Who could have predicted, as we enter 2009, the banishment of the word ‘green’ and ‘carbon footprint’? Both terms have become quite meaningless in this accelerated world of adaptive public relations and feral free marketers. But a word and its rigorous concept that must be more vigorously promoted and understood for this new year is biochar. So important is the notion that it was included in the 2007 Farm Bill, authored by then Senator Ken Salazar, now President-elect Obama’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior.
Biochar is simply the production of charcoal from a biomass. It is resolutely not the equivalent of a fireplace, though it shares a kinship. Biochar is produced by pyrolysis, the thermochemical decomposition of organic material in the absence of oxygen. But this definition requires significant qualification. Biochar made of wood, what we commonly call ‘charcoal’, has been produced for centuries in the limited presence of oxygen. Traditional methods might include burying wood over which one would then build a fire to char the wood below. Not only was the resulting charcoal used in cooking, still is today, it was also used as an amendment for poor soils. But this is not the same as the ’slash and burn’ method employed by ancient cultures up to the modern farmers along I-5. We are not talking about additions of a transitory ash. Biochar is different.
And just as ancient. Indeed, the recent discovery in the Amazon Basin of what are called Terra Preta do Indio soils confirms biochar’s Pre-Columbian use, soils dating from 500 BC to 1400 AD.
Now, what is especially fascinating about these soils is not only the logarithmic increase in agricultural productivity they continue to allow, but also the extraordinary stability and durability of the carbon added centuries ago. And it is this feature of biochar products that has caught the attention of some of the finest minds in soil and environmental science, David A. Laird and Cornell’s Johannes Lehmann to name just two. I encourage readers to study their representative works linked above.
The intriguing question immediately presented itself to researchers: could this ancient technology be refined to not only dramatically improve soil quality but to also sequester huge amounts of CO2 among other greenhouse gasses that would otherwise be released by agricultural/organic waste? And today it is absolutely a question of the efficiency of modern pyrolysis technology. In fact, oxygen has been eliminated entirely from pyrolysis. All gas by-products are not only captured but can themselves then become a source of energy in the form of syngas or may be further refined.
One leading manufacturer of a biochar machine/kiln, Best Energies, lists the wide variety of organic inputs that may be used to produce biochar: Poultry litter, dairy manure, greenwaste, nut shells, paper sludge, straw, wood waste, woody weeds, distillers grain, cotton trash, rice hulls, and switch grass. You get the idea.
This rather stuttering (and necessarily incomplete) preamble to biochar properly situates the following telephone conversations I had with Hans-Peter Schmidt over the last week (with minor bracketed semantic corrections despite his superb English!). He lives in Switzerland and runs Mythopia, an experimental vineyard where the only European research program on biochar’s effects on vineyard terroir is on-going. I called the gentleman after receiving his fascinating e-mail below:
We started 2007 with a first test field of 3000m2 where we introduce Bio-Char, Bio-Char + Compost, and each with different seeds in between the wine stocks. This year we are going to extend the test fields and trying the method in France, Spain and Italy.
Further on we created a Carbon-Network with several Institutes researching the soil-effects, char stability, water holding capacity and so on. We are going to purchase a first Pyrolyse reactor producing about 1000t/year Bio-Char and Electricity, through that our 40 vineyards all over Europe [will] become climate-neutral by 2013.
Admin Perhaps you could give us a glimpse of your background?
Hans-Peter Schmidt O.K. I started as an anthropologist at the University of Hamburg, and I became a winegrower in my research on the agricultural attitudes of ancient peoples. Quite a curious biography to become a researcher in ecology!
About your vineyards. You have some in Switzerland, some in France, Spain and Italy. Is that correct?
H-PS I have my own domaine in Switzerland, Domaine Mythopia. And this is a kind of research domaine, very small, it’s only about 5 hectares, 2, maybe 2 1/2 hectares of grapes, 3 hectares or so of aromatic herbs, fruit trees and wild, native plants.
How long ago was the vineyard planted?
H-PS They are kind of old vines, about 50 years. I took it over a couple of years ago. And we do the research there. But I also organize the research, the ecological research for a company that is called Delinat. It is an organic wine seller working with about 40 different winegrowers all over Europe. I am occupied to organize the ecological renewal [of the vineyards] for these winegrowers. They do all organic wine growing, but organic is not enough for us. We are looking for more biodiversity, for more respect of the terroir and a climate neutral agriculture. So, it is my job to organize it for these other winegrowers so that they become climate neutral, that they make better terroir wines, and so on.
In what appellations do you work, in France, for example?
H-PS Not an appellation but the Côtes du Var, near Provence, Côtes de Provence, Bordeaux, Côtes du Rhône. [All of Delinat’s domaines may be found here.]
Are any of the vineyards biodynamic? Are biodynamic principles in conflict with the production and use of biochar?
H-PS There is no conflict with biochar. Maybe one third of the winegrowers we work with are biodynamic, but in our charge it’s bio-organic. So whoever wants to do it biodynamic is free to do it. It is not an obligation.
What is your take on biodynamics, by the way?
H-PS There are a thousand reasonable things to be done to improve the Terroir characteristics, the harmony of the ecosystem and plant protection before irrational means would become inevitable. I like the positive energy of many biodynamic winegrowers but their theories are too spooky for me. I prefer playing Mozart to my grapes than rotating planetary copper-sulphur-mixtures 20 minutes to the right!
In your email you wrote of “different seeds in between the wine stocks”. Did you mean ‘inter row’ cropping?
H-PS Yes. Usually we start with legume seeds.
Are they all nitrogen-fixing legumes?
H-PS It depends on the soil, on the region, on the climate, but that is only to prepare the soil and enrich it with green manure for the nutrition of the vine; but then we [also] try to get wild seeds from the surroundings to enrich the biodiversity. Usually we have about 100 different species growing in the soil.
Our plantings include:
kg per hectar:
2 kg Rotklee (red clover) (Trifolium pratense)
2 kg Weissklee (white clover) (Trifolium repens)
4 kg Mattenklee (Trifolium . pratense)
7 kg Luzerne (luzerne)
2 kg Phaecelia
1,6 kg Esparsette (Onobrychis viciifolia) (sainfoin)
100g Kümmel (carum carvi) (caraway)
70g Ysop (hyssop)
100g Salbei (kbA) (sage)
10g Thymian (kbA) (thyme)
10g Origano (oregano)
The mix depends largely on the soil and climate. Indigenous plants are preferable. It’s not only for nitrogen but also oxygenation, to bring organic material deep into the soil so that you get micro-organic life not only in the first twenty to thirty centimeters but down to the root zone of the vine. The idea is to prepare the soil in the vineyard for the wild seeds. It is not of interest to have five or ten plants but to save and propagate the native plants.
With respect to the biochar, is it disced in? How is it applied?
H-PS It is disced in.
To what depth? Just a few inches?
H-PS Yeah. It’s just superficial. We don’t know yet the best [depth]. As you know the char is light and it tends to get to the surface; it’s like if you put wood into water, it floats up. So what we have to do is to [figure out how to best achieve] assimilation of the biochar with the soil to [enhance its] biological life. So then we do experiments: how to get it and to keep it deep inside [the soil].
Can biochar be crushed to a fine powder? Or is it applied as it arrives from a producer?
H-PS It is powdery but you still have pieces up to two centimeters.
