Play begins in earnest in April, and hope is in the heart of every fan for the possibilities of a great season. Bud break and initial vine growth occur with the crack of the first bat.

Early season injuries can devastate a team (~cough~ Jose Reyes ~cough~) just as easily as early season frost can decimate a vineyard.

In September and October the seasons wind down and the harvest and playoffs begin amid frantic activity and excitement. A winner is crowned as baby wines are barreled down for the winter.

And when it’s all over and the last leaves fall from the vine, we’re eager to sit down, reflect on the past season and begin looking forward to the new.

I love baseball.

Each year, in the quiet period after crush has ended and before the work of growing begins anew, I take a few weeks to work on a project that both interests me and expands my skill set. 4 years ago, along with my family, I decided to start building a winery. Last year I wrote a desktop database client and a companion iPhone app for the winery (BTW, here’re my thoughts on the recently announced iPad).

This year my mind turned to baseball. For my wine geek friends who aren’t into baseball ( but should be) you can click away now. It’s about to become a baseball stat geekatorium up in here.

Basically I said to myself, “self, you’ve always wanted your own baseball stats database, and a pretty way to access it. You also need to get a deeper understanding of mySQL and php for projects like Help a Winery Out. Why not do that for your yearly project?” To which I replied, “hell yeah.”

There are so many incredible resources out there for the baseball fan with some technical chops, it’s breathtaking. Retrosheet, for instance, is a complete record of every play made in every game stretching back to the 50s, and they are adding more historical data each year. And it’s completely free. Truly remarkable.

So I downloaded the sucker and got to work building a cool way to interface it.

Now, dear reader, if you count yourself as one of those baseball purists who don’t sugar the whole fantasy baseball thing, you may want to click away at this point as well. That should leave under ten interested readers. Excellent! You are my peeps.

Here’s what I built. It’s called Rotobase. Like Fangraphs but for fantasy baseball nuts.

I think I do these projects now as a reaction to being unable to complete my winery project. I feel a very pressing need to complete *something* and “ship” it each year, even if it isn’t a bottle of wine.

Happily next year will be different. Bottles of wine will finally ship. Which makes me wonder if my desire to do these projects will ship with them.

For now I’ll be competing in the NFBC Auction (nationwide high stakes league) in Vegas in March and using this tool to aid me in my research.

Wish me luck!

Fair use is made of cropped copy of a photo appearing on Uncork for a Cause

Dear Candace,

We are very sad to bring this news to you today. Demand for Pigs & Pinot this year was incredibly high, so high in fact, that our technology server was not equipped to handle the volume of ticket purchases made on the website yesterday at 12PM. This resulted in six times the amount of tickets allocated for online purchases to actually process prior to the system showing ‘sold out’. Furthermore, the system failed to process credit card transactions because of this overload and consequently you were not charged for your tickets.

We regretfully inform you that your ticket purchase was processed after all of the Pigs & Pinot tickets were sold out. We’ve racked our brains on how to accommodate all of the extra ticket holders, but unfortunately there just isn’t enough event space to accommodate everyone this year. What this means is that we have to cancel your order for Pigs and Pinot 2010. Due to the processing error, your credit card was not charged, so no charges will appear on your credit card statement.

We understand what a disappointment this is and would like to offer you the first option to purchase two tickets for Pigs & Pinot 2011 when they become available later this year.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or disappointment this may have caused (we’re just as sad and disheartened as you are, trust us) and are available to take any questions or comments by phone at 707-431-2800.

There has been such an outpouring of support for Pigs & Pinot this year which we are incredibly grateful for as we continue our efforts to raise valuable funds for Share Our Strength, while highlighting exceptional local Sonoma County wine producers.

Regretfully,
The Pigs & Pinot team

My wife purchased tickets at the stroke of noon and received confirmation no less than a minute after the tix went on sale. We find it hard to believe we were somewhere in the back of the pack given the timing.

More likely is that they had no way of discerning who attempted to purchase what when. Technical difficulties tend to come in bunches. Ticket assignment was, apparently, completely arbitrary.

Moreover, the offer to purchase tickets for next year has to be one of the worst customer service moves they could have taken given the circumstances. This makes no one happy, is completely crass (locking in lost revenue a year in advance) and the math doesn’t even add up. If you have 6 times more demand than tickets this year, how can you possibly offer an early sale to everyone who was passed over? Silly and false.

