A couple years ago, Dr. Vino wrote an influential blog post called “Is the clock ticking on hedonistic fruit bombs?” He didn’t come right out and say so, one way or the other. But he cited evidence of a “backlash” against high alcohol, extracted wines. Since then (Dec. 2007), lots of people have wondered if the pendulum is swinging away from higher ripeness and toward wines of greater finesse. I, myself, have written about this, although I’ve done so in the same hedge-your-bets way as Dr. Vino. I have speculated that cooler vintages in California (and, man oh man, 2010 is turning out to be one of the coolest yet) may be helping to bring the grapes in at lower brix levels.

Now comes an absolutely fascinating article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal with powerful implications for the wine business. With the intriguing headline “A Taste for Hotter, Mintier, Fruitier,” its thesis is that “The increased craving for intense flavors suggests that the American palate is changing.” Changing from what to what? Away from “natural flavors” and towards “intensity in flavor.” The author, Miriam Gottfried, lists plenty of examples of how steroidal flavors are being packed into our foods: “Snack chips are spicer. Chewing gum is mintier. Energy drinks are fruitier. In short, American cuisine is adrenaline cuisine.”

Gottfried bases her conclusions after interviewing a chef at a New York outfit called International Flavors and Fragrances, whose website describes it as “a leading creator and manufacturer of flavors and fragrances.” Their executive chef told Gottfried that Americans are seeking “a lot more umami,” the term popularized some years ago to describe a certain type of appealing savoriness in food. That Americans are in fact seeking more savoriness is accepted by a vice president of the James Beard Foundation, who told Gottfried, “You always need something spicier, something more, a bigger high” when it comes to food. He was echoed by a chef at McCormick’s (the spice people), who told the reporter, “Bold is replacing boring.”

I can totally accept this hypothesis. We do want more flavor, don’t we? As a longtime aficienado of cookbooks and food sections in the local newspaper, I’ve noted a trend toward spicier, bolder, richer, more layered, more complex and more savory food. Here in California, with our heavy Mexican and pan-Asian influences, our cuisine has become wildly delicious and adventurous. A good restaurant meal is a high to rival any substance I’ve ever had.

If it’s true that the American palate is changing in the direction of bigger and bolder, can it also be true that those same Americans are wanting their wines to be tamer and leaner? I suppose a case could be made. You could argue that a big, bold meal wants a companion wine to be restrained, in order to let the food star. On the other hand you could take the “like-with-like” route and suggest that the last thing you want with a big, umami-flavored dish is a thin little wine.

I’m still not ready to come down on one side or the other and make some stark pronouncement that hedonistic fruit bombs are [or aren’t] dead. I don’t know if the pendulum is swinging, and if it is, which way. We in the media tend to paint things in too-absolute terms anyway, as if everything is black or white. Of course, things aren’t. America is too big a country, and too fractured in cultural diversity, for such simplistic pronouncements to be made.

What are my own experiences with “hedonistic fruit bombs”? There are still plenty of them. And I don’t see them going away anytime soon. Of course, the word “bomb” is an explosive one. Your “bomb” may be my “chockful of fruit” delicioso. California growers and vintners have worked too long and too hard to achieve fruit perfection to turn around and throw it out the window. Cooler vintages may lower the alcohol a little bit, but not enough to reverse a generational shift, which is what we saw from the 1970s to the 1990s. The most important word in all this may be “hedonistic.” Last time I checked, it wasn’t an expletive, but a word based on the Greek root for “pleasure.” Nothing wrong with pleasure, in my book.

P.S. No new post tomorrow. I’m in Seattle for the weekend.

Here in California, Pinot Noir has one (World of Pinot Noir). Zinfandel has one (ZAP). The Rhône varieties have one (Hospice du Rhône). Sauvignon Blanc has one (International Symposium on Sauvignon Blanc). Petite Sirah has one (Petite Sirah Symposium). Maybe other varieties do too. I don’t think Cabernet Sauvignon does, but then, can you imagine a Cabernet Symposium? Too politically bizarre to contemplate.

Anyhow, now Chardonnay — America’s favorite white wine — is about to have its very own public event. The Chardonnay Symposium. About time.

What took so long? “We went through this ABC [anything but Chardonnay] period. Chardonnay people were looking at Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc,” i.e. almost anything other than Chardonnay, says one of the Symposium’s sponsors, Nicholas Miller, of Bien Nacido Vineyard. But “a renewed interest in Chardonnay,” he adds, prompted him and his colleagues to start the symposium now.

The one-day event is slated for Sat. July 31, in the Santa Maria Valley of Santa Barbara County, with tastings, seminars, food pairings and of course a great big lunch. The various venues are at Bien Nacido, Cambria Winery, Byron Winery and Tres Hermanas Winery.

I would have loved to go, and they invited me, but alas, something more important conflicts with the date: our annual Summer Editorial Meeting at Wine Enthusiast. If it weren’t for that, I’d be high-tailing it south to hear such esteemed Chardonnay producers as the Symposium will present. Not to single out or exclude anyone, but they include people with last names such as Pisoni, Ullom, Hyde, Talley, Volk, Sanford, Tolmach and Clendenen.

