New World Winemaker Blog

There’s little need for me to rehash the back-and-forth in the wine media regarding alcohol levels: in short, the wheel has turned and we are back in the 1980s when it was fashionable to criticize California wine for having high alcohol.

Here we are again. The difference this time around is that there is a hard number on the lips of the critical: 14%. The narrative being pedaled suggests that wines over this level generally are problematic, inferior, out-of-balance, not true-to-type, lacking: terroir, focus, complexity precision, nuance, etc.

I disagree.

And I’ve commented here and elsewhere that I have noted zero interest in the topic among the visitors to our Tasting Salon. But the “over 14% sucks” meme has a life of its own, it’s out there, it won’t die; sort of like “the President is a foreign-born Muslim.”

Because of this persistent media attention, I figured that it was bound to happen—sooner or later—that one of my guests was going to comment on the “high” alcohol levels on the labels of my wines.

It happened like this. Three nice people came in and tasted through the five wines I had on offer: three Pinots, a Châteauneuf-du-Pape-style blend and last, a varietal Syrah. They seemed to be enjoying them. After the Syrah one of the guests asked “What’s the alcohol on these wines?” I answered “between 14.5% and 14.9%” and a couple of them started muttering “oh, that’s high—so-and-so won’t drink it.”

I politely asked them if they could have guessed that the wines had alcohols approaching 15% without being told, and each of them admitted “no” they couldn’t have. One commented that “…these wines don’t taste hot.” I explained that ethanol doesn’t really taste hot, but that other alcohols do—propanols, butanols, pentanols, etc. and their esters and oxidation products, collectively called congeners in the distillation biz.

These fermentation products are more likely to be produced by yeast under stress, and high initial sugar as well as high final ethanol concentrations are potent stressors, as are nutrient and co-factor deficiencies. In my winemaking I go out of my way to minimize the stresses on yeast (though not so far as to throw diammonium phosphate—DAP, a source of ammonia—at every ferment) and so the levels of these congeners are low in my finished wines. No “heat” on the palate.

I further explained that in fact few of my wines finish fermentation much over 13.5%-14% but they pick up as much as 1%-1.5% during barrel aging. This is because we have a dry barrel cellar. Inside the barrel there is 86% water and 14% alcohol, while outside there is an average of 30% water and 0% alcohol. To a first approximation, the thermodynamic drive for water to leave the barrel is over 3x what it is for alcohol, and so over the course of 2+ years aging in barrel the alcohol level of the wine inside actually goes up.

A wine made from grapes harvested at “optimal” ripeness and put to barrel at 13.5%, in our cellar may well end up near 15% when it is ready to go to bottle. This is not the same as harvesting the grapes over-ripe. Not only do these wines not taste hot, they don’t taste raisined.

Anyway, the offshoot was that these folks bought a case of wine, and intended to put some of in front of their “I won’t drink any wine over 14% because wine over 14% all tastes the same” friends and see what they think. Awesome.

John Kelly is the owner and winemaker of Westwood Wines, Sonoma California. This blog was originally published on his blog: “notes from the winemaker” on the 3rd of January 2012 at 14h52 to be precise.

The wines I’ve made have been reviewed infrequently over the years. Different reviewers, different wines but the results have shown a predictable monotony: 84-89 points, nearly every time. Same with competitions: the wines always medal — frequently gold, but never double-gold or best of show. Seems that I show a remarkable consistency.

But hey… I’m used to it. I’ve long reconciled to the fact that my winemaking style does not meet the most common expectations. Scores and medals aside, the wines do very well in ranked blind tastings, but are sometimes a “love it or hate it” proposition. And I’m thankful that they sell well… even without high scores. People taste them, they like them.

That’s not to say a great score would not help my brokers and salespeople sell more wine, and in the current economic downturn better sales would be most welcome. So these days we are sending our releases out for review more frequently. Recently we scored another couple of… no surprise… 89′s. The reviewer had great things to say about the wines, descriptions which I plan to use in upcoming marketing efforts. But I’m not going to mention the scores. Why not?

Because an 89 is really a 63 — mathematically, anyway, when the ranges of scores are normalized. The publication I’m discussing here gives out scores on a scale of 50-100, split into six categories: from “undrinkable” to “superior.” I arrived at a graph (see original blog posting) by assigning the six categories a value of 1 to 6, calculating the fractional values between 0 and 6 represented by the 50-100 point scores, and then normalizing these fractional values back to percentages. So if “above average” is 3-4 out of 6, an 89 is 3.8, or 63% of 6. I’m exploring this particular system just as an example — pretty much every wine ranking publication uses something similar, explicitly or not.

