What do the words “good” and “great” mean to you, in terms of wine?
A “good” wine is most any wine that isn’t bad. You know, if it’s not really bad it’s good. It’s pleasing, fresh and balanced, not over blown, clumsy or harsh. It’s good with food and fine to sip on its own and it has some sense of typicity you know … if it’s a Pinot Noir then it tastes like you’d expect a Pinot Noir to taste. Some wines seem as if they’re one thing trying to be another, or trying to be all things. That’s not good.
A “great” wine is something rare and wonderful. It’s very possibly different for every wine drinker, but it always makes an impression and a great wine hits high notes in every aspect. From the way it looks in the glass to aroma, mouth feel, flavor and beautiful complexity that develops as you taste it, and elegant, delightful and intriguing finish. Everything about a great wine is a memory and the more wine you drink the tougher it is to be great because there are only a handful in any one wine drinker’s life.
Name two great wines you’ve had.
It being about memory I would have to say an Alsatian Riesling by Trimbach, the Cuvee Frederick Emile. My wife and I had an early experience at a wine festival in Colmar in the heart of Alsace, and those wines just blew my mind. The aromas and delicate but assertive, dry and still fleshy flavors of the Alsatian whites are astounding. Floral, fruity, intense, mineral and still very elegant. That Riesling opens up and becomes a wine that you must savor. Another quality of great wine is that it takes a long time to drink because it has so much to reveal as it develops, and you never want it to end.
Then, I would have to say a Bordeaux wine, the 1993 Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou. I probably could have allowed it to sit in my cellar longer than I did but it was beautiful in its vibrant middle youth. The name means “beautiful pebble” and of course Bordeaux wines are all about expressing their terroir, and the pebbly soils are what does the trick. This wine was all about elegance and charm. The food we were having is not a part of the memory. It wasn’t big or massive but riveting and long lasting in the mouth and the bouquet was absorbing, you could just smell this wine and with complete satisfaction, never give it a sip. Only you have to of course, and that was better still.
So, two French wines. Are you a Francophile?
Well, I routinely answer the question, “if you had to drink just one wine the rest of your life, what would it be?” with the reply, “Burgundy”. I figure I’d be drinking great red and white wine. There’s a lot of ways to answer that question and end up with only red or white wine and I couldn’t do without that choice.
But do you think French wine is somehow better, or superior to others?
Look, the French have been paying closer attention, more consistently than any other wine producing nation in the modern era. Vineyard management, crop yield, barrel aging, selection, blending, sanitation you name it, the French either pioneered or significantly refined every step. Wine would not be anything like it is today without the French. Even the very idea that wine from a specific place should taste a certain way, an idea that every nation has taken as a cornerstone to its own wine ethos, was a French idea and it still makes the most sense only in France.
That said, everyone’s favorite wine is not French and on any given day my choice may not be French. But if the idea is that wines should not all be alike than you have to take your hat off to them. French wine is still distinct and full of character. It’s very honest wine.
You’re known to be suspect of wine marketing. Do you think there is something dishonest about wines from places other than France?
Well, the French are also the shrewdest marketers of wine, whatever we’ve learned it was from them. But wine is about individuality so you cannot expect the same result in every situation. The problem with marketing is that it’s a commercial tool that’s intended to dominate. You can’t have domination and differentiation at the same time. I cannot make a wine that’s really cool to a connoisseur and also serves as a mass market wine for the average consumer.
I don’t trust marketing on its own because its about sales and not the product itself. Truly successful marketing can sell even sub-par products. “All grapes are picked at the peak of ripeness, we take great care to produce a wine of superb character”. Anyone can write that kind of label blurb but not nearly everyone delivers on those words. Not all French wine is great or even good, and not all non-French wine is bad but by controlling more about the entire process the French permit less room for imaginative marketing to inflate average wine. So, yea, I think I sense less hyperbole in European wine than in Domestic and New World wine.
In the final analyses, is there a difference between European and non-European wine?
The difference is a matter of time and tradition; the Europeans have it and we don’t. But we want to co-op whatever we can of that prestigious tradition and we have only one model to follow, the European model. So, in our wines we talk about appellations and terroir and varietal character without understanding that our claim to those terms as relevant is undercut by our lack of tradition. It will take time.
European wine is a staple. Even as their per capita consumption falls, wine is a part of European culture, it goes with their food and eating and it’s on a equal footing with other cultural traditions. For us, wine is basically a commodity that makes us feel classy and refined so its more about status.
As the global marketplace takes hold and everyone competes, the temptation is to strive for a product that satisfies a wide audience and as the taste of the audience becomes more thoroughly understood the products vying for attention grow more similar. Market domination and individual character are at cross purposes. The contradistinction of European and non-European wine is that tradition assures differentiation and the individual, predictable characters of various European wines stands out for me as the big difference.
