Musings

The Good Side of Stinky

Submitted by Clark Smith on Thu, 11/09/2006 - 1:32pm

Get used to it. In an otherwise perfect wine, that tiny faint hint of …what is that? Rotten eggs? Mildewed washcloth? Clam bog? Or maybe the wine’s just closed – you sense it has lots to give, but the aroma seems all zipped up like a computer file, and you can’t get at it. It’s not easy for the experienced connoisseur, to say nothing of the novice consumer, to switch gears into thinking of reductive strength as a mark of quality and ageworthiness.

Pimp My Wine!

Submitted by Clark Smith on Wed, 11/01/2006 - 11:32am

French Ban Sensible Winemaking Altogether

Submitted by Clark Smith on Wed, 10/25/2006 - 4:50pm

The Pinochio wine debacle seems to have hopped the border from Italy to France. INAO has proposed a ban on oak alternatives to barrels for wines of appellation.

Skill in the Cellar vs Benign Neglect

Submitted by Clark Smith on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 12:23am

Kudos to Eric Asimov and his respondents to his Watch What I Do, Not What I Say blog concerning interventionism in winemaking. My initial response included a reference to "field oxidation" which I promised to expand on here in more depth than I felt appropriate to hog on Eric's site.

Wine without sulfites, Roman-style

Submitted by Clark Smith on Sat, 10/21/2006 - 11:14pm

Two points to begin. First, I don't subscribe to the health arguments. Since the human body produces a gram of sulfites per day -- ten times as much sulfites as you find in a bottle of wine -- how can there be an allergic reaction to sulfites? And second, there are many technical methods to make wine without sulfites -- pasteurization, as is done for Japanese sake, to name one. That's not my interest.

Sympathy for the Devil

Submitted by Clark Smith on Mon, 10/16/2006 - 6:38pm

Kudos to Eric Asimov of The Pour. His critical but sympathetic portrait of the much maligned Michel Rolland is a model for wine journalism, particularly in support of intervention in winemaking.

First time I’ve heard this truth written so succinctly. Of course winemakers intervene! That’s our job, just like any other chef. Do you want your dinner to “make itself?”

2006 Harvest Oddities

Submitted by Clark Smith on Fri, 09/15/2006 - 12:31pm

It seems like they all are. After the intense early September heat of 2004 and the extreme cold of 2005, we’ve seen our share of recent physiological peculiarities in California fruit. But Nature continues to find new motifs with which to toy with us and test our mettle.

Good Structure as the Key to Soulfulness

Submitted by Clark Smith on Fri, 09/08/2006 - 11:00pm

Enough is too much

Submitted by Clark Smith on Fri, 08/25/2006 - 1:30pm

In the August 2006 edition of The Wine Spectator, we see once again the old armchair viticulturist refrain regarding crop yield that less is always more. James Laube’s assessment of the 2005 vintage is that it should be a good vintage, but he finds that its size casts that into doubt. Putting aside that the record crop is mostly based on record bearing acreage rather than high yields per acre, I contend that in many cases, (Napa Cabernet being the most glaring), quality suffers mainly from under cropping.

God's Country

Submitted by Clark Smith on Sat, 08/19/2006 - 11:31am

California winemaking gives me the creeps. And I'm not alone. Everything winemakers do is completely dependent on hispanic labor. Yet we treat these people like animals. You have no idea.

When I negotiate a sale of a piece of Napa real estate to be converted to vineyards, the first thing we do, before the D9's can fell trees and rip land, is to hire Mexicans to hand-carry out the bedsprings (which foul the backhoes of the machinery) left behind by the displaced tenants.

Postmodern Winemaking