March 8th, 2010
 It’s pretty much accepted wisdom that hillsides produce the best wine grapes. But like so much of the accepted wisdom in the wine world, it doesn’t necessarily jive with the real world.
My own personal experience with hillside vineyards hasn’t been a happy one. Our vineyards lie mostly on valley floors, but one of our vineyards has a hillside block. I had always hoped to get excellent fruit from this section, but never did. It suffered from several problems. First, it was planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, which probably requires a cooler growing environment than this west facing slope provides. It also suffered from salinity problems, due in large part to the fact that rain runs off the slope, instead of sinking in and washing away the salts.
It suffered from yet another problem, one common to hillside vineyards. The soil changes dramaticially from one part of the vineyard to another. Swales have different soil depths than do other parts of the vineyard. It’s difficult to get the vineyard consistency that is best for wine grapes. To some extent, this can be addressed by heroic measures that, in essence, tailor the grapegrowing small section by small section, if not vine by vine. This takes a lot of work, and never gets done with absolute perfection.
Eventually, I pulled out the Cabernet Sauvignon and replanted with Aglianico, a late-ripening grape from near Naples. In theory, the later ripening variety would allow it to thrive on the hot hillside. In actuality, it never took, probably due to the difficult soil conditions, and eventually I abandoned this part of the vineyard.
So, you can see, my personal experience doesn’t make me a big fan of hillside vineyards right off the bat. But, when you think about it, hillsides have some serious deficiencies as compared with valley floors. Valley floors are consistent. Hillsides are inconsistent. If consistency is important to producing quality grapes (and it is), the valley get the nod on this count.
Some would argue that hillsides are better as they produce less vigorous vines. As a general rule, they do in fact produce less vigorous vines, but whether that’s a plus is open to debate. Certainly a valley floor vineyard can be so vigorous that it affects fruit quality. But by proper pruning, as well as correct rootstock and varietal (and clonal) selection, in most (though not all) sites, the vigor problem can be overcome. And, in the end, it is easier to deal with too much vigor than not enough, often a problem with the hillside plantings.
I think it’s worth noting that, while hillsides produce some excellent wines, they certainly have no monopoly on wine quality. In Napa, for example, the valley floor produces excellent wine grapes. While others would argue to the contrary, I think on the whole the valley produces higher quality wines than Napa hillside vineyards do. I’m not trashing the hillsides, as they also produce very fine wines. But, on the whole, the valley floor, at the least, holds its own against the hillsides.
Posted in Viticulture | No Comments »
March 3rd, 2010
Every Wednesday I post my recommendations of the best of last week’s postings concerning wine, whether blogs or news. I list them in the order I read them, so you shouldn’t infer anything about the order in which I list these posts.
Off-Premise Wine Sales Increase 5.1 Percent in January
http://www.winebusiness.com/news/?go=getArticle&dataid=71610
Is this the news everyone in the business has been waiting for? Without significant sales increases, the bloodletting/discounting can’t end. Hopefully, this is a harbinger of things to come.
Shedding Light on Wine Flavor
http://www.winesandvines.com/template.cfm?section=news&content=71618&htitle=Shedding%20Light%20on%20Wine%20Flavor
I guess this should have come as a surprise, as it seems everything in the wine-tasting experience affects how much people like a wine. Here, the same wine was tasted under different lightings, with different results.
Why Should Terroir Matter…
http://www.beendoonsolong.com/2010/02/why-should-terroir-matter/
Randall Graham is to be commended for being one of the more interesting characters in the wine business. Here, he emphasizes the importance of terroir as a way out of the branding that has so much influence in how we sell our products. I can honestly say I disagree with most of what he has to say, particularly the emphasis on terroir, which I consider mostly a myth. But the article is fascinating, and well worth reading.
Intrusive aromas
http://www.redwinebuzz.com/winesooth/2010/02/23/intrusive-aromas/
Arthur highlights how smells in the environment can affect the perception of a wine.
