Many of you know that I recently rescued a chihuahua-terrier mix I named  Gus. Gus is insanely cute, the kind of dog that complete strangers on the street stop to compliment. I love him dearly, but there’s an issue. Gus tends to have the occasional “accident” at home.

I was down at the Old Crow yesterday telling this to Terry, looking for a little advice and, probably, commisseration. Terry, like most dog owners I know, told me that, when you have a dog, accidents will happen, and not to get too upset about it. I told him that, as far as I’m concerned, I want an accident-free Gus, 100% housebroken, without exceptions. No pee indoors, ever, period, end of story. Terry said, “Your expectations are pretty high.”

“I know,” I replied, adding, “That’s the way I am. I either have very high expectations, or none at all.” I’d never stated anything in quite those terms, but it just came out, and I was surprised to hear myself put it so bluntly.

On the way home–with Gus sniffing every tree, lamppost and hydrant in Oakland–I was thinking about this, when it occurred to me that there are analogies with wine. When I taste a new release, I’m looking for the most perfect wine ever, one that gives me pleasure on every level. I expect it not only to not disappoint, but to dazzle. I have a Platonic image in my mind of the perfect wine of every type (Pinot Noir, Champagne, Cabernet Sauvignon, sweet white wine, etc.), because in my lifetime I’ve had such wines, and stored each away in the repository of my brain, where I can reference it in detail. So I’ll take the new wine I’m tasting and hold it side by side with the Platonic wine, comparing them. Of course, almost all of the time, the new wine fails to live up to the mental image or expectation of the perfect Platonic wine. So ultimately, 99.9% of the new wines I taste are, on some level, disappointing.

And then it hit me. Am I holding my wines to the same standard as I hold Gus? With wine, is it all or nothing?

I don’t exactly mean “nothing,” of course. If I give a score over 90 to a wine, it ain’t nothing. But any score less than 100 points, regardless how high, still suggests that there’s something wrong with the wine. And that troubles me. My doggie-owning friends, and I have a lot of them, have convinced me that it’s totally unreasonable to expect a dog to never, ever pee in the house, over many years. So is a 95 point score the equivalent of a wine that, great as it is (and Gus is really great), occasionally pees on the carpet?

I’m still working this out. But without following the analogy too far, let me put it this way: I think it’s fair to hold every wine to a standard of perfection. It doesn’t matter if it’s in a box, or if it costs $500; I measure it in my mind against the greatest, what I want and hope it should be, not what it is.

Is it unfair to hold every wine I taste to such a high standard? The difference between wines and Gus, obviously, is that I have only one Gus. It’s he whom I love and must cherish regardless of whatever imperfections he has. With wine, on the other hand, there are thousands each year. I don’t feel any obligation to love or cherish any of them, no matter how much they cost or how hyped they are.

Still, I wonder if that little bit of irritation I feel at a slight imperfection in wine isn’t unduly harsh. The way I rationalize it is in the relationship between the score and the text of my review. An 84 is going to remain an 84 after I blind taste it, no matter what. If I see the wine costs $7, I’m going to give it a break in my description. If it’s $50, I’m going to be harsh. The analogy with Gus, I think, is that he’s a million dollar dog (in my heart) and so I want and expect him to be perfect. Still, I know how unreasonable that is. That’s why I’m hiring a dog psychologist to help us get through this. I can’t do that with wine; a wine that really disappoints me has no mitigation, no intervention by which it can improve itself–at least, until the next vintage. I guess that’s the difference between the living beings in our lives, and the fixed possessions, like wine. You can’t hope to change a flawed wine, no matter what you do. But you can always hope to see a change in a living being you love.

When I was in Napa yesterday, I was talking to a guy who’s pretty tuned into the valley’s wine culture. Our conversation ranged over a variety of topics, not just wine, but the economy, politics, Occupy Wall Street, etc., and obviously we got onto the issue of the declining middle class, which seems to be the big domestic story in the country.

