Alsace is not a counter-argument to what I was saying, it is support.
Perhaps this will no longer surprise you, but I don't really agree. Especially now, with climate change, there is a real question about whether or not certain formerly-lauded site and grape combinations are sustainable. One can choose, for example, to pick Furstentum gewurztraminer early and preserve balance at the expense of complexity, or let it hang and end up making something indistinguishable from a fortified dessert wine. Not every year, but often enough that there's concern. There are producers who make both choices, and producers who make many in-between choices as well. So Alsace, and it is not alone, must face the same sugar/non-sugar ripeness choice as other regions.
Your original point was on the difference between picking by sugar (thus assuming other forms of ripeness) vs. alternative standards, and explaining how one was a European model that didn't apply as well to hotter New World sites. I'm trying to point out that it doesn't work in the Old World sites either, that the best growers are still picking by taste more than analysis, and that the conditions of that taste are based on an array of aesthetic choices that are influenced by, but most definitely
not controlled by, the terroir.
In other words, an Alsatian grower can no more let their Furstentum gewurztraminer hang to an arbitrary number than can those who buy Pisoni pinot noir. Both are faced with a choice. And both result in producers making different choices from the set of same available to them, which exist as a disproof of "can/can't" assessments of the terroirs in question. If Arcadian and Cargasacchi make a hypothetical wine from the same site, and they're both "quality" wines (by which I mean not flawed), but they're 3% apart in potential alcohol and taste nothing alike, then I'm dubious (to say the least) about claims from either Joe Davis
or Peter Cargasacchi that they are simply making the wines the site has forced them to make. They aren't. They've chosen to make wine based on their very different standards about what constitutes the best expression of that site. I suspect, and evidence will bear this out, that these standards will be expressed across the range of sites from which they make grapes. That's not terroir forcing their hands. That's them, in full control of their hands.
So when you wrote in your original post (edited for clarity, and emphasis mine):
If hot climate growers pick based on sugar, the tannins would still be green, so they have to wait until the seeds are mature. But, by that point, sugar will have accumulated beyond the traditional European point (technological maturity), generating jammy wines with tons of alcohol that have to be acidified. These wines are what they are not so much because of stylistic preference but because their climate imposes it.
...it's "they have to," "will," and "their climate imposes it" that I object to. None of the three is true if counter-examples exist. And in most cases, they do. If no counter-examples exist despite efforts having been made, then I'll accept the case. But my own experience suggests that, among high-quality wines (thus excluding bulk and ultra-commercial stuff), this is far more the exception than it is the rule.
By European, I meant the classic places, cold in winter, with long growing seasons.
Man, that excludes an awful lot of places I'd hate to exclude from "classic." I mean, what should we dismiss? Bandol? Collioure? Jerez? Taurasi? The Douro? Help me out, here.
It seems to me that you want to define the highest quality wines as coming from sites that fit your above criteria, and I suspect you'd find a lot of agreement from like-minded folk (probably even me), but I think you have to recognize that it's your own preferences speaking, not an immutable natural rule.
I don't know enough about California, but in Chile and Argentina, the lightning fast maturations tend to generate less choices.
Sure, of course they allow a narrow range of choices. It's worth pointing out, though, that so do the long, slow, cool sites...except that there, it's a
different narrow range; Raveneau can't pick a month before their neighbors and made their best wine.
I, in turn, probably don't know enough about South American viticulture to comment on the specifics down there. But I do know that in California, Australia, and some of Europe's hotter areas, "I'm forced to make wine this way" is pretty often shown to be very much not the case. Steve Edmunds has made somewhat of a career out of it, for example, and he's hardly alone, though he and his like-minded compatriots may be the minority.
I agree with you that there are a lot of grapes that are badly-sited and thus fall victim, vintage after vintage, to this problem of wildly variant ripening curves. In fact, that's true at both ends of the climate scale. And maybe the sites you're referring to in Argentina and Chile really
can't make wine any other way...you'd know better than I would whether or not there are expressions that demonstrate potential alternatives. But as a worldwide generalization, even an Old World/New World generalization, I just don't think it holds up very well.
When New World winegrowers make this kind of "mistake," they have to choose between mature tannins with too much sugar or correct acid/sugar balance with immature tannins.
Yes, but now we're starting with a case in which we already acknowledge that an agricultural mistake has been made, like trying to grow olive trees in Qubec. That doesn't really work for me as more than a thought exercise, because no one who consumes or talks about olive oil is actually engaged in a world in which Qubcois oil rises to a level of consideration. Maybe it will, someday. But we've got evidence that quality wine can be made on the Central Coast of California, and yet a fury of heat and debate about what it can/should/must taste like. The choices made by the producers there exist, and are not identical, and are thus a real world case demonstrating this tension between ripenesses that we can discuss. That, to me, is more interesting and tangible.
