Those wineries that were making 13% alc wine in the '70s had little competition and still had trouble selling their wine. If 80% of the vintages in California are terrific, then there is more inventory to sell.
Wine got a lot easier to sell when the grapes were picked riper and the tannins were softer.
Everyone NOW likes to point out wines like Clos du Val 75 or Chappellet 75 and say, Wow, that was the golden age of winemaking but I am not sure every wine turned out great. I might add that the 75 Chappellet was hard sell.
I can certainly understand producers catering to what consumers seem to want. But the OP was about the thesis that this style was inherent to Napa – that trying to pick less ripe was somehow not true to nature in Napa. That’s what I’m taking issue with.
(The bolding was mine in my quote of you – just to make clear what I was responding to.)
That’s pretty much the definition of “Terroir” [or at least “Terroirism”]: Embrace what you’ve been given to work with, and don’t try to turn it into something that it isn’t.
Brix, anthocyanin and pyrazine levels provide great numbers for the chemists to read the wines from the back side. An old vintner’grower will visit the vineyard, check the clusters, pick and taste a grape here and there to evaluate the flavors, then check the seed to see if it is brown yet. Brix doesn’t matter as much as the grape’s ripeness according to the seed color. If a client wants it higher in brix or fruit, let it hang. If you want a wine when it is ready, the seed is brown and fruit is what it is with a little wiggle room of hang time.
'75 Chappellet might have been a hard sell because the '75 Clos du Val was $1.50 cheaper!! We ended up selling 100 cs of the Chappellet.
My point here is this: making wine the old-fashioned way, with plenty of tannin and SO2, retarded sales. I am not saying it retarded quality…in the long run.
From everything that I’ve heard about the 2015 vintage with heat and drought, it seems amazing that you were able to keep the alcohol that low. Did you pick much earlier than others? Is it true that the northern part of the valley often gets temperatures higher than the southern part? How much less wine did you make in 2015 than would be the norm?
I always pick “early” by others’ standards. And that year I picked very early. When you have a short crop (yields are down), the whole thing comes together more quickly. My spot is hot. Hot. I have a lot less than is typical for my site.
The wines are good. No one would taste them and ask the alcohol question. In fact, no one ever does. We talk about why the wine tastes like it does, how the color is so naturally beautiful, and what the oak treatment was. Never is the discussion about ABV.
No one needs to do anything. I don’t understand the concept as one dimensional or uniform. I do understand it as accentuating natural strengths and diminishing that which could be perceived by many as undesirable. While zealots such as ourselves perceive wine making as something noble, it’s first and foremost a business.
Important to recognize. I can put Calistoga AVA on my label, but I choose not to. You drive out of here 2 miles, within the AVA, and the soil and overall weather is totally different. I use the Napa Valley AVA on my label, which is even more diverse, but has recognition for excellence. At this point in my label’s “career,” I rely on “EMH Black Cat” for recognition.
I was served a good example of Napa-ness tonight: the 2002 Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet. It was immediately recognizable as Napa cab, with a bit of coconut (presumably American oak). In the mouth, it was rich, rich, rich – just chewy/dense/concentrated. Lots of fruit and some chocolate with lots of grip (slowly softening tannins). Though it’s a big bruiser, it’s balanced, with only a hint of alcohol popping out around the edges on the finish (none in the mid-palate). This will likely last forever, but it’s no crime to drink it now. Labeled 14.2% – modest by today’s standards.
We were just sorry we didn’t have steaks to go with this.
I have no idea of what the winemaking regime is here, but it tastes like cabernet (it wasn’t picked so ripe that the grape character is lost) and it tastes like Napa.
The lactone you noticed as coconutty American oak could also be French. American oak diminishes in lactones with seasoning whereas in French oak it rises.
I’m no expert but I’ve been told that pyrazine levels can be lowered/mitigated in both Cab Sauv and Cab Franc by more aggressive canopy management techniques.