[barrel logo] [oenoLogic]

[home]

[articles]

[dining]

[blog]

[regions]

[contact]

[links]

[frequently asked questions]
   

home > articles

Alcohol of fame

Meeting the burden of proof

from Grapes, by Thor Iverson

Not that anyone reading this ever engaged in the highly-illegal practice of underage drinking, but remember when it was all so much simpler? (For your friends, I mean. Not you. You went to church every day, asked for extra credit assignments, helped old ladies across the street, ate all your vegetables…and certainly, never, ever touched the demon rum. Especially not when it came in convenient punch form.)

Theoretically, then…back in the day, it was all about the alcohol. No one cared about grapes, or places, or (much) about brands. I suppose this is why my attempts to be the Disney Channel’s wine correspondent have, thus far, failed to gain traction.

But where are we now? If you’re reading this column – which means alcohol has to sound pretty darn appealing right about now – you’re regularly assaulted with a barrage of unfamiliar concepts. Grapes, places, people, ham-handed chemistry…all the oenological minutiae that make up the incredibly detailed world of wine. It’s enough to drive a person to drink. (But, hopefully, not the other way ‘round.)

You’d think that wine being an alcoholic beverage would still be comforting, somehow. And I guess it is, especially starting about halfway through the average bottle. But the fact is, modern oenogeeks can’t even leave this simple facet of wine alone, and these days there’s a fairly large controversy over alcohol in wine. Specifically, how much qualifies as too much.

Yes, yes, I know. Are you nuts? Possibly.

Here’s the thing: wine exists at a lot of different alcohol levels, expressed on labels as a percentage. You’ve got your off-dry German riesling, or moscato d’Asti, somewhere down in the middle to high single-digits. There’s the bulk of cooler-climate European wines, ranging between about 11 and 14%. And then you’ve got the bigger, bolder styles – mostly, but not exclusively, from the New World – starting at about 13% but sometimes leaping past 16 or 17%. With engineered super-yeasts, topping 20% is now eminently possible, though I’ve yet to see it in wine.

Obviously, these alcohol levels have a lot to do with how many glasses a person can polish off before the other demons associated with alcohol (hangovers, regrettable dance floor behavior, repeatedly screaming “I love you, man!” in a complete stranger’s ear) come to the party; a single person can fairly easily finish a bottle of light German riesling over a slow lunch, but one of the higher-alcohol brutes might be too much for a pair of people at dinner, even if they have no post-prandial plans other than sleep.

Alcohol levels in wine are going up. And up. And up. Since alcohol in wine is a function of sugar in grapes, it shouldn’t be a surprise that global warming is partially to blame. (Here’s another one of those auxiliary demons: Al Gore monitoring your wine intake.) But it’s not the primary factor. No, that would be something a lot more fundamental: by the winemakers’ choice.

Why? A wine’s body (the weight and texture of it in the mouth) is created by a few things, but the primary factor is alcohol. The higher the alcohol, the more body in the wine. And fuller-bodied wines win competitions, impress critics, and make a (slightly erratic) splash at tastings. Plus, as grapes with ever-escalating sugars hang on the vine, intensity and concentration of fruit also increases. This helps create the big, powerful explosions of flavor that are so popular in modern-styled wines.

Winemakers have good reason to believe this style is popular, but most often those who traffic in high-alcohol wines do it because they like the results. Not everyone does. For detractors, many (though not all) of these modern wines taste “hot,” and deliver a burning sensation similar to that of hard alcohol. This is a sign of imbalance, and can technically occur whether the wine clocks in at 7 or 17%, but it’s much more likely as that number rises. Consumer pushback has led to an occasional practice of lying on the label, claiming an alcohol level several percentage points lower than the actual one. And yes, this too is illegal.

So what about the future? Winemakers can pick earlier, but this means losing some of that fruit intensity. They can de-alcoholize their wine, an aggressive technique regularly practiced at hundreds of wineries in California alone, but almost never revealed to the public. They can engage in a number of complicated viticultural techniques to slow down ripening. Or they can uproot and move somewhere cooler, where their grapes won’t be so sugary by harvest time This is an extreme response, but it has happened.

Or, I suppose, we could all drink less. Though that hardly seems like an ideal solution.

(First published in stuff@night, 2008.)

   

Copyright © Thor Iverson.