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Yountville, CA

Temperature: 68°F
Humidity: 52.5%
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Clouds: Clear Skies
Sunrise: 6:03 am GMT-8
Sunset: 8:09 pm GMT-8
Updated: 11:54 am GMT-8

May 2007
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Archive for May, 2007

Q: Does the Vintage Matter?

May 31, 2007 in Answers. 0 Comments

Question from Jon: Is the vintage year important when purchasing red wines?

Vintage graphic

Answer: Hi, Jon. Thanks for writing! You’ve asked a complicated question, so I’ll do my best!

I always think the vintage is important because I want to know how old the wine is to begin with. The vintage date is the harvest date and tells you the wine’s true age. But, I suspect you’re wondering about quality differences from vintage to vintage. People love to say “that was a good year!” and the logical question to follow is “where?” For instance, 2000 was a great year in Bordeaux and more of an average year here. By coincidence 2005 happened to be really good in both regions. It’s all about the weather.

In warm, sunny climates like the Napa Valley the differences from year to year certainly exist, but they’re not as significant as they are in more challenging climates such as the Burgundy region in France or the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Our weather here is blissfully boring and predictable, and boring is beautiful when you’re a farmer. It’s not to say the years are the same, and you’ll hear that 2005 and 1997 were some of our best all-time vintages but, in general, we enjoy very good luck weather-wise. When I buy cold-climate wine, I like to take a quick look at my vintage chart to make sure I’m not about to purchase a wine from a “bad” year. Difficulties with rainfall at the wrong time or low temperatures that don’t allow the grapes to ripen properly are more common in cold climates than they are here. In most parts of California, more often we worry about hot temperatures ripening the grapes too quickly.

vintage years graphic

You don’t necessarily want to interpret these charts as “gospel” because wineries can have good luck on bad years or vice versa. For instance, you may read that 2006 was a poor year for Chardonnay on the north coast of California because so many vineyards were damaged by ill-timed rain. We were lucky at Goosecross and brought in our Chardonnay before the rain and it’s one of our best yet (not yet released, but soon!).

Getting back to the true age of the wine, it’s important to know your own preferences. For instance, if you like lots of fruity character you’ll enjoy the wine more when it’s young. Fruitiness is always a youthful trait. If you like your Cabernets big, fruity and powerful, as many of us do, then you should drink them young. As the Cabernet ages it gains complexity as the fruit gradually gives way to earthy, tobacco-like or leathery aromas and it gains subtlety and softness.

It’s smart to make a quick check on the vintage for whites, too, because the vast majority of them are at their best if you drink them within three years of the vintage date. Dessert wines and sometimes Chardonnay can be exceptions.

vintage when to drink chart

There’s more about this on our website or you can listen to our podcast if you like. We even have a Napa Valley vintage recap of our own! Since an off year is so rare here, it’s more of a recap than a rating by vintage.

I hope this is helpful to you. Thanks again for writing! Cheers! Nancy

Breakfast of Champions!

May 24, 2007 in Observations, Rants and Wine Business. 0 Comments

Well, this is fun. The Austrian government has come down on wine producers for an ad promoting the leading wine of the country, Grüner Veltliner. I’m not so sure about government intervention and I don’t pretend to have formal education in marketing, but you gotta wonder how people who do have the education came up with a misguided campaign like this. Were they mainlining G.V. when they came up with this stuff?

Weingut Brundlmayer Label

I guess being delicious just isn’t enough these days. Its supposed attributes include being an “anti-depressant ideal against the usual Monday-morning blues.” Does this mean we’re supposed to have a belt of Grüner Veltliner with our Cheerios, or maybe Muesli, before we hit the Monday morning commute? Maybe it’s better to stick with giving away T-shirts.

Gruner Veltliner Shirt

And when the industry came under fire for being such knuckleheads they promptly shot themselves in the foot again by coming out with a position paper “Admitting the necessity of responsible approach to the subject: and “went to great lengths pointing out the positive effects of moderate wine consumption, the important role of wine in Austrian cuisine and culture” - so far, so good - ”and its significance as an icon of a hedonistic lifestyle.” Boom!! Ouch! Perhaps something was lost in translation here, or these marketing geniuses should be looking for a job.

I don’t know about you, but when I think of hedonism I think of wild-eyed Romans rolling around on the floor and the fall of the empire, like this definition from Dictionary.com:

1. the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the highest good.
2. devotion to pleasure as a way of life: The later Roman emperors were notorious for their hedonism.
Synonyms: sensualism, libertinism, debauchery, dissipation, carousal.
Antonyms: puritanism, asceticism, abstemiousness, self-denial.

Maybe the Austrian version is tamed down a bit like this one from WordNet:

1. the pursuit of pleasure as a matter of ethical principle
2. an ethical system that evaluates the pursuit of pleasure as the highest good

In either case this is a most unorthodox way to lend credibility to their stated goals of promoting responsible marketing and moderate consumption.

