Instant replay in baseball: Screw homers, use technology for strikes

Baseball has hurriedly started an instant-replay system. But as usual with MLB, they're solving the wrong problem.

Long fly balls that might be fair or foul don't happen very often: 18 times so far this season, according to MLB.

Terrible calls on balls and strikes happen every single day, in almost every single game.

But now we have the technology to fix the problem in such a way that would eliminate arguments forever. I'm not talking about video replay: I mean having a laser-boundary system (similar to that used in tennis) that would determine where the ball crosses the plate and actually make the ball-strike call.

Think about it: the calls would always be right. There would be no appeal, no argument. It would speed up the game, rather than slow it down as viewing a video replay inevitably will.

Moreover, pitchers and hitters alike would love the laser strike zone system immediately. Pitchers could master the corners of the strike zone because they could practice throwing to the strike-calling system. As for hitters, they would never have to expand their strike zone because an umpire just made a poor call on them for strike two. Everyone would be confident in where the actual strike zone exists.

I see one key rule change that would simplify everything. Currently the strike zone is defined by each player's body: where his knees are, where his chest is when he crouches. This rule dates to the 1800s and is an anachronism. Not only that, umpires routinely ignore it.

Why should tall players have a bigger strike zone, and shorter players a smaller one? Taller basketball players don't get a different-sized hoop. Why not define the strike zone the same way for everyone? Define it as a square, say 2 feet to 4 feet high above the front of the plate. Or whatever. Just make it standard.

The umpires' union might resist a laser strike zone, but they could be won over because the system wouldn't eliminate any umpires' jobs. You would still need somebody to watch over every base; no laser system can make out/safe calls. Umpires are generally very good at those.

It's such an elegant idea, yet I haven't read anybody talking about it. So maybe you heard it here first.

Sauvignon Blanc: Drink now

It's hot lately, which has me drinking a lot of Sauvignon Blanc.

Sauv Blanc is my overall favorite summer wine. The acidity is very refreshing. There are other good ones: I drink more Albarino all the time, bubbly is always welcome, and a well-chilled dry rose is a great thing to sip outside (preferably in the shade). But Sauv Blanc is my go-to wine.

Lately I've been running through some of the 2006 Sauv Blancs I still have in my cellar and/or fridge, and I'm noticing a theme: they're losing their charm much faster than I expected.

Don't misunderstand me: these 2006 wines are still drinking decently. But the edge is gone from many of them, and it is that crisp acidity that I'm after.

A few months ago I tasted through some 2005 Sauvignon Blancs and they were a different type of wine altogether: richer, some with more opulent fruit, and interesting in their own way. But they weren't the lean, refreshing wines I sought.

Obviously this is a very general observation, as some Sauv Blancs are going to get old and flabby faster than others.

That said, if you have any Sauv Blancs from 2005 or before, don't expect to get the same refreshment you get from an '07. They still have their uses (pairing with pasta salads comes to mind, because of their more apparent fruit). But you need to think of them as a different kind of wine.

And if you're in restaurant, absolutely turn your back on anything before 2006. Sauv Blanc may be more like sake than any other wine: Drink now, it's not getting any better.

Looking for a good nigori sake?

Kamoizumi "Summer Snow" Nigori Ginjo is the holy grail: a nigori that sake aficionados can love.

Nigori is the White Zinfandel of sake. It's tremendously popular, particularly with people just discovering sake. It tends to be very sweet. And experts turn up their noses at it, usually with good reason.

Nigori sakes are white and cloudy because they contain bits of rice that didn't complete fermentation. They have an interesting, chewy texture. What turns off sake aficionados, more than their sweetness, is their lack of complexity -- you don't get the fruity, floral flavors and aromas that are the hallmark of quality sakes. Nigori sake reminds me of amazake, a warm, sweet, nonalcoholic rice drink sold at winter festivals in Japan. Imagine saying that a wine reminds you of cocoa.

John Gauntner wrote in 2005 on his authoritative sake-world site, "I have not had a full glass of nigori-zake in at least umpteen years, maybe more."

