Postmodern Winemaking. Clark Ashton Smith
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a growing comfort level with such delights as Sandusky Gewurztraminer and Iowa Frontenac Port.
The last thing that a postmodern wine should do is conform to expectations. Nowhere is the specific more vital than in the making of wines of distinctive terroir expression. That is the antithesis of the modern corporate winemaker’s job description, but for the 99% (okay, maybe it’s only 98%), the small and struggling wineries on the D list that have no chance at national distribution, it represents the only hope for salvation.
The division between modern corporate commodity winemaking and boutique postmodern distinctive terroir expression is not doomed to persist. Retail channels will adjust once consumers begin to demand the same access to the diversity of New World styles as they do for European wines, where flavors of place hold sway. No one would liken a St. Emilion to a Chinon simply because they are both Cabernet Francs. In the same way, Long Island Merlots may earn a separate shelf space alongside those of California, and the Chardonnays of Napa, the Santa Cruz Mountains, and Lake Erie may come to be independently displayed and understood.
RELATIVITY AND QUANTUM EFFECTS
Postmoderns reject the notion of the objective observer. Particle physics, with its uncertainty principle, contingent realities, superstring theory, multiverse, and quantum leaps, was the first of the modern sciences to cross over into postmodernism, abandoning half a century ago any notion of mechanistic objective observation. The Enlightenment viewpoint just doesn’t carry any water in this discipline. The existence of universal truth and objective reality are not prerequisites for functionality, and you’ve got to admit that physics seems to have muddled along pretty well without them.
Rejecting both the existence and the value of objectivity allows us to shed the pejorative connotations of subjective experience. Strictly speaking, for an experience to be subjective means merely that it is perceived by humans. But this pure sense has been perverted in modern parlance, and when we say, “That’s just subjective,” we mean to imply a finding that is random, unknowable, and unverifiable. Yet when all experience is understood to be subjective, we are compelled to look for patterns and areas of agreement—which music and chaos theory’s fractal images alike illustrate to be quite striking and beautiful.
The postmodern view is that the experience of a wine is not actually in the bottle; rather, wine resonates in tandem with its consumer according to the environment of consumption. This interaction possesses features of resonance, harmony, and dissonance that are strongly shared and for which predictive strategies can be employed. This is the art of serving wine.
One of the greatest intellectual challenges of postmodern philosophy is to reconcile, on the one hand, the notion that everything is connected to everything else, with the equally firm principle, on the other, that every experience is unique. This is accomplished by abandoning the reductionist false friend that moderns so often employ: division of experience into manageable little pieces that can be studied, then reassembled in a sort of plug-and-play philosophy. Insistence on working only with whole experiences frees the investigator to explore patterns within complex systems, often with unexpected results such as the well-substantiated existence of harmonious “sweet spots” obtained by altering alcohol content as little as one-tenth of one percent, a topic introduced in chapter 11, “Harmony and Astringency,” and developed in chapters 18, “The New Filtrations,” and 25, “Liquid Music.”
Attention to holistic systems guides the viticultural modeling of Bob Wample and David Gates (see chapter 15). A willingness to work outside the rationality box has supplied many of our field’s key discoveries, which I explore in chapter 12, “Winemaking’s Lunatic Heroes.” In chapter 21, “Science and Biodynamics,” I discuss in particular an eccentric path inexplicably chosen by many souls admired for their shrewdness and perspicacity. I confess that I have a chip on my shoulder here concerning the oft-asserted modern claim that homeopathy has no scientific basis, the refutation of which ties together Biodynamics, micro-oxygenation, and Singleton’s vicinal diphenol cascade in a delightful postmodern thematic juxtaposition, a sort of running joke throughout the book. My goal in all this is not to defend Biodynamics or homeopathy per se but to open the minds of scientists.
The legitimacy of homeopathy (that is to say, a challenge to a system by a small amount of a harmful substance, which the system learns to resist) is a pet peeve among modern scientists, held in about the same regard as astrology. Yet we have plenty of examples where a homeopathic approach is demonstrably valid, vaccination representing a prime example. The wholesale adaptation of this principle to every natural system, as the Biodynamics evangelist Nicolas Joly extols in his lectures, does indeed seem both simplistic and risky. But this is wine—essentially playful, seldom a matter of emergency. Before we declare scientific martial law banning new ideas, we had better have a clear and present danger. In my judgment, no imminent threat exists except to contemporary science as Mr. Know-It-All, in which case I fear that, until they come to get me, I must declare for the other side. I defend the concept of homeopathy not so much because I entirely accept it, but more because its mere mention makes modern scientific blood boil.
The experience fine wine affords, for which we shell out the big bucks, does not arise through scientifically delimited natural processes controlled by technical best practices; rather, it is a dance between specific, unknowable ecological particulars (climate, soil, microbiology) and the peculiarities of human perception that are brought to bear when the cork is drawn, all orchestrated through the invisible guiding hand of the winemaker. This is the postmodern view.
Postmodern winemaking seeks to deconstruct the embedded myths that shape modern winemaking but fail to serve winemakers well. These pedagogies include the application of the solution model, the direct link between chemical and microbial composition on the one hand and flavor on the other, and the use of component aromatics as preference drivers for quality.
In his penetrating review of the manuscript of this book, Ravenswood founder Joel Peterson asked an excellent question: “Do we really have to give up the Enlightenment to move ahead?” My answer is yes, I’m afraid we do. By this I do not mean abandoning the tools of skeptical inquiry, experimentation, and hypothesis verification; we do, however, need to foster an awareness of the limitations of these techniques. We must question the whole notion of objective universal truths, and even cast a skeptical eye on their value. We have every reason to be suspicious of the capacity of the human mind to comprehend and conquer nature. What evidence do we really have that knowledge expands and progress is certain? The Enlightenment anticipated a gain in clarity as we approach universal truths. Postmoderns instead see growing paradox as we knit together a picture of how things are, as in the case of the wave/particle duality in atomic physics.
The UC Davis–spawned Aroma WheelTM is a familiar example of modern enology’s reductionist attempts to manage sensory impact by dissecting aromas into their constituent pieces. There is no evidence that varietal characters or any other constituent aromas are compelling drivers for lovers of structured reds. For Riesling and Muscat, surely the flowery linalool and geraniol terpenes drive sales—the more, the better. One can point to vanillin (an oak extractive) as a hook for novice red wine fans. But these are regarded as cheap tricks in the big leagues, where an inarticulable profundity in great reds is what has connoisseurs reaching for their wallets, just as with the great unpasteurized cheeses of France and Italy.
Flavors of terroir receive much ink in reviews, evoking the intense joy that comes from being shown deep places in one’s own soul. Embodying a unique communion of taster and place, such flavors—whether of a fine red wine, an earthy Guatemalan coffee, or a perfectly spiced Thai soup—evoke profound connection, of being thoroughly known by someone far away. But these aromas are by nature unique, never to appear on a standard wheel.
The appreciation and evaluation of wine, the subject of chapter 24, presents intricate intellectual challenges that baffle novices and can perplex the most experienced professional. We cannot judge a wine unless we know the tradition in which it was made, yet to maintain objectivity, judges taste double-blind and are not told if a particular Chardonnay, for example, is from a nationally distributed brand of half a million cases or a tiny lot sold only out of a tasting room in an obscure location.
Postmodern philosophy offers useful tools for peering into the wine tasting