2006 Pavelot Pernand-Vergelesses Les Vergelesses

There is a clear ideal of non-interventionist winemaking which many terroir-expressive and palatable burgundies do not live up to. I think that we should not blur the lines between these two things; x can be good and y can be good even if x and y are not the same. A strong preference for x over y can nonetheless be rationally permissible; I commit no sin against reason by strongly preferring Classical string quartets to Romantic operas even while acknowledging that both have many merits, for instance.

If we need to intervene in some cases to bring out terroir, that might be a strike against non-interventionist winemaking. It certainly would be for some people since one argument for non-interventionist winemaking is that many forms of heavy intervention efface terroir. If terroir-expression is the goal then non-interventionist winemaking is only justified when it contributes to expressing terroir, and it may be that good traditional winemakers in great regions in fact simply know how to intervene well. (Although I do not believe it, I once heard it said that the so-called international style was simply the right way to get good terroir expression in stronger vintages of Pomerol.)

On the other hand, non-intervention itself might be the goal. Grapes and grapes alone, not the honey we make into mead nor the grain we make into beer, can become a delicious fermented beverage without adding anything to them. They bring their own yeast and sugar to the process and can support it all themselves, at least in ideal circumstances. We might believe that the process where the winemaker chooses only the picking date, whether or not to include stems, how much to crush, how long to let the grapes stay in contact with their skins, and how long to let them sit in glass or stone after they ferment (wood being too much of a flavor contributor, perhaps, to be countenanced in the end) before people drink them, is the one most worthy of admiration and being experienced, terroir which cannot come out in this way be damned.

I think that we should not pretend that certain things are not interventions because they are time-honored or make contributions to terroir expression (or big fruit, smooth texture, whatever else). And likewise, bad winemaking decisions that obscure terroir or make a wine less palatable are not ipso facto interventions in the sense of the ideal under discussion. Terroir expression and nonintervention are two separate values, often allies perhaps in a realm deluged with spoofulated industrial swill, but not for that reason conceptually equivalent nor coextensive in fact.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:Sitting in the comfort of my armchair, I don't see integrity in any of these practices. If this criterion only leaves a fistful of Burgundy winemakers standing, I'd like to know their names.
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I have it on good authority that you should abandon the drinking of Burgundy as nothing made there is likly to meet your criterion.
 
Although terroir-expressive and non-interventionist are logically distinguishable concepts, to the extent that one defines terroir-expressive in terms of letting the terroir show through, it should not be the case that an intervention will allow terroir to express itself better. It may be a traditional intervention that one (rightly or wrongly, depending on the definition of terms)connects with the expression of the terroir, but even then, the intervention doesn't let the terroir show through, but, rather, is connected with one's sense of it.

A good analogy for what you are thinking of might be salt. A little salt gives the taste impression that the flavor is enhanced. In fact, salt is its own flavor, which acts with other flavors in a particular way. Probably few cooks, even those who want to taste each of the ingredients in a dish, would not want to deny themselves the possibility of using salt. And they generally frown on other additives that more neutrally bring out flavor as spoofing. But salt is an intervention and it does really add its own flavor to others rather than allowing others to show through. A true ingredient purist might well eschew its use. Another true ingredient purist might define it as a true ingredient. It will depend on how one defines terroir. But, if one defines the intervention as part of the expression of terroir, it will function as salt, an additive that we define as an ingredient and not an additive that allows the ingredient to express itself better.
 
originally posted by maureen:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:Sitting in the comfort of my armchair, I don't see integrity in any of these practices. If this criterion only leaves a fistful of Burgundy winemakers standing, I'd like to know their names.
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I have it on good authority that you should abandon the drinking of Burgundy as nothing made there is likly to meet your criterion.
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But, I thought there were five.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Listed ingredients.
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Truth is a thing of beauty.

originally posted by SFJoe:
Too long an essay subject to assign.
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As if you had something better to do.

You are asking for absolute answers, but as with most things context and intent matter. If you are picking green because you fear the weather and then chaptalizing up 2 or 3 degrees you are doing something different than a Burg producer who adds a little sugar late in fermentation, say 1/4 or 1/2 a degree, to keep things burbling along. You could almost have different names for them. Chaptalizing sweet wine (extremely common) could almost be a third thing.