Who is the current supplier of the biochar product?
H-PS Well, now we have begun to produce biochar ourselves with our own machine and our own bio-material.
Would you tell me the name of the company responsible for the biochar machine?
H-PS Pyreg [site in German].
What material do you burn [pyrolyse]? What is its source?
H-PS Mostly we will burn [pyrolyse] the remainder of vinification, the pomace. But we can’t keep it for the whole of the year because it would compost. So we use other sources, the rest of the pressings like leaves, stems, and we use green stuff from the forest and [countryside].
And the cuttings from the vines at the end of the year?
H-PS No because we try to keep that in the vineyard, it’s a source of [green manure] and potassium that we need.
There must be other sources of material to maintain biochar production all year long, after the Crush, as we call it here…
H-PS Where we live we have communities who have to maintain the roads, they are cutting trees, there are lawns, shrubs, all this material we can use. If you are further south and you don’t have that much vegetation all the year round then we use the remains of olive pressings. Or rape seed pomace. So you can use very intelligently all this stuff. Pyrolysis would work combining different materials. Or sunflower. You can run your car on sunflower oil and use the remains for pyrolyse!
Even with ethanol production you have a remainder that could be used in pyrolysis. This might be a very intelligent combination if you do it on a high scale. You would combine these two technologies.
With small pyrolysis machines, you could use it on a small farm to produce your electric energy and your heating, to improve your soil and to restrain CO2 from the atmosphere. You don’t need that much material. You can scale the machine to a desired output.
My idea is to achieve a general diversification in agricultural production. In fact, not only to bring biodiversity into the vineyard, with flowers, planting trees, but also to have other cultures around and in between vine rows. For example, we do bees, we produce honey, a second product. And we produce aromatic herbs for herbal teas, and different fruits. So we have four, five supplementary products within the vineyard. So thinking in the longer view you could always have enough material to produce all the green stuff needed to produce not only biochar but also energy.
Combining the idea about Permaculture with the idea of climate farming means it’s a diversification of agriculture that [allows] you to calculate the needs of every part of your viticulture.
Since you placed your message (see bold text below) on the International Biochar Initiative’s bulletin board have you received any inquiries from other winegrowers in Europe?
From the Bulletin Board:
We are going to begin in 2008 a carbon-project in a Swiss vineyard in order to improve the auto-defence of the wine-plant, to fix toxic-elements of earlier plant-treatments (esp. copper) and last but not least to improve the climate balance of the vineyard. Has anybody worked already with carbon enriched compost in wine and fruit growing? Is somebody working already on carbon-projects in Switzerland?
H-PS I do not know exactly who contacted me through this [post] but I have received five questions a week about our project. But it is not only for winegrowing, it is for everything concerning climate farming and biochar. It seems that in Europe we are the first to use biochar on a big scale.
More specifically, you are doing side by side experiments in vineyards using just biochar and another with the biochar and compost mix. And you are doing that as a control study.
H-PS Yes.
And also determine how best to keep the biochar in the soil.
H-PS Yes. It’s a huge project we have, with different institutes and universities. There are many parameters that we [are] try[ing] to determine. One question is about the capacity of the soil to keep water, and this capacity, we believe, will grow with biochar which gives us the possibility to grow wine in Spain or in the south of Italy where there is no rain in Summer [so no moisture] without watering. It is not, however, about growing vineyards in the desert but about the possibility of inter row growing of green manure and wild plants to foster the biodiversity. We can better keep the rainwater that falls in the Winter season. We can keep much better the water in the soil which has a huge effect. And there is research on micro-nutrient activity; that is a very interesting question for terroir quality. The vines can better absorb the minerals and phosphorus. [And biochar] increases the bacteria and [therefore] the bioactivity of the soil because of the [porous and durable structure] of the biochar.
There are many different aspects that change through the utilization of biochar. We try to document the best possibilities of all these changes. So what we do, for example, we measure the change of aromatic profiles in the grape. We measure all we can! To better know how to use it [biochar] for better wines, and also the stocking of carbon, how long biochar will keep in the soil without [itself] changing. Another question [we’re answering] is if a vineyard usually has been treated with chemicals that still are in the soil then biochar can fix it. These are the kinds of questions we have and we have a network of different researchers doing different [projects] in the laboratory and also on the farm.
Where in Spain and southern Italy?
H-PS We are just starting this year (I began working for Delinat last year.) in Sicily, and in Spain, it’s the Navarra region and Extramadura.
Not in the Penedès?
H-PS We work with vineyards in the Penedès, but the pilot vineyards where we’re going to show how it works, [these are] in Navarra and Extramadura. Later on we’re going to introduce this whole concept of biodiversity and climate farming for the other vineyards.
Could you name a few of the institutes and universities associated with your research?
H-PS The University of Zurich, FiBL, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Fraunhofer Institute in Munich, and others you may not know. But these are the biggest.
So it is fair to say you are undertaking a research project that is the first of its kind in Europe.
H-PS Yes. And there is one thing that is great using biochar in the vineyard: you have a kind of permaculture. It’s not like you harvest every year and have to change [bio] cultures. But you can look to the long term impact of biochar on one culture, so you can do it not only with vineyards but with fruit trees or olive trees. This is one thing that is good. And the second thing, quite remarkable, is that we can make publicity with our research! So another agricultural producer doing cereals or beans or whatever doesn’t have much to win on promoting their efforts on biodiversity or climate farming. But with wine, and we sell organic wine, we can make it a marketing tool doing what we do.
So you understand this is a great occasion to be engaged in research and wine.
I understand. And by the way, as far as I know there is no one doing this kind of vineyard research in the United States. Biochar is hardly known here.
H.PS They will if you write a good article! (laughs)
That’s why I’m here. I’ll try! What kinds of grapes does your Domaine Mythopia grow? And where is your vineyard located?
H-PS We do Pinot Noir. We are located in the Wallis [Fr. Valais], between the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc in the High Alps. We are between two mountain chains, 4000 meter mountains. There is a valley, the Rhone Valley. In fact, the Côtes du Rhône gets irrigated from our valley. So this area is a micro-climate, very dry, warm, and we have a special terroir because, being in a mountain region, we have a different soil every 100 meters. From one micro-climate to the next, a different soil.
It is very interesting to make little wines. Sometimes we make a Pinot Noir from only 1,500 square meters, a special wine for that, then on another patch of 2000 square meters we make another wine. All is Pinot Noir, but the different soils [the terroir makes] different wines.
Where might we read the results of your research?
H-PS We are just starting an online journal called ithaka, like the island Odysseus came back to after a twenty years’ voyage. We call it ithaka because we try to bring bees, butterflies, birds, amphibians… back home to the nature of the vineyard. The official start of the journal is in two weeks [1/20].
Will it also be in English as well as French and German?
H-PS Not for the moment. But I like your blog; maybe we could interlink some stuff, translate some articles.
I would like that. Thank you very much, Peter.
H-PS You are welcome, Ken.
Admin
As returning readers of this blog well know I am a tireless enthusiast for the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA. I feel it has enormous unrealized potential, this despite fistfuls of awards won by its wines over the years. What is missing is greater national recognition. A stronger effort must be made by winegrowers, through their modest collective instruments of publicity and marketing, to better promote the unique qualities of the region. Terroir means something here. Creative indifference to both fashion and the latest technological innovation is the rule. A barn not a faux chateau is the dominant architectural form. If you like your wine spiked with masking oak, look elsewhere. The preference is for structured, balanced wines, approachable in their youth but, like the winemakers here, in it for the long haul. Indeed, the continuity of the AVAs wine history is unmistakable.
