Wilson Daniels, the marketing and sales company based in St. Helena, has been around since 1978, but they’ve finally done something they might have done years ago: they started their own brand, also called Wilson Daniels.

I’ve long been an admirer of Wilson Daniels, the company. They have, arguably, the most prestigious portfolio in the U.S., with wineries from some of the major wine regions of the world. Their claim to fame is, of course, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, of which they are the exclusive American importer, but their California wineries are also impressive: Clos Pegase, Schramsberg, Lancaster, Gainey, Roth and a couple of others.

It never would have occurred to me, even two years ago, to wonder why Wilson Daniels didn’t launch their own brand. We tend to think of producers, on the one hand, and businesses on the corporate side, like Wilson Daniels, as mutually exclusive. I can’t think of another sales and marketing firm that has its own brand. Generally, companies understand what they do well and what they don’t; they veer toward the former and tend to stay away from the latter. Wilson Daniels (and I haven’t spoken to anyone there, so this is just guesswork on my part) evidently decided they can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Their first wines are relatively inexpensive, ranging from $14-$19, ranged across five varietals (Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon). All bear a Central Coast appellation. They sent me only the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, neither of which is great shakes. I suspect all five wines say “Vinted and bottled by” on the back label, which means, in essence, that Wilson Daniels picked up the wines at a good price from somebody down in that area of California. Question: Why did Wilson Daniels, whose winery clients charge a lot of money for their wines, put something so ordinary on the market? The first commandment of business is to make a profit, and Wilson Daniels figured they could, by buying cheap and selling a little bit dearer. Could Wilson Daniels have released more expensive, better wines? I’m sure they could have, with all their connections. Maybe they didn’t wish to compete against their own clients. The price range–again, $14-$19–is a popular entry point these days for new brands. It’s not cheap, but it’s not expensive either, and that range is the comfort zone for consumers in 2012, as America emerges from this awful Recession and start spending again.

Another iconic name also has started a brand: Bien Nacido. Everybody knows them as one of the greatest vineyards in California, if not the New World. The designation “Bien Nacido Vineyard,” on dozens of wines from some of the state’s most prestigious wineries, is as close to an assurance of a very good wine as any vineyard designation can be. But the Miller family, who own Bien Nacido, have decided to launch their own brand, under the same name.

They faced similar but slightly different challenges from Wilson Daniels. For starters, should they call the brand Bien Nacido, or something different? Calling it Bien Nacido could cause some confusion out there in the marketplace, and might be seen as competing against the clients they sell grapes to. But they decided to call it Bien Nacido, and who am I to argue with that? It’s a fine name, and it would have been silly not to take advantage of it, in my opinion.

The Millers, however, did what Wilson Daniels didn’t: they came out with expensive wines. I’ve reviewed only two so far: the Syrah and the Pinot Noir, both from 2007. Both cost $52. The Syrah is awesome; I scored it 96 points. I gave the Pinot 90 points, but the truth is, it could be better today than when I reviewed it, last March. Bien Nacido also took the bold, ambitious step of hiring one of the foremost winemakers in California, Trey Fletcher, whom they lured away from Littorai. I think that testifies to their ambition to play at the highest level of which they’re capable, which is a very high level, indeed. After all, they won’t have any problem obtaining the best Bien Nacido fruit! There’s this consideration, too: having decided to brand the wines under the Bien Nacido name, the Millers certainly could not have released ordinary wine; that would have tarnished the Bien Nacido name they’ve spent so long burnishing.

Might Wilson Daniels someday decide to come out with an expensive Pinot Noir or Cabernet to rival, say, Lancaster, Clos Pegase of Gainey? Who’s to say? Two different companies, two different points of view and business philosophies. I wish them both luck in their new ventures.

The best thing about prognostications (a fancy word for “guess”) is that nobody can prove you’re wrong in advance, and by the time the future comes, it’s unlikely anyone will haul out your predictions and show how massively incorrect they were. So here we go: my prognostications about what we can expect next year in the world of wine.

The big news is that the wine industry will improve economically. The conventional wisdom of the last three-plus years is that wine at the high end has been slammed, as consumers, wary of spending too much, cut back on the amount they’re willing to pay for a bottle of wine. This has supposedly been good for companies like Bronco, Gallo, The Wine Group and others who can manufacture a sound bottle of wine and retail it for under ten bucks. But it’s been very hard on premium wineries. I’ve heard it time and time again, from owners and/or winemakers at these wineries, who tell me, off the record, that they’d be lying if they claimed everything was hunky dory.

