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Dan’s Cellar Notes for April 2003
See if you recognize this scene.
A friend comes to visit and you offer him a glass of your homemade wine. You’ve been making wine for years. You’ve won medals in competitions, and you are pretty sure you’re a relatively competent winemaker. “White or red?” you ask. The friend prefers red, so you descend to the cellar and return to uncork your medal-winning Rhone blend of Syrah, Mourvedre Grenache and Carignane made from grapes you have nursed from the beginning in a small vineyard that costs a fortune to maintain. You are very proud of this wine. After two years in old oak, it has an iron tannic backbone with explosive raspberry fruit, warming alcoholic flash and a complex, long finish that suggests vanilla, cloves, allspice, and old leather. Your friend takes a sip, stifles a gag, sits the glass down and, hesitatingly asks if he could just have a glass of water. You provide some, as well as a glass of cheap, mass-produced Central Valley merlot. Your friend beams a huge smile and complements you on how “smooth” this second wine is.
Scene 2. You have offered to make dinner for someone whose affection you’d love to corral. She comes to visit on a warm summer evening. The sun is still shining as you serve fresh marinated shrimp and fat sea scallops lightly marinated in olive oil, garlic, and white wine, then sizzled over mesquite on your patio grill. With the main course you serve an austere homemade Sauvignon Blanc with flinty-steely notes, crisp grapefruit-and-lemon tones, with a slightly smoky, lingering finish. Your friend gushes over the food, but puckers up as though sucking a lemon as she tastes your prize white wine, made in the mode of Graves, from a very expensive kit. She asks if, perhaps, you have a “white” Zinfandel instead. You pour an ounce of cranberry juice and a shot of vodka into a tumbler full of seven-up and she complements you on your “very fruity wine cooler.”
Okay, don’t send the flames. I’m a wine snob. I absolutely, however, agree with the idea that “good” wine is wine you like to drink. If the wine YOU like to drink isn’t what your friends like to drink, maybe you should make something just to serve them. If you have a pretty sophisticated palate, with the keen tastes of a connoisseur, but your friends really prefer something else, well there is an old saying about pearls and swine…
Sorry. To each his/her own. It takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round. One man’s meat is another man’s poison. And all the rest of those appropriate, if corny, old sayings. I really, really do believe we should all drink what we really enjoy, and if Turning Leaf White Merlot is what speaks to you, by all means….Prost! But if great La Tache is your taste, don’t bother offering it to friends who’d rather have Hearty Burgundy. Instead, make something good that has the characteristics your friends are seeking.
Listen to your friends. Do they praise wines that are “smooth” or “fruity?” “Smooth” may, in fact, translate as “sweet,” or “no appreciable tannins,” or, perhaps, simply as “simple.” We often praise fine wines for their voluptuous “fruit,” but that is dramatically different from a wine that is “fruity.” The latter also tends to mean “sweet,” along with low in acid and complexity. Face it: there are times, places and people who prefer simple, pop-like refreshment. These same folks probably prefer Ice House Lite beer to a Bavarian Duppelbock, and would rather have a guava-tangerine daiquiri than a neat shot of Laphroig. This doesn’t mean they (or you) are somehow lacking in some important way. It’s all a matter of taste.
But if you enjoy, as I do, serving your homemade wine to friends and family, or giving it as presents for birthdays, holidays, and weddings, then it will behoove you to make some wines for folks who, frankly, don’t really like wine. One way to do this is to select a kit that has the right attributes. Don’t grab one of the cheapest kits available. After all, you still want to make quality wine, even if its flavor profile is more suited to a mass market consumer than to a wine snob. Bob and Jeanne at Weekend Brewers have focused lately pretty singularly on Brew King’s kits—although they will, if pressed, order some of the competing brands. In looking over Brew King’s descriptions of their kits, look for sweetness levels of “1” or “2.” Sweeter than that indicates a dessert wine that may require an educated palate, and a “0” indicates a dry wine, which your friends may not like.
If you choose a dry red wine, go for a popular varietal known for early maturing, full fruit, and soft tannins, such as French merlot or Aussie Shiraz. Brew King’s proprietary Domaine Des Brumes is a fat fruity red that is best served a bit chilled. Their Vieux Chateux du Roi is meant to mimic the easy, early drinking style of some of the less intense examples of Chateuneuf du Pape and other common big Rhone reds. For the sweet pink wine drinker, don’t offer you best Grenache rose in the style of the Loire, make up a kit of White Merlot or White Zinfandel, instead. These are quality wines that approach the flavor profiles of mass-market pop wines. Your white-wine drinking philistines—er, I mean—friends will enjoy Brew King’s Liebfraumilch kit, as well as the off-dry Gewurztraminer and slightly “fruitier” (meaning “sweeter) Muller-Thurgau and Piesporter. If full, fairly complex, but off-dry, not-too-oaky Chardonnay is their taste, they’ll rave over Brew King’s Luna Bianca. Finally, if your friends seem like the kind of folks who like the low-alcohol fruit-and-wine adult soda-pop concoctions with “Mist” in their names, the kit makers offer very good examples at very reasonable prices.
So you don’t do kits. In that case, maybe you can set aside some of your grapes for those special wines to offer friends who don’t really like wine. For reds, consider some of the hybrids, or, if you only use vinifera, go for ripe, full-fruit grapes and consider vinifying using carbonic maceration. If you are crucshing the grapes, don’t macerate the skins in contact with the must any longer than you need to extract color and fruit. You’ll probably want to skip barrel fermentation, barrel aging, and malolactic fermentation (unless your total acidity needs to drop some). You’ll also avoid lengthy lees contact. Same for whites. Good clean fermentations with a choice of yeast that promotes fruity esters and some residual sugar would be your best bet (try 71B!). Cooler fermentation of whites will help retain fruit. Finish and bottle these fresh wines while they retain youthful flavors and colors. A nice, ripe, fat Seyval Blanc with a tiny touch of cab for color, fermented off-dry and low-to-moderate acid, should make a blush that even Andy Griffith would love.
The world is full of folks who don’t really love wine the way wine-lovers love wine. It’s a genuine, and authentic, challenge to learn how to make wine these friends and family members will enjoy. But what about that starkly dry Pinot Gris you made from slightly under-ripe grapes with little aroma, but tantalizingly vague tropical-fruit flavors braced by crisp acidity and a creamy palate induced by ML… well enjoy it with someone you love, and who also loves great wine. Enjoy it with a broiled striped bass filet, lightly marinated in limejuice, with freshly chopped cilantro or flavorful Italian parsley. After dinner, have a glass of Riesling icewine with a ripe pear dripped with dark bittersweet chocolate. Retire to your bedroom and follow your instincts. And let your other friends stay home and drink Diet Pepsi with their triple-cheese pepperoni pizza!