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Screw it

[cork]In some quarters, the long-running closure debate rages on. It shouldn’t. It’s almost over.

How can I make this claim? Do I have access to some new research that no one else has seen? No. Here’s the deal: the screwcap is almost universally acknowledged to work flawlessly (or very, very nearly so) over the short term. Most wine is produced for, and consumed in, the short term. Thus, there is no logical reason for any wine made for near-term consumption to be closed with anything but a screwcap. The only resistance remains adherence to tradition (though this must include the wonderful “tradition” of a taint rate that runs between 2 and 8%, depending on the sample) and fear of the market, especially in Europe. Both understandable reasons, despite the science, but the tide is turning even on Old World shores, and more and more short-term wines are being shipped under screwcap, especially for export markets.

Thus, the entirety of the unanswered question rests on the shoulders of long-aging wines. And here, one can forgive any producer for being confused. There’s an ever-growing body of evidence (most of it from Australia, though that’s changing) that white wines age beautifully under screwcap. And, in fact, where one sees adoption of the technology in the Old World, it’s mostly for longer-aging whites: rieslings, white Burgundies, etc. (One wonders if the market-killing premature-oxidation problem among white Burgundies might be solved in a stroke by the adoption of a different closure. It certainly couldn’t hurt, at this point.) For red wines, the anecdotal evidence is thinner, and certainly more long-term studies would be extremely valuable.

But there’s also a pair of unanswered questions: how much oxygen does a wine need to age, and when does it need it? (It’s useful to define our term here: “age” would, to most people, mean “age in a way similar to that of the best cork-finished wines to which we’re accustomed.” If screwcaps allow 10-year wines to go 40 years before they achieve a similar end-state, that’s to the credit of the closure, but less useful to the consumer without a multi-generational cellar from which to draw.) The problem for winemakers is that the research on this point is cloudy and contradictory.

It has long been believed, by some, that corks allow a gradual transfer of oxygen. “Not so,” said cork manufacturers in the past, when they wanted to assure people of the efficacy of their products despite persistently unmanageable cork taint. And “not so,” said the inventors of synthetic corks, who – after research – determined that the “perfect” seal was what they wanted to emulate (though it’s worth noting that all synthetic corks fail over the short- or medium-term, breaking their seal and allowing oxygen to enter the bottle). More recently, a groundbreaking Australian study came up with an answer of “not exactly,” demonstrating that while some corks did indeed prevent the transfer of oxygen, others allowed it at greatly varying rates. And most recently, a study in Bordeaux found that corks do allow oxygen ingress, at a much less variable rate than found in the Australian study.

The Bordeaux study was funded by a cork producer, and thus its conclusions need to be viewed with mistrust until verified by independent study. The safe conclusion is that there’s no actual conclusion, as yet, from the research. But I think we can do better than that by simple thought experiments, while we wait for the research to achieve surety.

We absolutely know one thing about oxygen: a lot of it is very bad for a wine. Open a bottle, pour half of it into a wide-bottomed decanter, and let it sit. How does it taste after a day? A week? A year? Twenty years? That’s a bottled wine in the presence of a lot of oxygen.

And we know one more thing about oxygen: very little of it does very little. “Do you want to open the bottle and let it breathe?” is, as most wine folk know, a useless question: the dime-shaped portion of wine exposed to air in the neck of an uncorked bottle does nothing to change the wine in the times usually under consideration. This is why young wines are sometimes decanted: to accelerate the effect of oxygenation.

Or consider old bottles. Which are, at auction, the most valuable, controlling for vintage, producer, and cellaring conditions? The ones with the least ullage (the space between the bottom of the cork and the top of the wine). It is believed, and supported by nearly all the tasting evidence available to us over the decades, that low-ullage bottles (that is, those that are closest to their original fill) are the best-preserved; there are occasional exceptions, but they’re rare. High-end producers, though not with closures on their mind, support this notion during their periodic forays into bottle reconditioning, wherein an old wine is quickly uncorked, refilled with a quantity of that wine from their cellar or other bottles of the same wine (or, in some cases, a younger wine), and then sealed with a fresh cork. What purpose to this practice other than to reduce the nefarious influence of excess oxygen, and to replace a closure with a high rate of physical failure before that failure becomes catastrophic?

Moreover, if there’s ullage in a bottle, then something is getting out. And not just oxygen. This is physical evidence that some corks are massively permeable (or allow transfer between their surface and the interior of the bottle; an important difference if you’re a cork producer, but a completely unimportant difference if you’re the producer or owner of the bottle in question; either way, the closure has failed to preserve the wine).

[disassembled screwcap]So we know a lot of oxygen is bad, and a tiny bit of oxygen is meaningless over the short term. The questions, then, are: what about a tiny bit of oxygen over the long term, and what about no oxygen at all?

Some wine chemists have long argued that aging is an anaerobic process, that wine doesn’t need oxygen to do most of what it’s going to do. Newer thinking on this question is a little less certain, and suggests that the tiny amount of oxygen trapped in three places: 1) the wine, post-bottling, 2) the headspace (the gap between the wine and the bottom of the closure) [edit: it’s worth noting that this oxygen is usually forced out; a process known as sparging], and 3) the cells of the cork itself, might be all the oxygen a wine needs to age. In practice, steps are taken to remove much of this oxygen in question at bottling, but some remains. However, if the cork is shedding oxygen into the bottle, then a cork really doesn’t provide a barrier against oxygen; if oxygen can move across (say) 35% percent of the cork, what’s to stop it from moving across 100% of the cork, other than the vagaries of the cork’s cellular structure? (I don’t want to dismiss this last point too easily. Cork is from a tree, not a lab, and as such will always exhibit variation; the “natural” quality touted by producers is also the principal source of its physical variability.)

But what about no oxygen at all? Can wine age in a hermetically-sealed container? How about one in which an amount of oxygen similar to that of a cork-finished wine is provided? We just don’t know yet, but early evidence suggests not. We do have some evidence that closures that permit absolutely no oxygen transfer (screwcaps with certain types of liners, for example) can lead to reductive wines, the eventual fate of which we don’t yet know. This problem seems to be preventable by changing a few minor aspects of bottling chemistry (that is to say…and with no little irony…modifying techniques that were designed to protect a newly-bottled wine from the effects of excess oxygen). But this can happen to cork-finished wines as well, and that it doesn’t do so 100% of the time is yet more evidence that corks are variable in their ability to move oxygen around.

We also know that, despite the claims of the Bordeaux study, corks can vary a lot in their ability to let stuff in and out, based again on the evidence of variable ullage in old bottles. Whether or not that study was funded by cork producers and tainted (no pun intended) as a result, the simple fact of the matter is that it only covered three, not thirty or more, years of aging. Minor variations in oxygen transfer can and, sometimes, do become major ones over long periods of time. And as I’ve already noted, the effectiveness and qualitative supremacy of screwcaps over the short term is well-established, so it’s really only these long-aging wines about which we’re currently concerned.

So if we don’t know, but suspect, that an absence of oxygen is no good, at least we do know that as little oxygen as possible seems to be ideal…based, as noted before, on the ullage in old bottles. The choice before us is this: a little oxygen at bottling plus a little oxygen over a long period, or a little oxygen at bottling plus no oxygen at all over a long period.

Given this, isn’t the only question the one asked earlier? How much oxygen does a wine need to age, and when does it need it? Once this is known, and given the continued existence of both cork taint and physical cork failure and/or variability, what reason – other than tradition and fear – is there to continue to use “natural” cork? For – and this is a major point – screwcap liners can be selected for permeability. Once we know “the number” (which may be different for different types of wine), we can tailor closures for that result; something that we’re unlikely to be able to do with corks, unless they cease to be a natural product.

There’s no blame to be assigned to a winery who wants to wait for the evidence before making a switch. Were I making a pricey wine with a reputation to preserve, I’d probably do the same, despite the large number of New World producer’s who’ve made the change already, and are betting their futures on the screwcap. But the evidence will eventually come, despite a several-decade interim period…a period in which we will continue to suffer cork taint, physical cork failure, and cork variability. At some point, this question will be decided, and the screwcap – though by that stage it could just as easily be another alternative closure with similar properties – will emerge the scientific victor.

Cork & screwcap photos used under the terms of a Wikimedia Commons license.

To preserve & protect: a defense of the AOC

[storming of the Bastille]When the oft-benighted INAO denied Jean-Paul Brun the appellation for his 2007 Beaujolais “l’Ancien” (story here, follow-up here, and in French here), it didn’t come as much of a surprise. The lowest-quality French appellations – those that produce oceans of mediocrity – are notorious for this sort of thing, in which low-quality producers (often, but not always, cooperatives) punish their leading lights in order to preserve the notion that their own insipid products represent the “status quo.” Such actions, alongside inexplicably silly lawsuits against those who dare to tell the truth about the appellation, don’t exactly slow the steep decline in the region’s reputation.

Of course, there is an ever-increasing list of very high-quality producers in Beaujolais, names like Lapierre, Coudert, Tête, Foillard, Desvignes…and yes, Brun…that are well-known to enthusiasts. Will they be next under the INAO’s guillotine? It seems likely. The difficulty in France is that unlike Italy, where marketable alternatives for wines that fall outside the DOC system have long existed (and in fact, have been strengthened by updated laws), the loss of a French appellation makes a wine virtually unsaleable. A certain measure of salvation comes from the export markets that know and love these wines, and a little bit more from the ultra-naturalist wine bars and shops that are so currently trendy in France (most of the leading lights of the appellation practice highly traditional viticulture and/or low-manipulation winemaking), but there’s no getting around the fact that this is a hard blow to farmers, most of whom are not exactly bathing in liquid diamonds.

