By Daniel Rodriguez, Drync employee

When I did my wedding registry several years ago, I had the perfect opportunity to upgrade my wine glasses to something more than a haphazard array of stemware, barware and plain old juice glasses.  Armed with a scan gun at Williams Sonoma, we opted for the Riedel Grape Series and, for simplicity sake, decided on a single style for white and another style for red wine. Today, I realize that I didn’t really know what I was doing.

1. The Bowl Shape Has a Purpose

Nobody questions a huge, deep bowled wine glass when served with red wine.  The problem is that nobody thinks a white wine can be served in a wide-bowled glass.  The Grape Series did have multiple choices, but since chardonnay is such a universal grape we figured we couldn’t go wrong with the chardonnay glass. I can’t count how many times people ask, “Is this a red wine glass?” when I pour them a glass of white wine in the chardonnay glass. But it’s like that for a reason: full-bodied, rounded white wines are best delivered on the sides of the tongue and mouth, whereas crisp, acidic wines like reisling and sauvignon blanc go well through the middle of tongue and should be used with a narrower bowl.  The same rule goes for red, with big cabs tasted best straight into the mouth (meaning narrower bowl) and pinot, especially the earthy kind from Burgundy, needing a deep bowl for the aroma and wide mouth to deliver the acidic flavors to the sides of the tongue. Bottom line: if nobody knows the difference, get a white wine glass that looks like a white wine glass and a big red glass that makes people feel cool while drinking a killer red.

2. Spend What You Can Afford to Drink

This is a personal pet peeve more than anything, but I can’t stand it when nice restaurants serve you a $60 bottle of wine in a thick-rimmed glass goblet. My philosophy is that the stemware should cost approximately as much as the bottle of wine you would bring to a dinner party.  The Riedel Grape Series runs for $40 for a burgundy glass– the same amount that I like to spend for a friend who likes wine. If you find yourself taking out a second mortgage because you broke a glass, you’re spending too much. But please, no goblets…

3. Lead Crystal Isn’t Just a Fancy Word

Without getting overly technical, lead in your wine glass is a good thing (unlike the leaded paint in that old apartment you just bought– lead can’t get out of the glass once it is set).  When we refer to crystal, we typically are referring to lead crystal, which allows us to make the distinction from clear glass, which is also called unleaded crystal. Besides having a better weight and being better for shaping, lead crystal (24% lead makes it full lead crystal, by law) has a very cool benefit to the wine: if you looked at the surface through a microscope, it would look rough, like sandpaper, allowing tannic wines to soften in the glass and “open up”. Regular glass is smooth and, therefore, lame, so go ahead and seek out lead crystal.

I’m sure I’m only scratching the surface (no pun intended) and if you have some things you have learned about your stemware, I’d love to hear it in the comment section!  And for the record, I do love my Riedel glasses. Just don’t put them in the dishwasher.

Cheers!!

By Julia van der Vink

Unlike us millenials who are into biodynamic wines fermented in clay pots until the sun strikes the tropic of Capricorn…my mother prefers to drink Bordeaux, thank you. She is also into Chianti, Brunello, White Burgundy, cool-climate Pinot, and an assortment of blends from the Northern Rhone Valley. Her preferences are sophisticated, but narrow. They were established by familiarity with region, and over time, they have become cemented by habit.

Introducing her to new styles of wine is my ongoing project. And it has required patience, elaborate behind-the-scenes manipulation, and baby steps. She’s recently begun a magnificent love affair with Riesling, (a huge win for me), but for the most part, despite the slew of “hip” and “new” wines I push at her, she rejects my advances.

Lagrein? “I don’t know, it feels too thin…”

Carignan? “I’m sorry Julia. That tastes like dirt.”

Biodynamic Garganega from Soave? Eye roll.

And then came Lambrusco.

Just when I was poised to raise the white flag of surrender, Lambrusco became my mother’s new drink of choice. I didn’t even see it coming.

