“We don’t want a square strawberry.”

So opines Ridge’s Paul Draper in the first half of Wine From Here, a documentary about (and at points a bit of a commercial for) the budding natural winemaking movement in California (I got a sneak peak by invitation from one of the filmmakers, Martin Carel of Wino Brothers Inc.). The trailer is embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

The film will be screened in L.A. in a couple of days, followed by a tasting of natural wines with winemakers featured in the film at BUZZ Wine / Beer Shop – and if you buy tix to the event online you’ll get 1/3 off the full price by using discount code “1WD” at checkout!

Draper’s comment above is in reference to (what I think is) the strongest selling point behind natural winemaking: consumers ought to know what they are getting when they buy a product, and in the case of wine sometimes they are getting a lot more than just fermented grape juice, primarily in the form of various additives (for more on that topic, and for a rough definition of natural winemaking itself, see my review of Alice Feiring’s new book – she makes several appearances in the film, by the way). And as we know well, consumer sentiment is king, and will play a large part in whether or not the natural winemaking movement gains any serious traction in the wine biz and becomes the vinous equivalent of the organic / slow food phenomena.

Based on the film (which is well-made, and is highly recommended watching for wine geeks), the natural winemaking movement sorely needs to emphasize its strong points, because it’s still touting a few tenets that hold less water than well-drained gravelly vineyard soils…

The leakiest of those tenets? The notion that natural winemaking is the most accurate lightening rod for transmitting a sense of place. Wine From Here begins its dénouement with a blind tasting of natural CA wines with experts and CA natural winemakers. It’s one of the dramatic low points of the film, which is a shame because the results of the tasting are themselves fairly dramatic; as summarized by the film’s narrator:

“…Only sometimes could they correctly identify the grapes or some detail of the winemaking methods; and not one could identify the specific terroir in California.”

Oh, blind tasting, you universally cool, cruel arbiter and equalizer!

While the above result will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever taken part in a blind tasting of wines, it undercuts the message delivered by several of the interviewees in the film that natural winemaking is a more reliable delivery service than UPS when it comes to bringing you a sense of place in a wine.

Wine From Here does a pretty good job of balancing the various sides of natural winemaking story in CA, including not shying away from the thorny topic of how environmental friendliness (another claim widely espoused by organic grape growers and natural winemakers) should be measured. Jared Brandt, winemaker at A Donkey and Goat, puts it best in his interview when he recalls a conversation with a former French employer, who noted that after converting to Biodynamics “his diesel usage went up ten times… is using ten times as much diesel worse on the environment than using RoundUp? I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as people think it is.”

Far more interesting to me, and I think a tactic ultimately more likely for success, are the comparisons made in the film between natural winemaking and natural foods. Long-standing godfather of CA natural wine Tony Coturri talks up this food angle, as does Alice Feiring, and it’s a strong one. If you demand that your food be processed as little as possible, then as a consumer don’t you have the right to demand the same thing from your wines?

My bud Hardy Wallace, in talking about the winemaking at his former employer the Natural Process Alliance in Santa Rosa (whose cloudy Sauvignon Blanc is a tasty, joyous, visceral experience, by the way), I thought summed up the thinking behind this comparison best during one of his interviews in Wine From Here:

“Our goal is to do nothing [to the wine]; so if we have to do anything, we want to do as little as possible.”

The corollary of course being that much of the wine you’re drinking is having something done to it, and in many cases it’s having a sh*tload of stuff done to it, none of which you probably know anything about and certainly some of which you’d rather go without putting in your mouth if you did know it was in there.

Wine From Here isn’t perfect, but if you’re a fine wine geek then it sure as hell ought to get you thinking about how and why wine production, in its pursuit of “perfection,” often turns more into craft and recipe-following than it does into genuine artistic expression.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Square Strawberries: Distilling The Natural Wine Message From The New Film “Wines From Here” (Score A Discount To The L.A. Screening!) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

Simple question, right?  “Duh! To make wine!” you might be answering to yourself.  What could be more simple than that?

But real wine lovers, and real winemakers, know better; they know that almost no other query could be more complicated, opinionated, difficult, thought-provoking, or (hopefully!)invigorating to answer.

