The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture

by Michael Steinberger

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  Wrath of Grapes

  WHO SAID there is no disputing taste? For many oenophiles, part of the pleasure of wine is arguing about it. In recent years, the wine world has seen a contentious debate over what can be called, for lack of a less ponderous phrase, first principles. What defines quality in a wine? How about authenticity? Is it ultimately more important for a wine to taste good or to taste true to its origins—to exhibit goût de terroir, as the French say? And if the end result is agreeable, does it matter how a wine was made? With much of the wine industry fixated on branding and marketing and technology increasingly giving vintners the power to bend nature to their will, these questions have taken on added urgency, and the discussion of them has grown ever more acrimonious, with terms such as anti-flavor wine elite and spoofulated being tossed around like hand grenades.

  All this Sturm und Drang over wine can seem excessive; after all, we’re talking about fermented grape juice, not war and peace. (There’s that preemptive cringe I mentioned!) The rancor of some of these debates brings to mind Freud’s famous comment about the “narcissism of small differences.” It also reminds one of Fran Lebowitz’s remark that “great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.” Small people, small differences. But as a not-infrequent combatant in these wine debates, I think they serve a useful purpose: they force people to rethink issues and to question their own assumptions, and they can often lead to improved farming and winemaking. For instance, the scrutiny that has been applied to Parker in recent years has not only yielded a more balanced and accurate assessment of his career than the hagiographic accounts that were predominant a decade ago; I think it has had a liberating effect on many winemakers, who no longer feel obliged to cater to Parker’s whims.

  In 2010, Robert Parker took a memorable swipe at people who do not share his affection for hulking, high-alcohol Australian wines—“leg-spreaders,” as the Australians like to call them. Via Twitter, he denounced these naysayers as an “anti-flavor wine elite.” The phrase instantly went viral and became a rallying cry for the very people Parker had slammed. Suddenly merchants, sommeliers, and consumers whose preferences differed from Parker’s and who deplored the tendency of producers to cater to his predilections had a catchphrase for their cause. It has since been trimmed to just an abbreviation—on wine sites, posters will identify themselves as AFWE.

  But it was the anti-Parker forces who fired the first shot in this war of words, coining the term spoofulated—spoofed for short—to describe wines that are egregiously manipulated—made with excessive new oak, enzymes, and other additives that give them a tarted-up taste. The word was apparently conceived in New York anti-flavor wine elite circles and quickly caught on.

  Whether a wine can be classified as spoofulated is obviously a subjective judgment. However, one brand of wines has become virtually synonymous with the term. Mollydooker is a line of wines produced in Australia. These are some of the most over-the-top, flamboyant, palate-searing wines you will every taste. If you can find a bottle of Mollydooker, give it a try; just don’t say you weren’t warned!

  Even as his career nears its end, Parker remains a singularly polarizing figure in the wine world. There is no denying his towering legacy; no one did more than Parker to get Americans excited about wine or to turn them on to the good stuff. However, he has become something of an irascible tyrant in his twilight, often lashing out at Burgundy, Burgundy fans, and other enemies, real or imagined. His palate, too, has undergone a peculiar evolution. Many oenophiles, as they get on in years, gravitate to quiet, subtle wines. By contrast, Parker’s thirst for the big and dramatic seems only to have grown, to the point that the word Parkerized has become universal shorthand for ultraripe, high-alcohol, lavishly oaked wines—hedonistic fruit bombs, to use the Parker vernacular. Oak and alcohol have become two of the most contentious issues in wine, and both are worth a close look.

