Browse Month

January 2009

Still no closure

[screwcap, reproduced under the GNU Free Documentation License provided by Wikimedia Commons, from user wnissen]Thanks to comprehensive note-taking, one of the things I’m able to do is note trends in my personal wine experience. None of which anyone else should care about, except for one:

I calculated the percentage of corked wines I experienced over the past year. As expected, it went down, and the current identified taint rate (I’m far from the most sensitive TCA-detector) is about 2.5% or so. That’s still too high, but much better than the 7-9%, even occasionally pushing 10%, failure rate I regularly experienced a half-dozen years ago.

Or is it? Those old numbers were generated in the near-complete absence of screwcaps and the only anecdotal presence of other alternative closures. So that, too, needs to be factored into the new percentage. Subtracting screwcaps, glass closures, both kinds of synthetic corks, and crown caps (I had several this year, on a bottle of California sparkling wine and some Italian sparklers as well), the number goes up. And it goes up again when I eliminate barrel samples, which obviously can’t show cork effects.

So what’s the real number? The number, it must be remembered, that comes after the cork industry’s much-heralded (unfortunately, mostly by themselves and their bought-off journalistic shills) attempts to, at long last, address their taint problems with technological solutions?

It’s better than one might expect: just a shade over 4%. Much better than it used to be, for sure, but still not good enough. I’m not yet at the point where I can express even cautious optimism, given the cork industry’s decades of lying and obfuscation on this issue, but we’ll see what the new year brings. At least the numbers are headed in the right direction, and obviously it will take their efforts a while to catch up to the older vintages in everyone’s cellars.

Meanwhile, two related numbers seem worth considering. The oft-discussed reduction issue with screwcaps did occasionally rear its head this year, but I still don’t see the problems that others do, which makes me wonder if I’m simply insensitive to the phenomenon. I identified four reduced wines this year, for a total reduction rate of .35%, but one of those was (somewhat surprisingly) under synthetic cork – the very last closure that should be able to preserve reductive characteristics – rather than screwcap. Restricting the data to screwcapped wines alone, the reduction rate – and this includes some aged wines, which are what those beating the anti-screwcap drum seem to fear most – was 1.6%. Not very high, and certainly far below the percentage of wines tainted by natural cork, but still not ideal. As I’ve said before, more research is obviously needed, but remember that the vast majority of the stories on this issue are being generated by a single journalist…which doesn’t make him wrong, but should at least lead to some healthy suspicion.

The most worrisome number is the physical failure rate for extruded synthetic corks (for those confused by the terminology, those are the spongy ones that look like a real cork, not the stiff plugs of multicolored plastic that strip the Teflon off corkscrews and are often impossible to remove). It’s important to note, however, that my number will be a bit of an outlier, as this past year included a number of wines that I inadvertently aged without realizing that they were sealed with artificial corks. The ability of synthetics to seal bottles for more than a few years has long been doubted, even by the people who invented them, and my experiences bear this out: the failure rate for extruded synthetic corks was a rather shocking 9.7%, and that’s only wines that were completely or very nearly dead, not those that I thought were inferior to their expected states.

In sum, my previous recommendations (not that anyone necessarily cares what I think) stand: there’s no reason for wines made for youthful consumption to be under natural cork. Synthetic corks must not be used for wines that have any aging ability at all. As for the longer agers and which closures are best, the questions remain: 1) how much oxygen ingress, if any (and from where?), is necessary for wine to age, and 2) what adjustments to wine chemistry, if any, are necessary to guarantee optimum performance for different types of wine under each closure? We need to answer the former first, however.

Funky, cold, & Medina

[qantas]It has actually come to this? So many great experiences, so many wonderful people (except for that one), so many unforgettable memories. And yet, New Zealand’s final farewell for us is this: for the second time in three opportunities, Air New Zealand has failed to put our bags on the same plane as us. Even with a three-hour layover in Auckland. How does that happen? Have they employed tuatara to handle luggage and cargo? Three hours is usually enough even for Heathrow, for heaven’s sake, and Auckland’s not exactly the world’s biggest airport.

