Good Structure as the Key to Soulfulness

In a recent interview, the question came up “I know you’ve talked about how the German theory of wine doesn’t really apply to red wine, but I’m curious to know a bit more of the why behind that. What about red wine makes cold stabilization and sterile filtration undesirable, and why isn’t white wine affected in the same way? I assume it’s connected to the larger, more complicated molecules in red wine, but I’m curious about the mechanics.” I thought it was a good question which others might be interested in hearing about, as it probes the true nature of wine.First I’ll mention that the line isn’t really between red and white, but between structured and unstructured wines. Many whites (such as Faux Chablis, or method champenoise champagnes) have a lot of colloidally suspended material.But we know the idea of macromolecular structure must be correct for all red wine, because the anthocyanins which give red wine its color are not very soluble in a 13% alcohol: 87% water solution. The maximum you can get to dissolve results in a light pink solution. This puzzled enologists for many years since Ribereau-Gayon first pointed it out in the ’60’s.

We now know that the color molecules aren’t dissolved at all — they’re contained in tiny pieces of goodge we call colloids, which are sometimes almost as big as a bacterial cell. If we disrupt these particles with sterile filtration or drag them down to the tank bottom during cold stabilization, we lose texture but also we lose the aromatic integration properties they impart to wine. I believe this integrative phenomenon is central to wine’s ability to provide a soulful, visceral experience.

In a simple solution, these problems don’t exist. The precipitation of bitartrate or the filtration of bacteria doesn’t effect the concentration or aromatic expression of, say, the terpenes which give riesling its fruity, flowery flavors. But neither do these wines prompt the same mysterious soulfulness. Their focused fruit can be lip-smackin’ delicious, but people who say a wine’s first duty is to be red are looking for something more substantial than focused fruitiness. This is the same reason bisque is generally preferred over consommé.

Pinocchio: It Takes One to Know One

How’s your Italian?  The latest phrase to learn: “Pinocchio Wine.”  This refers to a new Italian political movement “to protect the industry against artificial ageing techniques,” by which they mean use of oak chips.   

After serving a decade with the OIV Groupe d’Expertes Sur la Technologie du Vin, I can assure you that wine purity through effective regulation is not the Italian way.  That would be the French.  The Italian way is (surprise!)…LOOKIN’ GOOD!   

If they really believe these techniques produce bad wine, then they have nothing to fear, as consumers will continue to choose their superior wines, no? 

What’s behind this Rush Limbaugh-esque coinage?  Why, it’s plain, old-fashioned, protectionism.  That’s right, unfair trade. 

Italy has made a name for itself for making good value wine. Rivers of good cheap Gavi, Greco, Chianti, and, of course, Pinot Grigio have flowed from
Italy’s ports for decades. Bravo!  But now a few of them have gotten a bit lazy.   

The wine industry has moved forward, and wine continues to improve throughout the world.  As the Old World looks for a protectionist edge, what could be more simple than to demonize progress?  They’ve been around longer, and are looking for ways to exploit those highly touted venerable traditions  There should be a law or something. 

The truth is that an air-dried, carefully toasted oak chip gives much more predictable flavor extraction than a barrel.  Barrels suffer from the Forrest Gump Box-of-Chocolates Syndrome – you never know what you’re gonna get.  Well-made chips give winemakers more control at a fraction of the cost to the consumer and to the environment.  That is why even the greatest and most expensive wines in the world now use them.  And that is why the industry moved on:  better, cheaper, more control makes sense in any language. 

Napoleon planted those forests for the French Navy of the future – a useable tree is 200 years old.  Environmentalists take note:  insisting on barrels extends the current practice of wasting 75% of the good, useable wood.  So we cut down those forests at four times the needed rate in order to make poorer, more expensive wine to boot.  Why?  No reason except…LOOKIN’ GOOD!                                                                                                                       What’s artificial about an oak chip?  A better question: What’s traditional about a conventional Italian winery?  Let’s see ‘em ban electricity, stainless steel, refrigeration and freeze-dried yeast.  Doesn’t the consumer have a right to know about pesticides, enzymes, wine chemical additions, fining agents and inert gas?  Oops!  Wrong demons.  Sorry. 

