Turkey day again

Last year I covered Zinfandel and Thanksgiving dinner so I won't go into it again here, but I wanted to give a quick update.

One of the things I love most about Zinfandel is the predominance of old vines yielding exquisite fruit. Alas, the writing is on the wall, and those old vines are getting, well... old.

Enjoy them while you can, but eventually there will be a whole lot fewer old vine Zins. Why? Time marching on.

That whole pesky Prohibition thing didn't do much for the wine industry, and even less for the vineyards. The old Zin vines are primarily pre-prohibition, and there wasn't a lot of Zin planted again until the later half of the 20th century.

So, if you haven't gotten out yet to enjoy a fine Zinfandel, this turkey day may be your big chance. My recent tasting has shown an overall decline in the average quality of Zinfandel, even from some trusted producers, and this trend is likely to continue.

Fortunately, Pinot Noir and Riesling are on the rise, have I mentioned that yet?

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Why Cab is King

Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the best known wine grapes and most popular styles of wine, world wide. The chief grape of Bordeaux, Cab has traveled the globe, conquering vineyards and supplanting the local varieties.

Cabs are often tannic wines, both from the grape and from being aged extensively in oak. Such wines need years, even decades to soften and approach their peaks. How is it that a wine that is so often incredibly expensive and meant for aging has become the darling of casual sippers on nearly every continent?

Most wine lovers follow a pattern in their education. I certainly did, and my casual straw poll over the years has revealed this common process:

Stage 1: Discovery - The earliest wines tend to be light, inexpensive, and often of poor quality. The occasional bottle of better wine is tasted, and soon it becomes evident that there are higher quality wines to seek out. For many these first wines are white.

Stage 2: Exploration - As one starts to taste more wines, they learn that there are that many more to seek out. The realization of the variety of wine is overwhelming, and some find a niche and stick to it, while others press on. Beaujolais and other lighter reds are the first foray into red wine for many.

Stage 3: Realization - Not all wine drinkers get to this stage, but those that do have started to notice a quality difference, not just regional or varietal difference in wines. Merlot and Chardonnay are often favorites at this point. The strong wine making flavors of oak and diacetyl (butter flavor) are prevalent in these wines and they add a pleasing complexity.

Stage 4: Bigger is Better - This stage is often linked to testosterone. Not that many women don't share this point of development, but men rarely miss it. This is the early Cabernet Sauvignon stage. The taster has discovered tannin, and likes it. Big wines, thick with tannin are common (I could stand a fork up in the wines I liked at this stage). Those who have the wherewithal or opportunity may venture into Bordeaux, Super Tuscans, or Barolos at this point. There is another common feature to those at this juncture - even for those who don't go for the tannins - a nearly uncontrollable urge to stop at out of the way liquor stores to see if they have any bargains.

Stage 5: My Taste is OK - After all of the wines one has tasted to get to this point, an amazing thing happens. People often become more comfortable with their own ability to chose wines. I am going to show my bias here and suggest that this is where people learn about Pinot Noir/Burgundy and Rielsing/Germany. These lighter nuanced wines are often appreciated by those that have more to compare them to.

Stage 6+: Wine Geek - Needless to say, I am a wine geek. I love all things technical (and not just about wine). Some of us just can't resist learning every little detail about every subject, and so wine is perfect for us. Wine is not only fun to drink, it is fun to study (if you are like me). It has endless complexity and variables, and just when you think you know what you are talking about, it all changes. I am not sure if there is any specific wine that illustrates this point in wine education, perhaps a willingness to try them all.

Whew, even for me that was a long winded tangent. Believe it or not I am about to tie it in with the original premise.

Cabernet Sauvignon is popular because...

The average New World wine drinker, especially in the US, is at Stage 4. Stage 5 is looming, hence the recent surge in the popularity of Pinot Noir. I am working hard to bring Riesling to the fore as well.

Wine drinkers are starting to gain confidence, and as they do, there is a world of wine out there, just waiting for them. Most will never aspire to actual geekdom, but many will find their tastes changing, and it will be fun to see what trends that precipitates.

What is in a name?

A rose by any other name... The Bard knew of what he spoke, at least when it comes to roses, and Montagues. For wine on the other hand, a name is all important, even when it may be misleading.

Europe primarily uses place names for their wines, while the US, and most of the New World, uses varietal labeling. In theory this allows you to know what you are getting, without having to look up a place name for the allowed varietals. This is the theory. As with almost everything, the reality is more complicated than the theory.

In most of the US a wine need only have 75% of the grape listed on the label. This allows Cabernet Sauvignon to be blended with Merlot, and vice versa, a blend that has a long tradition and works well. Blending is a wonderful thing, and often I have written, extolling its virtues.

But, there is another side to the blending story. What of grapes, notably Pinot Noir, that are traditionally not blended with other varieties? Until recently it was relatively rare to find other grapes blended in with Pinot Noir.

No doubt, this was due in part to a succession of scandals in Burgundy, where Pinot Noir may not be blended with another grape (much less wine from Algeria and the like).

Blending Pinot Noir was off limits in the minds of most wine makers, and so it was rare, until recently. With the popularity of Pinot on the rise, there simply isn't enough to go around. And as it once did in Burgundy, this has led to the adulteration of Pinot in order to increase volume, and to help disguise poor fruit and thin wines.

The difference between what is happening now, and the French scandals of the past, is that it is perfectly legal to blend other grapes with Pinot in the US, as long as the 75% limit is not exceeded.

For better or worse, a great deal of time and money went into educating consumers to recognize varietal labeling. As an aside, the same effort was put into convincing the consumer to look for wines sealed with cork.

Times change. Cork has become less accepted as the closure of choice, and I would like to see varietal labeling becomes just as scarce.

The place name system of Europe works because appropriate grape varieties had, for the most part, already been found for the various regions. In the US, it is not uncommon to see very dissimilar varieties planted adjacent to one another. It would not be easy, nor economically viable, to enforce a strict geographical limit on grape varieties in the US.

Rather, I propose a move towards proprietary names and full disclosure of the blend. Ironically, this would play havoc with the way I like to organize wine lists, but I would adjust.

Meritage is a proprietary name for a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and to a lesser degree Petit Verdot and Malbec. This combination of grapes is found in the wines of Bordeaux (where the they are called collectively the carmenet grapes). Because there is a fee to use Meritage on a wine label, not all blends sport it.

The real importance of Meritage, from the point of view of this rant, is that the consumer readily learned to purchase a wine labeled with something besides the name of a single specific grape.

Ridge has been producing a wine from Lytton Springs for decades (one of my absolute favorites). This wonderful wine is a field blend, which means the different grape varieties are collected together at harvest, as opposed to being first made into wine before blending.

In some years the amount of Zinfandel is above 75% and the grape name appears prominently on the label, and in other years it doesn't. Year in and year out, the blend is listed right on the front of the label.

As consumers, we can reward those brave enough to break with the tradition of varietal labeling, while being honest enough to list the actual blend. Wine making, like all technology and art, is ever evolving and I think it is time we evolved towards honesty in labeling, because knowing 75% of the truth is simply not enough.