While producers can and do run afoul of the INAO for actual violations of the appellation’s technical rules (grape type and source, alcohol level, residual sugar, etc.), cases like Brun’s are due to the most subjective step in the agrément (the granting of the appellation), the committee of a winery’s alleged peers that tastes wines to see if they conform to the appellation’s norms. One can immediately see the problem here: personal bias cannot help but enter the equation. Petty jealousies matter, especially between penny-scraping defenders of mindless tradition and successful quality producers, few of whom are known for tempered opinions regarding the former group. And especially in France, the showy, somewhat internationalized market in which a “star” winemaker plays often breeds resentment in those struggling to sell their grapes to the local cooperative at ever-decreasing prices. It’s a foolproof recipe for exactly what’s happened to Brun and so many others before him, and it’s somewhat of a surprise that it doesn’t happen more often.

It’s easy, and correct, to call such events a failure of the overly-restrictive theory behind the legally-defined appellation as practiced in France. Some think that the solution is to strip appellations of all non-geographic restrictions. Thus, a Beaujolais could be any wine that came from within the confines of Beaujolais, no matter the grape, color, or form. This would bring French wine law into accord with most New World laws, and let the market rule the future. Others favor less extreme measures, but still advocate the elimination of many restrictions and prescriptions in appellation law.

I think this is a mistake.

The problem is that many, perhaps most, people have the wrong idea about the purpose of a legally-defined appellation. Blame for this can be laid squarely at the feet of generations of French winemakers who have promoted it as the top element in a hierarchy, or as a guarantor of quality. It is neither of those things (which makes Italy’s codification of this notion in their allegedly superior DOCG designation – the “G” stands for “garantita,” or “guaranteed,” – preposterous on its face).

A legally-defined appellation has nothing whatsoever to do with quality, and the only thing it guarantees is identity; that is, a product that carries an appellation must have the properties defined by that appellation, whether it be wine (Vosne-Romanée), cheese (Roquefort), or chicken (poulet de Bresse). The granting of a Bordeaux AOC does not mean that a given wine is good, it means that it satisfies a certain set of objective criteria that have nothing to do with subjective quality. It also does not mean that the wine is better than a vin de table, but worse than a Bordeaux Supérieur or a Pauillac. Yet that is what many people have been led to believe.

[INAO logo]Narrowly-defined appellation law could, and perhaps should, restrict itself to scientifically-measurable, objective criteria. Grapes, minimum (or maximum) alcohol, color, form (still/sparkling/sweet), harvest date, soil type, approved and disapproved viticultural and cellar techniques, etc….and eliminate the tasting panel. But would this solve the problem?

Yes and no. It would prevent inexplicable decisions like the one capriciously denying Burn the appellation for a sample of a wine already granted the very same appellation several times. But it is still a restriction, and a harsh one, on what Burn may or may not do. The question must be asked: why is it necessary to limit Burn’s freedom in any fashion whatsoever?

Libertarians and free-thinking New World winemakers are no doubt shouting “yes!” Here’s a counter-argument: because defined appellations have great value. Not so much for the producer, but for the consumer.

The proper way to think of an appellation is as an indication of typicity. That is, the way in which a wine satisfies expectations as to its character. There is nothing to criticize, and everything to praise, in a labeling system that gives the consumer information about the wine within. Of course, no labeling system is perfect, nor can this information be useful without a context of knowledge, but it’s certainly useful to know that, between a Muscadet and a Margaux, one is much more likely to be appreciated with oysters than the other. Or that, given a red Hermitage of recent vintage, there are consequences to opening the wine before it has matured, consequences (decanting, the right food to combat tannin) that must be dealt with to achieve the maximum possible enjoyment.

An appellation as an indicator of character is as clarifying as the knowledge of the consumer allows it to be. The novice may well find that the Muscadet/Margaux differentiation is enough for their satisfaction, while the aficionado may enjoy the fine-grained differences between Chiroubles and Régnié, or Morgon and Moulin-à-Vent. If the appellation is stripped of restriction and meaning, however, such indications cannot be. A Margaux that is, today, a blend of (mostly) cabernet sauvignon and merlot cannot tomorrow be a sparkling viognier, and after that a late-harvest gewürztraminer, without hopelessly confusing customers. Just look at the minor chaos created by simpler confusions, like the level of residual sugar in “dry” Alsatian wines, and multiply that confusion a hundred-fold.

Further, appellations preserve diversity. It is true that not all appellation-preserved wines can currently be assessed as worthy of preservation, but it’s important to remember that things change. As they have, for example, in Beaujolais. The dedicated French supermarket shopper may despair of finding anything worth saving from the region, but the savvy oenophile knows that there’s quality to spare if one knows where to look. That upsurge in quality is, for the most part, a fairly recent occurrence. But had the authorities given up on Beaujolais, no matter how justifiably, and demoted it to vin de pays or worse, would we know the names of the qualitative revolutionaries? Almost certainly not.

[yin yang symbol]In a trend-chasing wine world, appellations codify tradition (which is, after all, what typicity attempts to express). They don’t necessarily preserve quality tradition, but that’s situational; in regions where quality is the tradition, Brun-style problems don’t occur. Appellations mandate the use of grapes that would, in the face of the pure market, be ripped up for ever more endless acres of cabernet, merlot, chardonnay, pinot noir, and the few other well-known, seemingly infinitely-saleable grape varieties that already litter our shelves. They preserve the sharp brine of Muscadet, the delirious spice of Furstentum gewürztraminer, the rocky heights of the Scharzhofberg, the fierce brood of Taurasi, and the rustic smile of Bugey Cerdon, without all of which our world of wine is diminished

So, appellations must be preserved, just as they preserve that which we would otherwise lose. But what they must not be – and this is the critical point – is the final appeal. The crime against Brun is not that he made a wine that the INAO (rightly or wrongly) found atypical, it’s that this finding damaged him. Brun should be allowed to “opt out” of the appellation system and its implied promises of authenticity and identity without suffering economic harm. Current French law doesn’t allow him to do that, but it should. In an ideal world, Brun may choose to make wines within the appellation system, and thus benefit from the information that those designations provide to the consumer, but may also choose to make wines outside that system…wines that are merely Beaujolais by another name, or wines that are as fanciful as his imagination allows (and Brun has quite an imagination). Thus, Brun gains immunity from the jealousy and petulance that would do him economic harm.

One might ask: why a potentially confusing dual system, rather than simply scrapping the most problematic aspect of the agrément, the tasting panel? The argument for the panel’s preservation is that for appellations to have value along the lines that I’ve indicated, they must actually identify typicity. And I don’t know of any way to assess typicity besides tasting. The potential for problems could be greatly mitigated by ensuring that tasting panels are not composed of one’s immediate peers; for example, no one who makes Beaujolais should sit on the Beaujolais panel. This will require some means of assessing qualifications, but certainly France and other countries that grant similar appellations have enough qualified tasters to suffice.

The appellation system has both good and bad aspects. Scrapping it (or hobbling it) is an enticing course of action, but benefits producers (who gain freedom) at the expense of consumers (who lose coherence). And fixing it, in a country as conservative about its traditions as France, seems a venture doomed to failure…or, worse, repair that exacerbates the problem (look at Germany’s attempts to update its own wine law, for example). Instead, why not a minor tweak to the foundation, plus the addition of a worthy counterpart that does not in any way damage the unquestioned marketing power of the AOC? One which heightens the value of the appellation to the consumer and preserves tradition, but which sets the producer free to benefit from both tradition and unfettered experimentation? Everyone benefits. And our world of wine is enhanced.

Turning up the heat

[alcohol removal system © Vinovation]I know I promised a longer, more proactive post on the issue of alcohol in wine, but this will have to do for now. A while back, blogger (and winemaker) Craig Camp entered the fray, claiming that alcohol is not the problem. It’s a fine post, and to the extent that (as he argues) elevated alcohols are a primarily a symptom of a different cause – that of ever-escalating ripeness at harvest – he’s right. But he goes awry here:

The issue should not be the alcohol level of the wine, but if the wine tastes balanced and still reflects the 3 V’s of great wine: variety, vineyard and vintage. It is here that higher alcohol wines often fail, but the reason is not the alcohol level itself. The faults often blamed on high alcohol come not from alcohol itself, but the fact that the grapes were harvested super-ripe, which is just another word for overripe.

Camp makes one of the same errors – well, let’s instead call it a misstep – that Alder Yarrow made in conflating these issues. It’s absolutely true that alcohol levels are inextricably linked to the modern search for concentration and more powerful fruit. But what’s not true is that the flaws are inseparable from an organoleptic standpoint. Sure, some consumers may not be able to tell the difference between prune-like fruit and alcohol. But I can, Camp can, and I suspect most competent tasters can…especially once they’ve been trained to do so.

The work of controversial consultant Clark Smith (of Vinovation) rather neatly demonstrates that alcohol is a separable component. Tasting the same wine at a long series of alcohol levels (one of Vinovation’s techniques is the removal of alcohol using reverse osmosis), tasters regular come to the same conclusion as Smith: wines simply taste different at different alcohols, even when that variable is isolated…and not in a way described a simple bell curve, either. Instead, tasters find appealing but contrasting qualities at several different alcohol levels, which Smith calls “sweet spots.” (For more on this subject, I recommend the combo issue 73+74 of Ed Behr’s The Art of Eating, in which one finds a profile of Smith and his methods.)

So if alcohol is a separable variable, it makes sense, when opining on the organoleptics of finished wine, to treat it both in its proper context (as an outcome of ripeness) and as a unique, discernable component. In other words, to borrow and recompose a quote from legendary winemaker Henri Jayer: if a wine tastes too alcoholic, it is too alcoholic.

Earlier, I noted that competent tasters can identify alcohol in wine. Certainly, most successful winemakers and oenologists are trained tasters; often, they’re some of the most incisive tasters one will ever meet, because their jobs depend on their palate and decisions made from the information it provides. So why do they produce wines that others identify as too alcoholic?

