Ideas and resources to help you be a more thoughtful wine consumer, maker, and lover.
The Real Secrets of Wine Tasting: Part 2, At The Bar
There’s no right or wrong way to taste wine, but there are some things that will make you look really really stupid. The key to wine tasting is understanding that although in truth the whole experience is a glorified version of bar hopping, maintaining the illusion that that it is a process of appreciation, education, and sophisticated shopping is half the fun. These tips will prevent you from inadvertently violating this jolly pretense.
It’s not a shot. Spend a minimum of two minutes with each glass of wine. To kill time, swirl the wine in the glass compulsively – there are really good reasons for doing this, number one of which is that it makes you look like you know what you’re doing.
Get creative. If you read professional wine tasting notes you will be dumbfounded to find that a critic detected notes of things like “crushed pebbles,” “guava,” “forest mushrooms,” and “stone fruit.” How many glasses had they drunk? Consider for a moment that the sensitivity of your palate could possibly be equal to your ability to B.S. Stick your nose in the glass and smell the wine – yes, it smells like wine, but get creative. Take a big sniff. What’s that? Do you detect a whiff of… sunshine? Sea breeze? Dew covered blueberries? Yes, you do.
Hold the stem, not the bowl, of the glass. It looks prissy, but you are preventing your hand from warming the wine. Prissy is good. In fact, stick your pinky out as you sip.
There’s no accounting for taste. Wine should be described, not judged. If you hate it, never say so. Rather describe it as having aromas of “barnyard and freshly mulched earth” with flavors of “lead pencil and pasture clover” and a texture of “brushed tree bark and a finish like a nail in a coffin.” If you love it, describe it like the most romantic kiss of your life. “Intoxicating aromas of lilac and strawberry, rich and luscious with ripe, juicy fruit, plush and silky, with a finish that lingers in your mouth like steam on the windows of a car after you’ve made love in the backseat.” Go ahead. Get carried away.
Pretend whatever wine you taste is the cure for cancer. Act as if you are holding a precious elixir, extracted over centuries, crafted by the life-blood of a thousand generations, delivered to you in sacred ceremony, solely for you to have a fuller, happier, and possibly longer life. You might, after all, be right.
If you haven't read Part 1 of The Real Secrets of Wine Tasting: Wine Country, well... you should.
The Real Secrets of Wine Tasting: Part 1, Wine Country
Here are some insider secrets that will help you prepare for a weekend in wine country.
Pack a lunch. Restaurants in wine country are often few and far between. The ones you find will be overpriced. Plus, you won’t get through many tasting rooms on an empty stomach. The max is around 8, and that’s pushing it… trust me. The bar crackers only go so far.
Bring a date who is allergic to alcohol. They will come to be known as your “designated driver,” but let them discover this destiny along the way. Staggering sideways toward the car and dropping your keys as you fiddle with the lock is a good way to encourage them to discover their destiny. Then be effusively grateful. If needed, convince them to come with promises of all the great restaurants in wine country. Dates with sulfite allergies work too, but make sure they haven’t brought a secret stash of whiskey. Search them if necessary.
Make evening plans. Tasting rooms usually close at 5. That’s usually a few hours before your buzz peaks. Do the math. I suggest over-priced dining, drinking of bottles you purchased during the day, fire of some kind, hot tubs, movies, skinny-dipping and dessert. I suggest doing these first one at a time, then all at once.
Use Vegas money rules. At first you’ll just pay for a tasting fee. Then another. Then you’ll taste an amazing wine and you’ll have to buy a bottle. Then you’ll go to a winery where everything tastes good and you’ll say “One of each!” At the next one you’ll reason, with what seems to be utterly sensible logic, that you drink wine all year so you might as well get the buying part out of the way when you can taste what you’re buying, and you’ll come home with a year’s supply of pink champagne. Whatever you do to protect your money from yourself in Vegas, duplicate it in wine country.
Read Part 2, The Real Secrets of Wine Tasting: At The Bar now.
Organic (Wine) Isn't About Your Health
I was in a wine & spirits shop yesterday and remarked to the proprietor - a nice and knowledgeable guy who promotes natural wine - that it's a shame there aren't more whiskeys made from organic grain. (This goes for beer too, but that wasn't part of this discussion.) His initial response was that the distillation process is so extreme as to eliminate any contaminates that might have come from the conventional agriculture. Essentially he was saying that what you spray on wheat, corn, rye, etc. doesn't matter because it all gets removed before the whiskey is bottled.
I've heard this sentiment expressed in many ways, many times, but I'm beginning to wonder if this way of thinking about organic may be the problem that needs to be solved if we want to, you know, save the world.
My parents present the same kinds of arguments when I'm home and grocery shopping with them.
"I've been buying this kind of [conventional] bread my whole life, and it hasn't killed me yet."
Maybe these sound like strong arguments to you. I'll willingly admit that both arguments have the strength of being true. It's true that distillation (especially double & triple distillation) does remove just about everything from the fermented substance except alcohol. And it's also true that many people have lived long lives (my parents are well into their 70's), eating the products of the conventional agriculture industry.
This is a textbook fallacy from logic school, though: Conventional agriculture produces beverage and food products that aren't harmful to consume, therefore organic agriculture (and viticulture) is unnecessary.
First of all, organic agriculture isn't about your health. At least not directly. Support for organic agriculture (and viticulture) in the form of buying organic food, wine, whiskey, beer, etc., is about preventing harmful poisons from ever being manufactured and put into the world in the first place.
By purchasing organic products, you aren't protecting yourself from consuming a chemically-tainted end-product. Buying organic de-funds an entire conventional chemical industry that builds and operates factories where the chemical poisons are made, that operates global distribution routes burning fossil fuels to spread the poisons, that sprays those poisons over millions and millions of acres of planet earth and into its waterways and oceans, and that employs millions of people who must handle and work with those poisons directly, at their own peril.
We are disconnected from this in location and occupation, perhaps, and that is what allows us to think in terms only of this individual product in front of me at the store that I'm considering buying. But we aren't disconnected from the conventional chemical industry in any other way.
The poisons of the conventional chemical industry are in the world - its land and its waters - in massive amounts because we think we are separate from that world. We think we are independent individuals who aren't touched by the things that happen in the agricultural areas far from where we live. But this is an illusion that is now rapidly fading.
This is why the Centralas mission is to promote connection. We see the symptoms of the lack of connection everywhere, every day. We don't really promote "organic" or "biodynamic." We think these are the natural result of understanding the inextricable connection we have to each other and to the earth.
The next time you reach for bottle of whiskey or beer, try to buy one that is organically grown. You'll see how difficult it is to find organic beer and whiskey right now, and hopefully that will inspire you. Remember that you have the power to fund a healthier planet with a cleaner agricultural system, and to de-fund conventional poison production, simply by buying delicious, organic products instead of conventional ones.
Ultimately, a cleaner world will be good for your health. So maybe in the end if you need a selfish motivation you still have one.
Please use this form to join our mailing list if you want to support positive change in wine and the world, as well as be the first to get access to our new wine releases and special offers.
Organic & Biodynamic Wine Tasting Trails of Santa Barbara
If you're like us, you've stopped buying wine that isn't organically or biodynamically grown. If we had made that decision 15 years ago, we wouldn't have been able to go wine tasting in Santa Barbara at more than one or two wineries. Now, fortunately, there are multiple separate wine trails featuring only organically or biodynamically grown wine that you can explore in Santa Barbara County.
This is good news for the world, and good news for those of us in Los Angeles who want to get away on a wine tasting adventure for the weekend but don't want to support the chem-ag industry. We have personally tasted at (almost) every winery in Santa Barbara that features organically or biodynamically grown wine, multiple times, and have given some insider insights to help you plan and navigate your wine tasting trip, as well as to know what to expect.
Santa Ynez & Los Olivos
Organic & Biodynamic Wine Tasting Rooms in Los Olivos and Santa Ynez, Santa Barbara County
Beckman Vineyards features biodynamically grown wine from one of their estate vineyards (Purisima Mountain vineyard). Beckman's tasting room is just a short drive south outside the town of Los Olivos. It is popular, and can be busy, so don't be in a rush. But Beckman's tasting room is also a beautiful spot with a pond and outdoor areas for lounging and picnicking.
Special Note: as of this writing, not all of Beckman's wines are biodynamically grown. Only the wines made from their Purisima Mountain vineyard are biodynamic. So if, like us, you're being picky about what you support with your dollars, just let the tasting room attendant know you only want the biodynamic wine. If enough of us do this, maybe they'll see the value in converting all their wine growing to biodynamic.
Coquelicot makes wine from 100% certified organic grapes. Their entire 58 acre vineyard is farmed organically. They have a quaint tasting room in the center of Los Olivos, just a few steps away from the Larner tasting room (also 100% organic).
Larner Vineyard & Winery features delicious organically grown wine from their famed vineyard in Ballard Canyon. The owner was a geologist and was instrumental in getting Ballard Canyon designated as its own AVA. The Larner Vineyard has been called one of America's "grand cru" vineyards by Robert Parker, and when you taste their 100% organically grown wine you'll see why. Larner has a tiny corner tasting room right on the square in Los Olivos.
Solminer is a rare Austrian wine focused winery. Solminer makes a wine from a grape that almost no one in the U.S. has ever heard of or tasted: St. Laurent. If you haven't heard of it, think of it as the Austrian version of Pinot Noir, with a little more weight and earth, usually, like it was spiked with Graciano. If that doesn't make sense to you, good. Just try it.
They make most of their wines from their doubly certified biodynamic & organic Delanda Estate Vineyard, from which they make another Austrian rarity (for California): Blaufrankish, as well as Gruner Veltliner and Syrah. That's what makes it worth checking out Solminer's tasting room in Los Olivos. They do some sparkling, pet nats, cidery-co-ferments, and generally make wine naturally, even some zero-zero wines.
Another Los Olivos tasting room where you can find certified organically grown wine is Holus Bolus. Two of the "Holus Bolus" wines that they are known for are sourced from the John Sebastiano Vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills, which is organically farmed though not certified. Their estate vineyard, "The Joy Fantastic," has been certified organic since its planting in 2014.
To do Los Olivos right, find a parking spot and walk around. Los Olivos is basically a cross-roads town lined with tasting rooms. Something like 30 wineries have tasting rooms within a block of the square. Unfortunately there are only a handful of wineries that feature organically grown wine: Coquelicot, Holus Bolus, Larner, Grimm’s Bluff, and Solminer. Check them out, grab some lunch, and enjoy the people watching.
This Biodynamic Cabernet Sauvignon & Sauvignon Blanc vineyard recently (2021) opened a tasting room in Los Olivos. We stopped by their tasting room in October of 2022 and can attest that they make some beautiful wines. They offered several bottlings of Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon, with one carbonic Cab Franc. These are classy, stylish, polished, and (in the case of the Cab) ageable. And these Bordeaux varieties are a nice change of pace in Sideways country.
