Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/744999
2 4 V I N E YA R D & W I N E RY M A N A G E M E N T | N o v - D e c 2 016 w w w. v w m m e d i a . c o m w w w. v w m m e d i a . c o m cial in specific ways and different from a Zinfandel grown 150 miles to the northeast in Modesto. But climate is as mercurial as the latest election poll, and the wine industry bases its hierarchical pric- ing on the notion that certain places tend to make good wine, year in and year out, not only because of their climatic situation but because of their soils, too. We'll snake along a slippery slope for today (to mix our metaphors) by saying that reason- able people disagree on the issue of soil influence. I'd like to kick a couple of boulders down the slope by pondering how centuries of expe- rience, offering us specific soil char- acteristics in wine, can be summed up as mere winemaking tricks. How is it that Chablis' remarkable oyster shell aromas are due to sulfur use, as some narrow-minded pendants insist. But who am I to say…. Let's just agree to pretend, for a moment, that certain places on the planet give us certain kinds of wine. If mere winemaking trickery were enough to create $100 wines, well, surprise, everybody would do that. It isn't so. Certain places are spe- cial for myriad reasons. The past 50 years have seen new wine from new lands around the world offering proof that we haven't yet exhausted the pos- sible combinations of vineyards and grapes. Only a few miles from Rome, outside the little town of Montefiascone, is a plot of Mer- lot that makes delicious, remark- able wine. It was planted about 25 years ago by one of the geniuses of Italian wine, Riccardo Cotarella, so winemaking has something to do with it. But Italy has been dedi- cated to wine for three millennia or so, and it's just now finding a spot that makes great Merlot? I say if Rome still hasn't figured out where its best prospects lie for certain highly regarded grapes, why are we so critical of early efforts with, say, Geneva Red or Brianna, two of the Midwest's potential winners? Give it time, give it time. My circuitous argument lands here: Unless you plant grapes of your own, in your own place, how will you ever know if there's such potential? How will you ever dis- cover something great? Those win- eries that rely on purchased grapes from elsewhere cheat themselves, their neighbors and their children of a future all their own. And should California fall into the sea, as pre- dicted by Hollywood, where will they turn for their source material? Having starved their own state's farmers of the grape business, those farmers will have moved on to more lucrative crops. And the opportunity to conjoin a particu- lar farmland to a particular grape, hopefully conserved and watched over by succeeding generations, each learning from its predeces- sors, will be lost. STAYING LOCAL It's not an idle or trivial matter. Midwestern winemakers often find themselves short of grapes, at least good grapes from varieties that or what you like) exists throughout the world in versions that may be draconian or that may be little more than window dressing, the mes- sage inferred by the consumer is the same: By printing a place name on the label, you're telling me that this comes from a special place, and the wine should carry specific characteristics as a result. This requires us to venture rath- er further out on the limb, where things get wobblier. Roquefort cheese is a particular thing from a particular place and, according to French law, it must embody those particulars in its production — its ori- gins, its smells and its tastes. When we say a Zinfandel comes from Paso Robles, we're making the self- same claim. It's generally warmer there than in many other coastal Cal- ifornia sites, but it's near the coast nonetheless. So its character should reflect those climatic influences in ways that make that Zinfandel spe- MIDWEST WATCH DOUG FROST