Reign of Terroir » Wine News

Jack Keller On America’s Indigenous Grape And Fruit Wines

Admin, Ken Payton — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:14:21 +0000

Taken by a couple of articles that have recently appeared in the Palate Press on both the history and the commercial potential for American indigenous grape varieties, I did what anyone would do: I turned to Jack Keller, author of the site Winemaking, and perhaps the net’s first fermented beverages blog, Jack Keller’s WineBlog. Though humility forbids him from saying it, I have no problem calling him one of America’s leading voices on all things fermentable. And as an accomplished, award-winning home winemaker, he brings to the discussion his considerable experience with the making of fruit, grape, dandelion, even grass wines! He is a terrific resource for information and knowledge, both the arcane and the indispensable. The Michael Broadbent, if you will, of our indigenous and fruit wines. For our purposes here, he sheds significant light upon the questions I put to him.

In addition to visiting his websites, for more information please see my interview with the gentleman from the Fall of 2008.

1) Would you say a bit about the historical eclipse of America’s indigenous grape varieties by Vitis vinifera?

Jack Keller Ken, from the earliest days, I think every generation of Europeans who came to America brought with them a memory of wine that was formed almost exclusively around their homeland’s varieties of V. vinifera. It was and still is, after all, the overwhelmingly dominant grape on the western half of the Eurasian landmass and by import throughout North and South Africa, Australia, South America, and the Golden State. Sure, the more common among the immigrants possibly also had experience with elderberry, greengage, apple, blackberry and other homemade country wines, but there wasn’t really anything in Europe equivalent to the vast numbers of American native grapes.

With a V. vinifera memory, immigrants were of course disappointed in the very different flavors obtained from wild American grapes. However, the old expression “any port is welcome in a storm” also applies to wine. Oddly flavored wine was vastly preferred to no wine at all. Besides, for those who were born in American or came here very young, they had no memory of V. vinifera, American grapes made perfectly acceptable wine. Until, that is, the second half of the twentieth century, when Madison Avenue began to tell us what was and what wasn’t acceptable.

The wild grape of Europe, V. sylvestris, is somewhat analogous to American grapes in that both are dioecious, bearing male and female flowers on separate plants. If you walk through the forests of America where grapes grow, you see many vines that are male and devoid of fruit. V. vinifera, with hermaphroditic flowers, clearly would be favored in the garden or on the farm for that reason alone. But that is but a bonus. The real draw to V. vinifera is the generally superior flavors of the juice and it’s fermented byproduct over any other grape species on the planet. Even an inferior V. vinifera variety is unquestionably superior to the best V. monticola, V. mustangensis, V. acerifolia, V. arizonica, V. girdiana, V. vulpina, V. cinerea, etc. While one can get used to wines from these grapes, they are certainly not the best of the American native species.

The better American indigenous species, V. labrusca, V. aestivalis, V. riparia, and even V. rotundifolia have all produced some outstanding varieties. But, with the exception of V. rotundifolia (muscadine), the vast majority of the commercially successful “American” grapes all seem to have a little V. vinifera in their genes. Concord, Catawba, Alexander, Niagara, Delaware, Norton (or Cynthiana, if you prefer), and Ives are but a few that have had long lasting commercial success, and all but one of those had a European pollinator in its distant past. And then there are the muscadines — Scuppernong, Noble, Scarlett, Nesbitt, Summit, Carlos, Ison, Magnolia, Tara, and so on.

Certainly you can say these wines have been eclipsed by V. vinifera wines, but they were never in the same league at all. Even so, they have their place. Personally, I would prefer a good Ives Noir to an average V. vinifera, and there are a lot of average V. vinifera wines out there.

2) Tell us something of the quality of wines the home winemaker can achieve with both vinifera and native grapes, but also of various fruits.

JK I have been judging home wine competitions for a long time. I distinctly remember the first homemade wine I ever scored a perfect 20 (out of 20 possible). It was a black raspberry with a little elderberry in it, and it was superb. The beauty of that wine was that had I not known I was drinking a black rasp with elder, I’d have thought I was drinking a very well made Zinfandel.

The best wines I have personally ever made were almost all non-grape wines — dandelion, Marion blackberry, Key lime, Loganberry, black currant, pomegranate, mangosteen, black raspberry, Boysenberry, cherry, and (you’re not going to believe this…) beet. Oh, I’ve made more than a few unforgettable grape wines too, but I like to field blend indigenous grapes and produce something no one has ever tasted before. Probably my very best was a blend of V. mustangensis, V. cinerea var. helleri, V. monticola, and V. vulpina, and it was smooth but crisp and utterly delicious. I could never make it again because I just filled the press with what I had, but of course I’ll try.

Having said all of that, I am not the best home winemaker I know. I think I am pretty good, but I know people who make wines that put mine to shame. I consider it an achievement when I can steal a Best of Show or Grand Champion from them.

I think some of the best wines and worse wines I have ever tasted were made from the same fruit or berries. You can make an absolutely delightful wine from peaches, for example, but if your method is inappropriate or you use under-ripe fruit or simply not enough fruit it can be worse than bad. The best eating plums you can find might make pitiful wine, but a bucket full of small, tart, wild sand plums can be transformed into the most delicious wine you have tasted. The same can be said of grapes. The best table grapes generally make poor wine. Have you ever eaten a bunch of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes? Not very appealing, but oh, what wine!

Native grapes present similar challenges. Many have unusual aromas or flavors associated with their species. These are not necessarily disagreeable, although they might be, but they certainly are unusual. Every winemaker knows that the wine almost certainly will not taste like the fruit from which it was made, but it will carry certain characteristics of the fruit into the wine. Learning what will and what will not be carried into the wine is one of the skills that separate really good winemakers from the rest. Put another way, knowing what the ingredients will taste like when combined and then baked or cooked is what separates chefs from mere cooks.

V. vinifera varieties present the same problem, but we have tens of thousands of examples of finished product from which to learn. With most native grapes and a lot of different fruit, you have to make the wines to learn what is possible and what is not. Learning how to manipulate what nature offers so as to bring out desirables while shedding, masking or neutralizing undesirables is what turns the average chef into the master craftsman.

I guess what I am trying to say is that the potential quality of native grape wines is really dependent on the winemaker’s skills. The same can be said of V. vinifera wines, but most viniferas are much more forgiving than are the natives. You have to be a pretty bad winemaker to screw up a batch of Merlot, but you have to be a pretty good winemaker to coax a good wine out of V. mustangensis or V. rupestris.

Country wines present different challenges, but these are basically challenges of ingredient selection and chemistry, solved by a combination of knowledge and good winemaking techniques. Just as tart plums make better wine than most table plum cultivars, tart cider apples make far superior wine than do sweet eating apples. You have to select the right ingredients and then work with the chemistry that comes with them. The results can be both surprising and delightful.

If you’ve ever eaten raw cranberries, the idea of making wine from them might seem like a waste of time and effort. But the truth is that cranberry wine served in a blind tasting will be mistaken for grape wine — usually white Zinfandel — almost every time. Few other fruit or berry wines will do this, but the beauty is what each actually tastes like once fermented. Banana wine will not taste like banana unless the winemaker adds banana extract, in which case it will taste like adulterated banana wine.

The things to remember with country wines is that they are not grape wines, should never be compared to grape wines, and should be judged by what they present — not what you expect. My wife and I were in a little winery outside of Kalamazoo and we were luxuriating in the enjoyment of one of the best cherry wines we’d ever tasted when a woman complained in a very loud, shrill voice, “This doesn’t taste like any wine I’VE ever tasted!” You can go through life complaining and being unhappy or you can just relax and enjoy the moment.

What I love about home winemakers is that they experiment. It doesn’t always work out for the better, and folks with good manners will never let their failures cross the lips of a guest. But those successes, those are where the next greatest thing might be found. My wife’s favorite wine is a wine I learned how to make from Martin Benke called Key Lime-A-Rita, which is basically fermented Key Limeade and Triple Sec, and yes, it tastes more like a Margarita than a wine. Some winemaker down in Florida is going to read my blog one day, give Key Lime-A-Rita a try, and sell a thousand cases.

3) What are the indigenous varieties which show the greatest promise for commercial success?

JK Down here in Texas we have a native grape called mustang that is probably the worst tasting grape you’d never want to try, but good winemakers have been making some terrific wines from that sucker for generations. Mustang is a real challenge, but if you can make good wines from that grape you can probably make exceptional wines out of anything else. I’m not saying mustang has great commercial promise, but at least two wineries in Texas sell an awful lot of it.

The reason I mentioned mustang first off is to make clear that a good winemaker can make good wine out of any grape. The problem with many indigenous grapes is that they bear too little fruit to be commercially viable or are too vigorous to be controlled in a vineyard setting. Those that bear well and can be managed on the trellis have largely been exploited in breeding programs or in niche markets.

There are a lot of old grapes — heirloom varieties, if you will — that were once popular but would now be extinct if not for a few breeders, memorial vineyards, enthusiasts, and the clonal germplasm repositories at Geneva, NY and Davis, CA. The ones I am referring to are mostly hybrids of the native species, but some do indeed have at least some V. vinifera genes. From this vast storehouse are some exceptional grapes that make exceptional wines, but would you plant a few acres of Herbemont, Lenoir, Hidalgo, Ives, Brilliant, Lindley, Elvira, Blondin, Clinton, Elvicand, Valhallah, Hopkins, Bailey, Husmann, Munson, or XLNTA when customers are still asking for Merlot? It would take a gutsy person to do so, but there are some such folks out there. I have tasted commercial wines of most of these grapes (still looking for Elvicand and Hopkins). Most of these grapes will grow fine down here in the Pierces Disease belt (PD), where V. vinifera bears two crops before dying.

The oldest continuously operated winery in Texas is Val Verde Winery in Del Rio. Their flagship grape is Lenoir, a.k.a. Black Spanish, and they make a darned good table wine and a highly respected (and a bit pricey) port from this grape. They also make a half-dozen V. vinifera wines, but I would bet my soul that they buy that juice from some place where those grapes will grow. And that’s okay. They have to compete, and even though Robert Parker is never going to mention Val Verde Winery (they grow that Lenoir grape!), he does seem to mention all the other wines they sell and that works in their favor.

The truth is that I don’t really know which indigenous species or varieties show the greatest promise for commercialization, but there is some good potential out there. I prefer the blends to the varietals in both vinifera and indigenous wines, so I am only limited by what I can find out there.

4) I believe the time is ripe for the expansion of fruit wines into the market, still and sparkling. As with crafted beers, there is a commercial niche high quality fruit wines can create. Your thoughts?

JK Ken, I think the expansion is well under way. In certain portions of Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, every other winery offers a stable of fruit and berry wines, both still and sparkling. I was amazed how good sparkling cherry and raspberry can be. It had simply never occurred to me to make these wines.

Throughout the South you will find many, many commercial wineries offering wines from every fruit grown regionally, including pawpaw, mayhaw, huckleberry, blueberry, elderberry, all varieties of blackberry, currants, star fruit, Clementines, and so on.

Just recently a friend of mine living in the Sierras above Oroville commented on a winery in Chico that makes blackberry, cherry, cranberry, and elderberry wines, as well as a dry mead he likes.

When I lived in San Francisco, on my jaunts down home to San Bernardino I always stopped at a place in Pacheco Valley called Casa de Fruta and picked up a few bottles of pomegranate, raspberry and apricot wines. When down your way, I always tried to stop at Chaucer’s Winery in Soquel, CA, and pick up a bottle of Olallieberry wine, arguably the best blackberry that ever grew, and a bottle of raspberry mead.

I think the wines have been here for a long time. What has happened, though, is that the commercial wine world, especially in California, is 99.9% invested in V. vinifera and that is what rules the roost. Wine writers perpetuate the “If it isn’t vinifera, it isn’t wine” mantra by completely ignoring non-vinifera and non-grape wines. In the PD belt of the South, where V. vinifera vines only survive for 3-5 years, non-vinifera grapes are widely grown and their wines widely consumed. Indeed, muscadine is the grape of the South, and people who drink muscadine have no problem with fruit wines.

5) What are the cultural, practical and gustatory obstacles to the commercial success of fruit and non-vinifera wines?

JK I think there are few gustatory obstacles. Yes, cherry wines will never taste like any wine that rude woman in Kalamazoo has ever drank, but every good cherry wines tastes, well, good. And if truth be told, I have never met a person that didn’t like blackberry wine. But, if you don’t like fruit, well, then you might want to stick to beer.

On a practical level, the shelf life of fruit wines is comparatively short. If they don’t sell quickly, they probably won’t sell. But fruit wines are almost always shoved into the corner with the lowest traffic in the store because the big money controls the high traffic areas. You have to go looking for fruit wines to even find them, and you won’t go looking if you don’t know they are there. When is the last time you saw an ad or commercial — or just a mention in a movie or TV series — for a fruit or berry wine?

So that brings us to the cultural obstacles. I think most of the above is relevant here, from Robert Parker and all the Parker-wannabes, to the farmer who isn’t going to take a chance on a vine that will grow but which almost no one still living has ever heard of. The truth is that it is a V. vinifera wine world and in America it is all influenced by two or three small valleys in northern California.

I talked to a grower 12-14 years ago who was losing all his vines to Pierces Disease. He asked the agricultural extension agent, who was there at that moment, when was someone going to put some real money into solving the PD problem. The agent said, “When PD reaches California the money will flow.” He was right. PD has reached California and there are big bucks flowing into PD research. But that too is part of the cultural obstacle. PD wasn’t a problem as long as it was just wiping out mom and pop vineyards in the South. But when it threatens Big Wine’s vineyards, then it becomes worthy of notice.

Now, it may just turn out that there isn’t a solution to PD. If that comes to past (and I sincerely hope that it doesn’t), then all those native hybrids I mentioned earlier will start looking really good because many of them are PD tolerant and some are outright resistant. Andy Walker and many others at UC-Davis and elsewhere are looking into that resistance and the genes that may be responsible for it. Until the actual genes responsible are identified and spliced, the next best approach is to cross-breed resistance from the natives into V. vinifera. Once you do that, you then cross back to vinifera repeatedly until you have just enough residual resistance to protect the vinifera without messing up the flavor too much with that pesky American muck. It’s a perfectly understandable approach. Another approach would be to simply plant Lenoir, or Herbemont, or Bailey, or….

Having spent megatons of money convincing Americans that they are mere commoners if they don’t drink toasted oaked Chardonnay, it would be, well, insincere — would it not? — to retrain the palate to like something less noble. God forbid we should stoop to anything so low as Carlos muscadine, persimmon wine or — dare I say it? — Key Lime-A-Rita.

So, bottom line, my interest is in the clear-headed promotion of commercial alternatives to Vitis vinifera. I have enjoyed a number of pear and apple-based wines recently, and was blown away by the quality. It seems to me that the success of off-dry Rieslings, for example, the dumbing down, the homogenization of vinifera wines, especially at lower price points (the Two Buck Chuck Effect!), combined with new marketing niches now possible because of the revolution of crafted beers, all dovetail into new opportunities for non-vinifera expressions.

JK Ken, I couldn’t agree more with your last opinion. Despite the best efforts of Big Wine to dictate what we should like, the truth is that not all people are sheep. You can burn out on any taste after a while. The success of all those soft drinks on the cola aisle is based on the fact that people get tired of Coke or Pepsi or 7-Up all the time. The same is true of wines. But I fear Big Wine is trying to control that desire for diversity.

Take, for example, Arbor Mist’s fruit flavored vinifera wines. I counted 11 different flavors the other day at the market, and their success validates your instincts. There is a niche out there for fruit wines and Arbor Mist is jumping in to fill it. But why not sell the real fruit wine? Why flavor Merlot with blackberry when you could sell blackberry wine? The truth probably has something to do with a glut of grapes on the market. Merlot is cheap. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be a Two-Buck Chuck Merlot.

Now, I do understand why there is at least some grape in most fruit wines. Having made the real McCoy of every wine Arbor Mist offers, I will be the first to point out that most fruit wines are light in body. I myself usually add about 12-20% grape juice by volume to my fruit musts to thicken that lightness. But the difference between adding fruit flavors to vinifera wines or vinifera to fruit wines actually is significant. Arbor Mist Peach Chardonnay tastes too peachy, like that banana wine adulterated with banana extract. The consumer who tastes it and then tastes an excellent, real peach wine may well be disappointed in the real thing. Arbor Mist is tricking the consumer into tasting what he or she expects peach wine to taste like rather than presenting the real flavor of peach wine. This, in the long run, may well work against the real fruit wine producers.

You mentioned the Two-Buck Chuck Effect on pricing; let’s call this the Arbor Mist Effect on flavor expectations. The former has been positive for the consumer. The latter is just deception. Deception may be profitable and it may taste good, but it’s still deception. It is important to remember that whenever deception is practiced, someone gets hurt. In this case, it is probably the real fruit winemakers who suffer. The niche they belong in is being largely filled by Big Wine (Arbor Mist is owned by Constellation Brands, the largest wine company in the world) and manipulated so that many consumers will reject real fruit wines as “lacking flavor.”

I’d love to be wrong. I don’t think Arbor Mist will steal established customers away from fruit wine producers unless it is on the pricing level, but it probably will absorb the bulk of new customers turning to — what did you call it? — “non-vinifera expressions”? But of course they satisfy the change with more vinifera. The fruit wine producers may not lose customers, but they certainly won’t gain the many new customers they might have.

I really don’t know where all of this is going, but it worries me. If there were suddenly a demand for Norton, would Big Wine plant Norton, buy established wineries producing Norton, or follow the Arbor Mist model and sell Merlot with Norton flavoring added? It’s anyone’s guess.

Great thanks for your reflections on what promises to be a lively cultural conversation in the coming years.

Admin

The Future Of Wine Writing, Walla Walla Redux

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:59:37 +0000

What follows is my gaze into the crystal ball of wine writing’s future. I was invited by the organizers of the Wine Bloggers Conference, this year held in Walla Walla, Washington, to offer my views along side of those of the steady Steve Heimoff and the durable Tom Wark of Fermentation. My invitation to participate, I must say, was a bit of a lark, entirely unexpected. It is one thing to go about the quiet, deliberative work of presenting important ideas and issues to the public, one’s readership; it is quite another to take to the stage with gentlemen of such considerable experience and wisdom. Though I will not dispute for a minute the insight of the Conference organizers for having thought of me, I will say that I approached the panel discussion with humility, indeed, with a haunting sense that it could all go very wrong. But it didn’t. In fact, it may turn out that our exchange will take on an after-life none of us could have predicted.
Not used to public speaking, fully aware of the shortcomings of my presentation, here I offer an enhanced, fluid reconstruction of my remarks.

So It Begins…

None of us on the panel had any idea of what the other would say. We had agreed that our point of departure would be the question of whether in the future there would be a handful of important critics, gatekeepers; whether the consumer would continue to depend upon select voices for navigating the bewildering choices. However interesting the answer may be, it was clear to me that the question did not remotely approach what I understand by wine writing. Whether there will be gatekeepers in the future is a marginal question at best. The handmaiden to mere commerce, tasting notes and scores threaten to trivialize wine, and make of wine writing little more than the penning of serviceable haikus. A sub-genre at best, tasting notes and scores might more properly be understood as the discursive equivalent of a wine additive or manipulative technology.

And the assumption of a passive consumer deepens this impression. Having worked in a winery and knowing the manipulations commonly brought to unbalanced juice, I have often encountered a deep cynicism with respect to the public. And just as it is a common feature of winemaker psychology, so too does it afflict the wine writer. Aware of winery shenanigans, to the degree that they turn a blind eye to such manipulations in their tasting notes and scores, they, too, show a lazy contempt for the consumer, more so when, as often happens, they are made fully aware of a specific winery’s procedures and practices. Critics often share an unspoken compact with a winery that some things shall go unspoken. Indeed, it is just this structural deformity, the non-equivalence between wine critic and consumer knowledge that encourages contempt for the latter and generates dependance.

