I’m told, mainly by my friends in wine P.R., that the topic of my palate is of some interest to winemakers. It’s flattering, I guess, to think that people try to discover trends in my reviews; and certainly, the trends are there to be found. I don’t like table wines with residual sugar. I don’t like dirty, flawed wines. I don’t care for green, unripe tannins.

Beyond that, it’s harder to pinpoint just what makes for a “95” as opposed to an “88.” Words such as “intense,” “complex” and “brilliant” can only begin to describe qualities that are, essentially, indescribable. So I thought it would be worthwhile to look at some of my highest-scoring wines over the last 3 months and try to analyze just what it was about them that I liked.

My highest-scoring wines since June 1 consisted almost entirely of Pinot Noir, sparkling wines and Cabernet Sauvignon or Bordeaux blends. There were one or two Chardonnays and a handful of Syrahs or red Rhône blends. Pinot Noir clearly dominated the field, though. Why? Because of the great distance this grape and wine have come in California; also, because of Pinot Noir’s inherent nobility. Again, “noble” is a difficult word to explain when applied to wine, but I think most readers will understand.

My top Pinots — almost all from the great 2007 vintage — were a pair from Occidental Coast (Occidental Coast and Two Daughters vineyards), a duo from Lynmar (Hawk Hill and Quail Hill Bliss Block), three Faillas (Vivien, Occidental Ridge, Hirsch), two from Dutton Estate (Thomas Road and Karmen Isabella), Etude’s Heirloom bottling, Patz & Hall’s Jenkins Ranch, two from De Coelo (Terra Neuma and Quintus), J’s regular 2007 and a Roessler from Ollie & Hazel’s Block. Except for the Etude, each of these is from the far Sonoma Coast or darned close to it (for example, Green Valley). That has got to be more than coincidence, and it is. It’s fair to say that  the “true” Sonoma Coast is the most exciting place for Pinot Noir in California.

My top sparklers were Iron Horse’s non-vintage Joy!, the same winery’s 2002 Brut Late Disgorged, Schramsberg’s 2002 J. Schram, Mumm Napa’s 2001 DVX and a blush, Roederer’s L’Ermitage Brut Rosé. All are from the North Coast, obviously, and all are from producers with long track records of sparkling wine who never stinted from their devotion to it, through all the vicissitudes of the market. The best of California sparkling wines can stand next to anything from Champagne.

My top Cabernets were from Far Niente (2006 Oakville), Etude (2005 Oakville), W.H. Smith (2007 Purple Label, from Howell Mountain), Atlas Peak’s 2005, also from Howell Mountain, Beaulieu’s ‘06 Private Reserve, Stonestreet’s 2005 Black Cougar Ridge from Alexander Valley, a surprisingly good Hanna 2005 Reserve, also from Alexander Valley, and Corison’s outstanding 2005 Kronos. Some observations: Napa Valley and its sub-regions continue to dominate; no surprise. Howell Mountain again and again proves its greatness. The Alexander Valley Cabs come, of course, not from the “valley” itself but from the high ridges and hills on its east side, which are the western slopes of the Mayacamas. These are world-class wines that easily deserve the highest scores.

The one Chardonnay that crashed this exclusive list was Gary Farrell’s 2007, from the Rochioli Vineyard. Almost nobody gets Rochioli fruit, but Gary Farrell goes way back with that family, and even though he doesn’t own the winery anymore, I guess the new owners still have a deal. The lone Syrah at the top was another one from Failla, the 2007 Estate, from the Sonoma Coast.

Ehren Jordan, Failla’s owner/winemaker, got Wine Enthusiast’s “#1 Wine of the Year” award last year for his 2006 Phoenix Ranch Syrah. This young man has surged to the top in California. If you’ve never visited his estate vineyard, in the wild coastal highlands above Fort Ross, do so, but bring your four-wheel drive and GPS. You’ll probably get lost, and cell phones don’t work in those tortured mountains.

