Wine Reflection | Hawk Wakawaka Wine Reviews

The Lazy Winemaker: Patience, Terroir, and Vine Age, a conversation with Stéphane Vivier

May 8, ’13 8:45 AM

Wine with Stéphane Vivier

Stéphane and Dana Vivier started their Pinot Noir, and Rosé of Pinot Noir label, Vivier, in 2009 with credit cards, and 30 cases of wine. By 2011, they jumped to 150 cases. Their wines draw on small lots from vineyards in Sonoma County, each of which Stéphane works with hands on. Originally from Burgundy, Stéphane has also served as winemaker for HdV for 12 years. I fell in love with Vivier Pinots last summer, and was lucky enough to meet with Stéphane multiple times to discuss his winemaking philosophy, which he describes as “being a lazy winemaker.” Following is a transcript of his story from our conversations.

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“My wine, Dana, and I married in 2009. I was already with HdV but my wife suggested I make Pinot Noir. She thought I was missing something. I grew up in Burgundy on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. She said to me, “to be complete, there is something else you need here. You need to make Pinot Noir.” I asked her, “where will the money come from.” She told me, “don’t worry. This is America.”

“I grew up with rosé of Pinot Noir in Burgundy. I would come home and sit outside with my parents. My mom would bring in things from the garden, and my dad wine from the cellar. We would talk about the day, and most everyday have a bottle of rosé.

“I grew up with wine of perfume. The nose is very important. But it is important too to focus on the texture of the wine, really important. I like restrained, elegant wine that changes in the glass. I want it to change in the glass, and go with food. I like it when people have trouble describing, or deconstructing a wine. It’s a sign that the wine is complex. Wine is about pairing with food, about pleasure and enjoyment. Alcohol is a form of enjoyment. Wine is for making and consuming.

“Being a lazy winemaker is all about being patient, letting the place talk, and being gentle with the grapes. Making it simple. I like a long [slow] press, and a long, slow fermentation, not too long but clean, and long enough so the perfume develops. The idea of balance in wine is an extensive subject. It is about what is best from the site, letting the wine speak the site. There is a lot of feeling in winemaking, a lot of following what you learn.

“I spent time listening to old men and how they compare wine to old vintages, wines that are 14 or 15 years old. It puts everything in perspective. That wine is about being patient, and building a strong foundation.

“Acidity is the foundation of every wine, of good wine, just like the pyramids that have a broad base and so they lasted. If you want wine you can drink early, perfume is important. If you also want wines that can age, acidity.

“I have been at HdV for more than 10 years. People asked me in the last decade what my next job would be. I want to grow with a vineyard, to start young and grow up with the vines. Wine is like life. You start young, and the older you get, the wiser as well. It is the same with vineyards. I have a young daughter, and I can see it’s exactly the same. Some things you have to train for to get in certain ways, to learn how to do. With growing a vineyard too, there is a lot of training, and you can train in a way that is best for the site, and also for types of wine. It is important to know vineyards very well.

Stéphane walking in the vineyard, Sonoma, July 2012

“It is difficult to be simple, [to make something that is simple, while also rich, and not boring. When you are able to make something simple,] it is a work of experience. Winemaking is a work of experience, vineyards, and age.

“Balance is very difficult to define. So is stability in wine. It is hard to say stability is an energy, but it is in a way.

“Wine gives you this ability to grow on the same roots, and not necessarily make the same wine, always trying to make better wine every year from whatever it is you have. That is why we are looking to start with young vineyards and to get older with the vineyards. I couldn’t do this in Burgundy. You can feel this in Australia. You can feel the history of vineyards there from the 1880s being established. You don’t get that sense of history in the United States. Most vineyards here are young.

“Making wine with the same vineyard again and again, it is like Monet painting churches. He went back and painted the same church at different points in the day for different points of light over two weeks. Each vintage is the light. You capture that moment in the vintage. But Monet was also commenting on tradition, asking, what can I contribute to it? His work in paint was a recognition of tradition and the importance of time both. Monet could go back and paint that spot any time, winter even. But the winemaker can only go back once in the same year. Still, there is always something to discover while always working with the same vines.

“I want to give myself to time. These are the constraints in which I operate, and make choices. Pre-deciding in advance what the wine, grapes, vine health should be sounds cool and innovative, but is actually deciding in advance what the wine should be. It is adapting the grapes to himself, instead of adapting himself to the grapes. But you can adapt yourself to the place, and then make the wine of what you are. This way, like Monet, you can have innovation from within tradition. That is why you want knowledge of established vineyards, or vineyard practices, and to grow in age with the vineyard. Terroir needs to be farmed, and needs to be respected. If you respect it, you are in that top 15%.”

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Thank you to Stéphane and Dana Vivier.

Thank you to Dan Petroski.

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The Life in Wine, a conversation with Randall Grahm

May 2, ’13 8:39 AM

Meeting Randall Grahm

The first time I met Randall Grahm, he began discussing chi within a few minutes of my arrival. We’d stepped into Bonny Doon‘s winery cellar in the Mission district of Santa Cruz. “The ability to tolerate oxygen is the chi of a wine.” He went on, “wine needs oxygen, but it is also affected by oxygen.”

We were standing next to the upright wooden tanks for the label’s signature red blend, Le Cigare Volant, and he wanted to explain the connection between a wine’s chi and it’s contact with lees. The puncheons Grahm uses for aging his blend contain multiple levels of shelving, creating what Grahm calls “a lees hotel.” The wine’s lees settle on different levels, giving “more surface area for the lees to get digested.” As the wine breaks down the lees, they produce savoriness, but the also give the wine a greater ability to withstand the negative effects of air.

But it isn’t lees that Grahm is focused on. The discussion is meant to raise a different point. “One of the main mysteries of wine,” Grahm tells me, “is why some wines live and some wines die. Like good Burgundy, that wine is good for a week.” Asking him to explain further what he means, Grahm refers to the liveliness of a wine after it’s been opened, the way some wines resist oxidation and stay beautiful for days after opening. “We should all be focusing on answering one question, what are things we can do to give wine life, to help wines live?” Grahm says.

The Life of a Wine: The Role of Minerality

Half a year later, Grahm and I are talking over the phone for an article I wrote on the idea of minerality. In the article, I was able to reference Grahm’s point that a useful place to start would be to simply assay mineral levels in wines themselves. But his discussion went further. He offered a unique account of minerality I didn’t have the word count to share.

In the phone conversation, Grahm returns again to the question of oxidation. “What is the mechanism that leads some wines to resist oxidation?” Neither of us had referenced our previous conversation at this point. The question of a wine’s life is simply central for Grahm. “There are wines whose phenolics,” he tells me, “are not off the charts and yet they don’t oxidize.”

To put it another way, there are wines with obvious characteristics that we know resist oxidation–they are high in sulfur dioxide, which acts as a preservative; they are low in pH, or rich in tannin. “But subtract these factors out,” Grahm emphasizes, “and there is still a class of wines that do not oxidize, and that is not explained by those physical variables. What is at work there?” It’s the same question Grahm called wine’s greatest mystery as we tasted his signature blend.

Wine’s Mystery Class

For Grahm, the class of wine’s that do not oxidize and yet do not carry the understood mechanisms–excess sulfur dioxide, low pH, rich tannin (or perhaps have only one of them in a non-explanatory way)–are the mystery class. He lists examples that seem to produce a higher number of such wines–Haut-Brion, wines from the Saar or Mt. Etna, Chablis, many Rieslings, but his paradigm case is Lesona (an Italian wine incredibly hard to find information on). “Lesona,” he tells me, “you could leave those wines open for a month and they don’t oxidize.”

I ask Grahm if he finds anything in common between the wines he listed as examples, and he does. “Lesona wine, this appellation in Italy, is textbook mineral city.” For Grahm, it is a very particular account of minerality that the mystery class shares. In his experience, Grahm tells me, wines that stay alive after opening always also carry “a sort of experience on the palate.” He describes that experience for me.

“There is a persistence on the palate.” He says. “A savoriness, or saltiness, and,” he pauses to think. “What I call dimensionality to the wine.” He trails off for a second then returns. “Forgive the lapse into synthesia. The wine just seems to have some sort of multi-dimensionality, a non-linearity.” We discuss the shape of it for a while, and I recognize the sensation as a kind of echo on the palate.

