Agree with John here. Whether it is Chateauneuf or Bordeaux, these high ABV modern darlings show worse, IMHO, with age, as when the fruit starts to evolve and the baby fat recedes, the oak and alcohol seem to become more pronounced. I have often said some of these young modern wines can fool, especially in mass tastings.
I havenât talked with Vincent Morel for the better part of a year, and I havenât discussed the 2016 vintage with him, but Clos Saint-Jean wines are really quite high alcohol, and as I recall the 2010 Sanctus Sanctorum was 16.7% for example, with 14.5% on the label. So a wine labeled as 16% might conceivably (and entirely legally) be 16-and-some-change; and in my experience this is where most very high octane wines, whether from the Southern RhĂ´ne, Napa, Paso, etc are situated when you run the analysis. Some producers are getting north of 17% systematically, but really not that many in the regions I am familiar with at least; and trying to ferment wines north of 17% is quite a high wire act which in itself imposes certain inconveniences. So Iâm not convinced it would be that easy for Shay to find a wine that is hugely more alcoholic than this one.
As an aside, thatâs especially true if you consider perception: after all, this CSJ was around 30% more alcoholic than a Bordeaux as 12.5%, whereas a 17% alcohol wine will less than 7 % more alcoholic than Shayâs CSJâif it was labelled accurately at 16%. That certainly makes a big difference to how we physically experience alcohol, and my personal experience has been that the palate follows a similar rule: a wine at 16.3% tastes very similar to a wine at 17.3%; whereas the difference between a wine at 12.5 % and 13.5% is a bit more obvious; but of course other tasters mayâand in fact certainly willâexperience things very differently.
As far as aging is concerned, speaking generally here, the issue seems to be not so much the alcohol, as the kind of fruit often required to produce wines with such high alcoholsâwhich can be deficient in acidity, high in pH, and have field-oxidized tannins: none of which are conducive to graceful aging. These grapes are not so much physiologically mature as physiologically dead, and wines like these tend to be very fleshy and dramatic young, and then sort of implode, losing texture and palate presence, and often sort of thinned out by the alcohol. They taste quite different in this respect to, for example, a decrepit Burgundy, where is is more likely to be the acidity that takes over as the wine dies.
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I agree that perception is key. Some high-alcohol wines have a lot of other things going on, including fortified wines, where the sugar is coming from the fruit and there can also be massive tannins. Thatâs why I disagree with my friend John! And BTW - Iâm not selling high-alcohol wines here. Just noting that we canât always make bright-line rules regarding wine.
Iâve had a couple of Manfredâs wines that say 16+ but may be even higher. Same with some QC wines. One of the SQN wines, a white of all things, was surprisingly fresh. I wouldnât age it, but it was fine at the time. Most didnât work precisely because there wasnât enough other stuff going on - the fruit was super ripe with no where to go. The only reason to age a wine is because you expect it to be better after some time has past. Some wines arenât delicious young but age into something different and wonderful. Some are good young and hold on. Some are good young and also transform with age. Some are good enough young but just donât go anywhere and fall apart.
Martinelli Zins often say 17% or more on the label and Iâve had a few Turleys like that as well. And surprisingly, some of those actually do age really nicely. We recently had a tasting of Turley Zins going back into the 90s and one of my favorites was the 1994, contrary to my expectations going in. It brought home the point that itâs more than just the alcohol that one should consider. Based on that alone, I wouldnât have aged the wine. But for the person who did, she was amply rewarded. Iâm not sure I would age it for another twenty-five years, but it had done more than simply hold on - it had transformed into something that it wasnât when it started. Thatâs what you want from aging and thatâs my problem with most CdP, although Iâll defer to Gerhard on that!
![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
And then thereâs Amarone . . .
So long as the transformation isnât from wine to cough syrup.
16 beaucastel is drinking great now.
Iâve had some great wines from Ridge with over 16% and theyâve aged beautifully over 30+ years.
I wasnât able to swallow any of the 2016 wines which I tried from the South of France [neither the Southern Rhone nor the Languedoc].
I did several mini-horizontals [of the same label], where one was the 2015 & the other was the 2016, and the 2016s were uniformly freakish - they all tasted like a sickly weird distilled concoction made from extract of barrel sample, and that was giving them at least seven days to relax and start showing something [which they never did - they neither relaxed nor showed anything worth consuming].
Both the 2015 & 2016 vintages got huge points from Jeb Dunnuck, and I heartily concurred with him on the 2015s, but I hope for his reputation & career that he was correct about the 2016s, because he really stuck his neck out there.
the 2010 Sanctus Sanctorum was 16.7% for example, with 14.5% on the label
I thought the fudge factor was +/- 1.5%.
Maybe Iâm not remembering correctly.
But +/- 2.2% strikes me as the kind of thing which could get somebody in trouble with the labelling authorities.
And 16% might also have tariff implications.
Yes indeed. I think awareness of the potential ramifications was why they moved to labelling things more accurately in recent years IIRC.
Dry or late harvest?
Iâm quite sure that drinking too much high alcohol wine is detrimental to oneâs aging.
Had the 2011 Brezza Barolo Cannubi the other night with steak. Listed at 15.5%, tasted all of that. I didnât love the wine but we enjoyed it well enough. The alcohol definitely stressed the palate. Wouldnât hold this one, donât think time will help.
I found that in a number of '11 Barolos.
By âbackwardsâ I meant showing more tannin with fruit clamped down. If a big young wine were showing a lot of fruit, Iâd agree that it would be more likely to mask the alcohol.
I truly donât think we understand this phenomenon quite yet - and may never entirely as we need to deal with individual âpreferencesâ here.
An interesting set of data points is some of Paxâs early wines and the reactions folks have had to them. Many of his early syrahs and blends were pushing 16% or more and most assumed that they would be alcoholic messes as they aged. Most recent notes have been quite complementary of those wines, surprising most with their ageabiliy. Of course, some of this also has to take into account expectations and keeping an open mind - a 16+% syrah will not someone remind anyone of a cooler climate lower alcohol northern Rhone - just as an aged KB Pinot is not going to create comparisons to most old world Burgundy. But there still can be plenty of âpleasureâ in these wines without them simply being alcohol bombs . . .
Cheers.
Agreed. And add to that the fact that Paxâs star is shining pretty brightly these days so people are reluctant to criticize the wines.
But thatâs a real interesting comparison. I havenât had one of the early ones for quite a while.
Eric Ifune wrote: âSat Jan 04, 2020 2:46 pm
Iâve had some great wines from Ridge with over 16% and theyâve aged beautifully over 30+ years.
Dry or late harvest?
Dry. The 1970 Jimsomare is 15.8% I seem to recall the 1968 was closer to 17%
I think there is a big difference between high alcohol fortified wines like port and sherry (where the grapes are picked at a normal level of ripeness) and high alcohol table wines where the grapes often are picked when they are almost raisons, etc.
I am not a fan of CdP but if I wanted to try one to age I might go with Rayas or Beaucastel.
In many cases, that is the gobs of new oak along with the fruit.
I am pretty sure that drinking too much âlow alcohol wineâis detrimental to oneâs aging also.