Single vineyard vs regional , Professional vs enthusiast- Warning- Long and Rambling

No specific question here, just musings that might stimulate interesting discussion. Or might go nowhere…

I only have a few years of taking wine seriously under my belt, so I may be wrong here, but it seems that there is a growing trend in the general world of wine towards the Burgundian model of bottling wines of finer and finer granularity. There are countless small wineries that offer a dizzying array of single vineyard bottlings, portions of single vineyards, even bottlings of a few vine rows. And I think this is happening in lots of places. California for sure. Champagne as well; rather than the traditional model of blends across region and vintages to create a house style, we are seeing increasing numbers of single vineyard, vintage dated wines. Sure, there are still plenty of regional wines on offer all over the world, but the general trend among high-end wine seems to be towards the increasingly specific. Am I right in this perception?

If this is indeed true, I am left wondering: Who does this benefit on the consumer side? For the wine professional, someone who strives to understand the minutest intricacies of a region, then this sort of winemaking approach is certainly beneficial. How better to learn the nuances of terroir than tasting wines vinified from individual vineyards, or blocks within vineyards? But what about the amateur wine enthusiast, among which I count myself? I love wine, and I’m very curious about it. But I open between 2 and 4 bottles a week on average. I want something to enjoy with dinner, maybe discuss with a few friends, think about for a while, write up a clever tasting note. My goals are different than someone in the industry.

I’m reminded of the recent thread on the best 1er crus of Beaune. There were lots of interesting opinions offered. And I loved reading them. But given my personal consumption habits, I’m likely to drink one, maybe two, bottles of Beane 1er cru in a year. Sure, the best way to truly understand the terroir of Beaune is to try wines from many crus made by many producers. But I’m not necessarily looking to “truly understand” Beaune; I’m looking for a nice bottle of wine to have with dinner! I don’t have the time/money/opportunity to go through and compare a dozen bottles and I’m guessing most wine drinkers don’t either. Maybe for someone like me, a Louis Jadot Celebration bottle that blends a bunch of 1er crus together is the way to go. The individuality of each vineyard will be lost, but if I’m only drinking one bottle of Beaune 1er cru, there’s no point of comparison anyway. Individuality can only be appreciated in context of other bottlings.

It’s also interesting to note that there are some well-respected stalwarts who still insist, despite trends to the contrary, that blends represent the best expressions of a region. Bartolo Mascarello and Jean Louis Chave come to mind. Bordeaux also, as a region, seems to be resisting this trend.

For the record, I don’t think bottling wines of super specificity is objectively good or objectively bad. Honestly, on the whole, it’s probably for the better. But it does seem to be an approach more suited towards the professional as opposed to the layperson who simply has an interest and is looking for enjoyment. Please tell me if I’m way off base here. Or maybe you agree. I’m open to the possibility that this whole post is an example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. And thank you to anyone who read this far (probably very few).

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Noah, good post, thanks. I appreciate the honest perspective. My point of view on this trend (which you are certainly right to notice) is equally balanced. The trend is neither good nor bad, or perhaps, has both good and bad features. Highly narrow specificity in bottlings can be really interesting, or just head scratching.

I think at a high level division and subdivision of vineyards is being driven by some combination of genuine nerdy interest by wine makers (and wine lovers), fashion, and economics. The last one is especially significant. If you can increase your income significantly by making three or four different bottlings from your one vineyard, it would be very hard to resist. Although I think in some cases wine makers could even be giving up revenue by obsessively trying to isolate that one perfect vineyard block. And I always worry that culling out a ‘best barrel’ and calling it a ‘reserve’ diminishes the quality of the former blend.

The good news is that it’s a big wine world with a massive number of trends going in all different directions all at once. So pick your poison. Lots of niche wines, and lots of blends that speak to a region if not a little corner of a hill.

