Reign of Terroir » Wine & Politics

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 Smartest Man In The Room, Billo Naravane of Rasa Vineyards

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:38:04 +0000

I met Yashodhan (Billo) Naravane (right) at the Three Rivers Winery. He was member of one of many panel discussion organized, in part, by the good offices of the Wine Bloggers Conference spread among wineries throughout the Walla Walla Valley. Though meant to be instructional in character, centering on explaining the basics of the Walla Walla AVA, it became very clear to me that this gentleman was no ordinary panelist. It turned out uttering generalities is not where Billo excels. His is a very disciplined mind, a curious mind, exulting in a profound natural intellectual freedom and flexibility rarely encountered outside of a university setting. He and his equally gifted brother, Pinto (left), founded Rasa Vineyards in 2007. And in just a few short years they have demonstrated an understanding of viticulture and winemaking which repeats in yet another field their considerable academic achievements. But inasmuch as this is an interview with Billo, we may read a fragment of his CV below:

“Billo has worked in various technical and managerial positions in the Computer Industry for over a decade and a half. Billo received his BS in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from MIT and his MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Billo finished his MS in Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis in June 2008 and is currently running the Viticulture program at Walla Walla Community College.”

But as I was to learn, the CV is by no means complete. As you will read below, Billo is launching new projects that will require significant modification of the thumbnail bio above. Please enjoy my encounter with Billo, without a doubt, the smartest man in the room.

Admin So let’s jump into the middle of things. Tell me about your wines.

Billo Naravane We were interested from the beginning in building a luxury brand. This was when the economy was good. So, we initially poured our wines for MWs, and told them that the price points [for QED and Principia] were $65 and $75. We asked for an honest critique of the wines. We got great feedback, they were said to be beautiful wines, worth the money; but the economy was not the greatest. They suggested pricing it a little bit lower, it might be to our advantage. So we had to go back to our investors, and we decided to price the wine, the QED, at $50. Now, $50 is expensive. We’re not delusional. But that wine I think offers an extremely great value for the money.

We’ve had it in blind tastings with some of the very best wines in the world: Guigal’s La Landonne, La Mouline, Henschke’s Hill of Grace, against Grange, you name it, it’s been blind tasted against it. It really holds its own against the best wines in the world. So, that wine is 94% Syrah, 3% Grenache, and 3% Mourvèdre. It is mostly Les Collines; the Syrah is about 85% from Les Collines Vineyard.

I hear Les Collines being referred to constantly.

BN Les Collines is a great vineyard. It’s a huge property, 300 acres, or so, I think are planted up there. There is a wide degree of variation within the different blocks of the vineyard. It is not an homogenous terroir. Some blocks I really like; there are two we sourced from for the ‘07. One block had this really earthy, mineraly, almost truffle-type character underlying the core of fruit. The fruit is this black berry, black cherry on the Syrah, but has this depth to it. The aromatics are fantastic form that property as well. The finish is sometimes not the greatest. The finish is nice; it’s just not as long as we would like it for a high-end Syrah. So we have to address that via blending.

I’m a big fan of blending in that when done correctly you can achieve an aromatic complexity and a palate complexity, and broaden the finish out, rather than using just one specific wine. Now the trick, however, is that we’re also big fans of terroir, so how do you preserve the Walla Walla sense of terroir in a blended wine. That tricky to do. Blending is highly non-linear. You can put in 2% to 3% of something yet change it by 30%. So you have to be very careful not to obliterate a sense of place, of terroir in blending. But what we’re trying to do, being technically minded, we go through every permutation in the blending process. We do all the samples. Me and my brother then go through all of them, we argue back and forth, and then we decide on the final blend, whatever tastes the best and still preserves that terroir of Walla Walla or of any other region.

In that year, 2007, it was 94% Syrah, 3% of Grenache, Mourvèdre. In 2008 the blend has been different. Our QED will always be a Grenache/Mourvèdre blend, but the percentages will be different based on what the year gave us. 2007 was a very warm year, so we got riper fruit versus 2008, which was a pretty cool year. So, stylistically, our Rasa wines are more along the lines of French wines rather than California. We are huge, huge Francophiles. We love the great Rhone wines, Bordeaux, and Burgundy as well. But we don’t make a Pinot Noir… yet! We amy do so in the future.

Best of luck with a Pinot!

BN We were introduced to a gentleman who owns a small block of Pinot Noir, so we may try it out, not this year but next. Pinot is not something I’ve worked with yet. I’m really kind of anxious to try it.

That reminds me. Rasa is the rough Indian equivalent of the word terroir. Could you explain the distinctions between the two concepts, if any?

BN So the actual root of the word Rasa, it’s from Sanscrit, technically, though it can be used in a couple of different contexts, in one context it means essence. For us that is essence of soil and variety. And almost in a slang parlance, it can mean juice. So we have this essence and juice concept that is the closest word we’ve found that is also relatively easy to remember. Some of the related Indian words can get quite long and complex, hard to remember. We were looking for a word that tied together wine and our heritage. My uncle is the one who thought of it. He speaks Sanskrit. He’s not a wine aficionado, but after explaining what we were doing, about terroir and why it was so important to us, he thought up the word. We fell in love with it. It’s a great name! (laughs)

We’re originally from India; me and my brother were born in India. Our parents moved to New Jersey when I was turning 6, my brother was 8. We just wanted to have a tie-back to our heritage and still have something that was easy to remember, and with a wine connotation.

You mentioned that you initially tasted widely throughout the Walla Walla AVA. And we know the AVA is still in the process of being defined, the proper terroir for which grape, and so on. So, what are the relative merits and demerits of having a Washington State designation as opposed to having a Walla Walla AVA designation? In a conversation with Sean Boyd of Rôtie he said that the AVA designation, though not irrelevant, will not necessarily result in the best wines. He is willing to sacrifice, especially for so young an AVA, a specific designation in favor of an overall quality.

BN I tend to agree with Sean. In our 2007 QED we did source the Grenache and Mourvèdre from Minick Vineyard over in Prosser. We also had a little Lewis Vineyard Syrah in there, which is also from Prosser, over in Yakima. Now, Grenache and Mourvèdre are not best for our area. Let me put it this way: I haven’t tasted great Grenache and Mourvèdre grown here in Walla Walla. Now, this is all price point dependent. I’m talking about a $50 and up price point wine. You can definitely grow good enough quality Grenache and Mourvèdre here for a $20 bottle. I’m not questioning that. But for a quality that you want to deliver at that higher price point, we’ve just not found that yet in Walla Walla. So we have to look elsewhere. And we found this great cooler climate site. We would much rather get this cooler climate fruit. We like the acidity to be preserved naturally, and to get that balanced flavor development, rather difficult at a super warm site. The cooler sites tend to give wines that are much more elegant and refined.

We don’t want to be making wines that are 16% alcohol. There’s nothing wrong with those types of wines; they’re just not stylistically what were going after. I still do enjoy the occasional Australian Shiraz, but I tend to prefer Rhone style for Syrah.

We are after making the best wine possible. While we want to remain as true as possible to terroir, we want to make the best wine possible. For the QED, since we could not get the Grenache and Mourvèdre of a sufficiently high quality, we needed to go outside the AVA. We don’t see that as being contradictory. And if you taste the QED, that is a Walla Walla wine; 91% of the fruit is from here. It is in the blending process that you have to be very judicious to maintain the sense of terroir. One of our blends during the trial phase, when we were going through all the possible blends for the QED, it was roughly 5% Grenache, 7% Mourvèdre, and the balance Syrah. That did not taste like a Walla Walla AVA wine. We did not go with that blend even though it was pretty tasty because it did not taste like it came from the AVA.

You seem to have been blessed with an extraordinary palate. I was reading one of your blog entries about a tasting party you attended some time ago. Could you say something about your tasting history?

BN I’ve been extremely fortunate. When I lived in Austin I had a bunch of very eclectic wine collector friends that I had met throughout the years. It was a wine group we started called the S.O.B.s, the Sons of Bacchus. That name was quite fitting for the group in many respects! They were from many different backgrounds. And some had been collecting for many, many years, 30-40 years. They had these amazing wine cellars. We got to be such good friends that when invited over they would pull these unbelievable bottles of wine: an ‘82 Mouton, ‘61 Lafite, these crazy wines I had the privilege to taste. My brother had a similar experience in New Jersey. We really have tasted, just through really good friends, some of the best wines that have ever been made. One time I got to taste a 1900 Chateau Margaux, and the ‘47 Cheval Blanc, all these wines that are considered to be the best wines ever made. That is one the the biggest strengths that Pinto and I bring to the winemaking process. We are able to recognize, or at least have a perspective, of the best wines ever made. We bring that to our blending and winemaking processes.

It is kind of startling to me how many wine people I’ve met here in Washington, many of them winemakers, who have never tasted a first growth! They probably couldn’t tell you who the first growths are. It’s kind of shocking to me. I would wonder that if you don’t have it in your head what great wine is, then how do you know when you’ve made one?

That’s a very interesting question, and it bears upon the question of wine education, certainly of the average drinker, to the degree there is such a thing. There is a problem within marketing, I would argue, that through a series of commercial feedback loops, they work to maintain a certain level of knowledge, or, alternatively, of ignorance, amongst the wine-drinking public. It is very difficult to know how to challenge that, how to convince people there are depths to wine that can essentially change your life. How would you go about educating people to continue looking and searching for wines of revelation rather than listen to marketers, who have an interest, after all, in limiting that same revelation?

BN Boy, that’s a really good question. I don’t have a good answer. At some point everyone needs to have a friend, or somebody who is into wine, to expose you to an Aha! moment where you taste a great wine that is compelling and kind of leaves you speechless. It is that experience that everybody needs to have. That’s when they realize that there is something to this wine thing. My moment was when I was just starting out in wine. When I lived in California I used to go up to Napa a lot back in 1990 and ‘91. Back then you could go tasting all day in Napa for free. It was great for people just out of college, who had no money and could drink for free. But after doing this, me and my brother started to recognizing the differences between Pinot Noir and Cabernet. Wow, there must be something to this wine thing! It may not be all bullshit!

And then I had an experience in ‘91. I was at a store called Beltramos. I lived only 3 miles from there at the time. I believe it was the ‘86 d’Yquem that was just being released. And they were pouring it in their wine bar. At that time I did not know d’Yquem from anything. There were 3 other Sauternes they were pouring. They cost $3 for a taste of them. The d’Yquem was an additional $10 to taste. At that time I thought, Wow!, I couldn’t afford that. But there was an obviously wealthy woman there. She tried the wines, took a sip out of each one, and left. I asked the guy behind the counter if the d’Yquem was really worth $10 for just a taste? He said it was one of the best wines made in the world, “You should try it.” He let me take over the wines the lady left. The d’Yquem was my Aha! wine. It floored me. I had never ever smelled or tasted such an amazing array of things. It was indescribable. I could not find the words… My perspective on wine changed immediately. I began reading books on wine, going to Napa, not to just get loaded, but to actually meet with winemakers and learn about wine. The passion just went crazy after that. Then we became serious collectors. That was our downfall! (laughs)

To get people jazzed about wine they need to taste something that blows them away, and that they can’t quite put into words. For a friend of mine, it was the ‘90 Lafite. For another it was a Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet. It’s fun to hear people tell you what wine did it for them!