After I had finished my interview with Jeff Emery of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard (pt.1, pt.2, and pt.3) and was preparing to leave he volunteered the following meditation on the origins of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA.
Jeff Emery The Santa Cruz Mountains (SCM) AVA is unique in a number of ways. It was the first American Viticultural Area whose criteria was based entirely on geographical and climatological considerations. All the appellations up to that point were generally political boundaries. For instance, Napa Valley. To say Napa Valley on a wine label, on a bottle, you only have to be within Napa county. It is actually somewhat meaningless in terms of climate, soils and geography. Whereas in Europe those things are very strictly controlled based on where you are, that type of thing.
What ended up becoming the Santa Cruz Mountains Wine Growers Association, through a number of different changes, was a group of what was being called the new renaissance of winemakers in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the late ’60s early 70’s. They would get together for these monthly or quarterly pot lucks and discuss the criteria to submit to the government for establishing the SCM AVA.
The main players felt strongly that appellations needed to mean more than they had previously in the US. Appellations here were kind of a farce, a straw version of what they were in Europe. They really needed to have reasons why. The main people involved in that push were David Bennion of Ridge, Ken Burnap of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard, Val and Dexter Ahlgren of Ahlgren Vineyard, Bob Mullen of Woodside Vineyards, and I’m sure I’m going to miss some people…, Jan and Nat Sherrill of an outfit called Sherrill Cellars, long gone now; so this core group of people, we would get together and meet. I was a teenager when I came to this group in the late ’70s. The main focus was developing this AVA criteria. We had endless meetings about what to do with vineyards such as Bates Ranch which has an upper portion and a lower portion, and the lower portion would have been kicked out of the appellation based on the criteria that the upper was in. So a little gerrymander was made for that one….
In short, the boundary is much more complicated than this but generally the West side of the Santa Cruz Mountains the elevation has to be above 400 feet with the idea being that if it is below 400 feet it would be too cold for quality grape growing. And on the East side of the mountain range the vineyards have to be above 800 feet, the idea being that below 800 feet it is too hot for quality grape growing. There are a whole bunch of exceptions to that but, by and large that’s the deal. So when you look at a map of the SCM AVA it’s this incredibly squiggly line because it follows the contour lines. The most arbitrary limits, perhaps, are the northern terminus at Hwy 92 [Half Moon Bay] and Hwy 152 in the south [Watsonville].
So this group got together to establish this. The appellation was approved in 1981 by the TTB or what was called the ATF at the time. Now, they’d gotten used to meeting together and had, in and amongst establishing the appellation criteria, they had also done some marketing things and some tastings here and there, done some collective efforts like that, so it just naturally evolved into a marketing group for the Santa Cruz Mountains. Then, I’m sketchy on the dates, a group of folks started a Santa Cruz County group that was much more marketing-based than the Santa Cruz Mountains group, and it was sort of a sub-group. But as time went on they became more and more similar, in fact, a whole bunch of us, about half the membership, were in both. And it was decided that it was redundant and silly to have these two organizations duplicating efforts. The two organizations were merged, that was at the time the Santa Cruz County Winegrowers Association and the Santa Cruz Mountains Vintners. They became the present-day Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association (SCMWA). I was president of the board at the time when that happened, so you’d think I would know when that was but I cannot recall off the top of my head! I was chosen primarily because I was in both organizations and they wanted someone to sort of unify the groups and get it together.
Now we’re an organization [SCMWA] of over 70 member wineries from around a dozen in those days. We don’t do potlucks in people’s homes because there are too many of us! But we still do meet at least twice a year.
The SCM AVA does have one sub-appellation…
JE Yes.
In a conversation I had with Bob Mullen he was quite opposed to any further sub-appellations.
JE Interesting…
He believes it would dilute the branding. On the other hand there are so many microclimates…
JE I don’t know that sub-appellations dilute appellations. I mean, does a vineyard designation dilute the Gevry-Chambertin AOC in Burgundy? It’s a difficult question because it is such a broad appellation, certainly in terms of microclimates. And there is not just a single varietal that says this is what’s grown here. So it’s very hard for the consumer to get a handle on what Santa Cruz Mountains is. This is what the SCMWA has been struggling with for decades as far as what is the AVA’s identity. To an extent I could make a case for sub-appellations as helping with that. But I also don’t know that it needs to be that specifically legal called out. When you get into an application for an AVA you going to have to spell out the exact boundary. It’s like a property line deed. And we all know that applying such rigid, objective things to such a subjective, organic process like growing grapes is never going to be perfect. What I’ve heard proposed more recently that I think is a good way to do it, and to an extent winegrowers have started to promote it this way, is to talk about the different districts within the appellation, and their different characteristics. The wine group that has done a very good job of doing that is Appellation America which is an on-line presence that looks at and judges wines in the context of their given appellation, tries to pick out the different styles and then the sub-regions within that. They just did a whole thing on Pinot Noir…
Yes. Clark Smith and Laura Ness wrote a wonderful series…
JE Right. They developed these different regions like Corralitos and what they’re calling in our old area, the Vine Hill area, Los Ranchos, the Summit area, Skyline… so you can do these different plots and regions, and I would say you could do that in general with the Woodside, the Saratoga, the Corralitos…
Without a formal sub AVA…
JE Yes, without formal subs and formal boundaries because in many cases, within a given varietal, I think you could argue those boundaries would shift with what variety you’re growing, its requirements, heat, exposure, etc. It’s become so cumbersome to do applications for AVAs now that I think it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth. In fact the Feds are talking about throwing out the whole process entirely.
Paso Robles has been involved in quite a long fight over their proposal…
JE Yes, because they are trying to do lots of sub-appellations. We had a big fight years ago when the San Francisco Bay appellation was proposed. That was a situation of applying a bigger, broader based thing on top of an existing smaller one, in this case the Santa Cruz Mountains. The group actually fought pretty hard against the San Francisco Bay. We felt it was pretty meaningless. The Bay is a huge, diverse bunch of microclimates. It was mostly proposed, in our opinion, as a marketing tool for people that distributed world-wide because nobody knew where things were if you didn’t tie it to San Francisco Bay. And in the end the winegrowers group met and came up with the official policy by voting, and it was by no means unanimous, there was a lot of contention about whether it was a good idea, but the great majority thought it was a bad idea.
To my knowledge Santa Cruz Mountains is the only exception in the American Viticultural code wherein a smaller appellation within a bigger one is nevertheless exempt from it. In other words, the Santa Cruz Mountains said, “We do not want to be called San Francisco Bay”. Normally in that case if you were in the small one and the big one you could choose which you wanted on your labels. So, for instance, if you were in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA under the normal circumstances if you wanted to say [on your label] San Francisco Bay you could. In our case we said we never want to do that because it is ridiculous and meaningless. Santa Cruz is not part of the San Francisco Bay appellation, which did get approved. But we are carved out of the middle of it.
And if you’re below the 400 foot elevation on the western side?
JE Well, you can always call yourself by a county, Santa Cruz County, Santa Clara County, San Mateo, Monterey, or you could do San Francisco Bay were you located in the first three counties. Or Central Coast.
