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The Wine's the Thing
Mitch Kornfeld
1/12
Some Basics for a Winter's Eve
Now that the Holiday season is behind us and we're deep in the grip of
old person winter I thought it would be a good time to sit back and reflect
upon our subject, upon just what it is we are drinking.
My cheapo unabridged defines wine as "the fermented juice of the grape."
It says nothing about apples, cherries, blueberries, or dandelions. There
are a couple of reasons for that. For starters, both figuratively and
literally, to make "wine" from anything other than grapes you have to add
sugar. With grape juice this isn't necessary because it's high in natural
sugar. At harvest, wine grapes usually contain between 22 to 24 percent
sugar. That much sugar will turn into enough alcohol to serve to preserve
the wine.
Even a wine made with the most primitive technology and no
understanding of fermentation will reach 12 percent alcohol if the grapes
were harvested with 22 percent sugar, and that much alcohol is enough to
preserve the wine in a drinkable condition until the next year's harvest can
be brought in and made into wine.
Now you may be wondering a few things such as how did they make wine
thousands of years ago when they didn't know what fermentation was? Did the
wine make itself? And what was that second thing that separates the grapes
from the non-grapes? The answer to all of those questions can be summed up
in one word. Yeast.
Do you recall that when you wash grapes, as you rinse
them with cold
water, you can never get rid of that whitish sheen on their skins? It's
not because you're looking at insecticides; it's because you're looking at
yeasts. The yeasts live on the grape skins. Think about it. If you were a
one celled organism that ate sugar for sustenance where would you live? The
yeasts live on top of a reservoir of the biggest supply of their food source
that there is. They just wait around for rain, hail, deer, or more likely
birds to break the skins of the grapes so they can eat and reproduce.
In
reality the wine does make itself. Crush the grapes without removing the
skins, leaving the yeast, and you get wine. Surely wine was made by accident
the first time, but it didn't take the ancients very long to figure out how
to make it every year. And it has been getting made somewhere by someone
ever since. I think it's important
that when we consider putting down one hundred of our hard earned after-tax dollars on a bottle of wine,
that we remember that it is but the fermented juice of the grape and not get too carried away.
There are a few things about yeast worth mentioning before I leave the
subject completely. Most wineries consider wild naturally occurring yeasts
-- that is the yeasts found on the grapes themselves -- to be unreliable for
commercial winemaking, so they kill them off and inoculate their juice with
strains of cultured pedigreed winemaking yeast. Some wineries leave the wild
yeasts alone but add the pedigreed stuff to the juice just to play it safe.
They know the pedigreed stuff will hang in there until the very end.
There
are some wineries that only use the wild yeasts but they are a very small
minority. One winery that uses wild yeast exclusively (as well as
organically grown grapes) is Coturri, in Sonoma County. If you are looking
for the really all-natural experience they are well worth checking out. The
Zinfandel is probably their one wine that is easiest to find. If you are the
adventurous type and you like big wines you should grab one, but be
forewarned, they can be a tad erratic. I'm batting .750 with them, .800 if
you count the 1990 in my storage facility that is going to be excellent. So
far I found the 1987, '90, and '96 to be absolutely terrific, and the '94
was, well, wild. Not bad, but wild. It tasted more like a cherry cordial
than anything else. The last I remember they were $15, but I wouldn't be
surprised if they've gone up. If you catch a good one they are bargains.
Another good wine made with wild yeasts is the Cuvee Sauvage Napa Valley
Chardonnay from Franciscan (Sauvage=French for savage=wild). Many wineries
make a "regular" and a "Reserve" from a particular variety. Franciscan
makes a regular Chardonnay but no Reserve. The Cuvee Sauvage serves as their
Reserve although they don't call it that. A glass of this wine has a lot
going on in it. It really does show complexity. If it had more
concentration it would be a great wine, but it's already in the $20 to
$25 range and Franciscan, it would appear, doesn't want to charge more than
that for a Chardonnay. They like to keep prices realistic and they give the
consumer good value for his money. You have to pay for concentration, and
that brings up the fundamental subject of quantity and quality.
Way back, when those ancients were making wine, they surely began to
notice differences in the quality of their wines from year to year. They may
have noticed that in a season when there were fewer grapes and less wine the
wine they did make was richer and tastier than the wine they normally made.
A short crop is usually associated with weather problems in the spring such
as heavy rains washing away pollen grains or a late frost interfering with
flowering. Either one would mean the production of fewer grapes. The latter
was what happened in Bordeaux in 1961 (along with a textbook summer and
fall). The quantity produced was small but the quality was great. From all
reports the wines were absolutely great, real classics. The best ones, now
nearing the end of their fourth decade, are still great to drink (though if
you have to ask how much...).
The preceding was to illustrate a cardinal
rule in winemaking: that there is an inverse relationship between quantity and
quality. The grapevines want to produce a lot of grapes and a lot of seeds
by which to reproduce themselves. They're not interested in producing good wine.
That requires human intervention, meaning deliberate pruning of the vines to
cut back on quantity, thereby increasing the concentration and the quality of
the wine. Better concentration is what separates the excellent wines from
the merely very good ones.
Lets look at it another way. Which would you prefer to drink, a wine made
from vines that yielded two tons of grapes per acre, or a vineyard that gave
eight tons to an acre? You want the wine from the two tons per of course.
