Why do Californians seem hell-bent on establishing so-called appellations? Well, I guess I understand why: local pride, a wish to create a point of distinction from others in the marketplace, and a hope eventually to be able to sit back and charge twice or ten times what your wine is worth like they do in Napa and Bordeaux.
But it doesn't work. What does happen is land gets more expensive. Napa cult cabernet sauvignons shelfed at $100 are generally made from grapes that go for $10,000 per ton because they are raised on land that goes for $100,000 per acre. Good Mendocino cab can be had for $10 because it's made from $1,000/ton fruit which is grown on $10,000 land. See a pattern?
So fame inflates prices, but also costs. That's why Andy Beckstoffer has been arguing that Napa growers can't make any money.
Any extrinsic reason (i.e. on the label instead of in the bottle) to buy wine runs up the cost, so fame is definitely the enemy of value. For most people's purposes, a Timex keeps pretty much the same time as a Rolex. Duh. But I'm saying more than this. I'm saying the economics of a successful appellation actually deteriorate quality, particularly in the New World where we're still working out best winegrowing practices.
Many of our greatest vineyards are dry farmed. These tend to have deeper roots, and to be more resistant to seasonal variations. You can't much do that in Napa on $150,000/acre land, because you lose yield per acre. So there's an argument that the acclaim associated with fame is the enemy of terroir.
Many enlightened practices, particularly experimental ones, are difficult to implement on hyped-up real estate, because return on investment is imperiled. Napa real estate is $100,000 per acre, compared with $10,000 or less in Mendocino. I don't believe the average Napa wine is over ten times as good as the average Mendocino wine. Mendocino leads the State in organic farming research while Napa trails behind most other regions. Growers in the high-hype regions just don't take chances experimenting with minimum tillage, compost teas, and organic certification at the risk of losing tonnage.
In established appellations like Bordeaux and Burgundy, we see distinctive differences between producers which have become engrained and are systematically maintained through vineyard and cellar practices, many of which are regulated by law.
In New World, no such regulations exist anywhere. We want the hype without the restrictions. Furthermore, the fame of places like Napa and lately Walla Walla preceded the actual plantation of most of the grapes. In conditions like this, appellation thinking pushes winemakers to imitate each other. The appellation style takes precedence over developing distinctive house styles, and many winemakers are either afraid or conjoined from doing something offbeat. Whatever the reason, we see writer after writer, wine judge after wine judge, declaring that 75 Napa cabernets all tasted exactly alike. (There are many exceptions – Diamond Creek, Chateau Montelena, Mayacamas, and maybe 50 others--but these are the aristocracy, who don’t enter fairs because they can’t afford a Silver Medal, and are trying to distance themselves from the corporate appellation phenomenon.)
I believe an important cause of this sameness is what Nicholas Joly claims -- that without living soil, a place cannot assert its identity. But banks and investors don't like weeds, and highly paid consultants feel the need to "do something." So we see mostly manipulation in Napa's vineyards, and as little role for fickle Mother Nature as can be constrained.
Other problems. Who wants Napa traffic? And since fame hit the Central Coast, the real wine devotees have to fight their way into tasting rooms past frat fools who are just there to drink the spitbucket à la Sideways.
I say that it's too early to establish appellations in California. It's mostly being pushed by corporate interests-come-lately who want to piggyback on the hard work of the small entrepreneurial pioneer next door. To that dying breed, I appeal – build your brand, not your neighborhood.
Comments
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
Hi Clark Smith,
I read your blog pretty regularly and always find interesting wine comments. As someone in the wine world, I thought you might be interested in a recent online petition launched to protect wine place names and label misuse. It can be viewed at www.protectplace.com. The petition is aimed at consumers in an effort to show that it is not just wineries and trade people that care about this issue. I would love it if you could help by spreading the word in protecting our great wine regions like Napa Valley, Porto, Portugal, Champagne, France and Oregon…just to name a few. You can help by posting the petition on your website and it might even stir up some interesting conversation.
Cheers,
Jennie
Center for Wine Origins
Clark:
Submitted by Clark Smith on
Dear Jennie:
As I stated in my article about Mondovino, I believe in wine’s ability to express place, and Vinovation spends most of its time and resources supporting winemakers who engage in, as we put it, “connecting the human soul to the soul of a place by rendering its grapes into liquid music.”
Not all of our clients are particularly interested in this. Simplistically, 90% of winemakers make 10% of the wine out there, and they are artisans trying to stay alive pursuing distinctive styles which express their terroir. That leaves 90% of the wine that’s sold – the “McWine industry,” who just want to deliver a predictable, consistent product which slakes the public’s established thirst for a well-understood combo of flavor and label appeal. The last thing these winemakers want is a distinctive, unusual flavor profile. They just want delicious, rich, refined, yummy flavors which lie within an expected range of style. Chardonnays better be oaky and malolactic; Pinot Grigio better not be.
I viewed the www.protectplace.com. site with interest. As you requested, I want to publicize the opportunity for my readers to visit the site and evaluate its merits. I’m sure you’ll get some signatures for your petition.
I hope some will use my “Comments” function on this site to express supporting and opposing views. We agree on much, I also am disquieted by things I saw.
I do find that there is value in delineating regions and in exploring ways to anchor winemaking styles to them. But not as a means for just increase hype. That’s the bane of both good value and quality exploration.
I spent some time reviewing your site. It’s a very odd mix of strange bedfellows, and its members cannot have parallel agendas.
