The new generation often thinks they know better. Sometimes they do, and sometimes a bit of common sense wouldn’t have gone amiss.
So what would be your examples of flawed ‘improvements’ that have proven to be anything but. Are there any current ‘improvements’ that you think are misguided mistakes?
Some examples to kick it off: Historic
High yielding clones / varieties / practices. This one uncontroversial, but back in the 1960s & 1970s there was a naive mindset that simply increasing quantity was the route to riches. The effect on quality was dire.
Plastic corks. Eventually they might improve to the point they’re a valid option, but discovering one of these stoppering a bottle was invariably a prelude to pouring the wine down the sink. At least in that respect they were reliable!
Grubbing up old vines. Now some vine pulls made sense, but it took a number of mavericks to save some old vines that are greatly valued today. Perhaps this links to the first issue, of putting quantity ahead of quality?
Bigger / longer is better and biggest/longest is best. This very much more controversial, but for me there was a thinking that so many wines were better in ‘good’ (warm) years, that warmer, richer, longer was simply better and there was no upper limit to that thinking. We all vary in where we think that limit is, but few would now believe there no such limit to ‘quality’
Future
Already here now, but for me the focus on darker, bolder, yet less tannic nebbiolo in Piemonte, has compromised its ability to be the wine it used to be in old age. Ripping up Nebbiolo rose probably hasn’t helped.
Clonal selections over massal selections. With clones you get a bit more certainty, and it’s an easy choice. Massal selections are certainly more effort and takes much longer to find out what you’ll get. Are we missing out in greater variety though? Some of the commercial clone choices haven’t been the best either.
I have problems comparing what we as enthusiastic consumers want with decisions that businesses make. In some cases they align but in others they don’t and ultimately businesses have to make decisions that fit within their cost and projected sales.
A local example of this. About the time I was planting my home vineyard, Maryland enacted a program to buy out the tobacco farms. They also subsidized vineyard start up costs knowing that the farmers were still going to need to grow something on that land so there was a push towards wine grapes. My portion of the state had limited viticultural history and a challenging climate. Joe Fiola at the University of Maryland felt that this was an opportunity to establish a signature wine for the region that could set it apart. He made an appassimento style wine using Foch grapes. I never got a chance to try it but talked to a few who did and all agreed it was a good wine, that using Foch made sense, and was unique enough to carve out a niche. Unfortunately, they all agreed that sales would never be sufficient for commercial viability and when I talked to Joe about it, he said not a single commercial grower was willing to give it a shot.
That was twenty years ago give or take. Still today, whenever I meet a local winemaker, eventually the conversation gets to growing and while they are always interested in how my Aglianico is doing, they only ever ask if I am willing to sell Cabernet. I get asked this roughly half the time. One winery offered to buy it all sight unseen. I planted my small vineyard with 11 red varieties and 5 white. My cab is one of the worst performers in my vineyard. But Cabernet sells and it sells for a higher price. I don’t believe it is right to call it a mistake because the wineries need to sell wine and trying to make better wine isn’t always a wise business decision.
Internationalisation (or rather standardisation) is arguably a fault in consumers and wine buyers. Buying the ‘varietal’ rather than the terroir. A by-product of the new world using varietal labelling? I’m sure it is.
Less so with us lot, but still probably a criticism we could accept in our own history of wine drinking.
It’s harder to blame the growers, when the hard commercial reality is so brutal. It’s why some of the most stubborn and pig-headed mavericks can be so revered. It takes a lot of guts to do what Joe suggested, and even to do as you did and plant Aglianico (a super grape in my eyes, but in the wider public perception… A whatico?).
Conversely it’s also dangerous to take the obvious easy route, as there are plenty of instance of masses of producers planting an incredibly popular grape, only to see fashions change and a glut of those grapes… and those young vines wines can be hit hardest by weak grape prices. Hearing of growers grubbing up young vineyards due to such a glut is sad to hear.
Not sure exactly what you mean by this. What producers are you referring to with this trend? Also, one might wonder if much of that has to do with what nature is dealing out in recent vintages, which is anything but aligned with historical vintages. I know there is certainly a group of post-modern producers now making wines which are more accessible early, at least relatively speaking, without the use of barrique or other modernist technique, so perhaps that is what you mean. If so, I’m not sure that is really a broader trend or just a particular group of producers, especially newer and younger producers, embracing that style, often with reference to, and sometimes having been trained in, Burgundy. If so, my take on that would be that these wines are still fairly structured, even if we don’t know if they can age the way the most traditional wines can.
As for the Nebbiolo Rose, I seem to recall Ian D’Agata saying in an IDTT interview that much of it was very diseased, but could be misremembering and that could be Michet.
The majority in terms of dropping the rose clone (sic.). Not a current trend, but a past one. It’s almost all gone. Your second thought is correct, Michet is a virus affected version of Lampia.
Add to that a linked desire to make darker and more opaque wines because they’re viewed as more ‘serious’. So not restricted to modernists, though they typically took it further. I’d also venture that to varying degrees, the majority have drifted this way as well.
This is true, but walking into a block with a Pottery Barn, Kitchen Kaboodle, and Bed, Bath, and Beyond all on it and deciding to sell home goods is a “safe” decision more than a great one.
The flip is that if you want to sell Aglianico…you will have to do it yourself.
And if you try to sell Foch, you’re going to be foched.
I agree with you and with Ian’s earlier response. My only objection was calling these decisions mistakes.
One winery planted a few acres of Montepulciano. It made a nice wine that in my opinion was one of the best in the area. When I talked to them two years ago and asked about the vines, they told me that they had been ripped out and replanted with something with better name recognition. I don’t like that outcome but understand it and obviously I wasn’t buying the wine regularly so not sure why I would expect others to do so. At least they are still in business.
Most people don’t realize how important recognition is. The percentage of people who will take a risk on an unknown in wine is actually very, very, very low. Even in a known wine growing region.
Willamette Valley Syrah makes really wonderful wines that have a lot in common with wines from places like St. Joseph or Crozes-Hermtage. But it was 100% a hand sell for us. One of my favorite distributors, without knowing we were making a bit of Syrah at one point told me, “Whatever you do, don’t make Syrah.” So I opened a bottle for him, and he was really impressed with the wine. I asked him him much he wanted and he looked me straight in the face and said “None.”
A bit later the Som at The Inn at Little Washington came out. He had the Syrah before and really loved it, but we were talking and said, “when I tell people about this wine it’s like a dog whistle, they know I’m talking but they just don’t hear it.”
Is that style of (French) Syrah also a hard sell in the region? The somm’s (or distributor’s if they’re also an importer) opinion on that might be interesting. If they can’t sell those French wines (or Cornas or Cote-Rotie), then that’s the end of the debate.
If locals are willing to try and buy those wines, then maybe there’s a route through naming a blend and leaving any mention of Syrah off the front label.
The irony with us lot, is we’d probably make a beeline towards the unusual / quirky, but we are in the minority.
No, they were struggling to sell domestic Syrah. Their portfolio was more German/Champagne based with some Rhone wines but those were not an issue for them to take.