Wine whine

Sep 16, 2010 5 Replies
R

A bottle of '08 Canard Sauvage Dry Creek Valley zinfandel went well with a heavily herbed charcoal grilled leg of lamb in a Mediterranean style. A modern fruit bomb, but still. However, as I felt a buzz on early, I saw the alcohol level was 15.5%. The '70 Ch. Mouton Baron Philippe I reported on a month or so ago was a full rich nice wine, at only 11.5%. I want a wine I can enjoy with my dinner, and still get up out of my chair!



Is it so hard to make good wines in the older style, or with full ripe flavours, but not a load of alcohol? Is that too much to ask?



Jim



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J

I tasted through a bunch of Cline zins recently. The alcohol levels started at 14.5% and skyrocketed from there. But for some reason zins seem to be that way. Why is that?

I'm more concerned with the alcohol creep of just about every other wine. The Rhones are up to 15% now, and 14.5% is getting to be the "norm" everywhere. Nota Bene (Washington) recently released a 15.3.

I like to have wine with my dinner, not a 2-glass DUI.

JJ

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M

This is true.

Wines used to be made with more acidity, and with the idea that someone would cellar them. Now people want heady fruit bombs with lots of "roundness" (sugar) and so that is what they get.

If you come to Provence or Languedoc or the Southern Rhone, and you make wine in the most natural way possible, it is impossible to get a 12° wine. But those wines have always existed, through dilution and all kinds of tricks. In Ch9 the old trick was throwing blocks of ice in the fermentation vat, "to keep the temperature down" - yeah sure... there jsut happened to be two useful side-effects to massive water addition: higher volume, more drinkable wine.

So in fact, I would say that for these climes, any wine that is NOT over

14° is highly suspect. MAking high alcohol wine does not require any special manoeuvers, all you have to do is... nothing!
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