Now, to be put properly on the path to being a successful wine blogger, especially one specializing in tasting notes, will often mean accumulating secrets, a knowledge of which the public is unaware. It is the effective concealment of aspects wine knowledge, rather than its elaboration, that informs credibility. How humorous is the spectacle of established wine critics slamming bloggers for their lack of expertise when what they really mean is that they don’t know where the bodies are buried! You don’t need a PhD is business to know that controversy will close more doors than it opens. So, a wine blogger’s success, their monetization, is often built upon a foundation of bad faith, the requirement that wine drinkers be reduced to passive consumers, and that some aspects of wine knowledge be strictly policed.

The principle obstacle to improving the fortunes of wine writing in a broader sense is, unsurprisingly, the digital form it is required to take. These days there is no wine-related conference one may attend at which social media does not play a commanding role. Whether it be Twitter, Facebook, or blog formats themselves, these forms can significantly limit expression. A technological fetish, the various forms of social media, endlessly promoted, are granted magical (commercial) powers. But at the expense of thought and culture. We are repeatedly told that no one reads anymore; that 500 to 1000 words is all we should write on our blogs. But that is a function of social media’s digital forms. They aggressively subvert thought, largely preferring commercial applications alone. The corrosive financial impact of multiple digital innovations on traditional wine writers exploring the complexities of wine history, culture, and the literary side of the wine world, is everywhere evident. After all, democratization has, since Plato, known another face. With respect to wine writing we might call it a variation of the tragedy of the commons.

The future of wine writing ought to include readers in the writer’s explorations. No longer relegated to a passive position, the word ‘consumer’ should be scrapped. It was just a short while ago that Oz Clarke referred to Merlot as America’s gateway wine. Following upon a series of news reports in the 1980s about the beneficial effects of moderate wine drinking, America turned to wine in a big way. Merlot was chosen because it was the least wine-like wine, by which was meant that it caused no offense and was easy to drink. A lot has changed since then. The ‘consumer’ is not longer in that place. I compare our understanding of the evolution of the ‘consumer’ to traveling by car in the south of France to the Spanish frontier. The architectural forms, the local vernacular, slowly change. To take a single snapshot at any given mileage marker tells you nothing of the subtle, on-going transformations. It is the same with our idea of the ‘consumer’. Though we may try to fix the concept, it is morphing, taking on complexities of its own. So, the first principle of future wine writing in digital formats should be this recognition. Educate readers! Invite them along. Deepen their understanding along with yours. Most importantly, make of your own developing sophistication a promise to readers that your current ignorance will become a shared future knowledge. For your journey is also theirs.

There are great opportunities for on-line wine magazines. The Palate Press and Catavino are among the best examples we currently enjoy. Though differing in intent, each offer opportunities for multiple genres and topics to be more fully explored, even if somewhat briefly. The world of wine demands the multiplication of genres the on-line mag performs. The Palate Press’ recent stories on under-valued indigenous American grape varieties amply illustrates the point.

And then is the interesting possibility of wineries themselves taking on a greater role in wine writing in the future, to help gently force the agenda. It has long been felt that a winery can only provide updates on the humdrum ‘everydayness’ of their work. Perhaps one might read on Facebook an announcement about a festival or wine sale, the comings and going of the winery dog, that is about it. And whether one is organic or biodynamic is a one-off utterance. “We are organic!” Next month they write, “Yup. We’re still organic!” What is needed is for a winery to enter into a compelling narrative, for themselves to become a generator of important news. And this, in my view, is what Parducci Wine Cellars, the whole of the Mendocino Wine Company, is fast becoming. America’s first carbon neutral winery, the 100% reuse of winery waste water, the construction of wetlands, the aggressive promotion of biodiversity on their properties, these and many other green initiatives make of the Mendocino Wine Company an on-going performance of its vision of the future. The process moves. It is the unfolding story with multiple chapters.

Their most recent chapter may well be that as the anchor for a broad-based micro-finance initiative throughout the Mendocino AVA itself. Briefly stated, micro-financing is the use of monies aggregated from multiple private sources for the purpose of peer-to-peer lending. The purpose is not only to eliminate banking hierarchies and their usurious interest rates, but to encourage an entrepreneurial spirit. And to open up opportunities for development often closed to small farmers, for example, in our troubled economic times. Were a struggling farmer wish to do the right thing, to improve the efficiency of their water recycling system or even to install one, where a bank might not see a compelling financial interest, private micro-financing dedicated to such an initiative could quickly respond.

I shall have much more to say about this matter moving forward. It is best for now to simply let the process take its course and, hopefully, to awaken the imaginations of other wineries to the idea of micro-financing.

So, there are many, many ways to approach the question of the future of wine writing. I have related here not the sum total of my speculations, just those generally consistent with my presentation at the Wine Bloggers Conference. There will be much more to come. After all, tomorrow is the future.

Admin

Sean Boyd of Rotie Cellars, Walla Walla

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:16:56 +0000

One of the great advantages of arriving in Walla Walla earlier than the commencement of the Wine Bloggers Conference is the people you meet outside the official program. Always one to stray, I have been very fortunate to happen upon an excellent young winemaker, Sean Boyd, owner of Rôtie Cellars. He makes some of the finest Rhone expressions in Washington State that I have had the pleasure to taste. EVER. He sells out quickly. His wines are sought after by sommeliers in Seattle, and they are very popular here. But he’s a small producer. And should he grow it will only be if he is certain that his fundamental winemaking philosophy remains firm. A glimpse of his approach, his ethos:

“The whole point of Rotie Cellars is to make traditional Rhone Blends with Washington State fruit. So what do traditional Rhone blends mean to me? To start with, they mean lower alcohol, less ripe, less wood, balanced, finesse driven, mouth coating wines.”

But as I can personally attest, this is no mere marketing b.s. He believes what he says. And spend a few minutes with the man and it becomes crystal clear that he’s having the time of his life life making wine. The funny thing is is that he would be the first to shy away from the hype, to just laugh off the praise. As he says, “I’m just the janitor.” He believes all the quality his wines will ever have is achieved in the vineyard. Site location is of paramount importance, especially in the wide open spaces of the Walla Walla AVA and beyond.

The assembled bloggers for this weekend’s conference are fortunate that Côtie Cellars has just opened a tasting room that will be open tomorrow (Friday) and Saturday. Sparsely decorated, with only lonely orchids blooming, you simply must make time to drop in while there are still wines of his to taste. It is located a couple of blocks from the Marcus Whitman, at 31 E. Main Street, Suite 216.

Though it is not my custom or style, I will make an exception and provide tasting notes on another occasion. For now enjoy a little time with the gentleman.

Admin So you like Rhone varieties?

Sean Boyd Yeah. Naming my winery Rôtie Cellars is a little cheeky, but I just wanted to focus on making what I love to drink. I thought it was a fad ten years ago, but it was always one of those constants. You know, when you start drinking wine, for me, it was Zins. I started with Zins out of Paso Robles. I started there. Then you realize your love for other wines. You’ve filled up your cellar and one day realize you can’t drink anything out of your cellar because you think they’re all disgusting. You’ve moved onto Pinots. Then you move on as your wine education develops. Then you move back to what you’ve always loved; for me, Rhones.

Now, Cote Rôtie’s have higher acids, firm tannins, need aging…

SB For me it’s lower alcohol, less manipulation, finding sites that grow the vines very well. Walla Walla is a horrible place to grow Grenache. It’s a horrible place to grow Mourvèdre. Super long cycles, even longer than Cab. When you think about where Grenache and Mourvèdre come from, you think hot sites. Walla Walla is a much cooler site than a lot of the places around Washington. Now, I don’t want to put wines out that just say ‘Walla Walla’ on them to sell bottles. It’s more about finding the best spots to grow the grapes. With Grenache and Mourvèdre, the best spots are along the Columbia River. Super high winds, south-facing slopes, so I found Horse Heaven Hills and north of the Hood River where you have the gorge… you have these constant winds. You don’t get hit by winter frosts.

Grenache is a very temperamental grape. It comes from hot climates. It does not like cold weather. So during the winters around Walla Walla the vine starts deteriorating at around 7 degrees F. Syrah, Cab, Merlot, they start deteriorating between -3 and -12 F. And so if you have a 24 to 36 hour period of sub-zero, which we do every three or four years here in the valley, people are having to cut it all back. And they’re wondering why it’s not waking up in the spring. The reason is that it just doesn’t like cold weather. But if you have that constant flow from the wind, when the temperature stays in the teens at sites nearer this gigantic river, the Columbia rolling through, it helps keep the ambient temperature down, plus you’ve got this wind flow. So for me, that whole area is going to be fantastic for Grenache.

That for me is the highlight of Washington State, those Rhone varietals. I’m picking stuff that’s 24-25 brix, letting it hang until early November; it comes off with fantastic acidity. Because of the long cycle, you get those fantastic ripe-picked characteristics, where it’s phenolically ripe yet it is lower alcohol. So, finding spots that grow grapes well is the battle. If you’re more focussed on estate vineyards, where you’re predicated on Riesling to Cab in the same 40 acre parcel, on the same plot of land, that makes no sense to me. You’re going to have different ripening times all throughout it. Right now we have this incredible reservoir, especially with the crash of the economy, people are dropping out of vineyards left and right. So you’re able to find these incredible contracts, five acres for five years with an option for another five years. I’ll pay the going rate, no problem, with a 5% escalation clause, of course. Let’s see if we can manage it a little bit better. I want to chop it back to 2 1/2 tons per acre. Let’s just see where it goes from there. This after they’ve been producing 4 1/2 to 5 tons an acre because people are just looking for ordinary table wine. My idea is to concentrate the fruit, make some really fresh, high acidity wine by selective green cropping inside and outside of the canopy. Then it starts getting exciting.

So you source along the Columbia Gorge?

SB Yes. All throughout the Gorge. That’s Grenache and Mouvèdre. Now, the advantage of Walla Walla is the Syrah. Walla Walla is Syrah. It’s too cool, the cycle’s just not long enough; some years it’s fantastic, but for me it’s not long enough for Cab. It’s fantastic for Merlot; it’s a little earlier cycle than Syrah. But for Syrah it is just perfect here. It grows really well in the valley. Just beautiful, silky smooth tannins, plenty of color, just the way I like it. You can get reductive down on the rocks to super bright up on the loess… it’s a great spot for Syrah.
And I like to bring in a little bit of edge with lots of stem fermentation.

So you include stems? I love that. It’s considered heresy in certain parts of California.

SB Absolutely I use stems. A lot of it has to do with the sorting machines. The just chop away at the stems. You’re getting all these fractures, the little cuts, when chopped up by the de-stemmer. And if you don’t have a secondary sorting table, vibrating or what not, and you have guys picking out absolutely every little bit of green out of there, you’re not necessarily going to want that. You’re going to have greenness coming into your wine. At least if you do it with whole cluster, you’re getting away from all those little cuts that are happening when you’re sending it through a de-stemmer. It’s $150,000, $200,000 to get proper de-stemming equipment and sorters. It would be nice to have that kind of equipment to decide. If your stems are super, super green then maybe we need not to use them. It will bring in too much pyrazine.
Cab, you can’t really get away with putting lots of stems in. But with Syrah you don’t get those pyrazine issues, as you do with Bordeaux varietals. They would be super green: asparagus, green bean, pickles… but with Syrah using the stems really gives you that spice, that edge, it gives you that stinky funk that makes things interesting; so that it’s not just a bowl of fresh fruit.

I imagine you use a bladder press.

SB Yes, it’s a bladder press. We take all the free run out and mark them. Then with pressing we go up to about a bar, and we stay there after six or seven cycles. Some of the press juice is the best out of Syrah. We don’t do extended macerations. Most of the fermentations are done in 15 to 16 days. I’m not worried about color or extraction, and so some of the press stuff really gets nice tannin in there. I don’t like to rack. You leave the lees in there. Of course, you don’t want 4 inches of lees! But a good 1 or 2 is fine. Keep it sustained at the bottom of the barrel, keep it really topped, and as long as you’re not adding oxygen and that it goes through secondary, you’re fine. Then you become a janitor! This is really what winemakers are, glorified janitors. How you can get an ego about being a glorified janitor I’ll never know. Everything important is about getting it off the vine. You know what? I ike to be a janitor!

How did you get your wine into the right hands? I mean, there are dozens and dozens of new wineries yet there is a lot of buzz about Côtie Cellars. How did you break through?

SB I think it’s that I really enjoy what I am doing. On the marketing end, I hire the right people. Actually, it’s cool. I have two people. They came to me. What more perfect situation can you have than people coming to you? But it’s simply that good wine will sell. People say Syrah is a bad word right now. Syrah doesn’t sell. Blah, blah, blah. If you chase fads you’re going to get burned. You got to do what you love.

I started with Grenache. I got a contract suddenly. Somebody had just backed out of half a block and I had three hours to decide. There were a lot of people lined up to buy the fruit. But I had to take all of it. So I said I’d call my wife. I hung up the phone and literally hit redial. I knew my wife wasn’t going to like this! She was going to think it was a really bad idea. So I bought every last drop of it! Sign me up for the three acres. That’s what started it off. I knew it was a great site. When you know you’re getting this fantastic 14th leaf fruit of Grenache that people would fight over if they knew it was for sale, you can’t say no.

I just don’t want to mess it up, the wine. And there’s a lot of messing up here: like too much oak, like tartaric acid, like water… And then you get into the big boys and it just goes exponential from there. You start talking about RO, taking alcohol out, all those things that fool you. Super ripe and tons of acid, yet low alcohol… what the fuck is going on? Again, it’s about finding the right sites. Right now I have about 24 tons of Grenache under contract. I only use maybe twelve. I sell the fruit off for the same price I pay for it because I don’t want to piss off the growers. But I know that as were moving forward and things change, I want to have access to all the older vine Grenache so I can really work with it. Syrah is now very plentiful. So I don’t really worry about it. It’s easy and it’s fun to work with.

How important is the appellation designation, Walla Walla?

SB The winery is in Walla Walla. But for me it’s Washington State. I could care less if it’s Walla Walla. There are some incredible wines and vines being grown in Washington State, and Oregon. I could care less if it’s Walla Walla AVA. I think that’s doing a wine a disservice. I think it’s cool to do single vineyard Syrahs out of here, but to predicated yourself in Walla Walla just for the label, just because we’re getting in the magazines, is just ridiculous. If you’re fruit is a Cab you’ve gotta be in Horse Heaven Hills, you gotta’ be in Red Mountain, you know, super hot, really fun, floral, beautiful sites; it’s definitely not Walla Walla, for me. If you move into Merlot and Syrah, and some fantastic whites coming out of here, then it’s Walla Walla. For me the AVA does not matter. It’s the vineyard.

So Walla Walla is still working out its identity.

SB Absolutely. If you look at the vines I would say that half are between 7 and 14 years of age in the valley. There are some that are 35, like Windrow and Seven Hills East. The majority is young, with tons and tons of new plantings on the way. In France 35 years is still considered juvenile. We’re definitely trying to get our bearings, dial it in. It didn’t help that we had a huge frost in ‘04. But you can’t worry about it. You have to think of doing what’s best for the vines; not what’s going to burn into my profits. Right now we’re looking long-term. The only way you can be long-term in the wine industry is by putting out a quality product. If you don’t, then you might as well go do something else.

Tell me something of the water rights issues here. I’ve heard a lot about the ‘use it or lose it’ model.

SB Yes. If you don’t use it then you lose it after five years.

So it has to average out to whatever inches you’re initially allocated, or, if you’ve gone from fruit trees to grapes, for example, whatever has been grandfathered in.

SB Correct. A lot of people donate it back. If you put in a drip irrigation system you’re never going to need that type of water you need for growing trees, like the old apple and cherry farmers who would do overhead irrigation. I bought a small piece, ripped out all the trees, and we were going to irrigation. The government was going to give us money because of the water savings. That meant we had to donate water back to the river, but yet we got money back for that. They were very excited about it. They paid for all the main lines, the pipe, there were discounts on the pump, all these fantastic things where you’re getting, even as a first time farmer, 75% of the cost of your drip system, materials and installation. That’s fantastic. You’re helping the water table by using less. You have to use drip irrigation. Hopefully you find spots that can grow grapes without using it. But you can’t really do that in the juvenile stage of a vine’s life. You have to be very careful.

If I had endless amounts of money I would say that for the first 6 years not to take a crop off of a vine. Just get it up, grow some wood, give it what it wants but not take anything from it. And then roll into it. But economics being what they are, the 4th year you can start to make rosé out of it. Hopefully you’re in a spot where you’ve thought far enough ahead that you’re, down the line, not necessarily needing to water. Hopefully they’re big enough, the vines are strong enough. If they’re tree trunks after a few years, then you know damn well that it’s a fantastic place to grow that varietal. The can withstand a hell of a lot more if their 5 and 6 inches in diameter than they can when they’re one inch in diameter.

On a personal note, how does your wife feel about your new calling?

SB She’s from New Jersey. So, every time we come onto the other side of the mountain she says to me, “What the hell are we doing over here?” But then we get to Walla Walla and it’s ok. She’s also a school psyche. We’ve got the prison, and one step beneath that we’ve got the wineries and the service industries. It’s a small community and there are issues in it you don’t find in Seattle where they sweep in under the rug and move to south Tacoma. But here it’s a small community. You get all walks of life.

So a lot of the fruit here is hand-picked.

SB Absolutely. Talk about work. They guys who pick the fruit are unbelievable. It’s amazing when you walk out there and try and do a bin or two yourself. It’s really impressive. I won’t even pretend that I could do that work. We’re janitors. Those guys are laborers. They get paid pretty well, which is good; but it’s only seasonal. We’ve definitely seen the crunch with all the immigration bull shit. People want to work. And they’re willing to do it. You need to give them a shot. It’s how America was founded. The tough move up. Hard work is supposed to count for something.

Great guy, great wines. He left for France today, I believe. A pity the blogging folks could not meet him. But his wines may be found around town, especially in the tasting room. Again, I strongly recommend his work.

Admin

David Stephenson Introduces The Walla Walla AVA

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:18:27 +0000

A curious thing happened on the way to Milton-Freewater, Oregon, a small agricultural town a few miles south of Walla Walla, and home to the vineyard of winemaker David Stephenson, just across the road from Cayeuse. What was to have been a vineyard tour first passed through Mr. Stephenson’s remarkable introduction to Walla Walla’s wine growing past, present, and ambitions. I shall be doing a second post on the vineyard portion of my visit as well as the stop at Stephenson Cellars itself. But, for now I felt it would be particularly helpful for fellow wine writers and bloggers here for the Wine Bloggers Conference to be brought up to speed via his spirited account of the AVA.

Mr. Stephenson produces round 1,000 cases a year. He is also a consultant, helping with site location, variety selection, bonding paperwork, fruit contracts, the whole deal. As he has said, “In two years I can take anyone from zero to winery”. His knowledge of the local scene makes him an invaluable source of information for visiting bloggers. Indeed, though he is not, sadly, currently on the list of wineries the bloggers are scheduled to visit, I strongly recommend they make their way down to his tasting room at 15 South Spokane St. here in Walla Walla, just minutes from the Marcus Whitman Hotel.

Admin I’ve heard repeatedly about cooperation among winemakers here in Walla Walla. You’re view?

David Stephenson There is a unique level of cooperation here in Walla Walla. It’s a small town. We all know each other. We have to eat at the same restaurants and stare at each other. We tend to get along. But it’s really about trying to lift everybody up at the same time, because if we have people who’ve driven six hours, or who come here from New York or Chicago, and they have a bad experience at any of the wineries, then that carries through for the rest of their visit. It kind of shadows the valley. So we all made a decision early on, the people who founded this place, the wine community, that it made a whole lot more sense to make sure everybody was successful. We’ll let the marketplace sort out your competitors. We’re not competing against each other. We’re competing against ourselves.