But the U.S. economy seems to be recovering, and I have the feeling 2012 is going to be robust. I think the GDP will be up sharply, the housing market will show signs of life, the unemployment rate will go down, and personal income will rise, albeit modestly. We’ve seen, in the latest economic cycle, that consumers are spending like they haven’t spent in three years. They’re sick and tired of frugality. They haven’t treated themselves to very much since 2007, and they’re reading to start living again! That means a $12, $15, $18, maybe even a $20 bottle of wine.

I don’t see any major trends erupting in 2012, but hey, I missed sweet Moscato! The sweet red wine trend will pick up steam, but who cares? (No disrespect to anybody, but I’m into fine wine, not plonk.) I can guarantee you Chardonnay will continue to sell like crazy, and don’t look for lower levels of oak anytime soon (despite the oak-free phenomenon), because all those consumers with a sweet tooth (Moscato, reds) will find oaky California Chardonnay to their liking, with its sweet, simple vanilla and butterscotch flavors.

Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir remain red hot. I think the Cabernet market from $12-$18 will be particularly healthy, and for sure there are a lot of good wines at that price. There’s nothing going on in Pinot Noir below $18, but once you get up to $25-plus, your options increase. Pinot will be seen as a luxury wine, Cabernet as the everyday standard, and the reason that won’t change is inherent in the properties of the varieties themselves. You just can’t make a decent Pinot Noir unless the vineyard is in the right place and yields are kept low. That’s not true for Cabernet, which can be made decently from Temecula and Lodi to the Sierra Foothills and Mendocino County.

On the social media side, I don’t expect any great breakthroughs when it comes to wineries using Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. in 2012. An interesting article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle suggests that Twitter “can marginally help a candidate’s general message…but the jury is out as to whether tweets lead to votes.” Isn’t that what I’ve been saying here for years–that engaging, even heavily, in social media can help a winery marginally to get the message out, but the jury is still out on whether or not social media can lead to sales. I maintain that position. Wineries are in a good position to take advantage of the impending recovery, but they’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way: by pounding the pavements, or hiring salesmen to do it for them. Advertising, for those who can afford it, helps, as does a proper alignment of quality and price.

My final prognostication is that I’ll still be here, blogging, writing and reviewing for Wine Enthusiast, and having fun running around California and, hopefully, staying out of trouble.

I reviewed about 4,800 wines in 2011, which works out to 13.1 per day, although I didn’t taste every single day. The top varietals tasted, by quantity, are listed below. (My top-scoring wines from each category follow in brackets):

1,003 Pinot Noirs [Williams Selyem 2009 Precious Mountain]
885 Cabernet Sauvignons [Venge 2008 Family Reserve]
767 Chardonnays [Foxen 2010 Block UU Bien Nacido Vineyard]
354 Zinfandels [Seghesio 2009 Cortina]
295 Sauvignon Blancs [Trione 2010 River Road Ranch]
295 Syrahs [Qupe 2006 Bien Nacido Vineyard 25th Anniversary X-Block The Good Nacido]
236 Merlots [Rutherford Hill 2007 Reserve]
177 Meritage-style [Von Strasser Reserve]
118 sparkling wines [Schramsberg 2004 J. Schram Rosé]
118 Petite Sirahs [Envy 2008 Nord Vineyard]
59 Cabernet Francs [Merryvale 2008]
59 Rhône red blends [Sanguis 2008 Endangered Species]

plus, of course, a bunch of everything else: Chenin Blanc, Nebbiolo, white Rhône blends, Tempranillo, oddball red blends, oddball white blends, dessert wines, Viogniers, Rieslings and so on.

I was surprised to see that Pinot Noir outnumbered Cabernet Sauvignon for the first time! Pretty impressive. Why? I can’t say, for sure, but here are some educated guesses: Pinot Noir is the hottest wine in California. More and more people are making it, so more and more are sending in for review. I, in particular, am getting a lot sent because producers know I like it, and so they hope they’ll get a good score. Also, I pay particular attention to Santa Barbara County–not all reviewers do, you know–and there’s a lot of Pinot down there.

Other than that, not too many surprises. Napa Valley dominates the above list, followed by Sonoma County and Santa Barbara County. I think we can safely say that, in terms of sheer numbers, those three areas are where the action is, although a great wine can show up anywhere. I was a little surprised, in a pleasant way, that my top Chardonnay was from Foxen. If you’d asked me, before I looked it up, I wouldn’t have guessed Foxen. Maybe something from Stonestreet, Williams Selyem, Hanzell, Lynmar, but not Foxen. However, in retrospect I shouldn’t have been surprised, because when I looked up all my Foxen Chardonnay reviews over the years, the scores run quite high. Still, something magical happened with that 2010 UU Block Chardonnay, and I’m guessing it was the vintage. I’ve tasted about 235 2010 Chardonnays so far, and excluding the cheapies, the scores are impressive, with about 12% scoring 90 or higher . But there are many more 2010 Chardonnays to come in, and they’ll be the better ones, too, because the cheapies were mostly rushed out the door in 2011.