Now, you are also a teacher at the local community college. How did you assume the teaching position, and in the local colleges, how long have viticulture and enology programs been offered?

BN That’s a good question. I’ve always enjoyed teaching. When I was at MIT and Stanford, and U.T. Austin, I had the opportunity to teach mathematics classes here and there. I’ve taught Calculus and Differential Equations, Probability Theory, even a Pascal Programming class, and it was always a lot of fun. And when I moved here to Walla Walla in 2008, I was tasting wine at an event over at Dunam Cellars, and I started talking to a gentleman who, after a half an hour, began asking where I went to school and what was my background. He suddenly asked, “Can you teach viticulture?” “Sure!” When I was at Davis I took all the classes in both viticulture and winemaking. So it happened that the previous instructor had unexpectedly passed recently. So again I began teaching in January of 2009. I took over the viticulture position.

That having been said, I just resigned a couple of weeks ago. I did enjoy the teaching aspect of it quite a bit. Community College is an interesting place. You have students from very wide backgrounds. Teaching in places like Stanford, everybody has a similar background. They have a similar intellectual capacity. At a community college you have students that are super bright to those who I could not quite figure out why they were there. It was a little bit frustrating at times. But I had more frustration with the management there, rather than the students.

I took the tack that I would teach roughly 50% of the viticulture material that we did at Davis. I figured that was a reasonable target. But on no less than 5 separate occasions, the director of the program came in said that I had to dumb down the material. The last time I was approached was in April. I then knew this was not the right place for me to teach. I had tried to make some adjustments. But when eventually I was teaching only 25% of the material they should be learning, I really considered it less than a viticulture class then a viticulture-like class. I didn’t feel good about teaching it. I think the management there is a bit misguided. With the rising competition from other programs at other schools, it makes no sense to take ours out of contention.

At Washington State University (WSU) they recently hired a great, great director, Dr. Henick-Kling. He’s very well known in viticultural and enology circles. He’s going to raise that program up to probably compete with UC Davis at some point. I talked with him, and I was thinking of doing my PhD there. He gave me a run down of his vision where WSU is going to go. If he executes, it’s going to be a great program. It will produce 40 to 50 undergraduates a year, and 10 or so Master students a year. And you’ve got other programs cropping up in Yakima and South Seattle; and then we have Walla Walla Community College that wants to diminish the quality of their program. That doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s a bit short-sighted.

That is unfortunate. They may well be in the process of becoming an irrelevant institution just when the region needs qualified people the most. I hope the transition is not too jarring, but about pesticides, I’ve noticed that a number of vineyards in the valley, even some near Cayuse, a biodynamic property, are fringed or surrounded by apple orchards and other crops that require a substantial use of pesticides. I was told that Japan, for example, demands perfect apples. Many tons come from the Walla Walla Valley. Now, for someone who aspires to something like an organic status for their vineyard, what are the tensions, if any, between fruit farmers and grape growers? I asked this question of the winemaker at Buty. He said that although the fruit trees bordering his property are heavily spray, he just doesn’t pay attention to its impact on his vineyard! So, what is going on?

BN I can’t imagine how there couldn’t be conflict because of the proximity of these orchard sites to vineyards. They really are often on top of one another. As best as could have been done, they have put restrictions on the application and the timing of the sprays. They are not allowed to spray if the winds are more than 3 or 4 miles an hour to contain the drift, for example. Now, on the local basis you can’t tell a specific orchard owner that they can’t spray something that is legal for them to apply. There is this whole question of legality versus sustainability, organic and biodynamic. So just because you can spray something, doesn’t mean you should. And if you are going to spray something, then you’ll probably want to do it in the least invasive manner as possible. So overall there is a great deal of friendship and trust between the growers that they are not going to do something that is going to damage their neighbor’s crop. People here are very cognizant and willing to work together, which is great.

That being said, if you have a biodynamic site and your neighbor does not, how do prevent somethings from coming over? Some drift is inevitable. In fact, the biggest case is probably 2,4-D. This is something a lot of the wheat farmers like to use to contain weeds. However, 2,4-D is extremely toxic to vines. I mean, just a small amount of 2,4-D drift coming onto your vines causes serious damage; you will essentially see the arrest of the photosynthetic capability of the vine once just a little bit of 2,4-D gets drifted onto it. With this we have been seeing a little bit of contention between people using 2,4-D versus people who don’t want it used because it is affecting their grapevines. Some of these things need to be sorted out. But the spirit is generally one of cooperation.

And could you discuss the difficult issue of the local migrant labor force? What is the local mentality?

BN Hmm. Ask 10 people you’ll get 10 different opinions. In general, while I would prefer people to be properly documented – when we came over, we’re immigrants, we had to go through the whole process, the Green Card, the Passport – I would appreciate everybody to do that and respect the laws of the country. But we realize that there are some kinds of labor Americans don’t want to do. The laborers here during harvest are great people. They want to work. They are very industrious. They work hard and get the job done effectively. It needs to be addressed at the Federal level. I’m kind of for giving amnesty for the people who are already here, and getting them appropriately documented. This might curtail future people from coming in. But all the workers I’ve met here have all been tremendously great people.

I must congratulate you and your brother on your extraordinary success. You’ve gone from 0 to 60 in nothing flat. You’re one of the brightest individuals I’ve ever met. Maybe you should become the president of the community college! What are your plans for the future? What are you academic plans, if any?

BN I still do have aspirations to complete my PhD. I have worked in Theoretical Mathematics, kind of at the cusp of Electrical Engineering, so I toy with the idea of going back to mathematics or possibly doing something in Plant Physiology or Viticulture. Right now my focus is to get Rasa to be successful. I think we are headed on the right trajectory. Our wines are improving. We’re just beginning to get positive praise from the critics. We’re having the major critics coming through right now. Jay Miller was here just a couple of weeks ago. Tanzer is coming soon. I can see success on the horizon. Once that is done, I think I’ll pursue my PhD.

An extraordinary pleasure, Billo. Thank you.

BN Thank you, Ken.

Admin

Take Our Jobs, An Independence Day Special

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:38:38 +0000

On this Independence Day I will take a break from my noisy pyrotechnic display to quietly reflect on how our country was built and how it is sustained. It was hard work to build the Trans-Continental Railroad, the Highway system, to fell the forests, to electrify America, and to fight our wars. How beautiful the sparks from welder’s torch, the miniature daily display of 4th of July fireworks! From the captains of industry to the common laborer, all are part of our unexampled historical narrative. The phenomenal growth of the agricultural sector deserves special praise. The efficiency of our farmers to put food on our tables from coast to coast, to fill supermarkets to bursting with produce is heroic; but reflection must also fall upon the migrant laborer as an indispensable engine of America’s transformation.

But times have changed. A new fever is sweeping across the country, a divisive, toxic reaction to the presence of undocumented, unauthorized workers among our ranks. Arizona and Texas are just two of the states promoting draconian legislative solutions to the strangers in our midst, their governors falling over themselves to formulate the most un-American rhetoric. Even though the Labor Department tells us that “three out of every four farm workers were born abroad, and more than half are illegal immigrants”, crass political opportunism knows no shame, let alone decency.

But help is on the way! In our quest for mind-numbingly simple solutions, no matter who gets hurt, Stephen Colbert and the United Farm Workers of American (UFW) are joining together to promote the Take Our Jobs initiative. The idea is as elegant as it is peaceful: via the UFW site itself American citizens, only those able to prove it, of course, may pour over a constantly updated listings of agricultural jobs offered across America. Those wishing to work may sign up. That’s it! Training will be provided, for it makes a difference whether one picks, for example, grapes, lettuce, or strawberries. And the working hours are strictly enforced. So prospective field laborers must arrive on time. Just what attire is appropriate is also explained. You wouldn’t want to show up without a hat in triple-digit heat! Water will be provided, though there are no guarantees in this world.

Though the site is currently active, Mr. Colbert will provide an update on its progress July 8th on his show, The Colbert Report. Have a safe and sane 4th! I won’t!

For additional information, please see this.

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

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

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

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. 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

Cinco De Mayo, A Day Of Reflection

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:55:57 +0000

Arizona’s new immigration law casts a somber shadow over this year’s Cinco de Mayo celebrations across the country. While widely believed unconstitutional in reputable legal circles, the social consequences of the new law are as well proving corrosive of America’s historical tradition as a nation of immigrants. Polarization of political opinion, much of it crassly opportunistic, is well underway. Less interested in solutions than in energizing ‘the base’, the extreme positions on either end of the political spectrum flirt not only with violence but exploit the popular, nativist ignorance of American history itself.

We like to think of ourselves as a nation of laws, and we regularly trot out hallucinated visions of an America that never was. From Gone With The Wind to “It’s morning in America”, our complex cultural echo chamber feeds us myths and fictions at odds with reality. We are equally a nation of lawbreakers. And a powerful river of violence has carried our nation forward. From the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, the Civil War, to the Civil Rights struggle and the rise of labor unions, American social progress has often depended upon resistance to established law. But so has the nation seen regression and the erosion of rights. Violence is, after all, a contagion. It sweeps away distinction and difference; it is the enemy of civility.

I believe Arizona’s new immigration law perfectly captures these two seemingly contradictory forces of American history; for they are not contradictory at all. Myth is violence, a violence done to history itself. In Arizona’s case, the law reads like a Grimm’s fairy tale. It is a fable of us versus them, a fable of good and evil. And like any good tale, it clothes its violent core with a satisfying narrative. The wolf or step-mother always dies in the end. How will Arizona’s law end? The awful truth is that we know already know the answer to that question. Whether in the desert, or at the hands of ‘coyotes’ and vigilantes, Arizona’s new law, if upheld, promises that each reported death of an undocumented worker will be unremarkable, the mere consequence of ‘breaking the law’. The coarsening of our culture will only deepen.

I contacted the leading contenders for California’s Governorship and Governor Schwarzenegger himself for comment on Arizona’s 1070. All responded in some way. Their remarks are as follows.

Governor Schwarzenegger

“Immigration policy is, and always has been, a federal responsibility. The Governor does not support the Arizona law. He believes that comprehensive immigration reform needs federal leadership and must include secure national borders that allow for the legal movement of people, goods, and services, and creates a forward-looking labor policy that meets the needs of our economy. Arizona’s actions should be a wake-up call to the federal government. The decades of federal inaction can no longer continue.”