The blogosphere has all but pronounced Robert Parker dead as a Rift Valley bone, but The Man Himself just proved he’s still relevent (if there were any doubt about it) by raising $1 million in advance sales for charity scholarships for his big Oct. 22 tasting of Chateauneuf-du-Pape at the Culinary Institute of America, in Napa Valley.

Could anyone else do that, even Gary V.? I don’t think so. Not bad for a fossil. So I guess pronouncements of Parker’s demise have been exaggerated.

So many people want Parker dead and buried, you have to wonder what’s driving the anger, which at times is reminiscent of the birther’s hatred of President Obama. Leading the charge have been Dr. Vino and Slate’s Mike Steinberger, who last week issued his latest fatwa against the Man from Monkton, resurrecting the increasingly tired charges of “ethical lapses” and “missteps” and warning, not only Parker but others of his Baby Boomer ilk, that they’re going to have to tread “a lot more lightly” and even then, they shouldn’t expect to “command quite the deference” they’re used to.

Well, that would include me, I guess, since I’m basically Parker’s age and a certified Boomer wine writer. Not that I think I’m remotely in Parker’s league…

Look, have we Boomer critics really been so terrible? We helped popularize wine with the American people, writing about it and explaining it the best we could, scrambling to make a living in a job that doesn’t pay all that much (unless you’re Parker), trying to figure out how to be honorable, and considering ourselves lucky every step of the way. We had the baton passed to us by our predecessors, whom we gave proper respect to, and now we’re happy to pass it along to the next generation. So what’s the problem?  How else, besides an unseemly jealousy, to explain the vituperation, which sometimes gets expressed in an almost violent way against Parker and others?

I’ve always believed in fundamental fairness. When the Wine Spectator was busted in that phony restaurant wine list scam last year, even though the Spectator is Wine Enthusiast’s competitor, I blogged that it could have happened to anyone, so let’s cut Spectator some slack. Of course, that didn’t stop some people from putting Spectator right down there with Hitler. When Dr. Vino revealed some of the practices at eRobert Parker, I said that it wasn’t the worst thing in the world; writers need the largesse of the industry because otherwise we couldn’t afford to travel and taste wine. I asked for a sense of balance.

So once again I have to say, come on you bloggers, get a grip. Chill. Don’t be so pissed all the time: it’s not good for you. Just because Parker is rich and famous and you’re not doesn’t make him the bad guy. He’s had an honorable career, and you’re not going to advance any further or higher in yours than he has by insulting him, so get over it. Look, I’ve chastised the wine industry for years for supporting (wittingly or not) the hegemony of Wine Spectator and Parker, to the exclusion of every other legitimate wine periodical, including Wine Enthusiast. California wineries in particular stand justly accused of such short-sighted snobbery by buying into Parker-Spectatoritis. But I never felt I had to delegitimize the Spectator or Parker themselves. Just because you don’t like the message doesn’t mean you have to kill the messenger.

So everybody, lay off Parker. Call off the witch hunt. Bloggers, do your thing without having to slime anyone or build your career on someone’s corpse. It won’t kill you to be nice.

Hey, who says you don’t get your money’s worth for this blog? Here’s a Threefer.

1. Talkin’ Sonoma County

Somebody from the Sonoma County Wine Library called the other day to do a little phone interview with me. She wanted to know, basically, how I thought the Sonoma County Wineries Association could do a better job of marketing and promoting Sonoma County wines. My answer was: it can’t.

This stuff is going to appear in print someplace. The interviewer sent me a draft of her article, and while I completely approve it, and am sure I really said all the things she quotes me as saying, I want to put my remarks in context. This was, after all, a long conversation we had, and the quotes were preceded and followed by other statements that gave more complete meaning to them.

(I should add that, as a news guy myself who’s conducted literally thousands of interviews over the years, not just with wine industry people but with cops, politicians, business tycoons, lawyers, doctors, crime victims, artists, judges, kids, dying people, you name it, I understand the challenges of getting quotes right, and of presenting them in a way that doesn’t distort their intended meaning. It can be difficult.)

