| From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh | 3/9/2005 10:23:52 AM | | | | | | My version of the Barrel Tasting Weekend
This weekend I saw a tee shirt that said, "Life is Wine; all the rest is details". While I might be inclined to a slightly more complicated set values myself, I have to agree that a weekend wandering about Sonoma tasting wine, sun bright, but not hot, good food, loved one by one's side, friends to talk with ... has to be right up there among the good things.
As usual, we started out Friday afternoon at Sebastapol/Dutton Ranch. Their Chard barrel sample was its usual grapefruit flavor with lots of lees, but I know it turns out nicely. The Pinot BS were less exciting than usual, perhaps because they were still full of lees and needing clarity. I quite liked one of the Syrah BS, but not as much as the price, so we passed on futures this year and contented ourselves with some of the on-sale 00 and 01 wines. These specials are typically quite good values.
We then went on to a new place - Pellegrini/Olivet Hill. Pellegrini is an old jug vine label which has now developed three premium wine labels and a rather nice facility off of Olivet Lane. They were tasting Pinot and Chard from the barrel, both credible, on the affordable side, but insufficiently moving to get me to buy. A bottle sample of Zin was similar. It is perhaps worth checking back in a year or two to see how they progress.
Then on to Swan, as usual. They were tasting 3 zins and 2 syrahs(!) from the barrel and had specials on 4 older wines. It is no secret that I am very fond of Rod's wine and these were no except. I liked both of the Syrahs and the Mancini Zin was showing off the peak ripeness it exhibits in some years and the Stellwagen was unusually rich. One of the bottle samples was a Cuvee de Trois Pinot which led into an interesting exchange with a couple who were up from Arizona. He was an experienced barrel taster; she on her first tasting event. He was big on Pinot and decided that the C3 was one of the best values he had encountered. Over the course of some time, various other bottles got opened at someone's instigation and we progressed to some older Trenton Estate, new Trenton Estate, and Saralee's along with a couple of other wines. By this time it was long past closing so we parted with an exchange of addresses and recommendations.
While the old party at the Farmhouse Inn was certainly fun in its day, I certainly have to put in a good word for the Raford House where we have stayed the last few years. It is very pleasantly appointed, without the Farmhouse's saunas and jacuzzis and thus quieter and a more family atmosphere. With late cancelations our group didn't quite have the whole place this time, but the other couples were quickly integrated. For Friday dinner we had a simple, but very pleasant dinner out on the porch with smoked trout, baguette, a nicely ripe double creme brie, some olives, some grapes, and a couple of older wines we had brought with us. When the others returned from dinner we sat outside for a long time before finally deciding to let the chill drive us in, sharing wines and stories of the day's tasting. What a lovely way to spend a Friday evening.
Saturday we decided to focus on the northern sites and so started with David Coffaro since he opens earlier than most. Dave was in a particularly fine mood and playing Woodstock on his monster projection system. There was a bus in at the time, so it was a particularly dense party. He tasted a dozen wines, all red this time ... and fully four of them single grape! While Dave is still the master blender, creating balance and completeness, he is also clearly exploring new directions. One notable example this year was the Escuro, a blend of traditional Portuguese grape varietals from Lodi. Dave has a lot of interesting things planted, including Tannat and Aglianico, so you can be sure we will be seeing more explorations in the year to come. As always, if price is a concern, skipping Coffaro would be a bad move.
Then we looped over to the Locals Tasting Room in "downtown" Geyserville. They provide regularly open tasting facilities for Crane Canyon, Hawley, Sauvignon Republic, Peterson, Eric Ross, and Martin Family. They had 47 current and prior release wines in 10 different categories (two of which are other white and other red) plus barrel samples of a fair number. We quite liked a number of the wines we sampled and bought several, including a couple "end of vintage" specials which were great bargains.
From there we took off through Alexander Valley to Robert Young to pick up some futures and taste the barrel samples. It is quite a nice cave, though not spectacular, and the wines are excellent, but pricey.
Then a quick loop back to Stryker Sonoma which I had previously put in the category of needing a further visit. Apparently it was worth thinking so since I thought the futures were tasty enough to buy a case and was happy to supplement that with a special deal on some 2000 Syrah in the tasting room. Historically, I have associated this kind of "inventory clearance" special more with Winter Wineland, but there were numerous examples available this weekend, some quite extraordinary, e.g., 99 Eagan Ranch Zinfandel from Crane Canyon for $60 a case!
