Taming Wine


• By Allen Dale "Ole" Olson   |   Friday, July 30, 2010 at 6:07 pm   |     |   Print   |   Permalink

In September 1986 I sat on the stage of the Strasbourg Convention Center listening to Robert Mondavi, whom I had just presented to the delegates of the International Wine and Food Society. Next to me was Johny Hugel who had just told the audience that “there is no such thing as a winemaker.”  His comment and Mondavi’s speech provided fodder not only for the entire conference but for wine-producing professionals and consumers to this day.

Mondavi was explaining that “making good wine is a skill; making fine wine is an art”  He said that for years he had felt that wines should be made completely naturally without working them. He said that wines “are like untamed human beings” in need of civilizing.

Hugel had just told the audience that grapes know best but admitted, as anyone who had ever seen him at work in Riquewihr would testify, that the grapes often need encouragement and tender loving care.

Both men deplored the increasing involvement of technology and chemistry in the production process. Too often, Mondavi added, “technicians look at the chemical composition of the wine and if it’s in balance, they are pleased — but it’s as if the wine was made by a computer.”  To him, these wines do not have a soul or a heart.

Hugel had found that too many people were complacent in their wineries, unwilling — occasionally unable — to change with the times so they remained content with what they had always done. Tradition is important, he had said, but each year, each season is different, and each generation of people who drink and buy wine is different.

Mondavi had gone to Europe for the first time in the early 1960s and learned first-hand that Cabernet is made differently from Pinot Noir, Riesling from Chardonnay while “we in California were making all our red and white wines the same,” and so they did not vary in taste as much as they should have.

Hugel and Mondavi agreed that climate, soil, and grape variety are extremely important and depend a great deal on one another for the final product. Hugel insisted that soil (terroir) is all-important. Mondavi agreed — to a point. “We are looking for wine that has better balance, harmony, with proper fruit, structure, backbone, and complexity, with a good clean aftertaste… even when relatively young and better tasting through its lifetime.”

Much of what the two men told us a quarter-century ago has come to pass. There really is more good wine available, even fine wine, than ever before. Good wine is coming from many different places and from many different grape varieties. Technology is more widespread and is generally working for the good of the producer. But we still love arguing the merits of terroir versus the variety regardless of where grown. And we continue to compare each vintage year with past vintage years, “because like children, each wine is different from the other.” As Mondavi summed things up: “Producing wine is never easy, but it can be a lot of fun.”

Leave a Comment




« please enter the sum of 1 and 5+5