What's your take on abv levels in red wine?

WINE TALK
41

To throw a quick question out there, what’s everyones’ take on the age-ability of high abv reds?

42

Even Shafer Hillside at half price? :slight_smile:

To me, short term is usually no problem.

43

On Saturday I’m opening a 1969 Zinfandel @14.3%, an '01 @15.2%, an '05 Mourvedre @15.9% among others, I’ll get back to you.

44

Didn’t we just do all this in a nearby purple drank thread?

45

Yup [thumbs-up.gif]

46

When looking at the ABV of a wine, I completely agree that balance is important and low ABV – or even high ABV for that matter – is no guarantee of a balanced wine or even spirit or it not tasting hot. I’ve had 15-16% ABV red wines that burn and taste like bad cherry cough syrup going down and others like Amarones, Ports and Sherries that I couldn’t believe were 20% ABV and were dangerously easy to drink because they went down so smooth.

When dealing with higher alcohol reds, here’s what generally hits my mind right away:

  1. Buzz ratio. Once a red wine hits 15% ABV or above, I treat it as a fortified wine for drinking purposes. I.e. Cut out other wine or drink less of the high ABV red to avoid unwanted headaches.

  2. Texture. I immediately know this is going to be a full-bodied wine and I should probably have a glass of water with it as well if it’s going with a meal.

  3. Calories. While all wine has calories, obviously the more alcohol it has the more calories I am taking in that will have to get worked off at the gym later.

I must be honest and admit that my recent run of French fortified Vin Doux Naturels which usually top out at 16% does have me wishing that Portuguese Ports would drop down to this level. When wine traveled across oceans in ship barges then such a high ABV was necessary for its protection. Nowadays it is unnecessary. I think Port would be a lot more popular if it dropped the ABV to VDN or Amarone levels.

47

I drink a lot of Zinfandel, so I’m used to seeing alcohol in the 14-15% range. If I perceive balance and integration, I’m not concerned. Noticable heat and I am concerned.

I do get impressed when I come across a wine (such as a 12.6% '10 Copain Halcon Syrah) that delivers concentrated fruit expression at a lower alcohol level.

48

I am sure we have been down this path before, but higher than usual (or than you are normally used to) ABV is not a flaw unless you make it one.

49

I drink almost entirely Pinot Noir, mostly Burgundy but also domestic, and I do not think PN should have a finishing burn. I imagine some people enjoy warmth or even heat as their Pinot travels down the gullet, particularly if the wine has gobs of fruit, and there are plenty of wines to meet their needs. I do not care what alcohol level the wine label states as long as the alcohol is not “detectable” as finishing heat. But, practically speaking, the numbers of Pinots with labels reading close to 15% that do not taste of their alcohol would be slim indeed…so I do use it as a guide for what to avoid, having made the mistake some years ago of buying wine based on glowing reviews from a trusted source (IWC) only to find that I could not drink a single glass of Pinot at 15.8%!

50

Mike,
I don’t understand; could you expand a bit on this?
Best, Jim

51

Jim, with my admitted limited knowledge I will try and answer you.
I can only judge on the wines I drink, so my perspective is narrow. Many of those wines are made by winemakers who seek a Phenolic ripeness, hence the higher numbers in both brix and resulting alcohol. I think, no I know that many may seek to avoid any ‘greenness’/unripe qualities in the finished product. Some may even choose to water back a bit to achieve such goals. It happens. I could imagine the heads of many here exploding when they taste such a wine! (as if they could ever spot it).
I have a bevy of names I could assign to either side of the ripeness thing, in the areas I drink most of, but won’t.
Not having had the privilege of tasting your wine or pleasure of any wine based conversations with you, I am not sure where you stand.
I guess it will always be a point of contention and sides will always be divided. Unless I am so off base and have not been paying attention to all the winemakers/itb people I have had the joy of speaking with, let me apologize to the US wine industry now.
Pizza is my thing, let me get back to that… [cheers.gif]
Cheers!

Mike D. I agree. US Syrah seems more flexible. I guess the cooler climates have something to do with it.

52

As a wine drinker who is less knowledgeable than most here on the subject of wine making, would it be safe to say that if the only way to achieve phenolic ripeness (not over ripeness) and to avoid unripe/green flavors is to pick at a high enough brix so that the resulting wine has a finishing heat, that, at least for varietals such as Pinot Noir where finishing heat may be less desirable, those vineyards may not be ideally located for that varietal?

(I realize that this assumes that perceptible finishing heat in Pinot is in fact less desirable, and some would argue that this is just a matter of taste.)

