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Bottle Shock: The Movie

By on November 14, 2011 in Movies, Wine Reviews

I’ve had several people ask me at parties recently what I think of the movie Bottle Shock, which came out in 2008. It didn’t play widely in theaters. Only did $4.5 million in gross receipts, which is about 4% of what Sideways did (and only about a quarter of what it even cost to make Sideways). Most of these party questioners are just making small talk once they learn I have a connection to the wine industry. In all likelihood they brought Bottle Shock home on DVD, just as I did.

It’s an interesting comparison though. Sideways was not about the wine industry; it merely used a consumer’s interest in California wine as a setting to tell an interpersonal story. A rather depressing story, if you ask me. The color and attractiveness of the Paul Giamatti character in Sideways was his passion for quality Pinot Noir. But that feature was not central to the story. He could have as easily been addicted to gambling, or sailboat racing, or motorcycles and socialist politics for that matter.

Bottle Shock is a completely different animal. It’s the Rocky cliché (underdog fights hard against adversity; triumphs in the end) applied, quite broadly and inaccurately, to the California wine industry of the 1970’s. As a piece of writing it’s all schmaltz, albeit here hiding behind an excruciatingly thin veneer of historic truth. I liked it. Let’s set aside, for the moment, the ocean of scientific and factual material which has been thoroughly fictionalized by Bottle Shock. I may take some personal satisfaction in pointing out these discrepancies, but so what? Truth is messy. It slows down and dilutes the story line. Other than the claim by Bottle Shock to be “based” on the 1976 Spurrier Tasting in Paris, why do we need that connection? As a documentary, Bottle Shock is ludicrous. Why they even try to make the claim is clearly the ignorant delusion of some marketing wonk amongst the investor corps.

The thing that makes Bottle Shock worthwhile is the scenery, the musical score, the lush cinematography, the outfits on the foxy babes appended to the script with only the slightest pretense of justification. It’s Hollywood baby! It’s the same genius that made melodramas set in late 1800’s western cowboy towns a stable of American entertainment for generations. I know. I grew up on that stuff. And here is the same formula applied to a largely imaginary, but very romantic, view of the wine industry. It’s even replete with sentimental passages about the land infusing the blood of the vintners and living on in each bottle of wine. Hokum? Sure, but so are most notions of American Exceptionalism, religious salvation, and military honor. I’m not inclined to tilt at any of these windmills! They’re all so deeply ingrained in me that good stories on those subjects frequently elicit a teary-eyed emotional response. That’s art, almost by definition.

Sideways had a major impact on the wine industry, especially for Pinot Noir. Decanter magazine reports Pinot Noir sales rose 16% in the first three months after Sideways came out in 2004. The magazine went on to say the sale of Riedel’s expensive Burgundy stemware rose 46% in the year after Sideways was released. But Sideways did $110 million box office gross. Sideways got a 97% favorable rating from 218 commentators on the website Rotten Tomatoes. Bottle Shock was originally released at the Sundance Film Festival, but never got much traction in the marketplace. It got a 48% favorable rating from 210 commentators on Rotten Tomatoes. I’m guessing it didn’t help when Steven Spurrier, perhaps the primary player in the actual events depicted by Bottle Shock, said of the movie, “There’s not a word of truth in the script, in my opinion.” Of course, at the time, he was involved in a competitive movie project.

With that note, shall we try just a few selected, catty remarks on factual distortions to be found in Bottle Shock?