In taking this position, the Italian politicians’ long wooden nose is growing.  Italians were the first Europeans to begin experiments with chips and other oak adjuncts.  Bravo!  Their scheming politicians should leave Italian winemakers alone.

In response to Eric Asimov on sweetness of California wines

Heated discussion ensued in response to Eric Asimov’s indictment of California wines for what he termed ”sweetness.” (See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/dining/19pour.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin) 

A large number of responses ensued, defending our honor.

The missing element in this discussion is the importance of mineral energy.  Old world wines currently outshine their New World counterparts by manefesting an energetic “back end,” a finish full of drive, race, nerve which gives an overall impression of completeness, breeding and depth.  This is often confused with acidity, but that energy is in the front of the palate.

It’s increasingly clear to me from many experiments that minerality in the finish is associated with living soil.  I believe Claude Bourguignon’s contention that mycorrhizal fungi associated with vine rootlets can facilitate uptake of trace minerals which the vine itself cannot import.  This requires a complete soil ecology including healthy covercrop and earthworms.  You have only to taste the difference between a hydroponic tomato and one from your garden to grasp the importance of living soil.

In areas lacking summer rainfall, Californians and South Australians need to work at living soil much harder than the French or even vineyards of Long Island or Niagara.  And only a few well informed banks and tourists realize the importance of “weeds” — hence the manicured, freshly disked, pesticided appearance of most Napa vineyards.

The resulting simplicity and shallowness in our corporate wines, combined with the hotness and bitterness which elevated alcohol imparts (see my blog grapecrafter.com) leaves many New World wines lacking in ways you point to.  They may enter the mouth with delightful rich fruit, only to fall flat half way across the palate.  But as California winemakers catch on to this aspect, our wines are beginning to manifest the sense of nobility and breeding we expect from the French, together with the inimitable American spirit of expressiveness and generosity.   Look around some, and taste our future.

God’s Country

California winemaking gives me the creeps.  And I’m not alone.  Everything winemakers do is completely dependent on hispanic labor.  Yet we treat these people like animals. 

You have no idea.  When I negotiate a sale of a piece of Napa real estate to be converted to vineyards, the first thing we do, before the D9’s can fell trees and rip land, is to hire Mexicans to hand-carry out the bedsprings (which foul the backhoes of the machinery) left behind by the displaced tenants. 

 Upwards of 20,000 migrants are employed in North Coast farming (and not a lot of locals want to horn in on their jobs).  Thanks to high visibility initiatives by good-hearted corporations like Beringer-Blass and Kendall Jackson, low income housing is now in place for nearly 10% of the need.  The rest sleep in the woods.  No kidding.

When I was winemaker for R.H.Phillips in Yolo County, I had an employee of several years who chose to return to Mexico because the dental work there was a better deal.  A month later he was deposited at 3 AM on my partner’s doorstep by a “coyote” human smuggler who offered to beat him to death with a baseball bat if we didn’t produce $3,000 cash on the spot, compensation for redelivering him to “God’s Country.” 

 This is the sea we winemakers all swim in.  We don’t speak of it.  We hear the contraversy raging around immigration, and we just want to lay low and sell some $50 cabernet.

Time for truth. 

I feel Americans are being conned, imagining that jobs are lost when these hardworking yet humble people sneak across the border to make our lives work.  On the one hand, these people would much rather work in their own country, in their ancestral home. 

But until their own agriculture stabilizes, we are privileged to access their skilled expertise and hard work as the lynchpin of our winegrowing enterprise. 

God blesss them for it.  Heaven knows no white man will pick our grapes.