Lambrusco is the best-known grape variety in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, where it produces bone-dry sparkling red, rosé, (and sometimes even white), wines that are lush, fruity, and delightfully acidic. As Lambrusco believers will point out, however, the grape lived through an unfortunate era of misunderstanding. Its serious reputation as a dry, sparkling red wine has been long-slandered by the saccharine jugs of Riunite Lambrusco that used to populate supermarket shelves in the 70’s—until White Zinfandel replaced Riunite as the mass-market swill of choice. As has always been the case, real Lambrusco can be excellent. The wines are playful enough to slurp all summer long, yet serious enough to serve with a filet mignon.

As producers go, I recommend the Lambrusco Rosso, Lambrusco Rosé and Lambrusco Bianco from Lini Oreste. Although Lambrusco Rosso is by far the grape’s most popular style, I recently enjoyed the rosé paired with my roommate’s industrial-strength beef lasagna. The nose has fresh bright notes of raspberry and red cherry. It is dry and fruit-forward on the palate with tart notes of cranberry and black plum, and a characteristic structure of frothy, fumbling bubbles that makes it feel more endearingly easy-going than most sparkling wines and Champagnes.

Lambrusco is extremely food friendly, with flushing acidity, and an overt, delectably briny finish. If possible, imagine a refreshingly tart and fruity mouthful of seawater. The rosé would also be a perfect pairing for grilled chicken or risotto. Lini’s darker Lambrusco Rosso is a touch heavier, and would pair well with a grilled steak or burger. The harder to find Lambrusco Bianco (my mom’s favorite) is lighter than the Rosé, and is an excellent pairing for any aperitif.

Lambrusco is served chilled, and is a perfect wine for summer. Fortunately the wines are fairly inexpensive (~$20). So go slug some Lambrusco, it will definitely surprise you. To quote my mother, “I drank Lambrusco, and then on the seventh day, God rested.”

By Julia van der Vink

In continuing with a systematic approach to wine tasting, the next step after evaluating the appearance (Part I), is to smell the wine. Because one’s sense of smell is more discerning than one’s sense of taste, this is perhaps the most critical part of the tasting process.

Part II: The Nose

1)    Swirl the wine in your glass before sniffing deeply.  Although, you will have already swirled the wine once to check for legs, the purpose of swirling again is to aerate further the wine and liberate its full spectrum of aromas. As the wine coats the side of the glass and evaporates, it releases its bouquet. *Note: Do be wary of the overzealous floor slosh. It has an uncanny tendency of occurring when one is wearing borrowed clothing.

2)    Stick your nose in the glass, and inhale. This step is fairly self-explanatory. And there is no proper technique related to how many sniffs you should take, or how far you should put your nose into the glass. Do whatever works for you.

3)    Look for faults, and determine if you should send a wine back. For all of you who have ever shared my restaurant ordering-anxiety, this is the step to pay attention to. When you assess a wine’s condition to determine if it is “clean” or “unclean” you are looking for a few tell-tale smells. Cork taint is the most common fault that can be picked up on the nose, and it affects about 5% of all wines. Cork taint smells of mustiness, wet basement, wet cardboard, or in the most severe cases, moldy gym socks. Cork taint affects wine with varying degrees of intensity. Even if only faint on the nose, it is usually more pronounced on the palate. Some more subtle faults to look out for are excessive sulfur dioxide, and oxidation. Excessive sulfur dioxide is most often found in cheap white wines and has a smell of burnt matches. Oxidized wines will have lost their vibrant fruit aromas, and smell like burnt caramel. Spark notes: avoid wet cardboard, burnt matches, and burnt caramel.

4)    Determine if the wine’s state of development is consistent with its vintage. A young wine will have different aroma characteristics than an older wine that has had time to soften and harmonize. If a wine is young, you will be mostly picking up “primary aromas” (i.e. characteristics of the fruit, and specific grape variety), and sometimes a few “secondary aromas” (i.e. aromas derived from the way in which the wine was made). If you are drinking an older wine, however, expect more complexity. There will be more pronounced secondary aromas, as well as specific “tertiary” aromas that develop with bottle aging.

