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The Futue of American Wine Ratings
By Jeff Morgan
In the Robert Louis Stevenson classic Treasure Island, any pirate marked with the "black spot" knew he was a doomed man. Winemakers today live in fear of the modern-day equivalent of Long John Silver’s "black spot." It’s called an "89."
Yes, the dreaded 89 wine score. The kiss of death. Not a great wine and not a bad wine, but worse—a wine destined to quickly fade in the minds of consumers.
Having been a member of Wine Spectator’s tasting panel during my seven-year tenure with the magazine (ending in September 1999), and having experienced the ratings phenomenon from both sides of the playing field, I’d like to share an insider’s perspective on the 100-point scale.
European wine writers—meaning the French and the English—have always liked to hear themselves wax poetical. They rate wines based on global experience—what the wine tastes like, where it comes from, and whether or not it is stylistically correct. This approach, however laudable, is ignored by most wine consumers. The British public tends to drink whatever it can find for a bargain; the French public doesn’t really care what it drinks. (No kidding. I lived in France for five years and noted that my friends there happily drink whatever is on the table, from corky plonk to the great stuff.)
Recently, one well-known Bordeaux winemaker told me, "There is only one wine writer in France who makes a difference in our sales. And he is nothing compared to Robert Parker and the Wine Spectator. It’s amazing how much power is in the hands of so few individuals."
This is particularly true in America, where wine drinking has become fashionable in the mainstream only of late. Many Americans still require a security blanket to ward off the chill they feel while contemplating a seemingly endless row of mysterious bottles at the local wine shop. A simple wine grading system has offered a quick fix for their jitters.
The 100-point scale, first embraced by Robert Parker some twenty years ago and by Wine Spectator soon after, has demystified wine for these recent converts to the good life.
Parker and Wine Spectator remain at the top of the wine critic pyramid because of their relative consistency and a high level of integrity.
Parker doesn’t accept advertising in his newsletter, the Wine Advocate. Wine Spectator editors all taste blind, the bottles were bagged, and scores are never changed to attract advertising or for any other purpose.
Quite frankly, this is not always the case with certain other publications. I didn’t spend nearly a decade as a journalist without discovering who cheats and who doesn’t. Of course, there are other fine professional critics aside from Parker and the Spectator. These tasters have their own following, but they just don’t carry the same kind of weight as the two industry megapowers.
Ultimately, a great wine will sell itself. But it sure helps to have an endorsement by Wine Spectator (with its quarter million paid circulation) or Robert Parker. These publications can create a cult wine with the stroke of a pen and a 95 review. They also can increase sales for larger wineries at a phenomenal rate. One winemaker told me that the 90-point rating I gave his wine moved sales from 1,000 to 6,000 cases per week.
With the arrival of wine dot-coms, will the likes of Robert Parker and Wine Spectator retain their hegemony? To a degree they probably will, as long as they maintain their editorial quality and tasting integrity.
However, the dot-com potential can hardly be ignored. That’s why both Wine Spectator and The New York Times have entered into affiliations with wineshopper.com, the highly touted dot-com that, at press time, has yet to open its virtual doors.
An ability to reach an almost unlimited, newly plugged-in American audience leaves the world literally at the dot-coms’ fingertips. It is only a matter of time before more consumers opt for purchasing wine online. And as interstate shipping opens up (as it slowly but surely will), the dot-com audience will continue to grow.
How will the dot-coms sell wine? In some ways, just like successful brick and mortar stores, with sales pitches, discounts, and a selection of wines that appeals to a targeted audience. And to make up for an inability to hand sell a wine, the dot-coms will offer a certain amount of editorial content to inspire and educate their customers.
Those wine lovers who enjoy sitting back to relax with a glossy magazine will probably continue to do so. I don’t see a quick demise for the print medium. But virtual buyers are looking for speed and convenience, and the dot-coms can best satisfy these needs. How will they steer their customers to an appropriate wine of choice? Some dot-coms will rely on ratings—either their own or those of an outside source. Others will attempt to establish themselves as independent authorities, relying on their own rating or review systems.
This brings us back to Long John Silver’s dreaded "black spot." The rating game works well for a wine that hits 90 points or more. But what about the many wonderful wines that slip into the high or mid-80s? A skillful wine merchant in a shop can easily parlay an 86-point wine into an easy sale. But the virtual wine merchant may have more difficulty doing so. Will e-customers clamoring for 90-plus wines eschew those rated in the 80s? The dot-coms must address this issue, for the American public has clearly demonstrated that it loves the upper end of the 100-point scale.
The virtual world looms large on the horizon, yet no one really knows what awaits us there. For this print journalist, the virtual wine industry is brimming with excitement and offers an opportunity to participate in the creation of a new medium. There may be rocks along the shore, but I’m ready to ride the virtual tidal wave of winewhatever.com.
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The Red Menace
Brace Yourself for the Most Expensive and Unavailable Wines of the New World
by Jeff Cox
Stopping by the Enoteca wine shop in Calistoga the other day, I asked proprietor Margaux
Singleton if she had any of the so-called "cult" wines that have been making the news lately—you know, those California Cabernets made in infinitesimal quantities that sell for mind-numbing prices.
She pointed at a wine rack. "Ever see so much Screaming Eagle in one place?" she asked. I counted. Twenty-seven bottles. "How much are you charging for those?" I asked. She avoided a direct answer. "They’re all sold to a person who said, ‘I don’t care how much they cost. Get me all the Screaming Eagle you can.’" Given that a six-liter bottle of Screaming Eagle just went for a cool half million bucks at the 2000 Napa Valley Wine Auction, her buyer must have shelled out a fortune.
For some examples of cult wine prices, I checked a few on-line wine auctions, which listed these prices for some of the most sought-after, small-production Napa Valley Cabernets: a bottle of 1996 Screaming Eagle for $1000-plus; six bottles of 1997 Colgin ‘Herb Lamb’, $3,000; six 1997 Bryant Family, $2,900 (or a single bottle for $650); 1996 Harlan Estate, $375; Dalla Valle’s 1990 Maya, $475, and so on.
Why would anyone shell out those kinds of dollars for what are, after all, just bottles of wine? Well, people have been doing it for French wines for a little over a decade, when Bordeaux and Burgundy made their great price leap forward. At those same on-line wine auctions (winecommune.com, winebid.com, and others), a magnum of 1982 Château Petrus goes for $1,599, a 1985 Ch. Lafite Rothschild for $229, a 1996 Ch. Mouton Rothschild for $249, and a 1996 Ch. Latour for $269—high prices, but still not near the $395 a bottle for the 1997 Grace Family Cabernet.
A cluster of factors has created this phenomenon. The first is scarcity. While Château Latour and its fellow First Growths in the Médoc region of Bordeaux make anywhere from 25,000 to 30,000 cases a year, the Bryant Family winery makes 600 cases, Colgin makes 225 cases, Screaming Eagle 500 cases, and Grace Family, 48 cases. Forty-eight cases is 576 bottles. No wonder you can’t get these wines. The scarcity factor isn’t limited to the U.S. In France’s Rhône region, Gerard Chave’s vanishingly small production of 1995 Hermitage brings $750 a bottle and Burgundy’s rare Montrachet fetches $1,390 a bottle. It’s beginning to happen with high-end Italian wines, too. "When you only have a few hundred cases of a wine that gets high marks from the Wine Spectator and Parker, you get a feeding frenzy," Singleton says. Although several people referred to the cult wines as "the Napa Valley’s First Growths," it’s scarcity rather than a couple of hundred years of proven quality, that goes a long way toward elevating the prices.
