Category Archives: Wine Culture

The Challenge of Hybrid Grape Varietals

25 Monday May 2020

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marquette grapesThis article by Jamie Goode on the need for the wine community to embrace hybrid grape varietals raises an important set of issues. Most of the wines we drink are made from the grape species Vitis vinifera. But these varietals cannot survive cold winter temperatures and they are subject to a variety of diseases such as downy mildew and powdery mildew which require heavy applications of fungicides. As Jamie points out, these fungicides are not sustainable.  Copper sulfate is especially harmful to the long-term health of the soil.

One solution is to grow hybrid grape varieties made by crossing of European Vitis vinifera vines, American Vitis labrusca and Vitis riparia grapes. These hybrids not only survive cold winters but are resistant to mildew, requiring significantly fewer applications of chemicals throughout the growing season. Most Californians have never tasted these hybrids and they have been banned from many European appellations because they were deemed inferior to vinifera. Yet they are common throughout the Midwest and East Coast.

The challenge is taste. For those of us accustomed to the flavors and structure of vinifera varieties, these hybrids taste odd to say the least. I’ve tasted my share of Marquette, Norton, Frontenac, Chambourcin, Traminette, La Crescent and many others. Some were quite good; others quite dreadful. As with all winemaking its a matter of matching varietal, location and wine making technique. As everyday drinking wines most have potential (although I think Frontenac Red has a future only as a port-style wine). Can these wines reach the heights of the very best vinifera? Will we see a 100 point Marquette in the the near future? It’s hard to say in part because it’s a matter of adjusting our taste sensibilities to include flavors that don’t quite fit our conventional categories.

The challenge then is not all on the grape growers, viticulturalists, and winemakers. It’s on those of us who taste seriously as well. We at least need to be open-minded about hybrids and adjust our concepts of what wines should taste like. Tasting the new is always a challenge but it is how we make progress.

As Jamie concludes:

“It may take some time for the wine world to open its mind to resistant varieties, but the current situation isn’t sustainable. Our longtime addiction to Vitis vinifera grapes — used in the vast majority of today’s wines — with its attendant spray regimes, is simply no longer justifiable. It’s time to recognize the progress made by the grape breeders, and to get behind these new resistant varieties.”

More Wine Populist Nonsense

18 Monday May 2020

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clinking wine glassesThis argument, this time from W. Blake Gray,  gets really tiresome, but there seems to be no end to the joy wine writers get from beating up on wine lovers.

Nobody drinks buttery Chardonnay anymore. Wine pairing matters. The 100-point-scale rating is dead.

These are a few of the myths spread by the “wine intelligentsia” – the sommeliers, bloggers and writers who dominate our wine conversations.

These are not myths. They happen to be more or less true of the so called “wine intelligentsia”.

Gray devotes several paragraphs pointing out that the pre-occupations of the wine intelligentsia are not shared by the vast majority of wine consumers.  Well of course not. But who claimed they are? Where is the link or the quote that suggests “sommeliers, bloggers, and writers” are under the illusion that their audience is the general wine drinking public? I think all of us are well aware that our audience is other wine lovers. I use the word “lover” here to indicate someone who is obsessed with wine whether they are in the wine business or are connoisseurs. Most people who like wine are not obsessed with wine and don’t care to read about it. There is no reason why they should unless they want to expand their knowledge of wine.

Gray writes: “The problem is that we’re all talking to each other, and not to anybody outside our silo.”

Why is this a problem? Why is it a sin that people really interested in a topic want to talk to other people who share that interest?

Most people who occasionally visit an art museum don’t spend much time pouring over the pages of Art Forum. Most people who attend Major League Baseball games don’t know the difference between FIP and DICE. Most avid readers of literary fiction care nothing for what the writers at Paris Review think about the latest from Ian McEwan. Yet no one thinks such specialized writing is “a problem.”

Apparently only in wine is writing for a specialized audience “a problem”. And in fact the audience for thoughtful writing about wine isn’t all that small.

Enthusiasts – that’s us, the wine intelligentsia – make up just 10 percent of wine consumers, according to Constellation.

Since about 77 million people in the U.S in 2019 reported drinking wine regularly, that is a sizable audience for wine writing. Why he thinks serving nearly 8 million readers is a disservice is a mystery. Apparently, he thinks it’s because we hold opinions forcefully:

Nonetheless, we always present our positions like we’re 90 percent of the market, and the other 10 percent would be with us if they just knew better.