“Yes,” he responds. “there is a doubling of the sensation, a kind of secondary aspect to it” as if you catch a scent or flavor in the wine “and then immediately after follows a relief, or accompaniment in the wine,” not another flavor exactly, but an echo of the initial flavoral experience.

The description from Grahm seems to resemble the French account of minerality from Master of Wine, John Atkinson, I discussed in the article. As Atkinson explains his understanding of the French notion, minerality operates as a kind of “organoleptic action of mineral-bitter-salts element” that hinges flavors and structure together. Minerality operates, then, in this account as not just a flavor but a link between taste and acid or tannin, as well as a physical response from the mouth itself. As Grahm describes it, the echo seems to correlate with a kind of overall tension on the palate, as if the wine is directed and the mouth must follow.

Soil and Vinification Correlation

Beyond the sensory commonality Grahm sees in his wines of interest, there is also a correlation with mineral rich ground. He recognizes that current science denies a direct line from the mineral ions in earth to literal mineral content in wine, but the point is moot. Even if the ions don’t literally appear in the wine itself, who cares if such ground so often does generate quality wines? The calcium rich marl of Colli Orientali del Friuli, and Collio I add to the list. He agrees, but he wants to discuss a more ready example in limestone.

What Grahm notices is that the kind of experience he described occurs very often with wines from limestone soils, but most especially in whites. “White wines from limestone soils are more transparent,” he explains. “It can be easier to blind limestone soils on whites because they’re simply less encumbered.” There are fewer elements, such as tannin or anthocyanins, to block the palate expression of the soil. But Grahm points something else out. With limestone soils, such wines “are often very closed when [the bottle is] first opened up, both in whites and reds.”

But the source of a wine’s life doesn’t rest only in its soils, the role of vineyard care, and the winemaker is also clear. I ask Grahm what he’d recommend to winemakers wanting to create wines full of minerality, that last after opening. The answer is straightforward. “Buy some land in a mineral rich area, find soils rich in minerals, then farm in a way that is maximally expressive of those qualities.” For Grahm much of what that means is inspired by the work of Claude and Lydia Bourguignon, who emphasize the importance of micro fauna, and micro floral life in the earth. Supporting the longevity of old vines is also important.

The role of reduction early in the winemaking process also seems relevant. By giving wine a shot of oxygen early on, it seems to become more resistant to its negative impacts later. In Grahm’s view such an approach also adds an additional layer of complexity ultimately to the wine. “The reduction aroma initially occludes things present in how you farm. But as it dissipates, it adds another dimension,” giving room too for the terroir to show again. This process of reduction is another way in which a wine closes, then opens up over time.

Atkinson too describes a correlation between this sort of reductive fermentation process in making champagne (though not in the sulfidic sense) and the experience of minerality in both the vin clair and final sparkling wine, as he has studied for years at the shoulder of Billecart-Salmon‘s Chef de Cave Francois Domi. Current thought suggests a likely correlation between this sense of reduction, and the later presentation of minerality in wine. Hildegaard Heymann, of UC Davis, and winemaker Clark Smith are both examples of people that have shared such an account in interviews, or written on it.

Finding the Life of Wine with Air

It is this point about certain wines beginning closed, then opening up with time that finally makes Grahm’s point. “These wines are changeable.” For Grahm, the idea gets to the heart of appeal for his mystery class. “They move. They start out closed, and then they move and change in the glass.” The description of wine’s movement circles us back finally to an idea Grahm shared when we first met. “A wine that lives,” he tells me, “is responsive to oxygen. It breathes.”

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UC Davis Talk, Part 3: Freedom, Expression, and Love: A Consideration of Choice in Winemaking

Apr 18, ’13 8:19 AM

The following is part 3, the finish, of a talk I gave to UC Davis Viticulture & Enology students on Monday.

To read part 1: on Freedom, Paul Draper, and Camus: UCDavis Talk, Part 1: Freedom, Expression, and Love: A Consideration of Choice in Winemaking

To read part 2: UC Davis Talk, Part 2: Freedom, Expression, and Love: A Consideration of Choice in Winemaking

Here is part 3

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Freedom, Expression, and Love: An Exploration of Choice in Winemaking
By Elaine Chukan Brown, aka. Lily-Elaine Hawk Wakawaka

just after blind trials of Ridge Monte Bello (A), and Ridge Estate (B & C) blends

Part 3: Love: Paul Draper and Principles

The first time I interviewed Paul Draper he wanted to talk with me about philosophy. What he told me was this: philosophy was what got him, and Ridge Wine, the brand and the business, to where it is today. He considers it the basis of his success. We talked about what that statement meant, and by the end what I understood was that philosophy gave him the clarity of long term vision, long term commitment, and balance. Integral to Draper’s work with Ridge, is the goal that it surpasses him. It has done well for 50-years, he has developed it to last at least another 50. The team, and company seem well equipped to accomplish that goal.

I assume most of you don’t have thoroughgoing backgrounds in philosophy. I’m not trying to suggest you have to have one. Instead, I am pointing out that what Paul Draper has that UC Davis in itself cannot give you is his own long term vision, and the clarity to follow through—his own commitment to the kind of wine he believes is good, the care to plan for the sake of long term persistence as well as brilliance, and the willingness to experiment in a thoughtful manner to ensure he makes that wine. My view is that this combination—commitment, care, and willingness—amount to what must be understood as love. And it is love that defines Draper’s work and his success. I recognize this could sound too precious, so let me give you one last example. It will be brief.

Paul Draper began making Ridge wine at the end of the 1960s. The core portfolio has remained recognizably clear—quality soils, older vines, simple techniques, a focus on structure, American oak—even with the foray into White Zinfandel in the 1980s, or the occasional trouble with brett. I was able to blind taste the 2011 Monte Bello and Estate blends with Paul recently. He and his winemaking team had already selected their Monte Bello assemblage, but they were deciding between two possible assemblages for the final bottling of the Estate blend. One version resembled a blend with the lots that had traditionally been included for the Estate bottling. The other they just had a feeling about early on. It struck them as interesting, so they decided to keep it out and follow it through the year. By the end of the tasting they’d selected the second option—the assemblage that was less traditional showed better that vintage. By being open to something connected to what they made there—it was still a Bordeaux blend from the Monte Bello estate—but different than what they traditionally did—a blend from different lots than those used in previous years for that bottling—Draper was free to choose the wine he loved to make.

Conclusion

What I want to say finally is this. UC Davis offers you the very best tools of your industry. Knowing I am standing here among you and this quality of education you are receiving honestly makes me swell with pride. But what you have the chance to gain from UC Davis itself is not enough. You are free right now to ask yourself how are you going to exercise your strengths? How do you want to apply these tools? What is it you want to love?

Thank you.

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Thank you to UC Davis for inviting, and hosting me.

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UC Davis Talk, Part 2: Freedom, Expression, and Love: A Consideration of Choice in Winemaking

Apr 17, ’13 8:30 AM

The following is part 2 of a talk I gave to UC Davis Viticulture & Enology students on Monday.

To read part 1: on Freedom, Paul Draper, and Camus: UCDavis Talk, Part 1: Freedom, Expression, and Love: A Consideration of Choice in Winemaking

Here is part 2

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Freedom, Expression, and Love: A Consideration of Choice in Winemaking
by Elaine Chukan Brown, aka. Lily-Elaine Hawk Wakawaka

Part 2: Expression: Pneumonia and Technique

For the second part of my talk, I want to consider the idea of this expression, but I want to reflect on it by telling you a story from my own life that few people know. For all the personal confessions that exist in my writing about wine, this is a story I haven’t written. It’s how or why I left my academic career.

In 2010, I was awarded a research fellowship with Dartmouth College. I had already been teaching philosophy full-time in Northern Arizona for several years at that point. The fellowship I won is given to one person a year for someone whose research is seen as a positive resource for the Dartmouth community, and academia at large. The winner is funded to live on campus and simply do the work they were already doing. I arrived, then, in summer 2010 as a philosopher in residence working on questions of Indigenous Identity.

While there, I was also asked to give the response to a keynote address at a conference occurring in Montreal, Quebec, where I had also done graduate coursework at McGill. To prepare for the response, I’d of course thoroughly considered the article itself, but also read each of the books and articles written by the keynote speaker. The day I was to respond I woke up severely ill. I was used to toughing out sickness, however, and made plans to clear my schedule until the keynote that evening so I could rest until I needed to get up for my response. Two hours prior, I discovered I was still too sick to get out of bed. In the end, though, I had to be convinced by the conference organizer that it was acceptable for me to stay in bed and let someone else read my pre-written response.

