More “intuitively”, having worked with a few dozen grape varieties. Yes, that’s a good relation of the wine’s expression.
My problem wine was Tinta Cão, which I’ve only had a single mediocre varietal example of. I know nothing but it’s supposed to be an aromatic blending grape. I just trusted the grower when it was ready. It showed nothing. Nothing. Grapes, punching down, pressing, sampling. When I was ready to bottle, I was ready to dump it. No body, no expression. I did a bench test blending trial adding percentages of Touriga and that brought out these pretty florals that are quite distinct from the Touriga character. A 20% blend made a pretty light red, with the Touriga in a supporting and complementary role. Need to check in on a bottle, since a couple months ago it had gained some weight and dumbed down, which isn’t what you want an early drinker to do. Maybe that was a phase that will or did resolve, maybe it’s an indication I missed a blending sweet spot.
We had Silvanner here in the Vine Hill subregion of the Santa Cruz Mountains, which was prized for growing Germanic varieties. Those seemed to have fallen out of favor in the 1970s. Germanic whites had a good market in Oregon in the '90s, with a good number of local producers making them. I remember stores like Fred Meyer (regular grocery store) having a dedicated wine section, with many local, Alsatian and German offerings. Now that’s pretty much gone. Goodfellow’s Whistling Ridge Blanc includes old vine Germanic grapes, is a crazy good wine at an insanely low price. A short-sighted bean counter would tell them to rip that stuff out. (I think that’s the sort of wine that adds value to being a loyal customer.)
American culinary tradition until recently held French cuisine above all others. French wines and the classic French wine grapes were a part of that. We had the nurserymen in the 1860s offering pretty much every grape variety you can think of, everything they could get their hands on. We had grape growing, wine making families immigrate from all over Europe and continue their traditions, often with the same grape varieties they’d grown in the towns they came from (sometimes bringing cuttings). Phylloxera wiped some of that out. Prohibition wiped out so much family tradition and knowledge, and brought a sea change of what was planted (since home winemaking was legal, there was massive planting, grafting, replanting of grapes that could ship). A later push to quality to recover the perception of California wine stressed making 100% varietal wines, and we saw market perceptions shift. The '76 Paris tasting surely helped boost the reputations of Cab and Chard, the way the sad sack drunks movie later gave a huge boost to Pinot Noir.
Try selling a no-name pretty good Pinot for $50. It’s not an easy business. Retailers only have so much shelf space, and wines at that price point, especially from an unknown producer, are slow movers. Oddball grapes require hand selling, so it’s a niche market, but some restaurants and retailers are good at that, and their customers come to them for well curated novelty/introductions. Getting people to taste the wine is the issue. Tasting rooms can play a key role.
We moved from being a Pinot Noir specialist to going off the deep end with unusual grapes. The grape prices for Pinot went a bit crazy, sources were getting poached, growers become uncooperative - the idea of working with the winemaker to get the best out of a site became distasteful, when it was easier to just sell to someone less demanding. Most of the available fruit just didn’t warrant the asking price. So, the idea was finding less common grapes grown by people who cared, on sites appropriate for those (mostly Mediterranean) grapes. Strive to make wine of the same or better quality for half the price. When we finally hit our stride, Mission was our top seller, joined by our San Benito Cab and our Corvina. All fun by-the-glass wines, take-home-and-drink wines.
I have to say that famous aka noble grape varieties grown in the right places with the right methods are the greatest. They are called noble for that reason. Rauenthaler Baiken, La Tache, Cote Rotie, Ch Latour…pretty great wines. Just opened a 2005 Qupe Hillside Syrah…wow!! …noble cepage planted in the right place or what!!
