Netscape Forum Poll: Rising alcohol trend

[Robin Garr]

Just about every wine enthusiast has an opinion about the modern tendency toward higher alcohol, as many wines have crept from 12 percent alcohol by volume to 14 or more. Some of the big-name critics seem to love it, but the development isn't universally hailed, and some voices are starting to cry, "Enough!" What's your opinion about rising alcohol in table wines? Evil, great, unfortunate or somewhere in-between? Cast your ballot in this week's CompuServe/Netscape forum poll!

<b>Click here to vote</b>

(Standard notice: It's easy to vote - you don't have to register or log in on Netscape to take part. Feel free to post your comments here or in the Netscape forum as you prefer.)

A very qualified OK. OK if in balance.

[David M. Bueker]

Beating the proverbial dead horse I see.

[Robin Garr]

Dead horse? Two major California wine figures - Darrel Corti and Randy Dunn - have issued public rants on this subject within the past couple of weeks. Seems topical to me.

This weekend I sampled a Heidi Barret "Supertuscan" made for Showket Cellars at 15.7% alcohol or something like that. It was just plain awful-harsh, medicinal, and discombobulated. I also tried another 15% Cab that was equally yuck.

Definitely an unfortunate trend in my eyes.

[David M. Bueker]

Dead horse? Two major California wine figures - Darrel Corti and Randy Dunn - have issued public rants on this subject within the past couple of weeks. Seems topical to me.

The horse was already dead.

[Robin Garr]

Not sure I understand your point, David. Or are you just in a bad mood?

[David M. Bueker]

Not sure I understand your point, David. Or are you just in a bad mood?

No. It just seems like the high alcohol bugbear has been round the bend too many times over the last several years & nobody is winning any hearts/minds. You're almost a month behind the internet power curve on the latest version of the topic (it's been beaten to death elsewhere), and as usual nobody changed their thoughts on the subject.

Alcohol level is a number, nothing more.

[Robin Garr]

You're almost a month behind the internet power curve on the latest version of the topic (it's been beaten to death elsewhere), and as usual nobody changed their thoughts on the subject.

Odd. Corti's piece was featured in the Bee last week. Randy Dunn's E-mail came around on Thursday. I'm featuring it in today's <I>Wine Advisor</I> where I expect at least most of 50,000 readers will be hearing it for the first time.

Alcohol level is a number, nothing more.

So you don't have any problem with 15.1 percent Cabernet as long as you don't read the number on the label?

I agree that it is somewhat of a dead horse but don't understand why it continues. Guess we wine geeks are in the definite minority. I have started looking at alcohol % before buying and have put many bottles back. Balance is critical but when you start looking at 14 plus % even if balanced they are hard to enjoy. The problem with a balanced high alcohol wine is just plain and simple, the amount of alcohol. Not a huge German riesling fan but can spend an evening drinking one whole bottle or drinking just 2-3 glasses of a big west coast zin. Why does it have to be 14% plus??
Walt

[David M. Bueker]

Corti's original rant & some publicity of it was quite a while ago. The newest article is a re-hash.

My point about alcohol being just a number is that it is only one element in the wine. I've had 15% wines that masked their alcohol and 12.5% (even 9%) wines that did not. Balance is not apparent from a number on the label.

This is not unlike an argument I was in about cars & the environment a few weeks ago. A rather "focused" co-worker was chastising me because I did not buy a hybrid when making a recent car purchase. Sure if I wanted to focus on one specific aspect of the car (its carbon footprint) it would have been a great choice. The problem was that the available hybrids did not meet my needs for a car (e.g. trunk space, pickup (due to some pretty hairy required on-ramps), and most of all immediate availability) & so were out of the equation. It's all about balance.

My point about alcohol being just a number is that it is only one element in the wine. I've had 15% wines that masked their alcohol and 12.5% (even 9%) wines that did not. Balance is not apparent from a number on the label.

David,
I can honestly say I have never had a 15% wine that I enjoyed. Yeah, they can be balanced, drinkable and not show huge burning alcohol but why bother?
Walt

I agree that among we geeks the horse, if not dead, is waning. The efforts of Robin and others to educate the masses is laudable. We are in this mess now because wine writers convinced the public and thence the wine makers that wine should taste like high octane syrup. If we drop the ball now, things will not change as they should.

Cheers,
Carl

[David M. Bueker]

We are in this mess now because wine writers convinced the public and thence the wine makers that wine should taste like high octane syrup. If we drop the ball now, things will not change as they should.

I have so many non-geek friends that just love Aussie Shiraz, Cal Cab, etc. that I just don't buy the argument. They've never heard of Robert Parker or even the Wine Spectator. They like big, fruity wines.

On another note, head to Germany where every year is now an auslese year. Alcohols are higher, and it has precious little to do with critics. Summers are warmer & the grapes get more sugar before they are phenolically ripe. This leads to kabinett with 9% alcohol (instead of the old 7.5%) and many trockens with 14-15%, when 11-12% used to be common. Earlier picked grapes taste astringent and make unpleasant wine. They are stuck with what the weather gives them. The same goes for Austria.

Can Robin change the weather?

The argument is part chicken and egg. Did the winemakers that made the wine that your non-geeks friends like do so because of Parker et al, or because of the demand they created?

As for blaming high octane wine on global warming, there is nothing to prevent earlier harvesting of grapes.

