How I Became a Wine Snob
I am a self-confessed wine snob. What does that mean? There
are probably a hundred different definitions that I like but this is the one
that is most applicable to me: a snob a
person who believes himself or herself to have superior tastes and is
condescending toward those with different tastes. That definition certainly
applied to me when it came to wine.
A few weeks ago, though, I heard a “Freakonomics” broadcast
that asked this question: Do More
Expensive Wines Taste Better? The answer, in short, is—not necessarily. The
broadcast talked about a test that had been run in which some “wine snobs” were
given expensive wines to taste and cheap wines to taste, although they were
told that they were all expensive wines. The wine snobs were unable to tell the
difference between the expensive wines and the cheap wines. Many similar tests
have shown that the label on a wine as well as the cost of a wine can create a
preconceived notion of how a wine will taste.
Uh oh. Was I the kind of person who thought he could tell
the difference between expensive wine and cheap wine? I decided to try my own
test at home to find out. By the way, since I have stopped working my concept
of “relatively expensive” has changed, so I limited my budget to $25 or less. Anyway, I asked my wife Donna to pour one
glass of $25 wine, one glass of $12 wine, and one glass of (ugh) a $4 wine. I
then asked her to pour one more glass of one of those wines so there were four
glasses to taste. After that I tried to determine, in order, which wine was the
best, second best and worst. I got it right but it took three tries! The truth
was that I had a hard time telling the difference between the $25 wine and the
$12 wine, but I was able to detect the $4 wine. I hate to admit it but the $4
wine was not awful. I would not buy it again, but it wasn’t something I would
pour down the drain.
I do know a little bit about wine because I had the
opportunity to work with wine makers. When I had my own consulting practice
some of my clients were large wineries. My role was to develop simulations that
would assist the wineries on their wine-making schedule based on the predicted
grape harvest, the storage of wines based on the type of wine, the blending of
wines, the movement of wine throughout a facility, the shipping schedule of
wines and many other factors. In order to develop the simulations I had to
learn the wine-making process in minute detail.
Wine-making can be either simple or complex. There are
actually companies who make very cheap wine using the following process: add
water, sugar and yeast to grape concentrate. Repeat a couple of times and, when
the wine is ready, bottle it. This process is typical for carbonated wines that
are sold around the holidays.
Then there are processes that increase in complexity and,
therefore, cost, based on the value of the wine. A general rule of thumb in
wine-making is—the gentler you treat the
wine, the better it will be. The right equipment will assist in the
handling of the wine, but equipment that treats the wine gently is more
expensive, thus affecting the cost of the wine. Some wine-makers, especially
the French, don’t use much mechanical equipment at all and instead rely on a
gravity-fed process.
Below is a snapshot from the simulation I developed for a
red wine process. Each of the boxes shown in the snapshot can contain
thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of computer instructions. The boxes
are there to help the client understand what the simulation is doing.
Note the reference to “Free Run.” "Free Run” is the
terminology used to describe the juice that flows freely from freshly picked
grapes before they are pressed. When truckloads of grapes are stacked up on top
of each other some juice is released due to the weight of the load. “Free Run”
juice is considered to be exceptionally fine and requires a process of its own,
despite the fact that it makes up only a small percentage of the juice that is
processed. The fact that the client made use of the free run juice is an
indication of the quality of wine that was being made. The process is so
complex that a simulation of one harvest year could require an entire day to
run.
One of the most important lessons I learned about
wine-making from my consulting, however, was the following:
- You can make good wine from good grapes,
- You can make bad wine from good grapes,
- You can make bad wine from good grapes,
- But you cannot make good wine from bad grapes
This is sort of an industry joke. Just line wine-tasters,
wine-makers can be snobs. A maker of a fine wine may look at the appellation
(origin of the grapes) of a competitor’s wine and scoff—you cannot make good wine from those grapes. When it came to Texas wines my clients were
like—Oh my Gawd! In their opinion
there was no way any wine made from Texas grapes could be any good at all. This
is how I developed my opinion of Texas wines.
By working with my clients I also learned a lot about
tasting wine, mainly because one of my clients insisted that we have wine with
lunch every day so we could discuss what we were drinking. Lunch was kind of
“wine tasting 101” for us. This client also had a Starbucks on the premises and
provided Mary See’s candy after lunch. I think they were trying to overcome the
effects of the wine with caffeine and sugar. It was a great contract.
Because I was often on site in California a lot during a
two-year period, I wound up drinking, and appreciating, a lot of good wine, and
not just at lunch. Hey—I was on an expense account. I also learned a lot about
the wine business, especially how some bottlers try to trick consumers.
At one time wine bottlers would purchase grapes from places
like the Central Valley in California, an area that produces mostly “bad”
grapes. They would then ship the grapes to Sonoma, for example, and label the
wine as a Sonoma wine because it was created and bottled there. In 2000 California
passed a stringent law that stated, among other things: A wine may be labeled
by a grape or varietal name such as Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon, but it must
derive at least 75% of the volume from the grape designated, and at least 75%
of the grapes must come from the named state or county, such as “Sonoma.”