Thank you for your insight, Jeff.
JE You’re welcome, Ken.
Admin
Donna writes:
My husband called me a few days ago to tell me about a newspaper article in the UK newspaper Daily Mail. The article from the 18th of December told about how Chinese scientists from the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou invented a treatment to convert cheap wine into premium wine.
Reportedly they have been working on this technology for the past 10 years. The procedure is to pump wine through a pipe between two titanium electrodes at 600 volts per centimeter (V/cm) current for a period of 3 minutes. Resulting in wines that had softer acidity, were more aromatic and palatable. The test wine was a 3 month old cabernet sauvignon from Suntime winery in China and went through a professional tasting panel as well as chemical analysis showing the wine indeed improved with this technology.
After reading the article I got fixated on what 600 V/cm exactly meant. Just how much energy usage is that? I researched online trying to equate it in layman’s terms.
In my research, I found a reference that a household appliance such as a hair dryer, coffee maker, TV’s etc. had an average electrical field of 30-60 V/m (volts per meter). Next, I found a voltage converter which transcribes V/m into V/cm and places the household appliance’s range at point 3 (.3) to point 6 (.6) V/cm.
Then I converted 600 V/cm stated in the article and the resulting number is 60,000 V/m. That’s twice the amount needed to create the phenomenon St. Elmo’s fire. So, if my layman’s analysis is even remotely correct, those are very powerful currents to use simply for accelerating the age of young, cheap, unbalanced wine into something palatable and ready for market in 3 months versus the average 6. Could that much power be correct with my analogy? I don’t think so.
So I’ve asked a number of people regarding my dilemma and I’ve gotten a bunch of different replies, so I’m going to have to post an update in the future when I better understand the voltage used.
So why am I writing about it at all? It’s really intrigued me and the mad scientist that dwells within wants to figure it all out.
There were more questions to be asked:
1. What does the machine look like?
2. Is the machine scalable, by the few articles I found it appears to be a large machine.
3. Who were the “experts” who tasted the wine?
4. Why was a Chinese wine used? Why weren’t samples of Cabernet Sauvignon used from different regions throughout the world?
5. What’s up with a Burgundy wine professor endorsing it? Burgundy is birthplace of terroirists!
So after looking REALLY hard, I found the paper.
The machine looks relatively simple. It has 3 sections, a high voltage generator, pump with a flow rate controller and a treatment chamber. It uses 220 V power supply. The treatment chamber has two titanium plates of unknown size separated by 20 cm of space. That undetermined space houses Teflon pipes with inner diameter of 20mm of unknown length where the wine passes through between the plates. The wine enters the machine and the flow is controlled by the pump.
The paper advises 50 L (I assume that’s liters) of wine was used for each sample and timed at 1 minute, 3 minutes and 8 minutes at various electrical field strengths of 300, 600 and 900 v/cm. So with 50 liters for each sample, it appears to be a decent sized piece of machinery to be able to pump that much wine through 20mm diameter tubing in 1 minute. 50 L is about 66 regular bottles of wine. With the data given it’s impossible to work out the tubing length.
Then the paper discussed the sample used. They used Cabernet Sauvignon from the Suntime Winery Company in northwest China. Aged 3 months after it went through malolactic fermentation. For those who don’t know what malolactic is, it’s a secondary fermentation all red wines go through converting malic acid into lactic acid (think milk) which is softer. A few white wines such as Chardonnay go through this second fermentation to add body and softness. With white wine it’s much more noticeable as the lactic acid lends a buttery taste.
What was interesting about the wine sample is it went through 2 fining and 3 filtering processes before being subjected to the test.
Bentonite
Albumin Glue
Sheet Filtration
Kieselguhr Filtration
Membrane Filtration
I’m surprised there was anything resembling wine left after all that. Fining and filtering are common in the wine industry, but I haven’t knowingly drunk any that has been put through all those processes.
Then a panel of 12 experts in wine sensory evaluation was given the samples to rate on a 100 point scale following O.I.V recommended methods which are quite scientific and detailed. There were no details on who the experts were or their qualifications. The graph on the study shows the optimum sample given a 600 V/cm for 3 minutes treatment received a full 15 points higher score than the untreated sample. 15 points is a remarkable difference in wine quality.
What is interesting is the wine wasn’t subject to temperature increase during the procedure. It maintained 25C as it exited the machine. Although the tasters noted the sample that went through the procedure for 8 minutes at 900 V/cm had a burnt taste.
But only Chinese wine was used. I would think such an amazing discovery would also see a selection of Cabernet Sauvignon samples such as California, France & Australia used. It poses the question: Does it only work with cheap wine or can fine wine be made even better? As well as wines that were not fined or filtered prior to going through the procedure? I would have liked to have seen a sample of MD 20/20 go through the process as well.
So while this machine appears quite remarkable, I’m amazed 5 wineries in China have invested in the technology to produce facilities enabling them to immediately ship new wine to stores and decrease storage expenses. I understand electricity is subsidized by the government so it’s cheaper for them to use this aging method versus the storage requirements for an extra 3 months before a wine can be sold on the market.
I couldn’t find any documentation on the shelf life of wines that went through the procedure, but I figure in my own personal opinion if wine is artificially accelerated to be at its prime when it hits the shelf, it would have a 6 month window for drinking before it began its decline. Its decline should be quite rapid compared to a traditionally aged wine.
Ultimately while it’s a very intriguing process that can boost the flavor compounds of wine to taste better, are we going to see wineries readily adapting this method?
The current trend for winemakers is to create wine using sustainable and traditional methods versus manipulating wine with strange processes, chemicals and additives. Instead of subscribing to such intense technology, I hope they continue on this path, making wine as it was intended, a reflection of its place, its Terroir.
Donna
Donna writes:
One of my great joys in life is studying about wine. This year I’ve not been able to spend much time with my books and this week things slowed up for me and I took out one of the untouched dozens of volumes purchased this past year with good intentions to study.
Today I picked up “Champagne, How the Worlds Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed over War and Hard Times”, by Don & Petie Kladstrup. I was thumbing through the pages and my eye was caught by a brief description of how fighting stopped between the Allied and Germans on December 24, 1914. This really intrigued me and I started doing more research on the internet and military books I have at the house.
It was 5 months into WWI and already half a million had been killed in the fighting. Champagne’s fields were carved up vast trenches housing Allied and German soldiers, fighting for position to push each other back into retreat. The fields surrounding them held the bodies those that had fallen.
On evening of the 24th of December, Allied soldiers saw lights glowing from their enemy’s trenches. Then they hear Christmas carols being sung in German. With great hesitation, they began singing carols back and the book said a German soldier appeared through the mist holding a very small decorated Christmas tree and was unarmed.
The Allied soldiers left their weapons in the trenches and went to meet the German soldier, the Germans in their trenches also joined. They shook hands, embraced helped each other bring their dead back from the fields and drank Champagne, toasting each other to the early morning hours when at the days light a football (soccer) game was played.
After this wonderful evening of friendship and fun, the soldiers retreated back to their trenches and the fighting and death began again.
I can’t imagine the trust and bravery of those soldiers to lay down their weapons for a few hours and push aside their prejudice for a brief moment to be good to each other.
It’s remarkable how the holidays, in spite of our beliefs encourage us to reach out to each other and share the joy of these special days with each other.