  1. Most easily excused, of course, were short-shorts versions of overalls worn by Rachael Taylor’s character to perform vineyard and winery work, especially hosing down anything. Rachael is a healthy, lithe, young woman. That the costume department had clearly spent more time observing runway models in Milan than vineyard workers in Tuscany is of no consequence.
  2. Confusing the Barrett Family’s vehicles in Calistoga for Steinbeck’s Joad Family vehicles during the Great Depression… ? Well, it is a story about overcoming obstacles.
  3. Filming in September, when all the vines are fully leafed out and have ripe fruit on them, even though the Spurrier Tasting in Paris, which is the time period of the story, occurred in May (it was done in preparation for the U.S. Bi-centennial, which would have been 4 July 1976)… ? Completely understandable.
  4. Maybe a little more controversial would be filming so many of the landscape shots in Sonoma County, while giving all the credit for wine quality to Napa Valley. As my friends in Sonoma never let me forget, “Sonoma makes wine. Napa makes auto parts.”
  5. ‘Temporary’ brown color for a young Chardonnay in the bottle… ?  I’m sorry, that’s just lack of imagination on the part of writer / director Randall Miller. Spend a couple hundred dollars on a wine consultant for Christ sake! Chardonnay subjected to skin soak, without the benefit of SO2, will turn brownish (pulp particles oxidizing, just as a cut apple does) for a week or two after fermentation. But those brown particles drop out. Chardonnay is not going to brown in the bottle while remaining tastey, then magically correct itself a few days later. I’m surprised UC Davis didn’t sue them for that little bobble.
  6. The biggest injustice was, however, not creating a character to play the part of Mike Grgich, Chateau Montelena’s actual winemaker during the period portrayed. Credit aside, Grgich is and was a magnificently complex individual. Croatian by birth, he eschewed many scientific instruments to make the wine (’73 Chardonnay) which is the centerpiece of the film. Instead of a pH meter, he relied on his own finely tuned palate. And he had a roguish personality: I’ve never heard so many sexual double-entendres strung together than when Mike Grgich described one of his own wines.

But why quibble? It’s said enjoying fiction requires the “willing ability to suspend disbelief” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge). As a reader, I’m usually not very good at that. In the case of Bottle Shock, for a little less than two hours, it was no problem for me at all.

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Are You Man Enough to Order Chenin Blanc in Public?

By on October 15, 2011 in Other Whites

There are many grape varieties which have less name recognition than Chenin Blanc, but few which are viewed with as much distain in a producing region like California. The reason is simple. Most California Chenin Blanc sucks! It is grown as a bulk resource for jug wines in hot, fertile Central Valley vineyards where tons per acre almost always run to double figures. There are slightly more than 7,000 acres of Chenin Blanc in California, and 65,000 tons were crushed in 2010. The grape is naturally vigorous, with a tendency to over-crop. If encouraged in that direction, the resulting wine is, at best, non-descript. It does have good acidity though, and that trait makes it a good blending candidate for our 25,000 acres of French Colombard, although both end up together in $9 retail gallons with the varietal aroma of newsprint. It’s a flavorless universe where the phrase “alcoholic” is viewed as a compliment. California is not alone in this shabby treatment of the grape which has made the middle-Loire Valley district of Vouvray famous. Twenty percent of South Africa’s vineyard acreage is devoted to Chenin Blanc, which they call Steen. Much of that gets distilled into brandy.

It doesn’t have to be that way. And there are dramatic exceptions to this broad generalization.

Chenin Blanc is capable of making magnificent wine which pairs wonderfully well with many types of food. Jancis Robinson MW says Chenin Blanc is France’s answer to German Riesling. A handful of the best wines coming out of South Africa are made with Chenin Blanc, and have been since the end of the 1600’s when it probably arrived there in the hands of Protestant Huguenots fleeing Catholic persecution in France.  At its best Chenin Blanc balances a cleansing natural acidity with luxurious honey and almond scents. If allowed to ripen slowly, but fully, it can add guava and quince notes to the aroma. It can fairly be labeled as delicate, without being accused of shyness. There is no better foil for fresh-caught trout. Although finding fresh trout and a pristine bottle of Chenin Blanc in close proximity is a bit of a trick. Hiking the bottle into the cold mountain stream shakes the wine, rendering the aroma mute. While hiking the trout out of the mountains doesn’t do the fish any favors. The answer, of course, is to hike the wine in, cache it in the stream, and come back two weeks later to catch the trout. Believe me; that’s a recipe for intense wine-food appreciation.

