In advance of those closest to me arranging for an intervention, I have decided to come clean, so to speak, with my problem.

The sentence leading off this post should not be a surprise to those of you know me. I have not hid my fondness for wine, and, in fact, have blogged about it occasionally here. The fact that I actually blog and have a job that almost defines nerdinesss seals the deal on that end.

(Let me add as further proof that when I found that my my spell checker thought that “nerdiness” wasn’t a word, I decided to look it up on the interweb. I eventually found myself at a web site that linked the following ad with the word in question. So all in all I suppose that if the web site is dynamically associating ad content with searches, I am, as a nerd, in good company.)

But let’s get back on track here. It turns out the perfect marriage of the two prominent traits of mine is an online database called Cellartracker. This web site now carries information on about 11.3 million bottles of wine, and has nearly 70,000 uers, of which I am one. This web site not only allows you to track wines in your cellar, but it also has over 750,000 reviews written by the users. I have been using this for nearly 4 years now, and have found it to be an amazing resource for keeping track of wines that I have in my cellar, wines that I have purchased on futures, as well as wines that I have consumed.

Because the information is stored as a database, you can generate all sorts of reports of varying degrees of interest. For example, you can find out from the consensus “drinking window” which of the wines in your cellar should be consumed before they go bad. You can find out how the price you paid for the wine compares to the average of other users of the site. While this particular feature can be used in a post hoc manner to inflate one’s sense of worth (so I’ve heard), it is particularly useful if you consult it before buying the wine.

But one of the failures of this database is that you actually have to be pretty religious about updating it. Well, technically, you really don’t have be that compulsive about it, unless of course you like wine and are a nerd, which we’ve previously established. Anyway, I tend to be reasonably attentive to managing my cellar, and definitely add wines to the database as I purchase them. What I’m not so good at is deleting the wines from the cellar after they’re removed.

So this weekend I decided to update my database. This entailed printing out the database—for fellow geeks, I will mention that Cellartracker provides a great Excel export feature—and then taking it downstairs and going through each bottle in my collection and comparing it to the list. For most people, this would be just as much fun as you would imagine. I, on the other hand, was completely taken with this task. This ended up as an ultimate fantasy weekend for the wine nerd. I won’t tell you how long it took to do this, but the fact that I now recognize that I have a problem should tell you everything.

When I completed the task, I then spent some time going through the different reports. Here are some random facts:

• I have 795 bottles in my collection, with 43 pending.
• In an odd coincidence, I have consumed 795 bottles in the 4 years that I’ve maintained the database. That means an average of one bottle every other day, which sounds about right.
• I bought 335 bottles for my extended family and friends, and gave 64 away.
• 679 of the bottles are from France, with over half being Rhone wines. I was surprised to find that I have almost as many bottles from Spain as from the USA (<20).

So that is just a small inkling of the terribly fascinating information that is available from this database. Not surprisingly, the overall cost for all the wine purchased and consumed can be accessed, and I suspect that this number might well be of greater interest to the reader. Because certain people with whom I share and house and bank account occasionally read this blog, let me say as previous generations of Rosen men have said in the past:

It’s only pennies a day, dear. Pennies a day.

As an example, we were down in DC this weekend for my sister-in-law’s 25th anniversary party. We arrived early to help out with the setup for the party. More precisely, my wife arrived to help with the setup with the party. I arrived to with the goal of eating some Indian food, drinking some excellent wine, and working the puzzle page of The Washington Post. As some point, however, it became evident that I needed to give some effort to the undertaking. I volunteered to help pick out the wines for the party. What a terrible task, having to go to one of the better wine stores in the district and shop for wines that I wasn’t going to have to pay for. I struggled through.

I figured I was done for the day, and only had to worry about not completely dehydrating in the sauna-like conditions. It soon became evident that my Sudoku reverie was going to be broken by the need to once again appear to be helpful. This time, I was asked to help out by putting together the music for the evening’s party. So let’s get this straight. I get to sit in front of a computer and screen 3500 songs to find the ones that I like and then put them together into a series of playlists (one for starters, one for dinner, one for dancing, and one for the end of the evening). I got to hear a whole bunch of songs that I haven’t listed to in a long time (or ever for that matter), while everyone else actually did something useful.

