Wine is Truth

The first job I held after Graduating College (much harder in those days. We had STANDARDS!) was working as a temp for a wine storage company. We had a warehouse full of boxes of wine bottles. Not barrels, as it wasn't a winery. I worked there first as a filing clerk, then an order entry clerk selecting wines from the inventory to ship to customers around the Bay Area and into Sacramento. I worked in an office filled with married women and they sometimes forgot I was there, and their discussions were traumatizing disparagement of marriage, biology, or the laughable concept of love. That stopped me from dating for the next 3 years. Sad panda.

While there, I did get to meet and work with dozens of small family wineries. And I do mean family. These places were often started in someone's garage or a barn on a family farm, where they'd replaced the low-value pasture with grape vines in the 1980's and 1990's (See "Bottle Shock") and within a few years had sufficient grapes to experiment with making and selling wine, or more often trading it. The movie Bottle Shock has Alan Rickman being a snob, Chris Pine being a man-slut, and Eliza Dushku (aka Faith) as a bartender. Most is filmed in Napa County, the other wine growing county which runs beside my own beloved Sonoma County.

Another movie about wine making is A Walk In The Clouds. It has Keanu Reeves, who wasn't great in this flick, but it does show off home well, from atop the Maacamas Mountains between Sonoma and Napa counties.

Boutique level garage wine that's any good gets traded, drunk on special occasions, and gains a huge reputation. That bit in "A Good Year" where the Napa blonde explains about garage wines is quite literal. I have made wine in a garage. I was only 9 and just helping with the steps, but it was a fun family event and a couple families, working on the weekend, can make passable or even excellent wine for hobby prices. Lots of people did. I doubt they still do. Grape prices are higher today, and the quality of mass produced wine is way up. Garage wines remain fantastic if done right, because small batches and sufficient care can result in outstanding quality. Very small wineries, run by a couple families and keeping those levels of quality is where you get your $25-50 bottles of wine. And yes, its really that good.

Not everyone is capable of tasting the difference between that and a $16 bottle of wine. Mostly that's an unsophisticated palate, but sometimes that's where a super-taster mutation is the advantage. Most food critics have that mutation, with roughly 3-5 times as many taste-buds, something which is visible if they stick out their tongue. They're sort of forced into that industry as critics because they really KNOW when food is bad, in the same way I can tell when a singer or instrument is even slightly off key. Pain, the most effective teacher. When a super taster says a wine is really good? Believe them.

You should do some experimenting of your own, starting with good wine and working your way down by review and price. When you can't tell the difference between the $18 and $12 bottle, buy the $12 and save your money so you can fill your cellar with the Nectar of the Old Testament God. After all, Noah made wine with Gods full permission. Then he got drunk and restarted slavery, starting with his own son. Its in the Bible. But the Bible isn't science. Its hearsay. Science rescues us from ignorance, and science gave us really good wines.

Winemaking is a type of advanced and very specialized biochemistry. Of sugars, acids, and fermentation. Its ongoing liquid chemistry, oxidation, filtration, settling, the use of woods and tannins to affect flavor, and an end product worth billions of US dollars a year (and that's just in Sonoma and Napa counties). I would live there if I could afford it. The weather is fantastic.

One of the important things I learned is that the proper temp for serving wine is cellar temp. Not chilled to 40'F in your fridge, but closer to 56-60'F. If you serve the wine too cold, the chemical reactions on tasting and oxidization are not quite right. Cold wine tastes acid. Closer to room temp the fruit flavor becomes more obvious, and displays the quality of the wine, of the grapes used. The warmer it gets, the faster it oxidizes and spoils, which is why an empty wine glass sitting out smells bad and the true flavor of that specific wine comes from a clean dry glass.

My own preference is for reds rather than whites. I am very fond of Zinfandel, closely followed by Cabernet Sauvignon. Pinot Noir (small black) is an excellent fruity grape and produces fruity wines good with steak compared to the more peppery Zinfandel and the sharper Cabernet. Each of them is excellent with french bread, olives, cheese. I can tolerate Chardonnay but the better ones, more expensive ones, are easier to stand. Cheap white wines tend to be pale and boring or acid or both. Red wines can be cheap but often taste better for the dollar. Also, while the belief the the red pigment in red wine is part of the health source in the Mediterranean diet, there's currently no evidence to support that. I think red wines just taste better. The difference between red and white wine? Its when you take the grape skins out: before or after primary fermentation. I say leave them in, get the full flavor. And not too many stems. They tend to make it really acid. A good Zinfandel has some stems in the fermentation, source of the pepperiness. Same with a cab.

