It started innocently enough, “Wine is made in the vineyard.” Hyperbole wrapped in an off the cuff remark to reflect the fact the most important component in wine quality is the quality of the grapes. Well, this now oft-referenced cliché was just the starting point in a recent trend to push the perception of a minimalist approach to winemaking. Generally, this idea suggests that the less influence the winemaker has in the process, the better. But now it has come to mean that everything a wine needs to be excellent exists in the grapes at harvest, a “non-interventionist” approach.
Now most winemakers and those involved in the industry have a reasonable idea of what constitutes a proper amount of processing in a wine. And, to a certain extent, less processing does reflect more of the actual character of the grape. However, realize that even some very traditional techniques exist to craft something in a wine that does not come naturally. So the question becomes what constitutes reasonable and egregious processing of fine wine?
This question has an answer from just about anyone you ask. The most vocal, however, are those that hold a romantic view of winemaking. Those that believe that the best examples come from a special place with properties that no other place possesses and from those individuals that hold some sort of mystical understanding of the process. To employ perceived modern winemaking techniques on a wine destroys this mythos and reduces it to a mere “food science.” Yet this general idea is exactly how many luxury goods are marketed, a perception that what you are consuming is somehow, some way, intrinsically better than something else. But you just can’t quite put your finger on it. The non-interventionist approach to winemaking plays perfectly into this mindset. But let’s take a deeper look and dissect why there really is no such thing as non-interventionist winemaking.
Grapevines don’t know that they’re making grapes for wine. All they are concerned with is making a seed dispersal system. But what makes a grape attractive enough for a bird is different than what makes it good for wine. Modern grapevines are the result of thousands of years of breeding, artificial selection and adaptation to foreign environments. Grapevines are trellised, trained, and pruned to produce fruit for a specific taste. All wine-destined grapevines are cloned and self-pollinating, something very rarely found in nature. Many famous wine producing areas find ways to keep grapes on the vine long after they would otherwise rot off. The decision how to manage the leaf canopy, when and if to irrigate, and when to harvest are all judgments. Quite a bit of intervention goes into growing grapes proper for wine.
In the cellar, we nurture many reactions that may or may not happen in nature. There are many species of yeast that can produce alcohol from sugar, but only one that makes a proper wine (the vast majority of the others are, in fact, spoilage yeast). Wine is an ideal host for a particular bacteria that produces vinegar from alcohol. I could argue that most of what a winemaker does is intervene to prevent spoilage. These decisions, however, could be defended as expressing the nature of the grape. But what about oak barrel aging? Oak barrels are toasted over a fire to create chemicals that complement grape flavors. Just the act of storing wine in a barrel encourages chemical changes in the wine that, though are attractive to us, have nothing to do with what nature provided. How about malolactic fermentation? This traditional technique deacidifies wine and produces flavors derived from bacteria. Lastly, think about blending, the ultimate intervention. This simple act, quintessentially intertwined with old-world winemaking seeks to create something that specifically does not come from nature.
Wine is not a mere reflection of nature. What makes wine special is that it is an expression of both nature and human imagination. It is a culmination of thousands of decisions, both artistic and ordinary. It is the result of a cumulative effort of a lot of manual labor and a little inspiration. Unfortunately, this story doesn’t make for sexy marketing.
Jason
Vintner of Rappahannock Cellars
