This is a one year old video that Andy Perdue from Wine Press Northwest shot during harvest. I finally succeeded in pasting the link here.

NW Winecast for Oct. 30: Pacific Rim Winemakers

If you have 30 minutes and want to learn more about us and me, you can go to the winefoot website and lesson to an interview I gave yesterday:

http://www.winefoot.com/index.php/2008/07/16/winemaker-interview-nicholas-quille-pacific-rim/

It always feels weird to listen to your own voice online…

I was just reading a post on Dr Vino’s blog (http://www.drvino.com/2008/07/10/alcohol-can-it-be-too-low/) about low alcohol wines. Why people love 15% overextracted wines puzzles me! When we (at Pacific RIm) make wines above 13% ethanol I get very uncomfortable as a prefer 11.5% and below. The Sweet Riesling and the Vin de Glaciere at 8-9% are great choice for low alcohol wines in our Riesling world if you want to test lower alcohol content wines. Why can’t folks make 12% light reds in this country is a mystery.

Edward Deitch finds some refreshing thinking by American winemakers.

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Yesterday I have received an email from a national restaurant chain announcing that they will now only purchase wines that have received 90 points plus from the Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast or Robert Parker. This is very sad news because all of this score madness is truly pushing winemakers to make wines that will please their local Wine Spectator, Enthusiast or Parker journalist. It is a bit of a self fullfilling prophecy, the “specialist” rate wines according to their taste, the buyers wanting to offer the best to their customers buy those highly rated wines, the same wines with the same styles end up everywhere forcing winemakers to compete with the same style if they want to get a score and sell their wines.

Do you buy on score? How much impact they have on you?