Matt Kramer on how wine has changed in last 30 years

WINE TALK
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Matt Kramer has posted a really thought-provoking piece on Wine Spectator’s website on the transformation of wine over the last 30 years:

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He notes that red Bordeaux has stylistically changed. Italian wines have seen huge changes with “stainless steel tanks, small new oak barrels, export market demands, the incorporation of ‘alien’ grape varieties in once-traditional blends…”. California obviously has seen huge developments. The list goes on and on…

I’m curious as a young wine drinker, I’m 24 years of age, and having only a limited experience with Napa wines from the 60s/70s and Bordeaux from the 70s/80s, what changes board members have noted. As Matt notes at the end: “What is the good and the bad of the past and the present? Are our wines as irrevocably changed as I submit that they are? And are we better off for it?”

If I may, I would add a question, what changes lie in the future for wine?

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My thoughts: In many cases…

New world wines used to be made by the farmer who also grew the grapes. Today (pretty much since the late 1990s) the grapes are grown by (educated) farmers who are experts in farming. The wine is made by (educated) winemakers who know a lot about chemistry. He knows how to make wine.

Of course newer equipment and understanding the importance of sterile facilities has made a huge difference too.

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Keep your eye on Matt Kramer. Come the revolution, the wine “critics” will go to the gallows and wine writers will replace them. Mr. Kramer has been a wine writer for a long time now, and a damn fine one. While he is not meek, he should inherit the earth. Or perhaps the terroir. Or perhaps the entire M. Shanken empire!

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Bill, one is never sure when your sarcasm ends and when your serious thought begins. [basic-smile.gif]

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I think we’re at the end of the first phase of this wine age. What I mean is that there were two main events that happened in the 70s and 80s. One is the advent of technology and a more scientific, disciplined approach to winemaking (See UC Davis). The other was the rise of the US wine market and with that the rise of critics.

If the main criticisms of pre-1970 wines were that they were light and too often not well made, the reaction was not only to clean up things in terms of sterility but to make cleaner wines, i.e. wines where clarity and clean flavors were prized and to make those wines bigger - riper, with more oak. US critics, led by Parker, rightly pointed out the flaws with a lot of wines but the reaction has been more or uniform. Some of this is good, some bad. Obviously cleanliness is good, knowledgable, skilled winemaking is good. To some degree fruit is good. However, as with many things, too far in a given direction is usually bad.

The next phenomenon was the rise of interest in food and wine in the US among a broadly construed middle class. That meant the US market started having more influence. COuple that with the rise to prominence of a few critics (mainly Parker and the WS) and you have critics telling people who are mostly new to the topic what’s good. That gives the viewpoints of those critics more influence than they’d have in a mature, knowledgeable marketplace. COupled with the rise in interest was a broad rise in affluence (real and credit driven) among that same middle class. We could, and did, support higher prices and place greater demand on wine.

However, I think this phase is ending. Parker is not getting the same traction with the 20 somethings today. He’s not irrelevant or about to disappear, but I get the feeling that his influence on the sub-35 set isn’t what it was on that age cohort a decade ago. This isn’t unique to RP - from what I can tell, it’s true of all of the major critics. We now have a wine world where good winemaking is the norm, not the exception. What I think we’ll see are a wider variety of styles now. The big, bold style has peaked and rolled back. It will have a place, but that place won’t be center stage. The rise in the natural wine movement indicates interest in not only wines made in a particular way but in authenticity and diversity of styles. The movement won’t become broadly influential in its extreme form, but will show a different outlook that keeps high quality but doesn’t value the oak bomb style.

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Having lived in Sonoma County for over 30 years I can speak to the local “scene.”

It was Chard, Cab and some Merlot and Zin. All of it dry. All the reds tannc. It was assumed this is how wine had to be, that you had to age it to mellow the tannins, because that’s how French wine was. Things seemed to change in the late-90s. This was the softer, fruitier New World style. I’m not sure if CA started this or maybe Austrailia.

Locally, with Chardonnay it seemed to be a combination of Clos du Bois with barrel fermenting and KJ leaving a little RS to round it out. Whether you like it or not this is when Chard became really popular.

