More from the 2008 Unified Wine & Grape Symposium
There’s more to read about Unified Wine & Grape Symposium that I posted on last week.
Joshua Greene, editor of Wine&Spirits Magazine has uploaded the notes from his speech at the symposium. I think this is one of several interesting points that Greene makes:
In a reverse of traditional roles, twentysomething sommeliers are serving aging boomers as well as their own generation. And they are sensitive to the fact that their contemporaries often don’t have the money to invest in a $50, $70 or $100 wine. When selling beyond their peer group, they are often fearless about promoting wines that drive their own enthusiasm, even if they are ambitiously priced.
Greene elaboration on why many of these young sommeliers give California wines a short shrift is less incendiary than some of the newspaper coverage suggested.
Greene’s notes also state:
The natural winemaking movement in the state, however, is still nascent. There is much more talk of manipulation in wine, with journalists quoting percentages of California wine that is dealc’d or micro-oxed.
That sounds to me as being at least somewhat in line with what Darrell Corti said when he addressed the symposium (as quoted by Jeremy Parzen):
“Have we abrogated the quality of wine to the wine press?” he asked, urging growers to reel in brix levels (the brix scale is used to measure the sugar content of grapes; simply put, the more sugar in the fruit, the higher the potential alcohol content of the wine). “You have to grow good grapes to make good wine,” he told them.
Greene’s notes continue:
There is a growing audience in the nation’s most popular restaurants for farmer’s market produce, for the gamier, porkier flavors of organically raised pigs, the deep poultry tones of naturally raised chickens. These foods, rather than the squeaky clean, less flavorful meats and vegetables of the past few decades, are on the minds of chefs. So it is not surprising they would be on the minds of sommeliers.
(I found the link to Greene’s notes via Parzen)
A ByzaBoy brings us the symposium as seen from the eyes of somebody who actually has to man a booth there (booth manning is not glamorous work, let me tell you).
Jim Gordon takes exception to Greene calling California Pinot Noirs “chunky,” and Mark Marino seconds that and follows up with some thoughts on the brix levels in Califronia wines and why they are what they are.
Elsewhere, Nathan Kandler, an associate winemaker at Thomas Fogarty Winery in Santa Cruz, California made the following observation at the symposium his observations:
I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday morning wandering the aisles, visiting suppliers i know and meeting with new ones. I quickly learned our barrel prices are going to go up, not only because we pay in Euros. The supply of top quality French Oak is limited and demand continues to grow.
According to a February 4 article in Chicago tribune, a French oak barrel costs about $800 this year compared to $500 a year ago.
John Holland of The Modesto Bee filed a story from the symposium on the efforts to reduce vineyard water consumption in relatively dry regions that could easily become even drier if climate change is indeed at hand.
If all reading and no listening makes your eyes dull, check out Richard Kasmier and Randy Hall’s interviews from the symposium on Wine Biz Radio (the symposium report starts about 40 minutes into the show). You’ll get a kick out of the first call to their show.
Hey, thanks for linking to our show! We actually recorded over an hour of material from the Unified, and we’re splitting it over the next couple weeks’ shows in order to highlight some of the folks we got to talk to. So if you’re looking for more listening pleasure related to the symposium, stay tuned!
The Unified was crazy fun, being that it was my first time going, and I met a huge spectrum of people in one afternoon. Good times!
Comment by Randy — February 7, 2008 @ 11:50 am