So here are the quotes, with my amplifications.

1. “Sonoma County should not market itself as a region. The only region that means anything to anyone,” Heimoff says, “is Napa.”

What I meant: What I was saying was that I don’t think the words “Sonoma County” have much meaning to the average wine consumer. They do to people in the know, like you and me, but we’re not average consumers. To me, “Sonoma County” is a virtual guarantee of quality, of good viticulture and enology, of smart, hard-working people. But to most Americans, it’s like, “What part of Napa is Sonoma in?” They just don’t get it, and I don’t know if they ever will. So I’m not saying Sonoma “should not” in the moral, prescriptive sense of “Thou shalt not kill.” It’s more like I’m saying, “I wouldn’t spend a whole lot of marketing money promoting Sonoma County, because it’s not likely to be effective.”

2. He believes Sonoma was, “very promiscuous in the 80s in developing its AVAs.” Napa “was deliberate and said it did not want to rush. Sonoma is now paying the price,” he believes, with too many AVAs which mean nothing to the consumer, though an AVA like Russian River, he declares, has been very adroit in its marketing.

What I meant: Sonoma rushed out in the 1980s making all these AVAs before the terroir was properly understood. That caused bafflement, even among wine writers, but it also robbed the “Sonoma County” brand as a whole of the potential for respect and recognition, and fed (or attempted to feed) that energy into the sub-AVAs. Trying to promote “Sonoma County” now is a little like trying to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.

3. Much more important, he says, for Sonoma’s future is that, “people buy brands. In fact, brands are the only thing that people look for. I think in tough economic times people tend to stay with what they know, so to me, that would bode well for some of the more reputable brands in the country.”

What I meant: With hundreds of wineries in Sonoma County, they’re not all going to succeed, even if the public suddenly starts thinking that Sonoma County is the greatest thing since sliced bread, which they won’t. No, the most visible, respected brands will sell because people know and trust them. At the high level, a Williams Selyem doesn’t have to rely on a relationship with Sonoma County; people line up to buy it because it’s a brand. The same goes for Chateau St. Jean or Sebastiani or Geyser Peak; people buy the name, not the grape source. In Napa Valley, it’s a little different; people are so mesmerized by those two words, they believe anything from Napa Valley has to be great, which of course is nonsense.

4. “Newer vintners need to be aware they will have to build their brands by getting high scores for their wines from good critic. There is nothing,” he says, “that moves bottles off the shelf better than a high score from a reputable critic.”

What I meant: This would be self-serving if it weren’t true. The single best way for a winery (especially an unknown or little-known one) to sell wine is to get a high score. We can argue about who’s a “good critic” and who’s not, but not today. Put it this way: Which will sell more wine, an Enthusiast 100 or a Sonoma County AVA? Duh.

5. His tough-love wisdom at the moment: “Focus. It’s hard right now. And it’s every brand for itself. It’s definitely dog eat dog out there.”

What I meant: Exactly what it says. Woof woof.

2. Wine Fraud hits Canada, no longer limited to Europe

I’m continuing to read and enjoy Benjamin Lewis’s “What Price Bordeaux?” book, which is a romp through everything you ever wanted to know about the great wines of the Left and Right Banks. Each chapter is immensely interesting in its own right. I’m up to “Plus Ça Change” — “the more things change,” as in “the more they stay the same — which is about fakery, fraud, aduleration, mislabeling, and the entire Rogue’s Gallery of crooked practices which seems to have infected the world of fine wine forever.

When I was reading the chapter on Sunday morning I wondered if fakery exists in California. Just a little while later I sat down at the computer, went to Meininger’s Wine Business International to check on the day’s news, and saw this headline, from The Vancouver Sun: Canadians react angrily to faux wines.