A second factor is quality. The cults are undoubtedly very fine wines, and achieve their quality through a combination of excellent vineyard sites and very detailed winemaking. The Grace Family vineyard comprises just two acres along Highway 29 north of St. Helena, while Bill Harlan’s 30 planted acres is draped over slopes in Oakville. Ann Colgin’s seven acres nestle at the bottom of the eastern Napa Valley hills, and Helen Turley’s Marcassin vineyard includes 14 acres above 1,000 feet along the rugged Sonoma Coast. Jean Phillips’ Screaming Eagle vineyard is 57 sunny, rocky acres on the eastern hills of the Napa Valley.
Quality is monitored in these vineyards by viticulturists like David Abreu and marshalled into the bottle by talented winemakers like Heidi Peterson Barrett, Tony Soter, Helen Turley, and others. They babysit these wines, closely watching every detail, as Burt Williams did with Pinot Noirs at his Williams Selyem Winery in Healdsburg—one of the first superstar and superpricey wines in California.
The cult winery owners, usually wealthy folks, have the wherewithal to do everything right—the right sites, the right clones, the right spacings, the right winemaking techniques, the right personnel. Bill Harlan is a real estate developer who owns Meadowood Resort in St. Helena, Don Bryant is a successful St. Louis lawyer, Dick Grace is a retired stockbroker. As the old saying goes, "How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large fortune." Some people think they can cash in on the phenomenon. "We’re now starting to see boutique wineries with untested products at $100 a bottle," Singleton says. "But they haven’t earned it. One guy with a first release came in here and said he would be the next Colgin. The ego!"
But there are other, more subtle social factors that bear on our original question of why anyone would spend such money on a beverage, no matter how good it is. Shrewdness is one. Some buyers take their allocation, if they’re on one of these wineries’ exclusive mailing lists, and resell the bottles at auction for ten times what they paid for them.
Basketsful of disposable income is another. At this year’s Napa Valley Wine Auction, "Red" Adams of Patterson, Louisiana, spent $700,000 for a 10-year vertical of Harlan Estate Cabernets. "I married a rich lady," he explained.
John Livingston, a bookstore owner from Santa Cruz, California, sees lots of new wealth from Silicon Valley just over the mountains to his east. Livingston used to collect wines in the 1970s and ’80s, but not recently. "I think most of the people clamoring to get the cult wines are younger people. They have lots of income, so they’re willing to spend. They don’t remember when Château Lafite was $9 a bottle. They don’t have that perspective."
At the Napa Valley Wine Auction, I spoke with a young couple from Westchester County, New York, who said they call the cult wines "dot-com wines" because, like so many dot-com Internet companies, prices aren’t based on intrinsic value. Others call these wines "Parker wines," because approval from Robert Parker can vault them into the category.
Other Wine Auction attendees called them "cherries," and one woman said they were "unobtainia." But the most common reason given for the desire to own them is that they are "trophies." No more the bighorn sheep’s head on the wall and the Rolls in the garage. Now the trophies are the Colgin and Grace Family in your cellar. A wealthy Miami lawyer at the Wine Auction admitted that it’s a case of "I have them and you don’t." Then he added, "Why not throw some money around if you have it? After you’ve got the big house and the fancy car and still have $200 mil-lion, maybe you’re inclined to buy some expensive wine and entertain your friends in a lavish style."
Finally, there’s the question of value. Livingston said, "Unlike many other collectibles, cult wines have a definite lifespan." Some proven wines like old Beaulieu Georges de la Tour Private Reserve can last, certainly First Growth Bordeaux can last (the best wine I ever tasted was a 1928 Latour), but who knows how long Screaming Eagle Cabernet or the full-blown Marcassin Char-donnay will last? There’s intrinsic, lasting value in a fine house or car, but with wine, to enjoy it is to destroy it.
Are the cult wines worth it? They certainly score well with the national media. Parker pours points on these wines like water on a factory fire. The 1997 Grace Family Cabernet got 92 points and the 1997 Marcassin Chardonnay got 97 points from Wine Spectator. And yet, one can buy wines that score just as high on the GV500 scale at very reasonable prices. The 1998 V. Sattui Carsi Vineyard Chardonnay, for example, carries a 96-point GV500 score and costs $19. The 1997 Thomas Fogarty Napa Valley Cabernet scores close to 97 points and costs $65. The 1997 Turnbull Oakville Cabernet scores 93 points and costs $25. Even that old standby, Beaulieu Vine-yard’s Rutherford Cabernet (1997 vintage) scores 90 points and costs just $19!
In other words, the cult wines aren’t really as much about the pleasures of drinking as they are about the pleasures of acquiring for oneself what few others can have. I think there’s a word for that.
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Land Rush on the Sonoma Coast
Winemakers Are Searching for Land Where Pinot Noir Grows Best
by Jeff Cox
Between ten and fifteen years ago, there was a serious debate as to whether great Pinot Noir could be grown in California. No longer. Not only is great Pinot Noir being made in California, much more is on the way as big money and large wineries are furiously snapping up the unique land that flanks the Pacific Ocean along the Sonoma County coast.
Very, very few places in the world have the sort of climate found in this region—a climate that seems perfectly suited to producing Pinot Noirs that challenge the supremacy of Burgundy itself.
The ocean is too cold here for swimming, and westerly afternoon breezes create natural air conditioning that keeps temperatures pleasantly cool, day after intensely sunny day. Nightly fogs arise from the cold ocean and creep inland, further cooling the vines and often lingering late into summer mornings before burning away under the blazing sun.
The finicky Pinot Noir grape responds to this climatic spa treatment with a rich concentration of black fruit flavors and an exotic cola component, big tannins, and gobs of color. But now further wrinkles are being found. The fog moves inland, swirling around the high protruding hilltops of the coastal range of steeply folded hills left from past upheavals in the Sonoma Coast’s very geologically active region. In Mendocino County, just north of Sonoma, these hilltop "islands in the fog" have been given their own appellation, the Mendocino Ridge AVA.
The west Sonoma County Pinot story started in the late 1960s when Joseph Swan, an airline pilot who frequently flew to France, fell in love with good Burgundy and brought back some cuttings from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Pinot Noir vines to plant on his property near Sebastopol in what is now the Russian River Valley AVA. Swan’s Pinots were good—and they created a stir among other growers and winemakers. Questions were asked: Could great Pinot Noir really be grown here? Would it age well? Just how good could it be?
By the mid- to late-1980s, you could draw a line between Sebastopol and Healdsburg to the north-east and be pretty sure the consistently best Pinot Noir in North America came from vineyards within a few miles on either side of the line.
These wineries tended to be little, the production small, the wines hand-made by folks like Swan, Burt Williams, Tom Dehlinger, Tom Rochioli, and Gary Farrell. This was the Russian River Valley before it became a certified BATF appellation, or AVA.
The chief contenders for Pinot’s North American quality crown were located in Oregon. Wineries like Ponzi, Amity, Sokol Blosser, Oak Knoll, and Rex Hill were making good Pinot in good years, but the consistency was ragged, and the Oregon wines didn’t have quite the concentration of the Sonoma County Pinots. Carneros Pinots at that time were generally too simple, although some of Sinskey’s and Saintsbury’s best efforts were strongly competitive. Central Coast wines, such as Sanford’s and Au Bon Climat’s, were sometimes too light and strawberry-fruity.
