Saw this today in the local paper. Very interesting article. I have had a couple of his wines recently and was thinking it was time for further exploration after many years of little interest.
That article was one of the strangest/worst articles I’ve ever seen on Randall. It was poorly written, no organization, and a bunch of
nonsensical gobblydegook. And those are the most positive things I could find. ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Some of Randall’s statements just make no sense.
Old World wines are restrained, structured and redolent with tastes of earth and minerals. New World wines are bursting with fruit flavors and ripeness.
Seems like a pretty gross generalization to my mind. There are lots of old world wines that are packed w/ fruit. True…you don’t often get that earth & minerality
in Calif wines, but there are plenty of examples of such.
“One of interesting ways (we’re different) is the distinctive vin de effort versus vin de place in the New World. We do wines of effort really well. It’s our strength and weakness. We’re extremely consistent and controlled, but it sets limits on complexity and interest. It’s technically perfect but nothing you deeply love. Slightly synthetic, like talking to … Siri instead of talking to a person,” he says.
Again a pretty gross generalization. There are plenty of Calif wines that display terroir.
In the cooler climates of France, single varietal grapes can produce a very complex wine. When the climate gets too warm, grapes are blended to achieve interest. This should be especially true for California, believes Grahm, which on the whole has a warmer climate.
Another stupid generalization. Calif wines should be blended wines because of the warm climate?? Does anybody really believe that??
It’s believed by many scientists, according to Grahm, as the most salient ratio in predicting wine quality — kilos of fruit to kilos of roots. In other words, the mass of the roots divided by the pounds of fruit it’s feeding. The more roots, the stronger the soil impression and concentration of flavor leading to long-lasting wines.
Not sure what scientists he’s referring to. How the heck do you measure the mass of the roots?? I suspect there are plenty of deep roots in Bedrock/Kirschenmann/Carlisle/Papera/etc.
You open bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape, put the cork back in, and you can drink it the second day, then the third. > California wines are done the second day> ,” Grahm says.
Does anyone really believe that?? Because, as he asserts, Calif wines are all “manufactured”, vins de effort, they should all withstand being open for several days.
Grahm thinks it’s because California grapes are generally picked too ripe and thus are not chemically capable of aging.
Another dumb generalization.
Randall’s comments & assertions just seem gross generalization and shots from the hip. I attribute the flaws in the article to poor writing by the author. Randall usually has some
pretty profound thoughts & ideas. This article contains none of them.
OTOH, Randall continues to make some very good/interesting wines. As I commented back in April:
I’ve not had any of Randall’s wines from his new SanJuanBatista vnyd. Indeed, I don’t know if he’s actually made any yet.
But Randall’s wines are worth tracking. They can be sometimes very interesting & compelling. And other times, they can be
merely “vins de effort”.
Tom
You are in a feisty mood today Tom. I just skimmed over the article, and your remarks, and even though Grahm’s remarks are pretty “general” in style, you know he’s right.
You have to SEARCH the West Coast to find a wine with defined “terroir”. They are there of course, but in a great minority. You have to SEARCH France to find a wine that doesn’t have “terroir”. So I agree with Randall there.
I taught a “beginner” wine class last night, mainly California reds for the red stage, with a Southern Rhone old vine Syrah thrown in the middle of them just to see the reaction. One woman shouted out “Oh my god! It smells like blood!”, and the others couldn’t believe what the hell was going on in this wine. “Bacon fat?” “Black dirt?” “Smells like my grilled Venison steaks!” were some of the remarks from the crowd.
Almost in unison, they all agreed, there is just too much going on in this wine for us to like it. They wanted that jammy, easy style they were used to. And this can be frustrating for winemakers that want to produce something different, and not this “new world” style (that everybody wants).
He’s sort of the Yahoo! of the wine world. So much experimentation and pioneering, then abandoning the successes. Others are now lauded for being cutting edge and doing what he once did, while he seems focused on making moderately complex earthy wines with no acid backbone. Why should anyone care what he has to say if he doesn’t put in the effort?
