Comments on: Is the European model of wine regions obsolete for California?

By: Charlie Olken

Charlie Olken — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:01:37 +0000

Gregg–

Love your store. Great that you carry wines no one has heard of. The producers need outlets like yours who will hand-sell those wines.

I can’t speak for all other writers but my rag does review Cab Franc as well as small acreage Rhone varieties. We have not yet got around to Rousillon. Sorry about that.

But blaming the media for the turn to Cab Sauv in the Napa Valley misses the point in my opinion. Cabernet Sauvignon was the most important grape in the Napa Valley forty years ago before the wine boom hit, before any of the current media even came into being. The vines from which the great Cabs of the early ’70s came were planted years before that.

It seems to me that you have this equation bass-ackwards. The media reviews wine that is based on growing decisions made years before those wines ever hit our cellars. The media did not tell growers what to plant. The media reviewed wine and liked what it liked and did not like what it did not like.

It is not surprising to me that Cabernet Sauvignon rated higher with the media than up-valley Pinot Noir. It did with the wineries that existed before our time. Either they were all wrong and we along with them, or Cabernet has earned its way to its place in Napa.

I won’t disagree that good grapes got pushed out in the process, and I have no argument with the notion that there are plenty of boring Cabernets grown in Napa. There are also boring Grand Cru Bordeaux. And a veritable ocean of boring, less than Grand Cru Bordeaux. Do you see anybody ripping those grapes out and planting Albarinho?

California growing decisions reflect some combination of market and quality expectations. That is why Cab is king in Napa. Because it is KING in Napa. The place made it so. Not the media.

By: Gregg Burke

Gregg Burke — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:45:43 +0000

Steve & Charlie You guys have to see that the wine media’s attention to specific varietals from specific areas has lead to alot of the monoculture steve is writing about. The thing is that there are other grapes then Cabernet being grown in Napa. I carry a Charbono, Cab Franc, Rousillon, all from Napa. I have not seen these varietals written about in any significant way in the wine press. We, wine writers, and retailers, have convinced the public that this grape from this region is what they do best and the discussion usually ends there, well at least with the vast majority of wine writers and retailers. Consumers than take this idea and run with it like a Kenyan on chrystal meth. Hence cranking up demand for that wine from that region. Grape growers are business men, they need to grow what will sell at the best price. I do not blame them for just trying to earn a living. So let us all share the blame, wine writers for propigating the notion that one grape is the best grown in a given area. The retailers for being lazy and dependant upon the wine writers, and the wine drinking public for not getting out of their own way and begin buying things that may not be the grape they recognize.

By: lance

lance — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:56:43 +0000

steve,
to characterize europe as a continent of wine monoculture is absolutely inaccurate. what about the southern rhone, languedoc, rousillon, priorat, and portugal? i think that you fundamentaly misunderstand the history of the great european wine regions. those varietals were selected, by trial and error, over hundreds of years. they were selected because they made the best wines given the terroir of the region. the laws that now codify those varietals are less than fifty or sixty years old in most regions. do you really want do drink fat, flabby riesling from paso robles? or thin, stemmy cabernet from epernay? i don’t think so.
i will agree that experimantation is important but let’s go ahead and learn the lessons of our monastic predecessors and plant varietals appropriate to the local conditions.

By: Charlie Olken

Charlie Olken — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 02:47:19 +0000

Morton, this is the umpteenth time today (well maybe only the fourth or fifth) that I have read some winegrower or winery blaming the media for the path it has chosen to follow.

Thirty years ago was 1979. Parker had been publishing for a year at best. The Wine Spectator was a being printed on newsprint in San Diego. It is too damn easy to blame “the media”. It is high time for the producers to look at themselves and admit that they make their own decisions based on a myriad of inputs, most of which have to do with what they think they can sell and what they want to grow. The “media” did not pull out Riesling or Chenin Blanc or Burger. The industry did. And if you now think you were wrong, for goodness sake, go plant those varieties in Rutherford and stop complaining. You own the land.

But, Morton, if I owned the land, I would be planting based on what I wanted to grow and what I wanted to sell. I don’t need Jim Laube or Steve Heimoff or anybody else to tell me what to do. Why makes you think that a bunch of very rich people do?

And by the way, just because some folks are all of a sudden worried about diversity, that does not mean that it is time to pull Cabernet–unless you too are worried. Then by all means, plant Golden Chasselas.

By: steve

steve — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 01:22:56 +0000

Morton, it’s a continuing conversation. Anyhow, I wasn’t one of those wine media types 30 years ago criticizing Napa. The larger question, it seems to me, is if it’s possible for a relatively small region to produce several different types of great wine. Russian River may offer the most promising example in California. Of course, every region will always produce average wine also, except for something tiny, like Cote-Rotie.