If it’s August, it must be Winery of the Year time for the magazine I write for, Wine & Spirits. Each year as you’re all headed off to enjoy the last blast of summer, the editorial team crunches out a series of database reports on the 10,000 or so wines that have been tasted for the year and assembles a list of the best wines, and of the top 100 best wineries who made them. Then we the critics write a profile of each one.
By a mile, it’s the most intense writing project of the year. Writing project? It’s more like a death march. Each of us receives up to 20 writing assignments, and it never seems to end (like in a marathon, it’s the last five writeups or so–which is right where I’m at now–that are the hardest to complete). When all is said and done, I’ve usually accounted for about 7,000 words, the equivalent of a short novella.
But the great perk of this Herculean task is that each of the 20 wineries sends a small sample of their best wines for me to revisit, so for a month I’m required–as part of the job, mind you–to taste some of the best wines in the country and consider again what has made these particular wines stand out among the thousands we’ve tasted. I get to re-experience what these wines get right.
As a magazine staff, it’s an occasion to take a close look at our methods, calibrate our critical palates, and see where our editorial tastes cohere.
[By the way, two caveats: all of the wines referred to here are domestic, and most fall under my critical purview, which is the Pacific Northwest; and I’m sorry, but until the publication date, I’m going to have to keep the wineries anonymous. Revisit this post in October, when all will be revealed.]
Balance:
From the lightest of whites (an Oregon Auxerrois) to the darkest, deepest of reds (a Walla Walla Cabernet blend) the best wines on the table feel evenly weighted in the mouth. They have balance. They evoke the sense that for every assertion of sweet, generous fruit, there will be an equal and opposite expression of acidity, the grip of tannin, the firm clench of a mineral spine, acting as a counterweight. Balance is the easiest thing to perceive, and one of the most difficult things for a winemaker to achieve, but all great wines have it, and when you taste it, all is right with the world.
Purity of Expression:
It’s not something you actually notice, but when you’re drinking an ordinary wine, it’s kind of surprising how little happens. But it seems to us that outside of actual flaws, a wine’s greatest sin is to leave no impression, to give one the sense that its flavors and the experience of drinking it could come from anywhere: any varietal, any place, made by any means. A great wine, on the other hand, is all impression–the colors are vivid, the varietal makes a statement of itself, even the more neutral varieties, like Chardonnay or Merlot. Two wines, a Chardonnay from Oregon and a Merlot from Washington come to mind. Chardonnay is hardly something that sets my pulse to racing, but this one had such purity and completeness that to taste it was less about tasting as experiencing it. As for the Merlot; with so much bad Merlot out there, to taste one that not only is arresting but calls to mind the greatness that that grape can achieve is rare in this country. This wine had it.
Purity of Place:
Part of the pleasure of a great bottle of wine is that it’s transporting. It will either take you out of the place you are (at your kitchen table, say) or will deepen the experience of the place you find yourself (say, a romantic restaurant, or a cellar cave). Of course the most satisfying transporting experience comes when a wine gives an indelible impression of place, of where it comes from. When you can taste the soil in the wine, or the fog, or the sea air, or the pine and eucalyptus that shares the ground with the vineyard–these are the wines that get our hearts racing.
The most vivid of these experiences for me this last month came from a Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. As you probably know the Sonoma Coast, despite its evocative name, is one of the more meaningless appellations in the north coast of California–it’s too vast, too all-encompassing to really be of any use to consumers or winemakers, though it probably does move some wine. But there is an area near Annapolis which people refer to as the true coast, just in from the ocean at high elevations in the vicinity of Peay and Flowers vineyards, which really have a unique flavor profile. This wine, in its luminous purity, its brilliant, slightly tart black cherry and hint of the sea, brought me vividly to a view of the ocean from a high place.
Complexity:
Fruit is a given in an American wine. Fruit is not only expected and welcome, it’s unusual when fruit is absent–and you can rest assured that the wines I tasted over the past month weren’t absent of fruit. But to be merely fruity is a common shortcoming of American wines and while it’s not always a fatal flaw, it’s usually a letdown when a wine offers fruit and little more.
But when a wine gives you more than you expect, when the fruit is offset by elements of earth or textural intricacy or an abiding sense of place, when the experience of tasting the wine takes you in directions you didn’t expect or even dream of going, then you’ve got us by the collar. It reminds me of what one Washington winemaker told me recently; he says that when he makes his wines he likes to get the fruit out of the way. The more I think of that statement, the more heretical it seems, but it’s exactly what makes his wine great.
Another wine, an Oregon Pinot Noir demonstrated this in the opposite sense, a wine that seemed so dark that at first it resembled one of those Pinot imposters from the Central Coast of California that taste more like Syrah than the grape it purports to be. But at the finish of the wine, it let loose with a pure beam of red raspberry fruit that lifted the wine to heights no taster would have expected. It’s like a thrill ride, and it’s why we do this, and it’s why you should, too.