I recently had a glass of Gnarly Head Old Vine Zinfandel and I can say its superb. I think its $12/bottle. Compared to my typical table wine, a Fox Brook Cabernet which is only $1.98/bottle, the differences are both startling and obvious. I used to enjoy Ravenswood Zinfandel, which is $8-12/bottle but sometimes $6.66, though their quality varies a lot due to Ravenswood being a blender rather than wine maker. They buy someone else's barrels and blend them for effect. So its kinda risky. If you like variety in a Zinfandel, that's a good choice. They also make a good Cabernet, but their Zins are why they're famous. Back in the days of better employment and two incomes in the household, good wine was an affordable luxury. I hope to achieve that again, someday. Under no circumstances should you drink Beaujolais. It means new wine, and its awful. Like rocket fuel. Its the wine equivalent of moonshine and tastes terrible. Years later after aging and blending that raw stock will be civilized into something good with dinner.

In the old days wine was always made in big oak casks, up to 15 feet high and banded with iron. In October and November, the weeks after harvest, they leave the doors of the winery open so the huge billowing clouds of Carbon Dioxide created by primary fermentation can flow out rather then build up and kill the person who opens the door or walks in by accident. And it did kill winery workers every year. (and wearing a gas mask won't help you since the CO2 has displaced all the other air.). Those accidents are much rarer now. They mostly hire experts and get them green cards if they're Mexican or help them obtain citizenship since the old days. It has increased their pay and largely ended the stabbings by drunk and grumpy field hands.

These days the casks are mostly for storage and wine is made in stainless steel tanks with flakes of the right oak wood to provide the flavor and chemistry of cask fermentation. Its much more closely controlled so wine is likely to turn out well rather than go wrong. Its very scientific. Once that's done, the wine typically goes into an oak barrel, which is 59 gallons and they get racked and stored in the cellar by forklift. The cellar has a constant temp and the enologist and wine maker test them for qualities and potential blending to get a consistent or special bottling, as per their needs.

Managing this ongoing stock and bottling when the time is right is really important, since the entire process is investment until the cases and bottles start selling. Many wines aren't sold until 2-3 years after the grapes are harvested, just to give you some idea. Picture putting that kind of time and effort and storing all those materials in a temperature safe manor. Its millions and billions invested. Big corporations often buy wineries to reduce their taxable incomes, particularly if their bought Senators don't stay bought. Wineries are also something Old Money buys for long term investment. They DO pay out eventually. They just involve a lot of time.

I kinda wish I knew more about the industry, too. The Wine Making specifically. The wines we made when I was a kid were good for cleaning car parts, far too acid. Some of them were said to be good, but I never got to taste them. The 1986 Pinot Noir, old vine, late harvest, vintage we saved for years from when I was 11 was spoiled by the time of my wedding.Very sad. I was really hoping that heavily fruited grape would eventually simmer down from the excess tannins from the unburnt french oak barrel (at the time there were no barrel makers in California), not realizing the inside of the barrel must be burned with a propane torch to activate charcoal, which effectively filters critical chemicals in the wine and has a huge impact on the quality. We didn't know. There was no internet yet. Those things were secret. If I were rich, I could go back to my Alma Mater for a full Viticulture/Enology BS degree, maybe even a Masters in wine making. Enough to run a boutique winery's production for years on end, make and blend excellent wines, and turn grapes into money.

In the old days, it was hard to make much money in wine. That is no longer true. Enough is known that wineries that take it seriously can to serious business, and make serious money. I respect that. I don't like the car-salesmen who get into it, talking up vintages like they know anything, all about the money. There can sometimes be excess greed. The family ones? Usually not. Trouble is they tend to get bought out after a few bad years by the business pricks, and it can ruin their quality when they get turned into serfs by greedheads.

This is the big downside to the Wine Business. The money can spoil everything. It can destroy reputations. Talented people can leave the region and turn struggling places, like Oregon or Chile, into famous champions. And America loves the Underdog. Business goons don't care. They're selling reputation and don't care if its any good. They want their money. I just wish they'd get out of my home and stop ruining the place. A little money for the good wines, and acceptable prices for the less perfect wines, and you end up with happy customers and ongoing production. I really hope that businessmen pushing around Vintners will come to appreciate the value of quality and restore some of that power so a Winery can succeed by long-term quality rather than short term profits. Consumers and critics pay attention after all. If the wine is bad, there's no hiding it.