[James Roscoe]

I'm with David on this one. Most of the regular wine drinkers aren't drinking wine for the reasons we do. for the most part they like the sweetness and burn of the high alcohol. Quite frankly a guy like Gary V. is doing a lot more than we can here. He reaches a lot more of the type of casual wine drinkers and he doesn't come off as preachy, arrogant, or intellectual. I'm afraid over here the choir is all singing the same song. We are all in line with Corti and Dunn. (That sounds like a country music duo.)

[David M. Bueker]

As for blaming high octane wine on global warming, there is nothing to prevent earlier harvesting of grapes.

Except unripe flavors. Sugar levels in grapes are not the only measurement. If the seeds and stems are green then the wines will likely taste astingent and have "off" flavors like green pepper or excessive grassy notes (speaking of reds here).

It's all tied together.

At one of our winery stops last week, I told the winemaker to his face there was simply too much alcohol in his wines, making them out of balance and hot on the palate. The worst offender was a lighter-bodied Sangiovese with 14.5% ABV. Even his Merlot, which had more body to it, suffered with 15.7% ABV. I ended up paying the modest tasting fee and left without purchasing any wine at this stop.

I disagree with the assertion that we should not discuss this awful trend, just because it has been discussed elsewhere and wine-buying masses don't care (or may even like it that way). Just like it is everyone's choice to purchase or pass on high-alcohol wines, it is each forum participant's choice to participate or not in these discussions. If you don't like the topic, just pass on it. However, please do not state or even insinuate that we should not discuss ways to change this, even if the possibility for success seems to be remote at this time.

-- Clark

I don't buy many high alcohol wines. And I like Randy Dunn's wines. But am I the only one who finds it kind of funny him railing against high alcohol wines as hard to drink? What about high tannins?

As for blaming high octane wine on global warming, there is nothing to prevent earlier harvesting of grapes.

Except unripe flavors. Sugar levels in grapes are not the only measurement. If the seeds and stems are green then the wines will likely taste astingent and have "off" flavors like green pepper or excessive grassy notes (speaking of reds here).

It's all tied together.

Correct, David. James' initial statement reveals an essential misunderstanding of the physiology of winegrapes. If it was simply a matter of picking at lower sugar levels, the problem would be easy to remedy. But then you'd be picking at significantly higher acid to sugar/fruit ratios, and you'd be getting sifgificantly more green flavors and phenols in your wine.

Part....part, mind you... of this problem is global warming. Some other parts are increased efficiency of yeasts and increased vigor in the vineyards. Some people would call that better farming (albeit people who are more interested in high yields); on the other hand, it's pretty difficult to convince a farmer, even a grape farmer, that the goal is to be inefficient.

It's also a rare farmer, and an even more rare businessman, who would go intentionally to a highly marginal place to plant his crops, if he knew that he would get wildly variant vintages and radically varying crop yields (along with all the other problems of early frost, hailstorms, rain at harvest, etc.).

The vineyards in Burgundy aren't there because everyone scoped out Burgundy thousands of years ago with the idea it would eventually become a primary quality wine growing region. They are there because they developed there, along with the serendipity of having the monks focus on crop improvement, and were recognized over time. How many of those Burgundian growers are now exploring farmland in Southern Scotland, Estonia, and parts of Chechnya so they can spend another couple of thousand years developing the area into a new "Burgundy"?

David also makes a good point in that Parker's influence may be profound to wine geeks...but it doesn't necessarily transmit to an average consumer and his/her preferences. Australia didn't get to its volume range around the world because of Parker and his ilk---they got there because they provided a style of wine that appealled to the masses who wanted it that way: fat, glossy, ripe, and cheap.

[David M. Bueker]

I disagree with the assertion that we should not discuss this awful trend, just because it has been discussed elsewhere and wine-buying masses don't care (or may even like it that way). Just like it is everyone's choice to purchase or pass on high-alcohol wines, it is each forum participant's choice to participate or not in these discussions. If you don't like the topic, just pass on it. However, please do not state or even insinuate that we should not discuss ways to change this, even if the possibility for success seems to be remote at this time.

-- Clark

Clark,

It's fine to discuss it. But we've had these discussions before. This is one of the few times I am in favor or Mark Squires' way of handling his site: merge the discussions so that we don't just start all over again.

As for the possibility of the people on this stie changing the trend, I put the chance at somewhat less than 0.

It's also a rare farmer, and an even more rare businessman, who would go intentionally to a highly marginal place to plant his crops, if he knew that he would get wildly variant vintages and radically varying crop yields (along with all the other problems of early frost, hailstorms, rain at harvest, etc.).

Hoke, doesn't the farmer realize a loss when he is forced to increase the hang time and harvest partially dehydrated grapes?

Cheers,
Carl

[James Roscoe]

Correct, David. James' initial statement reveals an essential misunderstanding of the physiology of winegrapes.

What did I say now? You are correct in saying I don't understand the physiology of wine grapes. I thought I was agreeing with David? In fact, I don't think he has said one thing on this thread with which I disagree except maybe how we handle the discussions. But if I made some mistake along the way, I am glad the one and only Hoke is here to help me out!

I have so many non-geek friends that just love Aussie Shiraz, Cal Cab, etc. that I just don't buy the argument. They've never heard of Robert Parker or even the Wine Spectator. They like big, fruity wines.

Exactly. For the most part it's my non-geek friends who get bowled over by the big wines, with the "more is better" style. And none of them would know Robert Parker from Dorothy Parker. Well, I guess actually they do know who Dorothy was.