Occasionally in a restaurant a wine server will open a bottle that just doesn’t taste right. It can also happen with a  bottle you’ve brought home from a retail store. The off taste can be caused by any number of things, ranging from “cork taint” to poor handling. Whatever the cause, as a consumer you have recourse, and most restaurant owners and wine merchants are willing to help you out.

Fine wine stores such as the Sahara Mart and Big Red which help sponsor this newsletter consider customer service and satisfaction as paramount. They are more than willing to replace a bottle that’s gone off. But you have a responsibility too.

If you brought it home from a store and found it flawed or damaged, return it as soon as possible, but don’t bring it back if you’ve consumed half or more of it. The merchant probably won’t refuse to exchange it but should have the opportunity to test it in the same condition you found it. Even if you’ve not opened the bottle because you changed your mind or wished you had bought something else, you should also bring it back right away, certainly within a couple of days. The merchant should know how the bottle was treated while you had it. Had you left it in extreme heat, or allowed it to freeze?

In a restaurant, the situation can be a bit more delicate. For one thing, the server should sense something about the quality of the wine as he or she opens it. For another, you are quite likely testing the wine in the presence of others at the table. For a moment, it could seem as if it’s your word against that of the server. In a fine restaurant with a professional wine server, that doesn’t happen. A skilled server isn’t likely to question your judgment, even if  he or she doesn’t agree with you.

There are other factors at work. Did you select the wine or did you accept the suggestion of the server? It is awkward to reject a wine simply because you discover you don’t like it, unless the server proposed it. It is entirely appropriate to ask another member of the party to taste it. I also recommend you request the server to try it.

Most restaurants with wine service have a fairly generous policy regarding replacing wines not acceptable to the diner. The best advice is to be courteous, inclusive of the server’s opinions, and confident without being arrogant. You are rejecting the bottle because it’s flawed, not because you want to show off your expertise.

As we often say, people in the wine business are among society’s most hospitable; they want you to enjoy your stay with them.

Yesterday the first sweet corn of the season arrived at our roadside stand from nearby Washington County. It came from a farm with no corporate connections and from a county noted for the sweetness of its corn, the best of which has both yellow and white kernels.

There was nothing to do but serve it on the very day it was picked and to serve it Indiana style — on the cob. Readers not from America’s heartland may not readily appreciate the excitement of the first “real” corn of the season. In the Piedmont and the Landes there are the truffles, in Germany the asparagus, in Provence the melons, all of which bring great joy to their regions when they first appear. In Indiana, it is sweet corn, followed fairly quickly by tomatoes.

For a month or two, we won’t have to deal with tasteless supermarket ears of corn or dyed hothouse tomatoes. Our corn had arrived, and we were thrilled.

But there is something of a dilemma. In Germany, France, and Italy there is a wine culture that lends itself almost seamlessly to their regional gastronomic specialties. Not so in Indiana. True, we do have 43 Indiana wineries, so there’s no problem having fine local wine. The problem is the freshly-picked corn.

It is sweet but not dessert sweet. Served on the cob, it demands creamy butter and touches of salt. It is tender to the point of delicateness. A Chateau Thomas Cabernet Sauvignon we had had at lunch would overwhelm our corn. Besides, by dinner time, the hot, humid weather made a Cabernet unthinkable. Same with our oaky Chardonnays from California and our layered ones from Burgundy. Our Oregon Pinot Gris prefers more robust foods, and we find Pinot Grigios acting as thirst qenchers moreso than corn pleasers.

The answer was one I often advocate for summer drinking. Pink! Dry pink. There were several roses in our cellar, ranging from full-bodied ones from the Rhone Valley, some very fruity ones from Navarra, and an onion skin-colored one from Provence, my choice. Dry on the palate, pleasing if short on the finish, and completly without ego, Terre de Causan  from  the Espigouette firm a few kilometers from Avignon is refreshing to the mouth, pleasing to the palate, and proof that the Franco-American Alliance is intact. Best of all, this little wine retails in Indiana at just under $10.00 a bottle.

There are certain wines in all price categories with which we learn to feel comfortable because we can depend on them to meet our expectations. They are consistent from vintage to vintage and are never compromised by trends. Those of you who watched our video with Jim Callahan of Burgess Cellars (December 23, 2008, still in the archives) will recognize that the wines of Burgess are among my special favorites.

