Clark Smith: Removing the Manipulation Stigma from Winemaking

Provocative article by Clark Smith: Winemakers Must Come Clean: Clark Smith | Wine-Searcher News & Features.

Here’s a quote:

In the best cooking, the hand of the chef is invisible, a guiding principle nowhere more central than in wine. Aromatic integration into a soulful single voice requires a well-formed structure of fine, stable tannins. Oak is like cosmetics – ideally invisible in its enhancements. Proper presentation of terroir requires great effort.

Critics who have never actually made wine can have no idea how much skill and attention goes into invisibility. The fallacy is to demonize manipulation instead of ineptitude.

Any winemakers want to comment? Comments from the peanut gallery are welcome too.

EDIT: Clark pointed out to me that the link above doesn’t even link to the article I intended to reference. Here’s the much more recent article by Clark – the article to which I intended to link – that contains the quote above: Removing the Manipulation Stigma from Winemaking | Wine-Searcher News & Features

My apologies for the error and any resulting confusion.

No.

I’d have to taste his wine before I could agree or disagree with his views.

Just read the article and want to stick my fingers in my ears and say to Clark, “Na Na Na. I can’t hear you!”

Wrong, Smith, it’s not the ’ various tools as a chef using different types of pans’ but more of the deft addition of seasoning ie: salt that makes a dish wonderful, but only after the best ingredients are procurred. Like a photographers camera, the pan is just a tool. Vision is still the driving force.
yes, I am eating my peanuts.

JMHO: Winemaking itself is a manipulation of the grapes. A balanced wine is the truest form of manipulation. Making a balanced wine from very ripe fruit takes a talented winemaker/manipulator.

I got a kick out the article. When I read about the natural wine people, I am reminded of the saying that a conservative is somebody who is a fan of a dead liberal. By that I mean that the naturalists seem to embrace 60s technology, but say no to crossflow filtration, etc. They also reject new oak barrels, oddly enough, since barrels have been with us with centuries.
If natural wine is good, then let’s just use water power or manual labor…no electricity…to run the press. Maybe the grapes should pick themselves…pruning is evil…where do you stop??

On the other hand, where do we stop with spinning cones, Mega-red, concentrators, flash détente, etc??



Thirty years ago I visited a winery in southern France. They grew grapes next to salt ponds. When you entered the winery you were greeted by old oak tanks, everything traditional. Lots of tourists were tasating and buying.
Then we walked through a door marked ‘entrée interdite’ where we saw lab coat wearing technicians running around a forest of stainless steel tanks and discussed must oxygenation with the winemaker.

Maybe this is what people want. They embrace micro ox and oak inserts, they just don’t want to know about it.

THIS +1

I truly and honestly believe most folks just care about the final product and would rather buy into the ‘romanticism’ of the story rather than what actually happens to the grapes and wine during the process. And that holds for many, but not all, on this board as well.

I’m not sure I buy into Brian’s assertion that the ‘most balanced wine is the truest form of manipulation’ . . . sounds too canned for me . . . [snort.gif]

But as Mel points out, where do you ‘stop’ when determining ‘manipulation’. I truly and honestly think the majority of winemakers out there would prefer to be ‘minimalists’ in the actions they take in making wine. But that term is subjective as well . . .

Cheers

#1 is that “winemaking” starts when you have a problem. Who’s not going to fix it?

Winemaking is like taking a picture. You’re fundamentally creating something that isn’t “natural” but is judged primarily by its pure beauty and faithfulness to the natural subject. We might call it terroir. It’s very difficult to capture perfectly, but when you do, wow.

“Manipulation” to me is all the things you can do in photography to not so much capture what was there, but change it to create something that wasn’t naturally there. The person isn’t beautiful enough so we “fix” things to smooth out wrinkles and like that.

Sometimes the effects are subtle and add to the result, but so often things are obviously “photoshopped” to the point where you can’t even recognize the natural subject you started with. And it seems the hand of the editor often works out of insecurity about the quality of the natural subject, so that s/he is already planning the fixes before even taking the photo because they are certain the subject needs it and the result will be better in the end, even if you find the end product distorted and cold.

I find I’m most interested in efforts to capture what was there, perhaps with a little something like SO2 that I liken to wiping fog off the camera lens so you can better capture the scene without expressly changing it. Not every scene, and not every lot of grapes has the inherent beauty to stand up to this minimalist process. But when things line up right, that’s why I’m in it. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.