I for one won’t be taking Charlie up on the offer.

A superior solution would be to simply add a scaled down tasting event to the schedule to accommodate the folks who were arbitrarily excluded through no fault of their own.

In a down economy, to experience demand like this is a terrific honor. You should do everything in your power to nurture it.

Instead, it’s more of the same from an industry that is utterly tone deaf when faced with success. The answer is not to enhance exclusivity, it is to do everything possible to be inclusive.

You won’t be getting a second chance with the majority of these folks, and this year’s success will likely not be replicated due to this abysmal customer service.

As an industry we can do better. Much better.

One of the reasons for this, Jeff says, is because of the dearth of meta stories that are news-driven and thus have universal effect and interest. I think he’s right.

Two other stories this morning also prodded me to post. One is this story on CNN talking about winemakers fighting climate change.

Another is this recent post on Palate Press discussing where to plant a vineyard in 2099 due to effects of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

EDIT: Another one from today (12/8): French wineries join Greenpeace.

Bottom line – it looks like we have a universal, news driven wine story, and so I thought I’d provide some perspective from a farmer/winemaker in the Russian River Valley.

Global Warming and Wine Grape Growing.

First, some context. I believe that the earth has been warming over the past century. I think this is pretty well established. The question is: why has it warmed? Also, I am not going to take a stand on the global policy implications of warming. I’ll leave that to the politicians.

In terms of the wine industry, the relevant questions are: how will the warming affect grape growing, and will the the warming be detrimental or will it have a positive impact? In making these determinations, it is also very useful to have an opinion as to whether the rise in temps is due to CO2 “forcing”, or if warming is a cyclical thing and should be regarded as temporary.

How Will Warming Affect Wine Grape Growing?

The short answer is: we don’t know. The reason we don’t know is because the climate isn’t homogenous, and warming on a global scale may or may not adversely impact viticulture on a meso scale.

In 2007 I wrote about UC Davis Climatologist Richard Snyder’s work studying Napa temps.

I wrote the following as a conclusion (click through to see slides and a link to a news article on his talk):

What’s interesting is that the single biggest danger global warming poses for wine growers is that the incidence of these extreme weather events will increase, not that average temps will increase. San Pablo Bay protects Napa Valley from overheating quite well, and as temps increase Dr. Snyder predicted that fog due to evaporation from the bay will increase and stretch farther up the valley, insulating the grapes.

And given the fact that it is in nighttime temps that we are seeing the real effect of the temperature increase, what we have is a recipe for better grape growing conditions. Since grapes can continue to ripen at night when temperatures are relatively warm, global warming – paradoxically – might be just the thing to help out growers losing tonnage late in the season because phenological ripeness hasn’t kept pace with sugar accumulation.

It’s tempting to speculate that other maritime winegrowing regions might react in a similar way, but more studies for each region would need to be undertaken. The truth is we just don’t know.

Indeed, we simply have no evidence to suspect any sort of universal calamity to befall grape growers due to an increase in global average temperatures, and this needs to be noted in any discussion about wine and global warming.

Global Warming’s Cause: Man, Nature or a bit of Both?

Why does it matter what the cause is, if most people agree there is warming?

The answer is: if it’s man made, it will continue. If it’s an artifact of natural cycles, it will likely reverse course in the future. In one future the climate never cools. In the other the climate behaves like a sine wave, with global temps rising and falling with a relatively flat trend line.

In practice, a winegrower’s stance on the issue has profound implications.

As one example, I was sent this link to a Decanter story about Hugh Ryman of Chateau de la Jaubertie in Bergerac pulling out his Merlot vines due to warming. His actions are predicated on his belief that the warming will either continue, or that current temps will stabilize as the new normal.

This is not a cheap endeavor on his part, and pulling old vines is always a cringe-inducing affair. In the Russian River and Sonoma, the lack of many old vines is frequently lamented, even though they were replaced with the best of intentions at the time, in the name of progress.

There are of course consequences to inaction as well. If your wine quality is suffering for whatever reason, change is usually required. Grafting over to new varieties is typical in the New World, for instance, when the whims of the market change.

For those with skin in the game, it behooves us all to take a hard look at the science behind the cause of the warming and determine how big a bet we want to place on the accuracy of any prediction where climate is concerned.