Meg Whitman

“I understand Arizona’s frustration with the federal government’s failure to solve the country’s illegal immigration problem. However, should such legislation be proposed in California, I would oppose it because I believe there are far more effective and suitable ways to fight illegal immigration. First, we must secure our borders. If need be, I will deploy California’s National Guard to assist federal authorities in making sure our state’s borders are secured. Second, I will build an economic fence to make it far harder for employers to hire illegal labor. Finally we must eliminate sanctuary cities. I call on Congress and the Obama Administration to take immediate action on a serious federal effort to secure our borders. It is time to see real action, not just more talk from Washington, D.C. on this vital national issue.”

Steve Poizner

“I support the amended version of Arizona’s new law, which takes a bold approach to dealing with illegal immigration while making it crystal clear that racial profiling is both illegal and wrong. Arizona has acted because the federal government has failed to secure our borders. It is time for California to do the same and, as governor, I pledge to make stopping illegal immigration one of my highest priorities. I have detailed a bold plan to address the crisis, which includes cutting off taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens, employing state resources to help secure our borders, ending Sanctuary Cities, and cracking down on employers who hire illegal aliens. And to Meg Whitman and her liberal allies in Congress who want to reward illegal aliens with a ‘pathway to citizenship,’ I have just two words: No Amnesty.”

Jerry Brown

“The Arizona law is legally problematic… This is an issue of federal responsibility, and the federal government needs to step up, secure the border and enact sensible immigration reform.”

This Cinco de Mayo, as I drink wine in my finely maintained backyard, enjoying a bountiful feast of diverse agricultural products, my hopes and prayers shall be with all those nameless individuals who contribute to our quality of life.

Admin

Mendocino County Takes The Lead

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:45:31 +0000

On April 27th I had the distinct pleasure of attending the 2nd annual Taste of Mendocino, America’s Greenest Wine Region at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco’s Presidio. This well attended, downright crowded event, was a revelation. Living for far too long in the shadow of Napa and Sonoma, the membership of the Mendocino Winegrape and Wine Commission (MWWC), some 84 wineries and 343 winegrape growers strong, has decided enough is enough. Among their multiple initiatives is the effort to put their wines and progressive green credentials before the American public. In this time of environmental concerns, climate change, debates over ‘natural’ and biodynamic wines, of the American consumer’s evolving palate, Mendocino County has a wisdom and a vision accumulated over generations that will benefit us all to learn. From the website:

“Founded in 2006, MWWC is dedicated to sharing knowledge of the singular attributes of the winegrapes, wines and wine estates of Mendocino County with a diversity of audiences around the world.
Mendocino Winegrape & Wine Commission members benefit from research and education programs that emphasize positive relationships with winegrape and wine buyers within our own organization and extending into communities around us. Collaboratively, we place a strong emphasis on organic grape growing and specialized viticultural techniques appropriate to the dozens of grape varietals grown in our 12 diverse regions.

Mendocino County’s authentic “green” credentials are unsurpassed by any other wine region in the world. From pristine wild lands and coastline to multi-generational hands-on family farmers and winemakers, this is a region that has been at the forefront of the sustainable, organic, Biodynamic and fish friendly farming movements.

Now, whereas the county’s narrative is compelling, able to persuade drinkers to look for the region’s many and varied wines, it is the quality of what is in the glass that will keep them coming back for more. And let me tell you, the wines I tasted, only a fraction of those on display, were among the finest domestic efforts I have ever enjoyed. The acid levels were wonderfully high, the tannins firm, the oak judiciously used. The fruit was, dare I say it, pure?

Of course, these are general considerations. Mendocino County AVAs and growing regions are very different; I must confess I was somewhat perplexed at the event’s format. The differences between the Potter Valley and the Anderson Valley are enormous. And a few producers, a very few, disappointed. But with respect to varietal correctness, I was simply astonished as I moved from table to table. Expression after expression were true, soulful realizations of the their grapes. Syrahs were restrained and beautifully perfumed; Pinots, boldly fruited and transparent in the Burgundian style; the Cabernets, exquisitely balancing fruit, lower alcohol, acid and tannins; the Petite Sirahs again showcased that variety’s beguiling sensitivity to terroir; and the Zinfandels, a grape much abused these days, were tightly wound, almost abstract when compared to the awful alcoholic fruit bombs regularly detonating on our dinner tables. Perhaps most surprising were the Merlots, a grape I had largely abandoned. No longer.

These are but a handful grapes grown throughout Mendocino County. Indeed, owning to the geological complexity of the county, its boundaries seemingly drawn by a demented cartographer, it is obvious why dozens of varieties may call this region home. Yet it is also true that for this very reason that experimentation with varieties is enthusiastically embraced here. As with the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, it is very clear that California’s great learning curve of matching grape to place, vine to terroir, is being successfully realized in Mendocino County. A great many of the region’s producers are farmers, the highest compliment one may offer; true American farmers, respectful of the land, attentive to its rhythms and its greater wisdom. For they know better than most that it is only with such a disposition that honest wines may be made.

Here are a few specific producers who caught my attention. I will mention, with one exception, only the reds.

Albertina Wine Cellars. Though fruit forward and with softer tannins than I prefer, the quality of their Cabernets was quite high.

Barra of Mendocino. All organic, they offered a Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, and a Sangiovese, all very good.

Bink Wines. The wines of Deb Schatzlein, present at the tasting, were among the finest of the afternoon. She makes Syrah, Pinot Noir, Merlot, and ‘Melange’, a Bordeaux-style blend. Made in small lots, I strongly recommend you sign up for her wine club. I might add that her reserved demeanor, whether from shyness or the tiresome obligation to pour her work for a room full of strangers, added to her charm. Like many of the producers in attendance, they are not your practiced ‘happy talk’ B.S.’ers, but very down to earth people, if I may put it that way.

Chiarito Vineyard. Winemaker John Chiarito offered a Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, and a transcendent Nero d’Avola. (Mr. Chiarito is the first to plant this variety in the US.) All brilliant. I was given a taste from one of the last bottles of his long sold out 2003 Negro Amaro. Out of Ukiah, he is doing superb work. Hats off!

Lolonis Winery. The moment I stood before their table, a gentleman placed a cloth Ladybug, their logo, on my shirt. After tasting their excellent Zinfandel, Merlot and Cabernet, I turned to go and ran into Petros Lolonis himself, a man of great dignity and gravitas.

Terra Savia. Winemaker Jim Milone makes a 100% Chardonnay sparkler that was equal parts finesse and play. A serious wine!

Paul Dolan Vineyards. It is hard to find the words to describe these world class wines. I won’t try. My advice? Get on the list. These were the finest domestic wines I have tasted in a very long time. And the prices for most of Dolan’s efforts are laughably low. Amazing juice.
——————-

It was at this point, only an hour into the tasting, that I was called away to the seminar The Grape Grandparents of Mendocino County. Hosted by MWWC President Dave Batt, it featured UC Davis Coop Extension advisor Glenn McGourty, winemakers Alex MacGregor, Charlie Barra, Greg Graziano, Steve Sterling, and Bob Blue. Below are accounts of three of the speakers. A full account of all remarks will be presented here at a later date.

—–Glenn McGourty, Advisor for the UC Davis Cooperative Extension

“We’re not allowed out in public very often. We dance, we sing, we drink wine, we have a good time!
Everybody knows Sonoma and Napa, but there’s a large area on top of that called Mendocino and Lake County. That’s our territory. Size wise, it’s a combination of the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island put together.”

Mr. McGourty went on to describe Mendocino County as sparsely populated, about 90,000 souls. It is 100 miles long and 60 miles wide. Most of it is in the Russian River and Navarro River watersheds, and a little bit of the Dry Creek watershed from Sonoma County. It is a very mountainous region owing to the ongoing collision of the North American and Pacific plates. The regions of the county vary widely. The Pacific Ocean is a big air conditioner with the temperature a steady 50 F. Elevation is gained as one moves inland. The relation of an area to fog affects local climate. Fog brings cooler temperatures. Areas beyond the fog are, of course, warmer, with more moderate temperatures for areas above the fog. In the Anderson Valley fog is present almost every day in the summer time. Yorkville Highlands is above the fog, where the Dry Creek headwaters are. The Mendocino Range define the westside of the Russian River to the Hopland area, where nearby lies Lake Mendocino, the headwaters of the Russian River. Also framing the region are the Mayacama Mountains, at once the westside of the Napa Valley and the eastside of the Russian River Valley where Mendocino County begins.

Italians first grew grapes in Mendocino County, but only for family consumption. Hops were the principle crop in the late 1900s. Greeks grew grapes as well, the Lolonis Family, for example. Prohibition killed the approximately 20 wineries then in existence. [Parducci survived owing to its production of sacramental wines.] It was, in any case, always a race to drink the wine before it became vinegar. Low tech was all that was used. They weren’t making wine for Robert Parker! Mendocino has kept the old that was good, and they’ve added to it. Head pruned vines, simple farming, organic by default, light shakes of sulphur twice a year was about it. Carignane emerged as popular variety. It sustained good yields, an extra ton over Zinfandel. The important point to take away is that, apart from home winemaking, commercial wines were initially grown for the bulk wine market. The region’s history of these early days is that of the evolution from bulk and jug wines to varieties. [For supplemental information please see this.]

To illustrate these last two points we turn to two speakers. The first provides a thumbnail sketch of a kind of winemaking that continues Mendocino’s organic tradition, organic avant la lettre; the second speaker delves into deeply respected regional themes.

History in a glass.

—–Winemaker Alex MacGregor on the 2007 Trinafour Carignane, Niemi Vineyard, Redwood Valley

“This is of Finnish, not Italian origins, from a Finnish colony that bought property in the ‘teens and in the 1920s planted grapes, then ripped them out after World War 2 and replanted in the 1950s on St George rootstock, dry farmed. It’s never been sprayed. By default it’s farmed organically, but it has since been certified organic. These vines used to yield 7,8,9,10 tons an acre. By the time they got to 60 to 65 years old, they’re yielding 2 to 3 tons an acre. It’s definitely not a sexy clone unless you say ‘Carignane’. A neat history in a bottle. I try basically not to screw it up. It’s farmed by Alvin Tollini; his family has been farming for 3 generations. I make it with native yeast fermentation, native malolactic, there is no fining, no filtration, there’s no new wood. The only trick that I use in this wine is that it goes on top of a little bit of dried Petite Sirah skins, ripasso style, from Petite in the same vineyard, about 10%. They are not dried on mats like Amarone. I dry them in a tank, with heat, and once they’re really, really without moisture left, I’ll put the Carignane on top of those skins for 3 or 4 days and then drain to wood. It’s pretty straight forward.”

From Jug Wine to Varieties.

