Seems like wherever I go these days I get caught up in heated debate (pardon the pun) over the trend toward ever-higher-alcohol wines. These sessions are usually with colleagues and friends who have grown weary of table wines that more and more are beginning to taste like Port.
The most common complaint I hear is that two people can’t finish one bottle at dinner without getting smashed. Second to that is an aversion to the “heaviness” of those 15 percent-plus-alcohol wines. Many foodies I know wouldn’t want to finish a bottle of high-octane Cabernet or Syrah even if they could.
Yet some wine critics (but not all) continue to give such wines the highest marks. Finally a few seasoned wine industry professionals are starting to speak out about this scourge. Famed wine merchant Darrel Corti of Sacramento announced recently that his store would severely cut back on the number of 14 percent-plus-alcohol wines that it stocks; and just this week an influential Napa Valley winemaker, Randy Dunn, emailed an open letter to a number of wine journalists deploring the increased alcohol levels in pursuit of high scores.
Jim Gordon has most of the text of Dunn’s letter here.
The question on my mind after reading Dunn’s screed is how high is too high? I rather like WRO colleague Ed McCarthy’s thoughts on the subject. If I understand Ed’s position, his tolerance for alcohol in a table wine generally tops out at about 14.5 percent. I’m of the same mind, realizing that the fudge factor allows a producer to use 14.5 on the label even while the wine is pushing closer to 15 percent.
Another colleague recently did the math and explained to me that six ounces of wine at 14 percent was the equivalent of two gin and tonics made with an 80-proof spirit. Which means a half bottle of wine at 14 percent alcohol is about the same as five cocktails.
When the wine is 15 or 16 percent alcohol, which many are, you can just extrapolate those numbers right up the scale. Dunn’s solution is to list the alcohol level along with the rating in a wine review, but I don’t think a mere number would give consumers any clues about the overall balance of a wine.
At WRO we often mention the alcohol level in the text of a review, but we only recommend those more elevated-alcohol wines when they are well balanced and elegant. That said, Editor Michael Franz and I will certainly look at the feasibility of including the alcohol percentage along with the rating.
Bottom line, though, is that I believe consumers will ultimately decide this issue. Just as consumers have turned away from overly oaked, high alcohol, butterball Chardonnays in droves, I believe the days are numbered for the in-your-face, over-the-top reds that are now imbedded in the culture of the so-called “international style.”
I’ll never forget a conversation I had years ago with Far Niente winemaker Dirk Hampson that harked back to an exchange he had with the late Gil Nickel, founder of Far Niente.
“Gil asked me, ‘Dirk, how come our Cabernet always gets scores in the low and mid-90s but never one of those 97s or 98s?’ ” said Hampson. “I told him, ‘Gil, we don’t make wines like that because you don’t like wines like that.'”
Amen, brother!
PHOTOS: Top, Napa Valley winemaker Randy Dunn in the foreground; bottom, Far Niente winemaker Dirk Hampson.
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