We know it’s cold. We feel it everytime we go out (except for a couple hours between 1-3 p.m. when the gloom parts just long enough for the sun to come out). The Wall Street Journal wrote an article last week saying it’s the coldest summer along the West Coast in decades. Nearly every day, my local Weather Channel station predicts “near record cold” nighttime low temperatures. I’ve been saying this since March. Cold, cold, cold. 2010: the year without a spring or a summer. My TV weatherman just told us “The last time it was 80 degrees in San Francisco was on March 19. The last time it was 70 degrees was on July 4.” He is freaking out because he’s never seen anything like it.

The harvest looks particularly threatened in Sonoma County. I think growers there are legitimately concerned that the grapes won’t be ripe before the rains come. Early-ripening varieties — sparkling wines, Sauvignon Blanc — should be okay. It’s those thicker-skinned grapes that could be problems. Growers are cluster-thinning like crazy, hoping to speed up the ripening process. That’s one traditional intervention, but it’s not guaranteed. Michel-Schlumberger’s winemaker, Jim Morris, told me, “In 30 years we’ve never seen the weather this extreme.” They’re worried about rain, about mildew. At this rate, the grapes won’t be ready to pick until Oct. 22. That’s pretty late. Dry Creek Valley could have a lot of rain by then.

Napa may be in better shape. Being one mountain range further inland, it’s a little warmer and drier. But it’s not without problems. “Right now we need HEAT,” Tara Sharp, from Capture, told me. Gerard Zanzonico (Del Dotto) said, “At least two weeks behind.  More so on mountain fruit…Going to single cluster up on Howell.  It’s snip, snip here and snip, snip there and a couple of Tra, La, La’s. That’s how we work the day away in the merry old land of Napa Valley!”

In Paso Robles, this from Kevin Sass, at Justin. “We are about 2 weeks behind here in Paso Robles as well. We have not hit the panic button as we always have low crop levels. But if we don’t see some heat by Labor Day, we will have to evaluate a real HEAVY green drop.” On the other hand, just so you don’t think I’m reporting only bad news, this, from Jason Haas at Tablas Creek: “We’re most like 1999 or 2005 here in Paso, about 10 days behind normal out at Tablas Creek.  Definitely warmer than 1998, which itself was a pretty good Rhone vintage here.  We should be fine (even good) as long as we don’t get unusually early rain.”

Up in Calaveras, Scott Klann is “VERY concerned” about some of his blocks that are three weeks behind schedule.

I haven’t talked to anyone from Anderson Valley, but the average high for today (tomorrow, as you read this) in Boonville is 91, while today’s predicted high is 79. That comports with my experience of the rest of Northern Calfornia’s weather pattern this summer — anywhere from 5-12 degrees below average highs, day after day. Ditto for Sonoma’s Town Square: average high for today 86.5, while today’s predicted high is only 76.

Santa Barbara? How are you doing?

And this just in from the National Weather Service, for the 8-14 day temperature prediction. Check out the map. The blue color and capital B mean “below normal.” Meanwhile, the East continues to bake.

How much independence should a publisher give to an employee critic whose criticisms are hurting the publication?

That’s the big question raised by the case of a classical music critic in Cleveland, Donald Rosenberg, who was pressured by his editor to lay off his heavy criticism of the Cleveland Orchestra, which Rosenberg had been reviewing negatively for some time, according to this report in last Saturday’s New York Times.

Rosenberg sued his paper, The Plain Dealer, alleging he’d been reassigned to lesser roles and ordered not to review the Cleveland Orchestra anymore. The newspaper and its editor, Susan Goldberg, defended themselves in court, with the latter testifying that a “hefty chunk of the community was saying that Don Rosenberg was biased and unfair and that he was compromising our integrity.”

Both sides had expert witnesses testifying on their behalf. A jury last week ruled for The Plain Dealer, effectively throwing out Rosenberg’s complaint, which also included a charge of age discrimination. Rosenberg remains employed at the newspaper, but only as a music reporter (not a critic) and a dance critic.

As I read this, all kinds of questions popped up in my mind. What would happen if lots of readers of Wine Enthusiast started complaining about my reviews? Would my publisher reply, “Steve has every right in the world to express his opinion — that’s what we pay him to do” ? Or would he be concerned about a subscriber (and possible advertiser) backlash, and conclude that it was in the company’s best interests to rein me in?

Fortunately, the above has not occurred, and isn’t likely to. My magazine gives me wide latitude to tell the truth as I see it. I’m sure some of my reviews make my publisher, Adam Strum, wince; but he understands and respects the importance of employing unbiased editors, whose rectitude and incorruptibility in reviewing reflects well upon Wine Enthusiast.

For me, the most interesting and troublesome issue in the Rosenberg case is this: If The Plain Dealer thought highly enough of Rosenberg to hire him in the first place and then keep him onboard for years, how could they now question his objectivity, just because some people complained? It does look like management caved to outside pressure. The editor said (I’m quoting from the Times) that “Mr. Rosenberg had a closed mind about [the orchestra’s music director].”

