In Vino Veritas? The Truth About Wine in Three Tastings

April 30, 2013 By Mike Veseth in Chile, Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, Trader Joe's, Two Buck Chuck, wine education 9 Comments

In vino veritas — in wine there is truth — this is one of the touchstones of the wine enthusiast world. I like the sound of this, but I admit to being a bit confused by two recent wine tastings that I organized where the wines easily fooled us (or perhaps we just fooled ourselves), but a third tasting helped put things right.

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Mary Thomas asked if I would be willing to speak at a wine tasting that she donated (along with autographed copies of Wine Wars) to the local YWCA fund-raising auction. Yes, of course — and I knew at once what I wanted to do. A flight of red wines made by three University of Puget Sound alumni (Tom Hedges of Hedges Family Estate, Chuck Reininger of Helix and Reininger Cellars and Michael Corliss of Corliss Estates and Tranche Cellars), but first a blind tasting of white wines that figure prominently in Wine Wars.

If you’ve read Wine Wars you know that I end each flight of chapters with a wine tasting designed to explore the themes raised in the book. Three Sauvignon Blancs make up the first flight and thus inspired I put together a tasting of Charles Shaw (a.k.a. Two Buck Chuck) Sauvignon Blanc from California, Robert Mondavi Fume Blanc from Napa Valley and Cloudy Bay Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.

After tasting the three wines blind in the order given above I asked the tasters to (1) name the grape variety, (2) guess the country or region of origin for each wines, (3) guess the prices and (4) choose their favorite wine from among the three. I am not a big fan of blind tastings, but this one is fun to do in a group. I thought the auction group would enjoy it (and they did).

But first I decided to try out the blind tasting on my “lab rats” — the students enrolled in my university “Idea of Wine” course. Their tasting featured the same blind first flight followed by a different set of reds — a vertical of three Phelps Creek “Le Petit” Pinot Noirs from three years with very different weather. My hypothesis was that students would have more trouble guessing the grape, terroirs and prices of the blind flight than would the more experienced wine drinkers in the auction group.

Things did not go according to plan. After tasting the three white wines the college students were very confused and guessed all the grape varieties they could think of, but not Sauvignon Blanc. For me the signature taste of the Cloudy Bay is a giveaway — Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc — but tasted in the context of the Fume Blanc and Two Buck Chuck wines, which are so very different, nothing seemed to make sense. The common thread that connected the three wines was difficult for these wine novices to detect.

Interestingly, the experienced auction tasters did no better than the lab rat students in this regard. This really did surprise me and I think it was the confusing context that caused the trouble. Tasting the Mondavi Fume or the Cloudy Bay by itself might yield a good guess of type of wine or place of origin, but stringing the three wines together apparently distorted the view a bit too much.

One place where there was a significant difference between the groups was when it came to guessing the prices. The experienced auction group did much worse! How is that possible? Well, the big difference was the Two Buck Chuck. No frugal college student would offer to pay more than $12 for it in the blind tasting, but at least one member of the auction group was willing to pay $25 or more!

Why were seemingly rational people willing to pay so much for such a modest wine? Well, the quality of the Two Buck Chuck must be part of the answer. Wine drinkers of a certain age (and I include myself in this category) remember when cheap wines were really foul and Two Buck Chuck and its bargain priced siblings changed all that. The quality may not be high (only a couple of people in the two groups picked it as their favorite of the three), but it does reach a commercial standard that actually shocked one experienced drinker who had not previously tasted a $2.49 wine.

But the real answer is again probably context. The students are used to me presenting them with wines that are just outside a student budget — wines that cost say $10 to $30. They guessed at the low end of that range, which made sense given their expectations. The auction group’s higher guess also reflected context. Who would expect to attend a charity auction tasting and be served such a simple inexpensive wine? Impossible! So it must cost a lot, the logic probably went, and I just can’t taste the difference! If true, this is a classic case of using price (or expected price) as a proxy for perceived quality.