Btw if Burgundy is the inspiration for producing wines that represent some tiny fraction of a vineyard, I think it’s a colossal accident. The Burgundians, if I understand things right, do this because the long history of family ownership of the vineyards, combined with French inheritance laws, mean that the vineyards have been divided over and over as each generation has received its portion. The crazy quilt of minuscule crus is the outcome. Others in the wine world copied this careful examination of vineyard fractions because of Burgundy’s success - both critical and financial.

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It’s suited to marketing and making money.

Agree that it’s basically to make money.

More SKUs => Higher price point => More revenue

The heading of the OP is a bit different than the content. I also don’t think all small lots are just to make money. Maybe those that make it to distribution are, but I don’t drink much Burgundy so I don’t know how many cases we are talking about in these small lots.

My wife and I probably consume more than 120 bottles per year of California Pinot - the preference in our house (though we drink other varietals as well). So, I cannot speak to small lots from an obscure vineyard in Beaune (though I have been there in the past).

I am confident in an assumption that east coasters, unless they are on lists and buy direct (which is the small percentage of the market like this group of Berserkers) generally see the California Pinot that is made on a much larger scale and would not experience the small lots that many small wineries may make. Indeed, I buy from some winemakers whose entire production probably would never end up on a shelf in CT or NY, but may make it into a small shop in Napa or Healdsburg.

Some winemakers I have met enjoy making a barrel or two of a particular block, an interesting varietal, or even narrowing it down to a single clone from a vineyard. Some do this on a larger scale too but I am focusing on the smaller lots. I don’t think they do this for profit or for marketing, but for the fun of it, the geekiness of it, or perhaps to see what they can do in the future.

If someone makes 25-50 cases of an obscure block of a vineyard, that will go to a wine club or tasting room but not into distributorship. I remember visiting a winery many years ago and the winemaker was excited to have me try a single barrel he made of Tanat. I had not even heard to Tanat 15 years ago. The experiment went broader the next vintage and he made more.

Focusing on the title of this thread, I also think some people like the ideal of a SVD wine rather than a blend. It is certainly harder to make a great wine from a single vineyard than it is to blend grapes from different vineyards in a region. And I am not speaking only county-wide. Indeed, when a wine is labeled Sonoma Coast or Russian River Valley, the grapes can be from vineyards miles apart and at very different elevations and climates. What I really often enjoy (in addition to a well made SVD wine) are blends that are from a small area, but different vineyards. The best examples of these blends would be Williams Selyem Eastside Rd. or Westside Rd. Neighbors’ blends. These blends are from vineyards that are all in relatively close proximity to the others, and are consistently great year after year in my opinion.

So, my thought is it is not always marketing or profit when you see a small lot.

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Another interesting counter-example is German Riesling. Often a producer makes not just different wine from different sections of a vineyard, but also segments out sub-selections based on timing of picks and development of grapes. And then treats all these different barrels differently.

For example, Willi Schaefer can produce 5 or 6 or more different wines from a single vineyard based on a combination of all these different selections, sections and choices. Graacher Domprobst can deliver a Trocken, a Kabinett, 2 Spätlese, several Auslese and possibly a BA or a TBA. Or other things (a GG? A Feinherb? Am Eiswein?). As the vintages vary the results vary so the same exact wines are not produced every year. I don’t know the history of these choices, and perhaps this is driven by economics. But I kind of doubt it. I think this is more about tradition, wine maker interest, or other things. Certainly consumer comprehension is not a key factor :thinking:, though once you decode the nomenclature the rewards are great.

I think you make very valid points. I don’t think winemakers do this for money, rather they believe each plot should be given the chance to express itself. The difficulty is explaining this to the customer. We see this all the time with grower champagnes, champagnes from plots nobody has ever heard of or cannot be found on a map are suddenly being released as bottles with the reasoning, well here we have some clay on lime and 10m further we have some sand in the soil and we want to express the differences.

In the Champagne, the worst culprit is Benoit Marguet, look at the amount of cru’s he has released this year, incredible. Peter Liem writes that not every piece of soil is worth expressing in a single vineyard bottle, how true.