Grown at 3 to 4 tons per acre, and fermented cool to retain tropical aromatic properties, Chenin Blanc’s bracing acidity makes a stunning refresher. Maritime districts along California’s coast could be the perfect sites ~ better even than France’s Loire Valley. Chenin Blanc pushes buds early. That makes it subject to Spring frost in high latitudes. Tours, in the middle of the Loire Valley, where Rabelais wrote so glowingly of Chenin Blanc’s restorative properties in the 17th Century, is over 47ᵒ north latitude. They get snow in May. Soledad in California’s Salinas Valley is at about 35ᵒ of latitude.  Soledad never gets snow, and grapes often start to bud in early March. Chenin Blanc also ripens late. Obviously it is a grape built for long hang-time. French growers often remark that their best vintages are the ones in which they have 100 days of sunshine between flowering and harvest. The Salinas Valley routinely gets 180 days. In Monterey they rarely have a compelling reason to pick prematurely, even into November.

One of the best reasons to take a look at Chenin Blanc is the price. Really good ones can be had for less than $10, and world-class examples with track records going back decades usually come in around $20. The other major reason, at least here on North America’s Left Coast, is that Chenin Blanc frequently surprises as the go- to-match with many ethnic cuisines, especially if the wine has a little residual sugar to balance its sharp acidity (Spätlesen-style), and to simultaneously tame the capsaicin burn of a Thai curry or a Vindaloo chicken dish.  I tried six different wines with a Peruvian ceviche that had been lit up with habanero the other night. Nothing seemed to work. That is until we got to the South African Chenin Blanc. Perfect. And the same wine went well with a roasted pumpkin and rice dish the next night at an Afghan restaurant. I can’t wait to deploy a couple Chenin Blancs in my favorite sushi boite.

Here’s a good line-up of Chenin Blancs. Try a few side-by-side to appreciate the wide range of styles:

blue plate ~ $10 ~ From Clarksburg in the Delta. Something about the terroir in Clarksburg is magic with Chenin Blanc. No less a connoisseur than Gerald Asher wrote in Gourmet magazine many years ago, “Clarksburg is California’s Vouvray.” Full Disclosure: Jeff Anderson, one of the partners in Picnic Wine Company, is also Marketing Director of the new self-guided wine touring smart-phone app on which I am now working. But he’s not the partner who made the wine, and I do like it.

Ventana ~ $14 ~ Doug Meador doesn’t own Ventana Vineyard, near Soledad in the Arroyo Seco AVA, any more. Doug was a great innovator, and remains (I’m sure) a very entertaining personality. He had scores of ground breaking projects. But year-in and year-out, over fifteen vintages, I always thought his best wine was his Chenin Blanc. It was invariably a head-snapping success; miles ahead of the competition.

Husch~ $12 ~ from Anderson Valley on the coastal side of the mountains in Mendocino. Dry. Lovely Juicy Fruit nose, without seeming cosmetic. Good consistency over a couple vintages. Big winner at the CA State Fair.

Pine Ridge ~ $18 ~ Blended with Viognier. Real nice combination. Evidence this Disclosure concept can run amuck ~ Lisa Goff took a couple of my wine classes years ago. That experience, and her Harvard MBA, helped get her a job as VP of marketing for Crimson Wine Group, which owns Pine Ridge.

Domaine des Aubuisieres ~ $16 ~ A classic Vouvray. Usually made with just a little residual sugar to balance the acid. More full-bodied and flavorful than Montlouis, although generally fermented at fairly warm temperatures, which de-emphasizes aromatic properties as the centerpiece.

