Singular wines

[Unknown]

originally posted by Tristan Welles:

originally posted by fatboy:

there's nothing wrong with any of this stuff. it just means that when you taste through the wines, there are more cues to origins (and price) than terroir.

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I find this a reductivist notion of terroir. If the site allows for better grapes, it allows for different vinification. Terroir, in my estimation, should include practices developed over many generations.

My hat off to you, because I do not possess 10% of the experience necessary to determine if the delta between vinification of a Grand Cru and a 1er in the same cellar/appellation is proper or exaggerated.

I am guessing that, sadly, the many generations you are referring to are as much generations of marketing as those of winemaking.

 

[Keith Levenberg]

If Dujac is running with the herd, that's a herd I'd like to join.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

I think Tristan has said something important. If I get two kinds of grapes from the same field, am I obliged -- in order to be a Fatz-approved good guy -- to make them into wine the same way? Presumably not, as we could be discussing white vs red grapes and, anyway, varietal bottlings are reasonably traditional in many regions.

Having discussed 'different grape, same vineyard' let's now head down the slippery slope and ask about 'same grape, different vineyard'?

The Bordealaise have five grapes, the Chateauneuvians have thirteen... it must be almost impossible for any maker to do a good job, by your lights, even with the purest of intentions.

Your definition isn't merely reductive, it's tyrannical.

 

[Unknown]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Fatz in ItalyI think Tristan has said something important. If I get two kinds of grapes from the same field, am I obliged -- in order to be a Fatz-approved good guy -- to make them into wine the same way? Presumably not, as we could be discussing white vs red grapes and, anyway, varietal bottlings are reasonably traditional in many regions.

Having discussed 'different grape, same vineyard' let's now head down the slippery slope and ask about 'same grape, different vineyard'?

The Bordealaise have five grapes, the Chateauneuvians have thirteen... it must be almost impossible for any maker to do a good job, by your lights, even with the purest of intentions.

Your definition isn't merely reductive, it's tyrannical.

yet it clearly strikes a chord with .sasha, oswaldo and the many lurkers who have emailed me offline.

i offered my thoughts as a way of expressing my understanding of one thing that makes a wine truly singular in my eyes. again, that understanding seems to strike a chord with others.

did i say that i think this is the one true path? no. indeed, i have repeatedly said that i doubt i myself would follow a path that i admire and find to be both wonderful and singular.

as far as i can tell, the only tyrannical behavior here seems to be coming from other folks.

how about you untwist those panties and actually read what other people are writing?

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[Unknown]

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:

Any thoughts on Pacalet? Recently compared the Chambolle Villages to Premier Cru in two vintages and found the difference slight in 08, greater in 07, but no sense that the latter difference came from any of the above (though stems play a part in semi-carbonic). In both cases, I experienced some degree of "it's only when i go back to A, and find that it suddenly tastes clumsy in comparison that i really start to appreciate B."

not enough experience. and to be honest, a combination of not being a biggest fan of the style and the nosebleed prices will likely keep things that way.

but given my understanding of the philosophy, and your description, it sounds quite plausible.

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[SFJoe]

I haven't visited Pacalet, but have tasted through most of the lineup at a couple of trade shows in a couple of vintages. I found the different villages to be distinctly themselves, and a pretty big difference between the fancier wines and the less. I imagine the vinification is very similar between the wines, but haven't discussed it with him. Certainly new wood is not an important factor, and stems are similar between the wines. Of course, the house style is an outlier.

A change of US distributor has given a one-time window of kind pricing.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

originally posted by fatboy:
i offered my thoughts as a way of expressing my understanding of one thing that makes a wine truly singular in my eyes. again, that understanding seems to strike a chord with others.

You don't mean to say you were answering Levi's original question? Ye gods, man, what are you thinking?

ETA: But, anyway, don't let your tenor sing arias intended for basso.

 

[Claude Kolm]

originally posted by Yixin:
Claude, in the cellar perhaps, but my impression is that pruning, amongst other things (canopy management in summer, spraying, harvest), differs from plot to plot.

Could be. It makes sense that if you have oïdium in one part and not in others, you don't treat the others just because you treat the affected part. What differences in pruning do you see among the vineyards? He does (or at least did, last time we discussed the issue a few years ago), try to pick all the vineyards as close together in time as possible.

 

[Unknown]

originally posted by Claude Kolm:
Could be. It makes sense that if you have oïdium in one part and not in others, you don't treat the others just because you treat the affected part. What differences in pruning do you see among the vineyards? He does (or at least did, last time we discussed the issue a few years ago), try to pick all the vineyards as close together in time as possible.

makes sense to me.

tesch, in the nähe, sells a six pack of wines from different sites that are all picked as close together in time as possible, and all made in the same way. (you even get a map of the vineyards and 3d glasses to maximize your experience as you sip.)

while it's an appealingly geeky idea, i'm not so much a fan of the wines and have never been tempted. i might spring for mugnier though.

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[SFJoe]

Far from clear to me that picking at the same time is the way to control that variable, as opposed to, say, picking at similar ripeness (defined in some sensible way).

 

[Yixin]

Baguettes longer in some vineyards by 3/4 eyes - don't think it was correlated to cru status, and certainly not age of vines. Also choice of spurs - some growers have very specific ideas about how best to prune and you can tell in late Feb/early Mar what they are trying to achieve.

