02
Compromise Is Compulsory
Posted by | Posted in Wine Reviews | Posted on 08-02-2011
A detailed map of David Hirsch's terroir laboratory.
If there’s one lesson from all this deficit and debt ceiling talk, it’s that compromise is compulsory. Over the last few weeks, we probably all developed passionate feelings on the crisis, but what’s captured me the most in all this is the concept of compromise. In the short time I’ve had the chance to get to know David White, and in the much longer time I’ve had the pleasure of knowing David’s good friend, Tom M., the two of them have shown me it’s time for my own sort of compromise — with wine.
As a guy who cut his teeth on European wines, I’ve begun to wrap my head around something I never thought I would: There really is another world of wine out there, and it’s where I live now: America.
Every day, another winemaker is borne into the American wine scene with universal experience and sensibility. Every day, some intrepid youngster is spending his summers in places from Beaune to the Yarra Valley, discovering what it means to make wine authentically, naturally, responsibly. So what’s standing in the way of my own discoveries? What’s stopping the evolution of my own palate, my own compromise? Nothing at all, really. That realization prompted me to crack two bottles of Pinot Noir. I wanted to chip away at something that’s haunted me for a while, the misguided notion that America might not ever find that perfect confluence of terroir, talent and tradition to match the svelte beauty of most European wines. It’s obvious that a self-deceiving mindset like that is in need of change.
To put that nonsense to rest once and for all, I knew I had to start my journey with Hirsch Vineyards’ 2007 Pinot Noir ‘M.’
Uploaded to flickr by ((brian))
David Hirsch strikes me as someone inextricably linked to his terroir. He nurtures his vineyards like a true shepherd; he could probably talk to you about each plot for hours on end and neither you nor he would ever get bored. His Sonoma Coast property is essentially a terroir laboratory, a schizoid manifestation of Earth and its desire to rip itself apart. His farming talents were legend long before he ever started making wine under his eponymous label.
When I envision Hirsch’s wine, I see exactly the confluence of terroir, talent and tradition I find in places like Burgundy. When I opened the ‘M,’ I got the sense I was dealing with something emphatically Californian, but with something deeper going on that immediately brought German Pinot Noir to mind. This screamed red fruits—cranberries, cherries and raspberries. But this undertow of cedar, cashmere tannin and sweet earth gave me chills. There was something very rooted about this wine—rich and primary, no doubt, with a very natural persistence of mid-palate weight, but influenced mostly by something for which I can only conjure a parallel: the wines of Birkweiler in Germany’s Pfalz wine-growing region. Here the richly hued sandstone yields grapes of surreal depth and volume, gorgeous raspberry and black cherry fruit flavors, and an impenetrable sense of place. Some would call it minerality. I would call it Birkweiler.
The second wine, Aubert de Villaine’s 2009 Bourgogne “La Fortune,” was a bit more challenging. Villaine’s fame leaves nothing to be desired; he’s been at the helm of the world’s most renowned red Burgundy estate, Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, since 1974. Imagine if he started making wine in the humble satellites of the Cote d’Or? No need to imagine, really; the maker’s mark is all over this wine from the humble Cote Chalonnaise.
Uploaded to flickr by Rachel Black
From the start, this Pinot Noir was almost violently rustic and stemmy, with bramble and damson almost engulfed by plowed earth and beefeaters. Not a Day 1 star, but I had a hunch this would be spectacular on Day 2. It didn’t disappoint. In contrast, the Hirsch had almost completely unraveled into an oxidized, acetyl mess. I was taken aback—with the same amount of wine left in each bottle, I thought for sure they’d be neck and neck the second day. “La Fortune” really did find fortune on the second go-round. Having shed its cloak of oak and loam, this became a basket full of wild blueberries, plum and dried cran. Firm but pliant tannin integrated perfectly with ripe acidity, and the finish cascaded with spicy notes of leather, clove and anise. If you’re set on killing this Day 1, decant, decant, decant.
In the end, I’m certain I could not have picked a better way to foster compromise. I can’t say for sure, but I suspect a slight degree of heat damage and premature oxidation in the Hirsch ‘M.’ There were some indicators—label stains and a rather saturated cork—but its Day 1 performance set those fears aside. I loved the wine’s purity, its texture, and the sense that I could, in two or three pours, map the Sonoma Coast influence in my head. Aren’t these the same qualities that make Burgundy great: transparency, typicity and texture? It’s what made Villaine’s bourgeois Bourgogne something almost stately, aristocratic (given two days). Those principles and attributes translated in American soil will only make me more and more convinced that here—right in our own backyard—is where we’ll really start to see the renaissance and revolution in great wine. I won’t say I’m completely converted yet, but for Pinot Noir, it seems the Sonoma Coast may well be on its way to being my Burgundy DH.
Jeff,
Welcome to Terroirist – great first post!
I’d bet the bank your Hirsch was heat damaged. I’d think the ’07 would be singing on day 2, as young Hirsch pinots definitely benefit from air.
Jeff,
Your description of David Hirsch reminds me of our encounter with Jean Paul from Domaine de la Vieille Julienne in CdP-how he spent over two hours with us enthusiastically pouring out his philosophy on winemaking, displaying unbridled passion for his art. Sounds like we’d have a similar experience with Hirsch.
Great post and glad I could hook you and David up. Looks to be a perfect match.