Which was the favorite wine? The auction group was pretty much divided between the Mondavi Fume and Cloudy Bay. The students were divided, too, but Cloudy Bay received most of the votes. That Marlborough style is so distinctive — like nothing they ever had before — and in a blind tasting context it stood out to them.

What conclusion can we draw from these two tastings? Our perception of wine is sometimes less about truth and more about context and expectations than we might want to think. That’s not the conclusion I thought I would find when I set up this tiny experiment. Fortunately a third tasting helped balance the scale.

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The nice people at Wines of Chile sent us three Cabernet Sauvignons, which we decided to use for a small scale student tasting. Sue and I were joined by Bruce Titcomb, Eben Corliss and Ali Hoover. Ali’s attendance was based upon her study abroad experience in Chile and a paper she wrote about its wines. Bruce and Eben are enthusiastic students of geology and business respectively with a special personal connection — their parents also took classes from me back in the day. It promised to be an interesting tasting. We began with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc (from Chile this time) and then got to work on the Cabs we were sent. Here is the list.

Montes Classic Series Cabernet Sauvignon 2011 Colchagua Valley 85% Cabernet + 15% Merlot 14% abv. Typical price: around $10.
Santa Carolina Colchagua Estate Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon 2011 (from Miraflores in Andes Foothills) 13.5% abv. Around $12.
Undurraga T. H. (Terroir Hunter) Alto Maipo Calbernet Sauvignon 2009 (from Picque in Andes Foothills) 14% abv. Around $20.

We sampled the three Cabs by themselves, with food (savory empanadas) and then with chocolate truffles. The wines were very different from each other and each had its moment in the spotlight. On first tasting, the Montes (the least expensive of the group) was simple, enjoyable, and fun. When Ali tasted the Santa Carolina her eyes lit up — this was Chilean wine as she knew it from her time there, she said — a reminder of her temporary South American home. The Undurraga T.H. lived up to its “Terroir Hunter” name — it was much more precise and focused.

Returning to the wines to pair then with food the Montes was a puzzle — Blake noted a strong caramel aroma when the wine had time to air out a bit. The Santa Carolina seemed to be the best match for the empanadas just as the T.H. was the favorite on its own. Then we broke out the dark chocolate truffles and tried again. This time it was the Montes that stood out — that caramel aroma really worked with the chocolate and made a hard to beat combination.

Which wine was best? Well the T.H. was probably my personal favorite but the answer depended on how you drank it (alone, with savory food, with chocolate) and what you were searching for (for Ali that memory of her time in Chile was pretty special).

So what did we learn from our three tastings. Well, I don’t really want to argue against the idea of in vino veritas, but I do think our impressions of wine are context-sensitive — perhaps more so than we really want to admit.

Blake, Eben and Ali at the Chilean Cabernet tasting.

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Thanks to Emily Denton of The Thomas Collective for providing the Chilean wines for this tasting. Thanks to Blake, Eben and Ali for their help with the Chilean Cab tasting. Photos by contributing editor Sue Veseth.

Book Review: Lewin on Claret & Cabs

April 23, 2013 By Mike Veseth in book reviews 1 Comment

Benjamin Lewin MW, Claret & Cabs: The Story of Cabernet Sauvignon. Vendage Press (to be published May 1, 2013).

What is it about the tension between Burgundy and Bordeaux that casts such a spell on wine enthusiasts? I’m not really sure. They say that in Bordeaux you talk about wine and in Burgundy you drink it. Bordeaux is cerebral — you feel it above the neck according to popular opinion — while Burgundy arouses the senses down below. Maybe that’s what it’s all about.

Jean-Robert Pitte wrote a great book about the “classic rivalry” between the two wine cultures and Master of Wine Benjamin Lewin seems bitten by the bug, too.

That’s So Typical!