Over the ensuing years and through the 1990s, quality jumped forward all around. The Oregon wines improved tremendously. Carneros began to improve (and continues to improve, to the point that Acacia’s recent bottlings have all achieved GV500 scores near, at, or well above 90 points).
But it was the Russian River Valley wines that became the superstars. Williams & Selyem Winery led the way with bottles costing three figures—and when well aged from a good year, worth the money. Tom Dehlinger closed his tasting room. "I don’t have any wine to sell," he says. "It’s all bought up by the time I’m ready to ship it." The same held true for Gary Farrell and Rochioli Pinots.
And through the 1990s, new, major players entered the field. Kendall-Jackson created Hartford Court as its premier Pinot label to go along with its La Crema brand. Helen Turley made her reputation at Marcassin. Steve Kistler, long associated with top-notch Chardonnay, began making Pinot from grapes grown not far from Dehlinger and Swan, and Robert Parker gushed that Kistler’s Pinots were giving the great Burgundies a viable challenge.
More recent developments include outstanding Pinots from the Sonoma Coast, especially from Walt Flowers’ Camp Meeting Ridge vineyards and David Hirsch’s vineyards nearby. If you follow the Russian River west to the sea, you’ll come to the village of Jenner on U.S. Highway 1— the coast highway. Turn right and steep switchbacks will take you several miles north, then turn right onto Meyers Grade Road, and on the first ridge from the ocean, with spectacular views of the coastline, you’ll come to Flowers’ vineyards.
"Camp Meeting Ridge is at 1,300 feet, and I have vineyards up to 1,850 feet, but the fog only reaches up to 800 or 900 feet," Flowers says. "Daytime highs in summer are between 72 and 82, with nighttime temperatures in the low 50s. It’s similar to Burgundy and ideal for Pinot Noir. Except, by the end of August when Burgundy’s weather is chancy, ours stays steady." He gets $45 to $50 a bottle for his Camp Meeting Ridge Pinot, and in 1997 made 4,000 cases from 13 acres. That’s a gross income of over $2 million, or about $166,000 an acre. In 1998, his acreage pro-duced only 2,200 cases, so his average is less, but it’s easy to see why land with that kind of potential is subject to gold rush mentality.
I asked Flowers whether he’s noticed a lot of real estate activity out there and he just laughed. "Every square inch of land out here—people are trying to buy it up," he says. "Big Sonoma and Napa wineries are out here. Pahlmeyer just bought acreage for Pinot Noir near here. Peter Michael winery is here. Kendall-Jackson has land near Annapolis (a village near Flowers). Just in the last three years, people have tasted the Pinots coming from here and said, ‘Whoa! This must be the place!’ I think California Pinots have come up many notches in the last ten years, with Rochioli, Kistler, Dehlinger, and others leading the way."
He might have included himself, for his 1996 ‘Camp Meeting Ridge’ Pinot grabbed the top rating from the Wine Spectator. And something similar is happening to the north, in Mendocino County. Dan Duckhorn of the Napa Valley’s famed Merlot house, Duckhorn Vineyards, bought the old Obester Estate in Philo, in Mendocino’s Anderson Valley. Pinot will be the name of the game there, too.
Since 1994, Kistler has been buying Pinot from Flowers and Hirsch to augment his plantings on Vine Hill Road and his new plantings on old apple orchard land farther north toward Healdsburg. Kistler characterized the differences between Russian River and Sonoma Coast Pinots this way:
"Color and tannins in Sonoma Coast Pinots are much more pronounced," he says, "so I have to make sure I’m not extracting too much tannin. I have to choose clones that aren’t so tannic. There’s so much color in Sonoma Coast fruit that I don’t need long vatting times. And with shorter vatting, not as much tannin is extracted. Two weeks is about the limit on fermentation and vatting. Plus, I find wilder flavors and aromas come from coastal fruit."
Kistler says, "Russian River fruit is different. The tannins aren’t as pronounced. I can plant a whole range of clones, which adds complexity. And I can vat them in an extended maceration for three weeks. The Russian River fruit gives that typical black cherry and cola flavor and aroma."
Steve Prandini is a realtor who specializes in land in western Sonoma County. He says, "Not a lot of big blocks are available now. The big Napa wineries have been inquiring, but the big, choice ranches that were once in apples aren’t even getting on the market. I know one case where a winery went to a ranch owner whose land wasn’t for sale, knocked on the door, and said, ‘What would you sell this place for?’ The owner said, ‘Make me an offer I can’t refuse.’ The winery did, and the owner sold."
Prandini says good vineyard land in the Russian River Valley and western Sonoma County in general is going for close to $50,000 an acre. And that’s unimproved. Add at least $25,000 to plant, trellis, and irrigate the vines, and "maybe add even more with the new county environmental regulations and drainage rules."
"Available west Sonoma County land is almost impossible to find," says Mike Fitzpatrick of Century 21’s Healdsburg office. "You can almost name your price out here. The price has gone from the $15-to $20-thousand range to $40 thousand an acre in the last three or four years, and my guess is that vineyard acreage will reach $50 to $60 thousand an acre if it hasn’t reached that already."
Fitzpatrick doesn’t blame big Napa wineries for this. "A lot of people are making money in the stock market and in Internet startups in Silicon Valley," he says. "They’re looking for hobby vineyards where they can build multimillion-dollar homes. They don’t pay farm prices. They don’t need to turn a profit on the land. These are the people driving up the prices."
The truth is that a combination of wealthy younger folks looking for their piece of paradise and big established wineries looking to produce Pinot Noirs that can command three figures a bottle are working in tandem to create the land rush. As land developer Ron Neuman of Santa Rosa, who’s in the middle of several big west Sonoma land deals, says, "It’s berzerk!"
Compared to the Napa Valley, where the Chalone group’s recent acquisition of vineyard land cost close to $150 thousand an acre, great Pinot Noir land in Sonoma County at about one third that amount must seem like a bargain.
Kendall-Jackson recently purchased 300 acres in a very cool region between Sebastopol and the coastal village of Bloomfield, bringing its total west Sonoma acreage to between 600 and 700 acres. The fruit will be used for its La Crema and Hartford Court labels.
Craig Williams, vice president and winemaker at Joseph Phelps Vineyards in Napa, says the winery has just purchased 60 acres for Phelps near Freestone in western Sonoma County.
Freestone, a picture-postcard village nestled in the hills a few ridges back from the ocean and about 15 miles south of Jenner, is included in the Russian River Valley AVA, but probably shouldn’t be. Its land doesn’t drain to the Russian River, it’s a few miles inland from the town of Bodega (where Hitchcock filmed The Birds), it’s near sea level and subject to fogs, but it receives that blessed natural air conditioning as cool ocean air pours inland almost every summer afternoon. Williams and Joe Phelps set up a weather station there. "We were blown away by how different the climate is from Carneros, Monterey, Oregon, or Mendocino, for that matter. It seems to be perfect, and that’s exciting, but we’re several years away from even planting it. When we do, it will be the most expensive vineyard development we’ve ever done. Drain tiles, trellising, vine spacing—it’s all going to be well thought out.
