In a couple of weeks we have our big annual partners meeting in Houston. This weekend was an opportunity to talk about the heart of the business, without profit & loss statements, spreadsheets, or PowerPoint presentations—and to introduce the winery to new friends. All interspersed in discussions of politics, minerals, oil & gas exploration, and relationships (yes, guys do talk about these things, obliquely perhaps).

We’ve shared a few nice bottles of wine, too—among them: 1999 Merus, 2007 Ladera Cabernet, and a 2009 Emeritus Pinot. I’m thankful that the guys still think our wines are fit to be poured alongside these stunners. We had a pretty spectacular meal out last night. If you find yourself in Breckenridge do yourself a favor and check out Ember.

Define What Is “Better”

In any discussion of wine, in order to get beyond endless argument over personal opinion there has to be agreement on what constitutes “better”—exactly what is it that makes wine A superior to wine B. This is a non-trivial question that seems to be completely glossed over in the discussions of the merits of wine reviews. In my opinion, in a general sense there is no answer to this question. But my opinion aside, in order to put numerical values on wines there must be universal agreement on the value to be assigned to specific attributes. Simply put, in a research setting the first and most important question is: “what is the goal of this project?” For example, we might say “Chardonnay that shows more minerality, fruitiness, lack of vegetal notes, and creamy texture is better; our desire is to increase these attributes in our wine, so what can we do to increase these attributes?”

Set Up The Experiments

Perhaps we could explore the effects of canopy, crop load and irrigation management in the vineyard. Or maybe we could study options in fruit handling, processing temperature, juice settling, yeast selection, barrel choice, and lees stirring in the winery. First we have to define what are we willing to change, and then rigorously produce wines that reflect the range of these options as closely as possible to how we would treat them in routine production. Ideally, we would do this over several vintages to eliminate uncontrolled seasonal variables in the results.

Train The Tasting Panel

Aye and here’s the rub. Training the tasting panel—more than one person; my preference is for 5 to 7 experienced tasters—is the single most critical control point in assuring that the evaluation of experimental results has any meaning. In the research setting, reference standards for the attributes being tested for must be established, e.g. from the example above: “this is what we mean by ‘mineral,’ this is ‘fruity,’ this is ‘vegetal’ and this is ‘creamy.’” Reference compounds are dosed into neutral wines, and the panel members are drilled to develop their ability to recognize them. If a reference can’t be reliably identified it has to be dropped from the trial. If a member can’t reliably identify a standard obvious to the rest of the panel, that taster has to be removed from the trial. (I recall hearing that Ann Noble at UC Davis used to reward her tasting panel trainees with cookies when they got good at picking out particular attributes. I never found that motivation all that useful, but then the panels I trained weren’t hungry students.)

Present The Trial

This is the easy part. The setting needs to be well lit without distracting sights, sounds, drafts, or especially aromas. The glasses need to be all the same and well-cleaned, without any residue of the cleaner. Importantly, the wines to be evaluated need to be presented to the panel on more than one occasion (3 to 5 seems to be optimal) and these evaluations should be made at the same time of day in each instance. Of course the samples are presented blind and in random order. Reference standards need to be included in the blind presentation—these are to control for panel members having a bad day; if a taster who is usually good at identifying the attributes fails on the standards, their results should be excluded. When I would evaluate a multivariate trial, the tasting sheet for each wine would have the attributes listed, with a 100mm long straight line next to each and the words “low” and “high” underneath the lines to the left and right, respectively. The tasters were required only to put a mark on the line indicating their perception of the intensity of each attribute. The protocol I most often employed was to present the trial wines in ensemble; the tasters were allowed to smell all, taste all, smell all again, and then mark their sheets. The trial wines were presented in different orders for each taster and in each tasting session.

Evaluate The Data

I would slap a ruler on each line and measure where each mark was located: 0mm to 100mm. Each record in the data set comprised the session ID, the taster ID, the trial wine ID, the attribute ID and the associated intensity “value.” A first cleanup pass on the dataset would scrub the records for session/taster/attribute combinations where reference standards were poorly identified. The references I used were usually pretty obvious, so I somewhat arbitrarily set the cutoff at 60; e.g. if a taster failed to identify a standard with an intensity value of 60 or more, their session results for that attribute were excluded from the data set. Finally, I fed the data into statistics software to crunch the numbers. The most robust results came from principal component or factor analyses; non-parametric methods that maximize the variance in the observational data, and then rotate the experimental treatment axes relative to the observational vectors. In the example above, say if the wines produced from different crop loads grouped along the vector for perceived minerality, or perhaps the vector for perceived fruitiness, we could conclude that crop load affects these attributes of the wine.

I don’t own any of the data I generated from my days as a researcher, and I worked for private companies that did not publish the results of the work I did. So to illustrate this kind of analysis I have lifted a pretty decent graphic from a published study exploring the effects of yeast selection on the attributes of Sauvignon Blanc: I leave it to the (very) interested reader to look deeper into this statistical approach.

The Bottom Line

What I have tired to convey here is not the method, but rather a sense of the level of rigor I believe is necessary to perform an objective evaluation of wine—to be able to conclude with reasonable certainty that one wine is “better” than another, according to some specific definition of what constitutes better-ness. Would it surprise anyone to find that I view any expectation of inviolate veracity for 100 point scores to be hopelessly naive? Given the work I have done, I have earned the right to tell y’all that any insistence that someone reviewing many wines a day can approach tasting with this level of rigor and reproducibility is misplaced to the point of irrationality.

In The Trenches

I have huge respect for anyone who reviews wines for a living. It is hard work. In the argument over the meaning of scores—inflated or not—I come down on the side that scores are a shorthand valued by a culture that views everything in terms of a competition and shuns relativism. I truly believe that most if not all reviewers would prefer not to use scores if they had a choice, but that consumers demand them. I also believe that a certain slice of consumers are 100% to blame for the expectation that scores must reflect some sort of absolute. I don’t see a single reviewer claiming omniscience, infallibility, or the inviolability of their scores or evaluation methodologies. And I don’t fault wineries for touting scores to move their product—that’s just good business sense. But anyone who buys by scores and truly expects that anybody’s 96 is objectively “better” than an 88, every time, to every person—as the sage said, there’s one of them born every minute.

Yeah, I said it. Oh yeah, I really did. Sucker.

Today I was reading the February 2012 issue of Road & Track magazine (in paper, thank you—I’ve been a subscriber for nearly 40 years) and was struck by this bit from the opening “Road Ahead” column by Editor In-Chief Matt DeLorenzo:

‘What’s a good car?’ It’s a common question put to enthusiasts, yet impossible to answer because invariably part of the reason it’s asked is to validate the questioner’s own opinion. What really is a good car? More often than not, you end up engaging in Socratic dialogue to find out the person’s needs or wants before settling on an answer.

A better question is what car do you love? The beauty of this approach lies in its subjectivity, as opposed to the objectivity demanded by the ‘what’s a good car’ question. If someone is seeking your opinion, shouldn’t the answer be more subjective than objective? This also opens the door to allow passion to enter the discussion rather than simple data.

You can love a car for many reasons, both ration­al and irrational, the latter being eminently more fun than the former. So… we’ve decided to bring you a loose collection of cars we love. We aren’t saying these are the definitive best cars in the world, but rather cars worthy of not just your attention, but more importantly, your affection.