Sunstone Vineyards & Winery's estate vineyard are entirely organic. With a line up of Bordeaux varieties, they offer a great alternative to the majority of wine in Santa Barbara that features Rhone and Burgundian grape varieties. They are very popular, so the tasting room can get crowded on weekends and holidays. The organic wines are good, but don't be in a rush.
Special note: Unfortunately, only Sunstone's estate grown wines are organic. The non-estate wines are NOT organically grown. We always recommend making a point to only drink and buy their organically grown estate wines in hopes that they'll get the message and switch to using only organically grown grapes for all their wine.
The heirs of Budweiser also happen to make some really tasty organically farmed wine, just off the 101 freeway as you wind your way up from the Santa Barbara coast to Buellton. Their farming makes them worth supporting, and their location makes them a perfect first stop if you’re driving up from Los Angeles or from hotels in the city of Santa Barbara. Oh, and their wine is pretty dang tasty, focusing on small quantities of Rhone varieties grown on their 15 acre estate vineyard that they farm organically on their homestead with vegetable gardens, fruit trees, sheep, pigs, miniature horses, and of course Clydesdales.
Foxen & Los Alamos
Martian Ranch & Vineyard
Martian Ranch & Vineyard has closed its tasting room. The former Martian Ranch tasting room is now rented and used by Tensley.
Before they closed, we made a really outstanding wine from their Mourvedre.
Demetria Estate Winery - NOT CERTIFIED
You must make an appointment to visit Demetria Estate Winery. When you arrive at the gate for your appointment, keep in mind that you still have about a 10 minute drive to get to the tasting room.
The "driveway" to Demetria winds for over 2 miles through vineyards and some of the most beautiful Santa Barbara countryside you will find. You may see quail, deer, bobcats, and other wildlife. Also keep an eye out for the flock of sheep Demetria keeps to do the job of weed control and fertilization in the vineyards.
Demetria's tasting area overlooks steep vineyards that fall away into a canyon far below you and then rise again steeply in the distance. A winery cat may climb the large spreading oak tree and nap on one of the branches that provide shade for the tasting area.
If Demetria sounds beautiful, that's because it is. And the wines are great as well. We highly recommend allowing a couple hours to enjoy it. Take a picnic and take your time.
Special Note: Unfortunately, again, only Demetria's estate wines are biodynamically grown. Also, Demetria is not Demeter certified biodynamic (though you'd think they would be with a name like Demetria). However, we have toured their vineyards with their vineyard manager, seen their flock of sheep, and can confirm that they are indeed following biodynamic practices. Please ask them why they don't get Demeter certified, and why they don't buy organic or biodynamic grapes to fill out their non-estate selections, and maybe soon they will.
Shokrian Vineyard - NOT CERTIFIED
Shokrian is one of the new producers bringing organically and biodynamically grown wine to the newest and hippest town in Santa Barbara County: Los Alamos. Shokrian makes an assortment of wines from both Rhone and Burgundian grape varieties, and some even skew “natural,” like the Black Coq Sans Soufre, Syrah.
Appointments are required to visit Shokrian Vineyard. If you plan your day right, you could three biodynamic-oriented wineries of Beckmen, Demetria, and Shokrian, and wind up at one of the amazing restaurants in Los Alamos for dinner. Not a bad day at all.
Santa Rita Hills & Lompoc
Camins 2 Dreams’ tasting room is right in the Lompoc wine ghetto, and worth the trip to Lompoc even if you go nowhere else. Behind every wine there are 2 experienced and brilliant winemakers, who also happen to be great people. They’ve decided to showcase the less popular grapes of Santa Rita Hills with their wines, and thereby show that both they and Santa Rita Hills can make something fantastic from any grape. If you’re looking for anything but Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, Camins 2 Dreams is the spot. From Gruner Veltliner to Graciano to Gamay, Albarino or Carignan, and an incredible selection of Syrahs, they are all natural and all elegance and finesse. Can you tell I like these organically grown, beautiful wines?
Alma Rosa's tasting room is in central Buellton right next to Industrial Eats, the best place for lunch in Santa Barbara County. So if you time it right, you can taste Alma Rosa's organically grown wines right when the tasting room opens at 11am, and be done in time to go next door for lunch before Industrial Eats gets insanely busy.
Alma Rosa makes yummy organically grown wine, but keep in mind that you've entered the realm of the Santa Rita Hills, Santa Barbara's most celebrated AVA - so the prices will reflect the real estate.
Special Note: Only Alma Rosa's estate wines are organically grown... again, unfortunately. Talk to them about it. Hopefully one day all of their wines will be organically grown.
You'll need an appointment to taste organically grown wine in Spear's beautifully restored dairy barn tasting room. Spear makes delicious wine from their 100% organic estate vineyard, and those vineyards have a special place in our heart here at Centralas. They are the source of the very first wine we made - our single clone organic Pinot Noir. We also make several beautiful wines from Spear’s organic fruit.
Special Note: Spear's "Gnesa Vineyard" wines are still under the same ownership, and therefore technically "estate." However, Spear does not organically certify the Gnesa Vineyard. They do use the same vineyard company and follow the same (organic) viticultural practices at Gnesa that they do at Spear Vineyards, though.
You must make an appointment to taste organically grown wine at Pence Vineyards & Winery, and you can select between various levels of tastings & tours of the property. For not too much more than a standard tasting you can be driven around to see the vineyards and taste Pence wine outdoors.
Special Note: Only Pence's estate wines are organically grown... again, unfortunately. You actually have to do some searching on their website to find any mention of their organic viticulture. Talk to them about it. Hopefully one day all of their wines will be organically grown.
To taste the organically and biodynamically grown wine of Ampelos Cellars you must take the 246 all the way out to Lompoc and the Lompoc Wine Ghetto. It's not exactly the end of the road, but it's a short seagull's flight from it.
The Ampelos estate vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills is a rare triple threat: it is certified organic, biodynamic, and sustainable. In 2011 it became the first vineyard in the United States to achieve this triple certification.
The fact that this was less than a decade ago shows how far we have to go with environmentally respectful viticulture in the U.S., but Ampelos certainly deserves our admiration for caring enough to be the first to become certified in all three categories.
But don't just go for the vineyard. Ampelos makes delicious wines in a natural, low-intervention style that are worth the trip.
You must make an appointment to visit J. Dirt Wines for a tasting or vineyard tour. Brook Williams - Mr. J. Dirt himself - gives a great intro to biodynamic farming from a practical approach without worrying too much about the “metaphysical” aspects. The wines are delicious, and you’ll drink them surrounded by the vines they came from, with the chilly ocean breeze making each sip taste like it’s truly in alignment with the cosmos.
We also make a very popular and affordable wine from Duvarita, J. Dirt’s biodynamic vineyard adjacent to SRH.
If you plan your day well, you can taste some truly excellent organically grown wine at all of these wineries, and be on the beach for sunset over the Pacific Ocean. If you're lucky, that is. The Santa Rita Hills are such a great wine growing region because of the cool fog that blows in most days. So the beach can often be a cold, damp, and windy experience.
Even if it happens to be a beautiful evening, resist the urge to go for a swim, though. This section of the California coast is a Great White shark breeding area. Many people have been attacked, some fatally. So take a walk on the beach, and enjoy one of the epic evenings that makes this area not only one of the best regions in the world for wine, but also one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Why Is The USA So Bad At Organic?
A week ago I read that California is banning a chemical pesticide (chlorpyrifos) that is used in grape growing (among other crops) and is linked to brain damage in children. The real bummer is that this is the second article that I've read about a pesticide being banned for its horrible effects in less than 3 months. If we keep up this average, in just over a year we will have banned as many chemical pesticides as there are organic pesticides in total.
Want to know what's crazier than that? This article stated that the ban would happen "under an agreement reached with the manufacturer." That is, this ban of chlorpyrifos was only able to happen because the pesticide's manufacturer volunteered to do so. Because - guess what? - the federal government has taken no steps to ban chlorpyrifos.
The poison maker could have said no. Then, if California or anyone else tried to ban their product, they could have fought it in the courts. A court fight would cost large sums of taxpayer money, and would allow them to continue to sell their product for years while they dragged out the judicial process - barring some kind of injunction by a higher authority, unlikely to happen when the chemical is still approved federally.
In other words, the producer of this poison did a cost benefit analysis that looked like this:
Lawsuits by parents of brain-damaged children
+
Cost to fight ban of our poison in court vs State of CA
-
Profit generated by sale of our poison
=
Loss of $$
Conclusion: volunteer to allow ban of our poison
The problem with this math (other than the glaringly obvious ethical one) is that it only ends up with a conclusion to allow the ban of the poison if the ending sum is negative.
As it turns out, this is why the USA lags far behind China, Brazil, and the EU in banning harmful chemicals. In fact, the USA has not banned a harmful chemical in years, and only relies on voluntary withdraw by the manufacture to remove them from the market. Because of this, dozens of pesticides that are known globally to be "extremely" or "highly" hazardous, and that have been banned, or never approved, by all the other major agricultural producers on earth, are still approved and being used and sprayed regularly on crops in the USA.
I'm not sure how to look at that other than this: in order to protect the rights of corporations, the USA is literally sacrificing its children on the altar of capitalism.
The awful math above only works out in favor of humans if sales of the pesticide have already been decreasing for years. (Here's a great article with maps showing the decline of chlorpyrifos use in California.) If sales are strong, or god-forbid growing, then we will not see that particular poison banned. What we will see is an increase of instances of cancer, birth defects, brain damage, and other maladies.
This is where I see a spark of hope, though, believe it or not. The main issue keeping these pesticides in use is ignorance. Fewer and fewer people work on farms, or we might be more familiar with these chemicals. We are separated from the land where our food is grown, and so we don't know what's being sprayed on it. But we eat it.
If enough us care enough about what we consume, regardless of whether we know anything about agriculture, we can make one simple choice that could eliminate the market for these poisonous chemicals and enable them to be withdrawn from our environment:
Buy organically (& biodynamically) grown food (& wine) products.
How we spend our dollars is the most potent form of voting that US citizens have. You may feel that your vote for president doesn't matter, but you should never feel that way about the way you spend your money. We may not be able to easily change the equation that is used, but we can help ensure that the calculation results in a negative sum. By eliminating the financial support for "conventional" viticulture and agriculture, you eliminate the incentives for poison makers to continue to make poison.
Of course, in organic and biodynamic viticulture and agriculture, there would be no need to ban chlorpyrifos or any of the other dozens of terrible chemicals that get sprayed on grapes and food - because they never would have been allowed to be used in the first place.
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Natural Wine and the Quest for Authenticity: 5 Ways to Build A Better Natural Wine
"There is more philosophy in a bottle of wine than in all the books."
Is natural wine dead? So asks Alice Feiring in a recent New York Times article. How did natural wine get to the place where its preeminent advocate is questioning its vitality? And if it isn't quite dead, how can it be saved? Or should it be saved?