—–Charlie Barra [his oral presentation has been edited]

“My family migrated from the northern part of Italy, from the Piedmont district, in 1900. And they were grape growers over there, my grandfather, like my dad. And they came first through San Francisco and the earthquake, then they moved to Santa Rosa; they finally moved to Mendocino county to grow grapes because the area was very similar to from where they came. The terrain and climate was very similar. They planted small vineyards there, selling grapes to larger wineries who then made vin ordinaire and jug wine. That was their primary market. Then along came Prohibition. They had quite a difficult time; and without resources, I don’t know how they ever made it. But they did. Sometimes I have a suspicion that they converted some of their wine into alcohol, but I’m not sure about that! That all happened during the 30s. That was quite common with Italian families who moved into the Mendocino County area. (They moved into other areas, too.)

We were a very small grape growing area because we are a very cold climate. The Mendocino climate is very unique. Hardly anywhere else where they grow grapes that has a climate similar to what we have in Mendocino County. Very warm days, good for growing fruit; very, very cold nights, which is very good for preserving the balance in the fruit that determines the quality of the wine that you’re going to make. Now, as a grower, I like to take a lot of credit for what I do because I work very hard. I would point out that I just finished my 64th harvest! As a grower, you don’t miss a harvest. The reason you never miss a harvest is that you get paid once a year. You had better show up!

The climate that we have is unique, very consistent; it’s the kind of climate that you can grow many different varieties of grapes. But in the beginning, when they produced vin ordinaire, they grew Carignane, Alicante, Palomino, [unclear], all those varieties, and they sold them to large wineries for jug wine. That went on for quite a few years. And because of our very cold climate, you could not plant vineyards on the bottomlands. The most productive lands in Mendocino County were not planted to grapes. They were planted to hops, pears and prunes. That’s what we had on the bottomlands. They could withstand the frost better than the grapes. Grapes were only planted on the hillsides. Where I grew up, I was born in Calpella, just north of Ukiah, all of the vineyards were on the hillsides.

Mendocino County did not get into the varietal wine business, like those you’re drinking, until at least 75 years after Napa had already made a reputation, before we even got started in the wine business. This is why you don’t hear about Mendocino County. But you’re going to hear a lot about Mendocino County when it comes out of the bottle! It’s superior, it’s very easy to drink, and has more flavors than any wines that I have ever tasted.

I was born in 1926. I grew up in a vineyard. Ten years ago I could prune a vine as well as anyone else. In fact, when I graduated from high school they gave me a pair of pruning shears for a present! In my senior year, I was 19 years old, of course, World War 2 was going on, and grape prices were very good. I had the opportunity to lease a large Zinfandel vineyard growing on a hillside, 1945, from an Italian who was retiring. So I had to make a deal with the high school principal to go to school half a day. So I started farming in 1945; and in that year I made 3 times as much as the principal! He was making $3,300 a year. And I made over $10,000.

I had very difficult years, but I also ended up owning over 400 acres of vineyards and a pretty big winery in the county. I finally had to sell 200 acres of vineyards because it was cutting into my fishing time! Then in 1950 I decided to plant a vineyard all my own. I bought a 150 acres out in the Redwood Valley. You’ve got to remember, this was all borrowed money because my family had absolutely no resources. I planted varietal grapevines, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, some Cabernet, Petite Sirah, things like that. In doing this I made friends with Bob Mondavi. Unfortunately, when the grapes came in I had no market because nobody was buying varietals from Mendocino. So I had to sell my varietal grapes that were producing 3 to 4 tons an acre, to the larger wineries as vin ordinaire at $40 a ton, which was very difficult to do. Then about 3 years after production started Bob Mondavi and the Wente Family came up and made me a deal that they would use all the varietals I could grow if I would deliver them to Livermore and Napa. I was willing to do it, except that I didn’t know what they were going to pay me. I asked what the price would be. They asked what do you get now? I said $40 a ton. They told me that if I delivered them to their wineries they would pay me twice as much. So that got me started in the varietal wine business. That was 60 years ago. By that time Napa had already made its reputation. But we’re catching up very quickly.

I don’t have any problem withe the varietals we’re growing. In the case of Pinot Noir, we have Pinot Noir planted in lots of different locations. We’d always bring samples to wineries for selling our grapes. At one time, by the way, I was growing 600 tons of Pinot Noir, and I couldn’t give them away. We’d take these samples to a winery. And the winery, without knowing where they came from, would choose the Mendocino Pinot Noir, without exception.”

The seminar started a little late, and went over its alloted time. Regrettably, I had less than an hour left to taste through more than a dozen producers. The tasting room was now jammed. There was simply no way, especially with family obligations back in Santa Cruz, that I could intellectually engage the wines, let alone their makers. I decided to flee, but not before asking Charlie Barra one question, the answer to which might serve as a coda for Mendocino County producers as a whole.

Admin Mr. Barra, could you say a bit about your aversion to pesticide use? Were you ever visited by pesticide dealers?

Charlie Barra I could tell you all kinds of stories. I’ll tell you this. My best friend operated a pesticide warehouse and sold for large companies. He would come on the ranch and try to convince me why I had to use pesticides on my fruit. He would scare the hell out of me! He’d say he’d gone to such and such a ranch and saw what I had. He then said he went back two weeks later and it was a complete disaster! They scare you into buying pesticides. Fortunately I didn’t listen very well, until one day I told him to get his fanny off my place and don’t ever come back again. I threw my best friend off the ranch! Because it was all salesmanship. If I can grow grapes without pesticides, and I’m not an expert on pesticides, but if I can do it, anybody can do it. You just have to make up your mind. Yeah, in the beginning there was a little fingernail biting. But in the end, it’s good for everything around you, your health, your wildlife, and I feel good about what I am doing. That’s very important, to know that you’re not destroying anything. I won’t say it has anything to do about wine quality. I don’t even care about that. I care about the environment and the people around me. We need more of that in this country.
—END—

Am I raving in my enthusiasm for Mendocino County wines? Maybe just a bit. But for someone whose palate often feels a stranger in California, I have at long last found another region, in addition to the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, my taste preferences may call home.

Admin

Dr. Ron S. Jackson, Wine Science Principles, pt.1

Admin, Ken Payton — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:55:48 +0000

Dr. Ron S. Jackson. Who among wine science writers, oenologists and viticulturalists do not turn to his work for assistance, remedy, and for study? A standard textbook for the wine industry, for students and professionals alike, Wine Science, Principles, Practice, Perception, now in its 3rd edition, is the distillation of a disciplined life’s work. Whenever confronted with a technical issue requiring rigorous, thoroughly vetted research, it is to his book that I turn.
Professor Jackson may be retired, but the word means different things to different people. During the course of my conversation with him, to be presented in three parts, I was to learn that the life of the mind knows no retirement. Viticulture, Oenology, and Microbiology are ongoing explorations for him. Wine science is woven into his very character. Indeed, as the reader will discover, Professor Jackson continues to work on multiple intellectually demanding tasks.

A brief note on Dr. Jackson’s academic history: He gained his doctorate from the University of Toronto. Formerly associated with Brandon University where he developed Canada’s fist wine technology course, he is now a part of Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute at Brock University.

Part 1 of the interview concentrates on biography and what might be called the politics of wine science, the often counterproductive struggle between theoretical and practical research programs for research money. No stranger to academic battles, he offers helpful insight into this predicament.
In part 2 we will turn to topics specific to microbiology.

Admin Good afternoon, Professor Jackson.

Ron Jackson You’ve called right on time.

Yes. Although justly famous for your books, not many folks know of you’re background. If you don’t mind, could you give us a sketch of how it is you came to microbiology, oenology and viticulture?

RJ Oh, gosh! Of course. There was a professor with whom I had a great degree of compatibility. He happened to be a plant pathologist, and he also liked Horticulture; that was my primary interest at the time. When it came time to look for research projects, and since we got along really well, I initially worked on a disease of Cattleya orchids. I then basically moved into diseases caused by Botrytis. Once I got into it, I really enjoyed it, and found it so inspiring that I decided to stay in plant pathology for the next ten or so years until I took my first sabbatical, which was at Cornell. While there, because of the wine associated aspects of that particular region, I took a course with Bob Pool on Viticulture, and I took other wine-related courses just for the fun of it. Because what I was really there to do was to study the genetics of Botrytis, one of the important pathogens of grapevines.

But on sabbatical you tend to have more free time than you do when you have your normal teaching load. So I thought, gee whiz, I could just have some fun and take some courses to learn a bit more about the wine side of things. I found that it became even more interesting than the pathology side of things. When I went back to the university some people I met thought it would be nice to have a wine appreciation course, and I thought maybe a wine technology course would be even more intriguing to me. And my work on the genetics of Botrytis had been having some problems…

Problems in what respect?

RJ (laughs) O.K. Technical problems. The organism is not an easy one to work with. If you’re a really smart scientist then you choose an organism that will answer the questions you want. I was more interested in the organism, having it tell me what it could about itself. But it is a really obnoxious organism to try and work with as far as its genetics. With the technical problems, two years’ work, all the Botrytis died. Two years of work all gone up in smoke, of no value. I got kind of frustrated. The university is breathing down your neck, asking ‘Where are all those nice research papers you’re supposed to be pumping out’? Well, my organisms are dead. And they say, ‘Well, that doesn’t count!’ (laughs)

So when I was reading up on wine-related things, I realized that Amerine’s book, which was my bible at the time, simply didn’t talk about certain things that for me, from my background, I found particularly interesting; like cork and oak, things of that nature. He didn’t talk about that. Neither did other authors. I started to realize that there were lots of things that were not being mentioned. Amerine was getting on in years. Another edition didn’t come out. Nobody else seemed to be putting anything out. I came to the conclusion that if I were to get my act together in time, I can get my book out before anybody else does, filling the niche of a new scientific text before anybody else! I was lucky.

I then did the same thing with wine tasting. After all, I had been working with the Manitoba Liquor Commission on training and testing their tasters. So if I could get my book out before Ann Noble does, maybe I can scoop that one too! (laughs) It’s in essence seeing a niche, a good ecological term, seeing a niche… nobody’s there… if you get in first you can establish yourself.

Funnily enough, that is the same thing Professor Gregory Jones told me about his research on climate change and viticulture. He looked around and found that there was an opportunity.

RJ That’s right. Find out what it is nobody else is doing and get in fast! You become the person. There’s no competition, well, ok, later. Then, of course, everyone has to try and up one on you. That tends to be even more difficult.

Yes. Now, I know that in Anthropology and Philosophy, subjects I studied in the university for some time, there is a great deal of competition within those departments. As you know, it is cold-blooded and heartless! Is it the same thing in wine science research?

RJ I’d have to say yes. People are people. There are only a limited amount of resources and money. You want to get the maximum for you. That means getting the maximum number of students; they can put out more research which means you can get more money. That is the direction the universities are going in these days. Researchers who get more money are very highly regarded. You can put out the best research, but if you don’t get a big research grant, well, that’s not so good. It’s not your repute or the quality of your research so much as it is how much money can you bring in to the university. What fancy equipment can you get? That’s the name of the game. It’s not necessarily what it should be, but that’s the way it is.