Petite Sirah came onto my radar more than ever in 2011. It’s been there for some years, but more as a blip toward the outer edge than as something large and targeting  the middle. But there it is. Vintners have refined their style to make Petite Sirah less brawny and more elegant, although it will never be sleek or refined–but then, you wouldn’t want Petite Sirah to be, any more than you’d want Jack Black to have a sixpack.

I’m always glad when a dark horse does well. I guess you could say the Foxen was a dark horse. So was the Venge, in Cabernet, the Trione in Sauvignon Blanc, the Envy Petite Sirah and the Sanguis red Rhône. Williams Selyem, Schramsberg and Qupe certainly aren’t dark hoses, and neither is Rutherford Hill for Merlot; hell, they practically invented upscale Merlot back in the 1970s.

It was a good year for tasting, 2011 was. Lots of extraordinary wines at the top end. I expect 2012 to be a good year for tasting, and 2013, too, because 2010 is beginning to look better and better. And 2011? After so much bad press [including some here and on my Facebook page], it may turn out better than anyone thought. These last two years have certainly been the coolest in a long time, which should give us wines of lower alcohol and greater elegance and finesse. I haven’t used the word “finesse” very often over the years. I hope to be able to use it a lot more in the future, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

By the way, unless a critic tastes at least as many wines a year as I do, they can’t credibly pronounce on a vintage. If they do, they’re full of it. All they’re doing is repeating stuff they’ve read and been spoon fed, instead of giving a knowledgeable impression. That’s not journalism, it’s gossip. Worse: water carrying.

There were only 5 of us at the Christmas table, not counting various kids who were on the computer and a 13 year old who piloted a foot stool all around the house as if it were a hobby horse. But it was festive. After all kinds of appetizers–cashews, salami, cheese, crackers–Marilyn served her own homemade honey baked ham, with stewed fruits, oven roasted squashes and potatoes, and a salad of bitter greens, candied pecans and feta cheese which she criticized but that everyone else seemed to enjoy. She’d bought a gigantic chocolate layer cake for dessert, bedizened or should I say festooned with candy canes, sugary elves, garish Santas and little reindeer (FD&C red dye #40), which really added insult to the injury after all the food; and when everyone had ate their fill, and half of the cake was still left over, Marilyn tried to convince someone, anyone, to please bring it home with them. No takers.

Wines? We kept it simple. I brought along a bottle of JCB non-vintage Brut Rosé, a great buy for only $20, rich, delicious and clean. Everybody liked it, even Marilyn’s son and daughter-in-law, who profess to dislike sparkling wine. They made such a fuss over it that the teenaged kids asked for a sip, which they duly received–a tiny one. I personally think our drinking age laws are anachronistic. I do recognize we can’t just let kids drink alcohol anytime they feel like it, but surely we can respect the European tradition of letting them have a little, at the table, in the company of civilized adults, so they don’t end up thinking drinking is just for getting smashed.

What else did we drink? I also brought a bottle of Jarvis 2006 Estate Cabernet. Now that, my friends, is a helluva wine. I don’t know if Jarvis routinely appears on the list of Napa Valley “cult” Cabs. I myself have never prepared such a list, although I suppose if I had to, I could. But I’d be embarrassed; such a silly, pandering thing to do. Anyway I brought the Jarvis, even though I knew it wasn’t the ideal wine for the ham (which Marilyn had told me beforehand was the main dish), because I like for people to love the wines I bring, and I knew that everybody would adore that wine. And they did.

We had a couple Pinot Noirs, and a bottle of Chardonnay, and lots of sparkling water. Marilyn’s brother, Bud, who would be the first to admit he’s not a wine guy but likes to drink anyway, bought a bottle of Barefoot Sauvignon Blanc, which he drank on the rocks. Lest you think dinner with Steve necessarily implies wine snobbery of the highest order, keep that image in mind!

When everyone had gone home, Marilyn and I watched the 2008 documentary, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. (He’d been a favorite of mine from way back in the day, and I like to think the New Journalism he helped to inspire has had its influence on my writing in this blog.) The dogs cuddled up with us, little Annie with Marilyn, her mommy, Gus with me, and Maisie, Marilyn’s big, goofy Golden Lab, curled up snoring by the fireplace. It was cold in Pacifica, and the fog was rolling in as thick as mashed potatoes, but inside it was toasty warm and peaceful, as Christmas evenings should be.

It was on this day, Dec. 26, exactly 31 years ago that I fell in love with wine.

