Dan Berger, Educator, pt 2
Ξ April 1st, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ A Day at a Time, Interviews, Technology, Wine History, Wine News |
I am pleased to present the balance of my interview with Dan Berger. He is an interesting fellow, easy to speak with, very well-informed, but always ready to cite a more thorough, better informed source. It is the teacher in him. It is always about getting the best, most complete answer.
Part 1 may be found here.
For more about the gentleman see his fine work on Appellation America and subscribe to his newsletter, Dan Berger’s Vintage Experiences.
Admin What do you think of the attempt to organize tastings into quasi-scientific events?
Dan Berger I wrote an article about twenty years ago in which I tried to explain the justification for blind tasting as well as tasting in sight of the label. I think you can define both as valid. But I think that you have to do the blind tasting without sufficient information to create an evaluation that is tilted. An example of that would be to say ‘I’m going to taste today only $10 a bottle Chardonnays’. Well, I think that’s too much information for a blind tasting because once you know the wines are all the same price, or a similar price, and you know what that price is then you start to pre-judge. Once you’ve pre-judged, to a certain degree the tasting is no longer blind.
I think when you do a blind tasting you have to have only the barest amount of information. But I think it’s also valid to then adjust scores after sight of the label if it’s related to terroir, if it’s related to vintage, if it is related to something the consumer is going to to know when they see the wine on the shelf, if when they buy it and take it home, they’re already going to know something about it. When you do a blind tasting and all you do is put down raw scores and then publish those results you haven’t given the wine a fair evaluation.
It’s one thing, for example, for a California wine evaluator who not to long ago gave a wine a score of 58… what he did, I am guessing but I’m pretty sure I am right, was he pulled the cork, poured the wine into a glass, took one sniff and immediately discarded the wine as being spoiled. Well, I did exactly the same thing. I pulled the cork, smelled it and it was showing off a characteristic that winemakers know of very readily, and it’s the residual effect of sulphur dioxide. Once that wine had a chance to sit around for a 10 minutes, and once I could see what was happening, I decanted the wine and the wine was brilliant! The wine in question was the 2004 Clos Du Val Cabernet. Now, I think it was completely unfair for that evaluator to judge the wine with a single sniff, a single sip and not going back to the wine. Wine evaluation is a process, it is not a single, quick overview. When you do that you don’t serve the consumer or the winemaker.
Of terroir and tasting protocols, are they part of your professional-level courses you teach?
DB I teach at Santa Rosa Jr. College. Most of the students will be going on to UC Davis. What ends up happening in my classes is that I will on a weekly basis, I’ll pull a bottle or two or three out of my cellar from mature stock that goes along with the young wine that we will have for showing off youthful characteristics of the certain varietals. What we do is to illustrate why aging is or is not appropriate for certain wines. So, the terroir characteristic becomes most important. A good example would be what happens with Sauvignon Blanc.
When you buy a Sauvignon Blanc that says Dry Creek Valley on the label and you buy another bottle from a different site, say Alexander Valley, if they are both young wines, less than a year old, then the wines are going to be somewhat similar because they are both wines of youth and freshness. What I occasionally do is pull out a bottle of Dry Creek and a bottle of Alexander Valley that is three or four years old and I pour them after I pour the young ones to show that the terroir characteristics are really, really different. And the reason is that the terroir characteristics do not show themselves until after the wine has been open for a while. And it’s not that there’s no identifiability when the wine is young. There is. But it is so clear after a few years in the bottle.
I know of winemakers who believe very strongly that Sauvignon Blanc is one of those varieties that need time in the bottle. Now, there are a lot of winemakers who don’t. They make the wine to drink now, and all you do is wait for the next vintage. But I think Sauvignon Blanc is an under-performing wine because of the fact so much of it is consumed so young. I think it’s best when it is consumed with a little bit of bottle age.
With your teaching, do you try inoculate student against UC Davis’ arguably excessive interest in technology and intervention within the winery itself?
DB Let’s first of all look at what Davis’ plusses and minuses are. Davis is one of the greatest wine institutions in the world. Is it the greatest? You could make a case that it is probably the greatest in the United States. I have my opinions. i think, for example, that Roseworthy Academy in Australia is a much more complete wine education. I say that after having been to Australia 16 times. On the other side of it is the fact that Davis does not a very rigorous sensory evaluation program, certainly nothing like they have in Europe, nothing like they have at Roseworthy, nothing like they have in a number of other countries. Having said that, that does not mean Davis does not do its job. It doesn’t have the resources to do it the way it is done in other countries. Why that is is very complicated and I don’t want to go into it.
