Review by Tim Patterson.

A big part of wine’s allure is that it is so many different things: a source of alcohol, a source of pleasure, a gateway for entry into the mystical, the erotic, the enlightened, the divine, the silly, and sometimes the idiotic. But for thousands of years, it has also been a commodity–and that’s where this book comes in.

Worrying about wine as a commodity seems uninspiring, even tawdry, compared, say, to worrying about the distinctive terroir of some patch of dirt in Alsace. But without the buying and selling, we’d all be home winemakers, wine production would still be primitive at best, none of us would ever have heard of Argentine Malbec, and that special spot in Alsace wouldn’t have its own Facebook page. Money makes the wine go round, and Wine Wars helps to make sense of it all.

Veseth teaches political economy at the University of Puget Sound, is active in the American Association of Wine Economists, and writes the Wine Economist blog. The book’s central metaphor is the “wine wall”–the complicated, diverse array of regions, grapes, brands and price points that can be found at most any wine shop or supermarket. Shelf by shelf, Veseth decodes the logic of what’s where on the wine wall and how it got there. The book’s subtitle–The Curse of the Blue Nun, The Miracle of Two Buck Chuck, and the Revenge of the Terroirists–highlights three dynamics threaded through the story: the bad old days of cheap, insipid, industrial wine (Blue Nun, a wildly popular parody of good German Riesling a few decades back); the much better days of modern, efficient, technologically advanced, global winemaking (Two Buck Chuck); and the militant defense of fine, terroir-driven wine by another whole tier of producers around the world.

Not to spoil the end of the story, but Veseth remains hopeful in the end about the mix of wine dynamics. Despite the seemingly crushing power of global price-cutting and homogenization, he thinks distinctive, even quirky wines have a bright future–in other words, something for everybody.

Along the way, his overview of economic forces that have shaped wine’s career take the reader on a number of historical excursions and international visits. We learn about the German discount wine juggernaut behind the “surfer dude” cosmetics of the Trader Joe’s chain, the convoluted, multi-century relationships between French winegrowers and British drinkers, the marketing logic behind how Costco arranges its shelves and bins, and the rise of Hong Kong as the center of world wine auctioneering. The treatment is breezy and easygoing; not only are there no intricate economic formulas, there is not one single table or graph between the covers.

Nonetheless, Veseth does get to some fundamental economic realities behind the surface of wine, and even readers who pay attention to the ups and down of the wine market will learn something. For example, most wine fans know that the emergence of New Zealand as a high-profile player in the international wine trade is a very recent development, maybe two decades old, seemingly out of nowhere. More studious geeks know that the years of New Zealand’s obscurity were also years when the main grape varieties grown were French-American hybrids, thought to be more suitable to cooler climates but not likely to make any export waves. That reliance of non-competitive grapes might seem to be the prime reason for decades of international non-competition.

What Veseth adds to the picture is that for many years, New Zealand followed an official policy–known as import substitution–of encouraging domestic production by creating barriers to foreign imports. In the case of wine, this meant that backward production practices and grape choices had a free ride, and no incentive existed for joining join the modern wine world. When New Zealand dumped the import substitution strategy and opened the doors to trade in and out, New Zealand winegrowers suddenly discovered they could grow amazing Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir, and the rest is drinking history.

This kind of information may not change the way your next glass of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc tastes, but it surely will help you understand how it got there. And that, to go back to wine’s many wondrous properties, gets us back to the lure of enlightenment.

Mike Veseth Wine Wars: The Curse of the Blue Nun, The Miracle of Two Buck Chuck, and the Revenge of the Terroirists, Rowman and Littlefield 2011, $24.95 (hardback).

Tim Patterson writes for several wine magazines, blogs at Blind Muscat’s Cellarbook, co-edits the Vinography book review section, and is the author of Home Winemaking for Dummies.

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If I were doing now what I thought I would probably do with my life as a sophomore in college, I would be a photographer living in a tent or an old VW Bus somewhere, splitting my time between rock climbing and taking pictures of stuff that most people wouldn’t give a second glance. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but I offer it as proof of how little sense I had of what path my life would take.

James Ontiveros, on the other hand, was spending his sophomore year at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo going to classes during the week, and on the weekend, planting a Pinot Noir vineyard that now bears his family name. This wasn’t a little project to help out on his family vineyard, which can often be the reason that certain college kids find themselves putting rootstock into the ground in their spare time. While Ontiveros’ family has been connected to the Santa Barbara area for a staggering nine generations (which is why their last name is on everything from historic buildings to roads in the area) they were, up until recently, primarily cattle ranchers. But as the lands surrounding his family ranch gradually gave way to vineyards and more vineyards and more vineyards, the young Ontiveros began to think his decision to major in Animal Science might not be the most advantageous for the future.

By the time Ontiveros was a sophomore, he had switched to crop and fruit sciences, and had met Paul Wilkins. The two bonded over wine with some of the other students at the university.

