Postmodern Winemaking. Clark Ashton Smith
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we can coax these heroes to begin speaking proudly and openly of their real work. I want to thank lay readers for your curiosity and courage in picking up this volume, and to encourage you to hang with me when the discussion occasionally flies over your head.
This book is organized in four parts: Principles, Practice, Technology, and Philosophy.
The initial chapters explore the principles of postmodern winemaking, beginning with the surprisingly limited degree to which wine’s aesthetic properties derive from its composition. As with architecture, the properties that please us are less a function of the number of bricks than the manner in which they are arranged. I next address soulfulness and longevity, knitting together the secret life of wine colloids by touching on critical factors in each stage of winegrowing, with analogies from the kitchen. In the subsequent chapters, I examine the decisions the winemaker must make concerning fruit maturity, the conduct of fermentation, the oxygen regimen, oak influences, and bottling choices. These remarks culminate in their application to microbial management and a practical discussion of minerality, followed by an opening into the realm of the human psyche that every winemaker must address, however mysterious its portents.
The four chapters on practice are devoted to the work of some extraordinary practitioners. Every postmodern winemaker proceeds in a different way. It would be fair to call PMW an aesthetic without a manual. No particular set of instructions or ethical stands is recommended, save that winemakers ought to make consistent products and tell the truth. In many cases, winemakers experiment with such techniques as micro-oxygenation and ultrafiltration as a means to comprehend and verify for themselves what wine really is rather than to use them in commercial practice.
The four chapters on technology elucidate winemaking innovations of the past two decades, their value to winemakers, and their impact on the marketplace. Many of these are membrane applications for the introduction of which I am justly notorious. But while these tools are used by large corporate wineries to make clean, standardized wines, they are also employed by many thousands of small artisans (WineSmith included) to produce sound, well-made wines with distinctive character of place. Lest I be thought disingenuous for bemoaning the narrowing of style that my own innovations have helped to create, I must argue that these technologies are not responsible for the sameness at Safeway, any more than a hammer is an architect.
Distinctive wines of place still need to be sound and balanced. As Jamie Goode and Sam Harrop say in Authentic Wine, “Vigilance [is necessary] to prevent wine faults that obscure sense of place” (3). I have contributed to making cleaner wines by developing tools to remove excessive alcohol, volatile acidity, dry tannins, Brettanomyces character, and vegetal aromas. In many California wines, true ripeness is accompanied by excessive brix, leading to high alcohols that obscure sense of place. Alan Goldfarb remarked that my 12.9% “Faux Chablis” exhibited more terroir character but was less authentic than its hot, bitter original 14.8% version. I think that this is insightful but that Jamie and Sam’s advice is closer to the mark. If I had picked at 21° brix, I would never have gotten the lemon-oil aromas I was seeking, any more than the French should hang their grapes until they raisin in order to avoid chaptalization. Nor should they tear out their splendid vineyards and plant elsewhere. Instead they should get the grapes ripe and then take steps to balance them in a way that showcases the flavors of place.
There is nothing postmodern about the technologies I present here, and this book is not a justification for them. They can be misused. But open discussion of them is very postmodern, and is, I believe, the key to getting wine lovers the same degree of comfort with them that they have with stainless steel, electric lights, and the countless familiar manipulations such as picking, crushing, and pressing.
For such a discussion to occur, my single voice will not suffice. What is needed is an open forum in which winemakers from the largest to the tiniest tell their own stories concerning these tools. I have provided such a forum at PostmodernWinemaking.com.
Winemakers are both blessed and cursed by the limelight we enjoy. If we live in glass houses, at least we are not ignored. It seems too much to ask that critics stick to the work for which they are qualified—to report and judge what they find in the glass. Like football fans, critics are unrestrained in their opinions and advice, often with little reference to the realities that professionals face every day. If a vineyard does not yield perfect alcohol balance, it should be torn out, a celebrated Natural Wine advocate recently proclaimed, thereby condemning in a few keystrokes all the vineyards of France.
Much of the conversation about innovation in winemaking centers not on whether the new tools work but on whether we will go to hell if we use them. While I too distrust anything with a power cord, I find much of this diatribe rather insubstantial—seeking to persuade through emotional appeal rather than reasoned argument. Many of the players in these discussions are more interested in selling books or padding their page-view revenues than in a serious and balanced exchange of ideas. My purpose in the final section on philosophy is to provide distinctions and perspectives that can inform more profitable deliberations about real issues.
In chapter 22, I challenge the studied reluctance of Natural Wine advocates to place on themselves any tangible definition, seeking through vagueness to hold together a constituency with widely disparate objectives. Certifications such as organic, biodynamic, and kosher, for all their faults, are at least precise, and provide winemakers something specific to shoot for beyond mouthing platitudes.
While scientific enology has virtually eliminated spoilage, it has failed to inform the making of interesting wine. Having dispensed with its easy problems, winemaking has become a theater in which we can stretch our philosophical muscles and learn to grapple with mystery. Many of our best minds have turned their attention to an investigation of biodynamic winemaking, despite its shaky foundations. The delicious controversy surrounding its advent illustrates the inefficacy of reductionist science to organize inquiry into holistic realms, the subject of chapter 21. Perhaps the most valuable outcome in this area will be to refine science’s enthusiastic skepticism toward the appreciation of complex systems as they exist rather than the manner by which they came about.
Postmodern winemaking is science in service to art. The aim is human pleasure, soul to soul. Organized knowledge is not our goal, and formulated wines inevitably fall short. The same subtleties that inform both the performance and the appreciation of a musical piece are present in the process in which winemakers are privileged to partake—that of bringing a vineyard’s expression to the glass.
While Nature herself is the author of every wine, it is the winemaker’s job to present the timbres of terroir in a fashion that resonates in the taster’s breast, guided in doing so by our mutual humanity. Nothing is more exquisite than to be deeply known by another through an offering, be it a Syrah or a symphony, that touches us beyond mere words.
I conclude in the last chapter with a defense of my own working hypothesis: that wine is, for all intents, usefully regarded as liquid music. Its capacity to embody the spectrum of emotional modalities, to exhibit harmony or dissonance that we collectively apprehend, and its power to transport us from care and circumstance are the properties that wine and music share. Attention to nuance guides the best work of the gifted winemaker no less than the virtuoso musician.
Each chapter concludes with take-home messages—points drawn from the discussion that I believe are of particular importance.
The thoughtful reader will not find himself constantly nodding his head in these pages. I am often told, “I like your writing, but I don’t agree with everything you say.” I should hope not. If you are constantly in accord with my assertions, I have wasted my time. Just as in every line of musical melody, resolutions in postmodern thinking are always the child of the tension of discord.
A few notes about usage. Varietal wines are capitalized throughout; varietal grapes are not. Foreign words are italicized the first time they are used. I have taken the liberty to capitalize such semiformal movements as Biodynamics and Natural Wine. Reflecting the strong role of professional women in my industry, the gender pronoun is alternated.
Acknowledgments
I have done very little original creative work. If I have a talent, it is