Terms: Bricking and Spoofy

Hi, Manuel, Allen Meadows definitely means Claude et Catherine Marèchal, despite consistently mispelling their last name. Burghound seems to have stopped covering Marechal after 2003, so I wonder if the issue has anything to do with it.

Personally, I would like this to be decided by the tastebud department, not the ethics department, so I will continue to try and occasionally buy Marechal wines.

I remember discussion on old WLDG about use of RO on the (2000 I believe) Marechal Cuvee Gravel. I liked the wine a lot. Some previous fans decided they didn't like after they found out about RO.

Hi, Manuel, Allen Meadows definitely means Claude et Catherine Marèchal, despite consistently mispelling their last name. Burghound seems to have stopped covering Marechal after 2003, so I wonder if the issue has anything to do with it.

Personally, I would like this to be decided by the tastebud department, not the ethics department, so I will continue to try and occasionally buy Marechal wines.

I agree somewhat with the "tastebuds" decision thing, Oswaldo. Alas, if Maréchal uses RO, this goes against everything I've ever heard my firend Joe Dressner say he believes in and applies in selecting the wines he imports. Lots of questions...

Manuel, let us know what he says!

Dale, this latest post of yours was your 2008th, meaning your next one has to be next year...

I hate to use a cliche but for me Spoofulated is like pornography. I can't define it but I know when I taste it. It is essentially the same problem. Where does one define the line between normal process and excessive intervention? To be honest about it, everything from the basics such as wine spacing, trellising, pruning, etc. is not natural. Lets not even get to modern presses and actively cooled fermentation tanks (or even adding dry ice). The entire process of modern viticulture is not natural unless someone knows a winery that collects grapes from wild vines growing up trees and does nothing but press out the juice and takes their chances.

I am sure that there are wines that utilize techniques frowned about by the anit spoofulation movement that I like. To me it is not the tools but how they are employed.

I don't like the term "spoofulated" (which is pejorative) vs. "natural".

There is no such thing as natural wine that is sold commercially.

Natural wine means you collect the grapes, perhaps crush them, then let whatever yeast or other organism ferment the mess. Then you drain off the liquid and drink it.

Nobody does that commercially. ALL commercial wine involves some sort of "artificial intervention" into the natural decomposition process of rotting grapes. The debate is purely a matter of the degree of intervention/meddling that takes place.

That being said, in my own experience the best winemakers tend to intervene as little as possible. But they have a substantial arsenal of techniques that they WILL employ when it's necessary.

I'm a bottom-line sort of wine drinker. I look at the end product. I don't fret very much about how the winemaker got there.

-Paul W.

I like Dale’s definition of “bricking” in reference to rim variation of red wines. and David B’s definition of “spoofy” and “spoofulated” and I think Robin should add them to the “Wine Lover’s Page” wine lexicon.

Salute

Scare the Newbies: the latest sensation in internet-based, funk-rock bands.

I was thinking that "Bricking and Spoofy" sounded like something the Fox Network would promote as a comedy.

[David M. Bueker]

Scare the Newbies: the latest sensation in internet-based, funk-rock bands.

I was thinking that "Bricking and Spoofy" sounded like something the Fox Network would promote as a comedy.

Sounds more like the BBC to me.

It's Dressner's Marechale. I don't know if he's used the concentrator since 2000--it isn't like at LLC or some such.

But a good test case to make you ponder your certainties. Those Y2K wines were pretty good, to my taste.

One more reason to get the old WT archive up and running. Dressner discussed it there. With the exception of mega-purple and a few others, I'd be hard pressed to rule out any particular manipulation. In the end, it's got to come down to why the winemaker makes the decision and to what end. Maréchal was trying to save his crop that year, not produce some overwooded Syrah look-alike.

One more reason to get the old WT archive up and running. Dressner discussed it there. With the exception of mega-purple and a few others, I'd be hard pressed to rule out any particular manipulation. In the end, it's got to come down to why the winemaker makes the decision and to what end. Maréchal was trying to save his crop that year, not produce some overwooded Syrah look-alike.

Well. there was also that story in Jonathan Nossiter's Le Goût et le Pouvoir about Christophe Roumier using commercial yeasts on his 2001 Amoureuses (I think it was Amoureuses) because of a stuck fermentation. I realize it's a slippery slope, to accept these technologies in the cases of producers one respects, but I guess one can.

Haven't made it that far in Nossiter's book. I heard egg whites or something to that effect. But I agree -- I'd rather a wine with as little messing with as possible.

as little messing with as possible.

But should some "messing with" become necessary, in the hands of the true artist, spoofulation should end up unnoticeable? It would be an interesting angle. And it would also make sense that we can judge the sloppy spoofulators, the ones who aren't fighting the tribulations of lousy weather in one vintage, but their own crappy decisiones in the vineyard, sometimes at the most basic level of growing the wrongest possible variety in the wrongest possible place.

This is a very complex topic that needs much thought. I shall go and read Augustine now, hopefully to return with a perspectival realignment.