"The real challenge," Williams says, "is not to be greedy. Volume isn’t going to result in quality. We’re going to do what it takes to get the quality this region has the potential to give."
And then with a twinkle in his voice, sounding like a little kid in a candy store, he said, "Wait’ll you find out who my next door neighbors are. We are in great company out here. We’re excited to be here, and the future of Sonoma Coast and Russian River Pinot Noirs is very bright."
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La Belle Frontier
California Late Bloomers of the Central Coast
by Lynn Stegner
Blind tastings are often an index of things to come for wine professionals. An insignificant tasting became the famous 1976 Paris Tasting when French winemakers voted dark-horse Napa the winner against first-growth Bordeaux wines. In that case Napa became the first real competition for Bordeaux. Are there other California regions that are mounting a simi-lar challenge to Bordeaux?
Back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, when I was working for a wine importer and distributor, California was not so sophisticated a market as it is today. In those days, the wine industry as a whole was more engaged in educating the public about wines—because it had to be. Our company held tastings for prospective accounts; and for clients, who included restaurant owners and wait staff, we offered seminars and component tastings, blind tastings, even unheard-of workshops on pairing foods with wines. But with all our efforts to introduce new wines and new ideas, there was one category of wine we avoided, because (as one of my colleagues put it) its nose could clear a room. These were Cabernets whose aromas were so vegetal, so herbaceous, that even hardened wine drinkers reeled. Without exception, these Cabernets carried a Monterey, Santa Cruz, or Central Coast appellation.
At about the same time, the story of California Cabernet was fast becoming the story of Napa Valley Cabernet, which rode the marketing juggernaut of the ’70s and ’80s, Robert Mondavi gripping the reins, to center ring in this country and in Europe as well. Under the wheels, or pushed to the sidelines, were the Cabernets from the Central Coast, and to a lesser extent, from Sonoma. It seems there were valid reasons for this. Though the Monterey area yielded exceptional Chardonnays (and, in the Santa Cruz Mountains, great Pinot Noirs) it was too cool for Cabernet. The grapes matured only to the limits of the ecosystem itself: the berries were too big, the foliage was too lush, and there was simply too much wind, water, and rich soil. In effect, the vines lived in a stress-free environment and, like spoiled children, never made anything of themselves. Thin, acidic Cabernets, redolent of asparagus and tobacco, were jettisoned cheaply, and it didn’t take more than a handful of vintages to give the entire region a black eye.
But no more. On July 9th of this year a Regional Winemakers Tasting was conducted in Sonoma’s General’s Daughter restaurant for Napa and Sonoma producers. Billed as a 1996 Bordeaux tasting, it included wines such as Lafite Rothschild, Lynch-Bages, Latour, L’Evangile, and Calon Segur. The winning wine was a 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon from J. Lohr’s Hilltop Vineyard in Paso Robles, a Central Coast sub-region. Lohr’s Seven Oaks Cabernet, which competes with Robert Mondavi’s wines, is also from Paso Robles and has already picked up a handful of gold medals. How has this happened?
A brief geography lesson: The Central Coast appellation is comprised of a region that stretches from the Livermore Valley west to San Jose, southwest over the Santa Cruz Mountains, continuing south through Monterey, Salinas, Paso Robles, and yet another hundred miles or so to the Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Barbara—two hundred miles of geophysical and climatic diversity. In short, it is a huge mosaic of regions not slightly, but radically, different from each other, and utterly unlike Napa, a single compact, consolidated valley less than 30 miles long where microclimate and other such fine-tunings carry weight. In the Central Coast small estate wineries such as Durney, Lohr, and Ridge coexist with commercial mega-holdings owned by Australian corporations; the two groups have exactly nothing to do with each other.
Historically, American premium winemakers who have been attracted to the area reflect the diversity of the land; they tend to be mavericks, intellectuals, people prone to—indeed, excited by— experimentation. Some have called them artists, visionaries, gentleman farmers; some are quixotic and swiftly fall by the side; others endure and are just plain crazy. But one thing is clear: they have been intent on making their own way across the New World landscape of winemaking, and with few, if any, Bordeaux connections. Napa Valley wines, particularly their Cabernets, have achieved the kind of renown that is often impervious to reality; that is, even if the wine is inferior, it still sells on reputation alone. The opposite holds for Central Coast Cabernets. Even when they are great, they have a hard time overcoming the market memory of all those green Cabs of the early ’80s, or distracting the consumer from the glitz of Napa (and for some time now, Sonoma) long enough to discover the quiet dignity and elegance of so many of the wines from the "Territories."
When Jerry Lohr left his native South Dakota, where he had grown up on a farm, and came out to California (to earn an M.S. from Stanford in Civil Engineering, and later to work at NASA Ames Research Center) he probably could not have imagined that he would end up back on a farm. But his interest in grape-growing regions would not be denied, and by 1972 he had planted 280 acres at Greenfield Vineyards in Monterey County, which led inevitably to a winery in Silicon Valley. Ten years later he was down to white varieties in Monterey, Cabernet having been unreservedly exiled from his Monterey vineyards and his roster of wines.
Then, in the mid-’80s, he happened to taste a Cabernet from Adelaida Cellars of Paso Robles. Lohr was so impressed with the wine (and thus the region) that he purchased what eventually became 500 acres of vineyards on a high plateau between two rivers just east of Paso Robles. According to Lohr the area is ideal for world-class Cabernet. There is a fifty- to sixty-degree temperature fluctuation between day and night, with ripening heat during the day followed by cool marine air that moves inland during the late afternoon, resulting in excellent flavor/structure balance; poor gravelly soils and a shortage of water, which promote small berries (character intensity); and small leaves for optimum sun exposure.
What Lohr does not say is that Paso Robles’ high daytime temperatures can severely stress Cabernet Sauvignon vines. With Chardonnay, post-harvest tinkering is a feasible and potentially salutary option, but with Cabernet, the quality and disposition of the wine is established long before the grapes are even picked. According to Lohr, "Cabernet is made in the vineyard," a point of view borne out by his vigilant attention to the nuances of terroir (and to irrigation, for that matter).
He is not alone. Gary Eberle of Eberle Winery in Paso Robles regards Cabernet as his best wine. "No region," he remarked during a recent conversation, "grows any better fruit of the Bordelaise varieties than Paso Robles. The region got a bum rap," he says, because of the Monterey experience with Cabernet. But during the early ’70s UC Davis was urging Cabernet (a big-cluster clone, which was unsuitable) throughout the Central Coast ad nauseam, without having conducted direct long-term fieldwork. It would have demonstrated the incompatibility of Cabernet to most of Monterey County (the exception is the Carmel Valley). A Cabernet blend from Justin Winery in Paso Robles recently garnered the World’s Best Blended Red Wine award in London, eclipsing such greats as Pichon Lalande.
It is in the nature of pioneers to be iconoclastic, and yet even highly respected originals like Paul Draper of Ridge and Justin Baldwin of Justin Winery have perhaps felt at times that they couldn’t get any respect, although the consistent quality of their wines deserves recognition from the self- appointed establishment—Club Napa. In the past, the record of consumer purchases, tasting results, publication copy, and wine list inclusion may have given the impression that wines from the Central Coast, particularly Cabernets, would always be the bridesmaids, never the brides.