There can be only three answers. One is that they simply don’t notice it; this is what’s known as “cellar palate,” though the term is usually applied to winemakers who use more and more wood because constantly tasting wine from within fresh new wood renders the palate numb to its effects, like a chef who loses her sensitivity to salt. But as I noted before, winemakers are, as a group, very good at tasting the components and potentials in their grapes, must, and wine. So while it’s possible that some can’t – certainly there’s plenty of flawed wine out there, wine that suggests not all winemakers are good tasters – it seems unlikely that most can’t.

The other two are related: either it’s what they, themselves, like, or they think it’s what the customer wants. On this dual justification, a suggestive passage from the above-referenced The Art of Eating article:

A recent Vinovation client, tasting through his de-alcoholized wines, said of one sweet spot, “This is the wine I’d like to make,” and of another, “This is the wine I have to make.”

Though some will vociferously deny it, winemakers can and do make wine for the market. And not just the mass-market brands, who transparently do make wines to please popular tastes, and for sensible economic reasons. Among the artisanal set, I don’t think that most subject their palates to those of their customers, but some certainly do (at least in part); many have admitted it to me and others, and some have even allowed the notion to appear in print.

Once this objection is dismissed, discussion of this issue usually devolves into an argument about whether or not people truly prefer high-alcohol wines. I think this misses the point. It’s not necessary to demonstrate that everyone, or a majority, prefers these wines; it’s necessary to demonstrate that an audience for such wines exists. And obviously, it does, else the wines would not sell.

Where does the preference come from? I think two suggestions are relevant here, though this is speculative. First, it’s useful to look back into history. At one time, many wines had to be fortified for stability, as the biochemistry necessary to achieve stability by other means either didn’t exist or was still nascent. Wine was popular then, which demonstrates that people can and do embrace wines in which the alcohol is a prominent, or even dominant, component. And second, it’s helpful to understand where many modern wine drinkers come from, especially in the New World. Not from long traditions of cooler-planet, lower-alcohol wines made in the image of those consumed by their ancestors, but from the world of spirits. It’s no surprise that, for this crowd, wines with “extra” alcohol would hardly bother them, but in fact would rather appeal to their previous organoleptic paradigm. We see this being replicated more obviously in the world of microbrews, with the current fetish for ales aged in used whiskey casks that rather overwhelm the beer in favor of spirituous and woody aromas. (I wonder if some of the modern love of new wood is not also related to a move from wood-aged spirits to wine?)

And on the part of winemakers? What so frequently gets forgotten in discussions of alcohol is that, as I’ve noted before, alcohol is the primary component of body, and thus a major contributor to mouthfeel. The “size” of a wine is directly correlated with the amount of alcohol it carries. Whether winemakers are crafting oversized (compared to those of yesteryear) wines because they like them or because they think the market demands them – or both – is irrelevant; what matters is that, of all the ways to manipulate a wine’s overall heft, alcohol is the least problematic. The equation is simple and, in the absence of adverse weather, replicable: let the grapes hang and the sugars rise, and the alcohol will follow.

That services like Vinovation exist is, in itself, evidence that unchecked alcohol is not considered a universal good by warm-climate winemakers. It’s also evidence that there exist winemakers who recognize the problematic relationship between the different forms of ripeness in grapes grown in such climates, in which sugar ripeness can race ahead of other, more crucial elements. De-alcoholization is a technical solution to a natural problem: grapes planted in places where a balanced wine (in the opinion of the winemaker employing such techniques) cannot be made with the raw materials nature provides. In this, it’s no different from chaptalization, though it addresses the opposite problem: excess, rather than insufficient, alcohol for the winemaker’s purposes. (Of course, winemakers are in no more agreement on the definition of “balance” than wine drinkers are, which is why not everyone de-alcoholizes who could, and not everyone pushes their grapes to the limits of their yeast’s abilities even though their terroirs would allow them to.)

In any case, I hope I’ve demonstrated that while alcohol is a subset of a larger philosophical debate on ripeness, it is also, by itself, a mutable and thus isolatable component of wine.

Whining about whining about high alcohol wines

[upended bottle]Alder Yarrow, the respected blogger behind Vinography, recently issued a broadside against…well, a lot of people. His argument? That there’s too much whining about elevated alcohol levels in wine.

Now, it’s true that there’s probably too much whining about pretty much everything in the world of wine. We can thank the explosion of wine fora and blogs (like Yarrow’s, or this one) for that. And it’s also true that a lot of the complaining is not founded in an understanding of the conditions under which winemakers work, or of the market, or of oenology. But there’s a lot wrong with Yarrow’s thesis, and a lot to disagree with as well.

Let’s start with what he’s written:

Along with so called “green” wines, this bandwagon of opinions is the topic du jour for wine journalists and wine personalities around the country

Is it? Observers have been complaining about rising alcohol levels since at least the seventies, when extreme, high-octane zins were all the rage. Maybe Yarrow is only recently aware of this body of opinion, or maybe he’s reached his own personal breaking point with the subject. But it’s hardly the topic of the day. More like the last few decades.

Alcohol is Not a Sensation

Oh, dear. When making an argument against what one perceives as the prevailing wisdom, it’s usually best that the very first thing you say not be nonsense.

Among wine’s tactile sensations, the most important and encompassing is body. And what’s the key component of a wine’s body? Alcohol. The spectrum of wine sensations from light through full is in direct proportion to a wine’s alcohol level, first and foremost, with other factors playing a supporting role. So for Yarrow to assert that alcohol is not a sensation is 100% wrong. In fact, it’s the primary sensation.

most people seem to be complaining about alcohol levels in wine as if the percent of alcohol by volume %ABV is directly correlated to a wine tasting good or not […] Of course many put subtler points on their arguments and mention words like “balance” and “heat” but at the end of the day, most people seem to be blaming alcohol levels in wine for characteristics of wine that are only correlated with alcohol levels, not caused by them.

This is sophistry. If a wine is imbalanced due to its alcohol, it’s imbalanced and alcohol is the culprit. What other conclusion is possible? Yes, dry extract can be elevated to compensate, but this doesn’t fix the problem of an alcohol-imbalanced wine, it simply sets up a source of competitive attention, like trying to drown out a neighbor’s yapping dog by turning up the volume on your radio. As for correlation, I think that while advocates of more balanced wines (if I can be allowed to use that word without being accused of “subtlety”) would indeed identify parallel problems of elevated alcohol and overripe, jammy, “dead” fruit as symptoms of the same general cause, it doesn’t follow that those same advocates cannot separate the problems on their palates or in their arguments.

Of course some people dislike wines with a “hot” finish, or that are unbalanced in favor of ripe fruit. But that is not the fault of alcohol levels.

A “hot finish,” which indicates the presence of excessive alcohol, is not to be blamed on alcohol? Really? That’s a fascinating assertion. And again, 100% wrong. Yarrow introduces his own confusion on the matter by talking about “ripe fruit,” but while the shifting definition of “ripe fruit” is indeed a matter of great controversy in the wine world, the issue here remains alcohol. That’s not about fruit ripeness, that’s about pre-fermentation sugar, which is a different facet of ripeness; the most physical, measurable one, with all others being at least partially matters of personal taste.

In fact, it’s quite possible to have those characteristics in wines that don’t exceed the “sanity” threshold that so many “anti-high-alc” advocates set somewhere (you’d think all these people who are so religious about this issue could agree) between 14% and 14.5% ABV.

Where to begin? First: yes, it is certainly possible to experience excess heat in a wines with relatively low alcohol levels. (And again, this is the fault of the alcohol, despite what Yarrow states.) Second: I suspect Yarrow has no actual evidence or survey data to peg his made-up threshold at any level, merely an occasional anecdote. Those complaining about alcohol are a contrary bunch and don’t agree on anything except that excess alcohol is too frequently a problem, and why should they? Taste in wine is a personal, subjective matter. Some may find their reliable threshold at 14%, others at 16%. And third: is it really necessary to bring religion into it? Cannot people simply dislike excessively hot or body-enhanced wines for justifiable reasons without being identified as a member of some sort of cult?

There are plenty of excellent, balanced wines being made by great winemakers that exceed the 14% alcohol levels that many deem too high for “good” wine. I’ve reviewed a lot of them favorably. So have a lot of other critics — even those who are now complaining so loudly about alcohol levels in wine.

Yes, there are most certainly wines with very high alcohol that are nevertheless excellent wines, and which exhibit their own form of balance. This is indisputable. Though I’d suggest that Yarrow, who based on his body of work does tend to be much more embracing of the fruit-forward, full-bodied…and yes, higher-alcohol…style than many other critics, and certainly the critics likely to mention obvious alcohol in a negative way, is more likely than some to deem such wines good. On the second point, Yarrow should name those critics and the wines on which they’ve changed their tunes, or he should withdraw the assertion as unsupported. Because, I suspect, he can’t support it, and instead that he’s making it up. Certainly it does not match my reading of any major critic; those that like high-alcohol wines tend to keep liking them, and those who have long-expressed concerns tend to hold to those concerns. But even then, a critic happy with alcohol X may justifiably begin to complain at X+1.

The idea that wines “clocking in” at 14.6% or even 15% alcohol are all “monstrosities” is patently absurd, and also insulting to hundreds of talented winemakers around the globe.

The only patent absurdity here is the straw man wielding a broad brush. Yarrow should identify the source of the “monstrosity” quote as applied to those specific alcohol levels, or he should withdraw the contention, lest he be suspected of simply making up arguments, putting them in the mouths of unidentified and unidentifiable others, and then contradicting them for his own sport. Also, it is only “insulting” to winemakers if it is not true. If a wine exhibits, to a given taster, offensive levels of alcohol, the taster should say so, just as a taster should note excessive acidity, or tannin, or insufficient fruit, or whatever aspect of the wine the taster wishes to highlight. And Yarrow, who has occasionally run afoul of the targets of his criticism (like any other writer), should also probably avoid telling others which words they should and should not use in the course of their observations.