I’ll admit to using “hedonistic” as a wine descriptor on very rare occasion - you know - for one of those wines that is so good that you need to go to confession after indulging in just a taste? Ah…

Anyway, I guess these guys are just doing what we humans seem to do best: putting our foot in it only to find out it’s quicksand. I think we should all go out and buy a bottle of Austrian Grüner Veltliner. A nice, cool glass of G.V. sounds awfully good right now and we can hope they do the same for us when it’s our turn to look like our industry is chaired by graduates of clown college. Prosit!

Bloom is Bustin’ Out All Over

May 16, 2007 in Vineyard Update. 0 Comments

Well, we had New Years in March, and now I guess you’d say it’s Epiphany. The vines have started to bloom over the last week or so. Pretty spectacular, huh? Well, uh, on second thought…

So, don’t bother rushing out here to see the romantic flowering of the vines. This is a bloom only in the technical sense. And they have no scent - these fuzzy little flowers couldn’t possibly attract a thing.

Wine Grape Bloom

And that’s OK. The grape flower is hermaphroditic, meaning that the blossoms are self-pollinating. They contain both the male, pollen-producing staminate and the female, seed-producing carpelate. This means we don’t have to worry about attracting bees or rely on the wind to carry the pollen. Quite convenient. We only worry about the weather, and so far the weather, if not the flowers themselves, has been spectacular. Mild and agreeable–and dry–which bodes well for cluster set. Uniform cluster formation means Geoff, our Winemaker, may just have a little easier time figuring out his answer to the eternal question at harvest: “What is ripe”

The Cabernet Franc was the first, beginning to flower about a week ago, followed by the Merlot. Geoff said he’s amazed at the amount of fruit the vines want to set in some parts of the vineyard and sees some serious cluster thinning in his immediate future.

Wine Grape Thinning

He’s already dropped some crop in the Merlot–a rather bold and confident move when it has yet to complete bloom. We’re beginning to see some action in the Petit Verdot and hints of flowering in the Cab. So, the next thing you know, it’s time for cluster counts and we’re off and running!

Here’s to a bloomin’ good year!
Cheers!

Nice Legs…

May 10, 2007 in Wine Education. 4 Comments

Now that I have your attention…

wine legs

I’m so happy that Wine Basics season has rolled around again - today was the first class of the year! Wine Basics is kind of a crash course in tasting techniques that we offer on Saturdays every summer and I miss it during the winter.

I always feel a little rusty and nervous for the first class of the season - afraid I’ll forget what I’m doing. Of course, once we all got to know each other my inner ham emerged and we ended up laughing a lot and had a great time - hopefully somebody learned something! Anyway, as we were talking about what the color and clarity can tell you about the wine, someone asked about the “legs”. Now, I knew I was on home turf! I’ll bet that question is asked at nine out of 10 sessions every year, so coming up with a reply was second nature.

There’s a persistent myth that the little driplets that come down the sides of the glass are a quality indicator. If only it was that simple! Wouldn’t that be great? But, of course it doesn’t work that way.

The legs, candles, tears or whatever you like to call them are are mainly the result of a healthy alcohol. There are all kinds of physics involved and for those of you who want the truly geeky description, check out this explanation of the Gibbs-Marangoni effect. For the rest of us who prefer it in English, and perhaps over-simplified, the major players in wine are water and alcohol and this mixed-media liquid tends to climb the glass a little. A plain glass of water or a glass of pure alcohol won’t form legs, but wine does because the alcohol evaporates faster than the water in the glass and as it does, gravity pulls the remaining water down the sides in little streams. I’ll refer you back to Gibbs-Marangoni for the spiel on light refraction and why you can see the legs…

And is high alcohol a good thing? As usual, the answer is “it depends”. For a full bodied wine, especially red, if there isn’t enough alcohol the wine may feel light and unsatisfying on the palate. The alcohol definitely contributes to the body of the wine. Winemakers are always seeking that thing called “balance”. They don’t want anything to stick out of the wine - they want a harmonious whole - and if the alcohol is too high you’ll smell it and it will feel hot on your palate. That doesn’t quite fit the bill. The alcohol needs to be balanced with all the other components.

So, who started this myth? Dunno, but I suspect it goes back to the old country. While here in sunny California we worry about warm weather producing high sugars and therefore alcohols, the relatively cool climate in some European regions won’t always yield enough sugar to produce 12% alcohol and above. Many of the regions have established minimum alcohol levels, among other requirements, in order to gain appellation status. So, in the eyes of producers and consumers of days past, perhaps the good legs were in fact a sign of riper grapes and better quality. But - with chaptalization (adding sugar) and more recently a series of warm vintages (climate change?), if that was the reason, it hasn’t applied for a long time now.

So, next time one of your friends remarks on how the wine must be a really good one because it has great legs you have two choices: you can either try to gently quell the myth, or you can just smile indulgently, since this is one rumor that forever seems to have legs!!!

Chuckle du Jour

May 8, 2007 in Just For Fun. 0 Comments

This one, courtesy of Leah Garchik of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Setting: The Lodge in the Regency Center in San Francisco. Kermit Lynch, one of my favorite wine merchants, was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.

Quotable quote: “Do you know the difference between God and a winemaker?” asked Daniel Ravier, the winemaker for Domaine Tempier in Bandol. “God doesn’t think he’s a winemaker.”