Lewin (a renowned scientist — he was the founding editor of the journal Cell), has written a lot about wine in a short time. He began with What Price Bordeaux? (2009) followed by Wine Myths & Realities (2011), which I use in my university class. In Search of Pinot Noir appeared last year and now this book on Cabernet Sauvignon. What prodigious output. Amazing.

Lewin values typicity in wine, so it is not an insult for me to say that Claret & Cabs is typical of his work. Extraordinarily well researched and written, the facts and insights jump off the page in a way that draws the reader deeper and deeper into geography, geology, history, economics, viticulture and so on through all the senses that wine embodies. The discussion of clones that appears early in the book is a good example. It taught me so much in just a few pages — outstanding.

And I like the way that Lewin tells part of his story through the voices of the dozens of winemakers he interviewed on his fieldwork travels. As always, I appreciate that he doesn’t hesitate to take on difficult questions, weigh the evidence, and reach a bold conclusion.

The books on Pinot Noir and Cabernet are as different as, well, Burgundy and Bordeaux. The conventional wisdom (at least on Route Nationale 74) is that Burgundy is Burgundy and everything else is [merely] Pinot Noir, so Lewin scoured the globe for the Holy Grail — a Pinot Noir made somewhere else in the world that could match the highest Burgundian standard, especially in terms of ability to age. He discovered a lot of great wine in the process, but the verdict he reached is that Burgundy reigns supreme, at least for now.

A Different Premise

Claret & Cabs starts with a starkly different premise. It’s not really clear that Bordeaux is now or ever was the uniquely best place in the world to grow Cabernet Sauvignon. The center of the Cab world may well be California’s Napa Valley — or perhaps Bordeaux and Napa should uncomfortably share the global spotlight in the same way that Burgundy and Bordeaux compete for attention in France.

The book divides itself in various ways. There are about 300 pages of generously illustrated text followed by 200 pages of detailed tasting notes. Napa and Bordeaux are the main foci, although the analyses of the other important producer areas — Washington State, the Mediterranean arc that reaches from the Languedoc to Tuscany, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa — are very thorough.

I haven’t done a formal page count, but I’d guess that Bordeaux and Napa get about equal space in the book (including the fascinating closing chapter on “Cults and Icons”.) But I think that that Lewin leans in on the Napa side of the debate just a bit, infusing it with a palpable (to me) electricity and excitement.

A Burgundian Bias?

Maybe it is Lewin’s Burgundian bias creeping in? Yes, I think that’s it, but not in a the way you might expect. Every Burgundy fan that I have ever known has had a detailed map on a wall somewhere in their house that shows the famous vineyards and climats and so forth. The complexity of Burgundian terroir is reflected in the wines — the best wines, at least — and is an almost irresistible muse.

The Napa Valley is a complicated place from a geologic standpoint. Pressures from three tectonic plates shape the landscape and expose a variety of different different soil types from gravel to clay to volcanic residue and different specific characteristics including the alluvial fans that apparently account for some of the qualities of my favorite wines from Rutherford and Oakville.

If you love the diversity of terroir, as Burgundians do, then I guess you have to love Napa — isn’t that an unexpected thought! And although Cabernet is not generally classified as a “terroir wine” (Riesling and Pinot Noir are usually cited as the defining “terroir wine” varieties), you can tell that Lewin believes that in Napa it really is (or can be in the right hands).

Lewin puts Napa on a pedestal at least as high as Bordeaux’s but — significantly — he doesn’t deny the possibility that Cabernet wines from other regions might rise just as high in their own particular way.

Claret & Cabs is a great read and I think will prove its worth down the road (“age well”) as a reference, too. Bravo!

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Did you know that the British nickname for Bordeaux blend wines — Claret — comes from the fact that they originally were light (clair or clear), low in tannins and light in alcohol (less than 10%)? Nothing at all like the image of Claret today!