5)    Describe the character of the aromas. Describing character is one of the most personal parts of tasting. Everyone has their own Rolodex of familiar smells and tastes. One man’s blackberry may be another man’s boysenberry, and some of us have no idea what “cassis,” and “milk thistle” smell like, and no interest in learning what “sweaty saddle” means. However, with practice, you will learn to associate certain aromas with different grape varieties and regions. Below is a list of words to describe aromas that I find useful and have extrapolated from the Wine and Spirit Educational Trust. Your own Rolodex of terms will quickly expand if you try mentally cataloging the smells in your spice cabinet, or start paying attention to the smells of different fruits, vegetables, etc. that are all around you. Think of it as a little homework assignment.

By Julia van der Vink

I have an irrational anxiety about ordering wine at restaurants. It is not selecting the wine that bothers me; it is the moment when the waiter/sommelier brings out the wine, pours a taste, and benignly waits for my approval before serving the rest of the table. There is something about this situation that obscures everything I know about wine with a 30 second spell of self-doubt. Is it corked? No, that’s earth. No it must be corked…

After systematically tasting more and more wines, I have gradually overcome parts of the performance paralysis. However, it occurs to me that I was never alone in my discomfort. I have observed a few different wine-tasting methodologies, including but not limited to: the self-conscious swirl n’ sniff, the thoughtful “mmm” and nod, the random rattle of vaguely relevant facts, and the irreverent pour-guzzle-repeat.The fact is that few people know how to taste wine, including many wine lovers and serious drinkers.

I do not mean to argue that there is only one way, or even a so-called “right way” to taste wine. As far as I’m concerned, there is certainly a time and a place for guzzling. But there is also a time to evaluate wine more deliberately. Many people don’t fully inhabit the opportunity simply because they are intimidated by the pomp and circumstance. They in fact underestimate their ability to understand the wine simply because they are unsure of what they are looking for. However, no matter how many raised eyebrows and sardonic smirks you receive, the best way to truly understand what is in your glass, is to employ a systematic approach to tasting.

Part I: You can learn a lot about a wine just from looking at it

      1) Check for clarity. Does the wine look cloudy or murky? If you’re unsure, it may help to hold it up to a light. If a wine is too old, has been badly stored, or had a bad seal, poor clarity will warn you of these faults. A sound, well-made wine should always be clear. Note that some red wines produce natural sediment that settle at the bottom of the bottle; this is fine.

      2) Assess color and intensity. The best way to judge color and intensity is by tilting the glass 45° against a white background. This can reveal information about the wine’s age.  If you’re drinking a red wine, is the color purple, ruby, garnet or tawny? Purple is an indication of youth in red wines, and they get paler and more brown in tone as they get older. If you’re drinking white wine, is the color lemon, yellow or gold? Green is an indication of youth in white wines, and they get darker and more golden as they age.

      3)   Is the wine transparent or opaque? This can tell you a lot about the type of grape that was used to make the wine. Thick-skinned grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Merlot will appear much more intensely-colored and opaque in the glass than thinner skinned grape like Pinot Noir, Tempranillo, and Sangiovese. (This is also an important tip for blind-tasting).

      4)   Look for legs. Swirl the wine to test its viscosity, then wait for the legs or tears to fall down the side of the glass. These normally suggest high alcohol content or residual sugar. The thicker the legs, and the more slowly their fall, the more full-bodied the wine.

Stay tuned for Part II: Aroma

By Julia van der Vink

While certain sommeliers create food and wine pairings with artistry and nuance, many of us follow the simplified formulae:

• Beef or Lamb = Cabernet Sauvignon
• Pork = Pinot Noir
• Chicken = A source of anxiety usually remedied by a retreat back to Pinot
• Fish or Vegetarian or Aperitif = Something white (if we even have anything white)
• Dessert = Another round of whatever we were already drinking

I don’t mean to mock this default system; in fact, there is beauty in its simplicity. However, I do believe there might be something more to life than Beef = Cabernet and Pork = Pinot, even if that “something” is just a little more creative pizzazz, if you will. Wine is supposed to enhance food, food is supposed to enhance wine, and the scope of creative pairings is boundless. Here are some considerations:

1) A wine’s weight is more important than its color. One of the tried and true aspects of successful food and wine pairing is matching the weight of the food with the weight of the wine. When I think of a wine’s weight, I usually think: is this wine like skim milk, two percent milk, or whole milk? Rich, heavy foods like roast meats, grilled steaks, and red meat casseroles, need a full-bodied wine because something light would be quickly overwhelmed. For many heavy meat dishes, a rich full-bodied white wine like Viognier or Chardonnay is a better match than a light red like Pinot Noir or Valpolicella. I will also use this moment to rectify an age-old fallacy: you can pair red wine with fish.

