After tasting a wide variety of our wines on a visit to California, he expressed the (to me) shocking opinion that, despite their high sugars, our California grapes were more often than not simply unripe. “If it were left up to me,” he said, “I would ripen to higher brix, looking for truly ripe flavor, color and tannin, and dilute the must back to normal alcohol potential.” This was before alcohol reduction technology appeared on the scene.
