GrapeCrafter

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ye builders of appellations beware. The bell tolls for thee.

Washington State corporation Ste. Michelle has joined forces with rapacious Italian giant Antinori to assimilate Napa Valley collectible Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, following in the footsteps of another appellation pioneer, Carneros Creek Winery, swallowed up just a year ago year, while a third namesake winery, Dry Creek Vineyards, struggles against insolvency to maintain independence.

A surprisingly well thought out New York Times article on terroir, was delivered in May by food writers Harold McGee and Daniel Patterson. While it starts off silly in posing and then debunking the idea that terroir means that soil is literally transported by vines into their grapes, the piece then lays out this complex subject well and concludes properly by defining terroir as a collaboration of natural flavors unique to a place stewarded to the glass through skilled artifice. Missing only is the connection I observe between organic practices and enhancement of wine quality: flavor, structure, longevity and minerality. This connection is impossible for someone to make who has not spent a lot of time in vineyards both conventional and green-oriented and working with the resulting wines.

For this reason, I admire even more John Williams’ articulate essay on the Science of Sustainable Viticulture and am pleased that his considerable experience reflects my own observations. Here we find testimony of this underappreciated connection between living soil and wine quality.

So many wine media pundits speak of their love of Old World wine styles over the standard California offerings, which tend to overblown styles which please up front but lack minerality and length in the finish; muscular and fruit forward but without balance, interest and depth, brawny and generous yet dull and shallow; long on impact but short-lived. And I agree.

Behind the scenes among our winery clients it is well understood that this state of affairs is almost entirely voluntary. Smart marketing follows the money. Sometimes a winemaker just likes rich, forward wines. But mostly winemakers and marketers have better sense than to slog through the mud of today’s brutal competition by trying to sell wines of subtlety and finesse.

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.