What percentage of the local production goes outside of the Walla Walla AVA?

DS As far as the fruit… that’s a tough question. I would say, this is a guess, about half. There are some relatively large wineries that have locks on some of the old, established vineyards here. Long-standing contracts. They understand that it probably helps to lift the quality of their wines buying our fruit. Basically, I would say that the percentage is high for wineries here in Walla Walla that source fruit outside of the AVA as well. One of the things we’ve learned in Washington, at least Eastern Washington, is that it’s a pretty unpredictable place weather-wise. So you need to hedge your bets, I believe. So if I’m exclusively one AVA, there is a chance that about every six years you’re going to freeze. And when you do, you don’t get any fruit. So you either raise your prices 20% to cover the loss, or you try and source fruit from outside the valley. A lot of folks just don’t want the headache of that. There is great fruit all over, so it makes sense to borrow from each other, if we can.

So how does Walla Walla understand the distinctions between its terroirs and the terroirs of the Yakima Valley, or other locales?

DS Oh, you know, that’s still an on-going discussion! Over the years I kind of go back and forth on the whole concept, wondering if it exists [terroir], because I have in my own vineyard sometimes as much difference from one end of the vineyard to the other as there is from one end of this valley to the other end. There’s just a lot of different micro-climates. It’s a pretty large, expansive area. And I think that anybody who comes to Eastern Washington is blown away by just how huge the wine growing areas are. I mean, they stretch to Idaho; they stretch up to the Canadian border; they stretch all the down to Bend, Oregon. So it’s just an enormous amount of real estate. That said, Walla Walla does seem to have a real lushness and warmth to the fruit that I think shows through. It’s not like any other place. That doesn’t mean it’s worse or better. It’s just different. And I really enjoy working with the fruit from here.
I’ve settled here. I’ve bought vineyard ground.

And when was your first vintage?

DS It was 2001, my first commercial release. I had worked for a lot of the bigger wineries for 3 or 4 years prior to that. I apprenticed with some really great guy that showed me a lot; showed me what not to do as well. I was real appreciative of that. I’ve been around for awhile compared to most of the valley, I guess.

Yes. I noticed that there are two major wine books about Washington, including Walla Walla, of course. And even though they were published in 2008 they already seem to be seriously out of date.

DS They are completely out of date. Our growth has been exponential. A lot of what is happening is, and there is a lot of romanticism that goes with this, but there are just a lot of people who’ve worked hard their whole lives, and they get to be about 50 or 55 and they wonder what do they want to do in their retirement years. They are productive people, professionals, successful in their fields, so they want something that’s challenging but at the same time enjoyable. So they come here. For as many baby boomers as there are, we talk about an aging population, that’s the demographic that really wants to start these wineries. They maybe spent their college years in Europe and haven’t been back, or they visited and want to have a piece of that enjoyment. I sometimes think there are more people who want to start wineries than there are people who want to buy wine.

Is there any conflict between established wheat growers and the pursuit of new vineyard acreage? I’m thinking with respect to land prices.

DS Initially there was. But it has really balanced out. What you see now is wheat farmers who often own vineyards. They are not foolish. They understand that if the land prices go up exponentially, and they’re sitting on 3,000 acres, if it goes up ten times that’s not exactly bad for them. It’s tough to farm. If you wanted to get into wheat farming, if that was your life’s goal, to do that without an existing farm would be pretty difficult. That’s just the way things are.

But as far as taxes on land… that must be burdensome.

DS Well, you know, farmers, we take care of ourselves. There are tax exemptions. You don’t pay the same as if you had an apartment building on your property. Oregon, especially, is very, very protective of their farming ground, their agricultural land. In fact, the vineyard we’re heading to now are in what is called an ‘exclusive farm use area’. I couldn’t build a home. If there is not already an existing home you’re not allowed to occupy any square foot of that land except for agriculture. You have to go with your hat in your hand and beg the planning department if you want to put up any sort of structure that would take any acreage out of production. In exchange for that you have dramatically reduced taxes. It really does work to keep it in agriculture.

What about the erosion of your agricultural base? In California a farmer pulling down $50,000 a year might be approached by some real estate speculator who wants to build McMansions. He’s offered millions of dollars for his 100 acres. He’s 70. What’s he going to say? Of course he’ll take the money.

DS We’ve seen some of that here, south of town, toward the slopes of the Blue Mountains. There was a lot of 10 acre zoning that were wheat farms; but that seems to have slowed down. People have realized that it’s much better to live in town if you want a to have a second of third home. You’ve got services. You’re not dealing with well failures, mowing, and agriculture all the way around you. It’s really no fun living in a dirt zone, unless you’re farming it. It’s not that romantic.

So what about water rights? What percentage would you guess, of course, it has to do with locale, but what is the percentage of vineyards dry-farmed? And what are the irrigation protocols for many of the wineries?

DS That’s a good question. Very few wineries or vineyards here are dry-farmed. This road we’re sitting on here is the road down into Oregon. Basically, the rule of thumb is that every mile that you go to the East you pick up an inch of rain. We’re at about 17, 18 inches. It’s almost like clockwork. As you go up the slopes you pick up more water. Basically, as you get this rising elevation, you tend to scrub a little bit more moisture out of the thunderstorms. The difficulty with this area is that we have an enormous amount of water. Walla Walla means ‘many waters’. We’ve got creeks and springs bubbling everywhere. The aquifers are good. It doesn’t mean that they’re not going down–but that’s not due to grape farming. Grape farming uses minimal amounts. The biggest issue that we have is that if you turn your apple orchard, or your cherry orchard, your irrigated fields over to grapes, you’re going to use a tiny percentage of the water that you used to. There is a kind of ‘use it, or lose it’ rule. If you don’t use your 36 inches per year, you may well forfeit it. You can lose it forever.

You lose it forever? So they determine your allocation by how much has been historically used? So your incentive is to use as much of your allocation as possible even though you’ve switched over to grapes?

DS It’s a terrible system. My right is for 36 inches per year. So you’ll see out here cow pasture where people have a pump going year-round. They just flood-irrigate the field. They just have it running because if they don’t use it up, they’re going to lose it. We all know that in the future that water will be gold. None of this happen without water. Land doesn’t have any value here if you don’t have an irrigation source for it.
We don’t get any rain from basically this point until the end of September, sometimes into October, we’re not going to get an inch of rain. So, unlike France, or other places that dry farm, we get our 18, 20, 22 inches, but it’s all in the Wintertime. We’re in a little bit different situation. We desperately need to irrigate.

Speaking of France, when a winemaker first starts out here who do they turn to? To what nation’s winemaking traditions do they model their winemaking? I’ve noticed a certain use of oak, shall we say.

DS I would say Rhone is closer. We have a very hot climate. You wouldn’t know it now because it’s temperate, but we’re usually scorching in the 90s right now; that’ll go to a 100, sometimes 110 in the Summertime. Tempranillo is here as well. But it was Cabernet, Merlot, Chardonnay, that’s sort of made in more of a California style. Some want to go to the oak. You want bigger, bigger, bigger, because that is, quite frankly, what your customers want. If you want big scores, you go with lots of oak and heavily extracted fruit. But at some point, you kind of settle down. You make the wines that you love to make. You gain confidence over time. I think you can then throttle back and start paying attention to subtleties. But initially, if you look around, you’ll see that this stuff has not been planted to grapes for very long; I think 40 years is about the oldest vineyard here. Most of them are 10 years, 8 years. And so, with that you get this explosion of new, raw, big, bold, beautiful fruit. They’ve got an excess of carbohydrates. It’s fun while it lasts, but at some point we’re going to settle down here.

Where do folks turn for their rootstock?

DS There are a couple of nurseries. Washington is a little different because we grow on our own rootstocks, predominately. We’re not using any rootstock here. We don’t have phylloxera at this point. We are too bloody cold; too bloody hot. That we can plant vines ungrafted is another thing that I think gives Washington really unique wines. We’re not having to control for the effects of rootstocks. What you’re getting is kind of a pure blast of Cabernet, or whatever varietal you’ve cuttings of.

Do you pay attention to clones?

DS There is some attention. I would say that that research is a long ways away. We’re still trying to figure out what site grows fruit. We’re in our absolute infancy. We just haven’t been doing this for very long. and, again, if you look at how much space we have left in the Walla Walla Valley, it’s an enormous area.
We have about 1800 acres under grape cultivation in the entire AVA. I will tell you that there is a new expansion we’re going to be right below [Seven Hills]. It will be about 2000 acres in size. That will double the acreage in the Walla Walla Valley AVA with that one planting alone. So, we’re kind of on the radar now. We’re starting to see a lot more outside money coming in.

So, a new winemaker would essentially turn to a limited number of viticulturalists and siting experts in the area and be told what most are told. There is a model or a pattern.

DS There is a pattern that gets you in the door. Then, after that, you begin sourcing from small, little independent farmers. And this the community of Milton-Freewater, very different from Walla Walla. This is the old time agriculture: cherries and apples and prunes. And now grapes as well. There are lots of little pocket vineyards in here that are fun to play with.

Interesting. So there might be an apple grower here, for example, who might plant an acre of vines. Winemakers would then spot buy, as it were.

DS Yes. Absolutely. And there are a lot of winemakers here who work with a farmer. They’ll go up to an orchardist with a 100 acres and ask for five acres to plant under a long-term contract. Then they’ll split the development costs. The farmer gets the ’sure thing’. The winery owner has clear ideas of what he wants to see, what varieties… there’s a lot less risk for both of them.

—As mentioned above, a second post on Mr. Stephenson’s vineyard itself will be forthcoming.—

Admin

Parducci, Building The Future

Admin, Ken Payton — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 09:07:39 +0000

“My name is Tim Thornhill. I grew up in Houston. Some 35 years ago we all took off and went to work or went to college. The family only got back together once or twice a year sorta’ only when somebody died or got married. About ten years ago my brother [Tom] and I started thinking about what we should be doing, and what we would regret not doing; and that was trying to get as much of our family back together in one location, if possible. So I looked around the country, Tom already lived in the San Francisco Bay area; we settled on Northern California as being the region. We spent three years looking through Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties. While Napa and Sonoma have the geography and the climate, they really didn’t have the community that we were looking for. When your gathering family together to put down really deep roots, you have to look forward 40 or 50 years as to where you’re leaving them and how are they going to feel about it.

“What Napa had to offer, as far as all the commercialism and tourism, it just really didn’t fit for us. Also, this community is a very, very green community. There is 5 times as much organic acreage in Mendocino county as their is in Napa or Sonoma counties. So it really worked for us. When we purchased the first property [La Ribera Vineyard], it had 150 acres of vines on it. We ended up in the vineyard business. But it was really the landscape for the family estate. My parents were here right away. One of my older children has come back. In fact, I just became a grandfather three days ago [6/15]. My daughter [Kate], who runs the export and does all of our contract grower negotiations, married one of the winemakers here, and has now thrown off the next generation, probably a biodynamic baby, to be honest. Then we partnered up with Paul Dolan.”

All of this was said within the first few minutes of my revealing vineyard tour at Parducci Wine Cellars. I knew then and there I was in luck. Tim Thornhill is a rarity, in my experience. He needs no prompting to get to the heart of the matter. And he thinks big. But this has nothing to do with any Texas cliché. For he is a man of the world.

As you read what I will call a ‘lesson’, perhaps you might think money was an overwhelming factor. Not all wineries, after all, may believe they have the resources to accomplish what has been done at Parducci. But Mr. Thornhill turns the question around. Aligning yourself with the natural forces of Nature (with a big ‘N’) will save you money. And perhaps the world. After all, how much is spent on pesticides, municipal water, and electricity? How great are the monies spent resisting the natural world? Biodiversity, plant and insect succession, water filtration, oxygenation, gravity– these are biological and physical processes to be harnessed. The idea is to align your project with how the natural world expresses itself, how it goes about its business.

Life loves to live, I tell my kids. Even the lowly weed sprouting in the median along I-5 is an act of grace. Caltrans may knock it down, but there is no denying the weed’s determination to live. There is a beauty even there.

We now join a conversation already in progress.

“We take a row, I think it’s one every 14 of 16 rows, and we put in an additional drip line, sub-surface, and then we plant around 30 to 40 different plant species in our mix. We have flowers year-round. You’ll note this row [pictured] runs all the way through the block. So we get good distribution of insects all the way through. I want all the insects I can get! They will balance themselves. There’re almost 3000 species of predatory insects in Northern California. It’s really about habitat. We do the same thing time after time after time, whether it’s the insects or the owls.”

I am shown a video, recently taken by Mr. Thornhill, of the interior of one of their many owl boxes around the property. Barn owl eggs are clearly visible. In another box fledglings hiss behind a partition. A third video shows a mother owl starring at the camera.

“People ask me, ‘So, do you put owls in the box?’. I tell them no more than I put insects in that insectary. ‘Where did you get your owls?’ Well, the owls are indigenous. They just need habitat. An average owl consumes 53 pounds of rodents in a year. So I don’t need poison in my vineyard. I don’t need traps. They will balance themselves. The owls wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t food. They just need the habitat.”

Reduce The Use

“The first thing I want to do with all of my energy consumption is ‘reduce the use’. And what we find is that if you measure there is an almost immediate reduction just because people know you’re measuring. Of course, there is a push-back in the beginning for most people when you say you want to measure everything. So, in the vineyard we installed what’re called tensiometers. They measure available moisture in the soil. We used to make our decisions based more on schedule, what was convenient, or maybe what was historical, which usually was not based on data; it was based on feeling, emotion. ‘In god we trust; all others bring data’.
So we put all these tensiometers and started measuring available moisture in the ground. We found we did not need to necessarily water on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, like we were doing. We might not even water at all that week. We’ve reduced our water use by 25% in our worst case, and 37% in our best case. And we end up with better balanced vines, better fruit, and better wines in the end.

“We’ve reduced the amount of water we pull from the aquifer, the water we pull from the rivers, the amount of biodiesel burned to run the pumps, the number of hours run the pumps… yet the quality of our product has been improved. A lot of people will say being environmental is too expensive, that they can’t afford it. Being environmental means being efficient. When you’re efficient, things drop to the bottom line. So first we reduce the use. Then we get into recycling.

“Here in the winery to reduce the use, I went through and divided it up into 22 different sections. Each section has its own water meter. So when walking through the winery right after I put the meter in, the gentleman running the barrel room for 17 years said he’d seen that I had put one there in his spot. He was a little concerned that I would now how much water he was wasting. I said, no. I want to know how much water you’re saving. Well, guess what? He’s done nothing but save water. And so have all of his other guys, basically in competition. They’ve got the scoreboard right there, the water meter!”

“All of our utilities have been coming down. Our electric consumption, for example, between ‘06 and ‘08 went down by 15%, but our production actually increased by between 100-200%. So, while we’ve grown the production operation tremendously, we’ve reduced our electrical use. And you see our water use in the vineyard also declined. The period from ‘05 through ‘09 was one of the worst droughts in California history. But even while we had a tremendous drought, this means far less ambient moisture, we were still able to reduce the amount of irrigation we did, and ended up with better fruit and better balanced vines.”

Reuse and Recycling

“I try to use the water that rinses the tanks to also, at the end of the day, rinse the floors. We’re using it twice, if at all possible. Then the water is to be recycled. At that point the water is BOD. Here is a picture of what it use to look like when we first got here. It was basically purple. All designers told me back then that I needed to put four 10 hp motors in my pond, basically agitators like any sewer plant uses. But signing up for 25 years for four 10 horse motors was not in my game plan. I kept going through consultants until I found one willing to think completely outside the box. We went out and maximized existing resources.

“Here’s how we did it. In the winery I gave everyone dust pans and brooms so that they could sweep up all the debris of winemaking first before they tried to wash down the floors. It all use to just go down the drain. That use to be ok, and legally it was ok, too. But it also meant that the water was basically ruined. It had no oxygen. It’s called BOD, biological oxygen demand. It’s created mostly by sugars and solids. The sugars, in our case, comes from the fruit. So my job is to get the solids out and remove the sugars, and put the oxygen back in the water.

“So when the waste water leaves the winery (after years of bringing all the plumbing into one place), it goes up to the tanks way up on top of the hill. Up there we have repurposed old fire tanks. They now serve as anaerobic digesters. The water spends between 20 and 30 days to go through those tanks. Then, via gravity, it comes down through a series of trickle towers. The first one is near the tanks. Here’s another one [pic]. The water comes up through a pipe and runs down the trickle tower.
Now, the consultants I went to designed a trickle tower for me, but it was going to be $100,000. It was all stainless steel and plastic. Instead, what I did was take some old grape trailers. These things were in the weeds. Nobody even knew they were here. They do hold water. So I then took barrel racks, old steel barrel racks, stacked them up; welded them together; stuck it full of wood slats to act as a media; I then jammed a bunch of willows between. You’ll note what most people would call black slime coating the sides. It’s actually called filamentous fungi. What it does is consume compounds, sugar being my main compound. And as the water trickles down through here it also gets aeration. So, my settling goes on in the tanks on the hill. My de-sugaring goes on in these trickle towers.

“This one [pictured above] was built about three or four months ago. The efficiency is quite measurable. It’s an amazing thing. It has a whole lot of surface area; and the filamentous fungi, if you take it in your hand, feels kind of like wet cotton. You can squeeze it. It has texture. But lay it out on the flat rock in the sun, and by the next day it is like a piece of paper. It’s almost nothing but structure.
So the water passes through the trickle towers, the last one sitting just before the water goes into the pond. So that’s the delivery of the water from the winery to the pond. Now, in the pond is where they wanted me to put these four agitators. They would have just consumed the power of three or four houses. Instead, we built a water falls.

“Think about the two main processes in this world with respect to water. The giant water filters are the Everglades of the world. The oxygenators are all the streams and rocky creeks. That’s where the trout live because that is where is found the highest oxygen level. So we figured out that with one five hp pump all we had to do was lift the water in this pond twelve feet. That takes very little psi, very little power to move a lot of water. So I raise about 400 gallons a minute twelve feet. From that point it is gravity again. The water is raised above the pond level to the road height. From there gravity takes the water through a series of water falls. Those are my aerators. All gravity. No moving parts. Rocks. Plants. No service! And were operating at 20% of the power of the four aerators originally proposed, and we achieve a water quality 3 to 4 times what they would have ever had as a goal. We’re pretty pleased.”

We pass by a portable chicken coop with a solar door which opens at dawn and closes at dusk. It must be moved every six months when the predators in the area catch on. Guinea hens pass through. Hawks, a couple species of duck, egret, black, green, and great blue heron, common snipe, geese, sandpipers, killdeer, turkeys, bluebirds, a kingfisher, even the occasional troublesome otter, all make use of the pond, one way or another. There are muskrats.

“This pond use to be purple four or five years ago. It had a smell that people on the freeway would call and complain about. There is now no smell. Again, when the water comes out of the winery it has a BOD of about 2,500. Before I can use it on land it has to have a measurement of 80 ppm. I am now somewhere below 10 ppm. We can’t even get a reading. So I have virtually no BOD. When the water comes out of the winery there is zero oxygen. I’ll measure the oxygen down where it comes out of the wetland. We’ll probably find it is over 4 ppm. Trout require about 5 ppm.
“My minimum requirement for oxygen is 1 ppm before I can land-apply it. The BOD minimum is 80 ppm before I can land-apply it. So this water in the pond can be used anytime.” [To clarify, there are two measurements in play here. One, for BOD, is a measurement of organic material: the lower the number, the better. The second is for oxygen saturation: the higher, the better. The 'minimums' Mr. Thornhill refers to are establish either at either the state or federal level, or both. Admin]

“The water has to go back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth. It comes in via gravity, passes through the water falls, is pumped back up the twelve feet and starts all over. The plants in the pond do all kinds of things. They suck out all the excess nutrients left in the winery water; all the phosphorous, the nitrogen. They will also remove heavy metals. They also introduce oxygen. Aquatic plants pull oxygen out of the atmosphere and introduce it back into the water through their roots.
I had a neighbor call me to ask if I was interested in some concrete. He was taking out a big patio. I went and looked. There were forty of these slabs [pictured]. I said I would be right back with my truck! So I am going to put a path of these all through the wetlands so that people can see what is going on.