Seems that some pretty big wine companies “buy bulk wine from cheap sources outside Canada, bottle it here and sell it in the B.C. [British Columbia] Wines section of government liquor stores.” This “could even be a violation of the criminal provisions of the federal Competition Act [and] at the very least it’s unethical.” Some of the wine apparently is labeled “Cellared in Canada” which, apparently, does not mean that the grapes are from Canada, although the average consumer might be forgiven for thinking so.

This brouhaha brings to mind the famous WineGate Scandal, which Lewis recounts in Plus Ça Change. In the mid-1970s, a negociant house bought cheap Vin de Table red wine. He also bought some real AOC Bordeaux white wine. He then changed the color of the wine on the paperwork for his AOC Bordeaux from white to red, which allowed him to sell it for much more money than a table wine would fetch. Of course, he had to correspondingly lower the price on his white wine, since it was “demoted” from AOC Bordeaux to Vin de Table. But he still made “several million francs of profits in a period of four months” before the fraud was discovered by shocked, shocked authorities. (Only the previous year, the President of the INAO, the AOC’s governing body, had insisted that “Our system of control has been perfected so that [fraud] is impossible.”)

So it can happen in Canada. But here in California? Well, we all remember that in 1994, Fred Franzia “pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud with Bronco by falsely labelling grapes,” according to the story about him in last May’s edition of The New Yorker. But that was 15 years ago, and to the best of my knowledge, California wine has seen no fraud since. Every once in a while the question arises of whether or not wineries send critics like me “special” bottles for review — bottles that aren’t the real wine — and while it wouldn’t surprise me if that were true, there’s no way to know. (All you investigative bloggers out there, here’s the route to stardom: Find such a case and bring the winery down.) There are, of course, rampant tales of fraud in the wine auction and old bottle communities, but I can’t get too upset about that, since it doesn’t impact 99.9% of consumers.

I think the Franzia case was a shot across the bow to California (and American) vintners, a warning from federal law enforcement officials that they won’t tolerate such outrageously deceptive practices. Perhaps far more interesting than outright fraud is adulteration — the “improvement” of wine by adding chemicals for flavor, texture and the like. Although the practice is frequently deplored by winemakers, it’s widespread, and there are currently no regulations, state or federal, to disclose them to the public. Should there be? I don’t know. How many more words can you squeeze onto a label? They’re already getting pretty crowded. Maybe wineries could make the information available online.

3. How to make cult wine and be graceful

And speaking of Plus Ça Change, I read with great interest yesterday’s front page article on Dick Grace in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which Mr. Grace skillfully administers the coup de main to the dozens of Napa Valley cult wines that regularly exceed the $225 price tag on his Grace Family Cabernet. The Chron’s wine editor, Jon Bonné, wrote that Grace “is credited with creating California’s first cult Cabernet,” a citation that may be undermined by the craze that attached to Joe Heitz’s Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon when that wine first appeared in the 1960s. But it’s true enough, and the point is that Mr. Grace views the metastasis of cult Cabs with some proper skepticism. He told Jon, “We have to get over what I call the trophy mentality,” and Jon quoted his wife, Ann, as saying that some of the newer cult wines say more about “an address” than anything else.

Well, I can’t argue with that. I don’t taste all the Napa cults but I do taste a lot of them and I can unhesitatingly say that your quality-price ratio is poor in many cases. (The Napa Valley Vintners kindly invited me to a private tasting of cult wines I don’t routinely get to taste. The tasting is Nov. 5. I’ll be reviewing the wines, blind and formally, for Wine Enthusiast, but I should be able to write about the tasting here.)

You can agree or disagree with Mr. and Mrs. Grace — I tend to agree — but what struck me, when I thought about it, were the parallels between their attitude toward the newby cult Cabs, and the way that some of the older, Baby Boomer wine critics view the younger bloggers. Not to paint everyone with the same broad brush (something I’ve been accused of), but you can say generally that some of the older writers saw the younger bloggers as upstarts, not fully qualified, yet out there making statements anyway. That’s kind of like the Graces saying that some (not all) of the newer cult wines are wannabes rather than proven commodities.