“They’ll be on the next flight,” assures the man clicking away at a computer with the sleek lines and processing power of the eighties. The early eighties. It’s got a green screen, it’s slower than Air NZ baggage handling, and the printer issuing my lost luggage report is a noisy old dot matrix model. Dot matrix. And yes, the paper is the appropriate relic, which I wasn’t even aware was still produced: alternating green and white stripes with perforated holes down the sides. What sort of bizarre time warp have we entered? Have all the country’s IT consultants gone walkabout?

…continued here.

Quintaine coup

Guillemot-Michel 2001 Mâcon-Villages “Quintaine” (Mâcon) – Seems fully mature, with concentration at the core and aromatic frippery around the perimeter. White truffle, faded but good, white peach, (dry) honeysuckle, and a dust-in-heavy water texture. Lengthy finish. Really quite enticing, though it tastes a lot more like Guillemot-Michel than it does chardonnay. As for whether or not it tastes like a Mâcon, that category is almost too debased for comparison. (1/09)

Swans crossing

[vineyard]Swan 2000 Pinot Noir “Cuvée de Tois” (Russian River Valley) – Perhaps not all the way to wherever its going, but it’s in a strangely bipolar place now. The palate is light, crisp, and pure, full of red cherry and sharp raspberry acidity. But the nose, while it has some nice earthen elements, also speaks loudly and repetitively of smoke and cola. None of it is anywhere close to bad, and it’s a compelling enough wine to go back to again and again in an attempt to make some sense of it, but it’s just weird. (1/09)

First Cazin

Cazin 2005 Cheverny “Le Petit Chambord” (Loire) – Starbursting yellow fruit with crisp streaks of green, then layers of light chalk and dried honey, and a finishing sheen of very light sweetness. Nicely balanced, very pretty, and as fine a bargain as you’ll find in these difficult times. (1/09)

Chatelard, put out the light

Rosier “Château du Chatelard” 2006 Fleurie “Les Vieux Granits” (Beaujolais) – Cold, almost icy minerality, with a chilled blackberry boisterousness that never quite manages to escape an enveloping gauze. I’d be interested to see how this develops, because it’s a middle-tier Fleurie right now, but all that minerality would seem to have serious potential for future rocky goodness. (1/09)

The Young’s & the restless

[vineyard]Young’s 2000 Zinfandel (Shenandoah Valley) – 13.8%. Light and coconutty. The wild-vine intensity, often expressed as something almost piney, of the region is nowhere to be found, except in a vague suggestion of fresh spring bush growth. Fresh, friendly strawberry (seeds intact) comprises the entirety of the fruit. I’m not sure aging did anything for this wine. In fact, I’m convinced holding on to it was a mistake, as it was much better, richer, and more textured in its youth. (1/09)

As the Crozes flies

Desmeure “Domaine des Remizières” 1999 Crozes-Hermitage “Cuvée Christophe” (Rhône) – Sour and fecal, in a way few wines are these days. Significant Band-Aid as well. It’s like a masterclass in brett. Underneath – way underneath – there’s leathery meat-fruit that’s significantly lighter than one might think, and good structure. But there’s no getting past the ass. (1/09)

Tours de France

Reynaud “Château de Tours” 1998 Vacqueyras “Réserve” (Rhône) – Mute as if it’s corked, though the exact nature of the flaw – other than the absence of the wine – isn’t fully clear in the time we give the bottle. We put it aside. Twenty-four hours later, I’m told it has blossomed into something dark, rich, and full of fruit (as it’s understood in Vacqueyras, at least), but still youngish. Oh well. (1/09)

Anything you want, Rugate

[garganega grapes]ca’Rugate 2006 Soave Classico San Michele (Veneto) – More jagged than cohesive, showing more seams, cracks, and edges than is typical for this wine, its green plum, honeydew, and tart watermelon rind core are given the usual (for the appellation) dusting of powdered sugar in solution, though the wine doesn’t come of as more than anecdotally off-dry, and may in fact be analytically sugar-free. In a way, the discontinuities lend the wine appeal, but it’s not everything it could be. (1/09)