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)