2) Pair tannic wines with “chewy” meats. Foods with high protein content, particularly red meat, soften the effects of the tannin on the palate. So, along with Cabernet Sauvignon, consider pairing Nebbiolo, Aglianico, Malbec and Syrah with roasted meats and steaks.

3) Embrace contrast. Salty foods can be enhanced by sweetness, (for example, Port and Stilton cheese), and fatty/oily foods can be enhanced by high-acid wines that help cut through the fat, (for example, Champagne and fish & chips).

4) Match flavor intensity. Mild foods go with mild wines, (for example, pair grilled chicken with a simple, clean Chardonnay), and big, flavorful foods go with big, flavorful wines (you don’t even have to stray far from your Steak and Cab to pair a peppercorn steak with a spicy, bold Châteauneuf-du-Pape). A wine with intense flavor is not the same as a wine with heavy weight. Riesling, for example, makes a lightweight wine that is intensely flavored, while Chardonnay makes a full-bodied wine that is lower in flavor.

5) Don’t pair at all. Although some wine critics deem this new trend controversial, sometimes I don’t want to pollute my wine with food, and sometimes I don’t want to pollute my food with wine.

The most fun is discovering an unexpected flavor that is drawn out in the food by the wine, or drawn out in the wine by the food. However, getting obsessed with the alleged “rules of pairing,” sets you on a slippery slope towards culinary compromise. There is beauty in experimentation. Were it not for my own recklessness, I would have never stumbled upon one of the most sublime pairings: Cahors Malbec and sour gummy worms. If by some horrible chance you end up with a wine in your glass that does not go with your food, simply default to point 5.

By Julia Van der Vink

Summer rolled into Boston slowly this year, and although many of you have been dining al fresco, slurping oysters, and sipping your Chablis for weeks, I am just now retiring my dirty Syrahs and beginning to think about the best wines of summer. When the weather gets hot, the basic suggestions are fairly intuitive: aim for wines that are light, crisp, and low-alcohol. After all, it is the time of year when people are allowed to tout their sparkling wines, rosés, sangrias and spritzers unabashedly. However, there is a fundamental tension inherent to the summer wine search—while the summertime gives us the excuse to embrace frivolous fizz and fun, there is still important eating and drinking to do; and we need wines that can hold their own. Fortunately, there are many inexpensive and high-quality summer wines that can be as serious or as playful as you want them to be.

When people think of the wines classically associated with summer, they might think of Chablis, Champagne, Sancerre, dry Rosé, or in my mother’s case, anything handed to her that looks white and tastes acidic. However, although it is clear that these wines are popular for a reason, some of the best summer wines come in many different styles, and from many different grapes. The search for summer wines therefore provides a terrific opportunity for one to venture outside their usual drinking repertoire. My favorite summer wines are frisky and refreshing, with clean fruit and nuanced minerality, to help cut through the heat. Here are some fantastic summer varietals that are certainly worth putting on your search list.

1) Muscadet. Produced in the Pays Nantais subregion of the Loire that reaches toward the Atlantic Ocean, Muscadet wines are versatile and food-friendly, but have only recently started to be taken seriously. The wines are dry, delicate, and fresh, with a perfume of green apples and grass, as well as a distinctive saline note that makes them a famous companion for seafood (especially oysters). With many excellent bottles between $10-$20, Muscadet wines are a great summer value.

2) Riesling. Although many people are already firmly seated on the Riesling train, it is still worth dutifully advocating for Riesling as one of the quintessential wines of summer. Frequently accompanied by the adjective “sexy,” or “sumptuous,” look for dry, low-alcohol German Rieslings from both the Mosel and the Rheingau, which can be characterized by their refreshing acidity, minerality, and bright notes of peach.

