Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Wine Prices

Harvey Steiman tackles a perennial issue:

Last week Steven D. Levitt, the economics professor, made a pretty bold assertion in his Freakanomics blog for the New York Times. He basically said it’s better not to learn too much about wine because then you just wind up paying more.

Levitt, who confesses he doesn’t particularly like wine, recalled a tasting he organized in college to get his club to charge him lower dues. He didn’t want to pay for the expensive wines they served but he didn’t want to drink. He asked members to taste them blind alongside an inexpensive wine. They couldn’t tell the difference.

Oh my, not that again.

We have heard a lot of “emperor’s new clothes” theories about wine, that there’s no reason to pay a lot of money for a bottle because only experts can tell the difference when you can’t see the label. There are a lot of reasons this happens.

In contrast to Levitt, economist Orley Ashenfelter likes wine and has devoted a good deal of professional attention to it. In a well-known study, Ashenfelter applied statistical methods to the famous Judgment of Paris tasting. He concluded that:

Using a common statistical scheme, our software package established that there is enough concordance among the tasters that it makes sense to believe that the resulting ranking is not just a product of random chance.

To be sure, that doesn’t disprove Levitt’s argument. It suggests only that judging wine quality is not wholly subjective but rather has at least some objective-or, at least, replicable-components. In turn, this suggests that the oft-repeated canard that tasters can’t tell the difference between a $10 and $50 bottle of wine will hold only for the most inexperienced or ignorant tasters.

So maybe Levitt in fact is right that ignorance is, indeed, bliss. Or, at least, cheap.

Majella Sparkling Shiraz (Coonawarra) 2005

Gas grill capable of hitting 650°+. Wood chips in a smoking pouch. Pizza stone. It’s the next best thing to having your own wood fired pizza oven.

Standard pizza dough. Stubbs BBQ sauce (original not spicy). Sauteed red onion, diced. Smoked duck breast, diced. Smolked gouda, grated. Cilantro leaves, chopped. Assemble on pizza paddle.

Pizza onto stone. At 3 minutes, the bottom of the crust was beginging to show black spots, the top crust was brown and puffy, the cheese was melted, and everything was hot through. Slice and serve.

What to drink? Regular readers know that I firmly believe that Italian wines are fine with pizza, but also that there’s a better choice; namely, sparkling shiraz. The first time I had a sparkling shiraz with pizza was in Australia about 5 years ago. The context was unpromising: Apepperoni pizza from the local Pizza Hut after a long day of wine tasting in the Yarra Valley. It was an epiphany. Scrubbing bubbles and potent acidity refreshed the palate, slicing through the cheese and, let’s be honest, the grease. The pretty ruby color. The berry flavors. Yum. So why not try one with a California-style pizza?

I liked the 2003 Majella a lot. The 2005 is even better.

Beautiful deep purple. Intense berry flavors and aromas—blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, and maybe even some cranberry. Yummy. Grade: A-

Archery Summit Pinor Noir Premier Cuvee (Willamette Valley) 2003

A pleasant, albeit not a profound Pinot. Limpid ruby color. Light to medium bodied. Well balanced. Classic New World Pinot flavor and aroma markers. Cherry cola, cranberry, and green tea. Grade: B

Ridge Lytton Springs (Dry Creek Valley) 2001

When European wine snobs tell us that Zinfandel is incapable of producing great wine, this exceptional wine will be Exhibit A in the pro-Zinfandel case. At age 7+, it is moving into prime drinking territory. That’s late for Zinfandel, which is usually at its prime at age 4-8, but Zinfandel from a great vineyard in a great year is capable of becoming something very special. Lytton Springs, of couse, is one of America’s great Zinfandel vineyards and 2001 was an exceptional year for Zinfandel in the North Coast. The combination is exceptional. Bright fruit flavors mix with brambles and a very prominent dose of black pepper. Spicy, fruity, and tasty. It will be interesting to watch this wine continue to age (I’m lucky enough to have half-a-dozen bottles in the cellar). Although Zinfandel usually just gets older rather than evolving, truly prime Zinfandel like this is capable of maturing into something like an old claret with enough time.  I vividly recall tasting Ridge’s 1973 Langtry Zinfandel in 1994, when it reminded me of a mature St Julien. In 2022, when the Lytton is 21 years old, I’ll be 64, so the odds are fair that I’ll be around to see if this wine develops as well as the Langtry did. Grade: A

Grilled Boneless Leg of Lamb in Hoisin BBQ Sauce

For two good eaters.

