On reviews and Parker and valuable insight

Always hate an interview sitting for more than a couple of days, but this one with Pennsylvania wine grape educator Mark Chien is already beginning to age. We probably talked a week and a half ago. I read his most recent e-letter, which was part rant and part advice:

"Robert M Parker Jr and Us - I often use the phrase "wine growing" which is growing grapes specifically for wine. It can apply to any wine from sweet Concord to the driest red vinifera. The goal is to grow a high quality grape that will make the best wine of its type. It is easy to get isolated and locked into a particular set of ideas or practices in the vineyard. Ultimately, the wine is meant for someone to drink. Whether it is a quaffing wine or a cult wine, it is probably a good idea to be aware and informed of those who will pass judgment on your end product, certainly a wine consumer but possibly a wine critic. Like it or not, wine criticism, like wine competitions, is part of the landscape of the commercial wine business. It's useful, sometimes even instructive, to know what the pooh-bahs are thinking and saying about wine. I encourage all wine growers to taste benchmarks of the wines they make with no exceptions. The range is from 2 Buck Chuck to $50 reds. Someone out there is judging what you do relative to the competition and it only makes good business sense to know where you stand relative to others in the same type and class. Robert M Parker Jr is the most influential wine critic in the world. I rarely agree with what he says and cannot bear his bombastic, overbearing and confrontational style of prose, but like it or not, his opinion matters to all of us in the wine biz, even the smallest winery in the woods. Not that every customer reads Parker but the range of his experience and knowledge can help us to become better wine growers. His recently released 7th edition of the Wine Buyers Guide is good for a door stop but doubles as a very informative guide into the qualitative variables that produce the best wines in the best wine regions. I skip the individual winery notes and go right into the regional guides that describe some production practices that might offer a few tidbits of useful information to a dedicated wine grower in Pennsylvania. It is well worth reading for that information."

The few e-letters from Chien that I’ve had the chance to read have been a blend of information and opinion. He said the latter can often be a problem because people will read it and think it’s the official stance of his department or the state or Penn State, when it’s simply the perspective coming from someone who’s passionate about wine and wine-making and likes to share those opinions. It would be a shame if that part of Chien's contribution to these e-letters ever disappeared.

Talking more specifically about Parker and his guide, Chien told me that the information one can glean if they read around the personal commentary can be quite valuable.

“For anyone who’s really trying to make good wine,” he said, “the thing about Parker is that over the years . . . he has absorbed a tremendous amount about how the best winemakers are making wine, and if you read his words carefully you can learn an awful lot about it.

“I’m not saying that he’s a viticulturist or an enologist by any stretch, but . . . in a way his view is very useful because he’s not formally trained as many people in this industry are not, and he takes that information and he tries to connect dots based on his experience. . . . as much as maybe like myself doesn’t like Parker or even agree with him . . . you have to understand him because so much of the wine-consuming world considers him so important. From that standpoint, whether you like him or not, he’s an important part of your business if you’re trying to service that end of the wine spectrum.”

We talked about how so few people are reviewing wines in this region at the present; Chien was talking specifically about Pennsylvania but you could say the same about Maryland wines as well. He noted that in general the country’s primary wine reviewers wouldn’t even know where to go to taste wines in Pennsylvania. “If they just took a dart board of the wine map of Pennsylvania and threw darts at it and went around and tasted those wines, chances are they’d come away with a very bad experience,” Chien said. “But, you know, the same thing would happen if they did that for Burgundy. So they know who to cherry-pick in Burgundy and Australia and California, but they don’t know who to cherry-pick in our area, and unless they’re willing to make the effort to try and find out, chances are they are going to get a lot of 70 and 80 wines instead of high 80s and low 90s wines, which is what all of us want them to find.

"It’s a learning experience for al of us. We have to take the time to educate them and at the same time while we’re sort of educating ourselves and making better wines.”