Frequent acidification often betrays errors or sins of intent. The grapes are planted in the wrong place or left to hang too long. If it goes together with r/o, water additions, and so on, it forms part of a sinister package.
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I set up these Manichean straw horses for didactic purposes, and to get a rise, but I am hardly insenstitive to the grays, and agree with this fully.

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Oswaldo, you also might think deeply on what the word traditional means, in this context: Is a practice acceptable because "it was always done that way"? Does it have to pass muster with a modern scientific explanation? How about a modern sensibility?
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It's in extremely poor taste to think about anything deeply, but the semantic gap between natural and traditional is pretty interesting, particularly how the former claims, in some respects, to be a return to the pre-technological latter, while the latter is full of hand-me-down tics (like transforming transportation and storage vessels into flavor imparters) that I wish the former would avoid.
 
Jonathan,

That is an interesting argument but it seems a special case.

If one defines terroir broadly, as including vintage weather, temperature, moisture etc. characteristics, then it seems as though one must acknowledge that there are non-interventionist choices (different choice of picking dates or different lengths of time left on the skins, say) which are more and less expressive of same. This in turn suggests that, at the very least, if you screw up your non-interventionist process you might be able to get back closer to what you could have gotten through intervention - at least in principle. Furthermore, let us say that there is some set or sets of perceivable qualities which would constitute the best expression(s) of terroir in the broad sense for any given vintage. Must these always be reached through non-interventionist winemaking? The matter seems unclear. If we are trying to express those unique and interesting qualities of terroir in the broad sense to human perceivers there is a question of how we carry that off, and while I am prepared to believe (indeed my buying patterns indicate that I do believe) that in the vast majority of real world cases non-interventionist winemaking is the best way to get this, I do not see any reason that this should be a necessary truth.

Furthermore, I think that when many wine lovers - particularly Burgundy lovers -say that a wine expresses terroir well what they are really looking for vintage after vintage is not terroir-expression in the broad sense, but rather and more particularly expression of site (vineyard, village, etc.). And this latter seems, again in principle but not usually in practice, even more likely to be susceptible to modest interventions which don't screw up the wine but do accentuate relative to particular human perceivers the unique and interesting qualities of the site that come across in slightly different ways from year to year. Again: perhaps on average and for the most part in the real world non-interventionist winemaking is the best way to do this, although this thread has suggested that in Burgundy at least this may not always be the case.

As I mull this over, I wonder if some of the controversy over 'natural' wines can be explained by pointing out that we tend to say that 'natural' wines are those which are (a) made by non-interventionist processes/(b) terroir-expressive, with some sliding between 'both/and' and 'either/or' generating some of the pie fights.
 
Why do you deem 'harvest date' and 'skin contact duration' to be non-interventionist? In both cases I see the Hand of Man quite active.
 
I think comrade Brézème might dispute this, but chaptalisation to prolong fermentation, while a common reason, is more about changing the texture (especially on the attack) rather than falvour extraction. Try tasting the Vinovation series, for example. In more radical cases the structure morphs away from acid and towards tannin.

I've personally blended (unfinished) wines so as to achieve a certain style/'terroir' marking for tastings. I've also worked on bottling lines where we had several different vats meant for different export markets, but all the sample (including competition) bottles were done by hand, and 'finished' with something special. It was hard not to laugh as critics and amateurs fell over themselves to describe how bottle A was reflective of the vineyard the label said it was supposed to come from. Same errant nonsense appeared in print as well.

Which is my way of saying that most people's impressions of terroir are basically wrong.
 
originally posted by Yixin:
most people's impressions of terroir are basically wrong.
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Ah, le gout de terroir... This is not a controversial statement, but it doesn't follow from some people being taken in by one example of fraud.
 
originally posted by Yixin:
Same errant nonsense appeared in print as well.
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Pedantry: While your word-choice is amusing and apt, the general form of the phrase uses arrant, which means 'thorough and complete'.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Yixin:
Same errant nonsense appeared in print as well.
Click to expand...
Pedantry: While your word-choice is amusing and apt, the general form of the phrase uses arrant, which means 'thorough and complete'.
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Yes, I'm aware. I prefer the meaning of errant in this case, if I wanted to write 'complete nonsense' I would have done so.
 
originally posted by Jeff Connell:
originally posted by Yixin:
most people's impressions of terroir are basically wrong.
Click to expand...
Ah, le gout de terroir... This is not a controversial statement, but it doesn't follow from some people being taken in by one example of fraud.
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True, although I wasn't really trying to draw a logical inference from anecdotal evidence. Sloppy writing on my part, nonetheless.

