Bruni went on to suggest that Americans have blinded themselves to the fact that alcohol abuse is an enormous public health problem. “Wrongly, perilously, we tend not to attribute the same destructive powers to [alcohol] that we do to powders, capsules and vials,” he wrote. “Because drinking is legal for adults, safe in moderation, the rightful font of epicurean revelries and the foundation of a multibillion-dollar industry, it gets something of a pass.” Bruni was quick to say that he wasn’t advocating a return to Prohibitionist policies—“I’m not about to abandon my white Burgundy” (I guess premox hasn’t been an issue for him)—but that he was simply baffled by the “paucity of public discussion” concerning the damage wrought by heavy drinking.

Bruni overstated his case; there’s been plenty of public discussion about the risks of drinking and driving, for instance, and most people surely understand that excessive alcohol consumption is generally a bad idea. Still, it was a thought-provoking column, and for me it raised an interesting question: have we—oenophiles—deluded ourselves into thinking that wine is more benign than it really is? Although it’s not as potent as, say, vodka, wine is an alcoholic beverage. Yet, judging by the way we think and talk about wine, and the gusto with which many of us drink it, the alcohol element seems almost to have been written out of the equation. In an essay about wine for The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik offered the following observation: “Remarkably, nowhere in wine writing…would a Martian learn that the first reason people drink wine is to get drunk. To read wine writing, one would think that wine is simply another luxury food, like smoked salmon or caviar or chocolate; the one idea that is banished is that it is a powerful drug, which can wash away, in a few minutes, the ability to discriminate at all.”

I disagree with Gopnik on one point: while lots of people do drink wine to get inebriated, I think those of us who have succumbed to oenophilia consume wine mostly because we like how it tastes. However, there is no denying his larger point—the rhetoric of wine appreciation does obscure the fact that wine contains alcohol (yes, there has been a vigorous debate in recent years about alcohol levels in wine, but that’s really a debate about aesthetics, not health factors). And I do wonder if this breeds a cavalier attitude about wine consumption and encourages excessive drinking. I generally limit myself to two glasses a day. On social occasions, however, I will think nothing of tossing back four or five glasses, and while I never get drunk, the fact that I have no hesitation to consume that much wine does suggest a certain insouciance with regard to wine’s alcohol content—a belief that wine is somehow different than other libations.

So what’s your take on this topic? Are wine geeks too cavalier about the alcohol factor? Have we conned ourselves into thinking that wine is not truly an alcoholic beverage, or that the alcohol content doesn’t matter in the same way that it does with other potables? Over time, have you become more conscious or less conscious of the amount of wine that you consume? I’d love to get your thoughts on this one.

It would be good to learn more about the mystery man at the center of this latest fraud scandal, Antonio Castanos. Here’s what we do know. Castanos allegedly consigned the auction lots that were identified by Don Cornwell as suspect, and a number of those lots were withdrawn from the sale after Cornwell went public with his concerns. Castanos owns a restaurant in Los Angeles called Guido’s. Here’s a picture of it:

Judging by the restaurant’s wine list, it seems a little odd that Castanos would be selling a large cache of older DRC at an auction in London. Here are a couple of questions that I hope we’ll see answered soon:

-Where and when did Castanos obtain the wines that he allegedly consigned to the London auction?

-Has Castanos made consignments to other Spectrum auctions, and has Spectrum ever paid for him to travel to any of its sales?

-Has Castanos sold rarities to any retailers and brokers?

-Have any of the bottles that Castanos allegedly consigned to the London sale been rejected in the past by other auction houses or returned to other auction houses on account of concerns about authenticity?

- Does Castanos have any ties to Rudy Kurniawan?