3) Albariño.  Quite simply, the world would be a happier place if people drank more Albariño. Check out wines from the Rías Biaxes (pronounced Ree-uss By-Shuss) region of Spain just above Portugal. Albariño wines share some of the structure and fresh acidity of a dry Riesling, but with a less oily mouth-feel. They are light, crisp, and aromatic, with attractive notes of citrus, and a beach-like minerality that makes them phenomenal wines for the summer. (As an aside, if you get on a Spanish kick, additionally look out for Torrontés and Verdejo, which are also stunning summer varietals).

4) Grüner Veltliner.  As a grape that is capable of displaying complex layers, and a broad variety of flavors, Grüner Veltliner is said to produce some of the most exciting white wines in the world. In fact, in addition to being recently referred to as the “Arnold Schwarzenegger of wine,” it is a little known fact that many of the Grüner Veltliner wines coming out of Austria compare in quality with the top white Burgundies. Capable of expressing itself in many different forms, assertive fruit aromas characterize wines from the Wachau region, while wines from the Kemptal region maintain more of a mineral focus. Overall, however, Grüner Veltliner wines have a lush mouth-feel, scintillating acidity, and a unique versatility that make them a top consideration for the summer wine adventurer.

Ultimately, while there is nothing wrong with staying faithful to Chablis, if you do step out, you should be prepared for the scope of stylistic diversity that can be found amongst the many great summer wines waiting to be discovered. This starter list of varietals is by no means a comprehensive account of the many wines worth looking into. Finally, while these four varietals are a few of my current favorites, I would love to hear about some of yours. I, too, am always looking for new summer wine romances.

By Julia van der Vink

Carignan(e), is a grape that is usually either vehemently criticized or alternatively, just ignored. Presumed to have originated in the Aragon region of Spain, Carignan has established a diaspora within France, Italy, Algeria, California, Australia, and other parts of the new world. Gaining the humble reputation as a “workhorse” grape, Carignan is a late-ripening, warm-climate variety that is popular for its high yields. Carignan was, somewhat surprisingly, the most popularly planted grape in France during the 20^th century, but it has recently been overtaken by Merlot, Syrah, Grenache, Mourvédre, and a host of other varieties that have since been deemed more “promising.” Those who are familiar with Carignan might know it best as a blending agent, and most notably, as the base of many wines of Languedoc-Roussillon, (think Côteaux du Languedoc, Corbiéres, Fitou, and Côtes du Roussillon). However, as I have discovered over the past few weeks of hunting, Carignan is elusive in its pure varietal form.

As a wine, Carignan has been criticized for being “tough.” Deep colored, rustic, and high in tannins and acidity, even Jancis Robinson has historically discounted many Carignan wines for their unripe flavors and allegedly characteristic “rank bitterness.” Producing approximately four times as many hectoliters per hectare as a grape like Cabernet Sauvignon, many Carignan wines are fairly inexpensive, and frequently subjected to carbonic maceration to become more palatable. As a result, Carignan has acquired a sort of Nicolas Cage reputation; overly-gritty, low-budget, and with a road-kill haircut. However, to sum up this superfluous introduction, I will get to my point: Carignan is misunderstood.

It is necessary to begin with the disclaimer that not all Carignan is good. Quite simply, most new vine Carignan is bad. But despite the grape’s indiscriminatingly harsh reputation, old vine Carignan can be excellent. With a structure similar to Syrah, Carignan has fresh acidity and a dry, herbal, spiciness. Furthermore, although Carignan does not display Syrah’s obvious fruit, it couples delightfully sarcastic notes of cherry, with a broad mouthfeel, and a unique terroir-driven twang that plays on the palate. Carignan wines can additionally be characterized by their lingering finishes, capturing notes of leather, cigar, and earth.

When I had the opportunity to ask Randall Grahm what he thought about Carignan, he described it as a litmus test for wine drinkers. “It’s like cilantro, or Cabernet Franc. Some love it, and some don’t.” Carignan certainly has more funk than your average Cabernet Sauvignon, and so it is clearly not for everybody. However as Randall says, “once you abandon the set of indicators that you might use to determine what wine ought to taste like, Carignan can be fantastic.”

