Another question about spoof

originally posted by MLipton:
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?
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Yes. Now we're getting somewhere!

1. Whole cluster fermentation=non-spoof

Any idea if the ceramic container had a lid? We could probably make ruling on carbonic maceration.

Jonathan Loesberg: ". . . 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)."

That lifestyle absolutely requires alcohol.

Thanks again to everyone for the great replies.

Best,
Kay
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
except AmerIndians, who, amazingly made distilled cactus hooch but no form of fermented stuff.
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Pulque is post-conquest?
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No, but I believe I have read that some versions of mescal predate pulque. But I'll happily learn I'm wrong about that since the idea that a civilization would invent distilling before stumbling upon fermentation is counter-intuitive to me.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

originally posted by SFJoe:

originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

except AmerIndians, who, amazingly made distilled cactus hooch but no form of fermented stuff.
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Pulque is post-conquest?
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No, but I believe I have read that some versions of mescal predate pulque. But I'll happily learn I'm wrong about that since the idea that a civilization would invent distilling before stumbling upon fermentation is counter-intuitive to me.
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To me, too.

Distilling only concentrates the alcohol that results from fermentation. I'm not aware of a source of alcohol concentrated beyond 1% in nature that doesn't come from a fermentation. So any distillation will be concentrating a fermentation product. I wasn't aware that distillation was found in the Americas before the conquest. Pulque seems pretty old. This guy is precolumbian:

Monkeyjar.jpg
 

 And who could forget the four hundred drunken rabbits?


 
 
originally posted by VS:
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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There is a winery in California (where else) that specializes in red wine with blocked malo. You don't need to know any more.
 
Pulque, according to Wiki, goes back to 200 AD, which is plenty early but actually not that early in Mesoamerican civilization which goes back more than a thousand years BCE (Aztecs and their drunken rabbits are a very late and decadent pre-Columbian civilization). But I can't find the site that I found when there was a therapy thread about this that said that Amerindians had distilled alcohol before fermented alcohol. I'm more than happy to write this off as bad memory since, as you point out, it makes no sense to me.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
distillation drunken rabbits...very...decadent....
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You can say that again. Nothing sloppier than a drunken rabbit. Unless it's 400 of them.
 
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.
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And, of course, sharia law has trumped even nature, working better
than uber-ripe zinfandel to miraculously stop fermentations dead in their
tracks!
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
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."
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I'm no expert on spoof. Heck, I don't even know if the wines I make are spoofed or not.
But this definition seems fraught with problems, Joe.
It essentially reduces all spoofy wines to non-spoofed wines sitting in a penalty box waiting for the clock to run out.

It means that certain techniques are spoof-enabling or non-spoof based upon where they are used.
Harvesting sur maturite fruit is non-spoof in Banyuls but spoofy in Napa Cab production. Aging reds sur lies is non-spoofy in Burgundy, but spoofy in Australia.

It also means that some of the champions of low intervention wine growing are spoofers.
Puzelat's a spoofer for using so much dry ice in his red wine production. Joly (and indeed all the BDers) are spoofers. Wouldn't Allemand's sans soufre wines make him a spoofer as well?

as confused as ever,
bruce
 
originally posted by VS:
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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There are serious amounts of reds in this world that are sterile filtered (passed through something with a pore size of 0.45 microns or less).
Whether or not they are destroyed?... personally, I'm with you: I think the consequences of this kind of thing are dire. But the wines sell well, they get big point scores, and producers consider the wines "better" (or, at the very least, they claim that the effects disappear with time).

Go figure.
 
originally posted by Bruce G.:
originally posted by SFJoe:
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.
Click to expand...
The only really satisfactory definition of "non-spoof" is "practices sanctioned by time."
Click to expand...

I'm no expert on spoof. Heck, I don't even know if the wines I make are spoofed or not.
But this definition seems fraught with problems, Joe.
It essentially reduces all spoofy wines to non-spoofed wines sitting in a penalty box waiting for the clock to run out.

It means that certain techniques are spoof-enabling or non-spoof based upon where they are used.
Harvesting sur maturite fruit is non-spoof in Banyuls but spoofy in Napa Cab production. Aging reds sur lies is non-spoofy in Burgundy, but spoofy in Australia.