Everyone also seems quick to slam high alcohol wines as not age worthy. Frankly, I haven’t seen anyone provide definitive data on this subject, and there are plenty of higher alcohol wines (Ports, Sherries, etc) that might prove otherwise.

Here we see one of the great fallacies so often trotted out by high alcohol advocates. Port and Sherry are fortified wines, and made in ways (both before and after their fortification) that is only marginally related to the construction of dry (or “dry”) table wines. One cannot extrapolate from these categories any more than one can conclude that because Yquem ages for a very long time, so must all dry sauvignon blancs. No one would find that argument sensible. Yet Yarrow parrots it here in another form (though let’s be fair: he’s hardly alone) and expects traction.

Furthermore, it simply isn’t true to say that Port and Sherry age. Some do. Some don’t. Some styles are quite fragile, despite their alcohol. In fact, many fortified wines (think of the myriad alcohol-enhanced muscats from France, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere) age very poorly indeed.

The truth is, alcohol is a preservative. But not a permanent one, nor does it do more. A wine ages, or doesn’t, based on its structure and its specific chemical composition. Alcohol helps preserve the wine through its aging curve, but it does not create that curve, and more alcohol does not mean more ageability. (As always, the distinction between aging and lasting is a crucial one to recall.) Alcohol provides duration only, and knowledgeable critics know this; when they criticize wines for their high alcohol and refer to aging, they mean that, 1) the high alcohol will still be present, and perhaps even more obtrusive, as the primary fruit fades in intensity and the structure erodes, and 2) the fruit conditions that often parallel elevated alcohol have a problematic aging history. There are exceptions – there are always exceptions – but they are, as yet, few.

A better analogy than Port/Sherry would be to the various dried-grape wines of Italy. Amarone, Valtellina sforzato, and the like – while still not sufficiently identical to high-alcohol table wines for a detailed comparison – at least have a familial resemblance. And while some of these wines age beautifully, others fall apart in rather spectacular fashion; this is high-risk winemaking. If there’s a lesson to be drawn from the greater world of wine about the possibilities of high-alcohol aging, this might be it.

Yarrow is correct that no one actually knows how these wines will age. Unfortunately, this area of debate is rife with the potential for improper extrapolation from anecdote. Not that Yarrow would do this…

Not to mention what some consider to be the single greatest wine in the world. The alcohol level of the “ageless” 1947 Cheval Blanc? 14.4% ABV.

OK, I guess he would.

Several points on the ’47 Cheval Blanc. First, the accuracy of alcohol measurements from this period was not up to modern standards, as many have acknowledged. Second, I think it’s very instructive to actually read tasting notes on this particular wine. I’ve looked at a lot, over the years, and I’ve even tasted the wine myself (sadly, in micro-quantity). One thing the majority of the notes have in common is an explicit comparison to, or implicit description of, dry Port. No, really…look for yourself. Is that really what we want from dry red Bordeaux? As a delicious and standout anomaly, a bit of magic barely to be repeated no more than a handful of times each century, why not? As an regular diet? No thanks. If I want Port, there are plenty of wines to fulfill that desire. Starting, of course, with…oh, you know, Port.

Third, 14.4% isn’t all that high anymore. The alcohol levels about which many people complain aren’t just those topping 14%, they’re the ones creeping past 15%, 16%, even 17% or more. De-alcoholization can and does help some of these wines, but with the new super-yeasts that can take alcohols beyond 20% (I’ve only heard of them employed for beer, but their use in wine is almost inevitable), there’s no reason to assume that the upward trend will abate. Will Yarrow will be assiduously defending these wines as well? If 20%, why not 21%? Think of the possibilities! The 2047 Cheval Blanc may surpass its centenarian ancestor, coming in at 21.5%, tasting of berry-infused bourbon, and impressing critics well into the 2400s.

I’d bet good money that most (say 95% of) wine consumers, even those who buy wines in the “super premium” $20 and above categories pay absolutely no attention to the alcohol levels in their wine when they buy it. And furthermore, they couldn’t possibly tell you, if tasting a bunch of wines, which ones had higher alcohol and which ones didn’t.

Here’s an interesting fact: 87.924% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Like that one, and Yarrow’s as well. I would say that my experience does not match Yarrow’s, and not just among wine geek crowds. When I teach wine classes, I receive regular and, sometimes, quite strident complaints about the highest-alcohol wines from complete novices. Even those that, to me, are hefty but in balance. Anecdotally, I think many people can absolutely tell the difference between higher and lower alcohols, even if they don’t know what artifact they’re identifying. And even if they can’t, teaching them to read the “legs” on the interior of the glass, by which trained tasters can often identify the actual alcohol level of a wine to a reasonable degree of accuracy, is trivially easy. Of course, this has nothing to do with whether they’ll like the wine or not, but I just don’t see Yarrow’s dismissal of the tasting abilities of the masses borne out by the evidence. Perhaps he has some that he’d like to share.

Now, is it true that many consumers don’t look past the cute animals on the label and the price tag? Certainly. Similarly, they may be blissfully unaware of the addition of Mega Purple, or the “accidental” inclusion of a few liters of kirsch liqueur, or wholesale appellation fraud. But, as I think most would recognize, this is not really an argument in favor of any of those practices.

Which is to say that 99% of the time, they wouldn’t even notice that a wine they happened to be drinking was 15.2% alcohol.

So which is it: 95%, or 99%? Why doesn’t Yarrow just admit that he’s making up statistics as he types, and that in fact he has no idea what the actual percentage is, any more than his made-up average taster knows the actual percentage alcohol in their wine?

As far as I can see it, a large part of this “issue” consists of a minority of wine lovers proselytizing their own preferences for low alcohol wines (which they have every right to) on the rest of the world who, frankly, have about as much idea what they are talking about as I do when the Jehovah’s Witnesses stop by my house on a Saturday morning.

Nice. And again, anyone who disagrees with Yarrow is now both ignorant and to be associated with a cult. Talk about offensive. Yarrow is doing what he’s decrying from others: “proselytizing” in favor of the high-alcohol, New World-style wines he apparently prefers. And that’s fine; let a hundred flowers bloom, etc. But those of us who do not share his preferences could easily do without the insults.

And note the transparent rhetorical trick: this “minority” of wine lovers nonetheless makes so much noise that Yarrow is moved to respond (why, if they’re such a minority?), yet, “99%” of people cannot identify elevated alcohol to begin with. (If so, then who is this tiny but incredibly vocal minority? The 1% of people who can? Is it really likely that they really have so much power?) He contradicts himself at every turn, and doesn’t seem to notice.

Have you ever noticed how many people drink martinis and mojitos and cosmopolitans with their food?

And here’s the next common fallacy. Sure, people enjoy hard alcohol with their food. Thus, as Yarrow would have it, people must be open to high alcohol wines with their food. Except that, more people drink beer with their food. Does this mean that, given a choice, people prefer lower-alcohol beverages?

Of course, neither assertion means anything of the sort. People drink what they prefer, which should be self-evident, or what is available, which should be equally self-evident. And sometimes they drink what they think they’re supposed to drink. Not that there’s anything wrong with that either, though it’s too bad if that’s the only reason for choosing a beverage. Conclusions from anecdote are…risky.

Plus, don’t get me started on all those who say high alcohol wines don’t pair with food, and then drink port and sherry with their dinners

No, please, get started. “All those” who? Name them. Name just one who drinks fortified wines with their meals on a regular basis but simultaneously complains that table wines are too alcoholic with food. Again, I fear Yarrow is constructing this straw man from materials found solely in his imagination.

Those who say they need wine to be less alcoholic so they can drink more wine need to simply stop buying higher alcohol wines. It’s as simple as that. I have to scratch my head when I hear people complaining that they’re drunk by the end of the bottle. If you don’t want to get drunk people, the best way is to drink less alcohol.

On this we agree…to a point. And Yarrow’s actually missing one of his most powerful potential arguments here, because the fact is that the elevation in alcohols among wines of a specific category is rarely enough to make much of a difference in intoxication. Mosel kabinett to Port, yes. Edmunds St. John syrah to Alban syrah, no.

But: bottles are sold, especially in restaurants, under an increasingly traditional assumption that one bottle will serve two people over the course of a meal. One can certainly argue whether or not this is sensible (and there are advocates on both sides; Radikon thinks the two-person bottle is too parsimonious and should be upped to one liter, lawmakers concerned with public safety have a different opinion), but one can’t sensibly argue that this is not the modern expectation. However, if a single bottle leaves one or both parties intoxicated or legally unable to drive, the entire industry (from bottle-maker to restaurant) will have to change. Again, one can reasonably advocate for or against this, but it does seem a high price to pay for ever-escalating alcohol levels.

Alarmists like to cite the globally rising alcohol levels in wine. Some studies from Australia apparently pinpoint the average alcohol levels in wine there to be around 12.8% in the 1970s and now around 14.5%. Anyone used to consuming older wines, even occasionally, will certainly have anecdotal evidence that this is true.

I love how Yarrow cites facts that support a contention and then calls them “alarmist.” No, sir, they’re facts. They can’t be “alarmist” without their recipients becoming, you know, alarmed. Were I interested in spinning alarmism of my own, I’d suggest that Yarrow has a problem with the facts because they rather strongly support a position opposite to his: that alcohol levels are rising and that a rather large number of commentators have identified it as an issue worth debating.

The idea that the 1970’s was the golden age of California (or any other New World region) winemaking is ridiculous, as anyone who actually tasted a lot of those wines will tell you.

