An important scientific contribution by John Gilman

Drainage on a mountain side is different than drainage in a valley.

Microbial life at 3000 feet is probably different than that at 100 feet.

And so on.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I take Oswaldo's point to be that, if you are at a latitude that gives long, hot days, you can try to compensate for the heat by using the coolness of higher altitudes but that that compensation will not really work because of differences of exposure to light. He is not saying that higher altitude wines may not be better than lower altitude wines at the same latitude. And, so, of course, if you're stuck planting vineyards in a hot climate, higher altitude wines may be better there than wines at the same latitude by a lower altitude, but they won't be the same as wines from a cooler climate latitude. I don't know if this is true, but to respond to him, you need to respond to the argument he's posing.
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I had his point backwards, actually; but was not so much arguing against it as trying to understand why it might be so. I would have agreed that a change in heat/light ratio with an increase in altitude is likely, but the change would be mostly due to differences in exposure (including lowering of the horizon), not because altitude reduces the distance between the sun and the plant. As Mark points out, however, UV intensity varies with altitude, so distance may play a role, too.
 
As I understand it, higher vineyards tend to higher acidity because malic acid respires less at lower temperatures, and higher altitudes tend to have colder nights.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I take Oswaldo's point to be that, if you are at a latitude that gives long, hot days, you can try to compensate for the heat by using the coolness of higher altitudes but that that compensation will not really work because of differences of exposure to light. He is not saying that higher altitude wines may not be better than lower altitude wines at the same latitude. And, so, of course, if you're stuck planting vineyards in a hot climate, higher altitude wines may be better there than wines at the same latitude by a lower altitude, but they won't be the same as wines from a cooler climate latitude. I don't know if this is true, but to respond to him, you need to respond to the argument he's posing.
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I thought the point was "fuck the parametric approach to why a wine is delicious and just love your mountain wines for what they are: Avana or Persan or Cornalin or if you're in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada take your chances with Syrah or even Gamay - why not?" Latitude-schmlatitude (says one trying to grow wine way down on the 44th parallel, with nary a mountain in sight.) But maybe that wasn't Oswaldo's point at all.
 
My point was fuck the mountain wannabes. There's more than enough potentially interesting wine that we've never tried in (what the slacker's former reincarnation called) the marginal zones where there's a struggle to obtain maturity every year for us to waste our limited time and remaining years on the non-marginal zones where there's no struggle to obtain maturity every year just because their producers wanna make a buck while blaming it on you.
 
Thanks for the interest in the subject, guys. All the points you make are interesting and most are valid, but of course none of them address the very specific allegation by the noted scientist, John Gilman, which justifies the title of this thread. Gilman writes about the new venture by my colleague and friend, Gerry Dawes, as an importer of Spanish wines, and uses the occasion to make this statement, which I repeat here:

"He [Dawes] is no fan of the very heady and overripe style of winemaking that has been championed in many other journalistic circles behind the banner of Spain’s 'Mediterranean Wine' fiction, which argues unpersuasively that Spain’s natural wine proclivity is to make overripe and alcoholic wines due to the limitations of its Mediterranean climate. Spain’s important native wine critic, Victor de la Serna of the publication, El Mundo, has long argued for this fantasy in the face of an historical legacy to the contrary."

I say this is a total misrepresentation and fabrication and I only need to show the record: every word I have written and published since we launched elmundovino (www.elmundovino.com) as El Mundo's wine web site back in 2000 is still available online, in Spanish, yes - but that's not a language for which it's hard to find a few million translators in the United States. All my old articles in Decanter, in English, are also available in any complete collection of that magazine.

You will not find one article, or one paragraph, in which I "champion" a "very heady and overripe style". Not only that - elmundovino is often accused in some Spanish winemaking circles of being the champion of light, effete wines from such absurd places as Asturias, the Loire, the Jura or the Valais, and for our snobbish reticence to new oak. We endure the criticism because we think we are right, of course. But I'm particularly galled when I see Gilman accusing me of exactly the opposite!

There are two parts in his allegations: the wine styles I defend (false) and the existence or non-existence of a 'Mediterranean wine' with generally higher alcohol contents than more northerly wines.

Curiously, if I had stated that Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Languedoc wines have generally higher alcohol contents than Loire or Alsace wines we wouldn't be having this discussion because everyone knows that it's a fact that, for climate reasons, the sugar contents in those southern grapes are higher.

Making assertions on "Spain" as a single entity as Gilman does is totally disingenuous. It still has the largest vineyard surface of any country in the world, despite the European Union's (ill-conceived) vine pulling schemes, with some 2.5 million acres. Only France and, quite possibly, the United States have vineyards encompassing such a variety of climates (and soil types, and altitudes.)

There is a wet, temperate Atlantic Spain: its northwestern quarter and particularly its northwestern tip, Galicia (where all of Dawes' wines save for a cava come from - Gerry has never liked the wines from warmer sites), with what you could consider a warmer but also humid branch south of Portugal: sherry country. There is a Continental Spain, basically the two Castilian high plateaus, with an extreme climate that gets drier and hotter as you move from West to East, and a particularly arid Mediterranean Spain to the east and southeast, from southern Catalonia and Aragón down to monastrell/mourvèdre country in Murcia, which is actually closer to Algiers than to Madrid. The driest and warmest wine producing region in Europe.

Of course wines are radically different in Spain's southeast from those in Spain's northwest, and more powerful. It would be amazing if they weren't - and, I guess, as disappointing as suspicious for a wine lover. The winemaking style is another story. Gilman would be surprised to learn that late harvesting and overripeness were the historical styles in Aragón's garnacha/grenache country, with average alcohol around 18% back between 1900 and 1970.