53

Robert, good point. Why is the Sonoma Coast more varietally correct for PN than say Napa, even more precise, say the valley floor? The same could be true for Syrah. As winemakers and growers tune into the best spots for each varietal we start seeing reason in the wine.
Good for us. Find a bottle of Quivet Las Madres Syrah from 2011. Or Mike Hirbys new PN project named Kashaya. WOW. ‘Dialing in’ pays off dividends.

54

I can’t remember the last time I had a Shafer wine, so I can’t say for sure. But I’ve had so many very expensive cabs with lots of cachet and points that I thought were overripe and hot for my palate that I’d probably be interested only out of curiosity. (I like to reconfirm my prejudices periodically.) I should add that most of these were tasted double-blind in a brown-bag group of mine, so I’m reacting to the wine, not the ABV on the label.

55

Mike,
As to where I stand; virtually nothing I make exceeds 14%; most is 13.5 and below. My soon to be released skin-fermented ribolla gialla is 11.8. That should pretty much say it all.
And I too know a number of guys who love hang time and hate green. Those may not be my favorite wines but I have found a handful I do enjoy - and some of them are in the 14’s.
Lastly, how about we drink a little wine and talk about it over dinner one of these evenings. If you’re available to come to Sonoma, our house is comfortable, although not fancy. Or meet at a place in Napa that will let us slide on corkage?
Best, Jim

56

Jim, my stars tell me a trip to the Valley is in my future and when I do I would love to take you up on either of those scenarios.
Thanks!
Mike

57

I think you are substantially overestimating the difference between how different alcohol %s affect your sobriety or buzz. Using two of the poster children for the sides of the pinot/alcohol debate:

If you drink 3 four-ounce glasses of 2009 Copain Kiser En Bas pinot (13.4%), you will have consumed 12 x .134 = 1.61 ounces of alcohol.

If you drink 3 four-ounce glasses of 2009 Kosta Browne Sonoma Coast pinot (14.5%), you willl have consumed 12 x .145 = 1.74 ounces of alcohol.

The difference (0.13 ounces of alcohol) is the amount of alcohol in 2.6 ounces of Coors or Budweiser beer. How much is your buzz affected by drinking basically one topped-off shot glass full of Budweiser in an evening of drinking?

Now, if you’re deciding between off-dry German riesling and a table wine, or between Port and a table wine, then it would make a real difference.

The other thing to keep in mind is the way the alcohol labeling requirements work in the USA: (1) over 14%, you need to be within 1% of the actual number, (2) under 14% you need to be within 1.5% of the actual number, and (3) there is little or no actual testing and enforcement of the accuracy of wine labels, and some wineries either deliberately estimate or fudge on their labels, or simply choose not to incur the expense of changing the number from one vintage’s label to the next.

The most common result is that many wineries, particularly French wineries, simply list 12.5% on every label, because that covers them for the full spectrum from 11-14%. But that doesn’t mean the alcohol level is 1.7% lower than on that 14.2% New World wine, and I would hazard a wild guess that most of the French red wines that we get with 12.5% on the label are towards the upper end of that 11-14% range.

58

Thank you for this post - this seems to be a point that is commonly missed by most - that the regulations allow some variance with the labeled ABV. [Update - I see Chris also just posted on this.] In addition, a recent regulatory change will allow some alcohol content information to appear on the container rather than the brand label. So in the future, some wines will not have any alcohol content information on the brand label.

Here is a link to the TTB rulemaking:

59

Even though I’m one of those that thinks that the obsession about the alcohol % number on wine labels tends to be overblown, I am still curious enough about wine in general to wish Wine Spectator, Parker, IWC, bloggers or someone would do some periodic random spot-checking of labels.

It would be easy enough to do in a lab. Every month or whatever, pick a handful of notable bottles and run a lab test on the alcohol level, compare it to what shows on the label. I don’t really care as to a single bottle of anything, but it would be interesting to develop an overall sense of how accurate the labels are, whether they tend to overstate or understate the actual alcohol, whether different categories of wine are more or less likely to overstate or understate on their labels (e.g. by country, by color, industrial v. artisinal), and where most of the wines in that gaping 11-14% / 12.5 range actually are.

Do you think this doesn’t happen because (1) really, very few people outside places like WB really give a crap, (2) they are afraid of alienating wineries by publishing that kind of information, (3) they are concerned about potentially tipping off a minor legal/regulatory violation in wines that are outside the permitted variance and maybe getting someone in trouble or getting sued by someone? It’s always seemed odd to me that nobody does this.

60

Here’s a tasting note of a 1992 Williams Selyem zin (15.6%) that had aged spectacularly. I don’t hold it out as representative of how wines with different alcohol levels age generally, but it at least showed me pretty clearly that it’s not automatic that a high alcohol red can’t age well.