Jim was back at Story last night for an evening of sharing Burgess wines, which have been made by the same cellar master since the winery was estabished 37 years ago. That accounts for consistency. Cellar Master Bill Sorenson has been with Burgess from the beginning, and winery founder Tom Burgess made sure he had bought the best terroir for his goal: to produce the best wines the earth will give him.

Burgess defied the common sense of his day by planting on the slopes of Mount Howell in Napa. He planted Cabernet Sauvignon on the north slope, Syrah on the south slope, and used the plain for Merlot. In all three of his vineyards, he also defied the fashion of his day by refusing to produce highly extracted, jammy alcoholic wines.  He took his travels in France seriously, saying the wines in France are meant to go with meals, to be enjoyed. Highly extracted wines, he said, overpower food.  Burgess wines reflect very much the soil in which they are grown and the mastery with which they are produced.

Burgess wines are red. The Cabernet Sauvignon is Bordeaux on Howell Mountain: 80% Cabernet, 8% Merlot, 6% Franc, 3% Petit Verdot, and 3% Malbec. The Syrah is very Rhone-like: 90% Syrah, 10% Grenache. Jim was plesaed to hear me liken his Merlot to a Pomerol — 100% Merlot.

For one who cut his teeth on European wines, I find it most pleasurable to discover such wines in California. I only wish more of our Indiana retailers would carry them or that Indiana law makers would give up their resistance to allowing us to order them directly. But it’s always good to see Jim once in a while, especially when he brings along a bottle of Cabernet from the Library Collection, a portion of each harvest held back for ten years before release. Last night, the 1995 was absolutely marvelous.

I wish the screw cap perforation on wine bottles could be more pronounced so I coud see it in the dim light of my cellar. On several occasions I have tried to turn a screw through the top of a metallic cap. I have nothing against screw caps, recognizing that they are here to stay, but I do resent that even the tiniest of servers can twist them off without gritting their teeth while my ancient wrist has to go full bore to perform the same task.

Which suggests an issue just now finding its way into wine literature. Is there a screw cap ritual? Should there be? There has always been something romantically dramatic about a sommelier carefully trimming the foil and gently easing the wine key into the cork, removing it ever so gently. While I seldom sniff the cork, there is a touch of whimsy about taking it from the server for a look.

At two different places on my recent travels, a server twisted off the cap, set the bottle on the table and disappeared. (One of them did say, “Cheers.”) I never saw the cap because it disappeared with the server. There was nothing romantic about the service, though the wine was good, exactly what I had ordered.

I have asked around about this question of serving wine from a screw capped bottle. There is no consensus. I get the impression that professional sommeliers prefer the traditional cork and its attendant ritual and that average servers, especially young ones, like the convenience and relative ease of twisting it off. (None of them like plastic or artificial corks.)

So what’s a server to do, there being no prescribed screw cap etiquette? For starters, I suggest he or she present the bottle to the host for verification that the wine is indeed the one asked for. I’d like to see the server face the table while removing the cap and then pour a taste into the host’s glass for further approval before serving the other guests. Nor would it be a bad idea to let the host hold the bottle to check for flawed aromas. I see no need for the cap to be left on the table or given to the host.

I don’t think these suggestions are too much to ask in this high-speed convenience-first age in whch we live. Wine was never intended to be a “quick drink” beverage, and its very nature calls for a contemplative setting. If we must replace an 18th century ritual with 21st century technology, let’s be just as inventive in creating an etiquette to go with it.

During my travels across the High Prairies the past couple of weeks, I found much wine news to commend, as a couple of my postings have indicated. At wineries and in upscale restaurants, wine use and service has come a long way in rural America in the last decade.  However, I also found much disappointment in my explorations.

Admittedly, one shouldn’t expect tiny towns devastated by the movement to cities and urban areas to support fine dining. It’s even a stretch to expect those motels clustered around Interstate Interchanges to provide much more than survival fare to their transient clientele. Nor should a traveler give up the hunt without a reasonable search.