Subjectivity. Passion. Fun. Affection.

I could not agree more with Mr. DeLorenzo. As he suggests with cars, the joy of wine appreciation is sucked out by the “simple data” implied by scores. I have come to realize that James Suckling gushing “I’m 100 points on that!” is more expressing enthusiasm and emotional honesty about a particular experience than he is saying “this 100 point wine is objectively better than that 96 point wine.” Score inflation? Wines getting better? No, I don’t think either. I think that reviewers are just getting more enthusiastic about wines they love.

I wish reviewers would give up the pretense of objectivity. If we acknowledge that when a reviewer gives a high score it means they love that particular wine—no more, no less, and with no expectation that that score fits in a wider, objective context—we would all be happier. Kumbaya.

Here we are again. The difference this time around is that there is a hard number on the lips of the critical:
The narrative being pedaled suggests that wines over this level generally are problematic, inferior, out-of-balance, not true-to-type, lacking: terroir, focus, complexity precision, nuance, etc.

I disagree.

And I’ve commented here and elsewhere that I have noted zero interest in the topic among the visitors to our Tasting Salon. But the “over 14% sucks” meme has a life of its own, it’s out there, it won’t die; sort of like “the President is a foreign-born Muslim.”

Because of this persistent media attention, I figured that it was bound to happen—sooner or later—that one of my guests was going to comment on the “high” alcohol levels on the labels of my wines.

It happened like this. Three nice people came in and tasted through the five wines I had on offer: three Pinots, a Châteauneuf-du-Pape-style blend and last, a varietal Syrah. They seemed to be enjoying them. After the Syrah one of the guests asked “What’s the alcohol on these wines?” I answered “between 14.5% and 14.9%” and a couple of them started muttering “oh, that’s high—so-and-so won’t drink it.”

I politely asked them if they could have guessed that the wines had alcohols approaching 15% without being told, and each of them admitted “no” they couldn’t have. One commented that “…these wines don’t taste hot.” I explained that ethanol doesn’t really taste hot, but that other alcohols do—propanols, butanols, pentanols, etc. and their esters and oxidation products, collectively called congeners in the distillation biz.

These fermentation products are more likely to be produced by yeast under stress, and high initial sugar as well as high final ethanol concentrations are potent stressors, as are nutrient and co-factor deficiencies. In my winemaking I go out of my way to minimize the stresses on yeast (though not so far as to throw diammonium phosphate—DAP, a source of ammonia—at every ferment) and so the levels of these congeners are low in my finished wines. No “heat” on the palate.

I further explained that in fact few of my wines finish fermentation much over 13.5%-14% but they pick up as much as 1%-1.5% during barrel aging. This is because we have a dry barrel cellar. Inside the barrel there is 86% water and 14% alcohol, while outside there is an average of 30% water and 0% alcohol. To a first approximation, the thermodynamic drive for water to leave the barrel is over 3x what it is for alcohol, and so over the course of 2+ years aging in barrel the alcohol level of the wine inside actually goes up.

A wine made from grapes harvested at “optimal” ripeness and put to barrel at 13.5%, in our cellar may well end up near 15% when it is ready to go to bottle. This is not the same as harvesting the grapes over-ripe. Not only do these wines not taste hot, they don’t taste raisined.

Anyway, the offshoot was that these folks bought a case of wine, and intended to put some of in front of their “I won’t drink any wine over 14% because wine over 14% all tastes the same” friends and see what they think. Awesome.

“I have never seen anything like this…”

I heard this sentiment expressed by more growers and winemakers during the 2011 harvest than ever before in my 25 years of doing this. I said it myself any number of times. It’s not that any one thing about this vintage stood out on its own as unusual or unprecedented. What was unusual was the additive effects of the sheer number of unusual factors.

I brought experience to bear on the problems we faced. Also, I was very lucky. Our wines have turned out well. So as we sail into 2012 here is my look back at the wild, wonderful 2011 (n.b.—long post ahead).

For many the defining event of the vintage was the rain October 3rd-5th. For 72 hours before and 72 hours after that storm, there was not an idle picking crew anywhere in the North Coast. The gente were working around the clock, sleeping in their cars in two-hour shifts. A cottage industry sprung up around supplying them food and drink on-site. At one point I saw as many trucks on the road towing porta-potties as there were trucks hauling grapes. You could hear the tractors and see the light bars moving through the fields all night long. I had never seen anything like it.

I heard chilling anecdotes; one was of a large Chardonnay vineyard in the Petaluma Gap that rotted overnight. They could not deliver on any of their negotiated contracts, and ended up selling the entire crop for pennies on the dollar to Central Valley producers with flash détente machines. Ouch.

Joel Peterson of Ravenswood was quoted in Drinks Business:

“It was the most fungus-filled, botrytis-filled vintage I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been working a long time. Napa Cabernet never got ripe; it was a very bad year for Napa and Mendocino. We had to sort our Cabernet and Merlot in the field and crush straight away – I’ve never had to do that before. We lost 40% of our crop to the rains. There will be some awful Cabernets – green, oxidized and botrytized. The quality of 2011 will depend on who sorted well.”

Talking with Steven Tanzer, Joel had this to say about sorting:

“I learned that the cleanest fruit doesn’t always make the best wine… [W]e performed different levels of sorting on the same fruit and fermented each batch separately… Up to 10% damaged fruit did not seem to affect the taste of the resulting wine adversely…”

Alder Yarrow quoted Cameron Hughes winemaker Sam Spencer in
Vinography:

“There’s a lot of really fucked up wine out there.”

<Is it wrong that this quote gives me a little shot of schadenfreude? I suppose I’m being a bit petty, but it does.>

Then I found this evocative encapsulation of the vintage, as experienced by winemaker Abe Schoener, writing in The Wine Cellar Insider:

“The ancient Greeks called this kind of experience deinos—terrible, but amazing too… The report this year: Harvest is wonderful, a joyous culmination, as it always is. But it also reveals itself a much more serious event, holding the possibility of terror, catastrophe.

Sounds pretty crappy all around, right? Well—it was, and it wasn’t. The 2011 vintage was difficult, yes, and there will be less volume than average produced by wineries in the ultra-premium segment of the market. But I believe many of those wines will surprise and delight.

Quoting my friend Tyler Thomas, writing a nuanced piece in his blog over at Donelan Wines:

This vintage also reveals wine’s resiliency. We like neat categories – to say that a vintage is either great or not great; but this is silly. Despite the climatic factors that led to a difficult year and some poor quality, there will be plenty of great 2011 wines. The pleasure of wine is not necessarily robbed by rain or rot or similar challenges. While many grapes were lost, many perfectly suitable grapes remained, dying to be made into perfectly suitable wine.

As Tyler has, I’d like to do what I can to get ahead on the public relations front before the gatekeepers write off the vintage or damn it with faint praise. Herewith, my own bullet points on the most wonderful, terrifying vintage in my experience:

• The year started out benignly: post-harvest 2010 we had a wetter-than-average December, dry January, normal February. But the we had a very cold, wet March with frosts in April and May. The cool weather–and our late pruning–delayed budbreak at our Estate vineyard, but not enough to avoid minor crop-limiting frost damage to early shoot growth.
  
