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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?

  • Rod, if you're in the business of SELLING wine, as almost all contributors to this stimulating discussion are, the use-function of romance and mystery is minuscule. Of course we're cynical! Since very few wines worldwide conform to an absolutely non-manipulated (and therefore substandard) "natural" expression, we now need to adapt in ways Greg (brilliant!) and others here have detailed so clearly. I think he gets to the core problem:overripeness. That is what changes water use, yeast use, acidification, and some enzymes probably too. True "wines of place" are always barely ripe, and exist in the narrow margins where weather and water necessitate minimal yields and extreme selection. Think Urziger Wurzgarten, Cote Rotie, and Grand Cru Burgundy. They are accidents of nature, and notable for their understatement. The romance and mystery is that in some lucky vintages they are mindblowing. And yes, they all have manipulations of differing sorts. Sulfur to stop a fermentation, anyone? How about a bag or three of sugar in that tank? Got viognier to coferment with your chilly hilly syrah?

    By comparison, West Coast US and South Australia and Mendoza are all deficient in the natural limitations of the production cycle. What was that you were about to say about Sonoma Coast?

  • You’re breaking my heart, Kevin. Abdicating the romance and mystery of wine in the face of cold, hard commerciality seems, well, cynical. But you’re right, there is some reasonable manipulation (see my teaching analogy, above) and then a line beyond which the wine’s true nature is compromised. I would say that playing fast and loose with the organoleptic profile, i.e. with acid, concentrate, enzymes, and tannin, is going too far. Any other opinions?

  • Well said Kevin.  As a fellow Canlis sommelier I could not agree more with Gramercy being an easy sale.  It is up to the sommelier or wine steward to sell these types of wines.   It all about the approach you take to the guest.  At times I personally enjoy a fat and extracted wine, they have there place.  I call them "fireside wines".  They are not to think about or have with food, just guzzle.  

    As far as manipulation goes.  My big issue is the whole "mega grape" or some other additive to make wines more concentrated than they already are.  Seems silly and basically cheating.   I have surely tasted wines that seemed artificial.  Kevin remember the Pinot we tasted recently?  Interesting thread nonetheless.

    BTW great info Greg.  Thank You.

  • Anonymous
    Anonymous

    Thanks Greg for the perspective check. I've personally long since divorced myself from the idea that wine is some ethereal product of the gods, given to man to express the essence of...whatever.

    Yeah, it's extraordinarily important to us, and I think that truly great wines often show an unmistakable sense of place. But I've given up my romantic notion that my favorite wines must be culled as the product of a vintage and place, minimally handled by humans, happily displaying the vagaries of the vintage.

    Seriously, once you've taken your first wine course; visited your first winery; taken your first business course; met your first winemaker; understood that winemakers are trying to actually make good wine and SELL wine... where's the line? Tell us: What's manipulating wine and what's not? You've got to draw a line somewhere; where should we start? No, really. Where?

    To Master Harrington: I find your wines an easy sale, but you do have to know how to set people up for them. I often ask people whether they're looking for something fat and extracted, or for something with good concentration that's elegant and polished, with some old-world complexity, or something to that end. They end up in the latter camp most of the time. ;)

  • Scott Labs is a GREAT reference for much of this information, especially when it comes to yeasts, enzymes and other additives.  Their catalog is fantastic and very easy to read.  I highly recommend requesting it and getting familiar with these products.

    www.scottlab.com/.../downloads.asp

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