Making great wine takes tons of skill and experience…from the vineyard manager. If you have good grapes from a good site it’s just a matter of paying attention to details. Probably the biggest decision a wine maker makes is when to pick the grapes.

When I first read that line, I really liked the analogy. The challenge, though, is defining the natural subject. Wine is a man-made beverage based on a natural product—grapes. But where do the grapes leave off and man takes over? Well, at the very least, once you send people into the vineyard to harvest the grapes. The grapes don’t decide when to jump off the vines, and they certainly don’t make any of the hundreds of decisions that winemakers have to make along the process up through bottling.

Making wine is transforming grapes into something else. We can talk all we want about “faithfulness to the natural subject,” but drinking wine is very different than eating the raw grapes that grow in the vineyard. Winemaking IS manipulation and transformation; we can simply argue over which forms of manipulation and transformation we find acceptable/unacceptable.

Bruce

Vincent,
If you had an ugly wine would you rather photoshop it and sell it to somebody or send it down the drain?

LOL. These threads are usually into the third or fourth page before we get the argument that picking the grapes, or even planting vines in rows, are interventions or manipulations, and thus reverse osmosis and spinning cones are really no different. Mel, you and I both have been through those threads enough to know that it’s bad form to bring this into it here on the first page. (Just kidding you, Mel.)

Just for the record, I wish to buy and drink wines made with minimal intervention, and I wish to know when a wine is (or is not) made that way. I am in favor of rather detailed disclosures being required for any product that is sold as “wine.” I’m OK with web-based data sheets, rather than everything going on the label.

I’m in favor of the data sheets being required to disclose additions of water, acid, and sugar, along with all sorts of chemical adds. And concentrating machines, de-alc machines, etc.

As for “Faux Chablis”… f*ck, dude, give me a break. Is that even legal?

If photoshop is the answer, it should be disclosed. Like a singer lip syncing a concert, it should not be a secret.

Bruce, I agree. The analogy only goes so far. The “natural” grape is itself a manipulated thing, unlike a natural setting you might take a picture of. But to me the analogy works because from that point you’re either capturing the subject as it is, or you’re looking to fix things. I’ve loved altered photos and wines. I’ve been bored by unaltered ones. So I’m not trying to be an idealist, just express what gets me going on a given day making wine. My ideal is wine that requires very little input, and my concern with a lot of wine technology is that it’s not about salvaging wine but making better wine, if not the best wine. That’s just not my path.

Mel, I’d photoshop it. The point isn’t dogma, it’s just that’s not why I get out of bed in the morning. For Clark Smith, I think it is what gets him going and that’s great. Some people dehydrate food, powder it, add it back to other things and play with proteins and create incredible gastronomy. That’s cool, sometimes tasty. But if I’m a chef, it’s a much simpler approach. That’s just what I’m into.

How about if we just re-define “ugly”? :wink:

A friend of mine works for this winery that bought a cabernet vineyard with the veggies…lots of pyrazine. They tried flash detente. This removes the pyrazines but concentrates the tannins. Now they can sell the wine.

Some time ago a wine writer called me up with the idea of asking winemakers if they cut their pinot with petite syrah etc…Would winemakers answer him honestly? Yes, I said, but first they would admit to cheating on their wives…with Boy Scouts.

rachel mcdonald

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Post #33 by rachel mcdonald » April 26th 2015, 10:26am
Add me to the “it depends” contingent. The idea that a certain maturity level, or region, or grape, or winemaking style, etc. is always necessarily better than anything else is a bizarre concept to me. I just can’t identify with entire idea. I’m not sure what we gain from over thinking and over classifying wine into neat little boxes. Why enjoy wine when you can hyper-categorize it instead?
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Everyone is entitled to their opinion, right?

Michael, it almost seems as if you are (still?) stalking Rachel. There is no possible reason for you to quote her here. Her post was not about this topic, has nothing to do with this topic, so you are quoting her entirely out of proper context. If Rachel has anything to say about this, she is capable of posting herself. Sheesh. Get a life.

Dude, I thought you already apologized for the last incident, and had moved on.

If your point is that there are various degrees of manipulation, and we can disagree about where the line is (or the opposite), that’s fne, but you could have made that point without quoting a post and poster you recently attacked.

I wonder why WB has a reputation for misogyny.