The person who wrote the keynote was one of the leaders in my field, and the occasion had been designed partially to give us the chance to meet, so as to facilitate the possibility of her acting as an ongoing mentor—it is common for younger faculty to be guided by more experienced professors. It turned out I was sick the entire week and I never met her. Finally, by the weekend, a friend took me to the emergency room, as I was having trouble breathing. I was diagnosed with pneumonia that ultimately sent me to the emergency room three times over the course of almost two months, and demanded three rounds of antibiotics.

I actually suffered a poor reaction to the first set of antibiotics that included severe headaches lasting for several hours after taking the pills. The pain was intense enough I could not do anything for the hours they peaked besides meditate through them. It was unbearable but I had no choice but simply get through it. Fighting the headaches made them worse. Stopping the antibiotics would only make the pneumonia worse. The headaches were also severe enough I couldn’t do any other work. There was no way out. You might say the illness was my boulder during this period.

In the midst of this time I made a surprise discovery. At the best of it, I would clear my thoughts entirely. But often uncontrolled thoughts would come through mind. After a little while, I recognized that when I thought about something that lined up with my preferences, the pain would subside slightly, and I would feel better. If I thought about something that did not agree with me, I would feel worse.

When I recognized this pattern I decided to test it. I would intentionally think about things I already knew my preferences on: over extracted Australian Shiraz—immediately bad; over-oaked Chardonnay—even worse; champagne—ah, better; coffee—better still. I continued testing it until I was confident the pattern was consistent. Then, I began testing things I wasn’t so clear on to see if they made me feel better or worse. During my meditations through the headaches I would treat my body as a kind of i ching making small insights into aspects of my life I hadn’t been sure about before. Over time, what I came to recognize was that when I thought about anything relating to my career in academia, I felt immediately worse. The sensation was utterly consistent, and in fact became stronger through my headaches. By the time I finished that round of antibiotics, the idea of continuing in academia in the way I had been before immediately triggered migraines.

As I recovered my health, I decided I had to change my life. I had committed so completely to philosophy, and pursuing it through an academic career I had no idea what else I could do for work. Even so, the message of my health was too clear. So, I made a different commitment. I would give myself one year to extract myself from my career in academia. By the time I finished that year, I still had no idea what I would do instead. I only had images of what I wanted—I wanted to write. I wanted my life to be full of sunlight. I needed alone time. I liked listening to people that really meant what they were doing. I had no idea what it would look like to make all those elements come together. I only knew I’d made myself a promise, and I had to act on faith that my promise was worth something.

Around the time I had planned to give my resignation I worried that my decision was crazy. By this point I had returned to Arizona to complete my last year of teaching with an ongoing contract from the university. The same moment I questioned whether I should stick to my plan of leaving, or stay another year, I got asked to a meeting with my department chair and was told that due to severe budget cuts across the state I should expect my teaching load to increase one class per term without any raise in pay. It was the only confirmation I needed, and I submitted my formal resignation that same week. I understood that I was still a philosopher. But the success I’d cultivated in academia I left behind. Though I recognized myself as a philosopher still, there was no guarantee it would ever be recognized by anyone else outside a formal philosophy program. I walked away from any guarantee of being recognized for my work by others.

Here is what I want you to know about that story: everything in me knows that I made the right decision pursuing a career in philosophy. The personal clarity I gained from suffering through the rigorous demands of advanced training in careful thinking is irreplaceable. It has shaped who I am. I am endlessly grateful. Everything in me also knows I did the right thing in leaving my career in academia. This is not to deny the benefits of academic life. It is an excellent career to consider. It was simply not the right career for me to stay within. So while I am grateful I chose philosophy, I am also grateful I left academia.

My point, however, is this: advanced training in philosophy gave me decisive access to a wealth of tools. What it did not tell me was precisely how I must use those tools. It gave me a range of possible models I could follow, but it also did not expose me to others that were also possible. An academic career in the discipline is one framework through which I could exercise my training. But through faith, and a lot of luck, and now continued hard work, I bumbled my way into an entirely different form of expressing those same tools.

When I meet with people in wine, what I am doing is listening to what they say, as well as what they don’t, listening for their values, their beliefs, and their principles not only through how they overtly express them, but also through the implications of what they do and do not say. While listening, I track the form of their expression, to ask myself who it is in front of me. I ask questions to make sure I understand where someone is coming from. In a strange way, I do something parallel to this when tasting and drinking wine.

What I have learned from this approach is that the more willing, and more often I am willing to take people, and wine this seriously, the better at hearing what each has to offer I get. Then, once I am comfortable that I do recognize the actual person, or beverage in front of me, I write about them. What I am practicing, then, is another expression of my philosophical training. I chose to leave one form of philosophical practice to instead pursue another.

What I want to suggest is that each of you have a similar choice. Most likely, and hopefully, it won’t be as dramatic as headaches and pneumonia that helps you make your decision. But you are still in a similar situation as I just described for myself. This is true in two senses. First, it is up to you to decide how open, and how systematic you want to be in approaching your practice with wine, and with people. This point connects to the second.

Here at UC Davis what you have been given, or what you are gathering, is a collection of tools. If you do choose to continue in vineyard management, or in winemaking, eventually that choice will become the rock you are committed to, but you will still have the question of how you will apply the tools you have gained here. In what way do you want to express yourself as a vineyard manager, or winemaker? To put it more simply, you have an incredible opportunity to ask yourself, what kind of wine do you want to make.

In the world of wine, it can be easy to assume sometimes that we have been handed a preset model of what is good—that Burgundy is the model for terroir, as an example. It is one of the oldest. Sometimes we assume that most established is equal to the best. Or, we might think that over oaked Chardonnay is always bad. Today, common models of wine include the idea that natural wine is best, or that it is crap; or, that only low alcohol wines are balanced. But each of these approaches to wine are actually methods developed over time by a series of tasters, and winemakers, and, just like Sisyphus’s rock, these ideas are in a sense arbitrary.

We still have to choose our views. They are what give shape to our life. But if you recognize your own ideas here about what counts as the right kind of wine, I want to ask you to consider, what is the source of that opinion? Is it what you want to commit yourself to?

From the peak of Mt Olympus these distinctions in wine do not mean much. It is us, with our face right beside the boulder, that decide they are meaningful. We get to ask ourselves which approaches we want to invest our time in.

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Tomorrow: Part 3: Love: Paul Draper and Principles

Part 3: UC Davis Talk, Part 3: Freedom, Expression, and Love: A Consideration of Choice in Winemaking

Thank you to Dr. Boulton. Thank you to Nick Antignano. Thank you to all of the students that attended.

Thank you to Kate MacKay.

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UCDavis Talk, Part 1: Freedom, Expression, and Love: A Consideration of Choice in Winemaking

Apr 16, ’13 11:46 AM

The students of the UC Davis Viticulture and Enology Program operate a Spring speaker series course, attended by upper level undergrads, and graduate students, as well as some professors. The course is run by students themselves, with a group selecting the speakers, arranging schedules, and invitations.

I was lucky enough to be included for the series this Spring, and gave my talk yesterday, after receiving a tour from Dr. Boulton. Seeing the facilities, and what they offer in terms of research potentials for the community of UC Davis is truly inspiring. The design of the newer buildings offer an international class marker for sustainability as well.

I am inspired too to witness the passion and openness of the current students through conversations had after the talk, and questions asked during. The legacy of the UC Davis program is unmatched. The future of these young people is exciting.

Several people asked if I would share the talk here. It was not recorded. The talk was delivered without notes by simply moving through the ideas with the group. However, in order to prepare I pre-wrote a paper as though I was speaking with the group. What I delivered in person followed the form written here, as well as the points made, even if without reading it. What is lost here is the interaction with the group.

The talk was designed to be 45 minutes, with time for questions after, and discussion along the way. Because of the length I have split it here into three parts. Following is the first part.

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Freedom, Expression, and Love: An Exploration of Choice in Winemaking
By Elaine Chukan Brown, aka. Lily-Elaine Hawk Wakawaka

a photo taken of me by a student on the first day of Epistemology class when I was still teaching full-time

Let me begin in a way that is not typical here, but is integral to my understanding of who I am, and is the foundation of anything and everything I have accomplished in my life.