Again, the unfounded generalization. I know of very few who would argue against the contention that, for example, if one considers every single available California wine, the average level of winemaking is much higher now than at any point in the past. On the other hand, I know a great number of tasters, with both broad and deep experience of both era’s wines in their youth and (from the eras where this is possible) in their maturity, that rather strongly disagree with Yarrow, and think that the best wines of the seventies were superior to those of today. I’d accuse him of parroting received wisdom here, but he may well be able to support this contention with his own extensive tastings of seventies-era wines from California. (I haven’t seen those tastings, but that doesn’t mean that he hasn’t done them.)

The same argument can be, and is, conducted over nearly every major wine region…and not just those in the New World. There are those for whom Bordeaux has never been better, and those for whom Bordeaux has never been worse. Ditto Alsace, where escalating alcohol has long been a problem, and a parallel rise in residual sugar has not only failed to stem the trend (by indicating a prematurely-stopped fermentation to preserve “normal” alcohol levels), but has actually made the wines even more controversial; some adore the rich, ultra-late-harvested style despite alcohols that frequently top 17% (though you won’t see this on the label), others are nostalgic for the balanced, reputation-creating wines of old. Ditto Barolo and Barbaresco. And the list could go on.

Chief among these, I believe, is simply the fact that most people (i.e. the market) actually are buying higher alcohol wines more, because…. wait for it… they like the way they taste

And winemakers are making them because they like the way they taste. Sure, of course. Add global warming and modern farming technology, plus inoculated yeast with a higher tolerance, and you’ve got your reasons all in one convenient location. But what does this have to do with Yarrow’s original point? Winemakers may choose to make, and customers buy, wines with yak saliva in them at some future point, and if unidentified people start “whining” about that trend, will Yarrow deliver a similar denunciation of their opinion? More relevantly, alcohol levels may plummet as major wine-producing regions make it impossible to enjoy anything other than a low-alcohol bottle of wine with dinner and drive afterwards – as France has been doing for a while now – and then what? Will people be drinking them because they like them, or because they have no other choice? Or, to get to the actual point, why does it matter?

As Smith correctly points out in his article, Parker rates low alcohol wines very highly as well

But that isn’t the question, and rather spectacularly misses the issue. Which is: do higher ratings for wines within a given peer group correspond with escalating alcohol levels? I don’t believe anyone has this data, and thus, again, Yarrow is drawing conclusions despite a lack of evidence.

Which is why winemakers whose wines are “big” (and often higher in alcohol) tend to sell better.

I trust Yarrow has data for this assertion. But I rather suspect he does not.

Many of the best-selling wines in the world are de-alcoholized, because the grapes that go into them are grown in terrifically hot, fertile places like the Central Valley. Would they sell better in their original form? The companies who make them must not think so, else they wouldn’t be de-alcoholizing by the tanker-full. They must know something about the consumer base that Yarrow does not.

And if winemakers want to feed their families and be able to afford health care in retirement, they need to make wines that sell.

Oh, dear God. Now this is a plea for the well-being of winemakers? “If you don’t buy this 16.8% chardonnay, a winemaker dies in Napa, and somewhere an adorable little bunny is tortured. Please, for the love of humanity and Heidi Peterson Barrett’s continued employment, won’t you help?”

Ah, the joys of capitalism. Wine lovers complaining about all those high alcohol wines in the world are sort of like smokers who like to bitch about the fact that they can’t smoke on planes anymore. When the market demand gets high enough, things shift.

First, those who dislike escalating alcohols were whining. Then, they were in some freakish religious cult. Then, just plain ignorant. Now, they’re bitching, and probably some sort of commie besides. Man, it must suck to be one of those people, eh? Despite the fact that among them are numbered a rather large collection of the world’s most accomplished writers, tasters, and winemakers, whose lives don’t appear to be quite as miserable as Yarrow makes them out to be.

Also, Yarrow really needs to take a remedial course on analogies. For example, an apt analogy would work like this: discontented wine lovers are like soda consumers complaining that the 12-ounce sodas of a decade ago are now 20 ounces, or more, and that they have twice the high-fructose corn syrup and even more caffeine than in the past, forcing a consumer who wishes for less of any of those things to forgo soda entirely, take in quantities that they don’t want, or waste both product and money when they reach their point of satiety.

But that doesn’t mean that just because there is preponderance of demand in the marketplace for bigger, boozier wines, low alcohol wines with finesse are somehow under threat.

First, Yarrow doesn’t know that there’s a “preponderance of demand,” he’s making that up. But to the point, how does Yarrow figure? If, in year X, there are 500 wines and 50 of them have alcohol levels over 14%, and in year X+2 there are 550 wines and 300 of them have alcohol levels over 14%, where does Yarrow think those higher-alcohol wines are coming from? The Twilight Zone? They’re wines that used to carry lower alcohol levels, and now carry higher ones. Thus, the number of lower-alcohol wines is decreasing. And this is not a “threat” how, exactly? No, lower-alcohol wines are not an endangered species (at least not everywhere, though they’re approaching that status in certain specific regions). That doesn’t mean that they’re not disappearing, and quickly. But hey, let’s not hear any “whining” about that, OK? Everyone suck it up and drink what you’re given!

To suggest as much would require you to also believe that just because the most popular wine in America is White Zinfandel that all those Cabernet producers in Napa are in danger of being pressured to make pink wines.

Really, for the love of The Flying Spaghetti Monster and all his noodles: analogy class. Please, Alder, consider it for the good of your readers and your own well-being. Talk to zinfandel growers who survived the height of the white zin craze. What did its popularity do to the production, reputation, and sales of red zinfandel? That’s right: it sent all three into precipitous decline.

Also: white zin is not the most popular wine in America.

Also: does anyone – say, Yarrow – know what caused the initial downturn in zinfandel sales, the one that left old-vine plots unwanted and untended until blush versions came along and “saved” the grape from oblivion? Hey, guess what? It was…wait for it…excessive alcohol levels. The irony is too delicious to go unmentioned.

No, people just need to stop whining and go out and buy the wines they love. And expect everyone else to do the same. Trying to “educate” consumers by telling them they’re wrong to like big wines is as stupid as trying to tell winemakers they’re wrong for making wines that they (and consumers) love.

What Yarrow clearly does not need is a remedial class in irony. After lecturing his readers at length about how they should embrace the New World Order and just shut the hell up if they feel otherwise, he’s now of a mind to criticize this very practice. How…Alanis of him.

Later, when I’ve recovered from this breathless rant, an actual defense of moderate alcohol in wine.

Sweet on Alsace

[grape-eating bear, Andlau]In the most recent issue of The Wine Advocate, critic David Schildknecht’s report on Alsace includes a typically long and thoughtful preface assessing the current “state of the region.” In it, he makes many points I’ve been making for years (as, I should note, has he), with a special emphasis on the growing problem of residual sugar:

No doubt the sweetness in much of today’s Alsace wine is to a significant extent a reaction to high grape sugar, and many of the factors driving this – a long streak of very ripe vintages; selectivity at harvest; changing fashions; and a tendency to perceive more-as-better when tasting wines as parts of large line-ups – are hardly unique to the region. But whatever the cause, as more than a few concerned growers reminded me, steering a course and striking a balance between alcohol and sugar is becoming an increasing challenge (often exacerbated by precarious acidity), one ultimately demanding a re-thinking of vineyard and cellar practices. And those too-many Alsace growers whose wines display deficiencies in extract on account of high yields lack a critical tool for buffering alcohol or burying sugar.

He then goes on to identify manifestations of this problem…not only in gewurztraminer and pinot gris, where they’re ubiquitous and exacerbated by the problems of escalating alcohol and declining acidity, but also in the previously-iconic riesling and muscat. The latter is especially dismaying, as there’s precious little dry muscat on the market these days, though admittedly there has never been much of an export market for it in any form.

To fans of the region’s wines, this is all well-trodden territory. But in his essay, Schildknecht edges up to a major but largely unspoken cause of this problem in a way few high-profile critics have done, yet turns away before drawing the inevitable and self-damning conclusion: it’s, at least in part, critics’ fault.

Yes, as he says, climate change has a significant role to play. Certainly freak vintages like 1997, 2000, and 2003 are more the norm than the exception these days, and sugar levels are up everywhere (not just in Alsace). And it’s important to acknowledge that improved viticulture’s effects can be a mixed blessing, as the more reliable, even ripening at a previously-underperforming property is paralleled by the temptation of ever-longer, sugar-elevating hangtimes at better domaines.

But when Schildknecht writes:

Are not the most profound wines of which these varieties are capable apt to be in the realm of selective picking, vendange tardive, and residual sweetness? One could make such an argument, and my ratings would support it. But such a conclusion by no means warrants sweetness throughout a grower’s range.

…he misses the bigger problem: ratings, as a rule and from the greater mass of critics, do reward sweetness throughout a grower’s range.

Schildknecht may be an exception to this rule, given his ratings thus far, but if so he’s a rare one. Who gets the majority of the highest ratings major critics give? Generally, wineries who produce powerful, rich, sweet, and often alcoholic wine. Even dry-preferring wineries are frequently rewarded for wines in which residual sugar is presented as an “unavoidable”1 alternative to Port-like alcohol in a dry-fermented wine. People can and do disagree on whether these wines are balanced or not2, but there’s dismayingly little disagreement among major critics about “better,” in Alsace, almost universally correlating with “sweeter.”

Given this critical climate, what’s a sensible, export-minded winemaker to do? Unless there’s a rock-solid reputation on which to trade (e.g. Trimbach), one possible answer is to do what the critics appear to want, and pump up the volume.