Having helped make Carignan, Teroldego, Nebbiolo, Barbera, Zinfandel, Oregon Chardonnay and Pinot, Primitivo, Vermentino, Moscato Giallo, Grenache, Sangiovese and many others, I can say that these wines are perfectly enjoyable but rarely genius. Indeed the genius wines came from the most famous varieties. I agree with Wes…fun BTG or. take and drink at home wines…and somebody should pass a law about wax and ceramic capsules…
How many Zinfandels have we opened and wondered where the ‘no open flame’ sign was?? For every 74 LyttonSpring I’ve drunk there must be ten where I woke up the next day and searched for the ice pick in my brain. How many of you have drunk a ten yo Teroldego and thought, Thank God I wasn’t drinking a 20 yo Monte Bello?? Vermentino vs a ten yo ABC Chardonnay??
Now that I have slammed my entire plan for marketing Uvaggio wines, let me parrot Wes again: We have a Mediterranean climate…why not try grapes that grow there. We can make affordable wines for wine snobs who forgot to become venture capitalists.
When you mention Grenache, Nebbiolo, and Sangiovese here, are you referring to your experience of their quality here in the U.S. or globally? Would be hard to argue that those three fail to reach genius levels in their traditional regions…
The Nebbiolo was promising and some of SuperTuscan style blends were very good. That was more than 15 years ago. Had we gotten some encouragement from the market we might have continued. The Grenache was a short lived experiment. The wine was good but somebody else had first dibs on the grapes. My point was that the more noble the grape, the better our results in terms of ultimate quality.
They say the market makes the wine and the market back then called for high levels of alcohol and over extraction…not us. The market is turning towards what we did. This is due to a generational shift. The new generation wants something different and doesn t have that much money. Perhaps the new generation wants to visit a winery somewhere between San Jose, Santa Cruz and King City and come home with a case for less than $350…not a $350 bottle from Napa.
You pose a very good question, Scott (and I’m not sure my answer entirely belongs in this thread): is it just the novelty factor that people will try an 'odd" variety like Mission and then return to safer grounds once they’ve done so? I think yes, that’s def the case. People are curious and will try them at the right price point, but they probably won’t go upmarket with the oddball grapes. For that, they need to be vetted. So I think one needs to be priced right and maybe not put all eggs in one basket. Also, I think with odder varieties, you market appeals to the already initiated. Mission will prob never sit comfortably on a supermarket wine aisle. It needs to be sold to the terminally included.
But of course, consumers can be led in a direction. It wasn’t that long ago that Pinot Noir was an oddball - look at it now. Can Mission ever become a PN? No, I don’t think so, but damn if I won’t try! It has been a solid seller for me. And from what I hear from other Mission producers, they seem to have done OK with the variety as well. Which is why it makes me happy to hear that so many new producers are experimenting with Mission - the more we are, the more it legitimizes the grape and allows it its natural place.
A more philosophical observation: I think like most new winemakers or winery owners, tend to start out with big sweeping ‘statement-y’ ideas. I did. I went into this venture with grand plans of combining oddball varieties with natural winemaking, and that was what I would do and only do. Now 3 harvests down the road, I realize it’s not entirely as black and white as it seemed. Things shift and evolve. Opportunities arise. I use some oak - that was never the natural plan. I use sulfites, that was not the initial plan either. I was going to do amphora wines (and I do), but to much lesser degree (I sold 2 of them and cracked the 3rd). I was going to do a yearly orange wine - but have since become less enamored with the style, so this year was the first year I didn’t. I was never going to do Zinfandel - this year I did two. I was never gonna filter, but now I do so lightly. Etc, etc.
Great article, thanks for sharing. What’s always interesting to me is how much the basic supply & demand principles influence wine prices. So much fantastic QPR wine out there simply because the varietal or region hasn’t established the cache that other wines enjoy.
A lot of weird things move the market. Was the high-octane thing really what the consumers wanted or what they were lead to believe? I’m sure it’s some of both, playing off each other. The critics rewarding the new style were guessing. Hordes of winemakers got on the bandwagon to riches, best guessing at the recipe. There was a market backlash that sorted out the folks who knew what they were doing from the pretenders as the new wines collectors were told were great and would age well failed to do so, or rewarded expectations.