  
• Then came a surprisingly cold, wet June; rains at the end of the month smashed records dating back over 60 years. During flowering we had rains and temperature swings that ended up drastically reducing the amount of fruit that ultimately set in our vineyard. This was a critical period for growers throughout the North Coast. The rain hit those vineyards that set early just at cluster closure; this proved to be disastrous later in the year as Botrytis rot got started inside the clusters. Our fruit was weeks behind and berries had just started to swell; there was little chance for rot to get started inside the clusters.
  
  
• On a positive note, at 41.4″ total rainfall 2011 was the third wettest growing season I have tracked since 1998 (56.2″; 2006, at 48.5″, was also wetter than 2011). Due to the timing of the rains and the cool weather we didn’t observe any water stress in the vineyard until the middle of August, when we made our first irrigation of the year. This is unusual—in a normal season we might start in early June. I speculate that this encouraged very deep rooting on our young vines planted in 2009 (a good thing).
  
  
• For whatever reason(s), this year physiological ripeness in the fruit preceded sugar accumulation. Usually, we have to use canopy management and irrigation to slow the rate of sugar increase in order to allow the skin, pulp, and especially the seeds to fully mature. This year it was not an issue—acids, seed and skins ripened first; all I had to wait for was sugar and flavor.
  
  
• What was an issue was a very unusual spread in cluster maturity. On the same shoot we observed first crop where one cluster would be through veraison while the second cluster was not yet through berry sizing. I saw some of this in our Pinot in 2005, but in 2011 it was present in every variety at our vineyard. We had to drop nearly half the already sparse crop to even up the ripeness as much as possible. Nevertheless, there was more spread in ripeness between clusters in 2011 than we expect to encounter in a “normal” vintage.
  
  
• I also observed an unusual reversal in the order of senescence between the canopy and the crop. In every other vintage I have experienced, the basal leaves in the canopy turn yellow and may start to drop before the clusters get ripe (as in 2008, for example). Not so in 2011. This vintage, the berries started to fall off the clusters while the leaves were still green to the bottom of the canopy. I have no idea what to make of this, either in terms of a physiological explanation or as a predictor of quality.
  
  
• Even if we could have assembled a picking crew before the rain, it would not have mattered. The Pinot just was not ready. After the rain we sent the guys through looking for rot and dropping rotted clusters. The worst damage was in the heritage Haynes Vineyard selection block, where we dropped about one cluster every other vine.
  
  
• After the rain we had a string of warmer days, which pushed the Pinot along. We started harvest on October 19^th, over 16 days later than our late start in 2010. The Pinot harvest confirmed my predictions on yield—we barely averaged one ton/acre across all the Pinot, yields less than 50% of average. Justin, who has spent the last three vintages working for high-end producers in Napa, said he had never worked with such clean fruit. We do all our sorting in the vineyard, so we don’t need to at the winery.
  
  
• Tannat and Syrah came in as beautiful as I have ever seen. That left our late-ripening varieties to bring in: Grenache, Mourvedre and Counoise. Another shot of rain was forecast for November 4^th which I was sure the vines could have weathered. What concerned me was the hard frosts forecast for the nights after this rain. The flavors were there in these varieties, even if the sugars were low. I decided not to risk frost damage and pulled the trigger on picking the last of the crop November 3^rd. This made 2011 the most compressed harvest I have ever done, at just 15 days for start to finish. And the yields in all the varieties were down just as much from averages at the Pinot was.
  
  
• The decision to pick turned out to be the right call—the vineyard was subjected to over 4 hours of temperatures in the mid-20s F on the nights of the 5^th and 6^th. Driving north through Kenwood on the 7^th the vineyards looked like a war zone from frost damage. When I arrived at our Estate I discovered over two-thirds of the vines scorched, as though nature had licked the canopy with a flame thrower from above.
  
  
• This was not a vintage to take chances in the winery. No stems or whole-cluster. More SO₂ than I would ordinarily use. Fewer punchdowns. Following my normal practice, all ferments started on indigenous microflora, but everything was also inoculated with cultured yeast between 12° Brix and 8° Brix to assure a rapid and clean end to fermentation. Ferments proceeded rapidly—most finished in less than a week. I took advantage of the residual heat in the musts and inoculated for malolactic before pressing. All the wines were through malo within days, allowing me to add a second dose of SO₂ earlier than usual, thereby protecting the wine from potential color degradation.
  
  
• The wines all ended up with less alcohol than in previous vintages. Not only was there less sugar in the grapes when they were otherwise ripe this year, but the so-called “conversion ratio” for fermentation—the observed percentage of final alcohol achieved from the measured starting Brix—was also lower. On average I see conversion ratios of 0.59±0.01 for most of my ferments, but this year none topped 0.55; a number of my colleagues mentioned seeing the same thing. No explanation.
  
  
• Lower alcohols aside, post-malo acid levels were as low, and the pH levels as high, as though the grapes had been harvested at 25° Brix rather than at 22°. This is supporting evidence that the grapes were at full physiological ripeness at the lower sugar levels.
  
  
• Expecting that the wines will be more elegant than powerful, I have backed off on the fraction of new wood the Pinot is being aged in, from 50% in an average vintage down to 25% for 2011. As has become standard practice for me, the wines from the Rhône varieties will see no new wood during aging.
  
  

So there we have it. A difficult, late, compressed, low yield, low alcohol vintage—one that has given us elegant wines. And I have to say that, so far, these wines show higher quality and more character than I could have hoped. That’s no myth. That’s just fact.

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2012/01/2011-vintage-not-that-bad.html/feed 0 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2012/01/2011-vintage-not-that-bad.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/1S-oHjNfnkA/natural-wine-myth.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/12/natural-wine-myth.html#comments Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:17:04 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2493
Tom Wark recently posted a criticism of the “natural wine movement” on his blog, titled “Authentic Wine and Mistaking the Tail For the Snout” where he says:

In many ways the “Natural Wine” and now “Authentic Wine” movement is well behind the curve. Winemakers the world over have long embraced the notion of exposing terroir and connecting a wine to the plot of land from which it derives. Sustainably farmed vineyards proliferate all over the globe. Minimalist cellar techniques are common place. Native Yeasts have long been favored by many winemakers without even knowing there was such a movement as “native wine”.

Those currently pushing the idea of “Natural Wine” think they may be on to something transformational and important when in fact what they have done is mistaken the tail of the dog for its snout.

I commented the following, and felt it sufficiently cogent to re-post here, with edits for clarity and some elaboration.

I don’t think the “natural” wine promoters are the tail wagging the dog, or that they are behind the curve. The natural “movement” is marketing, pure and simple, and marketing is myth-making – myth-making as in: “creating an appealing narrative from whole cloth.”

The basic truth is that there is nothing – nothing at all – new here. As Tom correctly points out, every practice espoused by the “natural movement” has genesis in and persistence throughout winemaking history, everywhere in the world and without interruption.

Industrial winemaking is new, as is industrial farming of all sorts, and it has the same aim: to make an inexpensive, reliable product of adequate quality continuously available to the broadest market. There is nothing wrong with that.

Industrial winemaking irrefutably is not driving out more traditional winemaking. If anything, more wines produced by traditional methods are being made, and are more widely available, than ever before.