And there’s so much competition from the private sector as well. But I suppose the bottom line is the quality of the science…

RJ And popular. And current. As soon as a new technique comes out, everybody jumps in. Take DNA studies. Now everybody has to do a DNA study. (laughs) If you’re not doing a DNA study, then what are you doing? Are you slacking? Fooling around? Just reading newspapers? What? (laughs) I’ve been in the system sufficiently long to see trends. When I was coming in, electron microscopy was the thing. Everybody had to do studies in electron microscopy. Well, now electron microscopy is kind of old hat. DNA studies are now the thing. And gas chromatography was once the thing. Everybody had to be into that. That’s where the money is. I know it is not the way it should be, but we do not live in an ideal world. If you want to survive then you have to play by the rules.

It’s interesting. I spoke recently with Richard Smart who is also associated with your university, the Cool Climate Institute at Brock. He faulted the dependance of viticultural departments, UC Davis, etc., on genetics and the obsession with DNA when perfectly simple remedies for cool climate viticultural adaptation to climate change already exist. Plant breeding, for example. How do you balance the sexy, high prestige technology with simpler, more basic approaches to agriculture?

RJ What I’d like, in a sense, is the system that runs in Australia.

The mix of private and public.

RJ That’s right. There is a certain amount of money that comes off the sales of wines from wineries that goes to fund research. And, of course, those people are interested in really practical research.

Something like smoke taint.

RJ Exactly right. That affects our bottom line, how much money we get for our product. ‘We have a problem. Tell us what to do.’ Now that is really practical research. I love the really practical stuff. But it is not the sort of research that’s going to look great on your C.V. Because it’s practical, not theoretical. It’s not DNA. It depends on where the money comes from. If it comes from industry, like the wineries, then they will want practical research. They will put a stamp on where the money goes. But if the monies come from governments, and other researchers are the ones who tend to look at it, then they’ll be looking at it more from an academic point of view. So they will tend to shy away from the practical side and look at the theoretical side. Where the money comes from will therefore influence whether you get the grant or not.

What if the money comes from Bayer or Syngenta?

RJ Well, they’ll probably, if you’re not doing DNA genome studies, look elsewhere. You won’t get any money. Flat and simple. It’s not going to them any good. So, really, where the money comes from forces results of significance to them. If genetic engineering is where they make their money, then they want studies that relate to that. If your having problems with diseases in your vineyard, then you want the research to relate to that. It is natural that it will be that way.

Yes. So, getting back to your biography, eventually you have a textbook published. A standard. In light of constant and perpetual breakthroughs in the associated sciences, how is such a textbook updated and maintained?

RJ With constant study. There is no break. You must be looking everyday at the latest information coming out. Get the technical papers, put them away in the files, and when it comes time you simply look at all the old stuff, all the new stuff, try to integrate it all and update. It takes about 4 to 5 years for a new edition. You do not stop.

The amount of research is increasing constantly; that makes it even harder, but also more interesting. With data bases and access to data bases, you have your fingers going out into more research journals than was ever possible before. I’m finding interesting research in places I never would have even thought of looking. A journal on nuclear magnetic resonance imaging is not where I’m going to normally look for something on wine. But occasionally there is something fascinating that comes out of there. And without the data base I would have to be within a huge university and spend all my time looking at every journal, and doing almost nothing else, to try and find this stuff. The data bases help to locate diverse materials of significance to mention in the updated book.

Do you ever come across any difficulties with accessing proprietary scientific information, the work product of private companies? With privatization comes copyright, secrecy…. Has that ever proved to be a barrier to advancing your kind of research?

RJ No, because there are not really major industry players, like the genetic engineering people. That is not, at the moment, an important thing in grapevines or yeast studies. There is a bit of it, but there is such a backlash against it that little is actually being advanced at the moment in that regard. There is academic research looking into it, but on the practical side of it, it is very, very limited. Ok, fungicides… when it becomes available on the market then it becomes of interest to me. What they are doing in their research labs does not really effect what I am going to write. Because that is what might be.

You want real world results.

RJ That’s right.

END OF PT 1

Admin

VITIOUREM, The Struggle To Save A Medieval Wine

Admin, Ken Payton — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 06:10:41 +0000

“It’s a crazy world.” Such is the concluding sentiment of André Gomes Pereira, winemaker, businessman and President of VITIOURÉM. He is, too, a bit of a philosopher. I have met many people in preparation for the documentary I will be a part of later this year. And in many of the regions we have visited, Virgilio Loureiro, Nuno Sequeira and yours truly, we have come away with the question unsettled as to whether we are filming the beginning of a renaissance or catching the last light, the sundown of multiple Portuguese (viti)cultures. André Gomes Pereira is exactly the right soul to talk with in moments of doubt. He is a young man who has taken the proper measure of the Ourém wine region’s opportunities. A man of refreshing candor, tireless, his eyes wide open, he is just the fighter for this battle. It is an honor to know him.

Admin Hello, André. This is Ken calling from California.

Andre Gomes Pereira Hi, Ken. It’s good to speak with you again.

Shall we get right to it? So tell me about the organization VITIOUREM.

AGP VITIOUREM is an association that was put together in 2000 with the objective to promote, protect, and to legalize the Medieval wine that has been produced in our region for 800 years. It had become illegal, the winemaking method of the Cistercian monks. We felt it was necessary to create strict rules to preserve the method; but also to preserve our culture as winegrowers, to maintain a unique wine that was disappearing. The work with the politicians through 2000 to 2005 finally got the law changed. We are now allowed to produce that wine.

So the law or exemption was finally passed.

AGP Yes. In 2005 it was approved after five years of fighting against the big lobbies and the politicians that didn’t understand this wine. When the wine goes out to all the markets it is seen as something completely different. But when we talked to the Agricultural Ministry they told us that our wine was not good because it would not have had a productive enough economical impact for grow! But we thought the opposite. It is not necessary to sell one million bottles to make a profit. But this wine is not just about profits. It is also about maintaining our culture and preserving the historical heritage of our ancestors.

What exactly was illegal about the winemaking method?

AGP We couldn’t mix white grapes and red grapes in the percentage the method requires. In Europe we can mix up to 50% white grapes in reds. But we do a different percentage. We mix 80% of white with 20% of red. But before 2005 we were prevented by law from doing that, even though we have been doing it this way for more than 800 years. It was when we as a country entered what was called the European Community at the time, now the European Union (EU), that in one moment, with one stroke of the pen, a once legal wine became illegal. This was because nobody knew of or understood our wine. The moment we were forced to follow the rules out of Brussels, our wine became illegal.

Everyone in our region laughed at the regulation. And when the government said, from the beginning of the 90s, that we were doing a wine that was illegal, my uncle said they had better build a very big prison because you will have to arrest us all. For this is how we have been making wine all of our lives. We are going to do it this way until we die. The region does not know how to produce another wine.

How many growers are we talking about in the region? And where exactly is the region located?

AGP The region is in Ourém; it is very near Fatima, in the center of Portugal. It is about 100 to 150 kilometers from Lisbon, the capitol of Portugal. We are talking about 2,000 to 2,500 winegrowers in the region, all very, very small wine producers. Every family has a small estate where they grow a few vines or have small vineyard. The biggest percentage of what they make is for family consumption, to drink in their houses. So we have a very large number of very small wineries. Making Medieval wine and following all the rules, at the present moment we (Vitiourem) have about 15 producers signed up, with vineyards certified by us. It is through the rule-based certification that the wines may then be labeled and put into the market as Medieval wine.

Do the winegrowers work within a cooperative or are many of them under private labels?

AGP It is private labels. Unfortunately, the cooperative of our region went bankrupt two years ago. Right now it is all the small producers, mainly small producers from the region, except for Quinta do Montalto, my estate, we are one of the biggest. We believe that this wine must prevail in order for the region develop.

How much wine is produced by the average grower? And just how large are their properties, their vineyards?

AGP The average vineyard properties are about a few hundred square meters of land. For Medieval vineyards, we are talking about a maximum of 40,000 square meters, so, 4 hectares at the most per producer. And as far as volume in liters per year for all Medieval wines, right now we are talking about from 100,000 to 200,000 liters. It depends a lot on the year, but it is usually closer to 100,000 than 200,000 liters.

When I was there I saw some growers selling their wines in bulk, I guess you could call it. Folks would come by with various containers and fill up directly from the barrels. And there are others who actually bottle. Can you tell us the economic and cultural differences between those two approaches, and also where in Portugal these Medieval wines may be found?

AGP The wines from the region were traditionally sold in five liter glass containers. But that market is becoming more and more competitive in Portugal. So one of our marketing strategies is to stop selling like that, and start bottling. That will be a huge step forward for the small wineries. They are not use to doing that. They don’t know how to sell the wine in bottles. They have problems with labeling, following all the rules; it is a difficult process, one that VITIOURÉM is helping the small producers with.

In Portugal we find Medieval wines mainly in the immediate region. There are a few shops in Lisbon that carry our wines, but it is mainly in restaurants and hotels, again, mainly in the Fatima and Ourém region, in the center of the country. Because we have small quantities to sell, we haven’t yet made the jump to sell outside Portugal. However, in a year or two, maybe three at the maximum, we will have the need to find new markets outside of Portugal.

For the small producer it would be very expensive to purchase their own bottling equipment, bottles, labels and labelers, and all the rest. How does VITIOURÉM propose to approach this matter? Are bottling machines shared, for example?

AGP That is one way to solve the problem. At the present moment we do the bottling by hand; not the best situation, but it is working. In the future we will have to get organized and have bottling equipment so that everyone can use it. It will always be a small machine we’d use, to minimize the risk. To get organized is the best way; we could then do the investment together.

One of the most important factors to save and sustain your regional wine culture is to receive fair prices. Bottling is a step in this direction. What are the up-front costs for many of the growers? And how much profit do you think is necessary to provide sustainability?

AGP The costs of production are very different from producer to producer. It is difficult to answer that question because the majority or winemakers don’t include the cost of their labor, or that of their families and friends during harvest. Just to calculate costs on what they do to manage the vineyards mainly in the Spring is very difficult as well, because some growers have to pay someone to do the pruning of the vineyards, and there are variable fuel costs and vineyard treatment costs, whether they create their own label, and so on.

And normally producing wine in our region is almost always a second income for the family. It is not their main economic activity. They work in the vineyard or on finishing wines only after the end of their main job, at the end of the day or on the weekends. They can be farmers, but they cannot make a living just from wine. They grow other things, but mainly they are outside agriculture. Agriculture is mainly done for their family’s consumption. So, normally they don’t have their costs calculated. It is very difficult to answer your question.

Of course, we know from experience that we can sell a single bottle of Medieval wine for more than they are use to getting for 5 liters of their wine. It can be as much as five times the usual price. I think this is the only way to have a fair price for their work. It is the only way to survive. Otherwise we cannot compete, not even within Portugal. And then when you look at the low prices of wines in the New World, it is absurd. The price of wines in Chile, for example, is unbelievable. So we cannot sell our wines at those same prices, not even within Portugal.

