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The Elephant in the Cellar

Rod Smith

The Elephant in the Cellar

          I’ve enjoyed the Syrah discussion, and am pleased to be asked back for another round. This time, I want to see what the nation’s foremost wine geeks think about an issue that I think is vitally important but never seems to be addressed much beyond eye-rolling shrugs and head shaking.
          This elephant in the room—or, if you will, the wine cellar—is viticultural and winemaking practices that subvertly change the nature of wines being marketed as honest expressions of special vineyards.
          Here’s where I come from, as simply as I can state it. I started drinking wine for the obvious reasons, long before I got excited about it. What was it that finally engaged me to the point where I’ve now spent thirty-odd years thinking about—no, pondering wine on a daily basis? In a word, truth and beauty (okay, two words, but I’ve always thought they were synonymous).
          Most of you will recognize the script: young guy goes to Europe and discovers that each mystical, magical place has its own drinkable essence called wine. This local wine contains the landscape, architecture, culture, and everything else that gives a sense of place. Plus you get a buzz, especially helpful when you decide to, say, sit in a café across from Rouen Cathedral for an entire day to experience the changing light on that iconic façade as recorded by Claude Monet in his amazing 31-painting series.
          Honestly, I’ve long since forgotten what wines I drank that day, if I ever knew; they were mostly fresh, local quaffers served proudly in carafes. But I can still clearly remember what some of them tasted like. Ditto the anonymous riesling I drank after hiking along the Mosel near Trier, and the plump, juicy red in that Alentejo hill town. And couldn’t we all go on and on in that vein? (And isn’t it fun to open a few bottles and trade the actual stories?)
          My point is that it’s been at least 10 years since I’ve been confident that I was getting that kind of signal impression from wines of the New World, especially California. Truth be known, I’ve come to doubt the truth and beauty quotient of modern European wines, as well.
          I’ve put it in terms of confidence because it’s become very difficult to know for sure whether a given wine is telling a real story about a real place, or a fiction that may be based on actual events yet has been cleverly enhanced to be what the producer thinks I want to taste or would be willing to pay for. For example, a cult-stature Pinot Noir which I raved about to anyone who would listen before being told by an informant in a commercial lab that the producer had doctored the wine with Mega Purple, supposedly to make up for “deficiencies” in the fruit. I wasn’t just embarrassed. I felt betrayed.
          In fact, I’ve come to suspect that California, in particular, is increasingly a bottled lie. Marketing campaigns that represent wines as pure expressions of special sites are quite often overtly deceitful. I believe that many wines that are represented as pure expressions of exalted sites are concocted, that is, heavily engineered to hit a desired note. And it’s not that I think that every wine has to be from a single block of vines, produced without any technique whatsoever. I don’t doubt that a great winemaker is like the resourceful teacher who knows how to help a child reach her full potential. But plastic surgery? C’mon. Nor do I have a problem with a good appellation or AVA wine. I just want to know that I’m tasting the true essence of grapes grown in a particular place or places.
          Most of you are familiar with consulting outfits like Enologix, a firm that helps wineries engineer their wines to get high scores (and actually guarantees higher scores). And many of you either make wine yourselves or have made a point of getting hands-on experience in vineyards and wineries. So I’m not here to break any shocking news, nor to lecture or instruct. My point, rather, is to try to move the conversation toward an objective examination of what a fine is, what it should be, and how various viticultural and winemaking techniques may support or contradict a wine’s stature. And please note that I’m deliberately excluding mass-market table wines from the discussion, although I believe, ironically, that most of them are relatively non-manipulated for economic rather than ethical reasons. Let’s focus on wine that expensive because it’s ostensibly a remarkable manifestation of a given summer in a certain place.
          My position going in is that many of the currently accepted winemaking practices (particularly additions such as acid, water, enzymes, tannin, concentrate, etc.) compromise the integrity of the fruit itself, and therefore defeat the ideal of fine wine. They also effectively insult the producers who endeavor to embrace the ideal without cheating. The contrarian might say, “Hey, if Mega Purple is used correctly, not even the most experienced taster can spot it.” Well, maybe not. But is that the point? Hey, if Barry Bonds hits the ball out of the park, who can deny that the ball actually did leave the park? (Yes, yes, I’ve spent long evenings with my redneck wine-geek friends chewing on topics like HGH, Photo Shop, Dolby sound, computers in academics, you name it.)
          Other practices (such as mechanical de-alcoholization, reverse osmos, and various applications of oak essence) seem to me in poor taste, or contrary to the spirit of fine wine, without necessarily triggering my “foul!” alarm. Still others, including chapitalization, irrigation, temperature-controlled fermentation and sterile filtration, may be considered unacceptable manipulations by some yet are already established beyond the point of practical debate.
          And then there’s the whole yeast thing—yikes, where do we start with that?
          So: Truth and beauty versus (or enhanced by) Voodoo vinemaking. Any thoughts?
Parents

  • Agree completely, Brian—almost to the end. But I don’t think compassion and waiting are enough. You’re right that we’re at a crossroads, and I believe it’s imperative that those of us in possession of a clue stand up and comment on the emperor’s wardrobe. That happened in France some time ago, when enough people understood that the integrity of French wine demanded quantifiable ethics. That happened independently and subsequently in other countries, and the religion of viticultural integrity—the soul of a meaningful appellation system—spread throughout Europe. But the New World? For us, AVAs are more about marketing, and producer reputations, both in vineyard and winery, are more about image and hype. I believe it’s critical to the integrity of Cal (and by extension, New World) wine that the big bluff be called. After all, the Great Unwashed is a herdable beast—we ought to be fielding our own dogs, no?

    Also agree with Geoff regarding obviously manipulated wines. We tasted some in that RRV tasting you moderated recently, didn’t we? But to me the point is the ones that aren’t so obvious. I hate like hell to think I’m commenting on, say, the quality of tannin from a particular vineyard when that tannin may have come out of a bag.

Comment

  • Agree completely, Brian—almost to the end. But I don’t think compassion and waiting are enough. You’re right that we’re at a crossroads, and I believe it’s imperative that those of us in possession of a clue stand up and comment on the emperor’s wardrobe. That happened in France some time ago, when enough people understood that the integrity of French wine demanded quantifiable ethics. That happened independently and subsequently in other countries, and the religion of viticultural integrity—the soul of a meaningful appellation system—spread throughout Europe. But the New World? For us, AVAs are more about marketing, and producer reputations, both in vineyard and winery, are more about image and hype. I believe it’s critical to the integrity of Cal (and by extension, New World) wine that the big bluff be called. After all, the Great Unwashed is a herdable beast—we ought to be fielding our own dogs, no?

    Also agree with Geoff regarding obviously manipulated wines. We tasted some in that RRV tasting you moderated recently, didn’t we? But to me the point is the ones that aren’t so obvious. I hate like hell to think I’m commenting on, say, the quality of tannin from a particular vineyard when that tannin may have come out of a bag.

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