“So here’s our dissolved oxygen level. And I would venture to say that we are probably close to 6 or 7 ppm. We’re over 5, that’s for sure. When they first gave me an oxygen set to test, it went from zero to one, in tenths. Right? I would measure and tell them that I was getting 1. They would ask if I was getting a full 1 or a point 1 [.1]? No, I was getting a 1! And if you went to the bottom of the water fall it would be 12 ppm, off the charts. Saturated. So I got a new set. I come out to check the oxygen levels once a week, usually when I’m doing a tour, just out of curiosity. But I do have a guy who checks it in three different places every single Monday. We can see a difference from end to end of the pond and wetland.

“We check BOD once a month. That’s kind of an expensive thing or I would do it all the time. But we don’t see huge changes once we get out of harvest. There just begins this very steady decline. In fact, BOD removal is much faster now because of our trickle towers. We can go right to a trickle tower and measure the BOD in the water as it comes out of the tank. At the bottom of the tower BOD is cut in half. That is just at the first tower; and I’m going to have four.

“We recycle 100% of the winery water. After we’ve ‘reduced our use’, we reuse it more than once. It’s kind of like a wine glass. When people ask me what is the difference between ‘recycle’ and ‘reuse’, I tell them that a wine glass is reused. When it is broken, it’s recycled. So with the water, we try to use it more than once. But it does get ‘broken’. Then we have to recycle it. So this entire process here saved me about 5 million gallons of water last year that I was then able to use for irrigation. It’s high-quality water. I would have otherwise had to buy it.”

“So, number one, we recycle 100% of the water. Number two, we do it in a way that consumes very little energy, with no chemical applications. Number three, we’ve ended up with a bird sanctuary out of it; more habitat, more biodiversity, a greater contribution to the biodynamics of this property. And number four, I get to share the knowledge with people and try to teach others.

“When you want to talk about sustainability, what is true sustainability, well, first of all it means living your life and running your business so that it doesn’t adversely impact future generations. I didn’t come up with that. But I also think that it means sharing information. If you are not passing the information along, that is not sustainable. The sooner we pass it on right now, the better. It needs to be viral.

“My partners and I came to the conclusion, when we created our partnership, that if we waited for the governments around the globe to address environmental concerns, then it wouldn’t happen fast enough. However, industry can turn on a dime, with incentives. They are now incentified. They weren’t five years ago.
It’s been a struggle all my life to be an environmental person. Other people sort of laugh at it, and don’t pay any attention. It’s the same thing with organics. I remember when I kept thinking, well, there getting it now. That was 10 years ago. Maybe they’re getting it now. That was 5 years ago. Now they’re getting it. I mean, now there is a big push. A big wave. There is incentive.

“You take Walmart and Clorox. I’ve sat on boards with the environmental guys and that is the number one thing they are focused on is turning their company green. They know that if they don’t, they’re out. That company will not be around five to ten years from now. I’m convinced.

“The generation coming into play now, my kids, basically, the twenty and thirty year-olds, they are distrusting. They see what is happening. They want third-party certification. So, that’s where ‘certified organic’ or ‘certified biodynamic’ comes in. A lot of people don’t want to be measured. I do. It’s kind of like running in a race. If I’m going to run, let’s make it a race. If it’s going to be a race, then I really prefer the front. It’s just a lot more fun.” (laughs)

We then drove to the winery’s tasting room where I enjoyed a healthy lunch. I turned off my recorder. Both my intellectual and corporeal appetites were satisfied.

Admin

An Informal Talk With Ridge Winemaker Eric Baugher

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 04:19:07 +0000

A former Biochemistry and Molecular Biology student of UC Santa Cruz, Eric Baugher’s path to Ridge began as a summer job in 1994. It was essentially essentially a scientific inquiry with a bit of research thrown in. Unsure of his graduate school plans, whether to pursue a PhD and enter the pharmaceutical world, or to go into Dentistry, Eric decided to take a year off just to figure it out. After more time spent at Ridge, he made the proper decision: “No way am I going to any grad school. This is what I want to do. There is no better drug to be making!” Now the winemaker at the Monte Bello winery division of Ridge, one of California’s best known producers and a shining star in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, Eric has fully realized the skills of his mentor, Paul Draper. Mr. Draper needs no introduction. His merits, awards, and deserved international recognition are the stuff of legend. The Judgement of Paris anyone?

But for all of that the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA does not receive a tenth of the recognition of its noisy peers, Napa and Sonoma in particular. This is for a number of reasons, not the least of which are the dispersion of the properties and lack of organizational savvy. The pioneering spirit of the AVA, its strong sense of independence, has its downside. Ask anybody to name a Santa Cruz producer. Chances are folks will draw a blank. I have even heard people exclaim that they had no idea Ridge’s Monte Bello was made from Santa Cruz Mountain fruit!

In any event, I learned that Mr. Baugher was to helm a tasting at VinoCruz, Santa Cruz’s premier retailer for showcasing the wines of the AVA. Not wishing to be a bother, but insisting on a story, I hustled to the venue and made a bother of myself. Pausing between the public’s questions and his answers, I stepped in from time to time to ask my own. Though by no means a rigorous interview as readers here have come to know, it does have its charms.

Admin I understand that you were in Bordeaux recently [late May]. The reason?

Eric Baugher En Primier! I wanted to check out the competition. I was touring with some other California winemakers, going to some of the chateaux and tasting. I visited a cooper near Cognac just to see what they were up to there.
When I arrived there it was 91 degrees! I was unprepared. Normally Bordeaux is cool, especially this time of year. You always expect rain and cool weather. that’s what I packed for. When I got there it was Summer. Then I heard that back here it was raining and very cold. But at least I was able to bring back that weather to California.

Just out of curiosity, what cooperage does Ridge use for Monte Bello?

EB Always new oak, and 95% American, a nice mix of: Canton Cooperage, Kelvin Cooperage, Radoux, Demptos, Barrel Associates, it is a wide, diverse mix. We don’t rely on one barrel to make the wine. We really want the diversity of flavor from the coopers, and the different forests of America.

I was going through an older book on the California wine world circa 1979 and I can across a rare picture, the first one I had seen, actually, of Dave Bennion. I did an interview some time ago with Ken Burnap who, along with Mr. Bennion, paced out the original boundary of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA. How is Dave Bennion memorialized at Ridge?

EB I know there is an area, a spot in the vineyard where there is a large rock, one of the limestone rocks that were dug out when they were planting what is now known as the old vines. It is a spot where Dave Bennion used to go sit. There is a nice clearing around the rock, and ever so often people go out there. Fran Bennion still lives right below the winery. She is very close to the winery. We see her often, especially when we have special events at the winery. Usually the Bennions will come up.

Have you ever seen Ken Burnap up there?

EB No. We hardly ever see anyone [other winemakers] in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It’s surprising; but it is a different appellation. We’re so spread out. Everyone is off doing their own thing. It’s really difficult to see people. Whereas in Napa and Sonoma? Everyone is watching over who is doing what. Anytime anyone goes out to lunch you run into winemakers. In the Santa Cruz Mountains we just don’t have that. We all kind of occupy our own part of the mountain and stay to it.

In the old days there used to be all kinds of dinners, back when there were 17 wineries.

EB Nowadays there are more than 70 wineries and, again, we’re so spread out. There is no single road you can take. They are all so far apart.

So, are these selections principally your responsibility?

EB Most are. The Lytton Springs we now make at the winery in Dry Creek Valley. This is produced by my colleague John Olney. I’m responsible for Geyserville, everything that’s produced at Monte Bello winery. That would be the Mont Bello, the Chardonnays, our Rhone varietal wines, and several of our Zinfandels. And I’ve been responsible for 16 going on 17 vintages, working with the master, Paul Draper.

How is he, by the way?

EB Oh, he’s doing well. He’s in great shape. He’s very active, and actively involved in the day to day business of Ridge. But he’s relied upon me to take over winemaking long ago. And I didn’t go to UC Davis! So I didn’t bring any of that, you know, the technical, industrial methods of winemaking to Ridge. That’s not the way we do things.

A visitor asked after the recent heat wave we’ve experienced in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

EB We need this heat. Our growing season is off by three weeks. We’re starting off really late. It’s been a long Winter. And very wet. These late Winter rains is making for very good weed growth this year. At one point before we mowed, the weeds were taller than the vines. It was horrible.

How has our troubled economy affected sales at Ridge?

EB Well, at the bottom of last year, March of 2009 was probably the lowest point of our sales. It really affected our distributors mainly who were not buying wine because they didn’t want to sit on inventory. As things improved last year, by June things came back, distributors were re-ordering wines to replenish their inventories; and on the sales side we were seeing that the distributors were actually getting the wine into the marketplace, selling it to retailers and restaurants. So health returned to our sales by June of last year. And every month since sale have continued to improved. We’re actually 39% better this year than we were last year at this time.

Exports have really picked up substantially for us! Particularly in the UK, but also Germany, Switzerland, Japan, those are the big markets. Australia and France, we have distribution there. About 25% of our annual sales are to the export market. It’s a good diversity for us to have those markets. And as the US market comes back stronger, hopefully that will counter any effect that we may see in the export market. European markets are having some issues recently.

I noticed a Parker score on their tasting table placard so I asked, Do you think Robert Parker will ever retire?

EB Well, he’s got people in place now; he’s got his understudies there slowly taking over. I would imagine that in the next ten years we’ll see some change. Jim Laube as well, from the Wine Spectator. Hopefully some new writer will come in with a different sense of taste and style, or a greater appreciation for real wine rather than these fruit bomb, cocktail-style wines. And I think they’re slowly losing out to the on-line world, the new generation of wine consumers are necessarily going to be relying on Jim Laube and Robert Parker for their wine information. They’re going to be getting it off the internet through blogs. That’s a greater power.

But here on your placard you’ve got a Robert Parker score!

EB (laughs) That’s true! You can’t get away from him. We actually have not submitted samples to him for three years. There was a long hiatus where he didn’t review our wines… because we don’t worry about what the critics have to say. We don’t court them. Our customers let us know when we have succeeded by buying our wine. Firstly, we begin by making wines that we truly enjoy drinking ourselves and that our customers keep coming back to buy. We’ve got to begin at that point. And if then the critics come along and give some favorable scores, then that’s great. But we don’t count on that as part of our economic engine to retail sales.

Getting back to Bordeaux, how were the wines?

EB The 2009s that I tasted were terrific, absolutely beautiful. It’s a high quality vintage. The Bordelaise haven’t yet released their pricing because they’re waiting for the Chinese to decide how much they are willing to pay for the wines this year.

So the Chinese are that important a player?

EB Well, the Chinese were everywhere on the streets of Bordeaux.

They were everywhere in Cahors as well.

EB But I do think the Bordelaise have a very beautiful vintage in 2009. And I would love to buy some, as long as they’re reasonably priced.

A last question, about climate change. Many winemakers will not associate climate change with viticultural adaptations from vintage to vintage. The human mind can no more remember the weather last week let alone last year. We’re not wired that way. But if they go through their records they can then see they irrigated a little bit more here, they were a little more aggressive with the green harvest there, or they messed around with their canopy… they can detect subtle viticultural trends if sufficient attention is given. Is there anything about Monte Bello, about Santa Cruz’s Ridge that you’d care to add?

EB The only thing that we’ve been seeing it that to get physiological ripeness we’re generally having to go to slightly higher levels of brix. So what that has done is that the average alcohol of Monte Bello through most of the history of that wine, up into the 80s, the late 80s, early 90s, was right around 12.8% alcohol. That was a pretty precise measurement. As we moved into the mid-nineties to the present, the alcohol has moved now into the 13% to 13.1% range. We haven’t seen a general trend of hotter growing seasons. What we’re seeing is a lot more weather variability, or extremes. The coldest days of Winter have become much colder. The hotter days of Summer have become much hotter. Wind comes at unusual time of the year. The weather has become much more unpredictable. This has made the grape growing a little more difficult, more challenging. There is a lot of high anxiety for us, trying to grow with these extremes.

In 2004, the earliest harvest in our history, we began picking grapes in the middle of August that year. We were out sampling, tasting. We saw that verasion came early. It was on our radar that the harvest was going to be early. For a lot of California winemakers it just didn’t register. A lot of people picked too late and produced over-ripe wine; whereas we produced beautiful wines. A different style, though. They were lighter just by the nature of an early season with heat.

So do you plan to stay where you are? (laughs)

EB Oh, absolutely! I’m a Santa Cruz native and I work at one of the first growths of North America. There is no other place to go!

Admin

Clos Troteligotte, Cahors’ New Generation

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 03:34:08 +0000

Clos Troteligotte is an interesting property. Stylistically, it straddles the line between old and new Cahors, but is not part of a generational movement as such. It understands its future as one driven by an independence of spirit and a work ethic, the true patrimony of the South West. Clos Troteligotte builds upon this cultural continuity with refreshing innovation, a new perspective. I’ll explain.

Traditional Cahors AOC winemaking is difficult to grasp. Its long history has been punctuated by environmental disasters, changing international fortunes, the rise of powerful, politically astute regional rivals, the emergence of America as a winemaking power, its rechristening, if not rebirth, in the 1970s, and, most recently, Argentina’s successful marketing of the Malbec grape under Cahors’ very nose. Indeed, Cahors AOC identity today is an unsettled confluence of multiple histories and restarts. We can catch glimpses of the magnificence of the wines produced, more numerous examples in recent years, but I don’t believe the Cahors AOC has experienced sufficient continuity as a wine growing region for the rest of the world to clearly understand what it is she has done, certainly not what she now does. It was not until the 1990s, after all, that a thorough analysis of what Andrew Jefford has called the forgotten terroirs was even undertaken.

Now the Cahors AOC project becomes to expand and to deepen this new local knowledge of itself, of its terroirs and the best viticulture, for the sake of its growers, producers, and the thirsty public. For it remains true, as I was often reminded by locals themselves, that a substantial number of Cahors AOC vignerons still do not know the strengths and weaknesses of their own lands, whether their vineyards are in the right place, or where to look within the AOC at large for terroirs of great potential. This last point is important in that I strongly sense that others from outside the region are now shopping for AOC acreage. (I, myself, have more than once in the past few weeks wondered whether I might make a go of it here!) Of spectacular potential, this small AOC in the South West of France has only begun to shower the world with the soulful, expressive gifts of its terroirs. Like much of Portugal, I am convinced that the Cahors AOC is on the verge of far wider international recognition than now enjoyed. There is no downside to its fortunes.

Of Clos Troteligotte. Founded in 1987 by patriarch Christian Rybinski, it is a 10 hectare (1 of white grapes just coming in) family operation spearheaded by young son Emmanuel. They combine excellent red plateau soils, an appreciation of contemporary viticultural thinking, a relentless work ethic, internet savoir-faire, experimentation, and an abiding love of their patrimony into a range of bright wines, including a white and rosé. I had the pleasure of spending a couple of hours with Emmanuel. What follows is a blended narrative of the interview.

Troteligotte, Emmanuel explains, is the name of his grandfather’s house. It means a place where there are a lot of partridge (my effort to find an exact translation was unsuccessful). As we approached the property and drove a private dirt road through wooded land just east of the Villesèque commune, itself ten minutes west of Cahors off D653, sure enough partridge bolted in front of us. They did not fly, but ran. Emmanuel described his vineyard as atop the plateau, an iron-rich clay and limestone mix. Unobstructed sunshine is on the vines, the surrounding forest having been cleared for cereal grains and animal forage as well. Emmanuel’s father, Christian, though an agronomist, was an ingenue. He didn’t know a lot about wine when he initially planted the Clos Troteligotte’s vines in ‘87. His own father had been a farmer, had not known the vine. But Christian learned with each vintage and soon left the negociants behind with a focus on quality, a resolution made in 1998, the year of his first great effort.

In 2004 Emmanuel had returned from Australia. He had worked in Victorian Alps Winery, near the Victorian Alps in the state of Victoria. He had also put put in time in Napa as an assistant winemaker at Chateau Potelle in 2002. So, back in Villesèque in 2004, he began to make his multiple signature cuvées. Shortly was to come, with the help of his father, their first Charte de Qualité wine in 2004, the CQfd [see pic].

Diversity of wines is the key to the Clos’ success. Emmanuel has complete control over block, vine, and grape selection to do as he pleases. So why not explore the variety their current 40,000 bottle capacity allows? Eight thousand of Rosé, 4,000 of the white blend, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier, and the balance of classic Cahors blends, Malbec, Merlot, and Tannat. The white blend is quite interesting, the result of an experiment with the three varieties none of which were planted in sufficient quantities to warrant a separate bottling. But next year he will plant more vines for two new whites, a Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc blend and a stand-alone Viognier.

Father and son do everything; they work the vineyards, the cellar, the barnyard, they do all the marketing, including hand-selling at markets, the labels. Control rests entirely in their hands. Their new website, too, was Emmanuel’s doing, though with the help of a friend who runs eure-k!, a new innovative web design collective, in this instance charged with creating a site which reflected Emmanuel’s electric personality. It took six months, but the results are certainly more energizing and visually arresting than any other Cahors AOC producer sites I’ve visited on the net. They also do tee-shirts, fliers offering discounts, all that modern marketing stuff (like talking to me). Though not yet on Facebook or Twitter (it takes time he does not have!), he does have a blog administered by his lovely wife, Emily. (Though not always a part of Emmanuel’s narrative, Emily is undeniably central to their success.) All of this raises his profile and that of the winery. From his work in Australia and California he learned the importance of wine tourism, something he hopes to increase to his property in the near future. Future plans call for the building of a new cellar for tastings and sales, educational talks; a showplace for local art, theater, music, and books; a comfortable place for cultural gatherings and conversation, what Emmanuel calls a Country or Rural Cultural Center. Under construction now, he hopes to open the doors in the Spring/Summer of 2012.

These kinds of initiatives, incidentally, are going on all over the Cahors AOC. Indeed, the local wine and tourism authorities have launched a five-year plan to completely revitalize the region. It is an exciting time to be a winemaker here! Yet Emmanuel’s advice may not be sought, at least in the beginning. Along with other young winemakers 30 and under, they have not yet earned the confidence of the older generation. For that distinction, a greater region recognition of one’s work is required.

Emmanuel is not particularly concerned with such matters. He really has no time to speak formally about the development of the appellation in any case. He has more than enough work to do, what with his winemaking, viticultural practice, marketing, house and out-building construction and family responsibilities. He is the father of three beautiful young children. Malbec Days, in fact, offered him an excellent opportunity to combine a number of tasks, including meeting local officials, exporters, wine writers, etc. all while pouring his wines.

We arrive at the vineyards, the house and future cellar under construction just beyond. His current cellar is simply too small for his ambitious plans. The vineyard is 9 hectares of Malbec and 1 of Merlot. The Merlot was put in his first cuvée, La Fourmi and in his bag-in-a-box wine. But no Merlot is used for his middle and high cuvées. Those wines are 100% Malbec. I should add that the white grapes are not grown on the same soil as the red. In the main vineyard heavy iron-rich stones, some appearing 100% pure, lie scattered about the ground and lurk just beneath the surface. Years ago such stones were smelted to make iron farm and martial instruments. Were it to rain the soil would turn red before my eyes.