“Well,” some are no doubt already objecting, “don’t the critics just reflect what people actually like?” If so, why are Alsace wine sales in the States so stagnant? Why does Trimbach continue to dominate certain regions with their dry or barely off-dry wines while other excellent, but sweeter, wines languish on the shelves and in distributors’ warehouses? And why do the biggest exporters to other markets, other than the top names that can sell almost anywhere3, seem to be négociants and cooperatives whose wines are, yes, dryer than most? I don’t think it’s because the bulk of Trimbach’s products, which are the yellow-label négociant wines, are inherently better than their competitors; I wouldn’t say they were, though they’re of reliably fine quality. And above that level, which Alsatian wines most regularly appear on top restaurant lists? The highly austere “Cuvée Frédéric Émile” and Clos Ste-Hune Rieslings, the ultra-restrained “Réserve Personelle” Pinot Gris, and the increasingly unique “Cuvée des Seigneurs de Ribeaupierre” Gewurztraminer, much more than other fine grand cru4 wines from other producers. So it would, in fact, appear that critics are not reflecting popular taste…or if they are, they’re singularly unconvincing when it comes to these wines and this region.

The thing is, I don’t think they’re doing anything other than reflecting their own tastes. As, of course, they should be; their opinions, rather than some form of polling data, are what they sell. But when there’s a changing of the guard, as their has been at The Wine Advocate…from the sugar-loving (this is not a criticism) Robert Parker, though the sugar-appreciating-but-occasionally-suspicious Pierre Rovani, to the much more conflicted Schildknecht…the effect of years of the sugar=points equation is thrown into stark relief. Drinking the major names, these days, it can be very, very difficult to find anything that’s not overpoweringly sweet. This was not the case ten years ago, either, so one can see how quickly and completely this shift has occurred.

Will the paradigm swing back? Not soon, if ever. For one thing, many critics are still enamored of the more, more, more!!! style of winemaking, no matter which region is under review. For another, warming effects aren’t going away; in fifty years, the Furstentum may be more appropriate for syrah than it is for gewurztraminer. Now, maybe this will have a long-overdue positive effect on Alsatian pinot noir, but losing the wines that have actually made Alsace’s reputation would seem to be an astronomical price to pay for such an unheralded achievement.

1Of course, “events” like 2003 aside, it’s not entirely true that such results are unavoidable. The problem is that alcohol-reduction steps in the vineyard need to start long before a grower knows whether they have 1998 (a fine, balanced year) or 1997 (hot and sticky) on their hands, and by the time they have an inkling, it’s too late to do much. But there are still steps that can be taken, and some growers are starting to do them as a matter of course: picking earlier (or picking a portion of grapes earlier to preserve acidity for the final blend), and late-season canopy retention to avoid the greatest ripening excesses. Among others.

2What works elsewhere doesn’t necessarily work in Alsace. Even before the sugar revolution, Alsatian wines were “too heavy” for some, due to relatively warm, dry conditions for the Germanic set of grapes they employ, and the resultant levels of alcohol and dry extract. Adding sugar and even more alcohol to these wines while stripping their remaining acidity is a singularly bad idea, unless one is trying to produce syrup.

3Except, it sometimes seems, the States. I’ve gotten in trouble for revealing this in the past, but even the best-known names don’t always sell that well here. Prices are a major factor (especially at a few top addresses), and visits to the market are a must too often ignored by some, but the availability of the highest-rated Alsatian wines long after their release and initial ratings would be surprising to those who haven’t seen it first-hand in the marketplace. There has to be a reason for this, and there is: see the main essay.

4Which these are, though they’re not labeled as such.

The key to a man’s nose

There’s a fine article on scent (which is, after all, the “taste” of wine) and the difficulties involved in describing it in the current issue of The New Yorker. But what really makes it worth the read is the final paragraph…which I guess I’ll go ahead and spoil right now:

“The question that women casually shopping for perfume ask more than any other is this: ‘What scent drives men wild?’ After years of intense research, we know the definitive answer. It is bacon.”

Absolutely true.

Against the bias

[2001 star child; copyright MGM]On two of the major wine fora (here, here, and here, if you’re unduly burdened with free time and a strong stomach), strident arguments about how best to identify and eliminate bias have spiraled – as they always do – out of control.

Here’s a thought: how about we admit that this asks the impossible, and go back to the much more sensible practice of asking critics to be good?

I’ve already said far more than I ever should on the subject here, so I’ll let that stand as the pro-bias manifesto. But I’m curious about another facet of this endless debate: why do we care so much? Why is the potential for pure philosophical objectivity so beloved among consumers, especially when it’s impossible to achieve?

I believe that we recognize our own flaws as objective observers. We know that we can only make a attempt to be unbiased, but recognize that no matter how hard we try, we’re unlikely to succeed.

However, we exalt the critic (in my opinion unduly so), which follows from the subordination of our own opinion to that of the purported expert in whichever field of criticism we’re concerned with. The critic, in other words, is supposed to be more right than we are. In the act of subordinating our judgment to that of another, we justify our decision on the basis that the critic has superior knowledge that we have neither the time nor the inclination to acquire. This is often true, but it’s also irrelevant.

Knowledge, which begets accuracy, is a fundamental skill for any critic, to be sure. But it’s not what makes them a critic, it’s what makes them a writer or a journalist. A critic may do one or both of those things, but he or she also – and primarily – deals in opinions. It’s the utility of these opinions that determines a critic’s success or failure. By this I do not mean that the critic with the largest number of agreements “wins” – that’s patently ridiculous given that criticism is inherently subjective – but that the critic’s output must, in some sense, be useful to others.

Thus, while we may justifiably subject our knowledge to those with a superior breadth or depth of it, we somewhat less justifiably subject our opinion to that of the critic. This is not inherently misguided, because an informed opinion can indeed be more valuable than an uninformed one, but it is similarly irrelevant. A better-justified but still subjective response to an object of criticism does not mean that the less-justified opinion is now incorrect for the holder of that opinion. This is not an argument against the supremacy of fact and reason, both of which must remain paramount, but instead a restatement of this simple principle: just because you like something doesn’t mean I like it too. Shouldn’t that be obvious?

Wine appreciation is subjective. It cannot be otherwise. So for a person to allow another’s subjective judgments to hold sway over their own, they must posit the existence of a superior subjectivity. Except that doesn’t make any sense from a definitional standpoint – subjectivity is inherently leveling – and so the next step is to assume that a critic must now be objective. This is lunacy, but it’s what many people appear to believe.

If a critic is truly objective, then they must be free from all external constraints on their judgment. And this is how we wade into the miasma of bias, for if such a mythical creature as the objective critic existed, he or she would obviously be fundamentally and absolutely free of any influences other than those contained within the object of criticism. No prior experiences, no pre-formed opinions, no external motivators (a nearby winemaker, a pleasant dinner, an enthusiastic companion, the label), and certainly no generalized opinions on what does and does not constitute quality. Nothing. In other words, wine criticism in a sensory-deprivation tank.

Taken to its logical conclusion, of course, this also means that such an objective critic can only ever review a single wine. Because, as a critic, they must render a judgment on that wine. Having done so, they have now constructed a preliminary definition of quality. The next wine cannot help but be tainted by this construction, and thus bias has been introduced.

It sounds ridiculous, of course, and yet it is exactly where the anti-bias journey reaches its inevitable conclusion: a being that transcends their humanity, has no contact with anyone or anything that could influence their opinion, works just once, and then retires. Hopefully to somewhere where they can be a person.

No…better to let our critics be human, to accept that they (as we) are biased and cannot be otherwise, and to judge them not on conceptual philosophies but on the quality of their work. In other words, to be critics ourselves; critics of the critics, with all our own biases fully and gloriously intact.

The hobgoblin of little minds

“Another wine that I underrated (probably because of my generally conservative nature regarding new estates, and I had only tasted one previous vintage from this one) […]” – Robert M. Parker, Jr., The Hedonist’s Gazette

“Neither price nor the reputation of the producer/grower affect the rating in any manner.” – Robert M. Parker, Jr., an explanation of his methods

The world’s most powerful critic caught in a contradiction. Is it a backhanded admission of error? Or is it blatant hypocrisy?

How about none of the above?

Parker hasn’t (yet) responded to this contradiction, revealed on his own online forum, and the resulting thread has spun off in a predictable way: an exceedingly arbitrary debate about the pros and cons of blind tasting. While that’s certainly an interesting topic, it’s not what I’m interested in at the moment. Instead, I’m here to defend Parker. At least, after a fashion.

Every critic eventually contradicts himself. Computers, if programmed correctly, are perfectly consistent. People are not, and probably can’t be. Critics will practice regular inconsistency when it comes to individual wines, and while there are always a worshipful few who can’t seem to grasp the subjective and ever-changing nature of criticism, most rational people understand that this is simply the way wine interacts with the taster. Wine is a (more or less) natural product that can be different from bottle to bottle, taste to taste, and time to time.

However, when it comes to statements about the very nature of criticism – as described in the above-linked statement of Parker’s methodology, for example – people seem much less forgiving of inconsistency, and resort to imposing ever more rigid strictures on the critic’s methodology (e.g. “all wines must be tasted double-blind”). Or they’re forced into impossible and indefensible rhetorical acrobatics in an effort to explain away the inconsistency (it’s those worshipful few again, causing problems). The fact is, there’s no way to reconcile the two statements quoted above. Parker is mistaken (or, if one feels they can read his mind and his motivations, lying) in one of the two. In the absence of further clarification from him, it’s up to the concerned reader to decide which is his true position.

Of course, there is a way that they can both be correct, and that’s if they’re applied consecutively, rather than simultaneously. Parker might well be considering reputation when he evaluates some wines, and ignoring it when he evaluates others.* Certainly, it would be a natural human inclination, and despite Parker’s allegedly superhuman tasting abilities, he’s still just a human being, with all the normal flaws inherent in the species. Just like the rest of us.

