I was buying a few bottles of Amalie Robert Pinot Noir from a local distributor. This is not the usual deal where you buy in the store; instead we did a separate deal over email and I met the guy at his car and he handed over my wine.

What was funny is that I was sure he brought me a much more expensive Archery Summit wine. Why? Mostly because the logo on the foil end cap was nearly the same.

The traditional packaging of wine, which uses a cork, usually wraps the neck of the bottle in what is called a foil cap. In the not-so-distant past, the cap was made with some kind of lead, so you had to be careful not to ingest any by accident. These days, I think another soft metal is used.

This cap is a nice place for the producer to place their mark. And in the wine cellar, if you store your bottles on their side, the neck cap is often the best way to identify a bottle so that you can pull the right one out to enjoy with your meal or give as a gift to someone.

Here are the two foil cap logos in question. One of them was a $28 Pinot from Amalie Robert. The other could be on a $150+ Pinot from Archery Summit. (It’s not, but let’s just pretend, OK?) Can you see my confusion? Can you easily tell one from the other?

The reality is that wine vintage doesn’t matter in many cases, maybe in most cases. But in some situations it can offer a lot of insight.

First, for starters, the vintage of a wine is the year that the grapes were harvested, not bottled and sold. Once the fruit is picked, the juice then goes on a journey which will result in it being available to you the consumer at some later time. For the northern hemisphere, this means that you could see a white wine in the year following its harvest. Many red varieties and a few whites like Chardonnay will improve with some cask aging and bottle aging before being sold. For example, the Domaine Serene 2008 Evanstad Reserve Pinot Noir (a red wine) was not released to consumers until May of 2012, three and a half years after the grapes were harvested. Usually Cabernet wines are kept the longest in bottle before release.

Where Vintage Doesn’t Matter

The first surprise is that for a lot of winemaking regions, the vintage doesn’t factor in to the quality of the resulting wine. This is because for many parts of the world, the climate is too dry during the growing season and the vines must be irrigated to produce fruit. When you have irrigation and plenty of sunshine at work, there is practically no year-to-year variation. For places like the Walla Walla region of Washington State and a lot of the warm-weather California grapes like Cabernet, there really are no “good” years or “bad” years.

This can be a good thing for the consumer. If you find a producer you really like, the major variation for these wines will be in the technique of the winemaker rather than in the growing season. This means that if you find a wine producer and you like their product, you can pretty much guarantee that they will produce a consistently good product. Any change between years is likely due to a change in winemaking technique. This really simplifies the complexity of choosing a wine to buy.

Another place where vintage doesn’t factor in to a buying decision is in white wines such as Pinot Gris, Reisling  and Chardonnay or in rose’ wines. This is because white wines really should be consumed within no more than a couple of years of their harvest. I have made the mistake of keeping a rose’ or white too long and the taste was nothing like what I was expecting. Instead of being bright and fresh, the wine was flabby or sour. These wines simply don’t improve with bottle age, so the adage should be “drink up!”

So why even put a vintage year on bottles of wine where it doesn’t matter? Partly this is because there is a tradition and expectation of vintage wine being better. Also, it’s an easy way to know how old the wine is. Red wines from Napa, Italy and Bordeaux will usually improve with bottle age. And whites or rose wines will sour with bottle age. So the year is a good way to know if you have a red that is too young or a white that is too old.

Where Vintage Matters

I was having dinner with a group of business associates and I suggested some wine from the wine list. The restaurant had bottles from two different vintages of one of my favorite Oregon red wines, Belle Pente Estate Reserve Pinot Noir. The years were 2007 and 2008, so we got a bottle of each. Now this was the same vineyard, same winemaker, same method and just one year of difference. We held a glass from each year side-by-side and from the very first you could see a dramatic difference. 2008 was heralded by many critics as the best vintage of the decade for Willamette Pinot. 2007 got slammed as a terrible year because of being a very cool and rainy year. So the 2008 wine was quite a few shades darker than the 2007 wine for one thing.

