Eyeballing your wine

As my aging eyes struggle to read what I am writing, it seems only appropriate to turn my attention to what you can tell about a wine, just from looking at it.

Different grape varieties, different wine making techniques, even different growing regions, all have an effect on the color of a wine.

White wines range from clear to a dark brown color. Red wines can be bright red, or have various amounts of a blue hue, and as they age they too head towards the brown shades.

The browning of wine is due to oxidation, the same mechanism that turns an apple brown after you bite into or cut into it, and leave it sitting out.

Therefore a browning color in wine is a good indication of oxidation (the wine term is maderization).

This contact with oxygen is sometimes purposeful, such as in the case of Sherry or Madeira (hence the term) where it adds a wonderful nutty flavor component.

In other wines, especially when it is only present in moderation, the wine may have been badly stored, or even badly made. In these wines, the flavor is a less desirable caramel quality and a lack of varietal character.

Old wines all tend towards maderization, eventually. Good storage, and cork management (replacing old corks) can slow down the process to a crawl.

The golden color of many Chardonnays and dessert wines, actually comes from oak aging. While there is a small amount of oxygen contact in the process, it is not enough to spoil the wines.

Red wines have a broader range of color.

Wines made in the style of a simple Beaujolais have such a bright color, I have been known to call it "nuclear red."

Most young red wines have some hint of blue. Some, notably Syrah, have much more than a hint of blue.

As all red wines age they lose color. The intensity of the color is reduced, and any blue hues are lost. A well aged red wine is often said to be "bricky."

Port that has been aged in wood turns from a dark purple color to a tawny brown with time. This is a better color in port than in a dry red wine.

It is this plethora of visual clues that wine tasters are looking for as they peer through their wine. With practice one can determine the grape, and maybe even the origin of a wine, just on sight.

This is why there is a new trend of tasting in black glasses, that completely hide any and all visual clues. Without the benefit of the bias that looking at a wine can yield, it is a much more humbling, if not accurate, exercise.

A least, I imagine it would be. I have conducted similar tastings, including sitting in a darkened room, but I have not had a chance to try the black glass experience yet. Should I get my hands on a some, I will be sure to report my impressions here.

Co-fermentation, why and what

Someone asked me recently what I thought about co-fermentation. The practice of fermenting different grape varieties together. This is different than most blends, which are created after the individual wines have been made.

The short answer, is that co-fermentation is harder to do, and much easier to do badly. So why would anyone want to take the risk? As my mentor Bucky Fuller said "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

By fermenting the grapes together, you can potentially end up with a wine that transcends what you can create by blending. On the other hand, it is much harder to make any adjustments, or hide any flaws, after the fact. Even if you reserve some of the grapes to vinify separately, you still may not be able to undo, or hide, anything that goes wrong in the co-fermentation process.

Part of the problems stems from the simple fact that different grape varieties have different fermentation needs. The time needed for maceration, the temperature controls, even the choices of yeast are all varietal dependent.

So again, why take the risk?

Some blends have both black and white grapes (e.g. Syrah with Viognier, a common blend in the Rhone and the elsewhere). When you make a red wine, you carefully check the how the color is doing throughout the maceration period. After a certain point, you can get no more color from the pomace into the wine. The red wine is saturated with color.

If you were to now take that same, supposedly spent pomace, and add it to a tank of fermenting white wine, you would indeed leach even more color from the pomace. It seems that wine is saturated with coloring agents (anthocyanins) long before the must is no longer capable of releasing them.

This is important to co-fermentation advocates. By fermenting white and black grapes together you introduce the process of copigmentation. Meaning that the juice from the white grapes are colored at the same time, and more or less the same rate, as the black grapes.

Compare this to adding white wine to red wine. More than a tiny amount of white wine, and you have lightened the color. By co-fermenting you end up with a wine that has a greater presence of white wine characteristics, but with all of the color of a red wine fermented by itself.

This commingling may well work with flavor components as well.

Many wines owe their complexity to their blend. Just as with cooking, adding ingredients together (in this case other types of wine) can result in complexity, with each flavor adding a new facet to the whole.

Again using the cooking analogy, if the flavors are allowed to "stew" together for a time, you end up with an entirely new set of flavors, none of which were possible just by adding the ingredients together in their raw state.

So co-fermentation is in essence a way to "stew" the flavors of the various grape varieties together. Blending gives you a nice complexity due to the separate, but harmonious flavors. Co-fermentation gives a completely different complexity and flavor structure, that can not be duplicated by blending alone.

