I think I’ve always been a little put off by red wines that
trend to and beyond 15% alcohol. I'm not a fan of whites like that either, but I don't feel I come across them as much. Most often I get in this mode when wines are
driven by the aromas and textures of too much fuel. In most cases the wines are
otherwise sound, balanced and enjoyable. Until recently I casually dismissed
the alcohol as just a consequence of a warm growing climate where
super-ripening is just business as usual.
Not this week! During a recent Boston Sommelier Society
tasting I experienced three wines in a row (our whole red flight and second half
of our blind tasting) that were all 14.5% or higher as stated on the label.
Factoring in the +/- margin allowed in alcohol labeling in the US (and they
were all domestically made) they could all have been well over 15%, with one
potentially reaching 17.1%!!! I was offended at how the wines screwed with my
nose and palate. One of the wines had enough wood in it for a genuine fear of fire!
The wines were again laden with fruit, earth, noticeable
tannins, healthy acidity and otherwise enjoyable characteristics, but I had
trouble getting past the alcohol. Frankly, the wines didn’t need all of it to
be enjoyed. For me that meant they weren’t well balanced. There was healthy
confirmation of the alcoholic strength of the wines at the table, but varying
opinions on the balance of the wine despite this fact.
My wanabe rant ends here. The subject of high alcohol wines
is not new. As a hobbyist winemaker I understand the processes at work here and
figured a different take on the issue would be required to make an attempt at a
rant a worthwhile read in the end.
I began writing this post on the bus ride home after the
tasting and got the first three paragraphs out before I had thought much about
where to take it. The next day I read
"In Pursuit of Balance" at Steve Heimoff’s blog, which kicks around the same topic. The link was shared on Facebook by Andrew Murray (
AndrewMurray Vineyards) and the comments from both he and Adam Lee (
Siduri Wines) got me thinking.
How should consumers react to a wine when their final impression is that it is unbalanced. Is high alcohol a singular issue with a simple remedy?
( Vines near Los Olivos, California )
The comments to the original post were most useful fodder for the
consideration of how to make my argument meaningful. The final product here is
the combination of vineyard fruit in concert the winemaking staffs' decisions
and actions. The alcohol level is part of that. The need to take action to
balance wine must pre-fermentation for any reason, sugar and the resulting
alcohol being just one, is nothing new and is the charge of the people tasked
with making the best wine they can. The decision not to intervene then becomes
a corresponding creative choice, a choice with the same risk to that of action;
that if the final wine is out of balance in some way it may be presented to
customers in that form.
In one comment on the Heimoff post Adam provided harvest
numbers for fruit from Hirsch Vineyard in the years 2009 through 2011. I've summarized that information here.
In 2009 when the Brix
(sugar level) of the grapes was at its highest, thus more alcohol, the acidity
was also the strongest eliminating the need to add acid to balance the must
they fermented the wines from. The Brix trend in 2010 and 2011 was down (by
1.2% potential alcohol from 09 to 11), yet these were the recent vintages
that required an acid addition. From the winemaker’s perspective Adam makes it
clear that the 2009 grapes came in from the vineyard better balanced, requiring
less intervention. Fair enough. Adam didn’t mention any objective differences
he observed in the products, and without tasting them myself it would be hard
for me to really say what difference this could make to the consumer.
I wondered would the 2011 wine with 1.2% less alcohol offer the same
fruit character, acidity and tannins as its older sibling from 2009? If so, I
might prefer the wine at 13.3% alcohol and would see the intervention as a
positive act, producing what I thought was a better balanced wine. Or I might
not.
The point being made was that when action was needed based
on the balance of sugar, pH and strength of the grape’s acid content, it was
NOT the year the sugar was the highest! The lingering question which Adam
left the reader with was “So in which vintage was the juice more balanced and
in which vintage will the wine be most balanced?”
Good point. The sweet spot in any year for what a winemaker
might be seeking in fruit could naturally contain the potential for higher
alcohol. Will the final wine be any better or worse balanced in this situation?
A winemaker’s decision to act or not should tell us something. They think the
final product is going to be made best with or without a particular
intervention. We indulge their passion and experience because we want to enjoy
the outcomes right?
The ultimate perception of balance is on the palate of the
consumer though, and exactly what that means in any one situation is just as
dynamic as the choices made to produce a wine. It is likely that between two wines
made from the same fruit by different winemakers, making different decisions
that neither would be consistently labeled balanced or unbalanced by a panel of
tasters. From this I conclude that there is no objectivity in discussing what someone should have done to
make a “better” wine. Unless a wine is universally flawed, all impressions of
it are personal and in some case may be unique enough that they can’t be
reconciled by others.
