Minimal Understanding

While minimalist has become an overused catch-word for many a winemaker, it does mean something. Many wine journalists with minimal understanding of what minimal winemaking means now ridicule winemakers who make such a claim as using a trite phrase with no meaning. However, minimalist does mean something to those who practice it even if the journalists don’t understand and over-romanticize the concept.

I guess there are two types of minimalist winemakers: one group that follows some holistic recipe and the other group that does as little to a wine as nature will allow. Too many wine journalists, with a naive understanding of what it takes to make both great and very good wine think that minimalist winemaking is only the former and that those who practice the second as hypocrites using the phrase for its marketing impact. There is often the view that those that follow their holistic winemaking recipe every year, no matter the vintage, are somehow more natural, but this not the case. The fact of the matter is these “idealists” often make faulted wines that are well reviewed by writers that can’t tell the difference between funk and terroir.

Minimalist winemaking should be defined as those that do as little as possible to a wine, but that will intervene with the most natural, unobtrusive solutions available when a wine is about to become dreck. Any winemaker that lets their wine become undrinkable swill because of vineyard or cellar problems is irresponsible and perhaps even incompetent. Unfortunately there are many famous names that fall into this category and get away with it.

As these two minimalist paintings demonstrate you can be either energetic or monochromatic within the idiom.  A winemaker must make the same choice, but, as in the painting above, to add color and perspective does not mean you are not a minimalist artist. You do not have to paint your canvas in only one color to be a minimalist winemaker. The wine press wants the winemaker who uses only plain gray techniques to be called minimalist, but this is an ignorant position taken by those who have learned about winemaking from books instead of in the cellar.

A winemaker should let wine make itself only when capable of doing so. When that is not the case they have to live up to their name and make the wine.

Woody

Each month New Jersey fine wine retailer Doug Salthouse, of SmartBuy Wines, selects an assorted case of wine and sends it out to me here on the west coast. I do this because Doug has a great palate and sends me many interesting wines I might have missed. In my latest shipment came a note from Doug, “I’m trying to stay away from the woody, manipulated wines you rail against.”

I guess he’s right, I do rail against such wines, but it’s well to remember that wood is not the enemy here. Wines like Lafon, Chateau Latour, Sottimano, Spottswoode and many others see plenty of wood and, obviously, are none the worse for it. Without a doubt many great wines would not be great without the symbiotic relationship that oak has with certain wines.

Yet the reaction of individual wines with oak is so diverse that it needs to be approached with caution. Look at the chardonnay wines from Domaine des Comte Lafon in Burgundy where the wines spend almost two years in oak and are far less oaky in flavor than many new world chardonnay wines that spend half that time in oak. What is good for the goose is not always good for the gander.

It’s not oak itself that turns my palate, but its misuse. When oak is the dominate aroma in a wine I think they’ve gone too far. A barrels main mission in maturing a wine should be that of  creating an environment of controlled oxidation, not adding wood flavors, aromas and tannins. This would have to be one of the main arguments against adding wood chips and other methods that exist only to add wood flavors and aromas to the wine. However, if it is only these things we are after chips make a lot more sense than barrels.  I think that wines made  with wood chips and such would actually be better wines if they were only aged in stainless steel with the emphasis being on freshness and fruit rather that making some soulless imitation of barrel aged wines. All to often, oak characteristics are thought of as an essential aspect of what defines great wine. Wonderful wines from Muscadet, Beaujolais and Barolo prove this not to be the case.

One of the world’s most profound wines, Giacomo Giacosa’s Barolo Monfortino, spends seven years in barrels (obviously big ones) and is not a wine dominated by wood. What makes Monfortino great is the perfectly controlled, gentle oxidation that occurs during the years in these barrels. That process is the engine that drives the myriad of reactions and changes within the wine that bring it beyond mere greatness.

It’s only an accident that we use barrels to store wine. They were the best shipping and storage containers on hand in centuries past. This was a happy accident to be sure, because barrels have proved the perfect environment for the maturation of many wonderful wines. However, we should not assume that because they can raise tasting Lafon Montrachet to a spiritural experience that they can do the same thing for every chardonnay on the planet. Lafon’s Montrachet is great because it comes from Le Montrachet, not because it comes from a barrel.