Chardonnay is my favorite California white wine (excluding sparking) and it’s about time somebody devoted a big event to it. True, the geographic focus is mainly the Central Coast, with most of the speakers and participating wineries hailing from there; but then, this is the event’s first year, and you have to start someplace. When World of Pinot Noir began, what– 10 years ago? — I was there (Wine Enthusiast has been a sponsor from day one), and it was almost totally a Central Coast affair. The organizers tried to reach out to the North Coast, but it was hard. Wineries have so many opportunities to participate in so many events that they have to be selective. You not only have to pay to play, you have to open a lot of expensive bottles. And then there are travel and lodging costs, not to mention time away from your real job in the winery. It took some years for WOPN to attract a critical mass of North Coast wineries, not to mention vintners from overseas. Now, WOPN is a huge success.

Nicholas Miller envisions similar growth for the Chardonnay Symposium. “My hope is that, as people see what we’re doing, it will become like a Hospice du Rhône or a WOPN. They’ll see the success of it in future years, and we’ll get more interest from the North Coast.” So [this is Steve to North Coast producers]: keep your eyes on this one.

One tactical drawback I can see for the Chardonnay Symposium is that there’s a near total absence of nice places to stay in the Santa Maria Valley. At WOPN, most people stay at The Cliffs or at nearby resorts. It’s all very convenient. You never have to drive anywhere for the entire three days, and it’s nice to be able to duck away from a grand tasting or inbetween seminars and go to your room to freshen up or rest. By contrast, guests at the Chardonnay Symposium will be on the road all day, at the mercy of shuttle buses. They’ll also be mostly outdoors, which is always risky. It won’t rain at that time of the year, of course, but it could be cold and foggy. Or there could be a heat wave. It’s summer along the California coast; you never know. But then, the Chardonnay Symposium is beginning only as a one-day event.

Here’s what I hope some of the panels focus on.

- the role of oak. How much is too much? Can we wean the public away from their addiction to thick, clumsy oak, which they often think is the actual smell and taste of Chardonnay?

- malolactic fermentation. When is it justified? Are California vintners moving away from it? Why did they become so reliant on it to begin with?

- unoaked Chardonnay. Need it always be only a simple, inexpensive wine? Is it possible to craft an unoaked Chardonnay of great nuance and style?

I’m sure there are lots of other issues, but those are three good ones to address.

You’ll find information on the Chardonnay Symposium here.

Just when we thought the U.S. had rounded the corner of the recession, there are renewed fears of the notorious “double dip” (or, more colorfully, the “dead cat bounce”) of the economy’s performance. The Dow Jones stock index has fallen more than 1,000 points since April, triggering a new mood of gloom. Financial problems in Europe seem to be the proximate cause of the problem. Not being an economist, I’m not in a position to analyze what’s going on; not even the economists agree on the causes. But “recovery,” whatever that is, does seem agonizingly slow. Not only is the stock market in trouble, unemployment remains stubbornly high. Banks still aren’t lending; people still aren’t spending. It all adds up to what Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times this past weekend, calls “the new pessimism” in America.

Friedman casts his gaze over the economic landscape and perceives some pretty dire things. Consumer prices continue to fall, leading to the prospects of deflation. I used to think deflation was a pretty cool thing, as it would make the things I want more affordable. But no; Friedman calls deflation “really bad news” because it “tends to perpetuate an economic slump, because it encourages people to hoard cash rather than spend, which keeps the economy depressed, which leads to more deflation.”

This isn’t particularly good news for the wine industry. I sometimes look back over the last twenty years here in California in total wonderment. How have these thousands of wineries all have managed to survive? Somebody should write a book about it. The top-of-the-head answer is that the 1990s was a time of such economic boom that almost any winery owner, no matter how lame, could make money simply by riding the expanding economic bubble.

But just behind the shiny surface of that bubble, there always lurked a troubling spectre: debt. Winery owners are no different from the rest of us. They have debt; the only way they can pay their bills is to sell product at a profit. So what happens when “people…hoard cash rather than spend”?

Krugman himself doesn’t have an answer. He suggests he’s in favor of Stimulus II, but acknowledges it “would have no chance of getting through a Congress that has been spooked by the deficit hawks.” Short of that, all he can come up with is “hope [which] is not a plan.”

I doubt if many California wineries have a plan, either, to ride out the next several years, which Friedman says could resemble Japan’s infamous “Lost Decade” of the 1990s. Many are hoping that the Internet and direct shipping will come to their rescue, but of course, it won’t. Others play the old game of reshuffling their sales and marketing teams, but that increasingly seems like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Some strike off in the direction of new varieties they hope will excite consumers: Nebbiolo, Trebbiano, Pinotage. Others place their hopes on labels that jump off the shelf, or cute proprietary names. Winemakers travel more than they used to, schlepping from city to city to meet with clients, trying to persuade them to buy a case or two. If it’s Wednesday, we must be in Cleveland! P.R. agents court writers like Romeo crooning to Juliet on her balcony. Stores try to figure out how to position wines so they sell, what names to call the aisles, what to put in the window to lure shoppers in. The big wine companies are bringing in experts from other industries with a proven track record of sales. Everybody’s trying to game the market. It’s crazy.