This story gave me so much hope during this time of war and destruction. I encourage you all to lay down your arms, be brave, and trust yourself to reach out to your enemy and share wine and hope for the future, if only for a few hours.
Donna
The Christmas and New Year holidays are perfect for experimenting across the range and variety of wine styles; a fine Jerez as an aperitif (or later on in the day as a digestif), delicate sparkling and crisp whites for those seafood appetisers, rich reds for the main meal, something sweet at dessert and a late evening Port for a cheese board – over the hours of a traditional Christmas feast you should be able to find a dish to accompany most if not all of these styles. If you have extended family or friends coming round a good glass will break the ice and help relax the mood, while if it’s just you or close family then all the more reason to find a special bottle or two that has been crying out to be opened.
This year I’m trying a couple of wine styles for the first time, a Palo Cortado sherry and an Eiswein.
Palo Cortado is one of the rarer types of sherry, typically only 1-2% of total production, and is described as a cross between a medium dry Amontillado and an Oloroso. It starts off life intended as a Fino under a layer of flor (the surface layer of yeast which gives the characteristic tang of dry sherry), however if the flor dies then oxidation occurs and further development continues along the lines of an Oloroso (which never gets a covering of flor in the first place).
The one I have bought is an entry level version for £7.49 ($11) made for Waitrose by the renowned Jerez producer Emilio Lustau. 
I haven’t opened it as yet, but from my previous experiences of Oloroso and Amontillado styles I’m hoping for a rich, nutty experience with a salty dry aspect and good complexity – I’ll let you know!
The Eiswein is Pfeiffer’s 2004 Silvaner from Pfalz, which I picked up at the beginning of the year from Morrison’s supermarket for a bargain £5.99 ($12 at the time, closer to $9 now, such is the whim of the international currency market!). Eiswein (and international equivalents such as Canada’s IceWines) are made from late harvest grapes that are picked while frozen on the vine resulting in highly concentrated, sugary juice for fermentation. Unlike Tokaji or Sauternes dessert wines an Eiswein shouldn’t contain any grapes affected by Botrytis, which should lead to a fresher taste profile.
I’ve already opened this one up and can confirm this is definitely sweet! It has a light aroma with some tropical fruit, mainly pineapple, and a bracing acidity on the finish which counterbalances the sweetness well. It lacks the complexity and finish that I love in a good Tokaji Aszu but for the price it is excellent value for money and a solid 3+/5.
I haven’t decided on what else will be drunk over the next 10 days, although I’m tempted to continue with the “try new things” theme and open my Boplass Cape Tawny Port, brought back from South Africa last year. As for the white, red and sparkling, I’m not sure yet, but I’ve plenty to choose from and no doubt I’ll add in reviews of some of them later on this blog.
Unfortunately this year it may not be so much a season of peace & goodwill than a chance to forget all the problems for a few days, as the economy is in depression on both sides of the Atlantic and we are all feeling the effects of the current financial crisis to some extent. I hope you are viewing the problems with concern but not directly affected, however with most businesses feeling the pinch, and too many closing down, then people are naturally reining in their spending to cover the “essentials “ so, for most of us, it is likely that wine purchases will decrease in volume or price. I’ve already started to notice this myself but have made a decision that I’m not going to compromise on quality - times like these need some creature comforts and I would rather spend £10 on a single bottle than buy two £5 ones.
What is likely to happen is that I’ll start dipping into my modest collection more but I’ve realised that as I get older I am enjoying warm memories more than the anticipation of possibilities, so it’s better to enjoy some of the good wines now in times of need than to keep all of them for some uncertain future.
If you have a few nice bottles put away that are ready to drink then you should need no further encouragement to open them up, otherwise, before you realise it, the years have passed and bottles that would have enhanced any situation have remained unopened. This is still the one time of year that you should take what you have and enjoy it – better still, take what you enjoy, and have it.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Greybeard.
The following list considers only the posts assembled by a single writer for this space, the Admin. The two other principles, Greybeard and Donna, provided their respective choices for the 1st Anniversary post from December 3rd.
My method for inclusion is two-fold and simple. As a new wine blog struggling for a readership it happened that some early posts were ‘published’ when we were still quite unknown, and therefore the work topic did not get the readers perhaps it deserved. Readers come to a blog and entertain the ‘front page’. Owing to time constraints and the abundance of excellent wine blogs folks may not wander through the archive. So this is my way of promoting certain nested stories, of taking another ‘bite of the apple’, as it were.
In no particular order:
1) Easily among the most interesting and rewarding interviews I did was with Margaret Duckhorn of the Wine Institute. Her gracious participation in the interview should give hope to new bloggers that passive commentary on the events, topics and important personalities in the wine world need not fix your compass.
2) An early attempt at understanding the Biodynamic movement remains one of my favorites if only because of its rigor and plentiful links to primary sources.
3) This early piece from February, on the Murrin Bridge Winery, remains one of the most interesting but suffers from one big omission: I was unable to secure an interview with the protagonist.
4) And also from February was a story most notable for an included picture of a rare surviving grape brick from Prohibition. To my knowledge it remains the only pic of such a historical object on the internet. If you don’t know what a grape brick is then read the piece!
5) Another notable interview was with the charming Jason Lett of Eyrie Vineyards. The passing of his father, David ‘Papa Pinot’ Lett, some months later adds an unexpected poignancy.
6) And Alice Feiring, a delightful woman. Gracious, ethereal. Up to a point. She bites back!
7) A piece nearly composed in real time, as the events were unfolding, this is one on the participation of a few of Lodi’s wineries in the Hong Kong International Wine Fair.
8 ) A post from January on Braille Wine Labels was a success.
9) I simply must include my two-part interview with Jack Keller, here and here.
10) Rounding out the list would have to be a recent piece, though hardly obscure, which neatly frames Reign of Terroir’s exciting trajectory. This would have to be my account of Constellation’s trial of a new barrel-cleaning technology.
Back to work!
Admin
P.S. Upon reflection I simply must add my interview with Andrew Jefford. Really no finer wine writer.
Donna writes: Screw it or Cork it?
Oh yes, I’m going to open that old mess back up. I figure everyone else has talked and blogged about it, I don’t want to be left out.
The past year our entire portfolio had 14 bottle returns for cork taint. Versus the volume we do it barely registers a percentage. I personally have not had one bottle I’ve opened be bad, and about 30 cases of bright eyed hopefuls wanting to join my portfolio the past two weeks also brought no cork taint.
So is the cork industry getting better at removing tainted cork during its processing, are wineries doing more tests when receiving new cork supply? Or am I just lucky? I think a bit of both. I would say 80% of my portfolio has cork closures. I’m not offended by screw caps; I love them, for wines meant to be drunk young. Otherwise, cork has no equal in my humble opinion. Yes, I know the heartbreaking ordeal of opening that special bottle we’ve been saving for decades only to find it corked. My answer is I always buy in two’s. If I can’t afford two, I shouldn’t be drinking the first.
But on the other hand, is the public conscious of what corked wine smells like and are my bad bottles just not being returned? What if their comment at the wine bar or dining table, “I don’t like such and such wine” because they got corked bottles and didn’t realize it?