  OAK

  Along with genuflecting in the direction of Burgundy and bad-mouthing Parker, complaining about the use of new oak is considered a mark of sophistication in some wine circles these days. Occasionally you’ll even catch people griping about the oakiness of wines that weren’t actually raised in oak (word to the wise: if you are going to complain about the wood influence in a wine, first make sure the wine was actually vinified and/or aged in wood). Wood barrels have long been used to age wines, but it was in the 1960s and ’70s that the idea of using new barrels for each vintage took hold. Although the history is a bit murky, the use of new oak barrels seems to have caught on first in Bordeaux and then spread elsewhere, including California. Oak barrels, whether new or old, expose wines to small amounts of oxygen; the oxygen seeps in through the wood’s pores and serves both to soften wines and to give them greater aromatic complexity. The difference between older barrels and new ones is that the latter often impart wood tannins to wines and can strongly influence their taste. The most fashionable barrels are made of new French oak, which can contribute sweetish flavors such as vanilla, coffee, and chocolate to wines. American oak is also popular and is known to give off flavors such as vanilla, coconut, and dill. How much flavor the barrels impart is a function of how tightly grained the wood is, how long the wood was aged, and how heavily it was toasted during the barrel-making. Putting the wine in barrels during the fermentation process can also heighten the influence of the wood.

  The oak issue has been one of the biggest dividing lines in wine. In the Piedmont region of Italy, for instance, a spirited, sometimes acrimonious debate has raged over the past two decades between so-called modernist producers and more traditional winemakers, and the use of new oak has been at the center of it. The modernists age their Barolos and Barbarescos in new French oak barrels rather than the large Slovenian oak casks that have customarily been used for these Nebbiolo-based wines. Most critics seem to like the new oak influence, but many Nebbiolo aficionados deplore it. Likewise, oak has figured prominently in the recent history of Spain’s Rioja region. Riojas were traditionally aged in American oak, but in recent years most Rioja producers have switched to French oak. In fact, only a couple of producers are still making traditional Riojas, much to the chagrin of some wine enthusiasts, myself among them.

  New oak, applied judiciously, can add complexity to a wine without being obtrusive. Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, for instance, uses new oak for almost all its wines, but the oak influence is remarkably discreet. With other wines it is not nearly so subtle—the oak dominates the aroma, and the wood tannins can leave you feeling like you’ve got splinters in your tongue. A lot of California Cabernets and Merlots wear their oak heavily, as do some newer-style Bordeaux. Parker has lavished huge praise on many of these wines, and while he would surely dispute the idea that he is drawn to new oak flavors, he clearly doesn’t mind them. His fondness for these oaky wines has led many producers to ratchet up their use of new wood. However, this trend can’t be attributed solely to Parker’s influence. It seems a lot of consumers enjoy oakiness, too, which is why you find a number of mass-market producers using oak chips in their wines—a cheaper method than buying expensive barrels, and one that also imparts a strong oak influence.

  The good news, if you are not a fan of oaky wines, is that more and more producers seem to be backing off on the oak. Partly it’s an economic decision: new oak barrels are expensive, and with the economy still recovering and wine buyers being more selective and budget-minded, it’s hard to pass that cost along to consumers. But it’s also aesthetic: more people are gravitating to wines that are made with a lighter touch in the cellar, to wines that show the influence of the vineyard more than the influence of the barrel, and a growing number of producers no longer feel so pressured to cater to the predilections of oak-happy critics. Oak barrels will undoubtedly remain a staple in many wine regions, but they may not be quite as pervasive as they were before.

  ALCOHOL

  Wine wouldn’t be wine without the alcoh
ol, and the buzz it delivers is part of the pleasure. But alcohol levels have been climbing, much to the chagrin of some oenophiles, who find higher-octane wines overbearing and exhausting to drink. Fermentation converts the sugar in grapes into alcohol. Sugar is a function of ripeness, and the more sugar there is in the grapes, the more alcohol you end up with in the wine. Alcohol, in addition to getting you mellow, adds body, texture, and a perception of sweetness to wines, and as the alcohol content increases, wines become thicker, heavier, and sweeter. Grapes such as Zinfandel and Grenache naturally yield wines that are fairly high in alcohol, as do warmer regions like the southern Rhône and the Barossa Valley. But alcohol levels have been rising in a number of places, such as Bordeaux, that historically have produced restrained, modestly alcoholic wines, threatening the character of the local wines.