I'm generally in the ABN (anything but nigori) crowd myself. Just as with White Zin, I think nigori sakes are great for the industry because they introduce new drinkers who can move up later. But I don't order White Zin off the wine list either, even the reserve list.

Here's an example of the U.S. market affecting Japanese sake production: enough people here like nigori sakes, and are willing to spend money for them, that a few companies make upscale versions. (There's a difference from white Zin; the most expensive white Zin I could find online was $14.99.)

For Kamoizumi brewery in Hiroshima prefecture, making a premium nigori falls in line with company history.

The Maekake family who run Kamoizumi committed to unfiltered junmai production in 1971 when most of Japan insisted on charcoal filtering. Where most breweries saw impurities, Kamoizumi tasted complexities. But Kamoizumi junmais had a touch of color at a time when all sakes were expected to be clear. That decision had to be a lot more difficult than the decision to take Nigori upscale.

Kamoizumi "Summer Snow" Nigori Ginjo ($28 for 500 ml) is good enough to seduce an ABN drinker. In fact, my bottle emptied with surprising alacrity.

Hiroshima is known for its soft water, a good base to start from. This sake is not chunky; instead it has a viscous mouthfeel. Yet it also rings with acidity and is not at all like the sweet, stewy nigoris that dominate the market.

There's a strong olive-oil note in aroma and flavor, something I don't usually detect in sake. You also taste notes of white peach, cream (of course), lemon zest and clay. The medium-long finish never cloys. It's only very slightly sweet; with an SMV of +1, it's akin to a German halbtrocken Riesling. I have tasted many expensive non-white Zinfandels that have more residual sugar than this.

It's the best nigori sake I've ever had. Is that damning with faint praise? No, but at the same time I'm not sure it's convincing to the typical nigori drinker, since I'm openly ABN. Yet I really liked this sake; my bottle emptied rapidly. If nigori is the White Zinfandel of sake, this one's the dry Pinot Noir-based rose.

I held history today

Today I held in my nervous hands a bottle of the most famous white wine in U.S. history: the 1973 Chardonnay that beat the best of Burgundy at the Judgment of Paris tasting.

That's winemaker Mike Grgich's signature on the bottle.

Also, look closely above the word CHARDONNAY. A common misconception about this wine is that it's purely from Napa Valley; indeed, it's often called the Chardonnay that put Napa on the world wine map.

In fact, the grapes are from "Napa and Alexander Valleys." I never see that kind of combined AVA listing anymore with two exceptions: Pride Mountain Vineyards, which sits right on the Napa/Sonoma border, and Schramsberg, which is commendably completist in listing its grape sources on the front label, even if it's 2% Marin County.

So in a sense, this wine not only represented a victory for the U.S. winemakers; it was the first victory for the cult of winemaking over the appellation system.

This bottle will probably never be opened, and shouldn't be. Even the greatest Chardonnays can't be expected to last 35 years. The contents were noticeably cloudy (no, I didn't shake it up.)

I wish I knew how good it tasted in 1976. Ironically, the bottle's owner, who had consumed a few in the past, told me, "It wasn't Montrachet." He still thinks the Judgment of Paris tasting was little more than a publicity stunt. If so, it was a highly successful one.

Where can you find most Japanese sommeliers?

Answer: 30,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean.

The majority of Japan's certified sommeliers are actually flight attendants. At Japan Air Lines, 741 of the 1000 flight attendants have passed the Japan Sommelier Association's exam.

It may not be as rigorous as the UK/US Master Sommelier program, but it does require a knowledge of wine regions, varietals, service questions, and everything else a sommelier exam implies.

The last time I flew JAL, I remember drinking a 175-ml bottle of Bordeaux blanc that was actually pretty decent; I may have had a second. The last time I flew American Airlines, the only wine offerings were FishEye, sweet stuff from the Wine Group. I had sparkling water.

So maybe the sommeliers in the sky matter. The next time I fly JAL, I'm going to ask the flight attendant for the right pairing for roasted peanuts and pretzels. See how she does with that one.