Which is exactly what drove me to ask it.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after visiting hundreds of winemaking outfits of all sizes all over the world, it’s that no two winemakers ply their craft in exactly the same way, or with exactly the same ends in mind, or exactly the same attitudes.  But one thing in that world is consistent: the majority of those same people invariably have passionate stances on both the How and the What of their jobs as winemakers.  Theirs are the kinds of viewpoints that make for fascinating reading – and even more fascinating discussion and debate.

I wanted a techy interview, but one with passion, soul, and life . – in the hopes that it would fascinate, entertain, educate and maybe even get your wine blood boiling. To that end, I’ve staked the decks significantly in favor of passionate discussion by posing it to Matt Powell, the force behind Lodi’s Draconis Vineyards. Matt’s wines are focused and powerful – just like his viewpoints. He’s active on social media, is a big fan of comics, and takes his wine very, very seriously; case in point – visitors to the Draconis Vineyards at one point were greeted with the following message:

“I have no lists, clubs, or membership bullshit.”

Matt’s take on the job of the winemaker today? It’s just as straightforward, opinionated, and fascinating as you’d expect form the person who authored that welcome message, and who told me this about a recent vintage: “I tossed the entire 2009′s; weren’t good enough.”  A review of one my faves of Matt’s wines follows our interview. Enjoy!…

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1WineDude: What do you think is the role of the winemaker today?

Matt Powell: Not to be a total a**hole, and to remember that it’s the process of turning the juice into wine that matters most.  It’s easy to overthink it. Its easy to add sh*t to it.  It’s easy to screw it up.  But it’s really, really hard to just leave it alone.

There are so many tools in the winemakers kit today to modify, blend, and change the fundamental process that todays wine often loses its … character.  Filter, filter, filter, rack, rack, filter some more, throw in some sulfur and get a good score …right?

Bullsh*t.

Wine evolves from the process and needs to grow.  Often I feel winemakers, as good as some of them are (and you know who you are), by their very nature, are bound to create wine for today’s market; it’s all about turning the inventory and giving the customer some uber-high residual sugar blend with a really cool name …like “Flaming Porcupine blend … a mix of 18 different varietals grown in the mountaintops of Iceland, next to the volcano where sulfur naturally occurs, giving the wine its unique nose and protective features” …hey that sounds cool… I’d buy it (*sarcasm*).

Really though, I feel like the modern wine industry has lost its focus, that winemakers’ hands are constrained by corporate policies and shelf-life.  Now, don’t get me wrong; I totally understand it, and yet totally hate it at the same time. Sh*t, there’s nothing i can do about it except to try and play a different game myself.

I mean, like, what would Captain Kirk do?  I’m certain he’d take a different approach – but he’s smart enough to know that it’ll take the customer to force change in the industry and to the winemaker.  They just have to listen.

Ultimately, the winemaker has a responsibility to get back to the roots of wine.  Step it back a few generations and take a note from history.  Let the wine process evolve; don’t change it with equipment, chemicals, and blends. Try really hard to leave it alone making only the minimum necessary adjustments while listening to your customers’ desires.  Idealistic and unrealistic as that sounds, that’s what I believe and whatIi stick to.  Maybe someday, we’ll get there and the customer will have a much better selection of wine to choose from.

1WD: Is there really such a thing as non-interventionist winemaking?

MP: Probably not.  I have a hard time envisioning a completely non-interventionist winemaking process – I mean, there are things you have to do… that you just don’t want to leave out.  Like adding Sulfur; you need the sulfur to neutralize microbial activity – without it, bacteria and other microorganisms will hands-down ruin your wine.  This is especially true when taking a minimalist approach to the wine like I do … no filtering or fining means that the all the ‘character’ of the wine remains; but to stabilize the product i have to hit it with sulfur.  So in one respect, being almost non-interventionist certainly allows the wine to evolve in a livelier way, but on the other hand, it also does require that certain actions are taken to retain quality in the product.

1WD: Are there certain things that are “off limits” to you, things that you just won’t do to adjust or correct a wine under any circumstances?

MP: Oh yeah.  I learned the hard way that I won’t add adjust the acids of my wines.  I also ferment to complete dryness.  I’m not a big fan of the over alcoholic “bold” residual sugar-based wines and prefer a more refined and elegant end result.  Lots of people have suggested I leave half to 1% RS in my wine, but I won’t do it … I feel like it covers up what the wine is supposed to be.