Books Covers, Best Sellers and Great News about Savour Australia 2013

April 16, 2013 By Mike Veseth in Australian wine, extreme wine, Shameless Self-Promotion 3 Comments

The conventional wisdom disagrees, but I say what’s wrong with judging a book by its cover? People judge wines by their labels all the time!

OK, so maybe it is a bad idea as a general rule, but I encourage you to make an exception for my next book, Extreme Wine, which is sailing smoothly towards its October 2013 release date.

Check out the recently-finalized cover– pretty cool, huh? Hope readers will think that the book is as good as the cover that embraces it!

Best Sellers Are Made Not Born?

Since Wines Wars was such a success, we naturally have high hopes for Extreme Wine. Wine Wars in its three editions (hardcover, paperback and eBook) has consistently appeared in Amazon.com’s various specialized best seller lists (such as the top 100 globalization books, for example), but didn’t bust through to the really big New York Times kind of league tables. Tough to break into the really big leagues, I guess.

In reading about how the best seller lists work, I discovered that there are some techniques to “game” the best-seller rating system. Some unscrupulous authors and publishers, for example, have apparently purchased large volumes of their own books all at once — creating the sort of sales bump that pushes a book onto the big time lists — only to cancel the order or return the books after ratings have appeared. Mission accomplished, so to speak, and a phantom best-seller created.

Clever, I suppose. But not very ethical. I would never do anything like that (even if my credit card had enough head room to allow me to place such a big order).

A Not Entirely Unethical Experiment

But there’s another technique that is also strategic but not entirely unethical. It involves Amazon.com pre-orders. Apparently all of the pre-orders on Amazon are processed together on the day that a book is released — giving that same sales bump as the phantom strategy, but based upon actual orders, not fake ones. I guess that’s why some of my author friends encourage their readers to pre-order.

I wonder if it would work for Extreme Wine? If you’d like to participate in an experiment to find out, click here to visit the Amazon.com page for Extreme Wine where you can pre-order the hardback (you’ll have to wait for the Kindle version). It’s just a social media experiment, you see, not really Shameless Self-Promotion as you are probably thinking!

Savour Australia 2013: Australia’s Global Wine Forum from Wine Australia on Vimeo.

Savour Australia 2013

Speaking of Shameless Self Promotion, I’d like to announce that I’ve been invited to speak at Savour Australia 2013, Australia’s first global wine gathering, which will happen in Adelaide in mid-September.

You can learn about Savour Australia 2013 by clicking here or watching the video above. The purpose of the program, as I understand it, is to re-launch Brand Australia onto the global wine markets — to replace the down-market Yellow Tail sort of image that evolved over the last dozen years with an up-beat, up-market narrative that connects Australian wine with its regions, food, culture, people, and links it all to wine tourism, which is the best way to have the complete experience.

I think the message is exactly the right one for Australia today and I am looking forward to being part in the discussion.

Here is Your Chance to Tell Me Where to Go!

Sue and I will be staying in Australia for a couple of weeks after Savour Australia 2013. Where should go and who should we visit? If you have suggestions please leave a comment below or email us at Mike@WineEconomist.com.

Looking forward to seeing you at Savour Australia 2013!

Fly-over Vineyards: How Climate Change Redraws the Global Wine Map

April 10, 2013 By Mike Veseth in climate change, wine research 4 Comments

There has been a lot of buzz about climate change and the future of wine recently, starting with a New York Times article on Sunday and spreading all around the web. Now there is a video to help us envision the research.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so a cool “fly-over” animation like the one at the top of this post must speak volumes (see this article about the video and the research behind it). As you circle the globe in the video, keep these color codes in mind so that you can interpret the images.

Bear in mind that forecasting is difficult, especially about the future, so projections shouldn’t be confused with fact. But quality wine grapes are sensitive to climate change as this chart from Bemjamin Lewin’s Wine Myths and Realities (see p. 79) makes clear. Relatively small changes in average temperature can have significant impacts on vineyard patterns and, as the video suggests, the impact varies in different regions.