• 2 pounds boneless leg of lamb


• ¼ cup Hoisin sauce


• 3 cloves garlic crushed


• 1 tablespoon chili garlic sauce


• 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar


• 2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce


• 1 tablespoon honey


• 1 tablespoon ketchup


• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper


• pinch sea salt


• 2 cloves garlic sliced lengthwise thinly


• salt and pepper

In a small bowl, combine Hoisin sauce, crushed garlic, chili garlic sauce, vinegar, soy sauce, honey, ketchup, salt and pepper. Mix well. With a sharp paring knife make small cuts all over lamb. Push garlic slices into holes. Season lamb with salt and pepper, rubbing in. Put lamb in a 1 gallon zip lock plastic bag and pour BBQ sauce over. Squeeze air out and put in refriegerator for 6-8 hours.

Make smoker pouch by combining 2 parts soaked pecan wood chips and 1 part dry pecan wood sawdust in foil, folding ends and sides over to make a pouch. Poke a few holes in pouch and place on the flavorizer bars of your grill. Turn heat on all burners to high. Let the grill heat until you smell smoke. Put lamb in the middle of the grill grate, meat side down. Sear for two minutes. Flip. Sear two minutes. Turn middle burner off. Close lid and cook 8 minutes. Flip lamb. Cook 8 more minutes. Check with instant read thermometer. You want the lamb around 125°, so that carry over will take it to perfectly medium-rare. Remove to cutting board, tent lightly with foil, allow to rest 10 minutes, slice thinly and serve with lentils and squash. Drink a California Cabernet Sauvignon with some age.

Lentils and Squash

• ¼ cup green lentils, picked over and rinsed


• 1 tablespoon olive oil


• 2 medium shallots, minced


• 3 cloves garlic, minced


• ½ teaspoon sea salt


• ¼ teaspoon ground white pepper


• ½ teaspoon garam masala


• ¼ cup crushed pecans


• 1 package frozen Cascadian Farms organic winter squash, thawed


• ½ cup corn kernels
• juice of 1 lime

In a 2-qt saucier pan, bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Add lentils, reduce heat to a simmer, and cook 15 minutes. Drain and set lentils aside.

Give saucier pan a quick cleaning. Preheat pan over medium heat. Add olive oil. When oil is hot, add shallots and garlic. Cook 2 minutes, stirring often. Add salt, pepper, and garam masala. Cook 1 minute, stirring often. Add pecans. Cook 1 minute, stirring often. Add squash. Cook 2 minutes, stirring often. Add corn and lentils. Cook until heated through. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

You can use frozen corn kernels if necessary, but I had grilled corn on the cob leftover from the night before and cut off the kernels for this purpose.

I did the whole thing outside, using the side burner of my gas grill for the lentils.

Pine Ridge Cabernet Franc (Napa Valley) 2000

This wine had no faults, but it also had no personality. Light body and generic red and black fruit flavors added up to an inoffensive but inconsequential wine. Grade: C

Behrens & Hitchcock Petit Verdot (Napa Valley) 2000

In both its Bordeaux homeland and California, Petit Verdot is almost always used as a blending grape rather than being vinified as a varietal wine.

The Petit Verdot grape variety is one of the six approved grapes for making red wines in the Bordeaux region of France. It is usually used as you would use a spice in cooking because a little bit goes a long way. Petit Verdot will often be blended as 1% to 3% of the total wine in order to take advantage of some of its most dominant characteristics. Petit Verdot has very deep purple color and a strong tannin structure. It is usually used to impart these features to the wine into which it is blended. Because Petit Verdot tends to ripen late in the season and is often lost to rains during harvest, it is following another variety, Carmenere, into near extinction in the Bordeaux region. (Link)

In 2000, however, Behrens & Hitchcock bottled a small lot of Petit Verdot. I believe this was a one time event. Given the high quality of this wine, that’s a very sad thing. It’s still a deep, deep purple that’s faded hardly at all. The bouquet is impressive, with blackberry, violets, and leather. On the palate, it suggests blackberry, white pepper, vanilla, and mocha java. Despite being almost 8 years old, it is still pretty firm with plenty of tannins. It likely would have aged another 8 years with no problems. Grade: A-

No Beer, No Civilization? No Way!

