If you’re a true wine geek, then you know about the Jura. When I lived in New York, you couldn’t go to an “Offline” (translated into human: a wine geek gathering) without seeing a boatload of bottles from the Jura; some Arbois, some Vin Jaune, etc.

Wink Lorch, the scribe of Jura Wine scribes, is writing THE BOOK about the region and has started a Kickstarter campaign. To be honest, it’s already met its funding goal. So why support it then?

Simple.

Fame.

All Kickstarter backers will be acknowledged in the book. Yes, you too can have a piece of eternal wine geek history!

What are you waiting for?!

Italy’s at it again. When you look at their constant changes, it’s hard to think of them as a unified country. Does Italy need a wine Garibaldi? Luckily, out of this chaos, a wild variety of good and great wines are made, so it’s hard to complain too much.

There has been the overall change to be consistent wine with European law: Both DOCs (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) and DOCGs (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) will now also be known as DOP (Denominazione Origine Protetta). In the same way that AOCs in France will now be known as AOPs. The main change here is in one term – ‘controlled’ becomes ‘protected’ – that at least one person in the EU believes is an important distinction. It’s strange that this is all based on the French AOC system but even they need to change their terminology.

Garibaldi Awards:

The winner of the Most Sensible New Region is Romagna DOC. It’s a consolidation of five former DOCs: Sangiovese di Romagna, Trebbiano di Romagna, Pagadebit di Romagna, Cagnina di Romagna and Romagna Albana Spumante. Much more consolidation would be appreciated!

The winner of the Most Ridiculous New Region is Vigneti della Serenissima (Serenissima) DOC in Veneto. It’s a huge and very specifically designated DOC for producing Champagne style sparkling wines that covers pretty much all of the best vineyards of Veneto. Serenissima is a nickname for Venice which literally means ‘the most serene‘. It’s also the nickname for the A4 highway that runs through it as well as Franciacorta in Lombardy, a well established producer of Champagne style sparkling wines. Does Italy really need another Champagne? Are Venetians (and tourists) really going to switch from Prosecco to Serenissima? Is Serenissima just a bad joke?

There are now 73 DOCGs and 403 to 412 DOCs. It’s hard to get an exact figure on DOCs. The last published number was 403 but that would have required nine DOCs to have been abandoned, something that is not mentioned. For now, we’re leaving all 412 on the map.

New DOCGs (DOPs):

Bagnoli Friularo is a new DOCG with the same area as Banoli di Sopra DOC in Lazio.

Cannellino di Frascati is a new DOCG with the same area as Frascati DOC in Lazio.

Castel del Monte Bombino Nero, Castel del Monte Nero di Troia Riserva and Castel del Monte Rosso Riserva are new DOCs that all share the same area as Castel del Monte DOC in Puglia.

Colli Euganei Fior d’Arancio is a new DOCG in Veneto with the same area as Colli Euganei DOC.

Dogliani DOCG, formerly Dolcetto di Dogliani DOC, has expanded its boundaries slightly to the south-west in Piedmont.

Elba Aleatico Passito is a new DOCG with the same area as Elba DOC in Tuscany.

Frascati Superiore is a new DOCG with the same area as Frascati DOC in Lazio.

Lison is a new DOCG with the same area as Lison-Pramaggiore DOC in Friuli Venezia Giulia.

Montecucco Sangiovese is a new DOCG with the same area as Montecucco DOC in Tuscany.

Montello rosso is a new DOCG with the same area as Montello – Colli Asolani DOC in Veneto.

Offida DOCG – elevated from DOC in Marche.

Piave Malanotte is a new DOCG with the same area as Piave DOC in Veneto.

Rossaso is a former subzone of Friuli Colli Orientali DOC that has been elevated to a DOCG.

Suvereto is a new DOCG in Tuscany.