The marketable myth is that “natural” is David to the industrial Goliath. The second part of the myth is an explicit logical fallacy, the marketer’s tried-and-true appeal to tradition: older ideas are better, simply because they are older. Both David vs. Goliath and appeal to tradition have strong track records of reliably gulling the susceptible consumer.

I also believe that some of the compulsion to “go natural” among my cohort is pushback against the so-called “international style” of winemaking. There is no question that a certain fraction of wine from nearly every winegrowing region is heavily manipulated in order to garner higher scores. I suggest that the objection is not to the manipulation itself, but to the high market appeal of the result. So the third part of the “natural” myth is directed at discounting the value associated with the “international” style of wine.

The final element to the “natural” myth is the redemption narrative. Everyone loves the story of the Damascene conversion: “I used to make industrial wine, then I made wine heavily manipulated to get high scores. One day the scales fell from my eyes and I saw the evil of my ways. Now I follow the dao of ‘natural’ and I have been redeemed. Love me; love my wines.” Ahem. I mean – amen.

Wine is the product of artifice. Therefore, at one level “natural wine” is an oxymoron. On another level, for those of us who “…quietly do [our] job, with great skill and a light hand, with no funny astrological stuff…” (quoting from another comment on Tom’s post) it is a tautology.



The Follow-Up

The interested reader can trace the evolution of my winemaking philosophy–which I call “pre-emptive minimalism”–through this blog. My friend Stéphane Vivier (winemaker at HdV and Vivier Wines) espouses a similar approach, which he calls “lazy” winemaking. Our common belief is that in our winegrowing we should seek to only simplify.

We seek to achieve more by doing less. We edit. I have a plan for every wine I make that I start to formulate months before harvest. Once I get the grapes in the barn, I ask myself at every step: “is this necessary?” “Do I need to do this now?” I’m always looking for something to not do. It takes discipline to actively do less. We refuse to follow an externally-imposed discipline, a voodoo prescription or a one-size-fits-all certification checklist. Our winegrowing is adaptive (a highly effective strategy in vintages like 2011 – to be explored in a future post).

This is the reality of “natural” winegrowing: exercising our hard-earned skills to figure out when and how to do less. It is not to blindly follow some prescriptive/proscriptive formula. To paraphrase Voltaire: ideology is the enemy of the practical.

Yes, in today’s crowded market many producers, retailers and consumers are looking for differentiation between industrial wines and those made on a more human scale. Labels help. So if my “natural” colleagues are selling more wine by convincing people they are part of some new, transformational “movement”–more power to them. There are plenty of non-winegrower industry types actively supporting and promoting that marketing myth. No doubt there is a segment of the consumer demographic that filters their wine experience through this myth.

But please, in the name of intellectual honesty, once and for all let’s recognize that “natural” is nothing more than a construct, an artificial narrative, a myth that is used to sell wine. It is not a mantle of righteousness.

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/12/natural-wine-myth.html/feed 7 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/12/natural-wine-myth.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/WUwxhPNhc_I/wine-aeration-fail.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/12/wine-aeration-fail.html#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 23:19:55 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2501 A while back I did a post titled “To Decant Or Not” where I expressed opposition to the idea that decanting (other than to remove a wine from sediment), aerators, or blenders improves wines subjected to that treatment. In my post I suggested that “improvement” is relative, and that not everyone would agree. Writing for Smithsonian, Lisa Bramen picked up on that bit from my post and finished her piece with:

…if you want to try decanting, go for it. If you like the results, keep doing it. If you don’t, or you can’t tell the difference, don’t bother. Decanting, as with everything about wine, is a matter of taste.

Today Tyler Colman (Dr. Vino) brought attention to a piece on Bon Appetit where one of those aerator thingamajiggys was used on four different wines, which were presented in blind pairings with the un-aerated wines to a panel of three New York sommeliers. The take home message?

“The [device] definitely does something, but in three of four cases it turned the wines–each quite different stylistically–into less desirable versions of their former selves… This group of sommeliers unanimously agreed that the risk isn’t worth the occasional payoff.”

No this was not a rigorous trial, and there is no statistical significance to the results. But it is one more point in the meta-analysis, and one that supports my position–don’t decant or aerate if you don’t have to.

[Incidentally, I realize this is my first post in two months. Did you miss me? Hah! I didn't think so. Well, there was harvest, and then there was bottling, and then there was our first big Wine Club shipment to get out since February. Excuses, excuses. Anyway, unlike Jeff Lefevere I have not retired from writing (miss you, Jeff) and with the holidays upon us I have more time out of the office, and plan to wrap up and post several pieces I have in the works. Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year! Happy holidays to all.]

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/12/wine-aeration-fail.html/feed 3 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/12/wine-aeration-fail.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/La3DhMCyW9M/the-greatly-exaggerated-demise-of-syrah.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/the-greatly-exaggerated-demise-of-syrah.html#comments Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:07:15 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2459 For the past several years when I have shown our wines to distributors, brokers and retailers I have heard the refrain: “Pinot? Sure. Blend? Maybe. But I (we) can’t move any Syrah… especially not at your price point.” It seems to me that many (most?) critic types have piled on, at the very best damning with faint praise many examples of New World Syrah, and parroting the laments of the middle tier.


Not So Fast

Simply put, in my experience these people are out of touch with our consumer demographic.

I admit that I responded to the despair of wholesalers and retailers over Syrah, and cut our production in half from one vintage to the next. Well, surprise—the current vintage sold out last week, months before we had anticipated. We had even imposed a 15% increase to the retail price. Paradoxically, this increased the rate of sales on the wine in our tasting room. Since then we have been selling the previous vintage without pause.

I sort of saw this coming. Back in April we were pouring our Estate Pinot, Rhône blend and Syrah for the SF Vinters Market at Ft. Mason. To our astonishment, visitors to our table asked to taste the Syrah first, by a margin of 3- or 4-to-1. At the time I thought it might be relevant that the crowd seemed to trend younger than usual for these events. Since then I’ve concluded that age is not a factor—my observations suggest one does not have to be a Millennial to appreciate our particular expression of properly-aged, no-new-oak, cool-climate Syrah.

So, hey gatekeepers! It’s past time to give up the tired “Syrah doesn’t sell” meme. Syrah DOES sell. You guys are just a day late and a dollar short to realize it.

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/the-greatly-exaggerated-demise-of-syrah.html/feed 9 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/the-greatly-exaggerated-demise-of-syrah.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/BmAYtR6Ihho/here-comes-the-rain.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/here-comes-the-rain.html#comments Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:58:06 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2437 Here comes the first rain of the season. The radar loop shows a slow eastward progression; most of the motion is southwest to northeast. Forecast total rain accumulations have increased from yesterday’s projections. Dislike.
]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/here-comes-the-rain.html/feed 16 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/here-comes-the-rain.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/ZH7pPl8puy0/2011-vintage-quick-harvest-update.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/2011-vintage-quick-harvest-update.html#comments Mon, 03 Oct 2011 00:18:56 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2427 Sunday afternoon; outside the overcast is increasing and westerly wind rising as the first of a series of cold fronts approaches the area. Rain on tap for tomorrow and then for Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Forecast has advanced the timing and decreased the amount of rain expected from the system.