Jacquesson produce 200 000 bottles a year and make single vineyard champagnes from only 4 plots. Pierre Peter’s Chetillons comes from 3 plots in the vineyard, he says the blend of three is much better than each as an individual champagne.

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I’m a bit surprised how quickly people here seem to assume that this single-vinyard thing is driven by economics on the producer side. Well, it is, but possibly for different reasons than most seem to hold.

In French wine culture -and I guess we can agree there is no wine culture worth mentioning other than the French-, origin is one of the fundamental quality aspects of a wine, together with the usual balance, length, intensity (BLIC), and complexity, or some permutations thereof. This “sense of place” or, in other words, “expression of terroir” is eminently important; a given wine might taste good, but if it doesn’t speak of its origin, it’s inherently not a complete wine. It might be good, but… not there yet.

Some people, say in Burgundy, would even argue that the first duty of any wine is to represent its terroir. If then, a wine doesn’t have sufficient BLIC, the terroir is not good enough (or the producer sucks). If a wine has all the BLIC of the world, but doesn’t speak of its origin more than “South Pacific”, the terroir is not expressed (again, producer sucks) or there isn’t any terroir worth speaking of in the first place.

Hence, working out the differences between the two parcels “Les Punaises” and “Derrière le Dos” is the main goal of producers who very strictly adhere to this school of thought. Mosel producers can and, if asked, will explain to you the differences between “Tante Pauline” and “Freckes oben”. Rheinhessen producers will tell you about the differences between the middle of the slope and the left-top end of the lower slope that persist across decades and vintages. It’s just that they normally don’t bother to bottle them individually because in the grand scheme of things, “it’s good enough”. Same holds for Barolo, for Rhône, for essentially every region relevant enough for consumers to care about such differences and, hence, pay the premium needed to afford the significant effort to “express these differences”, and still be able to sell the wine. (I should note that “expressing the terroir” is meant in the same way that Michelangelo “expressed David” from a block of marble.)

Not every difference is useful if bottled stand-alone, e.g. in the Northern Rhône producers will happily confirm that their wine is a blend of different parcels, with the specific goal in mind to enhance overall balance. In some instances, single-parcel/single-vinyard bottling are less harmonious than blended together, but there will always be someone who takes a liking and buy the wine. If not, the producers will quickly abandon that pratice. But if they adhere to this school of thought, they will happily accommodate the needs of any like-minded consumer. Because in the end, they have to make a living, and if this is what it takes, that’s what they’re gonna do.

So, in the end, it’s the consumer’s wanting for difference and individuality meeting the producer’s wanting to make wine a certain way, that drives this development. And one has to be honest to oneself here: not just difference and individuality of the wine, but also of the consumer: the need for social distinction is powerful in luxury goods such as wine.

Some people drink Gevrey, but I only drink ‘Les Douces’.” (Read with a very posh accent at your own peril.)

Cheers,
HPE

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I just bottled my first 4 pinots, all from the same site. I bottled a blend of the 3 clones I worked with but also bottled smaller quantities of each of the clones. Why? Because I was excited to show how all 3 clones could stand on their own and make interesting wines AND to show how they could work together to form a blend.

There is no doubt that many winemakers are very curious and want to show off their results.

On the flip side, I have experienced flights of multiple single Vineyard bottling that were so similar to each other that perhaps it would have been better to blend them, but perhaps the winery wanted more SKUs to maximize $$$.

It’s simply not that simple . . .

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I am just a simple enthusiast and as stated in the OP, I also don’t have the time/money/opportunity to search out and acquire obscure SVD bottles. However, I think if a particular block really speaks of something special, it should be vinified and bottled on its own. I agree with several here that blends such as Williams-Selyem’s Eastside and Westside Road are the most interesting (to me). Then again, an SVD that is an overall vineyard blend that contains many different clones, exposures and soils can also be very enjoyable (to me). Many very good monopole operations/vineyards are so large their product is really not much different than a regional blend unless they produce block by block. I think I just spoke out of both sides of my mouth. I would think this SVD vs regional blend issue applies only to 100% varietal wines like Pinot Noir - most Cabernets contain other varieties such as Merlot, Cab Franc, etc. Just to conclude with a bitchy note, I also wish more wineries would stop pulling the best barrels out of their SVD blends as a “reserve” too! Cheers!