Why would he, of all people, insist on using bullshit terms like New World, anyway? Talk about stale and meaningless! And making those generalizations when the next generation has a blooming movement going on? Don’t want to praise the competition for doing what you used to do, better and more consistently? He seems to be struggling for relevance without looking inward.
Having read the article, you could be mistaken for thinking that the 'New World" is just California. Certainly there is some gross generalisation happening there
The article is not well written. But Grahm is pretty much on target.
Now wait a minute Tom; are you sure the author wasn’t indeed just painting an accurate portrait of Mr. Grahm?
IMO he’s one of the wine world’s tragic characters. Always chasing some ideal and never able to catch it. A little less manic and he could have accomplished what Kevin Harvey has; I think something like that was probably his goal in the first place.
Tom, it’s my belief that the lack of varietal character and more nuanced site specific character in many domestic wines are primarily due to young vines, farming techniques and sales pressure (scores, appeal, etc). Californian viticulture is still very, very young relative to other regions and while many old world regions had to re-plant after phylloxera (Napa is still replanting sites too), a great number of vineyard sites are many, many decades old. In contrast, a good deal of California’s fine wines (not bulk) are being produced from vines that are 5-20 years old. Consider that Kapcsandy wasn’t planted until 2002, comparable Bordeaux producers possess vineyards that are far more advanced and mature than that.
Also consider that there is a high degree of pressure on domestic producers to create marketable wines (points). Unlike other regions where land has been paid off and infrastructure in place, domestic producers are having to acquire land, plant vineyards, create facilities and so on. Even if winemakers are purchasing from some of California’s older vineyards, there is pressure to create more homogeneous wines that review well so they can stay in business. Given our climate and long-growing season, it’s easy to be tempted to hang fruit longer even if a producer has the best intentions.
In time I think domestic wines will show more variety/site specific character but maybe when the vines are a little older, the consumers a little more knowledgeable (and producers too) and the influence of critics for sales not so great.
Of course Tom, you realize this I’m sure. But I think we underestimate the youth of California vineyards. Vines can be like people in that they get more interesting with time.
Hmmmm, Taylor…guess that must make me one of the most interesting people around!!!
Much of what you say is true, Taylor, and much I agree with. Though I think you may be attributing the issue of vine-age more weight than I would. There is an interesting article
in the current W&S magazine (https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0453/8557/files/Wine_and_spirits_February_2015_article-Ousterhout.pdf on the subject of vine-age and
its impact on Zinfandel. I like JohnOlney’s comment that old-vine Zin vnyds is not the meat but more like the gravy when it comes to Zinfandel.
But, certainly, the drive to achieve points has the effect of sublimating terroir and making for more homogeniety in the style of wines I would agree.
Tom
Tom,
Agreed. Very poorly written article.
That said, Randall will always be challenged with being viewed as anything other than a caricature of what he created of himself in the past. It’s a bummer because I think his passion is real and sincere, and he is making some interesting wines these days - some that really shine and others that don’t - but heck, that’s the case with most winemakers anyway
Taylor,
I wish that it was as simple as you lay it out, but I don’t believe that is the ‘real’ case here. Vine age MAY affect the way that grapes will evolve over time, but it is the winemaker and grape growers who have more influence over the factors that you’ve discussed, as well as Mother Nature and our warming climate. Even ‘non interventionist’ winemakers still ‘intervene’ just by choosing when to bring their grapes in, whether they destem or not, and whether or not they age in stainless, cement, newer oak or older oak barrels. The myriad of factors that affect the final wines is so immense that there is no way to isolate what makes wines ‘unique’ as succinctly as vine age.
And I certainly am of the belief that there are GREAT examples of individual varieties being grown throughout CA as well as other states - they may just not be getting the critical acclaim nor are they mentioned on boards like this, but they certainly exist . . .
Cheers!
“Great wines are made in the vineyard” seems to be a common refrain for many producers. Degrees of intervention is definitely related to the topic given the term vin de effort (or is that vin d’effort?) but let’s also consider the commonality of many vin de terroirs - these are generally mature vines that are dry-farmed with more transparent winemaking.
The wine doesn’t make itself on the vine, clearly! There is always a degree of intervention but I’m not sure that’s either here or there. I think the reality is that among the winemaker and grower there’s little they can do to “add” but much they can take away. The raw material is ultimately produced by the vine and the roots and it’s up to the grower and winemaker to foster or preserve that character.