I personally have never met a wine I didn’t like except those corked in the past few years. I’ve favoured some over others, but I wonder if people really didn’t like it or was the wine bad? People frequently ask me what my favorite wine is and my reply is always “The one in my glass right now.” They look at me in disbelief and protest, and I’m always “no, every wine has it’s place and what it’s supposed to be and you have to compare it within the rules of what is, not what you want it to be”. But I’m drifting now….
Back to corks. What I can’t stand is those plastic corks. I really want to get on the phone and call the producers and ask them what they are thinking. Well, I can’t lie; I do call them and ask why they are doing it. Hate them.
#1: They have broken 3 of my wine keys. Not my Laguiole, which I would be berserk if it did, but I liked those keys, some were gifts.
#2: Because a lot of plastic corks have food grade oil smoothed on them so you can get the corks out. Nothing like pouring a glass of wine and the cork manufacturer was a little too generous with the oil and there’s a faint coating of oil on the surface of the first glass poured; while it’s not an oil slick, it’s not attractive. I also think I can taste the oil, which of course is probably my prejudice, but all the same, hate it.
#3: They smell like plastic. Cause they are.
#4: Depending on the product it leaks and it’s less oxygen proof than natural cork. Ever put one on its side in your fridge and then when you get it out the next day, there’s a puddle of wine on your shelf? Then you have to clean it up, then you realize the shelf next to it needs a wipe, then the next thing you know, you’re doing a complete hose down of the fridge’s insides instead of drinking wine. Sacrilege!
I’ve refused to accept wines into the portfolio unless they were closed with Stelvin or natural cork. In this day of economic strife do I have the right to do so? Yes, I think I do. I certainly don’t want my wine to have the cork that breaks the favorite corkscrew of a customer. They aren’t going to remember the cork broke it; they are going to remember my wine broke it, and that gives me economic strife.
Of course I don’t believe in long term aging in Stelvin either. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found some old aluminum screw cap products hidden in a shelf that hadn’t seen light in 8 years and they were corroded. Ever climb into your attic and see your grandmother’s old Mason jar collection? Lids and caps are a little nasty. I can’t imagine pulling out a forgotten bottle from storage and unscrewing a corroded bottle cap only to see little bits of white oxidation particles falling in the wine. Ew.
Something that’s recently come onto the market, that I got jazzed over, was the glass stopper. It’s a glass stopper with a flexible o-ring, so no plastic touches the wine, just glass. It’s sterile, preventing contamination or oxidation. Nice. It’s pleasing to the eye. It’s fun to play with, a conversation starter at a dinner party and it’s got the tin capsule giving us a formal opening of the bottle which makes us love natural cork so much. Only drawback is you can’t throw them at your friends like you can real cork. Well, I did, until I embedded one into the drywall.
One closure I really like, which I’ve seen a few wines bottled, is the crown cap. We already know due to its use in the Champagne region of France it works quite well for aging purposes with recently disgorged selections, but esthetically it’s probably worse than plastic corks to the wine drinking public. But it’s the most cost effective option out there right now and it’s not unpleasing to me for some reason.
Go figure.
Donna
In this final part of the interview Mr. Emery indulges my historical curiosity. He expands upon Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard’s founder, Ken Burnap, and touches on the legendary Martin Ray, an early friend of Mr. Burnap’s.
I would encourage folks who visit tasting rooms, any tasting room, to ask a few questions. Inquire after the winery’s origins. Sure, the person behind the counter may be reading from a hackneyed script and the winery may be little more than the investment of a trust fund baby. That is its own story. Still, persist. Cut through the bull. And ever so often you’ll run across someone like Jeff Emery, someone whose life is coextensive with his work. It’s all about the work. And I believe the living culture of wine, especially the labor of its making, is the better part.
Any fool can rate a wine. But it takes a special fool to remain indifferent to a vinous history in which they nevertheless participate.
pt 1
pt 2
Admin Would you tell us a bit more of the historical origins of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard? And of Ken Burnap specifically.
Jeff Emery Ken Burnap had been interested in wine very early on. He got started in kind of a backdoor way. He lived in Texas when he was a late teenager, in his early twenties, and he took a gal from the prom to the best restaurant in San Antonio at the time. He tried to order a bottle of Bordeaux and completely butchered the French pronunciation of the wine. The waiter, a snobby sommelier, made him feel about two inches tall. And in a classic early twenty-something attitude Ken vowed he’d go home and learn as much as he could and show the bastard! The more he learned about wine the more he became fascinated by it.
He was drinking first growth Bordeaux in San Antonio at a time when the neighbors basically only drank bourbon and martinis. He said they would literally put their empty bottles in paper bags before they put them in the garbage because only winos drank wine! That was the attitude at the time.
So it was through his love of wine all those years that he had come to find that he preferred Burgundy, pinot noir, of course. Now fast forward to what Ken said before [pt 1], “Why does California produce pinots that are so flabby and uninteresting compared to Burgundy?” He decided it had to do with where it was grown.
But he had no intention of ever being a winemaker or starting a winery. He had started a restaurant called The Hobbit in the city of Orange, California, which is still going today, his partner’s son still runs it. Ken had done that because of a real love of food and wine. He was the sommelier and his partners, Howard and Bev Philippi were the chefs. A single seating a night, eight to ten course meal, and the wine was priced at retail. Not at a high mark-up. And he sold more wine per table per night than any restaurant in L.A. in the second year of business. He had a lot of interaction with winemakers, that’s where he got a lot of his information and developed a lot of his ideas about Burgundy and California pinot.
So, as a hobby he started looking at maps (we go back to the meticulous Virgo thing). I have in a file every quadrangle of the Santa Cruz Mountains in great detail, with every patch shaded in that looked like it could be potentially a good vineyard site. He had done this before I met him. And as a hobbiest, with no conscious intention of ever being involved in the wine business, he would get out of Southern California and come up here and drive around pretty places to look at vineyard property. Or property he thought would be good for a vineyard. He did that for a number of years.
Then he stumbled across this property on Jarvis Road that he ended up owning. It had just been planted with pinot noir. It was owned by David Bruce. He and David Bruce were buddies because they had similar philosophies on pinot noir when they met. As Ken says, they put a realtor between them to save their friendship! David had planted it to pinot, he had intended to have it as a second source on into the future. It had 80 years of zinfandel on it when David pulled the zin in 1969, ‘68 was the last crop of zinfandel from the vineyard. David was in a divorce at the time and had to divest himself of some properties. David never saw the production from that vineyard, the pinot noir he’d planted. Ken bought it in 1974; the first crop was ‘75.
So before he bought it Ken sat on top of the hill of the vineyard, it had met all his criteria, he had this whole list of criteria that a vineyard had to have to meet his idea of the perfect site; he drank a bottle of champagne on the hill thinking, “Ok. This would be it”.
Did he finished that bottle? Something people will not often admit today!
JE (laughter) Yes! And he was alone at the time. And through the course of drinking that bottle he realized we all tell ourselves “If only… then”. If only I’d saved this much money; if only when I do this, I’ll do that. If only… Well, he just decided… he was incredibly busy and overworked with his businesses in Southern California, he just decided to jump in with both feet and buy the property and make the wine. He then spent two years commuting, 104 flights a year on Air California, three days a week here, four days a week in SoCal. He got invited to Air California picnics because the pilots saw him more often than any staff member! And he started the winery. He did the ‘75-’76 production year while commuting back and forth.
