StateWays is the only magazine exclusively covering the control state system within the beverage alcohol industry, with annual updates from liquor control commissions and alcohol control boards and yearly fiscal reporting from control jurisdictions
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Great wine, implied Pakenham through this example, was multi-faceted, not to mention had a lot of stuffing in it. The excitement of multitude flavors found in chardonnay didn't, in and of itself, create the American demand for richer, bigger, more blowsy styles of chardonnay. But that certainly did happen, and winemakers across the country began to do unspeakable things to the grape, all in the name of complexity The main tactics were putting the wine through a second fermentation called malolactic, then aging the wines on their lees in new oak barrels. This gave them a smoky, roasted character (from how the barrel staves smelled). One "Burgundian" tactic was to leave solids in the wines after the primary fermentation was done to allow tertiary flavors to develop – the so-called sulfide-y solution. This was done with lots of lees contact and barrel aging. Moreover, many of the wines had lower acid levels, to make them really succulent. Those who wanted a better balanced wine would serve them well chilled. We began to see this become a major trend in the United States in the late 1980s. In some ways it is what created the huge demand for "buttery" chardonnays with some buyers. The fad became a trend, and soon every winery that previously had suppressed the ML style of chardonnay was adopting the idea. And that's because wines of that style sold well. "Unoaked" Appears owever, by the mid-1990s, it was apparent, there were other buyers out there who preferred their chardonnays leaner, crisper, and with higher natural acidities. In some cases, the waters were being tested by small, courageous wineries willing if not eager to put the word "unoaked" on their front labels. The first one of this new trend I saw was in 1992 when Chapel Hill Winery in Australia's McLaren Vale made what it called Unwooded Chardonnay. The wine was a success locally and was based on excellent fruit that smelled and tasted almost as fresh as a Riesling, but with a little more weight in the mouth. It was just about this time that a number of major U.S. wine companies were looking into the Australian wine market. With strong connections to Australia, many of these wineries saw this upstart, chardonnay without any oak at all, as an interesting wine. But although E&J Gallo and Kendall-Jackson, the largest U.S. players in the chardonnay market, were interested in this phenomenon, they didn't make such a product for the broad U.S. market for a long while. However, both launched market research studies to H StateWays I www.stateways.com I January/February 2014 The Famed Wente Clone S even years before the 1919 start of Prohibition, a young Ernest Wente asked his family for permission to give to UC Davis, where he was a student, some of the plant material the Wente winery was growing. Among the field selections that the young man gave to the Foundation Plant Services department at UC Davis was a clone called, for want of a better name, the Wente Clone. FPS did a lot of work to clean up the clones to make them virus-free. Meanwhile work was done in vineyards from Stony Hill (Napa Valley) to Hanzell (Sonoma). Among the most notable work in Napa was done by Louis Martini at his Stanly Ranch in the Carneros. So successful was this clone of Chardonnay that today the Wente Clone (and its cousin, Clone 4) are considered the most widely used in California. A spokesman for Trinchero Family Estates noted that the clone has some of the most reliable fruitfulness and distinctiveness of all Chardonnay clones. He said the exotic "terpene" aromas can be spicy, sort of Muscat-y. "The Wente clone is sort of the grandfather of Clone 4, said Kendall-Jackson's Randy Ullom. "True Wente Clone has smaller berries and there are these random spice notes, kind of more tropical. It gives you a richer aroma, compared with some of the Dijon clones, which are floral and less spicy." He said the clone is reliable in producing a good crop, though it isn't immune to smaller crops, such as what happened in 2011 where all varieties suffered losses due to a long, cold season. Ullom said even Wente Clone Chardonnay suffered losses in many vineyards of 50%. 29