tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11397404602324690502024-03-05T01:05:29.027-08:00Tixover VineyardJohn Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-74997921566043068322019-06-19T21:28:00.002-07:002019-06-20T06:48:52.376-07:00NEW WAVE CHAMPAGNE - Reflections on a masterclass.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon concluded his address at the <i>New Wave Champagne </i>event by saying, “The true winemaker is time.” This constraint became increasingly apparent through his presentation. Roederer’s intellectual property winds into a double helix of action and complication. Small modifications accrue over time as the exploration of fixed territory becomes ever more detailed. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The constitutive gap between grapes and wine is a space within which alternative strategies and geometries of action and outcome are tested and interposed. Once established, these complex causal chains are hard to transform. Comtes would unravel if Taittinger withheld the 10g/l dosage; and Krug would be unyielding if all the barrels were swapped for stainless steel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Chez Billecart, I’ve witnessed a 20 year transition from inox to barrels and foudres. Like Jason’s rebuilding of the Argot, blends were refitted and evaluated a plank at a time, the renewal taking place at a pace that didn’t interrupt the brand’s serene passage. Over this same period, Anselme Selosse refined his solera system. The vision is inspiring, but I doubt Anselme could have accomplished this transformation without having a grounding in biochemistry and (at times) a close working relationship with Distillerie Jean Goyard in Aÿ. Other regions have cut and pasted techniques and barrels from elsewhere only to discover 20 years later they moved too hastily. When I first visited Selosse in 1996 it felt like an insurgency. Now, twenty-five years on, the domaine’s change in direction looks like a life’s work. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The shift from still to sparkling wine production was Champagne’s moment of revolutionary upheaval. Dom Pérignon wasn’t the only actor facilitating the region’s radical shift in protocol, though it’s perhaps ironic that the church, having spent so many centuries demolishing human spiritedness, should have been at the forefront of this particular flourishing. The Enlightenment push toward assertiveness and self-expression didn’t just open Europe to human potentialities and novelty, it also revealed the extent to which the Dark Age worldview had been an unremitting God delusion. Somewhere along the <i>way</i>, mythical accounts of a foundational deity got hitched to the human impulse for experimentation and productive combination. Muddleheaded medieval theologians took the objects of our own desire and activity as evidence for the workings of an all sustaining power.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Analogously, some commentators take wild yeast activity and the environmental modification of phenols and metabolites as proof of an auspicious hidden hand within production. Self-organisation is a seductive idea, yet neither yeast metabolism nor the environment’s ability to effect the balance of metabolites and phenols gets us to end points called <i>Chambertin </i>or <i>Palo Cortado</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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As said, Champagne blends are exemplary of a constitutive gap between grapes and wine, though the idea of productive separation is as applicable to the wines of Jerez and Burgundy as it is to those of Aÿ. If we accept that the people of Tbilisi, Funchal and Beaune responded to their world in inventive and unique ways then we won’t feel compelled to admonish one another with arguments about industrialisation and fallenness. There is no mothballed unworldly realm waiting on our return. Champagne and Georgia don’t share a common discarded past that can be resuscitated and restored. The overzealous use of fungicides may have been inevitable in the land of Pasteur’s birth, but growers can just decide to use fewer synthetics, or buy alternatives as and when they become available. Commentators need to pause before condemning all progress just because some people made (now) unfashionable choices under the cloak of efficiency and cost saving. We risk infecting the past with our own prohibitions and jargon when we invoke 'authenticity', or suggest there's an edict coming from terroir urging Houses to junk dosage. </div>
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The use of organic and bio protocols in Champagne is a case in point. JBL alluded to the fact that mycorrhiza can help overcome the base (Ca++) saturation of chalk, delivering freshness and low pH to vin clair, but this symbiotic pairing with vine roots doesn't then further direct us to butcher blends into their constituent vineyards.</div>
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Aesthetic objects hold our attention, and a talented chef de cave will look to intensify this experience – exploiting energies of combination, and pursuing appealing vectors of flavour. I took JBL’s statement that ‘blending is an art’ to be a polite riposte to critics who choose to employ terroir as a reductive measure. The concrescence (Whitehead) between an aesthetic object and an observer is both a coming together and a <i>becoming </i>together. Wine appreciation pairs sensation with understanding: we can creatively manipulate the former to heighten the latter; or we can loop sensations back to gain insight and inspiration. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Tellingly, when we talked with one another after his presentation, JBL was effusive in his (unprompted) praise of Richard Geoffroy. He didn’t mention <i>bio </i>once; it was all about balancing redox across decades of ageing - sparkling wine’s genuine holy grail. <o:p></o:p></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-46413639505953992202018-12-05T03:27:00.003-08:002018-12-16T08:39:16.600-08:00MARKETING REDUX<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What constitutes progress in our industry? The illustrations in the 1986 edition of <i>Hugh Johnson’s Wine Atlas </i>impressed me with their authority and detail, but the maps and plates proved shorter-lived than some of the wines they drew attention towards. To date, Hugh Johnson has updated his Atlas seven times. Like an animal that can only grow by shedding its skin, the world’s vineyards pushed against the boundaries of text and chapters: each new edition expanded on its predecessor, but the new territories it captured were largely copies, cut out against a French template of grape varieties, blends and barriques. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In the years that separated the publication of the 1<sup>st </sup>from the 7<sup>th </sup>edition of the Atlas we learnt that progress and expansion aren’t always the same thing, and that profit doesn’t necessarily follow on from investment. Through the 90s, New World vineyards boomed, though few achieved the kind of returns that incentivised their planting in the first place. In a similarly downbeat vein, oenological upgrades in Old World vineyards that benefited bulk regions disproportionately largely left their economic woes intact. Viewed impassively, the wine world appears resilient, steadfast, and stable. It is hard to imagine a future where the invention of Sherry, Madeira and Champagne will be creatively equalled. What we have today is largely a culture of imitation and steady improvement. Australia, New Zealand and California found success when they followed in the footsteps of esteemed French wine regions. If you’re looking for evidence that our particular world of expertise, learning and creativity has plateaued just look at the proliferation in competitive encounters between France and the New World. Impersonation has become a virtue. Borrowing from athletics, wine increasingly resembles track and field: competition is channelled into a fixed number of events which we take to be an absolute measure of ability.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Some implacable marketers insist that wine is held in an ideological bind. They believe that there’s no real necessity for this intransigence, and are affronted by the sector’s inertia. Sense of place, underwritten by law, has parked-up production on its own stacks of conceptual bricks. By pursuing discrete themes of difference and division regions have complicated themselves whilst standing still. A vernacular of place names coupled to an overweening desire to articulate the details of winemaking has effectively alienated wine from the dynamism of the 21<sup>st</sup>Century economy. Money brings equivalence to goods and services, forcing them to face the tribunal of the market together. We pick between categories before we select within them. If cars and fashion are compelled to find, distribute and communicate new experiences to shoppers then so, by extension, is wine. Contemporary brands, we are warned, either dance with the consumer or face elimination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Consumerism took-off in 50s America. Economies are founded on people buying the goods and services that they make, but the cycle of production-consumption can be accelerated. Diverting resources judiciously into demand creation improved the overall return on investment. If the industrial revolution increased the productivity of labour, then recognising those same labourers as consumers became the stimulus for even greater economic growth and prosperity. Marketing revealed a virtuous circle that could be turned faster and faster. This paradigmatic shift in business practice was reinforced and underwritten by auspicious changes in consumer behaviour. The old virtue of replacing things as they wore out was superseded. It was desire rather than dilapidation that drove and coerced the new tribes of consumer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The sectors that have benefited most from marketing are those where brands and consumers have come together in associations of enrichment and choice. We struggle to think of bottled water, phones, cars and fashion outside the purview of brands. Henry Ford gave buyers only one option, ‘black’, but car colour is now a sign of affluence and an expression of personality. Cars, unlike clothes, aren’t made on looms, and changing automobile design isn’t as straightforward as re-threading yarn or realigning beams, yet the industry has incorporated the dynamic and transgressive impulses of fashion into its design and development. As Roland Barthes pointed out, fashion negates its past; what was until recently admired and adored is summarily rejected. For checks to come ‘in’, stripes need to be pushed ‘out’. Signification denotes a change in use. Clothes are no longer replaced as they wear out, and cars are rendered obsolete by minor innovations and design tweaks rather than rust. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One of Marx’s less contentious insights was recognising that capitalism perpetuated a state of high anxiety among its dependents. Workers were worried about holding onto their jobs, and factory owners were compelled to reinvest profits through fear of competitive annihilation. Marketing burns luminously above Marx’s grim industrial landscape, its perspective and power drawing upon the utopian notion that growth in modern market economies is best achieved by giving people what they want, even if the choices seem a bit contrived. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In advanced economies anxiety is no longer played out at the level of subsistence, instead it’s felt at the level of our yearning for particular goods, services and brands. If we’re all so broke it’s largely because we have so much. Being hard up is no longer associated with having nothing. Marketers have done their job for the economy and demand if we’re all spent out at the end of each month yet stoked for next month’s lifestyle upgrades.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Just as money becomes a universal measure of value, so marketing addresses (<i>pace </i>the incessant use of analogy) often assume a high level of comparability across categories, consumer choice being the catalyst for this presumed equivalence. Brand stories turn into parables of best practice. Woolworths demise is first problematized and then solved by the <i>different thinking </i>of Apple or Amazon. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It is easy to become paranoid amidst all the spiralling aspiration, but some more familiar truths emerge where the downdraft bottoms out. Take the example of the retail analyst who calls out M&S’s loss of market share to Primark as an instance of not listening to customers. Our initial reaction to the report maybe to fret over our own trading relationships, but dig a little deeper and you discover that what M&S customers really want is Primark’s pricing and range rotation. M&S have long-promoted their clothes as being made-to-last, but this attribute wanes in significance once fashion’s cycles have accelerated passed the threshold where a garment’s durability is still relevant to shoppers. Fast fashion trumps utility, but it does have an underbelly. Beneath all the coded words about listening to consumers is another all too familiar world of outsourcing, efficiency savings, low wages and waste. Marketing has become very adept at the double movement of dressing up products for the consumer whilst simultaneously distancing them from the inconvenient realities of their production. Like the butcher’s repressed connection to the abattoir, one version of the Yellow Tail story is about consumers and another is about the ruthless pursuit of monopoly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Much of the recent twitter exchange focussed on the effectiveness of wine communication. Experts, as Peter Sloterdijk noted, are required to immunise themselves against outside worlds of distraction. Marketers, mathematicians and oenologues develop very specific ways of talking to one another that are essential to disciplinary advancement, yet remain largely incoherent to anyone outside their circle. It may well be that physicists don’t need to be understood by anyone beyond their peer group for progress to take place, but the same isn’t true for wine professionals whose livelihoods depend upon consumption rather than research grants. At some point we need to break out of our inward looking cell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I think it’s difficult to dismiss this suggestion. Talking to consumers in ways different to the way we talk to one another professionally makes sense; though quite what we say and how we say it doesn’t always come easily. One could delegate this responsibility to marketers, and many do, but it’s often just a case of winemakers wearing different hats and editing-out the language of production at the cellar door.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Despite the reasonableness of this suggestion, the suspicion remained that the consumer – and we must include ourselves under this banner - isn’t necessarily a benign force; or that marketing mobilises the consumer as a victim or a beneficiary so that it can dress up self-serving commercial activity with selfless words and altruism. The two-facedness of marketing means that it has different conversations and communications inside and outside the boardroom, yet both are themed around giving people what they want: the investor is promised a return, and shoppers get to choose between new and familiar experiences. The incompatibility of these two objectives only becomes apparent when we belatedly lament the plight of the High Street or the loss of independent booksellers. At some point marketing runs into contradictions of its own making. Words and reality collide. You can’t keep all the people happy all of the time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Happiness was in short supply on twitter. Marketers stuck with the argument that the language used by wine people erects barriers to consumer engagement and retention; while the enthusiasts were loath to give ground to soft marketing because they suspected that lurking beneath the velvet glove of consumer-friendly words is the iron fist of hardball marketing. Both sets of protagonists recognise there’s a problem with recruitment and profitability, but they can’t agree on how to fix it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Marketers are right to point out that enthusiasts are being nimbyist when they make special pleading for wine. We are, after all, consumers of brands in other categories. The relationship between marketing and capitalism is intimate and, given our lifestyles, more or less foundational. Everyone has been on brand journeys – for me, Fiat Panda to Audi - and benefited from the proliferation in mobile phone choice since the appearance of the first brick, but both these examples suggest there’s something timely about the appearance of cars and phones that enabled consumers and brands to enrich and populate categories together. If wine shows a degree of resilience to marketing it may not just be a matter of language, or be as simple as replacing the word ‘mineral’ with ‘fun’ every time we come across it in a tasting note.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">From my perspective, the difference between experts and their detractors won’t dissolve away even if they did manage to agree on a lexicon of consumer friendly terms. The stretched timelines of production, the slow depreciation of capital, and the prolonged separation of cause from effect in both enology and viticulture defines the category. Our forebears, we can deduce, got so good at fermentation, stabilisation and preservation that comparison across and within regions became inevitable. Vineyards, appellations and lieux dits, both formally and informally, were sifted by inquisitive generations and graded for quality. The resilience marketers, journalists and buyers come across when they attempt to hasten change isn’t linguistic but structural. When the Guinaudeaus decided to extend their interests into Fronsac they were lengthening a timeline that reaches back to massale selection and the accumulation of winemaking <i>savoir faire </i>at Lafleur. The expansion and segmentation that marketing craves is achieved in wine by other means - structural, aesthetic, historic, commercial - and its dynamic is antithetical to the impulsive and transgressive movements of fashion. Inertia is functional.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I began this article by claiming the wine world was more or less complete, and that we are unlikely to see changes of the magnitude of champagnisation anytime soon. The notion that something is largely finished doesn’t mitigate against improvement, but it does close-off the possibility of major revision. We can argue the toss about whether this or that château should have been upgraded in St Emilion’s latest reclassification, or whether Australian Shiraz producers should revert back to using hogsheads, but nothing, neither baselining SO2 levels nor reviving white grape maceration, strikes me as being as radical and different as a process that combines flor protection, fortification and fractional blending. The stylistic enrichment of our category that bequeathed us Jerez, Madeira, Hermitage and Tokaji is a job done principally by past generations. Nowadays we’re just getting on with the job of dispersal and micro-improvements. Some of the territories may be new, but the thinking is conventional and staid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Marketers sometimes talk as if the decision to divide wine territorially is arbitrary, and therefore capable of reversal. Penfold’s interregional blends are often rolled-out as evidence that things could be otherwise, but the trend at the premium end of New World production has veered towards typicity and deep-seated ways of viewing the creative bond between site and vine. One can detect a meeting of the ways between Old and New World production: in the former quality is now attributed to site and the people who make it – Barthod ‘Les Cras’ - and in the latter producers now want to talk about how the uniqueness of their working environment is immanent to their wine. I find this a welcome trend, as it moves us away from an overly romantic view of terroir as some kind of exhumed imperative that demands obedience. Moreover, this argument should resonate with marketers, as place and people evolve together in ways that parallel the mutually enriching experience of consumers and brands in other categories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Evidence of inertia isn’t always edifying: minor innovations get overhyped, Bordeaux dominates press coverage, and wine has become a winner-take-all-market. Change is possible, but the rate of progress is measured over decades and generations. La Tâche and Le Pin supplied the low hanging fruit for a newly made up tribe of billionaires, but Curly Flat, Montlandrie, and Seyssuel are playing a slow game of catch-up for those who can’t afford Richebourg, l’Eglise Clinet and La Belle Hélène. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Growers on the d’Oc plains may never rid us of all our bulk prejudices, but that’s arguably because what they produced was never good anyway. There isn’t a glorious past that can be revived, just a history of making cheap alcohol for blending into water.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Maybe it’s precisely because the Midi is so amorphous that it has attracted the attentions of marketing. The vertical stratification of the market left a largely undifferentiated pool of wine that could be war gamed into future brands, except the wine market has largely identified its best bits already, and the new bits are subjected to rigorous scrutiny as they come on. Marketers can only dream of turning wine into bottled water because the directions for segmentation are already in place. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It is at this bulk end of the market – Midi, Central Valley, South Eastern Australia - that the velvet glove is wont to fall off marketing’s iron fist. The frustration of marketers is palpable, lashing out at education and deploying the hapless economic situation of growers as an altruistic shield for more covert plans. Every new pillar of sand – bourbonification, synthetic wine - is hurriedly celebrated, as though deep down they all know what fate has in store for their Frankenstein creations. One senses that Yellow Tail have acknowledged the aspirational game is up, and their patented technique for extracting wine from dry skins seems squarely directed at entry point competitors rather than improving quality. We used to kid ourselves that consumers climbed ladders, now they’re stuck with a greasy pole. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This outbreak of frenetic capitalism is ugly. Californian Merlot growers and Midi cooperative partners who pulled up Aramon for Carignan know where some of the bodies from previous marketing campaigns are buried. I don’t have an answer to their predicament, mainly because I see a difference between overproduction and under-shopped. Marketers' tendency to frame the problem of resilience within education and communication misses the more general point about inertia within production, and as a consequence they end up kicking the messenger instead of trying to understand the mechanism by which wine has catalogued and reproduced its own realm of experiences without their assistance. </span><span style="color: #5b9bd5; font-family: "arial"; font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-43122225011822460092018-04-02T04:32:00.003-07:002018-04-08T02:23:38.128-07:00The Provocations of Terroir <div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I want to begin with a little background. Thomas Kuhn, an enormous figure in the philosophy of science warns us against the perils of retelling the history of this or that discipline with what he would say are the disadvantages of hindsight; while my wife, a psychotherapist, is forever telling me about how we, as people, are hopeless at situating ourselves in our own stories; so there are two caveats here at the start: two reasons to fail, if you like.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">One of my themes this evening is how outcomes we see as necessary, determined, fated, could, to use Steve Woolgar’s phrase “be otherwise”. So I was delighted to see a Facebook post from Monty Waldin, the wine author and biodynamic consultant promoting this tasting, that read:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">"Not bad for someone whose flirtations with punk in his youth might otherwise have seen him end up on the sidewalk, a cloth cap for collecting donations from passers-by in one hand, and a piece of string acting as a leash for an </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">adopted stray dog in the other."</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Overview: Naturalism v Production<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA9FV4gkr2-vZFPgrtMLV9fHTHK0Z2btcoA42VMdl0cD1HBm10VEJw7rrxCxIPuh6FNeleTRTeDjpuAYscRNa9KQsVAEGR6Ih1-2kjDKN3EYj1XiPzeDh48fm1g9GObUnjqBmOUtBiiTo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-02+at+09.55.14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="532" data-original-width="918" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA9FV4gkr2-vZFPgrtMLV9fHTHK0Z2btcoA42VMdl0cD1HBm10VEJw7rrxCxIPuh6FNeleTRTeDjpuAYscRNa9KQsVAEGR6Ih1-2kjDKN3EYj1XiPzeDh48fm1g9GObUnjqBmOUtBiiTo/s320/Screen+Shot+2018-04-02+at+09.55.14.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">A very simple flow diagram for wine production. We can imagine others for Port, Sherry, Champagne and Burgundy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">So my opening question is, how does a bunch of grapes suggest this process? Does Palomino - or, for that matter, the Andalusian landscape - suggest a solera? Is there something specific to Touriga Nacional that suggests foot-treading and arrested fermentation? Is a bunch of Richebourg Pinot harvested in 2015 imploring us to master the solvent effects of alcohol and the intricate and interconnected redox chemistry of barrels and bottles so it can be drunk in 2040? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Grapes don’t arrive at the hopper with a manual coughed-up by the earth. The same bunch of Gewurztraminer might be destined for Cremant d’Alsace or Vendange Tardive, depending on the picking date, but which elements of environmental influence survive the tumultuous events of fermentation, and are there discrete, shared characteristics across both styles that can be distinguished from the generative effects of production? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Burgundy is the poster-boy of naturalism. ‘The wine makes itself’, ‘We do nothing’, are stock answers to these types of interrogations and questions. Nothing should get between terroir and its expression. Pinot Noir is chosen precisely because it is entirely biddable to the influence of soil and topography, or so we’re told. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I once took a friend in the food processing industry on a winery tour. What he saw was production, and he ignored my more fanciful explanation about representing terroir. The philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, wrote that the city necessarily precedes the countryside. We first need the perspective of the city to separate out and differentiate this other entity we belatedly call ‘the countryside’. Might we apply the same logic to terroir? Rather than dictating production, doesn’t the concept of terroir – however murky our definition - need the perspective of production in order to come into being? We can never strip away viticulture and enology in the way we're urged to, because they are always elementary and precursory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Certain assumptions are deeply embedded in the way we talk about wine, but the sceptic in me has listened and used these words and phrases long enough to start to doubt their veracity. When visiting Burgundian cellars, I’m reminded of a line they use in creative writing classes: “Always show, never tell.” We mistake an economy of words for an economy of actions. I quickly realized after planting my vineyard that I had become a slave to it. Nature turned hostile towards me and monoculture. There’s a good reason why vignerons generally look fitter and leaner than their fleshy visitors, I discovered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">In this presentation I will attempt to historicize terroir and the implied passivity that surrounds its summoning. I will argue that terroir is embedded rather than theorized, and that its habituated meanings are hard to cling on to in 20<sup>th</sup>Century Burgundy once domaine bottling starts multiplying the number of styles emanating from individual climat. Environmental influence is uncontestable, grapes must be grown somewhere, but an imperative! How can we make sense of such an assertion?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>Trajectories/Themes/Provocations</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The Romans delivered Christianity and viniculture to Ancient Gaul together, and like a good marriage, their relationship was productive, reproductive and settled.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Since the 18<sup>th</sup>Century, Christianity has declined in France, but in wine it has left a legacy beyond transubstantiation, evocative place names and vineyard crosses. One of the ideas I want to examine tonight is secularism. The Enlightenment didn’t clean out old prejudices and establish new ways of thinking in the thorough way it was supposed to, and religious sentiment continued to occupy and shape secular thought. I shall argue that along the Côte d’Or particularly, we encounter secularism in the passive and submissive descriptions that vignerons ascribe to their actions. Process and production, and chemistry and biology failed to depose terroir, but have become absorbed and silenced by it, instead. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Matt Kramer’s ‘somewhereness’, like ‘sense of place’, is an attempt at universalizing and totalizing terroir, yet, if anything, in its Old World enclaves, the concept has hardened into a form of asceticism. In 21<sup>st</sup>Century Vosne, terroir must be obeyed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">From my perspective, wine escapes the heavily built walls of tradition but only at an inter-generational pace. We have to look toward compound change to see innovation. In Champagne, bottles are intimately bound up with production, and only the obfuscation of the present day makes us trivialize them as ‘packaging’. In Burgundy, Bordeaux and Jerez production hides in plain sight. I'm more inclined to think of wine in terms of a network effect of people and things - bottles, rocks, flor, slopes, botti, Prosecco - and the arrangement and structure of these networks is different for each region; their elements may overlap at some points, but not others. If Maderia, Chile and Champagne look very different it's because they've had distinctive histories with their own problems, priorities and solutions. Burgundians sorting of the land into climat is as contingent Castilian's planting of Airen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The extent to which wine is or should be a reflection of its environment is contentious. We’ve inherited a point of view that is crammed with history, but empty of chemistry. Viticulture begins by pushing back against the very nature it purports to represent, yet what emerges today from this violently denuded world is an imperative: terroir must be obeyed, elevated, and made sovereign. It is no longer enough for wine to express the influence of its environment; in order to be considered worthy, pure, authentic, fine, the environment must be immanent to it, and all signs of human artifice stripped away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The Côte de Nuits is held up as the exemplar of immanence, the walled vineyards determining subtle differences in wines that carry their names. But the proximity of this association only holds while production remains the responsibility of a few rather than the many. Domaine bottling has increased intra-vineyard divergence, and the slow patriation of style to individual domaine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Additionally, this evening, I want to consider the compound effect of generational changes on production, and how following examples enables domaine to reproduce intricate chemical processes without reference to theory or equations. The history of wine production looks much more dynamic and generative once we attune ourselves to viniculture’s extended timelines. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The gradients of history change. Long-lived societies endure because they are efficient at reproducing themselves, their structures of power and knowledge, their divisions of labour and distribution of wealth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">If you want to understand how powerful the church was in medieval France, strip away 55 million people, level the houses, municipal buildings, and ugly commercial zones, but leave all the Citadels standing. The church dominated France intellectually, financially and aesthetically. God’s omnipotence was invoked at every opportunity. Curiosity was a sin, measurement discouraged, and interest couldn’t be levied on loans, as it was a charge on time, and time was only God’s to give. France, like the rest of Europe, was becalmed for centuries. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">In a world that was so completely given and ordained, opportunities for human expression were limited, or when they did occur, weren’t recognized as such. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The descent of the sublime – the New Testament revelation that God is immanent to the world rather than above it – made man a spectator of God’s creation. Winemaking wasn’t considered ingenious or inventive, nor were the Cistercians troubled by medieval versions of present day anxieties about the generative capacity of winemaking, the originating destructiveness of viticulture, or why some people decide such a particularly intensive form of monoculture is their window on nature. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Medieval sentiments persist as secularisms after the Enlightenment. A space was cleared for mankind to be an actor, free from God’s will, but inherited misgivings about human frailties continued to undermine self-assertiveness. In 18<sup>th</sup>Century Burgundy, Cistercian submissiveness was displaced from God to nature. The magnitudes of influence remained unchanged even if they were articulated through an amalgam of aspect, climate and geology rather an omnipotent deity. Human agency was limited to spectating a non-human creation.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span> Burgundy producers who feel pressured to play down the impact of their daily exertions toe the deeply scored line of history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Nietzsche wrote of an impotent state in which external forces act upon and through man in order to realize their determination. What is reproduced and perpetuated under such circumstances is the prevailing relations of power, over and over again – a hierarchy of church, kings, fiefdoms and peasants. There was no possibility of things being <i>otherwise</i>. But what was bad for man proved pivotal for the Côte d’Or’s vineyards. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Scepticism <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Nietzsche teaches us to be suspicious of classifications. Those at the top of hierarchies – life, class – will frequently appeal to natural ordering; and will routinely invoke nature as a justification for a status quo that reproduces their status.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">On the subject of hierarchies, I want to share the tale of David Clark with you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">David Clark is a Cambridge engineering graduate. Before setting up in Burgundy, he managed the pit strategy for Williams Formula One Team. Spending time with David, you got the feeling he could get himself up to degree level in most subjects if you gave him the right books and a week to skim read them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">David personified the idea that things could be otherwise, that you could work round problems with inventive solutions, and that Burgundian determinations, the imperatives of their particular history, weren’t necessarily limiting, or the case. I always felt there was an element of this in Parker: "old vines and no-filtration" always read like a way of alleviating colloquial prejudices in those early books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">David’s cellar was small but well-equipped. His father was also an engineer, and there were lathed and be-spoked tools along with high-end brands like Francois Freres and Vaslin-Bucher.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Burgundy’s regional hierarchy is reinforced, in part, by pragmatism. Generic Bourgogne vineyards produce a less valuable crop, so production is skewed to volume – with the use of higher yielding clones and vigourous rootstocks. Anyone new to Burgundy tends to begin on the bottom rungs of the ladder, hiring generic plots. You’re treated like a probationary intern. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">2004 was a very difficult vintage in Burgundy. The Grand Cru struggled, and growers whose names you’d ordinarily tattoo on your arms, flopped. Many of the wines still taste green to this day. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">This was David’s first vintage. His Bourgogne, when I tasted it, was not only one of the best Bourgogne I’ve tasted, but it defied the hierarchy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">David clearly worked diligently in the vineyards, but he also sprayed with a legally available plant growth regulator, Ethrel. Ethrel is authorized for use in Burgundy. It’s mainly used to terminate flowering in bad weather, and decreases the potential heterogeneity of millerandage. David decided to spray at veraison, when its ethylene release is believed to accelerate both bunch ripening, and the synchronicity of that ripening, which can be problematic with Pinot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">David’s cellar was in Morey St Denis. Word got round that David had made an exceptional Bourgogne. One evening two of the most respected growers in the village invited themselves round to taste the wine. They abruptly flipped their praise of the wine into a threat. ‘This isn’t Bourgogne”, they said. “If you want to get somewhere in this region, then make Bourgogne; and once you’ve made Bourgogne you might be offered some village vines.” David gave up with the Ethrel, and eventually did get offered a small patch of Vosne Romanée vines, but I sensed his spirit was broken by the experience, and he left Burgundy in 2015.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">David’s story gives us a sense of how communities and hierarchies are reproduced and stabilized. It’s not as simple as saying two nighttime visitors got heavy with him, there’s all the history, the habituation to vocabularies, ways of doing and thinking, tight communities of sensing, rootstocks, clones, barrels and, of course, regulations. Control and power is dispersed over different agencies and through different actors. Terroir, we might argue, is institutionalized, but not theorized, though we could flip this round in the light of David’s story and say he theorized elements of terroir and ignored local precedent, reproducing certain advantages held to be naturally occurring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The Chinese have an expression that we go through life facing backwards, and what is in front of us is our past. Two thousand years of continuous production has inevitably cricked Burgundian necks. If David touched a nerve, I suspect it was because it was at the surface, waiting to be nicked. Being the apex beneficiary of a hierarchy isn’t such an easy ride when you’ve got to keep the underlings in their place. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Around the time David was packing up his Morey St Denis home, I was invited to participate in a blind tasting of 10 Côte de Nuits reds. All I knew in advance was that they were all red burgundies, from the 2010 vintage. At the end of the tasting I was asked to pair off wines – they could, I thought, be from the same village or the same producer – and the only wine pairing I made was between Dujac Morey St Denis and, as it turned out, Gary Farr’s Geelong, Pinot – the ringer on the day. The remainder of the wines were from Morey St Denis. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">There is a back story here, Gary Farr worked 19 vintages at Dujac. Backpedaling – something MWs are very adept at - I trotted out that Gary had studiously absorbed and then adapted the whole-bunch expertise of the Seyesses family to his own Victoria vineyard, and that this had thrown me – but the fact remained that I’d assumed the technique I’d tasted was an environmental affect common to both wines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I found separating technical merit from environmental expressivity particularly taxing when setting the MW exam. Over three days, students are examined on 36 blind wines, and despite all the assurances, it’s hard to pass if you don’t correctly identify 60% correctly. The underlying assumption is that wines, whether they’re from Victoria, Napa or Burgundy can be identified by discretely determinable, region-specific attributes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">As examiners, we filter the wines that are put forward to the exam, but it’s also incumbent on us to find wines that express the full range of a country’s potential. When I took the exam, Australian Chardonnay tended to be the colour of golden syrup, and came wrapped in oak; and you assumed that the expensive bottle of Shiraz was just two bottles of the cheaper wine reduced, simmered and re-bottled in heavier glass. But not today. Extrinsic environmental elements clearly extend their influence into the new wave of Australian Chardonnay and Pinot, but they’re getting harder to pinpoint; whilst what we previously took to be environmental traits are reattributed to transferable, nomadic expertise; as was the case with Gary Farr’s Pinot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Recently, a Master of Wine, returned back from an Australia trip and bemoaned the fact that too many Australian Chardonnays tasted like Burgundy, and can we please get back to the full-bodied, expressive style of the past. The relationship he inferred is like that holding between a genotype and a specific phenotype, the environmental code being transcribed into inimitable sensations, acid, fruit, tannin, which can themselves be seamlessly repatriated back into the world as and when we taste the wine. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The new wave of reductive Australian Chardonnay may have been too Burgundian for our MW, but the prejudice that wine and environment are in a closed relationship of equivalence, the elements of one passing directly into the elements of the other, is lifted straight from the cellars of Abbaye de Cîteaux and its ancien régime. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">When divergent styles emerge from the same origin – two phenotypes sharing the same genotype, to use our analogy, we feel pressured into a choice. If we want to hold onto the immanence, exchangeability and proximity of the Environment <span lang="SK">⇌</span><span lang="SK"> </span>Sensation relation absolutely, we have to nominate one wine as the phenotype and the other as an imposter, or, in the Australian example, as ersatz Burgundy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Clearly, Burgundians were never confronted by this sort of choice. They never thought of themselves as making judgements; they were impelled to act by a divine spirit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Faced with making a decision between the two opposing wine styles, our Master of Wine defered to his belief (as we did when setting the exam) that the richer, less-reductive style of Australian Chardonnay is more authentic rendition of its environment - because he believes the actions and decisions of the winemakers are compelled by their surroundings. In other words, today’s winemakers should be coerced by the environment just as the Cistercians, in their time, erroneously believed they were coerced by God. To paraphrase another philosopher, a cog that doesn’t move anything drops out of the mechanism. By turning the environment into an imperative winemaking retreats, a form of medieval passivity is restored, and the integrity of the Environment <span lang="SK">⇌</span><span lang="SK"> </span>Sensation relation is maintained. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Moreover, this imperative also extends to judgement and criticism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">‘A wine can only be great if it is made to try to express terroir as perfectly as possible’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Aubert de Villaine, Burgundy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Not only is this a challenge to winemakers, but it’s also a challenge to tasters. As William Kelley suggested to me a few weeks ago, Domaine Romanée-Conti is no longer an estate we critically appraise, but rather something tasters calibrate their critical abilities against. Terroir absolutism, if you like. That which must be obeyed. Aubert is imploring us to have faith, but to what extent is our obsequiousness a consequence of price inflation? And aren't people nowadays just consuming the value of DRC rather than the wines themselves? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">As far as I’m aware the world doesn’t provide us with tablets of stone or a manual to help us decide which wines are better representations of itself, all we ever really have for comparison is other wine and vague consensus, as was the case with the Australian Chardonnay and the suggestion that it should revert to its old, rich and more familiar form. (At this moment its worth reminding ourselves that 90s Australian Chardonnay – as I remember it – was off-dry, sterile filtered, refrigerated, etc.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">One way of thinking about Burgundy is as an experimental design. These lyre-trained vines out the back of Auxey Duresses ripened earlier than nearby 1mx1m, but this system is now banned. Viticulture and enology only appear as the enemy if they’re threatening to undermine a hierarchy from which you profit. Irrigation would certainly improve the fortunes of most of Burgundy’s vineyards, just as it would benefit plantings of similarly anisohydric merlot in Bordeaux, but in so doing it would smooth out some of the differences between crus. Currently, irrigation is deemed anti-nature, but Chileans and Argentineans who plant without rootstocks have grounds for complaint. Naturalization of some techniques rather than others is typically self-serving. The people at the top of the medieval church insisted on a natural ordering – God, lazy priests, peasants – and dismissed all challenges to the regime and their status within it as heresy. It's the same story with wine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Alternatively, where wines are unfamiliar to us, we allow sentiment to be our guide. Words like terroir, purity and authenticity are extremely seductive. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I’m always struck at how spirited the word ‘Enlightenment” was in the context of a world that was opposing spirituality with science. Arguably, emotive vocabulary becomes even more irresistible in a world losing depth and meaning, or its stock of familiar certainties. The <i>Songlines </i>in the title of Bruce Chatwin’s book structure the deep relationship Aboriginal Australians have with the land, but this relationship was decimated by colonization. Maybe terroir provides an alternative point of connectedness for the New World, but one that will always seem more virtual, more reliant on bolstering words than the indigenous version it replaces. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I think Lapierre's 400 'likes' shows how deeply emotion runs through wine preference, and how powerful sentiment can be. But all those well-meaning words count for nothing when you’re blind tasting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">We put Morgon Lapierre 2014 in the 2016 MW exam, as a one half of a pair with Morgon Jadot 2014. There's nothing wrong with Jadot, in fact, someone said it was Chambertin, but of the 129 people who took the exam, not one said the Lapierre was the better wine. Most recognized it as Beaujolais, but the quality level was somewhere between entry-point Nouveau and villages; yet here it is, topping Jamie Goode’s Instagram likes. And not to be superior, in the run up to the exam, I was a </span><i style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">liker </i><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">too!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Stalking the idea that the environment is immanent to the fine wine is Gary Farr’s Pinot Noir, David Bicknell’s Oakridge Chardonnay and David Clark’s Bourgogne. In their own different ways, each of them repatriated an element we'd previously taken as site specific, and proved it nomadic and reproducible. In the Burgundy blind tasting I attended, the theme was Morey St Denis, but among the variations the least divergent pair was Farr-Dujac.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I will revisit the genotype – phenotype distinction later, in the context of domaine bottling in Burgundy, and how this has led to a proliferation in styles, but I want to pick up here on the idea of long timelines and compound change. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>Timelines, change, examples</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Gary Farr spent 19 vintages at Dujac. In the context of wine, nomadic and imitable is not as easy as buying a book of long haul return tickets. Twenty years is what passes for a generation in wine production, and this duration seems to have real resonance for vignerons, like the lapsing of true and real time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">When I asked Francois Billecart about training a Chef de Cave, he told me they should spend 20 years building the edifice of previous generations, and only at the end of their tenure can he/she suggest a few changes for posterity. As confirmation, our just retired Chef de Cave, Francois Domi, embraced barrel fermentation after 20 years in charge, and Billecart is now the 4<sup>th </sup>biggest user of oak barrels in Champagne. Twenty years before this innovation, Billecart pioneered double-debourbage and cool fermentation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science I referenced at the beginning of this talk, wrote: “Examples are what we use when we haven’t got a theory". Wine has a long history and a short chemistry; following examples buffers winemaking against the uncertainties of production, but they also become the expressive and divergent pathways that separate one grower from another. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The Jesuits used to say, 'Give me the child until seven, and I will return you the man" – it’s hard to think of a better analogy for sparkling wine production, as we think of bottles darkly navigating Maillard and autolysis. Sticking to rules and following examples increases the probability of a successful outcome.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Production is foregrounded by events and cycles that span decades: contracts, rootstocks, varieties and laws. The effects of tweaks to 1er Cru Burgundy or vintage Champagne may only become visible 10 or 20 years after the wine is bottled. Change has a long timeline. Each thickened year of wine production adds up to a score of our own. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Gary Farr experimentation with whole clusters fits into his and Australia’s extended timeline. A fledgling, convergent </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">late 20</span><sup style="font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;">th</sup><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Century industry finding its feet, then diverging after one of our generations has passed. The same will be true in England; as it was true in Burgundy, after domaine-bottling took hold. Different domaine taking different steps, their actions, processes, hunches and understanding bound and networked together into singular examples and divergent trajectories. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>Terroir Wars</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">This could be the point where we quit. Terroir was being used 250 years ago, but nobody formalized its meaning, or systematized its use. Ben Lewin MW claims its meaning may have been ambiguous in the past. If you believe wine derives its character from the soil, and there are good and bad flavours in wine, so there must be good and bad terroirs. I can only speculate on this because nobody ever did the working out on terroir, and that’s the problem. Think of a medical diagnosis – pathology, symptomology, methodology, testing – you can’t just go to your boss and say I’m suffering from gout give me the week off! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Researching this talk I looked up some vintage wine books in the MW library. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I really admire Hansen’s book, published in 1982 – anthropology, ethnology, geology, viticulture, but no mention of terroir.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">So I looked through more. George Saintsbury’s Cellar Notes, Cyril Ray, Harry Waugh, and Alexis Lichine – owner at that time of 4<sup>th</sup>Growth, Prieuré Lichine. Still no terroir.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> @</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">UK Wine info helped me out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I’m not sure what Googles methodology is, but for non-francophone writers, terroir is a millennium thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Other people will have their own theories about this, but I suspect that what we’re seeing is a reaction to the war of words between the New World – conspicuously, Australia – and France in the 1990s. With its market share under threat, France claimed terroir was a point of difference setting it apart from, and above, the New world’s offering. Australia retaliated, and claimed terroir was just marketing. The whole debacle brought terroir to the consciousness of consumers and producers, but given the looseness of the definition - its lack of rigour – soon everybody was claiming it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Apropos the terroir wars, some have appointed themselves as the true keepers of terroir, a kind of priesthood – and something I’ve been guilty of at times - whilst others have sought to bring rigour to the term and treated it like wine’s very own cosmological principle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">One discernable trend I’ve picked up on is that for a few serious journalists, Burgundy seems to signpost the authentic pathway terroir ought to take – notice the imperative form again - and I want to move onto this idea after we’ve looked at a few definitions and assumptions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">There is no consensus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Most of these statements try and set boundaries, both conceptually and territorially.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Kramer and Jefford are very democratic. Their version of terroir sounds a little bit like what liberals call “the commons”, a shared resource that everyone has access to. It just seems to be a question of planting vines, and then terroir, “with relatively simple winemaking”, will imprint on the wine. Somewhereness yields a very flat ontology. It feels very Greek to me, like a swirling, continuous <i>logos</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Tracking Somewhereness is everywhereness. If it is just a question of planting vines, then terroir just seems to work like a postcode. The idea the vine trailing over my pergola at home exhibits terroir seems to bloat the concept to the point of meaninglessness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">On the back of everywhereness, is everythingness. Monty is a good friend, and this was the straightforward answer he gave when I asked him for a definition. I’m in danger of putting words into Monty’s mouth, but I do get a broader sense when I talk to him that what he’s really getting at is a flourishing ecosystem – think of yeast, lactobacillus, mycorrhizae - for which microorganisms are indicative. Monty is a biodynamic writer and consultant (I’ve never opened a fridge more denuded of brands), and if you read the books then all manner of astronomical and totemic forces get summoned to the cause. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">So with everywhereness and everythingness there’s no hierarchy and a sort of dispersal of influence among multiple physical and biological actors and agents. Now, I don’t find this idea unattractive; we live in the “varnish layer” of the Earth’s surface, to quote Bruno Latour, and realizing the extent to which everything is interconnected is, perhaps, our only salvation; but it doesn’t tell us much about terroir - maybe because it tells us too much. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Michael Broadbent’s idea resonates with Shand’s. Broadbent believes the term is misappropriated and should only refer to the natural environment. Personally, I have a problem with this: it naturalizes winemaking so that it can instate the minimalist relation, Environment <span lang="SK">⇌</span><span lang="SK"> </span>Sensation. But if you really want to go back in time to some sort of first principle, then go back far enough, and there’s no distinction between culture and nature. We need to be careful of origin stories that rely upon a beginning that never was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The INAO includes man, so recognition that winemaking isn’t just some spontaneous event – a throwback perhaps to pre-Pasteur thinking when yeast and lactobacillus were just thought of as coincidental to fermentation. It also draws upon history, and that's fine, as long as we see history as being unfinished business, and we recognize that the past gives us shaky beliefs as well as immovable walls. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Sichel’s idea is interesting in its positing of boundaries. Peter Sichel claimed, that only 7% of Bordeaux exhibited terroir, so there’s a certain threshold to quality that needs to be achieved; though Peter then went onto say that terroir has nothing to do with <o:p></o:p>quality. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Then, two rejections. The Australian Wine Bureau we’ve already mentioned, but Bill Nansen seems to be claiming that terroir is made-up in its modern, dispersed, everywhereness sense. As an author who makes his corn writing about Burgundy, I suspect he thinks there’s a precedent set by Burgundy that needs following. Certainly writers like Jon Bonné seem to align themselves with this point of view, which we might summarize as follows: - Burgundy had longer to sort and frame a range of environmental factors through the prism of elementary winemaking, and other regions need to take note so as not to misappropriate terroir. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">This is the viewpoint I want to challenge: not only are we being told what the model of terroir should be, we’re also being told what wine ought to be. The past has done its job with Burgundy, now we just need to correct the errant ways of fallen appellations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Finally, I like this from a New Zealander making one of France’s most iconic wines. He refers to man, soil, environment, but are their contributions as equivalent as he suggests: a third man, a third nature, a third soil? Maybe climate is more important in Chile, and soil more important in Burgundy. In other words, we use different models in different places. Again, I find this a perfectly reasonable idea. I think we underestimate the isolation of wine regions historically, even within the same country. Champagne, Jerez, and Bordeaux just went about things in different ways, they formed distinct networks of production; there’s no sense in which they expediently departed the true path to authenticity and purity taken by the Côte de Nuits' vignerons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>Terroir and the Côte de Nuits (See previous blog </b></span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>entries parts 1 and 2)</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">‘Terroir and the Côte de Nuits’ was self-serving research. At home, I’d found this shallow lump of Bajocian limestone, and wanted to know what this meant for production. Nothing I read could explain the advantages, so I pieced together various bits of research and came up with a theory as to why certain vineyards routinely performed better than others on the Côte’s brashy soils. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">What I liked about this account, was that it seemed to explain why certain soils are always better, whatever the weather. In hot, dry years, vines planted on the best soils maintain access to water; whilst in wet years, hydric stress comes more quickly. It also seemed to capture the heterogeneity of the Côte de Nuits, without delving into topography and slope angles, which count for little on east-facing slopes. I wished I’d investigated microbiology a little more, but again, just as the Côte d’Or is a homoclime, so its ecosystem is likely to show only minor variation. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">My conclusion was that Grand Cru designation was linked to maturity and concentration. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>Framing and Walls</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Burgundy’s inordinately long two thousand-year timeline helped capture some of these differences empirically and structurally. Walls surrounded Chambertin as early as the 7<sup>th</sup>Century, and the sustained patronage of dukes, princes and the church provided the region with the stability and resources to flourish. What was bad for peasants was good for wine. There was no opportunity cost attached to centuries spent comparing climats.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Shared and rudimentary vinicultural methods and techniques brought consistency and aesthetic visibility to, what was, God’s creation. For two millennia the effects of geology trickled down through Burgundy’s human strata, recurring tropes and intensities augmenting the vineyards in which they worked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">There isn't a strong geological necessity for the existing pattern of vineyard framing; the senses only get you so far, particularly when they’re up against the vanity of property ownership. The geology and hydrology of Clos Vougeot is notoriously divergent, but even Romanée-Conti is transversed by a fault between the Bajocian and Bathonian beds. The terrain is so fractured, and the accumulation of colluvial and bio-detritic material so erratic, that framing inevitably captures some combinations of geological differences, but not others: the territory could be sub-divided in alternative ways to yield different but equally interesting variations on a Burgundian theme. Difference precedes identity, if you like.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The local pattern of rural settlement - Nuits, Vosne, Morey - shows looser geological underpinnings than the climats. Geological survey maps reveal that variation is much greater down the dip slope of the Côte than it is along its length, yet we can’t resist falling into the nominalist trap of taking the village name as representing something more than the settlement to which it refers. Some differences count more than others. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The gradients of history ran shallowly across the middle ages. Collective winemaking, extended timelines, and restricted ownership – church, dukes, regents – together with framing and wall building, led to a system of theme and variations based upon the climats. Small batch winemaking wasn’t on offer; winemaking was scaled on how big a chestnut tree you could find and fell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The Monks’ devoutness minimized human endeavor and maximized God’s omnipotence. Human activity merely confirmed the expressivity of God’s creation. The problem of discretely determinable phenomena originating out of nature unaided is not raised in 15<sup>th</sup>Century Burgundy. In fact, as I’ve already mentioned in the context of historicity, even in the twentieth century growers still seem accustomed to a world view that largely excludes their own efforts, talents and inventiveness; or at least that’s how they choose to appear to their visitors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The French Revolution broke-up the ownership of Burgundy’s vineyards by church and state, and redistributed their tenure amongst local growers and families. Napoleonic laws of succession that required vineyard holdings to be split evenly between children, proved too effective. Incessant probate meant vineyard holdings often became too small to be commercial, and the divergent trend in ownership only served to reinforce the convergent trend in winemaking, as negociants stepped in to amalgamate small lots of Meursault and Chambertin into commercially viable and exportable quantities. Whatever differences existed between individual grower’s output were largely dissipated in blends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Only with the advent of domaine bottling in the latter half of the 20<sup>th</sup>Century do things change. The rewards for selling in small volumes began to exceed those derived from selling to negociants. (The people who built Burgundy’s walls never considered the economic consequences of a world of 8 billion people.) Not only did direct commercialization become more profitable, but multiple vineyard ownership introduced after the French revolution finally started to be replicated in a divergent winemaking trend. Of course, appellation laws remained in place, individual climats were bottled separately and everyone still spoke in the same cowed tones, but the gradient had steepened. Growers could follow their hunches, institute their own practices and refine examples for posterity. It wasn’t that they’d abandoned the environmentally and territorially oriented schema of climats bequeathed them by history, rather they had de-territorialized and claimed an element of production that patronage and negociants had previously denied them – the difference between tasting Coche and Lafon, or Dujac and Ponsot, if you like. The theme and variations enshrined by the climats is overlaid by another schema: - the particular theme and variations of individual domaine’s production. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">To adapt an insight of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, we are confronted with a sedentary distribution of qualities coming from the vineyards, and a nomadic distribution of qualities issuing from the domaine, quite literally in the sense of Gary Farr’s adaption of whole bunch fermentation in Geelong. The ground beneath growers stayed firm, but they themselves had shifted; though you’d never realize this by listening to them. Coche and Lafon both see themselves as revealing the phenotype of Meursault Genevrières, though the two wines are very different, the expression of house style trumping vineyard designation as a source of similarities and differences. To stretch the genetic analogy, what we have now, with the generation of new possibilities and mutations, looks far more like a form of sexual reproduction that cloning. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Coche’s style is very reductive, mineral, to step on another vinous landmine. I remember a story about Jean Francois Coche taking delivery of a very expensive press, but abandoning it for his old Vaslin because the lees it produced were too light. The chemistry of reduction is amplified by heavier solids, the flavor vector, thiol-acid, gets a boost, and the impression of salinity intensifies. When I visited Coche a decade or more ago, actions and protocols were put in place to generate and exaggerate this particular character, starting in the vineyard, where spur pruning trends towards thicker skins, lower yields and elevated solids, compared to guyot. Once in the cellar, heavy, healthy lees developed and sustained the wine in a reductive state; and finally, diligent and timely handling at bottling meant the chain of reactions initiated during elevage continued beneath the cork. Jean Francois was doing intricate chemistry, but by following examples rather than writing equations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">As well as sedentary and nomadic distributions, Deleuze also offers us the useful concept of molecular arrangements, which can be set against our earlier relation of proximity and equivalence - Environment <span lang="SK">⇌</span><span lang="SK"> </span>Sensation. Molecular interactions are much more dynamic, and involve changes of state, and the appearance of new compounds with new properties. Reversing these sorts of combinations is not straightforward. Moreover, as with chemistry, the properties of the resulting compounds may be entirely unrecognizable from the elements out of which they’re composed. The danger of being overly reductionistic or clinging on too tightly to naturalistic accounts of wine, is that we miss out on the extraordinary <o:p></o:p>inventiveness within production that makes DRC, Curly Flat and Monte Bello what they are today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Coche, Lafon, Boillot, Jobard and the other owners of Meursault Genevrières may still use a language of proximity and static equivalences, but if we watch what they do, and follow how their bottles evolve - instead of just listening - then their activities and wines are much more molecular and dynamic than their words indicate. The reason why we believed that there was anything like a unitary genotype-phenotype relationship holding between wines and climats was because the expressivity of individual growers was oppressed by scale. Through much of Burgundy’s history, ownership was in the hands of the few, whilst after the Revolution wines could only be commercialized if the fragmented parts were blended into bigger wholes. The climats became the only source of differences by default.