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Robert Parker posted an update the other day on eBob regarding the status of his investigation into the Pancho Campo controversy. He said that he hoped to “have the conclusions within several weeks” but that the “blogger Budd…has been reluctant to talk with us.” That was evidently a lie; Jim Budd quickly responded by saying that Parker’s investigators have not asked to meet with him and that in response to a request for information from Parker’s attorney, Stephen Miller, he had handed over emails and other documents related to the Campo matter. He cited emails from Miller thanking him for his cooperation. Harold Heckle, the Associated Press reporter who helped call attention to Campo’s questionable dealings with various regional wine associations in Spain, has likewise shared documents with Miller.

I received the same request for information from Miller, and on the same day that he reached out to Budd, January 19^th. Unlike Budd, I ignored the email. For one thing, I had nothing to share; in this case, I was simply a parasitical blogger commenting on the various nuggets that Budd and Heckle had unearthed. But even if I’d had relevant information, I wouldn’t have handed it over to Miller and Parker. In my opinion, it is not the role of journalists to assist public figures with private investigations into scandals of their own making. Frankly, I’m surprised that Budd and Heckle have offered Parker their cooperation. I understand that they are eager to see all the facts brought to light, but I don’t think they should be helping Parker, and especially not after he tried to bully them into silence by threatening a lawsuit. And now Parker expresses his gratitude for the cooperation by casually slandering Budd? I believe that in rural Maryland they have a word for this sort of thing: it’s called chutzpah.

At the time, I had just started to dabble in wine writing and had nothing like the knowledge, tasting experience, and pomposity that I have now. However, I had tried Yquem, and judging by the pale color of the wine that was brought to us, I immediately suspected it wasn’t a Sauternes. The first sip sealed it: although it was a sweet wine, it definitely wasn’t a Sauternes, and it sure as hell wasn’t Yquem. My wife and I were baffled, and we spent several minutes speculating, sotto voce, about what had happened and discussing what to do. Had the sommelier made a mistake, or was he trying to put one over on us? Had one of his colleagues poured the wrong wine? Should we say something or not? In the end, we decided to keep our mouths shut. The Yquem had been offered gratis, and whatever the reason for the switcheroo, we didn’t want to put the sommelier on the spot. But just to reassure ourselves that we weren’t nuts, we went to the bar late the next morning and ordered a glass of Yquem, which confirmed that there had indeed been an imposter in our Riedels the night before.

So did we make the right call, or should we have said something? Have you ever had a similar experience, and how did you handle it? And let me also throw in a bonus question, prompted by all the renewed chatter about counterfeit wines: If you drank a famous wine—say, the 47 Cheval Blanc—and loved it, but later learned that your bottle had been a fake, how would you feel?

The weekend naturally included some wine drinking. Things kicked on Thursday with a tasting of Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion hosted by this year’s honored vintner, Prince Robert de Luxembourg, whose family owns the two châteaux, and winemaker Jean-Philippe Delmas. We tasted Haut-Brion and La Mission from 2000, 1990, 1989, 1982, and 1961—a murderers’ row of renowned vintages. Having already posted tasting notes here from an Haut-Brion/La Mission blowout in Los Angeles in December 2010, I will spare you more tasting notes. Suffice it to say that the wines were sensational. The two 61s were epic, ditto the 89 La Mission. The 89 Haut-Brion was great, but this was the first time I’ve encountered a bottle with a slight nick—the wine was just a little raspy on the finish (oh, look who’s gotten spoiled). The 82 La Mission was not showing quite as well as it usually does, either, though it still offered abundant pleasure. The 82 Haut-Brion, on the other hand, was brilliant; as these things go, it remains an underrated wine. The 90s and 2000s were outstanding, too.

But that wasn’t the end of it; the tasting was followed by a lunch at which they served the 1975 La Mission and the 1959 Haut-Brion. The 75 was wonderful, but the 59 was incandescent. It was a decadently rich wine, but shot through with amazing vibrancy and freshness. There were so many flavor sensations—sweet, earthy, leathery, smoky, salty—and such depth of flavor that it was almost head-spinning. I could go on trying to describe the 59, but it might be more effective simply to describe my reaction to it: thunderstruck. I’d brought my glass of the 89 Haut-Brion and the 61 Haut-Brion up to the lunch, and to taste those three colossi alongside one another was truly one of those pinch-me moments. I’ve criticized Bordeaux quite a bit in recent years, but there is something very special about these properties, Haut-Brion and La Mission, and a great claret is still one of life’s great pleasures. As I was sunning myself by the pool later, it occurred to me that I could get used to days like that.