New DOCs:

Malvasia di Cagliari, Monica di Cagliari and Moscato di Cagliari are now just know as Cagliari. Giro di Cagliari, Nasco di Cagliari and Nuragus di Cagliari – which all have the same boundaries as Cagliari – remain independent DOCs.

Calosso is a new DOC in Piemonte.

Casavecchia di Pontelatone is a new DOC in Campania.

Falanghina del Sannio is a new DOC in Campania that shares boundaries with Sannio DOC.

Maremma Toscana has been elevated from an IGT to a DOC in Toscana.

Negroamaro di Terra d’Otranto is a large new DOC at the southern part of Puglia which occupies the entire provinces of Brindisi, Lecce & Taranto.

Roma is a large new DOC that includes the vineyards around Rome.

Romagna DOC is a consolidation of five former DOCs: Sangiovese di Romagna, Trebbiano di Romagna, Pagadebit di Romagna, Cagnina di Romagna and Romagna Albana Spumante.

Sicilia, which includes all of Sicily, has been elevated from an IGT to a DOC.

Spoleto, a new white wine DOC in Umbria.

Tavoliere delle Puglie is a new DOC in Puglia that covers many northern vineyards.

Terre del Colleoni is a new DOC in Lombardia

Terre di Cosenza is a new DOC in Campania that covers the entire province of Consenza in the northern part of Campania.

Terre di Offida occupies the same area as Offida DOCG. Offida has been elevated from DOC to DOCG status.

Terre di Pisa is a new DOC in Tuscany.

Tintilia del Molise is a new very large DOC in Molise that covers most of its vineyards but not all.

Val d’Arno di Sopra is a new DOC in Tuscany.

Valtenèsi is a new DOC in Lombardia.

Venezia is a large new DOC in Veneto that covers the entire provinces of Venezia and Treviso.

Vigneti della Serenissima (Serenissima) is a very large new DOC in Veneto.

Villamagna is a new DOC in Abruzzo.

On recent trip to Etna, I learned that you can take blind tasting a step further. One of their most influential and famous wine makers believes that you can actually identify a wine by the sound it makes being poured in the glass; that every wine has a unique sound.

But blind tasting is difficult enough.

If you participated in the blind tasting at the BYOB Enter Vinodrome you know what I’m talking about. Of the 33 people who tried, only 6 were able to guess the country and either a grape variety in the wine or the vintage as well. Congratulations to the top tasters: Elisabetta Tosi, Nöel Pusch, Agnes Nemeth, Robert Joseph, Jamie Goode and Oscar Quevedo.

It’s just extremely difficult to do well and I know of no one who claims that they are good at it. Except for one person: the great American wine critic Robert Parker. He claims to remember every single wine that he has ever tasted. And he tastes blind. And he’s tasted a lot of wine. I don’t know about you, but this sounds like either the ranting of a crazy person or the insecurity of someone with a very small penis.

About 10 years ago, before there were many wine blogs or facebook or twitter – ancient times – the way people discussed wines online was through forums. Forums still exist but then they were populated mainly by men with a banter that resembled locker room towel snapping fights. It seemed that the online diet of the wine geek at the time consisted of:

40% are point scores bullshit or not?
40% is Robert Parker bullshit or not?
20% actual discussion about wine

Fortunately the online wine world has dramatically evolved from this Paleolithic period. There’s a lot more written about wine and much less towel snapping. And not much discussion about point scales.

Did everyone get bored with point scales?

It doesn’t seem that we got bored but rather acquiesced to them. Everyone just seems to use them now. Even amateur wine enthusiasts on Cellartracker.com feel compelled to assign a score on the 100pt scale.

Points just seem to be necessary shorthand to describe a wine.

But are they? And more importantly, does anyone really care about them outside of the wine world?

A 2007 study by the University of South Australia looked at the factors that influenced wine buying decisions in the UK:

1. Tasted wine previously
2. Someone recommended it personally
3. Origin of the wine (country or region)
4. Information on the back label
5. Brand name
6. I read about it
7. Grape variety
8. Matching food
9. Information on the shelf
10. Promotional display in-store
11. Medal/award
12. An attractive front label
13. Alcohol level below 13%

The places were point scores could come directly into play in the decision are fairly low on the list: at number 6 ‘I read about it’ and number 9 ‘Information on the shelf’.

