Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Clark Smith
Read between
February 18 - March 12, 2020
Now, nobody has appointed me the new Noah Webster, but in my lexicon, minerality is not an aroma, nor is it a flavor by mouth, though it could be argued to be a taste. It is an energetic buzz in the wine’s finish, almost like an electrical current running through the throat. It has a nervous raciness similar to acidity, with which it is often confused, but farther back in the mouth (fig. 16). I
It turns out that excellent minerality can be obtained on any site if living soil principles are applied. According to French terroir expert Claude Bourguignon, the development of mycorrhizal fungi will facilitate trace mineral uptake by expanding the grape rootlet surface a hundredfold, facilitating a symbiotic exchange of minerals for sugar.
I worked with Susan Rodriguez, director of CSU Fresno’s Wine Sensory Lab, and famed analytical chemist Barry Gump to try to nail down what components might contribute to a minerally character. It was easy for Susan’s tasting panel to differentiate the wines I supplied into minerally and nonminerally groups, but Barry’s broad-spectrum atomic adsorption analysis, which scanned the entire periodic table, couldn’t find any simple compositional driver.
Since a hydrogen ion (the atom minus its electron) is just a proton, we can as easily say that acids are substances that can contribute one or more protons to solution. Upon entering the mouth, those protons stimulate the flow of saliva, by which they are neutralized, and our taste buds tell us how much of this reaction is going on through the sensation of tartness. Acidity can thus be described as a flow of discharged protons sensed by the tongue.
Most of the protons in wine are bound to weak acids like tartaric, malic, and lactic, which are in equilibrium with the free protons. These act like a series of reservoirs of acidic protons that get depleted sequentially because the acids are of different strengths, thus forming a kind of ladder of buffer capacities. When wine enters the palate, the first to be depleted is the strongest acid, tartaric, which you taste on the tip of the tongue. Then malic ionizes in the midpalate, then lactic a little farther back, and last acetic (which clings to its protons most) is neutralized in the throat.
minerality may very well be a flow of electrons released from various metallic elements of the periodic table as they move to higher valences. Elements such as zinc, aluminum, magnesium, and many others have an oxidized state as well as a reduced state. They can move from the former to the latter by giving up an electron, for example, Fe2+ → Fe3+ + e–. This is the rust reaction, and also the main mechanism through which soils retain oxygenation after tilling.
Minerals can play a second role as well. Some minerals are present in large quantities, others little or none; but trace minerals may have an important catalytic role to play in overcoming kinetic barriers along the energy ladder in which redox reactions arrange themselves. We don’t know all the ins and outs, but it’s plausible that specific mineral mixes can essentially constitute a multistage battery in the wine. UC Davis phenolics expert Andy Waterhouse has shown the importance of iron in catalyzing the vicinal diphenol cascade.
The analogy is clear: electron flow versus proton flow. It seems plausible that if we can sense one, we can sense the other. The minerality of which I speak is the same sensation you get when you lick a fresh battery—a static discharge.
Bottom line: If a young white wine has less aroma than you think it should, is maybe even a little stinky, but you experience lots of flavor by mouth and it tingles in the finish, you might lay some of it down to see if it improves with age.
H.L. Mencken said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
Total SO2 should also be measured and, if possible, kept below 100 ppm, at which level it exhibits an inhibitory effect on malolactic bacteria. A soapy finish can also be detected at about 200 ppm total SO2.
in European cellars, where indigenous microbial populations have stabilized and a goût de maison, or house flavor profile, which has developed over centuries and whose evolution and control has been empirically incorporated into cellar practices, may be a valued element of the wine’s distinctive character of place. Domaine Beaucastel in the Rhône and Château La Gaffelière in St. Emilion are examples of wines in which Brettanomyces plays a distinctive aromatic role without which the wine would be unrecognizable.
Because of its alcohol and acidity, even high pH wine is an unusual environment, and most organisms cannot grow in it.
The rich finish of a classic Bordeaux is not entirely attributable to phenols. Potassium and sulfate both contribute the back palate mouthfeel, and are natural by-products of high pH winemaking. Sulfate is the product of sulfite oxidation, which occurs much more rapidly at high pH. Potassium is the counter-ion in the highly buffered solutions typical of this genre, and confers richness and flavor persistence to the wine’s finish. High pH wines are typically not cold stabilized, since this results in lowered potassium and higher pH.
With some exceptions, though, most connoisseurs have experienced on different occasions both faces of Brett: the sultry, profound earthiness and the repulsive barnyard stench.
As I discussed at the end of the previous chapter, high TA exacerbates tannic aggressivity by drawing excessive salivary protein into the mouth and coarsening the impression of tannin, thus counteracting the winemaker’s efforts to achieve textural refinement.