Much wine was poured and consumed at the auction on Saturday afternoon. I tasted the 97 Harlan for the first time in a long time, and while it wasn’t a flawed bottle (there was a touch of volatility, but nothing unbearable), it failed to impress me again. I found it overripe, overoaked, and generally just overdone. If you like them packed and stacked, to borrow a Parkerism, it is a dandy wine; if you don’t, it ain’t. I spent most of the auction nursing glasses of Bruno Giacosa’s Barbaresco Asili Riserva. Someone in southwest Florida evidently has a Giacosa jones and had gifted the festival a seemingly limitless supply of 2001 and 2004 Asili red label Riserva. The 01 was still very tight but delicious nonetheless. The 04, on the other hand, was drinking beautifully despite its youth; it was a voluptuous, almost flamboyant Barbaresco, but with enough structure underneath all that glorious baby fat to ensure a long life ahead. What a wine.

However, the highlight of the day for me was the 1989 Chateau Pétrus, which more than lived up to its reputation. It was an astonishingly rich and complex wine, but there was also elegance and freshness to it. The freshness was the key—a good Bordeaux leaves a feeling of refreshment on the palate, which is a quality that the Harlan, by contrast, conspicuously lacked. How great was the Pétrus? After drinking the last sip, I kept dipping my nose into the empty glass to savor the floral perfume that had lingered—heaven.

So it was a terrific weekend in Naples that raised a huge amount of money for some important causes, and as a very small footnote, it gave me the opportunity to experience two wines that were on my bucket list: the 89 Pétrus and the 59 Haut-Brion. Once you get deeply immersed in this hobby of ours, it is inevitable that you begin to fantasize about tasting the Holy Grail wines. Over the years, I’ve been fortunate enough to cross quite a few of those wines off my list, but not all of them. The one I most yearn to taste is a wine that has been in the news this week on account of that controversial auction in London: the 1945 Romanée-Conti (I know, I’m sadly unoriginal). A bottle of the 45 was included in the London auction, and although it was one of the numerous DRC lots that Don Cornwell had pegged as questionable, Spectrum/Vanquish sold it anyway, for just over $39,000.

The 45 RC is the most celebrated wine ever produced by Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, and not just because it was from the year that the war ended. It was also the last RC to be made from pre-phylloxera vines. Those ancient vines, supposedly planted in 1585(!), didn’t fare well during the war years, and they had to be ripped out after the 45 vintage. Only 608 bottles of the 45 RC were released, and I can’t imagine that more than just a few are still in existence. The first wine from the replanted vineyard was the 1952 RC, which I had the pleasure of tasting a few years ago and which is a pretty special wine in its own right. I am reasonably sure that that’s the closest I will ever come to the mythical 45, but what the hell—I can dream the impossible dream.

So what’s your bucket list wine, the one wine you would most love to experience? Have you gone so far as to try to figure out how you might snag a taste of that wine, or are you content to leave it in the realm of fantasy? This strikes me as a fun topic for a Friday in mid-February, and I am eager to see what wines are on your drink-before-I-die list.

