Archive for the ‘Viticulture’ Category
Monday, April 15th, 2013
by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)
 At least that’s the title of the article by former Citigroup Chairman Richard Parsons. I found it on Blomberg business week. You can find it there too at http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-11/how-to-own-a-vineyard-by-former-citigroup-chairman-richard-parsons
I think a better title for the article would be “How to own a Vineyard if you happen to be the former chairman of Citigroup and are worth hundreds of millions of dollars”. And if you happen to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, whether or not you are the former chairman of Citigroup, this article may give you some insight on how to go about establishing a vineyard. Because if you start with a few hundred million dollars in your bank account, then some of the more annoying little things about owning a vineyard, such as selling what you produce, really aren’t that big a deal.
Parsons starts his article by dealing with what comes first and foremost: “the first thing to consider is where you want to be.” Excellent advice, again, if you’re crawling in loot.
For those of us who don’t have a few hundred million dollars lying around, though, the first thing to consider is, “How the hell am I going to sell the stuff?” The “stuff” may be grapes, or it may be wine, or it may be some combination of the two. But either way, you have some “stuff”, which damn well better get itself “sold”.
Apparently, it’s not all fun and games, though. There’s some hard work to be done. “I’m here in early October when the grapes are harvested. We pick grapes. It’s fun. That’s how you know what you have. I get involved in the blending, the aging.” I’m glad that he knows what he has at the time of harvest, because I sure as hell don’t. No one really knows what they have at harvest, although they can make some, perhaps pretty good, educated guesses. But I’ve certainly been wrong before, and will be again.
But Parsons continues: “I get involved in the blending, the aging.” Not sure what he means about getting involved in the “aging”. The only “aging” that I get involved with is my own personal aging. And I don’t seem to be much more than an involuntary observer of that. As far as I can tell, my wines seem to age pretty much on their own without too much help from me.
But I guess, bottom line, grape growing is a pretty different experience if you’re looking at it to make a reasonable return on your investment. I doubt very much that that was too much of a concern for Parsons.
So, at any rate, I wish Mr. Parsons the best of luck with his venture. Though I’m sure he doesn’t need it.
I am sure that putting down big bucks to buy a Brunello vineyard isn’t a bad way to start. I would guess that he’ll make this small return on his investment, but even if he doesn’t, I’m sure he doesn’t really care all that much.
I just hope that nobody that reads his article comes away with the impression that it is remotely related to how life is in the real wine business.
Posted in Viticulture | 2 Comments »
Monday, April 8th, 2013
by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)
As I write this, the day after the latest jobless report came out, I could not help but think that we are facing a long term jobs problem. The economy produced only 88,000 new jobs last month, which is pretty disappointing when the “experts” were predicting something closer to 200,000. I have no doubt that, on a month-to-month basis, this jobs report is more reflective of the events of the day, things such as the sequestration.
But, while each month is something of a blip, I think this jobs report is taking place against a backdrop which represents a sea change in our labor force which is not going to reverse itself.
If you just focus in on the grape growing business (the business I am most familiar with), you will see that, as conservative a business as we are, the changes over the last decades have been huge. Perhaps most obvious is harvest. While it is still common to see hordes of workers go out into the field at harvest time with knives in hand, it is becoming more and more common to see a tractor driver and a mechanical harvester perform the same work.
So what took tens or hundreds of workers is now done by a number of workers you can count on one hand. Not only that, in many ways the mechanical harvester does a better job. You can argue both sides of this, but the bottom line is that unless hand harvesting is clearly superior (which it is not), the economies of mechanical harvesting will overwhelm any effort to perpetuate hand harvesting (except in the most artisan of artisan vineyards).