While I think there are interesting discussions to be had as to specific wines and blending (would Ghislaine Barthod be able to make a grand cru level wine if she blended some of her 1er crus together? is there a better Chave to be made from a single parcel?), I don’t think the consumer focus is the right one here. If a consumer wants a “big house*” style champagne, there are plenty on offer. If the consumer wants a single vineyard style, there are plenty of growers who offer that. The consumer has all of his/her choices.

*It should be noted that blending is traditional in Champagne entirely to economics, not to because it is a better way of making champagne. Because making champagne takes longer and requires a slightly more sophisticated operation (stronger bottles, disgorgement, riddling, etc.), it was historically done by negociants who could bear those capital costs, could buy grapes and had no choice but to blend. But this was not a conscious decision made with respect to improving quality. Some of the big houses have recognized this and made single vineyard top wines for some time - Krug with Clos du Mesnil (1979 iirc), Philiponnat Clos de Goises, etc. etc.

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One positive consequence I think has come from the increase in single-vineyard designates is higher quality and often more affordable appellation-level blends. An easy example is the Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir from Rivers-Marie. While they produce several vineyard specific Pinots, I’d imagine that juice that doesn’t make the cut gets demoded into the basic Sonoma blend, and it’s excellent and affordable. Another example would be Goodfellow’s Willamette Valley bottling: excellent and affordable. Same with Belle Pente’s WV blend.

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Noah, with all of your OPs you are becoming one of my favorite new Berserkers. Thanks for jumping and using the platform in such a great way.

Regardless of producer desires, wines are purchased by consumers. And wineries making wines not purchased by consumers will be gone soon. So if this “trend” is unsupported there will be a new trend soon enough.

For me, I have always loved differences in wines. Wine is a non-technological self creating occurrence. It does need a sheperd though. And it’s absolutely insane when you stop and consider how utterly broad the spectrum of possible outcomes are for fermenting grape juice. Insane and magical.

When I began producing, I made 2 wines. Now I make between 25-30, from around 4000 cases(if we ever see a normal vintage again). But even in the early days, I was blown away by how much Pinot Noir craves being independent in nature. Every move it makes from picking to ferment to barrel, the grape wants to be different from it’s neighbors.

Again for me, it’s very easy to differentiate bottlings by site. The sites are consistent, they are different, and the differences are both understandable and appeal to my love of where I am from.

Perhaps more important to you, is that I care very much about getting that site expression into the bottle in as delicious a form as possible. So when it’s 1:00am on my 25th day in a row of 16 hour harvest days, that need to get the best expression of site is what pushes me to keep going.

You don’t need to drink site driven wines because they express the terroir. You’re absolutely welcome to drink them because they are good. Shut out the noise of us all chattering about the why of a wines deliciousness and just drink what you like. I prefet to try lots of different wines, including a range of Beaune Crus but I could make do just fine drinking Drouhin’s Clos des Mouches or Bouchard’s L’Enfant Jesus.

Most producers make a blend in addition to their terroir based wines. If you just want a good bottle of wine, those are excellent options. Try Patricia Green Cellars Reserve, for a WV option. It’s not the same quality as their Freedom Hill, but it’s a lovely wine and ages very well. It definitely covers “a good wine”.

Literally speaking there are a plethora of options of every type of wine, blends or single row.

Honestly, I don’t think there are more micro-lot site based wines than blends, it’s just that terroir is so interesting to enough of us, that those stories often get top billing over blends. And if the story is more geekdom than a consumer wants, they can skip it and just drink the wine.

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Thank you Brandon!

I would add Evesham Wood as well. I also just tasted Kelley Fox Mirabai bottling on Monday, and it was outstanding.

