Oops, I meant The Wine Spectator, the magazine that one of my favorite retailers likes to make fun of by mocking its cultural imperialism over the wine world. In any case, some of you may have heard of the war of words between the folks at the venerable Napa winery Beaulieu Vineyard and The Wine Spectator senior editor James Laube. The conflict broke out in 2002 after Laube accused BV’s wines of showing “high levels” of TCA (the chemical behind cork taint) and suggested that the whole winery might be infested. Beaulieu shot back that Laube was complaining about amounts of the compound that are undetectable to the average palate, and unfairly singling them out for a problem widespread in wine production.

I was prompted to revisit the hostilities by a bottle of 1997 Beaulieu Vineyard Tapestry Reserve. To find out where, after tasting it, Wine Girl stands on the battle lines, click here: More

For a while now, it’s not been safe to dip your toes in the lake of wine coming from Robert Mondavi Inc., as any of you who’ve had the disappointment of tasting its declining quality during the late nineties and early 2000s can attest. I’ll never forget Robert Parker’s review of Mondavi’s 1997 line-up, from the basic Napa Valley reds to the regal Opus One: you could feel the pain Parker was experiencing as he went through sample after sample, looking for but never finding, a glimmer of the world-class vintages Mondavi promised and delivered during the peak of his success as a vintner in the seventies and eighties. And any of y’all who have read The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, the very interesting book published last year about the up and down of Robert’s wine business, including a scandalously detailed section on his successful lawsuit against his own family at Charles Krug, are aware that the tables recently turned when Mondavi was forced to give up control of his own winery and sell to Constellation, a mega-conglomerate based in New York.

For the surprise happy ending to this tragedy, click here: More

A reader alerted me to the recent triumph at the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition of the $1.99 per bottle 2005 Chardonnay made by Charles Shaw, affectionately known as Two Buck Chuck. The wine has already made a name for itself and Fred Franzia (head of Bronco Wines, which owns the label) by proving to be an entirely drinkable, even agreeable byproduct of the California wine grape glut — as well as a nose-thumb to an industry Franzia calls egotistical, greedy, and bloated. (The colorful CEO insists, for example, that no bottle of wine can cost more than $15 to make; the rest, he says, is hype.) Now Two Buck Chuck can claim bragging rights to quality, too, after it bested 350 other wines in a blind tasting of California chardonnays from a range of prices, a couple of them costing more than $100.

How could this happen, one might ask – especially one who has tasted the Shaw line and found it, as I have, to be inoffensive indeed, but also forgettable? Click here for my two cents: More

From the spit-not-swallow department: Some of you may have read the hilarious report in the New York Times yesterday about “wine tasters gone wild” in the Long Island wine region of New York state — complete with stories of limo-loads of bachelorettes dancing on table tops, inebriated haywagon riders running naked through the vines, and garden variety drunks demanding that tasting room pourers “fill ‘er up!” Apparently some Long Island wineries are disallowing party vans and limousines in an effort to cut down on this alarming trend. The Times reminds its readers that wine touring is about the wine, not the buzz, using the same tone as winery hosts who are having more and more to snort the self-righteous shibboleth at would-be guzzlers: “this is a tasting room, not a bar!”

But why doesn’t anyone point out that there’s one simple way to avoid being an Ugly American wine tourist: More

Saying that some participants in their “Romantic Winery Tour” program have been gays and lesbians p.o.’d about California’s unequal marriage laws, Bart and Barb O’Brien decided to see if they help turn things around by raising money for Equality California, the state’s leading advocate for gay marriage. So their eponymous O’Brien Family Vineyards set up an “Equality Wine Store” and promised to donate 20 percent of its sales of chardonnay, merlot, and cabernet to EQCA. My first reaction to the news was to go shopping, and I’m satisfied so far with how my purchase made my heart feel; I’ll report soon on how it treats my palate.

Second response: who are the O’Briens, and why this bandwagon? More

Since reports last month that a substance in red wine was found to prolong life in obese mice, sales of dietary supplements containing the stuff have spiked. Seems that people seeking immortality may find their fountain of life in the form of a bottle of cabernet — or rather, 700 bottles, since that’s how much you’d have to drink a day to get the amount of resveratrol, as the substance is called, that the researchers fed those mice.

Anyway, now it seems that unlike a good Bordeaux, these supplements don’t age well. Today the Wall Street Journal reported that one of the few things we know about this magic potion is that “resveratrol is prone to oxidation, or breaking down when exposed to air … [therefor] a capsule form may be preferable.”

That makes the pill bottle a great candidate for a screwcap closure, too, I guess.

Joseph Phelps, that is. A few representatives of the Ladies Tasting Society, drawn by our long-time love of the winery, forked out $150 each for a special dinner paired with Joseph Phelps’s latest vintages. Two of us, having just returned from a week’s family vacation in a spot more known for its surf breaks than its wine lists, were intent upon having an “adult night.” The evening did not disappoint. We ate our way through five courses, drained our glasses of six wines, and considered ourselves reminded, thanks in some part to our host and national sales director KK Dirikson, of why it is we love Joseph Phelps.

But has Phelps switched allegiance from Bacchus to Mammon? More

The indications have been around since the much-publicized “French Paradox,” i.e., the observation that although the French people exist on foie gras and rich sauces, they live longer: Red wine, the health experts theorized, is an important part of the “mediterranean diet” and might keep those smoking, meuniere-loving Frenchies so healthy.

In the latest development, scientists are claiming to have proven the link between red wine and longetivity. Clinicians isolated the magic ingredient in red wine, resveratrol, and fed it to mice on a high-fat diet. Then they compared what happened to them to the fate of obese mice with no resveratrol, and guess what: even though they didn’t slim down, the tippling Mickeys lived longer and maintained healthier organs.

If this discovery sounds of dubious value to you — like, wow, I can be a fat bloat until I die at 90 — you’re not alone. Read further and you’ll find that the amount of resveratrol that they fed the vintage mice per day is equivalent to that found in 700-1250 bottles of wine. Now, my mother told me to beware people who started drinking before lunch. But to get through 700 bottles a day — oh, wait, it’s 8:30 am right now. I’d better go and pop that magnum of pinot.

As a send-off to myself, I offered to raid my cellar for a wine-and-cheese reception at the last meeting of my term on the board of a New York City-based foundation. But then I realized, they don’t let you on the plane now with liquids. When the ban went into place, most people worried aloud about their Visine bottles and $40 designer hair products. It didn’t occur to me that I’d have to leave wine at sea level.

I think that’s because, weirdly enough, I don’t think of wine as a liquid. I think of it more as a food and figured, like mother’s milk, the TSA would make an exception for my Domaine Tempier.

For how I flew the wine-friendly skies, click for More

Sniff at this: French gourmets have their apron ties in a twist over news that the mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë is selling off half of the wines in the cellar of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, housed in a vault beneath Paris’s landmark Hotel de Ville (pictured here). It’s not that Delanoë, like our head of state here in America, is a teetotaler; it’s just that unlike Chirac, who loved to pour old, rare vintages for his special guests (”Drinking even 1,000 bottles a year is not enormous,” said the cellarmaster who built Chirac’s collection of his boss’s consumption), Delanoë perfers just an occasional Champagne reception. The proposed sale is seen as a political embarrassment by Anthony Rowley, a French food historian: “In London, they receive you with a sumptuous Porto … [Instead, Mr. Delanoë] thinks it is fashionable and modern to serve little democratic wines.” Hate to think what he’d say to a diet coke at the White House.