GrapeCrafter

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

Dan Berger’s article in Appellation America offers a brilliant insight: overripe wines are wimpier. And as a winemaker weary of apologizing for youthful leanness and austerity, these words are a breath of fresh air.

He’s right! Today’s overpriced prune bombs may offer cheap thrills to impact thrill-seekers who lack the stones to appreciate good structure, minerality and integrity serious wine offers. But they’re wimps.

Here's a note from Derrick Schneider whose excellent blog An Obsession With Food minces many dicey issues.

Clark,

One of my site's readers asked the question below (he sent in a similar note as a letter to Art of Eating), and I wondered about your opinion on the subject.

"did you try drinking the wines blind and identifying the one with the sweet spot, and then drink (blind) with food and once again identify the one with the sweet spot?"

My response, though I imagine yours will be more insightful:

"Thanks for your comment (and the corresponding letter to AoE -- my joking aside, Ed appreciated all the commentary).

The short answer is no.

My recent suggestion to Alice Feiring or her fellow travelers got mentioned in her blog and has also just produced the thoughtful response to my question which I was hoping for.

My intent in my blog on Authenticity vs Terroir was not to pigeonhole anyone. I called on somebody -- if not Alice then perhaps other readers will comment -- to specify what you think is authentic.

A fascinating distinction is emerging from some recent intellectual sparring over wine manipulation. I have proposed that the unique flavors of a specific terroir are best displayed when the presented with a skilled hand. Winemaking is cooking, and this is basic culinary doctrine. Over-spicing or other sorts of clumsy manipulations can certainly get in the way of natural expression, but a skilled practitioner in the kitchen – by very definition – makes his work as invisible as possible and relies on the native flavors of his raw materials to carry the central themes presented at table.

Clark,

I've recently discovered your blog and various endeavors and have learned a great deal from them.

I'm a 1st year MW student and have been doing quite a bit of reading on phenolics recently. I'm curious about something, however, and haven't been able to find any pertinent info. What influences the perception of astringency in different parts of the mouth? Some wines will give you lots of astringency in the gums but not the tongue and vice versa. Is it the molecular weight of the tannins, their origin or something else? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best,

Adam
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Open note to Adam:

They all talk the talk. Nothing in the wine biz gets more lip service today than the blesséd and elusive terroir, a zealotry which begins with the notion that every place has a unique flavor signature, and (depending on whom you speak to) embraces aspects of living soil and even cultural tradition.

The film Mondovino argued strongly, if shrilly, that distinctive terroir expression is the highest goal of viniculture. And I agree. Wine is one of those unusual commodities which delight most when they surprise. Like a book, you don’t want the same one you had last week. But I see little evidence in the wine trade that a unique, distinctive experience has any real commercial traction.

Got a note this morning from an attorney chum who has wisely over the years converted a portion of his excessive salary to the acquisition of burgundy. He now sits atop a cellar of some 900 cases, peacefully ageing a few yards beneath his endangered liver. He tells me now the valuations of his stuff have gone so crazy it’s no joy at all to drink.

The commoditization of famous wines occurs for me as corollary to the general obsession with celebrity, which has led to such unfortunate matters as the OJ Simpson trial and the death of Lady Di. Wine is playing out its own tragedy – prices becoming to a greater and greater extent a function of notoriety and less and less a matter of intrinsic quality.

In the August 2006 edition of The Wine Spectator, we see once again the old armchair viticulturist refrain regarding crop yield that less is always more. James Laube’s assessment of the 2005 vintage is that it should be a good vintage, but he finds that its size casts that into doubt. Putting aside that the record crop is mostly based on record bearing acreage rather than high yields per acre, I contend that in many cases, (Napa Cabernet being the most glaring), quality suffers mainly from under cropping.

This weekend Napa Valley hosted the 2006 Symposium of the Institute of Masters of Wine. One of the most stimulating speakers was a chap under whom I studied Sensory Science at UC Davis, Dr. Michael O’Mahoney, a thoughtful and erudite chap who also brings his training as a Shakespearean actor to the lecture hall, and is never boring.

Michael doesn’t run with the traffic in sensory circles, and has for decades attempted to set the record straight about taste perception by digging into the literature to expose the shallow roots of the Basic Tastes theory.

I received this letter recently from Fran in Phoenix.

"In the context of tools that wine makers can use these days, Enologix has gotten a lot of press. I'd love to hear your take on what he's doing, and how that differs from Vinovation (which I ask just to enhance my own understanding). Is he a competitor? A different universe?"