For those who demand absolutes from their critics, this is an irreconcilable inconsistency. And they’re welcome to move on to whichever critics they find to be reliably inerrant, since Parker must now be excluded from that set. But I would like to suggest that the problem is not whether Parker is being inconsistent or not, and only partially that some people don’t actually understand the practice of criticism, but rather that he, himself, has fallen into an absolutist trap of his own construction.

Who makes a bigger deal about their methods and ethics than any other major wine critic? Parker, of course. From this position, he issues far-too-frequent attacks on other critics, and at times amateurs; a habit that is, by far, his most distasteful characteristic. (To be fair, he is frequently the victim of similar attacks, though that doesn’t excuse them on either side.) By doing so, he obviously opens himself up to attacks based on inconsistencies like the one above. But he wouldn’t have to defend such obvious inconsistencies if he didn’t take such an absolutist line. By saying “I do this, and only this,” and then being seen to be doing the opposite, he makes a mockery of the rigid methodological code he so loudly trumpets.

The solution, of course, is to take on a more liberal view of the possible ethical and methodological approaches to criticism. This is not to say that one should abandon all ethical codes – to be sure, there are critics who think that Parker isn’t strict enough – but simply to suggest that basing one’s reputation on ethics and methods rather than the results is fundamentally misguided. People may listen to Parker’s (or any other critic’s) ethical pronouncements, but his power and reputation are due to consumers’ trust in his results (that is, his wine evaluations). Using those ethics and methods to heap abuse on other critics is unseemly on the face of it, but more so when it turns out that the source of the abuse doesn’t even follow his own advice.

Parker shouldn’t be criticized for contradicting himself. And he wouldn’t be, did he not so gleefully wrap himself in the shield of absolutism when it comes to his methods. Since the “don’t contradict yourself” solution is generally unavailable to humans (including Parker), that leaves only the other option. An option he – and all critics – would do well to consider.

* Parker’s statement about price and reputation is, of course, meant as a direct attack on critics who could do 75% of their work without actually tasting the wines; critics for whom label and reputation mean nearly everything. Those critics exist (though as a smaller percentage of total critics than they did when Parker started…and he can probably take a large portion of the credit for that), and they’re a plague on the calling. Certainly, the number of unheralded wines that have nonetheless been heralded by Parker over the years suggests that he has not, as a rule, been unduly restrained by his own doubts when it comes to a young, untested brand.

Don’t taste with me, Argentina


A long-ago story on Tyler Colman’s Dr. Vino blog about tasting Argentinean wines with a critic from The Wine Advocate is more a little horrifying, and has me thinking. And, it seems, ranting. So what else is new? A better question: how did I miss this when it was first posted? I don’t know the answer to the latter, but the recent publication of the notes in question brought the story to my attention….and so, better late than never, right?

There’s been some hand-wringing in the wine consumer sector over Dr. Jay Miller’s work in The Wine Advocate, mostly due to his very high scores and sometimes breathtaking aging predictions. I’m not so much interested in that argument, because a critic can do whatever he or she wants in this regard. For me, he’s overly enthusiastic and prone to wild-eyed guesses that only blind optimism can justify, but so what? I’m sure he’d argue I’m far too critical, and who’s to say who’s right? Criticism is subjective, and will always remain so.

However, I have a number of more fundamental reactions to the piece in question:

1) “The setting was actually the Argentine Consulate in midtown Manhattan.” (Dr. Vino)

I don’t think it’s necessary for a critic to go to “the source” (the wines’ place of origin) just to render a judgment. The reason to go is to learn, which helps place wines in their cruicial contexts, and since this is a somewhat groundbreaking expansion of Argentinean coverage in (arguably) the most important publication in the field of fine wine criticism1, I’d like to have seen Miller visit Argentina along the way. His boss Robert Parker came under criticism in the past for doing report after report on Australia (and, if I remember correctly, Spain) without having visited either, though I believe that has changed.2

The counter-argument, which I’m sure many would make, is that all that matters is the wine itself, and that visiting only leads to psychological entanglements to fight off at the time of tasting, distractions that allegedly get in the way of critical truth-telling. But an ethically serious critic doesn’t deal with such facile definitions of objectivity (and in any case, the PR agents that were present would have been far more interfering than winemakers, who are generally far less intrusive), and from an organoleptic standpoint one simply cannot deal with wildly different expressions of grape, terroir, and winemaking as if they were all one. They’re not. A Paso Robles syrah is and always will be different than an Hermitage, and for a critic to pretend that they’re applying the same critical standards to each is willfully misleading.

So did Miller visit Argentina? Well…

2) “This tasting was just one aspect of my Argentina review which will ultimately involve a trip to Mendoza to taste at wineries.” (Jay Miller, in the comments)

“Miller has never visited Argentina (at least on official wine tasting business) but expects to early next year.” (Victor Honoré, in response)

The article has already appeared. So someone is lying. (Or, to be charitable, circumstances may have intervened that prevented a planned trip…but in that case, it would benefit Miller to say so in the same string of comments, lest people be led to the uncharitable conclusion.)

3) Dr. Vino is surprised that the tasting wasn’t organized by variety and style; Miller conducted the tasting by producer, apparently following the lead of the agents who set up the tasting in the first place. There are merits to both sides, and in large format tastings I prefer Miller’s approach here, though for a different reason: it helps combat palate familiarity, which I view as a debilitating component of palate fatigue. However – and this is important – I don’t rate wines. If one is tasting to rate, and thus tasting “competitively,” there’s something to be said for tasting in peer groups, and for not having to artificially attempt to adjust one’s reactions to, say, a sauvignon blanc tasted after a chardonnay and another tasted after a merlot. There’s concurrence on this point in the comments, from Dr. Debs of the Good Wine Under $20 blog (“I have to say that I don’t mind tasting by producer, because I find I have less palate fatigue that way. But–and its a huge but–I don’t claim to be objective, or assign points to things. If I were, I would taste by varietal [sic], so as to be able to make sure the syrah I just gave an 95 to was actually in some way/shape/form better than the one I gave a 90 to just a few minutes ago. How do you keep your standards consistent. When I grade student essay exams, I read all the answers to one question and grade them, then the next question and grade them. Makes sense, keeps me honest, comparative, and focused.”)

In any case, we’re not done with the issue of palate fatigue. Stay tuned.

3) “At one point [Dr. Vino] lamented the quantity of wines and [Miller] replied “well when you’ve been working for Bob Parker for 25 years, you’re used to it. He did not offer in what capacity this was although he only started as a critic last fall.” (Dr. Vino)

That Miller has written for and tasted with Parker for a very long time is not a secret, though his official and public position as a critic for The Wine Advocate is a fairly new one. But it’s a secret that is not as open as I suspect it should have been, and has caused a lot of speculation over the years. Parker went to some lengths to reinforce this point after he hired Miller, but it’s a little strange how much in the realm of rumor and whisper this relationship was in the days previous to that announcement. I, for instance, constantly heard it in the context of Parker owing his entire palate to Miller (on which I should note: even if it was true at one point, and while I have no way of knowing I kind of doubt it, Parker has long been his own man, and so it’s neither true nor relevant now).3

4) “But I report on this since I had little idea about the specifics of how tastings happen at the influential Wine Advocate. I didn’t know they were organized by producers or their agents. I didn’t know they were not tasted blind and were tasted by winery, not style. And I was surprised at how we basically had no discussion about the wines themselves, essentially having our own separate, parallel tastings. Maybe that’s because he didn’t know me but it could also be that it’s uncomfortable to talk about the wines in presence of the third party PR person, even if she did repeatedly ask for Miller’s instant evaluation.” (Dr. Vino)

It’s important to not generalize here. Different critics at The Wine Advocate take different approaches. It’s also important to highlight the non-blind nature of some of that publication’s tastings, because I think many consumers are misled on this point.4

I’m surprised that Dr. Vino didn’t know how many of The Wine Advocate’s tastings were arranged by interested third parties. One famous and highly-invested Bordeaux consultant set up tastings in that region for Parker for years (and may still do so; I’m out of touch with practices there), without major public objection…though I’d note that this is not a subject that is often discussed, and probably equally unknown among the general public. And were this knowledge more widespread, I think many would object more strongly. This is inevitable blowback from making great issue of one’s objectivity and ethics vs. other critics, because there is always something that can be called into question by consumers who have an overly idealistic and unrealistic expectation of what is meant by “independence.” (See, for example, the comments to the original post: “Wow. So we’re left to assume that Parker doesn’t taste blind, either. Sounds really objective…” and “that is absolutely fascinating. and scary. […] at least the spectator claims that it does at least the first round of its tastings blind.”)

As for discussions, I’m on Miller’s side here. One of the things I hate most when tasting wine professionally is to be asked – by fellow tasters, by uninvolved consumers, but most of all by interested parties in the production and trade realms – what I think of the wines. First, I think that discussion leads to the integration of reactions other than one’s own, and a consumer of Miller’s or Dr. Vino’s (or Iverson’s) tasting notes is not looking or paying for consensus involving any other party. Second, the opinion is evident in the final result (the publication); this isn’t physics where showing one’s work is important or valuable, except in assessing the critic…and that’s something that’s not easily done during the tasting process. Third, and perhaps most importantly, talking wastes time. It’s important to remember that, for a professional critic, this is work, not a social wine occasion. I don’t mean to suggest that Dr. Vino doesn’t know all of that, only that he shouldn’t have been surprised to find it exemplified in this particular tasting.

5) Finally, and most dismayingly, there is a rather shocking bit of head-in-the-sand denial on Miller’s part regarding the important issue of palate fatigue.

