finalanalysis

Biodynamic wines are all the rage these days, and the recent death of well known biodynamic viticulteur Didier Dagueneau has further heightened interest in this little understood technique. I had been considering writing a lengthy post on biodynamics, explaining for the lay person how it works and why it is a good thing. But now, thanks to The Daily Green, I don’t have to.

Read here for a simple explanation of the difference between certified organic, ‘made with organic grapes’ and biodynamic.

Thanks to reader Tom J. for the tip.

From Serious Eats via Dr. Vino:

Chris Tavelli, owner of Yield Wine Bar, which has offered Palin Syrah, a certified organic wine from Chile, by the glass since July. But after Sen. John McCain tagged Sarah Palin as his running mate, sales of the wine with the conservative’s inverted name plummeted.

As much as 5% of the vineyard area in France is now affected by the Esca fungus. The only chemical that can treat it, Sodium Arsenite, was banned in 2001 as a carcinogen. Vineyards in the southwest of France and Cognac and Armagnac are particularly hard hit:

“The disease has spread a great deal over the past 12 months, with up to 40 percent of some vineyards in Gascony completely destroyed,” said Alain Lalanne, a winegrower…”We’ve asked for the right to temporarily use sodium arsenite, especially as the health risks are only a concern for those who apply the product to the vineyard.”

(Remind me not to become a vineyard worker in Gascony.)

France has the 2nd most land planted to wine grapes in the world (Spain has the most, thanks for asking), about 2 million acres. So we’re looking at 100,000 acres affected by Esca fungus. That seems like a lot, and it is, but when you consider that the EU is paying European winegrowers to remove 1 million acres of vines, this might not be the end of the world.

From the NYT:

the substances believed to provide much of red wine’s heart benefits — resveratrol and flavonoids — are also found in grape juice, especially the variety made from red and dark purple Concord grapes.

It appears that, despite early season hailstorms that depressed yields in some regions that the Spanish harvest is going well. While yields are down 20% in some regions, quality of fruit is said to be excellent. Bucking the trend, Rias Baixas, home to the wonderful white wine grape Albarino, is looking at a 10% increase in production this year over the record-setting yields of 2007.

Hi dear readers, what’s on your mind? What wine questions do you have? No question is too simple or too esoteric.

Looks like 2008 is going to be a lean year for grape harvests across California:

What really wreaked havoc on this year’s grape crop were the frosts that hit the state between February and April.

“It was devastating to so many areas,” she says. “Lake County got hammered and counties like San Benito could be down by 30 percent.”

The worst spring cold spell in the last 30 years killed grapevine buds along the North Coast region, including Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties, responsible for some of the state’s most highly regarded wines.

This is coupled with a heat spike causing a ‘rush to crush‘ which is making for some harried vintners. As per usual, I imagine this will be used to justify an increase in prices.

Didier Dageneau has died:

Didier Dagueneau, an iconoclastic Loire Valley winemaker whose Pouilly-Fumés displayed a purity and subtlety far beyond most other sauvignon blanc wines, died Wednesday in a plane crash. He died when the ultralight plane he was piloting crashed after takeoff in the Dordogne region of France, his New York importer, Joe Dressner, said.

If you were put together a list of the finest Sauvignon Blancs in the world, Dagueneau’s wines would have to be on that list. I never met him, but his reputation preceded him. He raced Huskies in Finland. He renamed the street in front of his winery ‘Rue Che Guevara’. My favorite description of him comes from Andrew Jeffords in The New France: “A physically messainic winemaker in a Bacchic parody of the Annuciation…His wines smelled not of Sauvignon Blanc, nor of gooseberries, or asparagus or micturating felines, but of spring.”

Eric Asimov’s column on Aglianico in the NYT is worth checking out. He even gives a shout out to Paternoster as the granddaddy of them all.

Aglianico can offer a lot in the way of drinking satisfaction. Dubbed the ‘Barolo of Southern Italy,’ Aglianico can produce wines that are brooding, intense & spicy. The vineyards where it seems to do best are steeply pitched areas on the slopes of volcanoes (sometimes extinct, sometimes not.)

The climate is hot and dry, and the soils are barren save for an incredible concentration of minerals. I’m not aware of Aglianico being grown outside of the Southern Italian regions of Campania & Basilicata, and I’m not sure that the wines would be of the same character, as Aglianico seems, like its cousin Nebbiolo to the north, to be a grape exquisitely paired with its place.

It may come as a shock to some of you that there is more than just grape juice in the cheap plonk you’ve been guzzling:

In some cases producers employ water, sugar and sometimes hydrochloric acid to ensure their wine has a uniform taste and consistency…Some of the most well-known new world brands use milk and enzymes to make the wine less cloudy and ensure that the wine tastes the same from one batch to the next.

More than 60 Beaujolais producers are due in court later this year accused of disguising low-quality grapes with excessive amounts of sugar.

In Italy 70 million litres was seized and was found to comprise just 20 per cent wine, the remainder being water, sugar and ingredients such as acid and fertiliser, used to boost the alcohol content to achieve a higher price.

I’ve often wondered why wine (and alcoholic beverages in general) are exempt from food labeling laws. Maybe I’m being naive, but I bet if producers were forced to list everything they put into wine, they’d be a little less cavalier about all the crap they are throwing in the vat in the name of consistency.