Young vine wines that are epic

[Marcus_Goodfellow]

So, when is the Goodfellow zoom session?

Mid-April? Does that work?

[Rich_Brown]

Young vines produce very fruit forward wines.

I believe you Marcus, but it’ll be very hard for the average consumer to pick that out.

In a blind tasting of young vs. old vine wine from the same (or very close) vineyard, similar clones, similar vine maintenance/harvesting, same vintage, same winemaker and same winemaking…maybe one can distinguish the differences.

I’ve never tried anything remotely close. If memory serves, winemaking style tends to trump terroir tends to trump clones/rootstock with vintage as a wildcard (along with a number of other factors). It’s hard enough to try to distinguish producers and AVA in blind tastings of the same vintage…let alone identifying young vines.

RT

When I first started making wines I would taste barrels weekly. I’ve always held that you should work your way up to the best wines, so as we tasted I would start to develop an order to work through the barrels. It took me about 6 months to realize that the order I was tasting in was youngest vines to oldest.

Vines are like people.

When they’re young they tell stories like children do, with great energy and enthusiasm, and they are very easy to like. They are also more inconsistent and definitely put off by challenges like inclement weather.

Then there is an adolescent period, where balance is tricky. Too much energy for green growth, not settled into site yet, root systems and symbiotic relationships are just being established, reproduction is not a priority…and the results are pretty much what you would expect.

Then physical maturity of adulthood. Roots are established, microrrhyzial systems are in place, adaptation to site is established. Energy is well developed but hopefully controlled by site and conditions(grapevines need to be challenged not coddled). Like a person, the vine has become “who” it is. Stronger or weaker, it has learned how to live and produce fruit from the specific site it’s grown in. Reproduction is a priority, but energy for green growth is significant. This is a period of high quality, but it is important to remember that the energy in the plant can also go overboard fairly easily.

Older vines-site adaptation is at max, physiological energy is waning. Green growth is limited but root systems, if healthy, are at maximum depth giving maximum opportunity to mitigate climatic variation. Sugar accumulation is naturally moderated. Less canopy means more sunshine on the fruit, better maturity of tannins, acid balance is better, and as the roots are deep accumulation of flavor is at it’s widest. Without the “power” of fruit, the story is told considerably more quietly than say the young vine or adolescence, but for the listener who pays attention, the story is a much deeper and more interesting one.

This is true of every vineyard I have worked with.


But if you irrigate, then the vast majority of what I posted is hogwash. Plants only go as far as they need to for food and water(just like people-my kids first preference for water is for me to bring it to them).

I’m not a winemaker so I don’t have anything to contribute (other than that from a purely drinking perspective, I enjoy the ‘depth of flavor’ that I drfinitley find in Old Vines)…but i wanted to say that this was a HELLUVA post Marcus!!

[David_Bu3ker]

So, when is the Goodfellow zoom session?

Mid-April? Does that work?

Yes!

[JDavisRoby]

So, when is the Goodfellow zoom session?

Mid-April? Does that work?

Boom!

[Adam_Frisch]

Marcus, I’ll take your word for them being different young vs old. I have not the experience you have with that.

Just how many Cab plantings in Napa are truly passable as old (isn’t Scarecrow some of the oldest planted in 1945)? Yet they get the highly rewarded each year from the serious wine press. I know, I know, perhaps not our jam, but empirically, you can make highly regarded wines from mainly younger vines, it seems.

I just think there’s too much over-emphasis on these slightly intangible things in wine. It comes down, again, to what Sean Thackrey refers to as “real estate protection”. That just from this soil, this plot, this altitude, these vine ages, this climate, this row spacing, can you truly get great wines. It is my personal view you can make great wines from anywhere. And honestly, I think the future of winemaking is in that philosophical view, too. The new generation doesn’t give as much credence to these things, they’d rather that you care about making it right and not abusing the land. They would rather have a Fresno Cab that was grown organically, than a Napa To Kalon cab that was farmed conventionally.

In any case, I think this will all become clear over the next 20-30 years.

[Greg_Gardner]

I think there’s Cabernet on Monte Rosso that is from the late 20s or early 30s.

[GregT]

Since everyone knows you need to have really old vines to make great wines

A lot of people would disagree with this. A vine needs a sufficient root system. That takes a few years and after that, you don’t necessarily get additional benefit. It depends on what gets done to the vines.

There has been a lot of work done on this specific issue. In several vineyards that I know of in Spain, they have measured the flow rate of the nutrients in the vines. Similar work has been done elsewhere. The uptake of nutrients is via the fine roots. Those are constantly replaced and grow mostly near the surface of the soil. So once there is sufficient biomass to support the growing vine above ground, the age of the vines stops being an issue - again, depending on what you do to the vine.

When they’re young, grapevines tend to produce uneven sized fruit buds and the acidity and sugar levels can vary within the individual clusters. That’s one reason Bordeaux doesn’t use the grapes from vines less than three years old, but Lafite uses vines ranging in age from 3-80 years, or at least they did at one point. But the average age is around 35-40 years.