While harvesting presents the most obvious, “in-your-face”, example of mechanical replacing human labor, it is just that, the most obvious, but hardly the only, mechanization in the vineyard. Take pruning for example. I think it is only the dyed in the wool nature of our business that has perpetuated hand pruning. In Australia, where the human workforce to tend to the vineyards is lacking, they have managed to mechanize this, along with many other, vineyard tasks. Minimal pruning, which involves creating a hedge with a mechanical trimmer, works very well in many, if not most, vineyards. It particularly lends itself to very vigorous vines better than the “normal” hand pruning. However resistant to change our industry might be, the inexorable demand for more efficiency is going to greatly reduce the amount of human labor necessary to tend the vine.
But what holds true in the vineyard holds even more true in other industries that are more cutting edge. I hope that with the recovery taking place, we find ourselves in a situation approaching full employment. But we are paddling upstream. As workers without specialized skills become less and less able to hold their own against mechanization, each recovery following a recession is probably going to exhibit less and less opportunity for those of only average abilities. Business is becoming more and more efficient, which is a good thing. Right now, we are producing more than we were pre- recession, but with fewer employed. Increasingly large portions for labor force are becoming irrelevant.
What to make of this? You can certainly view this as a kind of utopia, a world where we are released from the burden of mindless physical labor. Machines, fairly stupid at the moment, but destined to be replaced by more and more intelligent robots, will be able to do much of what people have done since the dawn of human time.
This utopia is a wonderful thought. But it’s not happening. Those possessed of the intelligence and skills to succeed in our hyper technical economy are doing extremely well. Those lacking those skills struggle. With them, this revolution in the means of production is not freeing them from the burdens of mindless labor, but relegating them to the unemployment line. As the demand for unskilled workers declines, while their numbers remain steady, or even increase, the law of supply and demand tells us that what they can demand for their labors will decline as well. Anyone who doesn’t like it is welcome to leave, as there are many more than willing to take his place. The cost of many things will plummet as the labor necessary to produce them is replaced by a machine working for pennies instead of dollars. For those with secure employment, this is great. For those without the skills to obtain a good job, it’s hard to see how things aren’t going to go from bad to worse. Are we going to end up being a society that looks a whole lot more like the one Marx predicted than we would have ever imagined?
In the past, at least in the long term, the advance in technology has resulted in development of new types of jobs sufficient to keep the labor force fully employed, or at least within shouting distance of it. I have my doubts that this is going to continue to be the case. I hope I am wrong, but at this point the development of technology to replace relatively unskilled workers is taking place at a breakneck pace. I doubt that the expanding economy, the thought that a rising tide raises all boats, can overcome the sharp decline in the need for relatively unskilled labor.
My guess is that the average reader of this post has an IQ of 120 or higher. But for every 120, there is an 80. These “80’s” shouldn’t just be fodder for the more well-to-do, for those more fortunate when they were passing out genes. The vast majority of these “80’s” are decent, law-abiding, hard-working people. They deserve better than to have to live on the table scraps of the more fortunate.
So we have two alternative visions of the future. In one, the utopian one, we all are free to spend more time doing what we want, as opposed to having to produce what we need to live. The second alternative is a darker one. Those who have the good fortune to possess those skills that machines do not may well live in that utopia. But for those who lack those skills, is their future going to be a miserly existence on the edges of society?
Posted in Harvest, Viticulture | 2 Comments »
Monday, March 25th, 2013
by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)
If you don’t believe in climate change, you may want to go do something else rather than read this post. But if you do, then you should first read this blog by Dr. Vino: Confronting climate change in Germany - four views, http://www.drvino.com/2013/03/20/confronting-climate-change-in-germany-four-views/#more-12320)
The quandary these German face: If you’re a cool climate wine growing region, how do you deal with climate change? This post highlights the approaches taken by a few German growers. This problem isn’t imminent in the sense that Germans are still going to able to produce world class Rieslings for some time. But you can only do so much to counteract increasing heat. And heat will continue to increase. A few decades down the line…
I sympathize with the efforts of these German winemakers. And there are things you can do. You can orient your rows differently, adjust your irrigation practices (if you irrigate), pick earlier, play around with your trellis system, and so one. But let’s be honest. These practices are fine if you’re at the margins. If you’re a littler hotter than you’d like to be, some of these practices can bring you back into your comfort zone.
