Looking for the best Sauvignon Blanc Wines?

You couldn’t go wrong with these two fine choices. The Mollet Florian Sancerre Roc De L’abbaye 2007 from France’s Loire Valley, and Mahi 2007 from Marlborough, New Zealand

Each is made from the sauvignon blanc grape and, very likely, vinified in similar ways (stainless steel tanks, no oak barrels–though there are minor exceptions from winemaker to winemaker).

Because of New Zealand’s cool, maritime climate and stony soils, you can expect the Marlborough sauvignon blanc to be the far more pungent of the two wines.

It should smell like fresh grass clippings from your lawn with a lot of passion fruit, grapefruit and other tropical fruit thrown in.

Expect the Sancerre to taste and smell a bit more like that salty, stony character you get in European sparkling mineral waters.  Full article

Does our brain trick us when we have the choice between two wines – one more expensive than the other?  It seems that we tend to like the taste of the more expensive wine.

A study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology discovered that when people were given two different bottles of wine and told that one cost $5 and the other $45 (in reality, both bottles were identical), the pleasure-center part of the brain became more active when the participants were drinking what they believed to be the more expensive bottle.

They also reported that the wine they believed to be more expensive tasted better.

Baba Shiv, one of the study’s authors and associate professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, previously found that people who paid full price for Red Bull energy drinks were able to solve more brain teasers than those who paid less for the same product.In other words, how much you pay for something can affect how you perceive it.

Booming wine consumption in China is leading to a growth in locally produced wines but as Chinese tastes become more sophisticated, local wineries are finding that they need to play catch up in terms of quality and vintage.

According to China Organic Agriculture, Demand in China for foreign wines, including those produced in California, is growing rapidly. In 2007, the import of wine into China totaled approximately 54 million bottles, representing a 125% growth from 2006, according to the latest report of the International Wine and Spirit Competition.

The market share of imported wines in China increased from 6.6% in 2006 to 10% in 2007, while industry analysts project that share will reach 18% in 2008. Total wine consumption in China is expected to increase 65% from 2001 to 2010, a growth rate 6.5 times faster than the global average.

Dozens of wine enterprises have set up operations in the region, which has the latitude roughly similar to the Bordeaux region in France.

The coastal city of Yantai, home to over 10,000 hectares of vineyards in Shandong Province is regarded as China’s Bordeaux by the locals.

Many of China’s leading winemakers are expanding rapidly to cater to change in China’s taste buds, and the surge in demand for wine.

Once drinkers of beer and local spirits, many professional Chinese are choosing instead to toast to what they perceive as the more refined and healthy image of grape wine.

By 2011, Chinese drinkers are expected to down more than 1.1 billion bottles of wine or 828 million litres of wine a year, double the figure in 2007, according to a study by the International Wine and Spirit Record in London.

More than 100 wineries have opened since 1996 and there is an estimated 500 vineyards across China, which supply 95 per cent of the wines consumed domestically.

Great Wall Winery, one of the leading local brands in China produces over 50,000 tons of wine each year from its 3 main production areas in North China.

The biggest consumers of wine in China in 2003 were people aged between 35 and 44. The age group that drank the least wine was the over-55 age group.

Price is a major consideration to most Chinese, and imported wine is out of reach to most consumers. A domestic bottle of wine may retail for as little as $3 while imported wine is generally $10 to $20 a bottle or more.

According to a Datamonitor report Wine in China: a market analysis, the influence of western eating and drinking habits, along with rising incomes, have been the keys to market growth.   Source: AP

Robert Mondavi, the vintner who built his career and helped an iconic Northern California industry blossom by insisting that Napa Valley wines can compete with the best in the world, died in the Napa valley Friday. He was 94.

Mondavi died peacefully at his home in Yountville, Robert Mondavi Winery spokeswoman Mia Malm said.

“It is hard to imagine anyone having more of a lasting impact on California’s $20 billion-a-year wine industry than Robert Mondavi,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement. Mondavi, said the governor, was “a tireless entrepreneur who transformed how the world felt about California wine, and an unforgettable personality to everyone who knew him.”