So it seems that most consumers don’t really pay attention to scores.

OK, that was for the UK. I couldn’t find any similar metrics for the US but I’m not naïve about the impact that they have there. I have a brother-in-law who’s a doctor. One day he told me that he and his friends had figured out wine. The secret is to only buy 90+ point wines and ignore the rest.

He thought that this was genius until I pointed out that he will be missing out on a huge number of excellent wines. To help make the case, I had him try some wines that either score less than 90 or are not rated at all. He quickly saw the folly of his ways. A better wine buying strategy that he uses now is to buy from good local shops that give good recommendations.

Still, wine point systems seem to get more pervasive as more people use point systems – in a self perpetuating way.

Is this some sort of collective insanity?

The whole thing is like a house of cards built on the flimsy foundation of blind tasting. Something that nobody does well. And something that most consumers don’t really care about.

So why bother?

Traditionally, wine on Etna wasn’t red or white, it was simply wine with all the grapes blended together. Barone di Villagrande introduced separately vinifying the red and white grapes on Etna in the 1850s.

Nerello Mascalese
Nerello Mascalese is the uniquely aromatic grape that makes up the main part of Etna red wines. Etna Rosso DOC wines must have a minimum of 80% Nerello Mascalese. At first glance, its cluster could be mistaken for Pinot Noir, which also has small berries and a deep purple skin with pink highlights when ripening. They also both maintain high acid levels, flourish in cooler climates and are difficult to grow.

But Nerello Mascalese has much thicker skins and can produce a much more tannic wine. Wines made from Nerrello Mascalese have a distinctive aroma and flavor that can be described as (I’ll take a shot): almond/cherry liquor/herbal/red fruits and sometimes balsamic and/or menthol. They are usually pale to medium garnet and often have the a brick colored rim of an aged wine even when young. Their refreshing levels of acidity combined with their high tannins show the potential to age very well.

Stranglely, the oldest Etna Rosso that I tried – a 1996 Patria Torrepalino – was more of a deep ruby color. Red wines usually get lighter and more brown with age. It also had the freshness of a much younger wine but doubt that this is a Rodenstock fake as there was fierce pile of sediment in the bottle.

Nerello Cappuccio
Nerello Cappuccio is the minor blending grape for Etna red wines that adds color and fruit. Most Etna Rosso DOC wines will have between 10 to 20% (the maximum allowed) in the blend. While pure Nerello Mascallese is not unusual, Nerello Cappuccio is rarely made into a varietal wine, but Benanti has taken it upon themselves to make a 100% Nerello Cappuccio to show its characteristics.

For a grape that’s supposed to add color to a blend, the wine was surprisingly pale; a light ruby color. When I asked Guiseppe Benanti why he said that it is to make the color fresher and less brickish while adding some fruit. The standard line in most of the tastings was that the Cappuccio adds color and structure, like Colorino in Chianti or Graciano in Rioja. But it’s not the case and Benanti demonstrated it clearly with the wine in the glass: bright ruby color, softly fruity – red fruits and strawberry – a grape to add charm, not backbone.

Carricante
Carricante is the native and main grape in Etna white wines. According to star Etna winemaker Ciro Biondi Carricante means “abundant crop” in Italian. Usually a tough class of grape to be in. The high yielding vines of the world (ie Gamay, Chenin Blanc, Carignan, etc) were traditionally over-cropped therefore traditionally produced dilute and characterless wines.

Currently only 8% of Etna wines are white, but the proportion is growing as the unique qualities of this grape are more understood. Etna pioneer Marco de Grazia came to Etna to produce red wines but was surprised with the potential quality of Carricante wines. According to him, Nerello Mascalese is difficult to grow but (relatively) easy to make wines from, while Carricante is just the opposite: easy to grow but difficult to make into a good wine.

