Napa Valley did well this past week. Out of about 110 wines I tasted, it placed six in the Top Ten. The list is rounded out by 4 Pinot Noirs, two of them from the Russian River Valley, one from Santa Maria Valley and one from the increasingly well-regarded Edna Valley.

Silverado 2008 SOLO  Cabernet Sauvignon (Stags Leap); $90, 1,864 cases, 14.7%

Anomaly 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon (St. Helena); $85, 826 cases, 14.6% (also the 2007 vintage, with which the ‘08 was co-released)

Oakville East 2008 Core Stone Bordeaux blend (Oakville); $125, 150 cases, 14.5% (also their 2008 Exposure Cabernet Sauvignon)

Freeman 2009 Keefer Ranch Pinot Noir (Russian River Valley); $48, 323 cases, 14.2%

Siduri 2009 Ewald Vineyard Pinot Noir (Russian River Valley); $44, 147 cases, 14.3% (Also Siduri 2009 Clos Pepe Pinot Noir)

Robert Mondavi 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon (Oakville); $45, 7,685 cases, 15.6%

C. Beck 2008 Petite Sirah (Napa Valley); $38, 130 cases, 13.9%

Claiborne & Churchill 2009 Twin Creeks Pinot Noir (Edna Valley); $36, 248 cases, 13.8%

Alta Maria 2009 Pinot Noir (Santa Maria Valley); $28, 1,660 cases, 13.9%

Robert Mondavi 2009 To Kolan Vineyard Reserve Fume Blanc (Napa Valley); $40, 1,867 cases, 14.2%

I’m feeling good today. Spring is finaly springing here in California after a long, wet, cold winter. Soon it will be shirtsleeves and shorts again–not since last October have we seen that. (It’s already Springy in Santa Barbara, where I’ll be next week, but not quite yet here in the Bay Area.)

So I was driving home just now and thought it would be nice to tote up all the things that are happening in the wine biz that I’m grateful for. Here’s my list, in no particular order.

1. My blog. I’m so happy I started it on May 3, 2008. Steveheimoff.com is going on three years old! A toddler in human terms, but in blog years (roughly equivalent to dog years), my blog is an adult, and quite a successful one at that. Not the biggest, but one of the biggest, and gaining readership every month.

2. Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon. Clearly California’s two greatest wines, and they’re getting better every year. Napa Valley is a world treasure for Cab and Bordeaux blends; our coastal valleys are producing some of the most exciting Pinots on Earth. And I get to taste them, visit the wineries and meet the winemakers. I am humbled.

3. The Recession is ending. It’s been awful for everyone, including wineries. At last there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel. About time. I just hope it’s the light of day, and not the headlights on another oncoming train.

4. Friends in the industry. So many. Such nice people, from the P.R. folks to the dirt-on-the-shoes winemakers to the owners and somms and other writers and everybody inbetween. The wine industry attracts people who like to eat, drink and party. Nothing bad about that! (I should think the funeral industry wouldn’t be as fun.)

5. My magazine, Wine Enthusiast, is doing really well. Subscriptions way up. New blood at HQ in New York, bringing a fresh, sassy look and feel to the front of the book and online website. Keeping us Boomer editors on our toes.

6. New, young winemakers popping up all over the place, with new ideas, approaches, attitudes. I guess it’s the availability of grapes and/or bulk/declassified wine, not to mention the rise of custom crush facilities like Crushpad and Central Coast Wine Services. There are so many exciting new producers, you can’t keep up with them. Who will be the Dick Arrowoods, Genevieve Janssenses, Margo van Staaverens, Heidi Barretts, Rick Longorias, Tony Soters, Marimar Torreses of the future? They’re out there, that’s for sure, and it’s thrilling to make their acquaintance.

7. The wine blogosphere and social media. Still in a state of ferment, it’s changing everything. An exciting, turbulent place, without roadmaps. You have to feel your way through with infinite care and patience. It’s a thrill to be a small part of it, and a challenge to me, as a reporter, to keep up with it and try to figure out where it’s going and what it will look like in five years.

8. Living in Oakland. The geographic center of the Bay Area, wine- and food-loving, with a diverse, gritty population that keeps me from getting too addicted to the cult lifestyle. Oakland offers easy access north and south, making me feel like I’m at the center of the California wine web, sensitive to every quiver.

That’s what I’m grateful for. How about you?