If you are looking for Carignan in blends, I would recommend wines from Languedoc-Roussillon, or Randall Grahm’s 60% Carignan Bonny Doon Contra. However, although they have proven to be more difficult to find, I have enormously enjoyed Carignan in its varietal form. Some of the best old vine Carignan comes from the rustic Mediterranean corners of Sardinia, (I recently appreciated the 100% Carignan Rosso Jaunnisolu), and great Carignan is still grown in Priorat, just West of the grape’s origin. Finally, in terms of pairings, Carignan is a great meat wine, especially with grilled sausage, lamb, or roast duck.

Ultimately, in light of Carignan’s legacy of bad press, I felt the need protest on its behalf. Old vine Carignan is no brute. It can make brilliant wines that are edgy, and seductive, and if you give them a chance, they will dance with you. Therefore, whether you end up liking cilantro, or you don’t, I hope you track down some Carignan, and give it an openhearted try.

By Julia van der Vink

Today I am thrilled to present Lagrein as the first of a long list of underrated grape varieties. There are thousands of grapes that are used around the world to make wine, but much to my chagrin, I am probably only close enough to about twenty of them to feel comfortable snuggling. Through my parents’ influence, much of my experience with wine revolved around an obsession with a few Bordeaux varieties, and their corresponding California transplants. But the waves of change are upon us! My quest to better understand some of these so-called “underrated grapes” has opened my eyes to the new limits of what wine can and should be, and I feel compelled to share the wealth. As they say, once you go Hárslevelu or Királyleányka, you never go back.

Lagrein, (pronounced La-grine), is considered one of the up and coming flagship wines of the Italian Alps and Dolomites. It is a true mountain wine, indigenous to one of Italy’s smallest wine producing regions, Alto Adige, (pronounced Ah-dee-jay), which also bears the Germanic name Südtirol, (don’t be confused by labels that use these names interchangeably). The snowcapped Alps of Alto Adige lie right on the border of Italy and Austria, and although linguistically German, the area reflects a climate that seductively synthesizes elements of the Mediterranean South and the Germanic North. Lagrein is the most widely grown grape in Alto Adige. The area experiences huge temperature swings from day to night, but guarded by the Alps, the cool slopes of the Bolzano basin still experience warm summer times that are perfect for Lagrein.

Lagrein is one of those grapes that truly inspires me with its disconnect between performance and expectation. Although the wine often appears inky, dense, and dark, it comes off much lighter on the palate than its color seems to suggest. Many Bordeaux drinkers might find this alarming at first, and when I first shared a bottle of Lagrein with my dad, the first thing he said what that the wine seemed “thin.” However, about fifteen minutes thereafter, as it began loosening its lederhosen, true appreciation dawned upon us. Many Lagrein wines have a lightness that is elegant, refreshing and unpretentious. Maintaining a smart terroir-driven minerality, it can be characterized by its tight dark fruit, smooth tannins, and velvety notes of violet, earth, and smoke. Although the wines can be anything from light to medium, and sometimes even decently full-bodied, (I had one particularly jammy one that I would have sworn was a different species), they are distinctively clean, with nice fresh acidity, and a dark, brooding finesse.

I would especially recommend Lagrein if you like Cabernet Franc, or as a stunning substitute for Chianti or Valpolicella. Lagrein lends itself well to the traditional foods of the area, (think of fatty cured pork speck, sauerkraut, bratwurst, and stewed game). However, I would contend that its lightness and acidity make it a refreshing summer wine that can easily be paired with lighter cuisines as well. In terms of specific producers to look out for, I would recommend J. Hoffstatter, (especially the wines from the Steinraffler estate). I also feel compelled to include the Georg Mumelter Lagrein Griesbauerhof, which I recently enjoyed extraordinarily.

Lagrein is an unusual and expressive mountain wine that couples terroir-driven purity with unique velvety depth. However, it is relatively unknown amongst many drinkers, and is currently only ranked as the 116th most frequently consumed varietal out of the 156 listed in the cellars of Drync users. Just yesterday, Eric Asimov introduced Lagrein as Unfamiliar, But Worth Getting to Know. It is arguably not for everybody, but I hope you go out and try a bottle.