San Diego Reader on GrapeCraft vs hang time

You need good eggs from the chicken, but don’t ask her to scramble them for you…http://www.sdreader.com/published/2005-07-21/crush.html

Practicing GrapeCraft

Dear Mr. Smith:

I'm working on an article about the tools modern wine makers have at their disposal to make better wine. Vinovation seems like the company to talk to. I'd like to know if I could set up a time to interview you and/or other principals to learn about what Vinovation offers to its clients.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to learning more.

 David

————————————————————-

Dear David:

I do believe you are barking up the right tree. I assume you have already prowled around the Vinovation.com website, but since it isn't intended for the non-technical, you may have gotten lost!  Let me take you through the basics from a layman's perspective.

The Smith family has dedicated itself to establishing what amounts to a Culinary Institute for winemakers.  Our notion is that the reductionist principles of scientific enology which our young winemakers are stuffed full of at University simply can't address the making of viscerally compelling wines.  Winemaking is a branch of cooking, not a science.  It's our job to put something delicious on the table which moves people the way other great cuisine does.  We call it "putting an opera in the bottle."  This takes more than theory; it takes technique.  That is what we teach. 

We call our philosophical school "GrapeCraft." The foods that move us this way –  lobster bisque, béarnaise sauce, chocolate–  are structured foods.  Wine may look like a simple solution, but it isn't.  We know this because the red wine (anthocyanin) pigments aren't soluble in 13% alcohol. What we are seeing isn't in solution; it's in tiny suspended colloids composed of color molecules and tannin molecules, coordinated together into little beads.  The tannins suspend and protect the color, and the color softens and enrobes the tannins so they are rich and smooth rather than harsh and nasty.

You can start to see why we speak of red wine techniques as similar to chocolate making.  We use our skills in the cellar to refine these tannins the same way a chef turns cocoa powder into something rich and profound.  We call this by the French name of "élevage" — the raising of horses or of children.  The term "ageing" doesn't cover it — this is NOT a passive process!  The tools for building structure include blending for phenolic balance, high finesse uses of oxygen (the wire whisk for our tannin "soufflé"), a knowledge of the seven functions of oak and how to employ them, the re-incorporation of lees, which is similar to the conversion of dark chocolate into milk chocolate.

None of this can be done if the grapes are not properly ripe — not to much and not too little.  Unfortunately, nature almost never cooperates to give us perfect sugar content when that moment happens.  Therefore we need a tool to finely adjust alcohol content later on.  For the French it's easy — they just throw beet sugar in everything ("chaptalization") because autumn rains assure that they have too little.  In the fair weather of California, we usually have too much.  That's why I developed a filtration technique to lower the alcohol to proper balance.  Now we can pick the grapes just on perfect flavor balance and still make delicate wines.

More on this subject on the WIneSmith website as it applies to our own wines at http://www.winesmithwines.com/winesmithwines/grapecraft.html.

For a more specific discussion of the details of the GrapeCraft philosophy and the specific tools and techniques we utilize, go to the graphical site http://www.vinovation.com/poster/poster_web.html and follow the links.  We have just completed revising this poster for the better understanding of non-professionals. 

In essence, all great cuisine is based on unique, distinctive flavors from careful, life-based agriculture which are presented with finesse through skillful technique.  The cook must understand structure and possess the artisanality to refine and harmonize the presentation, but he must also get out of the way and let the distinctive characteristics shine through. 

So there you have some homework.  I reckon you'll want more detail on how all this actually works, and I would very much like to get you some of our wines to taste — without that it's all hogwash, right? 

I am in South Africa on a consulting trip. If you prefer, let's set up a time to chat upon my return.

Best regards,

Clark Smith

———————————————

(Cont'd) as "Concerning Alcohol Sweet Spots"

Reproduced; submittal on Micro-oxygenation to Jancis Robinson’s Purple Prose:

Dear Jancis:

I thought to chime in on micro-ox as a devoted practitioner and consultant to other winemakers on the practice. I'd like you to entertain the possibility that this artisanal tool, invented by a French peasant vigneron to save Madiran tannat from being pulled up and replanted to merlot, thus an anti-globalization, offers the key to the resolution of the hangtime issues you've addressed so well recently.  Hangtime is an inexpensive but not very artful method much loved by winery CFO's because it robs the grower of weight, and which winemakers employ to soften tannins out of ignorance of more appropriate techniquse which together comprise a growing Postmodern school of winemaking. 