George Will’s latest column claims ”No Beer, No Civilization.”

The development of civilization depended on urbanization, which depended on beer. To understand why, consult Steven Johnson’s marvelous 2006 book, “The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World.” It is a great scientific detective story about how a horrific cholera outbreak was traced to a particular neighborhood pump for drinking water. And Johnson begins a mind-opening excursion into a related topic this way:

“The search for unpolluted drinking water is as old as civilization itself. As soon as there were mass human settlements, waterborne diseases like dysentery became a crucial population bottleneck. For much of human history, the solution to this chronic public-health issue was not purifying the water supply. The solution was to drink alcohol.”

Often the most pure fluid available was alcohol—in beer and, later, wine—which has antibacterial properties. Sure, alcohol has its hazards, but as Johnson breezily observes, “Dying of cirrhosis of the liver in your forties was better than dying of dysentery in your twenties.” Besides, alcohol, although it is a poison, and an addictive one, became, especially in beer, a driver of a species-strengthening selection process. ...

To avoid dangerous water, people had to drink large quantities of, say, beer. But to digest that beer, individuals needed a genetic advantage that not everyone had—what Johnson describes as the body’s ability to respond to the intake of alcohol by increasing the production of particular enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases. This ability is controlled by certain genes on chromosome four in human DNA, genes not evenly distributed to everyone. Those who lacked this trait could not, as the saying goes, “hold their liquor.” So, many died early and childless, either of alcohol’s toxicity or from waterborne diseases.

The gene pools of human settlements became progressively dominated by the survivors—by those genetically disposed to, well, drink beer. “Most of the world’s population today,” Johnson writes, “is made up of descendants of those early beer drinkers, and we have largely inherited their genetic tolerance for alcohol.”

All well and good, but it is likely that the earliest drinkers - from whom we are all apparently descended - were drinking wine (albeit not necessarily grape wine) rather than beer.

Lee Berger is “is a paleoanthropologist, physical anthropologist and archeologist and is best known for his work on Australopithecus africanus body proportions and the Taung Bird of Prey Hypothesis.” In his paper, Wine at the Dawn of Civilization, Berger explains that:

Fermentation is, of course, the process that produces certain alcoholic beverages like wine and beer. In general terms, fermentation is the breaking down of complex organic substances into simple organic substances. During the process, waste products are produced. The waste product most important for the production of consumable alcoholic beverages is ethyl alcohol. Fermentation to produce ethyl alcohol requires the presence of yeasts. For barley and other grains to ferment, yeasts must be introduced. In early societies, men and women may have accomplished this by adding human saliva, a good source of natural yeasts, to the mash by chewing grains and then spitting them into a container to ferment. Grapes and many other fruits, however, have yeasts naturally growing on their skins, so that with no additives and thus no deliberate input by humans, grape juice will turn into wine if just left to sit. This natural advantage over grains makes it likely that fruit-based beverages like wine were the first intoxicating beverages to be used by humans.

In Africa, where I conduct my explorations into human origins, many fruiting trees have natural yeasts present. Under certain conditions, these fruits ferment when they fall to the ground. One such tree, the marula, is legendary as a source of naturally occurring fermented alcohol. The legend, unfortunately, stems from filmed demonstrations made many years ago of cavorting monkeys and staggering elephants dining on fermented marula fruits; these were thought to be staged, but more recent studies have confirmed that many animals in Africa deliberately seek out fermented fruits in order to become intoxicated, and primates are among the most frequent elbow-benders. ...

So was the origin of civilization bound to the fermentation of grapes and the making of wine? Certainly the timing is right, and as I mentioned, humans and our ancestors have probably been seeking out ways of accessing fermented fruits for their intoxicating effects in Africa for tens of thousands, if not millions, of years. It really is not too much of a scientific leap of faith to suggest that once humans had conducted these early chemistry experiments and could control the process of fermentation, that it, along with complex changes in social organization, may have provided a critical stimulus to the development of the first permanent settlements, and then to extensive trade routes to allow the effective sharing of the product of the grape.

No wine, no civilization.