Paradoxically, the production of a wine poor in nutrients results from a must rich in nutrients to promote healthy yeast action.
The nutrient status of wine in support of secondary microbial growth can be considered to have four aspects: fermentable sugars, nitrogen sources, micronutrients (vitamins and other cofactors), and oxygen. Brettanomyces growth must be suppressed in both of its modes—fermentative (requiring sugar) and respiratory (requiring oxygen).
When plated onto petri dishes, the unpasteurized inoculated wine achieved the expected growth of about 500 CFUs (colony-forming units), a typical result. But all the pasteurized inoculation grew to 107 CFU, whether micro-oxygenated or not. That’s 10,000,000 cells per ml. I had never seen this kind of growth, and I came to understand that our greatest ally in controlling Brett has been the presence of other microbes. Brett is an opportunistic pathogen; like a hospital disease, it can be promoted by excessive sterile practices.
Astringency is a tactile sensation, not a taste. As hunter-gatherers, our forebears needed instantaneous, hard-wired sensory clues to phenolic content—astringency and its taste analog, bitterness—to distinguish nourishment from poison, determine ripeness, and so forth. Sensory stimuli from all five senses are directed to the thalamus in the midbrain, where snap decisions tell us whether to swallow or spit.
TCA smells nasty, like a moldy newspaper. Its effect on astringency demonstrates the role that fruit aromas play in creating the illusion of harmony. Consider for a moment the difference between music and noise. At the beginning of a symphony, the instruments quietly tune up—a most obnoxious sound. Then they strike up together, with much greater volume, and we are carried away by music, for which we have a very high decibel tolerance as long as we are emotionally taken up. One false note, though, and we wince.
At first we assumed that wines would become more balanced if we got anywhere in the 13–14% alcohol range—a preference bell curve. Not so. After thousands of blending trials, we finally had to admit the obvious—and it was the last thing we were expecting. Every wine has discrete balance points we all can identify where the astringency abates and the flavors are married and harmonious. In such a series, the wines adjacent to the harmonious spots taste especially disharmonious: 0.1% alcohol too high is hot and bitter, and 0.1% too low is harsh and sour (fig. 19). In
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it. —Peter B. Medawar, Nobel Prize–winning biologist (1915–1987)
Heidegger’s hammer
An ideal solution to skyrocketing agricultural energy costs would be a mechanism to convert cellulose (a cheap and abundant product of solar energy) directly into motion on site. Such a device actually exists, and it creates a high-grade fertilizer as an artifact. It’s called a horse.
We can thank tank press technology for revealing another enological problem never before seen: pinking. The first commercial white wine in history to turn pink on retail shelves was a 1970 Gewurztraminer, followed by many thousands of Sauvignon Blancs, Chardonnays, and, well, you name it. Pinking is a skin extractive that occurs only in the reductive conditions tank presses make possible.
The basket press achieves low solids in the press fraction as a result of its static design. Similar to the lauter tun in brewing, it has thin (0.7–1.1 mm) slits to hold back the solids and allow liquids to pass through. The false bottom of a proper wine press provides an even, low-pressure drain surface that retains the pomace, and the structure of the pomace cake filters particulates.
Postmodern winemaking takes a different view of the function of the wine press. Our growing awareness of the positive role oxygen plays in healthy fermentations reveals the importance of the press as a juice aeration device. For reds (and for sur lie whites where structure is a goal), our increasing skill in building integrative tannin structure that supports distinctive terroir expression also causes us to look askance at pressing systems that minimize tannin.
The most desirable press is one that allows us to include all our press wine in the main lot. This ideal depends on the character of the material, our skill in working with tannins, and the style of wine we wish to produce. Second choice is a pressing system that allows us to taste clean press cuts. By minimizing and filtering out yeast solids that can obscure the sensory perception of tannins, basket presses qualify for high marks on both counts.
“With a basket press, after the first squeeze, the wine is very clear, and much easier to do sensory evaluation on,” says Jos...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
It wasn’t that I believed our predecessors were foolish, only that they lacked modern capabilities and limped along as best they could, right? I failed to appreciate technological conveniences such as electricity for the two-edged sword they really are.
In our headlong race for technical improvement, we moderns are disinclined to respect that the ancients may have had good reasons for the designs they worked out. In the rarified engineering circles where R&D actually takes place, we are well advised to question our own preconceptions before we set out to reinvent the wheel. The postmodern movement was founded to reconsider modern innovations whose implementers haven’t taken time to do so.
It’s all about integrity. Once you can fake that, the rest is a piece of cake. —Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing, TV’s Dallas
The Judgment of Paris led to the replacement of chenin blanc, grey riesling, and other light-wine grapes with cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay plantings as changes in winemaking style and practice moved toward Big. By 1980, cheap Chablis was “Out” throughout the nation and the noble fighting varietal Chardonnay was “In,” with Delta Force–style wine marketer Bruno Benziger flogging Glen Ellen Proprietor’s Reserve Chardonnay at two for $7 at Safeway. If the best is that cheap, why not buy the best?