My maternal great grandparents are Paul and Anna Chukan, from the Bristol Bay region of Alaska. My grandparents are Gordon and Anisha McCormick. My grandmother on my father’s side is Emily Ivanoff Ticasuk Brown, from the Norton Sound Region of Alaska. My parents are Melvin and Katherine Brown. I am the youngest of three daughters. My name is Elaine Chukan Brown.

Within the Native communities of Alaska, and elsewhere, recognition of each other is based, not only in the choices we have made on how to live our life, but also primarily in the family, the ancestors, from whom we come, and also the land from which we rise. It is understood that only through these connections, through the history of our place in the world could we be who we are today. Our life depends on the people that have raised us. Their life depends on the land from which we come. This is true for everyone in any community, and yet it is highlighted as foundational within Indigenous communities.

In talking with you today, I want to keep this perspective hovering in the background, while we go on to discuss the theme I have developed. But before I admit to what that theme is I have to confess something.

Introduction

I have struggled to understand why I am here. I am deeply grateful to be invited. I am honored by the invitation. The idea that I am here meeting with this wealth of talent, with all of you, the future of the wine industry, is overwhelming. I am humbled and grateful.

As I believe you know, I am not a winemaker. I have no substantial vineyard experience. I have never owned a winery, or a wine business. I am a writer, and a philosopher. The most honest explanation I can give you for what I do is that I write about people in wine because I must.

In preparing for this talk, I spoke with a number of winemakers, and members of the wine industry asking for their insights for our discussion. My talk is a fusion, in a sense, of a wealth of conversations and suggestions for your good fortune. By the end, I had to ask what I uniquely offer in being here with you.

I cannot tell you how to make wine, or how to manage your vineyard. Hopefully your other courses have helped with that. I cannot relate how I transitioned from this program, or another like it, into my wine career. I believe others in this series will offer that. So, instead I must speak to you as a writer-philosopher that works very hard at listening to people.

As some of you know, I am lucky enough to spend my time traveling around, tasting and drinking, speaking with people in wine. At the core of these experiences, I find a common theme; a philosophical question that I believe drives the very best winemakers, as well as the most astute tasters, and is the topic I want to focus on with you today. It is the simple question, what does it mean to make wine.

To tease out the answer, I am going to move through three parts, each arising out of consideration of one quotation. The parts, to give you a preview, will sound overly metaphysical at first, or perhaps commonplace, but I will name them for you anyway, and then we will work through what each one of them is. Here they are: (1) freedom, (2) expression, and (3) love.

Part 1: Freedom: Paul Draper and Camus

A. Paul Draper

Paul Draper, from my first visit to Ridge Monte Bello, October 2012

Here is the quotation. In a recent conversation I had with winemaker Paul Draper he made the following statement, “I am not an oenologist. I am a winemaker.”

Let me point out that when each of you finishes this program, you will take with you more formal training on viticulture and/or oenology than Paul Draper. He has never gone through a certified education program on the subject. Consider this. Paul Draper is arguably one of the best, and most historically significant winemakers of North America. If you really think about that, the reality of your training should be very exciting to you. What it means is that you have the opportunity to accomplish something truly significant in your career.

At exactly the same time, if you are really paying attention, the reality of what I’ve just pointed out should intimidate you. Here’s why: one of the best, and most historically important winemakers of the United States has accomplished all he has without any of the formal training that you are receiving here at UC Davis. What that means is that whatever it takes to achieve the kind of brilliance and success Draper has does not depend on anything Davis is giving you. It comes from something else. That does not mean you cannot find it here. It does mean Davis cannot in itself give it to you. It is that something else that we are here to discuss. To do this, I want to consider what Draper’s comment really means.

Let’s start simply, what, do you think, is an oenologist?

Students’s suggestions from yesterday:

- someone trained in the science of winemaking

- a lab chemist

- by Draper’s explanation, an oenologist is someone trained to solve problems with wine

- surely someone could also be an oenologist AND a winemaker

What, then, is a winemaker?

Let’s set that question aside for a moment, and look first at a story from Camus. It will appear disconnected at first, but my reasoning will circle back in the end.

B. Camus

In the final essay of his text, The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus gives his account of Sisyphus from Greek myth. Sisyphus tricked the gods again and again, avoiding death repeatedly, and thus acting as though he was cleverer than Zeus himself. When finally caught, the gods exacted their punishment. Sisyphus is consigned to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity—he is down there still right now. The boulder is right at the edge of Sisyphus’s strength. He can barely move it. But he must, all the way to the top of a particular hill. Then, just as he reaches the top with it, the boulder immediately rolls back down again. Without rest, Sisyphus is required to follow the rock back to the bottom of the hill and begin again. What is peculiar about the story is that according to Camus, we must imagine that Sisyphus is happy.

What I want to propose is this—to understand this claim, we have to assume that Camus is right. Sisyphus is happy. Then we have to assume it is our job to determine what it looks like for what Camus says to be true. The onus is on us.

This point—the onus is on us, I take into every conversation I ever have. It is my job to listen to you. It is my job to recognize the wine’s purpose. It is my job to be happy. I’ll admit, sometimes I get tired and fail in these tasks, but they are still my job.

Do people have ideas here? How can we understand Sisyphus as happy?

Students suggestions from yesterday:

- reveling in having tricked the gods before?

- hope he might escape again?

- appreciation for a worthy task

My suggestion is that Camus is offering us two views of freedom.

Here is the first. The rock is so massive that it demands absolutely everything Sisyphus is to move the rock up the hill. In those moments, Sisyphus exists only as a rock-pusher. He is so consumed by the task he is not even conscious of it. Strangely, in these moments the punishment is its own escape. The rock is so demanding he cannot waste energy or awareness on performing it. He simply must be the one that moves the rock. He is entirely directed at the exact task. He is free in these moments only in the sense that he exists without conscious awareness. For Camus though, lack of consciousness would be less a form of freedom, and more simply a form of escape.

What, then, is the second form of freedom? When Sisyphus has arrived at the top of the hill with the boulder, the rock runs away from him. It escapes his grasp and tumbles back down the hill. Sisyphus now must turn back, walk towards the boulder he will meet again at the bottom of the hill, and prepare himself to push it back up again.

In these moments, Sisyphus is free of the boulder in the sense that he is no longer pushing it. But what he must literally do is still defined by the boulder. The gods have taken the choice of his activity away. He has no choice but to walk down the hill to push the boulder again. But, even so, it is in these moments that Sisyphus is truly free. What Sisyphus can choose to do is determined for him by the gods, but how he can choose to do it is not. It is a subtle distinction here.

In any literal sense, he is required to walk to the bottom of the hill and repeat his task. But in these moments Sisyphus is conscious of his fate, and the way he will choose to face it in terms of his countenance is now up to him. If he walks down begrudgingly, the gods have won. They have truly punished him.

He is not free in the sense of being able to wildly choose any activity. He is free in terms of how he will be about the task he is required to do. The gods cannot decide for Sisyphus what his countenance will be, nor how he will feel. Camus contends that Sisyphus is happy.

This is what I want to suggest. The rock represents what any of us choose to do in our lives. At some point the rock becomes our required task—whether because we made a decision and now are following it through as our career path or relationship or other activity, or, because something outside our control now bears down on us to face. Camus is pointing out that if any of us are going to accomplish something significant with our lives we must accept the reality of what that means. Any life long project bears endless repetition. It also includes some breaks—an ebb and flow of accomplishment. The greatest accomplishments rest in choosing something with genuine substance almost beyond our capacity to handle, and a consistent form that we commit to fulfilling again and again. We must pick our rock and follow through with repeatedly pushing it up the hill.

Camus uses the metaphor of the rock also to point out that what we choose for our lives is in actuality rather arbitrary. Sisyphus’s task appears meaningless. The gods do not even care about the task except inasmuch as they gave it to him. From the distant view on top Mt Olympus, what we do is mostly irrelevant. But for us, the ones right there face hard against the rock, what we choose is intensely meaningful. What we choose matters because it will shape everything about our daily and long term lives. It is also only me that can push my rock. The rock any of us has belongs to us alone. Sisyphus is happy because the rock belongs to him. He has accepted his fate, but without giving up. He claims his rock. Each walk down the hill he gets to choose how he will face it. In this choice he finds his freedom.