He sold his contracting company which was his main business. He had to, at the time, sell the restaurant. The Tied-House restrictions were such that he couldn’t own a winegrower’s license and an on-sale license at the same time.
Tied-House restrictions?
JE Yes. They were put in at the repeal of Prohibition to keep mostly Mafia-based monopolies from controlling production and sales all the way through. It was broken by Domaine Chandon when they wanted to have their restaurant. They brought the legislation to the state to get it changed to where you could simultaneously produce and sell wine as the same entity. But Ken had to sell by law and he says it was a blessing in disguise because he probably would have tried to keep the restaurant, to do both. Much too much work. So he sold his interest in The Hobbit in order to start the winery. He moved up here in 1977.
And there is an intriguing Martin Ray connection…
JE I don’t know that much about it. I do know Ken spent a fair amount of time visiting with Martin Ray when he was first looking at property. Realize that at that time, as Ken points out, having been the buyer for this restaurant, that in 1969 there were something like 12 to 15 wineries in the Napa Valley. He knew the dogs’ names, he knew the kids’ names, he knew all these people. The group of wineries was very small, in the Santa Cruz Mountains even more so. He became very good friends with Bob Mullen, Martin Ray, all the folks here at the time.
I know that Ken went to Martin’s place a few times. I do remember a couple of stories where Martin was a real showman. He liked things to be very classy. Ken and his wife were invited for a luncheon at Martin Ray’s place and when going up that dirt road, still a dirt road today, part way up there is a kind of a pull out and a view of the whole of the Santa Clara Valley. There was a table set up with a linen tablecloth, champagne in a champagne bucket, and two flutes… you were supposed to stop there, admire the view, drink the bottle of champagne, enjoy that before proceeding further up to the house for the luncheon. That was the kind of thing Martin would do.
Delightful. What is your advice to young winemakers?
JE That is a very open question…. Don’t believe the stereotypes, trust your palate and your tastes. Learn from as many different approaches as you can, talk to different people. Try different wines, try the wines of the world. Don’t stay within California. Realize that wine is a subjective thing, everybody’s taste buds are different. The mission should be to demystify wine, make it fun and accessible. Remove the dos and don’ts, how you should have it, how you should drink it, how you should open the bottle… By and large I think that’s naturally falling by the wayside as the younger generation comes to wine. They are less worried about that….
Would you ever go to screw cap?
JE I have nothing against screw caps for something like the verdejo I produced in August and will be selling next month. But I don’t own a screw cap machine and I own a corker and my own bottling line. I’m not about to go out and buy another piece of equipment. So in my case it is that simple.
I would not use screw cap for the long term aged pinots. I would still do traditional cork. I think screw cap make absolute perfect sense for shorter term drinking wines. And there should be no stigma attached to that.
I’d like, lastly, to ask about your adopted child. Would you be willing to say a few words?
JE Oh! Yes. We have a little girl we adopted from China in 2005. She’ll be five this coming February. We couldn’t have children for various reasons. We looked into options. We like the China connection. We looked into the US program but there is this legal limbo period where the court may or may not grant you the child. We didn’t want to go through that uncertainty. People ask why international when there are kids here, that’s one of the reasons.
We were torn between Russia or China. My wife is a Russian major, speaks Russian, so that was attractive. In the end, children of China are healthy, they were available only because of their gender, not because of any family/social issue. And Russia is a drinking culture. There can be some alcohol issues there…
She’s a joy! The timing was interesting. We were doing this just as I was officially taking over the business from Ken. You have to do things for both alcohol licenses and adoptions. Finger prints, background checks, that kind of thing, so I had these two forms going to the FBI office to get these background checks, one for getting an alcohol license and one for adopting a child! (laughter) It really cracked people up!
Thank you very much, Jeff.
JE A pleasure, Ken.
Admin
Tree Hugger is reporting the existence of a hotel in Stavoren, Netherlands featuring a few rooms made of wine casks. Hotel De Vrouwe van Stavoren has put to use old 14.500 liter casks. As Tree Hugger writes,
“There are four of them, each created from Swiss drums that used to contain Beaujolais wine from the French chateau area.”
Included in the rooms are chairs, lights, windows, TV, a toilet and a mirror (not pictured). The beds rest on a fully carpeted floor. A free bottle of wine, unopened, complements the seasonal potted plant on a table. Beautiful hotel landscaping and the old harbor provide a welcoming vistas upon exit.
There is really nothing else to add. But a map. Which I’ve done.
Christmas shopping calls.
Admin
I’ve been contemplating writing this article for a while. I’m a wine buyer for an importer/distributor. The only buyer, I say what is bought, what isn’t, pricing and when, where and how. I have an entire portfolio to build within a budget to find new and exciting wines for our market to purchase. So I kinda run a thin line doing an article about pricing.
The reason I wanted to bring this up is the wonderful wine consuming nation that is the USA doesn’t often really know what an effort it is get good wines to you at fair price. Being in the wine industry isn’t for everyone, very competitive, you must know a lot about your products and the overheads are high. We really do it because we love wine and want to be around it, and to say the least: I get a lot of cool points when people find out what I do.
Now I’m not trying to host a sad violin party for myself, but I have read a number of forums, blogs, etc where there’s a lot of moaning about the price of a bottle of wine compared to what it cost to make it. But it’s really not a big mystery why wine has markups.
Let’s run it down, and this really is the short version of what’s required, it all depends on your state, the states liquor sales system, as they are all different, local, regional and state legislation, and a thousand other different factors. So for the experts out there analyzing what I’ve about to say, it’s just a rough speculation, so to speak.
First you have to apply for an importer or distributor license, which depending on the state runs $2,000 to $10,000.
Then you have to have a licensed warehouse to house your stuff, license costs around $5,000 plus around $2,000 for monthly rental. Now if you live in California or New Jersey or another large wine distribution state, you can buy warehouse space. Cost depends on how much space you’re using monthly.
That set up, you gotta hire sales staff, sales manager, bookkeeper (who can do books and keep track of all the continually changing legislation). And whomever else you need.
At this point without buying any wine, you’re out about $120,000.
Then if you aren’t qualified to be a buyer you got to find one, someone who’s market savvy in the industry, can maintain a portfolio of hundreds of wines, keep them ordered and in stock, and appease the sales staff by continually bringing in new products for them to sell, maintaining a minimum net percentage off sales and steadily monitoring the market for pricing. There aren’t many buyers who can do it all, and they’re not cheap. I know, I am one.
Ego aside, okay, you got your foundation in place, but you still need wine. You then have to go find products one of two ways. 
Either through importer’s collections that aren’t being carried in your market. With the exception of Bordeaux, most distributors have exclusives on the products they carry in the market. It’s done so as not to be undercut and have your brand go into a pricing war, which is disastrous. Or if you’re lucky enough, you have enough cash and you’re an importer, you can ship your products directly from overseas. You wonder why Bordeaux doesn’t go into pricing wars with having market exclusives? Bordeaux is a chateau based market system, they maintain the prices themselves, and they don’t let them go crazy. Bordeaux likes to make money and they’ve had the system for hundreds of years it, so it works pretty well. It’s a lot more involved than that, but that’s the short version.
Most distributors buy from known importers first and then graduate to containers from overseas or domestically. Profit margins are much less when purchasing locally (locally meaning within the USA) then buying full containers. However, you can buy just a few cases locally to sell or a container of 10 to 20 pallets.
