GrapeCrafter

My posting at AppellationAmerica.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.

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

It seems like they all are. After the intense early September heat of 2004 and the extreme cold of 2005, we’ve seen our share of recent physiological peculiarities in California fruit. But Nature continues to find new motifs with which to toy with us and test our mettle.

To be sure, vintage variation in California occurs within a much narrower range than the wild fluctuations typical of France and Germany. We do not follow the Eurocentric philosophy of planting varieties at the northern extreme of ripening potential, nor are we much subject to the dilution and rot associated with autumnal rainfall.

Over my 35 years in the wine industry, I have become increasingly alarmed at the gap between what winemakers do and what they are permitted to discuss in public. One root of this unhappy situation is the widening schizm between technical people and the general public, and a justly growing distrust of modernization. I admit it -- I can barely cope myself with my computer, and I have no idea how to program my VCR. If only winemaking could remain sacred and untainted! Alas, the advent of the 20th Century with its electricity, stainless steel, refrigeration, inert gas, its microbiology, enzymology, and all those other ologies completely erased traditional winemaking from anywhere on the globe some fifty years ago.

But fear not. What is important is not to eliminate modern conveniences, but to regain the ancient knowing in order to produce wines which lift the human soul. Winemaking is just another form of cooking, and winemakers need to learn to be better chefs. Not by putting down their tools, but by concentrating less on theory and more on technique, and by replacing draconian control of nature for an understanding of how to coexist with its bounty. These are the principles I will explore in this blog.