We really don’t have anything ready to pick at the Estate vineyard. There is some Grenache at 21.5° Brix that I could pick for a customer who wants some less ripe for Rosé but finding a crew to do the work is impossible just now.

The reason we can’t get a crew is that everyone around us is panic-picking. The coming storms have been forecast for over a week. A lot of folks realized that their fruit would not hold up under even a little rain. Much North Coast Zinfandel already had Botrytis in it from the rain we got at the end of June—right before bunch closure in this variety. One friend told me he sorted out at least a ton of Botrytis clusters from a 4-ton Zin pick today.

Apparently some Russian River Pinot has the same problem. And in Carneros many growers did not do any leaf thinning to open the canopy, nor put out any sprays to protect against Botrytis, before the threat of rain materialized. It seems that every available crew in the area is working around the clock, picking anything that’s even close to ripe, then moving to the next block to leaf-strip before the tractors move in to spray.

I think we are in better shape. All our varieties are really clean so far this year–no mildew, no Botrytis. We opened all our canopies over two weeks ago, and then protected with Elevate^®. Most of our varieties have really open clusters, especially the Syrah, Mourvedre and Pinot—even the Grenache. Counoise and Tannat are tight, but these are thick-skin varieties—less susceptible to rot.

My Rosé customer was going to bring in his own crew to pick tomorrow, but has had to reschedule because the receiving winery has zero tank space available as they filled up with all the Chardonnay thay have brought in. No worries. Our stuff will still be beautiful on Thursday. The forecast is for a return to our normal dry pattern. And Jean-Marie thinks his crews will be available to pick for us. I might even bring in some Syrah.

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/2011-vintage-quick-harvest-update.html/feed 0 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/2011-vintage-quick-harvest-update.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/tJw6HHypq1k/biochar-yeast-nutrition.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/biochar-yeast-nutrition.html#comments Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:11:14 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2410 I love Twitter. For example, biochar would not be on my radar today if I was not following @RandallGrahm on the platform. I remember reading an article on terra preta some time ago (might have been this article in National Geographic) but it is Randall’s sustained expression of enthusiasm for biochar as a vineyard amendment that has me thinking of it more specifically.

There is plenty of information on biochar available online to the interested reader. Briefly, biochar is a carbonized residue produced by pyrolysis of cellulosic biomass (such as crop residues–both field residues, and processing residues such as nut shells, fruit pits, etc.–as well as yard, food and forestry wastes, and animal manures) under conditions of limited oxygen. The products of pyrolysis are bio-oil, syngas and biochar. The first two products are combustible substitutes for petroleum-derived fuels. Biochar residue can be used to improve acidic and agriculturally-depleted soils. The feedstocks used greatly affect the utility and suitability of the derived biochar product for building or rebuilding any particular soil.

What got my attention was Randall’s tweet that application of biochar in the vineyard can increase the assimilable nitrogen in grapes. Quick background: in wine production, yeast depend on nitrogen sources in the juice to ferment cleanly and completely. Nitrogen in juice occurs in two forms: as ammonia ion (NH₄⁺) and as more complex nitrogen-containing organic compounds that the yeast can take up and utilize. The latter pool is generally referred to as “yeast assimilable nitrogen” (YAN) or as “assimilable amino nitrogen” (AAN).

The role of nitrogen in yeast nutrition is pretty well understood; I am not going to review it here. I’ll just say that nitrogen compounds are necessary for complete and clean-smelling ferments. Winemakers understand that some grape varieties and some vineyard locations yield juices that are deficient in both NH₄⁺ and AAN. Syrah is a classic example.

Some winemakers analyze the nitrogen levels present in every juice that comes into the winery, and supplement with di-ammonium phosphate (DAP–a source of NH₄⁺) and perhaps with yeast extracts–putative sources of AAN–to some prescribed minimum level in order to ensure a good fermentation. There is evidence that supplementing AAN not only aids in complete and clean fermentation, but also increases the level of pleasing aromas and textures in the finished wine.

Not surprisingly, such additions are anathema to “natural” winemaking adherents. I take a more practical approach to my process–clean and complete fermentation is a high priority for me and I am going to do what I can to assure it happens. However, another of my guiding principles is to strongly avoid adding anything to juice or wine that doesn’t taste good on its own. DAP tastes awful, and I refuse to use it except in cases of extreme need.

So anything that might increase the natural level of nitrogen compounds in grapes I know to be chronically deficient is of interest. I could fertilize the vineyard heavily, but I don’t for two reasons: 1) I’m simply adverse to using industrially-produced fertilizers, and 2) excess fertilization–especially with nitrogen–produces excessive vine vigor, which usually leads to poor wine quality.

So far in our vineyard operations we have been using small applications of low-N liquid fertilizers, compost teas and compost to keep our soils and vines healthy. Biochar looks like it could be a useful addition to our soil support regimen. Thanks, Randall–now I’ve got more research to do. After vintage.


]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/biochar-yeast-nutrition.html/feed 3 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/10/biochar-yeast-nutrition.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/nhmsWb1xgG4/2011-vintage-the-rain.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/2011-vintage-the-rain.html#comments Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:39:04 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2404 Sampled the vineyard yesterday, confirming that Syrah (approaching 23° Brix) is two full weeks ahead of Pinot (not quite 21° Brix) this year. Awesomely weird; feels like down is suddenly up.

Jennifer Thomson tweeted this morning that “Diageo reports they are bringing Chard & Pinot in around the clock for next 72 hrs. Anything 23.5° Brix + or close accepted.” There is a stench of panic in the air (or did the dairy guys just fertilize?). Rain is on the way. The latest NOAA forecast discussion predicts an accumulation of 1″-3″ in the first part of next week:

The main story of the forecast continues to be the early season storm system impacting the region next week. The GFS and ECMWF are in better agreement about the timing of this storm…giving extra confidence to the forecast. For now…the first round of rain will approach the north bay Monday morning and travel south through the region during the day. The entire region should see precipitation by Monday night. Tuesday will see mostly dry conditions…with occasional lingering showers in the area. The big day next week looks to be Wednesday…as both the GFS and ECMWF show the greatest accumulation of precip…colder temperatures…and possible strong winds. Other than a few showers possible on Thursday…dry conditions will prevail through the rest of the work week. Daytime high temperatures will also return to near normal values.

This is worrisome. But not the end of the world, or even of the vintage. There will be the usual wailing in the wine media asking “did you pick before the rain, or after?” as though it were definitive for wine quality. But there is so much else going on affecting wine quality this year a few inches of rain are just a minor distraction. For instance, Adam Lee posted this morning that one of their blocks of Pinot yielded just 1.5 tons off of 3 acres. That’s what is going to define this vintage, not rain.

I expect a compressed harvest and tank space issues. I’m off to Central Valley Builders Supply this morning to pick up some T-bins (fermenters) just in case.

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/2011-vintage-the-rain.html/feed 0 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/2011-vintage-the-rain.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/muVZcCBpu2w/to-decant-or-not.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/to-decant-or-not.html#comments Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:57:51 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2395 That is the question. I have a number of decanters around the house. I use them when I have a wine that needs to be removed from a sediment in the bottle. But I never decant a wine hours before serving it to let it “breathe” and I don’t own one of those thingamajiggys that aerates the wine as you pour through it. One, I don’t buy wines that some think need such treatment to taste “better.” Two, I value the more gradual change in a bottle of wine as it opens up in the glass over the couple of hours it takes us to drink it.