Mondavi was 52 and a winemaking veteran in 1966, when he opened the winery that would help turn the Napa Valley into a world center of the industry. Clashes with a brother that included a fistfight led him to break from the family business to carry out his ambitious plans with borrowed money.

When Mondavi opened his winery, California was still primarily known for cheap jug wines. But he set out to change that, championing use of cold fermentation, stainless steel tanks and French oak barrels, all commonplace in the industry today. He introduced blind tastings in Napa Valley, putting his wines up against French vintages, a bold move.

His confidence was rewarded in 1976 when California wines beat some well-known French vintages in the famous tasting known as the Judgment of Paris.

“He had the single greatest influence in this country with respect to high quality wine and its place at the table,” wine critic Robert Parker wrote in a chat room posting on his Web site Friday. He called Mondavi “an exceptional man….a true pioneer…a legendary pathfinder…..and I feel so priviledged to have known him…a sad day…but also one to pay homage to his enormous contributions.”
The success of the Mondavi winery allowed him to donate tens of millions of dollars to charity, but a wine glut and intense competition gradually cost his family control of the business. In 2004, the company accepted a buyout worth $1.3 billion from Fairport, N.Y.-based Constellation Brands.

Mondavi was an enthusiastic ambassador for wine – especially California wine – and traveled the world into his 90s promoting the health, cultural and social benefits of its moderate consumption.

“He had an amazing life,” said Robert C. Koch, president and CEO of the San Francisco-based Wine Institute. “He was a major driving force and an incredible promoter for California wine and the Napa Valley.”   Article by: Michelle Locke – Associated Press Writer

In a study that could make marketing managers and salespeople rub their hands with glee, scientists have used brain-scanning technology to shed new light on the old adage, “You get what you pay for.”

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Stanford’s business school have directly seen that the sensation of pleasantness that people experience when tasting wine is linked directly to its price. And that’s true even when, unbeknownst to the test subjects, it’s exactly the same Cabernet Sauvignon with a dramatically different price tag.

Specifically, the researchers found that with the higher priced wines, more blood and oxygen is sent to a part of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex, whose activity reflects pleasure. Brain scanning using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) showed evidence for the researchers’ hypothesis that “changes in the price of a product can influence neural computations associated with experienced pleasantness,” they said.

The study, by Hilke Plassmann, John O’Doherty, Baba Shiv, and Antonio Rangel, was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research, along with other studies the authors allude to, are putting a serious dent in economists’ notions that experienced pleasantness of a product is based on its intrinsic qualities.

“Contrary to the basic assumptions of economics, several studies have provided behavioral evidence that marketing actions can successfully affect experienced pleasantness by manipulating nonintrinsic attributes of goods. For example, knowledge of a beer’s ingredients and brand can affect reported taste quality, and the reported enjoyment of a film is influenced by expectations about its quality,” the researchers said. “Even more intriguingly, changing the price at which an energy drink is purchased can influence the ability to solve puzzles.”

Article by: Stephen Shankland

In the heart of the world’s wine capital is Sonoma. It lies about 60 miles north of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.  Sonoma has about 60,000 rolling, vine-filled acres dotted with more than 250 incredible wineries. The Sonoma wines have long been outstanding and award winning. The top-notch restaurants are on every culinary tourists’ radar.  But Sonoma gets even better.

Often the step child to its better known rival – Napa, recent stays at three Sonoma sanctuaries convinced me that you don’t have to go to buttoned-down Napa for pampering. Sonoma has arrived with a variety of luxury hotels that rival others anywhere in the world. Does a champaign bath sound enticing?  Full article

Avid wine lovers know that it’s not the price the wine that dictates its availability, but its production and limited supply.  A case of 2003 Chateau Mouton Rothschild can be found for around $3,000.

But try to locate a Chateau Le Pin 2004, which can go for $7,000, and you’re going to be out of luck. Full article