A lot of what you write is true, but with Burgundy the historical and traditional market was Paris and with Bordeaux and Champagne England/United Kingdom, to completely different mind sets. Transport played a large role and getting the wines to market, Paris with the canal system and Bordeaux with the harbours. Also Burgundy was in the hands of monks who had centuries to explore nuances, champagne was a wine region before it started making bubbles and we know for instance the reds from Bouzy was the wine of kings, yet the dynamics of champagne are different, it is much more than economics. In the terms of Blending it is about emulating a style. Single Vineyard is still a relatively new concept in the Champagne with Salon being the first. In Champagne we are seeing two systems competing against one another, the old Bordeaux/Champagne philosophy to make the best possible wine or champagne with what is available or the burgundian philosophy, the expression of site, grape, vintage, both are relevant.

Also take into consideration in the past, perhaps one vintage in ten was a good vintage in the Champagne, the weather was too cold, blending was the only way forward with the addition of chapitilisation and high dosage. Now every vintage is good depending on your taste. Overripeness is the problem. A site in Chouilly Mont Aigu, in th past the best site is now too hot, Guiborat no longer makes it as a single vineyard since 2013 for this reason, now he blends with De Caures to sink the alcohol. 2018 Bouzy too hot, the emergence of coteauxs.

Look at the vintage 2017, on paper a weak vintage, producers had reduced harvests, the plethora of crus were not possible. Marguet’s Shaman where a lot of the cru’s went into this champagne, really strong. Leclapart, the same with L’Aphrodisiaque all the crus in one champagne, a stronger champagne than his single crus from better vintages.

Another thought I had: I think the ever-increasing incidence of single vineyard (or even more specific) bottlings is good for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. To me, those varieties just allow site expression and transparency more than others, and they’re almost always varietal wines.

That said, other varieties can show site well enough. A perfect example, in my opinion, is L’Ecole No. 41 and their three single-vineyard Bordeaux blends: Ferguson (Ferguson Vineyard), Perigee (Seven Hills Vineyard), and Apogee (Pepper Bridge Vineyard). Tasted side-by-side, you can definitely detect some site-specific differences, but that can also be attributed in part to the ratios of varieties included. Cadence Winery is another example of the same: Bel Canto (Cara Mia Vineyard), Tapteil (same name), and Ciel du Cheval. Andrew Will too. What I love about those blends is it’s the winemaker doing her/his best to produce the best wine from a specific site, but partially doing so by blending varieties.

Hans-Peter, thank you for one of my favorite posts in a long time. I quote this one paragraph because it really spoke to me, though your whole post was a tour de force of thoughtful reality mixed with a subtle understanding of the art of wine making. Please keep posting here!

For many (most?) of us Berserkers, finding the wine makers who actually are artists seeking to express terroir through the craft is what drives us. And I think even we sometimes forget that artists are driven by many motivations, including philosophical ones.

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I’m surprised to see how quickly people attributed this trend to profit. Sure, producers are trying to make money, but I didn’t expect this response on a board where there are literally thousands of posts comparing/contrasting/dissecting the minutiae of vineyards, regions, vintages, etc etc etc. Seems out of character to me, especially as it applies to old world regions like Burgundy. Am I to believe that Burgundy producers release single vineyard bottlings solely for profit??

Great point! Vineyards got divided up accidentally (at least in part) and then the model was purposefully recapitulated the world over. What a mess!


champagne.gif My pleasure! Thank you to everyone here willing to share their wisdom. I’ve learned a ton from you all.

Thanks for all the great responses thus far. Seems like the thread has petered out, but I’d love to hear any more thoughts on the matter if you’ve got 'em.

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Great points Noah, and thank you for posting such an interesting topic. However, we shouldn’t treat all producers as a single monolith. Some are successful in what they do and produce interesting and differentiated expressions of site/clone/etc (a few of them even post on this board). Other producers are not so successful at what they do but price their wines like they are, which is probably why some posters replied cynically.