About a month ago, my friend and fellow wine writer Blake Gray wrote a piece on his blog about a visit with Charles Smith of K Vintners in Washington. Smith is a larger than life winemaker with a reputation that is even larger (and more controversial). Several anonymous commenters on Blake’s piece took swipes at Smith, and Blake announced today that Smith is suing those commenters and requesting that Google (who hosts Blake’s blog) disclose the IP addresses of those anonymous commenters so they can be brought to court.

I don’t know about you, but this is damn interesting stuff.

For starters Smith’s legal action doesn’t exactly dispel characterizations of what might charitably be described as his irascible personality. The lawsuit is likely to not only shine a spotlight of attention on the very comments he is upset about, but also to bring all the rest of his detractors into the fore, many of whom I assume will not be frightened off by the threat of legal action. My own experiences in Washington exposed me to a number of stories about him that make it clear he has made a lot of enemies.

Secondly, I believe the lawsuit won’t go anywhere. Google is not going to cough up the IP addresses of the folks that commented on Blake’s blog for the same reason they’re not going to give up the IP addresses of the people who write blog posts alleging that our current President is a Muslim, foreign-born national (and much worse). The Internet seems to have adjusted the threshold for libel these days, and especially behind a curtain of anonymity, even outlandish lies about someone aren’t really prosecuteable. Just ask all the businesses who agonize over very negative reviews on Yelp that aren’t based on real facts.

Mr. Smith comes off quite badly in all this, and would be best served to drop the whole thing, though I suspect that’s not necessarily in his nature.

Read the full story on The Gray Market Report.

More: continued here

I can still remember my first wine tasting trip to the Napa Valley. I’m young, so it wasn’t that long ago — probably 1997 or so. Having been born and grown up in Sonoma County, most of my first winery visits as a legal drinker were there.

But given my growing love of wine, my girlfriend at the time arranged a trip up to Napa with some friends and I gamely went along for the ride. The first place we stopped was, and remains, one of the cooler wineries in Napa.

These days I continue to send those who ask about unique wine tasting experiences to the The Hess Collection on the slopes of Mount Veeder, not only because the winery’s unique combination of modern art museum and tasting room offers something quite out of the ordinary for most wine tourists, but because the wines are dependably quite good.

The Hess Collection is one of many properties in the portfolio of Swiss businessman Donald Hess and his Hess Family Estates. Despite three prior generations of family history in the beer brewing business in Switzerland, and his own success building Switzerland’s top mineral water, Donald Hess decided to get into the wine business in 1978 by buying the land and vineyards that now make up the Hess Collection estate on Napa’s Mount Veeder.

A passionate (as well as deep pocketed) collector of contemporary art, Hess decided to fuse his love of wine and art to create the wonderful combination of art museum and winery that I and so many other visitors have enjoyed. The galleries feature some fantastic pieces, including one of my favorites: Leopoldo Maler’s “Hommage”, an Underwood typewriter that burns constantly.

Of course a nice art collection alone isn’t enough to recommend any winery in my book. Thankfully, the Hess Collection has done a fantastic job of producing a quality portfolio of wines spanning a wide range of price points. The small production single vineyard wines that are made in quantities of a few hundred cases are the equal of many of Napa’s top bottlings, and the lower priced wines often blow away their competition in a given price category.

Such is the case with this wine, a blend of 86% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11% Petite Sirah, and 3% Petite Verdot. It was aged for 18 months in American oak, of which about 30% was new. The use of American oak is somewhat unusual for a Napa producer, but it seems to have worked quite well, and the low percentage of new oak allows the fruit to shine through.

I’m not sure about the production quantities on this wine. The vineyard it comes from is about 210 acres, and the wine is quite readily available in the marketplace, which suggests they make quite a bit of it. But that is a good thing. In addition to being quite tasty, this wine will represent, to many, an exceptional value. It’s not so common to find single vineyard Cabernet from Napa under $20, and few are this good.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of cassis and black cherry with hints of wet dirt. In the mouth the wine has mouth coating, powdery tannins that wrap around flavors of cassis, black cherry, tobacco and espresso flavors. The dark roast espresso and wet dirt linger in the finish. Nicely balanced, good acidity, and an altogether tasty package. 14.3% alcohol.

Food Pairing:
Did someone say bacon cheeseburger?

Overall Score: around 9

How Much?: $19

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

More: continued here

I beat the drum a lot about public wine tastings. They are the best way for wine lovers to educate their palates. Period. There’s just no substitute for tasting a lot of wines in a single “sitting” to learn what the differences are, and more importantly, what you like.

One of the other nice things about public tastings, put on as they are by big organizations, or in this case, publications, is that they often allow you to taste wines that you might not get a chance to taste otherwise for some reason — whether that is because of their cost, their small production levels, or the fact that it’s simply a pain in the rear to go track them down.

Of course one of the other reasons you might not get a chance to taste certain wines is because they’ve been so highly-rated by some magazine or critic that they’re pretty hard to find on the shelves of even the best wine shops in the country. Which is one of the many reasons I urge people to attend the Wine &amp Spirits Top 100 Tasting every year. While inclusion in Wine & Spirits doesn’t quite make the available inventory of a wine vaporize, as a top score in some other magazines will do, the wines that are chosen for their list of “Top 100 of the year” are really some of the best wines in the world, and are not all that easy to track down for the casual wine lover.

I go to this tasting every year because of the high quality of the wines, and the excellent food that is usually on offer. This is, of course, the reason that so many other people go too (it can get a little crowded at times). But despite the popularity of the event, it is still one of the best public tasting events in San Francisco each year, and usually has a few gob-smacking, head-banging, utterly fantastic wines mixed in with a whole lot of truly excellent ones.

Like all such fancy tastings these days seem to do, some of the proceeds from the event will benefit Baykeeper, an environmental non-profit focused on the health of the San Francisco bay ecosystem.

This year, the magazine is adding an additional feature: highlighting its New & Notable restaurants in the Bay Area, which include Baker & Banker, Barbacco, Comstock Saloon, Herloom Café, Hog & Rocks, Locanda da Eva, Nombe and Saison. Each restaurant will serve bites of a signature dish paired with wines featured at the tasting. Guests will also enjoy specialties from local artisanal purveyors, including Hog Island Oysters, Nicasio Valley Cheese, Zoe’s Meats, Socola Chocolate and Barefoot Coffee.

So grab a wine loving friend, or look your best and try to make a new one at the tasting, but definitely don’t miss the Top 100.

Wine & Spirits Magazine’s Top 100 Tasting, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
The Galleria at the San Francisco Design Center
101 Henry Adams Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
(212) 695 4660 ext. 31, for more info

Tickets are $105. A limited number of VIP tickets are available for $125 that provide advance entry (at 6 PM). This event will likely sell out, so I recommend buying tickets ASAP. They can be purchased online at the event web site.

More: continued here