But if you’re a lot hotter than you want to be, these things aren’t going to work very well. And that’s probably where we’re going to be a few decades down the road. To be sure, there is not going to be a uniform increase in heat across the planet. Even as the average temperature rises, that does not mean that the temperature in any particular area will follow suit. It may well be some areas will cool as the planet in general warms. So some areas may well simply dodge the bullet and continue on with business as usual.
That being said, I think it’s fair to assume that most winegrowing regions will experience an increase in temperature over the next decades. If playing around the edges isn’t enough to compensate for the increased temperature, what to do?
I think we’re going to see some combination of the following adaptations.
First, a winemaker can move. Maybe Napa Valley becomes too hot for world-class Cabernet, but there’s always Oregon. Or Washington. Or British Columbia. Or the Yukon. I am being a little facetious here, but you get the idea.
The winemaker also has the option of staying put. But if he stays put and keeps doing the same thing, he’s going to see a dramatic decline in the quality of this wine. But while the adaptations the Germans are experimenting with may only work around the margins, there are more dramatic adaptations which can be very effective. First and foremost is variety selection. There is no question that some varieties do well in cooler climates (Pinot Noir, Riesling). Others prefer hotter climates (for example, Petites, Zinfandel). So areas which excel at Pinot today may excel at Petite Sirah 30 or 40 years hence. Related to the idea of moving to other varieties is the possibility of using different clones of the same variety. While one clone of Pinot Noir is not going to produce identical wine to another, at least you’re still getting Pinot Noir.
Of course, all that assumes that you’re not in a low-lying area. If, due to rising sea levels, your vineyard is now sitting under a few feet of salt water, finding a new variety or clone is not going to do you a whole lot of good.
If you’re into genetic engineering, it may be possible to modify the genome of your favorite grape to address higher temperatures. Even if genetic engineering isn’t your thing, it may well be possible to develop clones of grapes using traditional breeding methods that will accomplish much the same thing.
Another possibility is that the winemaker stays put, more or less, at least in the sense that he doesn’t move 1000 miles. But altitude certainly has a lot to do with temperature, as we see with species moving up to higher elevations as the planet warms. Grapes are no different in this regard. So what may work well today at a 500 foot elevation may work just as well a few decades from now at 1500 feet or 3000 feet. Of course, that assumes that you can find a mountainside nearby. If you can’t, scratch this option.
Those are just a few thoughts. I guess I’m not too concerned that climate change is going to result in the elimination of wine grapes on the planet. And I do think with human ingenuity, we will find a way to deal with increasing temperatures. Of course, there is still human stupidity to consider. If the wine drinkers of the future are like those of today, and would rather drink a mediocre Cabernet than a world-class wine they have never heard of, you can scratch much of the above.
Posted in Viticulture | No Comments »
Monday, March 11th, 2013
by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)
The Wine Curmudgeon posted a blog last week, “Five things the wine business can do to help consumers figure out wine” (which can be found at http://www.winecurmudgeon.com/my_weblog/2013/03/five-things-the-wine-business-can-do-to-help-consumers-figure-out-wine.html) that I found of interest, both for those points I agree with, and those I don’t.
The point of the post was to offer five suggestions on how the wine industry should deal with the consumer. The five are listed below, in italics. My comments follow each.
• Stop worrying about vintage. One of the few things that every wine drinker knows is that vintage matters, even though that’s becoming less and less true. Vintage – the year the grapes were harvested – matters for an increasingly small percentage of wine; most of the stuff we drink every day is made to taste the same regardless of the vintage. In fact, Barefoot, one of the most popular wine brands in the U.S., is non-vintage (its grapes come from different harvests). It’s actually possible to make better quality wine this way, mixing and matching the best quality grapes from various vintages. One example: the $10 Little James Basket Press wines.