It’s tempting to predict that, if anyone survives, it will be the big wine companies like Gallo, Bronco and Constellation, because in the past, they always have. That’s probably true, especially with private companies, which don’t have to satisfy shareholders and thus can steer a more controlled course. But we’ve seen big companies hit the ropes. (Hello, Foster’s! And does anyone remember Heublein?) Then I think of the thousands of small family wineries, from Temecula to Placerville, Salinas Valley to Mendocino, Lodi to Lompoc, and I really have to wonder if they’re going to make it through America’s Lost Decade. I hate to sound gloomy, but I am. There are also lots and lots of really nice wines from foreign countries that cost much less than even mediocre California wines that tend to be high-priced. Why would anybody pay more for less? There’s nothing deader than a dead cat bounce.

Are wealthy Chinese wine buyers “opening [Bordeaux] with their friends, rather than just using them as an investment,” as the Bordeaux Wine Council attested last week, or are “Speculators, not drinkers…likely to be the biggest Chinese buyers of Bordeaux,” as a Decanter survey, also released last week, just found?

The two statements can’t both be true.

I can understand why the Bordeaux Wine Council, a P.R. arm of the Bordeaux wine industry, would want to convince itself, and the world, that the Chinese are actually drinking their Bordeaux, and not using it like poker chips. [Disclosure: this blog has the honor of being on the Council’s blogroll, one of only nine to make the cut.] It doesn’t do Bordeaux’s image any good to be associated with rampant speculation.

The Council also is sensitive to the rather severe hit the Bordeaux market in China suffered earlier this month, when media around the world revealed that the “unprecedented speculation” is now giving rise to “fears of fraud…among the super-rich in China” concerning fake wine, as was reported, for instance, by The Telegraph.

The article reported unbelievably obtuse demand among China’s nouveau-rich for 2009 Bordeaux, and quoted a Hong Kong broker as saying people were “coming in with blank chequebooks saying, ‘Just tell me the number I need to write’.” That kind of blind madness naturally greatly increases “the opportunities for fraud,” the article said.

The proximate cause of the madness was (who else?) Parker’s pronouncement that “2009 may turn out to be the finest vintage I have tasted in 32 years of covering Bordeaux.” [Of course, if the '09s are duds, Parker can always say, "Well, I said may...".] If that sounds familiar, it’s because it uncannily resembles what he wrote of the 2005s: “One thing I am sure of after twenty-eight years of tasting Bordeaux wines every March is that 2005 can not be compared to any previous vintage in my experience.”

The Man does know how to turn a phrase! (And if anybody can come up with “greatest vintage ever” statements from Parker for other vintages, you win a free subscription to this blog.)

It’s obviously not in Bordeaux’s or in Parker’s interests for anyone to think the Chinese are just a bunch of fools buying up fake “Lafitte” from unscrupulous con men.

Fine wine must avoid the taint of fraud like an STD. Bordeaux has done a pretty good job keeping its hem out of the mud for centuries, but then, there’s never been a market as unsophisticated, gullible — and rich — as China. Although only about 14 million of its population of 1.3 billion currently buys wine, they do show an alarming naivete, and China’s potential down the road, as it gets richer, is clearly staggering. The Bordelais, with a centuries-old eye to emerging markets (Russia, Britain in the early 1800s, America in the 20th) know it. Mouton Cadet just opened their first wine bar in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, where they will pour, not only their plonkish basic Bordeaux (which my great colleague, Wine Enthusiast’s French editor Roger Voss, gives fairly dreadful reviews to), but d’Armailhac, Clerc Milon and, yes, Mouton itself. Never mind that falsely-labeled Mouton Cadet already has made its appearance in China. Can Mouton Rothschild be far behind?

Bordeaux and Parker are so intertwined, it’s almost like they co-brand each other. Parker essentially brought Bordeaux back from the dead with his 1982 declaration of the vintage, and France in turn returned the favor, with former President Jacques Chirac awarding him the Legion of Honor.

The Western world, where both Bordeaux and Parker made their reputations, is one of law, orderly commerce [usually] and a go-for-the-jugular Fourth Estate dedicated to fraud-busting. China is a whole other ballgame. If fake Bordeaux — and fake Rhône and California wines, which Parker also reviews — become a significant problem in China, that could mar everybody’s reputation. And you can bet it’s already happening. “California wineries also face a threat common to many industries in China — copycats,” reported this article from the San Jose Mercury News just two weeks ago. It quoted Wu Jianxin, owner of a Beijing wine club, as saying, “There are a lot of fakes and the government has one eye open and one eye closed…The fake wine industry will employ a lot of people.”

Wineries stand to lose more, in the way of reputation, than does Parker, whose personal integrity is undoubted. Still, the partnership between Parker and the Bordeaux wine trade in China now has a third seat at the table: crooks. How will they both handle it?