1WD: Do you think the technical tools offered to winemakers today do more good than harm?

MP: A difficult question to answer – I feel that technology has its place in the wine process; for instance, without technology we wouldn’t have modern cultivated yeasts or required additives like DAP; this in itself, has helped wine become better over the last 30 years.  However, I feel there are winemakers out there that depend too much on technology to guide them and end up doing more harm than good.

A lot of times, the wine may be technically correct but doesn’t have … life; no character or personality.  Tinkering with the process may fix one factor (like the acid levels), but it’ll certainly throw the rest of the wine off simply because the fruit arrived in a certain way.  That is, the fruit showed up in its optimal state as dictated by its microclimate.  Adding extra acid will automatically change the ratios of the other goodies in the juice…  So, I guess to answer your question and in my own opinion, technology should be used as an accent, nothing more …unless your making a million cases – then you’ll need robots to make your wine…

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2007 Draconis Petite Sirah “Classic” (Lodi)
Price: $28
Rating: B+

For the price, this wine is pretty much unbeatable.  Draconis pumps out a spicy, meaty take on Petite Sirah that is utterly without pretense – and it’s about as faithful to the variety as you can get while still managing to offer up a wine that feels complete, and doesn’t drop off precipitously in its middle stanza. It’s also a drop-dead sexy wine in its deep, dark, midnight-blues-infused color and silky but not flabby mouthfeel. PS, with no BS indeed!

2008 Draconis “French Oak” Zinfandel (Lodi)
Price: $28
Rating: B+

The QPR on this wine is ridiculous. A wizardly-crafted, wicked combo of deep, dark-berry fruit, spices, and sweet oak. Normally this amount of oak could feel off-putting to me, but here one gets the clear impression that a few years in the bottle will integrate that fruity/spicy/oaky core into something wonderfully hedonistic and even more supple than it is now. If you must open it early, please do so with a full rack of ribs and about an hour and a half of pre-dinner decanting time booked in your schedule.

Both tasted as samples.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Signs Of Life: What It Takes To Make Wines Of True Character (With Matt Powell of Draconis) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

While that title of the report doesn’t sound particularly fascinating, the report’s conclusions are – if you’re a wine geek, that is, and if you’re a fan of California fine wine and have ever wondered why alcohol levels seem to be kind of high in the premium vino coming out of that state.  According to the report, it’s not just your imagination – wine grapes in CA have indeed been getting riper over the last twenty years, which translates into higher booze levels, with white grapes bearing the brunt of the increase:

“The data show that the average alcohol percentage increased by 0.30 percent, with a larger increase for white wine (0.38 percent) than for red wine (0.25 percent).  This increase in alcohol percentage is consistent with an increase in the sugar content of the grapes used to make that wine of 0.55 degrees Brix, on average.”

That sugar measurement might look small, but according to the report it’s a “substantial” increase, and it’s that rise in sugar levels that is making CA wines a bit more… busty than they’ve been in the past (I imagine if you were used to drinking CA wine from 20 years ago, drank too much, passed out and pulled a Rip Van Winkle, upon waking up in 2011 you’d be forgiven for thinking that during your extended slumber your fave CA Cab had undergone the vinous equivalent of a boob job).  What this study does that is so fascinating is this: it puts data and critical thinking behind something that many CA wine drinkers may have already suspected… CA fine wines are getting boozier, and it might be the result of the fine wine market…

Now, we’ve all heard of global warming, right (if not, please remove the large boulder from over your head and read the news)?  Well, it must be getting warmer in CA winegrowing regions, raising the sugar in the grapes due to the higher temperatures, and thus increasing the alcohol content in the final wine, right?

Not necessarily.  According to the CWE study, the weather patterns have had a minimal impact on grape sugars during the last twenty years:

“…an increase in heat during the growing season would contribute to an increase in the sugar content of grapes.  However, the heat index did not exhibit any statistically significant growth during the growing season..”

