Pinotblogger: the Capozzi Winery blog

“The Greatest Vintage.”

That was the headline for the 2005 Bordeaux tasting this past Thursday at the CIA in St. Helena with Robert Parker. The event also marked 30 years for Parker as a professional wine critic, and I suppose because of this he was a little introspective.

It’s fairly well established that Parker’s influence is on the wane, and even he acknowledges it. Very early on - almost in passing - he said that “the days of one dominant wine critic are gone.”

Still though, Parker made his reputation in Bordeaux in 1982 for good reason, and the man still sets the market there. His once all-powerful influence might be diminishing in other regions, but there is no one alive that knows more about Bordeaux, or has more influence on the area and its wines, than Robert Parker.

Just like in the ‘06 pinot tasting I attended, Parker was an open, honest and unpretentious tour guide. This time though, he walked a room full of wine industry luminaries (excluding me of course - I barely made it through the door with my Parker’s Bitch tee-shirt on. Guess they didn’t like the cut of my jib) through one of the best vintages ever for Bordeaux.

And since most of this wine is gone and ain’t coming back, it really was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The Wines

Parker started things off by qualifying his “greatest vintage” pronouncement. He acknowledged that some Chateau have had better recent vintages (2000 for instance) than their ‘05 efforts, and admitted that he “still has a few reservations” about the vintage. He argued that what made the vintage great though was its consistency throughout, all the way down to the smaller less well known satellite appellations.

In all we tasted 18 reds and 2 whites. Here’s the list:

1. Ch. La Conseillante. Pomerol
2. Ch. Bon Pasteur, Pomerol
3. Ch. Trotanoy, Pomerol
4. Ch. l’Evangile, Pomerol
5. Ch. Cheval Blanc, Saint-Emilion
6. Ch. Haut-Brion, Pessac-Leognan
7. Ch. Pape Clement, Pessac-Leognan
8. Ch La Mission Haut-Brion, Pessac-Leognan
9. Ch. Lafite Rothschild, Pauillac
10. Ch. Latour, Pauillac
11. Ch. Mouton Rothschild, Pauillac
12. Ch. Margaux, Margaux
13. Ch. Ausone, Saint-Emilion
14. Ch. Pavie Macquin, Saint-Emilion
15. Ch. Angelus, Saint Emilion
16. Ch. Troplong Mondot, Saint-Emilion
17. Ch. Larcis Ducasse, Saint-Emilion
18. Ch. Pavie, Saint-Emilion

And the 2 whites were:
Ch. Smith Haut Lafitte Blanc, Pessac-Leognan
Ch. Pape Clement Blanc, Pessac-Leognan

I was told that, assuming you could locate a seller, purchasing one of each of these bottles would run anywhere from $12-14,000. That turned out to be a little low. They auctioned off a lot of one of each at the end of the tasting and it fetched 15K. For charity, of course.

But try and wrap your head around this: The CIA poured 11 of each of the wines on the list above at the tasting. That’s $165,000 in wine that simply disappeared from the earth in one three hour period. Equal parts amazing and sickening.

One of the most surreal wine-related experiences of my life occurred on my way out of the tasting. Stretched out across the seating area was row after row of half filled tasting glasses. Tens of thousands of dollars of wounded wine soldiers, unrepentantly left behind to choke to death on oxygen, looked back at me as we filed out of tasting room.

I remember thinking: “That would be one hangover that would actually be worth having.” I sure hope the CIA staff had a good time cleaning up.

PART 2 TOMORROW

Edit: Here’s what Wine Rocks had to say about the tasting. He beat me to the punch with a couple of quotable quotes, so it’s certainly worth a read.

Just a quick post to outline some fun things that have happened recently and that will happen soon:

• Arthur over at Wine Sooth has posted an exhaustive three part series on wild wine yeasts dubbed “Yeasts Gone Wild.” He even has a scandalous pic of a naked(!) yeast with its asexual organs partially exposed! It’s also where I’m quoted saying this:

  “The added complexity you get from 4 different yeasts shamelessly sharing a ferment trumps the routine consistency of a monogamous relationship with just one yeast strain, no matter how pure and virtuous.” (emphasis mine)

  Sex and wine. Is there anything better?

