I’m lucky to regularly meet winemakers and winery owners from all over the world. Their conversations with me pass on so much about wine — what it means to them, what they themselves have learned about it and how better to appreciate it.
I’d like to share some of these conversations, passing on to you what these folk first gave to me.
About alcohol levels
“You see the level of alcohol by volume on a label of wine because that’s the law; but there are so many other chemical things that make the wine what it is, such as its acidity, the pH, polyphenols, tannins — more than 20 families of elements. Wine is a synergy of all of these. When one of them is out of whack, then the wine isn’t going to be pleasurable. Looking at alcohol alone is an American reductionist perspective. … What if the wine wanted it to be that way? … You can have a wine that is at 13 (percent alcohol by volume) that tastes ‘hot,’ but also one that’s 16 that is yummy. It’s about the balance, the ratio, the interaction of all these things that are in the wine.”
— Kale Anderson, director of winemaking, Pahlmeyer; and co-owner and winemaker, Kale Wines, both Napa Valley
Wine as a living thing
“Wine is the only agricultural product that is always in motion. We have dried beans or frozen vegetables, lots of things that we can take and stop in time. You cannot stop wine; that captivates me. I had a 45-year-old (red) Burgundy that was still alive. That captivated me. The second thing that most people don’t realize is that, with wine, it’s a five- to 10-year journey to understand what you’ve created or purchased. If I screw up a meal, I can throw it away. But if I screw up a tank of wine, I don’t get another chance to make it again.”
— Michael Trujillo, president and director of winemaking, Sequoia Grove, Napa Valley
Tannin talk
“When you need to describe the tannin of a red wine, use an analogy about fabric; there are tannins that are like corduroy, or silk, or suede, or unfinished leather.”
— Graham Weerts, head winemaker, Capensis Wines, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Biodynamic grape growing
“Biodynamics is more an attitude than anything. It is not ‘crisis management,’ dealing with problems in the vineyard. It’s looking at the closed circle and how all of nature is interrelated. If the plant is the aim, then they use (synthetic) fertilizer. But for us, the soil is the aim, so we do not; we use other organic material. In a handful of healthy soil, there are more than 60,000 beneficial microorganisms. We augment that.”
— Fred Loimer, Weingut Loimer, Kamptal, Niederosterreich, Austria
Terroir, terror, terroiristes
“ ‘Terroir’ is a term that we have invented to express what cannot be expressed, the mix of soil and microclimate. But the human is in the middle of it; the human is now part of the terroir because the person’s decisions about winemaking influences the translation of the terroir into the wine. … The biggest obstacle to terroir is the ego of the human being; as soon as you imposed your ego on the wine, your wines will taste like little of anything. Too much of the human is a travesty of winemaking.”
— Edouard Moueix, Etablissements Jean-Pierre Moueix, and winemaker, Chateau Magdelaine, Bordeaux, France
Geek talk that means something
“High pH, and you get round, softer wines; low pH, ‘skinny’ wines. … Chardonnay is the red wine of white grapes: Without barrel fermentation and malolactic (fermentation), it’s emasculated. … Any color in white wines comes from tannins; they’re in white grapes too.
— David Ramey, Ramey Wine Cellars, Sonoma, California
The role of soil
“Wines made from grapes that grow on calcareous soil are linear; they last two minutes in taste on my palate. That’s Burgundy, of course, but also Gigondas and Barolo. If the soil is granite, the wine is very different: All the energy is upfront. It’s like the snout of a wolf, like wearing a beard. The wine is powerful but not lengthy (as with the wine from calcareous soil). It’s never round or ‘fat.’ Then, the more clay there is mixed with the rocks, and you obtain ‘round’ wines, super-soft, all black fruit flavors. Merlot is clay, Pomerol the best example.”
— Pedro Parra, terroir consultant, winemaker, Clos des Fous, Chile
One-offs
“We call our wines ‘wines of the mountains’ because everything they receive comes from the (Andes) mountains: weather, altitude, water, soil.”
— Sebastian Zuccardi, head winemaker, Familia Zuccardi, Argentina
“On tough economic times, Europeans lower the quantity of their wine consumption, not the quality; whereas, in the same situation, Americans lower the quality of consumption, not the quantity.”
— Marcello Lunelli, vice president, Cantine Ferrari, Italy
In a red wine, “wood should be the frame, not the picture.”
— Bruno Prats, Prats and Symington, Douro, Portugal
“If it’s fine for everybody, it’s perfect for nobody.”
— Benoit Gouez, chef de cave, Moet & Chandon, Champagne, France
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