That is 100% bullshit. Again there is no indication of what writing he finds pernicious. I read a lot of wine writing; none of it assumes their audience includes fans of Jam Jar.

By the way, Gray writes about some of the most arcane topics in the wine business and states his position forcefully—that is why I enjoy reading him. I know little about his audience but I would be very surprised to discover most of them list Jam Jar among their favorites.

It is an enduring puzzle why wine writers engage in this kind of self-flagellation.

A New Classification System for Wine?

13 Wednesday May 2020

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vineyardIn the U.S. we have no wine classification system that is really informative. Our appellation rules ensure the origin of the grapes to a degree but because there are few restrictive production rules, knowing the origin of the grapes tells you little about the wine in the bottle unless you know the producer. It would be helpful if there was some labeling that indicated something about the production process in addition to the origin. This is especially needed because terms that appear on labels such as “natural”, “artisanal”, “craft” or “handmade” are systematically abused and mean nothing.

Wine writer Meg Houston Maker has an interesting proposal based on the classification of French cheese.

The vineyard and field and cellar are elements Wineof terroir, but so, too, is the maker’s mind. This suggests that our new lexicon cannot be merely about locality, it must also be about intentionality, about how those local raw ingredients get made into food.

I absolutely agree. Here is her proposal for a new classification lexicon to supplement our current appellation indicators:

Farmstead — The wine is made on the winemaker’s own property using fruit grown on that land. No purchased fruit is allowed. The winemaker uses minimal inputs and interventions in the cellar and omits all additives that modulate the wine’s properties. Production is limited to the size of the estate and production facility.

Artisanal — The wine is likewise made on the winemaker’s property but using locally sourced fruit, possibly mixed with fruit grown on the property itself. Again, the winemaker uses minimal inputs and interventions in the cellar, omitting additives. Production is limited by the size and capacity of the production facility.

Cooperative — The wine is made using fruit pooled from a group of winegrowers, in a facility owned by one of them or by the collective. The grower-makers have stylistic as well as commercial sympathies. Production is limited by the size of the collective, the yield of each grower, and the capacity of the shared production facility.

Industrial — The wine is made using fruit grown anywhere allowed by appellation laws. Winemaking is industrial, and there are no restrictions on cellar manipulations beyond the legal requirements for wine production. Production is principally limited by commercial exigencies rather than raw material availability or capacity.

The one problem I see with these categories is that I run into small producers rather often who experiment with additives, enzymes, various oak products, or micro-oxidation, etc. Their wines are not industrial. They are made by hand using local grapes, and each barrel gets the kind of attention typical of artisanal wines. But they are more welcoming toward products that are technologically innovative and probably wouldn’t qualify as “minimal inputs”. It isn’t obvious to me how “minimal inputs” could be defined precisely without enormous controversy. Are cultured yeasts allowed? What about stabilizers, oak chips, or acidification?

I think we need an additional category–perhaps “post-artisanal” would accurately describe it since such producers clearly have a foot in artisanal wine making while aspiring to move beyond those limitations.

Unfortunately, the chances of this happening via industry wide regulations are slim because it means industrial producers would have to stop lying about their product.

Yes, huge brands will bridle at having their wine referred to as “industrial,” but that term, at least, is an accurate reflection of the origins and process by which that wine was made. Valorizing farmstead and artisanal production is a way to honor both place and people, and to help secure the future of terroir-driven American wine.

They will do more than “bridle”. They will flatly oppose it and with their political influence would likely prevail.

Wine Drinkers are from Venus; Wine Tasters are from Mars

11 Monday May 2020

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misunderstandingMany discussions about wine that appear in popular writing or in casual conversations fail to distinguish the practice of wine tasting from the activity of wine drinking.

Wine tasters bring at least a rudimentary knowledge of regions and varietals as well as some experience to their tasting practice. Wine tasters, even if they are novices, have made  a commitment to learning more about wine and have begun to reflect on their experiences and commit them to memory. They have learned some of the procedures used to maximize their ability to discern features of the wine and have begun to enter into conversations about wine, internalizing some of the vocabulary historically used to describe wine. For wine tasters, wine is no longer solely about immediate sensation; it is a practice that requires discipline and a variety of skills.

