The panel discussion at the Portland Indie Wine Festival panel discussion on Natural Wine in the Age of Technology held fascinating lessons for me in the disconnect between consumers and winemakers. Our hope was to arrive at a definition, perhaps even a Certification Mark, for Natural Wine. If a list of winemaking practices is commercially practical (unlike Organic Certification), many winery players will choose to participate. I argue in Natural Wine: Choosing Your Priorities that several consumer groups with different agendas are rallying under the Natural Wine flag. Careful thought is needed to determine the mountains everybody wants to die on.

Continue reading "Yeast Inoculation – Threat or Menace?" »

My posting at AppellationAmerca.com on Natural Wine: Choosing Your Priorities is resulting in new visitors to this site looking for additional information.

This blog consists of pieces on various wine technology topics. These are sorted into Categories: Postmodern Winemaking, Natural Winemaking, Terroir, Alcohol Adjustment, Social Responsibility, and so forth. The Search function will bring up titles discussing your keyword: sulfites, micro-oxygenation, chips, allergens, fining, and reverse osmosis are rich in content. I also recommend the GrapeCraft Glossary or the calendar wheel which ties all the concepts of postmodern winemaking together.

Last Friday I was privileged to participate in a tasting of Amador Zinfandels at Appellation America. It's a fascinating process, more geared at understanding the distinctiveness of what's happening in an appellation (both terroir and historical marketing influences) than just handing out medals (They do this, too.) This is one of the few tools wineries can use for longterm promotion rather than just moving the vintage on the shelves, and I hope AA will see submittals of the best regional wines, sold out or no.

Anywho, even I, who have been generally disdainful of appellation identity in California am forced to admit that if there is anywhere deserving of a local identity tantamount to, say, Roquefort cheese, it is Amador Zinfandel.

Continue reading "Appellation Distinctiveness = Market Suicide?" »

Curtis Phillips’ article in the December issue of Wine Business Monthly decries the state of wine research funding in the United States as compared to Australia, with the American Vineyard Foundation’s budget at $1.2 M as compared to Australia’s $23 M, mostly gobbled up by the intrepid Australian Wine Research Institute. As he mentions, our publicly funded research pales beside the proprietary investigations pursued by Gallo’s Jim Peck and other in-house secret fact factories. There can be no doubt that in our country, a public system for addressing the practical needs of small wineries is sadly lacking. By continually coming through with useful, practical findings, AWRI trumps our institutions completely through a clear and well organized commitment to Industry.

But Curtis is focusing on politics rather than economics. One should consider what is the ultimate source of these funds. Who actually cash-rolls Australia’s research? Why, the same folks who pay for Gallo’s research, and also for marijuana research and cocaine research and China’s industrial boom. The American consumer. Give ‘em what they want, and they’ll shell out for it. Not to worry.

These revered words, first coined by Martin Ray and later popularized on Robert Mondavi Reserve bottlings, were early buzz words of noninterventionist winemaking as a hallmark of the ultrapremium.

In our laughably complex world, the American consumer loves nothing so much as an easy answer to any shopping challenge. I just bought a high-def TV, and believe me, I can relate. But as I explained in Spoofulated or Artisanal?, winemaking is beset with alarmist paparazzi eager to spin panic. Lovers of easy answers are their chosen prey. So what’s the real skinny about winemakers who employ “traditional” tools like fining and filtration in an effort to bring us the best wine they can?

Continue reading "Unfined, Unfiltered" »

No, it wasn't the Wine Police, just technical snafus which have kept the site down for almost a month. May the look and feel also return soon. -Clark

As I explained in Spoofulated or Artisanal?, the conversion of grapes into that stuff in your glass is obviously a major technological reshaping every time. Unlike the free, open ‘70’s and ‘80’s, today’s winemakers are lying low and keeping mum while paparazzi fire live ammo over their heads.

I don't like it, I don't accept it, and I don't think you should either. And I tell you, we can go back. We just have to start up some honest dialogue. Begin with this: the real truth is that wines, and I mean all wines, become distinctive through artifice. That’s what winemakers do, don’t you know. You just can’t draw the line at no manipulation. You have to pick and choose.

Of course most folks just let the winemaker pick his own tools, a method I strongly recommend. Choose your winemaker with care, then delegate the details. Representative democracy is based on the notion that people are more expert at evaluating people than complex issues.

So let's say you get a chance to size up a winemaker at a dinner event or retail store, or better yet at the winery. How do you conduct the interview?

Continue reading "Grilling the Candidates" »

In Dan Berger's latest Vintage Experiences he relates a conversation with a fellow judge, and East Coast Burgundy junkie, who indicated concern about California Pinot Noir and the current fad to blend these with 24% Syrah to obtain more color at the expense of covering up nuance. I was with him all the way until he stepped off the cliff of absolutism: "Color in Pinot Noir ought to be pale, not black. If you see a black Pinot, something is wrong."