Tom
I think you’re right David. Hopefully this Hirsch mailing list thing pans out and I can get an allocation when the temperatures die down here. 104 today, non-indexed. Tom: from anecdotes alone, I imagine David Hirsch to be Jean-Paul’s western hemisphere soul brother. I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds right. And to think that, like Hirsch, J-P is farming the cool(er) side of his appellation, the similarities become even more striking. These guys are on the fringes (you remember how J-P’s winery even sits ‘technically’ in Cotes du Rhone territory), and yet it’s there that the most profound wines are being made. There’s certainly freedom on the fringe, and these guys are squeezing every drop of juice from it. I love it.
David White: I’ve kept wines for over eight months at 37C/99F. Tasted them against a wine that was not only identical, but bottled at the same time, from the same case in the bottling line. There was only a slight difference between the two. Most, could not taste the difference in the panel. Some liked the hot wine, some liked the cool wine better too.
The reasons most wines “unravel” is because people are too dumb to filter, and want to ruin their reputation on a bottle of bacterial waste. Next time you get a bottle like that, take it to someone who has a high-power microscope.
Isotope – Are you saying unfiltered wines are more susceptible to heat damage?
David: I’m saying heat damage is likely a figment of most people’s imagination, and an easy explanation for invisible bacteria. A sound wine should taste almost un-noticeably different after great deals of time at body temperature. 37C incubators are surprisingly cheap online, to conduct this experiment yourself. I’d also, strongly suggest getting confirmation on whether the wine is filtered or not.
During the primary fermentation of a red, temperatures often get close to, if not above human body temperature. Usually for a shorter periods of time than my experiment, but clearly there are plenty of reds that taste just fine after a “hot” spell.
Admittedly, a wine that has organisms like lactobacillus and pediococcus could easily spoil more rapidly at higher temperature. After all, these are common isolates from the human intestine! I’m sure they are more than happy at 37C!!! If some wine producer wants to “go unfiltered” they are buying into this “holistic” marketing nonsense and making a potentially disgusting product. I’ve got quite enough intestinal bacteria on my own now, I’d prefer not to drink them…
??? Heat damage is a function of repeated temperature differentials, wherein a wine frequently finds itself at extremely warm/hot temperatures, followed by moderate/cooler temperatures, and then repeats this cycle frequently until it reaches its final destination. It’s not a figment of one’s imagination; it’s a painful reality that most importers/shippers have been trying to mitigate since the world started shipping booze. Take the IPA, for example–a beer brewed specifically with a higher alcohol content and more hops to avert the spoilage inexplicably occurring in the lower-alcohol beers being shipped in extreme heat conditions to India. Sustained high heat will torch a wine, and it will skunk a beer. Now, regarding unfiltered wines…
Times have changed in the wine-making world, and rest assured, it’s not because winemakers have become “too dumb to filter.” Moreover, a winemaker’s decision to “go unfiltered” is not some weak-minded deference to “holistic marketing nonsense”. To filter or not to filter is a personal choice, predicated on personal philosophy and, even more likely, personal experience over many, many years now. Times have also changed in fermentation science. You’re correct: some fermenting musts can get to human body temp. But as we get smarter about fermentation and microbiology, we’ve discovered that the ability to maintain lower fermentation temperatures can do wonders for inhibiting the manifold volatility of wine. The microbial issues you discuss, however, have substantially more to do with harvest conditions, cellar hygiene and SO2 additions than they do with bottling wine filtered or unfiltered. Harvesting grapes at lower potential alcohol levels and thus naturally lower pH levels can go a very long way in assuring a cleanly fermented wine with little to no residual sugar (food for bacteria, etc.) and a high reactivity to sulfur treatments (in which case, less SO2 is needed). I’ve had great filtered wines and great unfiltered wines; I’ve had terrible examples of both as well. That said, I’d hate to ever find myself in a position where I’m “too dumb” to pick up a great bottle of unfiltered wine simply because I was scared of bacteria. Wine is alive, like us; consequently, it also exerts the will to balance itself, to offset the tug of spoilage with the tug of energy (lower pH) and flavorful life (healthy phenols). Add some high heat to the mix, some residual sugar and other volatile precursors, and not enough SO2: BAM, your “bacterial waste.” Filtration is of little consequence here.
Jeff, please replicate that heat vs. cooling, in repeated cycles, is the culprit of this heat damage you speak of. Personally, I’m not going to bother due to how mine were treated. I kept some fairly high-end pinot noir ($50 ish) at 98.6 degrees F for roughly 8 months. I’ll mention too, that there were at least 5 or 6 occasions that I had to remove them from the incubator to make room for more important experiments. I didn’t cool them below room temperature for the day that they needed to be out, perhaps that is something that I forgot to mention. I thought the fact that they were heated for 99.9% of the time was more relevant, apparently an oversight on my part, seems I inadvertently took care of this component already.
I guess next I have to keep some beer at 37C for six months to cause “skunking” now. Strange that the Heineken I found under the seat in my car after six weeks tasted exactly like a Heineken even though the car was basically an oven for the last two months…
Perhaps I didn’t cool the car down enough since it lacks A/C. I’m going to apply for a grant on this one…
I’d love to go on and dissect your second comment, but you’ve made it clear to anyone who reads this that you think that “personal philosophy” trumps logic and reason. Your perspective, which I doubt has much in the way of a legitimate organic chemistry or microbiology background, makes it a very rough place for wine consumers. That is why there are so many awful and frightfully overpriced wines made these days.
Good intention doesn’t make a quality product, no matter how much you’d like it to. If you don’t filter. I’ll call you dumb. Call up Josh Bergstrom, ask him about how that 2004 Bishop’s creek tasted the SECOND time it went to bottle. Ask the folks who made Kosta Browne why *they* decided to start filtering…