Wine drinkers, by contrast, bring none of this to their  experience. They seek immediate enjoyment only. There is of course nothing wrong with that but the experience of the wine is quite different for a taster vs. a drinker.

There can be some overlap. Wine tasters can sometimes relax their commitments and be wine drinkers. But the relationship is not symmetrical. Wine drinkers cannot be wine tasters unless they acquire the commitment of a taster and cannot discover the virtues of tasting until they do so.

It thus would not be surprising that the advice wine tasters give to wine drinkers is not helpful or that the activity of wine drinking seems unreflective and impoverished to wine tasters. Mutual incomprehension would seem to be baked in and there is probably not much to be done about it. Live and let live is the best attitude for both.

Good News Monday

04 Monday May 2020

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sales growthWhile much of the news about the coronavirus still looks grim, this post by Rob McMillan of Silicon Valley Bank appeared in my newsfeed last night and gave me a bit of a lift. Rob has his finger on the financial pulse of the wine industry and he has some good news for when the lockdowns begin to lift.

Today, as you can see in the below chart, off-premise sales have exploded! Danny Brager of Nielsen calculates to replace the lost revenue from restaurant sales, corresponding alcohol sales in off-premise accounts have to increase by at least 20%.
Looking at the chart you can see wine sales increased by 29%. Add online sales to that and we appear to be back to around 10% growth rate in wine sales, at least for the present!

People are eating at home and apparently are getting reacquainted with the joys of wine at the dinner table, without the markups that restaurants charged.

McMillan thinks that even after restaurants begin to open up, this trend towards more eating at home with wine on the table is likely to continue. The challenges faced by restaurants will not be magically disappear. That’s not so good for the restaurant industry but perhaps good for the wine industry.

Of course the fly in this ointment is the plight of the small wineries with greatly reduced tasting room traffic, fewer restaurant sales, and no access to the big retailers and grocery stores where most of the boost in sales is happening.

But Rob is even bullish on their prospects if they invest in phone and online sales, quality videos to help market their brand, and innovative remote marketing strategies.

McMillan is no Pollyanna. He’s been bearish on wine industry growth for several years. The fact he thinks there is opportunity here is reason for some optimism.

Is Wine Unique as a Beverage with Aesthetic Appeal?

30 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Philosophy of Food and Wine, Wine Culture

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fog over vineyardsI doubt that I need to persuade readers of this blog that wine can be the source of a genuine aesthetic experience. But what about coffee, Scotch, or beer? If wine is a genuine aesthetic object why not these other beverages?

What makes wine an aesthetic object? Well its complexity for one thing. Wine has hundreds of aromatic compounds all in various combinations across thousands of varieties and regions with distinctive winemaking practices, weather patterns and soil compositions. Wine also changes as it ages; some wines vastly improve as they age. It changes in the glass and in the mouth and interacts with food, the atmosphere, the weather, the company and the music. There is plenty of variation and diversity to stimulate aesthetic interest.

Do other beverages have this complexity? To be honest, I haven’t found other beverages to be so complex, but to be fair maybe that’s my limitation and inexperience.

Wine is also embedded in a robust community with a well-developed vocabulary for talking about wine and firmly entrenched traditions of wine appreciation that make the aesthetic appreciation of wine more rewarding. Scotch does as well although Scotch doesn’t seem to have the volume of discourse about it when compared to wine. With the emergence of craft brews and origin-specific coffee beans, beer and coffee communities have emerged with their own discourses. I have no way of measuring the relative vigor and coherence of their discourse compared to wine but they are mere babies if longevity is an indicator of strength.

However the one factor that clearly distinguishes wine from most other beverages is the connection to place and its dependence on nature. Beer can be made anywhere. Although the quality of the water used in beer production matters and hops may have some minor regional variation, beer is less dependent on geography, and variations in nature play little role in beer production. Scotch of course has its peat bogs, and cellaring location can make a difference in how it ages in barrel. But malted barley whiskey can be made anywhere and, as long as the grain is healthy, nature plays no role. Most coffee is a blend of beans from a variety of different locations.

It’s that connection to nature, place and the resulting variations that give wine its distinctive aesthetic appeal.

