The Wine Savant: A Guide to the New Wine Culture (18 page)

Krankl also said that European vintners such as Jean-Louis Chave and Dominique Lafon were in a very different position from his. Heirs to long winemaking traditions, they didn't have to build reputations from scratch; they just had to prove that they were worthy successors to their fathers. Once they did that, they were free to moonlight—to take on side projects and to carve out identities distinct from the ones bequeathed them. Sine Qua Non, by contrast, had existed only since 1994, and Krankl said his sole objective was to establish a track record of great wines—wines that could match the best of Chave or Lafon. Given the financial realities, he wouldn't be able to achieve that kind of quality in a $20 Grenache or Syrah, and it was therefore of no interest to him.

I also spoke with Ehren Jordan, one of California's most talented and versatile winemakers (full disclosure: he's an old friend). Over the years he has shown a knack for making full-throated Zinfandels but also earthy Pinot Noirs and Syrahs. Jordan pointed out that the value wines made by people like Chave and Lafon tend to come from relative backwaters; Lafon, for example, makes his cheaper stuff in the Mâcon region, not Burgundy proper. To turn out a seriously good $20 artisanal wine in California, Jordan said, would require something similar. Napa and Sonoma were prohibitively expensive; according to Jordan, an acre of choice vineyard in either county ran $100,000 to $200,000, and grape prices were also exorbitant. But there also just wasn't much interest in Napa and Sonoma in producing lower-priced wines.

Jordan noted that in recent decades, Napa (and to a lesser extent Sonoma) had seen an influx of people who earned fortunes in other fields and who had come to wine country with a trophy-hunting mentality (my phrase, not his). Their aim was to craft luxury
cuvées
that would get big scores and become collector's items. By buying up prime vineyards and hiring fancy consultants adept at pleasing critics like Parker, quite a few of them succeeded. Among this new Napa elite, bargain wines were just not part of the equation.

Clearly American consumers are not suffering because so few good budget wines are being produced in California; the rest of the world is happily filling this void. But I think it's a pity that California winemakers have completely ceded this category to foreign producers, and I think it's particularly unfortunate that so few top American vintners dabble at the lower end of the market. Although millions of Americans are now oenophiles, wine hasn't entirely shaken its elitist image, and the image persists in part because of the attitude that prevails in places like Napa. The fact that Aubert de Villaine, the codirector of Burgundy's Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, whose wines fetch thousands of dollars a bottle, also sells a $20 wine under his own label sends a powerful message: it says that fine wine is a democratic pleasure, accessible not merely to the affluent. It would be nice if a few prominent figures in California viticulture were sending the same message.

F
IFTY OF THE
W
ORLD'S
G
REAT $25
AND
U
NDER
W
INES

• Selbach-Oster Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett (Germany)

• Dönnhoff Nahe Estate Riesling (Germany)

• Loosen Dr. L Riesling (Germany)

• Albert Boxler Alsace Riesling (France)

• Clos de la Roilette Fleurie Clos de la Roilette (France)

• Jean-Paul Brun/Domaine des Terres Dorées Beaujolais l'Ancien (France)

• Château Thivin Beaujolais Côte de Brouilly (France)

• Domaine Jean-Louis Chave Côtes du Rhône Mon Coeur (France)

• Eric Texier Côtes du Rhône Brézème (France)

• Domaine la Bastide (Durand) Syrah Vieilles Vignes les Genets (France)

• Domaine de la Pépière Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Clos des Briords (France)

• Domaine Pierre Luneau-Papin Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Le L d'Or (France)

• Domaine A. & P. de Villaine Bouzeron Aligoté (France)

• Catherine et Pierre Breton Bourgueil Trinch (France)

• Bernard Baudry Chinon Les Granges (France)

• Château d'Epiré Savennières (France)

• Closel/Château des Vaults Savennières La Jalousie (France)

• Bernard Fouquet/Domaine d'Aubuisières Vouvray Cuvée de Silex (France)

• Domaine Champalou Vouvray (France)

• Avinyó Cava (Spain)

• Señorio de P. Peciña Rioja Crianza (Spain)

• Do Ferreiro Albariño (Spain)

• Benito Santos Albariño Saiar (Spain)

• Guimaro Godello (Spain)

• A Coroa Godello (Spain)

• Bodegas Marañones Vinos de Madrid Garnacha Labros (Spain)

• Pena das Donas Almalarga Godello (Spain)

• Ameztoi Getariako Txakolina Rubentis (Spain)

• Sigalas Santorini Assyrtiko (Greece)

• Argyros Santorini Assyrtiko (Greece)

• De Forville Langhe Nebbiolo (Italy)

• Produttori del Barbaresco Langhe Nebbiolo (Italy)

• Vietti Langhe Nebbiolo Perbacco

• Montesecondo Chianti Classico (Italy)

• Montevertine Pian del Ciampolo (Italy)

• Isole e Olena Chianti Classico (Italy)

• Mastroberardino Fiano di Avellino Radici (Italy)

• Morisfarms Morellino di Scansano (Italy)

• Badenhorst Secateurs Chenin Blanc (South Africa)

• Badenhorst Secateurs Red (South Africa)

• Copain Pinot Noir Tous Ensemble (United States)

