Anxiety is All That's Flowing!!

Peter Creasey

Peter Creasey

Peter Creasey
By ERIC ASIMOV
Published: July 28, 2009

THE California wine industry encompasses many with little in common. It includes small grape growers and brokers, family producers, ngociants, big corporations, major distributors and many different types of retail outlets.

Still, as diverse as this group is, one word seems to sum up the effect of the recession on their businesses: brutal.

The reason is simple. Wine is a cash-flow business, and all along the pipeline, from farm to production to sales, cash is not flowing. Growers are behind on sales of grapes, which are fetching much lower prices than last year. Sales are sluggish for wines retailing at $15 a bottle and higher. Meanwhile, distributors, restaurants and retail shops are reluctant to buy more wine, preferring to sell through what they already have.

Cash may be trickling, but anxiety is gushing forth.
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To view the whole article --> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/dining/29pour.html

. . . . . . Pete
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In a way, this could be very restorative like The Great Flood had on humanity (for awhile). Perhaps there will be a lot less new oak used and grapes might get picked before they become physiologically-ripe raisins.
 
If only they couldn't afford the oak barrels, RO machines, additives of various forms, thick heavy silly bottles, etc.

...if there was only a way to get them to lower the alcohol and ripeness too...taxes...that's it.
 
there are a few of us who don't do any of that shit. If you don't generally like the wines made here, fine. Everybody's suffering from the effects of the economic calamity that's befallen the entire world, and it has nothing to do with stupid winemaking. If you want to feel self-righteous, do it privately.
 
Eric follows the piece with a blog post on possible downstream effects.

Steve, I would have thought that the market would be moving in your direction, at least. Your wines have always offered good value.
 
originally posted by MarkS:
oak used
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not sure where the thread will lead, but:

"We can only hope that the recession will nudge a trend away from excessive use of new oak barrels, which not only unpleasantly mask the grapes flavors, but which also support the devastation of the 200-year-old forests from which they are made.
I must take exception to a few side points made here. Skillfully cured, high quality oak chips in tea bags are in my experience the most responsible and controllable way to impart oak tannin and flavor, making it much easier to make graceful wines with well-integrated oak constituents which support rather than masking grape characteristics. Barrels are quite a bit more variable and unpredictable in their extraction characteristics. Of course, crappy chips make very crappy wine, but it is incorrect to rule them out as a class, because when made well, they are the best use of the 75% of good wood which is otherwise wasted from these old trees.
It is also my experience that big wines need less help from wood. It is the small wine lacking sweetness or framing or some lifting of aromatics that benefits from skillful subtle oak touches. Big, complete wines are perfectly good without such extractives, and benefit from ageing in old barrels; J.L. Chave, for example, uses barrels his grandfather bought."

Clark Smith, AppellationAmerica.com

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thepour.blogs.nytimes.com
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Steve, I would have thought that the market would be moving in your direction, at least. Your wines have always offered good value.
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I agree with you but people often throw out the baby with the bath water.
 
...It is the small wine lacking sweetness or framing or some lifting of aromatics that benefits from skillful subtle oak touches.
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HANDS OFF my 'little' Jura trouseau or Val d'Aosta petite rougue!
 
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