Wine Journal

3 April 2011

Comparing Napa Valley red wines to Bordeaux blends is equitable to apples and oranges. Although historically many French wines were detectable by fallacy, adaptation and modernization have caused a shift in French wine making technique. The diminishing gap between French and Californian reds have made the task of differentiating the two harder than in the past, especially since nowadays you do not get piercing volatile acidity, brettanomyces, or intense oxidation on the nose.
Napa has something unique that not many other places on this earth have (especially Bordeaux) and that is a Mediterranean climate. Due to primarily climate, then soil and other factors, Napa valley grapes nearly always reach full ripeness. Dark flavors of cassis, blackberry, and juicy plum along with a slight stemmy note run across the board for Napa Cabernet. Cherry fondue mixed with darker fruit would be my descriptors for Napa Valley Merlot (keeping in mind that this a pure generalization). Many Napa red wines tend to be fuller bodied, fruit driven ,with medium plus new oak, and lower acidity, unless of course they are made in an old world fashion. Mountainous areas and wineries especially in Southern Napa can pull off Old World styled wines due to cooler temperatures, fog, and elevation.
When speaking of the Old World, what comes to mind? I look for earth, elevated acidity, less new oak and if so, well integrated, and to some it all up, terroir. For me this means more work done out in the vineyard and less in the laboratory. Unlike the government, the Bordelais seem to have more of a hands off approach allowing nature to take its course. What you have in the glass is terroir and more precisely, typicity. The grapes from the gravelly left bank speak differently than those from the clay dominant right bank. The merlot driven wines from the right bank tend to be lighter in body with more red fruit, chocolate, and hazelnut. A dessert to be enjoyed alone opposed to its stronger neighbor on the left bank. So when comparing Napa Valley to Bordeaux, like apples and Oranges, they are just different.


Spirits of Place

Spirits of Place, written by Douglass Smith is an article written to show the reader different angles of approaching a wine. Questions arise while reading the article such as what should a good wine tell the consumer? Is there such a thing as good or bad wine? What do wine and art have in common? The answers to these questions are grey, and the flood gates to discussion open up.
Smith describes wine as a signal but way more complex, because human creativity is involved. If one could imagine a message maintaining its full integrity from start to finish, unchanged, then this would be Smith’s ideal message metaphor. A transmission would be used to describe the distinguishable message that a grape sends out. Although other noise may distort the clarity of the transmission, Smith believes that these transmissions being sent by the grape are evident, and the more information they give, the easier it is to detect them. When comparing grape transmissions to sound waves, he says the more detectable information a sound wave gives the better quality it is. This range of expression allows the recipient or consumer to hear a clearer message. Enhancing or distorting the message through viti/vinicultural methods is controversial. Some would argue that the transmission of a grape should be clear and uninterrupted but things such as oaking, ageing, the addition of musts ext, are just extra noise taking away from the grapes original intent. Well, this leads us to the question, is a good wine one with a transmission clear as day? If this were true, then a wine should be based solely on its peak fruit characteristics and nothing else. But the issue at hand is more complex because if this were true, then ageing, and oaking would be out of the question and all wine would go straight into stainless steel vats. This would also insinuate that perfectly ripe fruit would be better than over ripe because over ripeness does not allow for maximum transmission either. “If fruit were cultivated in a manner that would tend to reduce its range of expression-that is, in a way that reduced the number of possible messages it could carry…than an overripe sort of flavor in a wine may be an indicator that information has been lost from the system.” This comment backs up Smiths argument by emphasizing the point of overripe fruit not being able to send as clear as a signal that ripe fruit would.
Further, Smith goes on to talk about wine and art. If wine is art, and the wine maker is an artist, then shouldn’t they be able to express their art in whichever way they chose to? Should the purpose of a wine be so straight forward by just expressing what it naturally has to offer, or is there room for variance? I think that art is in the eye of the beholder and whether a wine is oaked, aged, or anything else and is appreciated by somebody, then they should drink it. After all, wine is a human creation and should be accepted in all forms.