It is a whole lot less dangerous, and therefore cheaper in the long run, to blend after the fact. It is a whole lot cheaper up front to co-ferment (since you do not need as many tanks and barrels, and can pick all of your grapes at once). Therefore one can not use economics alone to help you to decide on blending vs. co-fermentation.

It is just one of the many choices a winemaker has to decide about, long before the grapes arrive at her crusher.

It is not common for a wine to mention if it was co-fermented as opposed to blended, and so it is not often something the consumer can look for on the label. It is however a great question to ask the winemaker the next time you are visiting a winery. Does she co-ferment, and why?

Have a favorite co-fermented wine? Let us know about it. If there are any winemakers that would like to chime in on this subject, i certainly would love to hear their opinions.

Farming for Fun and Prophet

Only two months until it is time to plant your cow horn packed with dung! That is of course, if you are a practitioner of Biodynamic Farming.

This latest craze in vineyard management goes beyond organic to the controversial practice first espoused by Rudolf Steiner in the 20s. Biodynamics, as it would later be called, is a farming technique that chiefly relies on good sense sustainable practices. The debate comes from the further dependency on what to many observers is essentially magic.

I am a nay sayer. This should come as no surprise to any of you. I am a big fan of paying attention to farming practices, and those who adhere to biodynamics pay more attention than anyone else.

At least one study has found that biodynamic farms do have healthier soil than commercial farms. The study did not compare similar sized farms, nor were the crops the same. The kicker is that the biodynamic farm's soil was not healthier than similar organic farms.

As an example of why I have a hard time with some of the pratitioners, here is what Hugh Courtney, the director of the Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics said recently "I would like to believe that the effort expended in New Orleans to apply the nine biodynamic preparations did indeed harmonize the energies in that particular location and served to block hurricane energies [in 2006]."

It would be reasonable to assume that this represents the fringe element of the movement, but in fact it embodies the core beliefs.

Biodynamics goes beyond making sure that the soil stays healthy, way beyond. The Cow Horn and Dung referenced at the top of the article is only one example.

At the center of biodynamic doctrine is a schedule of events that seem to be tied to astrology. This is explained by believers as being in tune with the natural rhythms of the universe, although some basic understanding of astronomy seems to be lacking:

The light of the sun, moon, planets and stars reaches the plants in regular rhythms. Planets don't have light of their own, it is light reflected from the sun*.

Cheap shots aside, does biodynamics work? Does it make better grapes, and therefore wine?

Yes and no, at least in my opinion. It is a wonderful thing to ensure that the soil, and by extension the vines, are as healthy as they can be. It is a good thing to think about the future when making farming decisions now. It is even a good thing to watch the cycle of life and respond to the needs of the vineyard.

Biodynamics therefore is a good thing. The more spiritual aspects are likely to be harmless at the least. Indeed, many subscribers to the techniques don't go the full extreme, electing instead to borrow what they like and ignore the rest.

The bigger question looms, are modern agricultural practices bad? I don't think they are inherently bad. These same practices have laid a bounty of food before the world like never before in history. What is bad is trading the future for profit today. And while many may be guilty of this, far from all are.

Sustainable farming practices seems a no brainer. Organic farming can be good. Biodynamic does no harm, and is at least as good as organic farming. Just don't expect me to pony up a few more dollars for a bottle of wine because your vineyard manager believes that the Moon lining up with Uranus is of dire consequence.

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*Ok, so planets, being above absolute zero, do indeed cast electromagnetic radiation. Light however, is usually defined as those wavelengths we can see with our naked eye. The far-infrared and sub-millimeter radio ranges have not been shown to have any effect on plants. I am pretty sure this attempt at covering my bases is likely to only get me into more trouble, but I tried.

Tick tock, is time passing too slowly, or too fast?

As I sit here, counting the months until I can finally get my hands on Apple's new iPhone another form of anticipation comes to mind. Waiting for wine to be ready to drink.

Ready to drink - a term that I put just slightly more credence in than "goes with this food." Drink what you like, with what you like, and when you like. This is an important axiom, but just as some food pairings work better with my taste than others, so too do some wines reward aging better than others.

It is a common misconception that all wines improve with age. To age for a long time, 20 years or more, is actually very rare. These wines are never inexpensive (with the exception of Vintage Port) and most are very well known names. Not all expensive, or well known wines age gracefully (and some should be ashamed of themselves for that).

It takes a lot of tannin, acidity and fruit to age. When the components are all there, the wine softens, gains complexity and develops aromas over time. A well aged wine at its peak is a wonder to behold.

What about most other wines? Many will "keep" for a few years, meaning mostly that they will not change too quickly. A wine that has seen too much time tends to have turned brown, and lost all or most of its flavor and aroma.