After Styker Sonoma we went back toward 101 to hit Trentadue. The barrel samples here have been quite extraordinary for the past several years, but the wine seems to be spending too much time in the barrel so that the finished wine lacks the intensity and punch of the barrel sample. The Zin is from the same vineyard which supplies Ridge with the fruit for their Geyserville Zin and, in the barrel, it tastes like a Ridge Geyserville for half the price. Finished, it is good, but not nearly as impressive.
Then, back under 101 to Ridge/Lytton Springs for a brief visit to taste only the barrel samples since they are always quite busy and we tend to have the finished wine from the ATP and Z List programs at home. This is certainly a very nice facility, befitting the quality of the wine.
Next it was on to Peterson. The gate has improved since the first visit, but I don't think the long road in has improved much. Peterson was tasting the Bradford Mountain Zin as usual and his Syrah for the first time, both of which were very rich. Fred isn't the best maker I know, but his wine never fails to deliver either.
After Peterson, it was back into Dry Creek Valley proper to the newly opened Mauritson Family Winery who were featuring absolutely mind-blowing barrel samples from Rockpile. The Zin especially was stunning. Unfortunately, it was all also expensive. This is another one that is going on my list of places to watch so that I can find out how much of that flavor really makes it to the bottle. The few bottle samples I have had urge caution.
We then went across the valley to Amphora. I had considered skipping Amphora this year because I am annoyed that Rick has stopped bottling the La Loma Block Zin separately from the rest of Mounts Vineyard. The Mounts is good, but not nearly as exquisite as the reserved block. Every one of the futures tasted good, but not quite enough to warrant the price given my annoyance. They did have a good deal on some 2000 Mounts, though. Their small facility was absolutely swamped with visitors.
The last stop of the day was back on the other side of the valley again at Nalle where we heard the story of how they managed to grow the rosemary cover over the winery (on the second try!). Nalle's wines are always good, but don't seem to quite motivate me to buy them, given all of the other really good wine available. Nice folks, though.
Dinner on Saturday was at the Dry Creek Kitchen with their tasting menu. This has always been an extraordinary experience (unlike, for example, The French Laundry) and this year was no exception. And, once again, they provided us with a double tasting flight of wines so that we had two different wines with each course. There was a couple near us who must have spent 20 minutes trying to pick a single wine to go with the tasting menu, thinking I suppose that nothing available by the glass could possibly be good enough for the experience they wanted ... but I can't see how any one wine, no matter how superb, could begin to match the experience of well-picked wines for each course. In each case, it was not that one wine was the better choice, but that each wine related to the food in a different way. This was true from the initial pairing of a Brut Rose and an Blanc de Blanc with the oysters to the final pairing of a late harvest Viognier(!) and a Zin port to go with the cheeses. And, in the middle of that, pairing Pinot Noir with halibut and having it work because of the rich poultry jus.
The evening was finished by a gathering on the porch and samples of various wines we had each picked up in our travels. What a superb day.
Sunday was started at Selby, again because they opened earlier than other. Suzie is continuing to make some great wine and seems to be growing rapidly as a winemaker, while preserving a strong sense of fun. In addition to the very tasty futures, she was also selling off some warehouse stock of some of her second labels. Monkey Business I was familiar with from Winter Wineland ... not the greatest wine ever, but at $86/case for club members a really good value. She had a new label this time called Laughing Raven which was a Barbara done entirely in stainless steel, not one chip of oak. This results in much brighter fruit than one normally associates with the grape and it will be interesting to see what I think of it in months to come.
Healdsburg has so many wineries these days that one could do a whole day's tasting and never leave town. The densest collection is the group on Front Street where Camilia, Huntington, Holdredge, and Sapphire Hill are on one side of the street and Davis Family on the other. The first two I skipped based on last year's visit, but the other three are all special.
We started at Davis Family ... the one responsible for a couple of us remarking last year that "we bought a future on a white wine!". The finished wines are quite lovely and the barrel samples again exciting. This year Guy made Rouge, a blend of Zin and Syrah which he only makes from time to time when the blend seems right. It did.
I have yet to make a purchase at Holdredge, but that may be as much because they share a space with Sapphire Hill and I get distracted. Well worth tasting, though, and perhaps more interesting to a Pinot drinker.
Sapphire Hill's Winberrie Hill Zin is mind-numbing in its intensity, but is no mere high alcohol fruit bomb since it is loaded with complexity. A great deal of this intensity has lasted into the bottle. This is certainly not a wine for every occasion, but is a real attention getter. We did not sample our other future, which is the VLH Zin, a dessert wine that was harvested at a supposed 25 brix, but which turned into 39 brix in the tank. From last year's taste, that too is a real attention getter.