While the dramatic changes you see in the video may not happen, they certain could. And some of the possible climate effects go beyond the sort of changes that might be mitigated by adaptations and innovations in viticultural practices.

Food for thought.

Washington Wine: More Than the Sum of Its Parts?

April 9, 2013 By Mike Veseth in Washington wine 2 Comments

This post starts with a roundabout tour of Taste Washington, considers the changing of the guard at The Wine Advocate, and ends with an idea for a new “Brand Washington” slogan. Hop on board — it promises to be a wild ride.

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My plan for Taste Washington, as reported in last week’s post, was to experience the event through two imaginary guides, Benjamin Lewin (author of the forthcoming book Claret & Cabs: The Story of Cabernet Sauvignon) and The Wine Advocate’s new reviewer for Washington wine, David Schildknecht. I think I’ve learned something through this effort, but it wasn’t as easy as I expected.

Hypothesis Testing

One of the points that Lewin makes is that because many of the Washington Cabernet vineyards are planted with the same or similar clones, there is less diversity in single-vineyard wines than you might imagine — blending across vineyards and even across regions is needed to compensate, he suggests.

So I set out to test this hypothesis empirically on the event floor, but found myself unable to establish a control on which to base the comparison. Poor experimental design on my part — I should have asked Dr. Lewin, a renowned scientist, for advice! Perhaps I will have better luck if I try this again next year.

I was more successful verifying Schildknecht’s observations about the freshness and originality of Washington wines at their best (by tasting some of the same wines he reviewed), but on the day that my initial post was published I received an email from The Wine Advocate announcing that Schildknecht was being assigned new reviewing duties that do not include Washington (Rhone Ranger specialist Jeb Dunnuck is taking over the job), which made this part of the experiment less interesting to me.

[Several folks hereabouts are understandably frustrated and feel a bit disrespected by The Wine Advocate’s coverage of Washington this year — reviews posted much later than promised and now another change in lead critic after only one year. The Wine Advocate is having a rocky transition to the post-Parker era, with new owners and new reviewers in a challenging and shifting publishing environment. No disrespect intended, it’s just business — that’s how I see the situation — but it is easy to see why some Washington winemakers and enthusiasts (including me) would be disappointed.]

The Art of the Blend

A different kind of blend

Touring Taste Washington with my imaginary guides was fun and provoked some interesting conversations but proved more complicated than I imagined it would be. I learned more at the seminars we attended before the big event (see details at the end of this post). Using a “divide and conquer” strategy, Contributing Editor Sue Veseth went one way and I went another. Here is Sue’s report:

Should Washington’s signature wines be blends? This was the first of several questions that came to mind at the Taste Washington seminar called “All Mixed Up — The Art of Blending.” The panel included three blending masters (Brian Carter of Brian Carter Cellars, Dave Merfeld of Northstar Winery, and Mike MacMorran of Mark Ryan Winery), plus Doug Charles of Compass Wines, and Tom Thompson from the Tulalip Resort. Washington Wine Report’s Sean Sullivan chaired the discussion.

In addition to the question of Washington’s signature wine, other questions came to mind.

What constitutes a blend? Blending can involve different varietals, of course, but also different percentages of the varietals, different vineyards, different picking times, different yeasts, different oak or no oak — you name it. In many cases, a wine labeled as a varietal may well be blended with other grapes, in accordance with local labeling requirements. Mark Ryan Winery’s Dead Horse is labeled as Cabernet Sauvignon but also includes Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot.

Is the varietal name the best way to market blends that meet requirements to be labeled with the varietal name? Are wines labeled “red blend” or “red wine” the best way to market blends? Or are named blends — such as Brian Carter’s Abracadabera — more appealing and memorable to consumers?

Are varietals introductory, “gateway” wines? One winemaker suggested that as wine drinkers become more educated, they can (should?) move from varietals to blends. Blends open more wine options for adventurous wine drinkers.

