my first Blog O' The Dog.
I'm a beer guy, as most of the readers of this blog probably already know.
I brew my own beer, I try EVERY new beer I can find (Some I love, most I like, and only 1 I hated), I read as many books and magazines as I can find about beer, I visit a brewery just about every time I travel....and I still can not understand how some people NEVER try new things!
To me, it would be like saying I love peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches on white bread and never trying anything else for lunch, ever! Sure, some people might try 1 or 2 other beers but that's only like having that PB&J on toast or with strawberry jam.
The point I'm trying to get across here is there are 34 different brewpubs and microbreweries in Maryland alone (check out the list here; http://brewpubzone.com/States/Maryland.html). That link will give you the address, email, website, reviews, and even a map to all 34.
Check out them out. You never know - you might like a grilled Reuben for lunch every now and then!
Nastrovia,
Brian
aka-the beer guy
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Fasten your seatbelts! ~ Philip Bernot
In what must be one of the most frequently misquoted lines from a classic movie, Bette Davis, as aging diva Margo Channing in "All about Eve", proclaims “Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a bumpy ride!” The actual line is “bumpy night,” and no doubt ranks second to “Play it again, Sam” as the most famous line never said. All that aside, the message is correct-it is about to get a lot bumpier for wine enthusiasts everywhere. I just got word that one of my favorite importers is dropping two French producers due to large price increases. We have carried wines from each of these producers and loved them, but here is the real problem-these wines simply do not have substitutes. One producer makes a rich Chateaunuef-du-Pape, the other a sublime Condrieu. No offense intended, but I have yet to taste a wine from California or Australia that captures the rustic elegance and stony complexity of good Chateaunuef-du-Pape, and I see no indication that any producer outside of France is on the right track of producing Viognier up the quality of a good Condrieu. Sure, there are other producers of these wines, but I fear they too will be facing huge price increase.
So what, you say, I don’t drink that stuff anyway! Well try this on for size: I recently added a well-known sparkling wine from California to the line-up. Four weeks ago the wine was $34; yesterday I changed the price to $44. In four weeks! So what, you say again, the bubbles tickle my nose so I don’t drink that stuff either. How about the pleasant little white wine that went up 33% on the new vintage? No problem, you say again, though now a little testily, I drink beer in the summer anyway. If you do drink beer, chances are you have already seen the effects of this story from last November on NPR: “Worldwide hops shortage will make stouts, ales and other specialty microbrews more pricy in coming months. A triple whammy of bad weather in Europe, an increase in the price of barley and a decrease in hops production in the U.S. has lead to a price increase of 20 percent for the most widely grown varieties, to 80 percent for specialty hops. The shortage is particularly hitting microbreweries, since they use more hops than major brewers” Ouch! Inexpensive wine is becoming more expensive, expensive wine is becoming very expensive, and good beer now costs twelve bucks a six-pack!
So what is driving all this? Simply put - everything. I have to admit, a couple of years ago I was amazed out how undervalued wine was in the market place. It was just too cheap, and the price only had one place to go. Many people have suggested that California is the logical recipient of the increased prices of European wine, but that has not been my experience. California wine was always more expensive to begin with, and has been increasing in price just as rapidly as European wine, often more so.
We continue to try and find wines that offer great value, and there are still wonderful bottles under $20, but at the risk of using the most hackneyed phrase that has infiltrated our language in recent memory (excepting, of course, ‘a perfect storm’), thirteen bucks is the new nine, and twenty bucks is the new fifteen!
So what, you say, I don’t drink that stuff anyway! Well try this on for size: I recently added a well-known sparkling wine from California to the line-up. Four weeks ago the wine was $34; yesterday I changed the price to $44. In four weeks! So what, you say again, the bubbles tickle my nose so I don’t drink that stuff either. How about the pleasant little white wine that went up 33% on the new vintage? No problem, you say again, though now a little testily, I drink beer in the summer anyway. If you do drink beer, chances are you have already seen the effects of this story from last November on NPR: “Worldwide hops shortage will make stouts, ales and other specialty microbrews more pricy in coming months. A triple whammy of bad weather in Europe, an increase in the price of barley and a decrease in hops production in the U.S. has lead to a price increase of 20 percent for the most widely grown varieties, to 80 percent for specialty hops. The shortage is particularly hitting microbreweries, since they use more hops than major brewers” Ouch! Inexpensive wine is becoming more expensive, expensive wine is becoming very expensive, and good beer now costs twelve bucks a six-pack!
So what is driving all this? Simply put - everything. I have to admit, a couple of years ago I was amazed out how undervalued wine was in the market place. It was just too cheap, and the price only had one place to go. Many people have suggested that California is the logical recipient of the increased prices of European wine, but that has not been my experience. California wine was always more expensive to begin with, and has been increasing in price just as rapidly as European wine, often more so.
We continue to try and find wines that offer great value, and there are still wonderful bottles under $20, but at the risk of using the most hackneyed phrase that has infiltrated our language in recent memory (excepting, of course, ‘a perfect storm’), thirteen bucks is the new nine, and twenty bucks is the new fifteen!
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