I don’t think anyone is knocking time proven grape varieties. But, the market has the attention span of a gnat. We’ve tossed many great grapes aside for myriad reasons. New fads. Royal decree. Difficulty working with. Acts of God. Some of these are being brought back, which knowledge, sanitation, modern equipment negating any weaknesses.
Many grapes have played important niche roles, many are just new, and have never had a proper chance to show their potential.
Location, location, location. Some sites are just great. Some sites have been known to be great long before the grapes currently planted there even existed. Some of these sites have stood high over absolute shit winemaking. Seriously. So, just because what’s currently planted and excelling there doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of other varieties that could do as well or even better.
Some grapes are finicky, so excel at one specific vineyard and seem to fail anywhere else.
Genetic diversity. Some varieties have a huge range of clones. But, guess what? A clone of Pinot Noir that excels at one site can suck at another where other PN clones shine.
What are you rewarding? We’ve had people on here talk about how they don’t understand long-term aging or aging at all. Many of us understand the glories of a great mature wine. Many seem to prefer more moderate aging. Many of us have observed a vast range of entirely valid maturity preferences. We’ve also experienced wines that excelled outside of our general preferences and expectations. How many of us have had mind blowing young wines? Is a complex, compelling wonderful young wine that needs to be consumed within 6 months less than a wine that’s undrinkable for over a decade and takes 30 years to be as enjoyable? Or, is it just different? We seem to be fine with quite a few diverse wine types, but biased against others. Like anything, some of those biases are based in bad experience. Carbonic maceration got a bad reputation from cheap wines made with a terrible yeast. Now we understand it as non-binary. A category of techniques that can enhance aromatic complexity in a young wine without effecting age-worthiness. (Okay, enough rambling for now…)
I always love your posts and need to try some of the wines soon.
Your energy in this is necessary to counterbalance the fussy curmudgeon in me thinking that we don’t have less cookie cutter wines now than we used to, we just have 7 cookie cutters instead of 3…
I find that true more in the new world than the old, but I probably just know and gravitate to that that cookie cutter more. Like I said, looking forward to tasting some of your wines and maybe some Dirty and Rowdy too.
based on your posted experiences with Burgundy, how is that that region any different for you than Sylvaner? Burgundy’s establishment as a rockstar is inarguable, but how often have we all opened mediocre bottles and given it a pass because we’re aware of the regions genius in other bottles, or it’s reputation in general?
why is the basis for what Wes’ Touriga tastes like wines from Portugal? Typicity for Portugal shouldn’t have an influence on Northern California typicity(in my opinion). Beef is beef in every country, but tastes the way it’s cooked in that country…but grapes are not grapes unless they taste just like the most established representation of the variety? Jura is in trouble…and I hope Wes’ Touriga tastes like the vineyard more than the variety(for his sake at the very least) and would encourage him to forge his own “traditional” style.
The idea that the highs are higher and the lows are lower in Burgundy, or that “you never know what you’re going to get” (I’ve heard this, ipsis verbis, from the mouth of Jasper Morris) seems to be old news from what I can tell. Whether or not Sylvaner is also a grape that can be mindblowing when finetuned in a very specific way but is otherwise disappointing, and/or whether it was primarily economic reasons that led to its decline in popularity in German vineyards, I really wouldn’t know… but I would be curious to know, and that’s why I asked that question.
My comment about doing the ‘right’ thing (and I was careful to use quotation marks lest I be misinterpreted) was related to Wes’ impression that Touriga helped ‘save’ an otherwise utterly bland expression of Tinto Cão, and that falls squarely in line with old, established Portuguese practice, which is that certain varieties (like Tinto Cão, or Tinta Francisca, or Donzelinho, to name a few) are excellent blenders but unsuccessful or underachieving as varietal wines, and Touriga Nacional - which is also most often blended but has plenty of character to warrant standing on its own - has such strongly identifiable characteristics that I was wondering to what extent its migration to the New World would preserve this or not. This was mere curiosity and not a judgement - I don’t mean to imply that Wes’ wines ought to taste like anything other than what they do end up tasting like. Even within Portugal, Touriga’s varietal expression is certainly different depending on where you grow it (Dão, Douro, Lisbon, Alentejo).