What is a Beautiful Wine? (1)

22 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Art and Wine, Philosophy of Food and Wine, Wine Culture

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beautiful wine bottleDoes the wine world need the idea of beauty to explain what makes a great wine great? That is not an easy question to answer.

The logic of the idea of beauty is peculiar. Identifying beauty is not like recognizing the stop sign is red or the wine is full bodied. It’s not an ordinary property that we simply and reliably perceive, and there is no straightforward way of demonstrating “this Pinot Noir is beautiful” to someone who disagrees. No gathering of evidence will suffice.

Neither is a claim to beauty a report about whether one prefers or likes an object. To call a Puligny Montrachet beautiful is not equivalent to saying “I like Puligny Montrachet”, which would be an unremarkable claim and entirely subjective. In calling an object beautiful we are doing something more than expressing a preference. We are inviting others to see what we see (or taste what we taste) with the expectation that they might also share the experience. Claims about beauty seem to occupy a logical space perched tenuously between objectivity and subjectivity. To say something is beautiful invites a demand for evidence and argument that simply would not be demanded of a claim such as “I like Chardonnay”. Yet as noted there seems no way of demonstrating such a claim by gathering empirical evidence. There is therefore plenty of room for a skeptic to doubt there is such logical space.

Thus the skeptic about beauty might well argue we don’t need the term to describe our experience. Talking about how much pleasure we get from an experience suffices in most contexts to communicate something about that experience. “I really enjoyed this sensual Pinot Noir” conveys our judgment of the wine without inviting argument or the expectation that others should enjoy it as well. What does the idea of beauty add?

Thus, to justify invoking the concept of beauty to convey something important about the aesthetic experience of wine, we need to identify the need it fulfills, especially because the claim seems to be making demands on others.

Of course, we would rightly think someone was crass or nuts if they claim to care nothing for beauty. On what grounds would someone legitimately claim to be indifferent about it? Yet, it’s a peculiarity of beauty that we are supposed to care deeply about it but no one can say quite what it is. We can point to examples of beauty but when forced to say what all the examples have in common we come up empty. I suspect this is why some people are skeptical about the whole idea. That we are just talking about the ordinary pleasure we take in the appearance of something with no need to make some further claim. One gets the impression that the art world has come to this conclusion. After the disruptions of 20th Century art, it seems most people in the art world are disillusioned by the concept of beauty. For much of the art world it’s a fusty old term genuflecting toward conventions we no longer take seriously”, something false or inflated that reflective people no longer believe in. Such a view need not reject aesthetic pleasure but merely reject the idea that there is some special property over and above pleasure in appearance that we call beautiful.

However, there is reason to think that beauty is not just about pleasure. When I’m enjoying a glass of wine with dinner, no one can coherently question whether I’m having a pleasurable or painful experience.  This is not something I can be mistaken about. I could not say that a wine gave me great pleasure but it turns out I was mistaken about it. That wasn’t pleasure at all.

But such a claim is not absurd with regard to beauty. I does make sense to say “I thought that was beautiful but upon further scrutiny I think I was wrong.” This suggests that there is something more than just perception that beauty captures. Beauty is something that investigation or thought can discover or reject.

Thus, it seems the skeptic is wrong that beauty is just an expression of subjective preference. But we still have to uncover what the idea of beauty can add to a discussion about wine quality.

The stories we have told about beauty through the ages give us some clues about what the idea might add to our concept of wine quality.

More about that in a subsequent post.

Save the Small Importers and Retailers

20 Monday Apr 2020

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docg importsDuring the Coronavirus lockdown, online wine sales are exploding for obvious reasons. But we are likely developing a habit that will be hard to break when the lockdown is over. Truth be told, buying wine online is convenient and the selection at some of the better sites (Wine.com, K&L Merchants) is quite good.

But if we want the wine business to return to something like it was before Covid19—with lots of interesting, distinctive, artisan wines available– we need to be selective now about where we buy our wine online. The big online retailers will not only survive in this environment, they will flourish. It’s the small importer or retailer, who formerly made a living selling unique wines to restaurants, that will not survive without our help. While I enjoy the selection at the big sites I’m shifting some of my wine purchases to small, local retailers who do a great job of finding wines that are otherwise unavailable.