• Wine: A Global Business, second edition by Liz Thach and Tim Matz was released recently. For those looking to break into the industry this book is peerless. It’s the standard text for a slew of classes at Sonoma State, and the list of contributors is long and distinguished. Well, that is except for one. This humble winery blogger contributed to the chapter “Direct to Consumer and Wine 2.0″ with Prof. Janeen Olsen, also of Sonoma State. Be sure to check it out.
• Tomorrow I’ll be heading over to Napa to tape a segment on wine and the media that V&WM editor-in-chief Tina Caputo is working on. It’ll be tough trying to answer questions about Robert Parker’s influence on winemaking styles while wearing my “Robert Parker’s Bitch” tee shirt. But it’s a challenge I feel I’m up to. Hell, it’s a challenge I was born for.
• Immediately after I’m off to CIA Greystone for the annual Robert Parker charity tasting. No costume change by the way, the shirt will stay! I’m hoping to get a photo with the great one while sporting the shirt. We’ll have to see. I’ll also post a lengthy report on the event right here, just like two years ago. The wines will be 2005 Bordeaux. Can’t. Wait.
• Then on Friday the madness of the WBC will begin. I have the privilege of hosting three wine blogging luminaries at our vineyard house for the weekend: Lenn from Lenndevours, Craig from Wine Camp and Russ from Winehiker. There’s even talk of a late night after-party with a well chosen selection of Long Island and Oregon wines. Very good times.

Blogging should continue to be sparse for the near future, but when I do post I promise to make it count.

This past month Hanna introduced a new alcohol meter as part of its Wine Line of instruments. I’m a fan of their products and have more than a few in my lab. The less expensive glass labware for me to break, the better.

This one is especially cool though, as it simplifies and speeds up the process of determining ABV while costing nearly the same as a non-electric Dujardin-Salleron ebulliometer ($735.00 vs. $795.00) which, incidentally, was first invented around 1870.

Moreover, it’s half the cost of an electric ebulliometer ($1500.00). And while an electric ebulliometer has better accuracy (0.1% vs. 0.2%) you really have to crunch the numbers and look at just how close your wines are to the 14% threshold to justify spending twice as much for a 0.1% increase in accuracy. Since most of my favorite California pinots all live just above 14%, I’ve resigned myself to the idea that we’ll be in the 14 and over category more often than not. Of course your mileage may vary.

Bonus: Doesn’t cost $15,000!

Originally I was looking at the super speedy, but super pricey Alcolyzer from Anton-Paar. However when you consider than an Alcolyzer costs $15,000, yet isn’t much quicker than the Hanna (2.5 mins vs. around 5 mins), the choice became pretty obvious.

Here are some interesting quotes I dug up during my research on the Alcolyzer. They’re from the Winemaker’s diary over at David Coffaro Winery.

The alcolizer (sic) is finally here and is working. Brendan is coming back tomorrow and we will have more input. Initially we are concerned with the inconsistency of this $13,000 product. BUT after continued experiment we concluded that the distilled water we were using to calibrate the Alcolizer was interfering with the constant results. We found that we needed to do 5 alcohol after calibrating with water, in order to achieve a stable result. Also we found that the analyses took longer than I hoped. We were hoping for results in one minute, but we will be very happy with the 2.5 min we got. We were told that the sample had to warm up to 68 degrees and our wine is stored at 62 now. Link.

…We are starting to live with the inadequacies of our Alcolizer. Yes I know we spent $13,000 on this instrument, but the one instrument that is debatably more accurate (Gas Chromatography) is much more expensive. Brendan and I will test the Alcolizer again Friday to make sure it is worth the price. Remember if we amortized this cost for only one year, it would amount to only $3 per case.

ed: David did end up keeping his Alcolizer:

…BTW, my alcolizer performed flawlessly so I paid the $15,000 bill (see my earlier concerns in Week 2 and Week 3 of this year). Link.

Benefits

• Quick - samples run in under 5 mins, minimal clean up (wash the probe)
• Super easy to use. Integrated Wizard in the HUD walks you though the entire process. Anyone can do this successfully and repeatedly. Even an intern :-p
• Cheap. Only one reagent involved (30 ml per determination) and Hanna is generous there, packing 3 500ml bottles in with the unit (at least they did for me).
• Pretty accurate - 0.2% v/v if you know the R.S. of your wine, 0.4% v/v if you don’t.

>li>Fit and Finish - This is the most well thought out, wine-specific instrument Hanna has made. From the Wizard in the HUD to the design of the probe holder so that the probe sits at the perfect depth in the sample (something totally lacking from some of their other meters), simply using the meter is much improved. There is, however, one very notable exception: the stir plate (see below).

Criticisms

One disappointment is that Hanna is incredibly vague about the method they use to determine ABV. In the manual, under principal of operation they write:

The alcohol determination is made using a new method. The meter takes two readings, one before the Hanna reagent is added and one after. The difference between the readings is used to calculate the alcohol content.

Wow! Thanks guys! The probe itself looks like it could be an EC meter, but I’m not entirely sure. No clue what the reagent is. Hanna hasn’t posted an MSDS or data sheet online for HI 83540-50 as of yet.