“The palate fatigue argument, frankly, is total hogwash. The principal difficulty for amateurs is maintaining concentration, mental fatigue, not physical fatigue. Someone mentioned doing no more than 12 wines; that’s 30 minutes work. You taste, you spit, you write a note, taste again, spit, add (or not to your note) and on to the next wine. When you’ve had practice doing this, it’s simply not difficult.” (Miller)

Shorter Miller: it’s what I do, therefore it must be immutable law. And if you can’t do it, you’re not at my level.

“The quantity of wines that you are able to taste is, indeed, prodigious. Did you follow the interesting series of articles on Slate.com about the science of taste? The author reports on his discussions with Dr. Charles Wysocki, an expert on olfaction at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. He said it’s impossible to taste dozens of wines in rapid succession and not suffer olfactory fatigue and that anyone who claims otherwise is claiming to ‘defy biology,’ as he put it. Although a critic might think that his sense of smell is still acute after sampling 40 Cabernets, his impressions at that point are being formed less by the nose than by past experience, visual cues (such as the color of the wines), and perhaps also tactile sensations.” (Dr. Vino)

“Sensation and Perception” and “Psychophysics” were part of my academic studies way back when (I got my my [sic] doctorate in 1972 and took that class (or classes) in the late ’60s. While I have no idea what current research has to say regarding olfaction and gestation, I learned enough in academia to take findings in this field with a grain of salt. There can be significant differences between theory and practice. There are still, I’m sure, issues involved in presenting stimuli in a consistent way and in the need to use trained observers (and the biases that go into that). Don’t get me wrong, they’re valid fields of study, but in terms of practical application, forget about it.” (Miller, emphasis mine)

Note that he claims authority in this field, his second dalliance with a classic logical fallacy. But then there’s the rather breathtaking statement highlighted in the quote. He notes (see below) that he has not kept up with the science in this field…in fact, his knowledge in this area is almost forty years out of date. That’s forty, not four. But that doesn’t matter to Miller, who claims to know more than the scientists anyway, just because…well, why? Because he’s Chevy Chase Jay Miller, and they’re not? So, here’s a willful dismissal of science, plus a refusal to even attempt to change one’s personal triumph of belief over evidence. Miller should run for president. Or sub for Stephen Colbert.

“As a wine blogger, I am extremely interested in the research of Wysocki and other experts, much as I am interested in the science associated with wine closure and the science related to organic viticulture. It’s unfortunate that anyone tasting wine on Mr. Miller’s level is willing to ‘have no idea what current research has to say regarding olfaction and gustation.’ As an academic, it is wise to take any findings with a grain of salt; it is not wise to ignore current findings. I will be taking Mr. Miller’s conclusions about wine with more than a grain of salt in future, given his comments here.” (Dr. Debs)

“To Dr. Debs, I can just see myself pouring [sic] through the journals after 35 years (in areas that weren’t even my specialty). My time is much better spent tasting wine. Just out of curiosity, though, I’d be interested in how you think I’d be a better wine critic if I kept up on pyschophysics, olfaction, gustation, etc. As it is, I probably know more about those subjects than 99%5 of those writing about wine. I think you’re just blowing hot air. (Miller)

So, even though he just claimed authority in these subjects in order to “win” the argument, now that he’s been called on that bit of BS he’s moved on to claiming that this field wasn’t his “specialty”. And then he claims more expertise than all but 1% of wine writers (which, I assume, would be the 1% who have, at the very least, read the Slate article, which doesn’t even require being up-to-date on the science behind palate fatigue, only basic literacy). So is Dr. Miller an expert, or not? We don’t expect those whose familiarity with computers ended with vacuum tubes or punched tape to guide us on cutting-edge chip design or the multi-touch interface, do we? In any case, if he can’t be bothered to keep up with the research over a period of forty science-filled years, I think I know what the answer is: he’s no expert, though he might like to play one on the internet when it allows him to attempt bullying legitimate questioners into silence.

But sure, there are indeed better uses for his time. Why read, or learn, or visit Argentina, when he can taste wine with an instrument (his palate) that he apparently doesn’t understand, and spend the rest of his time insulting his audience.

1 I’m exempting Wine Spectator, which is dominant in the broader world of wine, but generally considered less “important” among high-end consumers.

2 A busy critic can’t go everywhere or cover everything. There’s too many wines, and there’s simply not enough time. However, to be as informed as possible about a specific subject, a critic has to visit and taste in situ. A critic owes that to him- or herself, first and foremost, even before their duty to their readers.

3 And yes, I realize this is a sleazy way to bring up the rumor while dismissing it, sort of like what political campaigns do when they want to keep their candidates’ hands clean. I really apologize for doing so, because it’s not my intention to bring the sleaze or even the innuendo, but I think contextualizing the previously-understood (or previously-misunderstood) relationship between Parker and Miller is important in understanding why Miller’s “working for Bob Parker for 25 years” comment will strike many as bothersome, or at least curious.

4 Does it matter? To some people. For me, all that matters is whether or not you trust the critic to be fair (I don’t believe a critic can be objective, at least not in the hair shirt sense that many consumers believe). Whether the wines are tasted blind or not is far less important than a sense of ethics and fairness, and that those senses are perceived by the audience.

5 As if we needed more evidence that 71.3% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Turning the Tablas

[vineyard & rock]Notes from a Tablas Creek wine dinner at Simon Pearce in Quechee, Vermont. Food pairings, and their appropriateness with the wines, are described below.

Tablas Creek 2005 Grenache Blanc (Paso Robles) – Stone fruit and almond oil with hints of acacia. Crisp apples dominate the midpalate, which brightens and freshens everything before a denser finish of blood orange rind. This is a really nice wine, with more life and vivacity than one might expect from a Rhônish white, and it would appear to have some medium-term aging potential as well. (1/08)

Served with: Peekytoe crab & shrimp cake with a cucumber/lychee relish and a Key lime vinaigrette. This dish is a tremendous accompaniment to the wine, with each enhancing the other.

Tablas Creek 2000 “Clos Blanc” (Paso Robles) – 45% roussanne, 19% viognier, 19% marsanne, and 17% grenache blanc. Definitely showing signs of age, with a buttered caramel, lactic character dominating the nose. The palate, too, has turned to fat without sufficient substance. However, things are not quite so dire once one really works their way into the wine, which shows intense Rainier cherry, strawberry and apricot warmed by the hot Paso Robles sun. And then, things turn strange again, with an angular, somewhat distorted finish. I wouldn’t hold this any longer, if you’ve still got any. (1/08)

Served with: Atlantic halibut and smoked salmon roulade, almond orange rice pudding, and apricot honey vin blanc. The dish is grossly, inappropriately sweet, and completely obliterates the wine…not that what could be discerned seemed to match very well. Even taken on its own merits, this course is abominable. The rice pudding would be pretty nice on its own, as a dessert, but here? Ugh.

Tablas Creek 2004 “Côtes de Tablas” Rouge (Paso Robles) – 64% grenache, 16% syrah, 13% counoise, 7% mourvèdre. This feels a little lighter than previous vintages, but that may just be the influence of the food. Dark fruit and a slim but present structure dominate, with a dusting of fennel pollen and the very slightest edge of volatile acidity hovering atop the aromatics; nothing that anyone not oversensitive (like me) will notice, though. Soft and accessible throughout, though it seems to fill out on the finish. A typically solid, reliable, good-quality effort. (1/08)

Served with: juniper-seared venison loin, white truffle cauliflower gratin, and cherry molasses sauce. The food is too powerful for the wine, though I suspect a lower-volume dish with the same flavors would make a pretty good match. The sauce isn’t as sweet as it sounds, but the real star on the plate is the cauliflower gratin, which has a crumbed coating and is a really terrific way to extend the natural qualities of this sometimes overlooked vegetable.

Tablas Creek 2004 Tannat (Paso Robles) – 92% tannat, 8% cabernet sauvignon. This is my first domestic tannat; the only other examples I’ve tasted have been from France, Uruguay, and New Zealand. And if this is any indication, there’s great potential for this grape, though I can’t imagine the marketing nightmare it might represent. Deep, dark, mysterious, and even a little murky, with enticements of black licorice and blackcurrant, there’s the expected quantity of tannin here, but none of the usual qualities of tannin one expects from this legendarily tannic grape; instead, the structure is leathery, ripe, and…well, lush. It does calcify a bit on the finish, though…tannat fans need not worry overmuch…while the wine veers into an iron-rich, blood-like phase. There’s a touch of heat throughout, but only a touch. Terrific, and obviously quite ageable. (1/08)

Served with: braised veal cheek, caramelized shallot, marrow, and potato hash with pomegranate cassis jus. A little sweeter than it should be, but the braising and caramelizing components work well with the wine’s deep blackness. The marrow is completely lost, and I think that this dish would, in general, be better without the fruity enhancements. But, of course, Simon Pearce can’t help itself when it comes to adding sweeteners to food.

Tablas Creek 2005 Vin de Paille “Sacrérouge” (Paso Robles) – A dried-grape sweet wine made from mourvèdre. And it tastes like…figs! Black Mission figs, to be precise, in an almost uncannily accurate alcoholic form. Vague suggestions of strawberry jam, plum, or even prune are quickly dismissed by the figgy assault, and the wine has the texture of the seedy pulp left over from squeezing fruit as a preliminary step towards producing jelly. It’s relatively balanced and really, really fun. Will it age? Maybe, but I defy anyone to stop drinking it, once they’ve opened a bottle. (1/08)

Served with: Guanaja chocolate chèvre cheesecake with a hazelnut/fig spread. I should note, up front, that I’m not a big fan of figs except in their raw fruit form (and even then, I can take or leave them), so for me the hazelnut/fig elements of this dish are a complete waste of time. The “cheesecake,” however, is another story…brilliant, in fact, with an unusual texture and a fascinating mix of soft and chalky, bitter and sweet, that pairs beautifully with the wine.