Best of the wine blogosphere for October 3rd through October 17th:

• Boycott Beaujolais Nouveau
• The state of American wine
• What We Talk About, When We Talk About Food
• Cork USB Memory Stick
• Imagining a world after Parker
• Are Wine Magazines Shattering on the Vine?
• David Lett and an Eyrie Vineyards retrospective
• Wine Spectator Top 100 Wines of 2008: 2nd Annual Contest at domaine547
• David Lett Dies
• Can We Talk?
• Tell Him What He Needs To Know!
• Baked Goods: Announcing Wine Blogging Wednesday 51(WineDude) Edition!
• Wine Blogging Wednesday #50: The Great Outdoors
• Souschef helps you keep your recipes organized
• Wine Blogging Wednesday #50: Wine and the Great Outdoors
• WBW#50: Into the Land of Rancho San Antonio and the Torremoyon
• Good Wine Under $20: Now Entering Its Third Year
• Wines at the Beach
• Dry Creek Vineyard Goes Accounable and Authentic
• Serious Grape: Back to the Barrels? An Old-Fashioned Proposal

Brilliant article from the recent issue of Wine Spectator written by Matt Kramer (winespectator.com):

Recently I found myself in one of those wine wrangles that, truth to tell, I usually try to avoid. (Check out any wine chat board on the Internet if you've got a taste^? for this sort of thing.)
 
The wrangle was with, natch, a winemaker^?, while at a social event. It involved the winemaker's assertion that "fine wine is art." I pointed out, as modestly as I could, that there's no denying that nature surely doesn't make wine on its own, let alone fine wine (vinegar^? is more like it). I then went on to say that fine wine is, at best, a high craft both in the vineyard^? and the cellar^?.
 
Probably, if I had stopped there, the discussion would have proved amicable. But I took the matter one step further. (You're shocked, I know.) I submitted that saying that winemaking, and therefore its result, is "art" was self-aggrandizing. You can imagine how that was received.
 
Now, I admit that the self-aggrandizing bit was a low blow. Still, it's true. If winemakers can get you, me and, especially, their employers to see them as artists, you know what'll happen: Their salaries will rise, and producers, for their part, will start pricing wine as "art." And you know what that means.
 
So why isn't fine wine "art"? The answer is surprisingly simple. Art is creation; wine is amplification. The big^? difference between an artist and a winemaker is that an artist starts with a blank sheet while a winemaker works with the exact opposite. A grape arrives at the winery^? with all the parts included, a piñata stuffed with goodies, just waiting to be cracked open.
 
Is there a craft to doing that? You bet there is. But where an artist conceives of something out of the proverbial thin air, no winemaker anywhere in the world can do any such thing.
 
For example, when my wine heroine Lalou Bize-Leroy bought the former Domaine^? Noëllat in Vosne-Romanée and transformed it into Domaine Leroy, she did not create her magnificent wines from scratch. It was all right there in the hallowed ground and old vines^? of her newly acquired pieces of Richebourg and Romanée St.-Vivant. She didn't create something from nothing. Quite the opposite.
 
Fine wine is not creation. It is refinement. If it were otherwise, then everybody would be "creating" Lafite Rothschild or La Tâche or any other wine masterpiece of singular, irreproducible expression and high price. Counterfeiting aside, I don't see anybody doing that, do you?
 
They don't because they can't. That's precisely why fine wine is not art. It comes from all the forces that create a particularity of site. Great winemakers?which is to say, expert practitioners of winecraft?tease what they can from the sites that are available to them by planting the right grapevines, growing them astutely, harvesting the fruit at an ideal moment (a problematic issue today given some winemakers' and critics' preferences for ever greater ripeness) and handling the fermented juice^? in the cellar with deft control.
 
This is no small charge, and I, for one, do not seek to diminish it in any way. But art? Not a chance. The poet E.E. Cummings put his finger on it better than anyone else: "A world of made is not a world of born." Wine is no more a blank canvas than the Grand Canyon.
 
Why does this distinction matter? Because abstract though it is, if winemakers and, yes, wine lovers, see wine as art, then the essential connection between what a grape expresses from its site and what we expect is severed. If a winemaker is an "artist," then he or she, by artistic right, can and should modify the result to suit a personal vision separate from a "mere" expression of place.
 
However, if the finest winemaking is seen as a high craft, rather than art, the expectation changes subtly yet substantively. Where art presumes a blank slate upon which a personal vision necessarily is writ large, the notion of craft is more deferential. Like great parenting, it's a guardianship of something already largely complete. The goal is refinement and amplification of what's inherent. Think of what happens when parents do otherwise.
 
So it is with wine. All sorts of technological deconstruction and reconstruction now occurs in many wineries today, especially ones creating high-end?or at least high-priced?wines. They see themselves as artists and would like to convince you of same. If they can, well, you know how distorted the results can be?and who pays.
 
Matt Kramer has contributed regularly to Wine Spectator since 1985.

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It seems obvious on reflection but it remains an important distinction to make, especially given the widespread labeling of wine making as an art form, particularly in wine marketing circles.

Tags: melgab, wine, art, refinement, wine making, south-africa, South Africa

Apparently I don’t get out much.  Until recently, I didn’t know that some restaurants charge as much as $250 per bottle for their corkage fee.  Excuse me, but that is insane.  As Lettie Teague in Food and Wine magazine asked recently, “What could you get for $250 that you couldn’t for, say, $25?”

The average cost of corkage around the country is about $25, which is infinitely more reasonable, but even those establishments that have reasonable corkage fees, they, perhaps surprisingly, come with their own set of rules.  One of the more popular restaurants in San Francisco, Michael Mina, for example, has a two-bottle limit with their $35 per bottle fee, and the bottles that you bring can’t be something that they have on the house list.  That certainly makes sense, and if you’re planning on bringing your own bottle of wine to your next dinner reservation, it’s a good idea to call ahead to inquire as to the restaurant’s fee and their own individual rules.  You know, “know before you go,” and all that.

In her recent Corkage article, Lettie shared seven cheap corkage spots for your drinking pleasure:

Where to Go

Metro Marche, New York City ($10).  This bus-station brasserie has good food and cheap corkage.  625 Eighth Avenue, 212-239-1010

Sip Sak, New York City ($13).  Great Turkish food and a low corkage fee.  928 Second Avenue, 212-583-1900

Dehlia Lounge, Seattle ($15).  Corkage here is just $15, as it is at all of Tom Douglas’s restaurants.  2001 Fourth Avenue, 206-682-4142

Market, St. Helena, California ($15).  Corkage is free on Tuesday nights at this friendly diner.  1347 Main Street, 707-963-3799

Charlie Palmer Steak, Washington, DC ($25).  If you bring an American wine, the corkage is free; otherwise, it’s $25.  101 Constiutution Avenue NW, 202-547-8100

Naha, Chicago ($25).  There are lots of great corkage spots in Chicago, but this restaurant also has terrific food.  500 North Clark Street, 312-321-6242

Michael Mina, San Francisco ($35).  This top restaurant has a great wine list and a fair corkage fee as well.  335 Powell Street, 415-397-9222.

Photo from Morgue File.