The result of excessive hangtime is wine with pruney flavors, excessive alcohol and little longevity.  There are much more gentle and sophisticated methods to refine the hard tannins which characterize properly ripe red grapes.  This can be accomplished by a skilled hand without oxidizing the wine and in doing so one can actually extend wine longevity by promoting color and tannin stability.

Most University professors who train California winemakers do not teach technique because they are themselves ignorant of it.  They prepare our artists by training them as scientists.  But winemaking has more in common with music making than with science — it's really just a type of cooking.  Just as the best musicians and cooks concentrate on technique rather than theory, the making of delicious wine requires an intimate knowledge of how wine actually behaves and responds.

When the traditional winemaker was shown the door as part of post WWII modernization, the pre-scientific skills of tending and raising wines were mostly lost.  The art of élevage, that is, the refinement of wine in the cellar, is not taught in our schools, who hold mostly that oxygen is the enemy of Cabernet equally as with Riesling.  We are only now learning that the introduction of stainless steel and inert gas into Bordeaux along with these German scientific enology ideas was what brought about the fiasco of the 1961 vintage, which instead of being the vintage of the Century resulted in wines of astonishing dryness which are still undrinkable today.  

The vineyard is the source of all goodness in wine, just as only the chicken can lay an egg.  But we don't ask the chicken to cook the omelette, and the vineyard has too much variability and unpredictability to be a good place to accomplish the intricate work of élevage.   There comes a time to pick and do the work more proper to the cellar.

The hangtime approach was made popular by our Australian fellow travelers who use it with great skill to make soft, friendly wines for early consumption in an industrial cellar.  These wines "make themselves," as opposed to French reserve methods which begin with wines my Aussie colleague labeled as "mean-spirited," requiring much skillful care and attention in the cellar.  But the presence of active, grippy tannin is the essential starting point for great wine.

As you have noted, winemakers over the globe are challenging their own notions of how wine works by experimenting with micro-ox and other postmodern techniques, and they are finding that they are able to fine-tune their structural and textural goals just as the Incas taught the Belgians three centuries ago to use oxygen to refine cocoa into the visceral confection we call chocolate. 

Far from homogenizing and standardizing wine, skilled postmodern technique allows each vineyard's characteristics to emerge from a structure which integrates aromas like oak and Brettanomyces into background notes which complement the vineyard character.

These winemakers are shy to speak of their new knowledge simply because MOx is mostly scorned by the sensationalist press, which, by demonizing this useful tool, is not helping.

I applaud your open mind and restrained but active studiousness.  The time will come when those First Growths you want us to name will themselves speak proudly of their craft.  Meantime I shall continue to record the Modern/Postmodern debate at www.winecrimes.com.  Enjoy.

GrapeCraft point of view on “Mondovino”

The American distributors of “Mondovino” chose the heart of
California wine country (the Santa Rosa Rialto Theatre) as an early venue for the film, but oddly, I was the only person in the theatre that Saturday night despite the internet fanfare.  As a wine production consultant myself, I was disappointed by our local apathy. There was much in the film's inferred criticism of the state of the industry that rang true for me.  I certainly have observed that corporate agendas can displace (sometimes forever) precious local traditions just because by virtue of their own uniqueness they didn’t sync up with the current style in vogue.  If the film makes some viewers expand their aesthetic to include an exploration of these alternative styles, then it was worth making.I also concur that any powerful critic, be it Parker or The Spectator, can only add to the problem of de-terroir-ization when the public buys wine based on its extrinsics instead of its real quality.  When that critic endorses a producer, appellation or other extrinsic, that endorsement becomes a commodity people have to pay for along with the wine.  That’s not the critic’s fault; it’s a craziness of the buying public.   The core problem is consumer timidity to be their own connoisseurs.  They end up buying the hype rather than the experience.  These days the hypelands of California, France and Italy are largely in the insurance biz rather than the wine biz.  Critics are powerful because consumers distrust wineries to deliver good value, and as long as they think they need a wine police to defend them against unscrupulous fat cat wineries, they will purchase insurance instead of wine, and the price/quality ratio will escalate, increasing the need for third party review. 