Francois Chidane ~ $22 ~ Montlouis is on the south side of the Loire, right across the river from Vouvray. As such the vineyards do not get as much direct sun exposure, and the grapes have more trouble ripening. So the natural acidic character of the Chenin Blanc takes center stage. These are usually inexpensive wines paired with oysters or freshwater eels. In a hot vintage they can be very good value.

Indaba~ $10 ~ Fragrant, full-bodied, supple. An excellent representative of what should be a national tradition in South Africa, but isn’t. That could be because Afrikaners don’t see the wine as sufficiently virile. Perhaps if you imagine serving it with mussels you’ve harvested yourself, in shark-infested waters, using only snorkel gear. Serve the mussels in a manner the Dutch-descended Afrikaners brought back from Indonesia: with rice and a selection of sambals or chutneys.

Philippe Delesvaux ~ $70 ~ Coteaux du Layon. Botrytized Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley west of Tours. A dessert wine.  Agreeable. Very honey-like. Serve with an apple Tart Tatin.

NV Louis de Grenelle Saumur Mousseux Chevalier de Grenelle ~ $20 ~ Sparkling Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley west of Tours. Generally not very aromatic, certainly not compared to Asti Spumante, but can be excellent value when compared side-by-side with Champagne.

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CA Wine Market ~ Past & Future

By on November 23, 2010 in Wine Politics

Sometimes it seems wines just stay the same, as consumer preferences cycle through predictable patterns.

Historical Wine Background

     When one considers something as venerable as wine, two generations seems rather paltry. Forty years isn’t very old for a vine, and it’s nothing but a quick glance compared to the 5,000 years human beings have been seriously turning grapes into commerce. Nevertheless, the knowledge base of humankind has advanced rapidly since 1970, and wine is no different.
     It may be helpful to set the stage. In the early 1960’s there were only a few hundred U.S. troops in Viet Nam, and they were still called “advisors.” At that time nearly half the wine consumed in America was called “Port” and/or “Sherry.” JFK and his dazzling wife were in the White House and setting fashion around the world. Zinfandel was the most widely planted “premium” wine grape in California. The Civil Rights marches in Mississippi and Alabama were just beginning to happening, and 60% of the grapes crushed in CA for white wine were Thompson Seedless. Pills for birth control were about to come on to the market, and Robert Mondavi, although just turning 50, was still employed as a salesman for his family’s winery, Charles Krug. Women still went to college to get an ‘Mrs.’ degree, and you could buy a 1,200 sq. ft. cottage on a half acre in St. Helena for $30,000. Of course if you lived in St. Helena, you’d have to drive to San Francisco to get a good restaurant meal. The 280 freeway down the Peninsula from San Francisco had not been built yet, but South Bay wineries like Paul Masson, Almaden, and Mirassou were prestige players on the national scene. Seven years later, in the late 1960’s, while Jimi Hendricks and Janis Joplin were setting the tone musically, Gallo’s Hearty Burgundy was hailed by the New York Times as particularly noteworthy amongst international wine competitors because it was sound, clean, reliable, and reasonably priced.

Consumer Wine Style Preferences

     Yeah, things have changed.
     But I’ve changed too. Sometimes it is hard to say the wines or the marketplace have really changed more dramatically than my own preferences and opportunities have…

     To read this post in its entirety, including commentary about changing wine styles and the importance of future markets, visit the Stanford Wine Blog.

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Hearings to start on HR 5034

By on September 28, 2010 in Wine Politics

The Fat and Lazy Wine Distributor Full-Employment Act of 2011.

Hypocrisy of Opposition to Direct Shipping

Inter-state shipping of wine to consumers, usually called ‘direct shipping,’ is an enormous controversy in this Age of the Internet, and has been a simmering controversy for thirty years. The latest effort is a bill (HR 5034) introduced to Congress by William Delahunt (D-MA) with 139 co-sponsors. Judicial Committee hearings begin 29 September 2010. Eventually the matter will be settled by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile numerous politicians collect campaign donations from big wholesalers in many states by carrying water for them in the form of legislation against Direct Shipping. “Inter-state shipping of alcohol facilitates under-age drinking,” is their common refrain. What a crock! Air-freight shippers require an adult signature for alcohol deliveries. I’m not sure gun shipments can say the same. How many sixteen-year-olds do you know who buy alcohol by paying $30 or more for a bottle of wine, and then waiting a week or two for delivery?