Unlike Robert Mondavi, who promoted the entire region of Napa Valley, the winemakers of the Central Coast have promoted their own brands. But what else could they do? They themselves were (and are) highly dispersed, and the appellation is simply too amorphous, too multiform, and, finally, too unexplored to have found its voice or identity yet.
Regional spokesman Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard near Santa Cruz regards the Central Coast as the Rhône Valley of California. He considers appellations merely marketing ploys and of no significance anymore, and insists on making eclectic proprietary wines (Mediterranean varietals and blends, as he calls them) that are serious in quality despite their whimsical presentations. Consumers have come to trust his eccentricity. "To me, that’s not what wine is about, fetish-istically replicating the same experience over and over again," he said in an 1998 interview (Appellation). "It’s about preparing yourself for a mystery, for something you’ve never experienced before." And though Justin Winery offers more traditional wines—Cabernet (his focus), Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc—Baldwin concurs with Grahm. "The Gen-X crowd is eschewing tradition," he says, "and looking for great wine, not great labels."
If Napa and Bordeaux represent the royal regions, the walled cities of wine—often corporate funded, technically classical, and conservative, communal in terms of sharing methodology and data, varietally homogeneous, and perhaps, well, more pretentious—then the Central Coast is, or is closer to, a kind of belle frontier. "Land prices make more sense here," to quote Justin Baldwin’s enormous understatement. The wineries may tend to be small, individually or family owned, undercapitalized, and French inspired, though few have the French connections of Napa’s Dominus, Chandon, or Opus. Undoubtedly, the Central Coast has been more adventurous when it comes to matching variety to terroir. Some of J. Lohr’s wines include a Syrah from Paso Robles, a Valdiguie (similar to Gamay), and their long-popular Pinot Blanc; Eberle’s Côtes du Robles is a blend of five different Rhone varieties—Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Counoise, and Viognier. Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat located in the southernmost reach of the Central Coast appella-tion regards his winemaking as authentically Burgundian both by temperament and terroir. Char-donnay and Pinot Noir are well suited to the cool Santa Ynez Valley, though he also grows Barbera and Nebbiolo. David Bruce and Mount Eden Vineyards (they sold Martin Ray winery), located in the Santa Cruz Mountains, have released some stunning estate Pinot Noirs and Char-donnays over the years. And none can overlook the late Dick Graff’s contributions to the use of Burgundian winemaking methods in California, epitomized by his ’74 Chardonnay from Chalone that outshone the white Burgundies at the 1976 Paris tasting.
What’s missing from the Central Coast equation? Perhaps only time, a long track record of great wines. But there is another, less recognized factor that has had a tendency to shape the historical prejudice toward Cabernets from Napa and Sonoma, and to disregard or neglect those from other regions—namely, the home team phenomenon, or the house palate. It isn’t just winemakers north of San Francisco thinking that their wines are better; their palates have been conditioned to perceive excellence as equivalent to, as embodied by, the characteristics of their own wines. If veteran critics, winemakers, and the cognoscenti could get over the familiar taste of home, as it were, and allow their palates to appreciate universals such as balance, texture, and elegance, there would be—in fact there are—many more Cabernets from Paso Robles, the Santa Cruz Mountains, and elsewhere on the Central Coast stepping to the fore.
And oh, the places you’ll go, the wines you’ll drink . . . J. Lohr Hillside Vineyard Cabernet, Ridge Montebello, Justin Isosceles . . . oh, the places you’ll go.
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Napa Valley is on Par With Bordeaux
Napa Valley’s flagship Cabernets join their Bordeaux counterparts at the pinnacle of prestige and success
by Jeff Cox
When I first started getting seriously interested in wine, about 1970, the Great Growths of Bor-deaux stood alone as the apotheosis of wine. The very idea that California Cabernet Sauvignon would someday rank right up there with Latour and Lafite would have seemed ludicrous.
Well, it’s happened. "In the last five years," says Bruce Kaiser of Butterfield & Butterfield, the San Francisco business that auctions a lot of top-end wine, "Napa Valley Cabernets are considered world class wines—they’re a force to be reckoned with."
In fact, the rise of the Napa Valley’s Bordeaux-style wines to global preeminence is the big wine story of the last half of the twentieth century, a story that’s still being written today. How did it come to pass that a small valley in Northern California could challenge, equal, and sometimes even best the great wines of Bordeaux?
In 1971, two developments changed the world for the Napa Valley. First, Maynard Amerine, the UC Davis professor who was the California authority on how to run vineyards and make bulk wine, retired. And second, the French discovered the Napa Valley. Moët & Chandon decided to make sparkling wine. John Goelet of Barton & Guestier, who could have started a winery anywhere in the world, including Bordeaux, chose a Napa Valley site for his Cabernet plantings, calling it Clos du Val. And behind the scenes was always André Tchelistcheff, a French-trained Russian winemaker who, through his decades making the Georges de Latour Private Reserve Cabernet wines at Beaulieu, and excellent wines elsewhere, lighted the way to success for succeeding Napa Valley winemakers.
When the valley’s wine industry let go the hand of UC Davis and grasped the hand of the French, quality began to zoom upward. Through the 1970s and 1980s, crucial decisions were made: to concentrate on Bordeaux varieties, especially the Cabernet Sauvignon grape that produces such exquisite wines in Napa’s climate; to use the French experience to redesign vineyard trellising systems and vine spacings for increased quality; to import French oak barrels, and so forth.
A major figure in French winemaking at that time was Baron Philippe de Rothschild at Château Mouton-Rothschild. Fresh from the 1975 success of having his château elevated to Grand Cru status, he saw the potential of the Napa Valley and approached Robert Mondavi with the idea of a joint venture. And Opus One was born, with its first release in 1979 at an unheard-of $50 a bottle. When the snickering and scoffing died down, Opus One stood as the self-appointed leader of the pack, the one wine from the Napa Valley that, when chosen for a business dinner, told the client, "You’re worth it."
Finicky, albeit traditional, French techniques were introduced at Opus, such as the use of grape sorting tables, extra-gentle handling of the bunches, and other hands-on, small-batch methods that produce the kind of quality that distinguishes Bordeaux’s exalted wines.
Finally we reach the current era of the 1990s, with wholesale replantings of vines due to the phyl-loxera scourge. Vineyards that had been planted to UC Davis recommendations for rootstocks, spacings, and trellising were changed to French vineyard styles, better rootstocks, and high-qual-ity French clones of Bordeaux varieties. The introduction of French management and marketing techniques also began making a difference.
The change to the new era of the 1990s is summed up by Joseph Phelps’ vice president and wine-maker Craig Williams this way: "We did good work in the 1970s and 1980s, but really pushed the envelope in the 1990s. Early on, we saw ourselves as a winery that processed grapes, buying them from all over and making wine under the Phelps label. A profound development happened when we began to see ourselves as an estate bottler. Through the 1980s we developed our estate vine-yards, and now we have two key parcels, one in Rutherford and one in Stags Leap, that are the framework and foundation of our Insignia program. Between 85 and 95 percent of our Insignia wine comes from estate fruit."
Williams says that real progress occurred when Phelps introduced French vineyard management techniques at its new estate vineyards. "We realized that the old UC Davis model using heat sum-mations wasn’t enough," he says. [Heat summations divide California into five zones based on a total number of degree days, which indicates which varities will ripen well in those zones. It’s a rather simple yardstick that has been supplanted by more complex assessments.] "We had to look at the soil, drainage, calcium-to-magnesium ratios, and the use of phylloxera-resistant rootstocks that can be extremely sensitive to drought."