( Vines at Michel-Schlumberger in Sonoma )
I exchanged a series of e-mails with Adam as I was trying to
coalesce the ideas bouncing around in my head on this topic. Some of my initial
thoughts were tangential or were narrowly developed and didn’t make good sense.
Adam called me on several and offered his experience and opinion on others as
requested. Yes, typically warm growing regions experience high levels of
ripeness in grapes, but the balance of those grapes should be our primary
concern. And as Adam pointed out, you get what you get and a lot of that is out
of your control. Yes, there are people who claim that interventionist winemaking
is some new demon and that there is a historical context for consistently
high-quality natural wines not made with all the fuss. Actually there isn’t. Interventions
in winemaking have been around since the origins of the craft (thanks again for
the reminder Adam!), and producers have adopted lots of technology in the last
several hundred years to actually improve their wines. Once again we benefit
here, because their prior practices didn’t produce pleasant wine as frequently.
Ultimately Adam indentified a couple of considerations in how
vineyard practices and winemaking decisions are a big risk mitigation puzzle,
and you have to start over each year.
{Adam}
In 2011 we had two
sections at two different vineyards (Keefer and Rosella’s – both 115 clone
coincidentally) where the yields were so low, due to poor weather at set, that
the vines never fully shut down, even after coloring up. So we had active shoot-tips and laterals all
the way up until harvest. We discovered
that these sections, even with a tiny crop, needed to hang longer to truly
taste ripe. It was odd…but much more of
a vineyard/vine thing than it was a grape thing, even.
In 2010 we had fairly
small crops across the board in California.
Despite an incredibly cool growing season, we had two tremendous heat
spikes – one in late August and one in early September. These, combined with the small crop load,
pushed sugars up dramatically in Pinot Noir (however, not in later ripening
varieties such as Cabernet or Syrah).
The heats spikes didn’t noticeably change acids, however, nor did they
change the YAN numbers (yeast available nutrients)…thus we ended up with high
alcohol, high acid, fast fermenting Pinots.
My point is that
sometimes it starts with the physiology of the plant and other times with the
grapes and sometimes things are out of your control but other times you can do
things that help the situation (we prune 2 months later now at Pisoni than we
did years ago….hoping to delay ripening.
That seems to help in most years).
{Jason}
Detailed examples of where weather and growth of specific vines in a particular
season presenting new and different challenges to the winemaker before,
during and after harvest. The change in pruning regimen in one vineyard is a
great example of learning to work with the plant to push it to a balanced place
at harvest. Note that it isn’t expected to work every year.
{Adam}
As far as the
sacrifices of intervention go….any intervention has potential positives and
potential negatives. Any
non-intervention has potential positives and potential negatives. Choosing not to do something is making a
choice with potentially negative implications.
The winemakers’ job is, in part, weighing the consequences of any
decision or non-decision and deciding which course make the most sense. In my opinion, a dogmatic approach (we always
filter, we always fine, etc.) is just as problematic when it is equally
dogmatic about not-intervening (we never chaptalize, never add water, never add
acid, etc). Both instances are occasions
where listening to and learning from the plant and the grapes is a more prudent
course than making wine based on safety or philosophy.
I think these statements bring closure to what I’ve learned
after thinking about this subject. As wine drinkers we can describe whether we
personally think a wine is balanced or not, can share what our sensory feedback
is telling us to support out assessment, but there is no way (unless we are the
winemaker) that we can be positive that the out of balance attributes were because
of or in spite of any one potential choice by said winemaker.
Many such assertions could be the a cause, or it could be the weather, the shipping and storage of the wine, or personal taste. Assuming a fair taste at every turn, it may be that I personally
find I don’t like high alcohol wines because they too often seem out of balance
to me. If that is the case then I would need to take that as a personal reminder of
what wines to buy for my own enjoyment. I would also need to keep that in mind when I reviewing wines that trended towards higher alcohol. Being fair to readers and
expressing a sensory bias would at least make me look honest. Thankfully this is not
currently the case and I expect I will be seeking out some tasty high alcohol wines to enjoy real soon. Who knows if I will find a three-peat like the
wines above in my travels again!
Thank you to Adam Lee of Siduri Wines for taking the time to answer my questions and share his winemaking experience for readers.
In this pursuit of balance it is clear that both the
producer and the consumer will benefit from better understanding each other,
keeping the focus on the shared goal and not forgetting the new challenge to making
great wine each year.
Cheers!
Jason
