I won’t speak for the “we”. I tend to buy repeatedly from producers I’ve come to trust to do their best in making good wine, and who usually succeed. I have no problem if someone in that group decides RO helped enough for them to be able to sell their wine and stay in business. Whether or not they mention that has to do with a lot of factors, and I will trust their decision. Quite a few producers have been cautious and transparent about this kind of thing, which I applaud.
Anyone who buys a good bit of US wine has probably bought some that RO was used on for one reason or another, without knowing.
There is a lot to unpack here that gets skipped over in the rush to either move on before someone can look behind the curtain or people that just want to keep buying without fear.
I’m in favor of any winery doing whatever they can to save their fruit from smoke taint. If that means scouring it so it can be bulked out, then that sucks for them in terms of income but at least they can get something. Obviously less pain to the consumer missing a vintage. Or maybe even just declassify from SVD’s to appellation bottlings(I wish more wineries did this more often anyway).
What can be a problem is using some technique to clean up that smoke and passing off the wine as if it were just any other vintage when no one knows the long term effects of such techniques. This is the real and only issue I see yet everyone seems to want to dance around or straight up avoid talking about it. It really feels like experiments being passed onto unknowing consumers.
I’m about 99.99% sure this is exactly what is happening with many wines from 2020 in California. Where we’ve seen wineries straight up pass on the vintage from several vineyards and then other wineries from the same AVA say absolutely nothing about the fires and smoke impact, selling wines as in any other vintage.
Did all the vineyards from some wineries not have any smoke fall on them while others get blanketed? Of course not.
I’d just like more honesty. Say upfront that even though it was challenging you think you were able to mitigate it with some techniques in the winery. Because as it is, some wineries are acting like they have something to hide and that they do not trust what they did in order to continue to sell their wines at their normal prices.
We are not even remotely representative of the majority of wine buyers. Talking about honesty and transparency as if we are owed something is ridiculous IMO. Buy or don’t buy. End of story for the entitled geek class.
Nate has a consistent way of titling and framing his posts as if the big bad wine industry is trying to defraud poor wine drinkers. It colors my responses.
I’ll bite. If winery X is able to use a process to remove all smoke byproducts, so that it’s 100% imperceptible, for argument’s sake, is it really fraud (to use your term) for the winery to sell that wine?
Serious question, not trying to be snarky. I’m not seeing how that’s fraudulent. I could see how it might be perceived as unsatisfying and disappointing as a consumer, but where’s the lie? Sort of like if a restaurant overcooked my toast, scraped off the burnt bits, and served me the still tasty part.
If you were sold a car, computer, whatever, with a defect, and the seller intentionally did not disclose it, how would you feel?
I would say that if a winery is selling a wine with a known, very prominent flaw, and not disclosing it, that is profoundly dishonest. This happened numerous times in the case of the 2008 vintage. Well-documented and discussed here.
I’m not sure I totally agree with the analogy, though I don’t fully disagree.
If the wine’s “fault” has been removed so that it’s no longer perceivable, is it still flawed? I’m not trying to be cute, I’m asking a real question. To me, the answer is “no.” I could see how others would disagree with that. I mean, if I buy a car, and then two days later they issue a recall and replace a known defected part, the car is no longer flawed - it’s now the car that I bought and expected.
Just to have fun - and since this is WB - let’s play this out,. So let’s say you purchase a car and it looks fantastic - and there are no obvious issues. It turns out that the car had been in an accident and they fixed it ‘perfectly’. All good with this?
I’m not saying a winery has to disclose that they got rid of smoke taint - the question that remains is how this affects not only the wine as it is now but how it ages? Let’s say you purchase a wine that is known to age well and you pay a premium knowing that. The current vintage was ‘treated’ and shows well now - what happens if it falls apart faster than usual?
Well there was a case where a BMW 5 series was repainted by BMW. The buyer found out after purchase and successfully sued. PaintJobCase
No one thinks a car with fixed body damage is the same as a car without damage.