The French influence was also felt at Mondavi through the Opus One venture, as traditional Bordeaux grape growing and winemaking techniques were implemented. Other wineries saw what was happening and, all over the Napa Valley, changes were made. Through the 1990s, the quality of its Bordeaux-style wines took giant leaps forward.
But it wasn’t just a one-way street, according to Roger Asleson of Opus One. "Yes, the French had a lot to do with the success of the Napa Valley in terms of vineyards and techniques, but the Americans don’t play second fiddle to anyone in marketing. The Great Growth French châteaux are good at managing exclusivity, but American wineries know how to market their wines to the U.S. market."
Asleson says the French-American partnership as it has developed in the Napa Valley has benefited both countries: "Wines like Opus One and Insignia are presented like the French châteaux, that is, brand names that don’t emphasize the grape varietals. In the south of France, though, they’re beginning to name wines varietally. So I see a cross-fertilization between France and the Napa Valley."
In case production, the flagship wines of the Napa Valley—produced by Caymus, Phelps, Beringer, Mondavi, Beaulieu, Far Niente, and Montelena—are also becoming more like Bordeaux’s Great Growths, which produce around 20,000 cases a year.
All of these Napa Valley wines share certain characteristics that make them similar to top-end Bordeaux. They are all high quality, high price (over $60 a bottle, with many much higher; the 1996 Opus One is $125 a bottle and the 1996 Insignia is $95), and high production. That means that retailers and restaurants can rely on their availability and consumers can rely on their quality—even though they have to pay dearly for it.
Does it also mean that these flagship wines have the worldwide cachet of Great Growth Bordeaux? "The quality is there, and Opus One is very strong," says Butterfield & Butterfield’s Kaiser, "but there’s not the international demand that the French wines have. California’s flagship wines were being snapped up by the Asian market, but the Asian economic collapse stopped that. The French wines start expensive and they stay expensive, probably because they last longer at their peak drinking plateau. With top-end California Cabernets, it’s more vintage driven. Mondavi Reserves from 1978 and 1984—great years—increase in value, but other years not so much. Except for Opus. Any vintage of Opus sells. The restaurants all say, ‘I gotta have Opus.’ "
It’s also true that the category of Napa flagship wines with volume and prices over $60 a bottle is not growing. Not only are new wineries not joining this elite group, but aggregate sales in this cat-egory are down from 137, 500 cases in 1998 to 116, 500 cases in 1999. The quality and availabil-ity are there, but the weakness in sales is due to the extremely high prices.
And what about Sonoma County? Only Carmenet’s Moon Mountain Estate Reserve Meritage Red is the equal of Napa-based wineries when it comes to performance—combining price and volume.
While the Napa Valley is now recognized as the home of a handful of great wines that can equal the Great Growths of Bordeaux, the region still has a way to go before there’s true equivalency. For true equivalency, the valley will have to see world recognition for more of its flagship wines and especially for its second growths. The valley has now developed a nexus of businesses— international financiers, wine labs, technical experts, grower and winery associations, wine-oriented accounting firms, barrel makers, cork producers, label designers, four-star restaurants, and all the rest that goes into making world-class wine in a world-class region—that will help development.
The bottom line is that right now only Opus One stands at the very pinnacle along with the Great Growths of Bordeaux, but Insignia is moving up very, very close. Another group of wineries that combine high quality, high price, and high volume is poised to join them. The movement is up and the future is bright—as long as prices can be controlled.
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The Democracy of Wine
By Lynn Stegner
It is human nature to compare and calibrate everything from wit to wine, but the American temperament seems to resist final codification, a characteristic which may render any speculation about a rating system for wine just that—idle speculation. Bordeaux’s classification system has held its own for almost 150 years, despite a steady undercurrent of controversy and complaint, perhaps because the French seem, on the whole, more comfortable as a people with the idea of a canon of appraisal. But what is it exactly that so offends Americans, and how then should we as consumers adjudicate quality in wine?
In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political scientist and statesman, visited the United States in order to study the then remarkable fact of political and social equality, a visit which resulted in his classic treatise, Democracy in America. What he came to understand 170 years ago applies perhaps even more so now: "Equality, which makes men independent of one another, naturally gives them the habit and taste to follow nobody’s will but their own in their private affairs. This . . . makes them suspicious of all authority. [They] . . . have a natural bias toward free institutions." Even Tocqueville, a foreigner, swiftly realized that there was little affection for the statist view in America. Which leaves us with the push and shove of the marketplace, and a de facto classification system in the wine industry that can reflect genuine quality over 30 years, perhaps, but does not do so reliably over shorter periods of time.
A collage of independent, often random, sometimes antagonistic, and rarely coordinated rating strategies function throughout today’s consumer market, all sending messages ("offering advice") to the buyer, who, if he is not overwhelmed, is at least disconcerted. By definition commercial hype has the loudest voice and again, in the short run, potency beyond reason. This year, for instance, hype catapulted a Cabernet with (one hopes) the discrepant name, Screaming Eagle, to stratospheric prices—half a million for a six-liter bottle at the Napa Valley Wine Auction. Perhaps the wine is terrific—let us assume that it is—but one cannot help suspecting that the sheer momentum of media buzz corrupted the democracy of Screaming Eagle among its peers.
In much the same way that "Image is Everything" became a pop culture battle cry during the nineties, it is this kind of wild excess, coupled with ubiquitous and clichéd overstatements about cult wines, that has established an ephemeral rating system which finds peculiar favor among Americans. But for a while the spin doctors have their say, and they can say enough to sell out a vintage before anyone knows what exactly is in the bottle, and where it will be in, say, 10 or 20 years.
Wine buyers for state-controlled liquor stores, like The Wine Store in Salt Lake City, make their selections, which again constitute a de facto rating system, since one man—Brett Clifford, the omnipotent palate—makes virtually all final decisions for the state of Utah. Placement on wine lists, particularly celebrated ones, shelf facings in stores, and of course pricing comprise smaller rating systems. But by far the most influential and, for that reason, potentially dangerous, are the wine magazines, most of whose evaluations are based on organoleptic results—the ever mercurial, yet strangely almighty subjective. By assigning numerical values to the opinion—a 100-point scale, for instance—the subjective appears objective. "This country is numerically oriented," remarked Michael Quinttus, Senior Vice President for Kobrand. "Any formalized rating system for California is premature," he added. "There hasn’t been time enough to discern a story of quality. In Santa Barbara, for instance, most of the vines are less than ten years old. Napa Valley, as the longest planted, would be the first area susceptible to a rating system." France has had the benefit of centuries of trial and error data, he pointed out. The AOC system in Burgundy merely codified what everyone already knew, and had known for a very long time – what grew best where. Whoever knows the ages of the stone walls in Burgundy that demarcate vineyards and quality differences knows how long it takes to establish an authentic and reliable identification of merit.
If a rating system like the 1855 Classification of Bordeaux is The Thing Itself—the noun, as it were—then here in America what we have are stand-ins for such a system—we have pronouns. Among other things, we have commercial wine magazines. The Wine Enthusiast may praise Wine X while the Wine Spectator strikes it from the rolls. The Wine Buyers Guide may take no note at all of a winery the Wine Advocate regularly reviews. "It’s an informal system," says Michael Quinttus. "It has validity to the degree you respect that particular writer’s opinion."