De Grazie’s point comes across when tasting Etna Biancos. They were hard to pin down stylistically. Most were aromatic, but the specific aromas varied a lot, ranging from grapefruit to apple peel to lemon peel, herbal and almond and floral. The best whites had a distinctive waxiness, a little like Loire Chenin, and great minerality.

Catarratto
Catarratto is the main white grape of Sicily but only plays a minor blending role in Etna Bianco.

Other grape varieties grown on Etna, include reds: Alicante (Grenache), Rosso Minnella, Pinot Nero; and whites: Minnella, Trebbiano, Malvasia, Riesling, Gewürztraminer. Mostly played minor roles in blends but varietal Minnella, Gewürztraminer and Pinot Nero are also made.

There are many wine regions that compare themselves with Burgundy but few have a better argument than Etna DOC.

Actually, the more precise comparison would be to the Côte-d’Or. Both are very similar in size and slope from hillsides, but while the Côte-d’Or slopes from hills in the west, the Etna vineyards are wrapped around the base of Mt Etna. And both make elegant, aromatic wines.

Wine of the Week: Vistini Ribolla Gialla Colli Orientali del Friuli 2010

Ribolla Gialla is one of my all-time favorite grapes. It’s also an excellent way to wean your friends off Pinot Grigio. It’s usually more complex and less fruity – tighter and more elegant. That said, Vistini makes an amazing orange-hued(from skin maceration) Pinot Grigio.

One strange thing about this wine is that it gets more intense in the mid-palate, which is the opposite of pretty much every other wine. It might be just a short phase this bottle is going through or a phase that my taste buds are going through as well.

Wine of the Week: Valli Unite San Vito Timorasso 2010

Timorasso is one of my new favorite grapes – it’s Chenin-like but more intense. A must!

So instead of just complaining, I’ve put together a fail-safe method of how to spot a bad restaurant instantaneously. In theory it should work in the same way that a ninja assesses a threat: in a split second tallying the number of enemies, judging their skill level, determining exit routes, etc. You’ll usually have more time than a split second as the restaurant won’t be attacking you . . . unless you let it.

If more than one of these tell-tale signs crop up, you can be pretty sure that the eatery in question is indeed a BAD RESTAURANT:

1. Photographs of food
2. Pastel tablecloths
3. Glass plates
4. Long menus
5. Always empty
6. No food in sight
7. Dry
8. Loud music
9. Filthy
10. Bad toilets
11. Bad smells
12. Bad plating
13. Themes

Photos of Food
Photos could come in handy to avoid embarrassing misunderstandings – like that the local delicacy of Tordesillas, Spain is actually a medieval grey pile of boiled chicken skin and bones – but it’s usually better to give places with photos a pass. I’ll begrudgingly grant a waiver to Asian restaurants on this one, but otherwise it’s a giveaway that the restaurant’s main market segment is either tourists or grunting illiterate troglodytes. For some good examples, take look at Harmon Leon’s Bad Restaurant Food Photography.

Pastel Tablecloths
Pastel colored (coloured) tablecloths are about as fashionable as the Queen’s handbag and a surefire indication that the menu hasn’t changed since 1973; an ancient form of trickery used to distract from drab cuisine. Especially treacherous when deployed in diagonal layers or matched with pastel serving uniforms.

Glass Plates
Glass plates sound like a good idea in theory: food floating on a transparent surface. Wait, scratch that. They actually sound like a really stupid idea. In order to sell more product, the drinking glass industry has somehow convinced more than a few unwitting restauranteurs that glass plates are a refreshing and stylish twist in tableware. Yes! And they really come into their own when that pastel tablecloth shows through, visually intermingling with your hamburger patty, cottage cheese and pineapple ring (or equivalent) main course. Don’t let it happen to you.

