Back again, with pleasure. I enjoyed the discussion of manipulation, although I feel we barely scratched the surface of perhaps the most vital topic of the moment and would like to take it up again at some point. Meanwhile, have been pondering another aspect of our favorite subject.
I recently braved spiders and bats to get a grip on the shamble of crates and loose glass I call a wine cellar. By the time I gave up I’d unearthed a couple of cases worth of orphan bottles, along with some wines I bought in flusher times and haven’t tasted for awhile. I’ve been opening them at random, and it’s been pretty interesting.
For example, a ’78 Summit Lake Zin was at the end of the line, yet still extremely enjoyable. It was like looking at something through the long end of the telescope. It was smaller than it had been, but not distorted—it still looked like itself. The plump and luscious fruit I remember from the wine’s youth (and mine) had fallen away to reveal its essential elements: real terroir, minerality, soil, echoes of ripe grapes.
Was it nearly a ghost after 31 years? Most definitely. Had it lost its essential beauty? Definitely not. Let’s fall back on the old movie star analogy. Paul Newman in his 70s, selling cookies and salad dressing, did not look exactly like Butch Cassidy or Hud. But he still looked great, like a good-looking old man who had been extraordinarily handsome in youth. More to the point, the elements of his youthful beauty were still apparent. He looked a lot like the young Paul Newman, only older. Same with the ’78 Summit Lake.
I had a similar experience a few years ago with a 1921 Pol Roger. It was an incredible Champagne experience despite the fact, or perhaps because, it gave up its ghost within minutes. Why drink a doddering old Champagne when a young one is so wonderful? To quote my own column in the LA Times, “It was not a young wine, no longer fresh. But it was alive, with a measured effervescence and a taut, if somewhat ethereal focus. Even beneath the descending weight of its age, evident in the tawny gold hue and rich toasted nut aromas and flavors, it was brilliant, razor-sharp, balanced on a pinpoint. The glass exuded dignity, wisdom, and a kind of autumnal sadness. We were transported; discussion could wait.” (Read the whole column here if you have nothing better to do: http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jan/19/food/fo-55273 )
Closer to home, I was happily surprised by a Rodney Strong Zinfandel, Knotty Vines 2000, Sonoma County. Not a wine I would expect to age in an interesting way, and yet it was wonderful, fresh yet mellowed in the same way that a dry-aged Porterhouse is wonderful—every bit itself, and itself intrinsically fine, yet altered by time. On the other hand, Silver Pinot Noir, Lake Marie Vineyard 2001 (Santa Barbara) seemed promising but turned out to be oddly flat and syrupy, with a remote taste of chlorine (from watering back with city water, perhaps?)
And brace yourselves for my tasting notes on ’95 Lynch-Bages: “Perfect Bordeaux, let’s grill lamb tonight.”
All that got me thinking about aging: how and why wines age, whether there’s any virtue in a wine that age has rendered more interesting but perhaps not more enjoyable, whether ageworthiness indicates an ability to maintain youthful characteristics for a long time or a mystical capacity for metamorphosis, and whether anyone cares about aging wines anymore.
When I first got involved with wine, the second thing that attracted me (after the gleaming allure of regional typicity and, dare I say it, terroir) was the idea that wine is a living thing with a life of its own.
As luck would have it, my descent into winedom coincided with my brief acting career, and good ol’ Shakespeare provided plenty of fodder for my new fascination. During one memorable run of Henry IV, Part 2, in which I played Falstaff, the stage manager (a fellow novice wine geek) filled my prop flask with a different mystery wine each night, which culminated in my spraying the shocked front row with Ridge Zin during a particularlarly passionate reading of the line, “If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be to foreswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack!”
More to the point, the Bard gave me metaphorical language for what I percieved as wine’s most mystical property, its transmutation in the bottle over time. When I played Jacques in Love’s Labor Lost, I delivered the “Seven Ages of Man” soliloquy while visualizing Chateau Latour ’67, which was then just shy of ten years old and, I thought, at the Lover age, “sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ brow.”