My Current Opinion, Subject to Change

Until just very recently, I was a firm believer in AGW. We have purchased extremely marginal land up north and began vineyard planning and collecting temperature data in anticipation of future warming. In the face of what I saw as overwhelming consensus on AGW, our family put our money where the science told us to.

I’m now a skeptic.

In general, viticulturists and vineyard developers are used to and comfortable with trusting science and the researchers producing it. Science is a good bet. Sometimes it works out (phylloxera) and sometimes it doesn’t (UC Davis in the 70’s advised most folks to plant on the valley floor in Alexander Valley if they wanted the best quality). But we’ve never had reason to doubt that the researchers were only after the truth and had out best interests at heart.

I don’t have that same confidence anymore for the top-tier scientists in Climate Modeling. And I don’t think I’m alone.

Why? In a recent editorial in Nature, the evidence for AGW is characterized as the following:

Denialists often maintain that these changes are just a symptom of natural climate variability. But when climate modellers test this assertion by running their simulations with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide held fixed, the results bear little resemblance to the observed warming. The strong implication is that increased greenhouse-gas emissions have played an important part in recent warming, meaning that curbing the world’s voracious appetite for carbon is essential.

If the leaked CRU emails show anything, it is that the public was wrong to confer to scientists a level of deference that is utterly unmatched in any other professional endeavor. They are as petty as everyone else, and the sausage-making behind the scenes is ugly indeed.

Programming code and comments from the leaked archive indicate that data massaging was taking place. It is not clear if this code was used to produce published results, but it was present, uncommented, in a finished version of an influential temperature reconstruction.

Regardless though, the fact that such manipulative code exists is reason enough to demand a full and transparent accounting of how the models provide the predictions they do.

The extent to which the raw data and metadata used to build temperature reconstructions was destroyed is incredibly worrisome as well. It means that replication will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, and replication is at the heart of the scientific method.

Ultimately the above is important because, as the Nature editorial points out, the evidence for AGW rests on the inability of the climate models to account for warming without CO2 “forcing” and its attendant feedbacks (cloud cover, water vapor etc.) which are not well understood. The models are validated with past data, and are an accumulation of much good science. However the models are a product of a complicated set of assumptions, not observations, and can’t account for the lack of warming in the past decade. In fact, the warming in last decade is below even the most optimistic predictions the models made back in 1999.

Indeed NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth (now famously) wrote

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

Looking at all this, I’m forced to confront the uncomfortable idea that I can no longer credulously accept the notion of AGW. It may well be that man is the cause of the recent warming, but we are not ready to grub up any vineyards, buy any more property, or do much of anything else based on the evidence at hand.

Let me be clear, the above is not evidence that AGW isn’t occurring. It is simply a wake up call. Appeals to authority are no longer (and should never have been) acceptable as explanations.

Unfortunately for the climate scientists, the predictions of warming they provide us are entirely predicated on us trusting them and the closed-source climate models they create.

So, I’m a skeptic. It is a noble intellectual position, and I won’t let ad hominim cries of “denialist” sway me.

What will sway me? A clear accounting of the issues raised by the leaked data and emails, complete and transparent reconstructions of key paleoclimatic data, and public disclosure of all code used to predict future climate change. In short, good science.

My mind is open to whatever may come.

UPDATE: A very good discussion of the problems with AGW by Joe D’Aelo

For the impatient, the reason is: taxes.

Read the whole post.

Welcome to pintoblogger.com, a blog I’ve created to outline the long and painful processes involved in starting and building a family winery in the Russian River Valley.

I’ll be honest, just typing the words above was daunting. I have no illusions that the project will be either quick or painless, but, as they say, nothing worth doing ever is. How bad can things really get when you’ve got the opportunity to build something you are truly passionate about anyway? I guess we’ll find out!

Maybe I’ll look back on this blog three years from now shocked at my own naivety. Maybe I’ll be a shattered man, broken on the rocks of eno-commerce. Or maybe we’ll have made some great, distinctive wine we’ll be proud to call our own. Either way it shakes out, it should be interesting to read.

Well it’s been over three years and I still don’t have any wine to sell (though I have plenty to drink). The length of gestation of this project hasn’t come as any surprise to me, as my initial post shows, but I have been at times perplexed and disappointed at the twists and turns the saga has taken.