Traditional or non-traditional blends? Many Washington winemakers successfully make and sell traditional blends. Four of the wines at the seminar were traditional Bordeaux bends, one was a Southern Rhone blend. But the most interesting wine (to me) was a non-traditional blend, the 2011 Brian Carter Oriana, a blend of 51% Viognier, 35% Rousanne, and 14% Riesling. Riesling! So maybe Washington’s signature wine blends can respect the standard European blends and also include more non-traditional choices. Blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah already have a foothold.

More questions than answers.

My Solution to the Adding Up Problem

My seminar focused on the wines of the Yakima Valley AVA, Washington’s first appellation, which is celebrating its 30th birthday this year. Although the point of the program was to showcase the wines, to show their excellence and to argue that Yakima deserves a higher profile, another aspect that was revealed was its complicated diversity.

I wonder — are Yakima wines more diverse within the region than they are distinctive from other areas? Add that to Sue’s list of questions! Yes, I think they might. I think it is possible that this intra-AVA diversity makes the wines more interesting and sometimes downright exciting, even though the result might be that the Yakima AVA “brand” isn’t as neatly defined (and commercially valuable) as some might like.

What is our take-away message from these seminars and the grand tasting? Well, it seems to me that we learned that Washington wine is more than the sum of its parts. The parts are very good — the individual AVAs, the particular vineyards and grape varieties, etc. — and it is understandable to want to showcase each of them. But maybe just maybe Washington’s true identity comes through best when creative people blend them together.

Washington Wine: more than the sum of its parts? I suppose there are worse ways to describe this region!

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Here are details of the seminars that Sue and I attended. Thanks to Taste Washington and the Washington Wine Commission for media passes to these events.

All Mixed Up – The Art of Blending

Blends are one of the hottest categories on the market. What’s all the buzz about? Why are consumers embracing this category so enthusiastically? Why and how do winemakers blend their wines? What grapes play well together, and which one aren’t allowed in the sand box together? At this seminar you will learn from some of Washington’s masters as they pull back the curtain on the blending room and reveal the secrets behind the art of blending.

Moderator:
Sean Sullivan, Washington Wine Report (wawinereport.com)

Panelists:
Brian Carter, Brian Carter Cellars (briancartercellars.com)
Tom Thompson, Tulalip Resort (tulalipresprt.com)
Dave Merfeld, Northstar Winery (northstarwinery.com)
Mike MacMorran, Mark Ryan Winery (markryanwinery.com)
Doug Charles, Compass Wines (compasswines.com)

Wines:
Brian Carter Cellars Oriana 2011
Cadence Bel Canto 2009
Northstar Columbia Valley Merlot 2009
Mark Ryan Winery Dead Horse 2010
Seven Hills Ciel du Cheval 2010
Rotie Cellars Southern Rhone Blend 2010

Yakima Valley 30th Anniversary

The Yakima Valley is Washington’s first American Viticultural Area, approved 30 years ago in 1983. It’s also steeped in the early history of the Washington wine industry. Some of the state’s first European wine grapes were planted in Sunnyside by William B. Bridgman in 1917. The legendary Dr. Walter Clore came to the Yakima Valley soon after Prohibition was repealed and began planting grapes in the ’50s and ’60s to show Washington’s viability as a world-class wine region. Today, some of Washington’s greatest vineyards — Ciel du Cheval, Klipsun, Boushey, Red Willow and DuBrul among them — are in the Yakima Valley. In this seminar, we will explore the Yakima Valley’s fascinating history and diverse viticulture

Moderator:
Andy Perdue, Great Northwest Wine (greatnorthwestwine.com)

Panelists:
Bob Betz MW, Betz Family Winery (betzfamilywinery.com)
W. Blake Gray, The Gray Report (blog.wblakegray.com)
Todd Newhouse, Upland Vineyards (uplandwinery.com)
Thomas Price MS, The Metropolitan Grill (themetropolitangrill.com)

