Where to begin with this one? Our guest Clark Smith was in rare form, opening up a few hundred potential cans of winemaking worms. Among the topics: taking the natural wine movement to task, and showing us what happens to the texture of a wine when you play The Doors or Iron Maiden tunes in the background (a somewhat oddly terrifying experiment that you can try for yourself at home). If you think it’s easy to manipulate wine, wait until you see how easily YOU can be manipulated as a taster! I also taste through Clark’s 2003 Napa Chardonnay – both in its original (14.9% abv) and de-alcoholoized (12.9%) states… guess which one is better?
Oh, and Clark starts off with a song about Monticello Viognier. Which we can all agree is bad-ass, I think.
Prepared to have your minds partially blown, people, this episode turns a lot of our collective romanticized notions about winemaking on its barrel heads.
Mentioned in this episode:
Common winemaking adjustments (see my Wine.Answers.com interviews with Clark on that topic, parts One and Two)
We’re wrapping up 2013 for The Punch Down in an iconoclastic way (c’mon, what did you expect?!??), as we welcome author, educator, winemaker, musician, consultant, Vinovation founder and, yes, wine iconoclast Clark Smith as our guest on Episode 9 of The Punch Down!
Smith has been ruffling feathers in the wine business since he dropped out of MIT forty years ago to pursue wine full time. Along the way, the company he founded became one of the go-to resources for wine enhancements and chemistry in California, and he founded WineSmith Wines. Smith also has a long-running column in Wines & Vines magazine, the best of which was compiled and edited into the recently released book Postmodern Winemaking.
If you’re curious about what happens to that juice before it gets into the bottle that you just bought, and if you’re a wine lover and rabble-rouser at heart, don’t miss our conversation when Clark Smith brings his erudite, opinionated, and witty voice to the TPD hot seat!.
The Punch Down Episode 8 is in the books, and we had a stellar guest in critic Antonio Galloni, who somehow managed to be proud, educational, erudite and humble all at the same time.
We talk Famer Fizz, geeky Italian quality designations, Idaho Wine, Ferrari Perle 2006, wine scores, the future of Vinous Media, Galloni’s relationship with former employer Robert Parker, and wine tasting dental care.
Ladies, gents, geeks of legal drinking age within your respective countries… I’m happy to announce that the next guest on The Punch Down will be wine critic Antonio Galloni.
Galloni, of course, was formerly on the staff of the insanely-influential The Wine Advocate, and was widely thought to be the heir apparent to TWA founder Robert Parker, Jr. But all of that changed when Galloni left TWA earlier this year (with an ensuing un-served lawsuit from his former employer), and founded his own Internet-based wine publication, Vinous Media.
By reputation and work ethic – and by his long-standing association with TWA – Galloni is widely considered one of the most important and influential wine critics in the U.S.
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