In Portugal we have high costs of production because often the vineyards are densely planted. Because of this the majority of work done within our vineyards must be done by hand. That alone enormously increases the price.

Yes. I well remember passing through the extraordinarily beautiful Espite Valley just how steep were those hills, how difficult was the terrain to work. We also saw many very old vines, along with many vineyards that appeared to have been simply abandoned. How much has been lost recently, or has your region reached a kind of equilibrium?

AGP The loss of vineyards has not stabilized. In the last 15 years we have lost an enormous number of vineyards in our region. The majority of the people were disappointed with the failure of the cooperative. They did not know where to sell the grapes. I have known that valley when it was almost full of vineyards. Right now if we look to that valley, it is a shame. We don’t see many new vineyards. The process of renovation is not happening. So I hope that we are in time to save that valley, that heritage, that magnificent landscape, with the forests on top, the vineyards in the middle, and the river and vegetable gardens at the base. It would be a tragedy, a pity to lose that landscape. Every year vineyards are being abandoned.

It is also the risk of losing an important part of Portuguese culture itself.

AGP More than 800 years of history, of a tradition, of a technique we may lose just because of economical factors. The wine is unique, it is good, the method is more than good, if I may say, but we are witnessing all over the world the massification of the winemaking process and the styles. To me the world of wine is going in the wrong direction, toward standardization, toward wines without soul, without history. Like Coca Cola or Pepsi, it is becoming always and everywhere the same, every year. To me, as a wine lover, I am becoming more and more tired of those wines, wines that don’t give us anything. Those are the wines prevailing throughout the world. It would be a shame to lose this Medieval wine in Portugal; it would be a great loss to our culture.

I am fighting very hard to stop that process. I would very much like to see again the Espite Valley covered with vineyards. To me, even if it would be in 50 years, I would very much like to see that happen. We will not give up. We will always be fighting against everything and everyone. Even this week [3/28/10] we had some difficulty with the bureaucracy, some paperwork. That is one of our major problems here, the bureaucracy and paperwork.
But I think this year we will have some nice wines to show the world. We are working hard on it.

Getting back to agricultural matters for a moment, can you give us a rundown of the grape varieties of the region, especially those used in Medieval wine?

AGP In Medieval wine we can only use Ferñao Pires, 80% of this white, and for the red, only Trincadeira, 20%. First we crop the white grapes from the vineyards. We take them to the cellar; they are crushed, and the juice is put into a wooden tank to 80% of its capacity. The fermentation starts. We then crop the red, and once back in the cellar, we de-stem and crushed two to three times a day by foot so that they are well macerated. We need to do this so that the grape juice grabs as much of the color and complexity from the skins of the grapes as we can. Then, almost at the end of the fermentation the red juice, with the skins, is put on top of the white juice still finishing its fermentation. The fermentation therefore completely ends with the mixture already made. Now that it is wine, the grape skins sink which is a kind of natural fining process. The wine will not then be good for drinking, but at the end of the year, January, February at the latest, it is ready to be served. In fact, for this year we have begun the bottling process.

And the crushing is still done in lagares?

AGP Yes. And the grapes are still crushed by foot two to three times a day.

And how is the wine aged?

AGP The wine stays in the wooden barrel until late February and shortly thereafter bottled. It should be consumed in the same year of its production and bottling. The 2009 vintage should be consumed by the end of 2010. We have some experience with wines aged in bottle. Things go well for one or two years. But after that wine begins to lose some of its important characteristics that we like. So the wine is meant to be drunk very, very young.

I remember very well the wine from one adega where we also ate figs. A better combination of flavors I have never enjoyed! It was strangely exalting. I’m quite serious. Never have I better experienced a more sublime pairing. And I get around!

AGP Yes, with dry figs and dry raisins it is fantastic. We have a traditional sweet here in the region that has some dry raisins in it. The combination is magnificent. The ranges of dishes that go well with Medieval wine is stunning. From fish to meats, even game meats, it is unbelievable. Dishes very strong with olive oils, sometimes difficult to pair with other wines, with our wine it goes very, very well. As we used to say in Portugal, it is an ‘all roads wine’, it goes everywhere.

Now, about farming practices. Are they ‘green’, as we say here in America? What kinds of herbicides or pesticides are used, if any?

AGP The great majority of producers practice organic viticulture. Some are certified while others could be certified if they applied. We work with the rich equilibrium in Nature so we don’t need to use strong agro-toxics. We are small estates mixed with other varieties of agriculture. A patch with various vegetables along with the promotion of regional biodiversity is there among the vines. For diseases or plagues, biodiversity is the best way to end that kind of problem; to have a mixture of plant life is best, and we have that naturally. So we don’t need to use agro-toxics. This is true of the big majority of our farmers. They could be certified organic if they sought it.

Just growing one product is not a good idea. We would lose the natural cleverness of ecosystems, and then we would have to do things that should not be allowed. We have to be in sympathy with Nature. We then don’t have to overcome what Nature is telling us to do. It is working with Nature, not against it. Having and encouraging diversity is fundamental.

I couldn’t agree with you more. How about a few words about Quinta do Montalto?

AGP Quinta do Montalto is a small family estate. At the present time, I am the 5th generation to be producing wine over there. We became organic producers in 1997. We don’t do just wines. We organically farm vegetables: potatoes, onions, carrots, everything. We do sun dried tomatoes and make jams. We use everything from the farm. As far as wines, we do normal reds and whites. But after talking with the family we have decided to invest a lot in Medieval wine. All of my ancestors did it that way. We never stopped doing that wine. I have an uncle who used to make the wine before me. He always did that wine for his family. So we knew how to do it. In fact, we are planting more vineyards to make that wine. We believe that this is the only way to survive in the wine world and wine industry. We are playing a major role in this process.

I am also the president of VITIOURÉM, and as so when we see positive things happening, when more and more winegrowers want to go back in time and return to practices they have always known, that is very, very rewarding, to me and to the families. I want to continue to invest in Medieval wine. I strongly believe that this is the only way forward for the agricultural sector of that region to survive. The agriculture of Portugal has developed so rapidly in the last 10 to 15 years that right now its only agro-industrial. That is not a process that remembers history. If the small farmer does not prevail then in a few years we will no longer have farmers in our region. We will have only big supermarkets where we will buy products from China, Brazil, or even Argentina. At the present moment it is a crazy world. It is a crazy world.

Thank you, André.

AGP Thank you, Ken. We look forward to the filming.

Admin

The Science and Politics of Climate Change, part 2

Admin, Ken Payton — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:32:41 +0000

Here presented is part two of my conversation with Climatologist Gregory V. Jones, America’s most rigorous voice in the science as it relates to climate change and viticulture. As the reader learned in part one, Professor Jones of Southern Oregon University, has written extensively on the interlinked disciplines. In part one he spoke of his intriguing background and of his international perspective and expertise. Also discussed was ethno-climatological observations of how we experience climate changes over time, or, more to the point, how we don’t. In this section he further reflects upon that psychologically cross-cultural fixture, but more importantly, Professor Jones here explores climate change through the double registers of science and politics. How do we hear a message above the noise? What are we to make of the recent ‘Climate Gate’ debacle involving the University of East Anglia and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? Enjoy.

Admin Excuse me for tipping my political hand, but in the bad old days of the Bush Administration everything issue was thoroughly politicized. Climate change was one of the topics about which you could not effectively speak. Have you noticed a significant loosening of tongues and any increase in research programs since the beginning of the Obama Administration?

Gregory Jones Well, a little bit. There are actually a lot of stories behind the scenes. I really don’t think this is a Republican/Democrat kind of thing. I think it is more tied to variations of conservative Big Business versus environmental. And that is not purely Democrat/Republican. And the reason I get back to this is that I think that there have been scenarios that have played out in other administrations, for example, that of Clinton/Gore, that were very interesting. One of the most recognized hurricane researchers in the world, out of Colorado State University, from every story I’ve heard on it, he had his funding pulled out from under him because he wouldn’t say what Al Gore wanted him to say. That in and of itself tells you that yeah, the Bush Administration muted some things around the science of climate change, but the Clinton/Gore Administration did the same thing. And I am sure it goes on behind the scenes of virtually every administration with every issue. They are going to pander to what they’re being paid to pander to.

So I don’t know… I’m very anti-two party system government here in America. They don’t represent me whatsoever! Obama doesn’t represent me. Neither did Bush. Why should I even be associated with them? So I’m telling you my political leanings! (laughs) Bit I do think it is a little bit more open right now. I think that there are still issues that the business lobbyists are controlling what’s happening relative to the Republican and the Democratic moderate side of things. It may get better, but in this economic climate the first very thing that went away is the climate change issue. So again, that gets to the idea of the urgency and the perception. The urgency is right now dealing with lack of jobs and other issues, the economic climate, and not so much about cap and trade and being good stewards of our atmosphere.

Yes. You know things are changing in however a quiet and subterranean way, off the political radar, as it were, when some of the most radicalized environmentalists, many Republican, are emerging these days from out of Dick Cheney’s Wyoming! There it is environmental degradation, sub-surface water displacement etc., owing to various mining operations and technologies. It is rather ironic that conservative minds are being changed in such in-your-face ways. Sportsmen and the NRA, as well, have aligned themselves with water conservation activists.

GJ That’s going on in my neck of the woods, too. In Northern California and Southern Oregon, Klamath River issues have created the same kind of thing, where now tribes, farmers, business and environmental groups have pretty much all come together and realized that the dams have to come off the rivers. The problem is that it doesn’t play itself out in a year or two. They’re talking about 20 to 25 years before it will ever happen. In the meantime, the salmon in the Klamath River system could go extinct.

There is something about official news organizations that repeat certain framing devices around debates when in fact, behind the scenes, in very quiet ways, opinions are being changed and folks are coming to shared understandings through very novel issue combinations. Half the time I wonder why do I even read or watch this or that particular debate when I know full well that it doesn’t accurately reflect the reality on the ground.

GJ Sure, sure. Just going back to conversations you’ve had with people in the wine industry, and I have them as well. There are two different viewpoints. You have to look at the winemaker’s side of things. You know, anybody who owns a winery and is producing wine they are never going to stand at the front door of their cellar and say, “Yeah, climate change is impacting me” and then have it look, have people look, differently on their product. I can go to the back door of the cellar and they will tell me, “Yeah, climate is a real issue for me. I’ve had to change not only how I manage my vineyards but how the fruit comes in, and how I’m processing it.” But they are not going to stand at the front door and say that! Unless they’re proactive and trying to show that they’re trying to be better stewards through adaptation and mitigation. So I think there’s a lot of that out there. And I respect it. Completely.