U.S. Wine Laws

Let us start with the legal issue. When Prohibition ended in 1933, Congress granted to the individual states a right to regulate sale of alcohol within each of their borders. That led to a bewildering welter of different laws. Some states became ‘Control states,’ much like the Canadian provinces, where sale of alcohol was restricted to state-run stores. Pennsylvania would be an example today. The attraction is obvious: state stores generate a huge amount of income for the government. And state stores don’t have to be run by the governor’s idiot nephew. In the province of Ontario, Canada (read Toronto), the L.C.B.O. has some of the most knowledgeable wine people in the world serving a well-developed community of connoisseurs. Eastern Pennsylvania (read Bucks County and Philadelphia) by contrast, has turned the wine buying public into commuters. Some of the best retail wine stores in the world have operated for decades just across the Delaware River in various hamlets of New Jersey.
     Other states chose an alternative and became ‘Franchise states.’ Georgia is an example. That means any producer or importer seeking to sell their wine in Georgia must appoint a distributor who then holds the ‘franchise’ for the brand in the state. Whether they ever sell any product or not! Getting one’s ‘franchise’ back from an underperforming distributor in Georgia is next to impossible. Other states went for ‘local option,’ which means small geo-political entities can decide for themselves whether or not to allow sale of alcohol. Some 10% of Texas, for instance, is dry. Visit Lubbock sometime. Note the gigantic liquor stores all clustered like car dealerships next to the freeway south of town. That’s the county line. Lubbock, the college town home of Texas Tech, is dry. In other parts of Texas, like Houston, holders of a second class alcohol license must buy the alcohol they resell from holders of a first class license: a kind of entrenched alcohol feudalism.