The rise of natural wine grew from positive values – wanting wines that reflected place and time rather than manipulated formulas, wanting wines that were free of mysterious and possibly harmful chemicals, wanting viticulture that respected, protected, and worked with the ecosystem rather than industrial agriculture that plowed it under and poisoned it. These are ideals we all can, and should, get behind.
The problem is that good values do not give you accurate information, and they often lead to self-righteous zeal.
Advocates of natural wine inevitably began using it as a pillar of virtue-signaling. It became an unfortunately short step from virtue-signaling natural wine enthusiast to wine style-nazi.
The vigorous and sometimes vehement natural wine clique is defined more by its enforcement of a style of wine that is considered to be “authentic,” rather than a values-driven definition. In its fetishizing of esoteric wine styles, the why of natural wine has all but been forgotten.
Now, in many people's mind, "natural" has become at best meaningless, or at worst a negative word. Half the time, a wine isn't "natural" unless it's flawed. And those of us who may dare to point out that the emperor wears no clothes are discounted as the dull, unenlightened sheep of industrial winemaking.
By drawing lines of authenticity between foot-stomping versus mechanically de-stemming, and between oak and clay, natural wine stopped being about what was "natural" and became about what was "correct." These kinds of natural wine doctrines are more of an insidious in-group style signaling and a kind of holier-than-thou one-upswomanship.
But if you scratch the surface of many of these tenets of the natural wine faith, you’ll find fallacy, contradiction, and, naturally, hypocrisy. Poke around the winery of just about any natural wine guru who celebrates ancient techniques and you’ll find a fair bit of plastic in use.
Perhaps the natural wine trend is flat-lining, but I’m not sure it needs to be resuscitated. I think we can build a new style of wine that is values-driven, rather than a fad created by style-nazis. (See my post Natural Wine Is Bullshit for more on this perspective.)
Here’s how. Perhaps the new wine should be called “True Wine:”
1. Require ingredients lists for all wine.
This should be an industry-wide change – revolution, actually. All wineries should be required to track and list every ingredient they add to their wines. The results would be stunning, and we’d quickly see patterns. We’d see who are the Häagen-Dazs® of wines, with less than 5 ingredients, all of which an average person might have in their fridge, and who are the, you know, MANY other ice creams, the ones that have unpronounceable ingredients and lots of them.
This is really the only test of authenticity. And it has the added benefit of putting that test in the consumer’s hands, rather than in the hands of self-appointed authenticity police. Until we give knowledge to everyone about what they are really drinking, how can we explain ourvalues?
If we made this one change, it would resolve every other issue (and you could ignore the rest of this list). You can read my post about this for a more in depth discussion of the importance of listing ingredients on wine.
2. Define True Wine in such a way that it allows the use of minimal ingredients.
If we want more people to share our positive wine values, start by making wine that tastes good.
Yes, there is some excellent natural wine. But there is also a significant percentage of it that is flawed by runaway bacterial and yeast blooms or unhealthy fermentations. Detectable levels of Bret, VA, and H2S are unpleasant for the majority of drinkers. I’m not saying the majority is right, but it’s not wrong.
I’d rather have the masses convert to loving wine grown organcially, than try to convince them to love wines that smell like sewage and taste like sour dirt.
Sulfites are one simple solution. Sulfites are necessary to protect the fruit flavors and aromas in wine, and to prevent spoilage aromas and flavors. And sulfites aren’t bad for you. In fact they occur naturally. Set a limit, sure, but let wine taste good.
Occasionally, organic yeast nutrients should be allowed as well. These mainly consist of vitamins and minerals (think of a daily multi-vitamin pill you might take) coupled with dead yeast cells. Almost all of these nutrients are used up by the living yeast during fermentation, and then settle out in the lees of the wine before bottling. They don't alter the flavor of the wine, are allowed in organic wine production, and they protect the fermentation from creating detectable levels of H2S (rotten eggs smell) when the grapes are low in the nutrients that yeast need.
In an ideal fermentation yeast nutrients won't be necessary. But if I had a choice of drinking a wine that smelled of rotten eggs versus one that used an organic multi-vitamin for the yeast, I'd take the latter.
I would argue that in the hierarchy of values, for the vast majority of wine consumers, "not tasting or smelling like shit" beats "didn't add an organic ingredient" every time.
3. Define True Wine by values, not style.
Oak is just as natural as clay. The value behind the amphora fanatics is minimalism– i.e. we want wine to express the vintage, the variety, the terroir, not the container it was aged in. Oak can be neutral, first of all. But it can also be an elegant, natural addition to a complex palate of flavors. Minimalism should be about restraint, not prohibition.
While I’m on the topic of restraint, how about using some in regards to acid? Wines that strip the enamel off your teeth aren’t for everyone. Highly acidic is a style, not a virtue. Let’s allow for a diversity of styles.
Remember that not everyone likes minimal oak, maximal acid, and low alcohol. Oak trees, fire, and very ripe grapes are quite natural, so they should be included in True Wine. A ripe, rich, concentrated, new-oak style is not unnatural, and some people love it. If it was made without the use of all kinds of chemicals, and if the grapes were grown in an organic, respectful, and holistic way, why not include it as wine to be celebrated?
4. Don’t try to claim health benefits of True Wine.
Any attempt to market a “healthier” wine is doomed to be determined B.S. at some point. Supporting a healthy environment is why we buy organic, because a healthy environment will lead to a healthier planet of people.
But don’t sell wine as a healthier form of beverage. It just leads to endless debate about health benefits vs. harmful effects of alcohol. That debate is beside the point.
The issue of whether I’m putting something unhealthy into my body is a sideline consideration. The real issue is that with every dollar I spend on wine I support the creation of the kind world in which we all live. I either support the creation of a world where the environment and food/water-source is poisoned by an agri-chemical industry, or I support a world where agriculture is protective, restorative, and integrated into a living ecosystem, where chemgro corporations wither, not native floras.
5. Have some humility.
People’s tastes are subjective, and not everyone likes the same kind of wine. Accept that a high-alcohol, 20-month-oaked Napa Cab, mechanically de-stemmed and pressed, can be just as natural as an obscure carbonic pet-nat orange wine. There shouldn’t be a right and wrong style to be natural if you define it well. If you love a foot-stomping, antique-shopping kind of wine making, great! In your effort to sell your wares, though, don’t over-step and start claiming it’s the only way to make good wine. Define “True Wine” with an emphasis on values, and let those values speak for themselves. You aren’t a better person for choosing to make or drink a certain style of wine.
The term "True Wine" may never catch on, but I hope the sanity of its principles do. I think natural wine, and all wine, will benefit from them.
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7 Reasons Why Blind Tasting Wine Tests for Sommeliers are Pointless, Wasteful, and Should Be Abolished
Ah, the ego-inflating fun of blind tasting. It’s an excuse to create a “study group” dedicated to drinking a small fortune in wine, and then engage in a practice of one-upsmanship with your drinking buddies. It’s the perfect tool for show-off personality types to assert their wine-smarty dominance.
Wine without context is sterile, heartless, meaningless.
Got a wine-chip on your shoulder? Get to work nerding-out on wine, and soon you’ll be able to show everyone who ever doubted you that you are a genius at something. The wine-geeks shall inherit the terroir!
But besides these vainglorious pursuits, are there any other, dare I say "practical," applications of blind tasting?
So far I haven’t heard of any. In fact, there are lots of reasons why blind tasting is basically pointless, or worse... and here they are:
1. Blind Tasting Removes the Context of the Wine, and Context is Everything
Blind tasting intentionally strips a wine of every aspect of the cultures, moods, and occasions in which it naturally occurs. There is virtually never an instance in the world, unless deliberately contrived, where normal consumers replicate this practice. That is, wine is naturally always drunk in the context of a culture, a mood, and an occasion. These contexts have profound influence on the perception of the wine being drunk. They help us appreciate it better, enjoy it more, and understand it with greater insight. Wine without context is sterile, heartless, meaningless. Why try to learn about wine in a way that the people you sell it to would never experience?
Here's a better use of the money and time you'd spend training for a blind tasting exam: go visit at least five wine growing regions, drink the wine, and eat and talk with the people who make it.
2. Blind Tasting Attempts to Make Subjective Taste Objective
Taste – what you perceive – is subjective, as are taste preferences – what you enjoy. Yes, there is general agreement about many aspects of many wines. But this may not always be due to the objective nature of a wine’s taste, but because by the time sommeliers have risen to the upper levels of certification their original perceptions have been beaten out of them. If you ask beginning tasters about the fruit and non-fruit smells they perceive in, say, an old vine Grenache from Minervois, and not suggest a “correct” answer, you will not get a lot of agreement – with each other or with the current “correct” understanding of this type of wine.
So what somms often learn about is not wine, but the language of certification. Essentially somms are being trained to speak homogeneously about wine– not perceive objective tastes. Unfortunately, no one else speaks that language, especially the people to whom we are trying to sell wine, and that language seldom helps the consumer enjoy the wine more or want to buy more of it.
3. Blind Tasting Creates Wine Detectives Rather Than People Detectives
Following from the two above reasons, its important to add that the practice of blind tasting is antithetical to the theoretical aims of training sommeliers – i.e. to make them better wine sellers and servers. Blind tasting is deductive. You quickly eliminate and reduce possibilities so that you can narrow your identification down to a specific wine. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it builds the wrong muscles for a somm working the floor. To serve and sell better, we should be trained to listen better and ask better questions of the customer, not of the wine.
4. Blind Tasting is Anti-Innovative
To be able to continually accurately identify wine via blind tasting, wine styles must remain somewhat constant. While stability is important to the wine business, innovation is just as vital – and becoming more so (see below). Again, this seems to be at odds with one of the key goals of the sommelier – to shed light on lesser known, newer, interesting wines of quality. Instead, blind tasting lends itself to the old standards, because they have a sameness that is predictably identifiable. But what about being surprised? Isn’t that one of the true joys of drinking wine? Surprising wines are necessarily hard to identify blind.
The future of winemaking is innovation. New breeds of grapes will be developed continually to adapt to changing micro and macro climates, as well as to deal with new grape pests and diseases. These new breeds of grapes will be hybrids of current standards, as well as hybrids of hybrids that are already obscure – like Corot Noir – which will make them even more obscure. How important is it for blind tasting to keep up with the pace of these changes? My prediction is that the practice of blind tasting will quickly become overwhelmed (in fact, I think it is already). Rather than abandon the practice, though, it will become reductive – focusing on the classics – and deprive these new innovations of their much needed, and deserved, attention.
At that point blind tasting may not only be pointless but also detrimental to the wine industry.
