Americans expect a winemaker to produce a superior product by blending different vineyards together, or by using certain winemaking ‘tricks’ to emphasize ‘pleasing’ characteristics. Hence the name wine maker. To a European purist those interventions are a “hoax.” Europeans in charge of wine production on an estate call themselves ‘cellar managers.’ They think of themselves as baby-sitters: keeping the wine safe; not trying to influence its development. This matter leads to vigorous debate, with no right or wrong answers.

In the first video of our series, Terroir Tastings, we covered the reasons why wines made from Cabernet grapes grown on the hillside taste differently than wines made from grapes grown on the Bench or on the valley floor. For our fourth video in the series we wanted to use Merlot as our demonstration for why grapes in the southern part of Napa Valley taste differently than those in the northern portion. Our emphasis was on Napa climate. Cool air off San Pablo Bay is drawn north up the Valley as hot air rises over the sun-baked earth around Calistoga (note raptors circling in the updrafts to gain elevation at Calistoga). Different districts are defined by how the topography affects that mass of cool moving air. So the hills just north of Yountville separate the cooler districts of Carneros and Oak Knoll from the warmer ones of Oakville and Rutherford. Then the sides of the Valley constrict. The narrowest point is north of St. Helena, making the broad area south of Calistoga its own unique district.

Medoc upper left; Pomerol & St Emilion lower right.

In our video lesson we attempt to contrast how Bordeaux instead differentiates districts by soil. Their climate is much the same all over, but the soils in major districts are different. The Medoc~ on the outside of the curve of the river where the water would have run fastest over ten thousand years ~ has much more vineyard area with pebble-sized rock and sand. Sand is technically defined by geologists as up to 2 mm in diameter, about the size of the pupil in your eye. These soils drain well, ripening grapes earlier in a rainy climate. The French say the Medoc has “warm” soils. That’s why the Cabernet Sauvignon goes there, because it takes the longest to ripen. The Right Bank~ inside of the curve where the river would historically eddy and be much slower ~ contains a lot more silt (particles up to 0.05 mm in diameter, which you can barely see) and clay (< 0.002 mm, can’t see it without a microscope). These small particles have thousands of times more surface area to which water can adhere. The French call the soils of the Right Bank“cool.” They prolong vegetive growth of the vine each year, which slows down ripening. That is why Merlot and Cabernet Franc are preferred in Pomerol and St. Emilion. They ripen faster than Cabernet Sauvignon does.

Soil particle sizes

Ch. Latour in the Medoc.

Clay soil in Pomerol.

Demonstrating our thesis about climate in Napa Valley required assembling four wines (all 2010): Truchard from Carneros; Trefethen from Oak Knoll, Frog’s Leap from Rutherford; and Barlow from Calistoga. They are all properties with good track records. The wines are all highly rated by various reviewers. The wines all cost from $30 to $40. Then we sat down to taste them.

Truchard was the darkest, most full-bodied, and most robustly flavored of the bunch. Really good wine, but clearly the winemaker had left the grapes on the vine for an extended period, then done a long maceration on the skins, and probably attached some donkeys to the press. There were no herbal smells, and no indication (less ripeness) of the cooler Carneros climate at all. Barlow, by contrast, was lighter bodied. It had blueberry smells, but cropping at 8 tons/acre on an irrigated alluvial fan had produced a wine more noted for refinement than for concentration. There was absolutely none of the manhood-challenging intensity that the Calistoga district often flops out on the table. Frog’s Leap got a lot of attention for potential food matches, but it was the wine with the herbal notes. No one says “herbal” is typical of Rutherford, even for Cabernet Sauvignon, much less for Merlot (which ripens two weeks earlier than Cab). “Herbal” is a phrase people use to describe Merlot from cooler vintages in the Medoc, which is contiguous with an ocean estuary. Clearly, these Frog’s Leap grapes had been consciously picked early to achieve a Bordeaux style of wine.

The Merlot tasting with John and Katie was very instructive. They are both articulate and perceptive. Although the tasting mostly demonstrated the reverse side of our terroir coin ~ motivated winemakers can overcome terroir. It’s a lesson. Not the one we wanted to teach, but a lesson all the same.

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There is no regulatory standard. A winery could put ‘old vines’ on a label for wine made from 10- to 15-year-old vines. Of course their Zinfandel growing neighbors would never speak to them again… but it would be legal. And setting some governmental standard would be hard ~ not to mention it’s an enforcement quagmire. The better answer is probably to fall back on the marketplace. Don’t expect government to insure the quality of wine for which you pay a premium price. Taste the wine, and arrive at your own conclusions.