Acidity is a key to keeping, if not actually aging. A tart wine will keep longer than a thin one. This is doubly true for white wines, as they tend to have little to no tannin.

Tannin too acts as a preservative, and it is the most noticeably changed component of an aged wine. Even the roughest wine will become soft with time.

So, how do you know when your wine is "Ready to Drink"? It depends on the wine.

Most moderately priced wines (under $15) will not really get any better with time, although a few months to rest up from traveling and or recently being bottled, can really help. For me these are my everyday drinking wines, and rather than take up precious room in my (plug in Eurocave) cellar, they sit in my living room "ready rack."

Zinfandel, modest Merlots, Syrahs and Petite Sirahs all head for the ready rack. Most Cabernet Sauvignon based wines, better Merlots, Pinot Noirs and Syrahs, go into the cellar. Mostly for less than 5 years. Not because there aren't examples that age longer than that, but because my taste and pocketbook tend towards a more modest style.

So how can you tell when your wine has aged enough? The easy answer is that you can't. Fortunately, there is hope, and you will enjoy this exercise. Always buy more than one bottle of wine you intend to age, so you can open a few over the years to see how it is doing.

While this involves the joy of consuming your wines, it also means you have one less bottle to age. There can be a great deal of consternation over drinking up all your wines too young, but remember this: It is far better to drink them too young, than too old.

There is another bright side of tasting a bottle now and then to see how it is doing. You get to learn for yourself how wine changes as it ages. If you don't remember every wine you ever tasted, as I seem to, you may want to take, and refer back to notes of the progress.

Don't forget that some white wines age as well. In fact on my list of oldest wines I have tasted, almost all of the best where white. To be fair most were dessert wines (Ch. d'Yquem in particular) but at least a few were dry whites.

The dry whites that age the best follow the same rule as the reds. They tend to be expensive, they tend to have some tannin (from oak aging), and they had a lot of acidity and fruit in their youth. White Burgundies are the best known of this class.

If you have a cellar, root around in it and see if you have a bottle or two that is getting long in the tooth. It may be time to drink them up, but only tasting will tell for sure.

P.S. I want to thank those of you that have written to tell me about the American Wine Blogs Awards. I appreciate the support, and offers to be nominated, but it seems I am not prolific enough to qualify. It takes 52 posts in 2006, and as any of my regular readers know, I am a tad shy of that. Of course if you insist on nominating and or voting for me anyway, I won't stop you.

P.P.S. If you do have a favorite wine blog, other than mine, share it with us!

Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest winery of them all?

I have been to a winery or two in my day. I honestly can't count how many, but pushing a thousand is a safe guess. Most are pretty similar no matter where you are in the world. They fall into a few classes, and some have unusual features such as using gravity to their advantage, but few really stand out.

Italy is a wonderful country. I love the people, the food and the culture. I have never really been crazy about much of their wine. The anarchical spirit of the Italians is a big part of their charm, but my tastes in wine demand a more controlled approach to wine making. And so it is with no small amount of irony that I announce that the most impressive winery I have ever visited, was in fact in Italy.

The irony may be tempered a bit when you realize that the owners and driving visionaries of this remarkable winery, are in fact Americans. John Mariani, Sr. started in the wine business way back in 1919, and today his empire is in the able hands of his children and grandchildren.

Banfi began as an importer of Italian wines, although today it is better known as a producer. Castello Banfi, perched high on a hill in the Montalcino region of Italy, is the archetype for the great Italian wine producing villa. Only at Banfi, the Castello is just the start.

The winery itself is on the grounds, but not stuffed into a corner of the castle, as so many others are. Instead it resides in a newly created, and impressively well thought out, computer controlled modern facility.

What strikes me most about the Banfi winery is something so obvious that it should be part of the design of every facility. As if it were a glacial assembly line, the grapes enter one end of the building, and finished wines exit the other end. In between you walk along a timeline of wine production, from beginning to end, all in a straight line.

It is clean, it is beautiful, and it is large (around 1.3 million cases). It is above ground where it should be, and below ground where the passive cooling is required. But mostly, it is well designed at every stop.

This helps Banfi produce quality wines at very competitive prices. Their wines do not suffer the inconsistency or bottle variation of too many of their neighbors. This is a technological success story, that does not eschew traditional wine making techniques. It uses appropriate technology to enhance, not supplant the traditions.

If you are headed to Italy visit Montalcino. Not only are the wines from this region some of my favorites in Italy, but it will give you a chance to experience the hospitality of Banfi. Compare their vineyard management and wine making facilities to any and all others you may visit, and you will see for yourself what a difference paying attention can make.