These problems go away wherever local shops give good advice and consumers are able to evaluate their own real experiences with wines.  Sensible consumers must develop personal relationships with local purveyors who can custom pick wines for them one-on-one.  This is a process a national reviewer cannot possibly provide (unless you believe everybody's tastes are alike, in which case why pursue diversity?)  Reviewers can assist by encouraging consumers to make their own choices.  This begins with trusting winemakers and taking an interest in their art, even when its development is a work in progress or has goals outside the mainstream.  More discussions of style and technique can put the decisions back in the hands of winemakers and shift the confidence of marketing departments to champion their own in-house artists instead of mimicking their competitive cluster. A concentration of journalistic power can likewise aggravate the problem of globalized sameness when those critics are seen by winery marketing departments to prefer strongly a vinification style that trades away distinction for brawn.  The film sets up a dichotomy of terroir vs wine structure which has true elements for me.  In the 70’s a lot of California wineries were putting petite sirah in their pinot noir because the consumer didn’t understand the variety.  Similarly in the ‘80’s, Domaine Dujac led a movement to get more extraction from burgundies which experienced a backlash when the producers found their terroir differences in the various vineyard properties they offered were disappearing.These problems didn’t emerge as much in Bordeaux, partly because those houses only sell one product, unlike in Burgundy or Germany where a house offers wines from several terroirs.  In addition they are working with high tannin varieties which in my opinion responded very poorly to the gross changes in vinification techniques which occurred after WWII.  The introduction of U. Bordeaux-based scientific enology (stainless steel, inert gas, packaged yeast, etc.) led directly to the problem of the 1961’s – dry, graceless monsters which never did come around.  So the problem in a place like St. Emillon in the last 50 years wasn’t how to protect the terroir, but how to get it back.  

Jumping to my own turf of wine “technology,” I think the film was intellectually weakest in its portrayal of micro-oxygenation.  After all, Patrick Ducournau developed the technique in defense Madiran tannat, which was being pulled out in the ‘80’s in favor of merlot, so its roots are really anti-globalization.  Rossiter misunderstands that micro-oxygenation isn’t modern, it’s post-modern, a step back to the older traditions which created flavor integration and complexity through natural fermentation, aeration, bâtonage and other élevage techniques, much of which know-how has been lost.   Now, I wasn't there, but it seems unlikely that Michel Rolland would have given so much time to Jonathan Nossiter without taking time to explain WHY he is using micro-oxygenation, but this is left unclear in the movie. You would think he would have allowed Rolland to tell his story as he did with the Mondavis.  It's quite revealing that he did not do so.  I bet his footage deflated his demonization of it, so he left it out.   Properly applied, MOx is very effective to increase structure, refine tannin, integrate aromas, stabilize color, balance reductive strength and increase longevity.  I think it's an exciting and powerful tool, and far from making all wines taste the same, allows their unique characteristics to emerge.  We advocate it for big wines like cabernet sauvignon and syrah as an alternative to long hang time.  On the other hand, it usually isn’t a useful technique in many of the bastions of terroir: Bourgogne, the Loire, or Germany because the wines are too fragile.  

 It seems silly to ally such a tool with the political trends he portrays.  If his complaint is sameness, overuse of oak hits the mark better. 

So I'm advocating that the market should decide based on what the wine delivers, not how it got that way.  Critics are at their most helpful when they focus their discussion on results in the bottle.  The new élevage techniques are part of a post-modern school that isn’t yet very widely understood by winemakers and critics, let alone filmmakers.