At one point, we were driving down Highway 29, through Oakville and Rutherford, looking at all those famous wineries, and I said that I often wonder how they’re all doing in this recession. I said I can’t believe they’re not hurting. My friend had actually read my post from a few days ago on “Why more wineries aren’t failing” and he agreed that the banks probably are holding back from doing more foreclosures; but he agreed also that even if the wineries aren’t going bankrupt or having to sell themselves, many of them are probably deep in debt and struggling, especially those whose retail prices are in the medium tier (hard to define, but let’s say $20-$60). The extremely low-priced wines, such as those produced by Bronco, some Gallos, Bogle, some of Don Sebastiani’s stuff like Smoking Loon, Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi, Red Truck and Big House are probably doing pretty well, because they make sound wines at around $10 a bottle, and that’s the sweet spot for consumers these days. But the middle class isn’t going to buy a middle-priced bottle these days, the way they used to, because they either don’t have the money, or are afraid to spend it.

“If you think about it,” my friend said, “the middle-priced wines are kind of like the Middle Class Americans. They’re both being squeezed out of existence.”

Middle class Americans are indeed under pressure, a fact that Republicans, Democrats and everyone in between can agree on (although solutions to the problem appear to be intractable). The problem with the mid-priced wines is that they’ve pretty much targeted themselves to Middle Class consumers. High end drinkers won’t buy them (I don’t want to get into naming specific brands, but think of the stretch of wineries from, say, just south of the Oakville General Store to Calistoga along 29. You can choose just about any one you want). High end wine drinkers want Harlan, Hundred Acre, Futo. On the other hand, the financially strapped consumer (student, blue collar worker, housewife on a budget, retiree) can’t afford $20 and up for their regular house wine, and so they turn to the cheapies. As a result, the more the Middle Class in America is pinched, the less wine the mid-priced wineries are able to sell to them.

It’s a vicious cycle, but I think my friend got it exactly right. These wineries have got to be hurting, but the banks are going light on them, for now. Things won’t recover for the mid-priced wineries until the economy recovers, employment starts rising, and consumers feel like they have some discretionary money to spend again.

I do want to comment on some remarks that Rob McMillan, who I think is a banker with Silicon Valley Bank, made on my “Why more wineries aren’t failing” post. Rob said “Only 7% of wineries describe themselves as being significantly weak,” which is a statement that needs examining. First of all, self-professed status reports, in any poll, are notoriously misleading, so I suspect that the percentage of wineries that are actually “significantly weak” is considerably higher than seven. Secondly, you’d have to define “significantly weak,” as opposed to merely “weak,” to understand this number precisely. Perhaps 67% described themselves as “weak,” but not “significantly weak.” These surveys all depend on how you ask the question.

Secondly, Rob wrote “grape prices are going up.” I suppose this could be true, especially after this vintage, which is going to be very low-yielding, by every account. However, the 2010 crop was a large one, the third biggest of the decade, and according to the California Dept. of Food and Agriculture, grape crush prices, measured as dollars per ton, were down considerably in 2010 from their 2009 highs.

Even if grape prices go up in 2011, such is the law of supply and demand that, if demand remains low for high end wines, it won’t matter. Soft demand will balance out high prices, which will put an additional squeeze on those $20-$60 wines. It’s all tied together: restore the Middle Class to fiscal health, and the mid-priced winery tier will recover.

It’s easy to make a splash in the wine biz in California if you have a few hundred million in spare change to invest in a fabulous winery designed by a famous architect, then hire a famous consulting winemaker, put out a $150 Cabernet that goes on to be the top lot at the Napa Valley Auction or Premier Napa Valley, and then hire a top of the line P.R. firm to spread the word about your fabulosity.

It’s hard to make a splash when your “winery” is a dumpy little wooden barn on “the wrong side of the hill”, you have no budget for P.R. or much of anything else, and you don’t even make Cabernet. But it can be done, and for proof you need look no further than Joseph Swan Vineyards.