Also check out http://www.altoadigewinesusa.com

As we prepare to toast to a new year, there is one addition to wine that we all covet: bubbles.   But why?  As it turns out, the luxury status that Champagne has attained is the byproduct of a few savvy marketing techniques that date back hundreds of years.

The purposeful addition of bubbles into a bottle of wine is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of fermented grapes.  Although still wines from Champagne were served during the coronation ceremonies of French kings (which took place in Reims, within Champagne) dating back to medieval times, it wasn’t until the English scientist and physician Christopher Merrett, in 1662, published a paper detailing the use of “vast quantities of sugar and molasses to all sorts of wines to make them drink brisk and sparkling.”  Dom Perignon, the famous Benedictine monk frequently credited with discovering Champagne, did not set foot in the region until 6 years after Merrett’s discovery and spent much of his efforts attempting to rid bottled wine of unpleasant bubbles.

Following the death of Louis XIV in 1715, the court of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans made the sparkling version of Champagne a favorite among the French nobility.  However, the production process was difficult to replicate until a technological breakthrough–stronger glass bottles– allowed the second fermentation stage to take place without the bottle rupturing.  As the formalization of the méthode champenoise made production of sparkling wine on a large scale profitable, this period saw the founding of many of today’s famous Champagne houses, including Krug (1843), Pommery (1858) and Bollinger (1829).

While Napoleon’s troops popped bottles of Champagne  the old fashioned way on the battlefield to celebrate victory, Champagne houses devoted considerable energy to creating a history and identity for their wine, associating it and themselves with nobility and royalty. Through advertising and packaging they sought to associate champagne with high luxury, festivities and rites of passage. Their efforts coincided with an emerging middle class that was looking for ways to spend its money on symbols of upward mobility.  They even made a concerted effort to target women, touting the wine’s favor with a Countess and using labels that were designed with images of romantic love and marriage as well as other special occasions that were deemed important to women, such as the baptism of a child.

As we all begrudgingly know, Champagne can’t be called Champagne if it isn’t from the designated growth region of Champagne, France.  The name “Champagne” is a protected designation of origin in the European Union and since a court ruling in 1985 the méthode champenoise cannot be depicted on bottling in the EU to designate the form of production unless it is from Champagne.  However, cava from Spain and most sparkling wine from the US are made in the same fashion.  Prosecco and Asti, from Italy, go through their second fermentation partially outside of the bottle, which is a less costly method and produces some quality bubbles at affordable prices.

So while we might think the boastful consumption of Champagne by our modern-day celebrities and rappers is a novel display of nobility, it all dates back to some savvy marketing tactics of Champagne houses in the 1800′s.  So raise your glass–in my case, of Sonoma sparkling wine– to the English for figuring it out, to the French for popularizing it, and to all those around the world who enjoy popping a cork to commemorate life’s many occasions to celebrate.

Don’t forget to rate your New Year’s Eve wines in your drync.com cellar, online or on your mobile app!

Special thanks to The Oxford Companion to Wine, The Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia and A Short History of Wine.

In a recent blog post, I touched on some killer use-cases for mobile wine apps. Namely, finding specific wines at local retail stores, and wine search based on barcode or image recognition technology. Given the “barcode buzz” of late, I thought I’d revisit barcodes and do a bit more of a deep dive. This post will focus on the barcode use-case and compare it to a more traditional type-ahead text entry scenario.

If you’re not into reading the detail, the conclusion is that using an “intelligent”, well-tuned type-ahead interface where you type a few letters from each of the words on the wine label and let the app fill in the correct words, gets you a more accurate result more often and *much* more quickly.

Wine Search Using Barcode Recognition

Barcodes are pervasive in consumer products because they work and make identifying the contents of a package fast and accurate. The reasons they work include, on the technology side – dedicated hardware, good lighting conditions,  generally flat packaging, and an easily adapted environment to improve reading conditions ie. you can move the product around until you get a good “read”. And on the data side, there is a standards body that manages the database of UPC codes (barcodes), ensuring “clean data” (ie no duplication or re-use of codes) and that all product codes are accessible centrally.