But Davis is doing something that is very, very vital to winemaking, and it is really unfortunate that Davis has been attacked by people who don’t know what is going on. The first thing to remember is that Davis’ responsibility is to educate students in how wine wine is made. That means, from a practical point of view, how do you get something into the bottle that’s not spoiled? Step number one. We’re [Davis] not asking these young winemakers to go out and make Domaine de la Romaneé-Conti every time they pick Pinot Noir. In fact, Davis’ main responsibility is something that is carries out with a great degree of skill: teaching winemakers how to avoid some of the worst problems that they can run into.
Now, what often happens, I think, is that winemakers then criticize Davis for what they say is hamstringing their abilities to make classic wine. Well, that’s ridiculous! [Wine] chemistry hasn’t changed very much since Louis Pasteur’s day. In fact, it’s changed not at all. Chemistry is the same thing. And what wine is about is chemistry microbiology. If you don’t know those disciplines extremely well and how they apply to wine grapes then you’re not going to be properly skilled in the making of stable wine.
So, Davis’ responsibilities have been carried out, I think, with utter responsibility. And I am really disappointed when people criticize what Davis has done without understanding what the real dynamics are that cause Davis to not be as great an institution as it could be if it had the funding.
Are you talking about staff in particular?
DB Well, staff is one thing. Going for a year or two without a staff enologist is not a good thing to do, but where is the funding coming from? If Davis is going to pursue the most appropriate path for wine education in the United States then it’s going to have to do so with the knowledge that there is plenty of money to do that job. I have heard of winemakers in the last two or three years say that from a practical point of view Fresno State is a better winemaking institution. Well, that’s a good jumping off point, so to speak. Dick Arrowwood got his degree at Fresno State. I think everybody would agree Dick Arrowwood is a great winemaker. But that is not to say that you can’t become a great winemaker having gone to Davis. Davis has turned out literally dozens of great, great winemakers in California. Dan Baron at Silver Oak, he was in a class with Cathy Corison, and Randall Grahm, on and on. We’re talking about some very, very talented people here.
The very best winemakers in California are people who do not simply take UC Davis’ responsibilities and trash them. These are people who have been respectful. If they have a difference of opinion to a particular style of wine, that’s one thing. Styles change, times change. And the grape-growing culture has changed.
One thing that has for sure occurred in the last decade or so is that it has become absolutely evident that one of the most profound impacts on the California wine industry in the last twenty-five years was the result of phylloxera. But it wasn’t what phylloxera did but what it led to. And that was inexact planting. When UC Davis, and alot of people criticized Davis for this, when they encouraged the use of XR 1, the rootstock of choice, then phylloxera infected the vineyard. That is a secondary issue. What actually took place when phylloxera hit was that everybody said, ‘Well, it’s gong to be very expensive, something we have to deal with. But we my come out of this beneficially is we replant very carefully. Fine and dandy. The problem that we faced right after phylloxera actually hit was that a lot of people were making decisions on replants that I think were totally ridiculous. And a lot of the decisions to fix the problem were just as bad as the problem itself.
Davis was not directly involved in these bad decisions. They were trying as best they could, as far as I know, to make certain that people were conservative in the way they approached the problem. Since, say, 1988-90 there have been, what I consider to be, some of the most ridiculous decision-making that has led California to a place where the wines are not showing either terroir or balance. The consumer is mystified; a lot of the consumers I know are perfectly happy buying some of these wines but they really don’t understand what’s happening. One thing that going to happen is it will eventually backfire on the industry. It’s already beginning to happen.
It’s very complicated and I don’t want to go into all the details. But one thing for sure I can tell you is that a huge percentage of the vineyards were replanted on vertical shoot-positioned vines (VSP). The trellising system that was selected was vertical shoot-positioning; it has its place, there is no question. But should it have been in 90% of California? Site to site, VSP is probably fine. But there are plenty of sites where it does not work. All you end up is a solar panel, these leaves being splayed out over wires. The fruit is left dangling below, direct sunlight is hitting them, the ’solar panels’ are sugar machines. All you’re doing is generating high, high sugars. Some of the wines I’m seeing over the last decade or so are just outrageous in terms of how the sugar is being produced. The result is you don’t have any structural integrity to the wine. I think that’s detrimental to the winery although there will be plenty of people who will say, ‘Well, you know, the wine’s going to sell’. OK. Fine. Is that your notion of what success is? I think there’s probably other ways of determining what successful wine-making is.
With respect to VSP, canopy management and the consequent new wine ’style’, if I may call it that, what subtler part might climate change play in some vineyards?
DB I don’t think the effects of climate change have impacted the wine industry in California to any great degree at this point, certainly not the way it has affected the Australian industry.