Green harvesting, canopy management and so on are all techniques meant to replicate the character of less vigorous, lower yielding mature vines. Desired skin-to-juice ration, low pound per vine and other desired traits are generally naturally occurring in older vines. Even further, dry-farmed, mature vineyards have more extensive root systems, greater interaction with more diverse soils and suffer less stress from climactic events. All these things are typically what we try to achieve through techniques in the vineyard. This is not to point to it as synthetic or interventionist, but to demonstrate that the traits we find desirable are generally inherent to mature vineyard sites.
I agree with Tom’s article that the right variety/root stock in the right sites is superior to a mature variety in the wrong site/wrong rootstock. However the right variety in the right site with maturity? I think this is the ideal. Given the centuries of practice and many decades of vine maturity in the old world, I think we find wines that are consistently closer to this ideal than we find in the new world.
Does that mean that new world producers can’t create wines of these character? Not close, but we’re just near the beginning of our knowledge of California vineyards and climate.
I’d be willing to guess that I’ve turned in a few papers like this in high school. It reads like it was written by a non-wine person for a non-wine crowd.
I believe most of the wine article was transcribed from one of Grahm’s video lectures.
Also, for what it’s worth, from the article Tom posted:
Paul Draper: "In my view, when the vines are really young, up through 15 years or so, you can get some beautiful, distinct and intense fruit if it’s not over-cropped, and it’s in a good site. As you go beyond 15 years it’s more than primary fruit. Then it’s this slow transition into something that’s not quite as ‘delicious,’ in terms of in-your-face fruit, and by the time you get up to 50 or 60 years you’re really seeing more complexity or subtlety in the wine.”
Weird perspective. One could as easily say old vines are a crutch for a poor vineyard manager.
Does that mean that new world producers can’t create wines of these character? Not close, but we’re just near the beginning of our knowledge of California vineyards and climate.
It seems the new world was discovered after the 1970s. There have been wines of character being made here for a century and a half. Phyloxera took out some of the genetic diversity of what the nurserymen had brought over. Prohibition was the big hit, as it destroyed both the market for quality wine and the centuries long apprenticeship system that immigrants had brought with them. In came the French designed and developed modern technologies and techniques that made rather synthetic wines, but there were notable holdouts. Just as the breadth of quality producers boomed and gave France a wake-up call, someone done went and discovered the new world. Again, there were holdouts who thought all of the world was the same age. Strange. But now more and more are waking up to the fact that that is the case…
Wes, I’m not sure what’s weird about it. Young, irrigated vineyards with a lot of inputs demand green harvest and canopy management to manage vigor and create quality fruit. Not only that, but they also become stressed more easily to heat events and stop physiological ripening. Mature vineyards with extensive root systems tend to regulate themselves, are less responsive to drought and heat and naturally generate smaller berries and smaller clusters.
Your statement that old vines are a crutch for a poor vineyard manager seems like an example of Grahm’s distinction of a vin de “effort”. It takes a great deal of management to produce quality wine. In time, many of these vines will naturally set less crop and regulate themselves better (if weened off irrigation) unless they are uprooted and re-planted with younger vines so that the vineyard can be managed extensively all over again.
For those interested, here’s the Google interview that the author was transcribing:
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of old vines. It’s just the idea that excellent vineyard management of a young vineyard is artificial that’s weird. It’s just what you should be doing in that circumstance. And it’s just a fact that there are many young vineyards in CA. In many cases it’s new sites that have been discovered and planted because they seem superior to most of what’s out there to the people behind the project. There are also plenty of examples of wines made from young vines that show great depth of character, including many that have stood the test of time. If you look at what Grahm himself has actually done, instead of what he yammers on about, is when he restructured Bonny Doon he abandoned a lot of older vine sources and invested heavily in new vineyard land. Maybe it’s his own results from his warm new sites on mediocre soil that has him down on young vines…?
Vine age is one of many important factors. It’s importance can be easily dwarfed if you don’t have the others right.
I’m experiencing the same thing thing as I get older.