Kurniawan, who is apparently in his thirties, is truly an international man of mystery. He burst onto the wine scene in the mid-2000s and was soon spending an estimated $1 million a month at auctions. He claimed to be the son of a rich ethnic Chinese businessman in Indonesia and said that “Kurniawan” was an assumed name. Investigators for Bill Koch, who is now suing Kurniawan over the sale of allegedly fake wines, have determined that Kurniawan’s real name is Zhen Wang Huang and that he’s actually from China, not Indonesia (the embroidered biography obviously calls to mind Hardy Rodenstock). A Los Angeles Times story from 2006 gave a vivid portrait of Kurniawan’s Gatsbyesque existence. I encountered Kurniawan several times—at a charity wine dinner in New York, at a La Paulée de New York, and at an Acker Merrall auction in late 2007, where he casually dropped several hundred thousand dollars on a cache of 1982 Château Lafleur. He was a wispy, bespectacled figure who dressed like a hipster/dandy hybrid and who could have easily passed himself off as a teenager (if I owned a liquor store and he came in, I’d card him). It would be easy to say now that I detected something fishy, but I wasn’t so much suspicious as just baffled—by his youthful appearance, and by the crazy amounts of money he was spending.

Kurniawan first ran into trouble in April 2007, when he attempted to sell six magnums of 1982 Château Le Pin at a Christie’s auction in Los Angeles. The bottles were pictured on the cover of the auction catalog; the château saw the catalog and immediately contacted Christie’s to say that based on the photo, the magnums were clearly fakes. Christie’s reexamined the bottles, came to the same conclusion, and pulled them from the sale (ironically, the head of North American wine sales for Christie’s at the time was Richard Brierley, who now oversees the wine department at Vanquish). In April 2008, Kurniawan attempted to sell multiple lots of fake Domaine Ponsot wines at an Acker Merrall auction in New York. Laurent Ponsot, the winery’s owner, traveled to New York to prevent the sale from going forward, and the wines were pulled at the last minute (the counterfeits included bottles of Ponsot’s Clos St-Denis from 1945, 1949, 1959, 1962, 1966, and 1971. The tipoff there: Ponsot didn’t begin producing Clos St-Denis until 1982).

Kurniawan more or less vanished after that. Koch filed his lawsuit in 2009, and it included details of significant financial problems: Kurniawan had defaulted on loans from Acker Merrall, from whom he had borrowed over $10 million, and from New York’s Emigrant Savings Bank, which had extended him a $3 million loan. Kurniawan is apparently still in Los Angeles, where he owns a wine shop called The Wine Hotel. It would be quite amazing if he is indeed trying to sell wines via auction again; given his reputation and the kind of scrutiny that auctions are now receiving on account of the fraud issue, did he really think that he could slip one past the market? What’s even more amazing, though, is that Spectrum and Vanquish haven’t withdrawn all of the DRCs in question (and it is worth noting that Cornwell has said that there appear to be problems with some older Bordeaux that are also being auctioned off tonight and that those wines may have a Kurniawan connection, as well; Cornwell hasn’t yet indicated what specifically is wrong with the Bordeaux bottles).  Their reputations have already suffered a huge blow as a result of Cornwell’s sleuthing, and to proceed with the sale of any of these wines strikes me as downright suicidal. At any rate, this entire episode is a case study in digital empowerment, and the moral of the story is clear: Don’t fuck with the Internet.

Finally, Keith Levenberg has chimed in with a lengthy critique of the criticism leveled against the natural movement. He accuses me of playing “cheap rhetorical games” in expressing skepticism about the natural idea, which is an interesting indictment coming in an essay that displays an impressive amount of authorial gamesmanship itself. For instance, Levenberg notes that I’ve criticized natural advocates for refusing to define exactly what they mean by “natural wine”, but he then cites a passage in my Slate article about natural wines in which it appears that I provided a “nearly comprehensive” definition. However, I made clear in that passage that I was simply summarizing the general description offered by natural proponents themselves, and it is a little cheeky of Levenberg to try to pass it off as my “definition” (particularly as I went on, in the Slate piece, to point out all of the holes in the natural ethos and how conceptually muddled it is). His post is riddled with this sort of stuff; I think he was laboring mightily to score points and shift the terms of the debate. That said, Levenberg is an excellent writer and one of the keenest observers of the wine scene, and his broadside against yours truly is worth reading.