I know that harvesting dates has moved up as much a two weeks in some areas…
DB That’s certainly one effect but I’m not entirely sure that’s a result necessarily of global climate change. I suspect there’s some but not necessarily a direct result. I can tell you one reason why. Scientists now have determined that for the next decade or so, through about 2015 at least, Napa and Sonoma are actually going to be marginally cooler because of a curious effect of how the Central San Joachin Valley is actually hotter, therefore that is going to have the effect of drawing marine air into Napa and Sonoma, a little more aggressively over the next six to ten years. They will be cooler. The question, obviously, is about the long term. We aren’t entirely sure, although we can see the projections. We do see a rapid increase in glacial development in the North and South Poles over the last 12 months. Does that effect global warming? Is global warming actual? Does it have dynamics that we are unaware of? So, a lot of information still has to be processed by scientists. I’m not prepared to make any broad generalizations because I’m not a scientist.
I can say, with respect to the other part of your question about trellising and canopy management, I think canopy management is probably the most vital tactic that could be employed in vineyards throughout California as long as trellising systems are not going to be radically changed from where they are now. If you’ve got a VSP and manage it, that’s fine. I talked to a winemaker not too long ago who said, “The stupidest thing I ever did was put in VSP”. And I said can I quote you? “Absolutely not!” (laughs) And then I asked, “Well, then why did you say that”? He said, “Because it put me into a situation where I had no control over the excessive amount of sunlight I was getting on my fruit”. I said, “You have to do something…” He said, “Well, I’ve done some things. I’ve changed the direction of how the vine grows so that some of the canopy is literally allowed to grow out into the row and then I leave some of those canes out there longer so that they create a much larger amount of shade for the fruit”. I said, “It sounds to me like the old California sprawl system going back to the seventies.” And he laughed and said, “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to get back to where we were in the ’70s. If I need to fine tune I can go out a prune back leaves.” “But isn’t that labor-intensive”? I asked him. He said, “The main reason we were sold on VSP to begin with was the fact that it was inexpensive. Now I realize that there is no free lunch. To make fine wine you’ve got to spend some time out in the vineyard. There’s an old saying, the best fertilizer for a vineyard are the footprints of the winemaker”. So the answer is yes, trellising is critical, canopy management is critical.
It comes down to how much passion do you have for making great wine. An example: about four years ago there was hang-time conference that was help in Napa. During that conference, Dr. Richard Smart from New Zealand and now Tasmania, I asked him a question from the audience, “If you had to take a guess what percentage of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is under cropped?” Well, he was caught off guard by the question. I’ve known Dr. Smart for a long time and he knew that the question was somewhat loaded. He said if he had to take a guess he would say 95%. That’s a lot of vineyards in the Napa Valley. (Incidentally, the average tonnage of cabernet in the Napa Valley is 3.4 tons per acre.) I asked Dr. Smart later what level of harvested fruit would make the very best wine. He said there is no way of knowing site to site what is the best average tonnage, but it is certain that the smaller the tonnage the better the wine is a ridiculous phrase. He thinks 4.5 tons per acre on average would probably not be any worse than 3.4. So I guess the answer is that if you’ve got 3.4 tons of cabernet growing on your vines and you’ve been educated that this is the best way to make the very best wine then so be it. You’ll never know if your 4.5 would have made you probably better wine, at least the same quality wine. Nobody’s asking these people to increase their tonnages, I’m certainly not, but I think if one of the viticultural masters of this world, Dr. Richard Smart, thinks 4.5 tons per acre is not a detriment in terms of quality then maybe folks might want to listen.
Irrigation must matter. And fertilizer.
DB I can’t imagine that a change in tonnage would not also require a change in irrigation. But again, a lot of this comes back to scientific research that’s been done, and the vast majority has been done by the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI), and there is no institute like this in the world. I’m a member of the Australian Oenological Society, and I receive the AWRI bulletins. I believe very strongly in what the AWRI has done. I think it is one of the great wine educational institutions in the world. And if the AWRI hasn’t done some research on something then it’s probably not worth doing. (laughs) They are very, very savvy people. They have an analytical service, the have a research service, a development service, it offers an amazing variety of work.
This is where, when Davis is criticized, it amuses me because I know that the wine knowledge, or what passes as wine knowledge for so many winemakers in the United States is somewhat, shall we say, naive based on materials that have already been published for many, many years in Australia. Why we don’t have that information widely available to us is another story I don’t want to get into.
