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2006 Harvest Oddities

Another odd year.  It seems like they all are.  After the intense early September heat of 2004 and the extreme cold of 2005, we’ve seen our share of recent physiological peculiarities in California fruit.  But Nature continues to find new motifs with which to toy with us and test our mettle.

 

To be sure, vintage variation in California occurs within a much narrower range than the wild fluctuations typical of France and Germany.  We do not follow the Eurocentric philosophy of planting varieties at the northern extreme of ripening potential, nor are we much subject to the dilution and rot associated with autumnal rainfall.

 

On the other hand, we do irrigate.   Our European friends warn us that this keeps roots near enough to ground level that vines appear to be more subject to climate proclivities.  Here and there, California vineyardists have eschewed irrigation.  Besides all those old vine zinfandels, we see more contemporary successes (Christian Moueix forbids it at Dominus, for example), but by and large the yields from irrigated vines barely permit Napa growers to pay their mortgages on ridiculously overpriced real estate.  In Europe, more often the place is already paid for.

 

So in July of 2006, California got hit with merciless heat — in excess of 100^oF for three solid weeks.  This was actually the best possible time in terms of fruit condition, well after berry set and well before veraison.  Foliage was sufficiently developed to shade these nascent clusters, and little sunburn is apparent.  Most vineyards seemed outwardly to have dodged the bullet.

 

But now we are seeing some odd manifestations as the fruit begins to mature.  Some are quite variable across the State – in some Lodi vineyards, brix seems alarmingly retarded, perhaps because a portion of the fruit, falling prey to the stress of July, stopped maturing altogether.  In other Lodi cabernet vineyards we see 26 brix while acid remains high and flavors undeveloped.  In one North Coast Viognier picked in late August we saw such low acid that the pH was 4.5 – almost impossibly high.

 

These variations are probably explained by the differences in timing of the hot spell vis a vis the maturity status and water availability in various plots.  But there are three bizarre effects which are repeated by everyone I talk to: 

            1.  Low tannin

            2.  Low vegetal flavors

            3.  Bland

 

The third is probably an artifact of the first two – fruit aromas do not develop until nearer to harvest.  Tannins do not increase during maturity, and are critical for color extraction, so smart winemakers will be getting out their bag of tricks, each with a different strategy:  “seigné,” (bleeding off juice), co-fermenting with tannic varietals like Carignane or even the skins of tannic whites like Chenin Blanc, various oak products in the fermenter, and above all, trying to solve the riddle of proper hang time.

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

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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

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(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.