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">If today we are living through a golden age for Burgundy, it’s because of the generous multiplication of possibilities that domaine-bottling has provided. Necessarily, berries and yeast will be decisive vectors of outside influence, but there is nothing like an imperative or manual arriving at the pressoir with them. The Beaune Périphérique is full of busy wine supply stores where you can buy an array of cultured yeasts, yet William Kelley told me of the 260 visits he made last year, only one admitted to inoculating their ferment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">As said, at creative writing school they push the maxim, ‘always show, never tell’; it’s an adage that also holds for the cellars of Vosne, and we become part of this story when we equate their economy of words to an economy of actions. Enological time may appear to stand as still as the cellar air, but this is an illusion that comes from the assuredness of following examples. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Just as individual domaine confront and handle nature’s ordeal and bounty differently, so other regions also react differently to the world put in front of them. The stories of Avize, Clos St Hune, Jerez and Monte Bello are not the same. As I’ve mapped it, the path Burgundy went down is just a consequence of its history, and there’s a big distinction to be made between having a history and being compelled by some earthy imperative. Champagne and Bordeaux aren’t errant regions: they just have distinctive pasts. They are ‘otherwise’, just as Lafon and Coche can be considered ‘otherwise’ to the negociant wines that came before them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The fact that terroir was never formalized perhaps means its sense will always be more evocative than analytical. Identifying a phenomenon that is 'Chambertin' has arguably become harder in recent years as domaine have become more autonomous. Notwithstanding this, those making and those of us tasting Chambertin will continue our vane pursuit of its essence. Phenomena may elude us, but essence will continue to exert a siren force over us. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-83712876855499795502017-10-21T04:09:00.001-07:002017-10-22T23:07:45.586-07:00Curly Flat - Masters of Wine Tasting<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Curly</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Flat</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">was</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">founded</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">by</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Jenifer</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Kolka</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Philip</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Moraghan</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">in</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> 1991. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">It</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">isn</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">’</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">t</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">unusual</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">for</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">people</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">to</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">enter</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">the</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">wine</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">world</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">with</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> sky </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">high</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">hopes</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">but</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">it</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">is</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">unusual</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">to</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">have</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">them</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">realized</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">so</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">unambiguously</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Jancis</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Robinson</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; 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mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> 2004 </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">was</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> her favourite </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Pinot</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">from</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">that</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">year</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">globally</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">. Even t</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">hough</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">we</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">didn</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">’</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">t</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">taste</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">as far back as 2004</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, Curly Flat</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> 2012 </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">appears to be</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> in prime</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">shape</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">to </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">see</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">-</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">off</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">international</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">all</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">-</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">comers</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">too</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">. Who cares if Burgundy isn't the doomed place in 2012 that it was in 2004? The message from this tasting was </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica";"><i>bring it on!</i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">estate</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">is</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">planted</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">in</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">the</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">cool</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Macedon</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Ranges,</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">on</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">deep</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Ordovician</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">basalt</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">soils</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Clones</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">are</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">mixed</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> – 114,115, MV6, D5V12 – predominantly </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">trained</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> as</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">lyre</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">with</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">a</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">little</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Geneva</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">double</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">curtain</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">vines</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">are</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">irrigated</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> – ‘</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">judiciously’</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> - </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">biodynamic</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">methods</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">principles are followed</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">though</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">a</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">last</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">resort</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">option</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">of</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">synthetic</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">fungicides</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">is</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">available</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Over</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">recent</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">years</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">the</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> e</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">state</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">has</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">fallen</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">into</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">the</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">virtuous</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">habit</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">of</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">running</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">trials</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">bottling</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">the results </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">separately</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">for</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">future</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> evaluation</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">On</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">the</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">night</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">we</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">were</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">asked</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">to</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">compare</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">contrast</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">the</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">role</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">of</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">clones</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">oak</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> stems</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">on</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">wines</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">from</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> 2010, 2012 </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> 2013. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Additionally</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">we</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">tried</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">finished</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">wines</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">from</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> 2010,
2012, 2013, 2014, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> two 2017 </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">barrel</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">samples</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">wines</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">were</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">presented</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">by</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Matt</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Harrop</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, Curly Flat's </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">newly</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">-</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">appointed</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">highly</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">esteemed</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">winemaker</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">with</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Jenifer</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Kolka</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Miles</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Corish</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">MW</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">and</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">John</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Atkinson</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">MW</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">completing</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">the</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">panel</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Arial Hebrew";">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Flight
1. Clones:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">A comparison was made between
3 clones: 114, 115 and MV6. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Very obvious differences
across the wines. Clone 114 was, for me, the least fragrant of the 3 wines but the most satisfying to taste in terms of mouthfeel. Pinot can show a
hard-edged brilliance in Victoria, but rigid palate symmetry is often the payback
for aromatic extravagance. By contrast,
there was a notable and very seductive lozenge-like smoothness to all the
finished wines we tasted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Matt explained that Victoria's experience with Dijon clones wasn't altogether positive. In
warmer areas like Yarra, rapid ripening often resulted in simple, fruit-driven
wines. One of the qualitative factors selected for by the INRA clonal programme was early ripening, and what is a boon in Burgundy can become a bane in the sunnier, and warmer vineyards of Australia. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clone 114, Matt noted, gets early rachis lignification,
which can be advantageous if you're set on using stems in the ferment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">A discussion of terroir
ensued. The trials in front of us backed-up Matt’s assertion that ‘man’ is very
proactive in developing particular wine styles, but he also claimed that there is also an
overarching ‘Macedon’ character that is directly attributable to the regions soils and climate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Reflecting on Burgundy,
the point was made that 2000 years of unbroken production has woven ways of
doing and thinking into the regional consciousness. Medieval sentiments that made man an observer of God's creation are still encountered
in a meek self-image that habitually looks beyond itself for explanations of
style and character. Moreover, vinicultural activities become ‘second nature’ by
virtue of their repetition, hiding in plain sight. 'Terroir' has the unfortunate knack of closing down conversations in Burgundy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The Cote d'Or's geology is
complicated. The availability of water and the rate of its extraction varies
significantly from one vineyard to the next. To complicate matters further, the divergent hydrology is augmented by Pinot’s own anisohydric profligacy, eventually playing out as
differences in berry size, ripening rate and vine nutritional status.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Matt pointed out that Australians have become experts in water management.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Evapotranspiration rates are significantly
higher in the Macedon Ranges than Burgundy, and dry farming can be a hollow
boast if the momentum of ripening is stalled through lack of water. The soils
at Curly Flat are fertile; a slow feed of water soluble nutrients is essential
for vine health and fruit quality, but this needs to be achieved without causing
the shoots to bolt.</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Flight
2. New oak vs Neutral oak:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Australians might be good at
water management, but, according to Matt, they’ve become over adept at oak extraction.
A comparison between two pairs of samples drawn from 2012 and 2013 - new oak vs neutral
oak - supported Matt's contention. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
finish on both unoaked versions was more expressive and expansive than that of their
new oak twin. Consequently, the final assemblage reflects a more cultured attitude towards oak
use, with only a quarter of the final blend seeing new barrels. The additional oak tannin helps fix colour and raise the redox potential of the wine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">A more general discussion
of tannin followed, with Matt stating that the quality of Burgundy tannin is
something Australian pinot producers should aspire towards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The point was made that
Burgundy displays huge variations in quality. In order to hold the region up as
an exemplar we need to first drain the swamp of bad wine. Every great bottle of Burgundy has its shadow. Notwithstanding
this, the panel discussed factors that may positively impact tannin quality in
Burgundy’s best wines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">One idea put forward is
that there may be a latitudinal forcing of dormancy within the vine. Burgundy’s continental
climate and high latitude may encourage lignification, the vine responding
positively to rapidly falling light levels and temperatures through September. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">A second suggestion is that
wine aggregates the season-long influence of vine vigour, leaf number and leaf age. Dr Belinda Kemp has suggested that the quality of tannin is often
masked and negatively reinforced by other ‘green’ characters sourced from the
leaves and transported to the fruit. At harvest, Burgundy’s attenuated canopies are hedged to a few senescing primary leaves and
even fewer laterals. Maybe a combination of low vigour and zealous
tipping and topping literally cuts off this masking problem at source.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Flight
3. Destemmed vs Stems:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">As with flight 2, two
wines each form 2012 and 2013, one destemmed, the other whole cluster.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The difference within the
pairs was pronounced. Either of the 2012 samples could have been bottled in its
own right. A pleasant and intense citrus oil character was drawn from the stems in 2012, bridging the gap between mid-palate fruit and acidity in
the finish. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The 2013 whole cluster experiment
was less conclusive. There was some eucalypt-taint present, particularly
exaggerated in the stem sample. Matt explained that eucalyptus is particularly
pernicious as it is perceptible at very low concentrations. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Just a </span>few trapped leaves within the clusters can have a very detrimental effect on the whole vintage. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Returning to the theme of style
and extraction, Matt said that he had been experimenting with carbonic
maceration. He likes some of the carbonically-derived fruit characteristics,
but finds the stems more problematic. His solution is to run with carbonic
maceration for a few days, and then push the active ferment through the destemmer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Flight
4. 2017 Barrel samples:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Only two samples in this
flight: one wild ferment, the other inoculated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Within the room there was
a preference for the texture of the wild ferment over the cultured yeast. More
interestingly, after 6 months in barrel, these samples seemed simple in the context of the bottled wines we'd just tasted, illustrating how important the inward dynamic of
redox potential is to the finished wines. Again, this shows a stylistic shift
in technique and thinking. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the past,
Australians were quite content to layer flavours one on top of another, with
barrels adding a finishing polish to the primary fruit. By contrast, at Curley
Flat barrel-ageing is employed much more generatively, increased tannin
load being valued for the role it plays in a chain of redox reactions that
build intensity and definition within the wines over time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Flight
5. Finished wines:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Four vintages were shown –
2010, 2012, 2013, and 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">As said, there is a lozenge-like
smoothness to the finished wines. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The attack - not the right expression - is supple; there’s a mid-palate swell to the fruit;
and the acidity is naturally high. When everything is in the right proportion the chain of advantageous redox reactions set in motion during elevage isn't broken by bottling. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">So often New World Pinot
ages inauspiciously. There’s little development, just a sluggish
leaching away of charact</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica";">er, like the colour slowly draining out of an old photo. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica";"> Claiming an expensive wine will age is indispensable to its positioning, but it's often no more than an extended warranty that comes from driving a few extra nails into the body of a wine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica";">Judging by 2010 and 2012, Curly Flat is that rare thing: an Australian Pinot that, over a decade or so, can reassemble its elements into a more flattering form. 2012 Curly Flat really is a magnificent wine, with 2010 not far behind. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica";">This was an excellent
event, well-attended and well-organised. A big thank you is due to Jenifer, Miles and Matt for their generosity and time. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica";"> </span></div>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Message Header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Salutation"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Date"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Document Map"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Bottom of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Variable"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation subject"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="No List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Contemporary"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Professional"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Theme"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Level 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
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John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-27140704017917299752017-10-14T23:14:00.001-07:002017-10-23T13:08:09.504-07:00Sinking Craft<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuUL696O40bM9F1NmDAnUZgIXnjPdvc66O3y4loagUP7Ek_Ru30zcyk-gpTHzpmgMdL_cBhC7qff_BvciclFFT19vh1g9tx0r1dG1IAVYvv8eEeG00SLijCr_52ekZiNdcKUX3m8bX74k/s1600/henge-83-colin-k-chopper2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="1000" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuUL696O40bM9F1NmDAnUZgIXnjPdvc66O3y4loagUP7Ek_Ru30zcyk-gpTHzpmgMdL_cBhC7qff_BvciclFFT19vh1g9tx0r1dG1IAVYvv8eEeG00SLijCr_52ekZiNdcKUX3m8bX74k/s400/henge-83-colin-k-chopper2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">“More
depends on what things are called than on what they are.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Being a neurotic parent I
can’t look at my daughters without thinking they’re destined to carry variants
of my mistakes with them through time and space, seeding the future with updated
versions of past calamities. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In June, 1981, my mother
rescued me from The Stonehenge Festival. The humiliation I felt slinking
through a cordon of Hell’s Angels to her Vauxhall Chevette remains with me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The past repeated itself this
summer when I collected our youngest daughter from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Secret Garden Party</i> - in a Lexus. On the way home she told me the
blatant drug taking had upset her, and she’d had her fill of conversations that
revolved round brands rather than bands. When, in the 80s, Huey Lewis sang, “It’s
hip to be square”, maybe he was foretelling the kind of future my daughters now
inhabit, in which stoned, privileged kids boast to one another about gin
brands, parental trips to Waitrose and other people’s Rolex watches. In
marketing’s emotional economy drugs and brands amount to the same thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Dickens observed that gin
gave the wretched and defeated a temporary fix of oblivion from their despair. Gin
houses were a symptom rather than a cause, though Dickens recognised that in
offering an escape from life’s brutality alcohol advanced its own insidious form
of capture. As long as there was poverty, gin houses would continue to exist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Gin survived the last
decades of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century as Gordon’s, but like deep-ocean bacteria
that cling to hydrogen sulphide vents for breath, the brand lived out a woebegone
existence at the back of G-Plan cabinets, or else bottles were inverted and
hung in dingy rows of optics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In the 90s, I attended the
launch of a Gordon’s Gin commercial. The ad was aimed at a ‘younger demographic’,
but as a result of EU directives restricting TV advertising of alcohol it was scheduled
for cinema distribution only. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite
all the fizz and clink no one there believed the ad would achieve its brief and
recruit a new generation of revellers to Gordon’s. The more the presentation
addressed this separation, the wider the chasm grew. Spirit brands needed to be
able to bypass EU interdictions, or find new markets and new media that were less
inhibited.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The advent of digitalization
and mobile phones changed both the way we view the world and way the world
views us. The cultural theorist, Ian Buchanan, makes the point that twenty
years ago we were in the middle of an ADHD epidemic, yet for the past decade
parents have been yelling at plugged-in kids to be less attentive, and turn
their phones off. As with Dickens’ gin houses, we escape one problem by
stumbling into another.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Digitalization, according
to Bruno Latour, “finds more complexity in the elements than the aggregates.” The
extraordinary capabilities of today’s search engines allied to our propensity
to share <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">likes</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dislikes</i> creates strategic opportunities
for Google, Twitter and other social networking platforms. I see myself as
autonomous, resilient, and centred, but Google sees me much more open-endedly:
as one possible intersection of people, services and products that can be
reshuffled and built upon. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">As a case in point, while
writing this post, I searched and re-read Bruno Latour’s paper, ‘The whole is
always smaller than its parts’, only for Google’s algorithm to return my
inquiry back to me in ads for single men and wine tours. Google deduced enough
about my lifestyle from ‘Bruno Latour’ to try and top-up my R&R network of
people and places. Digital marketing develops opportunities virally from the
bottom up. It can create new and inclusive aggregates by enhancing, occupying
and expanding upon individuals’ existing connections. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Latour volunteers the
Mexican wave as an example of viral behaviour. There is no preplanning: a man
stands and raises his arms, and sometimes this builds into a spontaneous
rhythmic motion, and sometimes it doesn’t. Similarly, ants don’t work to a master
plan when they build a nest. The interaction of one worker ant with another
means every ants’ nest shares certain features, yet each nest is a unique
structure. Both examples start with the individual and their immediate connections.
Rather than seeing society as ordered from above, Latour urges us to think of
aggregates loosely overlapping other aggregates, but these assemblages ultimately
depend upon the connectivity and agreement between individual elements in order
to emerge and persist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Another example may help
here. If we enrich the combined data set of Conservative and Labour Party supporters
by including members’ published attitudes towards Europe then, potentially, we
can search and cut across old alliances and realise a new social grouping –
ergo, UKIP. The connection between Nigel Farage and Arron Banks gathered up and
united political opponents, eventually disrupting what most of us thought was
an inevitable, self-replicating structure of governance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">UKIP may prove to be as short-lived
as a Mexican wave, but it is a useful, if simplistic, model for showing how digital
analysis can break-up and realign existing organisations. We can think of
aggregates (in this case, political parties) as unstable isotopes whose atoms
keep bonding in different ways to produce new, fragile forms. Whether
assemblages bring about order of disorder, individuation or cohesiveness depends
on how they overlap with other assemblages, if they overlap at all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Crucially, Latour doesn’t
look upon the ‘the digital’ as epoch-making, instead he believes that digitalization
helps reveal a structure that has always been there but until now escaped our scrutiny.
Aggregates and elements are fundamentally equivalent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reason we think of them separately is because
when it came to complex assemblages like societies we simply lacked the
empirical muscle and data to see how the elements behaved, so a separation was
fudged between the macro and micro, society and individual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I think Bruno Latour
would approve of my daughter’s use of ‘a thing’. According to her UKIP is ‘a thing’,
and craft gin is ‘a thing’. Urban vocabulary captures the coalescing of people,
places, time and products in a way that subverts the established vernacular of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thing-hood</i> as existing independently
from us. Furthermore, ‘things’ overlap and build into lifestyles. In Cecily’s
example, she needed to endorse Rolex-Gin-Waitrose to gain access to, and the
approval of, her peers. Apple, remember, implored us to ‘think different’, not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">differently</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Sacred is the exemplar of
the craft-gin-thing. The company was founded by Ian Hart and Hilary Witney in
2008. Their story brings together entrepreneurialism, expertise, networking and
a fortuitous legal about-turn that meant spirit production could take place at
a micro level. We also need to add Gordon’s to this ensemble, the marooned
market leader that had become separated from its customer base by EU interdictions;
and a youthful, connected bar community that couldn’t be bothered with gin’s
historicity beyond the role it played in corroborating the costume drama of
hipster lifestyle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Ten years ago, tech media
companies were regarded as the benign gatekeepers of a shared virtual space rather
than as monopolists, and the digital turn seemed, for a brief moment, an
opportunity for the many rather than the few. The algorithms that would turn
our intellectual property into their capital were still pending, and
information trafficked freely. Sacred crossed the moat before the draw-bridge
was pulled-up, benefiting from uninhibited and rapid access to the early
adopters and influencers in their market; underscoring the fact that with every
success story there’s an element of right place, right time, right thinking. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Today, both digital space
and the craft gin market are much more crowded than they were back in 2008.
Vlogs are the latest trend to air. Watch a well-produced video and you’ll have
to squint to see the joins that separate it from cinematic commercials, or our
own fantasies of a better funded life; but watch a duff one – the overwhelming majority
are disturbingly bad - and you sense the embarrassment of the man whose Mexican
wave dies unrequited. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Sitting through crap
vlogs and irrelevant ads, the realisation came to me that only with hindsight
does marketing purify itself into a meta-language of success, aspiration and
affirmation. Most of the time marketing muddles through life, just like us,
though it’s better at hiding the flops behind the triumphs - until it began
leaving a digital trail on YouTube and Instagram, that is. More generally,
marketing seems to uncritically co-opt, and bandwagon itself upon, ‘the digital’,
‘the neural’, ‘the irrational’, ‘the genetic’, parading them as paradigms of
future prosperity, or as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">smart</i> ways
out of a doomed present. As Steve
Woolgar has pointed out, marketing has a revelatory structure. Like the analyst
and the couch, it stages a scenario in which the consumer’s irrational
motivations are brought to client consciousness; thereafter, all manner of
quackery is prescribed as a fix. There has to be some useful stuff mixed in
with the dross, but marketing has a tendency to swallow things whole, fearful that
it might be outmanoeuvred or outflanked by them. Contradictions are inevitable.