The biggest potential problem however is that Hanna says that residual sugar acts as an interference. So if R.S. values are unknown, the accuracy of the meter falls from 0.2% to 0.4%. Happily I’m able to generate RS values in house as well, so this isn’t an issue for me. But for those without a reducing sugars meter and test tube heater/digester, this will be an issue.

Finally there is the case of the magnetic stir plate built in to the meter. In short, it sucks. When I was a pizza delivery boy in college and had taken a particularly long time on a delivery, I would inevitably be greeted by my boss with this memorable phrase: “You drive like old people f*ck!”

Well, this magnetic stir plate spins like old people f*uck. It doesn’t properly homogenize the wine and the standard solution after it’s added. Because of this multiple readings must be taken and there is much waiting, and gnashing of teeth. All the while the Little Stir Bar That Could tries its best to mix everything up adequately, and fails.

What I do now, after blowing through nearly a whole bottle of reagent and sample after sample trying to get the thing to give a reading, is to take my sample cylinder over to my industrial strength stir plate and give it a good whirl there before attempting a reading.

Conclusion

I give the Hanna Alcohol meter a solid 88 points. The problems I mention would be more easily overlooked if the meter was either more accurate or cheaper. At the current price point though, even given the speed and relative ease with which samples can be taken, I have to dock it down below a 90 point score. Hopefully they’ll address the stir bar issue and clarify the principal of operation in the future.

One can also hope that eventually the price on the meter will fall. If that happens, then this will be the best solution available on the market for small wineries and will push my score up and over the 90 point threshold.

If last year was Darth Vader - all about extraction, enzymes, neutral oak chips and depth of color - this year is more zen Yoda. I basically said to the yeast: “do or do not, there is no try”. In short, ‘08 is all about the old wine cliche “let the wine make itself”.

The wine is turing out wonderfully, and for that I blame Joel Peterson. Earlier this spring I had a chance to spend a few nights chatting with Joel and Morgan, tasting wines blind and talking shop while Morgan prepared for his Masters of Wine exam. I’m happy and proud to report that Morgan, a fellow blogger and winemaker, passed.

He is now one of less than 30 (correct me if I’m off here) American MWs. And Morgan is still a few years short of 30. Quite the accomplishment, to say the least! You won’t find a more down to earth, unpretentious MW anywhere. And that’s just the way it should be.

Anyway, during one of our conversations Joel asked me what I thought about native yeast ferments. I repeated what I was taught at Davis: that native ferments were unreliable, and that more likely than not the yeasts that eventually ended up doing the heavy lifting were cultured ones already present in the winery, not in the vineyards.

30 Yeast Enter, 4 Yeast Breed

Joel nodded and then proceeded to tell me about a series of intriguing yeast studies he oversaw at Ravenswood. A few years back he hired a yeast geneticist to study the native yeast populations at various vineyards under contract at Ravenswood. The geneticist catalogued each of the species of yeast he found and then tracked the development of each through fermentation. He did this over multiple seasons.

What the geneticist found was that around 30 species came in to the winery on roughly 5% of the grapes, and that only 4 ended up fermenting the juice. Each of the 4 yeast “winners” would then split up the ferment. For example, one species might feast from 20 to 13 Brix, and then would be outcompeted by a second yeast which was better suited to the now more alcoholic conditions of the must. These results held year over year, and could explain why many folks tend to favor native yeast ferments, lauding them as “more complex”.

Evidence For Terroir

But for me the real relevation was this: the 4 yeasts strains that ended up being “winners” and dominating the fermentation varied each and every year of the study. Indeed, the pool from which the victors came varied each year as well. The assumption is that conditions during the growing season select for different species each year. As Joel pointed out, yeast are fungi after all, and thus are heavily influenced by weather conditions.

This is a profound finding, and is perfect evidence of terroir at work. It was also enough to convince me to rethink my position on natural vs. cultivated yeasts in winemaking.

Joel has graciously given me permission to share his research, and hopefully those of you out there who have been reticent about experimenting with native yeasts will give it a go. As for me, I’m now one of the converted.

The labs for the grapes were similar to last year, with acids being noticeably higher. The big three looked like this:

• Brix: soaked up to 27.4
• TA: 7.5 g/L
• pH: 3.44

Free Wine!

The only adjustment I made prior to ferment was to rehydrate. This is also the only similarity between this year’s recipe and last. Total H2O add back was less than 12%, with the rule of thumb being that anything less than 20% will not dilute flavor.

Some winemakers prefer to bleed off an equal amount of juice prior to the rehydration (as I did last year), and some even bleed off more than is added to concentrate the must further. The fruit this year suffered from some pretty severe desiccation however, so I felt that not only would my addition of Jesus Units this year help tame the high sugar, but would also bring about needed balance. Thus I did not bleed. Hey, it’s free wine!

