Industrial Marketing

Apologies for my recent lack of posting. Work has been crazy the past week or so. Luckily Simon has been able to hold down the fort. He's been posting about one of the most objectionable techniques of industrial-style wine-making--the use of oak chips to impart overwhelming, fake flavors to wines that would otherwise be merely insipid, unbalanced, and badly textured.

But from my perspective that's the least of these wines' troubles. I can avoid drinking the wines, and their existence gives me something to criticize when feeling grumpy. On the other hand, I'm regularly subjected to their offensive marketing, in which I'm told that if only I drink the wines a certain classiness and sophistication will be added to my life. I'm also informed that I will have a delightful aesthetic experience. And, for whatever reason, the aesthetic particulars seem to be remarkably similar from bottle to bottle.

I have recently had the misfortune to come into possession (through no fault of my own) of two bottles of industrial-style Australian wine. The first is imported by an outfit called "The Country Vinter," in whose website are revealed operational details not entirely consonant with the picture of a barn on the frontpage (although they do peddle (pdf) some wines that I would be more than happy to drink). They describe the particular wine I received thusly:

It has oodles of berries on the nose with suggestions of plum and spice. The fruit and spice follows through to the palate, fills the mouth and finishes soft and velvety.

The second importer does not appear to have a website, but I am sure they are just as objectionable. They describe their wine as having:

Generous ripe berry flavors followed by a silky, spice finish.

We can conclude that the standard marketing formula promises plenty of berry flavors plus spiciness and a smooth finish. Those looking for some variety can choose between ripe or (presumably) unripe berry flavors and having their spiciness on the nose(!) and palate or on the finish. Perhaps there is also some meaningful difference between analogizing wine to velvet or to silk.

I wonder if these sellers have explicit contempt for the customers, since they seem to regard them as automatons who think "good wine" when the label repeats three rote characteristics. And it's amazing to me that this is an effective marketing regime--one so effective that it's worth it to competitors to mimic each other and split the audience rather than to appeal to a different consumer with some new strategy.

Of course, making fun of this sort of wine is easy to do. But if there is a larger point here, it is the foolishness of the tasting note, which this exercise shows to be ultimately no more meaningful than a numerical score.

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Naming Names

In response to our post below on "oak alternatives," reader Phil from New York asks if we know of specific producers who use oak chips in their wine. This information is often tightly held in the industry, to say the least, as many wine lovers consider the practice taboo. Quite helpfully, though, the Wine & Vines issue on "oak alternatives" conducted a blind tasting of wines from known users of these controversial techniques.

The five producers who provided samples were: Romel Rivera, Corté Riva Vineyards, Santa Rosa, Calif.; Gordy Venneri, Walla Walla Vintners, Walla Walla, Wash.; Steve Pessagno, Pessagno Winery, Salinas, Calif.; Sean Larkin, Larkin Wines, Yountville, Calif.; and Clark Smith, GrapeCraft Wines, Sebastopol, Calif. (Have they no shame?)

Obviously, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Wine & Vines article, complete with the results from the blind tasting, can be found here.

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House Wines

Today's Washington Post features a useful survey of a perennial topic: inexpensive wines for daily drinking under $15. To be honest, I've never thought much of the idea of a having an established "house wine" -- I like variety too much to buy multiple cases of a single, inexpensive wine and even for casual company like to serve something a little special. But I do like the idea an "occasional wine" -- wines for a particular mood or setting or season -- and many of the recommendations in the article (most from DC-area chefs and sommeliers) are wonderful suggestions for casual summertime drinking.

I must say, however, that I don't care much for the authors' -- Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg -- choice of "house white": the "Dr. L" Riesling from Ernest Loosen in Germany ($12). Having tasted through most of Loosen's wines last year in the U.K., I found the 2004 "Dr. L" Rieslings clumsy, imbalanced, and lacking in freshness. The "Dr. L"s are Loosen's entry-level Rieslings and by far the weakest in his range. For a small step up in cost, one can drink far, far better from Loosen's truly impressive portfolio. For example, the 2004 Dr. Loosen Wehlener Sonnenuhr Kabinett -- balanced, elegant, and refreshing, with great minerality -- is available for around $17.

