Well, Mel…maybe you aren’t listening in the right places.
I find it interesting that many of the folks who are passionate about Nebb in Calif
are also makers of PinotNoir.
Tom
But Tom, Cabernet has had your undying support behind it 
But why is Chard not caught between Kendall Jackson and Chablis?
^this^ is the crux of the biscuit! But why chard? It may be a fluke of history. Something as arbitrary as early propagation by Wente.
Maybe 'cuz folks can pronounce “Shar-duh-nay”?
I hadn’t heard that before. I’ve thought that it was probably because Syrah has such a strong varietal signature that it doesn’t appeal to a significant segment of the wine buying public, whereas Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Cabernet Sauvignon are all capable of being easily manipulated into a broad range of styles and thus suiting a wide variety of preferences. Can you explain what you’re saying about Syrah?
I think Mel and Tom got it.
If you remember in the 1970s, when the “businessman’s lunch” lost popularity and women really started entering the workplace in full force, there were all kinds of etiquette issues and books were even written about how to talk to women if you were a man and how to talk to men if you were a woman. There were even newspaper columns and people who wrote about how to dress for the workplace. Women were supposed to wear those big stupid shoulder pads because the image of physical power was supposed to be good for their careers, etc.
Anyhow, that’s when the wine fad started in the US and there were all kinds of fern bars opening that served as places where women and men could go after leaving the office. And while guys still were drinking martinis or liquor, women wanted something else. Along comes Chardonnay, which was usually made with a little bit of RS left and a little bit of vanilla - Kendal-Jackson Reserve Chardonnay set the standard, and suddenly women had their own drink.
And it has the most beautiful name of any wine grape. People could pronounce it and sound sophisticated at the same time. That probably has as much to do with it’s popularity as anything else, and I think it also accounts for the popularity of Merlot. If you’re going to drink a varietal wine, you want to be able to pronounce it.
As to it’s being popular because it’s so widely planted, that actually puts the argument in reverse order. It wouldn’t be widely planted if it weren’t popular.
On its own, it’s a fairly insipid grape, but it can be goosed a little by stirring lees, oaking, etc., and so it can produce wine in a wonderful variety of styles. That makes it interesting to some of us, but that’s not why it’s popular. The popular model is still the KJ model - they sell oceans of the stuff and it made Jess Jackson the wealthiest man in Napa, at least insofar as people who made their money from the wine business.
If you put other grapes into people’s hands, they often like them and will buy them. I’d put a glass of Muscat or Torrontes into the hands of customers and they’d most often buy it. Usually for the floral aroma. Guys would buy it because they’d think their girlfriends/wives would like it and women often picked it up because it smelled and tasted good. I suppose that if we were starting out today, one of those grapes would have become more popular and we wouldn’t have the Chardonnay we do, but that wasn’t the case in the 1970s and 1980s when Chardonnay established itself.
I don’t think its popularity has anything at all to do with Burgundy. The only connection would be that in the 1970s when the wine business was taking off in the US, winemakers and drinkers looked to France for all things sophisticated and good about food and wine. Today they’d probably look to Italy but it’s too late.
I doubt in either case it has much to do about the grape being the same variety as in Burgundy.
As to the general wine drinking public, most of them do not know that Chardonnay is the grape of white Burgundy. And most of them do not care. They want a white wine they can buy at a reasonable price and that will be somewhat consistent. They probably are not worried about tons of oak because the big oaky Chardonnays like Kistler that we all talk about are well beyond what they want to pay for a wine. The find wines like Clos du Bois or Kendall Jackson or whatever to be pretty reliable and when they want a step up it is to Sonoma Cutrer.
For wine geeks, if wine geeks want white Burgundy, they will buy white Burgundy. I have to assume that most wine geeks are not being fooled. The ones that buy California Chardonnay buy it because that is what they like. I find most of the “white Burgundy nuts would like California Chardonnay better if they tasted it blind” or California Chardonnay nuts would like white Burgundy better if they only would spend the time to find the right ones to buy" discussion on this board to be very offputting and insulting. Wine geeks buy what they buy because they like it. Also, is California Chardonnay a monolithic whole (is white Burgundy)? Kister Chardonnay and Stony Hill Chardonnay are not exactly interchangible for me.
But why do wine geeks love white Burgundy so much?
IF “the” white Burg grape was, and always had been, [variety x] rather than Chardonnay,:
- would wine geeks like this [variety x] version of white Burg as much as the real version of white Burgundy (Chardonnay)?
- would [variety x] have as much world-wide popularity with wine geeks and general wine consumers as does Chardonnay at present? {I think this has already been addressed w/r/t general wine consumers}
- would Chardonnay be as popular in all other regions (everywhere but Burgundy — remember, there is no Chardonnay in Burgundy in this Hypo) as it is now? {I think this, too, has been lightly touched-upon, up-thread}
- would any of the answers to the three previous questions be dependent on which variety is “[variety x]”?