After de-stemming I dosed the wine with ~30 ppm SO2 to stun the various strains of yeast (many of which would be responsible for off-odors and creation of volatile acidity) and initiated a cold soak with the addition of dry ice. Temps were held around 55 degrees for 4 days and then I allowed the must to gradually come up to ambient temps. 5 days after de-stemming fermentation began and is just now winding down. Peak temp observed was 87 degrees (which is good for maintaining some of the more delicate volatile aromas generated during the ferment, but not optimal for color) I’ll be pressing off tomorrow and going to barrel.

Interestingly, I was able to recognize 4 different stages during the ferment, which I assume coincided with the points at which the different yeast strains dominated. There was a slightly stinky sulfur stage, and a spicy/earthy stage bookended by two floral and fruity stages. Good times.

A Successful Experiment

As an experiment with an eye towards quality and complexity, so far this one has been extremely successful. There were no issues with the ferment, the “off-odors” generated by the native yeast stand a very high chance of contributing a complexity to this year’s wine lacking in the ‘07, and inputs and interventions were minimal. This makes for less work on my part both now and down the road.

And finally, given Joel’s research into native yeasts, I believe that I can say with very high confidence that this vintage reflects the terroir of Rebecca’s vineyard and not just be blowing marketing sunshine up anyone’s tailpipe.

My thanks again to Joel and Morgan for the wine, food and the invaluable advice.

Pics and a video coming soon!

Recently I added my name to a mailing list consisting of journalists on deadline looking for “experts” (ahem) for quotes for their stories. It was pitched to me as a way to “build your personal brand” and “cement your place as an authority in your area”. All well and good. I definitely like building my/our brand, and someone thinking I’m an expert (even mistakenly) would be pretty cool.

But I also wanted to see what types of stories journalists are interested in, where the market for information is heading, and how exactly the journos were walking the line between reporting news and soliciting experts to help them create news.

It’s an interesting situation, made even more interesting by the recent flare up about perceived credibility issues in the wine blogging world.

Some, including me, have argued that wine bloggers aren’t trying to adhere to the standards espoused by pro journalists and that their audience hasn’t come to expect those standards from them. If they are transparent about their conflicts of interest, then they cease to be conflicts of interest.

Others argue that if wine bloggers ever want to be taken seriously, they need to adopt the ethos and standards set by the pros.

So with that background in place, let me just throw out a query that caught my eye from this past Monday, September 8th:

11) Summary: celebrities involved with wine

Category: Lifestyle & Entertainment

Name: Redacted

Email: Redacted

Title: Contributing Writer

Media Outlet/Publication: Redacted

Anonymous? No

Specific Geographic Region? No

Region: anywhere

Deadline: 5:00 PM CENTRAL - September 15

Query:

“I am always looking for celebrities (sports, fashion, film, TV,theater, etc.) involved with wine (meaning they are into collecting or have partnered with a winery to launch a vintage) to pitch to my editors at Redacted. This would be in the form of a Q-and-A where the subject discusses new projects related to his/her career as well as how the interest in wine got started and has been cultivated. If you have a client that fits this need, please contact me!”

In my opinion, writing an article is a lot like making sausage. It may be delicious at the end of the day, full of information and insight, but you really don’t want to see it getting made. Any time news coverage is generally favorable for the subject of the news, someone is benefitting. And when someone is benefitting, there is the potential, indeed likelihood for a quid pro quo. We know this as consumers of news. We understand that it is simply how the world works.

What we want is disclosure. We want to be able to calibrate our internal BS detectors on our own. We don’t trust anyone (except perhaps our friends and family), let alone the media. What we do trust is our ability as a society to increasingly shift through large volumes of biased and often erroneous information, and piece together for ourselves a passable version of The Truth.

What is remarkable to me about the query above (natch, why else would I be writing about it?) is the fact that the implicit agreement between the journalist and the subject - you know the one between the media representative and the subject who wishes to leverage said media rep for personal gain - has been made pretty darn explicit.

The journalist above makes no pretension about the fact that the celebrity subject will be able to pitch their projects or products in exchange for an interview. Is this a violation of journalistic ethics?

Personally I don’t think so. This is commerce, and it’s completely understandable. One would hope though that any article resulting from the above query would come with a statement of disclosure.

The problem arises for me, and I suspect lots of other media consumers, when journalists try to convince us that they do not operate in the same world the rest of us mortals do. When they argue that their processes and ethics prevent them from being corrupted.

Please, spare us. Just disclose. That’s all we ask. We’re all human and we can all be bought. Whether it’s by a deadline, a juicy story, or simply a pat on the back. Corruption is in the water and we’re all drinking it.

The best we can hope for as news consumers is that folks will at least give us a general idea how polluted the water is in their glass is so we can make allowances.

Agree? Disagree? Hit me up in the comments. This is important stuff.