So how does one sort it all out? Wouldn’t a classification system, even a loosely constructed one established by a panel of reputable industry members, and subject to biannual review, provide an educative guide to the consumer? Wouldn’t a little solid ground be . . . well . . . nice? And if so, on what would it be based—trailing averages (a combination of prices and volumes compiled over some years)? Caymus Vineyards has an enviable trailing average, one of the highest in the industry. Volatility invites demerit. But with the newer cult wines, which have no established track records that either elevate or diminish market estimation, the field is open, the critics all-embracing, and the groupies assembling.
Here in America, and in particular, in California, the process of identifying what grape varieties are best suited to which locations—terroir-specific wines—is in medias res; it is an explorative/cartographic process which will take many decades as vineyards are planted/replanted, and new viticultural techniques are essayed, and the vintages mount up over generations. While there has been some controversy over appellations, especially the ones that command the highest prices (Napa, for example), the fact that there is a readily perceivable harmony or disharmony between grape variety and location is indisputable. Pinot Noir did not do well in the Greenfield district of the Central Coast, it was green and vegetal; but Pinot Noir from the Russian River Valley of Sonoma can be exceptionally good. On the other hand, Chardonnays from the Monterey area are usually superior to Chardonnays from the Napa Valley, and in fact most of the Chardonnay vineyards in the valley have been grafted over to Cabernet Sauvignon. The task, simply, is to match-make, and few maintain any illusions about the sizable time ingredient. But to say out loud which are the best vineyards and/or wineries, and arrange them in a fixed, five-point scale generates all manner of agitation among industry professionals. To begin with, the industry needs time, and then more time, to map out those appellations, and to evaluate what Warren Winiarski of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars calls "the agency factor."
"Here in California it’s the producer, it’s making choices that allow the terroir to speak," he said during a recent interview, "and since humans change, so do the style and quality. We think more in terms of changes, while the French emphasis is on site, on quality due to its unchanging character." Winiarski offers some old buzz when he recalls that it was the 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon that won the Paris L’Academie du Vin tasting in 1976, a triumph that sent a warning shot over the bow of the French wine industry, as well as telling it "not to take their classification system for granted." As for cult wines and reckless prices, Winiarski admits that "the force of the free market can delude or obscure quality." But, he added, excellence is a combination of "ground, grapes, and the guy," and eventually that "excellence will out. You have to have a certain amount of faith."
Faith indeed. And time. A small winery making splendid wines with limited resources may not get the attention it deserves, perhaps because it does not woo the wine writers, or does not submit wines to the "right" tastings, or get samples to the influential buyers, or spin the tale that enchants. For such a winery time is money, and both can run out before the uncorrupted consumer has a chance to discover it. The trouble with our anarchistic system is that there are middlemen who presort and sift and then "offer up for discovery" chosen wines to the consumer. While some advantages accrue to the consumer as a result of this sequence, there are obvious drawbacks, not the least of which is that many wines are completely eliminated from the sampling and rating scene.
The Classification of 1855 in Bordeaux was based primarily on the historical market prices of the wine—trailing averages, as it were, that extended over many decades. Thus, their sampling was at the very least statistically formidable. Their selections arose not from tasting the wines, which would have invited personal prejudice, but from the performance of the properties over time. But the system focused on the Médoc, leaving out Pomerol and St.-Émilion, regions whose wines were considered inferior. A hundred years later St.-Émilion was classified, and around the same time, Graves. Château Pétrus in Pomerol— which has never been rated—is considered equal to a first growth.
Michael Quinttus believes that the St.-Émilion system provides a model as to "how to do it properly." In order to stay current, an official body convenes every 10 years to reevaluate the rating of each chateau, which it then affirms, demotes, or promotes. Judgment is based on "reputation, soil analysis, and tasting." The German model requires that wineries submit wines annually to tasting panels in order to maintain the privilege of indicating appellation on the label, a system Quinttus regards as "overly complex and overly comprehensive." As far as the 1855 Classification, Quinttus believes that it has achieved an "icon status. No one has dared to attack it officially, except Mouton." It appears to be virtually impervious to revision.
What is interesting about the 1855 system is that while it acknowledged that terrain was important, it recognized the proprietor’s management, together with his supporting cast of winemakers and cellar crew, as the final determination of quality, and therefore profit margin and market price. Classed growths were continually adding to and subtracting from their vineyard holdings, as well as altering the planting mix. "They are not vine museums whose purpose is to preserve the aspect of a nineteenth-century vineyard," says Dewey Markham, Jr. in his most recent book 1855: A History of the Bordeaux Classification. By the same token, the system recognized the vicissitudes of fortune that all wineries face—a decline in resources, a new owner, a descendent with straying interests – and would not demote a chateau based on even a 50-year run of disappointing wines. In France the agency factor is at least as important as location, location, location.
The main problem in terms of the authority of the 1855 system, according to Markham, is that it may be regarded as a "snapshot" of Bordeaux at that time, of the chateaux producing great or inferior wines, as well as the drinking public’s preference for certain characteristics which are, like all things, subject to change. Properties who did not make the cut then, but who have since established a record of making wines equal or even superior to their classed brethren, may not inscribe their labels with the highly profitable words cru classé. While the market makes its own blunt adjustments, and the wines may fetch fair or fitting prices, for these just-under-the-line properties, the row is harder to hoe.
Gerald Boyd, who writes for the San Francisco Chronicle, remarked during a recent conversation that here in America the industry has historically wanted some kind of classification system, but that now there is a feeling or a movement away from ratings, a desire to have "the wine prove itself." He added, "Everybody is brand-oriented here. If it was only California, or only red wines or Cabernets . . . but there are so many regions. A classification system would put people off." As far as the wine magazines go, he suggested that they’re "preaching to the choir," and that "one reason why wine consumption in this country moves at a snail’s pace is that there is little to no generic wine promotion." Read: promotion of affordable wines. In Wine Spectator’s California Wine Jim Laube, who has designed his own five-star rating system, says that he "deliberately focused on the finest wines." But perhaps the most salient point Boyd made with regard to an American classification system was that many wineries produce a variety of wines, sometimes multiples of single varietals, which would render the blueprint for a classification system dauntingly complex.
Jeff Morgan, a buyer for Dean & DeLuca, sees no need for a classification system here: "It would run against our free-wheeling American ethos." The market itself provides a "self-codifying process," he added. Cult wines with over-inflated reputations do not concern him either. "The prices that are manifested at the Napa Valley wine auction are not in any way indicative of real prices. They are a hierarchical indication of perceived quality." But what exactly shapes those perceptions of quality?
At this point it may be useful to note that there is in fact consumer demand for a rating system by the wine industry itself, but the industry has refused to provide ratings. Currently, we are the only significant wine-producing nation in the world that relies upon a media-based rating system.
Of the dozens of wine magazines, journals, newsletters, and buying guides published in this country, by far the most influential is the Wine Spectator. One assumes that in such a position the magazine feels not only a journalistic responsibility to its readership, but a collegial responsibility to the industry it seeks to interpret. Yet it declined to participate in a discussion of a classification system. In response to a request for an interview Jim Laube said he would "pass." One of the Spectator’s vice presidents called to explain that they regarded other magazines as "the competition." Matt Kramer, who writes for the Spectator, did offer a few opinions, but when asked if he thought there was any demand or need for a classification system in this country, he replied, "What’s the point? It’s not useful to us, and it wouldn’t work here. And anyway," Kramer added, "we have the Wine Spectator." Perhaps this statement, more than any other, suggests the need for a system that is less prejudicial and less self-patronizing. Even the sometimes-harsh evaluations of the free market, which eventually lead to gradations, are preferable to directives from on high.
