There is always so much more to learn.
Joy and I have participated in many wine clubs over the years. We have enjoyed the extraordinary Syrah and Pinot Noir of Sonoma’s Tom Dehlinger and the old-world characteristics of Oregon’s Patricia Green. We have opened boxes of excellent Cabernet and luscious Chardonnay. We have been involved in the importation of wine, including the excellent Refosk of Slovenia’s San Tomas, and we have purchased small production Brunello from a wonderful enoteca in Montalcino. We have tasted wines produced in states as varied as Illinois, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, and decades ago we stumbled across a wonderful sparkling wine producer named Gruet north of Albuquerque. We traveled through Northern Italy tasting only local products, including a bottle of Lambrusco declared by a Modena waiter to be the “finest in the region” as he ‘popped’ the cork. However, despite our efforts to explore and learn, we continue to be surprised by a wine or a grape with which we have had no experience.
It is the potential for surprise offered by a new wine or grape that offers an appropriate segue into Kevin Begos new book, Tasting the Past (2018, Algonquin), and a companion conversation about Accent On Wine’s newly formed Wine Club.
Vinny Wedderspoon (AOC wine club guru/wine specialist) and Stephane Peltier (former Woodland’s sommelier/owner of AOW) introduced their wine club in late 2018. As with many wine clubs they offer a red and white option (or mixed), and you could acquire 1-3 bottles of each. However, unlike many wine clubs, Vinny and Stephane are willing to challenge your wine palate. Chardonnay and Cabernet are not the common offerings. We have recently discussed Abouriou from the Rhone and will review Sicily’s Catarratto and Austrian Blaufrankisch in the near future. The world of wine is certainly wider than Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, and Vinny and Stephane explore the wide range of grapes and the flavors they offer a consumer.
Begos, in Tasting the Past becomes intrigued by the origins of wine initially sparked by a taste of a Cremisan wine produced from indigenous Israeli grapes. Much like Kermit Lynch’s 1988 classic, Adventures on the Wine Route, Tasting the Past is a narrative of wine revelations. Lynch travels through the French wine country as he comes to a nuanced understanding of French wines. However, unlike Lynch, who focused primarily on the discussion of the dominant six varietals and the producers of contemporary French wine, Begos explores the origins of both wines and grapes outside the mainstream.
Begos, in seeking the Cremisan wines of his youth, discovered that there were wines that have been, or soon would be, lost. He cites Sean Myles, an expert on wine biodiversity, who argues that the world is practicing “viticultural apartheid”. The focus of the wine world (both producers and consumers) is on the six French ‘noble’ grapes – Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Riesling, and Sauvignon Blanc. While Tempranillo, Airen (Spanish White), Syrah, and Grenache Noir are included among the ‘big ten’ in acres planted, it is the six ‘noble varietals’ that have generated a self-fulling prophecy regarding the questionable future of wine diversity. Many producers/distributors heavily market the ‘big six’ while arguing that those are the wines sought by their customers. The customers, of course, seek those wines that are heavily marketed…and so the cycle goes.
The wine industry is just that…an industry…and industry is driven by profit. Grapes are one of “the most economically important horticultural crops in the world”. However, instead of an increase in the diversity of grapes, thus expanding the flavor palate to attract more consumers, just the opposite has occurred. Sean Myles determined through a study of genomes that “despite their distinct differences in color and flavor, all wine grapes of European origin are very closely related from a genetic point of view”. The genetic inbreeding of grapes represents a significant danger for the survival of viticulture.
Grape growers are farmers, and in the short term farmers seek crops that are vigorous. In order to increase yields and combat pests, growers “have taken to grafting new grape vines from old stock, rather than growing new plants from seed”. Ultimately, many of today’s grape varieties, according to Cornell’s Institute of Geonomic Diversity, are “genetic siblings to those grown a thousand years ago, and some vineyard fields are filled entirely with clones of a single plant. From a plant’s perspective, that’s a problem”.
Inbreeding diminishes variation between varieties and that inbreeding has “prevented the plants from evolving pest resistance over time…and grapes have become more and more susceptible to fungi, viruses and insects”.
The Wine Mosaic Project, a non-profit organization championing vinodiversity, has determined that there are 155 endangered varieties in the Mediterranean region alone, and those varieties are planted on less than 24 acres. The Project reports that many others are moving toward inclusion on the ‘endangered’ list. Many of the ‘endangered’ varieties “make lousy wine”, but others, like Abouriou, are certainly worth saving.
The need for increased variety on the shelves of wine shops is not the only reason for protecting a greater grape species. The Wine Mosaic Project has utilized DNA research to “provide clues to wine history”, they also “offer researchers a genetic toolbox for overcoming challenges of climate change, vine disease and changing consumer tastes”. Plylloxera, a disease at the end of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th, devastated the wine industry on both sides of the Atlantic, and “wiped out many varieties”. Sadly, “even more varieties disappeared in the last decades of the 20th century when indigenous grapes were replaced by more marketable international varieties”. Man can be more dangerous than disease.
This post offers a bleak outlook…the next post will be more optimistic.