Day 2 of the Wine Writer’s Symposium began in the kitchens of the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. Young students and future chefs sported their whites and tall toques and prepped for the day’s dishes, which I would later learn would become our lunch. Us wine folk ate our breakfast (and tried not to get in the way) and geared up for a full day of panels, master classes and writing exercises.
First up, “What Wine Writers Need To Know about Winemaking” with Napa vintner and author Jeff Morgan. This proved to be a very interesting discussion in winemaking practices with a few lively debates. Including the somewhat hush hush practice of watering back wine. Jeff attests that many (read all) winemakers in Napa, are lowering the alcohol levels of their wine by adding water to the pre-fermentation juice. The warm temperatures on the West coast create really ripe fruit which means more sugars at harvest in turn creating a higher alcohol percentage. Jeff believes this is happening more often than you think or than is ever spoken of and stands by watering back as a necessary tool (and by no means a marker of a bad winemaker or lesser wine.)
This opened up a larger debate on “real” wine and whether or not making a wine biodynamically or organically somehow magically makes it superior. Jeff thinks not. He believes the use of sulfur, which many biodynamic winemakers use at incredibly small doses if at all, is imperative to creating a stable product that can withstand time and travel and possible oxidation. He also asserts that adding chemicals to a wine during fermentation is not something that should be shunned. Copper, yeasts, tartaric acid and tannins are natural products in essence and help create a better wine.
As much as I love the natural wine movement (see Vini Veri group) and its wines, I see his point and agree to some extent. Making great wine is an art that has grown from hundreds of years of failures, experiments and new technologies. The wine made in 1786, I can guarantee, wasn’t as good as a wine made today. Therefore, why should those winemakers in Friuli in Northern Italy be making wine like their ancestors of centuries past? For the romanticism of it? For the cool factor? Good question. And one that I will leave unanswered.
The next session was titled “Tasting and Writing Exercise: Sensory Analysis vs. Wine Reviews” and was guided by Eric Asimov of the New York Times and CIA Greystone Chair of Wine Studies Karen MacNeil. Good old tasting notes. The bread and butter of the wine writer/critic and the most widely discussed topic in terms of opinion on what makes a good one. I tend to be of the opinion that my opinion doesn’t really matter. But, I’m also not the critic for a national publication that millions of people read in order to know what to buy at a wine shop. Therefore, describing what a wine is like is necessary. But, how to describe it…
We were given 6 wines. 3 pairs. Each pair was to be tasted and compared with a specific element in mind: tannins, acidity or body. Everyone in the room then wrote a brief tasting note on the wine they preferred of the two. The resulting copy was incredibly diverse and really great. Several brave souls read their notes aloud as did Eric and Karen. Eric talked about how you must lose the clinical evaluation and surrender to the fact that wine is contextual, mysterious and subjective (which is exactly why we love it.) To be able to impart a feeling of that wine to a reader is far more effective. He quoted keynote speaker Frances Mayes’ observation of a wine being “fruit basket fresh” and how that created so much more of a sensory image for someone than saying, you know, “bright raspberries.”
I’ll leave you with this little guy- lobster with orange-caper aioli prepared by Chef John Ash. Next post, I’ll talk about the food and wine pairing writing exercise centered around this dish and share what I wrote in class (but was way too intimidated to read aloud.)
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
First off, I love the photography (those students are too cute)! Second, thanks for the details of the conversation with Jeff Morgan. I’ve heard about watering back, and was pleasantly surprised that he addressed the topic with such candor. Finally, your explanation of Eric and Karen’s segment was great – it makes so much more sense to write about wine as a sensory experience than it does to make it an academic exercise.
Sounds like you’re having a great time – thanks for keeping us posted on how things are going!
WOW – your pics of the event are stellar!
thanks joe!
Watering back wine isn’t necessarily a sign of bad wine making, but it is a sign of bad grape-growing. Are they acting like grapes have to be harvested over-ripe? That’s ridiculous–you monitor your brix and you pick your grapes when they’re at the sugar level you want. Perhaps these vines have been grown to be a accustomed to being harvested at over-ripeness, but they don’t have they can be retrained.
And five years ago winemakers were spiriting up their wines to make that full, hot, extracted style that was so in vogue then. Temperatures haven’t changed that much in five years so why have we gone from adding small amounts of spirits post-fermentation to now adding water pre-fermentation? Could it be that prestige California wine-making depends largely on locale, label, and marketing and less on the actual quality of the fruit? Instead of making wines that are trendy, make the wines that the terroir dictate.
Your grapes are getting overripe? Harvest them earlier, practice better canopy management, harvest them at night–there are tools in the toolbox for this problem. Adding water to your wine is like scraping the black off of burnt toast–it only kinda fixes the problem, your fucking toast was still burnt.
I would also argue that, although we are undoubtedly making more CONSISTENT wine in 2010 and wines are probably on average better across the board than in 1786, I don’t think we are necessarily making universally BETTER wine in 2010 than in 1786. I can’t see any reason why the Platonic ideal bottle of wine in 1786 would have been inherently worse than the Platonic ideal bottle of wine in 2010. We’re less likely to have bottle variation and spoilage now and we have higher shelf stability, but in 1786 we had cleaner air, cleaner soil, 100% hand-picked grapes, ancient pre-phylloxera vines, and vignerons who actually lived next to their fruit. And the basic tools of wine-making (good earth, good grapes, good hands) have remained unchanged for millennia.
Fun pouring with you tonight and great pics.
Told you I’d read it.=^)
i certainly agree with you on many, many levels. fantastic comments david. i can’t even begin to get into it on this measly soapbox…..we will have to reconvene over a glass of “real” wine. yes?
yes.
Good points David. Although you can’t change sun and warmth, even if you harvest earlier. On the other hand, CA Cabs from the ’70′s do tend to be lower alcohol and better balanced (not that I drink them every day). Pick the grapes at ripeness levels you want them at, is that so hard? Maybe it is, or maybe they really want the overly jammy fruit bomb style that the masses seem to crave, while at the same time lowering the heat for those who “should know better”. Anyway, this is the first I’ve heard of watering back.
Good pics Whitney and thanks both of you for the pours on Fri!