As experimental plantings by Steve Krebs at Napa Valley College revealed, Clone 337 cabernet loves the cold, ripening readily and delivering huge tannins and great color in spots where standard up-valley clones like Clone 7 won’t ripen at all.
By Napoleon’s time, vignerons in Burgundy and Bordeaux began boosting their modest brixes with beet sugar to about 13% alcohol potential to improve balance. In France, you pick on flavor and color, then fix the brix. Nearly half of the classified growths in Burgundy and Bordeaux routinely contain extra alcohol derived from 10 to 20 grams per liter of added beet sugar.
John Gladstones’s brilliant new book, Wine, Terroir, and Climate Change,3 offers an additional perspective on why other climes mature grapes at lower brix. At the risk of oversimplifying a lengthy and insightful discussion, Gladstones points to the notion, rather obvious in retrospect, that grapes are impeded in photosynthesis when highly humid conditions inhibit the evaporation of water. This factor alone might account for the low brixes one sees in ripe fruit in many high-latitude areas, where diurnal summer temperature swings are moderated by longer day length. Absent botrytis, it is rare
...more
Milk, like wine, is a structured food, essentially an emulsion composed of tiny beads of butter surrounded by clear whey. You can’t filter it without altering its nature any more than you can strain a stew. Any attempt to force milk through a sterile filter has the effect of de-homogenizing it, separating out the cream. In wine, sterile filtration may also cause colloids to aggregate irreversibly into much larger ones that, lacking the surface area to integrate effectively, tend then to precipitate out.
A second innovation in the same patent was the capability to lower volatile acidity, a fancy winemaker code for vinegar.
In 2011 California survived its most challenging vintage in decades — almost as difficult as a typical vintage anywhere else. We are so spoiled.
pH and TA are not very closely related. Both are measures of acidity (high TAs and low pHs denote lots of acidity), but TA is the sour taste, in contrast to pH, which is the amount of free, dissociated protons that are controlling the wine’s chemistry and microbiology. TA is like the cops on the payroll, while pH is like the cops on the beat fighting crime. Or if you like, TA is like the number of women at a party, while pH measures how many of them are unattached. TA numbers make sense: TA is higher in tart wines. The pH scale, though, is counterintuitive: low pH means high free acidity.
Here’s something weird. Above 3.6, KHTa precipitation lowers TA and raises pH, just as you’d expect. Below 3.6, however, TA is lowered, but so is pH. The acid goes down, but it also goes up. Softer taste, but more stability and freshness. Not too shabby. Because of this effect, it is often possible to deacidify low-pH wines by adding potassium carbonate (K2CO3). This is always Plan A. Here’s how it works. First, as the compound dissolves, it ionizes into potassium cations and carbonate anions: K2CO3 → 2K+ + CO32− Next, the carbonate neutralizes some protons, benignly turning that nasty acid
...more
The wrong mix of acids can lead to very tart wines with very poor shelf life. Grapes can get out of sync, giving you really high pHs when you still have high TAs. A high TA means the juice has lots of protons and a sour taste, but the high pH means they aren’t free and available—that is, your protons are tied up somewhere. To revisit the police analogy, you have a lot of cops off duty, or in donut shops.
Iconic of the growing division between industrial and artisanal winemaking, Flash Détente currently excludes the small guy and widens the gap between vins d’effort and vins de terroir. A small winery simply can’t produce the lip-smackin’ delicious product an FD unit cranks out by the carload, any more than a microbrewery can duplicate Budweiser or a small creamery can make Velveeta.
Winemaking isn’t a science. It’s just a branch of cooking where we use a calendar instead of a timer—the ultimate slow food.
Paradoxically, more choices for retailers means less diversity on the shelf. That’s what I said. In the 1970s, if you wanted a thousand domestic offerings on your shelf, you simply bought everything there was. Today you can pick and choose to hit a narrow taste profile that you think your customers are looking for: the expected Chardonnay, the expected Merlot, and so on. This is analogous to the AM radio dial;
But the problem isn’t the tools we use. The ticky-tacky houses in Pete Seeger’s song don’t all look just the same because of the hammers and saws used to build them but because they were banged out fast and cheap for a one-size-fits-all market mentality. Tools aren’t the issue. Who hasn’t ruined breakfast with a microwave? But does that mean Thomas Heller at the French Laundry shouldn’t be allowed to own one? Countless great films attest to the value of video cameras, yet cable is mostly junk, because junk is cheap to make and it sells.
Kosher rules may be completely nuts, but by God, they are written down, right there in the Torah:
