Berger: Limited choices in the wine game

Four experiences I had in the last few days capsuled for me the last decade or two in the choices of wine we are being offered.

First I had lunch on Thursday with a marketing and public relations executive who noted that the hottest trend in the U.S. wine market over the last few years has been the growing importance of the unidentified red wine blend.

He said it almost doesn’t matter what grapes are used for such blends as long as they have a clever name - and silly names work fine. Such wines are sold with the vague promise of an out-of-body experience, and they are full of flavor (i.e., they are unbalanced and likely a little bit sweet).

All you have to do is name the wine after a 1960s rock song (Dock o’ The Bay Rosé), a Danish physicist and a female deer (Bohr-Doe Cuvée), or a relative (Distant Cousin Red Blend) and you’re all set to sell the wine. Why this is I do not know, but intentional misspellings, puns, and cute animals are all fair game in this quest to sell an amorphous wine.

The fact that these wines have almost no particular varietal character and that they change from year to year (one vintage is based on zinfandel, the next on cabernet sauvignon) seems not to matter.

Retailers like that they can sell for $12 or so and provide a serious profit. And casual cafés rarely have by-the-glass consumers who ask who made such wines. Most diners simply ask for the house white (or the house chardonnay), and don’t care who made it.

Said my friend the wholesaler, “It’s the way the game is played these days. Most of this wine comes from the bulk market and you usually can’t tell who made anything.”

I asked him if he thought this was really wine in the fine-wine sense of the term.

“Well, uh, some of these wines sell for $30 a bottle, so yeah.”

“Fine wine? Really?” I asked.

“Uh, no, not really,” he said.

That evening I dined out at a superb San Francisco restaurant. The sommelier and I got to talking about quality red wines at the upper reaches of the price spectrum.

“Used to be you could get a decent bottle of Burgundy for $50,” he said. “Today, even $100 might not get you much.”

As for Bordeaux, he said, the bottom has fallen out of the market. “With the inflated prices because of high scores, the average person can’t afford almost anything with a recognizable name,” he said.

He said it has always been hard to stock a reasonably priced wine list, and noted that the best values are always going to be from obscure regions and obscure grape varieties.

“It’s always been that way,” he said, “but it’s worse than ever.”

Friday I sampled a 2013 sauvignon blanc from the Napa Valley. It had a gorgeous package and label design, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. Except that it was bland to the point of being totally uninteresting.

The acid was lacking, the flavors were nearly non-existent, and the aftertaste was thin and watery.

And the suggested retail price was $35. My wife suggested that if the wine didn’t have Napa on the label, it wouldn’t sell for as much as $10. I agreed.

Finally, I sampled a tasty and perfectly enjoyable red wine that was designated IGP, a relatively new appellation statement for use in France. It stands for Indication Geographique Protegée, and is not considered a prestige wine.

But IGP wines can be excellent, though they are rarely promoted and their prices consequently suffer - which is a benefit for those who can find them. However, without consumers asking for such wines, they can be hard to find.

Wine of the Week: 2014 Paul Mas Malbec, Pays ‘d’oc IGP ($14) – This stylish red wine from a fine Languedoc producer is varietal with plum and cherry notes, nice spice from oak aging, and an elegant fruit finish. Imported by Palm Bay International, Sonoma County resident Dan Berger publishes “Vintage Experiences,” a weekly wine newsletter. Write to him at winenut@gmail.com.