Long Menus
When the menu makes an audible “thud” as it hits the table, beware. While it’s great for the wine list to have some heft, the same thing in a menu should send alarm bells off. Vintage food anyone?

Always Empty
What if you threw a party and nobody came? Sadly this happens to many restaurants. Or they may just be a front for money laundering. The key term here is “always”. Some excellent restaurants are sometimes empty so this isn’t going to be an instant indicator. So much for our ninja approach.

No Food in Sight
Every once in a while I walk into a restaurant where there’s nothing to betray the fact that food is actually being served. It’s especially unnerving when the place is crowded, giving the effect of a giant waiting room with tables. More shocking is that some people actually decide to join the people sitting at tables in sitting at tables. Hit the doors faster than you can say “corporate hospitality!”

Dry
No wine, no alcohol, no BYOB – no fun. I can live without wine and even without drinking any form of alcohol during a meal, but the puritanical approach to restauranteering is a reliable indicator that your meal will be every bit as enjoyable as a trip to the proctologist.

Loud Music
I don’t mind loud music but would rather have a conversation than headbang through dinner. Mario Batali’s often parodied soundtrack at Babbo, was (is still?) heavy on the Ozzy but at least the music wasn’t played at deafening levels. I remember a new local fish restaurant that looked promising but blasted Fogat (the musical equivalent of a mullet – the hairstyle, not the fish). When asked if it could be turned down a little, our waiter said that it was part of the “concept.” The crescendo of the concept must have been with the restaurant closing 2 months later in screaming guitars; Eddie Van Halen’s Eruption towering as the doors slam shut for the last time.

Filthy
One man’s filthy is another man’s Denmark. Accept only what you feel entirely comfortable with. If your dirty fork is replaced by an equally dirty fork, apologize to the waiter for having to leave because of an appointment (with basic hygiene) that you somehow forgot.

Bad Toilets
I once ate at a place where the men’s toilet had been replaced by an orange traffic cone. Everyone felt sick afterwards. Go figure.

Bad Smells
If the food smells bad, then head for the door if you’re not already outside. This is obvious, but other ambient bad smells may not be so easily assessed. The main and pretty much only criterion is if they will soon pass. In the Florida Keys there was a waterside al fresco hotel restaurant that looked appealing. But what was that sickly perfumed smell? Little machines were wafting out a masking perfume over something now obviously and hideously sulfurous. The waiter didn’t know “what we were talking about”. Before we could be hacked up and thrown into the lagoon to refresh the odious stench of death, we ran for the car.

Bad Plating
Sorry, but if the food looks bad, it probably is. One of the most disturbing examples of bad plating I’ve ever encountered was at the famous M. Manze pie shop in Southeast London. The potatoes are first run through a mechanical masher which makes them look like congealed spaghetti. To add insult to injury, the mash is then scraped onto the side of the plate giving the impression that said plate was used to shovel a small hillock of slop off the floor. Fail.

Themes
I didn’t need to tell you this, but sometimes it’s not obvious, especially when travelling with children. Are Chinese restaurants themed restaurants? No, Grasshopper, a Chinese restaurant is a Chinese restaurant, unless its t shirt shop is larger than its kitchen.

This is a work in progress. The list could go on and on. Please let me know if you have any other surefire tips to assess the threat of a potentially bad restaurant. Together we can save humanity from a world of culinary woe.

Wine of the Week: Le JONC-BLANC Bergerac, Les Sens du Fruit 2009

Delicious, quaffable and pure. No cedar/cassis flavors as might be expected, just “les sens du fruit.”

David Gissen has done it again with an amazing new Metro Wine map of California. I know that – with the exception of BART – trains aren’t that big in CA but just like his Metro Wine Map of France, this map does an excellent job of clarifying the wines and grapes of California. It’s styled a bit different from the France map, giving it a more American flavor, but with the same sense of obsessive detail.

It’s now available for pre-order and will ship Feb. 23rd.

The only question now is what country to do next?!