But I also really respect people that have stood up and have really talked about it. A great example of is that of Paul Dolan of the Mendocino Wine Company. I think Parducci is part of their ownership, but Paul Dolan has been very out-going, talking about how this is a significant issue that all of us need to be concerned with. He’s been very proactive, and he’s a producer; it affects his bottom line. But for every one of Paul that is out there talking about this kind of thing, there are hundreds and thousands who really don’t say very much. And even get to the denial stage.

And the nature of marketing, they simply haven’t figured out a way to use the issue profitably. Wine marketing is often about removing the threat to the consumer of actually having to learn anything, certainly with respect to purchasing decisions. That dumbing down of the public from within the marketing strategies of the wine industry itself I find particularly hard to grasp.

GJ I think there have been some people who have been successful at this. The Kiwis and a few of the Aussies; probably the Kiwis have been on the forefront of it by really developing great strategies showing carbon neutrality, or at least some level of mitigation/adaptation and proactive strategies, because the British market really almost demanded it. So there was a very strong play by some of the Kiwi producers to work that market, playing the game very well, I think. But in the mean time they’ve also become more energy efficient, more sustainable, because they looked at themselves critically in terms of water, carbon and chemical usage. I think that there are some out there that are doing some really good things.

Then on the other side of the coin, I was just mentioning winemakers and people who own wine-making production facilities, but you can also go to the vineyards. You can’t talk to somebody who has been growing grapes for 30 years and have them tell you things are exactly the same. They are just not. They are just absolutely not. They [growers] don’t make wholesale changes. You don’t all of a sudden one day say “It’s just too hot. I’ll do something different”. They are making strategic changes year in, year out that reflect the overall environmental conditions that they are producing in. If they didn’t, their vineyards wouldn’t be alive and producing today. They just wouldn’t.

So I think that part of what is going on when you talk to somebody, a grower, and you ask have they noticed climate change, well, they hem and haw, and say “Well, yeah, but I haven’t really been doing anything”. But if you ask them what have they been doing for 20 years? Have they changed anything in their operation? Then, all of a sudden, it will all come out. “Well, yeah, you know, I do a different strategy of leaf-pulling; I maintain my canopy a little bit different; we planted a new block over here and we changed the row orientation; we put in a slightly different type of irrigation system to manage water more efficiently….” So all of a sudden they start talking about all the things that they have done to adapt to their environmental changes. But if you asked him at one fell swoop about climate change? They’d say, “Nah” Haven’t done much.”

Excellent. A quick question. What is your take on the email scandal out of the University of East Anglia, the so-called ‘Climate Gate’?

GJ I think it was a crime. I think the people who stole them should be prosecuted.

The authorities are trying to find out who hacked the computers. I have heard mention of some Russian organization, the Russian Mafia, perhaps. Do you have any information?

GJ I don’t really have any information, but I am going to give you what my feeling is. I think Big Oil and Gas funded some right-wing, skeptical group to hire the Russian mafia, or some arm of the mafia, to go in and hack the emails. They’ll never be traced back to where they really came from. That is unfortunate. I think it was clearly a crime. I think the real downside to the whole thing is that if I had been involved in that scandal, I’m sure I would have written things that would have been misconstrued, and that I would be at the center of it, too. You and I could send emails for the next sixth months and then somebody hacks them and uses them against us in one way, shape or form. I would expect that to happen because that is the way the press and blood-thirsty people want it.

I know virtually everybody who was at the center of that scandal. I know Phil Jones well, I know [Keith] Briffa, I know Michael Mann [Penn State], I know all those guys. There may have been a little bit of this or that which showed up as being not quite copacetic all the way through. But, in general, I don’t see it as a real issue. What I do see is that every scientific operation going on out there has some room for error and failings. This just probably brought that to the forefront.

It means the IPCC will get tighter, they’ll get better and I think they’ll correct a lot of the issues that are out there. But did they do things that were wrong? Maybe. Maybe they didn’t want to be around some of the barking skeptics; and maybe they did say things that weren’t flattering to that side, maybe limiting them from debate. That’s not right. But, in general, did they massage the data, did they hide things? No.

We know that very few of the emails show the slightest traces of data massaging or distortion. But what is most amusing is that the email data base was preserved intact, this according to the information-sharing protocols of the scientific community in general. Which is to say the material was just sitting there, subject to internal review by any number of supervising authorities at any time!

GJ Sure. I think it was all very unfortunate. I kind of saddens me in one respect, that our culture has to stoop to these kinds of ways; but it also, I think, may produce a better outcome in the long run because it forces those scientists and other scientists within that same discipline, and the IPCC, to look at itself little harder.

Climate change can be centrally about temperature change, but as you’ve pointed out in your scientific essays it is also very importantly about variability. Variability would include elements such as rainfall patterns, opportunistic pathogens and insect species, new epidemiological patterns. Can you speak about these other dimensions?

GJ I think that probably the biggest thing about the variability piece is that it all has to do with the shape of the distribution looks like. When we typically talk about climate change, this idea that temperatures go up X, that’s all about a shift of the distribution. The distribution moves so many units to the positive side depending if it is warming or cooling. But the problem with that is that climates are not expected to just change in their average, they are also expected to change in terms of the shape of the distribution, or, in other words, its variability. And so if we have changes in the mean and changes in the variability, what that does is produce more extremes on the warm side, but it also continues: It doesn’t mean that frosts and freezes go away. It means that cold weather still exists, and it could still be very problematic in many places. But yet the variability on the high end could be even more problematic.

And so that variability component is so critical for people to understand because evidence from not only just wine region analyses, both in the past and in the future, but from other things, too, are showing that our climate is appearing to be more variable in a warmer world. When the atmosphere on average is cooler, it tends to be a little less variable; warmer, more variable. But it is not a perfect one-to-one everywhere in every location; but that is kind of what the evidence is showing us.

I’ll give you a great example here in my region. The past two Octobers, well, really October 2008, we had the coldest temperatures ever recorded in October, the middle of October, preceded two weeks prior by the warmest temperatures ever recorded in September! Those kinds of things have been cropping up little by little, in temperature, but also in precipitation. Heavy rain events are more frequent in many places, which is causing slightly greater soil erosion issues.
Germany has always been having to deal with this because they have a lot of steep-slope viticulture. But it really didn’t strike me until I was a meeting one time there and we were doing some touring. We just happened to tour by a place where I say a bulldozer down at the bottom of a vineyard bulldozing dirt, putting it in a truck, the truck drove around along the slope up to the top of the vineyard, and they redistributed the dirt down the row. What they were telling me is that they had been seeing so much more rain coming in heavy, single events than being spread out over the year. Their erosion events were becoming more problematic.

I’ve heard and read studies that get to the same issue in different places in the world that we’re seeing heavier rain events than we are seeing more spread out rain kind of thing. That right there is a variability extreme kind of issue. The act of singular events like winter freezes are a little less extreme of late, but they still occur. Walla Walla this past December got down to 10 degrees; that’s at the damaging point for grape vines. Those kinds of things still happen. They just don’t go away. These extreme issues, whether they be with rainfall, hail even, of Winter freezes or Spring frosts, they are still risks to the industry depending on where you are.

END OF PART 2

Pt. 1 On Wine and Climate Change

Pt. 3 Gregory V. Jones On Pests, Pathogens, and Parker

Admin

J’Arrive Vinisud!

Donna — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:27:26 +0000

The irrepressible Donna writes:

J’Arrive Vinisud!

Everyone who knows me, knows I love wines from the South of France. They are near and dear to me and I’m a firm believer it is the future of France as we see all the named and historically famous wines become prohibitedly expensive and disappear out of the hands of the regular wine drinker into the very wealthy and increasingly the Asian market.

Here you find amazing value to price ratios unlike most wine regions in the world, save for Spain, which is slowly creeping up and less the value it once was. Unfortunately as successful as the region is, there still is a wave of vine pull schemes which tug at my heart every time I see another report.

The Trade Office of France and Sud de France have very generously brought me to the Languedoc to experience Vinisud, the largest wine trade fair for wines from the Mediterranean. I have to give props to Marie-Helene Courade of the Houston France Consulate who never forgets how I love going on these trips, making fantastic connections and putting up with my indecision when making flight reservations. Also thanks to Sarah Nguyen the Director of the Wine and Spirits for the French embassy trade office in NYC,

The Sud de France organization gave us all a wonderful welcome gift with our itineraries plus small gifts and samples of regional foods. One really neat gift and excellent for quick reference in a fun way is a sampling of wine tubes. Each tube contains a sample of the different styles of wines from the region. The AOC’s are for each style are printed on the back of the tubes along with the authorized grapes of the regions. As a wine educator, I kinda feel like Martha Stewart when I say “It’s a good thing”.

There’s a very busy schedule at these events. Frequently there’s a different hotel every night in a different city, dinner until 1 am, back up at 6 am, on a bus by 8am, repacking every morning, bodies fatigued, palates broken down, livers distended no matter how much wine you spat out but the opportunity to be in an organized visit schedule to meet producers and potentially bring their products to the United States, is gold. This trip I am thankful to be stationed in one hotel and I was able to completely unpack my garment bag and take account of all the things I need which I forgot to pack, but I did remember my Dansko clogs and will decline competing with all the very fashionable French women so I can cover as much of Vinisud as possible instead of moaning about hurting toes.

In addition to all the wines from the South of France at Vinisud I understand there are some wines from Corsica (very excited), Italy and Greece to also be included. I also saw they have a blind tasting room which I’ll be sure to visit and find out what that is about to see how badly I can humiliate myself. For those of you wondering why I’m disparaging my decent palate, I’ll fill you in about two weeks what that’s about.

There is going to be about 12 Halls in total and I received the book on only Hall 1 which is about 350 wines. And looking at the map of the event, Hall 1 is one of the smallest. So potentially, looking at about 5,000 wines? It can’t be that many, although I was looking at the pictures from last years regular Languedoc trade tasting and yes it could be.

Here’s the video from the 2008 Vinisud to see how large this trade fair is.

There is so much to pack into 3 days. They are also doing 3 full days of conference programs. I have signed up for 3, including the International Federation of Wine Journalists and Writer’s roundtable and a course on the new quality labels which I just don’t understand why it’s been changed. I’ll let you know if I’m still cranky about the change after learning about it more from those who really know. I know I want to go to Ryan O’Connell’s presentation about using the internet as a marketing tool on the last conference on the last day. He gave me a shout out on Twitter and I want to see what this young gun and his family are doing to make their wines successful. First look at his website impressed me.

The schedule for February 20th tells me we’re going to Cite de la Vigne et du Vin Gruissan which is on the coast near La Clape and then Carcassonne in the afternoon and for the evening visiting Corbieres de Bourtenac.

Schedule for February 21st has me going to Montagnac then visiting area wineries and then dinner at the Restaurant Le Sequoia with wines from Perpignan hopefully including the famous vin doux naturels from the region. I understand 3 groups of importers are going to enjoying this even on 3 separate evenings and I’m thrilled to be included.