‘Let the consumer decide’ sounds like Smithian rational decision making, but
these are often the same consumers whose irrational motivations - or so they
tell us on the couch - are hidden from them. If this sounds a lot like a man
selling ladders to escape the snakes he sold you last week, you are not alone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Gin brands have kept pace
with the inflationary expansion of vlogs. Sipsmith and Sacred have been joined
by hundreds of new entrants, and craft now accounts for 50% of the domestic gin
market. Craft evokes a utopian view of gin production, stripping away the silos
of bulk manufacture, and superseding familiar brands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The philosopher, Mark
Fisher, recently asked the question: which musical genre from the last 10 years will
constitute the retro-choices of future generations? His point being that
creativity has been the looser in the backward looking world of digitalization
that finds profit easy to come by in the simple reproduction and distribution
of back catalogues. Even today’s new acts sound like they’ve been plucked
serendipitously from the past. As Fisher points out, we can listen to pop music
from the 70s, 80s and 90s, and even if we don’t know the artist we can still make an informed guess at the year it was released. There’s was an identifiable
progression and succession of musical styles that the derivative Ed Sheeran and
Artic Monkeys have helped bring to a halt. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Viewed from this
perspective, craft, like vinyl and hipsters, is a demand to let history take
place, but as nostalgia and retro rather than as events. It aestheticizes
production, pursues the image, and abandons historicity. Images proliferate
precisely because their production already includes their own obsolescence. If
craft seems a precarious category it’s because it is so tied to the fate of the
image and to fashion, and is therefore exposed to the compulsion for change and
the relentless churn of the new.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Ten years ago, two
friends of mine, Jasper Cuppaidge and John Hegarty, collaborated together on
Camden Brewery. I was involved in the project in a very minor way as I did the
first brew with Jasper at a friend’s micro-brewery. Jasper’s family had run a
brewery in Australia, so there was a nice back story to the brand about moving
away to come back home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">John is the man who got generations
of kids who’d shot Germans in the playground driving Audis – ‘Vorspung durch Technik’
is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his</i> tag line – and he brought
decades of branding intelligence to the project. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Camden Brewery rode the
craft wave. Their beer was well-received; they did a nice line in
retro-labelling (Jasper owned the rights to some of the original Australian
labels); and the company bolstered its capacity through crowd funding. Camden
became the poster boy for nostalgic beer drinkers who were younger and less
sweaty than CAMRA. If squabbles within categories are embittered by the
narcissism of fine differences (psychoanalysis uses fine, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">never</i> small!) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>then craft
drinkers are always to found on the self-regarding side of the argument.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Seven years after that initial brew, Camden was sold to Budweiser for £78million. I was pleased for Jasper and John, but the
recriminations among my beer obsessed friends were immediate. Prior to the sale
they’d sought out the brand, but now they confided in me, “It was never any
good, anyway.” They felt they’d been duped. Craft, for them, was a line of
flight that broke free from the big breweries – they were the ‘first
capitalists’ according to a beer writing friend – and now this escape route had
been seized and blocked. As if this thought wasn’t bad enough, there was an even
more subverting idea in play: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that
Camden had set out to steal the heart from a category that was imitable
precisely because it was built on sentiment rather than substance, and what
substance there was could be easily replicated. The same principle applies to
scale: is there something intrinsically different about small batch production,
or is it just, as Latour would have it, a misplaced emotion tied to an expedient
division between macro and micro?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I remember John Hegarty
criticised a paper I’d written on wine branding for being too headstrong, so
maybe he’d seen a seduction at work in the reinvigorated beer category that was
open to leverage. Monks making Lambic beer has precedent, but surely UK
production is derivative; its own form of capture, even. Moreover, isn’t there
a circular argument at work here? Craft beer is interesting and good, and the
reason it’s interesting and good is because it’s craft. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">What goes for beer also
goes for gin. All the new market entrants must be persuaded that there’s either
an insatiable interest for botanicals, or that they can outcompete and undercut the
categories premium market leaders and still make margin. Sacred made a timely
jump across one moat before the bridge was raised, but maybe it needs a white
knight to help it make the next leap. Even my kids are starting to wonder how
many craft gins the UK market can sustain!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The reason John Hegarty
is pertinent to this post is because John, in his dual role as Creative Director
of BBH and owner of a domaine in the Minervois, has been unequivocal in his criticism of
the wine business, in particular the categories’ dearth of consumer focused brands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">A Twitter exchange that followed on
from Charlie Ingham’s post ‘Big Brand Wine” made me reconsider John's argument.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica";">I 'liked' this tweet form Joelle Nebbe-Mornot:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #f5f8fa; color: #14171a; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Brands as safe shortcuts on everything we
don't care about. Then on topics that grab us, we all end up seeking the niche
diversity. Geek out</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">My experience in the
supermarket reflects Joelle’s. Ten washing powders is enough, but drifting down
the wine shelves I can rarely find a bottle I want to buy. I’m too involved in
the wine category for the supermarket’s wine selection to be relevant; and I
just buy Persil out of habit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica";">My supermarket basket looks the same as many other shoppers, but their avoidance of
wine comes down to a lack of confidence, or unfamiliarity with the brands on offer.
What John Hegarty and others conclude is that we need more relevant and
recognisable wine brands to recruit, retain and up-sell consumers. Customers don't trust their own knowledge, nor are they trusting of the distributed
brands to provide value for money. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica";"> </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica";">Supermarket
bottle spend remains low, but it could be improved if customers were offered a
better choice. This line of reasoning is often underscored by a threat: ‘If
wine continues to be resistant to consumer needs then it shouldn’t take its
market share for granted.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">When following this argument,
we again need to be aware of staging. Firstly, marketing offers solutions, but to prescribe a cure it first needs to contrive a threat that it alone is
the answer for: - ‘Do it our way or suffer these consequences in the future’….
Secondly, marketing naturalises ‘choice’ to suit its own purposes and methods.
What Joelle refers to as ‘geek out’ is, for me, actually what constitutes making
a choice. I am in my element choosing between tens of thousands of wines. I can
bring my expertise to bear and, within reason, buy what I want<u>.</u> By
contrast, phrases like, ‘Let the consumer choose’ or ‘The customer will decide’
seen in the context of a limited range of brands is, in fact, no choice at all.
By the time the supermarket buyer has whittled a category down to a few brands
there’s little choosing and decision making left for the consumer to enact. What
is called ‘choice’ is an oligopoly of brand interest. Finally, the whole issue
of wine brands starts to look like an exercise in opportunistic appropriation. I
just don’t buy into Mike Paul’s argument that what the Cistercians were really
doing when they erected walls round the perimeter of Clos Vougeot was brand
building. This is a pernicious example of marketing capturing the slowly built reputations
of others - ‘Latour’, ‘Petrus’, ‘Krug’ - to help secure its own nebulous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">luxury</i> category. Marketing is a child of
the 20<sup>th</sup> Century, not before. Lafite isn’t a brand, just as Homo
Erectus pulping a Neanderthal brain with a stone axe isn’t proto-neurology. We
need to be able to show a disciplinary framework - the ‘working out’, if you
like – <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to earn the right to claim something
as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ours</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Cars are the exemplar of marketing's value to a single category.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Almost every attribute and quality is communicated
through the prism of brands. We experience luxury, mid-market and value through
brands and their extensions, rather than as abstractions: Porsche, Vauxhall,
Audi, Seat. Cars are branding’s primal element, and marketing does the job of generating
and distributing new products for profit. Even the most earnest innovations appeal
to consumers in ways they’d never imagined possible. Who ever thought we’d
boast about batteries? And which of you doesn’t want to own a Tesla?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">What works for cars works
for other categories too. Persil doesn’t fulfil me, but I’m a repeat customer. Brands
make decision making easy. So why am I a sceptic when it comes to wine?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Providing a definition of
terroir that fits all regions is problematic, but arguably the most obdurate difficulty facing marketing is that terroir’s spatial distribution of differences is already
doing the job it has earmarked for itself. In the bottled water category, branding
brings its own topology of premium and value to products with a high degree of convergence,
so you’d think that wine, with its multifarious differences, would be an
open goal - but it isn’t. Wine marketers are like latecomers to a game
of Monopoly who find all the sets are owned, and all the hotels have been used up. The only strategy left open to them is to buy
stations and utilities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">A variant of this problem faces new entrants into wine production. Australia made
a bold attempt to resist terroir with interregional blends, but, with a few notable
exceptions, premium Australian wine (often the most profitable part of the
market) now sells on typicity and regional identity. Sure, you can corral all
the exceptions into a subset and make a counter case, but this just strikes me
as another gratuitous act of marketing self-purification. Exceptions, it’s said, make for bad
law, but they’re very useful for marketers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">At its most hostile, Wine
Australia claimed terroir was marketing, but the criticism didn’t stick.
Terroir is more than ‘a thing’, despite all its inherent vagueness. History and
economics has sedimented and reified the ineffable into the immovable. For
centuries, terroir was compresent with God, exerting power over generations of Burgundian
vignerons. We can bemoan the fact that Bordeaux and Burgundy are now winner-take-all
markets, or that Pomerol is always assumed to be better than Minervois, but
there’s little we can do to change things. Rejigging a Slavoj Zizek one-liner: It’s easier for us to imagine the end of civilisation than the overthrow of the 1855 classification. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Terroir is an encounter with historicity, rather than its faux, nostalgic shadow - craft. Frederic Jameson writes
about the appeal of ‘ecologies of production’ as an escape from the uniform and
standardized world of manufacture. Digitalization has only intensified this
yearning, of which the flight to craft is symptomatic. According to my account,
craft creates opportunities for marketing as it enables brands to populate sentiments and emotions, thus capturing and returning us back to the very cycles
of production and manufacture we were originally attempting to escape. By
contrast, terroir’s historicity creates an impasse to wide-ranging brand
creation. As Europeans, our history is inescapable and immanent to us, yet even
in the pristine vineyards of the New World terroir is passively territorializing 'luxury' and 'premium' with its own concepts and understanding. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Marketing still has a job to do in wine – a little bricolage to keep the consumer in our thoughts -
but the frustrations of terroir means its in-tray is a little more prosaic than
all the grandstanding seminars might suggest. Steve Woolger, has a phrase: “It could be otherwise…..”
Woolgar is directing us toward the ironic structure of marketing’s reveal.
Irony includes the possibility of being mistaken about something: “You thought
it was this, when in fact….” John Hegarty was imploring the wine trade to
change: to think and be ‘otherwise’. But what was revealed behind his threat was
just more marketing: the chance to ‘think different’, as Apple put it, within a
category that is already impelled by terroir to do things <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">differently</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "helvetica"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">If terroir is a taboo,
then marketing is the gratuitous pleasure of breaking it. We may not like laws
and interdictions, but we’ve learnt that if we obey the taboo and take the more
convoluted route it directs us down, then the pleasure we attain is all the more
intense. The more we submit to the taboo, the stronger it gets, and the more it
structures our experience and pleasure. Over time, terroir becomes less like ‘a
thing’ and more like a universal principle, hence its power over us. I</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica";">n the end, what enables us to resist the instant gratifications of wine marketing is pleasure.
Drink differently!</span></div>
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John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-16901887501676409322017-02-04T02:24:00.003-08:002017-02-06T12:33:29.394-08:00The Tyranny of Rocks: Terroir and Trompe l'Oeil<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiqvDcFLUeYZVYiYX6S0nWpNXEV2xSTv_vCN3i7xzZULTXYFzqy7ABkR7MzkNsrHav100VC-n5yyoeUvulHMNCi3Ylolfr_qdN640Zm695diaZrg4eEO8wa330OnHypghgbmQajxfDg-M/s1600/IMG_0436.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiqvDcFLUeYZVYiYX6S0nWpNXEV2xSTv_vCN3i7xzZULTXYFzqy7ABkR7MzkNsrHav100VC-n5yyoeUvulHMNCi3Ylolfr_qdN640Zm695diaZrg4eEO8wa330OnHypghgbmQajxfDg-M/s400/IMG_0436.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;">The walls of Burgundy’s vineyards match
the pyramids for mass, but not elevation. Giza memorializes God-Kings where
the shallow blockwork of the C</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">ô</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">te d’Or recoils
from the burden of the sublime. The Cistercians could find no way out of God’s
maze and left us a labyrinthine vineyard puzzle as a keepsake. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Instrumental science eventually got the
world out from under God’s feet. Only at the end of the 17<sup>th</sup> Century was curiosity no longer considered a sin, but “the mark of a finite being
with infinite pretension” (Blumenberg). Copernicus’s heliocentric universe was
big, measurable and predictable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The medieval world had drawn a sharp
distinction between God’s infallibility and human frailty and capriciousness.
In the post-Enlightenment world human culpability persists, though the contrast
is made with a secularized nature that can’t perjure itself rather than a God
whose perfection was taken for granted. Commenting on William Buckland’s cross-examination
of history by geology, John Forrester concludes: “Rocks don’t lie!” Buckland
provides sound reasons to doubt the veracity of our storytelling, whilst Forrester
inadvertently sloganizes terroir for us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The Enlightenment cleared a new space for
mankind in the world, but inherited misgivings about human frailties continued
to undermine self-affirmation. In Burgundy, Cistercian submissiveness was displaced
from God to nature. The magnitudes of influence remained unchanged even if they
were articulated through an amalgam of aspect, climate and geology rather than
the actions of a transcendental deity. Human agency was limited to spectating a
non-human creation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Burgundy producers
who feel pressured to play down the impact of their daily exertions toe a
deeply scored line.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">There isn’t a conspiracy at work here;
rather, within Burgundy the limits of knowledge are set by a past that discouraged
curiosity and downplayed human expressivity beyond the elaboration of the
divine. If, today, we follow our (E)nlightened instincts and use science to disentangle
the individual threads of terroir from one another, we find our investigations
quickly jam against a knot. In the same way that the Cistercians had imagined
God’s creation to be irreducible, so terroir is presented as causative,
immanent and totalizing. Roland Barthes wrote that faced with the world we vacillate
between two possibilities: we can analyze and measure what is before us, or we can
admit its obduracy and poeticize the “otherness” that deep-down alienates us
from things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Coupling the aesthetic with
the analytic isn’t straightforward when romanticism and theory share the same
object.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Terroir is depicted as a window on the
world, yet the more we polish the smeary glass pane in front of us, the more
sharply our reflection is returned. Writing about fashion, Jean Duvignaud
observes that in societies where nakedness was customary the introduction of
clothing eroticized women: “Nudity is only attractive when culture creates it”,
he concludes. The desire to be side-by-side with nature, to experience things stripped
bare – “as they really are” - is a persistent theme among wine critics. When I planted
my vineyard I chastened myself with hand-hoeing, biodynamics and geological
maps. Ten years later, and I now accept my time is best spent removing leaves
and manipulating shoots. Back in 2005, the rock-strewn soil we planted looked
like a stretch of wilderness, but through the repetition of tasks and my own inventiveness
and toil, I now see industry and production where once I’d imagined Eden. That
it even occurred to me that biodynamics might ultimately decide the success (or
failure) of my start-up only illustrates the extent to which I was held captive
by a seductive version of creationism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Of course, it’s possible to imagine a
time, a few centuries from now, when everything in the vineyard will be done
through force of habit: the wisdom of past vintages will concertina into routines; production
decisions will become second nature, so much so that the only nature that gets
mentioned will be that of sun, rain and rock. The endless experimentation,
failed trials and tweaks for posterity will all be forgotten as my heirs direct
curious listeners toward a hidden world of geological strata that provides them
with the blueprint for their activities. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Alternatively, these farmers of the
future might look back at our time with bemusement, just as we now look back upon
the complacent astronomers of the Middles Ages who saw measurement and skepticism
as sinful. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Religious dogmatism sustained
the cramped dimensions of the Ptolemaic Universe, and future generations of
wine drinkers might diagnose a similar malaise amongst predecessors who thought
wine quality and the expression of environmental causes approximated to the
same thing. They might well point out to one another that the evidence for a
wider sphere of influence was with us all the time.</span><span style="color: red; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">From their perspective, every
family, village and region develops its own culture of production through time,
and this helps explain the inter-regional differences between Champagne and Sherry,
as well as the intra-vineyard disparities between Coche-Dury and Lafon at the
point where geological and climatic explanations fail. For them, our faith in
environmental predestination was just nostalgia; we couldn’t quite free ourselves
from inherited magnitudes of influence - medieval sentiments - that with the
benefit of their hindsight seemed to stifle our accounts of our activities more
than it inhibited the activities themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">This last point feeds into the error I
made when planting my vineyard: that of taking terroir too literally, and trying
to force old imaginings into an earnest work schedule.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Feuerbach drew a useful distinction
between knowledge and curiosity. Curiosity operates with few constraints, hence
Blumenberg’s allusion to our being “finite beings with infinite pretensions”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Enlightenment led to an outburst of
curiosity and conjecture, as though rationality needs the impetus of imagination
to properly reset its boundaries. Human intellect doesn’t like a void, and curiosity
fills empty space with its own hybridized speculations forged out of old and
new beliefs. Curiosity got the better of me when I splashed out on a hoe and
geological maps in the same day, but it might also explain how Jancis Robinson
can neglect the immanence of human activity to millennia of production and
extol wine as “Geography in a glass.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">My hope is that my bemused farmers of the
future will both acknowledge the debt they owe their forebears - all the
know-how and expertise that the past has shaped and gifted them - and better understand
the relationship between vine physiology and the environment. Having rid themselves
of the residues of medieval prejudice they will talk openly and confidently
about their own creativity and contributions, and how these entangle productively and aesthetically with nature; their words will match-up with
their deeds. They will look back at early 21<sup>st</sup> Century wrangles
about terroir and natural wines as being well-intentioned, but mistaken. They
won’t argue about whether Coche or Lafon captures Meursault in the highest vinous
resolution because they realize nature doesn’t offer us any means of deciding
between the two. The reason why we felt there was a decision to be made was
because we never properly broke with the Cistercian suspicion that we were trusted
observers and flawed creators.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">From my perspective, our understanding of
the evolution of wine style, at both regional and domain level, is enriched if
we yoke the environment and man together. Just as biology has taught us that
the egg came before the chicken, so, analogously, primitive production necessarily
preceded any discussions of geology and climate. If we believe we can peel back
centuries of doing and making and reverse the order of events so as to expose
some kind of primordial purity, we are, to use Duvignaud’s insight, confusing “nakedness”
with “nudity”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m happy to accept
natural wines on my terms, but not the rhetoric that’s served up with them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Wittgenstein warned us against becoming
“bewitched” by language. On our chilly Island, there is a long history of wine criticism
and a very short history of wine production. My hunch is that with little to
counterbalance our curiosity, we’ve all too readily taken Burgundian producers
at their word and failed to recognize the fact that when we’ve asked <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How things are?</i> we’ve instinctively been
told <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how things were</i>; - their answers
are infused with <i>medievalisms</i>. Attributing everything to terroir, or saying <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do nothing</i> are just ways of
clambering back under God’s feet. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Ultimately, if what producers do matters more
than what they say, then no damage has been done; the wines will speak for them
in their absence. Notwithstanding this, at a recent natural wine dinner the French
importer told me that most of the early adopters in France didn’t have wine
backgrounds, but were drawn into changing careers by rhetoric. Like me, they’d
idealized terroir and then become seduced by their own creation. I lost faith
when I realized that behind the hard work there was only more hard work. There
was no unveiling of essence; though, unarguably, recognising my earlier ideas as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">trompe l’oeil </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">must</span> count as some sort of revelation. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">As wine critics we have a duty to be self-critical. Not only should we expose the anachronisms of others, but we must be wary
of projecting our own ill-founded prejudices onto our loosely jointed industry.
If I don’t see any difference between replacing indigenous varieties with Cabernet and unravelling Champagne blends into climats, it’s because I see vine roots
extending into the cultural soil of A</span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">ÿ</span></span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> and Jerez, and not just reaching into the static chalk strata
below. Rocks don’t lie, but neither do they tell the truth.</span><span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-25216352644916550212016-01-05T23:54:00.005-08:002016-01-07T04:21:40.868-08:00Plant Life<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkdYhnd7kC9cwRqanYZmz7XVudUOieKrbBkUyJojjL_ufjLrYOAnIXUFoHIVEyC8lLxYyCYttUBALqZ6Rov-NLw4Ha0XP9bASP30lKf9vvCPTkNMwzLKlYw87WbruIq19Kv6f7Ld3dTG0/s1600/marder.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkdYhnd7kC9cwRqanYZmz7XVudUOieKrbBkUyJojjL_ufjLrYOAnIXUFoHIVEyC8lLxYyCYttUBALqZ6Rov-NLw4Ha0XP9bASP30lKf9vvCPTkNMwzLKlYw87WbruIq19Kv6f7Ld3dTG0/s1600/marder.png" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Michael Marder (</span><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.4161%2Fpsb.21954"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">http://dx.doi.org/10.4161%2Fpsb.21954</span></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">) brings an original understanding
to our place within the natural environment. He
argues against a long held bias within our ordering of living things that elevates
man above all other life on the basis of sentience. Philosophy, Marder, maintains
has shown too much self-regard for the “self”, and too little interest in life.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Away
from the supermarket value ranges things have notionally improved for pigs, but
one doesn’t have to go too far back in science to find “squealing” depicted as a
robotic response to slaughter rather than a horrifying reaction to pain and
distress. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">According to Marder, recent research into plants shows that the
development of a central nervous system is not an evolutionary point of
departure that reaches the pinnacle of expression in human self-awareness. On
the contrary, pain like responses, intelligent interaction with the environment
and cohort signaling all occur within plants. Sentience does not culminate in human
intelligence, but is itself the very condition of life, whether it be human,
animal or plant. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The moral vocabulary of rights that vegans and vegetarians are
urging us to extend beyond our own species may need to be rewritten again, but this time to
include plants. In an age when ecosystems are being described at the very
moment of their destruction, Marder’s thinking around the moral inclusiveness of
all life is timely.</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-12895560686681228442015-12-07T09:35:00.000-08:002015-12-08T04:58:22.794-08:00The Demon Marketing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIr5u4l0-vEOJCgdZAzNRNlHy7QiY1ZdPVkNzZ6tIhAcuQ38vjjnGo6P3qGEEev3xOtCwYar8ki4eceOtstH-iB8dsEWOSRxRXmqk4HQwrZ1OA11JZxbehDeQQPmi9lHZ9tAfn6Hf9sMo/s1600/ford.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIr5u4l0-vEOJCgdZAzNRNlHy7QiY1ZdPVkNzZ6tIhAcuQ38vjjnGo6P3qGEEev3xOtCwYar8ki4eceOtstH-iB8dsEWOSRxRXmqk4HQwrZ1OA11JZxbehDeQQPmi9lHZ9tAfn6Hf9sMo/s320/ford.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">Wine
marketers must envy colleagues who work on car campaigns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A quick-fire round of word association fixes
a car brand to any number of prompts: “fast”, “reliable”, “luxury”,
“economical”. As I wrote <i>in Meaningless brands from Meaningless
Differentiation</i>, consumer car knowledge is almost entirely mediated by brand
familiarity. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">Tellingly,
when the BBC raided <i>Top Gear</i> to find Oz Clarke a co-presenter they chose
James May, the nerdy serial-victim of Clarkson’s goading. The producers of <i>Oz
and James’s Big Wine Adventure </i>obviously felt that May’s geekish tendencies
could be made to stretch to the point where Clarke’s own geekery would take
over. May bridged the gap between the audience and Oz; a sort of boozy,
tri-lingual Vulcan intermediary who could scrutinise his co-host’s Klingonese
for sense.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">Car
production has a brief history when compared to wine, particularly if we
include caveman’s fluffed attempts to store grapes through the periglacial
winter. On wine’s elongated timeline Henry Ford is one of us, and “Fordism” a
thoroughly modern matter. The Model T came with a slogan: ”Any colour you want
as long as it’s black”. Mass production and mass marketing interpenetrated one another.