  California has become the main flash point in the debate over alcohol. Visit any wine shop and you’ll quickly see why: the shelves are groaning with California wines in excess of 14 or even 15 percent alcohol, and the labels may not even be telling the full story. Under U.S. law, wines 14 percent or under can vary as much as 1.5 percent from what is stated on the label, as long as the actual content does not surpass 14 percent, and those above 14 percent are permitted a 1 percent margin of error. Although California has always produced its share of floozies, Napa Cabernets and Merlots generally weren’t as heady in the past. A study led by University of California Davis professor Julian Alston found that sugar levels in California grapes have jumped 9 percent since 1980.

  What accounts for the spike? Climate change is often cited, and it certainly appears to be a factor in other regions. But Alston and his colleagues suggested that the higher sugar levels in California were mainly the result of farming practices. They speculated that different rootstocks and new planting systems may have had a role, and they also raised another possibility: producers harvest riper fruit in order to craft wines that appeal to critics, namely Parker. They noted that the largest sugar increases have been for premium grapes—Cabernet, Merlot, Chardonnay—and in premium areas such as Napa and Sonoma. They wrote that this “could be consistent with a ‘Parker effect’ . . . of wineries responding to market demand and seeking riper-flavored, more intense wines.”

  Parker has wielded extraordinary influence, and his California scores have long indicated a weakness not just for new oak but for ultraripe (read: high alcohol) wines. His words, too. Some years ago he blasted Tim Mondavi, Robert’s son, for making wines that he considered too light and restrained. He accused Mondavi of “going against what Mother Nature has given California” and said that the strength of California wines “lies in power, exuberance, and gloriously ripe fruit.” In 2007 he launched a similar diatribe against California vintner Steve Edmunds. “What Steve is doing appears to be a deliberate attempt to make French-styled wines,” he sneered. “If you want to make French wine, do it in France.” Considering the power of Parker’s ratings, it would stand to reason that many producers took the unsubtle hints and made sure to deliver the kind of wines he favored.

  Parker’s thirst for hedonistic fruit bombs, as he calls them, extends to Pinot Noir. In Burgundy, where Pinot is the signature red grape, the cool northerly climate makes ripeness a challenge, and as a result, the wines tend to be modest in alcohol. But with Parker’s blessing (or prodding), California Pinot has evolved in a very different direction: the wines are often very ripe and lush, with alcohol levels pushing or even topping 15 percent. Echoing Parker, proponents of this style contend that it is a natural expression of California’s sun-splashed terroir and that comparisons with Burgundy are misguided. Apples to oranges, they say.

  There’s some truth to that. It is silly (and unrealistic) to think that California Pinots should taste like red Burgundies, and for diversity’s sake, we shouldn’t want them to taste indistinguishable from Burgundies. But they should at least taste like Pinot Noirs, and the problem with the high-alcohol Pinots is that the varietal character is often extinguished by the overripe fruit—to the point that a lot of these bruisers taste more like Syrah than Pinot. Another problem with the overripe style is that it tends to overwhelm the influence of the vineyard. Pinot is particularly adept at capturing the “voice” of the soil, at conveying terroir—site expression is what Burgundy is all about—and to lose that quality is to lose a big part of what makes Pinot such a great grape.

  But I also recognize that this is an issue that mostly concerns hardened oenophiles and that much of the wine-buying public is not nearly so persnickety when it comes to Pinot and other wines. For instance, another gripe about full-throttle wines is that they can be tough to match with food, which is true: the flip side of all that alcohol is that the wines tend to be low in palate-cleansing acidity. For fusspots like me, that’s a big problem, but for many casual wine enthusiasts, it may not be an issue. A survey a few years ago found that most of the wine consumed in the United States is not drunk with meals. Instead, wine is mainly used as a cocktail beverage. The news came as a cold shower to some alcohol agonizers, and that was a good thing: it was a reminder that our preferences are not everyone’s preferences. The fact is, a lot of consumers enjoy buxom wines, Pinot and otherwise, and I can’t fault producers for giving these people what they want. If I’m getting the kinds of wines that I like and other people are getting the kind they like, it is all good.