5. Wine Flaws Are What Sommeliers Should Be Able to Blind Identify, Not Wines
When it comes to customer service, the number one skill that sommeliers should develop is the ability to detect a flawed bottle of wine. It’s a bit ridiculous that young somms can blind identify some of the classic wines without knowing TCA when they smell it (or even what TCA means). I have witnessed this more than once. Other wine faults can be more subjective, and some would argue they are not faults. But this is precisely why somms should be able to identify them. You should be able to tell a customer that a wine has high H2S, VA, or Bret. Some customers may not care, but some definitely do. If you want to provide great service, teach somms to be experts in wine flaws, not blind tasting.
6. Blind Tasting Is A Mis-Use of Sommelier Resources
Young, aspiring sommeliers are generally not wealthy. The practice of becoming good at blind tasting takes a significant amount of time and money. To achieve the aims of the Court, to provide a global standard of excellence for beverage service, I believe the practice of blind tasting should be abandoned, except as a fun diversion. Quit asking for students of wine to mis-spend their precious time and money. Instead, require all candidates to work a commercial harvest and make10 gallons of their own wine. The knowledge gained from these two tasks would revolutionize their wine knowledge, not to mention give them a few stories to share table-side.
7. You Can’t Blind Taste Some of Wine’s Most Important Characteristics
So much more important than what a wine smells and feels like is how it was grown. By that I mean specifically whether it was grown using biodynamic and organic practices, or whether it is has been sprayed with carcinogenic and environmentally toxic pesticides. More and more it is vital that we distinguish between wines that promote a healthy environment and those that don’t. While these differences can at times be tasted in the wine, they are not looked for; however, these are probably the most important differences between quality wines.
Are there differences between wine flavors and aromas? Absolutely. Do they tell you something about where and when and how and with what it was made? Indeed. Does deciphering all of those details from a blind sniff and sip help anyone? Nope.
There are many more important aspects of wine knowledge on which sommeliers should focus. Wines don’t wander around in the wild naked, devoid of labels and context. They are purchased and delivered in bottles with lots of relevant information, and you can, and should, research them thoroughly. Spend your time on that research, rather than on blind tasting.
Adam Huss
Never Surrender Your Palate
If a wine tastes like shit to you, that doesn't mean you don't understand it, or that you aren't a "sophisticated" taster, or that you have an "uneducated palate." It means you don't like it, and that is, actually, the highest authority in the subjective world of wine tasting.
I started drinking wine because I tasted wine that I loved, and I had to get me some more like it! I didn't start drinking wine that I thought I "should" drink because it was recommended to me by a sommelier, or wine expert, or because it got a 97 point score.
If I had felt obliged to drink wine - if I felt I ought to drink it - I wouldn't be writing to you today from my winery's website. I never would have even liked the experience, let alone love it.
I'm a rebel at heart. I naturally resist doing anything that involves feeling social pressure to do it. There is no joy for me in conforming.
I started by discovering one "gateway" bottle that made me groan with pleasure. It opened a door to the entire world of wine that I now love.
Now I love to introduce people to wine. I love to help potential new wine drinkers to discover its history, culture, and various styles. I do wine tastings and classes all around Los Angeles.
But I always start by saying, "At the end of this tasting you may realize you don't like this wine, and that's okay. Like what you like, and don't like what you don't like. Never surrender your palate to a purported wine expert. The only expert, when it comes to your palate, is you."
My parents like sweet wines. White zinfandel is pretty much their ideal juice. So when I go to visit them, I don't bring a red Bordeaux to try to expand their range. I bring them something sweet.
There's a whole world of incredible sweet wine out there. The best wine in the world for centuries, with entire vineyards dedicated to making wine only for royalty due to its preciousness, was Tokay - a sweet wine. My parents would love it, along with other very expensive botrytized wines like German TBAs or Sauternes.
There is an amazing array of wine styles out there. Let's not be snobby about any single style. Let's not be judge-y when it comes to people with other preferences. They aren't idiots, they just have different tastes.
At the end of the day, of course I want you to love wine. But that's the distinction for me. I want you to LOVE it. Not "appreciate" it. Not "understand" it. Not "graduate" to wine because it's an "adult" drink.
Unfortunately, the trend in the wine industry is too often a cerebral approach. Critics and sommeliers appeal to your mind when they should be tempting your gut, your heart, your palate.
Maybe this is one of the reasons why wine drinking is on the decline, especially among younger generations. Maybe what we need is a revival of personal-preference-first wine culture.
Maybe what we need is more white zinfandel.
Loving Cup - The Only Organic Winery in Virginia
Organic viticulture east of the Rockies is impossible. Just ask any conventional winegrower. Yet there's at least one winery proving this axiom to be false, and by doing so they're building the future of American wine.
Photo/Copyright/Jack Looney
Karl Hambsch is the mind behind Loving Cup Vineyard & Winery, established on his family's farm in central Virginia. His is the only certified organic winery in Virginia, and he may be the vanguard of answering the biggest questions facing the wine industry as it moves into the second quarter of the 21st century, and beyond.
Hambsch studied history, not science, and stumbled into wine growing by happy accident while experimenting with making wine from various kinds of fruit. A historical perspective may be necessary, though, to understand the significance of what he has begun with Loving Cup.
The wine making traditions of Europe date back hundreds, even thousands, of years. The grapes used at first were local. We can guess that what began as a series of happy accidents that led to better wine resulted in a process of hybridizing and breeding and selecting the best growing, best tasting grapes for a particular area and climate.
Over hundreds of years of trial and error, particular grapes made in particular styles, became the clear "winners" in the winemaking race for that place. Given the ancient techniques and tools humanity had at its disposal for winemaking during these centuries, we can assume the winning grapes were the ones that made wine growing and making easiest - the winners were the grapevines best adapted to the pests, rainfall, and temperature of that place, and the ones most resistant to the native molds and viruses.
The problems began when, after thousands of years of human-encouraged adaptation, those vines were transplanted to a place and climate utterly different from their home, with pests and viruses and fungi to which they had never had a chance to adapt.
This is why, when Karl Hambsch began to consider the idea of making grape wine in Virginia in the 21st century, he was shown a long list of chemical sprays that he would need to make it possible. Making wine from European grapes on the East Coast of the U.S. would be folly without these conventional substances, he was told.
He couldn't accept this answer.
Photo/Copyright/Andrew Shurtleff
This was his family farm. He felt a sense of stewardship both to it and to the surrounding environment. He also knew that he would be the person spraying the vines, and his family and their pets would be playing in and around them.
His discovery of organic viticulture began with the question, "How do we grow grapes for ourselves without covering ourselves in poison?"
To find the answer, Hambsch turned to the vines themselves. If European vines - Cabernet, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and the like - were ill adapted to Virginia, why grow them? Why not grow the vines best suited to his terrior?
Variety selection became the key to making organic viticulture possible in Virginia. Since organic viticulture eliminates the synthetic chemicals used to kill the fungi and pests that are rampant in the hot, humid summers of the East Coast, the goal was to find grape varieties that had their own natural resistance.
Since 2007, Hambsch has tested 30 varieties of grapes in the Loving Cup vineyards. He uses four main selection criteria to determine varieties that could be successful - disease resistance, cluster architecture, lack of phytotoxicity to copper or sulfur (the main tools in the organic toolbox), and wine style & flavor.
Most of the varieties failed in one way or another - often by succumbing to disease pressure - and entire sections of the vineyard were pulled and replanted, again and again. From the 30 trial varieties, three have emerged as winners so far: Cayuga White, Corot Noir, and Marquette.
Having a few "winners" doesn't mean that the vines take care of themselves at Loving Cup. Organic viticulture requires more hands on labor anywhere, but especially on the East Coast.
The work of trying out new varieties is significant. Entire blocks of the vineyard are regularly pulled and replanted. Then the canopy must be managed meticulously. Leaf pulling, trimming, and positioning must be done by hand and continuously throughout the growing season. Sanitation of the vineyard is a third job that never ends. Any traces of disease or fungal growth must be removed from the vineyard with extreme prejudice. This could be as simple as plucking a leaf, or as extensive and heart-breaking as cutting off an entire section of a vine in worst case conditions.
Though Hambsch lists these three labor practices as the keys to success in organic viticulture, there is a fourth that became apparent to me while talking with him: a humble and positive attitude.
"You have to expose yourself to things you don't understand so that you can change and grow," Hambsch explains.
It's this kind of attitude that enables Loving Cup to weather vintages like 2018, when over 100 inches of rain fell during the growing season. "The good thing about that year was that it showed us that most of our trial varieties didn't work, and we pulled them."
Even with the Herculean amount of effort that Hambsch and his family put into the care of the Loving Cup vineyards to enable the success of the vines, he acknowledges the vineyard site may play a significant role in making what they do possible. "We could just be lucky," he says, noting that his family farm happens to be situated in a valley that funnels the wind through the Loving Cup vineyards, causing a natural blow-dryer effect that could reduce disease pressure.
We can imagine that this kind of luck, over thousands of years, is exactly what created the great wine cultures of Europe. A certain south-east facing slope, or gravelly river bank, or windy corridor was discovered to be the ideal setting to allow a specific variety of grape to thrive. We, in the U.S.A. and elsewhere in the New World, are just at the beginning of that process - a process that requires the kind of commitment and bravery that people like Karl Hambsch embody.
While Hambsch is proving that there is a way to practice organic viticulture on the East Coast, he's also showing that, in fact, organic viticulture is the only sustainable way to build the future of the American wine culture.
A truly sustainable wine culture, that reflects a real, native sense of growing from a specific place, cannot be built by importing grapes from another continent and then poisoning the earth so that they don't have to compete with new, foreign pests and diseases. It must be built organically, in every sense of that word, through trial and error, with many native and experimental hybrid grape varieties that are allowed and encouraged to compete and thrive by their own internal mechanisms for adaptation and resistance. Over time, clear winners will emerge for a particular region, and a wine style will emerge to reflect the particular growing conditions that favor those winners.
The fact that most people, even wine drinkers, have never heard of Cayuga White, Corot Noir, and Marquette, shines a light on the issues facing anyone wanting to embrace organic viticulture commercially on the East Coast. But it also illuminates all that is wrong with the way the New World wine industry has begun, and what must be done to correct it.
Though these less popular grapes make tasty wines already, I have no doubt that they will likely be the great-grandparents of the specific varieties that eventually become the winners for central Virginia. Some cross-bred genetic offspring of Corot Noir will become the North Garden, VA equivalent to Pinot Noir in Burgundy. If we begin to embrace the organic approach to viticulture, it's only a matter of time.
Time is an important factor in winemaking at Loving Cup as well. That is, the enormous investment of time required to grow organic grapes in Virginia must be respected in the winery. "A growing season is five months long," Hambsch says, "and you can screw it up in one hour in the cellar." Because of this, he describes his winemaking style as "conservative" with a primum non nocere goal to protect all the work that preceded the harvest.
Despite all of the obvious challenges to organic viticulture on the East Coast, the one that seems to trouble Hambsch the most is more subtle. How do we talk about the importance of what we're doing without alienating our colleagues and friends in the wine industry who continue to grow grapes conventionally?