Green harvest is the order of the day at the more progressive vineyards, as here. Emmanuel explains the maximum number of canes allowed, 4 to 5, along each cordon. Grape bunches are severely reduced to one per cane. Yields for the higher quality cuvées are around 30 hectoliters per hectare, the lowest yield is used for the CQfd. Contrast this to the easier drinking, less expensive La Fourmi, for which 45 to 50 hectoliters per hectare are harvested. As may be seen, grass and flowers are everywhere between the rows, but Clos Troteligotte is not yet biologique. La Lutte Raisonnée is practiced, essentially what we would call ’sustainable’. In two to three years they will complete the transition to biologique, or ‘organic’. Under the raisonnée regime a very small amount of ‘product’ is used, sulphur and copper, usually once a year. No insecticide is applied. But even this quantity, Emmanuel explains, has been reduced by half since 2000. As a result the vines have become more and more capable of resisting what diseases there are in this dry climate. During a typical growing season it is only the leaves, and not the grape bunches, which are occasionally attacked. Clean grapes help, of course, with the vinifications, all done with ‘wild’ yeast.

Because it is just Emmanuel and his father, the grapes are mechanically harvested. Small select parcels are harvested first, when it is coldest, between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. in the morning. The disease-free grape clusters, a feature of both climate and viticulture, do not really need hand harvesting. No post-harvest de-selecting is required. Besides, a hectare may be harvested in under two hours at an optimal temperature and have the grapes in the winery before the morning chill has fled. The whites, however, are hand harvested because of oxidative matters. Curiously, their vineyards are consistently ready for harvest a full week earlier than their closest neighbor, a vineyard property only one kilometer away. Perhaps it is the forest circling their lands that provide an extra bit of protection, perhaps a subtle microclimate subtends the difference.

We leave the red soils of the Malbec/Merlot vineyard (with a small amount of Tannat, 2 to 3 percent) to view the white clay, chalkier soils for Clos Troteligotte’s whites. The vineyard bordered the forest, but in the past few years the trees have been cleared to make room for more vines to come, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Viognier, as mentioned above. The empty field is now planted with cereal grains while they prepare for the new vineyard.

I was next introduced to a small plantation of very young oaks, what they hope will become truffle trees in no fewer than 7 years. Asked about a vegetable garden, Emmanuel very proudly said they grew for the family. “We do everything!” They don’t use conventional paper diapers for their children. Instead, they use a hemp fabric, and for their tee-shirts, not to mention for the insulation of their home. His uncle has 40 hectares of cereals under cultivation. Complete with a windmill and grinding stone, grains for the family and their chickens and pigs are produced there. The pig manure is, bien sûr, returned to the fields. Like Emmanuel says, “We do everything!”

Heating of the family home, Emmanuel and Emily’s, is provided by a large stove. After firing it up for a couple of hours it provides heat all throughout the night, important when the temperature last winter plunged from an average of zero to minus 10. With the stove they bake their own bread. They harvest meats from their own livestock. Their family life and that of their farm supports and maintains long-standing Cahors country traditions. They remind me of rural folks living in Mendocino County or in western Montana. I couldn’t help thinking I had met these people before. I’m sure I have. And like their American counterparts, they are not making much money. Emmanuel laughs, “Not yet. Not yet. We work 7 days a week. We have one short holiday a year. Me and my wife. But I am on a good path. Next year I hope to take more time off… maybe pay someone to come with me into the vineyards. That would allow me to do something else.”

I was welcomed at their family house. Emily brought out a bowl of strawberries. Their apple-cheeked children eyed me with amusement, dressed as I was in unseasonable, unreasonable black and sporting multiple electronic devices. A friendly old dog, perhaps a Bernese, went back to the shade. Emmanuel introduced me and soon had his eldest son practicing his English numbers aloud. Their youngest offered me a bottle of liquid soap and a bubble wand. The ice water infused with citron tasted good.

Though I was to spend another 45 minutes with Emmanuel touring the winery proper and other sites, and listening to his extraordinary visions that I am certain will be realized, I feel it is best to end my post here. I had seen, tasted and heard much in my week in the Cahors region. But no experience was quite so perfect, so personally fulfilling for this weary stranger than my few precious minutes here with the Rybinski family.

Admin

For further reading, a supplemental link.

A Vineyard With Soul, Laurent Rigal’s Prieure De Cenac

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 25 May 2010 12:39:12 +0000

It sometimes happens in life that you meet a person of such spiritual dedication that you think things differently, your world-view nudged in a new direction. Such was my encounter with Laurent Rigal, son of Franck Rigal, family winemakers for Château de Grezels and Prieuré de Cenac in Parnac, AOC Cahors. On the first night of Malbec Days here in Cahors, what was called the Pré-ouverture, a kind of sneak preview, I tasted only a small number of wines, a few of which immediately caught my attention, this despite the tremendous heat inside the venue (I was told air conditioning was too expensive to install, coming in at around €10,000). Of those wines, one stuck in my imagination, ‘La Vierge’, from the Prieuré de Cenac vineyard. By virtue of a personal meander appropriate to this region dominated, as it is, by the Lot River, and the generous assistance of Jean-Marie Sigaud, I was to meet father and son the following day. A winemaker discussing their work often presents two faces, one public, a visage of commercial, more formal utterances, and the other, private, far rarer. I was fortunate to listen to the latter.

The vineyard for La Vierge is situated within 39 hectares of gently sloping hills high above the Lot River. At the top of the very highest hill is a special terroir in that it contains a 50% concentration of the most desirable soil admixture in AOC Cahors, clays, principally red, and 50% limestone. Iron, a red clay element, gives minerality and adds balance and complex aromas in the wine. The vineyard was planted on Laurent’s birthday 30 years ago, in 1979, from which the first harvest was taken in 1983. That was a very good year owing to the modest yield. The vineyard for La Vierge sees no chemicals and is all hand-picked. It is, most importantly for Laurent, biodynamic, his passion.

He began working this vineyard 7 years ago after finishing school in Bordeaux. There he learned the principles of terroir, biodynamics, the influence of the ocean on weather, and especially a respect for the land and its biodiversity. For it is biodiversity that informs the success of the grape harvest. And it is the responsibility of the winemaker to give back to the land what he takes away. All of these principles represented the broader change taking place in the entirety of the AOC.

When purchased this vineyard was already planted to the vine, but owing to its great age it was replanted with new vines, so low had the yields become. (Currently around 8,000-10,000 bottles come from the site.) It was formerly owned by a monk. The monk grew a large variety of cereals and vegetables during and after the Second World War, as well as maintaining a vineyard. Many monks sustained the local appetites and economies during this difficult time all throughout France.

Of the vintages from Prieuré de Cenac, Laurent has been responsible for 6, from 2003 forward. Of the difference between his first vintage and most recent he explains:

Laurent Rigal For the first vintage I was very excited. And very stressed! My father and grandfather set very high quality standards I had to meet. My first vintage was very hard work. I tried to make it perfect. But I felt I worked for nothing because it was a passion that drove me. Then I worked every day from early morning to mid-night, as late as two in the morning. Now I work more efficiently because working too hard on the vine and wine brings a negativity to the wine. I give the whole process more liberty and approach the harvest and vinification with greater respect, letting it develop on its own. Before I was pumping-over [remontage] 6 times a day; now I keep it at 2. It is better.

On the property there stands the monastery that, as Franck Rigal explains, the family hopes to renovate into a rooms for visitors, perhaps room enough for six. This he tells me as he drives our small car onto the steep slope to the vineyard hilltop. There is no road, but it is wide enough(!) Under brilliant sun, expansive sight lines in all directions above the broad and gentle slopes, we stop and I take in what they call mamelom, the ‘tit’ of La Vierge. But there is more to this name than a mere description. For Le Vierge means ‘virgin’, and the monk had cleared a place of quiet contemplation in the trees just a stone’s throw away. A spiritual topography begins to come into focus.

Laurent Rigal I will show you his place of quiet repose in a moment. But I want to say that here there is energy, a strong cosmic force and a telluric force. There is a concentration at La Vierge, and all around the statue is a reseau [network] that helps keep the vines in good health. There is another concentration of energy in the prieuré which serves the entire vineyard. This is very important for biodynamic viticulture because we use this energy to develop good health, to infuse the earth and the vine with life. The winemaker must learn to develop this force in the plant, the vine, and to so help reduce the quantity of chemicals.

We have three products in biodynamics: We use cow manure, and we prepare it according to Maria Thun – she is the person who developed biodynamie in France and Germany – we also produce mineral sprays for application on the vines. Two products are for developing the telluric force and one is to develop the cosmic force, to attract the light onto the vine. It is very important that you develop and focus the energy of the universe, the light. But this is rare. It is not easy to do.

So it is that the mamelom, the name of the hill, La Vierge, that of the vineyard, are descriptive elements of a kind of immaculate nursing (if I may put it that way) with the cosmos.
We then, midst a riot of bird-song, walked down the mamelom to Laurent’s place of contemplation and one of the vineyard’s power points. It was here that I took the picture of Laurent and his father, Franck. The picture of Laurent above shows him sitting at the precise power site initially discovered by the monk.

Laurent Rigal I was up this morning at 3 o’clock preparing and spraying, according to the calendar, the constellations, preparations for this vineyard! So I am a little tired today. In biodynamics there are four days: A fruit day, a leaf day, a root day, and a seed day. Today was a fruit day.
Here, at this quiet place, there is a concentration of telluric and cosmic force. Some people who visit this place feel this energy coursing through their fingers. And when you sit down, not to pray but to think, and if you are energy-friendly, then you may receive the energy.
And of the wine made here, the aromas and the taste of La Vierge, you can say the moon and the sun are in harmony. The wine is the expression of this union. We will be bringing a horse and cow to the vineyard soon; they bring good astral properties. This is a very special terroir for biodynamie. You have iron and orange clay.

Next I will show you the cave of the prieuré, but just for you. It was built by the monk. I do not often talk about these things, but you have an ambience. I can see it in the eyes when people do not want to listen.

In moments we are in the cave, the property’s second power point located beneath the main structure, the house to be renovated for guests in the fullness of time. Though I am a bit uncomfortable in doing so, I must stress that Laurent did give me permission to post the accompanying photo.

Laurent Rigal This was built by the monk, and it is in the form of the cross of Christ. I put my biodynamic preparations down here to bring into them the energy of the cave and the cross. Here I make the two products, preparations, described by Maria Thun. This one I put on the earth for an energy of concentration and recuperation…. This is a special place for me.

We head back to Cahors, the bridge where Laurent still faced the balance of the day pouring his wines. I was again to see him in the evening when, now nearly sleep-walking, he poured wines into the night, still cheerful, composed, radiating a great inner peace. I shall treasure my time with the gentleman and his father, among the finest moments of my time in the Cahors region.

Admin

The Terroirs of Domaine Le Bout Du Lieu, Cahors AOC

Admin, Ken Payton — Thu, 20 May 2010 09:42:34 +0000

In the interests of economy here may be found a kind of hybrid narrative, a compilation of a series of voices, principally that of the young winemaker Lucien Dimani, the son of Arnaldo, and my editorial contribution. Direct quotes will, however, be properly attributed. The point of this exercise is to faithfully present the Domaine Le Bout du Lieu’s precise understanding of their terroirs within the broader Cahors AOC. As underlined in a previous post, the Cahors AOC is kaleidoscopic, an assemblage of shifting elements only informed, not defined, by the proximity to the profoundly ox-bowed Lot river, vineyard orientation and canopy management, elevation, soil type, northern or southern exposure, blending percentages – if done- of Malbec (70% minimum in any case), of Merlot and Tannat, the blind luck of microclimate variations during the growing season, the skill of the vigneron and, it must be said, politics. What adds to the complexity is that all these elements are intertwined in such a way as to render nearly impossible durable regional harvest predictions or even the success of any given grower. To be a winegrower in the Cahors AOC is to daily roll the dice. Terroir has no ornamental value here. Rather, it not only frames the conversation, but it has the last word.

Preliminaries

From Cahors to Saint-Vincent-Rive-d’Olt is about 13 miles due west; not far, but the winding road adds time. The village has a population of 183, and less than 400 including the surrounding villages of Douelle, Parnac and Luzech. All along the road may be seen vineyards, many in the yards of private residences. The first village we passed through was Douelle which translates as ’stave’, as in the stave of a barrel.
Many, many years ago this was home to a number of cooperages producing barrels for the regions’ winemakers. Nowadays there are none remaining in the Lot region. They went out of business because larger cooperages outside the region offered better prices, and the barrels were made of a different kind of oak than the one locally grown. Different flavors came from oak from other areas. Local oak was a bit ‘green’. Political tensions within the Lot followed upon the choice by regional winemakers for barrels from outside the local economy. But that was 70 years ago.
Concrete tanks became rather more popular for the small to average sized winery because of the differences in the time and labor required for racking. Spent barrels would continue to be used owing to their greater micro-oxygenation proficiency, but imagine one tank verses fifty barrels: racking one tank takes two hours; racking fifty barrels takes two days.

Upon entering Luzech, past a small, well-stocked open market, we drove up a hill to a magnificent vista. It was from there that one could easily observe the alluvial to terrace, hillside to plateau terroirs, and specifically nearly all of the holdings of Le Bout du Lieu, a small part of which are on the first terrace; their larger vineyards are found on the second and third. (To clearly photograph them from the vista is another matter! A layer of fog played havoc.)

A bit about Luzech situated on what was once an island in an extreme meander of the Lot river. Years ago, before the building of dams and other water control structures, this particular stretch of the Lot was quite wild and treacherous, a tumult of powerful currents. Those traveling by boat, merchants in the main, would begin at the foot of the village and by the end of the day would have only traveled the length of the ox-bow, again arriving at Luzech at night. What took one minute to walk, was a challenging one day journey by barge. Indeed, many sailors lost their lives, so many that a little commemorative chapel was built at the end of the ‘island’ opposite Luzech. Now, the river’s flow is regulated by dams, land loss by canals, the flood events, too, are therefrom diminished.

Incidentally, from the vista point it is estimated that 15% of the total acreage under vine cultivation in the whole of the Cahors AOC may be seen. It is obvious that this AOC ought to be one of the premier wine touring destinations in all of Europe. Plans are underway to more aggressively promote exactly this. Just 50 years ago a larger percentage of the land was dedicated to a wide range of agricultural activity. Farms formerly dominated the region. Vegetables, corn, wheat, walnuts, fruits, pig, cow and sheep husbandry were the mainstays of the local economy. The vine now plays a far greater role.

Frosts remain a great threat. Even as recently as last week the cloudless night sky sent temperatures plummeting. No young shoot can take such thing. Historically, in 1956, a very late frost killed 99% of the young growth. Even with global warming frosts are a perpetual danger. Interestingly, owing to the scattered distribution of vineyards and the attendant micro-climates, damaging frosts and hails do not necessarily effect the region as a whole. Hail storms, for example, are very focussed. One vineyard may be destroyed while the neighbor’s is spared. In any event, the closer the river, the deeper the valley, so increases the risk.

With headwaters in the Pyrenees, the Lot is the greatest meandering river in all of France, with this area around Luzech having the most extreme loop. It is a tributary of the Garonne. The explanatory tile pictured above provides useful illustration.

The Terroirs

First we visit their vineyard on an alluvial terrace. Limestone and the first hints of gravel may be seen. Some say this is not a good terroir to make quality wines. Lucien is not in agreement.

Lucien Dimani “As long as you work well, you control the crop and the yield, you shouldn’t have any problem. Of course, if you want to do 8 tons an acre then here it is possible. You are close to the river. But it is something you cannot do on the second or third terraces, never mind on the plateau. The yields decline naturally the higher you go. There will not be the same quality, but here you can produce something similar. I know this because of blind tastings. I am sure some people would not believe me I tell them the wine they are drinking is from the first terrace.
These vines are from 28 to 30 years old. And this is high density for here. The number of vines in a vineyard depends where you are. If I compare it to Bordeaux it is a low density. So let’s say it is from average to high density, closer to high. There is an AOC recommended ratio, a minimum density of a vineyard, about 3000 vines per hectare. Here we have about 4500 vines per hectare. We have good results from this vineyard as long as we manage the crop and the fruit is not clustered too close together.
Trellising remains the same in all our vineyards, the same kind of canopy management. The only thing we change is sometimes the vigor management, but this bears primarily on the age of the vine and not the soil; and what wine we plan to make of these grapes. We’ll drop clusters to concentrate the flavors in the remaining grape clusters.

A lot of people are organic here, but do not always pursue certification. We have a lot of new converts as well. It has become more common. Of diseases, we have mildew and odium; but we can control them. We don’t have too much pressure. It depends on the vintage. But normally it is not something that is hard to control as long as you do your job in the vineyard. If we have to spray, we spray. If it is dry there is no reason to spray. Lutte raisonnée.

My father [Arnoldo] is the vineyard manager. He started working in the vineyard with his father when he was 6 years old. I, too, started working when I was 6 or 7, to help. A long time ago it was school and work. Now, everywhere in France there is the problem of the next generation of winegrowers. And it is even more difficult these days to find people willing to work at harvest. It’s easier in Bordeaux, but it is starting to become harder every year for hand-picking. So, 90% of the harvest is by machine, machines shared among neighbors. Here there are four properties and us. We share the harvesting machine. If tomorrow there were a law that we had to do everything by hand, no one would do it. And hand-picking is a huge cost.”

We next travelled to a second terrace vineyard.

Lucien Dimani “Here there is more gravel. This is also alluvial but with gravel. Even higher up will be found more gravel. We went a bit higher in elevation to another terroir. The root stock here is SO4. This is the oldest vineyard that we have. It is a vineyard we bought that my father took care of for 20 years. He did not plant it. He first rented it. Another, younger block is beyond the trees. This vineyard is a second terroir. There is a bigger difference between red clay and alluvial soils than between graveled and alluvial-graveled soils. Again, in blind tastings it is confusing. But if you have red clay it cannot be mistaken. Nearer the river the soils are also deeper. And the vine depth varies. Here the vines are about 8 to 10 meters down. It also depends on the vineyard density. The lower the density the roots tend to grow more horizontally.”

Then comes a higher vineyard yet, their third terroir.

Lucien Dimani “Vineyard orientation catches the maximum sun. When we do the leaf removal for air circulation and exposure we do it only on the rising sun side. Otherwise the sun will burn the fruit. Later, mid-August, when the sun is not so intense, we do the other side, but only on special plots. We only remove the leaf on the fruit; not above or below. The idea is to limit the humidity in the bunches themselves. Botrytis likes humidity. By select leaf pull we limit it. And we do de-budding when we prune. But we also do a green harvest later in the year if we have too many bunches that might become a source of disease. The fruit cluster, how tightly packed, depends on the clone. Of course, without irrigation a higher crop means lower concentration and lower quality. There is a balance between the crop and the quality. But there are limits above which the quality is not necessarily enhanced by lower yields. You may have 2 tons an acre, but if you lower the crop to 1.5 tons an acre you will find the quality will be the same in a vineyard harvesting at 2 tons. You will have lost half a ton per acre for nothing. You will have worked for nothing. It is about balance. Here in this vineyard the harvest is around 2.3 tons per acre.

This vineyard, the third terroir, sits on a small plateau. It is not strictly speaking a plateau; but we call it such because it is a flat spot on the top of a hill. The red clay is very visible. You saw the digging coming up. The surface is lighter, but if you dig it is red. The vine are between 30 and 35 years old.”

The significance of the respective soils, the terroirs overall, on the resulting wine will be explicated in a later post. For now we drove to the winery itself where I was to meet the formidable Arnaldo and his wife Monique, equal partners in all the winemaking labors. They had prepared a deep tasting of vintages and bottlings from respective terrace terroirs. A full account of this part of the visit will be written at a later date. Suffice to say for now that their hospitality and generosity was very well regarded by this traveler. I thank them. To their son, Lucien, rugby player, my narrator and teacher, and to his lovely American friend, Eileen, I, too, offer my humblest thanks for the nearly three hours they sacrificed for me.