Minimizing the subjectivity of wine reviewing
http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2010/02/26/minimizing-the-subjectivity-of-wine-reviewing/
Heimoff discusses the various things that can affect how much you like a wine, aside from the wine itself, how to try to avoid those extraneous things, and whether wine criticism has much validity at all. An interesting read.
For keeping up to date with what’s going on the in wine world, the best all around source is http://winebusiness.com.
Posted in Good Reads | 1 Comment »
March 1st, 2010
I’m not going to go through the history of the Syrah grape here, except to say that it hails from the South of France, and is one of the “noble” grapes. Instead, I’m going to think out loud about why this wonderful grape isn’t a bigger seller than it is.
According to the USDA Grape Acreage Report for 2008, there were 75,000 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon under vine, compared to 19,000 of Syrah, or roughly four times as much.
If you look at the February edition of Wine Businesses Monthly, at the Nielsen tracking of wine sales, you’ll see for a year Cabernet Sauvignon sold $1.2 billion dollars worth, Syrah sold only $290 million. What’s worse, where Cabernet Sauvignon showed modest growth (even during this horrible recession), Syrah sales are down almost 8%. What gives?
While there is plenty of room for people to have different preferences about the wines they like, I just really don’t understand what the problem is with Syrah. True, it’s still the fourth biggest red wine seller. But why isn’t it higher, is what I want to ask.
I can’t believe it’s a quality issue. I’m not going to badmouth Cabernet Sauvignon. It makes wonderful wines. But does it make a better wine, on average, than Syrah? In my opinion, it does not. Quite the contrary. Syrah, in my view, is more consistently good. Cabernet Sauvignon a little on the underripe side can be horribly herbal, reeking of green pepper. Syrah doesn’t have that problem. When overripe, or grown in hot areas, Cabernet Sauvignon can lack flavor. Syrah doesn’t have that problem, either.
But, in another sense, Syrah is inconsistent in a way that Cabernet Sauvignon is not. If someone asks me what to plant on their land, I usually ask them what the climate there is like, and, specifically, whether they have any solid climate data. In most cases, I get some vague response like it’s “warm”, with no real data of any sort. When you don’t have good information on your climate, then there’s, to my mind, only one obvious choice of what to plant—Syrah.
Why? Because Syrah does well in so many different environments. But therein lies the problem. Cabernet Sauvignon is a style unto its own, varying in quality but not in its essential character. When someone plunks down their money for a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, they pretty much know the style of wine they are going to get.
Not so with Syrah. In a cooler climate, such as Carneros, it can produce lighter, racy reds. In a hot climate, such as Suisun Valley (where we grow our Syrah) it produces a rich, dark, opulent wine, packed with dark fruit. And, of course, the gamut runs all the way in between as well. Add that Syrah can taste really different whether harvested relatively early (and therefore lighter) or later (richer), and there’s always a lot of question marks which Syrah is going to show up for tonight’s dinner.
So when you’re eyeing that bottle of Syrah, it’s something of a crap-shoot what’s actually in that bottle. You can pretty much know it’s going to be good, but good in what style is uncertain. And that, at least in my opinion, is why Syrah isn’t more popular than it is.
Posted in Wine Sales and Pricing, Wine Tasting | 2 Comments »
February 26th, 2010
Bottle shock is the bane (or at least one of the banes) of my existence.
What is bottle shock? I can honestly say that, having tried to educate myself on this subject, I really don’t have a clue, or at least a clue I have any faith in. I know what it does. It makes the wine (primarily red wines) pretty unpalatable for a period of time after bottling.
But what causes it? If you do an online search, you’ll find a plethora of information, much of it going off in entirely different directions, and all having in common only the fact that they don’t seem to be based on anything at all. The most common explanation seems to be that bottle shock is due to the wine picking up oxygen in the bottling process. Though there are also statements indicating that the problem is the opposite, the wine having trouble adapting to its new, oxygen deprived, environment inside the bottle.
I’ve talked to various people, most notably winemakers and the lead technician for our cork supplier, to try to get some insight into what causes bottle shock, and, more importantly, what can be done to minimize its impact. The result of my hours of inquiry: Nada.