But again, it is a very particular type of freedom we have to emphasize. It is not the freedom to wildly pursue any activity—Camus is also pointing out each of us actually faces a genuine limit to how thoroughly we can really choose our daily activities anyway. Now that I am here at Davis, I cannot choose to have dinner tonight in Paris (if any of you want to get me to Paris for tomorrow though, please talk to me after). Once we have selected what we want to do with our lives, we have also, in fact, chosen to limit ourselves. But without choosing to limit ourselves we have no opportunity to accomplish something. The freedom we find through our own commitment is the freedom of how we are going to express our choices.

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Part 2: Expression: Pneumonia and Technique will follow tomorrow.

Part 2: UC Davis Talk, Part 2: Freedom, Expression, and Love: A Consideration of Choice in Winemaking

Part 3: UC Davis Talk, Part 3: Freedom, Expression, and Love: A Consideration of Choice in Winemaking

Thank you to Dr. Boulton. Thank you to Nick Antignano. Thank you to all of the students that attended, and especially to those that spoke with me after. I’m so grateful for our conversations.

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The Butterfly Effect: How the death of a fad gave birth to beautiful color in wine, Part 3: The Craft of Wine Tasting, and the Question of Responsibility, Conversation with Two Sommeliers

Apr 15, ’13 8:39 AM

for George, with gratefulness

Danger, and Excitement: Giving Time to Wine

Bobby Stuckey

“A new approach or trend in wine is not exciting right off.” Bobby Stuckey tells me, “first it’s dangerous.” Stuckey is a Master Sommelier with a wealth of experience in Northeastern Italy (and elsewhere), as well as co-owner of Frasca Food and Wine in Boulder, Colorado, and the wine label Scarpetta. Stuckey’s idea of danger and excitement are meant to point out the challenge that a new discovery in wine carries with it.

The first introduction to a brand new style can offer such a break with previous expectations of wine that, as Ryme winemaker Ryan Glaab put it, the experience “is mind scrambling.” The feeling is dangerous when put up against old standards for judging wine that have grown inflexible. For those that remain malleable, however, an encounter with what’s new moves us past the danger zone into excitement–the first glimpses of new information giving charge to experience.

We’re discussing the idea of responsibility in the wine world when Stuckey touches on the role that knowledge and education plays. In order to make his point, Stuckey compares the oft discussed orange wine phenomenon to the surge in interest on Alsace that occurred in the mid-90s United States. When attention first turned to Alsace, a lot of sommeliers didn’t adequately understand the region–sweet wines? dry wines? what grapes? “It took a couple years for people to figure out what was going on,” he says. “We’re doing that right now with orange wines.”

The point behind Stuckey’s comparison, is that it takes time to genuinely understand new regions, or approaches to wine, let alone to simply gather basic knowledge. “Wine buyers need to take time to figure it out.” A mistake occurs, in other words, when people are quick to judge without having first put care into their study.

The time required to gain depth of understanding works against the pace of a world where it’s more common to quickly name drop wine styles, winemakers, or regions currently considered cool simply because trends too often equal street cred and attention. “We get buzz word trend focused, then go off the deep end.” Stuckey comments. “But,” when tasting wine, or trying something new we need to take the time and “ask, why did that work well there.” Stuckey characterizes this more in depth approach as “the craft of tasting a wine.” As he describes it, it’s a craft that develops with time and experience, and depends not just on sensory awareness, but intelligence and interest.

Answering Stuckey’s question “why did that work” depends too on recognizing the role of time for the winemaker. He points out that when it comes to exploring a new technique to making wine, “even great winemakers, 10 to 12 years before getting it, didn’t know exactly what was going to happen.” The best winemakers need multiple vintages to dial in their understanding of a new approach. In the process of trying out new techniques, there is also the risk of not knowing how the wine will be received.

In a U.S. context, Pax Mahle offers one such example. He began experimenting with using white wine maceration in 2003, but, as Mahle tells me, “it wasn’t until 2007 that one came to fruition.” Mahle was looking for texture and tannin without having to use oak or high alcohol, but wasn’t willing to bottle a wine until he was happy to put his name on it. Prior to that Mahle would find ways to blend his skin contact batches in to other wines. It was a way of allowing experimentation while mitigating the risk, maintaining credibility and quality.

Recognizing Responsibility and Hearing Voices

Levi Dalton

The responsibility piece kicks in in that it is generally wine professionals that are charged with greater access to a range of wines, as well as the position of representing the world of wine to consumers with less knowledge or experience. As proselytizers of the esoteric, wine professionals can slide into the more Catholic approach of acting as strict gatekeepers–a priest between the common and god–or take the more varied protestant approach of recognizing the people can talk to god directly. From the protestant view, anyone can learn about wine. As metaphorical spiritual leaders, we get to choose how we want to interact with that.

Levi Dalton takes the position of what I’m calling the more protestant aesthetic but counters it instead to an image of the Magician Sommelier. Dalton is a Sommelier in New York City, now working as the Wine Editor for Eater New York, and the voice of the interview podcast series, I’ll Drink to That. “Magician Sommeliers,” he tells me, “don’t want you to know the answers. They want to keep the illusion.” It’s a practice Dalton opposes. “You should want people to know things. You can’t stop them from googling stuff.”

Behind Dalton’s view is a similar consideration of time as that given by Stuckey. “Engage with something or someone on a real level,” Dalton suggests, comparing the process of getting to know a wine as that of having a genuine conversation with someone. When encountering a new wine, Dalton suggests, “sit down, try to treat the wine right, and try to hear something.”

In hearing something from a wine, Dalton is pointing out too that the responsibility for recognizing what a wine might have to offer rests in the person drinking it, rather than simply in the wine itself being immediately likeable. Recognizing the important role of the taster allows that not every wine will speak to every person. “If I find this interesting,” Dalton points out, “maybe other people will find it interesting. Not everyone but some people.”

Dalton’s openness to differing experiences with wine pulls the compulsion away from trends and shifts value back to individual wines, and particular markets. If not everyone is going to “hear” a particular wine, the need for supporting variation in the wine world comes to the fore of importance. It also makes the embracing of differences not only important, but fundamental to the overall ethic, not to mention integral to providing good service. That is, I may not like a wine, but my satisfaction in helping you find one you like depends on me listening to where you might differ from me, and valuing that.

The Relevance of Orange Wines

Stuckey and Dalton are both known, at least partially, for their insights on what are now called orange wines, macerated ferments of white grapes. Throughout our conversation, Stuckey demonstrates an intimate knowledge of the vintages of Radikon, as well as producers from throughout Italy. Dalton carries thorough experience of Italy as well, and developed the wine program of two Italian focused New York restaurants with an emphasis on integrating accessibility, education, and lesser known wines through the design of the menu. In this way, Dalton helped introduce the U.S. market to the phenomenon. Though orange wines as an approach reach to the techniques preserved in Georgian culture, Italian producers that drew from Georgia’s heritage brought the wine style to the fore of attention.

Dalton considers the meaning of the differing structure and texture of orange wines. “Orange wines,” he tells me, “make people think about how wines are constructed. It breaks the illusion.” With the illusion lifted, suddenly the winemaker’s trick is revealed, it gives the wine drinker access to the wine in a new way. The wine drinker has a new opportunity to start asking questions.

For many winemakers, playing with macerated ferments is a parallel process of asking questions. Back again in the U.S. context, Sonja Magdevski, winemaker for the label Casa Dumetz, describes that exploration, “the more I do, the more I learn. There are so many ways to make wine.”

Magdevski understands herself as early in the winemaking learning process after starting her label in 2009. It’s a view of winemaking she seems likely to carry far into her career, being committed to the process of exploration. She has begun playing with skin contact trials on Gewurtztraminer, so far expecting to use them as integral to a Gewurtztraminer blend. For Magdevski, the barrel that was left on skins for 21 days through fermentation was fascinating, but she recognizes too the limit in getting pulled into a wine only because it’s intriguing. “I wanted to do the skin lot as a separate bottling because it’s interesting,” she tells me. “But I realized, if the wine is not also pretty, and attractive to others, what’s the point?”

As a winemaker, Magdevski sees her responsibility as bringing together her learning process with the desire to share the wine with others in a pleasurable way. Playing with the two versions of Gewurtztraminer barrel side, a blend of the two draws on the heightened aromatics and pleasing texture of the skin contact, with the lift and purity of flavors from the pressed lot, together each gaining greater dimensionality.