Touting organic values inevitably holds up a mirror to the vast majority of winegrowers who continue to use things like glyphosate and imidacloprid in millions of pounds per year amounts. The effects of these, and many other, "conventional" chemicals are insidious, systemic, long-lasting, and far reaching. The environment's health will continue to degrade with the use of these chemicals. We can focus on the positives of organic viticulture as much as possible, but at some point there will need to be a debate, a confrontation, even an intervention, and possibly an agricultural revolution.
Perhaps it has already started, with a winery like Loving Cup proving that the stated conventional wisdom is false. Organic viticulture east of the Rockies is NOT impossible. It's delicious.
Los Angeles Wineries - Full List with Hours
The Los Angeles wine scene is finally beginning to happen. I'm not talking about wine bars, but actual wineries with tasting rooms or appointment opportunities to drink the wine that they made locally. In fact there are finally enough wineries for a Los Angeles Wineries guide list - so here it is.
To make this list, you have to actually offer regular tastings - at a tasting room or by appointment - in Los Angeles City or one of its central incorporated or unincorporated neighborhoods. So if you are just a winery owner who lives in Los Angeles but your winery and regular tastings are in Paso Robles, you can't be on the list.
Please use our contact page to send us updates and corrections.
Full List of Los Angeles Wineries
Los Angeles & nearby
Angeleno Wine Company
1646 N. Spring Street Los Angeles, California 90012
Open for tastings: Saturday 12 - 8, Sunday 12 - 6
The Blending Lab
7948 W 3rd StreetLos Angeles, CA 90048
Open for tastings: Weds - Fri 5 - 9, Sat & Sun 2 - 9
Centralas - Organically & Biodynamically grown
Coming Soon!
Available for mobile tastings by appointment, 2021
Old Oak Cellars
2620 E Foothill Blvd, Unit D, Pasadena, CA 91107
Open for tastings: 3rd Saturday of the month, & by appointment
Pali Wine Co.
811 Traction Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90013
Open for tastings: M-Th 4 - 10, F-Sat 2p - 12a, Sun 12 - 10
REV Winery & Brewery - Organic
1580 W. San Bernardino Rd., Suite H, Covina CA 91722
Open for tastings: W-Th 4 - 9, F 2 - 12, Sat 12 - 12, Sun 2 - 8
San Antonio Winery
737 Lamar Street, Los Angeles, CA 90031
Open for tastings, etc: Sun-Th 9a - 7p, F-Sat 9a - 8p
Urban Press Winery
316 N San Fernando Blvd., Burbank , CA 91502
Open for tastings: M-W 5 - 9, Th 5 - 10, F-Sat 12p - 1a, Sun 12 - 9
Malibu
Cielo Farms
31424 Mulholland Hwy, Malibu, CA 90265
Open for tastings by appointment
Deliese Cellars
1850 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., #200, Thousand Oaks, CA 91362
Open for tastings: Th 4 - 8, Fri 4 - 10, Sat 2 - 10, Sun 1 - 6
Malibu Wines
31740 Mulholland Hwy, Malibu, California 90265
Open for tastings daily 11 - 7, Reservations strongly recommended
Rosenthal
18741 Pacific Coast Hwy, Malibu, CA 90265
Open for tastings: Th 12 - 8, Fri 12 - 9, Sat 11 - 9, Sun 11 - 8
Strange Family Vineyards - Organically grown
3939 Cross Creek Rd, Malibu, CA 90265
Open for tastings: Th-Sat 1 - 8, Sun 12 - 7
Santa Clarita
Hoi Polloi
24338 Main St., Newhall, CA 91321
Open for tastings: Thurs - Sat 5 - 10, Sunday 2 - 6
Pagter Brothers Winery
24338 Main St, Newhall, CA 91321
Open for tastings: Th-Sat 5 - 10, Sun 2 - 6
Pulchella Winery
24261 Main St, Santa Clarita, CA 91321
Open for tastings: Th-Sat 5 - 10, Sun 12 - 5
Long Beach
Waters Edge Winery
217 Pine Ave., Long Beach, CA 90802
Open for tastings: W-Sat 3 - 11, Sun 1 - 8
There Is No Such Thing As A Winemaker
As the first Centralas harvest is winding down, I'm overwhelmed - not with a feeling of pride, but with a sense of gratitude.
After making wine at home for 10 years, I was used to doing almost everything myself. From picking to bottling, my physical labor and decision making is what got the job done. I didn't realize it, but this blinded me to huge aspects of the winemaking process that weren't in my control.
With my first experience of the scale of commercial winemaking, however, I began to experience a strange out-of-body experience. I kept expecting to have that sense of ownership of the process - after the long day of processing the first tons of organic Pinot Noir, for example. Instead, I kept feeling like I was watching the process unfold, as if I was observing the natural process of a flower growing from a seed and blooming.
Even when I was wet and sticky, elbow deep in grape must - as active as I could be in the process - I realized I wasn't alone. There was a team of harvest workers next to me sorting the grapes with me, pulling stems from the must with me, cleaning with me.
I couldn't have done it without them, and I wouldn't have wanted to do it without them.
When the wines went into barrel, and the heavy-lifting of harvest was behind us, I still had this sense of waiting to feel like I was the one making it happen. But I finally had to admit that I wasn't the one making it happen.
I mean, sure, Wendy and I put up our life savings to initiate this process, that we hope will result in a self-sustaining business that allows us to promote organic wines - something we love and care about. In a real sense, we planted the seed.
But could we say that we made the wine? With time to reflect on our first harvest, I had to admit that the answer was a big fat "No."
We didn't pick the vineyard site. And even if we did, this choice would have been constrained by our budget, availability of land for purchase, zoning laws, environmental suitability, and many other factors completely outside of our control. Yet the vineyard site is one of the single most important factors that influences how and what type of wine is made.
Even if we could control for nearly every factor of vineyard site location - and since we don't own a vineyard we can select vineyards based on exactly the type of site that makes the kind of wine we want - tending a large vineyard is far too much work for any one person to do. Yet how the grapes are grown is, again, massively important to wine flavor and quality.
Vineyard management, especially of the best organic and biodynamic vineyards, is a science that attracts brilliant minds with years of study and training, as well as a team of workers who are experts in the nuanced labor of leafing, pruning, training, thinning, and picking vines, not to mention the proper use and application of cover crops, composts, and sprays.
Then there are the uncontrollable factors of vintage and environmental shift. Even when we pick is sometimes out of our control, yet this single choice has a huge impact on the finished wine. We may have a sweet spot for brix and pH that we want to hit, but the vintage may never make that possible. Or we'll decide when we want to pick, but then a vineyard team isn't available until two days later and during that time there's a heat spike, or rain.
Once the grapes are in the winery, as I mentioned, there is a team of women and men who usher them along the way from the sorting table to the fermenter to the the press to the barrel or vat. Even the decisions you make about how you treat the grapes, and whether you add acid or water or yeast nutrients, etc., is sort of pre-determined by all of the factors mentioned above - vineyard site, vintage irregularities, and pick date.
We aren't making decisions as much as reacting to all of the uncontrollable factors. Even our reactions are most often guided by the experience of seeing how things unfolded in previous vintages, not our own brilliance. That's trial and error - observing a process and learning how to facilitate it again, rather than guiding it.
We didn't coop the barrels either. We didn't grow the oak, select it, age it, shape it, and toast it. At every step we simply enable the conditions by which wine is made, as it has been for thousands of years, by a whole community of people working with the great winemaker: Mother Nature.
So where do we get off calling ourselves winemakers?
Okay, sure, if I heavily manipulated the grapes using all the latest technologies of flash-detente and the like, and added this or that yeast, or Mega Purple, or powdered tannin, and played chemist with any of the other dozens of potential substances you can add, and fined it and filtered it and dialed it in to exactly the kind of commercial beverage that the marketing team guarantees will fly off the shelf in BevMo - then yes, sure, maybe I could call myself a winemaker.
But then, in my opinion, I would no longer be making wine. At least not the kind of wine that I want to drink - the kind that is expressive of the uniqueness of its place and time.
So I've been humbled by this first harvest. The word "winemaker" now seems extravagantly egotistical, full of hubris, and ungrateful.
The French don't have a word for winemaker. The closest word they have - vingneron - is connected more to wine growing, as in the vineyard. The German word is similar. In Italy and Spain the closest word they have is Enologist - which is really someone who is a student of the chemistry of grape fermentation.
Maybe that's because there really is no such thing as a "winemaker."
At Centralas, at least, that word has been replaced with a sense of gratitude for everyone and everything who makes it possible for our wine to happen.
You Never Forget Your First (Harvest) - Centralas Wine Harvest 2019
Our first commercial harvest at Centralas is mostly behind us. The organic Pinot Noir grapes have been picked, de-stemmed, native fermented, pressed, and put into 20% new French Oak barrels. The biodynamic Grenache and Syrah have been picked, crushed, and co-native-fermented in barrels, of which 20% is new American Oak.
Now comes the long winter of waiting. My style of waiting is eager and impatient, especially when it comes to wine.
We couldn't be happier with the way our first harvest has gone. The aromas and tastes of the two very young wines are outstanding, and they promise to improve with barrel age.
We even got exactly the color we wanted in the biodynamic rosé - a bright, bubble-gum pink just shy of hot pink. But there's nothing shy about this biodynamic rosé.
The young biodynamic rosé has effusive, tropical aromas of guava, pineapples, and bananas, as well as pear, pink grapefruit, nectarines, and apples. In the American oak barrel, these aroma flavors are beginning to intermingle with sweet coconut and vanilla, with maybe a dash of nutmeg.
This barrel-aged biodynamic rosé is already unlike any rosé that we have experienced before... which is exactly what we were hoping for it: uniqueness.
If the biodynamic rosé is the social butterfly, the organic single-clone Pinot Noir at the moment is that one mysterious person at the party who you don't notice at first. They are standing alone, and aloof, at the back of the crowd. But once you find them you can't un-see them. They didn't dress to get attention, but on closer inspection you can see they have mad style, and expensive taste. And when they make eye-contact with you, from behind their screen of bangs, it's mesmerizing. You know they have stories to tell, and secrets, and you suddenly want to leave the party and go somewhere quiet with them.
The organic single-clone Pinot Noir smells and tastes like a deep, mysterious well of fascinating stories and hinted secrets. The texture is already incredibly stylish for such a young wine. There are dark fruits and exotic spices that evoke markets in a fantasy netherworld where produce is grown by absorbing darkness rather than light. It doesn't seem to be from this planet.
We couldn't be more excited to see what secrets this organic single-clone Pinot Noir will reveal, or acquire, as it matures in oak.
The most exciting thing about Centralas's first harvest is that it not only lived up to our expectations and hopes, it exceeded them.
It was the most fun we've had in a long time.
We hope you enjoy the video mash-up of the two harvests. We combined both the organic single-clone Pinot Noir harvest with the biodynamic barrel-aged rosé harvest, to give you a beginning to end sense of the entire process.