While Cal Poly didn’t offer wine studies, that proved no impediment to Ontiveros nor Wilkins, both of whom landed jobs and internships in the wine industry while they were still in school. While he wasn’t busy helping Kendall Jackson manage its relationships with winegrowers in the area, Ontiveros was planting 8 acres of his family’s ranch to Pinot Noir. Wilkins, for his part, landed an internship at Alban Vineyards, and got the opportunity to learn winemaking at one of California’s most prominent boutique wineries.

Their careers in the wine industry diverged for several years, with Ontiveros doing stints at Gallo, and Wilkins becoming assistant winemaker at Alban. But in 2005 Wilkins left Alban and started consulting on his own, and one of his first clients asked him to see if he could track down some fruit from a vineyard named Ontiveros. Reunited, the two college buddies joined forces to make wine from Ontiveros’ property under the label native9, and shortly thereafter started another project that they dubbed Alta Maria.

The Alta Maria label offers four wines, a Cabernet, a Chardonnay, a Sauvignon Blanc, and this Pinot Noir, each in quantities of a few hundred cases. The winemaking is done by Wilkins, whose training primarily on Rhone varieties clearly doesn’t keep him from doing very fine things with Pinot Noir when he wants to. The winemaking itself tends to be minimalist, using native yeasts whenever possible, and I’m not entirely sure about the filtering regimen. New oak is kept to a minimum, as well.

In fact, minimalism might be a defining characteristic of these wines in many respects, from the rather stunning image on the label — a cluster of ancient iron nails, the sort of which held together both the houses and the shoes of California’s earliest homesteaders — to the rather remarkable pricing of the wine. I’m not in the habit of regularly commenting on the price of wines, instead letting my readers decide what they think is value or not. However, a California Pinot Noir this good for $25 should not go unremarked upon. It’s exceedingly rare to find pretty good Pinot at anywhere close to this price point, let alone a wine this fantastic.

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

Tasting Notes:
Light to medium garnet in the glass, this wine smells of the damp forest floor and the bright fruit of raspberries. In the mouth, tart, sour cherry and raspberry flavors have a silky coolness to them that is stunning and quite mouthwatering. Green herbs and willow bark mix with earthier tones as the fruit continues to vibrate thanks to excellent acidity. Fine grained tannins hang in the background as the wine lingers through a moderate finish. Quite elegant.13.9% alcohol.

Food Pairing:
What won’t this wine go well with? With low alcohol and high acidity, it’s a fantastic food wine that I’d love to drink while munching on a chantrelle and goat cheese tart, for instance.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $25

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

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Many facets of wine contribute to its allure and mystery. But foremost among wine’s most magical qualities must be the remarkable landscape of flavor and aroma to be found in the glass.

The flavors of wine are magical and beautiful, and worth celebrating, almost as much as they are worth drinking.

It is my pleasure to introduce a new series of weekly content on Vinography called The Essence of Wine.

This writing and photography project has been years in the making. Or more correctly, I have fantasized about it for several years, and only recently encountered the collaborators that I felt could truly help me bring it to life:

Photographer Leigh Beisch
Capturing the soul of food is more difficult than you would think. Food photography these days is glaringly unoriginal and boring for the most part — often as hopelessly derivative as it is clinically sterile.

Photographer Leigh Beisch’s images of food possess a rare beauty, poetry, and warmth that capture the energy and allure of great food.

Leigh studied painting and photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Moving from New York to San Francisco with her husband, an animator, Leigh opened her own studio and quickly attracted major clients like Williams-Sonoma, making a name for herself by creating stunning photographs for product packaging and cookbooks.

“My work as a painter influences my photography,” says Leigh. “Color, shape, texture and the boundaries of the frame are subjects in and of themselves and I try to capture an emotional response to the subject and the setting, as much ad abstract paintings do.”

Leigh’s visions has led to commissions that range from editorials for magazines to store displays. Her work has won numerous awards including several Communication Arts prizes in photography and design as well as awards from Graphis and American Photography among others. The cookbooks that she has photographed have received awards from IACP, James Beard and Gourmand.

Stylist Sara Slavin
Requiring equal parts sculptor, chef, painter, and engineer, good food stylists are worth their weight in saffron.

Art director and stylist Sara Slavin collaborates with photographers, designers and publishers on commercial and editorial projects throughout the country, with a special emphasis on the culinary and related arts.

She has co-authored numerous lifestyle books and has acted as art director and stylist for such books as Odd Bits, Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, Alice Medrich’s Bittersweet and Pure Dessert, Salumi, Williams-Sonoma Entertaining, Country Cooking of France, Southern Pies and Gwyneth Paltrow’s My Father’s Daughter.

Her clients include Williams-Sonoma, Restoration Hardware, Design Within Reach, Diageo Estate Wines, Food & Wine Magazine, Chronicle Books, Artisan Publishing, Sunset Magazine and 10 Speed Press.

Each week, Leigh, Sara and I will be bringing you a bit of visual poetry — an original photograph and some prose — that captures some of wines most essential elements. I hope you enjoy these as much as we are enjoying their creation.

See The Essence of Wine.

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