27 August 2006
A winemaker who vacations away from home in August can never be very relaxed, so I never do. Just being able to walk through the vineyards in early August (without taking samples because the grapes are too acidic to taste) is enormously helpful when preparing the winery for the harvest. First of all, I can assess crop size with regard to final grape quality. Due to our cool Spring weather on the North Coast, harvest will be a bit later than it has been for about 7 years! Yes, it’s true we had a record-breaking heat wave in July, but the vines actually shut down and stop photosynthesizing when temperatures rise above the winemaker’s body temperature. That heat kept us behind and, sadly, caused sunburn on grapes that were left too exposed by over zealous leaf trimming and hedging. The good news is that we can drop (cut off and drop on the vineyard floor) sunburned fruit as well as any red fruit that has not adequately colored up by now. Since we had such a cold winter and a rainy Spring was predicted, many growers left more fruiting buds than normal in case bloom and fruit set (fewer clusters or very loose clusters with fewer grapes) were compromised. To produce high quality fruit, any excess that did set must be removed in July and August.

As August progressed, our North Coast moderate weather pattern moved in from the Pacific: foggy, often drizzly, mornings and afternoon temperatures in the 80’s. We keep an eye out for Botrytis, a rot deemed noble only in dessert wines, and faithfully spray sulfur every 10 days in the vineyard until we’re 2-3 weeks from harvest. Vineyard sampling and grape tasting begins in earnest for white grapes and early reds like Zinfandel and Pinot Noir. Vineyard managers are cleaning picking boxes and grape bins and getting scales certified. Winemakers are lubricating destemmers and crushers, turning on presses, and cleaning everything in sight. Barrels are arriving from France. Orders placed in July for specialty yeasts and malolactic bacteria are ready for delivery, too. I feel like I’m at the starting line, waiting for the gun to be fired!

There was a thought provoking article in the New York Times about a week ago on the always hot, but very overworked, topic of wine rating systems. It piqued my interest because the writer’s purpose was to investigate the effects of numerical ratings on publications that write about wine. Recall that Robert Parker came up with the currently popular numerical rating system in which wines are scored much like tests in high school and college: 90-100 is an A; 80-90 is a B; etc. I suppose the success of Parker’s “borrowed” method is due to its familiarity and our great American need for speed. Why read exhaustive comments when all we need is a number? I was surprised to learn that all the major publications on wine, except those holdouts at Decanter, have had to adopt the Parker method or lose subscribers (Josh Green, Wine & Spirits Buying Guide). But what really made me laugh out loud was the claim that this very “understandable” rating system was responsible for the growth of wine sales in the US for the last 2 decades! Talk about hubris. . . What about our love affair with all things culinary that began in the 1970’s? Or improved winemaking tools and techniques, as well as droves of American winemakers who traveled to Europe to hone their skills?
Oh, well. I can remember learning to evaluate wine at Draper & Esquin tastings in San Francisco in the 1970’s. Our only method back then (the beginning of the end of the Dark Ages of wine in America) was the UC Davis 20 point system. Now I appreciate it; then, as a novice taster/evaluator, it was impossible. As a graduate student at Davis in the early 1980’s, I and my classmates raged against it when we should have raged against how it was used. (Now I realize it was just out of date and needed a bit of tweaking: why so much emphasis on volatility? Why so many points for color and appearance?). We stopped being so critical after Dr. Ann Noble, aroma wheel developer and sensory scientist extraordinaire, gave us an assignment to concoct our own rating systems; not so easy!

If you have input on this topic or questions about the Davis rating system, write to comments@davenportwines.com.