Post-war American men, it’s often said, were more familiar with the Ford logo
than they were with the clitoris. Advertising understands the value of
substitution and the affirmative nature of desire. A Ford, after all, would never
say “No!” to a man.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">Let me
make it clear from the outset: I’m not writing this piece out of some general
disillusionment with the digital age and marketing. My position alternates
between scepticism and usage, because I market myself, albeit in a fairly
impoverished way. My online persona is purged of negativity; and these criticisms
are being made from within digital space.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">One of
the advantages of the digital community, unlike the cemetery, is that it swells
without taking up more space. The Côte d’Or is similarly paradoxical. In <i>Cultural
Terroir,</i> I analysed the concept of terroir in terms of divisionism. Wine
production always has the potential to split - one can become two - and the
elements formed through this division are held in a relation of proximity and
difference. Accordingly, terroir becomes a network of differences dispersed in
space, but always with the potential to split again, adding more folds to an already
involuted organisation. Identity is subordinate to difference, and unstable.</span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">Gilles
Deleuze writes of classification: “It is always a matter of bringing together
things that are apparently very different, and separating the very close.” The
terrain of the <i>Côte d’Or</i> is segregated into vineyards, which in turn are
classified all the way from generic up to <i>Grand Cru</i>. If the region hadn’t become such
a monument to the historical process of division then one could imagine an even
more detailed plan; after all, Aubert de Villaine speaks openly of the
differences across <i>Romanée-Conti</i>.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">However
we divide terroir’s antecedents between man and environment “separating the
very close” is the creative force active within the concept. Moreover, this
splitting has an elevated sensibility at its centre. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kant writes in Book III of his <i>Critique </i>that
aesthetic judgements should be “disinterested”, which in the context of 18<sup>th</sup>
Century rationalism means something like “resulting out of nothing but
contemplation of an object”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether the
Cistercians were trying to map the workings of God is there for genealogical investigation
to decide, but their achievements on the<i> Côte d’Or</i> testify to a regime of hard
labour and Kantian-style aesthetic absorption.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">Eighteen
years ago, Mike Paul told a room full of MW students that <i>Romanée-Conti, Château
Latour</i> and <i>Rosemount Chardonnay</i> were all brands. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time I remember feeling relieved that
Mike had offered a definition of “brand”, albeit via a process of extension and
inclusion. In that same lecture we were introduced to Brand Australia and Strategy
2025. The Australian wine business wasn’t shy about its vision for the future. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">Strategy
2025 was my first encounter with aggressive wine marketing. For those still
drinking mother’s milk back in the 80s, believe me, the hostile strategy was
delivered with a smile. Australia was set to distance itself from what it saw
as the failed model of European wine production through a process of
enlargement and customer-focused brand creation. Brands would be developed
specifically with the end consumer in mind, with grape variety taking
precedence over geographical origin on wine labels. The paradise of the common
man was to become brand utopia. If the UK trade didn’t get on-board its fate was
sealed. We were like twitchers talking-up birdwatching in a world whose avian
interests only extended as far as chicken McNuggets. How remote from the consumer
was it possible to get!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">The
themes of Strategy 2025 were already familiar to those of us who were working
in the trade at that time: terroir was denied; French fruit wasn’t ripe; and all grape varieties had found their ideal habitat beneath the
tall Australian sun. At the time this take on the role of environmental influence
wasn’t presented as one possibility among others; it was hostile and denying of
terroir, dismissing its claims as pernicious “marketing”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth of this encounter is that marketing
only tolerates knowledge and expertise that can be used to enhance its own
commercial position. So entranced was “Brand Australia” by the idea that
marketing was the only genuinely creative means of establishing value and
identity within wine that it chucked its own modus operandi back at France as a
slight on terroir. The contrast between disinterested aesthetic judgement and
the sort of commodified knowledge delivered via brands was stark. One only has
to see the level of invective that’s turned on wine education by some of
today’s marketers to appreciate how a broad understanding of wine can be
anathema to their narrow commercial requirements. “Consumers want wines they can
understand” sounds reasonable enough, but when it’s forced into a false
opposition with “not education” we begin to see the hostility to what I’ve been
calling, after Kant, the “disinterested” perspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">I’m
thinking of the above struggle in the light of Mallarmé’s assertion that all of
life eventually reduces down to aesthetics and economics. I realise that I am
consciously trying to draw a line between the two by clinging on to divisionism
and contemplation. Capitalism’s innovativeness lies in its ability to identify and
exploit value in hitherto unforeseen areas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We’re familiar with thinking of “coal” and “oil” as commodities, but
what of “expertise” and “trust”. What is the PPI scandal other than the
exploitation of trust through the creation, development and marketing of
financial products? Wine is not unique in fending-off economic encroachment
into its own realm of expertise, yet for many of us it’s worth protecting
precisely because it provides an area of contemplation – like books, music and
film – where one can escape from the economic flows and connectedness of everyday
life. Freud, who was himself a hoarder, maintained that millionaires often resort to collecting
not to realise the eventual exchange value of their collections, but because possession
and contemplation of these aesthetic objects reversed the transient nature of their
monetary accumulation. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">The
fine wine market has joined the mass of other of winner-take-all markets that have
come to characterize the early 21<sup>st</sup> Century. Millionaires have been
replaced by billionaires at the gates of DRC. Relatively small differences in the
absolute quality of wines are magnified into large differences in price. Such
markets are a reflection of the increasing concentration of wealth, and in the
case of DRC, this inequity is exacerbated by limited supply. The latest round
of wealth consolidation began in the US in the mid-70’s, centuries after the
vineyard-by-vineyard division of the Côte d’Or was begun, and together they’ve
led to an inflationary storm that’s left wine merchants and drinkers looking
elsewhere. Personally, I doubt whether critics or marketers have an adequate response
to the forces of economic determinism that have swept through Burgundy and
Bordeaux in recent decades, but to blame individuals seems to me to miss the
bigger macro-economic picture. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">The integrity
and independence of critics has never been in greater demand than today, and as
far as new wines and regions go we are genuinely living in exciting times. If I
can’t afford DRC I won’t be forced to drink Aligoté. Gary Farr is making Pinot in
Australia on a calcareous Richebourg-like clay that’s every bit as exciting as the
best Burgundy. Because, in truth, the nightmare vision of brand utopia never
happened.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">Strategy
2025 no doubt still exists in some revised data rich form, but the heartening part
of this story that began back in 1996, is that Australia itself became resistant
to all the marketing platitudes that were being generated. Farr, Cullen and
Grosset drew the line between aesthetics and economics that the plotters behind
the plan seemed so keen to erase or re-evaluate. Wine, like novels and string
quartets, can be an inclusive point of departure from the tedium and habit of
the daily round.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">Of
those original 80s Australian brands, only a few like Penfolds survived. Grange
is still an interregional blend, which offers a point of difference in a fine
wine market that craves particularity. It’s ironic that the wine that was
supposedly going to blaze a trail for profitable, blended still wine brands now finds itself singled out as the anomaly. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "calibri light" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; letter-spacing: .75pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">Mallarmé maintained that life separated into aesthetics and economics, but I’d also add sex. <i>The
Unbearable Lightness of Being</i> is proof that great art and abundant sex are
possible under the most ascetic of economic regimes. Could it be that things were just
so much more intense before the intervention of brands, when the Ford badge wasn’t there to distract you?</span></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-59814012487710434622015-01-08T05:46:00.000-08:002015-01-08T22:11:57.125-08:00Use of Cosy Tex to accelerate Pinot Noir flowering in a UK vineyard<div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Champagne and Southern England are climatically distinct.
The sea breaches of the English Channel and the North Sea help give us mild
winters, but we pay the price with our cool springs and summers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Mean monthly temperatures, degrees Celsius. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">June</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Reims</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">14</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">17.3</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">18.9</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">18.8</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; height: 14.25pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 77.45pt;" valign="top" width="103"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">15.4</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span></td></tr>
<tr style="height: 14.95pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;"><td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext; border-image: none; border-style: none solid solid; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt; height: 14.95pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 77.75pt;" valign="top" width="104"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Herstmonceux</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; height: 14.95pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 77.35pt;" valign="top" width="103"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">12.8</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; height: 14.95pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 77.4pt;" valign="top" width="103"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">15.4</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; height: 14.95pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 77.4pt;" valign="top" width="103"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">17.2</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; height: 14.95pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 77.45pt;" valign="top" width="103"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">17.4</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span></td><td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; height: 14.95pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 77.45pt;" valign="top" width="103"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">15.3</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Parity is reached with Champagne in September,
but this is a month when both light and temperature become limiting for vines.
Frustratingly, acids and sugars become sticky after the autumn equinox, come
rain or shine.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The sluggishness of late Spring
delays UK vine flowering relative to that of Champagne, and sets veraison back by
2-3 weeks. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay on the Montagne de Reims and Côte des Blancs commence ripening in mid-August, whilst in England, the threshold of
the autumn equinox foreshortens maturation and turns October into a month of
hope rather than realisation.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Two consequences follow from our
stalled summers:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Firstly, our climate gives us no
wriggle room: days and weeks lost to bad weather in the summer cannot be
made-up later in the season because we run out of effective days; and</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Secondly, acids tend to be higher
for a given level of sugar <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vis-à-vis</i>
Champagne.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Poor weather increases the financial
jeopardy of grape production. In the UK, 2012 was a write-off, whereas Champagne was able to
regroup and take advantage of late season warmth. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The issue over acids has no
definitive answer. Malic acid can be very dominating, even in sparkling wine. It adds flavour and an impression of weight - useful in our fickle climate - but it is
very forceful. Personally, I find it has a greater affinity with Chardonnay
than Pinot Noir, and I find its character can become too brutal
on clay soils, which seem to bolster its effect. Others will disagree.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="border-image: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Forcing vines to flower early
therefore has distinct advantages, particularly for still wine production, and
in 2014 I experimented with a product called Cosy Tex to see if I could
accelerate early season phenology through to floraison.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Cosy Tex is a woven polythene mesh.
The product provides 86% light transmission, is 100% permeable, gives 2-3
Celsius of frost protection and, depending on the area covered and irradiance, can elevate day time temperatures by 3-4 Celsius. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Cosy Tex comes in rolls of
various lengths and widths, and can be secured to top wires and vineyard posts
by the manufacturer’s clips.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkENV4xBNfGRw1cXn4Rk4MZRf8y4HaGyFXM1rFDLmLP60LAK2Lr10idZXCFUh6aLNawofkivrW9udduFtp6o3mMEC4Oi8AlIm4frl7EJpoSbIsqHGBCYgZ_wqPxXUXXQuOW8ciSdFv6AM/s640/blogger-image-3602006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="92" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkENV4xBNfGRw1cXn4Rk4MZRf8y4HaGyFXM1rFDLmLP60LAK2Lr10idZXCFUh6aLNawofkivrW9udduFtp6o3mMEC4Oi8AlIm4frl7EJpoSbIsqHGBCYgZ_wqPxXUXXQuOW8ciSdFv6AM/s400/blogger-image-3602006.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div style="border-image: none;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">We attached the Cosy Tex in late-April,
and achieved an accelerated budburst compared to the rows outside. Early in May, we had
three nights of frost, which got progressively harder. The vines underneath the
Cosy Tex were untouched during the first two events, but we recorded -4C
outside on the third night which resulted in a 60% loss of shoots within the
Cosy Tex protected environment, and near 95% loss outside. One issue with the
product is that it increases humidity, which raises the frost risk for a
given negative temperature value, whilst the advancement of the shoots also
increases susceptibility.</span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">In the middle of May we were hit
by storm force winds, gusting 55mph. Our method of securing the fabric proved inadequate and the Cosy Tex blew off. The winds didn’t abate for three days,
and I finally re-secured the cover a week later. With strong winds forecast at
the start of June, I removed the fabric from the vineyard altogether.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Overall, the vines benefited
from the covers for three weeks, which brought flowering forward by approximately
7 days, compared to the surviving uncovered shoots. If we had managed to
maintain the covers in place to flowering, then the advantage could have been
as much as 2 weeks. We were also unable to study the impact on flowering, which
may have been beneficial due to micro-climate warming and reduced wind speeds.
We will not know whether the reduced light transmission effected bud flower
initiation until this spring.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
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</div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">We will repeat the experiment
this year. The use of additional wires passed<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>through the Cosy Tex should enable us to withstand 50mph winds, and we hope to get a better understanding of the fabric’s full potential by summer
2015.</span> </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-88752810682650315352015-01-04T05:43:00.000-08:002017-04-14T02:48:46.410-07:00Champagne's Labyrinth (A Simulation)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The
way the trade talks about wine usually exceeds most of their customers’ simple quest
for pleasure. When I studied for my WSET Higher Certificate I’d hoped Burgundy
would offer some relief from red Dalmatian grape varieties, but learning the villages
of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Côte d’Or</i> by rote was equally onerous.
Visiting the region for the first time in 1994, I realised <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Wine Regions of The World</b> had spared me the detail, though I ended
that week in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beaune </i>believing that the
difference between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Les Teurons</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Grèves</i> was profound, and not just
trivial. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">In
Tokyo, the city blocks are numbered, but the streets have no names. The plan of
blocks, roads and intersections is historical. Visitors to the city can’t just
bulldoze a route across the city or impose their own schema of street names. Finding
your way around Tokyo is more like gaining access to other people’s memories than
reading a map; you’re required to wrest the past from the present. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I
remember the literary critic, Maud Ellmann, advising in a seminar: that “The
only secret of a labyrinth is how you get out”. I wasn’t sure what Maud meant
at the time, but I do now. Tokyo stops being a labyrinth when you get in<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">,</i> and acquiesce to its alien
configuration of numbered blocks and unnamed streets. The secret of the
labyrinth is you get out by getting in. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">When
I joined <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Billecart-Salmon,</i> twelve
years ago, with my small haul of awards, most friends assumed I’d be making the
wine or, at the very least, blending it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tasting<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>through
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vin clair</i> for the first time was unlike
any <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">domaine</i> visit I’d ever made
before. The wines were unyielding and acidulous; and even though no one asked me
for a favourite, I volunteered <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Verzenay!”</i>
At the time it just seemed the most complete. I probed our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chef de Cave</i>, François Domi, about barrels and malolactic
fermentation, but never mentioned blending. It didn’t occur to me that the very
particular experience I’d gained in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beaune</i>
might not work in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mareuil-sur-Ay </i>as
well. My botched attempt to bash a Burgundy-shaped entrance through Champagne’s
walls meant the invitation to join in with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">assemblage
</i>never came.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Asking
questions about street names and disgorgement dates won’t stop you getting lost
in Tokyo or enable you to unpick <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tirage</i>
from all the mutations of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">methode</i> and
add-ons from the past. Neither the people of Tokyo nor our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chef de Cave</i> see themselves as prisoners of tradition. From their
perspective we haven’t expended enough time and effort acculturating ourselves
to their ways of seeing and doing things. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Using
a single grape variety, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Côte de Nuits</i>
scales the heights and plumbs the depths. Separating the good from the bad
producers in terms of how each talk about their own production is impossible. They
all share in the same vernacular: that the quality and personality of their wine
is a reflection of environmental factors, and in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Terroir and the Côte de Nuits</b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
</i>(parts 1 and 2) I tried to describe these site specific differences within a
non-esoteric vocabulary. The interaction of soil hydrology, plant water demand
and altered gene-expression does, I think, usefully add to the discussion on
the link between wine quality and the region’s appellation hierarchy. These
differences, far from being petty, became important to the Cistercians, and in
<strong>Cultural Terroir</strong> I argued that their continuing relevance to us is, in part, a
further example of secular life being shadowed by its non-secular past.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I
used an evolutionary metaphor in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Cultural
Terroir</b> to describe the way in which wine production divides incessantly.
Barrels and the fragmented ownership of land encouraged comparison, and a new
realm of environmental influence became visible to producers. Just as Hooke’s
microscope illumined a hitherto unseen world of plant cells and compound eyes,
so relating one barrel to another revealed a hidden domain of geological and
hydrological influences; even though they weren’t referenced as such. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The
microscope was revolutionary, whereas Burgundians’ framing of environmental
influence only succeeded in strengthening already existing ties to the
earth. Those fortunate enough to own a few hundred <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ares</i> in both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">les Suchots</i>
and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">les
Malconsorts </i>believe the difference between the two vineyards is ineffable,
cast in stone – Bathonian and Bajocian – and when combined with
climate, inimitable. Of course, if the differences between wines were only a
matter of geology, then everyone’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">les
Suchots</i> would taste more or less the same, which isn’t the case. Geology is
only part of a much bigger picture: one that escapes the tight fit of the frame
the Burgundians habitually try and squeeze their wines into. If, as is often
suggested, the resemblances between an individual producer’s wines are greater
than the similarities between neighbouring wines from the same <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lieu dit, </i>then we might conclude that
extrinsic human interventions are just as important as intrinsic environmental
factors in determining wine style. But this is a hard concession for Burgundians
to make. The difference between man’s inputs and nature’s inputs is that the
former also carry the prospect of duplication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The more ground we concede to ourselves, the less inimitable wine appears
to be. What is produced by our efforts may be reproduced elsewhere. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Champagne
has no such problem with reproduction. When a new winemaker joins a House there
is normally a period of acquiescence during which past practices are repeated
and mastered. The variables in Champagne are so rampant with possibility that
you need to immerse yourself in the prevailing orthodoxy before trying to
change anything: blending, dosage and in-bottle fermentation pile intervention
upon intervention. François Billecart says it takes twenty year for a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chef de Cave</i> to attain the requisite level
of competence and trust beyond which she/he can begin evolving blends for
posterity.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The
repetition of procedures; the recombination of villages according to historical
protocol; together these actions engender a sense of reality and permanence in
a realm of chaotic possibility and limitless choice. Reproduction yields the
grounding and the conditions from which the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chef
de Cave</i> can affect change; it can provide both a destination and a point of
departure. The labyrinth only gives up its secret to those who enter and stay.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">During
my induction at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Billecart-Salmon</i> I’d
wanted François Domi to offer-up answers that would dissipate ambiguity, and
cut through the crap of globally disseminated terms and anachronisms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But immersion historicises both actions and
descriptions. Causality becomes compromised, and effects emerge at the end of
weakly conjugated chains of events. Lineages, like that of Jean-François Coche,
have added a very human structure of assembly and amplification to the
differences they detected between their wines. Hooke’s microscope enhanced specific
images by magnification, but we can’t make similar claims about the empirical efficiency
of barrels and bottles; it’s all too messy. Dividing production into small
units encourages comparison, but the characters that appear in the wine are, in
part - through the effects and interactions of reduction, oxidation and suspended
solids – generated by the barrel. A good microscope improves image resolution, where
a new <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">François Frères</i> barrel adds
to opacity. I just don’t think that we can say with confidence which aspects of
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Coche-Dury’s</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meursault </i>are given and which are reified by past generations of
Coches trafficking the passageways of the labyrinth in the same direction. Fetishism
isolates and augments a part of the body and then symbolically substitutes this
fragment for the whole in which it is constituent. Saying that Jean-François’ “mineral-style”
shows “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">typicité</i>” is like recognizing
a Meursault family’s fetish, and then pursuing it as your own. Other villagers
and drinkers will be turned-on by different obsessions. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re not troubled by the thought of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chef de Cave</i> purposely subduing and
exaggerating different characteristics of a blend, because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">assemblage</i> is continuous in Champagne; but similarly decisive
interventions become visible in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Corton
Charlemagne</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>too, if we care to take
a long enough view of production.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">In
the 1980s, a young Gary Farr left Australia to work at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dujac</i>. The transmission of knowledge at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dujac</i> (and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Billecart</i>) requires
that you listen to what’s said, and follow what’s shown. Gary did ten vintages
at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dujac</i>, and still makes
“pilgrimages” to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Morey St Denis</i>; as
does his son, Nick. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Back
in Geelong, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dujac</i> influence is clear
in the perfume and colour of the Farrside Pinot Noir. Last week, I placed the Farrside
2009 in a line-up of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Morey St Denis</i>
2009s to prove to myself that the family resemblance between Gary’s wine and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dujac’s</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Morey</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dujac’s Morey</i>
and the other village wines, was commensurate; which it was. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I’ve
drunk old Geelong Pinots, but like many New World wines they want for that
rapturous second coming. Twice this year, I’ve tasted Farrside 2011, which meant
the 2009 was all the more intriguing for me. I remember hosting an “Old-New-World
Pinot Noir Tasting” and being shocked to discover how fixed and frozen in time
the wines seemed, as if the insertion of the cork had stopped the clock.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Ageing
is the pathway that turns wine towards its other destination in the future. The
Jesuits said: “Give me the boy, and I will return you the man.” Actions
performed early on in a process have transformative effects that only become visible
later in life. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">If the Jesuits gave us "the man" in the past, then <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Blade Runner</b> gives us a woman in the future. </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The
Los Angeles of Ridley Scott’s film is a paradox: unrecognisable but derivative.
Genetically modified slave replicants live in and for the moment; their
journeys beginning and ending in the same place, just like the “Old” New World
Pinots at the tasting. Early in the film we’re introduced to Rachel, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">replicant</i> woman, and the perfect
humanoid copy. Rachel’s identity, based on implanted memories, is delusional. Gary’s
and Rachel’s stories overlap because the veracity of their respective pasts
guarantees their futures. If the Farrside 2009 was a perfect simulation, then
it should have tracked the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Moreys</i>,
and started to transcend the continuous present tense of replicant existence towards
a future. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">If
I struggled to separate the Farrside 2009 from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Moreys</i> - the copy from the real – it may have been because the
generous climatic conditions in Burgundy that year were just too Geelong-like,
or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vice versa</i>. Was the Farr wine really
on a sweetly lubricated slide towards a finale? Or was it simply the
case that the Burgundy had become stuck along the way? I couldn’t tell. Those
who’ve seen <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Blade Runner</b> will recall
that the main symptom of Rachel’s “more human than human” simulation is self-doubt.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Los Angeles 2019</i> is cluttered with good and bad copies.
Rachel’s identity becomes problematic when she discovers the photo she believed
was of her and her mother together is actually of Dr Tyrell’s niece. This
realisation defines Rachel’s identity negatively: it is the place previously
occupied by the photo, experienced as loss and absence; but it becomes, through
the rest of the film, the lacuna within which her new identity takes hold. In a
moment of reversal, Rachel rejects the identity she was given by Tyrell, and then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">she gives herself</i> to Deckard, the Blade
Runner. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Rachel
can change because she’s such a good copy. As I suggested, the young François
Domi and Jean-François Coche proved themselves very adept at reproduction. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Billecart’s</i> NV blends twenty-seven
villages and takes ten years to make, if you measure the time between
disgorgement and the age of the oldest reserve wines. You need to prove yourself well-practiced
in rebuilding the edifice created by past generations before you’re trusted to make
any revisions to its structure; otherwise you’re just groping in the dark.
Perfect simulation can be the starting point for change, whether you’re a replicant
or a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chef de Cave</i>. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The
principle of reflexivity, as proposed by the sociologist William Thomas, is:
that “the situations that men define as true, become true for them”. Burgundians
believe environmental causes beyond the winery are the main source of variation
in their wines, and these variations provide the proof of this connection. It’s
a seductive but circular argument. It holds out the barely resistible prospect for
some of our lying side-by-side with nature; and there being wines which are
better and closer depictions of the world of rocks and rain beyond the cellar.
But in all of this talk of encounters we need to keep reminding ourselves that
wine is the murky point of contact with that which lies outside itself. I used
the analogy of a microscope to make a point about how changes in the scale of
production can make visible an already existent world. But winemaking throws us
a kaleidoscope rather than a lens to buff. The “luminance of the outside”, to
use Foucault’s phrase, which comes with these new exposures is reflected,
coloured and captured in patterns that we either like or don’t like. I just
happen to be partial to Coche’s intricate ordering and staining of the crystals
- spur pruned massale chardonnay, an old press, heavy lees, new oak, and long
elevage – but I accept that others might find his style too stark. We can
disagree about preferences, but I don’t think there is a further argument to be
settled by invoking prejudicial terms like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">typicité.</i>
<em>Tabula rasae</em> don’t usually take the form of messy, drawn-out production processes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">If
we amalgamate causes we can avoid some of the difficulties associated with
exclusion and prioritisation. Difficult concepts like “mineral” might prove easier
to handle if we think of them as multifactorial, and see its presence in a wine as an indication that various causes have been bundled together in sophisticated
and studied ways. Winemaking begins to look far less passive when we consider
its innovations and reproductions though time. I don’t believe all those centuries
spent in the vineyard and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cave</i> were
really about removing all the incriminating evidence of human involvement, like a gang
of thieves covering its tracks. We adopted a particular way of talking about
wine and we’re still adapting the proofs to fit the terminology. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">There
is nothing pernicious in the Burgundian’s prioritising of environmental causes.
In <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Cultural Terroir</b> I claimed that
the Cistercian’s pursuit of universal cause reinforced the power of the
“outside” so forcefully that it’s stuck with us through to this day. Human
influence is, as discussed, imitable, where God and natures work isn’t. But duplication
can be an immensely useful tool. Simulation creates its own labyrinthine realties
through repetition; it brings intelligibility and order, and thus provides a stable
medium from which the distinctive and generative differences that separate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lafon</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Coche Dury</i> can begin to coalesce. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "kalinga" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Much
of this essay has been about the difficulties of travel: from Burgundy to
Champagne; across the labyrinth; or the philosophical difficulty of moving from
the “inside” to the “outside”. John Updike said the problem with travel is: “It’s
always you that unpacks the suitcase”. Nothing I have written here changes
anything: the differences between <em>Coche Dury</em> and <em>Lafon</em> remain the same. Twenty-five
years ago Gary Farr left Australia, and when he repeats that same journey today
it’s a different man that unpacks the shirts and boots onto the bed. The story
of Farrside is about rocks and sunshine, immersion and repetition; but it’s also
a tale of individual self-fulfilment. The Old World is particularly good at
giving us accounts about the former, where the New World inspires us with the latter.