Admin

The Terroirs Of Cahors, A Brief Primer

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 18 May 2010 08:05:35 +0000

A city and its people offer to the traveler the opportunity to learn as much or as little as they wish. However, for the wine writer there is much less latitude. Cahors is a demanding AOC. There can be little true understanding without the writer’s submersion into its dizzying terroirs. As noted in an earlier post, the wines of Cahors have long been welcomed at my table. Yet choice of her wines in America has long been seriously limited. So it was that I attended a Cahors tasting in San Francisco and was spiritually transported by the rich variety. Yet even then, despite my many conversations with the patient producers attending, I could not begin to guess at the terroirs expressed, the real source of the differences. Now that I am in Cahors for the Malbec Days festival, I can begin to get answers to the new questions the San Francisco tasting awakened in me. Little could I have guessed the extraordinary lesson waiting around the next turn.

Wandering the streets of old Cahors in a jet-lagged fog early Monday morning, I saw a sign pointing to the Maison du Vins de Cahors. Just across from the train station, I walked in, barged in, if you like, and began to explore the sober working space. I was directed to the main office where I was introduced to the remarkable Jean-Marie Sigaud, President of the Union Interprofessionelle du Vin de Cahors (UIVC). With the assistance translating offered by Juliette and Maxim, I enjoyed a conversation that essentially threw me into the deep end of the pool, no more so than when I was introduced to The Map, the graphic depiction of the terroirs of Cahors. The work product of many days and hands by the Geographic Institute of the University of Toulouse, The Map, pictured below, is the non-plus-ultra of a terroirist’s education.

I shall leave the explication of its complexities for a later post. But I will say that there are 9 different terroirs classified. From the four alluvial zones, also known as the terraces, to the two different types of limestone covered slopes, up to the plateau, itself of three soil varieties. Even a cursory glance at The Map below reveals the enormous combinations afforded the winemaker, all given by the Lot’s graceful meander. Much more to come…

Admin Just how many producers are expected for the event?

Jean-Marie Sigaud We expect around 400 producers.

And of those producers, will small ones be present as well?

J-M Sigaud Not all of them. Those producing under 500 hectoliters will not be present. There are about 150 producers in the AOC making below that amount.

And where are Cahors wines sold?

J-M Sigaud You have three different markets: Export, around 20%; supermarkets make up 60%; 20% direct including tasting rooms, to tourists who come directly to the Domaine, private sellers, open markets, salons in different cities…

Why is it so difficult to find Cahors’ wines in America?

J-M Sigaud (laughs) Until 4 or 5 years ago production and consumption were balanced in the local market. Now, it is that the French drink less, not only of Cahors wine but of all wines. French people are drinking less wine. So we decided to go and begin greater exports the the United States and China.

Has there been any negative feedback from the use of the word ‘Malbec’? Traditionally the grape was called Côt or Auxerrois regionally. Some traditionalists, even in the US, think that this may be principally for marketing purposes.

J-M Sigaud There are three names. Auxerrois used to be the most used name of the grape. Traditionally it was Auxerrois. And technically it is called Côt, but more generally it is now called Malbec. So if you go to Bordeaux we will talk about Malbec because they don’t know the word ‘Auxerrois’. They don’t know what it is. We use the word Malbec because it is more internationally known. Auxerrois is only known here.

Those of us who love Cahors wines get a little bit worried that the closer one steps toward the general name most closely associated with Argentina, maybe the closer will become the winemaking techniques. We worry that the wines of Cahors will get softer, easier to drink when young. We like the purity of the Cahors expression.

J-M Sigaud The Malbec of Cahors will always reflect the difference of terroir. It will never be like the Argentine. Here we have enough rain. In Argentina they have to irrigate. We have six different terroirs in the Cahors appellation. You therefore have differences in quality.

You have the river, the first terrace, second and third. Each time you go into a deep bend in the river then you have this configuration. But you don’t have this configuration on both sides. Each time the river bends you will have a cliff on one side of the river and you will have terracing on the other.

Well, that is very helpful!

J-M Sigaud The best terroir is the third terrace and the plateau, between 200 and 300 meters high. The river itself is 120 meters above sea level. Would you like to know the nature of the terroir? Where the river flows you have this rich alluvial soil, a flood plain. That’s why it’s not very good for the Cahors vines; it is too rich. And you have the terraces which are the slopes of exposed earth over time. So, you have on one side of the river a cliff and plateau; on the other, the hillside slopes, the terraces exposed by erosion, all of which are of a different soil type and composition. In addition you have the North and the South. The North receives less sun than the South, so the South is preferred.

And there is the plateau; it is of clay, red clay. There are two types, red and white. The best terroir is red clay. We have a press document, but you are here before it is ready! The AOC is 50 kilometers long; the river makes it longer! It is about 4 or 5 kilometers wide.

And that is what you came here for; to find the difference between Argentina and Cahors?

Yes and no. I want to deepen my readers’ understanding of Cahors wines because Argentina is so much more present in the marketplace. I would like to move that in another direction, to get people to taste Cahors wines. People just don’t know Cahors. And I fear, which is to say, I know, that the Cahors style, its powerful terroir expression, and wines of similar strengths, are not well represented in America. I think Robert Parker, Coca Cola, fast food, and sweets have a lot to do with it. There are many who feel as I do. We’re looking for wines of greater finesse and character, terroir wines. We’re looking for difference. The wine of Cahors, certainly for me, and I think for others, is very much that wine.

J-M Sigaud Merci. The production of good Cahors wine is between 40 and 50 hectoliters per hectare. And the vine density is about 4,500 per hectare. About 80% is Malbec, 15% Merlot, and 5% Tannat.

And the rootstock of the vines?

J-M Sigaud In the ’70s the rootstock was SO4, and in the ’80s we had a lot of Riparia, 3309 and 41B, with a little bit of Richter [110]. And since the year 2000 we’ve used Fercal on the limestone soils of the plateau. Each producer had to take the good rootstock depending on where he was situated. It really depends on each parcel.

The harvest is around October 1st. And the harvesting degree will be between 12.5% to more than 14% of alcohol. Of course, you’ll have higher alcohol on the south side. Then you have the savoir-faire of the winemaker. The grapes will be mature, more or less, between the 1st and the 15th of October. Each producer has to decide when he wants to harvest. The more he waits, the greater the alcohol. In Cahors, despite the alcohol level, the biggest difference is the terroir in which the vines grow. Machine harvesting is done over 90% of the area with the best wines harvested by hand. Some of the producers even select individual grapes. At least one of them!

Does the Merlot mature at the same time as the Malbec?

J-M Sigaud Tannat after, Merlot a little bit before; three passes through the vineyard. The rootstock has an influence on the ripening.

I was then generously invited to lunch, but not before I laid eyes on an extraordinary map pictured above. The product of the Geographic Institute of the University of Toulouse, it is an extremely fine hand-painted representation of Cahors’ diversity. It is clear to see, once the geological principles are grasped, that Cahors AOC wines have an infinite number of expressive possibilities.
And while at lunch Jean-Marie Sigaud selected three wines from the restaurant menu, each to show how these elements bear upon the black wine in the glass, in this instance the terraces to plateau. Each of the wines, grown very near one another as the crow flies , was from an increasingly high elevation: Chateau Gaudou, Chateau Nozières, and Clos Troteligotte respectively. Though all three were very good, it was the last, Clos Troteligotte, made by the Christian Rybinski, that possessed the greatest electricity and finesse. It is from a plateau terroir, and continues a family tradition.

The conversation continued over lunch:

Do you enjoy your work as president of UIVC?

J-M Sigaud (laughs) It is a passion. The wine makes me crazy because it is such a passion, such a love for the wine. I don’t want to leave.

Are you elected to your position?

J-M Sigaud I’ve been president for 23 years, elected by the winemakers. In 2013 I will likely be leaving my position. But I am really not sure.

Well, it’s a very important time for Cahors wine. Surely they need a steady, experienced hand.

J-M Sigaud The most important thing is to meet a lot of winemakers because they all have a lot of differences between themselves. My politics is based on difference; it is difference that makes exemplary the culture of Cahors wine. Eighty percent of our winemakers are independent and 20% are in the cooperative. That is why we can have such different wines. One thing to remember is that when speaking to winemakers be sure to get your terroirs straight! (laughs) Especially for me.

Nowadays viticultural consultants speak only about the facts as they see them. To speak about terroir is not important to them. Nobody is interested in that! You are the first one to come here and ask to learn about our terroirs. (laughs)

The world has gone crazy!

J-M Sigaud Yes! You can’t speak about wine if you can’t speak about terroir. For many a wine is only a cépage and not a terroir. But here there is a new trend. Producers in Cahors want to underline the point that terroir is very important. Until now it was considered only a second thing, not the most important. Now it is both a cépage and a terroir.

Are négociants as interested in terroir here?

J-M Sigaud Yes, completely. The négociant makes a selection of different wines considering their terroirs. And they put the individual terroir on the label of the bottle. It’s a part of their communication with the public. Here it is very important.
A last word about these wines, [the ones we were drinking at lunch]. The basic principle is this: The further we leave the river, the better the terroir.

To make wine is a very personal thing. Each wine is like a portrait of a producer and his vineyard. The winemakers you want to meet here are those who while doing their job live for their passion.

END

Specific details of the multiple terroirs to come. But first I must enjoy my dessert.

Admin

Dr. Kevin Pogue pt.2, On Teaching Terroir

Admin, Ken Payton — Thu, 13 May 2010 06:51:39 +0000

“The geomorphology, soils, and climate of Columbia Basin vineyards are the result of a complex and dynamic geologic history that includes the Earth’s youngest flood basalts, an active fold belt, and repeated cataclysmic flooding. Miocene basalt of the Columbia River Basalt Group forms the bedrock for most vineyards. The basalt has been folded by north-south compression, creating the Yakima fold belt, a series of relatively tight anticlines separated by broad synclines. Topography related to these structures has strongly influenced the boundaries of many of the Columbia Basin’s American Viticultural Areas (AVAs).”

So begins Dr. Kevin Pogue’s recent paper Folds, floods and fine wine: Geologic Influences on the terroir of the Columbia Basin. Although the text may contain concepts exotic to the unstudied reader, this is one of the languages of terroir. No mere cultural cipher, though often an elitist fetish, terroir may be properly situated by multiple sciences, Geology, Climatology, and Microbiology having pride of place. Indeed, there is a durable, extensive body of literature that can help us think the question of terroir beyond the noise of received opinion, mysticism, and marketing dissimulation.

What I have especially enjoyed in recent interviews, with Drs. Greg Jones, Ron Jackson, and now Kevin Pogue, is the ease with which they move among symbolic registers. As educators their message is as simple as it is practical: ‘You, too, can understand’.

In this, the second and final part of my interview with geologist Kevin Pogue, the reader may see performed this message. He, like his colleagues above, finds communicating their learning the only way to fully realize their passion. John McPhee once said, and I paraphrase, that the greatest truth of Geology was that fossils may be found on the summit of Mt. Everest. Imagine the anguish of knowing such a thing but of having no one to tell.

Please see Part 1

Admin I remember seeing some excellent videos [from 2006, since taken down] on the geological origins of the Red Mountain area. Riveting, outstanding videos. They told of the formation of the area in a very exciting manner. Geology is quite an elegant science.

Kevin Pogue That was probably Alan Busacca talking. Alan has done a lot of the work over there. Alan, as a terroirist, has gotten himself more out there than I have. He was a professor at Washington State University and got so involved in being a consultant for the wine industry that he resigned his professorship. He’s planted his own vineyard and is making wine.

There are a few things with me in it on YouTube doing some consulting work and clips of some of the work I’ve done for some of the wine groups around here. [See this, @5:45 forward, and this.] But Alan is a great guy. Everything he says is right on; and there is a lot of b.s. in the terroir world! It’s mostly b.s. I’m just thrilled that every time Alan says something I know it’s going to be right on and relative. I’m psyched that, in addition to myself, the other terroir spokesman for the Northwest is doing such a good job. So, I don’t feel like I’m in competition with him. I’m glad to have him as a colleague.

Being from Montana, I went to Crow Agency to listen to the Native American Park Ranger go through the Battle of the Little Big Horn. And when I saw the Mr. Busacca’s videos of the Red Mountain area and heard the story of the enormous Missoula Floods, he gave it such an immediacy that I was reminded of the stirring Little Big Horn historical narrative.

KP Yes. He was a Geology professor for 20 to 25 years. We get wrapped up in those stories! It’s a great story and a big part of the Walla Walla story as well.

So is the Washington teaching establishment going to perhaps lose another one of its best geologists to winemaking?

KP No. They are not in any danger of losing me. I am first and foremost a teacher. I also have a little consulting business on the side called VinTerra. But I don’t advertise at all. I have that website, but I actually don’t advertise almost on purpose because I’m not sure what I would do if I got a lot more business. Right now I have three clients where I’m doing site evaluations for them.

In addition to that I’m doing research work this summer with a couple of students; and I’m going to Italy to the terroir conference in June. I’ll be getting back from that just before the Bloggers Conference. I’m really excited about that. They do this every two years. I went to the last one in Switzerland. there were about 300 terroir researchers from all over the world. It’s a fabulous experience. I’m giving a talk on how basalt affects terroir at that conference. And there will be lots of field trips to Italian grape growing regions around Soave in the foothills of the Alps in Northern Italy. So that will be fun.

So I’ve got a lot on my plate! I’m teaching a full load here. I’m chair of the department. And I’m running this little consulting business. I’m doing my terroir research, and I give talks and lectures all the time. I talked at the Oenology and Viticulture program at the community college yesterday, and spoke at Taste Washington a month or so ago.

And you just got back from a field trip with your students. Correct?

KP Yeah! (laughs) That was part of my real job. I just took 40 of my students all through the canyons of Western Idaho: Clearwater, Salmon, Hells Canyon, looking at the bedrock geology of that area. We camped out three nights in the rain and snow. It was exciting.

I use to be a classic, hard core bedrock geologist. I did work, believe it or not, in the Himalayas and Northern Pakistan. I was working in the tribal area along the Afgan border doing kind of crazy Indiana Jones-style geology. Remote, adventurous, I’ve got all kinds of exciting tales to tell about that stuff. I did that off and on for 15 years, and then 9/11 came along. That was the end of that. But I was already very interested in wine and had been reading books on wine and terroir. And people were starting to come to me and say, “Hey, Kevin! Will you check out this soil pit? What do you think about this site?” And I thought, wow, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done here. I would wonder why are they planting that vineyard there? They should be planting it over there. That’s a silly place to plant a vineyard.

I then started boning up on everything I could read and learn about. I already knew the geology of the area as well as anybody. So I just decided that was what I was going to do. I have a family, and have this big terroir laboratory in my backyard. I don’t have to run off to some crazy foreign country and get shot!

The other gratifying thing about it was that I could go to a meeting of viticulturists and have 350 people there very excited about what I have to say. I can go to a geology conference and have only about 10 people really know what I was talking about, even at a geology conference because it is so narrowly focussed on something that only a few people care passionately about; you know, the structural geology of the Himalayan foothills of Northern Pakistan. There are 10 people in the world really passionate about that. But there are millions passionate about where their grapes are coming from. So, it’s been very gratifying to have a lot of people very interested in your research. And it’s fun!

Are you familiar with the work of Professor Gregory Jones?

KP We are very good friends. We’ve been talking about collaborating on a big project in Idaho. I was in a phone conference with him few weeks ago. We are collaborating on a project on viticultural regions over there. He’s going to be at the same conference in Italy I’ll be attending. In fact, the Italian chairing the conference was hanging out with Greg for a couple a months this winter. He was over here visiting. I tried to get him up here but he couldn’t make it.
I’ve had Greg here at Whitman to give talks. We have a lot in common. He’s sat in my living room and we’ve thrown back a few bottles of wine! (laughs) I consider him a good friend. He’s a great guy. He invited me to give a talk in a session at the Association of American Geographers conference down in Las Vegas. And then I invited him to give a talk at Geological Society of America conference in Portland this year. We’re each contributing to each other’s sessions.

Have you talked with a sufficient number of Washington winegrowers to have some broad observations about signs of climate change in wine growing regions there?

KP You know, I can’t say that the folks that I’ve talked to have said ‘Oh yeah, we’ve noticed this or that is happening’. When I talk to them I hear things like that on average they get a big killing freeze every 8 years or so. So, bring it on! (laughs) If it [climate change] makes us have a killing freeze every 10 or 15 years then all the better.

And as Professor Jones points out, it very often happens that subtle and small adaptations by the winegrower are made over time. The changes are not huge shifts. You may change your watering a little bit. You may have a slight adjustment in your canopy, that sort of thing. Adaptations over time.

KP Exactly. I’ve done some research in connection with a number of papers I’ve written and was astounded to see that in the 1860s and 1870s that Walla Walla was producing 10s of 1000s of gallons of wine that were being exported out of the Valley, mostly by Italian immigrants. And that there was a massive freeze in 1883 or so. There are these great newspaper articles talking about the quality of the wine, how it was as good as Californian. I thought, wow, this is amazing, all of this happening back then! But there was this huge freeze. And since the settlements hadn’t been there that long they just said, ‘Well, this must happen pretty often… so, forget about grapes’. It never really recovered until the 1960s or so.

Is that so? I was unaware of that.

KP Yes. There was massive production of wine in the Walla Walla Valley until the late 1800s, before it was nixed by, I think it may have been, back to back freezes. Something led them to believe that it wasn’t a good place. It was starting to come back when Prohibition hit. And then it was gone. Then in the ’60s a few people started to grow again. Indications are that the climate is a bit milder now than it was in the 1800s, early 1900s. The The Wine Project, Washington State’s Winemaking History, by Ronald Irvine and Walter Clore details the history. There are some amazing quotes taken from period newspapers about how much wine production there was very early on in Washington’s history.

So how were you contacted by the Wine Blogger Conference? How did they discover you?

KP I think they discovered me through the Walla Walla Wine Alliance because I do all the terroir stuff for the them. I’m constantly giving talks and such. I just do that as a public service for them. When I was contacted I immediately said yes. There is this fascinating story about why this is a great place to grow grapes. We’ve got to get that out there.

But then I found out that if you want to reserve time to speak to the bloggers you’ve got to cough up a bunch of money. (laughs) They [the Wine Alliance] weren’t sure they could afford to have me speak to the bloggers. They’ve manager to work me in as a breakfast speaker. That way everybody is just eating breakfast anyway, so it’s not ‘reserving’ precious blocks of the bloggers’ time.

What? Well, that’s kind of annoying! (laughs)

KP Yeah. Ken, I have to run to pick up my daughter from elementary school.

Mine is walking home! I suddenly realized this morning that, to my horror, I had scheduled our conversation just when her school let out.

KP We’re in the same boat, man. Talk to later.

Admin

Dr. Kevin Pogue On Terroir, Education, and Markets pt.1

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 11 May 2010 05:33:03 +0000

The 3rd annual North American Wine Bloggers Conference is coming fast upon us. From June 25th to the 27th we will participate in a great community exercise in Walla Walla, Washington. Though the assembled bloggers give of their own divers and considerable talents, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is one substantial area of knowledge that is chronically under-represented: a working knowledge of viticulture and oenology. Now, while the rapid technological iterations of social media may be the most important topic bloggers hope to grasp, it is not enough. Indeed, social media is an empty form in search of meaningful content. Marketing is the current obsession, a force easily grasped by a 4 year-old demanding a toy gone viral. But, again, it is not enough. In this world of climate change, water scarcity, the decline of biodiversity, and the greening of our economy, it is more important than ever for bloggers to understand the basic science informing wine production.

So it is that I turn to geologist Dr. Kevin Pogue. I believe that his forthcoming presentation at the Conference to be of pivotal importance to our success at a durable understanding the Walla Walla region, and beyond.

