Ripeness in Wines by Jamie Goode

Surprised this has not been posted yet.

Interesting piece by Jamie, looking at historical measurements of ripeness and changes that have occurred over the past 20 years. And can’t wait for installment 2 where he’ll be talking with CA winemakers

It reads well, with a fair voice for people at different ends of the spectrum.

I always enjoy Jamie’s writing since he makes me think about the subject.

Thanks for posting, Larry,

Really informative, especially for someone not so familiar with the technical aspects of winemaking, unlike yourself. He lays it all out quite clearly. Can’t wait for part two.

That’s a great article.

He’s one of the best in the biz if you ask me. He certainly has his ‘leanings’, but he did a great job in this piece laying out the historical perspective and the factors at play.

It will be very interesting to see who he interviews in CA - to me, this will help determine the ‘lean’ of the piece. He’s already mentioned the IPOB crowd so my guess is that he’ll include Raj Parr or Jasmine Hirsch or someone like that; hoping he also includes someone like Justin Smith or Manfred Krankl or Russell From from Herman Story or any number of ‘cult’ Napa guys for alternative opinions . . .

Cheers.

I have to challenge one point. Those huge super ripe Barossa shirazes can only be made in certain parts of the Barossa, namely the North-West (think Torbreck.) Some winemakers in other parts of the Barossa would love to make those wines, they sell for big bucks, but they simply can’t due to terroir. So, it does have an effect on flavour even at that end of the spectrum.

James,

Great point - and that point can certainly be made about other areas outside of the Barossa and Australia in general.

Cheers!

Nice point James makes. How big is that area?

According to Wikipedia, Barossa has 10,350 hectares (25,600 acres) of vineyards. I’d guess less 1,000 acres can produce the Inky stuff.

Paging Kent and Jeremy!

To cut a long story short: There is no right or wrong. Many people tend to like the riper style. I can see this at my dinner table. If I put a bottle of Burgundy on the table and a full bodied Chateauneuf du Pape most probably the CdP is quick empty and the bottle of Burgundy still half full. This may be different if only wine geeks are my guests. And since Burgundy is a low production area worldwide demand will sell out this special type of wine anyway. But if you have to sell thousands of cases the picture is different. Most people are no admirers of the herbal style of traditional Bordeaux but love that new wave St. Emilion with vanilla, caramel and chocolate flavors and a dark fruit profile. 14,5% alc. is not a problem for most people as long as the wine does not taste sour or astringent. This is my experience.

Do I like Burgundy or traditional Bordeaux? Yes. But I am not dogmatic and can have fun with a “modern” wine as well. As long it is competently made and not a completely overripe mess.

Good post Juergen; I concur.

An outstanding article, Larry, thanks for linking. Wish I had seen it during our recent robus discussions on this topic in the two Bordeaux threads (1970s FG v. 3rd Growths and and 2016 Bordeaux).

Love the Intro:

Of all the issues at the heart of fine wine, perhaps one represents the crucial battleground: ripeness. To make good wine, ripe grapes are a prerequisite. But what exactly is ripeness? How is it defined? And when is ripe too ripe? The most controversial issue in wine is the shift toward riper red wines, made from grapes picked later, with a sweeter fruit profile and more alcohol. Bolstered by the lavish use of expensive new oak, these are in the so-called “international style.” They are dark, concentrated, and seductive, but they are a world apart from the classic European models that have for so long formed the bedrock of the trade in fine wine.

Even some of the classic wines have changed, becoming denser, riper, and more alcoholic through later picking, lower yields, more ruthless selection, and the use of increasing proportions of new oak. Is this just a style preference on the part of consumers? In this case, what right have we to complain? Or is there a deeper problem here, with a convergence of flavor that sees nuance and sense of place in wine lost? There are a limited number of privileged terroirs in the world capable of making nuanced, elegant, ageworthy red wines, and if these are being used to make big international reds, then something precious is being lost. This is why the topic is so controversial.