If a vine is left to its own devices, it will end up self-regulating and you get a vine that knows how much fruit it can ripen and that’s lived through difficult times and can survive dry and wet conditions. It has deep roots that provide reserves if needed, but like all woody plants, the action takes place in the youngest parts of the vine. But if you don’t let the vines self-regulate and you trim them every year, cutting off their canes and training them into shapes they would never grow to, you get different results.

[Keith_Levenberg]

Quinta do Noval Nacional 1931 is the classic example of this.

But the general rule is sound. Go with old vines if you can.

[CCoulson]

Nice to see more classic examples being shared. I hope that these will give a touch of confidence to a bootstrapped winemaker planting a new vineyard in a special spot, or a young next generation champagne grower the opportunity to replace higher yielding 70s agricultural vines with a more promising selection of massale or clones. Dreamers need north stars.

[Keith_Levenberg]

Just how many Cab plantings in Napa are truly passable as old (isn’t Scarecrow some of the oldest planted in 1945)? Yet they get the highly rewarded each year from the serious wine press.

Here are a couple works highly regarded by serious art critics

[Tomas_Costa]

Quinta do Noval Nacional 1931 is the classic example of this.

But the general rule is sound. Go with old vines if you can.

Those are ungrafted, though.

[Marcus_Goodfellow]

Just how many Cab plantings in Napa are truly passable as old (isn’t Scarecrow some of the oldest planted in 1945)? Yet they get the highly rewarded each year from the serious wine press.

Here are a couple works highly regarded by serious art critics

Lol…best way of saying YMMV I have seen yet.

John Williams at Frog’s Leap would have something to say about the new stuff.

Again, young vines make delicious, forward, precocious wines. They’re not bad, they’re quite tasty, just generally not deep. And fairly, ad the OP is looking for places that hit it out of the park as young vines, I think Ex-Novo does that very well.

[Eric_Ifune]

Those are ungrafted, though.

4 to 5 years old if I remember. Ungrafted would mean the roots would be especially young.

[Marcus_Goodfellow]

Marcus, I’ll take your word for them being different young vs old. I have not the experience you have with that.

Just how many Cab plantings in Napa are truly passable as old (isn’t Scarecrow some of the oldest planted in 1945)? Yet they get the highly rewarded each year from the serious wine press. I know, I know, perhaps not our jam, but empirically, you can make highly regarded wines from mainly younger vines, it seems.

I just think there’s too much over-emphasis on these slightly intangible things in wine. It comes down, again, to what Sean Thackrey refers to as “real estate protection”. That just from this soil, this plot, this altitude, these vine ages, this climate, this row spacing, can you truly get great wines. It is my personal view you can make great wines from anywhere. And honestly, I think the future of winemaking is in that philosophical view, too. The new generation doesn’t give as much credence to these things, they’d rather that you care about making it right and not abusing the land. They would rather have a Fresno Cab that was grown organically, than a Napa To Kalon cab that was farmed conventionally.

In any case, I think this will all become clear over the next 20-30 years.

Adam,

It sounds like we’re pretty close in viewpoint actually.

Though cynically I would suggest that one chooses between “real estate” protection and “personality” protection. I would rather read about vineyards a thousand times over reading about another “visionary” winemaker doing something shockingly close to what another winemaker was doing 3000 years ago and more.

The problem here seems to be the human brains desire for binary choices.

I don’t make great wines. Just bluntly, I don’t. I make wines from a place.

If I make great wines then I need to guarantee that they will be great. You can’t wait until they are done and cellared and then go back and alter something. So I don’t sweat it. Over the years, I’ve experiemented with a range of choices in vineyard and cellar management and listened to everyone I could about what they do. And now I, mostly, make pretty good wines. But whether they are great falls into the YMMV category. They are however from the place listed on the label.


You can, IMO, probably make great wine almost anywhere. And my early wines from young vines were solid and very good wines.

But I think that making exquisite wines is not possible from just about anywhere, by just about anyone, in just about any vintage.

I’ve had very good to great wines from the Canary Islands, North Africa, Germany, Georgia, Slovenia and many, many more.

But I haven’t had Rousseau Chambertin-Clos de Beze from any of them.

And old vines doesn’t trump other things, it’s just another layer in the mille fueilles of a wine. Old vines from Bourgogne AOC fruit probably doesn’t trump younger vines from Les Musigny.

Fresno Cab made with heart and soul for no money, is way better to me than a $200 Napa cab to me.
Farming aside because I don’t think ANYONE on this board can taste organic vs conventional. I know why we pushed to get Whistling Ridge over to organic but I’ll give you a $1000 dollars if you can tell me when we did based upon taste.

I know you haven’t made it up here to the Valley yet, but one of the cool things about the Willamette Valley region is we kind of run the gamut between Fresno and Napa. And most of my interest definitely lies in the
more blue collar side of things.

