Talibans, Indigenous Yeasts, Blah-Blah, Posturings and Wines

J

Joe Dressner

Joe Dressner
I don't really disagree with the overall flexibility and anti-dogma of Thor and David Buecker and lots of the other worthies now writing on our board.

Who really cares?

Wine is concrete. I don't have the same taste or like the same general range of wines that they do. Of course, there is some overlap, but why get caught into all these tedious arguments over winemaking techniques when what we are actually talking about is differences over what wines we actually enjoy.

I have had the privilege over the past 25 years to be roaming the vineyards of France and Italy and have been raised on tasting, evaluating and falling in love with wine in their place of origin. Often, literally in the actual place of terroir. I learned about Brzme by visiting the site and the only remaining vigneron with Eric, not by buying a bottle somewhere in America.

Obviously, everyone cannot do this, although judging from Thor's travelogues on the web he seems to have far more disposable income than I do to tour the world and I don't understand why he complains so much about lack of access and accepts freebies.

I learned about wine from Henri Goyard, Pierre Breton, Marcel Richaud, Jean-Paul Brun, Jean Thevenet, Pierre Overnoy, Marcel Lapierre, Jean-Marie Puzelat, Jean Foillard, Didier Roussel, Marc Olliver, Nady Foucault and what they all taught me was to smell, see, taste and speak the terroir. That my perception was only secondary and incomplete. That I had to learn from the vine.

What I do object is to the verbose internet tasters' subjectivity becoming the definitive guide to evaluating wine. A good taster understands their weaknesses, the incomplete knowledge and their need to always know more and push further. Their is a certain smugness on all these discussions on the board right now which I find arrogant and unfortunate.

Enjoy and dislike what you like. But everyone doesn't have to become a minor Peynaud, Parker or Terry Theise. Try to be at one with the wine, try to melt into the glass. Try to understand that the terroir existed before you did and if the various assholes in all their flexibility and anti-Taliban dogma don't intefere, it will exist long after you are gone.

Long Live Pierre Frick!
From the depths of the New York University Cancer Wards
A Guy Who Has Fought for Natural Viticultural and Winemaking for All His Career
The Former Joe Dressner
 
I learned about wine from Henri Goyard, Pierre Breton, Jean-Paul Brun, Jean Thevenet, Pierre Overnoy, Marcel Lapierre, Jean Foillard, Didier Roussel, Marc Olliver, Nady Foucault
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Show off!
 
I am with you on this and I enjoy you in the cancer ward and again in the bottles you have bought to me. I agree with you that we often forget that each of our experiences with wines is fleeting, personal and restricted to one sensual moment. It always amazes me that people treat a bottle like it is the definition of a vineyard, a vintage, a vignoble, instead of one personal moment with one's tongue, one's palate, one's psyche and one's emotions at a time.

I think it comes from unconscious arrogance, based on the notion that what springs from Zeus' head is in fact the universe; instead of a collection of tongues with their collective merits.

I will say to you: Goddess speed on your way along your particular journey. Thank you and I will indeed carry on!

Love, without knowing you in person,

Unashamedly,

Karen
(who has done the harvest alongside unsung and un-written up various organic and simply agricultural vignerons in the Loire who want to make wine the best way that they can....)
 
Personally, I think this whole business of pleasure is overrated. When I first learned to spit, a little bit of the pleasure died within me, right there and then. When I wrote my first tasting note, a little bit of the innocence died too. The next logical step is to not even put wine in my mouth, and get this whole sensory thing out of the way. It's a nuisance, and interferes with the proper apprehension of the technical data. My cortex cannot handle being a nerd/geek and a hedonist at the same time. I yearn for the day when the FDA makes it mandatory to put a chart on wine labels showing the composition. Then I could just read the labels and derive intellectual satisfaction from a well conceived gestalt. No more smug subjectivity, no more corked wine, and I'd save a bundle too.
 
originally posted by Florida Jim:
originally posted by Joe Dressner:
Wine is concrete.
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This is a revelation to me.
Best, Jim
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Beat me to it.

originally posted by Joe Dressner:
...smell, see, taste and speak the terroir. That my perception was only secondary and incomplete. That I had to learn from the vine.
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The vine just gets the privilege of giving voice to the earth, no? So long as the winemaker does not add so much noise that we cannot recognize it any longer. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
A great winemaker with a a great terroir aids and gets a wine to bottle.

Not a small job.

There are so many links in the chain that to reduce everything to innoculation is absurd. What are the plants like, how has the soil been treated over several generations, what is the agricultural regiment, yields, treatments and so many other variables. Fuck up one link and you may as well hire the oenological mob to engage in correctives.

Getting it right is worrisome, difficult and takes years of practices. When it works and when you have great vines, it sings in a way that the Wine Industrial Complex will never sing. At least to me and my friends.

We get a vibrancy and liveliness that jumps out of the glass. If you don't, tant pis. Drink your own poison and enjoy yourself.

My company, my colleagues (Kermit, Neal, Weygandt, others) have left a concrete legacy of wines which come from this culture. We've been doing it for 20+ years and you can judge for yourself. If you don't like my use of the word CONCRETE, fuck you.

Because what we have popularized is actual wine and not sophistry. I leave sophistry for the great sages of this board.
 
originally posted by Joe Dressner:
What are the plants like, how has the soil been treated over several generations, what is the agricultural regiment, yields, treatments and so many other variables.
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That was a sentiment I wanted to explore in the last of the substantial list of exploration of the subject here.

As a fruit grower, I ponder the long term modification to the soil (and inherently, the terroir) of, say, 1200 years of viticulture in Burgundy. It's purely academic and futile, like hypothetically comparing athletes from different eras, but I'd love to know how wines made with the same vinification from the same soils from, say, 1100, 1600 and now would compare.

originally posted by Joe Dressner:
If you don't like my use of the word CONCRETE, fuck you.

Because what we have popularized is actual wine and not sophistry. I leave sophistry for the great sages of this board.
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Actually, I loved it. I won't speak for Joe, but I was simply amused at the literal interpretation of a perfectly good metaphorical turn of phase. When I quit trying to see the fun in stuff, well, then, apply your sentiments, indeed.

I ain't no sage. However, I did just stock up my cellar with a bunch of Coudert, Tete, Desvignes and JPB. Thanks for that opportunity, and thanks to Putnam for cluing me in.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled confrontation and sycophantry.
 
The vine just gets the privilege of giving voice to the earth, no? So long as the winemaker does not add so much noise that we cannot recognize it any longer. Correct me if I'm wrong.
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If there is a better definition of terroir than this, I have not heard it - and certainly not in this thread.
Best, Jim
 
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