First, kudos to Jon Bonné for a good primer on alcohol levels in wine in last Sunday’s Chronicle. I’m keeping it because it contains handy information, such as the official government regs on printed ABV numbers, which I can never remember even though I’ve looked them up dozens of times.

It was also really cool that Jon persuaded the [WARNING! Dated metaphorical reference alert!] green eyeshade types at the Chron to pay to have 19 wines analyzed for alcohol. What’s surprising was not how far off so many of the wines were in reality from what the label said (I assume as much every time I taste), as the fact that some of the readings were actually close. (Only one was dead-on accurate.) I’d love to send everything I review to a lab but that’s not financially feasible.

Now, about the title of this post: “buzz” or buzz? The “buzz” in quotes refers to getting high from high alcohol wines. This is the big gripe of those who don’t like anything over 14.0% or 14.5% or whatever their cutoff level is. They want to be able to drink 2 or 3 or (gasp!) even 4 glasses of wine without the room starting to spin. Personally, that doesn’t happen to me, but then, I’m a professional.

The second meaning of buzz is in the marketing sense. From Wikipedia: “Buzz: a term used in word-of-mouth marketing…which serves to amplify the original marketing message…a vague but positive association, excitement, or anticipation about a product or service.”

We all experience buzz all the time. It’s built into the release of movies, DVDs, cars. Every new product from Apple has buzz. A new Michael Mina restaurant has buzz. And guess what? Articles about alcohol levels in wine have buzz.

For some reason I can’t quite grasp, this ABV thingie has become the buzziest topic in the world of wine. Anytime anyone with any credentials weighs in, everyone goes all a-tizzy. (It might even happen here!) If you think about it, alcohol level in wine isn’t that big a deal. I mean, it’s not important enough for so many people to get so crazed by it; the emotional impact of alcohol level is far higher than it ought to be. If people are really in a debating mood, we might get worked up by, say, stoop labor conditions in the vineyards, or the free interstate shipping of wine (see my remarks yesterday about big government and the Tea Party), or why California wine is so widely perceived as being too expensive for the quality. We might even wonder why such ordinarily sensible people as Ursula Hermacinski, a longstanding friend of mine, say such silly things as “Would the wine industry come to a complete halt?” with Parker’s retirement from California, as Ryan Flinn reported two days ago in Bloomberg. (Memo to Ursula: No, my dear, it won’t. If anything, we’re liberated. Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we’re free at last!) There are so many more important things to get worked up over than ABV.

Personally, when I blind taste a Cabernet and give it 94 points in my head and then see that ABV is 15.4%, it not only doesn’t bother me in the least, it doesn’t even surprise me. I can give a Cathy Corison Cabernet an equally high score even though it has only 13.8%. The two extremes are not mutually exclusive, and in fact most lower alcohol Cabernets in California run the risk of being green and unripe. I’m glad that there’s a cadre of winemakers in California that’s focusing on under-14% Pinots, but that doesn’t stop me from loving a Siduri “Pisoni” that’s closer to 15%. I’ve tasted Williams Selyem Allen Vineyard Chardonnays that were high in alcohol and so rich, so opulent, they were practically food groups in themselves. If the low ABV crowd doesn’t want them, fine; more for me.

Anyway, a final congrats to Jon Bonné for convincing the Chron to publish alcohol levels in their reviews. Even though the actual number may be up to 1-1/2 points different, it’s better than no information at all.

Americans have finally figured out that red wine is good for them, but they don’t know that drinking too much of it is bad, according to a new American Heart Association survey.

“[W]e need to do a better job of educating people about the heart-health risks of overconsumption of wine,” said an AHA spokesperson.

I don’t think the problem is a lack of education. Doctors have been saying for decades that drinking too much is dangerous. Everybody knows that. The reason people drink too much isn’t because they’re ignorant but because they’re unhappy and want to self-medicate. That’s the real problem, and I don’t know if it has a solution.

* * *

Here’s the V-Man in the news again, reminding businesses to be “heartfelt” and “human”, to give their customers “a hug or a handshake” and “overcare” and “listen” to them, instead of “pushing.”

Can’t disagree with that. What I wonder about is why, in person, Gary strikes me as rather arrogant–just what he tells businesses they shouldn’t be.