Pinot Noir was interesting in that no one except a couple folks knew where to grow it or how. The vast majority was junk. Some things just come with experience: understanding soils, clones, micro-climates in the vyd. In the '80s there were still a number of outdoor open top redwood fermenters. You’d crush the grapes, stems, leaves, whatever, dump it in the tank and throw in some yeast and see what happens.

A couple folks that still seem to make their wines the “old way” are Dry Creek Vyds and Kenwood. Sometime in the early 80s we had inlaws visiting. They didn’t like CA wines essentially because of the tannic nature. We were at Kenwood where I know the tasting room manager. He took us to their wine library and there happened to be a few bottles of early-to-mid 70s Zinfandels open from the day before for some special tasting. We tried the wine and I watched the eyes of my inlaws get about six inches wide as they went, “Whoa! So this is what it’s about!”

I’ve had some Italian wines over the years and at one time most seemed dirty and “barnyardy” until they adapted to the New World techniques. A lot of it having to do with the cleanliness stressed by UC Davis, I think.

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Rick, Bob,

Well put!

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Thanks, Rick and Bob, you’ve explained a lot of the evolution that I have vaguely heard about, but not known in much detail.

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Matt’s a pretty deep thinker and one could do a lot worse than to pay attention to his writings.

There’s no question in my mind that - the tendency to over-use new oak aside - improved sanitation and the adaptation of modern, scientific winemaking practices are the greatest developments since I started drinking wine. I’ve developed (and cultivated) a perverse reputation for hating Italian wine, and it goes back to the 70s when I tasted a lot of flawed, oxidized, dirty wines from Italy. Of course, they’re much better today.

In fact, the first time I visited Louis Martini in St. Helena, they were still fermenting in old redwood tanks that probably went back to before Louis P. was born. They had to have been nasty.

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Pinot Noir was interesting in that no one except a couple folks knew where to grow it or how. The vast majority was junk. Some things just come with experience: understanding soils, clones, micro-climates in the vyd. In the '80s there were still a number of outdoor open top redwood fermenters. You’d crush the grapes, stems, leaves, whatever, dump it in the tank and throw in some yeast and see what happens.

Actually the change was the realization that you couldn’t vinify like Cabernet. It needs a different style of wine making.


In fact, the first time I visited Louis Martini in St. Helena, they were still fermenting in old redwood tanks that probably went back to before Louis P. was born. They had to have been nasty.

Actually, some of their best wines were fermented in redwood. Louis M. was one of the first acedemically trained winemakers in the valley. Redwood is a relatively inert wood. Fermenting in redwood tanks is akin to the modern and fashionable concrete “eggs.”

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Fair enough, Leo. Totally serious this time (well, except maybe about the gallows). Matt Kramer is one of my favorite wine writers.

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As usual however, Matt wants to make a point and leaves out context. For example:

“Back then, red Burgundies were overly light (the producers said “delicate”) because of excessive yields.”

Well I guess that’s it. Lower yields = dark wine, higher yields = light wine. Overly simple and besides the point and he knows it but he leaves it hanging. For his examples, “context” in several cases means politics, also attenuated by the increasing popularity of wine in America.

What was happening in the early 1970s? Inflation, among other things. Remember LBJ started a commission to investigate why prices in the US were going up? Of course at the same time he was trying to pay for the Great Society and the Vietnam War. Then in Europe, the post-war boom from rebuilding was fading. Somewhat like what’s happening to the Euro-zone countries like Spain and Portugal that got all kinds of money from Germany to build their infrastructure recently and now have no sustainable businesses to keep things going. So you have inflation, increased globalization, and on top of that, a nascent American market for wine developing. With American-led inflation on one hand, and inflation due to European social spending on the other, the producers in pretty much every country were looking for ways to increase their sales. That usually means increasing production, and that’s what happened.

Now look at those countries Kramer talked about. Sure, part of the changes in winemaking were due to science and increased knowledge of what goes into good wine. But what drove those changes?