For me the second point calls into question the validity of the premise implied in the first–that aeration actually improves wine. It may change them, but does it really improve them?

This morning Joe Roberts (1 Wine Dude) tweeted about this article in Bloomberg Businessweek where Nathan Myhrvold discusses “How to Decant Wine with a Blender.” Joe’s comment about hyperdecanting: “I know a lot of wine geeks that actually do this.”

My first thought was “really? why?” Is this just another example of our “more is gooder” cultural imperative? Or is it wine geeks feeling the need to insert themselves in to the winemaking process?–”hey look I made it better!” My second thought was “whatever, you bought it, it’s your wine–you can mix your ’82 Margaux with Tab and serve it over ice if that’s what floats your boat. It’s not like you’re shooting paintballs at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.”

But careful reading of Myhrvold’s article reveals an interesting nuance. Early on he states that hyperdecanting in a blender “…almost invariably improves red wines—particularly younger ones…” This is a subjective evaluation, and I believe if you put ten people in a room to taste a blended ’82 Margaux next to a bottle decanted just to remove sediment, you’d get some lively argument about which wine was “better.” (Especially if I was there.)

Then comes something interesting: Myhrvold talks about using a triangle test to remove bias. With at least 10 judges, and multiple presentations. It’s not surprising that the former CTO of Microsoft understands the value and utility of the triangle test as a research tool. It would be astonishing, though, if consumers and professional wine evaluators actually started to use the method to eliminate bias in tasting.

From my perspective the best part of the article is when Myhrvold walks back his assertion that hyperdecanting “improves” the wine, when he says that “…hyperdecanting does clearly change the flavor of the wine.” Note: changes, not improves. He follows up with “To determine with scientific rigor whether your tasters prefer the hyperdecanted wine requires a more complex trial called a ‘paired preference’ test, or ‘square’ test.”

Absolutely. And I can tell you from experience that the results of this sort of evaluation are often something like “60 percent of the tasters prefer wine X at the 90% confidence level.” In other words, on average 6 out of 10 tasters (not necessarily the same group of six in each trial) prefer wine X about 9 out of 10 times.

Does this mean wine X is “better”? No. It still means that a group of tasters express a subjective preference for wine X. If 10 out of 10 tasters prefer wine X at the 99% confidence level, perhaps then we would be justified in concluding that wine X really is better.

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/to-decant-or-not.html/feed 20 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/to-decant-or-not.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/d3kLCKukA0I/demagoguery-at-the-wine-party.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/demagoguery-at-the-wine-party.html#comments Wed, 21 Sep 2011 06:31:17 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2377 When I am into harvest there is not much else that can get my attention. When harvest is on, I’ve got my head down, in the moment.

But at the moment for me harvest is decidedly not on–yet (see my last post). Oh, I am busy–don’t mistake me–mostly selling wine but also monitoring and managing the vineyard, prepping for harvest, lining up clients and grape buyers, and seeing if I can fit in a bottling.

But without grapes coming in, demanding my immediate and undivided attention, I have time to read. And sometimes I read what others have to say about the world of wine. And a lot of what I read about wine these days–especially online–is sheer demagoguery and/or self promotion. Under ordinary circumstances this stuff would not get under my skin, except just now I am stretched on tenterhooks about the lateness of harvest. And the ever-present fiscal pressures don’t make me any more sanguine.

Lately I have been helpless to resist the pernicious effects of a lot of self-righteous, complacent, condescending blah blah blah about terroir, and natural winemaking, and biodynamics, and how-wines-should taste, and scores-should-mean-nothing, and especially no-wines-over-14%. So tonight, in a fit of pique, I’m going to tell everyone how I really feel about all of it.


PAR-TAY

The world of wine is like a big party, thrown for everyone by those of us who actually produce the stuff. Everyone is invited–even these demagogues, these ideologues, these cultists, these fetishists, and even these huckster self-promoters. Invited, but tolerated–not welcome (unlike you, dear reader, who are doubtless just here for the free booze).

Most people at a party are simply there to enjoy themselves but there’s always that guest who feels it is incumbent upon them to demean the taste of the host, the fare, the entertainment, the rest of the guest list. They just come to kvetch. Even those who have never thrown a party themselves. Especially those who have thrown their own party and found their invitees perhaps {ahem} less than appreciative of their singularly out-of-the-mainstream approach to wine. Or there are those born-again naifs–the ones who drone on and on about the wonderful discovery they have made, and how can everyone else be so blind as to not see it, and the whole world should be just like this!

All these folks actually represent a tiny fraction of the people at the party, but they have an outsized impact. This is not because–as they perhaps believe within their narrow self-referential worldview–they are actually influential, but because (if the rest are aware of them at all) their antics are mildly amusing. They mostly give the wider party something to talk about (as I am doing here, and now). At best, they are useful idiots.

So… I didn’t know him, I never met him, but I read his stuff–and I am going to miss Joe Dressner. Strikes me that Joe did not suffer sages lightly, and fools not at all. He liked the wines he liked, made by people he liked, and did not appear to believe it necessary to vet each producer for purity or adherence to some trumped-up ideological movement.

I’m angry that Joe ultimately lost his fight in the same battle that I have been infinitely fortunate to win–so far. I’m angry because he did not deserve to die at 60, and sad because the world is a little less interesting without him. And I am full of deep sorrow for the pain his family and friends are feeling right now.

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/demagoguery-at-the-wine-party.html/feed 0 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/demagoguery-at-the-wine-party.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/ahm28Z_ee28/no-harvest-yet.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/no-harvest-yet.html#comments Wed, 21 Sep 2011 01:32:09 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2369 It is the day before the autumnal equinox and I haven’t picked grape one. A week ago I was sweating bullets over this, in spite of it being cold outside–in fact because it was cold outside. I have been mostly tweeting it up from the vineyard this year, but it is time to make a more permanent record here in the blog.


2011 is a cold, late vintage

A week ago it was clear we were at least a month behind what I would think of as normal. In the middle of September I had LOTS of green berries in every variety at the Estate vineyard. Terrifying, truth be told. Today was a better day. I spent a couple of hours leaf thinning in the Pinot with the crew this morning and checking ripeness by taste. Normally I would not leaf thin in the fruit zone at our vineyard, but this is not a normal year.

We are having a very welcome–and long overdue–heat spell and it really has moved things along. Compared to last week, the crop looks much better colored and more uniform. Also, with the leaf thinning we can see much more of it. This is the Haynes Vineyard Selection block of Pinot above, showing a decent set and moderate consistency of color cluster to cluster. With the increase in uniformity, the potential yield looks more like over a ton per acre, rather than the utterly dismal prediction I was making last month of under 0.5 t/ac. Below is the Clone 777 Pinot block; I’m estimating the yield at less than in the HVS block but still respectable. The weather forecast yesterday called for rain Sunday-Monday as a deep trough (over 4 std. devs. from the mean!) was progged to tap sub-tropical moisture from a Pacific typhoon and sweep across our region. It was with great relief that I woke this morning to a forecast of a stronger high pressure ridge persisting and driving the rain probabilities north of us. Hoping for more of same.