In considering again the role of the wine professional, Stuckey emphasizes the importance of recognizing the winemakers learning curve. As he puts it, “if you’re doing something different, it takes a minute.” The winemaker learns their craft over timel. But ultimately he brings the point back again to the wine professional and their ability to facilitate for a patron. “Our responsibility as a wine buyer is to learn, and know what is going on, not wild west it on the customer.”

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To read previous installments of this series:

Part 1: The Butterfly Effect: How the death of a fad gave birth to beautiful color in wine, Part 1: Considering Recent History

Part 2: The Butterfly Effect: How the death of a fad gave birth to beautiful color in wine, Part 2: Variety, Terroir, and Mind Scrambling

To read last year’s series explaining Orange Wines beginning with how they’re made, then their presence in Georgia, Italy, and California, begin here: Understanding Orange Wines Part 1: A Quick and Dirty Look at How They’re Made and What Their Tannins Do To Our Saliva

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The next installment will further consider the interplay of technique and terroir.

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Finding Purpose: California Chardonnay at IPOB SF 2013

Feb 6, ’13 8:04 AM

In Pursuit of Balance SF 2013: Seminar 1: Relevance and Purpose in California Chardonnay

Jon Bonné headed a panel of Chardonnay makers focused on the “Relevance and Purpose” of the state’s expression of the grape. In his opening remarks, Bonné referenced our movement into the third wave of California Chardonnay. As a reaction against the oft criticized Rombauer over-oaked and buttery paradigm, Bonné explains, winemakers developed an interest in the use of stainless steel and its austere coupling against malolactic fermentation. Today, Bonné offers, we also find a terroir driven synthesis that brings together delicacy of flavor with textural pleasure, higher acidity freshness, and lower alcohol heat. The wines represented throughout the event, In Pursuit of Balance, showcase such a style.

The panel discussion included the following winemakers and owners: Gavin Chanin, Chanin Wine Company; Matt Licklider, LIOCO; Rajat Parr, Sandhi Wines; Bab Varner, Varner Wine. Each showed a single recent vintage wine to illustrate their work. Knez Wine was also represented through the tasting portion of the panel.

Expressing Chardonnay’s Site

As Bonné began the panel, we were reminded of the neutral character of the grape itself. That is, Chardonnay does well at transmitting the characteristics of the climate, soil, and overall terroir within which it is grown. Stylistic choices can overwhelm the site specificity possible through the grape too, however. But in listening to the panel discussion, what the third wave of California Chardonnay seems to be expressing is the subtle balance not only of alcohol and acidity, but of site presentation and stylistic technique.

Rajat Parr gave the most direct statement regarding the panel’s thesis question–the Relevance and Purpose in California Chardonnay. “Our goal,” he offered, “should be to make the best wine from where you are. Not the best wine like somewhere else. Represent your own appellation.”

Bob Varner furthered the question on how to accomplish such a goal. Varner clarifies that as a winemaker he regularly asks himself “how do I have the most control doing the least?” Through experience Varner has learned that “the vineyard is going to give me more than I can do in the cellar.”

The point becomes interesting when you consider that even in less manipulative winemaking practices technique is still a determining factor for expressing terroir. Varner addresses this point. “Sites need technique. [...] You have to make decisions about what to do and don’t do.” In considering lower intervention approaches to wine, Varner emphasizes that “too much removal [of technique] leads to not making a statement wine. One that doesn’t reflect the vineyard.”

Questions Besides Terroir

Alongside such considerations the winemaker also has to decide what their other goals are in making their wine. Terroir isn’t a simple matter of direct presentation, fruit to wine, there are also considerations of how quickly one wants their wines to be approachable, what texture the winemaker prefers, and how rich he or she is willing to let the flavors become, all of which make contact with the idea of how to express the particular site, that is, of how to cultivate the fruit into wine. As an example, Parr references the use of light fining and filtration on Sandhi wines. Sandhi fines and filters because of how doing so makes the final wines more taut, a stylistic preference that still carries the manifestation of the site’s particular potential.

The Relevance of Clone versus Site

The panel clarifies that when considering site the age of the vines has some relevance early on. That is, in the first 10 to 15 years of a vineyard’s life the wine expression is more about the clone–the characteristics of the particular clone planted really show when the vines are young. In a young vineyard the nuances of the site itself are not very clearly expressed. However, once the vines acclimate to the site, they calm down in a sense. Older than 15 years and the particular characteristics of the vineyard become more important than the clone type. Bob Varner clarifies, “younger vines are more exuberant. But [their fruit is] not as dense or taut on the palate as older vines. Older vines also offer more lift.”

Working with Chardonnay

The sensitivity of Chardonnay gives Gavin Chanin his reason for loving the grape. As he explains, “working with great Chardonnay, or Pinot Noir,” he adds, “needs time to produce. With these grapes time turns into something.” Part of the point Chanin raises is the role technique carries in creating good wine. In discussion Chanin considers that if one wanted to create the strictest rendition of a terroir wine, the winemaker might choose to rack, to bottle, to age the exact same durations every year. In keeping the numbers consistent, the wine drinker, it would seem, could really taste the vintage differences from year to year. But as Chanin explains, “respecting an individual wine means respecting that wine has different needs” from the same vineyards’ fruit of a different vintage, or the fruit from one vineyard versus another.

An audience member asked the panel about the idea of new oak. The Raumbauer panic would seem to steer us away from the use of new barrels. But Matt Licklider clarifies, “new oak is good.” There’s not an absolute for or against its use. “Some sites don’t need it.” Bob Varner responds in agreement. “The trick is finding the cooperage and wood that integrates with the wine. That adds structure, with flavors that integrate rather than cover over.”

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Thank you to Jon Bonné for facilitating the discussion. Thank you to Gavin Chanin, Matt Licklider, Rajat Parr, and Bob Varner for your insights.

Thank you to Jasmine Hirsch, and to Dan Fredman.

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A Winemaking Philosophy: Guest Post by Tyler Thomas, Donelan Wines

Jan 29, ’13 8:00 AM

The following is the second of a two-part series, guest posts written by Tyler Thomas, winemaker of Donelan Wines.

To read the first of Tyler’s guest posts: http://wakawakawinereviews.com/2013/01/28/the-humanness-of-winemaking-faith-hope-and-love-as-the-core-of-life-and-wine-guest-post-by-tyler-thomas-donelan-wines/

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tasting Donelan Wines, summer 2012

It is a privilege that Wakawaka Wine reviews has invited me to post as a guest. Elaine and I have spoken much of philosophy and approach to winemaking, partly because of the very important role I place on “wine worldview”: i.e. how we think about wine informs actions of the way we end up producing that wine. What follows is somewhat of a personal winemaking philosophical statement that I apply to our efforts at Donelan Family Wines where we make Syrah, Grenache, Roussanne, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir.

While obtaining a B.S. and M.S. in Botany and Plant Molecular Biology, I was fascinated with plant physiology: how a static organism could adapt/interact so well to its environment. Winemaking is a wonderful professional avenue to enjoy the fruits of such interaction in a way that brings pleasure to so many people. In this industry my focus has almost exclusively been with producers who sought to maximize wine quality (and hence, your pleasure) by maximizing our understanding of any particular place and bringing forth that expression with deft work in the cellar. My desire is to produce wines of great and special character consistently and efficiently each vintage.

I’ve learned in my tenure as a winemaker that unique vineyards, great equipment, proper education, and excellent cellar techniques are only part of the story. First and foremost I believe that one must develop quality leadership, a quality team of people, and a quality winery culture to produce peerless wine vintage in and vintage out. My experience in winery upheaval and transition has emphasized the importance of leadership, philosophy, and vision combined with patient communication in order to develop substantive change. We must cultivate wine, but also people.

With an excellent team in place, making great wine vintage after vintage is a result of two places: the vineyard and the mind. While inimitable wine presumes inimitable fruit, the role played by the mental juggling of variables involved from vineyard to glass are less easily delineated. I’ve read once “don’t learn the tricks of the trade, learn the trade.” Knowing how to clean a barrel doesn’t necessarily make me a better winemaker, but knowing the language of winemaking (another way of saying the science and art) and understanding how people handle different challenges might. Deciphering how another individual thinks about wine – their philosophical approach to making a wine, to balance, to quality; understanding these elements from one person or culture can be integrated into handling the fruit from your own region, climate, and vineyards.