I’ve been a Swan fan forever. I began tasting their wines (not for review, for sheer enjoyment) in the 1980s. I still remember a dinner at Chez Panisse at which Swan’s winemaker (and Joe Swan’s son-in-law), Rod Berglund, brought down a bunch of old wines for a tasting, for which Alice Waters prepared a magnificent meal (lamb, if I recall correctly). Those wines had aged perfectly even though some of them were 20 years old. (I covered the winery extensively in my first book, A Wine Journey along the Russian River.)

I reviewed a bunch of their latest releases yesterday and was again reminded just how good and authentic Swan wines are. Few wineries in California have such a good track record across so many varieties. I’ve given consistent high scores to Swan Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, Syrah, Viognier, Chardonnay and even to a Tannat I loved last year. Can you name another winery that performs so well in so many kinds of wine? Off the top of my head, I can’t. The reason, I think, is because Swan is very careful to source their grapes only from the coolest parts of the Russian River Valley, and the best vineyards. It’s also because Rod is a hell of a winemaker. His Pinot Noirs are probably his best wines; I gave his the 2007 Trenton Estate 97 points, and at $52 it’s less than a lot of Pinots that aren’t even as good. You could call it Burgundian because it has such great acidity and a mushroomy thing going on that’s obviously pure terroir, but I think I’m going to stop referencing wines as “Burgundian” because, after all, the correct word to use is “Russian River Valley-an” or “Trentonian” or some other word that’s about our terroir, not theirs.

So kudos to Joseph Swan Vineyards and Rod Berglund. They’re still going strong after all these years.

* * *

I’m headed up to Napa later this morning to hang with Jayson Woodbridge, the owner/winemaker at Hundred Acre, Layer Cake and Cherry Pie. I want to see how his vintage is coming along (and to see him, too. Fascinating guy). We chatted briefly on the phone the other day and he was excited. Now, vintners are always “excited” about the latest vintage, or so they claim when talking with ink-stained wretches like me. I think they’d find something positive to say if an asteroid hit Napa Valley right in the middle of harvest. “The Asteroid Vintage of the Century!” But I agree with Jayson’s take. The rainfall of the first and second weeks of October was a drag and everybody was scared witless by as much as 4 inches that drenched Sonoma and Napa. But they’re dancing in the cellars over the weather that followed: two weeks of absolutely gorgeous, drop dead beautiful weather, dry, sunny and warm. No big heat at all, just mild, breezy conditions that will dry out the ground and the leaves and grapes still on the vine. I think this could be a tough vintage for the coolest coastal locations (Sonoma Coast Chardonnay, for example), where growers could experience mold and unripeness, in addition to severely short crops. But the star of the vintage might just well be Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and Meritages, although the best will be produced in miniscule quantities because of this low-yielding year.

Did you see the announcement yesterday that our friend Eric Asimov, the New York Times’ chief wine writer and critic, has been appointed the paper’s interim restaurant critic, following last month’s promotion of Sam Sifton as national editor?

That’s big news, and I’m happy for Eric, assuming he wants to wear both mantles for the time being. It’s a lot of work being a daily wine critic, not to mention writing a wine blog at the same time. That’s what I do. I’d hate to have nighttime come around–a time I cherish for resting and doing my own thing–and know that I have to report to work for my second job, restaurant critic! Exhaustion piled on top of exhaustion. Good luck, Eric. By the way, I wonder what Eric would say if the Times offered him the permanent restaurant gig, which, I have to assume, would mean he’d have to step down as wine editor. If I put myself in Eric’s shoes and fantasize about having that choice, I’d probably pick restaurant critic. Not saying it’s a cinch, because until you’re actually faced with these kinds of choices, they’re hypotheticals. But a part of me always wanted to be a restaurant critic. I tried my hand at it, once, in this blog, nearly a year ago, when I reviewed Twenty Five Lusk, a smokin’ hot place near AT&T Park. That was huge fun, but I will admit I felt a little out of my league. I know a lot more about wine, especially California wine, than I do about food and restaurants, and I realized it takes a lot of time to reach the point where you know enough about food and restaurants (which includes the prior history of the restaurant’s owners and chefs, and even of its space) to write authoritatively about them. One can fake it, of course. One can simply give one’s reactions to the food and the atmosphere, the way the guests do on Check Please! Bay Area, Leslie Sbrocco’s amusing show on KQED-TV. They don’t often have the background that a seasoned restaurant reviewer ought to have–not that that makes their opinions any less worthy or entertaining. But still, a critic of any kind, from cars and movies to wine and restaurants, should have a solid background in what she’s talking about.