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Spinning Oak Chips

"Get the information out yourself, on your own terms, so you can set the terms of debate." The dictum that was page one of the Clinton White House's media playbook has now been appropriated by the wine industry with regards to the use of oak chips. As Eric Asimov reports in his latest dispatch, the trade magazine Wine & Vines devoted an entire issue last month to "oak alternatives" in the hopes that the industry can get out in front of the issue. The desired end, of course, is having the general public accept the much reviled practice of imparting traditional oak flavors in a wine through the use of oak chips, wooden blocks, powder, or barrel staves rather than the significantly more expensive process of traditional barrel aging.

Oak chips have long been used to flavor cheap wines, and the results are usually quite vile: wines with caricatured oak flavors without any of the nuance -- let alone the structure, texture, or body -- of wines carefully aged in new oak barrels.

But Wine & Vines editor Jim Gordon, in spin worthy of James Carville, argues: “People are going to find out sooner or later about all of this, so wouldn’t the American wine industry be smart to shape the story itself, rather than let some political opponent or competing region do so? The industry is probably much more frightened of the subject than consumers will be. Oak is as natural as it comes. Whether it surrounds and contains the wine or is immersed in it, it’s still just a natural flavoring from a tree that symbolizes strength and longevity."

It is all too easy to take part apart Gordon's statement ("symbolizes"? powdered tannins as "natural" as traditional oak barrels?) and, instead, I would like to turn to a more helpful framing of the issue from David Schildknecht of The Wine Advocate. Schildknecht, writing in a thread on the Squires Board, states that as with any manipulative technique in winemaking, there are "issues of taste and issues of authenticity, both matters of degree, and both with an irreducible component of human preference and volition."

Schildknecht surveys many of the oak alternatives currently available and finds some techniques to be much more successful than others in the context of low-cost alternatives for wines "never designed or priced to go through a traditional, expensive barrel-élevage." Yet Schildknecht concludes that even if he may find the taste of a particular wine enhanced by the use of oak blocks, he may, just the same, avoid that wine for its lack of authenticity: "I might, in short, think that its use represents cheating in the game with nature that is called 'making wine.'" Of course, as Schildknecht observes, the argument then turns to how to define "cheating" and how indeed to distinguish barrel aging from oak chips. This is precisely the line that Jim Gordon and the industry seek to blur with their talk of all forms of oak being "a natural flavoring."

Schildknecht, like Gordon, comes out in favor of greater openness about the issue, but for very different reasons. Schildknecht argues: "The irony is that as long as winemaking techniques and technology are viewed by a significant segment of the wine-drinking public ... as transcending or offending against some vague notion of 'tradition' - in short as taboo - the less information oenologists and winery owners are inclined to divulge about their practices and hence the more likely that you are buying and enjoying wine whose production involved methods you may be claiming are a tool of the devil!"

I am generally sympathetic toward Schildknecht's free market argument: have all the information available to the consumer and let the market decide. But I also agree with the decision of INAO (the French regulatory agency overseeing wine production) to ban the use of oak chips in all appellation contrôlée wines in the face of the EU's recent directive allowing their limited use. I firmly believe it is the place of a regulatory body with the historic mandate of INAO to hold the line with regards to the best French wines (if only INAO were as vigilant in limiting yields). Yet in the absence of such a regulatory scheme in the United States, the onus will rest upon the consumer to be informed and inquisitive and demand that the use of these techniques be fully disclosed.

And I am hopeful. As one contributor to the Squires Board thread put it: "... there's cheese and then there's 'cheese product,' process cheese like Kraft Singles. Maybe it's time for wine labels to reflect the same distinctions."

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