Next we moved slightly north of the square to Thumbprint Cellars, newly opened. The wines here were good enough to warrant checking in again, but failed to really set themselves apart ... other than having a Pinot dense enough that he was tasting it after the Cab!
We finished in Healdsburg with Manzanita Cellars up on the north end, also newly opened. The wines were OK, but left no real impression.
We made a somewhat short day of Sunday by finishing off with Acorn prior to an unfruitful attempt to visit Chalk Hill Nursery. Acorn had unusually tasty food pairings created by Zin, the restaurant. All of the wines tasted were good, as usual, but they were not tasting the Zin, having sold out of the futures following their medal winning success with the last vintage.
Looking back on the whole of it ... a very pleasant endeavor since it was a fine weekend ... with a glass of the '01 Sebastopol/Dutton Ranch Chard to sip from ... I suppose the two most stunning wines in terms of sheer mesmerizing intensity were probably the Mauritson Rockpile Zin and the Sapphire Hill Winberrie Hill Zin, though there were other contenders. For Bordeaux-like elegance, I would probably have to pick the Scion. For surprising new twist, probably the very modestly priced Laughing Raven Barbara although Coffaro's Escuro might also take this prize. For current release or barrel sample Syrah, a dramatically increasing group, I think I would have to go with Swan, Great Oak. For buyable Pinot, I would have to pick the Swan Cuvee de Trois, as really delicious and a great value, even though it wasn't really a current release.
All in all, a remarkably good collection of wine and a great way to spend a spring weekend. |
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| To: sense who wrote (434) | 1/7/2016 9:39:36 PM | | From: Savant | | | | Time flies, and Vintners ....umm...lie....to placate the public's idea of what should be.....
(I'm in favor of knowing the actual, not some made up number)
(no reflection on this board's vintners)
washingtonpost.com
The big wine lie
By Roberto A. Ferdman January 6
(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Behind the picturesque rows of grapevines at vineyards around the world, winemakers are bending the truth. It's not the sort of thing most wine drinkers would have noticed, because it's happening behind the scenes, before bottles are shipped out, and it's tough to tell by taste. But it's hard to imagine anyone would appreciate it.
Many winemakers have been a little loose with the information shared on their labels. Not with the region, vineyard, year and varietal, which people — both expert and not — look to when buying wine, but with the alcohol content, which they have been misreporting on bottles for decades.
The percentages reported on bottles aren't the precise measurements consumers likely believe them to be. A number of factors, including tastes, expectations, associations, rating systems and even international tax laws appear to be nudging winemakers to round the alcoholic kick of their respective wines up or down a notch on labels in ways that might make the bottles more attractive to prospective drinkers. And the problem is widespread.
"The errors, whether deemed 'small' or 'large,' are systematic," said Kate Fuller, who teaches agricultural economics at Montana State University.
This past fall, Fuller, along with a team of researchers that included Julian Alston, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics of the University of California at Davis, and James Lapsley, a retired professor who has written and researched extensively about wine, set out to test two theories. The first was something experts have been warning about for some time: Wines, for various reasons, have been getting more alcoholic. The second was something else: Winemakers have been inaccurately reporting the alcoholic contents of their wines.
The team dusted off data from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which oversees and tests all wine imported for sale in Ontario, Canada. The sample included more than 127,000 wines (roughly 80,000 of them red, 47,000 of them white) imported over the eighteen years between 1992 and 2009. And it told an interesting tale.
As suspected, wines are getting boozier. On average, they were about a percentage point stronger in 2009 (13.8 percent alcohol by volume) than they were in 1992 (12.7 percent). "There was growth in alcohol percentage in every country," the researchers wrote. The chart below shows the worldwide increase over time.
Some suspect that global warming and the rising heat index, which could be altering an already fussy production process, are to blame. Michael Kaiser, who is the director of public affairs for Wine America, a national association that represents American wineries, says the sugar content of the grape, which in turn affects the alcohol content of the wine, is altered by climate. "In some places, winemakers have had to change the types of grapes they're growing to adjust."
But Fuller and the team believe it has less to do with external factors than it does with the practices of the actual winemakers. "Our findings lead us to think that the rise in alcohol content of wine is primarily man-made, even if as an unintended consequence of choices made by grape growers and winemakers," they wrote.