That early gift keeps giving. Just the other night we drank a ’93 Pommard-Pezerolles (Ballot-Millot) and I found myself thinking of Ariel’s song, “of his bones are coral made, those are pearls that were his eyes, nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea change, into something rich and strange.” (A positive comment, by the way.)
The thing is, that kind of experience seems to have gone by the wayside in recent years. I frequently hear ***-swinging wine geeks brag about old wines they’ve had, and the observation is almost always to the effect that the wine was either “still drinkable” or “over the hill.” Several times recently I’ve tried to engage people at dinner parties on the subject of an older wine being poured, and it’s been frustrating because there hasn’t seemed to be any interest in describing the experience of the wine. It’s always devolved to how it competes with other wines in the longevity department. Has anyone else had a similar—or opposite—experience?
I find myself thinking that what’s been lost is not so much an ability to percieve the unique beauty of a fine wine in different phases of its life, but the ability to think about and talk about it.
It also strikes me that ageability is no longer as important as it once was. Has there been a sea change in the vinous paradigm, equivalent, say, to the relatively new vogue for syrupy, high-alcohol wines (which, to my taste, don’t so much age as decay)? As we know, most wine is consumed relatively soon after it’s made. A lot of the manipulations we discussed in the last thread are aimed at early drinkability. And the all-important scores are generally obtained by wines that grab the taster’s attention upon commercial release, fresh out of a newly-opened bottle or even a barrel.
So, I’m curious. Is age-worthiness still a viable value? And what wines currently exemplify that?
Also, what do you think happens to a wine as it ages? How does a Mosel or Eden Valley riesling age, compared to a Sancerre or a Mersault? What about Bordeaux, and how does that compare to a Napa Valley cabernet?
And would it be fair to paraphrase Jacques--“And one wine in its time plays many parts, its acts being seven ages?”
Hello Rod,
I completely agree. I will be tasting several of the Lots from the Louis Martini Special Reserve 1968 set today. Twelve separate lots and the Private Reserve from that great vintage. Every time I have one of these wines I am astounded at the quality and especially the price upon release. I wonder what some of our pioneers would be making today? Funny, it sounds like I'm describing Constitutional Law. What were the framers thinking?
That’s a really interesting tasting, Fred. Those wines have real character, which I attribute to being made from perfectly ripe fruit in a straightforward manner (through the ’88, at least). No bogus hang time, no devious manipulations to reverse-engineer Spectator scores (which, of course, weren’t yet a factor). Would you agree? And do you see a shift toward “critic pleasing” in the early ‘90s?
And I have tasted some of those old-school Inglenooks. They’re amazing. I don’t have to tell you, of all people, that those classic Napa cabs were made from fruit picked (usually) shy of 24 brix, and they seldom added acid, or anything else for that matter—although we might debate whether they would have used enzymes, mega purple, etc. if such things had been available. But for whatever reason, it was honest wine production. I know you’ve also tasted some of those Inglenooks next to BV PR, which is also interesting given that they were making wine from virtually the same place, so it’s really a comparison of Duer vs. Tchellistchef. I don’t think the typical Napa cult cab, for all its immediate appeal, has nearly the character or complex evolution of those classic wines.
This is so interesting considering I have just finished doing a "Five Decades of Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon". Bob wisely put away a significant library and I have been pulling a wine from each decade, 60's up. Last week it was 69 Unfined, 76, 88, 96, 2005,6. It's amazing to see in perfect condition how the vintages have progressed, regressed and impressed. Also, if you have any access to the Inglenook Cask wines from the 40, 50 and 60's they are superb.
As with our discussion of manipulation, Greg, your view tends to cut through a lot of cloudy single entendre and embrace the bright light of reason. You produce wine, you understand the realities of the marketplace that makes it possible for you to continue, and you still champion old-school values. There’s a lot here that I want to elaborate and discuss. For now, I have to go to bed for awhile in order to get up around 4AM to pick the last of our grenache for mid-day delivery to the winery (will pull the last clusters between dropping the kids off at school and picking them up).