“A closed mind.” Wow. Think about that. When I criticize certain table wines for having too much residual sugar, does that mean I have “a closed mind”? What about a wine I give a low score to because it smells like it came from the inside of a cat’s bladder? Is my mind “closed” to the pleasures of cat pee? For that matter, what about an eleven-year old Chardonnay that’s dead? Is my mind “closed” to dead Chard? You see where this is going: toward a slippery slope. Any negative critique of any kind can be attributed to “a closed mind.” But what does a publication hire a critic for, if not to praise things he likes and blast things he doesn’t? And shouldn’t a scrupulous editor stand by her critic?

I think The Plain Dealer caved in to outside pressure, but obviously, eight jurors who actually heard the case disagreed. What do you think?

Wednesday night, 9:10 p.m. Pacific time, right off the plane from NY – I have been virtually out of touch the last 3 days due to our meetings at Wine Enthusiast planning 2011. I feel hugely guilty at not approving comments. I just did. I apologize for not being able to do this sooner. I love and respect my readers who take the time and who deserve quick response. I just can’t always do it. Return to normal tomorrow, Thursday.

I’m not sure that an audience comprised of Masters of Wine was the right venue for an advertising man to call for a simpler, more consumer-friendly approach to marketing our favorite beverage. After all, there’s no wine club on Earth more elite than the MWs.

But it was at an MW event in Bordeaux that Sir John Hegarty told the crowd, “The [wine] industry fails hopelessly on accessibility. This market…goes out of its way to confuse the consumer. You’ve seen it – the way people in restaurants nervously pass round a wine list. It’s fear. You as an industry have encouraged that fear. The wine industry is the most fragmented market I’ve seen. Fragmented, confusing, impenetrable.”

It’s true, isn’t it? You and I, who know something about wine, go our merry little ways, making tasting notes, debating about Burgundy vs. New World Pinot Noir and speculating on the future of social media. But the average consumer, on whose shoulders the industry rests, indeed is totally confused and fearful.

Hegarty is creative director of an ad firm, Bartle Bootle Hegarty, which has worked on campaigns ranging from Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Finger Lickin Good to Levi’s Flatbeat TV ads that included a yellow puppet

to Johnnie’s Walker’s “Keep Walking” commercials,

which were credited with helping to revive that whiskey brand’s fortunes. I don’t think a single ad campaign is going to be wine’s salvation — and with per capita continuing to rise in America, things aren’t quite as bad as perhaps Mr. Hagarty painted them to be. But everybody knows that millions of adult Americans are scared to death about wine, or have negative attitudes toward it, or both, and we need to do something about it.

The snobbism factor is the main problem. I know people who are perfectly happy to get snookered on beer or cocktails, but when it comes to wine, they shrug their shoulders and say, with an embarrassed little smile, “Oh, I’m not really an expert,” as if you have to be an expert to like wine but not beer or liquor. The wine industry itself created this myth, although it did so unwittingly, in an era when the industry’s most creative minds thought that the way to sell more wine was to create an aura of aspiration.

For example, I remember a wine TV commercial from years ago that, I think, was from Gallo. As I recall, it showed a wedding couple, she in a white gown, he in a tuxedo, and they were riding in one of Boston Commons’ famous swan boats,

toasting each other with a glass of bubbly. I remember thinking then, and it’s even truer today, “OMG, the concept this ad is delivering is that the only time you’re permitted to drink sparkling wine is on your wedding day, on a swan boat in Boston Common.”

And then there was Orson Welles’ creative but fatuous “We will sell no wine before its time” commercials for Paul Masson,

as if Paul Masson’s wines needed to be aged. Those ads were pretty classy, but did they sell wine? I don’t think so. They just proved once again, to the average guy, that wine is too complicated to deal with.

Compare that with the Bud Lite TV commercials of the same era,

in which regular dudes had fun with each other, often with scantily-clad bosomy beauties. (Not defending that, no ma’am. No sexism at steveheimoff.com. Just sayin’.) That sold bottles of beer, by the billions.

Hegarty didn’t come up with any specific ideas for marketing wine, although the article did suggest he said something interesting: His “solution [according to the reporter] was to redress wine’s image as an accompaniment to food – which he suggested was a drawback – instead promoting it to stand alone with the slogan ‘wine flavours our life’.”

Wow. For years, we’ve championed the idea of promoting “wine with food” as wine’s greatest strength. Hell, even the beer people started copying us on that one. Now here comes one of the industry’s greatest brains saying “wine with food” has been a drawback! I’m not sure what to make of that, but I do agree with Hegarty that “Today’s market is a younger, more experimental audience. Invest in the future. Youth is the future.” Having just come back from the Bloggers Conference, I saw the future. It is indeed young and it is indeed experimental. However, it is also extremely interested in food, so I’d say that, rather than being a drawback, the “wine with food” message is only a part of the package. I do like the “Wine flavours our life” thing, although in this country, they better drop the “u” and spell it “flavors.”

Here’s the link for my keynote speech at the Wine Bloggers Conference. The audio is a little choppy.

I haven’t yet addressed the issue of HR 5034, now going through the U.S. House of Representatives, because it seemed complicated, and I didn’t want to take a position until I understood the details.