The Surprising Centralas Brand Revelation
While driving back to South Central Los Angeles after Centralas's first harvest, we passed a large billboard advertising a wine brand. This inspired us to ask the question: What would the Centralas billboard look like?
Since we live in Tinseltown USA our native tongue is movies & TV. So what we really started discussing was: What would the Centralas movie poster look like?
What we came up with surprised me.
We decided that the Centralas poster would be something like Love Actually. Yes, Richard Curtis is pretty much on-brand for Centralas.
You see, we've founded Centralas on two key values: organic viticulture and transparent winemaking. We only use grapes that have been farmed organically or biodynamically, and we will list every ingredient on the bottle. That way you know exactly what you are, and are not, drinking.
We could approach these values from very different perspectives, though.
There is a perspective that is easy to take: it's a bad and scary wine-world out there for the most part, especially when it comes to chemicals and practices that are used in "conventional" viticulture and ingredients that are added to wines without telling consumers. We can give you examples. Lots of examples. And Centralas is the cure.
That's one model: create fear and anxiety, and propose your brand as the panacea.
But this perspective focuses inherently on the negative. It's simultaneously combative and defensive. It is intended to enhance the fear and anxiety in your life.
That's not the brand we want for Centralas.
We want to inspire you.
We want you to fall in love, to feel joy, to appreciate what is good and courageous and artistic, to have a laugh. And to have hope. We want you to embrace the rich diversity of life in all its natural colors and flavors.
That's at the heart of the values that inspired Centralas.
We don't hate bad wines, we love good ones. And we love the brave, intelligent farmers and winemakers who are investing their lives to craft wines inspired by the Centralas values.
And we want those who don't share the Centralas values to see what a fun, prosperous, meaningful time we're having and want to join. We don't want to have a corner on the market of our values. We want to inspire more and more vineyards to be farmed and wines to be made with these values.
This is a harder proposition. We humans often scare easily and love slowly. The pull of the dark side is appealing.
But the harder work of inspiring hope is the only work we want to do. It's the only world we want to create.
Love (and hope and joy and bravery and beauty), actually, is all around us, if we just know where to look. The mission of Centralas is to help point it out.
You Will Never Be Able To Drink That Wine Again
The best bottle of wine I ever drank - the one that tasted so good that it broke my mind, the one that allowed me to realize that this rare and poignant pleasure could transcend tongue and taste buds - was a bottle of 2002 Santa Rita Hills single clone Pinot Noir. I discovered and tasted it in the early summer of 2004, a year that changed wine in California forever. I say that because this is not just a personal story of something that’s meaningful only to me. This is about mortality, and the way we all experience the things we love.
It happened in the Lincourt tasting room on Alamo Pintado Road in Santa Barbara County, but it was under the Foley label. Foley had purchased hundreds of acres in the Santa Rita Hills a few years prior, and had planted Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. He hadn’t yet built the Foley tasting room on Highway 246, though, so the first wines were showcased in his Lincourt tasting room, named for his daughters, in Santa Ynez. The small, newly built tasting room was closing soon. It was 4:45pm, and the man pouring for my friends and me had that end-of-shift focus blended with optimism. We were his last tasks for the day, he could see the light at the end of the tunnel. There was hope.
He tasted us through the line-up of wines, and then hepoured us a wine that would never now be served in a tasting room. This was awine that was made in such a small quantity, with such extra care and cost,that it would only be released to wine clubs today. But there was somethingspecial about tasting wine in Santa Barbara at that time in history.
This was before there was a Lompoc Wine Ghetto. This wasbefore there were 30+ tasting rooms in downtown Los Olivos. This was whentasting at Sanford meant driving out a lonely road to a little rustic shackmade of sticks and logs. This was 3 months before the movie Sideways was released in theaters.
If you weren’t into wine pre-Sideways, it may sound strange to use this movie as a touchstone intime for California, and possibly the global wine industry. But it was. As themovie found its way to audiences and then won awards through the winter andspring of 2004-05 and beyond, things began to change in Santa Barbara.
Once sleepy tasting rooms were suddenly over-run with gueststhirsty to taste the romantic elixir that is Pinot Noir. A Sideways wine trailwas mapped. A Sideways wine toursprang up. “As seen in Sideways” signscould be seen all over the county at locations that had been featured in themovie. Some of these things persist to this day, fifteen years later. You canbook a reservation today to stay at the Sideways Inn this weekend.
New wineries opened, and old wineries opened newer, biggertasting rooms. Sales growth was exponential. The typical winery owner who hadbeen well positioned before Sideways couldbe seen walking about in shell-shocked bliss, a weary but gleaming smile ontheir face, like someone who had won the lottery. Because they had.
Then the movement spread beyond Santa Barbara. Sideways launched a sharp increase of Pinot Noir sales from anywhere, while Merlot saw its sales drop over 40% in California and elsewhere. If you haven’t seen Sideways this won’t make sense, so maybe go watch it. I think an argument could be made that the advent of Sideways is second only to the Judgement of Paris in its impact on the wine industry, especially in California (leaving out natural disasters of globalization like phylloxera).
Santa Barbara would have eventually gotten to where it is now, I think. It would have taken many more years and a lot of concerted marketing efforts, but it is a beautiful landscape for wine tourism, excellent terroir for growing grapes, and the closest world-class wine area to the massive populations of Los Angeles and Southern California. So it was in some ways only a matter of time. But Sideways took it there in months.
On the other hand, I don’t think Pinot Noir would be thedominant grape variety that it is now. Sure, it would always be one of thenoble, popular grapes. Burgundy would always provide a classic benchmark. Butwould Pinot Noir have ascended to become second only to Cabernet in sales, andjust as much of a household name? I don’t think so.
Before all of that, though, there I was in a quaint littletasting room in quiet little Santa Barbara wine country. It was the last ofseveral tasting rooms I had visited during the day, without having to elbow myway through a throng of tipsy tasters, unaware that I stood at a precipice forboth my life personally and wine in general.
The tasting room attendant poured three other wines – aChardonnay, I’m sure, maybe a more generic Pinot – all of them have been forgotten. Becausethen he poured the wine that changed my life.
It was a 2002 Foley Pinot Noir, single clone 667 from Block5C. I later researched Block 5C and found that it was a small parcel, closestto the ocean and highest on the hills of the Foley estate in the Santa RitaHills. It inspired me to geek out. It made me want to know more about it.
But all of that obsession came later. In the moment I tastedit I was innocent, unschooled and untainted by wine knowledge, expectation, orbias. I tasted purely. Did it taste good to me? That was the preeminentquestion.
It did. Unquestionably. Undeniably. It tasted like the bestwine I had ever put in my mouth and swallowed.
But it cost $50 per bottle. The most I had ever spent on asingle bottle of wine up to that point in my life was probably significantlyless than $30. Yet for the first time in my life it suddenly seemed completelyworth it to spend this much money. I had to have more of that wine. I wanted torelive the experience of tasting it again and again.
“Would you like to revisit anything?” It was the first timeI heard those lovely, silly words that make greedily lapping up some extrabooze sound like taking a Learjet to a destination resort. In that moment I sawthe brilliance of this as a marketing technique. Without revisiting that wine,I may not have bought it. The frugal, rational side of my brain might have wonthe argument. But that extra taste gave me the opportunity to confirm just howdelicious it was.
“I’d like two bottles of that,” I declared. Yes, it was thatgood. So good that I doubled down on the most I had ever spent on a bottle ofwine.
He had to search to make sure there were actually twobottles left to sell to me. It was a very limited release, only available to mein that tasting room in that moment because Sidewayshadn’t yet hit theaters.
I don’t know how long I held onto those two bottles, but not very. Months at the most. I even paid corkage to open one at a fancy restaurant with a steak. I went to that restaurant only to have an occasion to open the wine. But I think I could have drunk it with anything.
Was the wine still as good as it was in the tasting room?Even better. I literally groaned with pleasure with each sip I took, noexaggeration.
And then it was gone. Forever.
I will never be able to taste it again.
Even if I could taste it, though, that wine may be goneforever in other ways. I’ve changed. My palate has changed. The wine wouldsurely have changed.
I chased that pleasure though, wanting to revisit it the wayall of us cling to the things we love. It’s so hard to let go, and pleasure isso fleeting. I tasted and collected wines obsessively, and tasted and collectedsome more. I immersed myself in learning about wine, and how that wine was madeand wondered if I could replicate that bottle, that experience. In a way, I’mstill chasing that thing that was so much sweeter because it wasconsumable. As Shakespeare put it:
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
People and wine are processes. We are not fixed things. Theidea of a self or a bottle of wine is an illusion. Fifteen years later I canlook back and see that wine as a discovery that redirected my energies andattentions to the point that I have now started a winery for which the firstwine that I’m making is a single clone 667 Pinot Noir from Block 16 in abeautiful organic vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills.
I hope my Pinot Noir is even better than that one I had backin 2004, but I also hope that I’m better. I hope I’ve learned not to take thismoment for granted, because another Sidewayscould be released next month and change it all forever. I hope I’ve learned notto take the things that I love – like wine – for granted either.
And that’s the secret to tasting wine that I’ll leave youwith. Forget everything else you’ve heard or been taught about how to properlytaste wine and just remember this:
Before taking that first sip whisper a silent reminder toyourself, “I will never be able to drink this wine again.”
Dry Farming – The Future (and Past) of Wine in California
Before the 1970’s, all vineyards planted on earth were “dry farmed.” Simply, winegrowers had to rely on precipitation as the only source of water for their grape vines. Today in California, you’d be considered crazy to plant a vineyard without an irrigation system. In fact, you might not be allowed to.
What? There’s no law against dry farming, you say. Technically there isn’t. But a bank today is highly unlikely to lend to a winery that wants to plant a vineyard without irrigation.
The commercial demands of viticulture in California are part of the reason irrigation became the norm. Vineyard growers discovered that you could grow more grapes per acre if you irrigated. Once this link was established, banks wouldn’t lend to a commercial grape growing operation without this promise of greater yields, and therefore more predictable profits.
As climate change progresses, the resulting increase in the extremity and frequency of drought in the Western United States has begun to make it clear that reliance on irrigation is what’s crazy. Water use restrictions will likely eventually make it very costly to irrigate, and at some point there may just not be enough water. At some point we may face a choice of having water or wine to drink, but not both. And as much as I would be the first to joke that I’d choose wine, the reality of a water shortage for a city like Los Angeles, for example, would be catastrophic.
And irrigation isn’t necessary for the most part. Places like the island of Santorini, Greece have been dry farming vines for millennia on an average rainfall that is less than that of Los Angeles. Los Angeles was the first great wine region of America. The main center of winegrowing in the1800’s wasn’t Northern California, but Southern, all grown without irrigation. Yet now we irrigate vineyards in Northern California where they get twice as much rainfall as Los Angeles.
Comparing rainfall in California with other areas around the world that dry farm shows that dry farming is possible in California.
