Another question about spoof

K

Kay Bixler

Kay Bixler
Last night we enjoyed a bottle of basic Vin de Bourgogne Chablis. The wine was crisp but not at all shrill and the next nights leftovers had a wonderful tinge of marzipan. But it dawned on me that the wine, obviously, had not undergone malolactic fermentation. And since it was not currently refermenting in the bottle someone, possibly with a filter or a good dose of metabisulfite or both, must have intervened to prevent this secondary fermentation that would have otherwise happened naturally.

I liked the tart wine very much, but could a person claim it was spoofed?

Best,
Kay
 
An avid denouncer can claim (and ) that anything done to a grape to turn it into wine would be considered spoofulization. I suppose that if there was a grapevine growing somewhere naturally that wasn't being tended by a human being and the grapes ripened and a couple of bunches fell into an indentation in the rocks beneath the vine and the juice in them fermented on its own from the warmth and then someone happened to be walking by and noticed this puddle of glistening juice and being thirsty, decided to taste it, well I guess that that would be considered "sans-spoof" (Thierry Allemand should trademark that name).

And if I'm having this discussion with someone who's come back from the dead to talk about wine, is that considered spoof or just good karma?

-Eden (if it tastes good, does it really matter if it's spoofied?)
 
Hmm. Ah, well . . . Hey, can we just get an up or down vote here: stopping malolactic fermentation--spoof or non-spoof?

Best,
Kay
 
What if we stop alcoholic fermentation and make port? What then, eh? Eh?

Spoof city, Sr. Fonseca or Roseira.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
What if we stop alcoholic fermentation and make port? What then, eh? Eh?

Spoof city, Sr. Fonseca or Roseira.
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Porto, which I love more than most, might be considered spoof. Blocking malo? Not spoof. Unless it is a red wine. But just because the malo didn't happen doesn't mean it was blocked.
 
I think it has been definitively established that all that matters is the winemaker's intent. So we need to ask, why was your delicious wine prevented from going through malolactic fermentation? Let us consider the options.

1. The winemaker learned to do it that way in wine school. Verdict: Spoof

2. The winemaker was trying to make a wine that would please David "briskly saline" Schildknecht. Verdict: Spoof

3. The winemaker and his new bride were vigorously consummating their marriage in the next room and a bag of bisulfite fell into the open-topped fermenter. Verdict: Terroir!
 
I tasted this afternoon with a producer who makes a chardonnay that apparently will not undergo malo -- that is to say, they've tried and it simply doesn't work with that particular wine -- with no spontaneous refermentation in the vintages thus far produced. He doesn't filter. There is some sulfur in the other wines, post-malo (none at bottling), but I didn't think to ask about this particular wine. Is it actually an inevitability that a non-malo chardonnay would referment in the bottle?

Said producer actually posts here, so maybe he'll chime in.
 
from reading 'art of eating', malolactic ferm is largely not done in vouvray, so is typical vouvray (think huet, et. al.) spoof wine? if you ask the question, you must be prepared to face the answer.
 
Whether or not a wine will go through MLF in the bottle depends upon a number of factors, especially pH and SO2 levels.

Wines with low pH (below 3.2 or so) are hard to get to go through MLF intentionally. You might not need to filter something like that.

Too, if your SO2's were high enough (but they'd have to be pretty damn high) you might have some level of confidence in bottling unfiltered.

Some other factors come into play as well:
-length of time between bottling and release
-amount of wine to be sold
-intended range of distribution for the wine
-ability to keep the wine cool throughout the distribution channel
-knowledge level of your intended market
-past history of the wine's behavior

etc, etc, etc. All of this a matter of playing percentages... there is no cut-and-dried answer as to whether filtration is necessary or not.

MLF is far more finicky than alcoholic fermentation. So, while there are a goodly number of unfiltered wines that go out without completing MLF, there are far fewer wines with RS that go out unfiltered.
Even then, though, there are exceptions.
 
originally posted by robert ames:
from reading 'art of eating', malolactic ferm is largely not done in vouvray, so is typical vouvray (think huet, et. al.) spoof wine? if you ask the question, you must be prepared to face the answer.
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I think it's more often a question of "doesn't happen" than "not done." pH is often low enough to discourage it, as Bruce notes more comprehensively above.
 
Bruce G. you bring up a good point regarding pH, and considering the bracing, crisp nature of this Chablis it may very well have been low enough to naturally discourage malolactic fermentation. Thanks for the insight.

So maybe the question could now be filtration: spoof or non-spoof.

And I'll bet the answer again will be "it depends."

SFJoe: Port to me is more of a tradition, that's just how it's made and if you don't make it that way it's not Port so I'll vote non-spoof.

Best,
Kay
 
originally posted by Kay Bixler:
Wow, thanks!
SFJoe: Port to me is more of a tradition, that's just how it's made and if you don't make it that way it's not Port so I'll vote non-spoof.
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The only really satisfactory definition of "non-spoof" is "practices sanctioned by time."
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
The only really satisfactory definition of "non-spoof" is "practices sanctioned by time."
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That might be the best definition yet, though if spoofy wine takes over the world in the next century it will need to be revised.
I'll reiterate my view that the essence of spoof isn't manipulation per se but manipulation towards a particular aesthetic. People who want a derogatory term to describe crisp, pure, non-ML Chablis will have to come up with a new one.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
People who want a derogatory term to describe crisp, pure, non-ML Chablis will have to come up with a new one.
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Yeah! And people who try to point out that spoof isn't always a derogatory term will just have to try a little harder.