Without question, the label names “champagne” (which should designate only wines from the Champagne district of France), “sherry,” (not popularized as Jerez) and port (not Oporto) have been shamelessly expropriated throughout the world, with the U.S. being the most persistent offender.
We even went so far, in 1999, as to resign from the international wine community as embodied in the OIV rather than to give up these unscrupulous practices, mostly because of political pressure exerted by Gallo Winery (Andre Champagne). This story can be spun a lot of ways, and surely the Europeans dealt with us unfairly, but we were so out of integrity on this issue for so many decades that I, for one, can understand why the Europeans chose to fight unreasonableness with unreasonableness.
To our credit, we Americans have managed on almost every high-end brand to replace “Champagne” with “Sparkling Wine” (albeit “méthode champenoise,” which is perhaps just a tip of the hat.) The only significant hangers-on are Gallo and Korbel, who both, ironically, actually making extremely good products, but continue to be marginalized in the press because they cling to the “champagne” nomenclature. So there is justice in the world.
On the other hand, we’ve never come up with functioning names for sherry and for port which can communicate to the consumer these wine processing types. You make a fortified sweet red wine, whatcha gonna call it?
You’re going to call it “port.” But so what? My gracious colleague Antonio Graça at Sogrape, which owns several Oporto producers including Sandeman, declined my apology for my countrymen thusly, “Let them please continue to call it “port” – it will only send their customers to try our real ports grown on schist, and then they will never go back to the imitations!” I wholeheartedly to agree. Because if it’s a legitimate proposition, terroir will out.
Perhaps the same can be said for my own WineSmith Faux Chablis, which while it points at the possibility for that style to be made in California, also more importantly opens up a lot of consumer appreciation to explore the real thing.
So the Europeans are getting what they want, and God bless.
But now we swing around to Walla Walla, the most hilarious excuse for an appellation in history, since its fame as a winery address pretty much preceded the actual plantation of grapes. Even more humorously, the weighty Red Mountain Cabernets which Walla Walla wineries are known for don’t resemble the delicate, minerally wines that can be grown in Walla Walla itself. God is such a joker sometimes. So I’m having trouble divining the point of the website’s petition. Who, apart from all these local wineries who are members of the coalition, is trying to steal the appellation’s marketing clout?
Napa Valley’s history is similar. Like most people, I first heard of Napa Valley in 1956, when its name was lyrically featured in the catchy musical “The Most Happy Fella.” Again, the fame of the Napa Valley preceded the establishment of 95% of the wineries now there. At that time, the Valley was almost entirely planted to Zinfandel, Carignane, and the white workhorse Chenin Blanc (which prior to 1955 was known as “White Zinfandel,” after the horse mentioned in the Illiad, weird as that seems). Not a lot of cabernet, though tasty ones were made by four wineries. No chardonnay worth mentioning.
I agree that shell games like Beringer’s Napa Ridge and Bronco’s American Canyon-bottled Charles Shaw have sought to defraud and rip off the power of California’s place name. But if the locals really want us to believe in their cause, they can start by reinstating the Suisun Valley, which by virtue of the Suisun River’s status as a tributary to the Napa River, is and always has been part of the Napa Valley appellation, since geographically it does lie in the Napa Valley. It was the Napa County folks who some 25 years ago lobbied BATF to chop off the appellation at the County line. Napa Valley, indeed. Nobody in Napa County wants to protect the real Napa Valley.
Within said hallowed appellation, sub-appellations like Stag’s Leap only exist because land grabs near Warren Winiarski’s Stag’s Leap Winery, of Paris fame, want to bask in the glow. Appellations, California style, aren’t about creating distinctive house styles. They’re about corporate parasitism onto the hard work and luck of the small guy.
Lastly, the characterization of the entire State of Washington as a regional terroir seems a bit of a stretch. You praise the notion of “specific soils, terrain, and climates.” For heaven’s sake, Washington State is a great place to grow grapes, but it isn’t a legitimate place of origin. Federal legislation establishes all U.S. states and counties as appellations, but the political borders should be ignored in sorting out wine flavor effects. In particular, Washington contains vineyard plantings on perhaps the most varied soil types, terrains and climates of any State, from the waterlogged Olympic Peninsula to the island vineyards of the San Juans to the high altitude plantings of the Snoqualmie Ridge and Red Mountain, to the dry deserts of the Eastern plateau. People -- are you actually asking us to imagine this all tastes the same? And again, what menace are we protecting this appellation from? Are there some inappropriate space aliens trying to label wines as “Washington State?”
Perusing the Declaration of protectplace,com, I think there are many, many more than your “handful” of “truly extraordinary places on earth from which great wine is consistently produced.” Much is still undiscovered, and still less gets fewer the kudos they deserve. I question whether “familiarity is synonymous with quality,” as is claimed on your site. I would certainly grant you that familiarity is synonymous with overpricing.
Again, we agree on much. I do find value in delineating regions and exploring ways to anchor winemaking styles to them. It shouldn’t take more than a few hundred years to convert those delineations into distinctive winemaking traditions, as the French and Italians have done. Once winemakers cement local customs of winegrowing, our descendants may, if they wish, begin to outlaw experimentation and variation as has occurred in Europe. Then we’ll have real appellations, for good or ill.
I realize I’m currently regarded as a fringe element in this discussion. I’m writing in the hope that my readers might chime in to indicate support for a rational approach to appellation development.
Calling all angels: Anybody out there know how to set up a site where people can lodge their opinions regarding impeding or refining the appellation creation process?