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In Reply to: RE: Wine getting less complex posted by jimbill on October 23, 2011 at 20:24:23
...and midrange, but not the higher priced wines, IMO.
I was in Spokane, WA this past weekend, for Fall Family Weekend at Gonzaga U., where my daughter is a senior.
There are now at least 22 wine tasting rooms and wineries in the area, many from Walla Walla.
Arbor Crest had an excellent $35 cab and a very complex meritage.
Cougar Crest had a spectacular Legacy Syrah for $45 that was pretty complex.
One things our wines don't have much of, which gives the French wines more complexity, is terrior.
But it's not something I miss...
Follow Ups:
As far as I know, Cougar Crest is the only Walla Walla winery in Spokane. The rest are Spokane
(or Spokanistan as we like to call it) based. Their fruit comes from points west of course.
If you are a spirits drinker, Dry Fly is making a lot of waves out of Spokane. I know my NY distributor sells them and is having great success.
...also calls it "Spokanistan" and the locals, "Spokies".
I saw Dry Fly when we were there - think we drove by, but I only drink wine or beer these days.
Out here, the hot spirit is Hanger One Vodka.
Mike, by your own admisssion you don't drink wines outside of California.
Now I see where you are branching out to Washington. Be sure to try Saviah and Seven Hills.
But I'm talking about Bourdeaux and Barolo from the late '60s and early '70s. California made a few, BV "George LaTour" comes to mind. Upon release they were hard to drink. The tannins could almost pucker your mouth. But given a few years they changed. Not just mellowing, but adding dimensions.
It wasn't just terrior, it was blending practices, heavier tannins, not picking the grapes at maximimum ripeness. I'm sure there was a lot more than this that the wine makers were doing to make their wine complex, but these stand out in my mind.
But wine became more popular in the mid '80s and people new to wine didn't want to wait for these wines to come into their own. Wineries had to make a profit to stay in business so they went with the new flow.
Sutter Home white zin brought a whole lot of people into the game. Then Australia made reds accessible by dropping the tight tannins and holding the grapes until ultimate ripeness, making a "sweet" red. The rest of the wine world followed suit. Luckily this practise is starting to back down. But nowhere near to the old style.
There are still a few holdouts for the old style, but it is a very small percentage.
But who cares? Wine is for enjoyment and if more people are enjoying them then that is a good thing.
...in the early 1980s is what got me into the finer wines.
In our wine tasting group, as I've documented here, we've done malbecs (Argentina) and Italian varietals last month - next is Spanish Riojas.
I also documented our Willamette Valley trip to Oregon last year.
I do focus on California wines because they are so accessible here, and I'm not a big fan of Italian or French terrior, which to me, many times, tastes musty and dirty.
An acquired taste, no doubt.
I haven't read the WS article, but for a guy who doesn't believe in bottle aging or storage at a low temperature, what are you going on about?
Yes, wines are less tannic and probably don't age as long as they did 20 years ago.
I'm disappointed when my California cabernets don't make it 8 or 10 years today.
People want instant gratification these days.
Robert Parker has changed winemaking so that many times what you get now is a big, alcoholic fruit bomb.
That's not all for the bad either, as you say, they are enjoyable most of the time and that's what it's all about.
My point has always been that wines made in the "new" style, for the most part, don't require extensive aging.
And that's the point of the editorial response. Current Italian wines and such aren't made, for good or bad, like they were 40 years ago. Thus the loss in complexity for more approachable wines.
Thanks for reminding me. I'd forgotten about the "Parker Effect".
By the way, starting to get all that wine in that I've ordered over the year. I'll let you know if I have any finds. Our heat has made it impossible to ship.
Speaking of the "Parker Effect" much has been written about the influence of Robert Parker and his personal taste upon winemakers worldwide. Here's one opinion about conformity in wines taken from the blog of a local (to me) wine seller in 2009 whose speciality is Italian wines. Not exactly pertinent to the topic of aging, but interesting nonetheless:
Protecting the Faith in the Motherland
The following is the text of a talk Roberto gave at Vinitaly a while back to 40 highly esteemed wine producers from all over Italy (which received a standing ovation): "I have been asked to comment on what changes I have seen in the last fifteen years of coming to VinItaly. I would say that in that time the average quality of wines across the board has increased by three fold. BUT, the average conformity of style has increased ten fold and you must realize that in the future, when all wines taste the same, only the cheapest will get sold.
I blame this situation on two people: Robert Parker who evidently only likes ONE kind of wine and Luca Maroni who evidently does not like wine at all but only 'pure fruit' and therefore should redirect his efforts to becoming the world's foremost critic of gelato where that is the point and not waste his time on wine which should be a TRANSFORMATION of mere fruit into something much more interesting.
I beg of you that, when you return to your zonas next week, you seek out the oldest person in your village and talk to them in dialect, not Italian, about just what it was that made your village different (and therefore, of course, better!) than the village five kilometers down the road when that person was a child. Then, go out in your vineyards, taste the actual dirt, smell the wind and see that it is different in your hillside than on your neighbor’s and look very closely between the rows and see that there are NO reverse osmosis machines and NO paddle fermenters and NO barriques and NO spinning cones growing there. And then promise yourself that next vintage you will make truly ITALIAN wine.....the world will love you and reward you for it!"
But ya gotta still make money.
Maybe in the old days, a little was enough.
But once you see the "Bright Lights" it's hard to blame them for going for it.
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