Spraying is often proactive (or rather, reactive to weather instead of actual onset, by which time it's almost too late), especially for those eschewing more concentrated chemicals. I don't know about Mugnier, but some growers spray more aggressively in very young vineyards. They also use herbicides and fertilisers more generously. All these contribute to significant differences as early as flowering, and of course the rest of the season.

Harvesting is a bit like monetary poicy - you can pick to achieve similar potential alcohol, or physiological maturity (whatever that means; we can agree to use malic:tartaric ratios), or at the same time, but not all three. Nature doesn't co-operate that way.

 

[Yixin]

Which is a way of saying that the classic shorthand of terroir and winemaking does not always transcribe well upon closer examination. Or that wine as interpretative craft is more conversational and iterative than usually thought.

 

[Unknown]

originally posted by SFJoe:
Far from clear to me that picking at the same time is the way to control that variable, as opposed to, say, picking at similar ripeness (defined in some sensible way).

i think this is implied in claude's "as close together in time as possible." as yixin notes, ripeness equivalence is a pretty variable variable.

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[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by SFJoe:
Far from clear to me that picking at the same time is the way to control that variable, as opposed to, say, picking at similar ripeness (defined in some sensible way).

Which goes back to your response when I suggested that different chablis levels should have the same alcohol: you said grand cru vineyards are grand cru at least in part because they get more sunlight, so it should not be unreasonable that they show higher abv. But if the different levels are picked at similar ripeness, then the grower would pick the grand crus first, the premiers second, etc., and, at the end of the day (barring hail), they ought all have similar levels of sugar, the qualitative differences due mostly to terroir, not higher alcohol... (forgive the ellipsis).

 

[Mark Davis]

originally posted by .sasha:

originally posted by fatboy:
depends on who we are talking about: degree of chaptalization, amount new oak, inclusion of stems (dujac), etc.

there's nothing wrong with any of this stuff. it just means that when you taste through the wines, there are more cues to origins (and price) than terroir.

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I told JS on multiple occasions that gruenchers was my favourite wine in the cellar, and he understands, you know, in a sense that ferrari isn't necessarily better than a beemer. Not that he is going to do anything about it, at least not overnight. I do think he is inching (centimetering?) in the right direction though.

.sasha-

Not to nitpick too much, but I assume you meant 'bimmer': http://www.bmwccbc.org/misc/tech-and-trivia/bimmer.html

My vote is for Houillon, by the way. But I can see it for Truchot and some others.

-mark

 

[Unknown]

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:

originally posted by SFJoe:
Far from clear to me that picking at the same time is the way to control that variable, as opposed to, say, picking at similar ripeness (defined in some sensible way).

Which goes back to your response when I suggested that different chablis levels should have the same alcohol: you said grand cru vineyards are grand cru at least in part because they get more sunlight, so it should not be unreasonable that they show higher abv. But if the different levels are picked at similar ripeness, then the grower would pick the grand crus first, the premiers second, etc., and, at the end of the day (barring hail), they ought all have similar levels of sugar, the qualitative differences due mostly to terroir, not higher alcohol... (forgive the ellipsis).

the answer is, "it's complicated."

y'know how when you read history books, and the generals are always fighting the last war, as if they were just courting disaster for shit n gigglez?

so it is in most of the classic wine regions. the struggle was always for ripeness (the whole point of viticulture is to torture that concept to within an inch of its life, after all); now it is mainly about keeping some semblance of balance in the face of climate change (aka "modern viticultural practices").

in the old days, leaving the grapes on the vines lower on the hill might lead to rot-soup, not a catch up in ripeness. now shit has changed, the problem with the exact same vines is often too much ripeness, not too little.

in either situation, given that one has a team of pickers, and a bunch of sites, one is faced with a choice: you are going to focus on your best sites, so do you deal with the less well situated vines early or late? i know of estates where the abv of the generics is higher than the fancy shit, but they are currently the crazy exception: mainly the opposite is true.

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[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by fatboy:
in either situation, given that one has a team of pickers, and a bunch of sites, one is faced with a choice: you are going to focus on your best sites, so do you deal with the less well situated vines early or late? i know of estates where the abv of the generics is higher than the fancy shit, but they are currently the crazy exception: mainly the opposite is true.

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Exactly why it must be tempting for the goal-oriented (or hierarchically minded) producer without project management software to reestablish the natural order of things with a bucketload of sugar.

 

[Unknown]

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:


Exactly why it must be tempting for the goal-oriented (or hierarchically minded) producer without project management software to reestablish the natural order of things with a bucketload of sugar.

quite. not that project management software would really help. what do you do when two days of sun make the balance in all your sites go bonkers in a given year.

which raises a real question: unless you can tell where the sugar went, does it matter?

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[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by fatboy:
which raises a real question: unless you can tell where the sugar went, does it matter?

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The question is equally valid for acidulation: if you can't tell, does it matter? To me, because I enjoy being a process idealist, it does, otherwise I'd end up with "what matters is what's in the glass." But, I can see how two days of late season sun could ruin even the best laid processes if they don't measure brix every few minutes and can pick a whole field within an hour at the drop of a hat.

 

[Tristan Welles]

originally posted by kirk wallace:

originally posted by Ned Hoey:
Domaine Belluard Vin de Savoie Blanc Gringet Le Feu

Literally no peers.

I have just pulled a bottle to try this weekend.

And what about Bourdy's Galant des Abbesses? Is macvin (or things like it) eligible for inclusion? Certainly singular and excellent.

I had my first taste of Galant des Abbesses this weekend. Very good stuff.