“Doesn’t mean you should
Just because you can
It doesn’t mean you should
Just because you can
Like Abraham and Ishmael
Fighting over sand
It doesn’t mean you should
Just because you can.”

- “Facts of Life” by King Crimson

Seriously, people.  Stop it.  Please.

It’s getting embarrassing now.

I get that newer wine areas need to experiment.  I get that you’re just exploring the multi-facets of your terroir.  I get that we don’t yet know which grapes will really sing when grown on your land.

I just don’t get why people should be sold the results of your experiment when they suck (the result, I mean, not the people). When those grapes don’t sing mellifluously, and instead let out what we refer to in my band as a “brown note” – well… why the hell should people pay out good hard-earned cash for that crappy experience?

I know what you’re going to tell me: “Hey, smarty-pants, people come in asking where’s the Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, so I have to grow them and make varietal wines out of them!”

I’m calling bullsh*t on that right now – and it’s in your own best interests, because it’s a totally bogus business strategy…

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“Of course, you know this word, terroir?”

The fact that Gonzague de Lambert, Marketing & Sales Manager of Viña Vik, didn’t punch me squarely in the head after my response to his question – especially given our close proximity at the time, he in the driver’s seat and I in the front passenger seat of a truck bouncing through the meticulously-kept vineyard property of one of Chile’s newest winemaking outfits – is strong testament to his good-natured attitude:

“Sure,” I said, “it’s French for Brett.”

Gonzague, formerly of Château de Sales, is very tall, very approachable, and (in mannerisms) very French (zee accent, zee pursing of zee lips when he speaks…).  All the more reason why my joke actually playing out successfully feels, in hindsight, like some minor miracle.

On a warm, sunny, South American Summer day in early March, I visited Viña Vik, hosted by Gonzague and their equally affable winemaker Cristián Vallejo. On a day like that, with full view of their estate (and upscale guest house) in Millahue, one marvels at what’s been achieved in their plantings, and in their lofty ambitions.  A state-of-the-art winery is being built there in the hopes of making the best wine in Chile.  As in, the best wine ever made in Chile.  No pressure or anything, right guys?

Viña Vik is the brainchild of uber-rich Norwegian entrepreneur Alexander Vik, who, after researching potential S. American vineyard sites with extensive soil reporting, settled his winemaking sights on this stretch of land in Millahue (“Place of Gold” in the native indigenous language there) on the northern end of the Apalta Valley in Chile. Carving out a viable vineyard here, in the middle of nowhere (if you were dropped into this hilly, arid, windy spot blindfolded, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d landed in an eastern Africa game preserve) must have put a serious dent in Vik’s fortunes.  They wouldn’t give me numbers, but did admit the cost to develop this land for viticulture fell somewhere in the ridiculously-expensive range.

The idea was to identify and develop a unique terroir in South America, and let the wine speak for itself.  But can the expression of terroir be designed? Can it bend to the whims and resources of an almost-unlimited wallet? In other words, did it work?  I tasted their blending components made from the unique vineyard parcels in 2010 – along with their latest 2009 release – to find out…

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Last week, I wondered aloud (on twitter) whether or not anyone out there cares if a winery uses cultured yeasts instead of wild yeasts.

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!!!…

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In the morning fog of Casablanca, a stone’s-throw from Santiago, Chile – provided that you could throw that stone over the enormous mountain range that divides Casablanca and the city, that is – the world feels very, very small. At least, it did to me on my recent S. American jaunt.

The world feels small despite the fact that those fog-covered vineyards (cooled by the effects of the mountains, which dramaticly reduce the amount of sunlight and heat compared to the city) are owned by Emiliana, a company that collectively farms the largest source of estate-grown organic wines in the world.  It felt small despite the scale of how “all-in” Emiliana is when it comes to organic viticulture.

Part of the cozy feel comes from Emiliana’s Casablanca estate itself: home to wandering birds (especially the chickens, who eat the larvae of what are locally called “burrito spiders” but I took to be mites, who can damage vine roots), and alpaca (whose wool is sold by the vineyard workers).  Part of the feel also comes from how the workers are treated here – they are trained and then help manufacture olive oils, hats, and various other native crafts that are sold in the off-season to help maintain their income when not working the vineyards (many of them also have named plots in the organic gardens near the vineyards, which helps supply them with healthy food).

But mostly the world felt small to me in Emiliana because they kept talking about Biodynamics, a topic that got very hot recently here on the virtual pages of 1WD.  And they kept calling it… wait for it… the “science of Biodynamics.”

I can feel the collective shoulder-tightening ire of the wine geeks reading that last sentence.

And where did Emiliana get the BioD bug?  From a visit by consulting winemaker Álvaro Espinoza Durán to Sonoma’s Benziger, where I visited in the not-too-distant past, and talked BioD with head honcho and BioD cheerleader Mike Benziger – and then interviewed BioD viticultural consultant Alan York (whose clients include Benziger and rocker Sting) as part of a more in-depth pro/con BioD debate.

And to further the far-away-but-close-to-home experience, I found the vinous results of this Biodynamic work to be pretty similar to those I’ve encountered elsewhere in the wine world… namely, inconsistent…

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