I both agree and disagree with this one. Vintages do make a big difference, particularly in Northern Europe. They may matter less in California, but the last few vintages have definitely shown that they matter here as well. But the idea that wines can be made non-vintage (i.e. blending different vintages together) is one that has never really taken off, despite the fact that it is definitely the better way to make wine. The more material the winemaker has available to him, the better the chances are that he’ll produce something that’s really good. This is recognized pretty much throughout all winemaking in all kinds of different ways (different varieties, different clothes, etc.), Yet when it comes to vintages this idea receives short shrift. That may be crazy, but it’s so ingrained into the wine market that it’s not going to change, at least anytime soon. At least not for what are considered to be premium wines.
• Use less expensive bottles: It’s one thing to use a heavy, costly, imposing bottle for a $150 cult Napa cabernet sauvignon. But producers who don’t use the best made and least expensive bottle for a $10 wine are raising the price of the product without adding quality or value. For example, why do most wine bottles still have punts – the dimple on the bottom of the bottle – when it’s cheaper and just as effective to make a bottle without one?
Well, I can answer this question. The simple reason is that heavier bottles are perceived as being higher-end, and therefore people will pay more for them. Does that make any sense? Probably not. But then pretty much everything having to do with packaging of a wine, or any other product for that matter, doesn’t make any sense either. You can rail against the inequities of life and stupidities of the consumer, but that doesn’t get your wines sold. If you want to sell wine, you have to do this stuff.
• Stop obsessing over oak. High-end wines that need thousands and thousands of dollars worth of oak to pull their various parts into a coherent whole should spend time and effort describing the oak process and how it works. But the rest of the wine we drink – 90 percent? – either doesn’t need oak or uses a substitute, like staves or chips. And these wines are often perfectly fine. Sometimes, they even make the $10 Hall of Fame.
Personally, I would not only stop obsessing over oak, I would stop using it, either altogether or at least in the high quantities that it’s used throughout much of the wine world. For some wines, I wouldn’t argue that some oak is helpful. But I would like to feel like I’m drinking a grape product not a tree product. With lots of wine, it’s hard to tell. I like pepper with my salad, but a few turns of the peppermill is enough. I certainly wouldn’t want to dump the whole container of pepper on the salad. But that’s what many winemakers do with oak.
• Appellation isn’t the be all and end all. Appellation – where the grapes were grown – matters almost not at all for most of the wine we drink, and consumers (especially younger ones) are paying less and less attention to it. They want malbec or moscato, and they don’t really care where it’s from. And, truthfully, given modern winemaking techniques, the goal is (as with vintage) to make the malbec taste like malbec, not like it came from California or Argentina. This is another opportunity to make less expensive, quality wine by mixing grapes from different appellations, and not worrying whether the bottle says California or Argentina.
This one I could hardly agree with more. If anyone could, with consistency, identify which appellation a wine came from tasting them blind against other similar wines, I might feel differently. But to a large extent this is just a marketing ruse. As far as the idea of blending wines from different appellations is concerned, see my comments above concerning blending of different vintages (great idea, will never happen).
• Write back labels in English: One wine that costs around $10 promises things that are all but impossible for a wine at that price: “chocolate and hints of licorice.” Or, to go to the other extreme, the wine drinker who buys another wine “prizes the simple things in life: spending good times with close friends.” Both do the consumer a disservice. They’ll assume they’re wine idiots because they couldn’t taste chocolate and licorice, and be totally confused by what the second wine is supposed to be. One solution, as advocated by W. Blake Gray: simple terms that we all understand, like rich, robust and fruit.
I have always been a big believer that there are only a few things that people can agree on with any consistency when it comes to a wine. Flavor is not one of them. Acidity, tannin, sweetness, oak level, maybe, even probably. Yet most wine is described primarily by its flavor profile. So what that nobody can agree on it. A simple description like “rich, robust, and fruit” beats the usual drivel that we see on the back of a wine label, even if it’s generality means it really doesn’t say that much about the wine. Perhaps this situation would be a little better if there were a little bit more honesty in the comments on wine back-labels. But I don’t think we’re going to see a description such as “lean, fruit challenged” any time soon. I think it’s fair to say that back label prose is going to continue to be one of the worst examples of writing in the English language.
