Wine

Let’s face it; all wines aren’t perfect! Few wines are. Most winemakers never set their sights on perfection. The typical winery is run like a business, with volume goals, cost projections, an intended price point and a profit margin that will provide for production continuity and expansion.

A wine with concentration, balance, varietal correctness and individuality doesn’t exist in this environment. These are the wines with animals on the labels, one price for all seven varietals and UPC codes affixed to the label like any other grocery store item. The very best of these wines can only hope to end up as a house wine in a nice restaurant. Their goal is to be liked by all and bought by all. This column isn’t about these wines.

The wineries that do aim for perfection rarely achieve it. I’ve only tried two perfect wines in my life; 2001 Chateau d’Yquem and 2003 Chateau Latour. These first growths aspire to greatness every vintage, but rarely ever reach it. Latour has received four perfect scores from Robert Parkers Wine Advocate in the last 100 years (d’Yquem has received three perfect scores from Parker since 1811)! The paths to greatness for these wineries are littered with lesser vintages and span decades. It behooves us to examine the origin, destination and interim bridging the two, for the majority of our wine selections will fall short of perfection.

There is one distinction between Old World wines and New World wines I’d like to make before we continue. While there are always exceptions, the best Old World wines are produced from grapes grown in climates that barely allow for full ripening. Germany, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, Northern Italy and Loire depend on a slow, cool growing season to establish the tension between acidity and alcohol, fruit and earth.

The warmest vintages often produce the best wines. The best New World wines are often produced from grapes grown in warmer climates. Napa Valley, Barossa Valley, Sonoma, Oregon and Coonawarra produce their best wines in cooler vintages with longer growing seasons. The typical Old World bottle will clock in at 13 percent alcohol. The typical new world bottle will have 14.5 percent. The paths to perfection for Old and New World wines are polar opposites!

Regardless of vintage conditions, winemakers still strive for perfection. Old World winemakers in Burgundy were dumb struck when presented with an extremely warm growing season in 2003. The wines produced from this atypical vintage displayed the body and texture of top quality Oregon Pinot Noir grown in cooler years. Conversely, Oregon is often faced with temperatures considered extreme for Pinot Noir. Ken Wright is considered by some to be one of the best Oregon Pinot Noir producers. Their Web site gives a vintage-by-vintage account of growing conditions starting in 1994. The greatest challenge to their winery is excessive heat. Oregon usually has to harvest the grapes before they over-ripen, while Burgundy fights to keep the grapes on the vine to eek out every ounce of ripeness.

Could it be that Old and New World wines are traveling along entirely different paths towards the same destination? There was an old cartoon depicting two climbers scaling different sides of a difficult mountain unaware of each other’s presence. They arrive at the summit simultaneously and both exclaim, “How did you get here!”

It almost seems the Old World wines come closest to perfection as their alcohol content reaches up to 14 percent. New World wines gain balance and complexity as their alcohol content drops towards 14 percent. Is it preposterous to suggest that a certain alcohol content could correspond with the greatness of still wine without residual sugar?

Perhaps it is, but the fact remains that great wines from less-than-stellar vintages fall into two basic categories; too ripe, and not ripe enough. The Old World wines falling short of perfection tend to have higher acidity, grittier tannin and lighter body. These deficiencies are easily amended with a culinary accompaniment (fat foods add body and balance acidity).

New World wines that miss the mark will often showcase overly ripe fruit, and low acidity. These wines leave little to the imagination and tend to show best on their own. The fact remains that great wines exist on either side of perfection. Like the base and sides of a pyramid supporting its point, the wines littering the paths hold the few perfect wines up as a beacon. We need to sample wines from both paths, along the entire length of the paths, to truly appreciate a perfect bottle of wine.

Contact Matt Devan at wineguy@lagniappemobile.com.

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