Let’s say you weren’t affected by Wall Street this year and you want to buy a container from overseas. Average cost of a container is about $80,000 for $15 retail product. Plus $20,000 in shipping and taxes to bring it into your warehouse. Domestic shipping ranges from about $500-$4000 depending of the distance and quantity of your shipment, plus extra for refrigerated shipments during the summer. Besides sales costs, transport and taxes are the highest costs associated with the price a bottle is sold for.
So you get all this glorious wine you have your markups and then you give it to your staff to go sell. Well, they need marketing materials, so if you’re not savvy, you got to contract a graphic designer if your producer doesn’t give you any material. Lots of times, you’re finding unknowns and they don’t know what a graphic designer is, they just want their wine sold in the states. So you will give your contract person about 20 hours of month work. They’re not cheap.
Now your sales team is set. It takes about 3 months to introduce a product into your market. All the while you’re sitting on existing product you’re ordering new products to keep a balance in your stock levels. The absolute worst thing you can do is run out of stock. So you end up keeping a minimum of a months worth at any time so your staff doesn’t freak out when they lose sales.
And lastly, when you buy that wine, it’s yours, you can’t return it. You have to make it work, it’s a heavy burden and mistakes in predicting what the market is going to like is quite costly. It’s quite risky.
Of course then you say why do restaurants have high markups? I personally don’t believe in the 3 times markup and I don’t frequent restaurants that have it. When I do, I make sure it’s an expensive restaurant and I buy a high dollar bottle because I get more value because the markup isn’t 3 times on expensive bottlings. I’ve actually found some bargains even compared to what a retail markup would be. But you say I have an advantage being in the industry; that’s true, but I was a “civilian” at one time and I learned pretty quickly what I liked to drink and what is cost retail versus in the restaurant.
I don’t begrudge a 1 or 2 times markup though because, the same as a distributor, if they want to have a good wine list, they have to build a cellar which can cost upwards of $30,000, plus training for staff, sommelier on staff or more than one sommelier on staff, that is preferred. Then they have all the time dedicated spending with various distributors finding products that meet their image. It costs a lot of money a year maintaining a good wine list. I mean a lot, anywhere from $30,000 to millions. And many of the bottlings need aging, so they aren’t making any money with the bottles waiting in the cellar waiting to be ready to drink. But they know better customers drink wine and spend more money. So a wine program is a must for any decent restaurant serving entrees $13 and over.
Retailers for the most part are pretty good with their markups, however, there are some I would never buy from. In order to make sure you are getting a fair price, fair is within 15% of the market price, you can find out on wine search engines like www.winesearcher.com. If the wine isn’t listed, then bargain; your retailer might have an exclusive and it shows they look for rare and unique products. I’d keep them if I were you as they obviously dedicated the time, energy and money into looking for interesting products. From my perspective, I look for cool stuff for these guys. I love them. Gives me a chance to find some super neat stuff and there’s a lot of neat stuff out there.
So I’ve given you a peek at my world. The next time someone grumbles at a wine costing $$$, once they know where came from and that upfront costs are half that price, they might now understand why it does. Keep it in perspective! Compared to the real costs, it’s still pretty cheap.
Donna
I had the great pleasure of witnessing the first trial run of Cavitus’ new barrel cleaning system at Constellation’s Gonzales Winery (formerly Blackstone) in Gonzales, California. In attendance from Gonzales Winery was General Manager Hugh Reimer (left) and winemaker Scott Dahlstrom (right). Present from Cavitus was Andrew Yap (center), not only Director of Oenology and Industry Marketing, but one of Mr. Reimer’s former teachers, and Field Engineer Howard Wittwer. In addition to these distinguished gentleman were representatives from three major California wine brands the identities of which Mr. Yap has asked me not to reveal pending their permission. I was present at the invitation of Mr. Yap and with the assent of Mr. Reimer.
Mr. Reimer opened Gonzales Winery for others in the industry to watch the Cavitus beta prototype in action. Having successfully performed in Australia earlier in the year, the unit recently arrived from trials in New Zealand. This is the first time the system has been demoed in the United States. As may be read in my three-part interview series, essential background reading for this story, Mr. Yap was in the Napa/Sonoma area in October laying the ground work for a number of demos planned for this month at a few of the larger wineries located there.
The entire barrel cleaning/sonication process was performed by one person, in this instance, Field Engineer Howard Wittwer. This is not to say such a unit is optimally run with only a single operator but it does amply demonstrate the simplicity of each step of barrel sonication. Further, the beta prototype is complete in itself. It possesses all the requisite elements as a stand-alone unit. The titanium soniprobe, the hot water heater, recycling/recovery pumps, conveyer belt, cable runs, etc. However, the complete unit is, in part, for the purposes of demonstration. A winery with its own hot water system, etc., it was explained, would not need to purchase those elements of the unit. They could use the already installed tech of their own winery’s infrastructure.
As with the wineries in Australia and New Zealand, three specific barrel trials/experiments were performed at Gonzales Winery. One was the sonication of known brett infected barrels (which will later undergo laboratory analysis to test for any live cultures), a second was the removal of tartaric crystal buildup, and the third was a lower-power sonication of brett infected wine while still in barrel. Of the latter experiment, the effort is to determine both the elimination of live brett cultures and whether any disruption of base-line phenolics might occur. Only a laboratory assay to be conducted at a later date will prove conclusive. Standard 60gal/227 liter barrels were used (American oak, in this case), though puncheons could easily have been substituted without modification of the beta unit.
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And just as ancient. Indeed, the recent discovery in the Amazon Basin of what are called Terra Preta do Indio soils confirms biochar’s Pre-Columbian use, soils dating from 500 BC to 1400 AD.
One leading manufacturer of a biochar machine/kiln, Best Energies, lists the wide variety of organic inputs that may be used to produce biochar: Poultry litter, dairy manure, greenwaste, nut shells, paper sludge, straw, wood waste, woody weeds, distillers grain, cotton trash, rice hulls, and switch grass. You get the idea.
H-PS I have my own domaine in Switzerland, Domaine Mythopia. And this is a kind of research domaine, very small, it’s only about 5 hectares, 2, maybe 2 1/2 hectares of grapes, 3 hectares or so of aromatic herbs, fruit trees and wild, native plants.
H-PS They are kind of old vines, about 50 years. I took it over a couple of years ago. And we do the research there. But I also organize the research, the ecological research for a company that is called Delinat. It is an organic wine seller working with about 40 different winegrowers all over Europe. I am occupied to organize the ecological renewal [of the vineyards] for these winegrowers. They do all organic wine growing, but organic is not enough for us. We are looking for more biodiversity, for more respect of the terroir and a climate neutral agriculture. So, it is my job to organize it for these other winegrowers so that they become climate neutral, that they make better terroir wines, and so on.
With respect to the biochar, is it disced in? How is it applied?
H-PS Pyreg [site in German].
My idea is to achieve a general diversification in agricultural production. In fact, not only to bring biodiversity into the vineyard, with flowers, planting trees, but also to have other cultures around and in between vine rows. For example, we do bees, we produce honey, a second product. And we produce aromatic herbs for herbal teas, and different fruits. So we have four, five supplementary products within the vineyard. So thinking in the longer view you could always have enough material to produce all the green stuff needed to produce not only biochar but also energy.