Are the newer cult owners resentful that the Godfather of Cult Cabs, Dick Grace himself, faulted them? Maybe there’s been some grumbling. The Chronicle is Northern California’s largest newspaper, and this article was on the front page of the Sunday edition, meaning that a lot of people read it. But if they have hurt feelings, I doubt if they’ll express them in public. Besides, I have to think that many of the newby cults know, in their heart of hearts, that what Mr. and Mrs. Grace said is true. These overblown wines, crafted with the help of hired celebrity winemakers and grapegrowers, are “marketing tool[s], as opposed to wines with a distinctive character,” as Mr. Grace asserted. The pendulum indeed “has swung too far.” And in at least one other aspect, the Graces are attempting to make up karmically for the wealth and luxury that their lives have accorded them. A Buddhist and follower of the Dalai Lama, Mr. Grace contributes large sums of money to humanitarian causes. He calls this act of charity a “self-correction” after realizing that there is a higher purpose than wealth or fame. It’s enormously gratifying to hear him concede that the prices his wine commanded were “an extension of my overblown ego” and to see him making up for it.

Maybe Mr. Grace could hold Buddhism classes for his fellow cult wine producers in Napa Valley and elsewhere. They have a lot to learn from him.

As everyone knows, I try my best to steer clear of controversy on this blog. But these are times that try the soul. Here’s something that just makes me want to scream!

Rough play? References to wine, sex prompt BYU to cancel U of U production of Greek play

That’s the headline in one media outlet reporting how Brigham Young University, the Salt Lake City school owned by the Church of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), canceled a performance of Euripides’ Greek tragedy, The Bakkhai, just hours before it was scheduled to be shown.

Let’s break it down. The Bakkhai (sometimes Bacchae) premiered in Athens in 405 B.C. It is a morality tale, relating a fierce confrontation between Dionysus, the Greek God of wine, and the temporal King of Thebes, Pentheus. Dionysus calls upon the people to celebrate his annual Festival in the usual way, with wine-drinking, dancing and sex. Pentheus, a rather conservative sort who was the ancient Greek equivalent of the Family Research Council (or perhaps Mike Huckabee is a better example), doesn’t believe it’s right for the people to so indulge, and orders Dionysus’s arrest. However, the table is turned on Pentheus, proving that it’s a terrible idea to challenge a God, particularly one so popular with the people. Pentheus is torn apart by his own mother, who exhibits his head as a trophy. The Bakkhai has been called “the most horrific, powerful and theatrical of all Greek tragedies.”

The production, staged by the University of Utah’s Department of Theatre and Media Arts, had been scheduled as part of its 39th annual Classical Greek Theatre Festival, and was to have been shown at BYU. You can imagine the dismay of the 350 BYU students who purchased tickets when they were abruptly refunded their money and told the play wasn’t happening.

What prompted BYU to muzzle it? University officials knuckled down on the Univ. of Utah, and who knows what local political and religious pressures they brought to bear. The play’s producer, James Svendsen, offered this lame excuse: the production “does not really fit the BYU proscenium arch theater nor their audience.” If you believe that, I have a Tabernacle Choir to sell you. Is it really credible that the producer would have discovered his play didn’t fit onto BYU’s stage hours before it was to open? And in what way did the play not “fit” BYU”s audience? Isn’t that a judgment that the 350 people who bought tickets should have made, rather than had imposed upon them?

What really freaked BYU out was the “gender-bending in the casting” and “abundance of phallic symbols and cleavage” in the play (this, according to Svendsen). In the straight, white, male-dominated Mormon culture, any artistic expression, no matter how rooted in history, that doesn’t accord with their idea of correctness must be quashed, censored, driven underground. (And don’t forget, the Mormons were behind last year’s Proposition 8 campaign in California.)

