yeah the denial of mouse is insane. there are plenty of $20-40 conventionally made wines that are perfectly sound so i refuse to accept it even at a lower price point.
My point about prices is that I have had some gloriously mindblowing no SO2 wines that are cheap, refreshing, alive and honestly a different type of wine drinking experience. I am willing to take my chances for this type of experience under a certain price point.
I drink a decent amount of La Clarine and have only had 1 faulty bottle that I can remember. I’ve had this wine probably 6 times and my experience has been closer to Alfert’s than John’s. I still have a couple, I’ll open one soon and report back. I thought that wine had 15 or 20 ppm of sulfur like most of his others but could be wrong.
for sure there are plenty of no s02 wines that drink well, are not costly, and have no spoilage issues. but there are too many natural wine stores where mouse is basically a shunned word ![[pwn.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/3/3d5d493eaefe29f8a37971ea1ffbb65a4e2b21aa.gif "pwn"){kind=small}
…usually the wines that are good are available beyond the scope of these specialty shops.
It does sound like these tend to be better close to the source. But both the mousiness and the VA are bacterial in origin, so it seems like a little more sulfur would be in order.
I strongly suspect that climate change is a factor in the premox/poor aging problem. Even if grapes are picked early at the same acid levels (aka TA, total/titratable acidity) as they “use to be”, the gradually rising temps of CC cause higher pHs (at the same TA). Lower pHs are a huge factor in oxidation resistance…and not because SO2 is more effective at low pH (SO2 is more effective at killing microbes at low pH, unrelated to oxidation)…low pH changes the oxidation chemistry in wine making oxidation more difficult & less likely.
These days, everything north of Westchester gets called Upstate. Politically, culturally, and in terms of wine selection, that’s certainly a dividing line.
This is my 'hood, which I think entitles me to say I’m Upstate:
Sadly, I am in agreement with this. I love the wines but I open them much younger than I used to.
Absolutely +1 with the caveat that modern viticulture is much better at maintaining canopy health and this is adding to climate change, in terms of harvesting fruit at higher pHs.
In the Loire, I think there was a tendency to reduce SO2 in the 2000s, and other producers (e.g., Baumard) had premox issues as well. At Dom. Closel in Savennieres, they started picking earlier to avoid botrytis because they were committed to using less sulfur and they couldn’t do that with botrytis, the proprietress told me at a tasting a few months back. The Closel wines are very different now than they were in the early 2000s – much leaner and lighter. So the style changed dramatically because of the commitment to reducing sulfur.
John,
You still didn’t answer the question of whether or not you returned the bottle - I’d be curious to hear.
As far as the whole ‘climate change’ thing - I think that this has more to do with intent than anything else. Most winemakers prefer to do less rather than more, and if there’s a way to cut things out of the process without negatively affecting the finished wine, then folks are moving in that direction.
As many are finding out, cutting out the use of SO2 is quite tricky - and a handful ‘succeed’ while many others really either don’t understand the risks or know them and should have warming labels on their bottles.
I really don’t think the ‘general wine consumer’ should bear the risk that many of these bottles inherently carry. Wine shops are not going to let them know about storage temps / how long to hold etc. It’s a problem - or at least, I believe it is.
Curious to take this conversation in that direction if possible.
Personally, I rarely return wines. If I buy an SS wine, caveat emptor, I own the risk. But that is just me. 99% of the time it is not worth the effort for me to return something.
Robert,
I hear you - but nothing will change if all of us do this. And this is true of TCA, too . . .
Cheers
If I buy an SS wine, caveat emptor, I own the risk. But that is just me. 99% of the time it is not worth the effort for me to return something.
I absolutely disagree with the first sentence. Applied to any other good or service, that would be unacceptable.
However, I also agree with the last sentence and thus totally trash my objection to the first one. Right now I have two corked wines sitting on the counter because I poured out the third one. Yeah, I could return them but I’d have to make a trip to that store blah blah blah. I did let the winery know. They said that they had cork problems that year and offered to replace the three bottles. They also said they changed suppliers. They’re small and they made the offer so I let it ride.
I guess if I would have spent a lot more on the wine I would have been more PO’d.
Unfortunately, I’ve had the same experience John did with some of the Clarine Farm wines. I don’t want to bad mouth some little guys but seriously, you’re making something to be consumed. How can you be indifferent to the final result? It’s like a cook who says he’s not going to adjust the heat on his stove. Everything is fired full blast. Some things are burned, some partly raw, but the diner is being treated to his vision and should be happy to pay for it.
Remind me again what’s so incredibly horrible about sulfur that it needs to be avoided at all costs–I forget?
I like Hank and have had some wonderful bottles - but I’ve also had some less than stellar ones that ‘went sideways’.
As I said above, unless folks like wineries know about ‘issues’ and instead the wineries just hear from ‘yes people’, they’ll never know . . .
If I made a wine that, for instance, had ‘noticable’ VA to a lot of folks, I would be concerned and do something about it.
Cheers.
You just dont get it, man . . . 
It’s part of the ‘industrial wine complex’, right?
I only bought it and opened it Tuesday and retried it last night. Give me a chance, man! Plus, it’s a 25-minute drive. I’m Upstate, remember? ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
I’m a little on the fence about doing that since it’s not a high-end store. But it’s probably worth doing it so their distributor knows.
I like the term Marcus put up: “Farmhouse wines”, as a sub-category. When you get these through hipster specialist wineshops, the channel getting them there should be safe, and there is an understanding these are “drink now” wines. As everyday drinker priced wines, they aren’t coming from great sites. The lack of SO2 makes them more expressive than they’d otherwise be. A little wildness can be fun.
Selling wine from better sites, through more conventional channels, where the end user might be holding/aging them for some time, is quite different. The wines should be able to “take” what they can reasonably be expected to be subjected to. Maybe some wines can get away with being SS due to the right combination of site, variety, pick time, processing, but that’s the exception.
The beer industry lobbied for warning label makes them sound scary. Tied into that is the myth that they’re a major cause of “red wine headache” and the like.
But, really, they have a big impact on wine. They dull, mute, narrow aromas/tastes. They also add structure, darken a wine’s fruit expression, add a structural component. We did a side batch or two with different wines each year for several years using an alternative product (derived from grape seeds) that’s naturally antimicrobial and antioxidant. With most wines most people greatly preferred the no sulfite version. A couple were more like 60/40 for the no sulfite, while one greatly benefited from the structure and focus the SO2 gave it.
Also, various microbes are inhibited at different levels of sulfite. That’s the thought of low-sulfite producers like Ridge, where they use enough to prevent bad stuff from happening, while not so much to prevent positive contribution from wimpier yeasts.