* * *

Nice to see the Salt Lake [City] Tribune reassuring Christians that wine is “a blessing, not a curse.” I always thought that anti-alcohol Christians were being a little hypocritical. How can they condemn drinking wine when wine is practically at the center of everything people did in The Bible, both Old and New Testaments? Jesus himself made wine, and made it part of the sacrament. These anti-alcohol Christians are the same kind of people who talk about “Hate the sin, love the sinner.” I don’t trust them.

* * *

The State of Pennsylvania, some time ago, made history when it began selling wine through kiosks in public spaces. Now, “the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is toying with making hard liquor available in the kiosks.”

That’s a good idea, but the real problem isn’t that the kiosks, which require swiping photo IDs and credit cards and taking a breath test, are too complicated to use. It’s that PA remains a control state that doesn’t trust its adult citizens enough to let them buy booze in a grocery store. What’s all this talk about Big Government I hear coming from the right? I’d like to see the Tea Party get behind eliminating control states and coming out for the free shipping of alcoholic beverages throughout the U.S.

* * *

OMG, now it’s the Battle of the Mommy Wines!

Not exactly up there with other celebrated battles, such as Hastings, Waterloo or Gettyburg. But the war of words is heating up between Clos La Chance (an excellent winery), which produces “Mommyjuice” wine, and “Mommy’s  Time out,” an Italian wine whose New Jersey importer claims to own the copyright on the “M”-word.

I say let the two company CEOs fight it out in a UFC Octogon, armed with baby carriages and used Pampers.

And that’s your news roundup for today!

Plum is a new restaurant that opened in what people are calling the Uptown district of Oakland, which is just a few blocks from where I live. Plum was started by Daniel Patterson, of San Francisco’s Coi restaurant, and critics have referred to Plum as Coi’s little sister. It’s very Oakland-y. The interior is stark and austere, and I joked to the general manager, a genial woman named Cassandra Brown, that I understood why: the real art was on the arms of the heavily-tattooed line cooks!

Anyway, when Larry Stone invited me to dinner, I chose Plum. Larry of course was long with Francis Ford Coppola, as both his Master Sommelier at the old Rubicon restaurant, now Tyler Florence’s Wayfare Tavern, and later at Rubicon the winery, which is now or shortly will be Inglenook. A while back, Larry left Coppola to work at Evening Land Vineyards, whose 2007 Occidental Pinot Noir, from the Sonoma Coast, was sent to me two years ago. I knew absolutely nothing about it, but dutifully stuck it into a blind tasting of Pinots. It blew my mind; I rated it 98 points, my highest Pinot score of the year. I just had to learn more about it, so good old Google showed me that the winemaker was Sashi Moorman, who makes the wines at Stolpman Vineyards, and that Evening Land’s GM was none other than Larry Stone. Moreover, Occidental Vineyard had been the source for a highly rated Kistler Pinot Noir. So there were perfectly good reasons why that ‘07 was as good as it was. These things don’t happen by accident.

Anyway, Larry wanted to taste me through a range of Evening Land’s new Pinots and Chardonnays, including from their new Santa Rita Hills vineyard and their property in Oregon. Very exciting wines they were. I told Larry I’m looking forward to reviewing them formally at home–not the Oregon wines, of course; those are for Paul Gregutt.

Cassandra, it turned out, is studying to be a Master Sommelier, so she was thrilled that the famous Larry Stone was dining in her establishment; she’d even come in on her night off to meet him. She joined us at the end of a very long meal (nearly six hours! a record) and I’m sure she’ll get those precious M.S. letters and not too long from now. It was inspiring to see the depth of her ambitions and hopes. She aims to be the first African-American female Master Sommelier, she said. When I asked Larry if there are any black male Master Sommeliers, he said he didn’t think there were. So Cassandra’s elevation would be historic.

Larry and I talked a lot about a lot of things over those long hours. One subject that came up–he broached it–was that people dislike sommeliers; they think they’re pompous snobs. I suppose some are, but it’s because they’re really turned on by wine. They love discovering new things, and they do tend to get bored with the same old “names.” Maybe that’s why some people think they’re snobs. Mr. So and So comes in and orders a bottle of [name a cult wine]. The somm says, “I could bring you that, but we have a wonderful [whatever from wherever] I think you’d enjoy, and it would actually complement chef’s food better.” What’s  snobby about that?

After our long meal, I saw Larry to his car, made sure he knew how to get out of downtown Oakland at midnight, and walked home in the chill night air, feeling just fine about my neighborhood, and that with restaurant wine service in the hands of people like Cassandra Brown, it’s all good.