Burgundy? There were fertilizers and scientific advances that came about during the war. Add to that the fact that many of the growers were not aristocrats or the well-to-do that owned the Bordeaux chateaux, but in many cases were the farmers who grew the grapes. Mix in a relatively small market for their wines internationally and the perennial farmer’s mentality that equated increased product with increased income. Just like the corn and wheat farmers in the American midwest. What do you get? Grapes picked as soon as possible, maybe blended with something from Italy because they were stuck growing PN in Burgundy, massive amounts of fertilizer that in many cases, went to producing vegetation instead of improving fruit quality, and uninspiring wines. Figure that the post war generation moved aside in the 1960s and 1970s and then that generation was faced with an increased scrutiny of winemaking worldwide, and the changes are inevitable.

But Bordeaux too. Wasn’t it in the 1970s that they had accounting scandals and wine-producing scandals and that they adopted more stringent rules regarding winemaking?

Italy? It’s hard to imagine today, when Italian food and cooking dominates the US, but in the 1950s and 1960s the US market for Italian wine was pretty much the Italian communities in East Coast cities. Tuscany was what meant Italian wine in the international market and a lot of that wine, maybe most, was not made by small-time producers interested in quality. Putting out lots of product was what mattered and that ended up with the ethanol scandals. Isn’t that why the Brunello producers came up with their rules in the 1970s, that we now call “traditional”? Other places in Italy were pretty content to stay doing what they were doing for years, and often that meant wine made for grandad to drink with his buddies.

Spain? They had a fascist government that pretty much kept them out of the mainstream until their local dictator died in the 1970s. Same with Portugal. Their awakening and integration into the larger world took a generation, just like Burgundy, and that new generation started in the 1990s really. So Kramer’s comment about a “mop-up” is frankly ridiculous.

Germany? He punts. The sweeter styles that he loves are still made but for some reason, the Germans are trying to emulate Burgundy and focus on dry wines from particular “terroir”. Those latter wines are championed by a few people but they are in no way a dominant trend. Austria in the 1970s had a lot of growers under contract to produce wine for the Germans. IN an attempt to ramp up production of sweet wine, a few people added glycol, which killed their industry.

California? It was just starting for heaven’s sake. The US wine industry was pretty much wiped out by Prohibition. Heitz, Ridge, Montelena and the others were just opening up, some of them making wine for friends and family as a hobby. How many of the wineries in Napa and Sonoma opened in the 1970s? Nobody knew that the CA wine business was going to turn into what it did. And it’s inevitable that they experimented and that things were going to change. It was not inevitable that some of their wine turned out to be as good as it did back then. Nor was it inevitable that the 1982 Sixty Minutes piece would turbocharge the US wine industry the way it did.

Then you have places like Hungary. The Russians wanted more wine from Tokaj than it was possible to produce. So what did they do? They remembered what happened when they pissed off the Russians in the 1950s and tanks rumbled down the streets of Budapest and the Russians executed their Prime Minister. So they made wine. Same with much of Central and Eastern Europe. Their wines were completely debased by the Soviets. People in the US make jokes about those wines, but that’s because they were largely crap until the 1990s - not by choice either.

It’s just not possible to talk about changes in wine since the 1970s, especially in Europe, without talking about changes in the economic and political environment. And then of course, there’s science. UC Davis wasn’t all that important in the 1950s but after they played such a big role in creating a wine industry from scratch, they became pretty important world wide. And of course, that spurred developments elsewhere. Clean winemaking is what they get tagged with, but they also did a lot of research into clones, canopy management, and other things. All of which go to improved wines.

The introduction of refrigeration and stainless steel was a big deal. But on the other hand, the fact that it wasn’t used before doesn’t mean that the peasants in little hamlets wouldn’t have used it had it been available. Their winemaking changed because they wanted it to, not because changes were forced on them. In fact, in the wine business, what’s usually forced on people is a prohibition on change, not a requirement for change.

Anyhow, just my 2 cts.

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Here’s a question: If wines have changed so radically, can those of us who remember the older “wine life-forms” confidently predict the future of today’s new “wine life-forms”? (Short answer: No.)

