Reading through Fiona Morrison's profile of Chambolle-Musigny, I was struck by the comments of leading producer Frédéric Mugnier on the 2005 Burgundy vintage: "There is something perfect about it but also something bothersome -- perfection almost doesn't have much character -- it needs aging to give it more character."
As Morrison reports in her October 2006 article for Wine & Spirits (a must-read; PDF file here), for Mugnier, "2004 is more intriguing; he finds the essence of Chambolle in the best wines." In contrast to the forgivingly perfect weather conditions in 2005, "2004 did not allow for errors, as it was riddled with traps such as risk of rot, disease and the temptation of excessively high yields."
It is not surprising that a producer of Mugnier's skill would find 2004 more interesting. 2004 was a winemaker's vintage, rewarding those with the most rigorous methods and highest standards of vinification while punishing lesser producers with under-ripe, austere wines. Reading through numerous producers' notes for 2005, I almost found a sense of boredom as they recited the same litany of vintage characteristics -- optimum weather, ample time for harvest, perfectly ripe, clean fruit with little, if any, sorting needed. Bruno Clair confessed that during the growing season, he had "nothing to do."
Yet it is interesting to juxtapose Mugnier's near disdain of "perfection," and his embrace of the challenges of a difficult vintage, with his professed non-interventionist approach to winemaking. "I'm wary of enology," Mugnier tells Morrison, and on his website states that "processes that traumatise the wine – over extraction, for example, or excessive woodiness – are limited to a minimum."
It becomes clear, then, that for Mugnier, the vigernon's work rests more in the vineyard than in the cellar. Tending the vines as a farmer -- with treatments against rot or pruning to reduce yields -- is the paramount work. Once the grapes are harvested and sorted, the "goal is to preserve the inherent quality of the grapes and not fiddle with them too much," as Morrison puts it. That is, to bring out the distinctive character of the vintage and the vineyard rather than achieve a certain generic standard of ripeness or concentration through interventionist techniques.
It also becomes clear what Mugnier means by perfection being "bothersome" and lacking "character." Young wines made from perfectly ripe fruit tend to lack transparency -- that is, they don't yield the distinctive characteristics of a particular vineyard, which are initially overwhelmed by blanket fruitiness. The "essence of Chambolle" is muted. Yet it is this quality of transparency -- "the ability to transmit clearly the underlying terroir," as Allen Meadows puts it -- that traditional Burgundy lovers prize most in their favorite wines.
Now Meadows is optimistic that the underlying terroir will shine through in these wines with age, but it may take twelve, fifteen, or twenty years for the very best '05s to reveal their distinctiveness and their greatness. People coming into Burgundy for the first time with the '05 vintage ought to know they have a long wait ahead of them. I shudder to think at the inevitable acts of infanticide that will be committed by those weaned on California pinot. Perhaps point chasers, if it is instant gratification that they desire, ought to follow Freddy Mugnier's advice and seek out wines from those many imperfect vintages.
Friday, May 18, 2007
On Vintage 2005: "Perfection ... doesn't have much character"
Sunday, May 13, 2007
A Morbid Post
Another thing is worth mentioning in regard to the issue
discussed below. The mere fact that science lacks (as of yet) an explanation for some observable phenomenon does not mean that said phenomenon is a figment of the imagination or the construct of evocative prose.
Until recently, we did not understand the mechanism behind X-linked Severe Combined Immunodeficiency. (It turns out to result from a mutation in the gamma chain of the interleukin-2 receptor.) Unfortunately for those afflicted with X-SCID, the absence of an explanation did not absolve them of the need to live in a hermetically sealed bubble because of their compromised immune systems.
Other examples abound. Glioblastoma is brain tumor. Even today, its causes are understood not at all and its mechanisms very poorly. But it will kill you all the same. Ditto for Alzheimer's and Multiple Sclerosis.
Similarly, the mere lack of a scientific explanation of the mechanism by which a wine reflects the soil in which its grapes are grown is not evidence for the absence of the ultimate effect.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
On Minerality
From a Chablis Vaudesir to a good village cru Macon to the $13 pinot grigio recently recommended to me in my local wine store, there's nothing I love more than a wine with a great mineral cut. And I think (or at least like to think) that I can and do differentiate between different minerally tastes. On the other hand, I've never gone in for the "list all the fruits you can think of" approach to describing various fruit flavors in wine. That's always seemed silly and reductionist to me. I justify the dichotomy on the ground that, when talking about different minerals, there's something real there--grand cru chablis is actually grown in soil from kimmeridgian limestone, and that's what I'm tasting. On the other hand, grapes are not actually grown out of boysenberries, huckleberries, or whatever other fruit happens to spring to mind at the moment a taster wants to describe the fruit flavors in the wine he's drinking.
That's why I was temporarily disheartened to read in Eric Asimov's post on Friday that a recent NYT magazine article "refutes the most literal meaning of terroir – that grape vines can somehow transmit the mineral components of the vineyard soil directly into a wine." Asimov adds that "Of course [one does not literally taste granite in the glass], just as you’re not literally tasting road tar and violets in a Barolo, or gooseberries and cat urine in a New Zealand sauvignon blanc, to take a few common wine descriptions." He then goes on to defend wine lovers' appreciating the aromatic and flavor experience of drinking wine despite the lack of scientific evidence behind them.
I entirely agree with the latter part of Asimov's post, and I think he does a great job of expressing why we shouldn't allow science to undermine our appreciation of the beautiful flavors and aromas that wine evokes. But, on reflection, I think he gives up too much to the scientists when he concedes that we're not actually tasting the kimmeridgian limestone in that Chablis Vaudesir. Certainly, large chunks of limestone are not being incorporated into chardonnay grapes just because they were grown in the soil. As McGee and Patterson point out in that Times magazine article, the vines are soaking up rock particles dissolved into the soil. They read that to mean that the grapes are not incorporating the actual limestone, and so when we think we smell or taste limestone in the glass, we cannot actually be doing so. The problem with this logic is not that it misunderstands how rock is incorporated into Chablis, but rather that it misunderstands how we experience limestone in other contexts. When we say that Chablis flavors remind us of limestone, we're not comparing those flavors to the experience of biting off a chunk of rock. Rather, we're comparing them to the smell of limestone, in other words to the experience of those limestone minerals that dissolve in water and/or evaporate and/or decompose into dirt so that we can smell them--which are the same ones soaked up by vines.
I'm not a scientist, so perhaps the above is totally wrong-headed. But it makes sense to me. And I just can't believe the notion that soil qualities have nothing to do with how a wine tastes. There's just too much empirical evidence. Wines from different places taste so different. Admittedly, other factors such as climate, local practice and culture, etc. play a huge role and are obstacles to duplication. But I'm sure there is somewhere else in this world with similar climate conditions to Chablis, and if you could make a wine taste like Vaudesir in that somewhere else, people would be doing it by now.