Probably one of the greatest winemaking resources is Dr. Richard Peterson. Dr. Peterson doesn’t even actually make wine anymore but he is a repository of information on wine, techniques that have been developed around the world. He gets his hands on a lot of the Australian material. He’s like a library of winemaking techniques. We tend to forget that because a winemaker is older doesn’t mean they’re out of touch with the current research. In fact, they may be more likely to make a great wine because they have so much life experience.
I’ll give you one example. I was at a Petite Syrah conference about four years ago. I heard a grower get up and say ‘you need to do such and such in your vineyard, otherwise you’re gonna get some red-leaf problems, nutrient deficiencies etc’. It didn’t surprise me to hear it, but I’m not a scientist. So, I’m sitting next to a guy who has been growing Petite Syrah for 25 years, and he said, “Oh my God! Maybe that’s my problem!” The following year I went back and this guy was absolutely adamant. He said, “It worked! It saved my butt. Had I never attended this conference I would have never known that these soil additions were necessary for Petite Syrah.” The reason, partly, is that Petite Syrah is not exactly on the lips of everyone in the world. (laughs) It’s not exactly a commonly produced wine, although there are probably 150 to 200 wineries making it today. It’s not a variety people spend a lot of time worrying about. It doesn’t give you glory to make a good Petite Syrah. That doesn’t mean the scientific knowledge about it shouldn’t be disseminated! But then we get back to the issue of how much money is there? Who’s got the money to get the information out?
So this conference held by the PS I Love You group was tremendous because it gave some of these growers an opportunity to hear from their colleagues. I’ve seen better Petite Syrahs in the last few years than I’ve ever seen. Does that ever come out in the Wine Spectator or Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate? I don’t know. Sixteen percent alcohol seems to get you a high score, we know that, but in terms of the character of these wines that are so much better than they’ve been for many, many years, I think that has gotten overlooked. It’s really too bad. Alot of these winemakers and wineries are working really hard to make great wine from many varieties that were previously under-considered.
Indeed. I would place Petit Verdot very high on that list. I love that grape.
DB Petit Verdot is an incredible variety! So is Cabernet Franc grown in the right soils. What we’re seeing now is more of a refinement in how Viognier made. We’re seeing Tablas Creek doing rather remarkable things with Roussanne. Take a look at some of the unusual wines that Randall Grahm has made out of, for example, Muscat. This is a very exciting time for the California wine industry. It hasn’t been very well revealed because of the fact, I think, some of the best examples of our wines are a result of terroir and varietal prejudice. Imagine a Sauvignon Blanc that gets 95 points. It doesn’t exist, as far as I know. Imagine a Gewurztraminer that gets 95 points. It doesn’t exist, as far as I know. Or how about a dry Riesling getting even as much a 91 points…? It’s pretty risky making these varieties. And yet Wendy Stuckey at Chateau Ste. Michelle, is making some of the best Riesling I have ever tasted from the United States. It’s brilliant wine. And some of them can be purchased for $12. But when the critics, those who put numbers to wines, see the volume produced of these wines they prejudge the score, give them an 88 or an 87. They are absolutely demeaning the efforts that are being made by people like Wendy Stuckey.
One of the things I miss is the ‘field blend’. I buy them where ever I find them.
DB The field blend still has an opportunity. But there is an unfortunate problem with it right now. The field blend that makes the most sense for the grapes doesn’t always make the most sense for the market place. I’ll give you one example, it’s not a very good one but it come to mind. Will Bucklin has more, different grape varieties planted in his vineyard out in the Sonoma Valley than just about any other vineyard in the world. I mean, he’s got literally 200 varieties out there! And if he wanted to make a field blend, a real honest to goodness field blend, that really reflected the character of what he’s got out there he would have to go out there about thirty times to harvest thirty different lots, to make, essentially, thirty mini-wines to finally put a blend together. From a practical point of view that’s just not going to happen.
It is an amazing property. It’s called the Old Hill Vineyard. The Old Hill Vineyard is one of those unbelievably rare examples of California viticulture taken back to the 1880’s.
I have got to get out there!
DB It is amazing! You should see it in the Springtime. In fact, in about a month you’ll be able to go out there and without any question you’ll be able to spot the Grenache because the Grenache sticks out like a sore thumb. It is so aggressive in the way it produces leaves. The leaves just reach for the sky! It’s just dramatic to see. And all the varieties look different. That was the most fun for me. I went out there about three years ago, walked through the vineyard with Will in the Springtime. It is so amazing to see an old California vineyard, and with no particular trellising system at all! A great property!
Well, thank you. It has been an absolute pleasure to speak with you.
DB It’s fun to chat with somebody who has such enthusiasm.
For more on Dan Berger see his fine work on Appellation America and subscribe to his newsletter, Dan Berger’s Vintage Experiences.
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