This is exactly what I have taken away from each opportunity in the industry. Experiences in the Santa Rita Hills, Sonoma, Napa, New Zealand, and across Europe were paramount to developing my own perspective on wine production. These experiences evolved my mental approach to wine production. Concepts like balance, importance of extraction, emphasis on mouth feel over flavor, the tool of patience, and perhaps most importantly: how wine was esteemed in each culture.

I will always remember having a candid discussion about acid and bubbles with a winemaker in Champagne when a light bulb went off about the greater role of acid in texture and wine let alone great Champagne. That informed my time as an Assistant Winemaker with HdV Wines in Napa and altered the angle of my view of California wines ever since. Who knew the halls of a corporate cafeteria in France could be so informative for a boutique winemaker!

Across cultures the purpose of wine is pleasure. My goal is to make wines that please by their compelling nature. That is you find yourself both hedonistically and intellectually compelled to go back to the wine over and over again. It calls to you, and you answer. Many wines can draw your first glance, but can they sustain your desire?

I find that both cuvees and single vineyard wines can achieve this goal. The hope of any cuvee is to utilize all the parts, all the colors, to paint a picture or present an offering that is greater than any of the individual parts. Vineyard designated wines ought to stand alone as complete wines (complexity, depth, length, structure) but generally offer a certain unique something that is sine qua non. They ought to have a unique, intriguing aroma profile as a result of their place, but also a balanced texture and complexity to deliver both pleasure and distinction.

I believe that the greatest wines (cuvees or single vineyards) are not made but discovered. While many say that great wine starts in the vineyard (and it does), my goal is also to discover and distill what truly makes an impact to the governing components of wine and only do those things (okay, that’s also because I’m a little lazy and don’t want to create extra work for myself!). For example, by segmenting vines as a result of natural variation within even the smallest of sites we can capture only the best of the best in a vineyard. This assists in learning more about small sections of vineyards, and about essential and nonessential parts of the production that influence how a wine tastes from that site.

Perhaps this is disappointing. Perhaps you would prefer a recipe or some other secret to our vineyard and winemaking approach. Well, maybe I make it out to be simpler than it is, but as my old mentor used to say: “don’t forget, it’s just wine.” We look for good people, create good culture, make wines we enjoy, and hope you will esteem them.

I’ll sum it up this way. Just the other day I was telling Joe Donelan that I found a vineyard that would make the best Mourvedre in the state. We could make one acre, 4 barrels, and drink it all ourselves! Wouldn’t that be great! People, passion, pleasure.

The foundation to achieving this is laid on the quality and knowledge of the team corralled. Establishing a quality vision and culture, and uncompromisingly executing the details will in the end produce the most satisfying of all the beverages: transcendent wine.

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Thank you to Tyler Thomas for his work writing these posts to share here. I am grateful for the opportunity to share his ideas, as conversations with him have consistently proved insightful and engaging. I also admire the quality of his wines.

To read more from Tyler, you can follow the Donelan Wines blog here: http://www.donelanwines.com/blog/

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The Humanness of Winemaking: Faith, Hope, and Love as the core of Life and Wine: Guest Post by Tyler Thomas, Donelan Wines

Jan 28, ’13 8:19 AM

This summer I had the privilege of meeting winemaker Tyler Thomas. We talked for several hours about the intersections of science and faith, winemaking as art versus craft, as well as philosophy and what it means to be human. It’s a conversation I’ve returned to again and again in mind since. Tyler Thomas is head winemaker at Donelan Wines in Santa Rosa, California, producing high quality Rhone and Burgundy varieties from Sonoma County. Previously, he also served as assistant winemaker alongside Stéphane Vivier at HdV.

After continued conversations with Tyler about minerality and plant health, making Chardonnay, and the 2012 vintage, I asked if he would be willing to write a guest post to share here. I am grateful to share two. The first, is Tyler Thomas’s reflection on faith in winemaking; the second, tomorrow, elucidates his winemaking philosophy.

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Tyler Thomas (photo courtesy of Donelan Wines)

One of the elements of winemaking I enjoy is how its production employs our humanness. This topic is difficult and very broad so I’ll try to remain on task. We could start by discussing wine’s transcendence. Wine transcends its original material. It points to – no – engages the imbiber into an experience of enjoying flavors other than what would be expected from tasting its original components. Cherry wine tastes like cherries, but grape wine doesn’t taste of grapes. And while I think, just as NYU President John Sexton argues, that baseball implies a larger transcendence and the same could be said of wine, here we’ll leave that windy path for someone else to travel. But there are plenty of other reasons beside wine’s transcendental nature that invoke our human experience, not the least of which is the way it draws our pleasure and gladness of heart.

Wine is incredibly complex yet simple, regal yet rustic, crushed for goodness, real and ethereal (at times), known and mysterious, physical and transformed. Its purpose seems primarily set toward pleasure. For me, wine is analog for life…and Life; and not only in wine’s final state but in its production too. “Analog for life,” you might think, “did he just write that?” Yes! One of the reasons is because my worldview has led me to feel that faith, hope, and love are core elements of life. And in wine production we exhibit elements of faith, hope, and love; and we do so frequently. I’d like to examine how wine can help one gain an understanding of the faith elements of life. To do this I’ll presume that faith, hope, and love are indeed integral to our humanness. I’ll also assume winemakers care about wine, and just as we live life as if our decisions have meaning, we interact with our grapes with a similar passion and verve for their meaningful outcome: yummy vino.

Certainly faith has strong religious connotations. So much so that many people consider the word faith synonymous with the qualifier blind faith. Perhaps some have already stopped reading as a result! I like this definition: a confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. Do we employ faith when definitive explanations fail us and quality and artisan greatness beckon us? Not blind faith, blind to historical experience and science, but real faith that incorporates experience and science.

For a winemaker like me the scientific knowledge we’ve gained over time is critical in that it gives us a confident trust in a specific cellar or vineyard practice. However there is also an interesting narrative that leads many to refer to winegrowing as art, and us as artists. Empirical knowledge provides confident trust, but there are also quite a few creative gut calls that I believe require faith, or the confidence in knowledge beyond ourselves. Winemakers don’t often admit this but – here’s the news flash – we don’t know everything about producing inimitable wine, yet we hope our decisions have tremendous importance.

It’s true! While we may not know things exhaustively, we can still “know” even amidst the mystery. We strive to obtain more knowledge about winegrowing so we can use it to optimize our viticulture and enology and ensure we make the best wine possible each vintage. But without a complete road map to how this flavor in that concentration responds to an 83 degree (not 86!) ferment with 3 punch downs a day and then bounces into another compound to produce a given sensory effect…you can see it gets complicated. Without knowing all that definitively, producers often hope in their intuition and then examine the result asking: “do I like this?” This often leads wine producers to rely more on faith developed over time. Or can I say we employ a confident trust in the truth of a particular practice to give us the desired result?

OK skeptics call it intuition mixed with science if the word faith sends shivers down your spine and your eyes rolling. But if you have an aversion to a word because it conjures too much religious context (which would be a guilt by association fallacy), I encourage you to take what you know from your production techniques and reexamine what it means to employ faith. Can we admit we make decisions without full knowledge of how our desired outcome is achieved? Can we admit that we deeply hope those decisions have meaning? “No Tyler,” you might say, “you are talking about intuition.” Fair enough. I admit it is difficult to separate faith from intuition in the discussion of wine. But I would maintain that there is something about the passion with which we pour ourselves into the process, something more personal and emotive about it, some part of our sincere desire for this decision to be right and true that takes these decisions beyond mere intuition. Intuition is visceral and doesn’t involve the same hope. Intuition is not as supremely pleased when right or devastated when wrong. If we were to consult the Bible (don’t hate me for it!), it offers an alternative definition of faith: the assurance of things hoped for, the convictions of things not seen. Do we not often feel assured in the hope we have that the decisions we make improve our wines?

When we are enjoying a wine 5 years removed from its production and pat ourselves on the back for handling a challenging situation for which we had yet to have a reference and glow in the pleasure of the sips. When we do that, do we simply say “nice gut call”? Isn’t there something more? More of an expectation, more hope, more risk, more reward, more meaning?