I don’t see much point in unpacking all of his claims. The article was clearly fired off in anger, and the anger is understandable: Elia’s magazine has folded, and that’s a tough blow. However, I do think his comments about lost romance are worth pondering. There is an element of truth to what he says. Wine has become a big business, and all the chatter about points and prices, about social media strategies and distribution channels, can be dispiriting. There is no denying that numerical ratings, marketing, and corporatization have taken some of the soul out of wine. They have surely taken the soul out of certain wines and wine regions (here’s looking at you, Bordeaux and Napa). If you want to focus on the negative, there is plenty to focus on.

But I hardly think the romance is gone from wine. Consider Burgundy; yes, the most sought-after wines are insanely expensive now, but it is still a place dominated by artisans and suffused with rustic charm. When you see the pickers clinging to the vertiginous hillsides of Germany’s Mosel Valley, working the same land the Romans worked, or listen to Jean-Louis Chave talking about his family’s 500-year winemaking tradition, how can you not be in love with wine and all that it represents? As it happens, I received a letter yesterday from Mauro Mascarello, thanking me for an article I’d written about a tasting of his Barolos. In the letter, Mascarello paid tribute to his late father Gepin, describing his tireless efforts on behalf of the estate, his commitment to quality, and the strong bonds he formed with area growers (“concluding deals with a simple handshake”). It is a wonderfully evocative, very moving note that I will keep and treasure—a reminder to me of what I adore about wine and the people who make it.

In his parting shot, Elia wrote, “We miss stories about winemakers, about their hard work and their purple hands.” Those stories are still out there, in abundance, and it doesn’t take a lot of effort to find them. I’m sorry that QRW has folded, and there is much to lament about the wine world these days. But is the romance lost? Not even close.

Eric Asimov, the wine writer for The New York Times, did a piece last week defending the natural wine movement against its critics, including yours truly. Eric is an excellent columnist, but he fired in the wrong direction in this instance. Eric mischaracterized the criticism that has been leveled against the natural movement and is far too accepting of the claims that it makes on its own behalf.

A constant refrain among natural advocates is that people who challenge the natural movement feel somehow threatened by it, and regrettably, Eric repeated that canard. Speaking for myself, I can say that I don’t feel at all threatened. And why would I? I am a wine hack, with no personal stake in this matter. I’m merely offering my observations, and one thing I’ve observed is that natural advocates do not like to have their ideas interrogated and habitually assert that anyone who takes issue with their pronouncements is doing so because they feel threatened. It is a very self-flattering claim, and it is also a way of ducking debate. I understood why they do it, but Eric surely knows that people like David Schildknecht, Terry Theise, and Andrew Jefford, three of the most intelligent commentators on the wine scene, are not acting out of fear when they question various aspects of the natural canon.

Eric wrote that “natural wines offer an ideal…far better to absorb and consider rather than stamp a foot in annoyance.” But thoughtful consideration is precisely what people like Schildknecht and Jefford have been giving to the natural ethos. Natural partisans make all sorts of claims, those claims have been scrutinized, and I think the scrutiny has demonstrated that the natural movement is long on stridency and dogma and woefully short on intellectual coherence. Eric stated that “natural-wine partisans refuse to be pinned down in a manner that subjects them to lawyerly argument.” What exactly is lawyerly about asking them to define what that they mean by the term “natural”? If they are going to classify wines as “natural”, aren’t they obliged to explain what it takes to earn that distinction? Schildknecht put it perfectly in his recent broadside against Jonathan Nossiter: “The question at issue with natural wine…is how can its adherents routinely reject wines because of one or another thing that was done to them, while refusing to draw the logical conclusion that some subset of practices serves as a litmus test of legitimacy?”

(Eric compared the natural wine movement to the Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s a facile analogy that falls at the first hurdle: while OWS is a protest movement, the natural insurgency is an advocacy movement, and that imposes very different demands on its proponents.)