At a motel a few miles from Kansas City a receptionist assured me that her motel served good wine. When I asked the server to brings us each a glass of dry white wine while we looked at the menu, he said “We don’t have any dry white wine.”  I asked him what white wines they do have, and he said they only have Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and White Zinfandel. Never mind that he brought us Chardonnay instead of the Sauvignon Banc I had requested. The red wine, he thought, bore the name Mondavi. Encouraging, I thought, as I requested a Cabernet to go with our steaks. Back he came to explain they no longer carry Mondavi. He had to go back to the bar to find out what they do carry and returned with a Merlot and a Cabernet from Yellow Tail and a Merlot from Red Rock Winery in Napa. “That’s our last bottle of Red Rock,” he said. He also had to go to the bar to ask the price.

In northwestern New Mexico the receptionist sent us into town to a restaurant with wine. The only red wine ws $38 a bottle, again the server had to ask because she had only served wine by the glass. She didn’t know the name of it, so she brought the bottle. It was a magnum (double bottle). “The bartender always pours from these big bottles,” she said.

But I don’t complain. It wasn’t too long ago that neither of these places would have any wine on offer. And each venture across country shows more progress. At a small town eatery in rural Oklahoma, a server let us sample an Oklahoma wine, pleased to let us know about a local wine. The restaurant had only three or four white wines and only four red wines, but they were there and available. We take heart — but we push for still more wine education. And data indicate that by 2012, Americans will consume more winer per capita than people in any other nation.

During the last month or so, the wine literaure has been chock full of suggestions about wines to use with barbecue. I have yet to see a single article address the meaning of barbecue. To many of us, the suggestion of barbecue evokes aromas and tastes of tangy sauces comprising combinations of peppers, spices, onions, brown sugar, lemon, etc. Others say the barbecue is open air cooking.

In a strictly literal sense, the latter group is correct.  Barbecue comes originlly from an Arawak word denoting a structure on which meat could be dried or roasted. The Spanish corrupted the word to mean an apparatus for such use, and that’s how the word came to us in the 20th century — to which we added the suggestion that men rather than women would do the barbecuing.

That said, why should we consider specifyng wines for the barbecue? Is a steak grilled over a gas flame on the patio any different from a steak grilled on a kitchen range? If so, won’t the usual Zinfandels, Cabernets, and Shirazes do? Of course. An argument can be made, however, that if the barbecuing takes place over charcoal or wood chips, the same wines may not do. One should be sure that the wine is not overcome by the impact of the smoke, whether from coal or wood, but that it can still equal the meat and its sauce. 

Ah, the sauce. If the former group, the group for whom a barbecue means a tangy sauce, forget a perfect match between food and wine. There is no wine that goes well with a tangy barbecue sauce. Lest I be shot at sunrise, let me hasten to add that when faced with a barbecue sauce, I advocate selecting a wine you like and prepare to enjoy it no matter what. I further advocate that you keep the wine simple, because the complexities of a really serious wine will be lost among the flavors of pepper, onion, brown sugar, and other spices.

And for the literary purists who recognize barbecuing as outdoor grilling, my advice is similar. If you’re really outdoors, we assume warm, even hot, weather. Hot weather is not conducive to red wine service. Choose a simple wine you like, then enjoy it.  If it must be red, choose one you can cool a bit, like a young Beaujolais or a Dolcetto. Better yet, think rose. For a white with a touch of body against a steak, consider a Pinot Gris or a Rheingau Riesling.

I am ever reminded of the legendary wine purist Andre Simon, while touring Australia visiting wineries and wine producers anxious to please him, on a very hot afternoon declined a wonderful Shiraz and asked for a beer.

It wasn’t terribly long ago that  we couldn’t expect to find wine in a bar. Then along came wine bars, occasionally with snacks and tid bits. In the last few years, wine bars have floiurished, and many of them offer full service meals. Wine bars have now found their way to a few towns in the High Prairie, and we were privileged earlier this week to enjoy the 4 Olives Wine Bar in Manhattan, Kansas.

To be sure owner Scott Benjamin can boast one of the finest restaurants in the Midwest, one with awards from just about every prominent wine and food journal in the country. But to his credit,  he chooses to call his 4Olives a “wine bar.” To many of us, this is the priority order for creating a fine meal. Consider the wine, then the food.

His wine emphasis is obvious at the reception. The first thing you see is a floor-to-ceiling glass wine “tower” displaying prestigious bottles from just about every wine region in the world.  700 wines, all of them in stock and available. 70 glass wines at the ready. Scott cooks and cooks very well the dishes he has learned or created from his experiences along the Mediterranean, in California, and from Pacific nations — and for every dish coming out of the kitchen, he has a specific wine recommendation.