The question then becomes how can you tell which is which? Once in a rare
while the yield of the vineyard will be stated on the back label, but
that's an exception. There are other ways to tell, however.
In France, a few regions, notably Burgundy, use a system of grading the
quality of the vineyards. Wines from the best vineyards are entitled to use
the words "Grand Cru," meaning "Great Growth," on the label. The next best
vineyards are called "Premiere Cru" (First Growth), the next best use the
name of the village (Gevry-Chambertin, etc.) on the label, and the final
category is the name of the region, "plain" Burgundy (Bourgogne in
French). Let's use Chablis for an example. Chablis is a place name. If the
wine is from outside of Chablis it is not a Chablis, just like Champagne.
Chablis is the northernmost growing district in Burgundy and the wines from
Chablis are all white and must be 100% Chardonnay, although you'll never see
the word Chardonnay on the label. That's why you need books, magazines,
tastings, and places like this one.
Grand Cru Chablis is legally allowed to produce no more than about two
tons of grapes per acre. Actually they use hectoliters per hectare, as does
the rest of the world, but I'll use the more familiar American system. For argument's sake let's say that a Premiere
Cru vineyard is allowed four tons per acre (in reality it's closer to three
tons), while a wine labeled as plain Chablis is allowed six tons per acre, and
the last in the Chablis
hierarchy, Petite Chablis, is allowed eight tons per acre. You can taste the difference
in concentration in all these wines, but as I said earlier, you have to pay
for it. The Grand Cru Chablis might cost $64 a bottle, the Premiere Cru $32,
the "plain" $16, and the Petite $8. Those yields and bottle prices will all
add to the same $96,000 per acre coming in. (If you care to do the math the
only conversion factors you'll have to know are that one ton of grapes gives
about 150 gallons of wine, and there are five bottles to a gallon, which is
why they call them fifths.)
Outside of Europe you don't have the same stringent legal standards but
the economics are basically the same. A great many New World wineries borrow
the Reserve wine concept from Italy and Spain. You will find wineries making
a "Plain" or "regular" version, though the labels don't say that, and a
"Reserve" or "Private Reserve."
The labels will say something like Simi Cabernet Sauvignon, and Simi Private
Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, or Rosemount Chardonnay and Rosemount Show
Reserve Chardonnay. There is a big difference in price between the regulars
and the reserves, and it is mostly due to the lower yielding vineyards used
for the reserves. (Also, the reserves are almost always made with more new
oak barrels that add about $2 per bottle to the cost.) The reserves again have
more concentration from the lower yields, and you have to pay for it.
Although it is not an absolute guarantee of higher quality, you can tell the
better wines by their reserve designations PLUS the higher price. You
just have to know if a winery makes both a regular and a Reserve. If you
don't know or are not sure, a good wine merchant will be able to tell you.
Be
careful because some wineries (notably Glen Ellen and Domaine St. George,
both in California) use the words "Private Reserve" on their low-priced
"fighting varietals." If you see an $8 wine labeled "Private Reserve," don't
be misled and think you are getting a bargain. The wines are not mis-priced $28 bottles. There are no true reserve wines that cost $8.
Lastly, some wineries use a vineyard designation on their better wines.
Again they borrow from Europe, this time the concept that specific sites
yield better wines (remember the Grand Crus?). Once they have identified a
vineyard that produces better wines from a particular variety they will cut
back on the yields to produce the best wine that they can. You might see a
Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons from Heitz labeled "Bella Oaks," or the
venerable BV (Beaulieu Vineyards) Georges de Latour Private Reserve (a wine
made in part from a vineyard planted in the 1900's, as in 1903). The Bella
Oaks and the '95 and '96 Georges de Latours, which you might still be able to
find, are about $60. (They've raised the price on the blockbuster '97 GDLPR
to $100.) They are great wines, but the regular Napa Valley cabs from these
firms are about $30 and $16 respectively. The regular bottlings, while
clearly not as good as the vineyard designated wines are usually fine wines
and undoubtedly better values. (The Wine Spectator gave the BV '97 88
points, but said there was a bit of bottle variation, so try one before
buying any quantities; $16 for an 88-point cab is very good these days.)
With the vineyard designated wines, especially the Georges de Latour, you are
paying for scarcity. The well known names get snatched up and the laws of
supply and demand kick in with a vengeance. While I always say avoid paying
for scarcity I can't say you should never get one. On rare occasions I've
taken the plunge myself. That $12.50 I paid for the 1974 Georges de Latour
seemed quite steep at the time (hey, top Zins were then about $3.00) but in 1984
the wine was so good I wish I had bought more. The regular is certainly a
better buy, but for the price of one bottle of luxury Champagne you can get
two bottles of the Georges de Latour and have a great wine experience twice.
Such choices. May you be so lucky that these are the hardest choices you'll
face.
In the next few weeks I'm going to look at some red wines that are
appropriate to drink during the winter. Next week we go to California for a
Varietal wine that is often found in two and sometimes three quality levels.
© Mitch Kornfeld 2001
All rights reserved
Previously by Mitch Kornfeld...
And if They're Spanish That's Fine
(01/05/01)
Hello Carbon Dioxide (12/29/00)
Wines for Christmas (12/22/00)
Nouveau Beaujolais, Etc.
(11/24/00)
Going to a Tasting 101
(12/01/00)
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