Therefore, a wine that is labeled Sonoma Cabernet must be
75% Cabernet, and 75% of the total wine in the bottle had to come from grapes grown
in Sonoma.
The picture below is a good example of a well-labeled bottle
of wine.
Because of my knowledge of the California and Federal wine
labeling laws I was under the impression that every bottle of California wine
had to list the blend of wines it contained. Apparently that is not the case.
My wife and I were at HEB a couple of days ago where I saw a
number of relatively expensive wines simply labeled “Red Wine.” When I examined
the wines I was unable to find out what they consisted of or where the grapes
came from. I went on line to research one of the wines, a wine that cost almost
$70 a bottle and still could not find what the grapes where. I actually had to
download a PDF file to get this description of the 2011 wine: Varietal
Composition: 81% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc--Appellation:
Paso Robles. This is actually suspicious because, given the percentage of
Cabernet, the wine could have been labeled as such. It is quite possible that
the vintage of the wine described in the PDF is not the same as the wine being
sold.
Paso Robles is part of the Central Coast, an area considered
to a producer of “good grapes.” Despite that I could not see putting down $70
for a wine that has little or no information on the label. The California labeling laws are strict, but
apparently not strict enough. In 2015 the entire California congressional
delegation had urged federal regulators to “more aggressively enforce” the
labeling rules that “ensure that consumers receive truthful and accurate
information” about wine.
When you are gainfully employed you may want to take the
risk of buying a $70 bottle of wine that you know nothing about. Now that I am
retired, though, my days of spending $70 on a bottle of wine are long past. In
fact, I don’t think I have ever spent
$70 on a bottle of wine--$50, maybe, but not $70. My current approach is to find wines that I
like that are prices I can tolerate.
My opinion is that I don’t think you have to spend much more
than $20 to get a very good bottle of wine and, in fact, you can find good
wines for much less. Below are some of my favorite red wines, all of which can
be purchased at HEB. Here are some wines I recommend: Rutherford Ranch Cabernet
Sauvignon, about $24, St. Francis
Cabernet Sauvignon, about $18, The Show Cabernet
Sauvignon, about $12, and Michael David Winery 7 Deadly Zins, about $12 at HEB
(gets a 97 score from some reviewers).
Other wines I like are: Jean Leon Gran Reserva, a Spanish
Cabernet. (Unfortunately I cannot find it around here and, besides, I think it
costs about $30. Gotta stick to my price guns!), Bodega Norton 2014 Barrel
Select Cabernet Sauvignon, an Argentine wine, about $12, Concha Y Toro Marques
Casa Concha Cabernet Sauvignon, a Chilean wine, about $20, Marques de Riscal
Cabernet, Spanish, about $20. This used to be my favorite-don’t know why I have
not bought it in a while. There is a $9 version that comes from newer vines. I
will have to try it!
Back to Texas Wines
I posted a version of this a week or so ago and publicized
it via NEXTDOOR.COM. I got some pushback from people who are involved in the
Texas wine industry so I decided to do some research. I discovered that the Texas wine business is
booming because, among other factors, grapes require much less water than other
crops such as cotton.
If you research where Texas ranks as a wine producer you may
find that it ranks behind states like New Jersey and Florida. What? You have to
be careful when looking at statistics. It turns out that Florida, for example,
makes wine out of many different tropical fruits, such as mango. New Jersey
wineries (and wineries in other states) import juice/wine from California and
finish it on site.
Texas actually ranks fourth in wine production if you
exclude New York State (which I do because New York produces very sweet wines
and Kosher wines). The big three are, of course, California, Washington State
and Oregon.
In the ten years or so since I consulted to the industry a
lot has changed. Texas is increasing its wine quantity and I have to believe
that the wines have increased in quality as well. I have decided to bone up on
my wine-tasting skills and then discover as much as I can about Texas wines. If
you have any suggestions for me regarding Texas wines, please let me know.
In the meantime I will continue to blog about wine in
general and provide information about the wine-making process, factors that
affect the quality of wine, wine trivia and so on. If you read my blog you,
too, may be able to self-declare as a wine snob based on the information I
provide.
Technical Reading
If you are interested in some technical reading, you can
read an article I wrote for Wine Business Monthly at this web site: https://www.winebusiness.com/wbm/?go=getArticleSignIn&dataId=3563
You will have to join but it is free and you get very good
information about the wine industry.
Listen to the Freakonomics pod cast here: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/freakonomics-radio-do-more-expensive-wines-taste-better/
My Other Blog
I have another blog called "Gregs-INTO.com." The INTO stands for "I'm Not Too Old." It is geared towards getting "mature" folks invloved in sports they normally might not consider, such as white water kayaking. Here is the link: www.gregs-into.com
No comments:
Post a Comment