Wines:
Domaine Ste Michelle Brut Rose
Smasne Cellars Ancient Rocks 2010
Betz Family Winery La Serenne 2010
Owen Roe Red Willow Vineyard 2010
DeLille Cellars Harrison Hill 2009
Soos Creek Ciel du Cheval 2010

Imaginary Guides to Washington Wine

April 2, 2013 By Mike Veseth in Washington wine, wine education, wine festivals 1 Comment

Taste Washington bills itself as the nation’s largest single region wine and food gathering. This year it was bigger and better than ever. Bigger — two days instead of one — with 225 wineries (out of the roughly 700 in the state) pouring about a thousand different wines. A great opportunity to survey Washington wine and taste food from more than 60 local restaurants.

The program was also better in a way that will make sense to Wine Economist readers. It seems to me that the Washington Wine Commission made even more of a point to help and encourage participating wineries to tell their stories and to promote their products. The pre-event messages were more focused and the two-day format meant that the wineries could give attendees more personal attention, which is key to relationship-building. This has always been the goal, of course, but I sensed an even more clearly directed effort this year, which I applaud, and I hope it pays off.

Turning the Tables

My first exposure to Taste Washington put me on the other side of the tasting table, pouring the wines of Fielding Hills Winery for my good friends Mike and Karen Wade. Although I wasn’t able to taste many other wines, I think I had the best view of the event because the people came to me — and it is meeting and talking with the people that is probably the best part (no offense to the food and wine).

So how do you actually taste Washington? You can roam around randomly, sniffing and swirling, but I think it is best to have a strategy. Last time around I tried to taste every Washington Malbec I could find to compare with the Argentinean wines I had tasted in Mendoza. Fascinating!

My Imaginary Guides

This year I decided to try to see Washington wine by imagining that I was new to the region but far from new to wine and looking at the state’s industry through these particular eyes. My imaginary guides? David Schildknecht and Benjamin Lewin. They weren’t there to guide my in person, but I used their recent writings to steer my path. Here’s what I think I learned.

David Schildknecht is The Wine Advocate’s new reviewer for Washington State, replacing Dr. Jay Miller who has moved on to other pursuits. Schildknecht has written for Robert Parker’s celebrated wine journal since 1989 and I have especially appreciated his reviews of German and Austrian wines. He made two visits to Washington in 2012, literally starting from the ground up to master his new turf by touring the vineyards in the company of geologists!

Benjamin Lewin visited Washington in September 2012 to gather information for his forthcoming book Claret & Cabs: The Story of Cabernet Sauvignon, the sequel to In Search of Pinot Noir. Lewin’s Washington stop was part of his project to taste Cabernet Sauvignon and Claret (or Cab blend wines) from all the most important wine regions of the world. Lewin is nothing if not ambitious and the resulting book is quite spectacular.

I admire Lewin’s sharp analytical approach and his fluid writing style and I frankly envy his skill as a wine taster. Look for a review of Claret & Cabs closer to the May 1, 2013 official publication date.

I decided to make Schildknecht and Lewin my guides since they were both essentially experiencing Washington for the first time and because their backgrounds and approaches are so different. Surely I would get an interesting view by putting Lewin’s lens in front of one eye and Schildknecht’s in front of the other.

Consulting the Guide Books

I know what Lewin thinks because I’ve got a review copy of the book. Schildknecht’s views are not yet fully stated [and perhaps never will be — see note below — because a new reviewer was assigned to Washington on the day this post was published]. Wine Advocate has only published a selection of his reviews of individual Washington wines and wineries — an additional tranche of reviews has been promised for some time, but hasn’t yet appeared. Included in the so-far unpublished list are wineries that account for a majority of Washington wines — Chateau Ste Michelle, for example, Columbia Crest and many others.