So what is causing the increased sugar = increased booze?  Probably the CA wine biz reaction to consumer demand. According to the study, it seems that premium wine varieties (especially reds) have seen some of the most dramatic sugar level increases – and they propose that this could be due to critics like Robert Parker giving higher scores to riper, more concentrated wines. This in turn causes consumers to demand those wines with higher scores, which causes winemakers to try to get higher scores, which causes grape growers to leave grapes hanging on the vines longer in an attempt to achieve more ripeness (and therefore raising the sugar levels in the grapes). To the study:

“In all of the models… the analysis shows a higher propensity for growth in sugar content for premium varieties, compared with non-premium varieties, even though premium varieties had higher sugar content to begin with.  This feature and the patterns of the level of sugar content among regions and varieties could be consistent with a “Parker effect” where higher sugar content is an unintended consequence of wineries responding to market demand and seeking riper flavoured more intense wines through longer hang times.”

The study doesn’t conclusively prove a link between a “Parker Effect” and rising CA wine booze levels – it merely concludes that is one logical interpretation of their results, since global warming / weather effects alone don’t account for the measured increase in CA grape sugar levels.

Still… it would explain quite a bit, wouldn’t it? And we don’t exactly have data coming out of ears disproving the link, or attributing the sugar/booze increase to something else, now do we?

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Want Some Wine With That Booze? (The “Parker Effect” And Rising CA Wine Alcohol Levels) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

The feedback from the twitterati is included below after the jump (if you chimed in already via twitter, your response may be listed for all of the 1WD faithful to see – don’t say I didn’t warn ya!).

The short (and grossly oversimplified) answers to the question, by the way, seem to be "Yes!" for wine geeks and "No, who cares as long as the juice tastes good!" for the majority of people, based on the twitter responses that I received.

The topic of wine yeasts, and why they seem to touch off a hot-button reaction among wine pros and the geekier of wine aficionados, requires a bit of a primer, because to most wine drinkers, this is gonna be some pretty esoteric shiz.

During my last trip to Napa, I stopped into Chimney Rock for some barrel samples tasting (that’s samples of wines from barrels, not tasting samples of barrels) and spent a few hours geeking out over all things wine-related with the affable Elizabeth Vianna (CM’s winemaker who last week was promoted to GM).  Elizabeth is open, honest, and easy to get along with, and she’s not shy when it comes to expressing her opinions.  And yet, when she was explaining the winemaking process behind each of Chimney Rock’s wines, she became almost apologetic when she mentioned that they – gasp! – inoculate their wines with cultured yeasts! 

Imagine, the audacity!  The HORROR!!!…

I think Elizabeth got skittish around the yeast topic because it’s almost as divisive among wine pros and wine geeks as Biodynamics (ok, it’s not quite that bad, but it’s close).  For some reason, the topic of which style of yeasts are used by winemakers has taken on way, way, way too much importance in wine geek circles, and occasionally in reviews and profile pieces where it feels, through implication, as though any wine not using native yeasts, (or if filtered, and/or fined), must somehow be inferior to those that take things as far as can reasonably be done au naturel (when it comes to the wine itself, I mean, not the winemakers… though I certainly wouldn’t put nude winemaking past a good percentage of the winemakers that I know… ok, whatever…).

Now, generally speaking, winemakers have two options when it comes to yeasts.  They can use wild yeasts (which exist naturally in the winery and wherever the grapes where grown); or, they can inoculate with cultured yeasts to start fermentation.  Either way, without yeasts converting sugar into alcohol, you’re not gonna get any wine - so we’re not talking about the importance of yeasts, just about whether or not it matters to people if the yeasts used are cultured or not.

Cultured yeasts are more predictable – they are cultured specifically for behavior at certain temperatures, and/or for flavors that they help to impart into the finished wine.  Wild yeasts typically are less predictable, a bit more difficult to work with as a result, but can (in the best cases) impart what some consider to be rougher-hewn but more characterful flavors than the "cleaner" ones that result from their cultured counterparts.

I’m certainly not saying that any process performed behind closed doors in a winery should be ignored by consumers; the end doesn’t justify all of the means, but honestly… how far should we rationally take this stuff?

Case in point: do Chimney Rock’s wines suffer somehow from not using wild yeasts?  It’s an impossible question to answer without somehow having side-by-side wines made from grapes in exactly the same location and in exactly the same way except for the yeasts involved.  But I can tell you this: Chimney Rock makes some really, really good wine – and personally, I don’t give a sh*t what type of yeasts they use.   And neither should you, if the thing you care the most about is what’s in the bottle at the end of the process.