This lighter shade usually means that the hotter 2008 season produced a grape with a lot more fruit intensity when the grapes were harvested and the cooler 2007 had less intensity available. This is a factor often called “extraction” and is under the winemaker’s control as well. The 2008′s were considered a good wine to store away for future drinking because the wine would grow more complex and interesting over time.

But is the 2008 wine really better than the 2007? A lot of people are finding that the lighter 2007′s are tasting really good right now and although they might not have the extreme cellar life of the 2008, they are really a fantastic wine. In fact I have read some that advise people to drink their 2009′s now (another “hotter” year) and save their 2007′s and 2008′s for another year.

So for Willamette Pinot’s, I think the vintage matters a lot. For you as a consumer, it can help because knowing a little about the general quality of the year helps you choose one wine over another. For example, I will more readily try an unknown 2008, just because of the reputation of the year. That doesn’t mean they are all superior, but it’s a clue. For example, I have had a couple of really great 2006 wines, from Belle Pente and Amalie Robert, so it makes me feel like this was a pretty decent year. But from another of my favorites, Atticus, 2006 was not a good year because their estate vines were too young. The vintage is not a perfect indicator, but it is a clue.

This is why my personal cellar definitely reflects this bias in terms of vintage. Here is the distribution of Willamette Pinot vintages in my collection:

• Today’s Flickr Blog taught me about a technique called “redscale” which basically means shooting regular old film backwards. The photos have a weird red cast to them because of shooting through the plastic layer of the film. The results are beautiful and mysterious like a lot of these weird techniques - check out the post to see what I mean. Yeah, non-digital!
• My wife was very frustrated on vacation using simple point-and-shoot cameras in full sunshine. It’s because the image on the preview screen is too dim. “Shooting blind”. Maybe I just need to buy her a decent camera!
• My friend Dirk has been playing with his new toy, a Nikon D800 camera, and posting the photos on the Internet. This caused me to read the specs on the new Canon 5D Mark III, which seems drool-worthy, but certainly unnecessary for me.
• After borrowing cameras from my Dad for years, I bought my first camera around 1976 or so. It was a low-end Canon SLR. We used to call them “match needle” metering, because to set the exposure, you needed to line up a needle with a ring in the view finder. Focus was all manual. No zoom – if you wanted to use a telephoto, you needed to change lenses. I probably still have that camera around someplace.
• At some point I moved up to the Canon A1, which was just an amazing film camera, and I used it for many years. But had some initial build issues which required a trip to the camera store to get addressed.
• Now I use a Canon 50D, which was a gift to myself when we paid off the mortgage. Really was just two mortgage payments.
• Although I love capturing travel images and the like, I am truly more of a technology geek than an artist. This is what drove me to build a darkroom in our current house and what makes me love to tweak things in Photoshop today.

I hope you enjoy the photos on my own Flickr page, which is by far the best photo sharing site in my opinion. It readily allows sharing through other sites and has great sharing an community features.

But I don’t love her dogs. They bite.

This city has a lot of stray dogs. For example, this morning I went for about a 6 mile run and counted 23 stray dogs. This didn’t count dogs behind fences which barked at me. That’s a lot of dogs! But basically they left me alone, although a little pack of three dogs did chase me for a little while.

However my friend Saul went out running separately and got bit by a stray German Shephard. Bit hard enough to be bleeding freely when I saw him later at breakfast.

Fortunately I have some bandages in my travel kit that I gave him. Before heading to the doctor, he and a local person went and checked out the dog. It didn’t seem sick or acting strangely, and he consulted with a local doctor, and they decided a rabies shot wasn’t needed at this time.

The Lonely Planet guide book gives a warning about the dogs. Here is the total warning:

Officials are dealing with the stray-dog problem but there are still around 100,000 dogs on the street. The best advice is to ignore them and they will ignore you, though occasionally – rarely – bites occur. Be careful around parked cars or bushes, particularly at night, where you could inadvertently startle a sleeping dog. If you are bitten, go to a hospital for anti-rabies injections within 36 hours.