I don’t think we will really know Schildknecht’s views until all the reviews have been released and even then it might take a few years to see how the pieces fit together. Fortunately, he has published an essay that tries to sum up his reaction to Washington and its wines and I have found that very useful (it is behind the sturdy Wine Advocate pay wall, however, so you’ll need to purchase a subscription to read it).

Lewin and Schildknecht both seem to be confused or perhaps appalled by Washington’s untidy ad hoc system of AVAs, so they mainly ignore them and focus on vineyards and wineries rather than regional designations.

The Signature Varietal Issue Once Again

David Schildknecht

They both address the issue, which I raised last week, of a signature varietal. And while the Washington industry is officially neutral in this fight (we’ve tried signature varietals before and the results haven’t been pretty), Lewin and Schildknecht don’t hesitate to state their choices.

Washington is all about Cabernet and Merlot says Lewin (who coincidentally is writing a book about Cabernet and Merlot), although he seems to think that adding Syrah to the blend can be a good thing. It’s all about Cabernet and Syrah, says Schildknecht, although you can tell that he really wishes that he could make a stronger case for Riesling.

The problem with Washington Riesling, according to Schildknecht, is that Washington can make extremely good wines at affordable prices. You can get maybe 80-90% of the quality of top German wines for a low price (my numbers not his), so who is going to pay the substantial extra cost to get that last 10%? No one, he moans. So Washington Riesling is doomed to arrested development.

The Diversity Issue

Schildknecht also seems concerned with the division of labor in Washington wine, where wine growing is one specialization and wine making and marketing another. Most of the world’s great wine is estate wine, he says, where the two functions take place under unified control. The Washington non-estate practice of blending from different sites and different appellations to add complexity and diversity feels like a compromise to him, even when the results are very good.

Lewin is more concerned about clones. He notes that a great many of the Cabernet vines are the same or similar clones, especially the earlier plantings, so that clonal diversity is very limited in making the wine, meaning that cross-region blending is needed to add complexity to the wines.

Washington Originals

Both have nice things to say about Washington wines. Schildknecht highlights the freshness and authenticity of the wines at their best. He wonders why Washington wine makers waste their time talking in terms of Old World models when they are creating an original product. He writes that

I have no compunction about drawing analogies to specific Old World wine types when I think these apply – and for the benefit of those (very much including yours truly) for whom these are the most familiar points of reference. But virtually all of the most exciting wines I tasted for the present report display personalities and styles whose like I haven’t encountered outside Washington, and that is precisely what their producers and promoters should wish for.

Lewin locates some of this distinctiveness in his comparison of Cabernet and Merlot. Usually, he notes, you add Cabernet to Merlot to give it depth and structure. In Washington, on the other hand, it is Merlot that is the gutsier grape and Cabernet that perhaps needs a little punching up. Maybe this is due to Washington’s distinctive growing climate (large diurnal variation, longer sun-filled days) and perhaps this accounts for Washington Merlot’s signal success in the pre-Sideways Merlot boom days.

Why Not Syrah?

Both authors seem to wonder why Syrah isn’t more often included in Cabernet blends? Is the idea that Washington winemakers must adhere to “Bordeaux blend” orthodoxy preventing them from making the best and most interesting possible wines?

Lewin and Schildknecht are very interesting on their own and you can perhaps see that piecing them together raises some questions and starts to answer questions, too. What did I learn with the two of them as my imaginary guides to Taste Washington? Come back next week to find out.

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My comments here only scratch the surface of what Lewin and Schildknecht have to say about Washington wine, but this hopefully gives you some insight into their fresh perspective on the region’s wines. (I hope I haven’t misrepresented them in my brief summaries.)

Thanks to the Wine Appreciation Guild for letting me have a sneak peak at Benjamin Lewin’s new book. I’ll post a full review in a few weeks.

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Update 4/2/2013 An email from Wine Advocate arrived this morning announcing a new reviewer for Washington wines, Jeb Dunnuck. It will be interesting to find out his take on Washington wine.s