Why Direct Shipping Shouldn’t Threaten Anybody

Throughout this quagmire of different regulations and practices, one general principle is dominant, the Three-Tiered Distribution System (hereinafter ‘TTDS’). Producer (or Importer) pays a Federal excise tax upon sale of the product to an in-state Distributor (sometimes called Wholesaler). That’s tier #1. Then the Distributor pays a State excise tax upon sale of the product to a Retailer (or Restaurateur). That’s tier #2. Finally the Retailer pays a sales tax upon sale of the product to the Consumer. All three tiers pay various licensing fees.
     Direct Shipping seeks to eliminate tiers #1 and #2 from this chain, and to let Producers perform #3 themselves. Amongst marketing savants this process is called ‘disintermediation.’
     The concept is particularly practical when applied to wines costing more than $20 per bottle. Spirits, major-brand beers, and mass-produced inexpensive wines work just fine through TTDS. Those products seek consistency from bottle to bottle. They are produced in large quantities, and they attempt to influence consumers through widely disseminated advertising. Mass-produced products also account for way over 95% of the alcohol volume sold in America. Expensive, limited production wines are an entirely different story.
     Craftsman-level wines seek to emphasize taste differences from vineyard to vineyard, and from vintage to vintage. Hence they need to convey a much larger volume of information to consumers than do mass-produced alcoholic beverages. TTDS does not transmit information well. Much like the parlor game where a secret is whispered into a succession of ears, a Producer’s message is seriously diminished and mangled by the time it emerges from any TTDS chain. This ‘product story’ is an essential ingredient for craftsman-level wines. Producers need to communicate it directly to the end-user. Bottle and story need to arrive together.
     Of course the other perceived effect of disintermediation is a reduction in distribution chain cost. But because that cost is not a flat rate, but is traditionally calculated in the alcohol Trade as a percentage of some starting figure (i.e. the Distributor Price from the Producer gets marked-up a percentage by the Distributor, and that price in turn gets marked-up a percentage by the Retailer), it only becomes attractive enough to eliminate when it outweighs the more flat rate cost of physically delivering Goods directly to a Consumer. That desirability begins to manifest itself at some point between a retail store shelf price of $15 and $20 per bottle of wine. Let me demonstrate:
      On a bottle of wine retailing for $10, the Wholesale Price to the Local Retail Store is around $6.65, and the Winery price to the Distributor is around $5.00. The Winery could sell that same bottle directly to the Consumer at the Wholesale Price ($6.65), and pocket the $1.65 that otherwise would go to the Distributor, but the $3.35 savings to the Consumer would be meaningless if a $15 UPS charge were subsequently applied to deliver three bottles in a protective shipping carton.
      By contrast, on a bottle of wine retailing for $20, the Wholesale Price to the Local Retail Store is around $13.30, and the Winery price to the Distributor is around $10.00. The Winery can sell that wine directly to the Consumer at the Wholesale Price ($13.30), realizing a bump to Gross Revenue of $3.30, while the $6.70 per bottle savings to the Consumer more than compensates for $15 UPS charge on a delivery of three bottles.
      The Direct Shipment cost to the Consumer on three bottles of $10 wine would not be attractive compared to the TTDS price that Consumer would expect in a Retail Store. It would only make sense if the wine were not available in a Local Retail Store, and the wine were dramatically better than alternative wines the Consumer could find in a Local Retail Store. Remember, there’s no waiting period after a purchase in a Local Retail Store.
     Direct Shipping simply does not impact the vast majority of wine gallons sold in America! The price::benefit ratio of Direct shipping only starts to become desirable at something above a retail store shelf price of $15 per bottle. Above $20 per bottle it definitely starts to make sense. At $50 per bottle, serious cost savings are a reasonable expectation on the part of both Producer and Consumer. And while those bottles represent a large number of small, family Producers in America, those bottles are a miniscule percentage of the total wine volume sold throughout the country today.
     It costs small California wineries a considerable amount of hard-found capital to create a bottle sale in their tasting rooms. Clearly they should feel justified expecting the legal right to contact that purchaser a few months down the road to politely inquire, “Would you like to buy another one?”

Further Info on HR 5034

For more information on the cynical HR 5034, now pending before the U.S. Congress, see Stop HR 5034 on Facebook. Or view the Joint Letter sent recently to Congress from California’s Wine Institute, the U.S. Brewers, and the Distilled Spirits Council.

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Vin de Constance

By on July 6, 2010 in Wine Reviews

Historic dessert wine from Constantia in South Africa. Brilliant!

Wine Description

Muscat highlights in a nose balanced between floral and ripe white peach. Yellow green color with no browning whatsoever. Dense flavors with refreshing acid finish. Perfect for a lemon custard cake. Tasted in Fine Wines of the Southern Hemisphere class at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Southern Hemisphere class will next be offered as a Weekender in August 2011.

Wine Education

Even with the attention lavished on South Africa by the World Cup soccer matches, few people realize how accomplished the South African wine producers are. Founded at a time when New York City was still called New Amsterdam, the wine industry at the Cape of Good Hope flourished while Californios were still fermenting in cowhide bags. Sweet wines from Constantia were the toast of the Russian court during the late 1800’s, where they competed quite favorably with France’s Ch. d’Yquem and with the best Rieslings of Germany. Burgundy? At the time it was considered a backwater. Its wines couldn’t command one-twentieth the price of Vin de Constance, the luxurious dessert wine from South Africa’s premier winery, Groot Constantia, which had been founded on the estate of the Capes’ first Dutch governor, Simon Van der Stel.
     After Van der Stel’s death in the early 1800’s, Groot Constantia was split into three parcels and sold. Hendrik Cloete bought the homestead piece, and with his offspring raised the quality and recognition of Vin de Constance to worldwide acclaim. Cloete called his winery Klein Constantia. In Afrikaans groot means ‘great,’ while klein means ‘small.’ Phylloxera dealt a crushing blow to the South African wine industry, and by the end of the 1800’s Klein Constantia was in the hands of Abraham de Villiers and his American heiress wife Clara. They created an elegant party venue out of the estate, and even sent their nephew to U.C. Berkeley to study viticulture, but they did not resurrect the extraordinary reputation of Vin de Constance. That was left to the Jooste family, which purchased the property in 1980. Their U.C. Davis-experienced winemaker, Ross Gower, began the wine’s resurgence with his first release in 1986. Today son Lowell Jooste is in charge of the property, and Adam Mason has taken over as winemaker. Vin de Constance is reaching new heights every year.

