Meeting people is a great way to want to try their wine

A while ago I went to Total Wine to explore the store and pick up a few bottles. I ended up with more than a few bottles, but one of the many I picked up was the Hahn Estates Meritage 2006. Around the blogosphere I got to know Lisa de Bruin, the New Media Marketing Director for the winery. Lisa writes her own blog, where she explores the world of relating to social media and how the mass amounts of bloggers relate to the world. Lisa and Hahn Estates are easily at the forefront of what I believe will be a growing trend of wineries and country promotional organizations having a dedicated staffer whose job it is to explore and relate to online media. I think Lisa and Hahn Estates do a fantastic job. They have started what they hope to be a regular bloggers tasting forum where wineries and bloggers can come together to discuss how each views the wine industry as it is today.

It seems to me that the people doing the best work for bloggers are other bloggers that have access to wineries, samples, or information. Besides Lisa, Lenn Thompson has been very influential in the New York wine industry and has set up a blogger event called TasteCamp (which I am very pleased to be attending). Other bloggers including dudes and lushes, all the way up to established wine writers such as Steve Heimoff of the Wine Enthusiast make mention of other bloggers that they find to be thoughtful and interesting to read. It should be noted that if I mention someone here I think it is well worth the time to check them out.

With that aside however, I want to focus on Hahn Estates.

Nicolaus Hahn and his wife Gaby founded Hahn Estates in the mid 70’s when they experienced that bug that led to a compulsion to start a winery. May I be inflicted one day with the same disease. After meeting with success for their Smith & Hook brand they started the Hahn Estates brand in 1991. The Hahn Estates line is meant to be more approachable by the average consumer as well as reasonably priced.

The wine was pleasant. It had a purple red color and smelled of sweet red cherries with muddled assorted berries. The taste started on the sour cherry side and then transitioned into blueberry punctuated by black pepper. At first I found the wine to be a little disjointed, with a sense of it not knowing how it wanted to present itself. However, once I added food I was very pleased with my purchase. I think this wine was made for rosemary lamb chops with focaccia bread. The blend on the wine is 33% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 19% Petit Verdot, 11% Cabernet Franc, and 7% Malbec. There were 10,500 cases produced and the suggested retail price is $20, although I purchased the bottle for about $17.

I had a few questions for the winemaker, so Lisa put me in touch with Paul Clifton, who is in charge of the Hahn Estates, Hahn SLH (Santa Lucia Highlands), and Lucienne lines from the winery. Since the bottle said Central Coast as the AVA I wondered if the blended grapes came more from one region within the Central Coast than the others.

Paul said:

“Regarding the fruit for the Meritage: The Cabernet Sauvignon, Cab Franc, Petite Verdot come from Paso Robles or southern Monterey County in the San Antonio AVA. The Merlot comes from Arroyo Seco and the Malbec comes from the Santa Lucia Highlands. Over the past 7 years, with the growth of our brands, we have worked with many growers up and down the Central coast with all these Bordeaux varietals. Through a lot of trial and error in working with Growers, as well as our own vineyards, we have determined these AVA’s to be the best for the style of Meritage we put together.

Most of the Bordeaux varieties do very well in warmer areas like Paso and southern Monterey County. However, in 1999, we planted a small block of Malbec in the Santa Lucia Highlands (a cool climate) for a tasting room wine and it has turned out to be an incredible blender with dark color and intense tannic structure. Since it was successful, we planted more Malbec to blend into the Meritage.”

Overall I would say this is a fair wine. It gave me just as much as I felt I had paid for, which is a rare marvel these days.

A question of points

William Tish (known as Tish), at www.wineforall.com, made a comment on one of my recent posts. The post was about my experience at Total Wine and Tish had a question about what I found more influential, cards that list the number of points that the wine received or the personal notes that were written by the staff.

I started replying to the thread and before I knew it I had a whole blog post written. So instead of just posting it as a comment I thought I would post is as an article and let others see it and respond as they see fit.

Tish’s comment was:

Are you for real about the points? Why do numbers impress you? And if one rating comes from WS and another from RP and another from IWC, doesn't that make you wonder what they ratings they did NOT post were? I have been to Total Wines in several states, and have always been WAY more impressed with the hand-written shelf talkers that consciously avoid ratings.

And now the response:

Hey Tish, thanks for the comment!