The Mormons were also clearly obsessed with the focus on wine, notwithstanding its place in the Bible of both the Hebrews and Jesus. Wine is evil, because it lets people relax and be themselves instead of following some imposed mania, and so it must be resisted!!

Look, we’re not talking about some weird performance artist covering herself in chocolate and licking it off, or about the head of Jesus Christ in a jar of urine. I can understand why people would find those objectionable. No, we’re talking about an ancient Greek play by one of their greatest tragedians. The Bakkhai deals with a perfectly reasonable and important topic: the relationship between God and man. The Bible, Shakespeare, even modern playwrites like Kafka have asked precisely the same questions: Who is man to give his devotions to? What are the consequences of the clash between spiritual and civil authority? Jesus wisely recommended rendering unto Caesar, etc., and our own U.S. Constitution took the same route, famously prohibiting, in the First Amendment, the establishment of a State-sponsored religion.

But obviously, some reactionary religious groups never have been comfortable with the separation of Church and State. They would prefer to see governance and theology tightly intertwined, even in the halls of academia, where freedom of inquiry and expression ought to be celebrated, not despised. Why is that? And why is it that such people so often hate wine and the spirit of freedom it inspires?

Well, at least the Salt Lake Tribune gave The Bakkhai a glowing review, advising playgoers to “get there early to catch dramaturg Jim Svendsen’s informative introduction.” Too bad BYU crushed it.

Dionysus won’t be playing in Salt Lake. Maybe San Fran?

I’m glad to see that the California Association of Winegrape Growers, the state’s leading grower trade group, yesterday announced the launch of its new website for consumers. Their old one was a mess, aimed almost exclusively at member-growers, and with very little interest even to a reporter-hound dog like me.

The new site is a good start, but work remains to be done. Here are some suggestions to make it better.

Have a glossary. There are so many words and phrases connected to grapegrowing. How about a thorough list of them, with definitions? The only word I could find on the site that they do define is terroir, and I don’t even agree with their definition: “A French term used to describe how a vineyard’s geography, soil, weather conditions and farming techniques can impart certain characteristics upon the grapes and wine that reflect ‘a sense of the land.’” I never thought that “farming techniques” were part of terroir. If that were true, then the terroir of a site would change every time the grower altered his farming. I think the proper word for when you add terroir + human intervention is cru.

The “Varietals” section is missing Albarino, Marsanne, Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Grenache Blanc and Petit Verdot, among many others grown in the state. This is strange, given the website’s source — California’s growers. And while we’re at it, can we please, please get rid of the term “emerging varietals,” which is what the site lumps Viognier, Sangiovese, Tempranillo and several other grapes under? Until we stop thinking of these varieties as oddballs and upstarts, it will be hard for growers and winemakers, not to mention consumers, to get serious about them.

The “Wine Regions” section is a little, well, skewed. They list 5 — Central Coast, North Coast, Sacramento Valley, Sierra Foothills and South Coast — but, let’s get real here, only a state association of grapegrowers would mention the Sacramento Valley and the South Coast (mainly Temecula) in the same breath as the North and Central coasts. Just sayin’…

The “Stewards of the Land” section puzzled me. Under “Meet Our Growers” they list some well-known ones, while others are left out. In the North Coast, the site admirably mentions Andy Beckstoffer and Mike Sangiacomo, but where are (for example) the Duttons? The Central Coast offers info on (for example) Steve McIntyre, but there’s no mention of that region’s biggest winegrower, the Indelicato family, of San Bernabe fame. What’s up with that?

All the above is meant as constructive criticism. It’s great that grapegrowers — not a group that has historically been comfortable with consumers or the media — is finally understanding the importance of reaching out and making new friends, and through the Internet, much less! That’s pretty rad for farmers. But if they really want their new website to succeed, instead of going to that place in Hell where URLs that no one visits die, they should take my advice and make theirs better. Beginning with a glossary!