• Copain Syrah Tous Ensemble (United States)

• Saintsbury Carneros Pinot Noir (United States)

• Roederer Estate Anderson Valley nonvintage Brut sparkling wine (California)

• Tablas Creek Vineyard Paso Robles Patelin de Tablas (California)

• Tablas Creek Vineyard Paso Robles Patelin de Tablas Blanc (California)

• Au Bon Climat Santa Barbara County Chardonnay (California)

• Dashe Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel (California)

• Ridge Vineyards Three Valleys Zinfandel (California)

• Torbreck Woodcutter's Shiraz (Australia)

10

Letting One Thousand
Grapes Blossom

A
FEW YEARS AGO
I experienced an epiphany sitting on a barstool at a Manhattan tapas joint. I'd gone there to meet a young importer of Spanish wines named José Pastor. The twentysomething Pastor was dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a baseball cap, and with his beard, he looked more like a graduate student than a wine flogger. In fact, my first question to him was, “You're not missing class to do this, are you?” I was initially skeptical of Pastor—he looked disarmingly young, and before we started tasting, he told me that he was the ne'er-do-well of a family from Valencia and had come to the United States basically to get out of his family's hair. A dilettante, I thought—until I tried his wines. For the better part of three hours, we sampled Pastor's portfolio, and I was floored by what I tasted. The wines were all unknown to me, mostly came from unheralded parts of Spain, included some grapes that I'd never even heard of (Treixadura, anyone?), and were uniformly delicious. To say that tasting Pastor's wines was a revelation would be an understatement. Not only had I discovered a brilliant new importer, I had discovered a side to Spanish wines that I never knew existed. In contrast to the big, oaky wines pouring out of Spain's two main viticultural regions, Rioja and Ribera del Duero, many of which tasted as if they could have come from anywhere, these were earthy, elegant, utterly distinctive reds and whites. I walked out of the tapas joint feeling quite soggy—the restaurant didn't have a bucket for us to use, so there was no spitting—but also woozy with pleasure.

You often hear it said these days that there has never been a better time to be a wine enthusiast. That's unquestionably true, and the main reason is that there have never been so many good and diverse wines to choose from.
Diverse
is the key point: the variety on offer now, in terms of both regions and grapes, is unprecedented. Wine stores are literally becoming miniature United Nations, their shelves filled with wines from once-obscure regions and previously unknown grapes. Some of those grapes have even caught the interest of American vintners and migrated across the Atlantic; alongside all the Cabernet and Chardonnay, esoteric varieties such as Ribolla Gialla and Albariño are now being cultivated in California. It's not hard to envision a future in which grapes like Godello and Aglianico are nearly as prominent as old standards like Sauvignon Blanc and Syrah. That's a very different future than many people imagined just a decade ago.

A decade ago, all the talk was of globalization. To its critics, globalization inevitably led to homogenization—less diversity, less choice. That was a particularly acute fear among some wine aficionados, who worried that the world's thirst for Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc would lead more and more producers to focus on these grapes to the exclusion of others. And certainly there are examples of winemakers uprooting less popular varieties and replacing them with Cabernet or Merlot. But many others seemed to understand that amid a worldwide glut of Cabernet and Merlot, standing out from the crowd, offering something a little different, made sense. Why become just another source of Sauvignon Blanc when you can make an amazing Assyrtiko and develop a devoted following in places like New York and Sydney? It turns out that the globalization of the wine market has actually promoted diversity, by giving producers an incentive to differentiate themselves and by making it so easy for wine to move across borders and oceans. This point should be obvious to anyone walking the aisles of a half-decent American wine shop these days and perusing the Txakolis from Spain, the Blaufränkisches from Austria, the Aglianicos from Italy, and the Trousseaus from France.

Around the world we are seeing a renaissance of indigenous grape varieties, and it can largely be credited to globalization. Take Italy, for instance. Over the past two decades or so, grapes such as Fiano, Falanghina, Nero d'Avola, Negroamaro, Arneis, and the aforementioned Aglianico have made remarkable comebacks; they may not be household names yet, but they are headed in that direction. These are grapes that might well be extinct now but for globalization, which gave individual producers and entire regions both an incentive to distinguish themselves and the opportunity to reach consumers in distant markets.

But I think probably the most exciting story in this globalized wine world is the emergence of northern Spain, which has become a source of incredible white wines. Galicia, an autonomous region in the northwest of the country renowned for its firthlike inlets and verdant landscape (it is sometimes referred to as “green Spain”), has been at the forefront of this development. At the turn of the last century, Galicia was hit hard by phylloxera, vineyards were abandoned, and the wine industry fell into a prolonged slump. The dictatorship of Francisco Franco only compounded the difficulties. During the Franco era, Spain's wine production was dominated by large cooperatives churning out insipid bulk wines. There were pockets of excellence—Vega Sicilia, Spain's most acclaimed winery, had a number of stellar vintages in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, and some brilliant Riojas were also made during this period—but they were a distinct minority. With Franco's death in 1975 and the establishment of democratic rule, many of Spain's cellars and vineyards underwent a dramatic overhaul. New and better vines were planted, antiquated equipment was replaced, and over time the emphasis shifted from quantity to quality.