The party, as it turns out, was just great. The caterer was fantastic, making life easy on everyone, and the food was out of this world. The hosts were convivial and entertaining, and made everyone feel welcome and that they were an essential part of the celebration. But the really important news is that, as has happened countless times before, my modest contributions were acknowledged well out of proportion to the effort expended.

Separately […], a research team led by Tomas A. Prolla and Richard Weindruch, of the University of Wisconsin, reports in the journal PLoS One on Wednesday that resveratrol may be effective in mice and people in much lower doses than previously thought necessary. In earlier studies, like Dr. Auwerx’s of mice on treadmills, the animals were fed such large amounts of resveratrol that to gain equivalent dosages people would have to drink more than 100 bottles of red wine a day.

The Wisconsin scientists used a dose on mice equivalent to just 35 bottles a day. But red wine contains many other resveratrol-like compounds that may also be beneficial. Taking these into account, as well as mice’s higher metabolic rate, a mere four, five-ounce glasses of wine “starts getting close” to the amount of resveratrol they found effective, Dr. Weindruch said.

The bottom line is that the amount of resveratrol in red wine is so tiny that even if this one ingredient is truly related to longevity, one couldn’t possible consume enough wine to gain any benefit along these lines.

The hoohah surrounding this report and others like it is that it can only mean bad things for all of us, but most importantly, me. Most people will not read the fine print and immediately run out and buy up red wine, which will of course result in price increases across the board. That is bad for me and for anyone who enjoys drinking wine because they enjoy drinking wine.

But what is even worse in my mind, is the underlying assumption that scientists are going to be able to isolate a single substance that, once ingested, will have the single desirable effect of lengthening one’s life. This represents but a small subset of the mindset that allows us to think that simple manipulations of our biology by exogenous compounds will cure what ails us. Anyone remember oat bran as a cure for cholesterol? Wilfred Brimley aside, there has never been a single study demonstrating that it has any effect. If you haven’t already, read anything by Michael Pollan to see what a really smart guy thinks about this. His advice “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” is right on point.

People rightly worry about what they put in their bodies. If you’re diabetic, for example, it would be wise to limit the amount of simple carbohydrates and sugars you eat. That said, our bodies are incredibly complex and it is simply folly to think that varying one aspect of our biology will have only one desired outcome—hence the term side effects. As for me, I may indeed choose to suck down 4-5 glasses of wine a night, but if I do so, it won’t be because I need to get a dose of resveratrol. It will be because I’ve turned into a wino.

Asimov’s piece does a nice job of summarizing some of the recent studies that have gained notoriety over the past couple of months.

…American wine drinkers have taken their turn as pop culture’s punching bags. In press accounts of two studies on wine psychology, consumers have been portrayed as dupes and twits, subject to the manipulations of marketers, critics and charlatan producers who have cloaked wine in mystique and sham sophistication in hopes of better separating the public from its money.

He then proceeds to detail some of these experiments that basically demonstrate that wine drinkers are unduly influenced by price and cachet. He also does a fine job of pointing out some of the holes in the interpretation of these experiments. Perhaps my favorite point is this:

Yet the rating system has bred an attitude toward wine that ignores context, which is perhaps more important a consideration to the enjoyment of wine than anything else. The proverbial little red wine, so delicious in a Tuscan village with your sweetie, never tastes the same back home in New Jersey. Meanwhile, the big California cabernet, which you enjoyed so much with your work buddies at a steakhouse, ties tucked between buttons, doesn’t have that triumphant lift with a bowl of spaghetti.

This is one problem with trying to judge wine in the sort of clinical vacuum sought by studies like the one in “The Wine Trials.” In the end, I don’t think you can ever eliminate context. The trick is to distinguish between the harmful or disingenuous — the marketing come-ons, the point chasing, what the guy next to you thinks — from the beneficial: the food, the company, the environment. Even in a blind tasting situation, wine is evaluated in the company of other wines, which is a different sort of context but a context nonetheless. Perhaps they’ve chosen the best wines to be sipped and spat out, but not the best wines for dinner.

I was sort of surprised that he didn’t mention perhaps the most interesting purported studies of wine tasting. Calvin Trillin, one of my favorite writers ever, wrote about his quest to investigate an alleged test at UC Davis where red and white wines were poured into black glasses (so that their color would not be visualized), and were asked simply to tell whether the wine was red or white. They didn’t have to tell the year, vintage, slope, etc., just whether the wine was red or white. The bottom line, according to the story, is that they failed. Trillin points out that this is probably an urban legend, but that, depending on how the wines are chosen, an expert will identify the wines properly about 70% of the time in this type of blind tasting.

