Risk : Greatness

Flying back from selling wine in Chicago, I have to reflect on the wine tasting I attended. Some Napa wines and some from Bordeaux. The luscious yummy wines were from California, but the interesting and balanced wines were from France, with the possible exception of an older Dominus, that could have been a Bordeaux. Chicago being a Bordeaux town, the night before I had shared way too much Bordeaux and some great steaks with the friends I was visiting. We felt great and woke up fresh. How many times have you heard this story? Part of the balance those wines have, in addition to balance in the glass, is that they work so well as part of a balanced meal, and a balanced lifestyle. The alcohol tends to be 2-3 percentage points lower than our wine. The next day at the tasting the Bordeaux snobs were complaining to me about the California wines, saying that we “just grow alcohol.” I took exception, but couldn’t defend my home as vigorously as I’d like, because the truth is that our wines are high in alcohol, and unbalanced in that respect. I think it is out number one wine fault—much more of an issue than brettanomyces or VA. We send out squeaky clean wine that still has one major fault—it’s hot and pungent with alcohol.

I sometimes think it’s a question of maturing as an industry, but our alcohol levels have gone up, not down, as we have become more successful. I don’t agree that in general the higher levels are on purpose, to raise scores, or to be more “New World” in style. I partly think that we have developed an industry-wide cellar palate that doesn’t notice the creeping alcohol levels, but I also think that many winemakers just have a hard time dealing with the high sugar levels required for ripeness. A big part of the issue is that a lot of the time we need long hang times to get ripe. As a viticulturist, I see that as the number one issue to be addressed. Different canopy practices to get different anthocyanin levels are pretty neat, and selecting the proper rootstock is important, but how to we deal with our most prominent and problematic wine fault? It is clearly a vineyard problem, as it has to do with ripeness.

One major theme keeps coming back to me. We take excessively good care of our vines. We fertilize too much, water too much, control pests too well, remove all of the competition, and generally create conditions which allow excessive photosynthesis. The soils and climate in Napa have been shown over and over again to be capable of making wines that stand with the best in the world. That fact cannot be argued. But for some reason, maybe the American nature in us, we push for healthier and better, by doing more and more. Maybe we need to have more faith in the terroir, and allow ourselves to do a little less.

A few weeds, a little mildew, some nutrient deficiency symptoms, some water stress as the grapes are ripening—these things can reduce sugar accumulation—we know this from our jug wine days. But we’re not growing sugar any more. We are growing wine, and just as with people, a healthy level of adversity builds character. Why do we need a healthy canopy at harvest? Why would we want that? Why would we not want the canopy to look a little shabby, the vines digging down into their reserves to just barely ripen the fruit, fruit that is concentrated, rich, ripe, and balanced…at 23.5 to 24.5 brix, the correct level of ripeness for all but the past few vintages.

There are lots of scientific theories for why a struggling vine makes better wine. We’ve focused on berry size, but barely scratched at the surface of the complex web of hormonal and biochemical signaling in the plant. The fact that understanding the importance of and how to manipulate the mechanical simplicity of “skin to pulp ratio” is a recent scientific achievement points to how primitive our understanding is. The grapevine is an amazingly complex chemical factory—but chemical-making carries a biological cost—there needs to be a good reason for the plant to go to the effort. Seconday metabolites help the plant deal with adversity—and so it stands to reason that some adversity means that more metabolites will be made. Roots stressed for water send signals throughout the plant telling the various parts to adapt. Genes switch on and off. The wine is getting made on a daily basis.

Managing struggling vines means that there is more risk. That is a simple fact. Trying to achieve greatness entails risk. If you stress the vines too much before harvest, and a north wind kicks in, there might be some shrivel. If you keep the water on as harvest approaches, afraid to take that risk, you may never know what the wine could have become. There is a razors edge between stress and distress. “Benign neglect” requires a closer eye and a steadier hand than does simply serving up the groceries and giving the vines everything they need. Pushing all of the buttons every time doesn’t require a lot of monitoring or record-keeping. If the groceries are being given more judiciously, the way to manage risk instead becomes more monitoring, thinking and worrying. As the saying goes, “the best fertilizer is the farmer’s footsteps.”

For some reason it has become a popular notion that vines need a green “functional” canopy to ripen the grapes. That’s true if the crop is large, and the block may not make sugar, but at a reasonable cropping level, in Napa, “making sugar” isn’t the issue. The genes that create flavors are in the berries. All the canopy is doing is making sugar. And, if it is stressed, sending hormonal signals to the fruit to get ripe. What kind of signals is a healthy green canopy sending? Signals to make green fruit?

With my vineyards, and my wines, I have been struggling with alcohol, and even while picking earlier than most, am unhappy with the levels in my wine. I want to make a rich, complex, balanced, 12.5% wine. Maybe I’ll get there. But to that end I am doing less to the vineyards. And I am feeling more challenged as a viticulturist, because I have to watch constantly to keep from going over the edge. There is more vintage variability in Bordeaux, because sometimes things don’t work out. And sometimes they achieve greatness. We have the tools and the climate to keep things from heading too far south. But if we won’t take any risk, how do we achieve greatness?

Steve Matthiasson

viticulture