It also means that some of the champions of low intervention wine growing are spoofers.
Puzelat's a spoofer for using so much dry ice in his red wine production. Joly (and indeed all the BDers) are spoofers. Wouldn't Allemand's sans soufre wines make him a spoofer as well?

as confused as ever,
bruce
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Since I proposed back on one of the prior threads using accord with tradition as the controlling element for distinguishing spoofing from non-spoofing intervention, I am hunky-dory with "practices sanctioned by time." I also explicitly foresaw that it would run into these kinds of objections since the concept, while comprehensible, doesn't operate with analytical precision, as few concepts do. So some of your questions are just the cost of doing business and I don't believe you are all that confused despite them. And some of your questions are easy. Yes, practices that are OK in some places would not be OK in others. Indeed, to the extent that the complaint against spoofing is linked to a complaint against making wines from all over that taste alike, one should absolutely want some differences in technique to correspond to differences of terroir and variety. A Napa Cab that tasted like a Banyul would not be my idea of a good time, however much I might like Banyul. The real difficulty of the position is that it forces one to think of as spoofed wines made against practices that one does not like--an austere, 10% alcohol CdP for instance. Personally, I'm willing to accept that difficulty since I want "spoof" to be an irresponsible accusation about practices and not, as Keith wants it, to be an accusation about bad taste. I have nothing against accusing people and things of bad taste, but we have so many ways to do that already.
 
If Brian Loring can sell his wine steadily for 50 years I will learn to love it (assuming I can buy/find it). But it will almost certainly change over that period of time. I will like where it ends up more than where it came from. The same goes for Steve Edmunds, and Thierry Puzelat ... minus the closure each has achieved in the gaps with 50 years past ... or 250.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

and I don't believe you are all that confused despite them.
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Maybe not.
I'm not quite sure...

one should absolutely want some differences in technique to correspond to differences of terroir and variety.
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But your associating non-spoof with "practices sanctioned by time" means that the whole thing becomes haphazard, based on historical happenstance.
And it condemns some naturally-inclined forward thinkers to spoofdom simply because they work in an environment where manipulation was the rule.
Unsulfured California wine is spoof.
Unchaptalized "Champagne" is spoof.
Biodynamie is spoof.

If "spoof" is synonymous with "new", then why don't we just stick that word.
Everyone understands what it means, and it is 2 letters shorter... seems like a no-brainer to me.
 
Aw, hell, we should drag Wheeler over here and see what he thinks.

I lack Prof. Loesberg's patience with parsing, which shocks me a little to discover but which seems to be the case.

So I don't think I can man the ramparts to defend a particular definition. But I wouldn't think that my "practices sanctioned by time" would necessarily be restricted by geography. Are r/o machines becoming traditional in Bordeaux? Would old redwood tanks be OK in Burgundy?

Anyhow, my attempted formulation was just recognizing that people who object to "spoof" mostly preferred older viticultural practices to newer ones. It's a conservative tendency, suspicious of the benefits of innovation. But I hadn't really thought it through as far as Banyuls.
 
originally posted by Putnam Weekley:
unchaptalized champagne is spoof?
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I'm not even sure it's Champagne.
Do AOC regs allow for non-chaptalized Champagnes?

new or old, it depends on the efficiency/liquidity of the market rated against time\\\right?
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Didn't Sarah Palin say something like this the other day during the Charlie Gibson interview?
 
I think it was in response to a question about energy independence.
Or maybe that was at a Town Hall-styled meeting.

One or the other.
 
originally posted by Bruce G.:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

and I don't believe you are all that confused despite them.
Click to expand...

Maybe not.
I'm not quite sure...

one should absolutely want some differences in technique to correspond to differences of terroir and variety.
Click to expand...

But your associating non-spoof with "practices sanctioned by time" means that the whole thing becomes haphazard, based on historical happenstance.
And it condemns some naturally-inclined forward thinkers to spoofdom simply because they work in an environment where manipulation was the rule.
Unsulfured California wine is spoof.
Unchaptalized "Champagne" is spoof.
Biodynamie is spoof.

If "spoof" is synonymous with "new", then why don't we just stick that word.
Everyone understands what it means, and it is 2 letters shorter... seems like a no-brainer to me.
Click to expand...

Your objections imply two things:

1) You understand the meaning of the concept since you unfailingly designate wines and practices relevant to the issue.

2) You'd rather the word didn't exist.

The fact of (1) means that (2) won't go away. It seems to me you would want a definition whose features you object to intellectually than a lack of definition you can't object to.

History by the way doesn't automatically indicate happenstance unless like Henry Ford you think that history is just one damn thing after another. You don't have to believe in a Hegelian history manifesting Mind to think that practices sanctioned by time in particular places were sanctioned for reasons. There is a pattern to Provencale food and to the larger category of Mediterranean food. Some of it is accident, a lot has to do with ingredients that grow there and how people have chosen to use them. Moreover, I have little doubt that if all Mediterranean cooking became Italian it would work and people who judge by what's on the plate would be happy. But the world would have become a slightly smaller place. Within each dining tradition, there are empirically innovations within the tradition. Some people find some of those innovations interesting variations and others find them reasons to eat elsewhere. That doesn't mean the pattern of cooking doesn't exist or that people who value it are valueing nothing at all.
 
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