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/no-harvest-yet.html/feed 3 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/no-harvest-yet.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/0bLk-Ls1rjA/a-tale-of-two-press-releases.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/a-tale-of-two-press-releases.html#comments Wed, 14 Sep 2011 07:12:30 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2344 A new winery has opened in Sonoma Valley. Since Roche Winery sold their production facility several years ago we locals have been wondering what all the new construction at the site has been about. There was a sign on the property announcing “Rams Gate,” a very thin web site, and a lot of speculative talk.

Well, according to their press releases Ram’s Gate Winery opened their doors today. Their new website is no less lean and cryptic than the old one, but hey they have a Facebook page and a Twitter feed so they MUST be serious.

Far be it from me to second guess how a new winery would choose to manage the PR around their opening, but I would not have known anything about it except for a couple of emails that dropped into my inbox from the Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Alliance (SVVGA). Perhaps that is deliberate. Turns out that even if I did not have a winery it looks like perhaps I am not a part of their target demographic.

Let me ‘splain. RE: those emails I got from SVVGA–each contained a press blurb. One was a little more extensive than the other. Here’s the lite version:

Ram’s Gate Winery to Open!
Scheduled to open Sept. 13, Ram’s Gate will be home to a portfolio of estate and single-vineyard wines crafted onsite in the 22,000-square-foot winery. The wines will be small lots averaging 300 cases or fewer, mainly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, as well as Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and sparkling wine (brut, blanc de noirs, and rosé). Priced from $25 to $75 per bottle, they will be sold exclusively at the winery and via the winery website and wine club.

Succinct and to-the-point. Evocative, such that it left me wanting to know more. I especially like how it stuck to just the facts. As a winery owner I don’t think I am alone in believing that the more cool, high-quality wineries we have in Sonoma, the more people are going to come here. Critical mass is a wonderful thing.

But then I received the longer press release–the one the bit above was apparently culled from:

Wine Country’s Most Anticipated New Artisan Estate!
At the Carneros Entrance to Historic Sonoma and Napa Valleys Ram’s Gate will bring together the best in wine, architecture, interior design, food and an unprecedented guest experience. Ram’s Gate will be home to an exclusive portfolio of estate and single-vineyard wines crafted on the Estate. Released with the opening of the winery, the wine offerings will be comprised of small bottlings (average 300 cases or less) of mainly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, as well as Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and sparkling wine (Brut, Blanc de Noirs, and Rose). The wines showcase Sonoma County sites including Durell Vineyard, Hudson Vineyards, Ulises Valdez Vineyard and the winery’s own 30-acre estate vineyard, which is the southernmost planting region in Carneros.

Ram’s Gate wines, priced from $25-$75/bottle, will be sold exclusively at the winery and via the winery website and wine club.

Tasting Room: Ram’s Gate will be open to the public starting September 13, 2011 from 10-6pm for wine tastings, winery tours, special chef demonstrations, and wine & food pairings. The winery is located at the entrance of historic Sonoma and Napa Valley on Hwy 121 (across from Infineon Raceway).

Ummm… really? “We have ‘the best’ in in wine, architecture, interior design, food and an unprecedented guest experience.” Compared to what? To whom? And then: “Ram’s Gate will be open to the public…” right after they have told us how exclusive their wines will be. And to top it off, we have the beginning and ending repetition of the confused geography: “…located at the entrance of historic Sonoma and Napa Valley…” Seriously, guys–did anyone look at a map before crafting this last little brown nugget of prose?

Sorry but based just on this press release they have lost me. I could have been–and wanted to be–excited about this place. But this second press release comes off as a me-too “look at us!” cookie-cutter remake of what I have seen from countless “all hat and no cattle” wineries since time immemorial.

(If the Ram’s Gate people read this, don’t get your panties all in a bunch. I’m looking at these two press releases as a case study. I could have redacted the winery name or changed it to something unrecognizable, or substituted any of a number of other winery names, and my point would be the same.)

As much as these folks want us to believe they are the Sine Qua Non (oops–winery name already taken!) the second press release suggests to me they are anything but. This concept–small-lot wines, food pairings, beautiful architecture, an ‘unprecedented’ guest experience–is so well-trodden that the feet have beaten a path into the earth deep enough there is no seeing out of it.

How will this be different, much less better, than the successful efforts of wineries like Robert Sinskey, or the failed efforts of Copia? There’s nothing in this press release to tell us–instead of answering questions, it raises them.

I care about the guests who go out of their way to find our Tasting Salon. Eddie and I take pride in our skills to concierge for our guests–to make their current visit to Sonoma memorable if it is their first, or to make it better than their last. After seeing this second press release, we won’t be comfortable referring any of our visitors to the new kid on the block–until we have seen that they aren’t more of just the same-old same-old. We’re going to be looking for their Yelp reviews, just like everyone else.

Yesterday Leah Hennessy (the quitessential Millennier) tweeted: “I remember when all I wanted was for millennials to be respected in wine. Now it’s happenned. So why does it feel like nothing has changed?” My answer would be: “because nothing has.”

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/a-tale-of-two-press-releases.html/feed 3 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/a-tale-of-two-press-releases.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/13dgKevEh-Y/no-one-on-the-corner-has-swagger-like-us.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/no-one-on-the-corner-has-swagger-like-us.html#comments Mon, 05 Sep 2011 05:14:17 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2334 Close friends know I have been a M.I.A. fan since 2004. Closer friends know that weekend nights I sometimes turn DJ. A+B= this is how the Labor Day weekend has felt so far:
]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/no-one-on-the-corner-has-swagger-like-us.html/feed 0 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/no-one-on-the-corner-has-swagger-like-us.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/lai9hq32PJ4/wine-marketing-as-a-sandwich.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/wine-marketing-as-a-sandwich.html#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:09:28 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2288

Yeah. A sandwich. Bear with me–this ain’t rocket science.

First and foremost–if your filling is not delicious, you aren’t even in the game. It can’t be a great sandwich if the filling is not delicious. The filling can be many things–hopefully many things that complement each other.

But fillings are distinct from condiments. If you notice the condiments first, before the filling or the bread–if they are the star of the show, or even draw your attention–then something is wrong. A really great sandwich is never about the condiments.

But it can’t be a truly great sandwich unless the bread is also a star–the bread should have equal billing with the filling. Great bread complements the delicious filling–presents it in its best light, and enhances it. And for the sandwich to be transcendent, both the top and the bottom pieces of bread have to be equally good.

When it comes to marketing our customer experience, I think of a great sandwich. The wine is the delicious filling–duh. The condiments are the obvious things–like branded hats, shirts, corkscrews, bags, posters, etc. In my humble opinion if you walk into a tasting room and see lots of condiments, run away, run away! The filling is not delicious! Taken to the extreme, even that lovely building– the manicured grounds and vineyards–are also condiments.

But the bread is the thing to look for. The bread is the customer experience and customer service. I see the top piece of bread as our initial contact with our guests. The bottom piece of bread is our follow-up with the customer after their visit: things like concierging, order fulfillment, phone calls and emails–all the things that an engaged business should not need customer relationship management (CRM) software to accomplish in an authentic manner.

I am working with my staff to create the perfect sandwich. We have no condiments. But we are working on our bread–every day.