Great wines are made in the world’s most storied wine regions with both categories of yeast, and if there’s a morally-superior yeast option then it certainly has never revealed itself to me in the bottle. I can tell you I have personal preferences when it comes to what I like, particularly with Chardonnay (when it’s not coming from Chablis), where I like the characterful complexity that wild yeasts can impart.  But my personal predilections do not equate to one wine being inherently superior to another.

My friend Steve McIntosh from Winethropology.com summed up it best, I think, when we exchanged some thoughts over e-mail on the topic of why yeasts don’t really matter:

“I’ve always associated cultured yeasts with beer-making more than quality winemaking. Of all the wineries I’ve toured and winemakers I’ve rapped with, the topic of yeast has only come up anecdotally. Even then, they’ve only mentioned it when they use wild yeast. I guess I had (mistakenly) assumed that most higher-end wineries rely exclusively on hands-off, wild-only yeast.

Then, just yesterday, I was chatting with a winemaker on Facebook. This is a guy whose wines I’ve been loving and recommending for a while. Right there on his Facebook page is a picture of his boxes of Lalvin Rhone 4600 and T73.

WTF?!? Commercial yeast?! In some of my favorite wines?!? It can’t be.

Of course it can. It is.And not just his wines, either.

My outrage quickly dissipated, recalling just how damn good his last Grenache was. Sure, the romantic in me wants to believe that nothing is ever added to the wines I serve my friends and family. But the truth is that my attention quickly refocuses on what I love the most about wine: the experience, not necessarily the ingredients.”

Amen to that!

Where do you stand on yeasts?  Should we get our vinous panties in a wad, or is this much ado about nothing when it comes to enjoying wine?

Here’s what some of you said on the topic last week:

billward4: Not in the lees, er, least.

vinniebasile: Wild yeasts add to the ‘terroir’ aspect of wine which I enjoy…but then, sometimes that’s not necessarily gonna be a good thing.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Do You Care About Wine Yeasts? (Crowd-Sourcing Wine Learning) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

Janet is a geek, in every positive sense of the word.  We got to know each other a bit the night before the interview, at a dinner held for the fellowship recipients and their underwriting wineries, and I got enjoy Janet’s down-to-earth approach – which belies an almost encyclopedic knowledge of all things related to Franciscan, Mt. Veeder, and especially how their respective terroirs translate into their finished wines.  She’s especially geeky about yeasts – and when you produce one of the more expensive Napa Chardonnays based on native yeasts (Cuvee Sauvage – the 2006 of which wowed the diners at our table with its balanced marriage of stone fruits, rich mouthfeel and acidic, refreshing finish) , it’s probably an enormous benefit to have a passionate geek making your wine.

Janet also has a passion for blending that was evident when tasting the Franciscan and Mt. Veeder portfolio; all of the wines under her care are clearly well-crafted.  And while Franciscan’s best-known wine (the 2006 Napa cabernet) felt out of balance to me, I was floored by the 2006 Napa Merlot, which Janet indicated gets a lot of focus at Franciscan in general because Merlot is such an important part of the blend that goes into their flagship Meritage (“Magnificat”).  The Merlot is textbook Oakville – plump, ripe, full of plums and smoky tobacco – but is extremely well-balanced and supple.  For $22 bones – it’s an impressive feat of winemaking and a hell of a wine for the price tag.

Janet kindly agreed to have some of our discussion on her approach to blending captured on video, which is embedded below.  You might be surprised to learn (as I was) that there isn’t a set “recipe” for blending the Magnificat.  “We’re in the ‘blend late’ camp,” Janet told me, meaning that individual varieties are vinified separately and then blended together to make the final wine later.  “I want to see how they develop before they get ‘nominated’ to go into the final blend – because they can surprise you.  We’re not making Coca-Cola here; we’re keeping within a theme.”  More on that in the vid.

While the first thing that you may notice in the vid is my annoyingly rampant use of the dumbass’ anthemic “uhhhmmmm…” (due mostly to my state of exhaustion after having tasted dozens of wines at Pre-Premiere Napa events, some of it in soul-suckingly sterile environments – more on that in a later post), the first person who comments correctly identifying the MAJOR gaffe that I toss out in this video will win a fabulous prize (not kidding). Good luck!

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Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at 1WineDude TV Episode 10: Go Forth, And Blend! (An Interview with Franciscan’s Janet Myers) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!