So while we’re on the subject of its impact, what is its impact? Again, no real answer. Often, the fruit simply disappears, leaving an acidic/tannic brew that isn’t much good for anything, especially drinking. Even worse, you can get a cacophony of unpleasant scents that more resemble a witches’ brew than anything you’d want to have with dinner.
At one point, I thought that the more tannic and bold the wine, the more likely the bottle shock will be severe and long-lasting. But several bottlings of bigger wines that experienced little in the way of bottle shock have led me to abandon this hypothesis.
When I say bottle shock can be “long lasting”, what is “long lasting”? Again, it’s very variable. Our Sly Dob Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 took a year and a half to get over its bottle shock. Our Seven Artisans Meritage just as long. But our latest bottlings of Syrah and Petite Sirah showed little evidence of bottle shock. It certainly seems that our Bordeaux variety wines seem to have a bigger bottle shock problem, but whether that’s just coincidence (as I think more likely) or something else, I can’t be sure.
These are some of the other things I’ve heard from people who I respect concerning bottle shock:
It’s worse when you filter (as most wineries do), since the filtration process not only disturbs the wine chemistry, but introduces oxygen into the wine. I’ve heard this enough that I’m inclined to give it some credence. On the other hand, whenever I’ve tasted wine going into the filter and coming out, I’ve never noticed much, if any, difference. True, bottle shock tends to not show up for several weeks, or more, after bottling, for reasons that are not at all apparent. So maybe the filtered wine is shocked, but hasn’t shown the telltale symptoms yet. And to add an extra wrinkle, when I take a tank or barrel sample, which lets in far more oxygen than any filtration/bottling process, I’ve never experienced anything remotely similar to bottle shock. So, ultimately, I’m inclined to discount the oxygen theory.
Another possibility, mentioned above, is that the shock comes from the oxygen starved environment in the bottle. Since some of the off-odors you get from bottle shock are of this (reductive) type, this makes some sense. Adopting this theory, we tried using two different types of corks in one bottling, one of which let in more oxygen than the other, to see if they were different. (In both cases, the amount of oxygen let in was tiny, but was tinier in one case than the other.) We tried opening them a few months after bottling. No difference (lots of bottle shock in both). We repeated the experiment about a year after bottling. This time there was a big difference. Two of us found the higher oxygen corked wine to be much better. But the third of us found of the wine with lower oxygen cork to be the better one. Go figure. At least we all found there to be a difference, albeit a difference that doesn’t offer much guidance for the future.
The other thing that seems to be the case is that wines that have severe bottle shock don’t travel as well. Whether this is a matter of the travel re-introducing the bottle shock that had passed away sitting in the warehouse, I can’t tell. Adding to the difficulty is that I have to rely on reports from people on the other side of the continent, since I’m not there to taste the wines.
Ultimately, I’m inclined to think the problem is a combination of things, which makes it even harder to sort out. But I’m not even sure of this.
Alas, and this is but one of the many aspects of winemaking that raise so many questions, for which there are so few answers.
Posted in Winemaking | 1 Comment »
February 24th, 2010
Every Wednesday I post my recommendations of the best of last week’s postings concerning wine, whether blogs or news. I list them in the order I read them, so you shouldn’t infer anything about the order in which I list these posts.
Not much this week.
Don’t know what black currant is?
Wine Sooth
http://www.redwinebuzz.com/winesooth/2010/02/16/dont-know-what-black-currant-is/#more-4589
Wine reviews revel in descriptors, with all kinds of berries, spices, and some pretty weird scents thrown in for good measure. Is there an objective basis for assigning different descriptors to different wines? The Wine Sooth thinks so, and starts with black currant. I agree that it is possible to train people to some extent to identify specific flavors in wine. But I’ll add that I think it’s very difficult to do, and, because of our different palates, possible to obtain agreement only so far. But the article is a good stab at trying to accomplish what is possible.
For keeping up to date with what’s going on the in wine world, the best all around source is http://winebusiness.com.
Posted in Good Reads | 1 Comment »
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