Santa Barbara County gets an average of over 19 inches of rain per year.
There are a few caveats – maybe it’s better to call them requirements – for dry farming. You can’t just stick any old vine in any plot of land and expect to successfully dry farm a vineyard.
First, you need the right rootstock. Much of the rootstock on which wine grapevines are growing, due to their resistance to phylloxera, are riparian or riparian crosses. That is, they evolved in moist, river bottom soils where phylloxera also evolved. That’s why riparian rootstock can resist the pest.
But to save the vines from phylloxera, we’ve put them on rootstock that does not do well in the dry Mediterranean climates, like California, where we grow most of the wine grapes. Planting on riparian rootstock in the US West at this point in history is not only silly, it’s irresponsible. There are great alternatives to riparian rootstock, bred both for pest resistance and drought tolerance. Here’s a full list of common rootstocks, with their qualities, provided by UC Davis.
In addition to the right rootstock, you need the right land planted in the right way. The soil must be of sufficient depth and water-holding capacity, the vines must be planted far enough apart so that they don’t compete with each other for the water in the soil, and you need to manage the vineyard ground between vines to minimize evaporative loss and maximize water retention. In a place like Oregon, with generally abundant winter precipitation, this doesn’t necessarily mean your vineyard will look any differently than an irrigated vineyard. But in drier areas this will mean fewer appropriate vineyard sites, and fewer vines per acre – resulting in decreased productivity.
The main way to manage evaporation and water retention is to stop tilling and grow cover crops. Cover crops can compete somewhat for water when establishing a new vineyard with young vines. But once a vineyard is established and the vines are 3 to 7 years old, depending on their vigor and the site, there generally is no more competition. The cover crops actually help water retention, by reducing the soil temperature and increasing holding capacity, and they allow better water penetration down to the vine roots… not to mention the myriad other benefits such as erosion prevention, habitat for beneficial insect, biodiversity, healthy soil microbiology, and fungal networking.
The results of un-tilled, dry-farmed vines planted appropriately and on rootstock matched to the location, can be stronger vines with longer lives, better health, and better resistance to drought. This is one of the reasons why vineyards planted in California in the 1800’s can still be found producing grapes today. These factors of health and longevity can offset the costs of dry farming in the long run.
Sustainability arguments aside, there’s another really great reason to dry farm: it results in delicious, terrior-driven wines.
Irrigation in viticulture is literally watering down our wines. When we don’t water the vines, their roots dig deeper, strengthening the vine’s connection to the soil. They become better able to self-regulate, especially in times of stress. And they produce fewer grapes, in dry times or in dry climates, with brighter, more concentrated flavors.
If terrior means anything in wine, the natural water supply for the vines from precipitation, natural ground water, and fog must be part of it. We can’t simultaneously believe in terrior-driven wines and irrigate our vineyards. You are eliminating one of the key elements of terrior the minute you irrigate.
This is why in much of Europe – France, Italy, Spain, Germany – vines cannot be irrigated after reaching producing age (usually at least 3 years), if you want the resulting wine to be classified as originating from a designated viticulture area.
One of the key differences, philosophically, between old world wines and US wines is that while banks have made it nearly impossible to dry-farm wine in the US, the old world has made it against the law to irrigate their best wines.
As wine in the USA matures, it seems likely that someday in the not too distant future we’ll see an AVA self-designate as “dry-farm only.” The Deep Roots Coalition (DRC) has promoted dry farming in Oregon for years. With at least 27 wineries who are members of the DRC, and significantly more annual rainfall than California, it seems likely Oregon will be the first to begin regulating and enforcing dry-farming.
But California has a few dry farmed vineyards as well. Some of the oldest vineyards, which were of course planted without irrigation, have continued to be dry-farmed. And there are several lists of dry-farmed California wines online.
In 2021, Centralas made wine from dry-farmed organic zinfandel vines in Southern California that received only 5 inches of winter rain. The vines were planted around 1918 and were likely flood-irrigated for the first few years, but they have not been sprayed or watered for generations. The wine will be released in the fall of 2022, and in barrel it tastes incredible.
The commercial fears of dry farming in a place like California are understandable. But the rewards of dry farming wine are delicious, sustainable, and soon may be imperative.
The California Ag Water Stewardship Initiative has some great resources about dry farming if you'd like to learn more.
Bandol - France's Other Big "B"
You’ve heard of Burgundy and Bordeaux, but you most likely haven’t heard of Bandol. That’s a shame, because it produces some of the most exciting and unique red and rosé wines in the world, with AOC standards that exceed those of Burgundy and Bordeaux.
If you think of Burgundy as France’s northern “B,” and Bordeaux as France’s central (albeit western) “B,” then you can think of Bandol as France’s southern “B.” It is situated on the sunny Mediterranean coast, technically part of the French Riviera in south-eastern France, and part of Provence. While not anywhere near as large as Bordeaux or Burgundy (and this may be part of the reason you haven't heard of it), Bandol has even more stringent winemaking requirements and rigor that result in exceedingly distinctive and high-quality wines.
When you think of Bandol, your first thought should be of Mourvèdre. Mourvèdre is the grape variety that defines the Bandol region because it is required to be included at a minimum of 50% in every Bandol red wine, and it often accounts for much more than half in Bandol reds and rosés. As of the writing of this, there is a restriction that requires a minimum of 2 grape varieties in every bottle of Bandol wine - red, white, or rosé. Therefore there is also a maximum of 95% Mourvèdre in any cepage (blend), though many Bandol vignerons would like to get rid of this to allow for 100% Mourvèdre wines.
Mourvèdre is to Bandol as Pinot Noir is to Burgundy, or as Merlot is to Bordeaux. Though in Provence, which is known for its rosés, Bandol stands alone as the only Provençal commune known for its red wines. Grenache and Cinsault are the two other main red grape varieties that are most often used in in Bandol in blends with Mourvèdre. Mourvèdre is also known as Mataro and Monastrell in Spain and California.
Mourvèdre is ideal for this region in the farthest south of France because it loves heat. The vines bud late and the grapes ripen late, so in cooler climates it may never fully ripen. As the world’s climate changes, Mourvèdre may become an ideal grape to plant that can take, and love, the heat and dryness.
Though Mourvèdre naturally produces a smaller crop of grapes, Bandol restricted the production per acre to levels much lower than in Burgundy and Bordeaux. There is a saying in Bandol, “One vine, one bottle of wine” which speaks to this extremely low-yield type of viticulture. Additionally, Mourvèdre vines must be at least 8 years old before they are allowed to be used for red Bandol wine. This is double the minimum age required for vines in Burgundy and Bordeaux. Bandol red wine must also be aged in barrel a minimum of 18 months, though many producers age their wines much longer.
The effect of all these regulations is to mandate the highest possible quality for Bandol reds. The regulations are also in place because of the particular nature of Mourvèdre in Bandol, which is aggressively tannic in its youth, both viticulturally and oenologically. Lower yields, older vines, and extended aging help moderate and soften this square structure, leading to wines of finesse with remarkable ageability.
Another requirement in Bandol, aimed at controlling for the highest quality of wine, is mandatory hand-harvesting of grapes. Other traditions of the region include the use of foudre – massive oak casks – for aging the wine, and restanqes – terraces for the vines, cut into the south-facing hillsides.
Fun Fact (or, should I say, Foudre for Thought?): foudre, while also a large wine cask, is the French word for “lightning.” It’s not a coincidence that the Centralas logo includes a lightning bolt. There are several reasons for the Centralas logo, and one of them is a nod to Bandol and its use of foudre.
It should be no surprise, given Mourvèdre’s love of hot and somewhat arid climates, that it does well in Santa Barbara County, where Centralas sources its grapes. We see amazing, untapped potential for Mourvèdre in this part of California, which has an almost perfect combination of soil types and climate for this grape. Here the Mourvèdre grapes tannins are moderated by some happy magic of the terrior, allowing for reds that range in style from almost ethereal, Pinot Noir-like gems, to deep, dark-fruited and opulent elixirs that are unmatched in complexity.
Then there’s the rosé made from Mourvèdre in Santa Barbara County, some of which may be the finest of its kind on earth.
Centralas Recommends
If you want to experience the uniqueness and high-quality of Bandol, as well as taste one of the inspirations for Centralas’s barrel-aged rosé, we highly recommend Chateau Vannières’ La Patience de Vannières 2017. This is barrel-aged and age-able rosé. It smells of butter-poached strawberries and pink grapefruit zest simmered in cream. The taste is rich, full-bodied for a rosé, with a creamy texture and mouth-watering minerality/salinity. The finish is as endless as the food-pairing opportunities. As crazy as it sounds, this wine may be the perfect pairing for both steamed lobster with clarified butter or a lobster roll, and a Big Mac or a grilled filet mignon with herb butter.
At $60, La Patience de Vannières takes rosé to whole new level. The Boisseaux family, who run Chateau Vannières, are originally from Beaune, in Burgundy, and they made La Patience de Vannières in the style of a white Grand Cru from Burgundy. You can taste the Burgundian influence, but they have achieved something new and uniquely Bandol-ian.
Why You Should NOT Make Wine At Home
Let’s say we were hanging out in the backyard, drinking some fantastic Centralas Pinot Noir, and you said, “I’d like to make wine at my house. Could you teach me how?”
My first reaction would be, “That’s just the wine talking. Let me know how you feel in the morning.”
And if you called me bright and early the next day, still wanting to learn how to make wine at home, I’d still try to talk you out of it. Here's why.
1. Making wine at home won’t save you money. In fact it will cost more than buying good wine.
There are large pieces of equipment that you pretty much need to buy – a press, a corker, fermentation containers, storage containers, maybe a destemmer – plus myriad odd and ends and lots of supplies that you need to buy – like grapes (even if you grow them, there’s a cost), stoppers, bubblers, racking tubes, sulfites, bottles, and corks, at the minimum. Plus there’s your time, which has some value. Even if you keep your equipment and supplies costs to the bare minimum, I would wager that a careful accounting of the time you spend will add up to a per bottle price that will make every wine at Trader Joes seem like a bargain.
2. Making wine at home is hard work.
It’s physical labor that includes getting up before dawn to pick hundreds of pounds of grapes, schlepping them in and out of your car, house/apartment, etc. You’ll need to heft 60 pound carboys – or even heavier barrels - filled with wine, unwieldy fermentation bins, and bulky equipment. You’ll be wet a lot of the time, and often cold. Your back will be sore.
3. Making wine is about 80% cleaning.
Seriously, you will spend more time cleaning than any other winemaking task. You clean and sanitize equipment and areas before using, after using, and between using. It’s tedious. It’s not why you want to make wine, yet it’s an obligatory part of the process. Your hands will prune.
Winemaking is cleaning.
4. It’s hard to make good wine at home.
If none of the above deters you, this fact may be the clincher. Making wine on a large, commercial scale affords many luxuries you don’t have as a home winemaker. Sure, you can carefully make a 5 gallon batch of wine at home with decent results, most of the time. But there are a lot of ways that your wine will be hobbled, from a quality standpoint, and may run into problems.