It happened in the Safeway store in the little town of Benicia, some 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. I’d just made one of the biggest, riskiest moves in my life–coming to California from the East Coast, to go to graduate school. (That’s a whole different story I might tell one of these days.) My cousin, Maxine, and her husband, Keith, had invited me to live with them until I got settled. I’d flown west out of Logan Airport in a blizzard, only to arrive in sunny San Francisco where the mild temperature, leafy trees and flower-choked gardens blew my mind. I mean, roses and magnolias in late December? I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto!

We drove to Benicia. I was shown my new room. Then someone suggested barbecue for dinner. Maxine went out into the garden to pick lettuce (another mindblow) for a salad, and then we drove up Main Street, past the little park with the gazebo, to the Safeway. Threw a couple steaks and potatoes into the shopping cart. Then we headed over to the wine aisle. This is where “the incident” occurred.

Maxine’s steering the cart slowly down the aisle. I’m trailing after her. I don’t remember Keith in the picture; maybe he’d stayed at home, starting the fire. Maxine picks up a bottle of wine, examines the front label, turns it around, examines the back label. Puts it back on the shelf. Picks up a second bottle and goes through the same ritual. Then a third bottle. And a fourth.

Me: “What are you doing? Just grab a bottle and let’s go.” [I was sooo New York in those days.]

Her: [arching an eyebrow of disapproval] “You don’t just grab a bottle of wine. You think about it.”

What? I can remember my reaction as if it were yesterday. What is she talking about? I know my cousin has her “ways,” but she is, for the most part, a sensible, rational human being, not subject to whims or emotional fancy. I simply could not understand why buying a bottle of wine was any different from buying a can of peas. They were all the same, weren’t they?

Things happened very quickly after that. I needed to understand. Not wanted; needed, as if understanding were as important as breathing. I bought a couple wine guides: Bob Thompson’s “Pocket Encyclopedia of California Wines” and Olken, Singer & Roby’s “Connoisseurs’ Handbook of California Wines.” I started haunting wine shops.  For sure, I didn’t have much money to spend, but I remember the pride I felt when I bought my first varietal wine: Wente’s Grey Riesling (or was it spelled Gray?). Shortly afterward, I moved out on my own, to Concord, where I shared a house with a young Diablo Valley College kid, Tim. I shared with him my passion for wine, which he quickly adopted. Together we would go to wine shops, looking for suitable bargains to drink with the dinners we cooked. That’s when I began my career as a wine educator, teaching Timmy: as long as I knew a little more than he did, I was mentor, he mentee.

I’ve thought often of Maxine examining those wine bottles. I observe the same behavior today, when I loiter in the wine departments at Cost Plus or BevMo, watching people. They’re so confused, most of the time, so apprehensive, so clueless. I don’t say that judgmentally, just objectively. Lord only knows what’s going on in their heads. I am reading now the 1950 article, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” by the great computer pioneer, Alan Turing, who came up with the concept of the “Turing test,” in which a human observor (you or me) has a “conversation” with an unseen interlocutor [in, say, another room], through a teletype screen or similar digital device. The idea is for the observor to determine whether the unseen interlocutor is another human, or a machine [computer]. The theory is that, if the computer were programmed sufficiently well, this determination would be impossible. It was Turing’s conjecture that someday computers could be programmed so that there would be no way of telling the difference. All theories of artificial intelligence begin, and end, with Alan Turing.

Watching those wine shoppers, I try to imagine what’s happening in their brains. I can’t, in that particular situation, because I know too much about wine to be confused in a wine aisle. But I get confused in many other situations: for example, anything that involves mechanics defeats me. So I can recall my confusion when dealing with automobiles and imagine it inside the head of the Cost Plus wine shopper, and I feel empathy. Could a machine ever feel empathy? Is that what makes humans different from machines? I don’t think that’s the case, because I can imagine a computer behaving in such a way as to simulate empathy; and since I can’t crawl into the computer’s brain, any more than I can crawl into yours, I would just have to assume, based on its behavior, that the computer actually was empathic.

I would have loved to ask Turing, who died in 1954, if a Turing test could ever determine if a computer liked wine. Actually, he anticipated such a question in his article. Can a computer “enjoy strawberries and cream?…Possibly a machine might be made to enjoy this delicious dish, but any attempt to make one do so would be idiotic.” That’s how Turing dismissed the idea of programming a computer to have esthetic or hedonistic preferences: that it would be “idiotic” to do so, presumably because the effort involved would be vast, whereas the payoff would be meaningless. Why not use the same effort to program a computer to find a cure for cancer?

Maybe it’s idiotic for us humans to fall in love with anything–strawberries and cream, wine, each other. Yet Mother Nature gave us that capacity. It happened to me on that long ago winter day, and you know what? I’m still in love with wine.