In 2007 we were to crush at Vinify which, if it had actually occurred (botched compliance paperwork by our consultant torpedoed the deal), would have meant that our inaugural release would have been this year. This was disappointing at the time, but in hindsight perhaps it was a blessing. Clearly 2009 was not a good year to spring a new luxury Pinot on the market.

In 2008, licking our wounds, we decided that we would start construction on our winery ahead of launching the brand in the marketplace. It was a bold move, but the numbers panned out even at very small production levels (we happen to have some good construction industry connections). While our banker was skeptical, he seemed to be willing to move forward based on both a strong marketing and business plan and some really novel ideas about how to get the wine into the hands of consumers. Indeed, my current biz plan still calls for a completely revolutionary way of looking at tasting rooms. I’m very excited to put it into action.

But then the great crash happened, banks became saddled with illiquid debt, became horrifically risk averse, and we became less attractive as a result of our own financial issues. Yuk.

So, back to square one. Custom crush. Pragmatic, but constraining. Such is life.

Luckily I’m being assisted by a good friend and will have a small amount of wine coming to market next year.

Through the entire roller-coaster ride, this blog and the folks I’ve met through it (and via Twitter) have been a constant source of encouragement. Pinotblogger has opened many doors for me both professionally and personally, I’ve contributed to textbooks on wine marketing, speak regularly at universities, was approached by a literary agent (Candace Bushnell’s no less) about turning our story into a book, and our mailing list is approaching 1700 people. Good times.

I regret not one day. Not one. It’s been quite a ride, and I can’t wait to see how the first act of this play ends. Even if it takes another four years!

Thanks for reading, for your continued support, and for joining me on the journey. I’ve got mad love for you.

Photo by farleyj

Do you know how to rectify your taint after you’ve sniffed it? Are you certain?

Did you know that not all taints are foul smelling? Some folks think some taints smell pleasant. It really depends on the person.

There is so much to learn about taints, in fact, that UC Davis has put together a 2-day taint symposium. There you can go and sniff taints – uninterrupted – with your peers. It’s really quite exciting.

I’ll be going. Will I perchance see you there as well dear reader? I hope I do!

Here’s the full itinerary of taints:

Wine production is all about flavor: getting it in the vineyard, enhancing it during processing, retaining it in the bottle and marketing it to the consumer. We are pleased to announce the creation of a new series of programs focused on all aspects of flavor development called “Wine Flavor 101”. Our goal is to expand the knowledge and recognition of wine flavor attributes, the specific impact compounds and their interactions and the mechanisms by which flavor can be manipulated or modified. A combination of commercial wines, spiked wines and wines deliberately made using different processing techniques will all be featured in the sensory recognition portion of these programs. The programs for December, 2009 include:

Wine Flavor 101A: Identifying and Reducing Flavor Negatives: Dec. 7, 2009 This seminar will include both lectures and sensory evaluation of these taint characters: 1) Green characters from the vineyard 2) Sulfur taints 3) Brettanomyces taints and 4) winery taints: the musty family. Each lecture will go into the nature of each of the taints and what can be done to avoid them, or recify them, if necessary. Following the lecture, attendees will be tasting wines that have either been spiked with the offensive compounds and/or research or commercial wines that clearly display the taint characters.

Wine Flavor 101B: Identifying and Reducing Flavor Negatives: Dec. 8, 2009 The second seminar in this series will cover the following taint characters in both lecture and sensory evaluation formats: 1) Oxidative taints 2) Lactic taints 3) Rose and floral taints and 4) Earthy and smoky taints

TO REGISTER FOR ONE OR BOTH SESSIONS, GO TO: http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/survey/survey.cfm?surveynumber=4278

MAP: The Wine Flavor 101A & B will be held in the Activities and Recreation Center on the UCDavis campus, on LaRue Road, just off Russell Blvd. Map and directions can be found at the ARC site here: http://campusrecreation.ucdavis.edu/cms/internal.aspx?uid=0ebe886d-4128-4f81-8922-66301b508950