In all likelihood the sheer momentum of globalization will force the emergence of an industry-based classification, but at the moment the wine industry in this country seems to have little or no disposition toward such a system, if only because it opposes our national character and philosophy. Americans are accustomed not only to equality of condition, but an equality of potential. We insist upon the equal right to improve, to be the best, even while in so improving we create ascending and descending levels of quality. We create inequality. Here again is Tocqueville: "They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow."
The 1855 Classification of Bordeaux does some, though not all, of the work for the consumer. No one interviewed had any unwarranted credulity in it. A system so dogmatic has, perhaps, little chance of survival today. In our country we have an array of opinions about an array of wines, we have the market, we have pricing, we have wine list inclusions and wine shop selections, we have ads and the ever-present buzz of hyperbole, and we have our own palates. No one here should suffer unwarranted credulity in any one of these sources. It’s a messy mortal scene . . . and it’s all we have.
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About Us
We're part of what you are seeing and tasting right now, the emergence of a quality movement within the California wine industry. Exponential increases in wine quality in Napa Valley and elsewhere is the result. Napa is "Bordeaux in America". What's next? We offer quality analysis and software products, the logistical support, that allows California's top winemakers to change winemaking on-the-fly to create some of the world's finest wines. The secret is out, too. We are the commercial leader in California viticulture and enology.
OUR INNOVATION IS QUALITY RECOGNITION SOFTWARE
How winemakers Cross the 90-Point Break.
American wine is a highly competitive entrepreneurial business for profit and a cultural intersection where we discuss quality. Can the two coexist? Here are some thoughts.
In a recent article business pundit Michael Porter said a universal driver of profits is the "sustainable competitive advantage, which allows a company to outperform the average." If you read our "national wine critics" the "advantage" is wine quality on the 100-point scale. The average wine scores 85-points. How do you get an advantage?
Winemaking is not a science. That is why since the 1970s, California's independent winemakers have had an aversion to Technology of Winemaking (Amerine et al) and a fondness for the low-technology that was developed 150 years ago on French wine-farms (see Knowing and Making Wine, Peynaud). California winemakers were avoiding technology coming from researchers because science has been linked to mass-production. Technology became an anathema for wine marketers.
The secret is that American winemakers have used Enologix information technology (IT) to cross the 90-point break since the mid-1990s. We offer logistical support that allows fine winemakers to change operations while they are occuring. Enologix reports can be used to say how to protect quality using traditional methods.
Enologix developed quality-recognition software aimed at winemakers who advocate low-technology. It uses scientific analysis of wine to determine its quality components. It is the leading provider of wine quality metrics to California winemakers. Independent consulting viticulturists and winemakers use it as a wine operating system (LM Brooks Consulting, Zach Berkowitz Vineyard Consulting). Now it is spreading to Oregon, Washington and Long Island winemakers, too. Consumer wine ratings are available through Global Vintage™, which has merged with Enologix.
The software helps the wine industry improve quality and performance in all phases of its business. Now the winemaker can sip and taste through barrels that will ultimately yield fine California or French wines, while all the technical data he needs is in the laptop by his side. "Winemaking is an art, not a science," says Enologix President Leo McCloskey, "and the informed artist simply makes better decisions."
About five years ago, Enologix began as a service that analyzed samples of young wines to assess their quality and predict their acceptance in the marketplace. Over the years, the firm's database of information has grown enormously and powerful new functions have become possible. Now Enologix has integrated its information and functions into software it calls the Quality Management System (QMS).
QMS adds value to vineyard techniques, to winemaking techniques, to a winery's sales effort, and ultimately to the wine in the marketplace. As a result, consumers get high quality at the right price, which develops brand loyalty, and the winery gets an enhanced reputation and a better bottom line.
Everyone in the wine business knows that grape-growing, winemaking, and sales have highly technical components. In the vineyard, for just one example, infrared scanning from aircraft is used to assess vineyard health. The winemaker has a laboratory to analyze juice and musts, spinning cones, and micro-oxygenation technology at his disposal. Even the business office uses high-tech software to analyze and improve sales results. QMS software ties the technologies of grape growing, winemaking, and pricing together in important new ways that take regionalism into account.
At the QMS Client Service Center at the Enologix website, viticulturists can find standards for grape quality, assess yields, and see vineyard reports that are regional, statewide, and even international. By analyzing data from many vineyard reports, QMS establishes standards of quality, so that a grower can see where he's succeeding and where work needs to be done.
Winemakers can use QMS software to record their own, independent methods; inputting data for their techniques and wines that then can be compared to industry-wide or regional quality standards. The software also provides a sampling calendar that advises them on exactly what to sample and the optimum times for sampling, to get the best possible information on which to base their winemaking decisions.
Regionality is a big part of QMS's power. It can tell whether a winemaker's techniques improve wine quality on an appellation to appellation basis. Scientists have devised many schemes for quantifying wine quality, but they don't do it on a regional basis. And yet, the right methods for the Napa Valley are probably not the right methods for Paso Robles; and are certainly not right for France. The UC Davis flavor wheel is an attempt to standardize the terms used to describe wine, but the terms in actual use are regional in nature because the wines are regional in nature. The wheel is seldom if ever used in the cellars of the Napa Valley or France. QMS gives winemakers regional answers to regional questions based on regional winemaking techniques. When it comes to fine winemaking, one size does not fit all.
On the marketing front, Enologix is the only company that includes a wine quality variable in its marketing model. Other systems make price models, but they are always missing that important variable. This quality variable is so important, that without it, the model is incorrect. Enologix provides a model that incorporates all the significant variables in the market that affect pricing. These include volume produced, national wine critics' ratings, regional winemakers' ratings, the force of brand recognition, advertising budgets, and the GV 500 score; a mark unique to Enologix that evaluates wine quality by technical analysis of the wine, benchmarked against similar wines from around the world.
Thus, the marketing software can analyze a price to see whether a wine is overpriced, underpriced, or priced correctly. A winery can then compare their pricing with their competitors. When the client's wine is correctly priced and the competitor's wine is overpriced, there are two results. First, the consumer begins to recognize the value in the client's wine ("It's a good buy") and sales increase. Second, profits are therefore maximized.
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Burgundy in America
Symposium-April 4, 2001
Burgundy in America: Luxury California Chardonnay
by Client Services, Enologix, Sonoma, CA
Enologix® quality management systems is sponsoring a series of special symposia to make winemaking better for each major varietal. Symposia themes focus on systems to help winemakers beat the market performance averages with respect to quality and price. Discussions about strategies and winemaking are led by today’s industry leaders. The philosophies and practices of successful winemaking, and the problems and limits of scaling production of fine wine are addressed. Discussions focus on the increasingly important link between consumer markets and success. The unique role of the critics in determining quality is considered for the varietal by a media pundit. A recommendation is made to those interested in combining price, volume and quality. The symposia ends with a strategic solution.
The Symposia all follow the pattern. The first Symposium, Bordeaux in America, was held on April 5th |
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