If I feel a solidarity with Gary that allows me to run our two stories
together, it’s because we both found ourselves, as Deleuze would have it, somewhere in the middle of things.</span></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-52973838819929726082014-02-18T03:42:00.000-08:002015-01-05T05:21:46.313-08:00Cultural Terroir<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Nature is not one thing; it is a
collective term for forces that obey a determinate number of known physical
laws. The elements of the universe are simple, but the patterns generated by
the interaction of its forces are complex and changing. If your view of nature
is informed by evolutionary biology you won’t be alarmed at the idea that man
is descended from Pelycosaur; but if you take Genesis as your starting point
you’ll see all the complexity “out there” and “in here” as evidence of a
supreme being. Either way, both sides of this argument agree there’s a lot of
stuff bloating our experience, whether you think it’s been put there by a divine creator or the big bang.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">When 15<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>th</sup> Century
monks dug-up fossils in Bonnes Mares they thought they were unearthing evidence
of God’s omnipotence, not chunky wannabe ancestors. Individual beliefs don’t
sit in isolation; they form part of a coherent set. The Cistercians weren’t
being dumb when they dated dinosaurs at 1000bc, it was a calculation that was
consistent with other beliefs they happened to hold. There was nothing
disturbing or contradictory about the fossil-record if you held God as a universal cause. By
contrast, Darwin’s anxiety ahead of the publication of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Origin of Species</i> was because the argument he was about to
present placed man in a fluxion of genetic mutation and environmental pressures
that had no obvious centre or end point, the two positions that until then had
been occupied by God and his ape. Nothing takes our place in the theory of evolution;
Darwin just posits a continuum of divergence and multiplicity that rolls on
with or without us. If individual species founder they are replaced by
multiples of better adapted species, a void doesn’t come to stand in their
place.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Darwin’s theory fitted the
evidence better than it did other 19<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>th </sup>Century beliefs. Beliefs
are the bodged raft we drift on, and if we ever attempted to change all our
beliefs simultaneously we’d sink. In order to survive we need to maintain the
raft, swap timeworn timbers for new timbers, but at a rate that conserves
buoyancy. Some planks of our raft are pristine, but other older planks provide
a record of our navigation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">If we still show reluctance
to change our beliefs in light of the evidence presented by Darwin it’s because
erroneous abstract theories about our place in the universe aren’t immediately punitive.
As far as survival goes, we can simultaneously believe in God and Darwin (We
can rightly accept the evidence for random mutation, and wrongly see ourselves
as its culmination), whereas we won’t live very long if the only thing we have
an appetite for is intensively-farmed raw chicken. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Asking whether terroir is
“natural or cultural?” strikes us an entirely reasonable question, and one to
which we should have a ready answer, but after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Origin of Species</i> it’s hard for some of us to identify a stand
point outside nature from where we could rally a response. Conversely, we could
adapt Barthes’ critique of mythology as the transformation of history into
natural order as an argument against terroir, and conclude that there is no classification
or teleology that is independent of us. We could dismiss the taxonomic ordering
of the Cote de Nuits as just another mythic episode; a further example of
cultural mutation and imposition. “Terroir: Natural or cultural?” is just part
of a bigger debate. What distinguishes the natural from the cultural, and
whether they are in fact opposites isn’t going to be decided by a debate around
wine. Setting dialectical ambitions to one side perhaps we're just in need of a good carpenter
to show us how the new and old planks of our raft are aligned to one another.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">In Terroir and the Cotes de Nuits
1 and 2, I argued that pedological differences in soil hydrology underpin the
region’s generic/village/premier/grand cru hierarchy. Accordingly, the soils
and sub-soils of the better sites ration the availability of water in such a
way that their vines are buffered from the unpredictable pattern of
precipitation events. Growers on the Cote de Nuits observe that beneficial water
deficits are more rapidly attained on the Grands Crus, while the effects of
drought are resisted for longer. Taking the Cote de Nuits in isolation, we
might draw the conclusion that hydrology is the controlling variable within this
mid-latitude homoclime. As tempting as it is to construct a climatic map of
differences relating to aspect and elevation, pedology is the only reliable way
of separating stylistic and qualitative differences between adjacent vineyards
that are given the same management.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Just as a pig doesn’t divide into
hot dogs and stone doesn’t order itself into Chartres Cathedral, so the rifted valley
sides of the Cote d’Or don’t immediately suggest a congested pattern of
vineyards. Butchery, building and agriculture are useful things to be able to
do, but sausages, basilicas and fine wine are elevated beyond what we might
consider ordinary needs, unless you’re a German pope. Stone masons began working
on Chartres Cathedral 900 years ago, and their toil crossed centuries. Anyone
who has ever lived in a house, or hammered home screws, needs to get on a plane
and go to Chartres. You will be born again. Don’t buy a return ticket because the
homebound journey will be done on all-fours with your nose rubbing against the
earth; - God’s earth. It is of this World, but out of this World. When I first
saw the northern transepts I turned to my school mates and said: “Whatever they
were on when they built this I’ll take intravenously!”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The immense scale of Chartres divides
into endless detail. If you don’t find God in Chartres you might at least identify
Darwin in all the stained-glass and stone masonry, and see evolution taking
hold in the escalating minutiae and detail that expands into one space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again: go there! And when you ask yourself, as
I did, “What were they on?” you can have an answer already prepared: metaphysics.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">In Europe, the enlightenment was
preceded by the dark ages. The “big” question - which wasn’t answered with
survival tips but a thesis on how the universe slotted together - was parked
with God. Notionally, the God of the New Testament is also the God of Abraham,
except the Christian God both creates and populates our world with His spirit. If
you looked hard enough the evidence for omniscience, omnipotence and
omnipresence was manifold. Experience was underpinned by the divine, and if bright
theological light was shone onto our experience and beliefs the architecture
and detail of God’s creation became visible. When the Cistercians cultivated
Burgundy the quality of their labour was measured against a divine yardstick
that included old metaphysical formulations. Where else could important ideas
like “infinity” and “perfection” have come from, but Him? Our acquaintance with
abstract ideas was presented as proof of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sublime
descent</i>. Devotion got you closer to your Maker by increments, and the monks
spent centuries revealing the complexity of God’s creation by mapping a
fragment of His design in wine.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Over the centuries, the patronage
of the Church and the devotion of the monks led to an increasingly intricate
pattern of land use, as morphological and geological differences manifested
themselves in wine styles which were scrutinized and calibrated by their
creators. Once the process of division was set in motion it was hard to stop,
because the activities of the monks were directed by theological certainties. Compiling
evidence of God’s handiwork became a search for the detail and perfection
within His design. The qualities of “perfection” and “infinity” were beyond man’s
fabrication because, ultimately, they were the property of God, but you
approximated them, as the artisans at Chartres had done, by elevating finity
towards infinity and representing the sublime as best you could. The Cote
d’Or’s complex geology prompted a complicated response. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Just as the Cistercians looked
for God in wine, so we can scrutinize terroir for signs of its theological past.
As I’ve presented it, the two dominant trends deriving from medieval doctrine
are the pursuit of perfection and the division and re-division of the corporeal
into smaller and smaller parts. Both tendencies are evident within the Cote de
Nuits’ complicated hierarchy of vineyards. The ardour of the monks would have
led to an ever more intricate pattern of land use once they’d begun recognising
the divergent but consistent trends in wine style. In turn, these differences
could only be properly elaborated if production was organised in such a way
that it was responsive and sensitive to the small variations that were being
generated. The method, duration and scale of manufacture were critical to their
achievement. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">In other blogs I have been
critical of the New World’s appropriation of terroir. When I first visited
Chile young winemakers spoke enthusiastically to me about terroir – “No
rainfall. Always sunny.” – as if it was a pitch to sell time-shares and not the
samey black liquid that was never more than 10ft away during that long-week-long-trip.
When I eventually tasted v<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inas viejas</i>
Cabernet in Maipo – “A strong terroir” – I was bewildered, and thought Conan
had been let loose on the punch downs. But there have been good experiences
too. Last month, having drunk Gary Farr’s Pinot for the first time, I
unexpectedly found myself renewing my vows with wine. The fact that some of
Farr’s vineyards are planted on montmorillonite clay and limestone is relevant,
but I suspect the organisation of his domaine is equally important. Production
at estates like Farr, Rippon and Eyrie is personified. Nick Mills, Jason Lett
and Gary Farr do a meek impression of omniscience, examining the consequences
of enological and vitcultural decisions in detail, and implementing strategies
that promote diversity at the expense of homogeneity. One gimmick of branding
is to make the big look small, but from the perspective of terroir production
is always miniaturized and small differences magnified. It’s the difference
between staring down a telescope the wrong way and making use of a microscope. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The Cistercians' toil wasn’t sustained
by profitability or productivity but by a faith in the omnipotence of the
divine. If conscientious producers like Jason Lett and Nick Mills feel their
work is never finished, if its demands get ever more detailed and insistent,
it’s probably because the paradigm of terroir they’ve inherited incorporates medieval
determinations of infinity and perfection. Cistercian beliefs are carried over
into our actions and understanding. His work will never be done. Production can
always be split again in the pursuit of the sublime. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The Cistercians and Darwin both
found a divergent trend operating within the natural world. Representing God’s creation introduced
the condition of infinite perfectibility into the monks’ labour, whilst Darwin
just saw more and more life diversifying into the same space. The monks’
beliefs may seem antiquated for those of us who’ve grown-up being taught
evolutionary biology, and yet their embracing of multiplicity contained the
germ of what became Burgundian terroir, with all its attendant hierarchies, old
walls and mystique. I have argued before that terroir’s appropriation across
the New World (and, indeed, the Old World) has diminished the term's meaning,
but I am also aware that 2,000 years of continuous production sets a high bar
for the growing number of vigilant and careful growers who are exploring the
detail of what they do. What I hoped to do in this discussion was present a
genealogy of terroir (I don’t think wine is the obvious starting point for
establishing how dialectically opposed culture and nature really are) and show
how old beliefs inform current ways of doing things. In the same way that our
mammalian heritage connects us back through time to pelycosaur, so the drive
towards division and multiplicity is the unbroken chain that links Nick Mills
and Jason Lett back to Burgundy. If it was mine to give, I’d let them have terroir.</span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-40077780459328066782013-12-15T08:26:00.001-08:002013-12-15T08:26:06.888-08:00Angleterroir<div style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<em><span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">John Atkinson MW has a particular interest in terroir and soil composition, as you can read in his </span><a href="http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/a201104202.html"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Terroir and the Côte de Nuits</span></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">. Now he has planted his own vineyard (pictured) in the village of Tixover, Rutland, in the middle of England. Here he explains what happened when he had its soil analysed.</span></span></em></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Superficially, our soil looks like some of the better bits of the Côte de Nuits. The soil is composed of clay (25%), limestone gravel (25%), silt (30%) and sand (20%). In the shallower parts of grand cru Romanée-St-Vivant you hit Bajocian bedrock at a depth of 30 cm, and it's the same for Tixover. Shuffling around on your haunches you might imagine yourself to be in Vosne. The first time I tested our soil, I also submitted samples gathered from across the Côte de Nuits. The results for Romanée-Conti confirmed it as 'a good agricultural soil', with macronutrients falling within the 2-3 range of standard farming indices; endorsing its potential as a wheat field should the wine business ever go to pot. The ratio of potassium to magnesium in Le Chambertin and Clos de la Roche was skewed towards potassium, and the pH for all three sites was between 7.8 and 8.3. The results for the Tixover sample closely resembled those of the grands crus. All four had excessive calcium levels.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The second soil test was analysed in France by AGRO-Systèmes. It introduced me to new concepts such as </span><a href="http://www.jancisrobinson.com/ocw/CH636.html" target="" title=""><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">cation exchange capacity</span></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"> (CEC) and base-saturation. Our soil was high in nitrogen and calcium, but weak in iron and magnesium. The ratio between calcium and magnesium influences soil structure, and soils that are base-saturated with calcium tend to be more porous than soils dominated by magnesium. A high cacium to magnesium ratio generally facilitates water movements within the soil - up, down and sideways.</span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The most recent test, conducted by Albrecht Agriculture, was also the most thorough, and the results showed worrying discrepancies from the previous two analyses. Iron was recorded at a critically low level, and the CEC was measured at 30 meq, which is high for a soil that is only 25% clay. The 'clay and colloidal matter' bound calcium and magnesium ions in the ratio of 40:1. Our soil, Albrecht warned us, was like a sieve. We needed to add magnesium, lots of magnesium. But at least we were in good company: the three grands crus soils were similarly biased in favour of calcium base-saturation.</span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Confusingly, iron levels were only measured at 1 ppm by the Albrecht people, but at 15 ppm by the French analysts. We haven't seen signs of chlorosis in the vines, so experience suggests the French analysis is the more accurate of the two. Moreover, despite identifying the chronically deficient iron levels, the Albrecht analysis didn't propose any amendments other than the magnesium. Critics of scientific methodology warn about theory-laden data, and the Albrecht obsession with the calcium:magnesium ratio may explain why in this instance they missed the low iron count.</span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">CEC is a measure of the nutrient holding capacity of the soil, and relates principally to the number of internal and external bonding sites within the sample's clay and colloidal fraction. The <em>meq</em> measurement was elevated in our sample by the mix of clays. Smectite, a volcanic mineral, was incorporated into our clay as it sedimented out, and its inclusion has significantly changed the soil's properties. For agronomist </span><a href="http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/a201111252.html" target="" title=""><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Claude Bourguignon</span></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">, smectite/montmorillonite clays, with their large internal surface areas, are particularly advantageous for red-wine production. Just why these clays are so interesting to M Bourguignon is worth consideration.</span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">According to Bourguignon, the soils of Pétrus together with most of Vosne's grands crus (Romanée-Conti may be the exception) are luxuriously endowed with smectite. By contrast, the illite-kalolinite clays of the white-wine grands crus have much smaller surface areas, and therefore their capacity to hold and exchange nutrients is considerably lower. Montmorillonite clays are also distinguishable from other clays by the extent to which they expand when wetted. Modest water deficits are seen as advantageous in wine production as they accelerate ripening and generally improve the quality and quantity of extractable solids from the skins, so a clay that absorbs and holds onto copious amounts of water would seem anomalous to the requirements of premium grape production. Montmorillonite clays do have a trick, however. Strong root growth and function require a good level of root oxygenation. The expansion of montmorillonite clays can be so dramatic that root growth and function become impaired. Moreover, the permeability of the clays can decrease due to sealing at their surfaces after wetting. Thus soils may look wet, puddled even, but this moisture is not necessarily available to the roots; a case of water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. And just as they expand when wetted, so montmorillonite clays shrink when dried. A sustained period of drought will open up capillaries within the soil which then become exploited by the vines' constantly regenerating mesh of short-lived rootlets. Taking into account the close connection between vacillations in clay particle size and Bordeaux's changeable seasons, it is possible to model a shallow, smectite-rich soil in which the availability of moisture to the vine roots is almost continually held at deficit levels - a terroir very much like that of Petrus, in fact.</span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Beneath the thin clay loams of Vosne's grands crus is limestone. The ability of vine roots to populate hard rock is limited, but this fact hasn't stopped commentators from positing this hidden union as the very foundation of terroir. However, a more </span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">probable explanation of limestone's advantage to viticulture is revealed by a consideration of its physical properties. Limestone can hold large volumes of water, but, as was discussed in the context of clays, we must be careful not to confuse capacity with availability. Movement of water through soils is multidirectional, and limestone can irrigate the clays resting upon it through capillary action. The extent to which the capillaries are opened will in turn depend upon the relative expansion of the clays and the degree to which calcium base-saturation has flocculated these, the most minuscule of soil particles, into larger agglomerations. In other words, the limestone's ability to function as an aquifer is itself dependent upon the structure of the overlying soil. As was the case with Pétrus above, we can imagine a possible balance between local effects whose equilibrium point sustains the vines at a slight and ultimately advantageous level of water deficit. </span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">On the Côte de Nuits the mercurial temperament of Pinot Noir brings colour and texture to the bland realms of geology and pedology. In her excellent articles in the <em>Australian & New Zealand Wine Industry Journal</em> on 'Calcium in viticulture', Valerie Saxton talks of 'terroir-ridden France', and Burgundy can seem like yet another scion of the republic's obsession with taxonomy and hierarchy. So completely pixelated has the map of Côte d'Or's vineyards become, that it's now virtually impossible for outsiders to see the whole picture. Twenty years ago, many New World growers censured the Côte d'Or. It just didn't make sense: grands crus a stone's throw from modest village vineyards; and Clos Vougeot, the oversized <em>Circus Maximus</em> at the centre of this antiquated world, just seemed to lump together everything that the rest of the classification had painstakingly tried to keep apart.</span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">There are historical precedents for Burgundy's sub-divisions, but the acute sensitivity of Pinot Noir coupled to the equally acute sensibilities of those that tend to it is the more remarkable story of this segregation. One way of classifying grape varieties is through their differing responses to water deficits. <em>Anisohydric</em> vines are said to be drought tolerant, whilst <em>isohydric</em> varieties are drought avoiding. The divide is not clear-cut, and relates to the strength of response different varieties show towards hormonal signalling (abscisic acid) from the drying roots. The stomata of isohydric varieties progressively close, rationing water uptake and loss, while anisohydric varieties maintain stomatal turgor, such that gas exchange, water uptake and carbon gain are unimpeded. Isohydric vines are 'pessimistic' and anisohydric vines 'optimistic', inasmuch as the latter carry on as if they expect it to rain again tomorrow.</span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Some varieties seem capable of both responses, but <em>in extremis</em>, Pinot Noir is anisohydric, and Grenache Noir isohydric. Lavish water use, as exemplified by Pinot Noir, brings with it a vulnerability to sustained drought. Pinot Noir, by rapidly depleting soil moisture, can accelerate itself towards conditions under which its own metabolic processes become compromised, just like the man who saws furiously at the branch he's resting on. Without the self-buffering responses of isohydric varieties, Pinot Noir's own water status is <em>so</em> immediately bound to the vicissitudes of soil moisture that it takes, in unirrigated Burgundy, a very special mix of extraneous pedological factors to consistently produce high quality grapes, ie those that are the result of sustained, but not impairing, water deficits. Vosne's grands crus are, indeed, exceptional.</span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Claude Bourguignon caused me to depart from thoughts of my own soil analyses and on-going struggle to get consistent data. There have been reasons for optimism in most of the results, and I don't doubt the fact that if Tixover's three blocks of brashy soil were panelled into Morey or Chambolle you wouldn't see the joins, but it's ridiculous to start talking about terroir, particularly when we seem to have spent the last few years acquainting ourselves with a whole load of Nature's disadvantages. I remember with incredulity, a vineyard owner in Long Island exploiting the argument that Bordeaux's crus were the finest in the world, that Bordeaux's vineyards were flat and, as his vineyards were flat, too, it followed that his wines were rivals to those of the Médoc.</span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">As said, there was a time when the majority of New World growers rejected terroir, portraying it as either a perspicacious piece of marketing, or homey make-believe. But somewhere along the track these protagonists either gave up on this line of attack or lost the argument, because producers in Chile, New Zealand and Mendoza nowadays reel-off neat invocations about the contingency of their own vineyard work that wouldn't sound out of place in Vosne. Wine now seems so exclusively 'made in the vineyard', it's hard to know if there is anything left for winemakers to do. In the New World, terroir has gone from being nowhere to being everywhere.</span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The ubiquity of terroir is problematic. I take from the late Peter A Sichel's remark that only a fraction of Bordeaux's vineyards genuinely exhibit terroir characteristics, that terroir is a title bestowed like an honour or a peerage, rather than a democratic entitlement to which anyone with a vine growing up a wall has an equal claim. Accordingly, Richebourg and Pétrus are the exemplars of terroir, the foundations and acmes of a system in which exceptionality and scarcity are paradigmatic. In this context, the work of Claude Bourguignon, Gerard Seguin and Cornelius van Leeuwen is so pertinent because they are trying, in different ways, to cleave some scientific traction into our understanding of a much abused term. For those who crave more metaphysical accounts of grape quality, who will never be moved by terms like 'vine water status' or 'point quadrant analysis', there is always Nicolas Joly of Coulée de Serrant. But this is to miss the point. When physicists revealed diamonds' atomic structure, they didn't stop them from being a girl's best friend.</span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">I do share Peter Sichel's instinct for parsimony, not least because the over-extension of any term, terroir included, eventually runs the risk of draining all significance from it. The meaning of words changes over time, and despite van Leeuwen's attempts to give terroir intellectual rigour, I feel sure that the term's appropriators will win out. 'Sense of place' will read like a postcode.</span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">More optimistically, the weakening of terroir is not going to stop some very clever people from giving us ever more concise formulations of past viticultural accomplishments, those for whom 'sense of place' and 'terroir' prompt the question: 'And how did we get here?' As for the appropriators, I suspect every nascent English sparkling wine venture will claim its unique terroir, as will every newly planted desert of irrigated Sauvignon. Bertrand Russell once observed, 'The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.'</span></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-53278690599271375282013-12-08T08:25:00.000-08:002013-12-09T12:49:49.078-08:00Meaningless Brands<br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">(This was published in 99, and should be read as such. At the time,I was full of admiration for the achievements of the Australian wine industry.</span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Reading the paper again now, I am aware of how irresistible the forces of commoditisation are in our market. Most of the brands mentioned have struggled to retain equity. I must also admit that my attitudes to AOC have changed: I now see the INAO as an unnecessary evil.) </span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">I</span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">n the same way that light is
refracted through a prism into its constituent colours, certain product classes
divide spontaneously into their brands. So complete is this segmentation for
products like cars, soft drinks and perfumes that our entire knowledge of the
categories is almost entirely mediated by brand familiarity.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">On the face of it, the wine market lacks such decisive brands. “Ernest
and Julio Gallo” and “le Piat d’Or are the categories two most popular brands,
yet with less than 2% market share neither has any claim on sector dominance.
These statistics offer something of a puzzle. Outwardly the wine market seems
disposed to branding - consumption is growing year on year, and drinkers are
familiar with the notion of a highly differentiated product – so why is it that
individual brands show such a disappointing lack of penetration?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Branding begins with the realisation that what people buy are not
products, but ideas of quality associated with products. These ideas and associations
far from being imaginary must be anchored to the brand. The cycle of
consumption means that customers have the chance to measure the brand against
the projected ideal, and a brand position based upon far-fetched claims will be
unsustainable. In order to count, these associations must be relevant. If the
differences between brands do not make any difference to consumers, then price
will provide the only reason to buy. Once established, such commodity style
markets are characterised by low margins and cut-throat price competition.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">At first sight, grape varieties and appellations provide a huge
reservoir of available associations that can be tapped to create meaningful
points of difference. Thus the Australians took up the batten of varietal
labelling and effectively made “Shiraz”, “Cabernet” and Chardonnay their own.
Just how successful this appropriation has been is illustrated by a story I
heard last year. An Australian winemaker working in Europe was approached by a well-known
singer to plant his Algarve estate with vines. “Sure”, the winemaker agreed,
“And what should I plant?” “Some of those Australian grapes,” the singer
replied.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Although labelling by variety is now common in Europe, the continent's
strongest associations are still with geographical origins. Consider Burgundy: awareness
is high from centuries of exposure, and the litigiousness of the INAO
successfully protects the appellation nomenclature form imitation. . Moreover,
the complicated dissection of the region into Crus has provided an enduring
qualitative message. But just as the VW Golf tag-line “2846 improvements” doesn’t
have prospective buyers reaching for the Haynes Car Manual, so Meursault drinkers
don’t need to memorise the villages of the Cote d’Or to embrace Burgundian modishness.