Then finally 3 days of the main event which I have no idea how I’m going to get it all in, plus hopefully do some interviews’ in the time allowed and then home. I still wonder if I turned my hair curler off before I left.

Donna

The Wine Trials 2010, Tasting Blind

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:43:40 +0000

The Wine Trials 2010, by Robin Goldstein and Alexis Hershkowitsch (along with scores of others), is a curious book. At once rigorous and slippery, honest and evasive, it is precisely because of it’s structural ambiguity that it is a good place to initiate a discussion of what might be called the informal cultural anthropology of wine. And the discussion may most properly begin among small groups of wine enthusiasts tasting blind. This is the book’s great strength.

Robin Goldstein, whom I’ve never met, is perhaps best known for an interesting experiment (some folks used harsher language) he performed in 2008 involving the Wine Spectator’s (WS) ‘Award of Excellence’ program, the details about which this space has written. He created an entirely fictional restaurant on the internet, composed a wine list of WS ‘under-performers’, paid his $250 entrance fee and, voila!, the Award of Excellence was his. Equally importantly for Mr. Goldstein’s purposes (and ours) was the solicitation for advertisement space. Full details may be found on his website, Blind Taste. It was an amusing coup.

The Wine Trials 2010 takes elements of this project forward. First of all, it is important to stress that the tone of the book is a kind of hopeful skepticism, a forceful, yet playful insistence that though the consumer’s conscious freedom to taste is muted by three distinct cultural obstacles, they might yet escape through the practice of blind tasting. (And, of course, with the help of the wine recommendations in this book!) This is a book for adults interested in the ‘big picture’. It is meant to provoke thought. But that it also interferes with thought I hope to make clear.

The first of the three obstacles is the wine press, generalized under the titles Parker’s Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast. The second obstacle is the ‘placebo effect’, a universal feature of the human condition. The third obstacle, an equally universal feature, is cultural training whereby everyone is introduced from infancy into a specific gustatory regime. I shall briefly examine each in turn.

The Wine Press How is it that a $12 Domaine Ste. Michelle Cuvée Brut sparkler from Washington State is consistently preferred in blind tastings to a $150 Dom Pérignon? Or a $9 Beringer Founders’ Estate Cab to its close relative, the $120 Beringer Private Reserve Cab? Or a $6 Vinho Verde from Portugal to Cakebread’s $40 Chardonnay? Precisely because they were tasted blind. And the reverse, choosing the more expensive wine in the full light of day? In part, this is because of the distortions the wine press. Through well-publicized tastings by established critics, advertisement and a battery of lifestyle-enhancement triggers, the consumer comes to believe a higher price is correlated to quality. To see is to believe. Of course nothing could be further from the truth, the book argues. And it tries to show the reader why.

The Wine Trials 2010 tells us that four hundred and fifty “widely available” wines were initially selected, all under $15. As distinct from last year’s edition, this time around “We have accepted nominations from professionals in many different areas of the wine industry, from producers to sommeliers, importers to retailers.” It was from this pool that after multiple blind tastings among dozens and dozens of contributors, one hundred and fifty wines made the cut. Part Two of the book is an alphabetical compilation, with details and notes, of these wines. Now, what is surprising is that every one of the 150 wines “outscored much more expensive bottles in our brown-bag tasting.” It is surprising because of what the reader never learns :

1) The identity of the “more expensive bottles”. Indeed, very few expensive wines are mentioned in the book. Apart from the Dom Pérignon, Beringer and Cakebread, the only other wines touched on are Veuve Clicquot and a Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru from Louis Latour. Were there others? What was the price spread? Were $20 bottles included? We just don’t know.

2 Neither is a definition of “expensive” provided. Is it $18, $25? (The least expensive of the wines mentioned comes in at $40.)

3) Lastly, though the Wine Spectator comes rightly under considerable fire for their very questionable methodology, readers are not informed whether the “expensive” wines were ever given especially high scores in that magazine.

These are important methodological faults of The Wine Trials 2010, in my view. Of course, the book’s principle argument is that value may be found at lower price points. I heartily agree. No one would argue otherwise, not in the real world. But I do not believe their case is properly made absent a full disclosure of the expensive wines’ identities, how the expensive were selected and how widely did the authors select. We do know that all wines had to be “widely available”. But that is the sole criterion, as near as I can tell.

The placebo effect The Wine Trials 2010 discusses very important developments in the field of Neuroscience concerning how it is that to believe something is true in fact physically alters one’s perception. The authors provide a fine, though limited bibliography for further reading. Recounting various historical and current experiments in which test subjects, from the sophisticated to the novice, were creatively mislead (shall we say), the book amply demonstrates the very real phenomenon of the placebo effect. In these experiments wine experts come to believe the same wine in different bottles, one expensive, one cheap, actually taste different; casual drinkers, when mis-informed that they are drinking a cheap wine said to be expensive, prefer the ‘expensive’, by significant statistical margins. New experiments are being formulated as I write, so rich is the field.

Perception and expectation do alter taste. About that there is no question. Mr. Goldstein calls this framing of experience “The taste of money”. This we know occurs. And it is a far deeper phenomenon than the casual drinker might be willing to admit. Or the authors themselves. Indeed, the clinical trials of new drugs are routinely abandoned because the pharmaceutical company is unable to show a statistically meaningful improvement in a patient over a placebo in blind trials.

Further, there is a large body of brilliant research on differing experiences of pain when a subject’s expectations are wildly distinct. Take, for example, a soldier shot on the battlefield. He is offered pain medication, but he refuses it, deferring to his fallen fellows. Why? With allowances made for specific details, it is because he knows he is going home; he knows he will see his kids and wife; he knows he will receive a hero’s welcome; he knows he will receive on-going medical care. He was wounded defending a cause. Clinical experience clearly shows the experience of pain will be attenuated.

Now contrast that series of expectations to the victim of a random shooting on the street. This poor soul has no expectation of proper, complete care; he does not know whether his employer will keep his job for him and whether, as a consequence, he will be able to pay the rent; or how he will provide for his family. He is the anonymous victim of a random crime. There is no ’cause’, just the brutal reality of the street. Again, clinical experience reveals a different experience of pain.

I’ve gone on this tangent because I think the authors of The Wine Trials 2010 grossly overstate the simplicity of consumers rising above ‘the placebo effect’. They provide what I would call a ’soft’ case. The research they cite, however methodologically flawed, still remains compelling. It is simply that neuroscience and anthropology, the hard research, provides stronger evidence of the persistence and durability of ‘the placebo effect’ than the authors appear to believe.

Cultural Training The Wine Trials 2010 offers some very valuable insight into modern wines, what they call a ‘globalized’ style. Recognizing the jeopardy much of the world’s wine diversity is in, they point to a plausible suspect. Robert Parker? No. For Parker is only the bearer of a cultural marker, a gustatory preference. The real culprit is sugar. From the book,

[...] the culprit for the style convergence might not be Parker himself, or his followers themselves; it might be the taste for sugar that he, and they, all acquired in childhood–a taste that an increasing percentage of the world’s children are now also acquiring. [....] Should we call Yellow Tail not ‘Parkerized,’ but rather ‘globalized’”?

I think there is something to this. And one might look no further than The Wine Trials 2010 list of wines itself for evidence of this increasingly important cultural factor. Sure enough, of the 150 wines selected a full 42 ‘Heavy New World reds’ (their category) made the cut in their blind tastings! Nearly a third, and by far the largest single grouping. Of course, they might argue that this is because the decisive factor for inclusion into the original 450 wines was that they be “widely” available. And Heavy New World red does not necessarily mean ‘globalized’. But it, nevertheless, begs the question. No discussion of this statistically significant result is entertained in the book.

And this takes us to a more difficult question about the value, you could even call it the philosophy, of blind tasting. Mr. Goldstein cites a lively discussion shared on Eric Asimov’s NY Times wine blog, The Pour, about the subject. Among the many topics touched on, Asimov insisted that “blind tastings eliminate knowledge and context that can be significant in judging a wine. [....] It is an almost anti-intellectual position. Obviously what’s in the glass matters. But the more knowledge you can bring to a wine, the better your understanding of that wine will be.”

In The Wine Trials 2010 Mr. Goldstein responds in a very curious, though similar, way. He writes, “Our descriptions do not rely solely on blind tasting notes. Without a doubt, a lot of the fun of wine is in all the stuff that’s not in the glass.” [emphasis in the original]

Now, I have not read all the original source material framing this exchange, but I will say that both gentlemen seem to agree that Knowledge, with a capital K, is extraneous to what’s in the glass. I couldn’t disagree more; for knowledge comes in many different forms. I would argue that viticultural and winemaking practice have a direct bearing on what’s in the glass. Whether biodynamic, organic, conventional, whether terroir-driven, practice and soil informs the wine. It is one thing to recognize it, it is quite another to claim, as Mr. Goldstein certainly does, that knowledge, this time with a small k, does not inform a wine.

Mr. Goldstein is equally dismissive of the notion that wine is meant to be consumed with food. Who would argue with what half the wine-drinking world holds to self-evident? Well, he erases entire libraries and cultures when he writes,

“It is true that information about your experience of a wine in the absence of food, or in a sequence of other wines, will not be perfectly relevant to a reader’s future experience of that same wine over a relaxing meal. But information about how the wine’s fruit character and tannins reacted with your next-door neighbor’s demi-glace might well be even less relevant”

Try telling that to a Spaniard! I guarantee that uttering such a thing will not get you invited into his family’s house.

It is almost as if he is claiming ‘knowledge’ of/about wine is limited to price, the eccentricities of the winemaker, label and prestige, only those elements that fall under the umbrella of wine marketing and ‘the placebo effect’. An astute student of socioeconomic folly does not make one a wine critic. Neither does he claim to be, to be sure. And as to that, it is a curious effect of this book that it leaves this reader with the impression that Mr. Goldstein does not himself drink wine. There is little passion for wine on the page. Intelligence, yes. I think he might be principally a creature of the behavioral sciences, perforce hamstrung by the multiple ways his freedom may be hijacked by subterranean cultural forces at work on us all. Or, perhaps, a touch of how the gynecologist might reflect upon the prospect of having sex. He’s just seen too much!

But I like the book, even though my point of view cannot find a home there. It is stuffed with ideas, too many to fairly discuss in a modest review. It forcefully puts forward a point of view, a series of challenges to a large part of the wine industry which deserve, no, demand to be heard. I like the book well enough to give Mr. Goldstein the last word.

“The aim of The Wine Trials–aside from seeking out good, widely available values under $15–is to question the institutional structures that govern the industry, to encourage people to learn their own palates through the exercise of tasting blind instead of trusting the numerical scores that Parker and the magazines assign. It is the economic power of these institutional structures that damages not only the wallet of the everyday consumer, but also the chances for a small, interesting, good-value producer–even one that makes a wine costing more than $15–to succeed on the store shelf or on the restaurant wine list.”

Please also see the spirited debate over at 1 Wine Dude’s site.

Admin