I’ve enjoyed terrific Sylvaner --or silvaner–from Franconia thanks to Claude Kolm, but I don t think it’s a grape variety for California.
Here it was called Sylvaner Riesling but it was never a big hit. People tend to replant what sells.
In Germany it was prized for its ability to ripen and good yields.
The idea of noble varieties may be fairly stupid but there are ignoble varieties I am sure. My uncle the horticulturalist used to say there was no such thing as a weed, just flowers out of place.
Solid answers, and I hope that my questions/assertations came across as seeking information in the first. And making a point in the second, that wasn’t intended to create sides but to simply state that the ultimate goal for many winemakers is an expression of place that also includes culture.
It is old news that Burgundy, and Pinot Noir, can be inconsistent but still thought of as noble. But as wine drinkers and enthusiasts consume wines from lesser plots, but still seeking the “noble” experience, I would guess that the wines will rely more and more on the reputation of nobility rather than upon user experiences.
Red Burgundy wines occupy many spots in my hypothetical “GOAT” list and also a couple of slots of my worst of all time list. That said, pricing has moved most of the GOAT wines beyond my options. I’m not bitter about it, just making the point that if I hadn’t had previous experiences with great red Burgundy, my last 10 years of consumption have seen almost no “life altering” experiences from the region. If that was my total experience, I would wonder why the region ranks where it does.
Last, with climate change as real as it is, it’s hard for me to look at any growing region and say that historical status should be accepted at face value.
A lot of posts here are packed with lengthy views, and this is the one that I keep dwelling on. It made me think about it.
It hits to an interesting nerve for me. Noble, when I think of it I generally assume the capability of some unparalleled level of quality, or versatility, or just greatness. What’s the last great SB anyone has had that did that? Few. Well Sauternes and Barsac, check. Yet while it can go rounds for what it does there, it does not do it alone often, i.e. blended in Semillon and Muscadelle as partners in crime. Begs the question, can it stand alone and be great?
Well, yes and no for me, The Loire, Cal and NZ at the forefront, basically any where else in the world jockeying for position. And its good, rarely great (Merry Edwards). Its kinda why I like SBs at restaurants, they are food friendly, rarely expensive, and rarely scamper wildly out of their swim lanes for a region. Its consistent. I always pretty much know what I’m going to get. Other varietals, way too much can go wrong or they go can go way off the reservation in a bad way.
So maybe SB trades “greatness” for breadth of region, expression, and consistency. If it is noble, maybe it not noble in the sense commonly thought of.
That is pretty much what I was thinking (i kept it short and slightly flippant to spark discussion). IMNSHO Its the level and quality of the top 1% of wines using the grape that decides nobility, not the top quartile or the average. (Your comment about restaurants points at another discussion perhaps about how bad wines can be - hello Pinot Grigio, were looking at you - and what are safe categories, but that’s off topic). Is there a DRC of Sauvignon Blanc? I think not.
No question that the original varieties considered to be noble was a little suspect.
Certain white Graves used to be considered great. Nobody talks about them much now. I would have to put '37 d Yquem and '47 Suduiraut in my GOAT list. Blends to be sure, just like the Bordeaux reds. I would also put some of Didier Dagueneau’s wines in that group.
Clearly there are a bunch of Italian and Spanish varieties that should have been planted here 40 years ago but are just now gaining traction. They are much more suited to the the Golden State than cool climate French varieties. Does that mean that Teroldego is a noble variety?? Maybe somebody who collects Foradori has the answer to that question.
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