[M_Meer]

Though likely not on the level of those mentioned already, I have had good experiences with wines made from Rita’s Crown (pinot & chard) and Gap’s Crown (pinot), both within about 5 years after planting. They were noticeably made from good material and haven’t fallen apart, roughly 10 years in.

[Bruce_G1]

One often mentioned epic wine from young vines was the Stags Leap Wine Cellars’ 1973 Stags Leap Vyd Cab, winner of the '76 Judgement of Paris… made from 3 year old vines.

Young vines can make some pretty impressive wines.
Root mass is smaller, nutrient uptake is not as great, and so the vines tend to have reduced vigor and extremely open canopies that promote ripening.

But I have to agree with Marcus… old vines will produce better fruit, provided the site and cultivar selection were done properly and the vines were treated to good, responsive farming.

[Marcu_Stanley]

Young vines produce very fruit forward wines.

I believe you Marcus, but it’ll be very hard for the average consumer to pick that out.

In a blind tasting of young vs. old vine wine from the same (or very close) vineyard, similar clones, similar vine maintenance/harvesting, same vintage, same winemaker and same winemaking…maybe one can distinguish the differences.

I’ve never tried anything remotely close. If memory serves, winemaking style tends to trump terroir tends to trump clones/rootstock with vintage as a wildcard (along with a number of other factors). It’s hard enough to try to distinguish producers and AVA in blind tastings of the same vintage…let alone identifying young vines.

RT

Modern winemaking, and to an extent also modern farming, is basically a laundry list of being too scared to let the vineyard do the talking because it might not tell a “grand cru” story. Wines are forced to be “great” because we can do that. Show me a modern region that is looking to make wines like Beaujolais? So yes, in a huge amount of cases now, winemakers bring amplified instruments to an acoustic session.
With predictable results.

Edit: I should also add modern weather reports. A century ago no one could look at Doppler and see whether or not there was a “window” behind a storm or not. I am guessing with a years work on the vine, a lot more fruit got pulled early due to weather avoidance. Now we can sit through more, and “wait for flavors”. Most of the time the flavors we’re waiting on are darker and sweeter flavors. Sometimes you need to wait, but I think in Oregon good weather reports lead to more of us hanging through weather.
2010 was a vintage where we were close but perhaps not quite there(according to the winemakers) when the weather said, pick now or else. Those wines are among my favorites and I have been “not waiting for flavors” ever since.

This isn’t to blame winemaking, there has been an explosion of wine production all over the world, so young vines are common everywhere(and a very necessary part of getting to have old vines). Competition for consumers attention is fierce. So it is what it is.

Established old world terroirs don’t have to be in as much of a fist fight to get noticed. Nor does financial muscle have quite as much impact on getting those established regions time in a distributors day. Sales reps quotas are a real thing. And places like Total Wine and Binny’s care about price, and really any decent story will do as long as the wine is attractive(very different from authentic).

Some great lines and great insights in this post! The search for “dark and sweet”, bringing your amps to an acoustic session, the effect of modern weather reports on wine…

[Marcu_Stanley]

I just think there’s too much over-emphasis on these slightly intangible things in wine. It comes down, again, to what Sean Thackrey refers to as “real estate protection”. That just from this soil, this plot, this altitude, these vine ages, this climate, this row spacing, can you truly get great wines. It is my personal view you can make great wines from anywhere. And honestly, I think the future of winemaking is in that philosophical view, too. The new generation doesn’t give as much credence to these things, they’d rather that you care about making it right and not abusing the land. They would rather have a Fresno Cab that was grown organically, than a Napa To Kalon cab that was farmed conventionally.

In any case, I think this will all become clear over the next 20-30 years.

I am pre-disposed to agree with this given the massive economic incentives to exaggerate the role of unique terroir, but again and again I return to why I haven’t tasted any other pinot anywhere in the world which reliably tastes and feels like Burgundy. Based on prices, the market also judges Burgundy to be unique. It aint’t because that’s the only place in the world with limestone or temperate weather either…

If attitudes shift as you suggest there will be some huge pricing shifts to go along with it.

[HoosJustinG]

One often mentioned epic wine from young vines was the Stags Leap Wine Cellars’ 1973 Stags Leap Vyd Cab, winner of the '76 Judgement of Paris… made from 3 year old vines.

Young vines can make some pretty impressive wines.
Root mass is smaller, nutrient uptake is not as great, and so the vines tend to have reduced vigor and extremely open canopies that promote ripening.

But I have to agree with Marcus… old vines will produce better fruit, provided the site and cultivar selection were done properly and the vines were treated to good, responsive farming.

Judgement of Paris wines is something I immediately thought of here.

Also… hard pass on the organic Fresno cab despite being - technically - a millennial.

[JDavisRoby]

How much does the knowledge of how a site responds to the various weather patterns and pruning techniques make old-vine “better” for winemaker and consumer?