This constitutes the first and possibly the only time you will ever find me endorsing, recommending, and generally plugging a commercial product (that isn’t a bottle of wine or sake) here on Vinography.

There are two clear reasons for this.

The first is that the product I am endorsing is free. The second is because I designed it.

Those of you who know a little bit about me may be aware that by day I run an interactive design and strategy consulting firm called HYDRANT, which, among other things designs some of the best e-commerce and web applications in the world. Apart from employing my company’s expertise a little in the design of this blog, I generally tend to keep these two careers of mine entirely separate. Or at least I did until about 18 months ago when we agreed to help a company called Vinfolio build the best wine cellar management software on the planet.

And today I am extremely proud to announce the launch of a public beta of that software, under the name VinCellar. This is a beta version of a web-based software product, which means that it still has some rough edges, only includes about 80% of the functionality that we have designed, and is subject to somewhat radical modification at any moment as we see fit, but in spite of that, it totally kicks ass.

VinCellar is designed to help a specific type of wine lover: anyone who has a wine collection that numbers at least one more bottle than they are capable of remembering off the top of their head. The more wine you own, the more useful you will likely find this software application, but even those with a very modest number of bottles may discover that this software will help them manage, maintain, and enjoy the wine they own.

Until today, there has really only been one truly sophisticated wine cellar management solution out there. While there are a host of desktop and web based software systems on the market, ranging in price from free to several thousands of dollars, I’ve seen almost all of them, and the only one that actually has most of the functionality needed to help wine lovers manage their cellars is a free web-based application called CellarTracker.

The only problem is that in addition to sophisticated functionality, CellarTracker offers its users an incredibly horrible, teeth-grindingly painful, ugly, and all around completely unusable user interface. Of course, that doesn’t mean that thousands of people haven’t gritted their teeth and learned to use it despite these massive usability flaws.

But the best tools should not only NOT be painful to use, they should be pleasurable. Just ask an iPhone owner if you need a further explanation of this principle.

And just as Apple’s graphical user interface showed the world that there was an alternative to DOS based computing in 1984, it is my hope that many wine lovers will recognize the degree to which VinCellar represents a new paradigm in interacting with your wine collection. In short, wine cellar management just got a hell of a lot more fun.

The main purpose of this application is, of course, helping you do stuff with (or to) your wine collection — from figuring out what you’ve got, where it is, how much it’s worth, what you’ve bought, and what you want to drink, to what you probably should drink, what you should sell, and what you might not know about your wine consuming habits because you’ve never looked at the trends before.

In addition to tools to easily add, remove, reposition, edit, sell, analyze, and generally keep track of individual bottles or whole collections, the application also allows you to rate wines, add your own tasting notes, and see the scores and notes that others (including major wine critics) have made on any wine. These notes are pretty much the most useful part of CellarTracker, and they will likely become a very important source of value in VinCellar over time as well.

Finally, while it might be just enough to change the game by offering 98% of the same functionality as your major competitor with a much more usable interface, VinCellar today has dozens of useful (and entertaining) features that don’t exist in any cellar management application, such as the ability to visually browse your wine cellar by label image, the ability to perform actions on multiple wines at once, and the tools to do sophisticated graphical analysis on all or a portion of your collection. And that’s just for starters. Some of the features we’ve designed are so cool that we’re not finished implementing them yet, so you’ll just have to hang in there.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for indulging my excitement, and I hope you’ll take the time to go check out VinCellar. Set up an account and add or import some wines to check out how the thing works.

It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn good. A few more features, a few bug fixes, and a bunch more tasting notes will take it from pretty good to awesome.

Let me know what you think: www.vincellar.com

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By W. Blake Gray

“Spring Snow” is a pretty good nickname for a sake because it sounds not just delicate and natural, but outright freaky when you think about it. Snowing in springtime? You don’t see that often.

Same for its sake namesake — although in this case, blame not Mother Nature, but the US government.

Akitabare “Shunsetsu” (”spring snow”) Nama Honjozo is highly unusual because it combines a class of sake we often see in the U.S. — nama — with one that we don’t, honjozo.

Honjozo sakes are basically the same quality as junmai sakes, because at least 30 percent of the outer part of the rice is polished away. They’re very popular in Japan. But because of US tax law on imported sake, they’re uncommon here.