Allegro: Tanks busier than last year this time

Checked in Thursday with winemaker and owner Carl Helrich of Allegro Vineyards on how they fared during the first weekend of Tour de Tanks. That event will continue on weekends through the end of this month. Here's what he had to say.

"Yeah, we had a busy weekend. Busier than last year this time. We're tasting Chardonnay, Merlot and Chambourcin in the cellar with the visitors. The first two are wine varieties that I think will speak for our region. I am offering the Chambourcin as a counterpoint.

"We always enjoy being on the Tour de Tanks trail. It let's folks experience all the wineries side-by-side. Our customer base has exploded because of this event because a lot of wine drinkers in this area never came out to the Brogue before. Our sales in this remote area grew significantly last year, even with the slowing economy and the $4/gallon gas prices."

Past meets present at Naylor Tour stop

Wander into Naylor Wine Cellars in Stewartstown during the Tour de Tanks event that begins Saturday and you're likely to get more than a sip of the present. You'll also receive a taste of the past.

“That’s what I'm trying to do, let them try to take something home with them besides the wine,” owner Dick Naylor said by phone on Wednesday. “Let them take some knowledge home, some history, so they get some feel of what the wine industry is all about.”

Tour de Tanks will begin its fourth year this weekend, incorporating 12 wineries that come together once a year as the Uncork York wine trail for this event. Passports cost $15 per person and entitle holders to stop in at each winery and sample some of their goods while learning a few of the basics of how the wine is produced. Each winery lays out a spread of food, some catered and others prepared in the kitchen of the adjoining home. The idea, one shared by other wine trails in the region, has mushroomed into something grander than anyone could have imagined.

“It’s great. Last year we had 1,014 [come in for Tour de Tanks],” Naylor said, noting they had around 200 the first year. “Each year it has jumped. Last year it really jumped. And the nice thing about it . . . we get people who hear about it and come in from northern Virginia, from Maryland, from Jersey, from Delaware. Some come down from New York even. The B&Bs are making out like crazy, same with the hotels. So it’s a win-win for everybody. We're really looking forward to it.”

Naylor said he'll go through around 100 bottles of wine that visitors will try as samples during the four weekends that the event runs. He'll also dole out some history lessons, maybe noting that while his winery was the first one in York County when it opened in 1975, it actually has a predecessor who was picking grapes and making wine early in the 19th century along the banks of the Susquehanna River in Wrightsville. And, if you really want to dig deeper, you can research the early work done by William Penn, who planted a vineyard of French vinifera in 1683 around Philadelphia.

That's well before Naylor was scouting York County for a place to grow grapes, lured by the adage that wherever peaches grow, grapes can grow. Others have followed; indeed the 14 wineries in York County, Naylor said, is the most in any one county in the state.

“It's because we have a fantastic area to grow grapes,” he said. “Our high plateau . . . we're at 1,000-foot elevation here, we have everything going for us. Good air and drainage, just enough breeze to keep the vines dried off. The soil is such that the grapes don’t have wet feet, they call it, because it drains so well. We’ve been growing grapes for 34 years and we've never had frost damage on a bud in the springtime nor in the fall while we had fruit in the vine. Hardly any place in the United States can make that statement. So we’ve been blessed [here].”

Tour de Tanks, in essence, becomes a chance for Naylor and the other 11 winery proprietors to share their stories of a fraternity, he said, that's worldwide. “My wife and I have had the good fortune of traveling all over Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and wherever we go we bring our wine along and brochures," he said. "And we’ll see some people out in the vineyards in Italy or Germany working and we’ll go up and try to converse with them. And once we let them know that we’re a winery owner in America, you’re like a brother that's come home. We have a couple of German families that we wouldn’t dare go over there unless we stayed a couple nights at their home. I think all of agriculture has a little of that, but I think wine, because Mother Nature is a little tougher to work with than when growing corn or wheat, so we’re at it 12 months a year. That’s the way the wine business is.”