But it is highly amusing to read tasting notes from 'critics' (professional or otherwise) who write of terroir transparency. Shills are different - it's our job to perpetuate the myth and jack up the prices.

To use a couple of analogies:

1. Sell-side research is fraught with conflicts of interest and laughably bad, but at least you knew where they were coming from. Ratings agencies? Well, who pays them? Who sends samples to wine critics? Who pays for their trips? And so on.

2. I very much doubt that a cursory sexual liaison with a prostitute/gigolo would embolden most people to guess, much less make definitive pronouncements on, the service provider's personal history and family tree. But make them pay enough, and they think (and pronounce) the full lips suggest a certain lineage rather than some cosmetic enhancement.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
originally posted by maureen:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:Sitting in the comfort of my armchair, I don't see integrity in any of these practices. If this criterion only leaves a fistful of Burgundy winemakers standing, I'd like to know their names.
Click to expand...

I have it on good authority that you should abandon the drinking of Burgundy as nothing made there is likly to meet your criterion.
Click to expand...

But, I thought there were five.
Click to expand...

Probably not. Your obeisance to some mythical ideal will surely greatly limit your drinking choices from here on. I suspect more than just the burgundies must be removed from your cellar. Send them north and we will toast you and your crazy virtue.
 
No doubt, Maureen. I have also limited my circle of friends to people who subscribe to some mythical ideal of integrity, and that has greatly reduced my friendship choices.
 
originally posted by Steven Spielmann:
Jonathan,

That is an interesting argument but it seems a special case.

If one defines terroir broadly, as including vintage weather, temperature, moisture etc. characteristics, then it seems as though one must acknowledge that there are non-interventionist choices (different choice of picking dates or different lengths of time left on the skins, say) which are more and less expressive of same. This in turn suggests that, at the very least, if you screw up your non-interventionist process you might be able to get back closer to what you could have gotten through intervention - at least in principle. Furthermore, let us say that there is some set or sets of perceivable qualities which would constitute the best expression(s) of terroir in the broad sense for any given vintage. Must these always be reached through non-interventionist winemaking? The matter seems unclear. If we are trying to express those unique and interesting qualities of terroir in the broad sense to human perceivers there is a question of how we carry that off, and while I am prepared to believe (indeed my buying patterns indicate that I do believe) that in the vast majority of real world cases non-interventionist winemaking is the best way to get this, I do not see any reason that this should be a necessary truth.

Furthermore, I think that when many wine lovers - particularly Burgundy lovers -say that a wine expresses terroir well what they are really looking for vintage after vintage is not terroir-expression in the broad sense, but rather and more particularly expression of site (vineyard, village, etc.). And this latter seems, again in principle but not usually in practice, even more likely to be susceptible to modest interventions which don't screw up the wine but do accentuate relative to particular human perceivers the unique and interesting qualities of the site that come across in slightly different ways from year to year. Again: perhaps on average and for the most part in the real world non-interventionist winemaking is the best way to do this, although this thread has suggested that in Burgundy at least this may not always be the case.

As I mull this over, I wonder if some of the controversy over 'natural' wines can be explained by pointing out that we tend to say that 'natural' wines are those which are (a) made by non-interventionist processes/(b) terroir-expressive, with some sliding between 'both/and' and 'either/or' generating some of the pie fights.
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I think a vital element of tasting terroir is that one get there via the terroir. In your first example, using an intervention to correct a non-interventionist screw-up, the taste may come out the same, but the cause won't be and cause is vital to wanting to taste terroir. As a thought experiment, imagine a Star Trek replicator that could produce a wine that tasted exactly like (and I mean exactly like, because it was replicated to be materially identical) whatever wine you name that had the gout de terroir of whatever vineyard you care to designate. Clearly the replicator wine would not have the gout de terroir even though it would be the identical wine. Indeed, if replicator wines existed, gout de terroir might die out except as a taste descriptor. The interventions you imagine are of course vastly lesser but not different in terms of the nature of what one wants when one wants gout de terroir.

Your second paragraph describes interventions that might be more like MSG than like salt. My position on those interventions would be the same. More to the point, I can't speak to others, but part of my sense of certain CdP's whose sites I can identify is how they change in different vintages. I don't want them to be the same year after year and I certainly wouldn't want interventions that achieved that.
 
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