No doubt the world of wine could benefit from a similar structure and technology. Scanning a wine barcode and receiving detailed information, including market prices for a given wine is compelling. The problems, as I outlined in my previous post, are the following:

• We don’t have dedicated hardware with a little red light that creates a specific, readable reflection. Nor do we have flat packaging or good lighting conditions. We have a digital, low-ish resolution camera with no flash, curved bottles, and are typically in a store or restaurant with low light. That said, some of the new technology, like Red Laser by Occipital, is excellent and does its best to correct for the inherent shortcomings of using a phone for barcode recognition.
• There is no single central database of unique wine UPC codes.
• Only 30% of wineries use UPC codes at all today, and of them, *very* few boutique producers use them and their use is sparse outside the US
• Wines found in restaurants do not typically have barcodes on them
• Because there is a cost associated with generating new UPC codes for each SKU, wineries re-use UPC codes. This ambiguity requires that the user visually guide the barcode recognition system when there are multiple matches for a given barcode.
• Oftentimes, wineries will use a single barcode for all of their wines. That’s right – one code for all years of all wines. Oops.

That said, let’s get to some empirical data…

Now that there are some barcode-based systems for smartphones on the market, we took one to a retail store and started doing barcode lookups. Here are the results:

Overall accuracy (meaning that it found the wine on first “snap”): 48%

But that data needs qualification. First of all, the system basically only worked on US wines, and our data was skewed towards US wines. Here is a more granular breakdown:

US Wines - 11 out of 12 wines were recognized correctly (92%)

International Wines – 3 out of 17 were recognized correctly (18%)

Digging deeper, we found:

• NO vintages were available through the barcode recognition system. In other words, the user always has to identify the year if the system comes back with the right wine.
• 3 out of 29 wines were from producers that used the same barcode for every wine they produced.
• For 8 out of 29 wines, the barcode was read correctly but they were not found in the database.

The time it takes to use one of these systems to look up and identify the correct wine, assuming it is available in the UPC database, is about 20-30 seconds.

So, while the technology is undoubtedly amazing, factors outside of our control limit the usability and usefulness of using barcode recognition for wine search. But what are the alternatives, given that no one wants to sit in store or restaurant tapping at their phone for 5 minutes while people stare at them?

Text Based Wine Search Using Typeahead

Text based search on a phone is pain in the ass by any measure. We tap tap tap and then wait for a result to come back. At Drync, we’ve heard from our users that they don’t enjoy that process, and we ourselves have gotten fed up with having to do it.

So Rob, one of our engineers who is into solving really hard problems, gave himself a Thanksgiving puzzle to solve: could we analyze our 600,000+ historical wine searches done by users, and the 100,000 unique words they used in describing those searches, and implement a type-ahead system that pro-actively tries to figure out what you’re typing and fill in the words?

(For those of you who aren’t familiar with the phrase “type-ahead”, it’s a technique commonly in desktop applications – like Outlook/Mac Mail and web browsers – and on the web when a user is being asked to type something, like a search query. The Google app for the iPhone does this beautifully, if you want to see an effective example.

To cut to the chase, Rob was successful on his typeahead journey and was able to reduce the number of “keystrokes” (tapstrokes actually) by ~50% on average when searching for a wine using Drync Wine. We were impressed.

As an example:

Before, if you were searching for “chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2004″, you’d probably type “2004 chateau beaucastel chateauneuf du pape”. That’s 43 tapstrokes.

With Rob’s typeahead system, here’s what you’d type:

ch <select chateau from the typeahead list>

beauc <select beaucastel from list>

chat <select chateauneuf-du-pape from list>

That’s 14 taps, or a 67% reduction in tapstrokes. Also, it only took ~10 seconds to enter, and another 2 seconds for Drync Wine to look up the wine. Pretty good in my book.

You draw your own conclusion, but ours is that a typeahead interface is quite a bit better for users than a barcode recognizer, despite the sexiness of using your phone as a barcode scanner. Does that mean we’ll never implement a barcode recongition system for wine search? ABSOLUTELY NOT. We are just going to wait until the data side of the equation becomes more reliable and comprehensive.

* The Drync Wine typeahead interface will submitted to Apple shortly and hopefully will be available before Christmas 2009.