I’m increasingly of the view that Schildknecht, Jefford, and other skeptics have done the natural movement the grave disservice of actually taking it seriously. I’m no longer sure it deserves to be taken seriously; I believe that for a lot of these people, the term “natural” is just a slogan used to champion a particular set of wines that happen to please their palates and conform to their prejudices. A while back, I had an exchange with one prominent naturalista who told me that a certain California winery could never be considered “natural” even if it adhered to all of the core tenets of naturalism because it produced too much wine. I almost fell out of my chair laughing. It seems many natural advocates arrange the goalposts to suit their own tastes and biases. Just look at the contrasting attitude vis a vis chaptalization and acidification. The latter is deemed strictly verboten, but chaptalization is not a disqualifying intervention, and I think the reason for that is pretty obvious: adding sugar is acceptable because it has been a traditional practice in northern Europe, and that’s where the natural movement has its roots. I find that natural proponents are curiously selective about these and other matters.

One issue that Eric sidestepped entirely is the fact it is journalists, importers, and retailers who are making most of the noise about natural wines and turning into an ideological crusade. Forgive me for quoting myself here, but as I wrote in Slate, “Winemakers are the ultimate pragmatists and empiricists. Most who work in a ‘natural’ way are doing so not to be fashionable or politically correct, but because they think it produces better results. And as any competent vintner will tell you, winemaking can’t be reduced to a recipe, and process alone doesn’t account for quality. The fact that so much of the conversation about natural wines is being driven by nonpractitioners makes it hard to assign it much weight.” Aubert de Villaine and Paul Draper have worked in a “natural” way for decades, but they have never categorized their wines as “natural” or peddled the kind of dogmatism that is standard fare with the natural crowd, and that’s very telling.

As science and technology exert ever more influence in our vineyards and cellars, there’s an important discussion to be had about the winemaking process and how much intervention is too much. From what I’ve seen, however, many natural advocates just aren’t really interested in an exchange of ideas. They apparently want to be free to claim, as some do, that natural wines are healthier than conventionally produced ones—a completely unfounded assertion—and not have that statement or others like it challenged. I think that instead of criticizing the critics, Eric would have been better off casting a more skeptical eye at the natural movement itself.

So wine is turning up in some strange places these days, which I suppose can be taken as an encouraging sign—further evidence that wine is shedding its highbrow image and becoming a mainstream American habit. Wine is even encroaching on beer’s turf; a number of baseball stadiums are now selling cabernets and chardonnays alongside the Bud Light. Of course, wine is now on the menu at baseball games for the same reason prominent chefs, restaurateurs, and food purveyors (Danny Meyer, Lobel’s) are turning up at the old ballpark: teams are trying to cater to the most affluent fans, and offering wine is seen as one way of pulling them in and keeping them happy (and spending money). So while I do think wine is losing the elitist taint, some businesses are clearly using wine as a means of appealing to those with particularly deep pockets.

The Starbucks story is the one that most intrigues me. At the moment, Starbucks offers wine and beer at five locations in Seattle and one in Portland, Oregon. The wine choices include an Oregon Pinot Noir, a Prosecco, and an Argentine Malbec. The company hasn’t disclosed whether the alcoholic beverages have boosted traffic but says the addition of wine and beer has proven popular with customers, and the fact that they are now expanding the program suggests that this is indeed the case. I could certainly see kicking back with a wine or beer at a Starbucks; some of the stores are quite comfortable, and depending on the hour and my mood, a wine or beer might be preferable to the house specialty.

However, Starbucks is known as a coffee merchant, and given the strength of its brand identity, I wonder if it can really diversify on a broad scale. Some Starbucks patrons in Southern California, interviewed by The Los Angeles Times, were not enthusiastic about the new menu items. “If I wanted a beer, I’d go to bar,” Doug Tanaka, a 48-year-old police officer from Valencia, told the paper. “I bring my grandkids in here. I don’t want to have to deal with a drunk if I’m having coffee.” (Given that Tanaka is a cop, one can assume that the feeling would be mutual.)  It will be interesting to see if Starbucks can fashion itself into a combination coffeehouse-wine bar. Let’s just hope they don’t get cutesy and put a merlot macchiato on the menu.