I’m not sure what all this means in the grand scheme of things, other than to say (and if you repeat this to anyone, I will deny having said it) too much is made of wine. It is, after all, a beverage. I mean it’s not single malt scotch with its peaty nose and aromas of leather…sorry, I got distracted for a minute. Where was I? Oh yes, everyone has their sweet (and dry) spot both in terms of taste and cost. So just drink up, figure out what you like, and share it with the people that matter. Namely, me.

• Chez Henri
• Excelsior
• KO Prime
• East Coast Grill
• Rialto
• Craigie Street Bistro
• dante
• Zygomates
• Taza Chocolate
• Sage
• Tremont647
• No. 9 Park

I wish I had taken notes, so I can credit individual restaurants, but between my age and the cocktails, I can’t precisely recall who made these highlighted dishes (in order of preference):

1. Garlic risotto with escargot and parsley (maybe No. 9 Park?)
2. Pulled pork tortillas (East Coast Grill)
3. Wild mushroom ravioli
4. Steak Tartare on homemade potato chips

But to be fair, there weren’t any bad dishes. And I’m proud to share with you that I am no longer a lardo virgin.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I like wine. I like wine a lot. Tonight, I opened a 2002 Domaine de la Combe “Au Renards,” which is a red wine from the Burgundy region of France that is made from the pinot noir grape. When I poured the wine, the color was nearly pink in hue and looked like watered down Kool Aid. On tasting, it was all sweet fruit and resembled nothing so much as soda pop. Very disappointing. So I opened up the 2003 Domain de la Combe “Au Renards,” which the more observant of you will notice is the same wine but a year younger. There was a huge difference between the wines, with the 2003 having a deeper, garnet color and a much more complex set of flavors that only got better as we finished the bottle a couple of hours later.

So far, this isn’t that unusual a story. It is true that 2003 is considered to be a better year than 2002 in Burgundy. In addition, there was the possibility that the 2002 was just past its prime. Finally, it could also be that that bottle was “corked” (i.e., spoiled). One of the sad truths is that many wines that are cellared—some say as many 5–10%—get corked. For what its worth, it hasn’t happened to me that much, but in fact that is what I thought had happened with the first bottle.

So here is where it gets strange. About 3 hours after pouring the wine from the first bottle, I came back to the scene of the crime and found that the color had completely changed. It now resembled the the deep garnet/ruby color that I had expected (and had seen in the 2003). More shocking was the fact that the wine was not only drinkable, but was close to outstanding. While it isn’t at all unusual for a wine to improve with more time in the glass as it gets exposed to air, this was the first time I had ever have a wine pull a Lazarus.

You gotta love a beverage that breathes life back into itself.

Here’s a quick and dirty list of red wines that I have had that are both affordable and exceptional. I’ll post some white wines later.

1.2005 Bodegas Olivares Monastrell Altos de la Hoya Jumilla This is a lovely bold wine from the Jumilla region of Spain, which has some of the oldest vines in Europe. There are lots of good bargains from this region of Spain. It has many of the characteristics of a Chateauneuf-du-Pape at a fraction of the cost
2. Henry’s Drive Pillar Box Red I’ve had a couple of these vintages and they are all just great. A very nice Australian blend of cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, and merlot. The Wine Advocate considers this one of the biggest wine bargains in world. I agree.
3. Thorn-Clarke Shiraz Terra Barossa This is an old favorite from Australia. Although I am mentioning only the Shiraz here, anything from this producer is a great bargain.
4. N.V. Fess Parker Lot 41 Frontier Red Yes, it is that Fess Parker. For those of you not old enough to remember, Fess Parker played Daniel Boone on TV in the 60s. He is now the owner of a very fine winery that produces a number of very nice wines. This one is reliably delicious.
5. 2005 Georges Dubœuf Juliénas I know what you’re thinking. Beaujolais? That insipid stuff that was marketed so successfully in the US in the 80s? The Julienas is not Beaujolais Nouveux, it is a Beaujolais Villages, which is a totally different animal altogether. This can give you a small sense of what a Burgundy wine might be, again at a fraction of the cost.