I think that's because you have a strong bias against ratings to begin with. I agree that it made me think about what the other publications gave the wines that had ratings tags, or why there weren't ratings on every wine. But they were names I trusted. Perhaps it is the special position I have in the industry, but if Michael Schachner at WE rates a wine or Josh Raynolds from the IWC I have a higher chance of buying that wine because I have tasted wines they have rated and I have agreed with their ratings (for the most part).

And do not get confused between trusting and being impressed. I am not impressed about which wines are rated what, it is simply a matter of trust. I trust wines that have the names of WS, WE, W&S, IWC, WA associated with them. And why shouldn’t I? That is why these publications exist! However, I trust my own taste buds MUCH more!

Which brings me to the point about the staff at the store. I don't know them, and I do know that the main goal of the storeowner and staff is to sell wine. Sure they have the incentive to recommend a good wine so that I come back for another recommendation, but because I have not tasted with them I do not know if I should trust their recommendation.

It would be much different if I visited Total Wine regularly and got to know the staff and taste with them during their free in-store tastings, but since it was a one time visit (and maybe again in the future if I get back there) I trust names I know.

At the end of the day, I did not buy a single wine that I knew was highly rated unless I had already tasted it. I purchased wines from producers I had little experience with or regions that I had not tasted as thoroughly as I had others. I completely ignored the signs left by the staff and made my own choices on whatever criteria my brain came up with that day. I might have been buying with a few articles that I had read in mind, or perhaps a wine by the glass I had at a wine bar that someone had recommended that I found enjoyable. But I still found it comforting to know that there were wines that were rated there.

Total Heaven

How many different types of gum are in the world? Maybe 100? Maybe even 200? At most, in our wildest dreams, 1000? It would look somewhat impressive if all of that gum was put on a retail wall in a store, but you would expect there to be other products in the store too, right?

I have made mention of how many wines there are in the world on other posts, but I think every wine loving person should have the experience I had this weekend.

As a birthday gift my mother took me into Total Wine for the first time on Saturday. It was a rather intense experience. Total Wine is the equivalent of a Costco, Sam’s Club, BJ’s for wine. It was almost specifically made for people who just want to explore aisles and aisles of wine. Really, it is a bloggers’ paradise. I almost salivate at the idea of attempting to try every single wine in the store. I am sure I could ask the good people at TW for the number of SKU’s they have in their stores, but just from walking the rows I would say that the number is certainly over 1000, and possibly over 3000. And that might be underestimating it.

Seeing that much wine and knowing nothing about them is daunting. Repeatedly, I was caught by the shelf talkers (the little signs and notes that retailers put near the bottles to give you a sense of what it is you might be buying). One note that did a particular good job at influencing me was the number of points the wine received.

There were plenty of signs, handwritten by the staff that said they had tried the wine and it was delicious. There was even one that said, “if you want to love this wine, let it breath.” These show that a particular amount of thought goes into each sign and that the staff does care that you get the best experience possible. Again and again there was a sign that said “Bob’s Choice.” I knew nothing about Bob, but I assume he was the wine buyer or manager of that particular store. Really it is no different from what Gary Vaynerchuk does at Wine Library.

But back to the points issue. I was really affected by them. It was comforting to know that in this sea of choices, someone out there that is an authority on wine could tell me that this particular wine was good enough to be rated 90 points. Someone I did not know recommended the wine and thought it was good. No wonder that points are in such demand!

The one thing that trumps points every time is a personal recommendation from someone standing there next to you. It could be an employee at the store (and believe me, it was almost a challenge to move from one aisle to the next without someone asking me if I needed help) or as I found out this weekend, it could be just some Joe Schmoe.

The store was laid out by grape variety, which works until you hit France or Italy, so they received special treatment with their own sections. I was standing in front of the Petit Sirah and thinking that I needed to taste more of them when someone next to me pointed to a bottle and said that it was his wife’s favorite. Immediately I picked up the bottle and put it in my cart, whether to be polite or because I truly believed this man’s wife had a palate I could trust I am not sure. Just like that, no second thoughts, no questions, just a hand-sell. The winery or the store should have given him a dollar off for his troubles.

So, at the end of the day my mother and I filled up the cart with 18 bottles and paid the register clerk their due. It was a great experience and it only makes me want to go back for more. Although I think I need to drink through some wine first.