Posted in Viticulture, Wine Marketing, Wine Tasting, Winemaking | No Comments »
Monday, March 4th, 2013
by Jeff Miller of Artisan Family of Wines (Seven Artisans, Sly Dog Cellars, Red Côte)
The subject of clones probably isn’t one of the sexiest ones that you can talk about when it comes to wine. Which makes the better wine, Cabernet Sauvignon clone 7 or clone 337? That certainly is not a subject that you see a lot of ink spilled over in the Spectator or the Advocate.
Clones aren’t something I think the whole lot about, either, but a recent post by Steve Heimoff, which can be found at http://www.steveheimoff.com/index.php/2013/02/26/the-chaos-of-clone-theory/, brought this issue to my attention.
The question Heimoff’s post addresses is whether clones really make much of a difference. It pretty much comes to the conclusion that clones aren’t nearly as important as they are sometimes made out to be.
Trying to figure out how important the difference in clones can be is not an easy task. There so many other variables (climate, rootstock, trellis system, and so on) that effect the ultimate result, i.e., the wine, that you get from particular grapes that isolating the effect of a particular clone is well nigh impossible, at least experimentally. That said, I cannot agree that clones are not that important. I think if you go through the different clones of Pinot Noir, for example, it’s impossible not to conclude that certain clones are vastly different than others. Notice that I didn’t say better, but different.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on Pinot Noir, since it doesn’t grow well in our climate. However, when I have done tastings of the different clones of Pinot Noir, you could almost see the difference. While I think the same can be said of Cabernet Sauvignon, at least in theory, I don’t think the differences are quite as dramatic, in practice, as they are with Pinot Noir.
Of course when considering whether clone 7 or clone 337 of Cabernet Sauvignon makes the better wine, you immediately run and all kinds of difficulties for the reasons alluded to already. Unless you were to plant the two clones on exactly the same rootstock, train them in exactly the same way, and plant them right next to each other, are the differences really the differences between clones or between some of those other things? Or maybe there is a difference, but that’s because one clone mates better with one rootstock and another clone mates better with a different rootstock. Switch rootstocks and you get entirely different results. So is this experiment, even if you could do it, very conclusive of anything at all?
And even if you were to control for everything else that could affect the quality of the resulting wine, and you were to identify differences between the two, are the differences truly differences in quality, or just differences in preference? Just as some people prefer Cabernet while other people prefer Pinot Noir, it could be that the difference between two different clones comes down to personal preference.
It is probably also a mistake to compare the wine made from different clones as though those results really did give you a good assessment of that particular clone. When you create a wine from different varieties, each of those varieties contributes its unique qualities to the final blend. Maybe one variety adds color, but not a lot of flavor; while another variety may add flavor, but be relatively color challenged. I don’t think that, in that context, it would be fair to say that one of those varieties is superior to the other. Each has its only own contribution to make to the final blend.
What applies to a blend of various varieties applies equally to a blend of various clones of the same variety. While there are certain clones that lend themselves more to being a stand-alone, in the sense that they are more enjoyable to drink when unblended, that’s probably not the right way to look at things.
But, all that said, in the end, I do believe clones make a lot of difference. It may not be a difference that the consumer is able to appreciate as he downs his Cabernet, but it is a difference that the winemaker can utilize when it comes to putting together a wine. Certainly, to the extent that the winemaker can draw upon wines with different qualities, some more or less colorful, some more or less flavorful, some more or less tannic, etc., it gives him a palette to work with that will allow him to come up with a more balanced final blend. And that, I think, is the primary reason why clones do make a difference.
Posted in Viticulture, Wine Tasting | No Comments »
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