Kaiser, for his part, admits that evolving tastes might be playing a role, too. "The palette of the consumer is probably partly to blame," he said. "Americans tend to like sweeter beverages. So winemakers might be leaving the grapes on a little longer to get a wine that is a little fruitier and has a higher alcohol content."
Many winemakers, however, don't appear to want to let consumers know about the trend. In fact, they seem to be going out of their way to conceal it. The analysis uncovered a sizable discrepancy between the alcohol content reported on bottles and the actual alcohol amount observed during testing, largely due to systemic underreporting.
It's legal. In the United States, wines with 14 percent alcohol by volume or less are allowed to have a range of 1.5 percentage points from the amount stated on the bottle. In Australia and New Zealand, it's 1.5 percentage points, too. And in Europe, the permitted range is half a percentage point, which is about as stringent as it gets.
But Fuller says it is no less disturbing. "I thought there would be some discrepancies between the actual and reported [alcohol contents], but I didn't expect so many would be underreporting," said Fuller.
Nearly 60 percent of the more than 100,000 bottles observed had more alcohol by volume than their bottles would lead people to believe, while just a shade over 20 percent had less.
On average, wines around the world tended to understate the alcohol percentage by volume by 0.15 percentage points. New World wines (red and whites from the United States, South America, Australia, etc.), underreported by closer to 0.2 percentage points on average, while Old World Wines (largely those from Europe) tended to understate it by just over 0.1 percentage points. The wines from Chile, Argentina, the United States and Spain, meanwhile, which underreported alcohol content by 0.27, 0.24, 0.23, and 0.21 percentage points respectively, carried the least accurate labels.
These discrepancies likely won't make much of a difference — in terms of health or driving ability — if you are having a single glass of wine, but could if you're having more, Fuller warned. What's more, they're averages — meaning that many wine bottles have been underreporting the alcohol percentage they contain by a good deal more. In the study, the researchers used choice words to describe what they observed: "substantial, pervasive, systematic errors in the stated alcohol percentage of wine."
Although it's hard to pin down the precise reasons for the prevalence of these inaccuracies, there are a few things that are likely at play.
There is, for one, something practical: taxes. In the United States, for instance, wines with more than 14 percent alcohol by volume are taxed at a higher rate (the federal excise tax increases by $0.50 per gallon for those above that threshold). Bulk winemakers, especially those selling some of the cheaper wines available, might be underreporting the alcohol content of their offerings in order to avoid the added tax, since their customers are more price-sensitive.
This quirk has led some to question whether it might be reasonable to change the definition of table wines, which have less than 14 percent alcohol by volume, especially given the broader increase in the alcohol content of wines.
"Maybe it’s time for the government to reevaluate the alcohol levels for tax reasons," Kaiser said.
But it's a matter of tastes, too. People, as well as experts who rate wines, expect a certain narrow range from specific varietals (more, for instance, from a Cabernet Sauvignon, which is heavier, than a Pinot Noir, which is lighter), and winemakers, rather than shunning this desire entirely, cater to it by tweaking their labels.
A quick look at the distribution between the declared and actual alcohol percentages shows how this affects the greater wine landscape. Notice how the wines more or less all fall into one of six declared percentages (in the chart on the top, below) but many more actual percentages (in the chart on the bottom, below).
That right there is winemakers bundling their wines into "desired" alcohol contents, rather than actual ones. Fuller and the team point out that this is likely deliberate, since wineries must know the actual alcohol content of their wine given how easy and inexpensive it is to measure it with precision today.
"I have spoken to many winemakers about this question over the past five years or so," said Alston, who co-authored the study. "Let me say this: I would expect most winemakers to have a fairly precise idea of the alcohol content of the wines they make."
At the heart of the discrepancy, however, is a funny little tug of war wine drinkers are forcing producers to partake in. People — on the whole — tend to favor wines that are less alcoholic. This alone means that, all things equal, rounding alcohol percentages down is better than rounding up (and, of course, not rounding at all). But it's being exacerbated by a concurrent demand for wine with more intense and ripe flavors.
Consumers want "wines with 'bigger' or fuller flavors, but they do not want (or at least, do not want to know about) the higher alcohol content that typically comes with those attributes," Fuller said.
So winemakers have made do by giving people what they want — wines with bigger bodies — and hiding from them what they don't — the extra alcohol that comes with it. And it's hard to see why that would stop, so long as it's legal, and effective, and preferences don't change. Well that, and people don't find out about the little fibs.
“What remains to be resolved is why consumers choose to pay winemakers to lie to them," the researchers wrote. |
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