Vineyard & Winery Management

November/December 2012

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END POST Opportunity in Esoterica crophobia, arachnophobia, claustrophobia: The fear of heights, spiders and small spaces, respectively, are all common enough to have their own words. While the fear of navigating a wine list may be wide- spread, fortunately it has not risen to this level (what would it be, vino- scriptophobia?) and I doubt that contestants on "Fear Factor" will ever be seated in restaurants and given menus. Wine lists can be daunting, especially to the uninitiated or when diners are unfamiliar with the wines of a certain region that dominates the list. And since the hip- pest lists are often populated by an increasing array of grape varieties, from Assyrtiko to Zierfandler, this can happen a lot. When flummoxed, a diner can either take some action to al leviate the f rust rat ion and increase the enjoy- ment at the restau- rant. Or he can go home and write a grumpy column about wine lists being too difficult. That latter tack is what Steve Cuozzo took when he was recently stumped. Cuozzo, the restaurant critic for the New York Post, wrote a column entitled "Sour Grapes," decrying restaurant wine lists that are "esoteric and pretentious," such as Greek restaurant lists replete with Greek wines, wines made from lesser-known grapes and, most importantly, grapes and producers of which he's never 98 VINEYARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT NOV - DEC 2012 heard. These lists leave him "at the mercy of a sommelier determined to teach you a thing or two, when all you want is a nice, affordable Bordeaux to go with chicken and summer greens." Never having met him, I'm not sure if Cuozzo is a real curmudgeon or just plays one in his column. Needless to say, his article caused quite a reaction, as his attitude was widely derided across the blogo- sphere, Twitter and in newspaper wine columns. Restaurant staff should help to make lists manageable for din- ers. Fortunately, there are a lot of strategies for that: offering free tastes of wines by the glass, pricing half bottles at only half the price of a 750 mL bottle to encourage experi- mentat ion, and grouping wines by flavor profile instead of just by region or grape variety. But the best thing a restaurant can do is to engage the hesitant diner in conversation. Cuozzo, if he were willing to swallow his pride as much as that familiar Bordeaux, could have started that conversa- tion by asking what the sommelier would recommend to go with the dishes he ordered or by asking for something stylistically similar to a reference-point wine that he was seeking. (In a posting on my site, DrVino.com, Cuozzo commented that he often finds the wine direc- tor absent, or, as he put it, "off junketing, doing TV or otherwise TYLER COLMAN Tyler Colman, author of the wine blog Dr. Vino, teaches wine classes at New York Uni- versity and the University of Chicago, and wrote the book "Wine Politics: How Gov- ernments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink." MIA," and the servers on the floor uninformed. While I agree that server knowledge can be a prob- lem, it's more of a hospitality and staff-training issue and it wasn't the point of his column.) Esoterica on wine lists is here to stay. As Tim Teichgraeber pointed out in a recent Vineyard & Winery Management column (July-August, 2012), young sommeliers seeking the new, new thing and the relative obscurity of the wines making price comparisons difficult for diners, are two causes driving wine lists away from the tried and true. Prices from many regions have risen so much as to make them unprofitable at many restaurants. Also, somme- liers often seek low-alcohol, high- acidity wines to pair with food. Wine-list diversity is a good thing. Consumers should not be afraid to talk with the sommelier; younger drinkers are certainly not afraid to try a wine made from a grape variety they haven't heard of. And domestic producers, espe- cially small producers, should pay heed to the restaurant gatekeepers and try crafting some lower-alcohol wines or ones from off-the-beaten- path grapes that are catnip for som- meliers. At least domestic producers of such wines would have an advan- tage over Old World wines: Steve Cuozzo has heard of California, Oregon and other domestic wine- growing areas. (Opinions expressed in this col- umn do not necessarily reflect those of Vineyard & Winery Man- agement.) Comments? Please e-mail us at feedback@vwm-online.com. WWW.VWM-ONLINE.COM

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