In our second Video Tasting  Sierra Foothills Zinfandel we covered how the style of Zinfandel changes as one progresses up the gradual western slope of the Sierras fromLodithrough Amador toEl DoradoCounty. We had a Master of Wine (Dr. Liz Thach fromSonomaState) tasting with us, and a prominent marketing research consultant named Hal King. We tried the wines with BBQ pork shoulder and with BBQ brisket. We concluded there was a considerable difference, not just in the character of the wines from the three elevations, but also in their color, acid content, intensity, and finish.

Woven into the beginning of our video lesson, however, was a discussion about vine age.Californiais unique in having some 5,000 acres of Zinfandel vines which are more than 80-years-old. They are in the Sierra Foothills, inSonomaCounty, in Paso Robles, and in isolated pockets such as Ridge’s Jimsomare Vyd in the Santa Cruz Mtns, and several places inMendocinoCounty. Very old vines yield meager crops. Maintaining these ancient vineyards is an extreme form of artistic stewardship.

Loosely linked to vine age is the matter of how the vines are trained. Virtually every old vineyard is head-pruned; whereas almost all young vineyards are trellised along cordon wires. That fact reflects conventional practices when the vineyards were planted. Logically enough, old-timers tend to feel head-pruning is a superior method for Zinfandel. Traditionally a head-pruned vine cascades outward in an umbrella pattern. Sun can penetrate into the middle of the vine through a relatively leafless circle at the top. But the angle of that light penetration changes as the sun passes overhead, so no clusters get sunburned. They receive a very desirable ‘dappled sunlight.’ The downside to head-pruning ~ forgetting, for our purposes, that there is no such thing as mechanically harvesting for head-pruned vines ~ is that pickers have to search through each vine, lifting up canes, in order to find the grape clusters during harvest.

Trellised vines place all their clusters in a row about waist high. That makes life a lot easier for the workers during harvest. Vineyard managers can also perform selective leaf removal at the end of the season seeking ‘dappled sunlight’ on the clusters. A common technique in vineyards with rows running north – south is to pick leaves only on the eastern (i.e. morning) side of the vine row.

Guyot trained vines in St. Joseph, northern Rhône Valley

Trellised vs. head-pruned is but the most rudimentary description of training options for Zinfandel. There are many types of trellising, of course, and head-pruning takes at least two forms: wagon-wheel vs. Xmas tree. Most of the old vines in our videos are wagon-wheel. When bereft of leaves, those take on the shape of a chalice, with spurs for next year’s growth forming a pin-wheel, more-or-less in a single horizontal plane. Structurally it is quite strong (cf. the Guyot system inFrance’sRhôneValley resisting the Mistral winds there). Historically these sculptured vines were pruned by the owner on a small plot (3 to 5 acres) around his house. They took years to train correctly. They look spectacular in late Winter – early Spring against a backdrop of yellow mustard flowers.

As vineyardists purchased larger plots, and needed hired workers to do their pruning, a common practice was to teach laborers the easier, quicker Xmas tree technique. This form is basically a vertical trellis, with spurs left in an ascending helix around a central trunk. This is a good compromise for vineyards where an owner is supervising the tasks of pruning and harvest. Trellising along horizontal cordon wires is more expensive in the first couple years, but simpler long-term. It started becoming popular as owners moved away, and labor became something contracted through a third party.

Do these factors actually affect how the wines taste?

You will easily recognize our Master of Wine friend as the attractive, younger person in the middle. Hal King is on your left. He asked if I’d only invited him because it was barbecue? That’s ridiculous! I think every BBQ – Zinfandel event needs a Harvard MBA who did three tours inVietnamflying military aircraft. (He’s also on our Marketing Advisory Committee.)

At the end of the day it is almost impossible to untangle the effect of old vines vs. young ones from the effect of head-pruned vines vs. trellised vines. ‘Old’ pretty much implies head-pruned. During our tasting we thought there was a substantial difference between the two wines, but that didn’t mean we enjoyed one more than the other. They were both delicious, albeit easily distinguishable. The young-vine, trellised example was intense, clean, refreshing, boysenberry-like, and a screaming winner with our pork shoulder and a slightly sweet, tomato-based sauce. It had all the virtue and life-force of a college 440 champion with good grades. The old-vine, head-pruned example was darker, more Gothic. It matched better to our brisket and to a sauce with some liquid smoke in it. The old-vine Zin took more thought. Like the indiscretions of youth, one’s opinion was subject to change over time. The wine showed many layers, but always in a tighter package. It was more about the crust on the steak than about the meat.

If you or your friends are not already on our mailing list, go to the Vinobo.com website to leave your email address. We’ll send you the names of representative wines illustrating the points made in our Video Tastings. We’ll also notify you whenever we post a new Tasting Video.