It is perceived quality associations that drive brands and seduce consumers;
complicated facts are liable to leave them cold.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Burgundy provides the price ceiling to the wine market’s vertical
stretch; at its base are the value brands, and these too have come synonymous
with certain countries and regions. Bulgaria has been a reliable source of
entry point and value wines over the past 10-15 years. Before the iron-curtain fell,
subsidised sales provided valuable foreign exchange, but with the subsidies
gone the domestic wine industry has been forced to consider other ways through
which it can become self-financing. Raising quality in the hope that margins
and prices follow suit is an attractive option that seems to have a precedent.
Australia’s entry into the table wine market coincided with Bulgaria’s, and twenty
years on, their profitability and premium image contrasts sharply with the
latter’s value positioning. So, if Bulgaria follows Australia’s lead, will
acceptance and profitability follow?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">From a marketing perspective I think that in the short to medium-term the
answer to this question is “no”. The reasons for my negativity are varied, but
spring principally from the fact that delimited origins far from being an
arbitrary source of association serve as a compulsory form of branding. As
such, each delimited country and region has a value proposition, - a quality
perception amongst consumers –that is fairly inelastic to real changes in
quality.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Awareness provides a strong argument for the claim that countries and
regions act as quasi-brands. The point was made above that product classes like
cars divide almost hermetically into brands. Ask drivers to identify quality
and value in the car market and they are likely to respond with brand names
such as BMW, Mercedes, Ford and Nissan. Put similar questions to wine drinkers
and you will be lucky to get a couple of brands, a few grape varieties and a
short list of countries and regions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
fact that only a few brands are likely to be recalled shouldn’t surprise us.
Origins have provided a means of distinguishing one wine from another for a
long time. Furthermore, in most European wine regions production continues to
be piecemeal, with appellations containing hundreds, possible thousands of
individual growers. Their numbers may be thinned-out by the time they reach the
UK market, but for regions such as Bordeaux, Rioja and Chianti, the choice is
still manifold. Faced with this proliferation, consumers buy on words they
recognise. It stands to reason then, that from both a simplistic and exposure
standpoint what sticks for the occasional Rioja drinker are not the brands of
the twenty or so Riojas he or she has been exposed to this year, but the name
“Rioja”. The unfortunate truth for individual brands is that in a market that
values brevity, their name runs the risk of appearing one complications too far.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">If regions, appellations, even countries can function as brands in the
wine market, then what are the values they communicate? At a time when wine has
itself become fashionable, there has been a tendency to dress the product up in
the jargon of the day as “just another product”. Inasmuch as it competes for
supermarket facings this may be true, but from a marketeers perspective, we are
also interested in what distinguishes our product class from others. I can buy
a toothpaste endorsed by the Dental Association in the belief that it will
freshen my breath; if people breathe easily in my company I can be satisfied<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that the brand has delivered on its promise.
Likewise, I can buy a Nissan on the premise that it is reliable, and find that
after 50,000 miles driving I haven’t lifted the bonnet once. Both brands
communicate particular qualities, and their claims are tested during the brands
use. With wine, the endorsement of quality is not so clear-cut. When poured
blind, what can we learn from the fact that the majority of drinkers struggle
to distinguish a £5.00 from a £100 bottle? Well, to start with the large
difference in price tells that quality really does matter; presumably consumers
wouldn’t be willing to pay for differences in quality if they thought they
didn’t exist. Moreover, the vertical stretch in pricing shows these differences
are very important to consumers even though they struggle to distinguish
between them. In other words, there are acknowledged differences in quality,
and these differences are communicated through price.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The link between quality perceptions and price provides the core for
each region’s or country’s value proposition. It may well be that Bulgaria can
raise the quality of production, but after decades of exposure to value
pricing, consumers are unlikely to meet the new price demand. In fact, the most
probable outcome is that they will trade away into another country's wines. As
the German wine industry found out to its cost, low pricing creates a perception
of quality that is difficult to escape. By the same logic, a brand aspiring to
establish a reputation for quality within a lowly appellation will struggle,
because the reputation, the value proposition of the appellation will hang like
an albatross around its neck. Worryingly, the real opportunities exist for
those who undermine the value proposition by producing poor wines that they
sell-off cheaply. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perceptions of worth
move downwards much more rapidly than they move up, and cutting price and
quality to gain market share can all too easily accelerate the downward spiral
towards commodity. This problem becomes particularly acute in regions where
large numbers of producers qualify for the geographical designation. All too
easily, price rather than quality becomes the driver of the market, sending the
appellation’s value proposition into freefall.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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</span><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">In this context we can see how the spectacular rise of the Australian
wine industry was facilitated by careful management of the “Australia”
name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With four large companies responsible
for 80% of the annual crush, the destiny of the country’s table wine industry
was concentrated in the hands of a few individuals. These individuals soon realised a shared marketing vision would serve them better than disparate and possibly antagonistic strategies.
As a consequence, the Australian industry was able to build brand equity
through strong qualitative associations, without the fear that a competitor
might milk these associations to gain credibility for an inferior brand. Thus,
the image and equity of individual brands like Penfolds is intimately linked to
the early articulation and protection of the “Australia” moniker.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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</span><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The other feature that characterised the Australian revolution was
rapid acceptance and use of technological innovation, and the practice of
interregional blending to produce wines that are badged with a varietal name.
The singer’s <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>request for “Australian
grapes“ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>shows the extent to which the
Country has developed strong associations with imported grape varieties; yet
unlike regional links, the names of grape varieties become the shared property
of whoever grows them. Success breeds success, but it also encourages
imitation, and the availability of Chardonnay and Cabernet is steering the
Australian industry towards a system of geographically delimited points of
difference.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">I think, in the end, it is their very ubiquity, the looseness of the franchise
that prevents grape varieties also being considered brands. “Chardonnay” maybe
one of the key words that triggers the purchase decision, but burgeoning
production means it lacks the fixture and solidity for other association to be meaningfully
hung from it. Consumers may still search out “Australian” or “Chilean”
Chardonnay, but as the tide of production rises, Chardonnay is likely to slip
the anchor of its origins and drift towards the ranks of commodities.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The value of the name <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Chardonnay” is one of the dilemmas currently
facing the wine trade. Varietal labelling was welcomed by most of the trade
when it came to the South of France as it simplified the purchase process by
utilising more familiar and potentially friendlier associations. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But simplification invites replication, and by
projecting quality in the form of a grape variety the wine business runs the
risk of losing points of difference that have traditionally added value. When I
asked Mike Paul, MD of Southcorp, why Lindemans chose to market Chardonnay as
“BIN 65” he replied it was a deliberate obfuscation: “The secret of strong
branding” he said, “was to prevent people from completely understanding your
brand.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Above I claimed that what counts for consumers is perceived quality - a
representation. Volkswagen realise that “2864 improvements” is a better way of
communicating quality than an exhaustive list of their new Golf’s
features.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think this is what Mike Paul meant when he
spoke of “not completely understanding your brand”; it is a brand’s gesture
towards a realm of complex facts that ultimately drives our perception of
quality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence my assertion that
Meursault drinkers don’t need to memorise the villages of the Cote d’Or to
embrace Burgundy.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">It has been argued quite seriously that what the wine market needs is
simplification, and the popularity of labelling by variety is very much part of
this strategy. Unfortunately, as the World’s Chardonnay growers are starting to
realize, recycling the same associations means undifferentiated products. What
seems to be at issue for those who are pushing for greater simplicity in the
wine market is a conviction that consumers need to be in possession of all the
facts about a particular wine before they can be persuaded to buy it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It therefore follows that the existence of
appellations, sub-regions and crus provides a barrier to customers with no
appetite for knowledge. As I see it, the weakness of this argument stems from
the assumption that the specification of a brand needs to be immediately transparent
to customer scrutiny in order for it to become part of some initial consideration set.
Successful branding in other categories shows us how a background of opacity
and complexity can add value by driving and anchoring qualitative associations.
In other words brands can communicate complex information “implicitly”, as a
reference; there is no further requirement that consumers should understand the
brand’s specification “explicitly”.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">This article began by considering why does a product class that
outwardly appears so suitable to branding lack dominant and decisive brands.
Why is it when ask consumers to define value and quality in product classes
such as cars and perfume, they invariably give answers linked to brands, while
the same questions put to wine drinkers yield a mix of brands, grape varieties,
countries<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and regions. In part the
answer to this question derives from the fact that the precedent for labelling
wines according to their origins predates most wine brands. Moreover, the fact
that the production of most regions is thoroughly shared means that exposure to
a named origin is more frequent than exposure to individual brands, prompting
greater awareness.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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</span><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Accepting that origins exhibit brand characteristics can help us
account for some of the problems regions and countries encounter when they look
to improve their market positioning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
quasi-brands, origins communicate impressions of quality and value, and in a
product class as inscrutable as wine, consumers will tend to take their quality
prompts from price. This conclusion presents real problems for regions that
have traditionally supplied the value end of the market or countries that see supplying
entry level as a foothold into a market that can be leveraged at a later date,
as all too easily perceptions of quality correlated to price become frozen in the
minds of consumers. Moreover, even within regions with established reputations
for quality, price competition can lead to the gradual erosion of equity, as
shown by the weakness of the Grandes Marques in the French domestic Champagne
Market.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The diminution of equity is common to most agricultural crops. The wine
market faces similar pressures, but unlike other agricultural crops the drift
towards commodity is resisted by the notion that grape quality can vary from
site to site. In turn, this principal has become the basis for appellation prescriptions
around which much of the added value of the European industry is structured. It
is for this reason that origins as a means of differentiating wine should be
encouraged. Those who prefer to divide up the wine world according to more
utilitarian notions of quality, such as grape variety or winemakers, overlook
the fact that wine drinking is still aspirational; a sign of social mobility
and increased affluence. Wine’s status is maintained because quality associations
are passed from the premium end of the market to entry level. By contrast, simplification
of the category makes not only makes the procurement of quality associations
easier, but also erodes equity as qualitative thresholds are unchallenging. Thus,
we can understand the temptation of French farmers to label their d’Oc Syrah as
“Shiraz”, but our sympathies must lie with the Australians who have spent years
nurturing the reputation of the variety.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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</span><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The articulation and protection of quality perceptions is an important
part of our business and the responsibility of all those who work within it.
Equity is eroded away all too easily, but by basing quality communications on
inimitable origins rather than readily procured associations, the value added
nature of the wine business can be preserved. The need for more detailed and
discriminatory regulations runs in the face of those who advocate simplicity,
but regions are notoriously bad at regulating themselves. Brand owners in other
product classes are familiar with the idea that detailed specifications need
only to be used implicitly, and this is the lesson that those who attack
appellations as over complicated must learn. Idealistic, yes! But ideas are
what we all buy.</span> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-22357363265172058322013-12-02T02:25:00.001-08:002013-12-03T07:47:28.347-08:00Critical Thinking - Aspiration and Inspiration<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">In a recession, your job changes;
the first line of your job description now reads, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Looking after your Job,</i> which in our business means protecting
income and lifestyle. The foreign travel and restaurants are perks that some
speedily get accustomed to; in fact, the sense of entitlement can become acute when
we start living-off other people’s expense accounts - ask Charles Saatchi. PR
agencies are awash with tales of irate wine writers ringing-up in the middle of
the night to get their rooms changed because “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the view isn’t a view, and the pool's too small to do lengths, if it
ever warmed-up here, that is!</i>” When people tell me they want my job what they
really want is to sit in l’Arpège and Guy Savoy, though for my part, I’m never
at home in these surroundings; there will always be part of me stuck in the
Salford fish and chip shop where my family’s culinary roots were first put down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The wine trade is in a mess.
After years of expansion, people are drinking less wine, and once you strip out
the Chancellor’s duty accelerator, they aren’t spending much more either.
Robert Joseph continues to offer a Gibbon-style analysis of this decline and is
fastidious and clear in his warning that if we don’t change our thinking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now</i> we won’t even be afforded the luxury
of repeating past mistakes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Everyone has their theory as to what
went wrong - over-supply, cosy relationships between press and trade,
discounting – but in 30 years of growth, the UK wine trade failed to significantly
increase equity within the category, and most wine drinkers view the different
regions of production with a sense of equivalence that’s reinforced by an
alternating offer in which the World displays all its diversity at discounted
prices. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The situation is no better in the
on-trade. “Support” is needed to facilitate many listings, and support has
morphed from retros and incentives to upfront payments that have as many
noughts as those premium bond cheques whose winners used to be paraded on the ITN
news back in the 80s. Sommeliers can seem embarrassed at times, passing on the
corporate neediness of an unseen FD - “And this guy” they will tell you, “doesn’t
care if your Chablis is bigger than the other guy’s Petit Chablis, he just wants to
see the size of your wad.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">What a lot of us are wondering –
journalists, buyers, salesmen, managers - is what’s next? Like economists
calling the end to the recession, we need to see a couple of quarters of growth
and greater spend to confidently announce a recovery, but quite where and how
this will come about is not clear. Jamie Goode recently challenged Robert Joseph
to offer solutions rather than, as he saw it, <em>challenges</em>. I have some sympathy
with Jamie Goode; I once joined a company that had a vortex of MBAs at its
centre. Every week they confronted me about wine profitability (not their core
business), put hurdles in my way and then forced me to jump over them. I took
their questioning in good faith; I believed they were leading me in a
particular direction - to an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">answer</i> -
but after 6 months of inquisition, I realised I was just going around the same piece
of track, jumping the same hurdles. We were all lost.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">On twitter, Tim Atkin MW offered “inspiration”
and Robert Joseph “aspiration” as possible remedies for the trade’s current malaise.
That day, Tim Atkin was inspiring 3000 people in Manchester with stories and
wine, an effort which Robert Joseph likened to a “finger in the dyke”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Joseph suggested that Parker 100s had created
a culture of aspiration in the States, which still persists. Aspiration develops
an aura of desirability, whereas inspiration promotes interest and access
through improved understanding and education.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">As bystanders to the argument, we
don’t have to take a side. Both arguments are persuasive, and I think by
accepting one you don’t exclude the force of the other. I’d raised
“inspiration” in a previous exchange, when I wanted to draw out some
similarities between books and wines. I don’t think Robert Joseph took
exception to my likening the trade to a community of deluded literary critics
who mistakenly thought people read Jackie Collins as a preamble to Dickens.
Part of the misguided thinking of the 1990s was a belief that consumers who
bought their wine from the supermarket gondola-ends were stepping onto our escalator;
all we had to do was wait at the top and skim them off with lists of expensive
Claret and Burgundy. It never happened. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The Robert Parker argument proposed
by Robert Joseph is intriguing; Parker awarded 100s, but he also slammed
underperforming Cru Classés. In a tweet last week, Steve Heimoff said that he
could avoid giving low scores to his friends’ wines by writing rather than
scoring. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I replied at the time that Heimoff’s
attitude illustrated the difference between a fact and telling the truth, and
that consumer trust didn’t arise from the facts, but from the truth behind the
facts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robert Parker gained our trust
and encouraged aspiration because he incorporated this distinction into his
criticism from the start. The 100 point scores wouldn’t have meant so much if
he wasn’t red-inking 50s to the underperformers at the bottom of the class.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The relationship between the
press and producers is complicated. As Chris Kissack reminded me the other day,
the critic must always be on the side of the consumer, never the producer. Chris
is very principled and, as far as I’m aware, funds his own trips, but his
expertise resides in the Loire and Bordeaux, short-haul destinations. Funding
your own trips to Australia, South Africa and New Zealand is beyond the means
of flying journalists, so inevitably there is a conflict of interest if they
accept the hospitality of trade bodies or producers. I am not sure if this can
be resolved other than by charging for content. I am with Tim Atkin and Chris Kissack
on this inasmuch as you forfeit your right to criticise them if you are not
prepared to pay for their content. We must recognise our part in this economy
of trust; we shouldn’t expect their output to be free, and if we do, we have no
grounds to doubt their integrity. I would go further: I would argue that paying
for content builds trust, and is part of the solution to our current woes. Aspiration
needs to be grounded in trust.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Just as a neglected truth is required
for the establishment of trust, so, I believe, there is a forgotten but shared
truth anchoring our interest in wine. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wine
has a primal scene: it is the unbroken process of production - viticulture and
enology - achieved and guided by human force and sensibility. Proximity and
human agency, the coalescence of viticulture and religious devotion delivered us
Burgundy, but these artisanal attributes became repressed through wine’s
industrial evolution. The expansion of the wine business in the 80s and 90s exaggerated
an already established trend for discontinuity within production.
Mechanisation, contract growing and increased scale dehumanized the conception
of wine, and caused us to forget the deeply personalised origins of our trade.
Inevitably for some industrialisation is a heresy, but I am sure Damien Wilson
is correct when he says that wine has to expand in order to protect itself; I
think it is enough that we should remember and respect what came before, and thus
resist the temptation to believe that there is an easy equivalence between the
artisanal and the industrial. If we can hold onto this distinction and keep it
separate from complicated considerations of terroir and appellation (the
meaningless and the failed, from my point of view), we might nurture the same
kind of interest and care for production that has helped develop value in
categories like bread, whisky and beer. Returning to my analogy of hapless literary critics,
the trade developed a delusion of uniformity: we started talking about the cheap
stuff as though it had all the intrinsic values of the expensive stuff; it was as
if we believed we could flog extra copies of <em>Bleak House</em> by calling <em>Lucky</em> a novel
and declaring Jackie Collins the rightful heir to Cervantes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Interestingly, the Californian
wine Industry has a long history of bulk manufacture, but it is the recent increase
in artisan and small scale production that has helped drive values up. As Jamie
Goode consistently proves with his well-informed coverage of wineries and
regions, we can desire both a product and the production of that product. How
things are made really matters to some of us. There is a lot of new and untainted wine
out there and we have some excellent people covering this emergence of talent;
I just happen to believe if we paid them it would be even better.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">California is blessed with a
great climate and an industry that’s well disposed to developing its customers’
experience with wine. Up to this point, UK wine drinkers have been largely denied
this sort of familiarity with production, but now, with the growth in domestic estates,
vineyard access has never been easier, and a combination of cellar-door sales and
chauvinism might help us to deepen consumer interest in the product. The UK industry
is young and premium-priced, it just has to be very watchful about how it goes
about nurturing its reputation; you are not going to maintain people’s trust for
long by calling 2012 a good vintage. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my blog on the 1855 Classification, I
warned about the dangers of rationalising wine into groupings and hierarchies.
The 1855 classification is hyperbolic; it created its own reality of division
by restraining opportunity for the majority of estates. From the Jura to Muscadet,
individual producers were branded with an appellation name the value of which was
determined by the worst offerings of the region. There was no escape, no consideration,
and no incentive to change; the fate of individual growers was bound to the
laziest and least sanitary domaines within the appellation’s boundaries. Now,
with the advent of social-media, we are witnessing the democratisation of
opportunity, and the concomitant weakening of the INAO’s authority. Regions
long repressed by AOC law are beginning to flourish; their estates are profiled;
the previously anonymous detail is being brought into the light. The hegemony
of Burgundy and Bordeaux is loosening. There has never been a better time to be
a wine drinker, if you have money and an open-mind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The UK wine trade is in a period
of decline and change. Last time I saw him, John Hoskins MW astutely remarked, “That
perhaps the old stuff needs to die-off so that the new stuff can come through.”