Clearly my presumption is that faith and hope are core human elements. Perhaps you disagree. But if you grant me that presumption I think it difficult to deny that winemaking employs elements of our humanness and this should be recognized and embraced. The challenge is to distill what is really true, what really worked, from an anecdote associated with success. How do we wade through knowledge and embrace the mystery? Is faith, the confident trust in the trust worthiness of a practice the answer? The goal of any lifelong pursuer of peerless wine should be to find good answers. And this takes time, effort, and…a little faith. I submit that those who can embrace the science and the mystery will have the greatest opportunity to make the best wine. Those who love and understand empirical knowledge and belief have – I believe – the best chance to discover something great and be a part of producing an inimitable wine. It requires faith in certain actions that transcend your current understanding of the winemaking world to provide meaning to your final goal: a wine that produces a glad heart.

***

Thank you to Tyler Thomas.

To read more about Tyler’s work with Donelan Wines: http://senelwine.com/wine-interviews/tyler-thomas-of-donelan-wines/

Donelan Wine Website: http://www.donelanwines.com/index2.html

Tomorrow will host another guest post by Tyler Thomas on his winemaking philosophy.

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A Report on Tragedy and Comedy: Red Hook Winery, A Guest Post by Abe Schoener

Nov 14, ’12 1:03 AM

The following is a guest post written by Abe Schoener, winemaker of The Scholium Project, and one of the founders and winemakers of Red Hook Winery, Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York. The text of this post has also been shared with his Scholium Project mailing list.

***

A Report on Tragedy and Comedy, by Abe Schoener

Dear Correspondents–

I am writing you from Red Hook, Brooklyn, on a beautiful warm sunny day. I wish that I could send a hundred photos. There is so much tell you and words are not enough. I am writing from a pier with water on both sides– the south side looks across the Red Hook Channel of the Upper Bay of New York Harbor to Staten Island and Bayonne, New Jersey; the north side looks across the Buttermilk Channel to Governor’s Island and the Statue of Liberty. Wild ducks live near the breakwater shore; ferries, tugboats and their charges ply the water constantly. These days, we see a lot of police boats and Coast Guard cutters racing across the water. This is because we are at the center of a zone of water-born devastation.

I work at a winery here on this pier. I helped to found a winery in Red Hook in 2008, and I have spent many wonderful days here, making wine from New York grapes. I have learned so much from and with my friends and colleagues and have treasured both the experience and our accomplishments. It is not enough to say that there is a world of difference between making wine in Brooklyn and in Napa. I will leave it to your imagination. But what you must know is this: we have found some amazing vineyards sites in the warm, fertile soils of Long Island, and we have made some wines as good or better than anything I have made in California. I will save details for another message. When the storm hit New York, Red Hook was like a breakwater. No zones in the storm’s path in NY suffered worse damage from the raging waters. On the morning that the waters receded, my colleagues reported to me that the winery had been destroyed and that all was lost. Within another day, I got a somewhat more studied (and optimistic) report. We had no power, no doors to close, no working equipment. But very few of the wines, fermenting or in barrel, had been been flooded by water or swept away. It was a miracle. We are still not sure how much might have been contaminated indirectly (through the barrels staves, by swirling vapors), but we knew that we had a new task: no matter what the final result, we must work to save everything that we could.

I flew out as soon as I could. Meanwhile, Mark and Christopher and Darren and Ben and 20 volunteers cleared the tumult of barrels and swept away the fruit spilled everywhere onto the floor. On the fourth day, we began working on the wines again, in the dark, using headlamps and flashlights. We tasted everything and made a triage chart. Some wines still needed pumping over; most were at the end of their fermentations and needed to be drained away from the skins and seeds. We began work draining the tanks of red wine by gravity, into large open vessels that we would then bucket out of to fill barrels. Over the next couple of days, we drained the puncheons of white wine by gravity, bucket, and eventually by a tiny generator-powered pump. Yesterday, we finished draining the puncheons of red. Except for one still active Cabernet fermentation, every wine is now safely down to barrel. We don’t know how much wine is spoiled, how much contaminated– but in a certain sense we do not care. We had work to do.

Why am I telling you this? I learned an important lesson, reflecting on my colleagues and friends working tirelessly in the cold, dark stone warehouse that is our winery. Among us for three days was a winemaker from Piemonte who had originally come here to promote his wines to the important New York market. Instead, he showed up one morning at the winery and could not stay away. For three days, he held hoses, swept the floor, filled barrels. He could not stay away and nor could we– even though none of us had any assurance that we could finally save anything. Our work was in a certain sense an end in itself.

Winemaking is an act of devotion: devotion to the wine in front of you, still young and needing your husbandry to reach its best completion; devotion to the grapes, the grapes harvested to make wine at your hands; but most of all: devotion to the vineyards and the people who own and farm them. None of us had any doubt: we had a natural and irrevocable responsibility to make sure that the grapes grown by Ron Gerler and Joe Macari, by the Matabellas and by Sam McCulloch, that the fruit of their vines, harvested at length, after months of tilling, pruning, thinning, mowing– that these did not go to waste. Storm, hurricane, flood, absence of power, a forklift that would never lift again– no excuse, no impediment: we had a responsibility to make the very best wine and make sure that a whole year’s life in the vineyard was not in vain.

Our devotion flows from the fact that the essence of winemaking is not something silly like blending or ordering the right barrels: the essence of winemaking is preservation and transformation. Both of these can take place with the least of our intervention or supervision; this in turn emphasizes that we are not creators but shepherds.

We were in that cold, dark building for four days– Luciano, from Monforte d’Alba, with other responsibilities in an important market; Talia, a writer with deadlines; Allison and Matt with restaurants to run- we were all there for the same reason. No shepherd would abandon a flock on a stormy hillside. Not his flock, not his neighbor’s. When you take on certain tasks, you accept certain charges and responsibilities and they take residence in your bones. It is wonderful to feel that charge, so deep and so viscerally; and wonderful to respond to it.

This is a report on the close of harvest. Normally, I would not report on Brooklyn– it is another venture, not Scholium. But I rushed from California to come here, leaving my noble and precociously wise interns in charge of the Scholium winery. And my mind has been forced to reflect on two places at once, but one truth. The harvest in California has been my best ever, in every respect. The quality of the fruit, the quality of the wines, the youthful interest of the wines (some of them are already fascinating!), the happiness and efficiency of our work– never have I had a year like this. And my friends and colleagues who grow grapes and make wines– all of them are celebrating. This year, there was no suffering in Napa or Sonoma or Lodi or Suisun– only gratitude and elation.

And then a winery in Brooklyn is demolished and a whole year’s harvest threatened. It made me think right away of the two sides of a coin, inseparable. And made me think of the emblem of the Theater: two masks together, Tragedy and Comedy, inseparable. And this in turn made me think of a very important line in Plato’s Symposium, a beautiful dialogue about love, but also about drinking. The story ends with Socrates compelling his two remaining drinking companions (they had drunk the others under their couches) to agree that “it is in the power of one and the same man to know how to write both comedy and tragedy.” This line has always mystified me and spurred me to thinking, but I never felt that I understood it fully, or knew why this question brought the dialogue to a close. I still do not; but I feel somewhat closer, brought closer by my recent experiences in agriculture, in winemaking, in working in a harbor: in other words, by having my hands and my feet, and my heart and my head, in the physical, unbending world of Nature– not in the filmy, pliable world of books. I learn every year how close the wedding-celebration of comedy is to the funeral march of tragedy. Winemaking– like farming– is shepherding, but it is always no more than a breath away from spoilage.

Thank you for reading such a long message. Just let me know when you want to hear less from me.

With very best wishes
Abe

***

Red Hook Winery is offering “Survival Packs” — collections of their wine, still intact, available for sale. To find out more visit their site here: http://redhookwinery.com/

To read more on the history of Red Hook, and the impact of Sandy on the area plus the winery, check out this thoughtful post by Allon Schoener: http://the-reluctant-angeleno.blogspot.com/2012/11/channeling-destruction-wrought-by-super_14.html

To hear more from Abe on the state of things at Red Hook Winery, check out this podcast with Levi Dalton on _I’ll Drink to That_. Episode 42: http://illdrinktothatpod.com/

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A Winemaking Philosophy: Guest Post by Tyler Thomas, Donelan Wines

The Humanness of Winemaking: Faith, Hope, and Love as the core of Life and Wine: Guest Post by Tyler Thomas, Donelan Wines

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