Older vintage than wine list -- send it back

"Older equals better" was once a wine belief. People evaluated wine based on how it would age. Many restaurants carried extensive older-wine selections.

Wine has changed. Strong tannins are no longer needed to protect against erratic and high temperatures, so reds are made without them. Older is not necessarily better.

White wines are rarely better older. There are exceptions: some Rieslings and a few Chardonnays are the most prominent. But the great majority of white wines are best on current release.

If you order white wine and the vintage presented is older than listed, send it back.

Vintage changes happen. A restaurant doesn't reprint every day. Sometimes a supplier switches to the new vintage. Fine. That's the wine industry.

If they switch to an older vintage, somethings's wrong.

Case in point: Last night I ordered a 2005 Mastroberardino Falanghina with dinner. The waiter presented the 2004.

I balked. Falanghina might age, but why should I take that risk? I wanted it for its light, crisp, orange blossom, floral character. Maybe it's richer at 4 years old, but that's not what I want.

The waiter paused at our table for a while, dumbfounded. He said that's all they had at the bar. I told him to bring me the wine list.

A couple minutes later the owner showed up. He explained that Wilson Daniels lost the Mastroberardino distribution rights, so a different distributor carries it now. The previous distributor delivered the wine and won't take it back. The distributor carries several must-have spirits brands, and the restaurant has a bar, so they can't really fight back.

There's a happy ending. He recommended a wine I would never have ordered: 2005 Domaine Bertagna "Les Croix Blanches" Bourgogne, $44 on the list. Who orders a general AOC Bourgogne? You assume purchased fruit, big vats of grapes of uneven quality trucked in from wherever.

Apparently this is a single-vineyard wine: a 4-acre vineyard outside any official Burgundy subappellation. "The white crosses" makes me think it's a graveyard, but maybe that's just because I love zombie movies. And Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That's good terroir.

Excellent wine, the Bertagna: licorice note on the aroma with cherry fruit; cherry tobacco palate, a menthol note. Good acidity. Light-medium, body, easy to drink a lot of. 13% alcohol. Very nice with oxtail tortellini with crispy Parmesan and caramelized onions, and also with sous vide game hen. A real find.

And all because I sent back the too-old white wine.

Bud Selig solves the wrong problem, again

We interrupt this wine blog to bitch about baseball.

Today Bud Selig announced that because of this year's 15-inning All-Star Game, in which the managers nearly ran out of pitchers, he's considering adding two additional pitchers to the roster for each team.

It's a ridiculous idea, and it won't solve the "problem" of an extra-inning game using up a pitching staff -- which, incidentally, is not a problem at all. Fans and players alike would have loved seeing J.D. Drew pitch the 16th inning. The only people who would have objected would have been the general-sports columnists who live to find things to rant about. But I digress.

The All-Star rosters are already too large: 32 players for one game. In one real baseball game, a team could get by with 21 players because they're only going to use the 4 starting pitchers who don't start the game in an exceptional circumstance. So the All-Star game rosters are already 50 percent larger than they need to be.

These overly large rosters influence the way the game is played. Instead of leaving the best shortstop and second baseman in the league out there for nine innings, the managers feel pressured to let everyone play. They might hold back one position player and a pitcher or two but for the most part, every batter gets at least one at-bat, and every pitcher faces at least one batter.

How is that going to change by adding two pitchers? Will these two be designated the "emergency pitchers," to be used only in extra innings? Not likely. The Players' Association would object for good reason: Many players earn a bonus if they make the All-Star team. I find it hard to believe the Players' Association would sign off on creating two uneven classes of All-Star pitchers.

So how will going from, say, an 11-man pitching staff for ONE GAME to a 13-man pitching staff change anything?

It will mean the All-Star Game will look even less like real baseball. Pitchers will run in to face one batter just to get an appearance, regardless of the score or situation. That will slow the game down, and the long opening ceremony already makes the game feel overlong.

This year's All-Star Game was one of the most exciting in memory. The tantalizing thought of seeing position players pitch added to the drama. This is not a problem. It doesn't need fixing. Leave it alone, Bud Selig.