Best,
Kay
 
originally posted by Kay Bixler:
Hmm. Ah, well . . . Hey, can we just get an up or down vote here: stopping malolactic fermentation--spoof or non-spoof?
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Without intervention, wine will eventually turn to vinegar. By this logic, all wine is spoof. Or, rather, we conclude that judicious use of metabisulfite or even filtration is not per se spoofulation.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Eden Mylunsch:
An avid denouncer can claim (and ) that anything done to a grape to turn it into wine would be considered spoofulization. I suppose that if there was a grapevine growing somewhere naturally that wasn't being tended by a human being and the grapes ripened and a couple of bunches fell into an indentation in the rocks beneath the vine and the juice in them fermented on its own from the warmth and then someone happened to be walking by and noticed this puddle of glistening juice and being thirsty, decided to taste it, well I guess that that would be considered "sans-spoof" (Thierry Allemand should trademark that name).
Click to expand...

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that wine production began on the S. shore of the Black Sea more or less at the same time that civilization began. It's likely that the first wine resulted from some enterprising farmer picking wild grapes and placing them in a ceramic container where they were crushed by their own weight and sponteneously fermented. Perhaps that should be our baseline for spoofulation?

(BTW, there's also circumstantial evidence to suggest that the motivation for migratory hunter-gatherers to settle down and plant seasonal crops -- the event that is usually taken to signal the beginning of civilization -- was to grow wheat for... beer! Enkidu was actually Homer Simpson???)

Mark Lipton
 
I like that: "practices santioned by time."

It seems related to something else I've noticed related to spoof vs. non-spoof but strictly from an experiential "in the glass" kind of way. That is, non-spoof wines always seem to taste better over time, with repetition, in comparison to otherwise equivalent spoof wines which tend to the reverse.

I find this difficult to talk about though. There are epistemological challenges. For example, for those interested in separating the two types of wine quickly, is there a shortcut without resorting to facts of winemaking? I don't think so, especially not for seasoned professionals. ( When youre certain you cannot be fooled, wrote the magician Teller, you become easy to fool.) But checking the winemaking introduces a bias. I try to overcome the bias by spot checking the "juice" in normal settings: full bottles, depleted entirely, in comfortable settings, repeat. But it is difficult to do this without knowing details that might influence results. (For more on practical self mind control, please refer to the church of the Subgenius.)

And I thought, after years now, that I had at least convinced two of my friends of all this. But last week I showed up to discover that they thought an oak aged Duboeuf 2005 Moulin a Vent was a better wine than a 2007 Terres Dorees l'Ancien because it tasted bigger and more obvious in the glass. And I think I could see their point, except, when I asked them if they could possibly buy and drink TWO bottles of the Duboeuf they quickly changed the subject. We kept coming back to "what was in the glass." So I was forced into the familiar position of inadvertently insulting their ability to discern a wine's merits.

And in case there was any doubt I tried to drink a glass of the Moulin a Vent myself. In three or four drinks (not "tastes") it went from a plausible facsimile of an Henri Gouges Nuits St. Georges if it were made with Gamay, to a hideous plasticine paint job of sour oak extract and suppressed acidity (but pleasant). As expected (bias admission), the l'Ancien went from a challenging swipe of sour berry acid and unruly herb flavored tannins to a pure, highly drinkable liquid, expressive and thought provoking, forthright and beautiful, the picture of sweetness and light. So I finished the bottle and left.

So I guess I'm looking for confirmation of this from other misfits, or devastating criticism. Thanks.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Eden Mylunsch:
An avid denouncer can claim (and ) that anything done to a grape to turn it into wine would be considered spoofulization. I suppose that if there was a grapevine growing somewhere naturally that wasn't being tended by a human being and the grapes ripened and a couple of bunches fell into an indentation in the rocks beneath the vine and the juice in them fermented on its own from the warmth and then someone happened to be walking by and noticed this puddle of glistening juice and being thirsty, decided to taste it, well I guess that that would be considered "sans-spoof" (Thierry Allemand should trademark that name).
Click to expand...

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that wine production began on the S. shore of the Black Sea more or less at the same time that civilization began. It's likely that the first wine resulted from some enterprising farmer picking wild grapes and placing them in a ceramic container where they were crushed by their own weight and sponteneously fermented. Perhaps that should be our baseline for spoofulation?

(BTW, there's also circumstantial evidence to suggest that the motivation for migratory hunter-gatherers to settle down and plant seasonal crops -- the event that is usually taken to signal the beginning of civilization -- was to grow wheat for... beer! Enkidu was actually Homer Simpson???)

Mark Lipton
Click to expand...

I was under the impression that virtually every civilization discovered for itself some form of fermented drink--except AmerIndians, who, amazingly made distilled cactus hooch but no form of fermented stuff.

My colleague in anthropology, one of four people with whom I teach a course on Darwin, says that the current theory is that people move to agriculture only when their population size forces them to, since any fool would prefer the relatively work light life of a male hunter gatherer nomad (one hour to kill some dinner, the rest of the time to sit around and brag about it) to the dawn to dusk work of agriculture.
 
I know from experience that a grenache wine at 3.19 pH will take forever to complete malo. If low pH is combined with high alcohol, it's even worse. Yet I don't know any red wine in the world (maybe there are, but I've never known any) that hasn't undergone malo. The type of filtration needed to stabilize a whte wine without malo and avoid refermentation would completely destroy a red wine, which has so much more dry extract than a white, rendering it lean and mean to the extreme.
 
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