I wanted to try and see this from the distributors’ point of view. There may be a case in favor of restrictions on alcohol sales of the kind they’re trying to push through in 5034. After all, alcohol isn’t your average consumer product, it’s a drug. If it gets into the wrong hands, it can cause lots of pain. So I didn’t want to have a kneejerk reaction and just say, “All distributors are jerks,” even though my initial instincts were strongly in favor of direct shipping. Sometimes, instinct needs to be tempered by informatio, and gathering information takes time. In the end, though, I’m coming out against 5034, because the arguments in favor of it are very weak, and they don’t stand up to intellectual scrutiny.

Most of what I knew about 5034 came via Tom Wark, who’s blogged extensively against it at Fermentation. As Tom explained it to me, 5034 was a sort of end run around the Supreme Court’s famous 2005 Granholm v. Heald decision, in which SCOTUS said (I’m paraphrasing) states cannot prohibit wineries from other states from sending in their wines to consumers, if those same states allow their own wineries to disseminate wines. It was a basic issue of fairness, but also seemed to comply with the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the Congress — not the separate states — the power to regulate interstate shipping.

That was a good development, especially for smaller wineries, who had found themselves locked out of the distribution system. The smaller wineries wanted to be able to ship their wines directly to customers anywhere in the country, especially in the age of the Internet; and Granholm v. Heald seemed to give them that right (although when I interviewed Ken Starr, who successfully argued the case, he told me it would be many years before there was unfettered wine shipping across U.S. states, and boy, was he right).

Tom also explained to me that 5034, if enacted, “would give states the ability to enact discriminatory bans on wine shipping,” reasons too complicated to get into. Bottom line, according to Tom: “The law encourages and will result in states… passing bans on direct shipping that cannot be challenged in court.” (Disclosure: Tom is the paid executive director of the Specialty Wine Retailers Association, which is very anti-5034, and so he’s not exactly unbiased. But I am.)

I always operate on the theory that you can figure out what’s up with an issue by seeing who’s for it and who’s against. So who’s in favor of 5034? Let’s start with the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America. In a press release last April, they “encouraged members of Congress to support state-based regulation of alcohol and look beyond the mischaracterizations and misinformation being circulated” by its opponents, like Wark and SWRA. They took a states-rights position — the kind that conservative red states always take when they want to be discriminatory — and said 5034 would “place the burden in litigation where it should be: on the plaintiff challenging a state alcohol law.” That’s pretty much the same flimsy argument that opponents of Brown v. Board of Education used in the 1950s: the Federal government doesn’t have the right to desegregate public schools, and if a black family doesn’t like a school’s admission policy, they can sue that school board in court. If not for Brown v. Board, we’d still have segregated schools today.

WSWA also argued that 5034 doesn’t violate the Commerce Clause because it “does not expand state legislative or regulatory authority into what is currently and appropriately federal jurisdiction.” This seems to me to be disingenuous, an Alice-through-the-looking-glass playing with words. WSWA says that the Federal government, through agencies like TTB, FTC and FDA, remains free to regulate alcohol “in such areas as labeling, advertising and food safety.” Okay, but if the Feds can regulate in those areas, why can’t they regulate interstate shipping? Totally bogus argument.

Finally, WSWA asserts 5034 “does not favor any segment or tier of the industry.” Puh-leeze! Everybody knows 5034 favors wholesalers. Who’s kidding whom?

Who else is in favor of 5034? Well, there’s the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA), whose position is a carbon copy of WSWA’s (and for similar reasons). Then there are 5034’s backers in the Congress, about 100 of them. There’s ample evidence that WSWA and NBWA have contributed boatloads of money to their supporters, as for instance here and here and, especially, here, where you can draw direct lines between WSWA’s main contributors (all the big distributors) and individual congressmen who are beneficiaries of its largesse (and by the way, this isn’t a partisan issue: Democrats and Republicans alike take campaign donations from WSWA and NBWA).

So what we have is a collection of odd bedfellows lined up in favor of 5034: wholesalers, distributors, and the politicians who take their money to run for election or re-election.

Now, who’s against 5034? Like I said, there’s Tom Wark and his Specialty Wine Retailers Association. No surprise there, since their members are smaller wineries and merchants, and their slogan is “wine without borders.” Also against the bill is Free the Grapes!, which is a leading group in favor of direct interstate shipping of wine; various state legislatures (including the New Jersey Senate, where my cousin, Sen. Loretta Weinberg, voted to open up interstate wine shipping); the Wine Institute; Family Winemakers of California, and many congressmen from wine-producing districts, including Rep. Mike Thompson, who represents the North Coast.

For me, the good guys are against 5034 and are in favor of the free, unfettered shipment of alcohol, to and from adults, throughout the 50 states. Isn’t that as it should be in America — isn’t that as Thomas Jefferson intended? I don’t want to say those in favor of 5034 are bad guys, because I’m sure they’re good people who are simply trying to protect their economic interests, same as all of us do. But I’m siding with those trying to defeat 5034. It’s a bad bill. Please call your Congressional representative and urge him or her to oppose it.