THE PROGRAM

Wine Flavor 101A: Identifying and Reducing Flavor Negatives: Dec. 7, 2009
8:00-9:00: Registration, Coffee and Welcome: David Block
9:00-9:30: Overview of Wine Taints for this Session: Linda Bisson
9:30-10:15: Green Characters from the Vineyard: Susan Ebeler
10:30-11:15: Sensory Evaluation of Green-Taint Characters: Susan Ebeler
11:15-12:00: The Sulfur Taints: Linda Bisson
12:00-1:00: LUNCH
1:00-1:30: Sensory Evaluation of Sulfur-Taint Characters: Linda Bisson
1:30-2:15: The Brettanomyces Taints: Lucy Joseph
2:30-3:00: Recognizing Brett Taints: Lucy Joseph, Linda Bisson
3:00-3:30: Winery Taints: The Musty Family: Paula Mara
3:45-4:15: Sensory Evaluation of “Musties”: Paula Mara, Linda Bisson
4:15-4:30: Discussion/Questions: Linda Bisson

Wine Flavor 101B: Identifying and Reducing Flavor Negatives: Dec. 8, 2009
8:00-9:00: Registration, Coffee and Welcome: David Block
9:00-9:45: Overview of Wine Taints for this Session: Linda Bisson
9:45-10:30: Oxidative Taints: Linda Bisson
10:45-11:15: Sensory Evaluation of Oxidative-Taint Aromas: Linda Bisson
11:15-12:00: The Lactic Taints: Lucy Joseph
12:00-1:00: LUNCH
1:00-1:30: Sensory Evaluation of Lactic Taint Aromas: Lucy Joseph, Linda Bisson
1:30-2:15: Rose and Floral Taints: Linda Bisson
2:30-3:00: Sensory Evaluation of Floral-Taint Aromas: Linda Bisson
3:00-3:30: Earthy and Smoky Taints: Linda Bisson
3:45-4:15: Sensory Evaluation of Earthy and Smoky Taints: Linda Bisson
4:15-4:30: Discussion/Questions: Linda Bisson

If you have any questions, please either email me at klbogart@ucdavis.edu or call me at 530-754-9876.

And here’s the link to register. Cost is $400.00 for both taint-filled days.

Based on this one dimensional sensory profile I guessed France, and from there the Rhone.

I was half right. To find out which famed producer made such a wine, click here.

I thought you should know that I just finished reading Tom Wark’s recent post on your unconscionable support of HB6644 late last year. This was a bill that, as far as I am able to discern, was almost completely anti-consumer and anti-competitive, benefitting only the Michigan Beer & Wine Wholesalers.

That you counted the Michigan Beer & Wine Wholesalers Association as your single largest contributor; that you rammed the legislation through committee in a single day; that you introduced and sponsored the legislation at the end of your last term; and that after exiting the legislature you went on to become a lobbyist representing the very same wholesalers absolutely reeks of back-door dealing, sleaze, graft and corruption.

I’m a fairly cynical person. I thought I was beyond being offended by the depths to which corrupt lawmakers like yourself would stoop to return campaign favors and contributions. I was wrong.

Your utter lack of integrity during your tenure as a legislator has opened up new frontiers of indignation and disgust for me, and for many others. This will be your legacy. One feathered with the fetid stain of sweaty cash and framed by the formless black abyss of your conscience. A fornicatorium of malfeasance and dishonor.

What a sad, sorry waste.

Sincerely,

Josh Hermsmeyer

Photo by gruntzooki

Stop using it. Just stop. Saying that consumers are “trading down” right now betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what the entire “Trading Up” phenomena actually was. Silverstein, Fiske and Butman deserve better!

Here is the authors’ own definition of the term (emphasis mine):

“consumers who selectively trade up to better products and trade down to pay for other premium purchases“.

Consumers aren’t spending less on wine right now so they can pocket the savings and spend it on another luxury good. They are cutting back across the board. The economy sucks, and this happens every time we have a recession. We don’t need a hip new term to describe it.

Moreover, by using the term trading down, you show just how little you understood the forces that drove the massive shift to luxury that occurred during the 5 years leading up to the recession.

You come off like a parent trying to score street cred with their punk rock loving teenage son by telling him about how you and his mother totally used to rock out at the James Taylor concerts.

The sad thing is this CEO is not alone. People seem to think they can absorb important marketing concepts simply by osmosis.

Not true. You have to put in the time and actually read the books. Reeks of effort, I know. But it’s better than looking like a complete tool.

Photo by JanneM

A gorgeous dry white that was so aromatic and balanced that I thought it was an excellent example of Gewurtztraminer from Alsace, one of my favorite wine regions.

Was I right? Click here to find out.