Dr. Kevin R. Pogue is chair of the Department of Geology at Whitman College where he teaches classes on the geological history of the western United States, weather and climate, and terroir. Dr. Pogue has conducted research and led field trips in the Pacific Northwest for more than 25 years. His research interests have included the deposits of the Ice Age Missoula floods that form the basis for the soils of many of eastern Washington’s premier vineyards.

Recently, Dr. Pogue’s research has focused exclusively on terroir, concentrating on the relationship between topography and vineyard temperature variations and the influence of basalt, eastern Washington’s ubiquitous bedrock, on vineyard climate and soil chemistry. Dr. Pogue has presented papers at national and international terroir conferences and recently authored a field trip guide that describes the geological influences on the terroir of the Columbia Basin. He regularly contributes lectures on terroir to the Enology and Viticulture programs at Washington State University and Walla Walla Community College. Dr. Pogue has been a featured speaker at conferences of the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers and at “Taste Washington”, a celebration of Washington wines hosted by the Washington State Wine Commission. His essay on the relationship of the Missoula floods to Columbia Basin viticulture appears in the book “Washington: The State of Wine”. Dr. Pogue also provides vineyard site evaluations, terroir related web content, and promotional and educational materials through his company, Vinterra Consulting.

Admin Hello, Professor Pogue. Greetings from sunny California.

Kevin Pogue Hi. It’s good to meet you, kind of…

What’s the weather like up there? [May 5th]

KP We are having unusually cool weather. And I’m thinking that viticulturalists are starting to get a little worried about delays of bloom and things like that. It’s been cool and rainy, with snow in the mountains; it’s flirting with freezing down on the bottom of the Walla Walla Valley. It’s pretty strange weather we’re having.

What is the uppermost elevation for grape growing in Washington, by the way?

KP The limit of the viticultural area in the Walla Walla AVA is 2000 feet. But you could probably grow cool climate varieties above that, like Riesling or Gewurztraminer. I’m thinking that maybe you could grow up to 3000 feet, but most of the vineyards are in the 1000 to 1600 foot range in the valleys.

And this is true throughout Washington?

KP Some of the vineyards get a little bit lower than that, but that’s probably pretty much the case throughout Washington. Most vineyards lie between 700 and 1500 feet elevation. There are a couple that are 1600 to 1800 feet. I gave a talk to the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers [WAWGG], there were about 350 people there, and I told them that they ought to be growing Riesling at 2500 feet if they wanted to grow Riesling like that of the Mosel. Now they are planting it down low where it gets really hot in the summer. Yeah, I think we could grow several varieties that would do really well up as high as 2000 to 3000 feet.

When you speak before associations like that of the Washington Wine Grape Growers, are they generally that well-attended? Are the winegrowers well organized in Washington?

KP They are. The Washington Wine Grape Growers is the largest conference of its type in the Northwest. The WAGG conference, they have it every year in February in the Tri-Cities. They have clinics and seminars, poster sessions, and then there’s a big industry presentation of all latest gadgets and machines, local suppliers attend. It’s the small scale regional version of the big Californian Unified Symposium. It is our little local version of that.

I was asked this year to give a talk about Riesling and Gewurztraminer terroirs in Washington. and there were about 350 people for the talk. That was a huge turnout.

All very serious winemakers and growers, I’m sure.

KP I’d say they were mostly viticultural people than winemakers.

I have a friend living in the Seattle area. She can’t purchase wine from a number of states, New Jersey being among them. What are some of the marketing obstacles Washington winemakers face when selling out of state?

KP Well, I think it has a lot to do just with recognition. When I travel to the East Coast and I go to, not the top flight places, but what many people would call a nice restaurant and look at the wine lists, there are European wines and the domestic stuff is from California. I think the typical East Coast wine consumer thinks that all good American wine comes from California. There is a lot of education that needs to be done. When they go to the grocery and liquor stores I think they are buying wines from Chateau Ste. Michelle and Columbia Crest. They are selling really well because they are an amazing value, but I think that when you get to the upper tier wines, Napa has such amazing name recognition that it is a real uphill battle to fight that. It is always frustrating for me. And when I’m sitting in a bar at a nice restaurant looking at the wine list, I always take them to task. ‘Why don’t you have any good Pinots from Oregon? Or some good Syrahs and Cabs from Washington state?’ They ask, ‘Do they grow wine there?’

No! Really? That is astonishing to me. I rarely have a conversation with anyone, whether civilian or in the wine business, who are not cognizant of the Pacific Northwest as a quality region.

KP Well, you’re running in good circles. I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, where the University of Kentucky is…

It’s a dry state?

KP It’s not a dry. I mean, Lexington is a wet as it can be. They have warehouse-size stores in Lexington because many, many of the counties are dry. Everybody floods in. The places that are wet are soaking wet. So they have to supply all the all the outlying counties that are dry as well as their own county.
Anyway, there are Washington wines available in some of those bigger stores, and the people who work there are aware of the wines coming out of Washington, but the California stuff just dominates. And, of course, it’s production; there is a lot more production in California. But I think Washington needs to do even a better job than they are doing getting the word out. I think they need to go out and hold more tastings, more events, just get the word out and educate. Sommeliers know it, restauranteurs know it, but people aren’t going to buy them from the list unless they realize the quality of Walla Walla Syrahs. They need to learn how great the Syrahs, for example, can be. The average person knows that Napa makes great Cabernets, but the average person does not know Walla Walla makes great Syrah.

We have a similar problem here in California, in miniature. Other wine regions are ghettoized; Santa Cruz Mountains, Mendocino County, Sonoma to some degree. Napa dominates here as well. They’ve done an extraordinary job. The strange quality ranking goes on even here.

KP Sure. A lot of it is just time. Napa has been doing it for longer. They just have this history. Also it’s that a lot of our producers are small producers, they don’t have huge productions. And they are enough people out there who do realize there are fantastic wines here. My next door neighbor is a winemaker, he’s making great wine. I said something to him about needing a sign. He’s got a new tasting room. It’s in kind of an obscure place, I said he’d might want to put up a sign. He said, ‘Why do I need to do that? I sold out my entire production last year. And back then I didn’t have a tasting room.’ As long as they’re small producers, they are not trying to get on every wine list across the country. They are selling their stuff and are pretty happy.

Of course, you’ll be giving an important talk at this year’s Wine Bloggers Conference.

KP Yes. After you sent the emails I went on the Conference site and saw that they had me giving a talk on the geology of the Walla Walla Valley. Just before you called I talked with someone from the Wine Alliance and told them I wanted to change the title to The Terroirs, plural, of the Walla Walla Valley because I want to get people to a breakfast talk after they have probably been up at night drinking! The geology of the Walla Walla Valley isn’t the most inspiring thing in the world to wine writers, but maybe terroirs would be.

About the fellow who was reluctant to hang the sign for his tasting room. That is in a way an entrée into the issue of social media that you’ll be hearing so much about at the Conference that you’re going to want to pull your hair out! Of course, social media is a large part of the Conference’s appeal. What percentage of Washington’s winegrowers, recognizing that many are small, could benefit from social media applications?

KP I think they would all benefit from it. There is no doubt about it at all. I read at least two wine blogs everyday, and sometimes three or four. I read Paul Gregutt’s everyday, I read Sean Sullivan’s everyday. I’ve been going back and reading yours, now that I know about it. I’ve been reading a bunch of your past blogs and enjoying them. They appeal to an academic like me. I teach a terroir class at Whitman. And I’ve pulled a lot of stuff out of the Wine Science text book, so I’ve been reading you interview with Ron Jackson. It’s fascinating. And I read Alice Feiring’s blog from time to time. I brought her to Whitman this year to give a couple of lectures. There was a really interesting reception to that! I read Randall Grahm’s stuff, when he writes it. I brought him here the year before to give some lectures.

Anyway, I think it’s great. I’m going to be doing a series of tours this summer, working with a local winery. I asked her how she was going to get the word out and she said she had an email list of of a gazillion people that she keeps updated on the goings on of the winery. All she has to do is punch a button and an announcement of the terroir tours will go out to all these people. That’s fantastic! Obviously, if you maintain a big email list of people that are interested in your winery and what’s going on with it, then you can just blanket them with new stuff, new releases, events. It’s a very powerful marketing tool. She seemed to have no doubt that if I agreed to do tours for them, in conjunction with some other events, that they’d sell out immediately. We’ll see.

People who drink wine tend to be more educated folks. And I find that whenever I do tours around the Valley (and I kind of wanted to do one for the Bloggers Conference, but it didn’t work out), that they are just packed. People love it. They want some sort of intellectual stimulation. Why is this vineyard different from that vineyard? What is the history of this area? What is the climate of this region? Why does it have that climate? Why are these rocks here? What’s the soil chemistry? How is it different from that sol chemistry? How might that be reflected in the wine? Why are people trellising their grapes like this in this vineyard and doing it differently in that vineyard? Etcetera, etcetera. People really thrive on that stuff. It’s been a lot of fun for me.

You know, it’s funny. I hear this time and time again. Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought in the wine blogging community. One that insists on talking about only the taste descriptors, basic and straight forward, never straying too far from the marketing aspects of wine narrowly defined. The other approach (I’m squarely in this camp) recognizes that there is an enormous thirst for knowledge out there. Having worked in a winery for a number of years, I know that once folks are no longer afraid or intimidated from asking questions that they just go nuts with curiosity. Winegrowing is farming, after all. They want answers to basic questions about the agricultural world. People love that.

KP Yes, and they can’t get enough of it. I’ve done a couple of tours over in Europe. I led one big tour through the southern Rhone area, and I was astounded. I walked into Chapoutier’s tasting room in Hermitage and the whole floor was plexiglass. And underneath the plexiglass were labeled boxes containing rocks and soils from all the Chapoutier vineyards. So as you walked across the floor you could look down and see how the rocks and soils differed. And when you were tasting the wine, they would pour a vineyard designate Syrah from Hermitage, and if you wanted to know what how it was different they would point to someplace on the floor. ‘Go look at that.’ For each wine they would point to a different box.

There were geologic and soil maps all over the walls of the tasting rooms over there. The marketing organizations over there put out geologic cross sections and soil maps because people are really into it over there. They really market their terroir. And they have this philosophy that it is all about the site; and if you have a great site you then know the wine makes itself.

And the reason you want to buy a Walla Walla wine is because it comes from this fabulous site in Walla Walla, not because a superstar winemaker decided to settle here. It’s not about the personality of the winemaker. It is about the personality of the land.

End of Part 1

Admin

Dr. Ron Jackson Wine Science, Perception, pt.3

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 07 May 2010 05:06:40 +0000

I am more than a little sad this is the final part of my interview with Dr. Ron S. Jackson. During the hour and a half we spoke, I found him a very generous, open individual. And I insisted that I reserved the right to write him with technical questions that will most certainly arise on a blog such as mine. Dr. Jackson readily agreed. His door is open. What greater reward for my effort is there than this?

Part 1, Principles
Part 2, Practice

Admin Perhaps you could provide us with your general take on the differences between ’sustainable’, ‘organic’, and ‘biodynamic’ viticulture with respect to the health of the soil.

Ron Jackson O.k. About biodynamic I cannot and do not want to say anything. Organic, I can talk to that more acceptably. Certainly if a winegrower is going to use organic fertilizers, then the soil will have and maintain more compost. Depending on how you treat the soil, your soil will be microbially more complex; and complexity in microbial ecosystems normally means stability. Now, does that mean the vine is going to be better nourished? That is another question. And I’m not so sure. All I can with certainty say is that the stability of the soil will be improved. The availability of nutrients to the vine, that is a much more moot point because if you have drip irrigation, for example, and you’re a savvy viticulturalist who applies nutrients at the appropriate time and in the appropriate amounts, then your vine will be super well nourished. But your soil could be as poor as pure sand. The vine would still grow very well, fully nourished; you can limit the amount of water so that you can control the growth of the vine. In some sense, with drip irrigation used sensibly under certain conditions, you can simply tell the vine what to do and when. You can dictate to the vine how and when to grow. You have much more control than under organic conditions in which case you’re basically allowing things to develop as quote nature unquote permits under the conditions of that year.

Now, if you want to have control then obviously the modern way is better because you’ll have more consistency from year to year. If you want to produce excellent wine at minimal cost, that is the way to go. I would say that it is impossible to have consistency and high quality with organic viticulture at low cost. So it depends who you’re selling to. If people want the organic, they believe in that, and are willing to pay more; they like the aspect that they may like the wine this year but may not the next year, and they buy into that whole cultural element, then that’s fine. I’ve nothing against that. People can chose what they want. They’re the ones doing the buying.

From my perspective (I look at it more from the industrial side of things), I tend to like wine more consistent in character. I know this year it’s great and that next year it will be almost the same, and equally great. I know people who really hate that philosophy. That’s fine. There is no reason there should be only one option.

It is also true to say that in organic winegrowing there is the codification, the formal legal elements of what we call ‘organic’, and then there are people who have been doing organic irrespective of the codification; I’m thinking of Rodale from 60 years ago for example. I’ve often met organic gardeners who do what they do indifferent to the official definition. Of course, they may not use the word ‘organic’ on their label, for to do so would not only commit them to a specific set of rules, but also open them up to criticism that they share the whole of the practices allowed under those rules.

In any event, I’d like to hear a bit about climate change in your part of North America. I’ve talked to Dr. Richard Smart about his expansive homoclime database, and Professor Greg Jones recently about this. Now, about the perils but also, as has been observed, the advantages for winegrowing climate change might bring. Do you have a position?

RJ All I can really say is that I’m a believer! (laughs) I would have to be nuts to say that I didn’t. The evidence is too strong, and is essentially all in one direction. When you see CO2 levels essentially going off the scale you say ‘Holy Smoke’! Something is going on here. There is no doubt about it. Now, what are going to be the consequences of this? I’m scared. Literally, I’m scared. Partially because what’s going to happen to sea levels and climate, but those are not what scare me so much. What really influences me in my nighttime fears would be political consequences. That’s where is really gets serious. If you look in past histories with significant climate change, that means big political problems.

Population disloctions…

RJ Oh! That usually comes with extremes of political philosophies. They [dislocations] are often associated with wars. And famines… it’s not nice.

As Richard Smart said ‘Growing wine will be the least of our worries”.

RJ That’s right. If there is any wine to drink. Maybe we won’t even be able to get our hands on it. That is really small fish.

Yours is a refreshing perspective. I get pretty tired of hearing about how Napa’s fortunes might be affected while the world burns.

RJ (laughs) Yeah. Don’t bother me with that! That is not important.

Another question with respect to climate change: about the higher alcohol levels, longer hang time, the race for phenolic ripeness in hotter climates. Just what is the role of climate change in what is often called, correctly I think, the Parker Palate. Is he driving winemakers to produce a certain style or is Parker merely tasting the fruit winemakers now have to work with in a warmer world?

RJ Well, I suppose he [Parker] is an influence on the consumer. The producer will look at that. But it is also driven by scientific research where they are looking at greater phenolics, greater color… color influences perception, just modify the color and people will change their perception of the wine. The wine can be exactly the same, just a slightly darker color, they can change the perception. Certainly a more fruity character is more pleasant. I like that. But you can get fruity flavors but not necessarily get the high alcohol contents. There is no absolute conjunction between the two.

But we still need somewhat better techniques to determine when to harvest based on flavor and not so much on straight phenolics. We still are not sufficiently advanced to be able to determine this. People certainly have been for the past 20 to 30 years trying to figure out what is the most important aspect of significant humanly detectable flavor in wine. We’re still not there. And until we can define what it is that really are the significant components, we will still fall back on old techniques: intensity of color, phenolic content, sugar content, acid content, all these standard things. They work really well! There is no doubt about it. There really is a good correlation between all these factors and flavor. But if we knew even more what the actual critical compounds were, we could follow them.

And depending on the climate that you’re in, the flavor development, the sugar content, and the drop in acid level do not always coincide. So, cool climates tend to have a different sequence than those in the warm climate with exactly the same grape variety. What apples in Napa, California wouldn’t work necessarily in Washington. So, if we knew what the compounds were that really influence people’s perception, or a critic’s perception (laughs), the winemaker could then select when to harvest and not get high alcohol contents that are somewhat disappointing. And I find them disappointing, too. I find that wines that are getting 14%, 15% alcohol, where I grew up with 11% and 12%, I find that their balance is different. I don’t really like them. That may be simply because of habituation. I see so much of the influence of habituation. Maybe the new wine drinkers will come to think that the higher alcohol content in their table wine is natural. And if you give them something more at 12% they’ll think the wine is not balanced (laughs).

Yeah, I wanna get my money’s worth!

RJ So, habituation is a big factor. I see that especially with wine and food. Habituation is probably the major driver.

Also it is the American diet, perhaps, that plays a role. Coca Cola, cheeseburgers… they have a certain mouthful, a satisfying heft, a sweetness. Is this not also habituation? And wouldn’t it be foolish to think that wine would be any different. Especially when you hear the ‘trust your own palate’ mantra shouted by wine gurus. And the people who have been habituated now think that if it tastes like Coke, “hey, I like Coke, therefore….”

RJ That’s right! (laughs)

So how do you persuade people to explore and to question their palates, their routinized expectations?

RJ I wish somehow that I could shake people up and say ‘Try different things.’ Just take a wine, don’t look at the label at all. Pour it out, get away, just sit down and think about what you’re perceiving. Just think! Don’t drink. Think! Swirl. Smell. Analyze what it is you’re detecting. I am not expecting people to say that it has just a hint of truffle and all of this silly talk. (Well, ok, for some people it isn’t silly. But for many people I think it is silly.) Then ask yourself if there is complexity there. Do I really like this? Is this something that I, as a human being, appreciate by itself. Is the taste something that I do in fact appreciate? If not, fine. If yes, good. Then go and look at the bottle. Was it inexpensive or more? Certainly, if I could get people to do comparative tastings, blind comparative tastings, then I’d be happy. Even better, though certainly more complex because they are not readily available, would be to use black wine glasses, so you cannot be influenced by color. The only thing that can influence is taste and smell. If you don’t know where it came from, it’s just you and the wine! That’s it. You’re having a kind of conversation, you and the wine. You don’t have anybody’s comment. No other information. That’s it. That’s where you start to get truth.

And if you do this repeatedly, then you start to find what is really your own preference, whatever it is. It can change. It may not change. I’m not insisting that people change. I would like people to try to find what really is their opinion. Later on you can read what this critic says about this wine, if you can find such a review. Do they have a perception similar to mine? If so then you can begin to trust them when they suggest things.

The local merchant as well…

RJ That’s right. And if you like Tempranillo, then they might suggest this, and this, and this. Try some, again, blind. See how you respond. You could include your favorite wine and compare two. Can you distinguish between the two? It is just the fact that you are thinking about the wine is the best means that anyone can use to find out what their real tastes are. And to find out what quality wine can have. It really can be stupendous! My best personal experiences are wines with that I had no idea what the wines were. Or I made a mistake! (laughs) I took out the wrong wine. What have I poured here? This is ambrosia from heaven! What did I just open? It can be such a shock. Wow! Wine can be stupendous. It doesn’t have to be just nice and pleasant.

When I drink I never think in terms of pleasure. I think in terms of difference. For me it is the differences I find in wines that motivates me. At the store I grab varieties I’ve never heard of just for the experience of drinking an entirely new world. Then I’m interested in reading about the grape, where it’s grown… I become engaged in a larger dialogue.

RJ Initially it is a sensory difference, and then you augment your interest in that with all this other material, rather than going from the material to the wine. I find that having the sensory difference to start the whole thing rolling is the inspiring way.

Could you tell me of your latest research?

RJ Oh, well, since I’m retired…

You’re retired? You sound all of 35!

RJ (laughs) Oh, well if you double that then you’re pretty close! I wish I were back at 35 with all I know now. Boy, now that would be inspiring.

Yeah, I know. Experience always comes too late! So you’re not doing research?

