If You Think That's Bad, Wait Till You Hear What They're Doing With Loaves and Fishes

Anyone interested in the inner flywheels and clockwork of the California wine industry should follow the link (via Tom Wark's FERMENTATIONS weblog) to a fascinating article from The Economist, "Water into wine".   

The story focuses on the semi-hush-hush practice of "watering back," i.e., adding water in order to reduce Insanely High alcohol levels to the Merely Ridiculous.  Recent wine-related films are mentioned, both Sideways [an unexpurgated rendition of Miles' market-flattening aspersions upon Merlot opens the piece] and Mondovino [there is fretting about the creeping sameness of wines].  The article concludes:

[T]he real danger for California’s wines is one shared by wine-lovers the world over -- the standardisation of taste and the loss of individualism.  As giant corporations buy up one winemaker after the other -- for example, Constellation’s purchase of Robert Mondavi in 2004, or the acquisition of the Chalone Group by Britain’s Diageo earlier in 2005 -- the risk is that a wine’s marketing will count more than its terroir.  It is certainly true that labelling wines by their grapes has demystified the appreciation of wine (even French winemakers are now adopting the habit).  But what happens if one cabernet sauvignon tastes much the same as another?  What happens if giant winemakers, imposing standardised methods of production, put consistency ahead of character?

The answer is that Paul Giamatti’s character Miles will be very disappointed.  So, too, will any other wine connoisseur.  They should all take seriously the warning of Jonathan Nossiter in his polemical film 'Mondovino': 'Wine is an expression of civilisation, but it is also an expression of power.  It was the Romans who introduced wine to the Mediterranean basin, and for them it was part of their mission to civilise. Today, the picture is paradoxical.  On the one hand, never have so many people taken seriously the notion that their place of origin and identity have meaning and are worth preserving.  And yet, never has the world been under such threat from the forces of homogenisation.'  That, one would have thought, was a much greater threat than watering-back.

The trend to producing high alcohol wines, and the impact on grape growers when wineries insist on longer "hang time" -- that the grapes remain on the vine to maximize ripeness and sugar levels -- are issues on which Tom Wark has been expressing strong opinions of late.  A comment by Craig Camp to Tom's post leads to a post on the weblog of Anne Amie Vineyards in Oregon's Williamette Valley, in which Craig opines persuasively that the rise of higher alcohol wines has a lot to do with winemaking techniques that have shifted the centers of the winemaking world from cooler locales such as Bordeaux and Burgundy to sunshiny places such as California and Australia :

Historically, the greatest vintages were always the ripest vintages, in other words: more alcohol.  However, in most vintages alcohol levels were lower due to weather conditions.  In the past, great wine regions like Bordeaux and Burgundy felt lucky to get three excellent vintages out of ten, but modern vineyard and winemaking techniques have changed this to eight or even nine vintages out of ten that produce wine of excellent quality.  That means more vintages with higher alcohol levels than in the past.

Also, there has been a shift in the sources that provide most of the wine consumed.  Bordeaux, once the major supplier of the worlds better wines in all price categories, has experienced a disastrous commercial collapse of sales in the moderate price category and all of those 12 to 13% cool climate wines have been replaced hot climate wines from California, Australia, South America and southern Italy.  Wines from these sun drenched regions regularly, and easily, surpass the 13% level.

As Craig says in his comment: "In Oregon, with pinot noir, longer hang times is know as ripening the grapes."  His post goes on to remind that alcohol levels cannot be considered as the sole criterion for wine quality: what matters is how the alcohol balances with the other aspects of the wine and whether the totality is a harmonious one, particularly in the company of food.

Not every winemaker in California wants to receive those hyper-ripe, alcohol-engendering grapes.   Some -- Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat is a leading example -- make it an article of faith that grapes can be fully "ripe" for winemaking purposes without excessive sugar levels, and work hard to produce wines of charm and longevity at and below the 13% level without post-harvest tinkering.  Huge producers may insist that their growers provide those longer hang times, with the result that the average alcohol level in the mass market is likely to remain high for the near future -- perhaps until the Great Consumer Rebellion of 2007 foreseen by Tom -- but there is still opportunity for small and mid-size wineries, particularly those that grow their own grapes, to buck the trend.