Your short essay strikes home on several levels. Appropo this discussion, I’m still wondering whether sommeliers today have any sense of wines that are honestly made to live a full life, as opposed to the current model you characterize as “Winemaker philosophy vs. financial reality. Our wine world.”
We really are drinking financial reality these days, aren’t we? What I’m getting at in this whole thread is the idea that there has been a sea change in modern wine (or, as some would have it, post-modern wine) equivalent to the shift toward dry wines in the last century.
Your explication of pH tells the tale. It sets up the current paradigm of picking too late then adding water and acid. Assinine in the old school. Big scores in this one.
Anyway, have to get out there in the dark to pick some grenache. Not without some trepidation—last night I was taking a leak by the vineyard gate and something growled at me. Something big and feline, I believe. Wish me a little luck.
Just to add some thoughts on this article from the perspective of a winery. And maybe answer Rod's more sublte question of "Are we currently making wines that will age and is that important."
Of course, this is not how every winery thinks, but these are things that go through a winemaker’s head (or the marketing department) when addressing the issue of wine and ageability.
Let’s start by looking at the life cycle of a particular wine – 2009 Cabernet from a warm growing region. The wine is harvested in late September/ early October and aged for a particular amount of time in the cellar. You will notice that many, many Cabernet wines spend 20 months in barrel and are released in the Spring 2011. This allows the winery to bottle in the summer and then let the wine settle for 6 or so months in bottle before the release of the wine. This allows the winery to only have 1 vintage in the cellar before harvest, clearing space and barrels. It also allows the wines to be ready for the critics tastings that occur in the spring. For many wineries, it is vital that the wines are drinkable as the critics make their tours of the wineries or as samples are submitted. Six months bottle age is desirable as wines go into bottle shock for 4-6 months after bottling, depending on the varietal. (Note that not all wineries work on this cycle. Another method is to taste the critics on the previously released vintage. For our example, the winery would taste the critic on the 2008, instead of the 2009. It allows you to get another year of bottle age for scores, but is less impactful to move the most recent vintage. ) Don't be mistaken, winemakers thing about critic scores. It is the market that we have all created.
So with this in the back of our minds, most wineries seek to construct wines that are extremely drinkable 2 ½ years after the harvest. Seems like a long time? Remember that in the past, even thinking about drinking Bordeaux that was less than 10 years old was unthinkable. Why was that? Well, looking at the classic vintages of Bordeaux and California, these wines were picked much less ripe, with much lower pHs (typically below 3.5). The typical pH of the modern New World Cabernet is 3.8+, sometimes much more than that. For a pH tasting comparison, a traditional Chinon will have a pH of 3.5 and a Barossa Shiraz a pH of 4.1ish. It is pH (along with Total Acidity) that drives the ageability of a wine. The lower the pH, the longer the wine will last, obviously depending on other factors like intensity of fruit, balance, etc, BUT the longer it will take for the wine to be drinkable. So the winery, needing sales and critics scores, picks riper (higher pH) and thus sacrifices ageability.
Will some of these wine ages? Probably. But will we be consistently drinking 2001 Napa Cabernets in 2035? I think not. But I bet we are still drinking some 1959 Bordeaux. (For the record, I'm not picking on Napa. Washington is the same)
Lastly, specifically regarding Cabernet, the thought of “greenness” in a wine horrifies most winemakers. To get all the pyrazine out of Cabernet, you have to pick it ripe and with a high pH, for the most part. It takes heat and hang time to get those flavors out of there. But think about all those beautiful herbal flavors of great Graves or Pauillac? Those were green flavors when young, but putting a wine like that in today’s critical arena is asking for a beating.
So that is the dilemma for the winemaker. Approachable and high scoring when young or ethereal and respected when old. Principle vs practicability. Winemaker philosophy vs financial reality. Our wine world.