Now if someone wanted to argue that my recalculation is bull, I’d be OK with that — even I think it sort of is. A proper analysis would evaluate the actual frequencies that scores are awarded; Leo McCloskey could probably clarify (though I doubt he would) or perhaps Peter O’Connor has these numbers. Bogus or only partly so, my analysis does point out some funny stuff about 100-point wine scoring systems. Like, that just 30% of the points available in the scoring range are assigned to wines that are below average, and 33% of the points are devoted to wines that are outstanding or better. Talk about grade inflation.

This is unlikely to be the intention of the rankers who employ a 100-point scale — but there it is. Realistically, everybody — from the dewiest newbie to the most experienced and educated palate — is rating wines at just three levels.

The top level is: “According to my taste, this wine is really good. I mean really good. You should spend a lot of money to buy this, because it’s worth it. As an investment, as a date-impressor, or simply as a measuring stick to tell people ‘mine is bigger than yours,’ this wine is the schiznit. About a third of what I write about fits this category.”

The middle level is: “I’ve tasted many, many a wine I have enjoyed more or less as much as I have this specimen. You should not be disappointed even if you have to spend more than the average American’s weekly wine allowance for a bottle of this juice. It’s good. Not ‘blow the kids’ 529s to invest in cases of it’ good, but ‘good enough’ to be right in the middle of the range of wines I would bother to drink. About a third of what I write about fits this category.”

The lowest level of rating is: “Meh. This wine did not impress my palate today. It is OK as these things go — not too overtly flawed, or thin, or hot, or too out of balance — but I’ve tasted better. You should thank me — I just spent an hour of my life tasting this bilge… er, I mean… ‘wine’ so that you don’t have to. Seriously. I mean, what were they thinking, sending me this crap? Yes, I wrote about it but if you have the budget, you will be better served going for something I’ve ranked in the middle tier. About a third of what I write about fits this category.”

There is a fourth level — everything that does not get ranked at all. These wines represent, I’d guess, something like 85%-90% of the total volume of wine sold in the world. For the most part these are wines that are not worthy of review, but some fraction of them are wines that just don’t get reviewed because they are too quirky or too rare or too… something.

This post has been incubating a while and in the meantime we’ve received another set of results from a different publication. News flash! — some 87s and an 84. {yawn} Like I said, it makes no difference to me. I am not driven by any desire for external validation. I’m not going to make these wines differently just to get higher scores — I believe that would be the wrong play in the short term, and I’m positive it would be wrong in the long term.

But still… there’s no doubt — and no denying — that better scores would help our sales. Joseph Heller cribbed this plot.

For comments to this blog see the original posting on John Kelly’s blog: notes from the winemaker.

Jamie Goode is a trained scientist who today in his blog wrestles with the tension between faith and science implied by “natural” wine. I am also a trained scientist, plus I am deep into my 24th vintage as a winemaker. You might be surprised how infrequently the term “natural” comes up in discussions among professionals. We talk about what works, and what doesn’t. We respect each others’ choices, because the proof of what works is always there right in front of us — in the bottle.

“Natural” only really seems to cause cognitive dissonance among some wine buyers, media types and consumers. I think it is a marketing thing with some people, and a cultish obsession with others. I don’t experience this dissonance. My winegrowing philosophy is “don’t do anything you don’t have to.” Consequently my approach has become more minimalist with each vintage.

I can get away with using less technology because of my scientific training, which has empowered me to take a rational approach to pursuing only what is necessary. Also, our vineyard is small enough (24 acres) that we can farm nearly vine-by-vine, and our production is low enough (2,500 cases max) that I have my own eyes and hands on every drop of wine we make.

Winemaking technology is required to scale up production from these low levels. Technology substitutes for eyes and hands on everything, allows us to make more with the same labor — which is how economists define increased productivity. The tradeoff for increasing productivity through the application of technologies is a loss of the “natural” artisanal character of wines.

Earlier this year, in a post about the role of yeast in artisanal wine production, I noted that Jamie observed a continuum between “natural” and “industrial” winemaking. I believe this view is correct, and that definitions of “natural” wine are purely semantic, and therefore artificial. So how’s that for boxing the compass, folks? “Natural” wine is an artificial construct.