Saul seems to be fine so far today, but this puts me into a quandry. I’m sure I will have a lot of stray dog encounters if I keep running in Bucharest. I don’t want to be limited to the treadmill from now on. I love to run outside, and it gives me a lot better feeling about a place and her people when I run there. But I’m not really comfortable with angry dogs.

Unlike any other beverage like soda or bottled water or even beer, a bottle of wine captures a time and a place like no other, but it can drive the uninitiated crazy. Many confused buyers hunt for the one label they recognize, or with art work on the label they enjoy. Many times they wander off without choosing anything, unwilling to take a risk.

Whether you are well-versed in the lore of wine or a rank newbie, here are three recent books which are really good reading. I expect you will learn a lot, no matter how much you know or think you know.

Voodoo Vintners: Oregon’s Astonishing Biodynamic Winegrowers by Katherine Cole

As life in our world becomes more industrialized and processed, the desire to get back to natural ways of living and eating has touched off the move to trumpet the organic qualities of some foods. Wine as a drink is supposed to represent the earth and climate like no other, so of course you would expect there to be organic wine. You may have even heard of winemakers flaunting their “biodynamic” cred.

When my neighborhood winery advertized themselves as biodynamic, I didn’t think too much about it. But Biodynamics is about more than just avoiding toxic sprays. It specifies a range of herbal treatments for vines which must be prepared in some really wacky ways. Think burying flowers in animal skulls for several months.

Cole does an excellent job researching the roots of biodynamics and presenting it in a balanced way. But what’s really wonderful about this book is the way she introduces us to the people of Oregon wine. Winemaking is relatively new in Oregon, dating back to the 1970s. So the pioneers are still with us.

If you are an Oregonian, this is a special treat. For example, you can read about Moe Momtazi’s hair-raising escape from his native Iran. Then you can drive out to Maysara Vineyards and meet Moe himself and his wine-making daughters as we did.

Judgement of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine by George M Taber

Friends know that one of my favorite movies is Bottle Shock which dramatizes the famous blind tasting between excellent French wines and a few brand new California wines. The movie fictionalizes the story of one particular winemaker and the English wine snob Steven Spurrier (played by Alan Rickman) who staged the whole event. This book is the basis for the movie, but gives more of the real story behind the wines and winemakers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Taber was the sole press representative at the event, so he brings an authoritative perspective. But more interesting to me are the ways in which the wines were made. Taber explains the process in a very accessible way, without diving into the multi-sylable complexities of microbiology.

The claim is that this one tasting event changed the wine world, popping the presumption that the best wines come from France. And so Taber takes us on a bit of a world tour showing the extent of the New World invasion on the previously sacrosanct French preserve.

Wine Wars: The Curse of the Blue Nun, The Miracle of Two Buck Chuck, and the Revenge of the Terroirists by Mike Veseth

Thanks to the Judgement of Paris, we now live in a world where good wines from all over the planet are available in your corner grocery store. But where do we go from here? Veseth takes on the challenge of predicting where that now global wine world will go in the future.

The forces for change are titanic, but predicting the future is hard. So rather than taking things too seriously, Veseth pauses periodically for a guided tasting to illustrate these social and economic trends. A nice way to illustrate his points.

Veseth uses an entertaining and witty voice for what could be a very dry book. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in learning beyond your small world of what you are comfortable with in wine and learning to appreciate how things will change in the future.

My ambivalence stems from the following:

• Relaxation and rejuventation for me usually comes from seeing something I have never seen, or as many new somethings as I can (much to the chagrin of the rest of my family, who sometimes call me “Robo Tourist”). I think I have learned my lesson here, and try to schedule a vacation from my vacation periodically.
• I like learning about cultures and countries different from my own. With only a little vacation time granted by American employers in the private sector, there are few opportunities to do this, so I usually like to save up for a trip that will allow me to see those cultures and countries in person. And hey, I don’t mind brushing my teeth with bottled water.
• Since we have family in Colorado, there is a strong priority for spending time there around the holidays, which again limits the vacation options.
• And here is the most dangerous confession of all. Truthfully, I actually like a little danger in my vacation cocktail. I love it when things don’t go quite as planned or when I don’t totally understand the language or customs. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t love it at the time when I got violently ill from drinking Myanmar Beer at the Inle Inn in Naung Schwe. But even then, only my sister and I got sick out of our combined families, we were fine the next morning and had a great story to tell. I am not a crazy adventure junkie, just like a little action, Jackson. (And my local town’s pancake house makes me sick when I eat there anyway, so I get that every place).