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/wine-marketing-as-a-sandwich.html/feed 6 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/09/wine-marketing-as-a-sandwich.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/JAccFCyi47Q/is-the-customer-always-right.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/08/is-the-customer-always-right.html#comments Fri, 26 Aug 2011 05:23:22 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2290 In a word–no. End of discussion. I refer the reader to the wise thoughts on this question expressed by Herb Kelleher, Gordon Bethune and ServiceGruppen (click here for a nice synopsis).

Since we opened in May, 2005 we have relied on our semi-hidden location to weed out the people who might not “get” our unusual take on the tasting room experience. Typically, people who seek us out have been very receptive to our brand of wine tasting. But it was inevitable that sooner or later someone was going to come in who could not be satisfied. We do our best, but we realize we can’t meet every customer’s expectations.

Today we received our first really disparaging Yelp review. My first thought was “oh thank god – the pressure is finally off!” Receiving universally positive reviews pressures everyone to perform like circus monkeys. That kind of pressure leads to in-authenticity, and in-authenticity is contrary to what we are really trying to provide our customers.

But seriously, these particular folks should never have come in to our Salon. It is not and never was going to be their kind of thing. That they stayed despite their discomfort–and then decided they had to write a bad Yelp review about it–tells me way more about them than it does about what my staff might or might not have done to turn them off.

I’m backing up my staff on this. In our post-moretm we determined that we had provided the same experience for this person that we do for everybody–it was the customer who determined to be disgruntled by it.

Our approach to guests stresses two-way interaction over fawning obsequiousness on our part. We are not just hosts, we are the people who actually make the wines we are pouring. We expect some respect for that. In return we show a lot of respect, including respecting the space of those guests whose demeanor and body language suggest they would rather not talk to us (or be somewhere else).

The review was written by someone who threw off this vibe. Nevertheless we recall they stayed for at least an hour, and even checked in on Yelp–weird behavior for someone so deeply affronted they wrote that they felt “…judged [b]y nearly everyone around…, glared at, eavesdropped upon, scoffed at and overall disrespected.”

So I wrote a reply to the review on Yelp (which might not have been my best move–oh well). In essence it read: “Dear Ms. Dakonta F.: We will miss you. Love, John” (thanks for the inspiration, Herb Kelleher).

This was just my most recent Happy Gillmore moment.

]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/08/is-the-customer-always-right.html/feed 4 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/08/is-the-customer-always-right.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/W8-7PBkLE28/judging-a-wine-on-its-own-merits.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/07/judging-a-wine-on-its-own-merits.html#comments Mon, 18 Jul 2011 22:47:31 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2258 I recently came across this exchange between Wine Wonkette (Amy Corron-Power) and 1 Wine Dude (Joe Roberts) on Amy’s “Another Wine Blog” (which is up for a 2011 Wine Blogger Award–and BTW so is Joe’s blog).

• Joe: “Do critics give decent ratings to wines that they don’t personally like but otherwise are made well, just in a style that they personally do not prefer? I know I do – and have been taken to task for it several times on-line, but have always come back to the fact that I try very hard to minimize (NOT exclude!) my personal preferences when it comes to coming up with a firm rating / recommendation.”
• Amy: “I admire your ability to judge the wine on its merits versus simply your own personal taste.”

Interesting concept, but…


I don’t think there is any such thing as “judging” a wine on its merits.

No disrespect to Joe or Amy, but in my opinion the idea is an oxymoron on its face; it begs the question of the standard that is being used to judge. Judgements based on sensory evaluation by can never be completely objective, because individual taste will ALWAYS play a role.

That’s not to say there aren’t objective standards–there are. But these standards are based on laboratory analysis. The only objective standards that can be used to judge wine are based on quantitation of the levels of compounds related to universally-recognized wine flaws: things like TCA and acetic acid, or more exotic and uncommon things like geosmin and ochratoxin. Note I did NOT include things like levels of ethanol and 4-ethylphenol (Brettanomyces marker) as different people have different opinions as to how much there can/should be in a wine.

I could go so far as to say that if someone gave me enough money, I could develop an analytical program targeting compounds produced by molds (Aspergillis, Penicillium, Botrytis), spoilage bacteria (Lactobacillus, Pediococcus), yeasts (Pichia, Kloeckera, Brettanomyces, Schizosaccharomyces, and yes even Saccharomyces), insects such as multi-colored Asian ladybeetle, even smoke from fires–and predict from those results what fraction of the population would find a particular wine objectionable; sort of a reverse of the service provided by Enologix.

On the other hand, someone could just hand me a glass and ask me what I think. I will tell you my opinion. With more authority than 99% of the wine “reviewers” out there. I have the résumé to back this up, and it does not include any letters such as “CMS” or “WSET”.


]]> http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/07/judging-a-wine-on-its-own-merits.html/feed 16 http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/07/judging-a-wine-on-its-own-merits.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/winemakernotesblog/mnYV/~3/HpO63sDUveo/2011-vintage-interesting.html http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/2011/06/2011-vintage-interesting.html#comments Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:46:38 +0000 John M. Kelly http://www.winemakernotesblog.com/?p=2232 There is an old Chinese curse which goes “May you live in interesting times.” It seems we are under this curse for this vintage in Sonoma, as much or more as we were in 2010. This is the Estate vineyard yesterday, viewed from the NW corner looking SE. It rained on Monday; about 0.90 inches. On June 28th. You have to go back to 1967 to find rain at the end of June in this area. So here is a summary of my Twitter posts from the vineyard yesterday:
• Second crop in the young vine Pinot is about to bloom (shades of 2005). Might make economic sense to harvest it this year.
• Won’t have to do any thinning anywhere at our vineyard to reduce crop load (yay-saves $$$) but color thinning a certainty.
• Definition of “decimate” = cut by 10%. What do you call “cut by 90%” – “nonimate”? That’s our Mourvedre in #2011vintage. Best. Wine. Ever?
• Weather has not just hurt grapes. Walnuts late & astonishingly light. Need supplemental supply for 2011 nocino.

We had a tough go of it with our Sonoma Pinot vineyards in 2005; weather decreased the crop load pretty dramatically. This year it has done so in every variety at the vineyard. It looks like the Mourvedre was hardest hit–I estimate that we have less than 10% of a “normal” crop. In the ordinary course of things we would thin off between 50% and 75% of what this block would normally set, but it still means that 2011 will give us just 20% to 40% of what we would expect to pick in an average year. I have had a buyer for part of the Mourvedre every year (at GREAT prices) but it looks like we have nothing to sell this year from that block.

I took the long way back to Sonoma (note to Caltrans: umm… not cool to be doing heavy road work on BOTH Hwy. 12 AND Arnold at the same time!) going over Calistoga Road and down through Napa Valley on Hwy 29. Stopped in to chat with a few winemaker friends on my way down-valley and heard the same thing from them: light crop and uneven set.

And it is not just grapes as I noted in my last Twitter post from the vineyard yesterday. Our walnuts are late and the crop is very light. At this time last year the unripe fruit were the size of limes, or small lemons. Moments after I posted to Twitter about the short walnut crop a friend from San Francisco replied with: “@jkellyca I am also having trouble sourcing my nocino walnuts. Sad!”

Interesting times, indeed.

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