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In other words, top European vintners think of themselves as craftsmen. They don’t call themselves winemakers because they believe the vineyard makes the wine. They call themselves cellar managers. They are like baby-sitters, keeping the child from injuring itself, but allowing it to develop its natural characteristics on its own. American vintners are more likely to think of themselves as artists, molding the development of the child ~ like the French think of chefs, assembling a dish from items found in the marketplace. Both of these concepts can exist side-by-side. Neither invalidates the other. The competition has to do with what you think wine should be. It’s a philosophical discussion.

Eventually our hope is to produce seven short videos (six to nine minutes) providing examples of Europe’s terroir concept, only applying these principles to grapes and places in California. Each video will illustrate a general aspect of climate or topography which affects wine taste: terroir drawn broadly. Our first effort is going to be a comparison of Cabernet in a cross-section of Napa Valley drawn west to east through Oakville. This lesson will apply to lots of other grape varieties as well, and to lots of vineyard districts around the world, because it demonstrates the effect of steep hillsides vs. benchlands (i.e. piedmont, or foothill) vs. valley floor sites.

About half of each video is devoted to tasting wines which illustrate our point(s). In fact we’ll recommend examples for you in a range of price points, so you can ‘taste along’ if you wish. Invite some friends over. Make an evening of it. Do the tasting along with the video, then have some food with the remainder of the bottles.

From our production standpoint, the tasting part of each video is fairly easy. It’s indoors. The discussion is open form; we don’t need to get specific information into precise spots. The explanatory, or lesson part, of each video is another matter altogether. We’re usually trying to integrate blackboard-like charts or maps with outdoor landscapes. Outdoor scenes require good weather. They are usually much better in the early morning or late afternoon, when the light arrives horizontally, rather than the sun being directly overhead. In a valley such as Napa, it is important to account for the sunlight coming from the west or from the east, because you would prefer the sun to be behind the camera. Our video partner, James Forbes, is very creative, and every bit the professional, but you can’t ask him to compensate technically for ‘talent’ that likes to sleep ‘til noon (that would be me). Bad lighting is the signature of an amateur production. Ask anybody who has even a nodding acquaintance with porn.

Finding an appropriate location to illustrate our academic points is one thing. Getting permission from the property owner is software from a different programmer. You can run through armies of gatekeepers, vineyard managers, and Administrative Vice Presidents before you get to someone willing to make a “Yes – No” call. One rule of thumb seems to be, “If they feel sufficiently authorized to make a decision, they won’t be available this week.” Most often our best outcome is, “Shoot quickly, and get the Hell outa here.”

Then there is the question of sound. Birds chirping in the background don’t bother us too much, but nearby traffic, or (God Forbid) a tractor, can ruin any take. Even wind whistling past the microphone can make matters difficult. We’ll see. Forbes is editing now. Voice Over sections and musical interludes are always a possibility.

Wardrobe is an on-going debate. I’ve been told to seek female assistance. Story of my life. With a physical presence best suited to radio (Rush, are you paying attention?), I prefer to show up for these shoots in a De La Salle Football T-shirt. I mean, De La Salle does own the national high school record for longest winning streak. But Forbes feels an upgrade may be in order. Trouble is you want to maintain the same outfit when shots are cut together within a single video ~ even though they may have been shot on separate days. In part it’s a shopping issue. Mostly it’s a laundry issue. I thought I could pull off the cowboy / vineyard manager look ~ you know, long-sleeve, solid color shirt, with blue jeans, maybe a gigantic belt buckle, perhaps even a hat. No go. Forbes demanded the same black pullover I’d worn the day before so the shots could be cut together. It’s a lot to remember. Especially for a guy who deep down doesn’t really care.

Bruce In Flight

My main personal problem is standing motionless long enough to get each shot set up properly. I now grasp why movies employ stand-ins for this task. We shot one scene last week in a very steep hillside vineyard. By the time we’d captured the shot, my downhill foot (the one with all the weight on it) was asleep. I tried to casually saunter away from the perch I’d assumed, composed as always, but couldn’t quite gain command of my right leg. Which sent me careening down the slope, upright albeit out of control, and bearing a close resemblance to a balloon you inflate and then release without a knot in its neck. I stumbled like an hysterical chicken for about twenty yards, and at least 20 feet of elevation, before I could arrest my departure with a not-so-casual wrap-around technique on a vine-row end-post. You know the feeling: Too fast to stop; no where to go. Very amusing to all the other parties involved (that would be Forbes). Up to this point I hadn’t understood why vineyard managers kept telling us, “Don’t hurt yourself.” Forbes claims, if he hadn’t been putting the camera back in the case, we’d be viral on YouTube right now. I just can’t catch a break.

All business, Jeff, at an early age

Stay tuned. We’re doing these Fine Wine apps across two or three generations. We’ve been trying to pick a musical theme, and to make the occasional movie reference, only to realize our Marketing Partner was 3-years-old when the movies I were quoting came out. Looks like we may need an Out-Takes Reel.

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