by Stu Harrison on February 11, 2010
There’s a lot of controversy today about “scores”, the numerical ratings critics assign individual wines.
For a winery, scores can be a terrifically valuable marketing boost. On the other hand, nothing can be as ego shattering and angst provoking as a fair-to-middling score from one of the major critics. To aggravate matters, consumers have come to rely on a handful of critics for their go-to purchase advice. That puts a lot of influence in the hands (and on the palates) of a very few.
I have a slightly different opinion of ‘scores’ than many of my colleagues. My feeling is that ‘scores’ offer a large potential benefit to individual producers and very little downside. This stems from my belief that the primary influence of ‘scores’ is their ability to mobilize consumers in a positive direction. A wine which receives a “95” from one of the major critics has been given a remarkably powerful endorsement, one that is certain to boost image and fuel demand. A mediocre score has nowhere near the same downward impact. I’ve yet to see a consumer walk into a wine shop with a list of wines that they are not going to buy. The only real effect of a score of “85”, therefore, is its ego deflating capacity. We take the same offense when a teacher delivers a sub-par evaluation regarding one of our children. It’s human nature to be taken aback.
At the end of the day, scores are like medicine. Some are hard to swallow. Some don’t agree with you. Others can make a world of difference.
by Jack Stuart on December 1, 2009
The Dirty Secrets of High Alcohol Wines, Part Two
Overlooked in the alcohol debates is the amount of manipulation that is required to make high-alcohol table wines. Any must over 25˚ or 26˚ Brix needs help to ferment to dryness. With some winemakers aiming at 28˚ Brix, grapes sometimes arrive in the cellar with Brixes of 30˚ or more. These musts need to be diluted with water by as much as 15 percent to be able to ferment completely, and they require additions of various nutrients, such as diammonium phosphate, yeast hulls, and thiamin, as many as two or three times during fermentation.
Troublesome fermenters may stick (stop fermenting) anyway, allowing opportunistic bacteria, such as acetobacter and pediococcus, which produce distinctive off odors and flavors, to grow and compete for nutrients. In such cases, complex apparatuses must be brought in to remove acetic acid or alcohol, which inhibit continued fermentation. Sometimes filtration is required to remove viable bacteria. Then the whole mess has to be reinoculated with alcohol-tolerant yeast and more nutrients. At the end, you may still wind up with a beat-up sweet wine.
Now, it’s true that new rootstocks, new spacing, new clones and new canopy management have changed things in the vineyard since the good old days of AXR-1 and 8-by-12 spacing. It may be that we really do have to pick at slightly higher sugars to get the ripeness we desire without losing the character of the variety. It’s also true that lots of Cabernet and other cultivars are being planted in marginal areas that are not suitable, forcing winemakers to leave fruit on the vine longer to diminish the underripe characters that persist on bad sites. One way to tell whether a site is a good match for a particular variety is that you can achieve fruit ripeness at relatively lower Brix levels.
Even so, it may be that 14.5 is the new 13.2. Good wines at that alcohol level can be enjoyed, but go much higher and you start to get into trouble. Such wines are harsh, they make you tired, you can’t enjoy them throughout a meal, and they overwhelm the food.
—Jack Stuart, Winemaker & Partner
