Which is probably what those of us who have shot our mouths off here should have said as well 
After reading your comments, my guess is that Matthews knows a lot more than Kramer (or any of us) about these subjects. I guess that’s the difference between a columnist and a journalist. Maybe it would be good if Kramer sat down and interviewed Matthews before writing an essay.
That’s a great idea. I wonder if either of them would agree to it?
Tom Hill,
You may enjoy a Working Paper from the American Association of Wine Economists, its’ title is:
“On Wine Bullshit: Some New Software?” It’s by Richard Quandt, and was written in 2007. Very funny and very true, I use this method to generate “shelf-talkers”, and it WORKS. It’s a light read, as compared to most of the Working Papers from the A.A.W.E.
Like Carole I work in two worlds, one is dealing with winery people and the other is selling a small bit of wine. The language you use in selling wine is completely different from that employed by production people. When you are selling wine you can say, Oh there are hints of cherries because there used to be a cherry orchard nearby, or it’s terroir that gives us __________.
Production people talk how they try to match the variety, the root stock and the clone to the soil and climate. Then they try to hone their techniques to achieve an objective. Kevin Harvey is a wonderful example here. He combed the wine world with his questions. He had a target and planted vines, built a winery, worked on all sorts of production issues. So did he discover a wonderful vein of terroir in the hills?? Or did he figure out a way to make wine that he liked??
Terroir used to be defined as a flavor coming from the soil. Then it was soil and climate. Now the cultural anthropologists have taken over and given us a completely different point of view.
Well, how can you discuss a concept that keeps changing??
About garrigue: is it really pyrazines from French people picking grapes before they are flavor ripe or the residue of winds that smell like pyrazine?? The scientific explanation sucks but the wine merchant version is a winner. That’s Provence you’re smelling!!
I had a customer who was a Fuller brush salesman…bought a case of Lafite from me. He decided to call on wineries —combined business with pleasure-- and he was very proud that he sold some minty floor cleaner to Heitz…he might have been kidding…
Alan,
That would be a fun interview. My guess is that some would conclude that Matthews knows much more about plant physiology and Kramer knows much more about wine.
Speaking of pyrazines, there are a lot drifting into my office from Golden gate Park…maybe that’s a new source of garrigue…
Kevin makes a good point that there are many things we cannot measure yet. The difficulty also with isolating a soil variant is that one is always changing the location–climate issues-- as well as soil when you get grapes from another location. This gets us into another issue. I see this with barrels where oftentimes analysis of wine made in different barrels is inconclusive, but the taste is different. Toasting differences usually show up.
I have a lot of older books on wine, by which I mean books from the 50s, 60s and70s. The explanations given are oftentimes hilarious. For example, one book says that in a day in Springtime they open the cellar doors in Champagne, and the wines start to crackle again. The explanation given is that the sap in the trees is communicating with the wine.
A vertical of North t o South Zind-Hubrecht Riesling might impress you of terroir influences
+1
For all we know, Matthews has drunk as much wine from around the world as Kramer has Probably not. But I’m ready and willing to listen to someone with a solid scientific foundation talk about what’s real and what’s not when it comes to how vines interact with soil.
Most importantly, given Carole’s input, this sounds like a tempest in a teapot on Kramer’s part.
Tom,
I would ask you if you have ever tasted the same wine aged in eight different barrels.
That wine from two different vineyards tastes different …what does it prove?? That wine from two different parts of the same vineyard tastes different even when made the exact same way…??
I expect that Mark would have no compunctions of sitting down & talking to Kramer. But Kramer might not be amenable to a chat
would be my guess. It might change his views on the elitism that these scientific types have.
Back in '70’s (by crackey), I made an appointment at UC/Davis to visit w/ VernSingleton about an article I was writing
for Vintage (or Wine Spec) on tannins & polyphenolics in wine. He spent well over an hour w/ me chatting on the subject and answering ny (probably stupid)
questions. You couldn’t have asked for a more gracious host. Same story w/ MaynardAmerine when he visited NM back
in the '70’s. He charmed the sox off of me and at no time seemed condescending in answering my questions. Same sort of
experience twice w/ RogerBoulton over dinner at Darrell’s. However, when I started to pontificate on the subject of
“Dependence of the Fission Spectrum of Pu-239 on the Energy of the Initiating Thermonuclear Neutron”…their eyes
sorta glazed over!!! ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Tom
Thanks for chiming in here, Carole. I think those two statements go right to the very heart of the issue. Too much of the pontifications by so-called “wine experts”
are totally accepted by wine lovers w/o any questioning. More often than not, those “wine experts” are just parroting the “knowledge” that came from the “wine experts”
before them.
I’m looking forward to reading more of his book.
Tom
Thanks, Nick. Sounds like an interesting read. I’ll try to track it down.
Tom
Perhaps, Mel…but maybe not 8 different barrels.
Didn’t Wine & The People (the once winery there in Berkeley on University or SanPablo) once btl up a set of wines that were from one lot of wine but
aged in different barrels? I seem to recall tasting those at one time. Think they were Zin.
But in visits to different wineries & barrel sampling, I’ve done that experiment. French vs. American oak (at Ridge), no-toast vs.
heavy-toast barrels. Hungarian vs. Slovenian vs. French oak. Old vs. new oak. Same oak vs. same oak. Sometimes the differences
are dramatic…other times very subtle. But certainly there are differences.
Tom
Tom,
My point is that there are always going to be differences when things are changed…grapes from adjoining vineyards, barrels, fermentation techniques, etc. But what does this demonstrate?? That when you change things, things change?? But why??
Are grapes from contiguous vineyards different because of the soil?? The climate?? Winemaking techniques??
Kramer’s argument reminds me of Bonne’s book. The reason the people at Davis/Fresno State haven’t proved what he thinks is that they haven’t tried hard enough, that their equipment isn’t good enough etc…
By the way, Tom Hill, I was talking to Tom Pavlovic.
Didn’t Carly Simon write a song, You are so vain you think this post is about you…???
There are actually areas of substantial disagreement between scientists on many wine topics (ie “wild yeasts” and terroir). For example I was once interviewing an assistant winemaker who had been taught at Davis that Saccharomyces did not live in the vineyard and were in fact singularly native to wineries. European scientists thought otherwise and recent DNA advancement by NZ scientists has proved that they are indeed present in the vineyard.
To accept anything in “wine science” as gospel is pretty risky.
Kevin,
How risky is accepting the word of wine writers??
I put the risk at “Possibly Survivable”. Of course, you might end up with a bad bottle.
More seriously, I would recommend “proceeding with caution” when it comes to wine writing or “wine science”. That said, there is plenty to learn from both.
If forced to choose (by a hardened barrel merchant) I think understanding wine through the glass is more illuminating. For example, Richard Smart’s thoughts on viticulture are interesting but learning viticultural practices from people making great wine is a bit more interesting.