This past Friday, Jeff Lefevere wrote an interesting post about wine bloggers and wine samples. He makes some excellent points fleshing out the nature and utility of wine blogging to wine producers, marketers and consumers.

Jeff also makes the contention that wineries should send out wine samples in half bottles. I recognize that this has economic appeal, on the surface, but I must disagree with him. (more…)

Closures

Today, Winebusiness.com reported on an unusual tasting which took place in Yountville, CA three days ago. During a Maters of Wine seminar, participants blindly tasted four 2004 Washington sauvignon blancs – all finished with a different closure.

The point of the exercise seems to have been to correctly identify the type of closure used in each bottling and to select a group favorite. The participants were not given a list of choices, so it can be said that they were not suggested to make guesses or change their answers. (more…)

Reality Check

Voices from the past can not only make us revel in memories but nudge us – however inadvertently – to view our current circumstances in a new light. This can creep up on us unexpectedly. It can happen as a tangent to the catching up.

I recently re-connected with a fraternity brother. He was not a typical fraternity guy. Shiro came to the U.S. from Japan to study at my university. A stalwart friend and a dedicated brother, he immersed himself in American culture – down to buying a ’66 Mustang with a straight 6. He also shared his culture by teaching me a few Japanese turns of phrase, some of which I still remember. We had a lot of good times together and I was very sad the day a group of us saw him off at the airport.

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Tannins

Wines and Vines wrote today about some growing debate over the validity of the Adams-Harbertson assay.

In short, this is an assay that gives winemakers real-time quantitative and qualitative information about the tannins in their wines. However, the validity of the test is being challenged by winemaker Larry Brooks, Leo McCloskey and Doug Mckesson of Enologix and Marshall Sylvan – a University of California Santa Cruz mathematician and consultant to Enologix. (more…)

Yeast gone wild.

This is the third post in a series of three that look at the idea of wild yeasts. (See the first post here and second post here).

Complexity and Terroir.

The major contention of the proponents of uninoculated fermentation is that this route bestows a greater complexity to the wine. Some have suggested that certain, “regional” strains or cultures can also impart a regional distinction. S. Cerevisiae is subject to great variation (vineyard to vineyard and even tank to tank). Mortimer’s work indicated that there were multiple distinct strains within individual wineries. So it is not unreasonable to implicate yeasts as contributory factors in a wine’s distinctiveness. (more…)

Yeast gone wild.

This is the second post in a series of three that look at the idea of wild yeasts. (See the first post here).

Wild-Domesticated-Feral.

One of my original questions (when I set out to put this piece together) was: “are those S. cerevisiae yeasts found on the grapes prior to inoculation still “wild” or just “feral”?” If S. cerevisiae thrives primarily in close proximity of human populations (as mentioned in Robert K. Mortimer’s article – in the section discussing a theory of yeast evolution offered by Naumov), the interaction between man and yeast must have some impact on the genetic make up of the yeasts. (more…)

Yeast gone wild.

“There are no wild yeasts, only feral ones” Bruno D’Alfonso once told me bluntly. I had been probing the winemaker about notions in the wine loving and wine writing spheres about what is and is not excessive intervention and manipulation in modern winemaking.

Recalling my undergraduate and medical school microbiology, I had some understanding of yeasts and concepts of their utility in winemaking. Bruno’s argument made sense to me, and it affected my thinking about wine yeasts going forward.

After a recent increase in blog chatter about natural wines and the aversion some writers and critics have to cultured yeasts, I wanted to revisit this topic. Obviously, there is a disconnect between what the winemakers know and what some writers and critics believe. It seems to me, though that getting hung up over the use of inoculated yeasts as an inherently bad thing is misguided.

This is the first in a series of three posts that look at the idea of wild yeasts. (more…)