These wines are being made because this is what the critics like, we are told. But there’s a vocal reaction against these riper, denser wines, with a growing momentum to see some of these excesses curtailed, chiefly through picking much earlier. But to see this issue as a simple binary “right/wrong” or “them/us” scenario is to misread the situation and to prolong the divide. As with so many issues in the world of wine, a more intelligent, nuanced reading is needed, holding in tension seemingly conflicting “truths.” In this three-part series, I will try to explore the issues surrounding ripeness in wine, which is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking of all the discussions in fine-wine circles.

Sure, but of course the problem is, so many once-traditional estates have flipped to the trend. It’s not just limited to St Emilion, as you note. So while others may like “vanilla, caramel and chocolate” in their wine, it is quite sad to see Figeac, Conseillante, Carmes Haut Brion, Lanessan, La Louviere and a whole host of others, make such a paradigm shift. They had loyal followings already. Follow trends, fall prey to trends. If only it had indeed stayed with the St Em garage wine movement, relegated to the garage.

The article makes the point of a sameness in late picked riper wines and I agree with this but I also have experienced a sameness is a number of earlier picked lower alcohol wines as well. Not all of them by any means just like not every 15% wine tastes the same. But when I notice this it comes across as an overwhelming cranberry that overrides any varietal character. Yet this isn’t noted in the article. For me proper ripeness is that sweet spot between cranberry and raisins where the real flavors come through.

My chief problem is when the line in ripeness is crossed with the result being gads of residual sugar. A producer wants to pick that cab at 32-34 brixs yet only ferment to 14.5-15 abc, no cone spinning desired. Ripe fruit is fine, if I want RS, I’ll buy a Sauternes, Vin Santo, or Riesling, keep it out of my cabs, Syrah, Chardonnay, and especially PN!

Unfortunately, the market place is going in the opposite direction! They all want to make money like Joe Wagner!

The article didn’t start out that well IMO but overall it turned into a pretty good read. Most interesting was the bit about Chile, because it seems really hard to talk about their wine without taking into consideration the vast amount of learning that’s taken place over the past 20 years and the changes in the political situation. So many of their wines used to be both too green and too ripe and I was always amazed at that because it’s a country with an astonishing array of possibilities. So many mountains across so many latitudes provides as many possibilities as any country on earth. And over the past decades their wines have become better and better. I don’t think that they need to go back to whatever they were doing in the 1970s because there is now much more diversity than there was and they have more possibilities.

Ditto California. People slag on Napa Cab for being oaky and ripe, but there is just so much more to California wine than Napa Cab.

And that’s where I had problems with the article, good as it was. There’s not a “new world palate” or preference for sweetness - that’s universal in all cultures. Also, most wine produced anywhere is pretty crappy, including Bordeaux. There’s an ocean of plonk coming out of there that doesn’t get discussed by wine writers or people on this board and a lot of the changes have helped that wine at the low end.

Nor do I get where people came up with the notion that a bigger wine shows better at blind tastings. In their imaginations maybe, or with people who tend not to drink wine regularly, but after some twenty years of regular blind tasting, I can testify that it’s simply not true.

I realize he wasn’t writing about the history of wine so much as recent stylistic changes, but he should have edited this line:

it was universally acknowledged that in the classic European wine regions, the best wines were made where grape varieties were grown close to the margins of where they could successfully achieve ripeness.

That may have been true in the 1960s, but I doubt very much that it was true in the 1600s, 1200s, and earlier. People planted what they had and what they could grow and they didn’t use the most fertile ground because that was needed for food crops. Grapes did OK on more marginal soil, so it worked out, but no way were people looking to make their lives more difficult than they already were.

But all in all a fun article to read.

It’s pointless to discuss fine wines in 1200 or 1600, since winemaking was so primitive then. And he’s not saying that grapes were planted in those locales for that reason, I assume – he’s just making an observation about the final products.

If you think German and Austrian riesling, Champagne, Burgundy (white and red), Bordeaux and nebbiolo in the northwest of Italy are capable of producing the most complex and interesting wines (not a crazy view, though hardly universal), then the accepted wisdom he cites is pretty true.

Robert,

obviously these Chateaux think they will be more successful with a modern approach.

Absolutely! True terroir comes from perfectly ripe grapes fermented without too much ‘winemaker’s thumbprints.’