And that last one is probably the biggest reason I have not been wild about going to Hawaii. It seems really safe and, well, “American”. Why feel perfectly safe when for just a little more money you can immerse yourself in something really weird?

But after less than a week in Hawaii, we have scratched a few adventure itches:

• A drive-up volcano: This is the easiest place you can experience a smoking, steaming, molten gateway to hell itself. Mark Twain, when he visited Kilauea, said that the smell of sulpher is “not unpleasant for a sinner.” Besides this exhaust pipe from the underworld in a National Park, you can see the evidence of very active volcanism
• everywhere you look. (I do have a lot of complaints about how the Parks service is managing certain things here, like closing the only restaurant in the park without any notice or signage, but I digress).
• Buckets of blood: One of the things you learn when you visit the Tower of London is that English royal history is incredibly violent; your brother might as well execute you as have breakfast with you. At another National Park here on Hawaii, you can find Pu’uhonua o Honaunau, one of the “places of refuge” where a commoner could find sanctuary. Why? Well the Hawaiian culture had oh so many ways to offend the gods or royalty that you could be killed at the drop of a hat. In fact, dropping your hat on royalty might well get you killed. But if you could escape to this lonely spit of land, you could be forgiven. The Parks Service here has done a fantastic job with restoration, signage and explanations.
• Chewing a ripe coffee cherry: Coffee farms in the Kona region have some decent joe and one of them (Greenwell Farms) had a really nice and informative tour. You can taste a wide varity of coffees and even buy some to take home.
• Food that won’t kill you: In developing countries, and even in some developed ones, you need to be careful with those fresh fruits and veggies that you don’t catch something nasty from them. Common safe eating practice is to bath you purchases in a weak Clorox solution before slicing them. The markets here are silly with amazing tropical fruits. We have enjoyed fresh lettuce, avocado, mango and so-called apple bananas straight from market to mouth. (Well, Deb washed the lettuce).
• A weather geek’s dream: Don’t like the placid weather? Hop in your car and drive for 20 minutes. There is incredible diversity here from barren lava fields to rain forests to cattle country, all within the 237 miles of road circumference of the island.

Good, well, and I have to say, with the trade winds blowing, it’s actually, OK I admit it, quite comfortable here compared with my home right now which is rainy and still pretty nasty. And I can find a few really good Pinot Noir wines from home in the local stores.

Runner’s World was going pretty strongly there for a while advocating morning runs, suggesting how to make them work for you. I used to do my runs in the morning all the time. After all, that way you could accomplish right away the hardest thing you would have to do all day.

I had it down to a science:

• Roll out of bed
• Dress for the weather
• Flip on the brightest lights in the kitchen
• Fire up a double espresso and slurp it down with one half of a Cliff Bar.
• Put my Garmin GPS on the front porch to locate satellites while I take care of bathroom stuff
• Charge out the door

Now, all of that sounds really organized and efficient. The way it would usually go is:

• Alarm goes off at 5:00AM
• Drag into the bathroom, try to convince myself I shouldn’t skip my run
• Sit down to tie my shoes, that was a mistake, how am I going to stand up again?
• Will I really feel like running after my coffee?

And so on.

Lately I have been having morning meetings, for the past 10 days or so we have had daily 7:00AM meetings.  If I’m running for an hour or more and it takes at least 30 – 35 minutes to drive to work, that doesn’t leave a lot of time.

So I have switched to the after-work run. Seems to fit a little better, and I can shower before bed and save a little time in the morning.

“Yeah, probably.”

What better way to frame the story of “Blue Like Jazz” than in the weird city of Portland, Oregon? And it is at Reed College, the very apex of Portland free thinking and free expression that college student Don decides to reject his conservative Texas upbringing and discover who he truly is.