Far too few cooks, even renowned cooks,  can claim serious wine palates. Scott is among those who can and who considers  the wine experience an important part of the whole meal experience. If he can succeed in the plains of Kansas, there is hope that others in the Heartland will follow.

The I-70 is no Yellow Brick Road, but it still promises its speedy wayfarers an Emerald City. Not far west of Kansas City, the bill boards start announcing Oz Winery at Interchange 298. Similar billboards tell of an Oz Museum, also at Interchange 298; but it doesn’t take Munchkins to point the way to Wamego, Kansas, a lively little prairie town nine miles north of the highway.

Oz Winery is in a brightly colored brick building in the middle of town. Inside, one can really believe he is not in Kansas. This is a working winery complete with a picturesque tasting area and wine accessories gift shop. In Kansas there are 26 winery members of the state Grape Growers and Winemakers Association. Oz hostess Becca Simmons says that before Prohibition, Kansas had more wineries than any other state. She says that Wamego has been smitten with Oz and all its characters, and each of the winerie’s wines bear Oz-related names with labels depicting a Yellow Brick Road, Toto on the Run, the “Ditched” Witch, and Emerald City lights.

Oz owners Brook Balderson and Noah Wright get some of their grapes from local grape growers, some from West Coast growers.  The excitement they generate is somewhat from the Oz associations but mostly from their daring blends. Take Auntie Em’s Prairie Rose, a blush wine blended from Chardonnay and Zinfandel. Forget the EU arguments about blending red and white grapes. At  Oz this blend creates a pleasant sweetish wine I admit I liked better than I tbought I would — sweet  but not cloying, and pretty to look at. ($20 a bottle)

Emerald City Lights combines Vignoles cut by a touch of Seyval  in Witch Gone Good and Vignole with a blend of Chardonnay makes the Yellow Brick Road while Witch in a Ditch blends the little-known Ives Noir with Concord for a powerful aroma. Run Toto Run brings together Merlot and Zinfandel and a sweet Syrah results in Professor Marvell’s Ruby Red.

All right, you won’t see the Tin Woodman on your table soon or perhaps at all. At Oz, sales are almost exclusively to winery visitors, most of whom come off the Interstate. A surprising number of visitors write back to order these wines, and Oz is authorized to ship to many states, depending on each state’s regulations concerning such shipment.

In the Hoosier Wine Cellar we are interested in wine wherever it is produced and in promoting its use. A hurried  trip acorss the Great Plains is never so hurried as to prohibit a stop at a winery, especially one whose Port is called The Lion’s Courage. The Wizard would applaud us.

Writing in DECANTER this month, David Peppercorn advised us to drink up our 1985 Bordeaux, because this rather good vintage was peaking.  I have a dozen or so assorted clarets from that vintage year, so I went to the caveau and fetched a dusty bottle of 1985 Chateau Dutruch Grand Poujeaux from the commune of Moulis en Medoc.

I was at the chateau because Dominique Thienpont included it on a tour of “little” chateaux he drove me to to over a period of several days in 1988.  I had never been to the Moulis area. It was — and is — a stepchild in the Medoc. It is set back from the river and boasts no “classed” growths, not any real chateaux, and has never had the financial clout of its adjacent neighbors in the Paulliac and St. Julien. Since my visit,  Dutruch has been dropped from its name, but Chateau Poujeaux and the whole Moulis area is fast becoming newsworthy. Moulis offers good quality at way-below-average Medoc prices, and I am hoping our Indiana distrbutors will get those wines to our markets soon.

I bought a case in 1988 for less than $6.00 a bottle and was instructed by Dominique to keep it three or four years before using it. At the chateau it was tannic to the point of bitterness. “That’s the way it is in Moulis,” he explained.

Over the years we found the tannins muting, but the bitterness remained. The ruby color never flagged. In 2002, our last sampling, the bitterness had mellowed into the true finish of a mature claret, representative of what we frequently hear today about “Old World” production intended to “cellar” wines.

