward-thinking stances on a number of contentious issues, including, among others, the ongoing shift away from corks and towards artificial closures. In particular, we’ve applauded the Stelvin screwcap for its comparatively lower rate of spoilage, even as it’s been derided by winemakers we’ve met on account of environmental or tradition-based concerns (as well as by wine snobs we’ve met on account of pretention-based concerns).  But while the cyllandrical still wine cork may be losing popularity, the Champagne cork always seemed a bit more immutable.  No one would ever seal a bottle of bubbly with anything but the classic mushroom-shaped cork and wire ensemble, would they?  After all, besides being quelle traditionelle, the corks are incredibly fun to pop open, no matter which method you employ to do it (click here to watch a video of us testing out three of them).

You can imagine our surprise, then, when we received a sample bottle of the 2007 Municipal Winemakers “Fizz” Sparkling Shiraz (Santa Barbara County) and discovered that it had been sealed with a crown cap — the type found on your favorite long-neck bottle of brew.  While screwcaps may be taking the wine world by storm, the crown cap still has quite a bit of catching up to do.  In a recent article in Wines & Vines, Domaine Chandon PR director Sue Furdek explained the crown cap’s image problem: “Consumers love and want the ‘pop’ when they open bubbly,” she said. “There’s only modest acceptance of alternatives to cork in still wine, and even less with sparkling.”

As has been well-documented in various media, the Winos will open any closure as long as it allows us access to the wine within, so we had no compunction about grabbing the bottle opener and procuring ourselves some fizzy red goodness.  In the interest of satisfying our journalistic curiosity, however, we decided to contact winemaker Dave Potter to learn why he bucked tradition and bound his bubbles below a bottlecap.  What follows is a journey into the mad mind of the Municipal Winemaker.

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A few months ago, the Winos found color photos of themselves in various stages of intoxication splattered across the pages of a nationally-distributed publication.  However, what was even more impressive than the time one of our celeb-studded wine brawls wound up in US Weekly was the time that the Winos were featured in Mutineer Magazine!  (See what I did there?  The old irony-laden bait-and-switch.  Like when you offer your friend a glass of Romanée-Conti, and he thinks he’s getting a Romanée-Conti AOC, but then you actually pour him a La Tâche.  Ooooh, burn!)

The January/February issue of Mutineer features a four-page article called “Rebel Spirit,” penned by yours truly, in which an unassuming wine writer from southern California travels to New York State’s first whiskey distillery to operate since Prohibition and investigates the bizarre and unpredictable world of micro-distilling.  The Mutineer website describes the piece as follows: “veteran scribe Jesse Porter goes Gonzo in this piece that explores the exploding craft spirits scene in the United States, featuring Finger Lakes Distilling, Tuthilltown Spirits, Philadelphia Distilling, and Dry Fly Distilling.”  That’s right, I’m a “veteran scribe” named “Jesse Porter” and I “went gonzo.”  C’mon, who doesn’t want to read that?

If you’re among those who didn’t answer “me” to the preceding rhetorical question, then I’d siggest you do one of the following two things: 1) download a fairly low-res PDF version by clicking here, or 2) the vastly better option, rush down to your local magazine retailer and purchase a copy of your own!  Mutineer Magazine can be found on the shelves of numerous retailers large and small, including such formidable names as Barnes, Noble, Borders, Vons and Safeway (a full list can be found here).  Or, for the price of three single issues, you could instead subscribe for a year — six issues delivered to your doorstep for $14.95.

As a demographic, the Young Winos tend to drink quite a lot more wine than the average. There’s no denying it… we drink an inordinately large amount of wine. Truthfully, it’s severely ridiculous how much wine we drink.

However, one of our big points of pride is that we not only drink more wine than most people, but more interesting wine as well. It’s easy to fall into the trap of drinking only Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Zinfandel, and other grapes we see most often on wine lists and in grocery stores. To avoid such situations, the Winos do our best to devote numerous meetings to tasting awesome, dynamic and under-appreciated grapes that may be flying below the radar of the average consumer. This week, we investigate exactly such a grape: the star of Sicily, Nero d’Avola. (more…)

We wanted to love the South African wines. We really did. We hadn’t tasted them exclusively since 2006, and we thought the intervening two years might have some positive effect. We were buoyed by Eric Asimov’s recent glowing endorsement of South African Cabernets, and we couldn’t wait to dig in.

Perhaps, though, we should’ve waited. Or at least bought different bottles. (more…)