Last night with some grilled rabbit I had the lovely 2004 Roagna Dolcetto d’Alba that Doug sent me in this month’s shipment. Not a hint of oak or any other type of wood  showed in this wine and none was needed. It’s perfect just like it is.

Thanks Doug. 

Chips On Their Shoulders

“FRENCH AUTHORITIES TO BAN OAK CHIPS France’s National Appellations Institute (INAO) said it had proposed a law to allow the country’s Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) regions to ban or limit the use of oak wood chips in wine. Although the practice was approved by the European Commission, the INAO remains concerned that using oak chips may damage the quality of wine in higher quality appellations.The decision from INAO has left some in the French wine industry a bit apprehensive as the country continues to struggle with exports. Allowing the use of oak chips in wine was adopted by the European Commission earlier this year to help modernize and relaunch EU wines on the world market after meeting with staunch competition from New World winemakers.”

Wine & Spirits Daily: FRENCH AUTHORITIES TO BAN OAK CHIPS

Now here’s an unenlightened approach. Does the INAO really think that Lafite, Lafon, Clape and other such producers are really going to start using wood chips in their wines? This is a technique that has a legitimate use as a way to improve wines priced and created for everyday consumption. What a pain it must be to make wine in France. Such tools will be used by industrial winemakers and will be of little interest to those dedicated to terroir. No such ban is required.
France Wine Winemaking

Sleight of Hand

Today there are key words that wine writers love; gravity-flow, indigenous yeast, low-yields and on-and-on. Key words are great for writers, but have little to do with the realities of making wine. Good winemakers are quick to spot problems and deal with them in the best way possible. Often these solutions do not meet the idealistic simplicity of right and wrong that most wine journalists push. However, they can make better wine. Using the advances in winemaking knowledge in a judicious way is not always some evil sleight of hand. Like most things it’s not only what you do, but how you do it that matters. Good winemakers have to think on their feet and react quickly to what nature has dealt them otherwise they’ll have a lot of wine that has to be poured down the drain. Consumers need to taste with their own palate, if the wine is good it’s good. Like most things, modern winemaking techniques are not simple black and white issues, but provide a full menu of solutions that can be both used and misused. For example, Luca Currado, the fine winemaker at Vietti in Barolo, abandoned his experiment with roto-fermenters for obvious reasons, but he kept just one “for emergencies”. While roto-fermenters destroy the character of good vintages, in a bad vintage he can use it to help improve his wines. No, they won’t be great wines, but they’ll still be very good if Luca decides to put his label on then. Yes, even the evil roto-fermenter can have its place when used by thoughtful hands in the face of disaster. Good winemaking is never a simple recipe to be followed, but must be adapted to new situations with each vintage. Today’s best winemakers use what could be called a minimalist philosophy, in other words they do as little as possible to their wines, but that doesn’t mean they don’t do something when it needs to be done. It’s unfortunate that the wine press, whose simplicity shows their ignorance of what it takes to make great wine, has made winemakers afraid to talk about  anything that is not seen as politically correct winemaking. This makes them seem like they are using some kind of ethical sleight of hand, when, in fact, what they are doing is giving us better wines to drink.

Pleonasm

Definition: pleonasm: the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea

I have a new word for Webster’s – eno-pleonasm: the use of more winemaking techniques than necessary to make a wine.

Winemakers today seem to lack confidence, or perhaps it’s a personal vision. Most of all, it’s a lack of a solid tradition. Not so many years ago, winemakers didn’t have to give much thought to the style of their wine. That was determined by tradition: you knew what your wine was supposed to taste like and you made it like your father and grandfather and great-grandfather did. That was good and that was bad. A lot of bad wine was made because little thought was put into it, but a lot of good wine was made because the winemaker had a clear sense of history and time and what that meant to their wine. This confidence meant change came slowly. Of course, this meant that many beneficial changes were too slowly accepted, but it also meant that regional character was safe from the whims of the wine fashion market. No longer is this true.

Today winemaking has taken on the same emptiness as the fashion runways of Milan and Paris, where it is more important to shock than create real clothing. Today’s wines are all-to-often like the bizarrely dressed models prancing down the runway in an outfit that no one could really wear in real life – or to put it in wine terms – have with dinner.

Too many of today’s winemakers create eno-pleonasms using every intervention at their disposal instead of making real wine, because they don’t really know what they want and, as a result, are slaves to the fashion world instead of wine with food world.