The number one quality issue is that you will most likely not be able to get quality grapes. People who own high quality vineyards in prime regions have more important uses for their grapes, don’t want to waste the time and labor on your small request, and don’t want to risk damage to their vines or introduction of a damaging micro-organism by letting you scour their vineyards to pick your own.
Oh, you’ll grow your own, you say? Well prepare for a 5 year time-table before you can taste wine from them. New vines need to grow for at least 3 years before you let grapes ripen on them, if you want strong vines that produce decent grapes. And you’ll need to tend those vines weekly with, at minimum, sulfur sprays, training, hedging, and leafing. In the winter you’ll need to prune and do dormant season spraying.
You’ll need to invest in trellising, bird netting, a cat to patrol for rats, and a dog to patrol for raccoons and opossums, and chickens to eat the grubs in the soil that turn into grape-eating beetles. And if you are lax for a moment in any of these areas you could lose a lot of your grape crop.
Also, how much room do you have? Enough for 15 or 20 vines? You probably won’t even end up with 5 gallons of wine from that. Unless you over-crop, which of course will likely diminish quality.
By the way, where do you live? Anywhere outside of California, Oregon, and Washington? Well, good luck then. Multiply everything I said above times ten.
Even if you successfully grow, or source by other means, a decent harvest of grapes, you still have all the issues of making a small batch of wine. Smaller quantities of wine are inherently exposed to more oxygen, which can lead to more issues with spoilage micro-organisms. And you won’t have the ability to hide the flaws of one batch by blending with another.
It’s nearly impossible to use a full-sized barrel at home, which is one of the reasons good commercial wine tastes the way it does. Using a small barrel has its own challenges, and no decent barrel is cheap. Adding oak cubes or chips to a carboy can be tricky and easy to overdo, plus you don’t get the micro-oxygenation and concentration of barrel storage.
Conclusion
I have made wine at home for over ten years. Doing so is partly what drove me to start Centralas. I wanted, finally, to make some really good wine. I had made some decent wine, but never achieved the quality that I wanted. Several times I ran into issues that ruined the entire harvest. When you understand how precious a person becomes about their homemade batch of wine, you’ll realize the extent of the heartbreak at having one of those batches ruined.
When you consider these realities, the challenges and the costs, you may just want to spend your time and money at a really nice wine store splurging on some grand crus. Believe me, it will cost less and taste better than anything you can make at home.
If none of this deters you, you are probably someone who likes to cook elaborate dinners, had a chemistry set in elementary school, had an Italian grandfather, and you are probably bad at math and tend to ignore good advice. If so, you’re like me (minus the Italian grandfather). For you, there is no hope. You’re a mentally deranged obsessive with more passion and will than common sense.
I wouldn’t wish home-winemaking on you, but since your fate is sealed by virtue of the fact that you’ve already read this entire article and are still reading I offer you this: When you make wine you will learn many things that you couldn’t otherwise know about wine. And, if you ever happen to produce a decent bottle, and manage to not drink it for long enough to allow it to age to perfection, then, when you are able to open and taste it and share it with friends, you’ll know a sense of accomplishment that is rare and, perhaps for nutjobs like us, worth all the effort.
Adam
P.S. If you, against all better sense, decide to make your own wine I offer winemaking consultation via phone at $65/hr. I give personalized guidance based on the specific grapes and equipment you’re working with, according to the style of wine you want to make. Just use the contact form to schedule a phone call with me.
Or…
Skip the disaster that homemade wine can be. Drink Centralas wine instead.
Why I Love Making Wine
Winemaking is a lot of hard work, and starting a smallwinery involves many sacrifices, stresses, and sobering realities. I wrote thislist of things that I love about winemaking so that I won’t lose sight of thethings that make this all worthwhile:
The color of young red wine, the color of the skins afterpressing, in the sunlight. The look of the freshly pressed juice in glass withsun shining through it. It’s like hot pink crossed with royal purple.
The smell of a healthy fermentation. That sweet, intoxicating, cloud of carbon dioxide and volatized esters that combine unmistakably and remind me of the seasons and change, of the richness of harvest, of the end of something and the beginning of something all at once.
The weight of a cluster of ripe grapes. The heft of it inyour hand, full of potential energy lying just beneath the tight skin of eachgrape berry, giving the bunch a sense of explosive potency, like a grenade thatcan burst into life rather than death.
A vineyard at dawn. The supple undulations of the land mirrored in the curve of each row. The quiet wakefulness, as if each vine were in guided meditation and the wind was their breath. The symbiosis of natural processes and human endeavor, reminding me that they are actually integrated, synonymous.
That night-before-Christmas thrill underlying the stress andexhaustion of every day of harvest until the wines are barreled down, andlingering even after into the winter.
The freshness of new wine, straight from the press.
Wine barrels full of, and stained with, wine. A cellar full of barrels feels medieval, and evokes cloaks, and wintry castles, and feasts.
The word "bunghole." The fact that part of my job is sniffing bungholes.
The pristine lines of a wine bottle pouring wine into a wineglass.
The tremendous satisfaction that transcends the flavor of even my best wine when I taste something that I helped bring into being. And the complementary humility in knowing that I didn’t make it good, I just helped to keep it good. That at my best, I’m just trying to bottle sunshine, moonlight, and, if I’m lucky, a little lightning.
Organic Wine Utopias - More Than Just An Ideal?
Tucked into apicturesque valley along the Argens river in Provence, in south-east France, isa village that is known as the First Organic Village of France. The village ofCorrens got together in 1995 and made a decision that all agriculture in thetown would be organic. A majority of the agriculture in the town is actuallyviticulture, and there’s a decent chance you’ve had a rosé that came fromCorrens.
That’s because Corrensgained international notice for its Provençal rosé when Brad Pitt and Angelina Joliegot married there, and later purchased Chateau Miraval in Correns. ChateauMiraval rosé is still widely available, despite the couple’s split.
But this isn’t aboutcelebrity fairy tales with unhappy endings. This is about a group of people whodecided to make organic values the defining characteristic of their community.If I had Brangelina money, I’d want to buy a castle in that town too. That’skind of the point… wouldn’t we all want that?
There are several communities that are leaning in the Corrensdirection, but they are few and far between.
In the U.S.A. the town with the best shot at this may be Hopland, California. In this quaint hamlet in Mendocino County, a majority (11) of the wineries are organic and/or biodynamic. This includes the one of the largest organic wineries in the U.S. – Bonterra.
There’s also Fetzer, which, while not making organic wines, manages hundreds of acres of organically farmed vineyards and has the distinction of being the largest Certified B Corp winery in the world.
Wouldn’t everyone want to live in a community where you didn’thave to tediously read ingredients lists to make sure you aren’t ingesting morechemicals than actual food, where your kids can play in the rivers withoutworry of being poisoned by agricultural or industrial run-off, where you caneat at the local restaurants with confidence that the entrees and beverages areclean, healthy, and nutritious?
So why is Correns unique in the world then?
To me, that’s an important question, and why it’s worth highlighting these towns. I hope they soon won’t be unique.
Is "Sustainable Wine" Total B.S?
The answer to this question is complicated. There are two uses of “Sustainable Wine” that you might come across in the wine industry.
The first is just a marketing term which may or may notpoint to any real principles and practices in the winegrowing or winemakingprocess, and is basically meaningless. It’s a buzz word to capture theattention of environmentally conscientious consumers (like me). It’s total B.S.
Then there’s “certified sustainable.” This term can be used when a winery undergoes the certification process of the California Sustainable Winegrowers Alliance (CSWA). There isn’t an Oregon or Washington version of the CSWA, but they have other certifications that are similar, like LIVE certification. The use of the term “sustainable” when accompanied by this certification actually means something on a bottle of wine.
Certified Sustainable winegrowers have shown that they areengaged, to some degree, in practices deemed “sustainable” relating to BusinessStrategy, Viticulture, Soil Management, Vineyard Water Management, IntegratedPest Management, Wine Quality, Ecosystems Management, Energy Efficiency, WineryWater Conservation and Quality, Material Handling, Solid Waste Reduction andManagement, Environmentally Preferable Purchasing, Human Resources, Neighborsand Community, and Air Quality.
The gist of that list – if you didn’t fall asleep reading it– is that “Certified Sustainable” is a very good thing. It is looking ateverything that goes into producing a bottle of wine, including the quality oflife of the humans who do the work or live near the work, and setting standardswhere otherwise it would literally be the Wild West. You wouldn’t be too far off to associate itwith “Fair Trade” minus the import aspect.
But…
There is some fine print.
“CertifiedSustainable” sounds like it means something like “almost organic” while itallows, and actually prescribes, the use of Roundup (glyphosate) and othersystemic chemicals in the vineyard. (This is true for Oregon LIVEcertification as well, though minimal use is advised.) So there is a majorlymisleading understanding that is promoted, or at least capitalized on, by“Certified Sustainable.” If you haven’t already, please check out my postabout the dangers of glyphosate.
Also, it’s important to understand that “CertifiedSustainable,” while not Total B.S., is limited. A certification is only as goodas the metrics it measures, and its enforcement of them. Let’s take the exampleof the old joke: what do you call the person with the lowest passing grades inmedical school? A doctor.
Similarly, in sustainable certification each metric is“graded” on a three tier system. The tiers are Red, Yellow, and Green and canbe seen as a grade of F, C, or A respectively, to use this analogy. You canbecome certified sustainable with a majority Yellow tiers (C’s). But in neither the case of the doctor who iscaring for you, nor the wine you are drinking, should it necessarily inspireunquestioned confidence. And when you consider that you can use some prettyintense systemic synthetic chemicals in the vineyard and still get an “A”(green tier), you may feel even more cautious about Certified Sustainable.
I don’t want to diminish the good side of Certified Sustainable, though. It is a very good thing. But everything has its limits. To be an “Organic” winegrower, all you need to do is only use the products which have been certified for organic use. It doesn’t require you to be careful about water use, erosion, beneficial insects, natural habitat, or things like vineyard worker safety. Organic winegrowers can, and do, use pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. They just use ones that are “naturally derived,” but that does not always mean “non-toxic.”
Check out my post about the realities of Organic Viticulture.
Hey, but wait a minute! On the one hand you have “Certified Sustainable” which sets standards for nearly everything related to winegrowing except the use of synthetic systemic chemicals, and on the other hand you have “Certified Organic” which pays no attention to anything but the use of synthetic chemicals. What if you got both certifications?
The winegrowers who get certified as both Sustainable andOrganic are my heroes. Meeting the combined standards of both of thesecertifications ensures that the lacks of one are made up for by the strengthsof the other. To me this is the best wine pairing ever.
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To learn more about the requirements of certification by the California Sustainable Winegrowers Alliance, click here.
To learn more about LIVE certification, click here.