Simplistic truisms are almost never true in the wine world, and Pinot is even tougher to nail down than most grapes. This guy may know Burgundy, but he sure doen't know Pinot. While I share his concern, he should have more respect for the variability of which Pinot is capable.

Continue reading "Pinot = Syrah?" »

The irrepressible Steve De Long posts yet another jewel -- this time a jibe at internet pouring excess.

It got me thinking why these things are done. The phenomenon obviously results from the plain and tragic fact that the Internet, being a medium that provides sight and sound but never smell, taste and touch, is a singularly inappropriate vehicle for investigating the wine experience. Along with the desperate attempts in Steve's article to work wine into the medium at hand, this incapacity gives rise to an awful lot of silly and irrelevant wine chatter.

I think my arguments and observations on appropriate uses of technology and about the experience of wine and music make a lot more sense for those readers who go to the effort to try the experiences glass in hand..

In truth, discussing wine in its absence is gossip, and a true gentleman would withdraw from the field. Still, I would miss Steve.

Huge flap by Napa vintners over tightening rulemaking procedures at TTB. Perhaps I am missing some subtleties, but the changes seem like a positive step towards real definition of our so-called appellation system. Since we currently have very little burden of geographic proof and nothing whatever of wine flavor characterization or winegrowing rules, we are hardly in the league of European standards under which varieties and growing practices are severely restricted and tasting panels pass judgment on the quality and typicity of each vintage.

I think U.S. appellations are silly. It's sad how easily Americans are being duped in their quest for easy guarantees. They are the enemy of terroir, a method for corporations to co-opt the hard work of pioneers. Smart small guys should devote their energy to distinctive expression of their unique piece of ground rather than supporting marketing bandwagons which inevitably will undo them.

Please check out my posting at Appellation America on the subject of wine manipulation.

Readers of the recent SF Chronicle articles on the work I’m involved in concerning the resonance of wine and music have written me to ask whether I think the effect is in our perception or some physical effect the musical vibration has on the structure of the wine.

Top of my head, I would say that in my demonstration, I find that at least part of the effect is strictly mental, which may indeed involve physical manifestations in the brain, but not necessarily in the wine itself. You can do an experiment to confirm my finding, by tasting wine while you play different pieces of music to yourself in your head. If you find this difficult, you can use headphones. Either way, the astringency effects of harmonic resonance vs dissonance are
quite apparent.

Continue reading "Physics or Cognition?" »

I confess I’ve been holding out on my readers about an intriguing area of research Susie and I have been pursuing lately, that of the relationship of wine and music. My wife, Dr. Susan Mayer-Smith, a French-trained clinical psychologist who holds two music degrees and was awarded first chair flautist for the Chicago Symphony at age 19, has been working with me to explore the GrapeCraft core notion that wine is liquid music.

At Vinovation many times daily we conduct “sweet spot” trials to determine the proper balance points for alcohol in the wines our 800 California clients bring us, and we always find the same two things. First, the points of harmony (roundness, softness, sweetness) and dissonance (harshness, disjointedness) arrange themselves in a very nonlinear fashion. You don’t find balance throughout the 13%’s with lower alcohols being thin and salty and higher alcohols hot and bitter. Instead you get dialed-in radio stations: specific points of harmonious balance just a tenth of a percent away from terrible wines.

Continue reading "Wine and Music: Mysterious Resonances" »

I think it’s part of a good winemaker’s work to work the street. Musicians who hole up in the studio never get a feeling for how their work is received. You gotta tour. The winemaker’s version is to ride with a salesperson and go one-on-one with his customers as he runs his route. Alternatively, you stand behind a table and pour. Wine is a people business, and often the buying decisions get made for reasons having nothing to do with what’s in the bottle. So an opportunity to work the market and be truly known in a pure way unpolluted by the tricks of salesmanship is a pearl of great price.

Continue reading "East of Eden" »

I hope a winemaker blogger can be forgiven some inactivity this time of year. As the 2007 harvest winds down, I thought a short note would be helpful to other winemakers struggling with harvest decisions.

Basically, if you haven't picked by now, you should probably do so. A cool summer which hardly topped 90F in most areas encouraged rapid maturation and very screwy numbers and ripeness patterns. For example, Dry Creek Zin was all picked well before Lodi this year! Over half our fruit came in a month early, and then we slowed to a crawl. We are now experiencing unusually cold and rainy weather in which lofty brix goals many winemakers still pick on will never be achieved. That's OK. Look for signs of ripeness: good fruit flavors, brown seeds, skins which disintegrate when chewed and yield color easily when subsequently squeezed between forefinger and thumb. Forget brix!