  CRUNCHY WINES

  All that said, we are now seeing a movement away from the fruit bombs that Parker favors and toward more elegant, terroir-driven wines. Not surprisingly, there is also a growing emphasis on ecofriendly farming practices and on ensuring that vineyards are tended in an environmentally sound and sustainable way. Interest in winemaking practices has increased as well. Vintners can now manipulate the flavor, texture, and color of wines in all sorts of ways; while these practices are safe, there is a lot of discussion about whether they constitute a form of cheating. Two big movements have sprung up in recent years that deal with these issues in one way or another.

  BIODYNAMIC VITICULTURE

  Why are some of the world’s most eminent winemakers filling cow horns with cow dung and burying them in their vineyards, stuffing animal skulls with grated oak bark and burying these, too, in the dirt, and consulting astrological calendars to determine when to harvest their grapes? More important, why are these bizarre practices, prescribed in 1924 by a teetotalist Austrian philosopher, yielding such excellent wines? That’s the mystery, and controversy, at the heart of biodynamic winemaking, an ultraorganic, deeply ideological approach to viticulture that is winning the adherence of top wine producers on both sides of the Atlantic. But it has also drawn the wrath of the scientific community, which is convinced that biodynamics is little more than a cultish fraud. There is a cultish quality to it. But as always with wine, the ultimate test is in the glass, and right now the evidence is pretty compelling: all that interred cow shit seems to be producing superior Cabernets and Chardonnays.

  Three of Burgundy’s most celebrated estates, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Domaine Leroy, and Domaine Leflaive, have gone biodynamic. So has Zind-Humbrecht in Alsace, Michel Chapoutier and Beaucastel in the Rhône Valley, and Louis Roederer in Champagne. Closer to home, Araujo Estate Wines, which makes one of Napa’s most sought-after Cabernets, has embraced the biodynamic approach, as has Joseph Phelps, a legendary Napa winery. Each week seems to bring word of a new heavyweight convert to biodynamic viticulture. What was until fairly recently a fringe movement has become the biggest sensation to hit the wine world since the emergence of Parker.

  Biodynamic viticulture traces its origins to a series of lectures delivered in 1924 by the Viennese scholar Rudolf Steiner. In a city famed for its intellectual vitality, Steiner distinguished himself both for the breadth and depth of his interests and knowledge and for the peculiarity of many of the ideas he espoused. He is best known as the father of anthroposophy, a convoluted doctrine that seeks to examine the spiritual world by means of the same scientific methods use
d to explore the physical universe and that aims to help the individual transcend materialism in order to forge closer ties with fellow humans, with nature, and with his own soul. The philosophy has attracted some prominent adherents and admirers over the years, including Franz Kafka and Saul Bellow, and it also serves as the basis for the Waldorf education movement (also known as Steiner education), which flourishes to this day.

  In 1924, Steiner gave a series of lectures in Germany in which he laid out what became the core tenets of biodynamic agriculture. Steiner, in his early sixties at the time and in failing health (he died the following year), was asked by a group of farmers in Silesia (now part of Poland) to help them find a way of reversing the declining quality of their soils and crops, a crisis that they attributed to the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It was an issue that had long concerned Steiner, who often lamented how much poorer fruits, vegetables, and meats had become during his lifetime, a downturn he blamed on industrialized agriculture. In response to the farmers’ urgent request, Steiner traveled to Germany and delivered eight lectures prescribing not just a remedy for their problems but a new, revolutionary approach to agriculture. He told the farmers to stop using chemicals in their fields. In this, he was doing nothing more than embracing a central precept of organic farming. But what he went on to suggest would set biodynamic agriculture apart from mere organic farming. In Steiner’s schemata, the farm was not simply an incubator of life but an organism itself, in which everything was intrinsically connected to everything else. A sick chicken had repercussions for the tomatoes; a diseased tree was a problem for the cows. Likewise, said Steiner, each farm was part of a larger biosystem; the earth itself was an organism, and it was clearly linked, gravitationally and otherwise, to the sun, the moon, and the other planets.