I don’t normally promote products on this site but I’m going to make an exception and give a shoutout to DOCG Imports. If you love Italian wines, this is a place to get distinctive, high quality, small production wines that cannot be found elsewhere. Proprietor Marina Snow divides her time between the U.S. and Italy and knows both markets intimately. She has hand selected each wine she sells and her taste and judgement are spot on. I’ve tasted many of these wines and have never been disappointed. (She ships to any state that permits sales by out-of-state retailers)

If businesses such as DOCG Imports don’t survive, we will be left with mostly mediocre, homogeneous corporate wines. Small retailers are utterly dependent on consumers like us to make it through these difficult times. So lets make an effort to see to it that the wine culture in the U.S. continues to flourish by supporting these small, independent businesses.

 

 

The Paradox of Wine Democracy

16 Thursday Apr 2020

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supermarket wine aisleMy post yesterday on the outdated charge that wine lovers are snobs got me thinking more about the democratization of wine. Wine and wine knowledge are now available to almost everyone, anywhere. It is no longer a beverage for the wealthy or those who want to appear wealthy. But that availability does have a downside that might explain why, even before Covid 19 ravaged the wine business, the growth in wine sales had plateaued.

My point will require a brief tour through the history of the wine trade in the U.S.

After prohibition and the Great Depression, it took many years to revitalize the wine business. Wine sales grew steadily but slowly through the 1950’s and 60’s and most of the wine consumed was cheap, sweet, and very high in alcohol. Basically it was so called “bum wine”—Thunderbird, Ripple, and Wild Irish Rose. Yet, by 1978, 70% of wine sold in the U.S. was dry (or relatively dry) table wine and wine sales were rapidly growing. A combination of soldiers returning from Europe, better transportation that facilitated vacations in Europe, and a growing interest in food planted the seeds for Americans to emulate the French approach to wine—dry, nuanced, food friendly, and a source of aesthetic experience. The wine trade was quick to recognize the symbolic power of this image of wine and created an imaginative discourse in which wine came to symbolize a life of refinement, luxury, sophistication and romance.

For the boomer generation wine was an aspirational beverage, the consumption of which meant you had your eye on the prize of upward mobility.

But success often plants the seeds of failure. Wine has become too successful and can no longer serve those aspirations. It is too widely available to be the the exclusive domain of the upwardly mobile. It can’t be a symbol of wealth and expensive tastes if everyone is drinking it. Thus, wine no longer has the symbolic charge that made it fascinating and warranted the high prices some consumers were willing to pay. As boomers age out of the market there is no similar symbolic reference to give wine special status.

This is not to say that wine has no capacity to serve as a symbol. Wine still symbolizes community, sociality, conversation, and good cheer (once we can meet face to face again). The problem for the wine business is that for wine to serve that function it need not cost $50 per bottle. A $15 Rosé will do just fine.

I suspect in the future, the market for fine wine will be largely wine lovers seeking the kind of aesthetic experience that only wine can provide. Hopefully, there will be enough of us around to support the kind of wines we want to drink.

Why the Charge of Wine Snob is Out of Date

15 Wednesday Apr 2020

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wine snob 2People outside the wine community tend to look at wine lovers, especially wine lovers who like to talk about wine, as wine snobs. I suppose many years ago there was some truth to the aspersion.  As wine was  growing in popularity in the late 20th Century it was an aspirational beverage and thus sometimes consumed by people who boasted about vacation trips to Europe and wanted to be seen as having good taste.

But for several reasons that image of wine as a playground for the wealthy or wannabe wealthy no longer applies.

— In affluent countries wine is consumed by people from almost all social classes, and certainly the middle classes.

–Due to advances in technology and global distribution networks, wine is no longer identified exclusively with European taste but is produced and available throughout the world.

— Wine knowledge is widely available and can be acquired by almost anyone for a relatively modest expense.

–There is no evidence that wine tasting ability requires remarkable sensory abilities or cognitive skills.

–Wine expertise requires only dedication which can be sustained by most people with access to the necessities of life.

–Wine appreciation involves knowledge and skills that can be communicated to anyone with an interest in them, and judgments about wine are widely shared.

This is not to say that there are no barriers to someone with an interest in wine. The cost is not negligible and at least average sensory abilities and cognitive skills are helpful. But that is true of any human practice. Wine has become thoroughly democratized. There are of course snobs but there is nothing about wine that makes wine lovers particularly susceptible to snobbery.