For the above hypothetical questions – just for fun – let’s also pretend that [variety x] is not a grape variety that is presently allowed in Burgundy. (i.e.: no Pinot Blanc)
All I’m saying is that a few years ago, during the time when Syrah seemed dead in the market, one common theory as to why was that its ability to grow well in a variety of climates has led to too many different styles and flavors, which confused the consumer. Personally I don’t believe it, and Chardonnay is a great counter-example, but if you dredge up some of those old threads, you’re sure to find this idea.
I remember that well.
NYT did an article June 1, 2010 called “Is There Still Hope for Syrah?”. And there was plenty of other speculation - Heimhoff’s blog and many others.
http://palatepress.com/2011/07/wine/how-to-fix-california-syrah-a-consultants-point-of-view/
But the REAL reason may have been this:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/09/palin-syrah-sarah-sara-wine-drops-in-sales.html
In any event, I don’t think Chardonnay would be so popular today if it had come in so many styles back in the day. I think the diversity of styles today is because there’s so much of it, but the main seller is still the oaky and slightly sweet version. Syrah may have just become too diverse too early and maybe that’s the problem - there wasn’t a “standard” that people could react to.
Tom,
In the 70s and 80s there were so many articles in the press about pinot being the holy grail for winemakers.
I don t see so many articles about nebbiolo for several reasons.
1/it s hard enough to sell Italian nebbiolo such as Barolo and Barbaresco, let alone lesser appellations.
2/nobody has really dedicated his fortune to the grape the way Josh Jensen and others did with Pinot
3/nobody is interested in nebbiolo unless it is really great.
Gerald Asher, or was it Terry Clancy, once told me they did some market research. Tasting blind, people loved the muscat based blends. Once they were told what they were tasting, folks liked the snootier grapes.
Walter Schug once remarked to me that California should look at the rejects from Germany s grape breeding trials. Germany was looking for grapes that did well in a cold climate, grew like sylvaner, tasted like riesling. California needed varieties that did well in a warm climate. But only riesling had snob appeal. Huxelrebe and schreurebe haven’t caught on.
There are top-down trends in wine like gruner veltliner. Somms loved it and pushed it. Australian shiraz was bottom up. People liked $9 bottles of soft rich red wine. The floor stack as empty so more was ordered. Chardonnay was top down (wine merchants and somms pushed it) but it also became bottom up.
In the 70s there were just a few ‘grand’ dinner restaurants here in SF but lots of places famous for lunch: Jack’s come to mind. Now it is the opposite. When I worked in downtown SF guys would go out for lunch 2X a week…maybe a drink, followed by wine, then another drink. My theory was this ended when mid management started to get the ax. Guys felt better stuck to their computer and eating sandwiches. They could drink at dinnertime.
Hal Riney, the late advertising genius hereabouts (Bartles and James, Bear in the woods) once told me that there was a generational theory of beer drinking. In the 50s and 60s it was Olympia…then Coors aced out Oly…now it is the epoch for craft beer. One can say the same thing about distilled spirits. Bourbon and Scotch are hot again. With wine we see this with brands. Some wineries got stuck in the 60 and never survived. Christian Brothers anyone?? Louis martini sold out. Some brands know how to renew themselves.
Gotta run.
Before there was,chardonnay there was jadot pouilly fuisse.
Huge in the late 60s and early 70s. Huge in restaurants on date nite.
Maybe people associated this wine with getting lucky.
We
Yup…true dat, Mel. I don’t see the passion out there among many winemakers for Nebb like there was for Pinot back in those days.
There are a few (KenMusso, EmilioCastelli come to mind) who have staked their fame & fortune on Nebb. But they’re tiny voices out in the wilderness.
I agree w/ the first two points. Not so sure about #3, though. If you replace “nebbiolo” w/ “zinfandel” and I think it’s not a true statement.
We’ve talked about this aspect of marketing Nebb at our NEB get-togethers (you should come to one). We pretty much agree that those folks
who are passionate about Baarolo/Barbaresco are not going to have much interest in Calif/US Nebb. Their minds are made up.
Our thought is that if we can get somebody who’s drinking Zinfandel, say, to try a Calif Nebb…they might get their eyes opened enough to try some other ones.
Getting them to try an AZ Nebbiolo…forget about it.
Tom
Yes, I often heard this referred to as “fuzzy p*ssy.”
To clarify, I don’t think Muscadet tastes oxidized. I was writing about how I think each variety is perceived by those who don’t like it, based partly on how that variety used to seem to me years ago.
Sigh.
Tom,
I would be happy if people who liked zin tried our primitivo…we gave up on nebbiolo…five very good wines all sold at a discount…Where are these Nebbishathons?? New Mexico?
Re Muscadet and oxidized…not two words I associate.
Pouilly Fuisse was not easy to pronounce but it was a big hit. It got so expensive people moved on to Meursault.
Mel,
We have a FaceBook page: Redirecting...
NEB4 was down in Paso last Aug. NEB5 will be in Jan/Feb 2015, hopefully near SantaCruz.
Tom