Despite a fair amount of fruit bombs/oak soups favored by some American rather than Spanish critics, the trend over recent years in Mediterranean Spain has been just the opposite, and I have some personal reasons to know. An increasing number of producers are intent on correct ripeness rather than overripeness, and you'll find that drinkability and even hints of elegance are quite compatible with alcohol levels mostly between 14% and 15%. Large and mostly used oak vessels instead of new barriques are the growing pattern. If anyone is interested, I can give names of producers doing that. (Or you can go down to Chambers Street Wines: eight or nine of them are there.)

P.S. On Oswaldo's opinions on high-altitude wines and light: I disagree, but since he and I already discussed it once on WD, I'd rather leave it at that. I'm sure you can find the discussion with the search engine.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
My point was fuck the mountain wannabes. There's more than enough potentially interesting wine that we've never tried in (what the slacker's former reincarnation called) the marginal zones where there's a struggle to obtain maturity every year for us to waste our limited time and remaining years on the non-marginal zones where there's no struggle to obtain maturity every year just because their producers wanna make a buck while blaming it on you.
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If you wish; but just who are these mountain wannabes? And with mountain wines, vineyards and growers disappearing faster than sub-Saharan languages (or at least in the same speed zone) is there really someone who thinks they can make a buck growing wine on a mountain? Or is this some veiled personal vendetta against Steve Edmunds?
 
When I say climb a mountain, I don't mean steep inclines, which are indeed being farmed less and less. Could be a plain at high altitude. Mountain wannabes would bes all who compensate for being in too hot latitudes through altitude, as if that sufficed. Some I find interesting (Cornelissen), most I don't. My original beef is with Andean wine, but the applicability is wider (but I would never put Steve in that category). The Alpine mountaneers are not what I have in mind, since their latitude is fine, so it's not a compensation gambit.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
When I say climb a mountain, I don't mean steep inclines, which are indeed being farmed less and less. Could be a plain at high altitude. Mountain wannabes would bes all who compensate for being in too hot latitudes through altitude, as if that sufficed. Some I find interesting (Cornelissen), most I don't. My original beef is with Andean wine, but the applicability is wider (but I would never put Steve in that category). The Alpine mountaneers are not what I have in mind, since their latitude is fine, so it's not a compensation gambit.
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So, if you're going to plant a vineyard in Colorado you are going to be at high altitude relative to sea level (thousands of miles away). You could be on a flat plain for as far as the eye can see. But if you want to grow decent wine, you had best find yourself a nice hillside, preferably on the western slope. Altitude-schmaltitude. If this be you your latitude is fucked anyway from a certain persnickety point of view. But you're not compensating for anything. You're just where you are.
 
No, I knew you meant altitude. I'm asking, if you are 2000 km away from the nearest ocean, what is the relevance of sea level? The angle at which sunlight strikes the vine is no doubt important. Latitude is certainly an important determinant. So is the contour of the land, i.e., slope. But if you are on a flat plain, what difference does it make if you are at 2,000 metres or 200 metres? Or for that matter, if you are on a gentle slope, or high up on steep slope, what's the difference of being at 2,000 metres versus 200 metres? That's what I'm not getting.
 
originally posted by Jeff Connell:
No, I knew you meant altitude. I'm asking, if you are 2000 km away from the nearest ocean, what is the relevance of sea level? The angle at which sunlight strikes the vine is no doubt important. Latitude is certainly an important determinant. So is the contour of the land, i.e., slope. But if you are on a flat plain, what difference does it make if you are at 2,000 metres or 200 metres? Or for that matter, if you are on a gentle slope, or high up on steep slope, what's the difference of being at 2,000 metres versus 200 metres? That's what I'm not getting.
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There's a generalizable decrease in air temperature with increase in altitude, in the troposphere (the layer of atmosphere adjacent to the earth's surface). Here's Wikipedia's intro to the subject. Basically temperature decreases about 5-5.5 degrees F for every 1000 feet in dry air. Humidity affects the rate of decrease.
 
Thank you for the reminder, Ian. So, if you plant vines in Colorado Springs and Cincinnati, the dramatic difference in elevation is going to manifest itself how?
 
If two vineyards are on the same latitude and distance from the ocean but different elevations, the difference will be UV light and temperature extremes between night time low and day time high. It's something, but no big deal, hence I have no potential beef with Alpine situations.

My point is not about high elevation vineyards at "correct" latitudes. I am talking about the use of high elevation to compensate for being in an "incorrect" latitude (e.g. Mendoza, on a latitude equivalent to Dakar). These "people" act as if all you had to do was climb a mountain and everything would be allright.

The situation is more nuanced than just latitude, because distance from the ocean and ocean currents play a huge role, but I want to start the insurrection with just latitude. Once latitude consciousness is prevalent among the geek classes, we can thicken the plot.
 
Your distaste is obvious, but you have yet to make a persuasive case for the existence of "correct" latitudes. And your elevations come with caveats.

There is a lot worse garb than going up a mountain.

In truth, why does a high-elevation wine from an "incorrect" (ha ha) latitude bother you more than fucked-up industrial plonk from Touraine? The latter bothers me infinitely more.

Which are the fraudster high-elevation wines we should be shaking our pitchforks at?

Should I go raid a Coca-Cola factory?

My point being that to get the geekery up in arms, you have to persuade of your issue's relevance to our experience.

I really don't care how people are dressing in, I don't know, Anchorage. Let them wear leather miniskirts if they feel like it.
 
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