RJ Other than writing books, editing other books, writing chapters of books.

Obviously you’re retired…

RJ It is a funny type of retirement. A wholly active retirement.

The life of the mind knows no rest.

RJ Oh, boy, I don’t want to let it have any rest. I refuse to allow it to have rest. I push it to the maximum. As you get older you need to push it to the limit. No bars held. So research is basically writing now.

And a cellar? Do you have a cellar?

RJ Oh, yes. Though it is getting depleted because, regrettably, my wife passed away three months ago.

I am very sorry to hear that.

RJ So the house is now way too big. My mother lived here, then she passed away. My wife. The house is way too big for me. It’s actually up for sale. And I had this huge wine cellar full of wine that I thought I’d be drinking for the next 20 years! I haven’t been buying. When Susan became ill, I stopped buying and began to drink. So it’s going down, but I certainly have a cellar still.

And the wines? What country is mostly present?

RJ Australia is the primary occupant of the cellar. I like a lot of Spain. Italian. Portuguese. The Portuguese I like because the grape varieties are really distinctive. Italy has a huge selection of grape varieties. I’m always intrigued with those. I like German wines. The Spanish ones, I really have a particular fondness for Rioja. It was the Marqués de Murrieta Ygay blanco that was the first white wine that sent me into heaven. That old-style white Rioja, I just couldn’t get over how stunning that was. Regrettably, you can’t get it in most Provinces of Canada anymore. Why, I don’t know. Maybe not a lot is being produced and most is being consumed in Spain! But it’s not coming to Canada, anyway.

It’s many of these older styles. Amarone, the very ancient style. I loved it. And my love became even greater when I realized some of the best Amarone is Botrytis-infected. Of course, this is my fungus! Now I am even more interested. Most of the literature is in Italian, and my Italian is not great. But I will fight through Italian to understand what they are saying about that particular wine!

I like carbonic maceration. I think it is a neat technique. Sure, it’s not considered hi-tech… well, it is hi-tech in one sense. But most connoisseur’s kind of frown on it. But it is a fun wine. Why do I have to be serious all the time? Diversity is much of the spice of life. I like that.

Well, sir, it has been a distinct pleasure. Oh, one last question. Did you read the patent text from Virgilio and his group?

RJ Yes. The patent sounds quite interesting. I was quite inspired to read it. I don’t know if this is going to be the BT of fungicides. All of these things will be great for a while, but like all fungicides, if you depend on only one, you’re designed to fail. You can’t use one. You’ve got a host of microbes out there, billions of them, and they are mutating. They are going to find a solution sooner or later. If they don’t they will simply disappear off the face of the Earth.

They’ve got the numbers against you. In plant pathology the current view is to never use the same fungicide more than once. Rotate. Use only if necessary, and in the right amount. Minimize the application beyond need so that you preserve these things for generations, not just for three or four years. That’s a horrible waste.

But his seems most interesting. From an academic point of view, it will be interesting to find out what exactly it is doing to the fungi. How is it killing them? The fungi will be able to produce proteases to break it down too.

But it is something different. And we need new weapons in the arsenal, that is for sure.

Thank you for your generosity, Ron.

RJ It’s been fun, Ken.

Admin

Dr. Ron S. Jackson, Wine Science, Practice pt.2

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 04 May 2010 02:01:53 +0000

In this second part of three, Dr. Ron S. Jackson gets down to business. Here he discusses subjects both great and small, but all with an endearing charm and wit. He possesses that great teaching skill of measuring the demands of the question for all audiences. Equally at home discussing amines, esters, nematodes, yeast and the life cycle of phylloxera, he can easily shift to marketing strategies and his favorite beer. He is an academic at home in the world. Without further ado…

Part 1 may be read here.

Admin What lives on the surface of a wine grape? I mean the microbiota, especially with respect to wild yeast populations. Just how complex is that micro-universe?

Ron Jackson It is clearly very complex. Most of the organisms that are growing there have a limited effect on the characteristics of the wine. In most instances, if it’s going to have a marked influence, it’s going to be negative. It will not be positive. At least that is how most microbiologists view it. Now, there are some other people who have a different point of view. It’s like Brettanomyces, the yeast. Certain winemakers love it. And my suspicion as to why this is so is that their nose is not particularly sensitive to the off odors. Now, there is a lot of variation between people. If you’re a winemaker with an olfactory capacity that does not detect it, or you become adapted to it, then you don’t really think your wine smells of barnyard manure. To this microbiologist it mostly smells real bad. But some winemakers think it is wonderful. What is one to say?

If the consumer doesn’t reject this odor and the winemaker can sell their wine, then they say that makes their wine distinctive. Well, so be it. Most microbiologists just find it abominable. Certain of these wild yeasts, if they start to grow in the ferment at the beginning, they can produce some pretty unpleasant odors. Now, again, does this add complexity? If the concentrations are low enough, yes, it can add an element of complexity to the wine that it wouldn’t have otherwise. If it gets much higher, if you are sensitive to it, then it simply makes the wine almost undrinkable.

Most of these organisms require oxygen. And, of course, as soon as you crush the grapes and you start getting the fermentation going then the oxygen level goes down to almost undetectable levels. These organisms then cannot grow. Or don’t grow for very long. Then the Saccharomyces cerevisiae starts to grow, produce alcohol, which is toxic to most of these yeasts, so they simply stop growing, under most circumstances. Not all! There is no absolute here.

We’ve talked about Portuguese winemaking approaches before. Whether on the Açores or elsewhere on the mainland, wild or native yeasts populations are almost exclusively used. Would you explain the differences between wild yeasts and S. cerevisiae?

RJ Saccharomyces cerevisiae is there. It definitely is already there. It probably is there as the predominant yeast in the winery. In most places the grapes may come in with very few cells of S. cerevisiae on them. But the winery equipment is covered with S. cerevisiae! Now, when we say “wild” strains, those are kinds of indigenous strains with slight modifications, but there are still the same species. They have slightly different characteristics. Some produce a little bit more ethyl acetate, some produce a little bit more glycerol, things like that; so there are slight differences. If you really select strains then you can markedly affect the character of the wine by the kind of yeast you use to inoculate. This is equally true of the wild versions of S. cerevisiae that actually are occurring in the winery, on the winery equipment, in the fermentation tanks and so on.

I’m asking because I have friends who champion wild yeast fermentations. And I recently came across an article out of Australia about a biodynamic grower who was looking for a legal remedy to stop a brewery from opening nearby because she is afraid that her vineyard would become colonized by a yeast variety that is contrary to her principles. What would be your response and advice to the grower?

RJ Oh, boy! We are really becoming paranoid, I’m afraid! (laughs) Well, I’m sure that person would not consider anything I said to be of any value whatsoever. I’m in the wrong camp. I’m in the enemy camp. So obviously I would be telling her lies! There would be no reason for me to mention anything. But the evidence at the moment is that if you take to pomace from a fermentation, take it out and use it as fertilizer in the field, most of the residual yeasts will die very quickly and you may not be able to detect it in a year’s time. It’s what survives in the winery that’s important. Not what you put out on the vineyard. Sure, it my splash up on to your vine, but S. cerevisiae does not grow well at all outside. It is a really unique organism, specialized to fermentations, and does not grow well on grapes. It does not grow at all well on grapes.

Most breweries are not going to have many yeast cells getting out into the air. At least most breweries that I know of certainly don’t have much floating outside.

So what accounts for the massive die-off of yeast?

RJ The yeast has a comparatively short lifespan. Certainly the ultraviolet radiation from the sun will damage it. Drying will kill individual cells, especially if they are by themselves. Now, if you get a big clump of them, ok, they’re protected inside.

Like something you’d buy from Lallemand.

RJ Sure. You’ve got millions inside, coated; they dried down slowly. They can survive. But once they go onto soil and you get moisture then they will break down. There are microbes in the soil, they will eat the yeast. It’s a food source. So the yeast will be consumed and die fairly quickly. It simply has no place to grow. It will die off. It’s like taking a bunch of seed and tossing them onto dry soil. Leave them there for a year or so and all the seeds are dead. If the yeast does not have a favorable environment to grow then it will die off.

The origin of Saccharomyces cerevisiae seems to be on the exudate of Oak trees. There are a few other related species, but the exudate sap of Oak seems to one of the few places where you can find the progenitor of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Also included would be acorns. It’s probably from that that the yeast got into fermenting barley and fermenting grapes.

With respect to the effect of smoke taint on grapes in the field, I’ve read some preliminary research that Pine and Eucalyptus trees and other very aromatic plants, like sage, when grown near vineyards that there may be some aromatic component that somehow infuses the grapes, and therefore helps to distinguish the unique character of one vineyard’s wines from another. What is your opinion of that line of thinking?

RJ I think it is a distinct possibility. My question is how many people are able to tell? I would say only a few in 20,000. First we have the problem of establishing that there is a difference, then of recognizing the difference, which is even more complex. Most people won’t be able to do this. So, in essence, it is a tempest in a teapot simply because the vast majority of people would never be able to tell. It is amazing how imprecise human beings are in this realm of distinguishing subtle differences. If you have two shades of color right next to one another, put them together, of course, people can tell that difference. But if you then take them away and bring one back and ask which was the lighter or darker, you’ll find that people cannot make that distinction.

It is the same with two wines. I’ve done it with 5 or 6 wines. It’s one of the most complicated tests for trainees to have any success at. You give them 5 or 6 wines, quite distinct (you don’t want to make it impossible), usually reds. Ask them to write down their comments, how that they may distinguish each wine next time they see it. So then those 6 wines go away. Now 8 wines appear. Tell me which wine is which? And which wines were not originally there? Finally, are any of the wines you tried before present here twice? (laughs) That separates the men from the boys pretty fast! People are just stunned at how poor they are at answering accurately. They then see how much work is ahead for them!

This must be why some wine critics are so leery of double blind wine tastings! Your format would be quite challenging.

RJ It is very, very challenging, and certainly very humbling.

You yourself have written a book on wine tasting and appreciation. How do you approach the subject?

RJ The book is for universities. It’s for courses in wine sensory evaluation. That’s primarily what it’s designed for. Or for industry people who want to set up tastings. For critical tastings the first thing people have to figure out and decide is what do they want to learn from a tasting. Are they looking at it from a strictly quality point of view where is used the standard terms of quality? Or at you looking at from a varietal expression? Regional expression? Stylistic? How well the wines might go with a particular food? So each one of these ways of looking at it will influence how you assess the wine.

Now, from a scientific point of view, if you want to know are wines from region ‘A’ distinguishable, on average, from those from region ‘B’ and ‘C’, then in that case you have descriptors and a ranking, say from 0 to 6, or 1 to 100, and so you have your tasters rank the wines on a set of aroma descriptors. You ask about how much pineapple do you detect, for example, in a given wine. Is it 10 out of 100? Ninety out of 100? Then you take everybody’s results, measure them, do statistical analysis to see if anybody can distinguish any difference in pineapple character in of the wine. Then you can study for consistent patterns. By extension, could you then distinguish wines from regions ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’?

Whether wines were from a cool or warm climate…

RJ That’s right. Or even the different regions of Napa. Northern Napa, central Napa, southern Napa, are there really consistent patterns? Perhaps consistent for the year, but sadly most tastings of this kind are not done over multiple years so as to see whether these patterns tend to remain. Or is it just that climactic change marks where these shifts, these differences appear.

Also relevant would be changes in winemaking style, longer hang time, new oak, various masking elements…

RJ That’s right. Which type of oak, toasting level; was it natural seasoning or was it fired… multiple things that make it terribly complicated and correspondingly very interesting.

What’s always bothered me with a lot of the wine tastings is that one never knows whether a winery uses liquid oak extract, mega purple for mouthfeel and color density, there are all kinds of additives and technological tricks currently available. Or at least they don’t talk about it. Is it possible through sufficient training to distinguish what is a ‘natural’ wine product, in quotes, one with minimal winery intervention, from one which has been so treated?

RJ I would say, humanly, no. Chemically, yes. But humanly, no. I have seen absolutely nothing that would give me any confidence that people, unless there is some hound dog out there, can do it. Certainly the majority of people can’t. It’s just one of those things: that the perception of reality and reality are often markedly different. Most people don’t realize the difference between those two. Often they are afraid to believe themselves and will follow what anybody says, just like sheep.

And the winery that might use such adulterants protects the secret. For the information to get out would significantly alter the perception, shall we say.

RJ You can pretty well tell who is doing what just by looking at the price they charge. (laughs) You simply can’t have a wine produced for about $8 a bottle that has been in French oak! Pricing is an instructive element. Of course, if you charge $50 a bottle that does not necessarily mean you used high priced oak. You could have used oak extract, too, and laughed all the way to the bank that you fooled everybody. You’d at least better have a few oak barrels there for the people who walk into your winery! (laughs)

You could rent them from Hollywood.

RJ That’s right! (laughs)

End of part 2

Admin

Wine As Liquid Music, Chaos Theory And Culture

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:30:33 +0000

The question is surprisingly simple: what is the relationship between wine and music? More accurately, what happens to the experience of tasting a specific wine, of its flavors, mouthfeel and aromas, when the sense of hearing, normally a negligible participant, is fully activated? How does a wine change when listening is given direction, a starring role? This was the question put to us at Monday’s gathering at the magnificent Hess Collection Winery. The group, assembled by Jo and Jose Diaz under the title Scoring the Scores, included Steve Heimoff, Clark Smith, Dan Berger, Laura Ness, and yours truly. All the wines, 19 in total, were Petite Sirahs. The music? All the tunes are found on Alacia Van’s superb CD Beautiful Thought. We’ll get to the music in a moment.

Now, it would be easy to dismiss this playful experiment as much ado about nothing. Music is music, wine is wine. But we, on the other hand, experience miraculous, unexpected intersections of physics and pleasure, art and science everyday. So routine are these encounters that the brilliance of the natural world, the complexity of a simple experiences, often go unnoticed. Take the run of a small stream, its flow over rocks, its eddies. A stream taken as an open system, the mathematical modeling of its movement is bewildering complex. But it does have a math. Or cloud formation, as it interacts with air pressure and temperature. There is math there, too. Better known is Johann Sebastian Bach’s prodigious mathematical play subtending many of his prodigious compositions. A particularly favorite example of mine occurs near the close of Gleik’s book, Chaos when he sits with mathematician Mitchell Feigenbaum on the floor of the latter’s empty apartment. As smoke rises from Dr. Feigenbaum’s cigarette, initially a laminar flow, it finally breaks into turbulence at precisely the point worked out by the Dr. Feigenbaum himself.

Our group’s question at Hess was essentially about missing information. To take one more illustrative example, that of weather prediction. Years ago a humble meteorologist by the name of Edward Lorenz was crunching numbers on a computer, a computer primitive by our standards. Approaching a deadline for a weather prediction, he was forced (for various reasons) to rerun his results. To speed things long, he clipped a few decimal numbers off of the very ends of his weather station data, things like wind speed, air pressure, temperature, all the inputs one normally associates with weather prediction. To his surprise, and ours, he came up with an entirely different forecast. Most puzzling was the fact that the decimal values clipped so as to shorten the numbers were seemingly insignificant, equalling the turbulent effect of a butterfly’s wings. This discovery led to the oft misunderstood ‘Butterfly Effect’, the idea that information missing from a calculation may have staggering real-world consequences.

Revolutionary ideas were soon to follow or to be loosely united under the mathematical science of Complexity Theory. Chaos, Poincare, Topology, Catastrophe Theory, Fractals, to name but a few, became the buzz words of an invigorated, visually informed math. And this latter concept is doubly important. Sight had been abandoned from math more than a century ago. It was all a matter of the brain. Every school child knows the pain of Algebra, the college student, of quadratic equations. The only bit of the world remaining before the student’s eyes was the dreaded text book and test paper. But through Fractals, the pioneering contribution of Benoit Mandelbrot, the natural world was reintroduced. The stunningly beautiful visual modelings of missing information has changed mathematics forever. The sense of sight was finally restored to the mathematical sciences, and aesthetics given its rightful seat at the banquet table of creation. Art became an expression of science. And a science may now find art as a source of primary information. For the natural world expresses both simultaneously.

So who was I to prejudge the Hess Collection Winery Petite Sirah tasting? Perhaps the sense of hearing might prove to be a treasured source, once stimulated, of something like wine’s missing information? First a word about our cast of characters. Clark Smith is arguably at the origin of the meditation on the wine/music intersection. An ebullient individual, overflowing with curiosity, crackling with the energy of a man half his age, Mr. Smith has researched this topic for some time. Dan Berger, Mr. Smith’s co-theoretician on this day, is himself a deep pool of knowledge. He, too, is an innovator of sorts, and bursts his banks with unanticipated gifts of insight. Noted wine writer Steve Heimoff played the part of the responsible skeptic, laboring to understand and explain the wines in ways everyone might appreciate. For Mr. Heimoff hyper-specialized wine knowledge can limit or interfere with what should proper be the simple pleasure of drinking. Laura Ness, champion of the Santa cruz Mountains AVA, she is up for anything! Open to the world, she was a fountain of play and inspiration. Jo and Jose Diaz, as organizers, were responsible for setting this comédie humaine in motion, though both clearly enjoyed moments of shared bliss as the afternoon proceeded. Myself? In such august company I felt it best not to speak unless spoken to. It is enough to say that watching these extremely diverse professionals in action was its own reward.

The wines:

2007 Artezin, Mendocino County
2005 Clayhouse Estate, Paso Robles
2007 Concannon, Conservancy, Livermore Valley
2006 EOS Estate, Paso Robles
2005 Langtry, Guenoc Valley, Serpentine Meadow
2005 Lava Cap, Granite Hill, El Dorado, Reserve
2007 Line 39, Lake County
2004 Mettler Family Vineyards, Lodi
2007 Miro Petite Sirah, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County
2005 True Grit from Parducci, Mendocino County
2006 Pedroncelli Dry Creek Valley, Family Vineyards
2007 Silkwood, Stanislaus County
2006 Twisted Oak, Calaveras County
2005 Ursa, Sierra Foothills
2006 Vina Robles, Paso Robles
2006 Hess, Allomi Vineyard, Napa Valley
2008 Diamond Ridge
2005 Quixote
(1 missing)

For the musical offerings please see Jo Diaz’s web site Juicy Tales for the list.

The method was simple. After an exhaustive introduction to the basics by Mr. Smith, we were first to taste the wines and then write a few notes. Next we were exposed to a variety of tunes, jazzy in the main. The task was to both pair a wine to a musical offering and, more importantly, to see whether our appreciation (or denigration) of a wine was substantially altered. An overarching question was whether we might find areas of collective agreement beyond tasting alone. By turns sultry, energetic, atonal, and novel, each tune was distinctive and rich. As we all listened, some of us perplexed, Mr. Smith and Mr. Berger went about their research with all the joy of latter day Archimedes. Exclamations not unlike that of ‘Eureka!’ rang out between the two. Mr. Heimoff offered a Mona Lisa smile as he sat listening next to the computer speakers. At one point Jo Diaz burst into laughter at his expression, and never fully recovered!

By fits and starts we next turned to lunch. Time, a sadistic task master, was moving quickly. A beautiful meal had been prepared by Executive Chef Chad Hendrickson, all the ingredients of which were sourced, with few exceptions, from local organic and sustainably farmed products. So beautiful was the food that, indeed, it crossed my mind that its preparation is itself among the highest cultural expressions of the twining of science and art. Ironically, we did not discuss the food and wine pairings before us. The designated music played over our conversations. We continued to entertain the question well into a dessert of Bitter Chocolate Terrine, Crème Fraiche Ice Cream with Banana Caramel Sauce.

What was learned? Well, that the people assembled were great intellectual adventurers. That the sympathy of music to wine demands greater research. That no miracle of everyday life should go unthought, however transitory and discrete. Such as our gathering.

Admin