Love that Clark Smith

originally posted by Brian Loring:
But I think that it may be the folks trying to create the "13% and under aesthetic" that are more likely to fine tune than many of us who are completely comfortable making 15% wines.
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Heh. But I think the "under 13% aesthetic" crowd would simply pick earlier.

So, for me, the nose job analogy isn't quite right. The analogy I'd use would be laser eye surgery.
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"Nose job" is not a pejorative for me: I have a cousin who got a nose job on his very Jewish schnozzola and he is a big hit with the ladies... now.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by MLipton:


People might get squeamish about heating the permeate.
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Under vacuum on the rotovap.
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On what scale? Even the industrial rotovaps I've seen wouldn't hold more than a few barrels of wine.

Mark Lipton
 
there are pervaporation processes for ethanol conversion that run on pretty big scale, but I don't have details.
 
originally posted by Brian Loring:
But I think that it may be the folks trying to create the "13% and under aesthetic" that are more likely to fine tune than many of us who are completely comfortable making 15% wines.
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Ooh, this comment was so good that I have to answer it again.

Ahem.

Not at all! The "13% and under" aesthetic, generally speaking, rejects tools like these. The most likely audience is the Chablis-envy crowd -- like Smith -- who thinks they can "super-size" the quality of their wine by tweaking this or that component part.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Not at all! The "13% and under" aesthetic, generally speaking, rejects tools like these.
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Are you sure? Why do you think Clark calls Randy Dunn a hero? The same Randy Dunn who's so publically called for winemakers to stop making higher alcohol wines. Could it be that he de-alcs his wine?

I've seen the names on the trucks/tanks/barrels heading into ConeTech in Santa Rosa. And it's not like it's a parade of Cali Cult Cab producers. Which keeps bringing me back to Clark's point - you don't really know for sure if you're drinking a de-alc'ed wine or not because winemakers won't tell you. So you make assumptions. And if you assume that all wines under 13.5% alcohol are that way naturally, you'd most likely be wrong.

And BTW... if you're assuming a wine labeled 12.5% is really 12.5%, we also need to talk. That wine could legally be as high as 14%. In fact, putting 12.5% on your label means that you can produce a wine ranging from 11% to 14% each year without having to resubmit a label approval request to TTB. That also prevents you from having to re-file label approvals in about a dozen states. That saves money. And wines 14.0% and under are in a cheaper tax bracket than those 14.1% and higher. That saves a lot of money. Those factors alone could lead a lot of winemakers to do a bit of fine tuning.

It would just be nice to have real facts when discussing this issue. There are very few of us who openly talk about what we do. And we often get criticized by people who not only do what we do, but do it more often and to greater extremes. Granted, most winemakers just stay quiet on the whole issue and pretend it doesn't exist.

Sorry for venting. I'll get down off the soapbox for now.
 
originally posted by Brian Loring:
Sorry for venting. I'll get down off the soapbox for now.
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No problem. I did know most of those things. As I said somewhere above, perhaps naively, I give people the credit that they live up to their words.

On the other hand, I am also an empiricist. I'd love to see the data.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by The Latin Liquidator:
I may have said this before, so forgive me if it's a repeat, but I see this whole thing as technological correctives applied to create an illusion of "balance" within an aesthetic paradigm that precludes the possibility of true balance. In other words: We need to keep in mind what screws up the wines in the first place, then read Mr. Smith. Or that nice Loring guy.
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I also get the sense that the correctives are in the service of an immediacy. This product now. Do these techniques affect how the wine will age, etc.?

(One hates to retreat back to the flashy plastic surgery metaphor, but hell, you only live once: I get the image of an eighty-year-old woman with huge, perfectly spherical tits.)
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Eeewwwww!
 
I think this belongs here. I buy from a small farm upstate -- all organic, heritage breeds, etc. -- and they send a weekly newsletter. In today's newsletter, the following segment appeared:

Some of you may have read South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's emails last week for the salacious content. We, of course, read them for what they have to say about modern agriculture.

We are all familiar with American Gothic, but Governor Sanford, in one of his e-mails to his lady in Argentina sent last July, inadvertently defines what we might call "Modern American Bucolic". He wrote:

   "Got back an hour ago to civilization and am now in Columbia after what was for me a glorious break from reality down at the farm. No phones ringing and tangible evidence of a day's labors. Though I have started every day by 6, this morning woke at 4:30, I guess since my body knew it was the last day, and I went out and ran the excavator with lights until the sun came up."

That his farm experience consists of running an excavator says something about him and possibly about what we have come to see as farming in today's industrialized America. It all sounds much like George W. Bushs favorite ranch experience "clearing brush". Clearing brush for what? Excavating for what? But it gets better. Sanford continues:

   "To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the back ground, the tranquility that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning clouds - and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt."

Country music playing, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine and... "tranquility"! How, one wonders, does tranquility break through this din? How on earth, one might ask, is he alive to the dawning of the morning light, driving as he is with his headlights on? It reads to me like a modern advertising script selling big vehicles with all the accoutrements by invoking imagery from once authentic Romantic ideals. Undoubtedly faux country music (heard, no doubt, through headphones), windows rolled up (to keep in the air conditioning), manicured hands on the steering wheel of a big roaring excavator. But somewhere in his trendy head the faint intimation, a vague sense, that one should, when in a landscape of "trees and marsh",
experience the tranquility of nature.
 
Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand,
And rivers that ran through ev'ry day.
I must have been mad,
I never knew what I had,
Until I threw it all away....
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay....
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Well I'm sorry my son but you're too late in askin'...

Best Prine song ever, and that's saying something given the competition.
 
originally posted by Steve Guattery:

Best Prine song ever, and that's saying something given the competition.
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Blow up your TV,
Eat a lot of peaches,
try to find Jesus on your own . . .

Some competition, indeed.
Best, Jim
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
Pssh. You still haven't re-road-tested the 06 Romo, I would imagine?
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Puzelat? We just had that two nights ago. What's the deal with that wine? I think I've missed this wine in prior years so I lack a frame of reference.

I sampled 2002 No. Rhone wines carefully based on the troubles in the region. Vincent Paris made a very nice lightweight Cornas in 2002. But I didn't re-buy really washed out wines. Several winemakers in the Piemonte and Tuscany, dealing with their own 2002 issues, still managed to make some very good wines.

I require that the wines I buy taste good, be interesting, and be reasonably priced. Ideolological purity doesn't enter into that equation for me. I don't require that people making the wines I buy renounce electricity or dress in black or join the Socialist Party. But after I've identified wines that I enjoy and learn about the methods used, there are very often common (but not indentical) "wine making" characteristics. I wonder if extreme ideologues would have the flexibility necessary to make good wine in widely varying vintages?

If I tasted a Clark Smith Chardonnay that tasted like (unoxidized) Chablis and was reasonably priced, I'd buy it, regardless of his political, religious, or aesthetic affiliations.
 
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