Eric, fortunately, does. He’s done prior stints at restaurant reviewing at the Times, so this isn’t entirely new for him. It will elevate him, I should think, to greater power and visibility in New York. The restaurant critic at the New York Times is and always has been considerably more powerful than the paper’s wine critic. I don’t think a Times wine critic has ever been feared, but the Times restaurant critic is. So is the restaurant critic at any important American newspaper, like the San Francisco Chronicle’s Michael Bauer, one of the best in the business.

I do wonder how Eric will be anonymous when he dines out, given that his face is so well known. Will he wear a Groucho mask? A long wig? Eric, if you read this, weigh in and let us know! I don’t expect you to send a picture of your new secret identity, but tell us, in the interests of journalism, how you intend to get around being so recognizable.

I’ve often wondered why there haven’t been more winery failures or sales in California over the past three years, given the length and severity of the Great Recession. Sure, we’ve seen some, but nowhere near the quantity one might have thought.

It’s been my supposition either than (a) the pressure’s building and we’ll see a steadily increasing number of bankruptcies or forced sales in 2012, providing the recession continues, or even deepens, as now seems likely; or (b) that many winery owners, who are personally wealthy, simply have the means to hang on, until and if things turn around.

The problem with (b), I’ve realized, is that it’s not true. Some winery owners are indeed wealthy and can hunker down, perhaps for an indefinite period of time. But many aren’t. They lead pleasant lifestyles, and aren’t exactly poor, but most of their profits are plowed right back into the family business. So that leaves (a) as the likely scenario.

However, I had a conversation yesterday with someone well known in the wine industry as a veteran leader–someone who understands everything there is to know about leading a medium-sized family winery and navigating the tricky shoals of financial rapids. I asked him why we’re not seeing more changing of hands of winery ownership, and here’s what he replied, pretty much verbatim:

There’s actually a lot less wineries for sale than people might think, and the sellers are doing pretty good.

[Me] How could that be?

There’s a lot of liquidity in the market chasing not many deals.

Why?

The banks and wineries are working through a difficult economy and they’re much wsier than in the past: You don’t have banks foreclosing on wineries. You don’t see a lot of wineries in the press financially strained, even though they may be. The banks and wineries are managing this crisis better than in the past. I think the banks learned their lesson from the housing crisis. The’re wiser this time not to put everyone into foreclosure and run everything down.

The way I’m interpreting this is, there may well be a lot of winery owners who are “underwater,” not in the real estate sense but in the sense that they owe a tremendous amount of money to their lending institutions–money they don’t have, and don’t foresee having anytime soon. This historically leads to the classic foreclosure scenario Hollywood loves to portray–recall Jimmy Stewart’s character, George Bailey, fighting to persuade the Board of Directors of the Bailey Building and Loan Association to keep home loans flowing to the working poor, in It’s a Wonderful Life.

We hear a lot these days about banks not lending because they’re afraid of the security of their loans in this devastated economy. We do hear about foreclosures on homes. But maybe it’s true that, in wine country, the banks are much more hesitant to crack down on wineries. Most financial arrangements in wine country are made with local banks, and often there is a personal relationship between the winery family and the lending officials at the banks, the way there isn’t between an ordinary mortgage holder and, say, Bank of America.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the banks aren’t nervous. As financial institutions, they need their loans repaid. But they’re forced into the uncomfortable position of being between the Devil and the deep blue sea: if they crack down on late payments, thus forcing the family winery out of business, they lose, because they’ll probably never get repaid; the winery will be forced to sell at a loss, or only a fraction of what the business would be worth in a sound economy.

Better, from the bank’s point of view, to let things drift, come to some kind of private arrangement with the family, and keep their fingers crossed that 2012 will bring about an improvement in the economic climate.

Let’s all hope for that.