Last Friday evening, the cork came out strong. The bottle showed no ullage.  I did not decant as I had had it standing upright for several days and there was little indication of heavy sediment. The wine was dark red with a tint of orange around the rim. Not much aroma, just a mere suggestion of perfume. It was a pleasant drink but not a truly memorable one, except for the conversation it evoked about our whereabouts in 1985. It was not a great Bordeaux going in so it could not be a great Bordeaux coming out of the bottle.  But it proved the durability of a strong vintage year on a Cabernet-based wine.

It also demonstrated once again that wine is the only beverage capable of stimulating nostalgia, conversation, and lingering assessment. I’ll wait another couple of years before opening the remaining bottle of Chateau Dutruch Grand Poujeaux.

Mark Twain: What would the people of this world be without women?  Scarce, Sir, almighty scarce.

Summer seems like a good time to recognize the increasing number of women who are distinguishing themselves in what has been for a very long time a male-dominated field of interest — the wine industry. In fact, as recently as the mid 1980s, there was an expression among wine producers in France: le vin est Chauvin (wine is chauvinistic), and at many wineries women were not allowed in the buildings where the grapes were fermenting, only in the fields to help with the harvest or in the kitchens to prepare meals for the harvesters and winery laborers.

This seemed strange in a land where women are adored and where it was a trio of widows who made champagne famous – widows named Cliquot, Pommery, and Ponsardin, whose names still appear on the labels of the very best champagnes. It was also in the mid-1980s that I met Christine Valette, glamorous by any standards, scrubbing out the vats at Chateau Troplong-Mondot, which she owned along with her husband. Christine was the wine maker, a term she denied, because she claimed only to “help” nature do its work. Her help spoke for itself; Chateau Troplong-Mondot maintains one of the highest classifications in Bordeaux. (In my own cellar today, we protect our remaining few bottles of her 1982 vintage, still vibrant and lively.)

About the same time, I met Denise Andre, owner of the tiny Chateau Haut-Segottes on the edge of St-Emilion. A no-nonsense “Nanny type,” Denise nurses her splendid wines like a school ma’arm protecting her brood, while her civil servant husband peers into the cuverie just hoping that no one will ask him anything about the wine producing business. When asked about her role in a man’s world, Denise seemed to be quoting Bob Dylan: The times they are a’changin’.

  “That’s true,” Jinette Humbrecht said, dressed in hip boots and designer denim, as she tapped a barrel of Herrenweg Riesling. With her husband, Leonhard, and now her son, Olivier, Jinette owns the famed Domaine Zind-Humbrecht near Colmar. Our friends for forty years, we have never seen Jinette hesitate to enter the winery and perform just about any job in need of doing in the winery. Same for Olivier’s Scottish-born wife. “The old superstitions never existed here,” she tells us, and her daughter-in-law says she never knew about them.

In California, where Old World wine traditions have almost always been ignored, the accession of women into the world of wine has been more seamless. Take Heidie Peterson. Born into the Barrett family, a child of the 60’s, Heidie grew up in her father’s winery, doing just about anything and everything he did. In school she majored in oenology. After school she worked at several wineries, ultimately becoming a wine consultant and now oversees production in a number of the Golden State’s most prestigious wineries.

Andreas Immer is beverage director of the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center and is one of only 37 master sommeliers in the United States. Such achievement for a woman doesn’t surprise Serge Dubs, the world’s most consistent “Best Sommelier in the World.”“

“ Women have a better sense of smell and taste,” he told me on a wine junket we made around his native Alsace. “The only thing they lack is sufficient strength to move around the cases from the storage cellar to the daily-use cellar,” he complained.

By the end of 2007 men outnumbered women four to one in seeking credentialing in wine. There are some encouraging signs, however, as almost 40% of the wine majors at the University of California- Davis are female. And all of us with an interest in wine have nothing but admiration for Delia Viader, founder of Viader Vineyards and Winery in Napa Valley. Delia has a Ph.D in philosophy from the Sorbonne, an MBA from MIT, and speaks six languages fluently. Even with credentials like those, she says she still has to prove herself once in a while.

Professionals agree that women sommeliers are better at the “soft sell’’ than men, who still seem to conjure up an image of an Old World “Old Boy.” Marketing data reveal that women buy 60% of all wine over $15 a bottle and are more likely to buy wines they like for consumption rather than for laying down or for futures investments. Such data indicate the field should be wide open for women.

The times have changed, even more so than when Will Rogers observed that things were changing because he “never expected to see girls sunburned in places they are now.”