| Notes from a recovering Terroir Junkie (A terroir primer) | | | | By: Rich Collins | << back  Page 2 of 3 next >> |
The key to this type of wine is maintaining consistency from year to year and creating a flavor that doesn’t change (think Coca Cola). One cannot rely on nature with this type of outlook on wine production. The mass quantity of juice produced alone inhibits the concept ‘ grapes are often bought and trucked in from all over to assure a perfect blend. Then the wines are crafted under strict environmental conditions (as in a laboratory) to produce the same wine year after year.
Thus, the key to profit for many is to make the best wines using whatever mechanical and chemical means you can to ensure consistency among a branded item (KJ Chardonnay - always a winner if you like KJ Chardonnay).
So here’s where it gets interesting.
Some producers are leveraging modern technological advances in wine by outsourcing their winemaking to a company based out of California (where else) that has developed a software system to estimate (and improve) ratings scores for wines in the major trade mags to further the hand of man in winemaking. How do they do it? They analyze the wines that have scored well in the past and using what I assume to be a complex system of algorithms and chemical analyses, work with winemakers to improve their wine scores, thus increasing demand, thus increasing price, thus securing accolades and gross profits. How is this change in the wine achieved? Any way possible - from concentrating wines to using centrifuges, to acidifying, to concentrating, whatever it takes to increase that Parker score.
Not so romantic is it? But a fact of wine life.
Concept 2: Nature Rules the Vine (and the Wine)
This is the dreamy, starry eyed concept that is surprisingly gaining steam in the winemaking world (but has long been the ideal in old world wineries). Letting the grapes, the climate, and nature have a hand in the wine creates a more interesting, unique and exciting product - partly because you never know what you are getting!
However, though the concept sounds terrific, if you allow nature to create the wine, and your influence is minimal, your wine might suck. It happens - some years are good, some bad, some outstanding. Though you serve as a steward to the environment and an extension of the Hand of God, no one buys your juice because it tastes like horse hair, you go bankrupt, and a McMansion is built on your vineyard as you take a job as a maid cleaning the new house on your old vineyard.
Or something extraordinary may happen, you may produce top notch wines (like French Burgundy or Bordeaux) sticking to the principles of terroir and overly affluent folks will buy the wine for extremely inflated prices, buying on name recognition and Parker reviews, making you rich and famous and touting the benefits of your terroir - without using computer programs and chemically altering components of your wine. Ahhh, success!
However it doesn’t often happen this way, it just isn’t that easy. Organic wines are difficult to make, expensive, and inconsistent from year to year (and even bottle to bottle in some cases) Most folks, especially Americans, are turned off by inconsistency, thus seen in the proliferation of mediocre chain restaurants that provide consistent products that can be considered as food.
So what’s my take on it?
I waver from being in love with the concept to seeing it as superfluous and outdated - my opinion usually depending on the quality of the wine and the mood I am in. But I admit, when the concept was first introduced to me, I was sold. It just made sense. But the more I learn about wine, the more I feel there is so much more to modern winemaking than just the land and the vine.
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