Regional Description

As a wine producing district Constantia has three distinct characteristics, two of them related: (1) It is basically a suburb of Capetown, with correspondingly fine exposure to the marketplace (both domestic and international); (2) it is a very up-market piece of real estate, with sumptuous houses and beautiful landscaping; and (3) it is perhaps South Africa’s coolest (using the temperature sense of the word) growing region, no small factor when the tip of the continent is at 33º of latitude. Constantia is on the eastern side of a ridge running 20 miles south from Capetown along the peninsula which comprises the Cape of Good Hope. Constantia looks out to the east across False Bay (where the English landed to begin the Boer War). Technically I suppose Cape Agulhas (the southern tip of Africa) is the terminous of the Indian Ocean, but one could certainly argue (after swimming in it) that False Bay is the westernmost vestige of the warm Indian Ocean. The cold Bengula Current runs up the western side of the Good Hope peninsula, i.e. the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic side is not only colder, it carries much less moisture (cf: the Kalahari desert in Namibia further north). Constantia stands astride this divide, protected by its western ridge tops.

Food and Wine Pairing

Klein Constantia makes Vin de Constance from Muscat de Frontignan grapes (cf: Liqueur Muscat from Australia). They are picked very ripe, but not excessively dehydrated. Then they are matured over a four-year period in changing combinations of stainless steel and 120-gallon oak puncheons. The wine has more the 15% residual sugar, but also has very high acid for balance. In the 2005 vintage the pH is 3.45 with 8.75 g/l of total acid. Alcohol is less than Sauternes at a little over 12%, but considerably more than botrytized German Rieslings.
     On a one-dimensional scale of dessert wines, Vin de Constance falls somewhere between Canadian Icewine and Sauternes. It is not as honeyed, nor as volatile, as Sauternes. Which means milk chocolate and nut tarts are probably not going to be preferred matches. At the other extreme, fruit aromatics are a feature of Vin de Constance, but they are far from the only arrow in its quiver. Moreover the aromatics have a distinctly floral component. In the mouth the wine is an extraordinary balance of Vin Santo-like, dried fruit concentration, and refreshingly acidic length. A simple fruit dish, such as peaches with crème fraiche, would not do justice to this complexity.
     I believe the right answer is a custard cake. Decorate each plate with jasmine flowers. Buy or make a pound cake. Slice it horizontally into three levels. On top of level one put a layer of Meyer lemon custard. If you don’t want to make it yourself, you can buy a packaged product from the Jello Company, and tart it up with a real Meyer lemon or two. Include some zest from the lemon. On top of layer two put a layer of light caramel custard. Again, if you don’t want to make your own, use crème fraiche with some brown sugar stirred in. Layer three of the pound cake goes on top. I’d be delighted to eat the dessert this way, but purists will probably want to frost the cake. Once more, packaged frosting will suffice. Vanilla or butter crème would be my choice, but apply it sparingly. You don’t want any wine to have to fight its way through legions of butter and sugar. This dessert should be 75% cake, no less. And serve it in small portions. Things always work out better if the wine is slightly sweeter than the dessert.

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