“Junmai” means “pure rice”: nothing but rice, water and koji mold goes into a junmai sake.
For honjozos, brewer’s alcohol may be added during the process. Usually this is done to create a lighter, less intense, more subdued style. Think about the difference between Italian Pinot Grigio and Alsatian Pinot Gris. The honjozo is more like the Pinot Grigio — crisp, light-bodied, meant for food, at the sacrifice of some aromatic and flavor intensity. Yet there are plenty of mild dishes in Japanese cuisine that a richly flavored sake (or a full-bodied, super-aromatic Pinot Gris) would overpower.

Honjozo sakes are big in Japan partly because of their food friendliness, and partly because their easy quaffability makes it easy to drink quickly enough to get shitfaced. Japanese don’t drink halfway.

However, while honjozo sakes are generally the same price or cheaper than junmais in Japan, in the US they are significantly more expensive. The US government taxes them at a higher rate because alcohol is added, so they drop into the same category as fortified wines like Port.

That, and the fact that junmai has the better connotation in the US of being “pure,” has kept honjozo sakes from making any headway in this market.

This honjozo is an oddity because it’s also “nama,” which means unpasteurized. It doesn’t taste like any other sake I’ve had on these shores. More on that in a moment.

The brewery, based in Akita prefecture in chilly northern Honshu on the Japan Sea side, claims to be bound by tradition. The company’s junmai label proclaims “koshiki junzukuri” — the old way. And the brewery claims to have been using some of the same tools for the past century (In case you’re wondering, the US Air Force didn’t bother flying that far north.)
And yet, Akitabare’s sake lineup is pretty innovative. The daiginjo is bottle-aged for two years, which is almost heresy in an industry focused on freshness. And then there’s this sake, which — because it’s nama — is most definitely “drink now.”

Before that spring snow melts.

Tasting Notes:
The aroma is complex, with notes of cream, mustard powder, orange rind, oyster shell, melon and shrimp. But it doesn’t prepare you for what you’re about to taste. Neither does the mouthfeel, which is a big plus: it’s tight and creamy at the same time, with a taut center and a long taut finish.

What I taste from this is melon, and plenty of it — the characteristic of a nama, but definitely not a characteristic of most honjozos. I also taste notes of cream and oyster shell. It’s a little pungent and never fattens up. That’s a good thing — it’s very food-friendly.

Food Pairing:
I had it with Chinese delivery food — sliced fish sauteed with bok choy, spinach with garlic and vegetable chow mein — and it was excellent.

Overall Score: around 9

How Much?: $20

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

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I’m sorry about that headline. I couldn’t help myself. Everyone else is doing it.

When I first started writing about wine several years ago, I thought one of the things I might do is help my readers keep up with the health news surrounding wine, so I started posting little tidbits every time I saw a news item about the health benefits of wine. After about three weeks it was clear that unless I was planning on writing the wine health blog, there was just no way I could possibly cover it all.

I’ve speculated before about why the health benefits of wine seems to be such a popular topic with researchers and the only reason I could come up with was that the researchers just need the merest shred of an excuse to spend their grant monies on booze.

But don’t take that as demeaning the quality of or the need for such research. I’m just a bit bemused as to how much of it seems to be pouring out of the halls of academia around the world, proclaiming that yes, red wine will cure just about anything.

The latest bit of research purportedly shows that drinking red wine while eating cooked meat is better for you than eating the same meat while sipping a Diet Coke, for instance.

Of course, we’ve known since ancient times that drinking wine with food was good for you — in the old days it was the water that got you sick (and occasionally the food too) so consuming massive quantities of wine was not only fun, but good for staving off dysentery and other nasties. Red wine with your tomatoes, anyone?

This most recent research focuses on wine’s antioxidant properties, which seem to reduce the toxins that are a byproduct of our guts trying to break down the fats in the meat. Eating steak apparently shortens your life, but drinking red wine while you do it makes everything OK! (in addition to curing Leprosy, of course).

Like all such studies, we must take these results with a grain of salt, but they certainly are encouraging, nonetheless. Not like you needed an excuse to pop the cork on a nice bottle with your steak dinner….

Read the full article.

Thanks to Jack at Fork & Bottle for sending me the link.

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Without diminishing the serious threat of the California wildfires to homes and property, wine enthusiasts can’t help wondering about the impact of fire and smoke on the grapes.

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Writer Richard Fadeley recently returned from his annual pilgrimage to France. He offers a report on Bordeaux with a variety of tasting notes on Bordeaux of good quality and value.

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Coinciding with our Wine Focus, Jorge Eduardo Castillo is talking about the wine he enjoys most on a really, really, really hot day: Sauvignon Blanc.

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