To say that Don’s upbringing is discounted at Reed is mild; in fact it is openly ridiculed until he learns
to reject it himself. Along the way he pals up with other vivid characters like Penny, the object of his yearning and Lauryn, a lesbian he meets in the unisex bathroom, played by Tania Raymonde who was Alex in “Lost.”

And then, there’s The Pope.

Not the actual Pope, mind you, but a fellow student who wears papal garb, burns books he disagrees with and dispenses atheist advice to all who will listen.

And all of these, and Portland as well. The movie is shot almost as a love letter to the City of Roses, its bridges and public transit, its weirdness and it’s rain of course. But as Don realizes, Portland in winter is a
perfect place to have an existential crisis.

I highly recommend Blue Like Jazz. See it soon, since as a small independent film, you never know how long it will stay in theaters.

You would think I would have this figured out by now, since I have been running races since about 1996 or so. This weekend I did an 18 mile easy training run, and when I was finished, my inner voice said, “Well, that wasn’t the most fun run I have had, but it’s wasn’t bad.” But then I asked myself, “What would be the most fun I have had running?” That really stopped me cold.

When I’m in the moment and mindful of what’s going on, the act of running takes effort. It’s not like biking where you can just coast at some point and enjoy the scenery. I might be able to tune out my body’s effort and pain and use the time for thinking or talking with fellow runners or enjoying the scenery. Racing, going really fast, is usually a lot of fun too, though it usually comes with even more suffering.

This spring I ran a 5K, 10K and 15K runs, about once per month. There are so many things about racing that are fun that it’s hard to stop. Friends asked me if I would be running the Race for the Roses this weekend in Portland, a Half Marathon (13.1 miles).

My running coach basically told me to knock it off. Stop running races on the weekend. When I’m racing, it’s hard to get in the quality workouts I need to get ready for the Newport Marathon in June. So I told her I would be good and not race any more for a while.

Running has to be about work for me. Quality work, speed training, tempo runs, gym workouts. This is how it is if I want to meet my time goals in the marathon. Delayed gratification will get me to a greater level of fun later.

Bad news for those who love their bacon.

Article in today’s Portland Oregonian stating that Alzheimer’s is by and large a lifestyle disease, and that although there can be a genetic predisposition, what you eat and drink are critical. Findings are good for those who eat whole grains and fish and avoid trans fats and maintain healthy aerobic exercise.

Five cups of coffee per day seem to be a preventative factor. A little red wine also seems to keep the dementia at bay.

So if you drink coffee and red wine, you’re doing your brain a favor. Nice, although my boss says I’m demented most of the time, and there are no guarantees whatsoever, it’s a happy coincidence that my current lifestyle is perhaps extending my brain’s usefulness.

I grew up in a coffee and red wine house. Mom and Dad always had a cup of percolated joe at breakfast, and used to have one at dinner as well. In fact, I well remember him visiting Deb and I at our home in Oregon after we got married and complaining about how awful he felt, because we had served decaffeinated coffee after dinner.

The red wine was “Red Burgundy,” a jug wine from California. My current readings suggest that this wine was probably pretty lame as wine goes. I really never saw beer or hard liquor in use.

I consider all of these drinks to be acquired tastes. I defy anyone who would claim that their very first drink of black coffee or dry red wine was anything but “yuck”. Apparently they are good tastes to acquire, but they have downsides too:

• Some people can’t tolerate these drinks for a variety of reasons. Most common seem to be stomach issues since they are both acidic. That’s a bad trade-off, stomach pain for a healthy brain!
• There are people who suffer from addictive tendencies. Certainly an alcoholic should not drink red wine, no matter how good it might be for brain health.
• Even without abuse, alcohol is involved with a huge number of traffic deaths. I suspect too much coffee is involved in road rage and similar dumb driving acts, just to be fair.
• I have seen way too many examples of embarrassing behavior by people which seem to be caused by what they are drinking.

So if you eat like a Mediterranean and do aerobic exercise, coffee and red wine seem to have their place in a brain healthy diet.