I think there’s an attourney in Monktown who’d dispute that point.

I would add Ridge MonteBello to the list that have not changed much in style.
Tom

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As someone who got serious about wine in the early and mid-80s, Kramer is right.

First, until 1982, young Bordeaux tended to taste pretty nasty when it was first released – tough, tannin, ungiving. The funny thing is that those first vintages I tasted extensively, like 79 and 81, turned out to be very nice, though they weren’t blockbusters. Of course, 82 proved to be a top vintage but the success of 82 – which was based in part on its accessibility early on – was a turning point in the way they made wine in Bordeaux. The wines are made to be drinkable young now and I, for one, often find the newer generation don’t have the same complexity when they’re aged that older wines did at a similar stage.

As for California, it’s gone through cycles. In the late 70s, people tried the big style, with a competition for alcohol levels like you see today. (I remember comparing 15+% zins with friends circa 1981.) Then the tide turned and the mid-80s saw “food wines,” which were often under-fleshed.

The big difference I see today is the ripeness and alcohol. The average alcohol level in Napa wines rose by 1% in a decade (through some point in the early 2000s). I do a lot of double blind tasting and what’s striking is that most of the big name, expensive Napa cabs aren’t recognizable as cabernet. The grapes are so ripe that they’ve lost their varietal signature. I’d rather buy a $25 or $30 bottle that tastes like Napa cab.

Then there are the 15+% pinots and syrahs. Obviously lots of people like them, but no one would imagine growing grapes to that ripeness 20 years ago. There was nothing like these wines then.

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One difference, I would say, John, from today’s Zins and those in the late '70’s is this. Those '70’s Zins, often labeled as LateHarvest, since 12%-13% was the norm back then, when they got much above 14%,
often had a late-harvesty/pruney/raisened character to them, noticibly alcoholic, and often had r.s. from being a stuck fermentation.
Nowadays, a Zin below 14% is sorta an outlier. But most of the Zins today, even up to 16%+, do not show that late-harvesty/raisened flavor and, many times, carry that high alcohol much better.

But you’re right about Pinot at 15%+. Can’t recall nary a one. And there was, of course, no Syrah at 15%, because there was (essentially) no Syrah then.
Tom

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I recall a Roudon-Smith Chardonnay at 15% from 1979 or 1980. Interestingly, it was quite divisive when tasted blind – some people loved it, some (including me) hated it.

As for Zinfandels, my recollection is that some would occasionally get over 14%, but it was Joel Peterson at Ravenswood who first began routinely going for the high test stuff.

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Kramer’s one of the most thoughtful wine writers I’ve read, along with David Schildknecht. I own two of his books, and his is the only column I bother to read if I come across a copy of the WS somewhere.

Who’s the thoughtful writer of the next generation?

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The problem is that we’re in the middle of a decentralization of critical authority. Most people here and in the wine world in general would not know about Kramer without the WS column even though he was locally successful prior to that with is Oregonian column.

What we have now, though, is the ability for anyone to publish their thoughts on the web and the ability to publish is simply far ahead of good ways to discover who’s worth reading. The advantage of magazines and newspapers was that they did this for their readers - they found and hired people who were good. This is more true with prominent regional and national papers and magazines. Now, we don’t have a method to replace that selection so it’s harder for people on the periphery of a topic area to find writers who are good. It’s not that hard if you’re very into a topic… but if you want to edge into it? VERY hard. Search doesn’t have an opinion on quality, just popularity and relevance. Aggregation sites below a certain level don’t provide visibility and above a certain level (HuffPo, etc) are really just magazines with a slightly different model and solely an online presence.

It’s an interesting problem without a clear, good solution.

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Supporting Eric, I would ask anyone to taste the 1974 Phelps Insignia, a wine fermented in redwood, and tell me if you can find anything “nasty” in there. It is a truly remarkable wine.

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I would nominate Mike Steinberger for that list. Jamie Goode is another. Jon Bonné is a third. And Eric Asimov is hardly a slouch.
DISCLOSURE: The first three have written favorably about CellarTracker, so perhaps that biases me.