It’s not just the wine market that’s altering, production is too; among the
vines there is a churn of birth, reinvention and mortality. Wine's New Testament march around the Globe has slowed</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">, though the personnel that
brought that burgeoning offer to the UK are still largely in control of <em>it</em>. At the time, I thought John was referring to Australia – he was
backed against a fantastic wall of antipodean bottles - but reflecting on what he said now,
I’m not so sure he wasn’t just talking about me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-9653445499823740882013-11-20T00:01:00.000-08:002013-11-27T11:32:33.805-08:00Abe's Bookshelves<br />
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<span style="color: #c00000; font-family: "Calibri Light","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: black; font-size: small;">
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<span style="color: #c00000; font-family: "Calibri Light","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">In a short video, Abe Schoener is talking and making wine at the Scholium Project. He says something about wine being somatic and sensual, but I’m not going to allow myself a second viewing in case I’m wrong, and this whole edifice of words comes crashing down. In one scene Abe is greedily devouring grapes, like a boar. Next, there is a beautiful tattooed woman treading white grapes against smoking nuggets of dry ice. It looks fun. Abe’s in a barrel, but the woman’s barrel looks more accommodating. <span id="goog_715016751"></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_715016752"></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #c00000; font-family: "Calibri Light","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Then it’s back to Abe, now sitting in front of a bookcase talking rapidly about “the carnal, the body…” You can view it for yourself on HawkwakawakaWineReviews.com.<a href="http://wakawakawinereviews.com/2013/10/31/the-carnal-the-corporeal-the-somatic-indistinguishable-from-each-other-conversation-w-abe-schoener/">http://wakawakawinereviews.com/2013/10/31/the-carnal-the-corporeal-the-somatic-indistinguishable-from-each-other-conversation-w-abe-schoener/</a> Hawk was a philosophy professor, as </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #c00000; font-family: "Calibri Light","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">was Abe. Philosophy has a loose connection with wine: Paul Draper, Randall Grahm and Jancis Robinson all studied the subject, and they are much better qualified than me to discuss its content. Indeed, if they ever read this they might become irritated at the thought that a non-philosopher is queering their patch, but then aren't we all on each other's patch a bit now, anyway? Besides, I've read books, some of which had philosophical themes. And it's the books that catch my eye on Abe's shelves, particularly the pastel 1983 Pelican reprints of Freud. Abe must have bought these at the same time as me - they're in my cellar now - but given the different directions our lives have taken, Abe obviously read his Standard Edition much more closely. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #c00000; font-family: "Calibri Light","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: small;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: black;">I'm watching Abe in the barrel and remembering Eric Peter. In 1983, Eric was washed-up on the shores of Guadeloupe in a barrel, Ton-tiki. Penniless and wearing only a pair of jeans, he immediately claimed the record for crossing the Atlantic in the smallest ever vessel. “I knew I had to hit some land somewhere,” he said. “It didn’t matter where.” He had no compass, said he’d lived on a diet of Spanish olives and almonds, and drank rainwater which had collected in his barrel during a 4 day squall. The record was never verified. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daily Record</i>, 8<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>th</sup> February, 1983)</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #c00000; font-family: "Calibri Light","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">I <o:p></o:p>know as little about Abe as I do Eric. Abe cast off the obligations of being a professor of Greek Philosophy, came over to wine, and immediately cast off the obligations of being a winemaker too. Some of the sauvignon blanc bunches arriving at the winery reception in the video will be eaten by Abe, the rest will make an orange wine, unless the whole vat gets tipped away. Abe seems as frivolous about outcomes as Eric seemed blasé about his starting point. Eric originally sailed from England. The elements were against him. He launched into the surf, but the first big wave lassoed him back to the shore where he was arrested and his barrel confiscated. His enthusiasm undiminished, Eric began his successful navigation from the Canary Islands, whose easterly flowing waters were outside UK jurisdiction.<o:p></o:p> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Winemaking and archaeology have their methodologies, strict codes of production that encourage re-production rather than freedom and virtuosity. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thor Heyerdahl was a serious student of reed boats and hardwood rafts. Ra and Kon-tiki – part of the unseaworthy fleet built by Thor - were archaeological replicas. Ra 1 was an ethnographic experiment that sank (but then, I guess, reed boats have always sunk, otherwise the global village would have been with us since antiquity); and when Ra 2 eventually dumped its emaciated ultra-blonde crew on a tropical beach it had the buoyancy of a turd.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: small;">Eric's adventure sounds ridiculous, suicidal, but then, so do Thor’s. It’s hard to separate the rational from the irrational here. The fact that Ton-tiki and Con-tiki achieved the same thing just reminds us that stupidity and reason progress through time together, like matter and dark matter; like interlocking talons, which you prise apart at your peril.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plato put reason on a plinth, separating the mind and alienating the body, and it took Freud, listening to hysterical voices two and a half thousand years later, to fit them back together again. Freud thinks Greek when he places the irrational id and burdened ego into a dynamic relationship with the instinctual drives, but he sounds like Jackie Mason when he says our best hope in life is to attain “the normal level of human unhappiness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri Light","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: small;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #c00000; font-family: "Calibri Light","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace; font-size: small;">Wine
is full of numbers, scores, cod-commentaries, and classifications. It tries to
reproduce itself in styles, such that “Bordeaux-like” and “Burgundy-like” have
become the trade’s two most overworked phrases. There is an attenuation of
interest that comes with rationalisation, a narrowing of thought. Returning to
those pastel reprints of Freud, I remember reading that we are drawn to those
who exhibit patterns of desire we once had, but have now given-up. I am attracted
to the Scholium Project, even though I’ve never tried a bottle, because their
relationship with wine seems to be one of pleasure, expansion and indulgence;
things I’ve repressed as my tastes have become more institutionalised; as I’ve
drifted into a self-censorship that refuses to acknowledge wine in the immediacy
and purity of its effects. Abe is right: we need to drink wine with our bodies, not
just our minds.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-63726433517220842092013-11-04T11:27:00.001-08:002013-11-04T22:52:54.890-08:00Champagne: The Power of Blends<br />
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Courier; font-size: large; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">It's worth considering that Champagne is not an extracted wine;
the ratio of juice to phenolics derived from low yields can be detrimental to
the quality of Champagne. Starchy tannin has a place in red wines, but in
acidulous <em>vin clair</em> its presence only exaggerates austerity and bitterness.<br />
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Blending originally comes out of pragmatism, and the need to overcome seasonal
climatic anomalies, but it has become creatively refined. Bad blends repel, like the
identical poles of magnets that are forced together. The <em>Chef de Cave</em> is
looking to create vectors of flavour, small synergies, and energies of
combination. Too often blending is depicted as a potlatch which proceeds
haphazardly, crashing the new into the old.<br />
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The <em>Chef de Cave</em> is like the Jesuit priest who takes the child and returns the
man. He makes decisions at a very early stage of the process, the final
elaboration and consequences of which may not become clear for 10 years.<br />
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Yields are something of a red herring in Champagne. The <em>prise de mousse</em> boosts
the wine's power and intensity. Wines coming off a low yield may end up
lumbering, particularly if the time in the cellar is over-extended. Champagne
offers drinkers a reflux between refreshment and <i>sapidity</i>: salt, citrus,
bubbles, malt. It entices its drinkers to drink again, so it needs to combine
delicacy and intensity: delicacy comes from the climate; intensity from the
<em>terroir</em>, blending and the prise de mousse. The best wines are mutually
dominated by their origins and Champagnisation. Heavy base wines from low
yields that are subjected to long lees ageing can be every bit as poor as wines
given the minimal term in the cellars. <br />
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Champagne Houses understand the relativity of consumption. Most of their
drinkers don't go through the Newtonian ritual of the ISO glass before taking a
sip. Festivity is Champagne's natural form of expression, but this does not
imply a lack of integrity on behalf of the Houses. Just as the handsome
architectural facades of Reims hide a subterranean world of hard work, so most blends
are the articulation of hard earned preferences. The best wines are an
extraordinary expression of intellectual property that can't be revealed by
disgorgement dates and the like. Sometimes it's best to wonder at a process,
particularly one as beguilingly creative as blending.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-77198397338709227962013-08-29T05:52:00.000-07:002013-08-29T06:00:12.069-07:00Early Season Leaf Removal - Poni and Kemp<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Over the last decade viticulturists
have rowed back from Richard Smart’s original hypothesis that improvements to
the light environment of vine canopies unanimously benefit the quality
and quantity of grape harvests. In particular, it has been shown that the
combination of high ambient temperatures and strong UV light can negatively
impact grape colouration. In the warmer regions of the World it is possible to
get too much of a good thing, and Smart’s original prescriptions are now customised
to site and variety.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In separate studies, Dr Belinda
Kemp and Professor Stefano Poni have researched the consequences of early
season leaf removal. Belinda Kemp found that for Canterbury-grown (NZ) pinot
noir, mechanical leaf removal around the clusters 7 days after flowering
improved the perception of fruitiness for tasters, whilst simultaneously
lowering the negative ascription of “green” characters. to the wine. Similarly, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Poni, working with grenache, sangiovese and graciano,
attributes accelerated ripening and a rise in the ratio of desirable tannins
and anthocyanins within the must to early season leaf removal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, for both Kemp and Poni early season
removal conditions the clusters to ultra violet light, and consequently the berries don’t
scorch or sunburn. If complete fruit zone leaf removal at veraison improves a wine’s quality, then
the chances are that leaf removal at flowering will bring an even greater gain,
as long as you are prepared to tolerate some drop in productivity. Removal of
basal leaves diminishes the vine’s photosynthetic potential at a crucial stage in
the development of both this year’s inflorescences and next year’s buds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Poni has speculated that early leaf
removal might bring about physiological changes in the vine that favour the
production of phenols, but as yet no mechanism as to how this might work has
been forthcoming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Returning to Smart’s
work, it seems logical that at fruit set intra-bunch shading – berry-on-berry
light interception - is minimal, whereas closed or veraised clusters only
present a fraction of their cumulative berry surface area to direct sunlight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Strip leaves off early and the clusters
expose every bit of their green-skinned-selves to mid-summer’s forceful sun.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq6diF7m2_OUvIgRIBS4k0riVuGSQ-BwhKsVwuf91MALCaWO5F336QH4WF5vlvDjsaN3T6PRU0knVjb3fGDxFdqdP_QFHnWOIemtdJpdovk864yLxFoj6I3Y8gHNLO0_eOjabIm7G40mY/s1600/tweet+iphone+044.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq6diF7m2_OUvIgRIBS4k0riVuGSQ-BwhKsVwuf91MALCaWO5F336QH4WF5vlvDjsaN3T6PRU0knVjb3fGDxFdqdP_QFHnWOIemtdJpdovk864yLxFoj6I3Y8gHNLO0_eOjabIm7G40mY/s400/tweet+iphone+044.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pinot at fruit set</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">UK Conditions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Dr Steve Smith estimates that at
the equivalent latitude, New Zealand’s vineyards receive 40% more UV than those
of France; whilst the regions of Champagne and Burgundy intercept between 15%-25%
more light through the growing season than does Southern England. Moreover,
differences in seasonal temperature accumulation between England and Continental Europe
mean that even in our warmest vineyards, flowering and veraison occur later in
the year than they do in Central and Northern France. On the Cote de Nuits,
pinot veraises around the beginning of August, when UV levels are high
and the sun tall, whilst in England veraison takes place three weeks later,
when days are shortening and the sun’s trajectory is much lower. If you want to
make a still pinot noir in England then the autumnal sun might just not be the
strong radiating source you need.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">With this in mind we have adapted
the principles of Kemp and Poni to our vineyard. Removing leaves at flowering
maximises cluster exposure to sunlight at a time of the year when light levels
are at their highest and intra-bunch shading is at its lowest. It gives the
grapes every opportunity to build their defences against the light, and we hope
these adaptions will ultimately benefit the quality of our wine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pinot Noir<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We have a few different clones -
777, 828, Abel - and some rows of massales.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Between flowering and veraison the clusters are held above the
horizontal which means that it’s only necessary to remove the primary leaves (by
hand) from the node adjacent and immediately above the second cluster (assuming
two clusters per shoot). This has the advantage that the basal nodes retain
their leaves which seems prudent given that we spur prune. We also remove the
laterals around the clusters, which at flowering are just starting to elongate.
In this way we create a window in the canopy just above the clusters. Poni and
Kemp experimented with stripping primaries and laterals through nodes 1-6, but
in our situation this wouldn’t necessarily increase the exposure of the
clusters to direct sunlight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz5hxksCMstXTTLgFYJ5St9KY5jsBoE5PT5-AywCz6Dzx1-Ug2i-_n4-76TBgGuqvmlyljIbeLaG5ARV8q0kBI_qmBFt4l43fbpkMwkgY1hbz0N9EVfn4hOmI_hocFL4G9pqoZJhD742s/s1600/panoram.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz5hxksCMstXTTLgFYJ5St9KY5jsBoE5PT5-AywCz6Dzx1-Ug2i-_n4-76TBgGuqvmlyljIbeLaG5ARV8q0kBI_qmBFt4l43fbpkMwkgY1hbz0N9EVfn4hOmI_hocFL4G9pqoZJhD742s/s400/panoram.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pinot Noir with reflective mulch between the rows</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Over the last three years,
cluster exposure has been good all the way through to harvest, though this year
we have only trimmed the vines once. Ripening grapes in a cool climate requires
an active canopy late into the season, and we have taken the decision to retain
more laterals this year. Sunlight exposure on the clusters may be slightly less
through September than it was previously, but more leaves should potentially
mean higher sugars and the prospect of increased hydric stress on our shallow
soil. I am happy to eulogise the advantages of a long, cool ripening period,
but vines slide inexorably towards entropy and rot under October’s lowering
skies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am hopeful that the
intermittent periods of hydric stress and photon flux experienced over the
previous 3 months can cumulatively get us across this year’s finish line.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Acolon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd6g4iFXmOpFdGuJ5uICALNXKs92gD7IJHF4UHWS9z7HkOlcQnGFUdl-WZr05O2qkcoz0QHOSC794Gx6csJNRJJITf3qbZ65-ymfWR3TsTYuBlrYICJOCdztfkoaNgYb7gYo31i0fh_pk/s1600/IMG_0649.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="121" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd6g4iFXmOpFdGuJ5uICALNXKs92gD7IJHF4UHWS9z7HkOlcQnGFUdl-WZr05O2qkcoz0QHOSC794Gx6csJNRJJITf3qbZ65-ymfWR3TsTYuBlrYICJOCdztfkoaNgYb7gYo31i0fh_pk/s400/IMG_0649.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Acolon at veraison with two leaf excision</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Acolon’s (blaufrankischxdornfelder) phenology is more precocious than of pinot. Veraison begins in the middle of August, when one hopes the energy
in the atmosphere is dedicated to drawing water from the soil rather than depositing it at its
surface. Acolon has a different growth habit to pinot noir, it grows straighter
with fewer laterals, and berry and cluster weight is twice that of pinot.
Retaining leaf area invariably means a tall canopy, so we’ve adopted a policy
of green harvesting to one cluster, with 12-13 primary leaves retained per shoot. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We planted the acolon at a high
density – 0.6mx1.5m – which is very crowded by UK standards, but rocky soil, spur pruning
to four buds and the use of 161-49 throughout seems to have balanced the vines’
vigour. Close planting also keeps our yield per hectare high, so losing the 2<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">nd</span></sup>
cluster doesn’t seem such a hardship.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The latter arrangement reminds me
of UC Davis’s Mark Matthews comment about leaf plucking and green harvesting,
that “It is the journey and not the destination that matters”. Viticulture is a
way of gilding nature’s lily, not creating it. On a vigorous site you can hack
at vegetation like the Prince in Sleeping Beauty, but you may never find your
Princess. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you are always fighting the
impulses of the vine, the chances are your vines are in the wrong place. To paraphrase
Smart: you think you’re in the wine production business when you are actually in lumber. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-86068264337209840582013-08-18T02:43:00.001-07:002013-08-18T02:44:23.038-07:00Prelimary discussion on water deficts in a UK limestone vineyard <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZuaPHJ_YTskwcVoBxeSYYb0Wqh5G0WdoIqTZFldxzCbLTMVNDLjoq5lG9ty3F2EXG3Y8tsoWs11qSq_KXisUhtsV5zls9P095EI5fMmOo3eW4FZFe62Hz4mS8FwxYafYfX7nMI0rKktk/s1600/iphone+for+arrticle+199.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZuaPHJ_YTskwcVoBxeSYYb0Wqh5G0WdoIqTZFldxzCbLTMVNDLjoq5lG9ty3F2EXG3Y8tsoWs11qSq_KXisUhtsV5zls9P095EI5fMmOo3eW4FZFe62Hz4mS8FwxYafYfX7nMI0rKktk/s320/iphone+for+arrticle+199.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The soil we have in Rutland
looked so much like the Côte de Nuits that I talked myself into planting Pinot
Noir: fissured Bajocian oolite with a gravelly 25 cm covering of clay loam. I’d
spent so long in the company of Burgundians that I was entirely convinced that
the ceiling for wine quality was set by geology, and that limestone is the
plinth upon which great reputations are constructed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And limestone isn’t just my
obsession: the stories of Ridge Monte Bello, Bell Hill and Calera have the rock
at their heart. For Paul Draper and Josh Jenson, limestone is intrinsically superior
to other soil/subsoil/bedrock combinations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Limestone is not homogeneous. Chalk,
Dolomitic, Bajocian, and carboniferous differ in their physical and chemical properties; their hydrology is diverse, and these variances are carried over into the soil
and subsoil to which they give rise. The high magnesium content of Dolomitic limestone
can lead to water logging, while calcium carbonate from chalk can flocculate
the overlying clays, making them free draining. We need to be circumspect when
discussing limestone generically. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Elsewhere I have written about
the relationship between hydrology and grape quality in Burgundy; water
deficits between 30%-50% of cropevapotranspiration (CET) positively effect gene
expression, encouraging ripening rather than vegetative growth, whilst simultaneously
increasing the ratio of skins to juice. Smart claims that reduced vigour impacts
canopy density, and the resulting improvement in the light environment benefits
grape quality, particularly in cool climates. Conversely, too much stress
lowers quality and can lead to a cessation in grape development.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again one needs to be cautious about
extending these principles indiscriminately to all varieties and all environments.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The soil and vine combination we
have at Rutland references some of the Côte de Nuits’ best sites. Calciferous clay loam, 25-30cm deep over
limestone is the referent for many of the Grands and Premiers Crus, but the
clay could be illite, kaolinite or montmorillonite; and the limestone fissured,
massive, oolite or marble. Notwithstanding this, our soil/subsoil/base rock
sequence could be neatly fitted into the Côte de Nuits fractured geology, I’m
just not sure where! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Soil Moisture Results<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Sentek monitor gives us five soil
moisture readings at soil depths10cm, 20cm, 30cm, 40cm and 50cm. These readings
are aggregated together in the graph below.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQLextMxfD6cpRr1V5hZNveytsfzLlXzjCXrWuguttJop1jGF6xgqW5sVtxTKCAsgt1ncD48maJNMtTZqgnaCVKSH371yMJGPldaF-a1F-29uYiMbUotL0HE-r1Zr6um9C8xSf9p-5dZU/s1600/50cm+water+use+doule+curve.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQLextMxfD6cpRr1V5hZNveytsfzLlXzjCXrWuguttJop1jGF6xgqW5sVtxTKCAsgt1ncD48maJNMtTZqgnaCVKSH371yMJGPldaF-a1F-29uYiMbUotL0HE-r1Zr6um9C8xSf9p-5dZU/s640/50cm+water+use+doule+curve.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Together the two datasets show
how the rate of extractability of water varies with soil morphology. Water is
extracted easily from the clay loam soil, and its reserves are rapidly
exhausted. With a full canopy, CET on an average Southern English summer’s day
is about 4.5 mm of water, but can peak at around 7mm on a hot sunny day if
access to water is unlimited. When the soil is “full”, water is extracted
unevenly: extraction from the clay loam is three times greater than extraction
from the limestone, even when we mulched the soil surface with plastic to stop
evaporation. Our vines are eight years old, so we might speculate that root
density within the clay loam is much greater than that within the rock, and
that the mechanical resistance to root penetration and the kinetic movement of
water in response to plant suction is different for the limestone. From “full” to
“onset of stress”, the extraction of water from the limestone was a constant,
at around 1mm per day. </span><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The period between 14-07 and
24-07 was a period of high water demand: the sun shone continually; daytime
temperatures peaked at around 28C; and night time minimums averaged 15C. With
the moisture in the upper horizon of clay loam depleted the limestone became
the vine’s principle source of water, so despite the fact that soil moisture
was midway between the “full” and “onset of stress levels”, water rationing had
already begun. In fact, with extraction constant at 1mm per day the reserves
were sufficient to cover another fifteen days without rainfall, and 30 days
without significant precipitation is rare for both Rutland and Burgundy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCJxPCupzGaLVG53INbW59k08LQfpwNRwhIY4D-URmWdGzYlrP_SvP-mpI2CNLClu31lyx3Wx8nMqF0jnlxuduzJ7JaaZXhdYCBloNtXyR-oNyqEq_zkPYySmefefntoAIAaqez8LHtXU/s1600/iphone+for+arrticle+197.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCJxPCupzGaLVG53INbW59k08LQfpwNRwhIY4D-URmWdGzYlrP_SvP-mpI2CNLClu31lyx3Wx8nMqF0jnlxuduzJ7JaaZXhdYCBloNtXyR-oNyqEq_zkPYySmefefntoAIAaqez8LHtXU/s320/iphone+for+arrticle+197.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The distinction between water
deficits and stress is a fine one. If water is available for a prolonged period
at less than 20% CET, vine metabolism and physiology may become compromised. We
began to see shortening shoots and internodes on some of the shallower soils of
the vineyard towards the end of the dry spell, when CET was equivalent to 7mm
per day, but water extraction was only 1mm per day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On the Côte de Nuits, certain
cultural practices are utilised that might exaggerate vine dependency upon the
regulated deficits provided by limestone. High vine density yields high numbers
of leaves per hectare, so the water demand will rapidly exhaust the moisture
content of the upper layers after rainfall. In Rutland, the difference between
the soil being “full” and reliance on the limestone aquifer is approximately
30mm, or about 4-5 days of warm, dry July weather. Moreover, in the context of
this year’s Burgundian deluge, it is worth pointing out that once the soil is
full, it cannot hold any more water, so intense episodes of precipitation will
not adversely slow the return to deficit. Poor weather may impact flowering or
the health of the crop, but stress will be established as rapidly after 150mm
of rainfall in two days as it will after 50mm over the same period. It is
conceivable that vines growing on the Côte de Nuits’ stonier Grands Crus were
in water deficit within 4 days of July’s 70mm storm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ploughing is frequently used in
the Côte de Nuits vineyards, and eradicating roots from the upper soil layers
forces the vine to source its water from the deeper limestone aquifers. On a
particularly shallow soil like “Le Musigny”, ploughing will restrict the roots
almost entirely to the limestone strata, which offers the intriguing
possibility of a vineyard almost completely buffered from the vicissitudes of
seasonal precipitation, collapsing clichéd climatic thinking about calling a
bad vintage, or the hapless reductionism of considering the fate of all the Côte
de Nuits vineyards together. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Rutland data also makes the
case for vine age. Our vines were planted in 2005, and mechanical resistance to
rooting over the intervening years was still limiting extractability in the spring
of 2013. The meagre 1mm of water per day proved insufficient for parts of the
vineyard, even when the vine shoots were at the 10-12 leaf stage. In all
probability, our roots will further explore the limestone over the next decade
or so, at which point they should maintain the vine at a beneficial level of
water deficit rather than at the current potentially stressful level of
extraction. The same is true for the Côte de Nuits, and this is recognised in
AC stipulations about vine age.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Climatic differences between
Rutland and the Cote de Nuits make comparison complicated. CET rates are not
only higher in Burgundy, but phenology is more advanced. Moderate water stress at
veraison encourages carbohydrate partitioning to the fruit, and in Burgundy this
pivotal growth stage coincides with the warmest part of the year, whereas in
Rutland CET rates are declining by the time verasion is reached. Post-veraison,
water deficits also accelerate the ripening process, and again this is less
likely in Rutland through late September and October. All this points to the delicate
balance that exists on the Cote de Nuits between geology, climate and viticultural
practice; just having limestone isn’t enough: leaf area, vine age, ploughing
and climatic patterns all converge advantageously on the best sites.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh91s5Q1O-vVg8wVkBV1wLhHCxVhi1ELkFt1_u_Thyphenhyphenjum8axuJr2pnmf6Sn69mBdMZjfbVN3Itseh7LcYzqk0eMI8zpjVuU3ZfdtHH-CVEL7qASyShGRTmWSBEm-eqx5Nwy3aLOlctDm30/s1600/iphone+for+arrticle+216.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh91s5Q1O-vVg8wVkBV1wLhHCxVhi1ELkFt1_u_Thyphenhyphenjum8axuJr2pnmf6Sn69mBdMZjfbVN3Itseh7LcYzqk0eMI8zpjVuU3ZfdtHH-CVEL7qASyShGRTmWSBEm-eqx5Nwy3aLOlctDm30/s320/iphone+for+arrticle+216.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I will post again at the end of
the season on whether the use of vigorous grasses and water exclusion in
Rutland can help overcome the disadvantages of a sluggish phenology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-57224589667947495442013-06-16T22:37:00.000-07:002013-06-16T23:28:08.237-07:00Terroir and the Côte de Nuits Part 2: Hydric Stress and Pinot Noir<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">Bill
Blatch’s excellent Bordeaux vintage report of 2010 gave a fascinating account of the vagaries
of Bordeaux’s weather through the spring, summer, autumn and winter. The
vineyards were, by varying degrees, subjected to heat, drought and deluge, but
at the end of all the climatic involutions, the vintage is one of “embarrassingly
good quality”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2009, the ripening
curve for both Cabernet and Merlot had been smooth and predictable, but in 2010
the tracks of decaying hurricanes, and the switch from El Niño to La Niña
mid-summer, reacquainted the Bordelaise with the anxieties of grape growing in
the mid-latitudes. Autumnal showers and a burst of unseasonal warmth in October
finally blunted the sword that had hung threateningly over the region since
high-summer. It will be fascinating to follow the development of this tannic vintage,
both in terms of the absolute quality achieved by the very top estates, and its
consistency across appellation boundaries. Really great claret vintages attain
an imperishable level of perfection, and their finest wines gather within themselves,
uniquely it seems, the silty scent of time’s gentle motion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the consequences of climate change is,
we are told, more weather, when “weather” is understood as a measure of deviation
from climatic means. Climate and weather are very different and, as Bill
Blatch’s commentary makes clear, at close quarters the latter’s progress can appear
both causal and chaotic. Those who still think that the warming trend in global
temperatures will be a gentle notching-up of just one climatic variable are in
for a shock. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">It
is against the shifting backdrop of weather that “Terroir and the Côte de
Nuits” is intended to be read. The article makes a strong case, I hope, for the
role soil composition plays in buffering the vines against the uncertainties of
weather…..”quantifying over individual cloud bursts and droughts, and
delivering the vines into a realm, that at root level at least, more closely
resembles the smooth curves and plotted trends of climatic means.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">Soil
composition and depth show significant variation along the Côte de Nuits, but
according to Seguin and Gadille, similarities do exist within appellation
hierarchies. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the Grands Crus and
better Premiers Crus, the limestone bedrock is covered by an average 40-50 cm
of clay, silt, sand and gravel, and the high levels of calcium within the soil
aid drainage and root colonisation. Thus, while the bulk water storage capacity
for these soils maybe as low as 50mm for some vineyards, these reserves are
readily available to the plant. Supplemental to this, the soil’s load of porous
stones together with the permeable bedrock, provide another water source that
the vines can draw upon during times of drought. We need to remind ourselves that water movement can be multi-directional within certain soils.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">Many
researchers have explored vinifera’s response to stress, and there is general
recognition of vines’ inherent tolerance of water deficits. Vine water loss is
not a constant. Each plant species has its own evapotranspiration coefficient,
and for vines the peak period of water loss is likely to coincide with
mid-summer, when temperatures and solar irradiance reach their respective
zeniths. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Burgundy, the monthly rate
of evapotranspiration is at its highest in July, when it is equivalent to about
120mm of water. For June and August, the months either side of this peak, the
value of evapotranspiration (ET) is approximately 100mm of water. The significance
of these values becomes more apparent when we compare them with the rainfall
means for the corresponding months.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">Table
1<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: currentColor; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody>
<tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td style="background-color: transparent; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.5pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: windowtext windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid solid solid none; border-width: 1pt 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.5pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">June<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: windowtext windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid solid solid none; border-width: 1pt 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.55pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">July<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: windowtext windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid solid solid none; border-width: 1pt 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.55pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">August<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext; border-style: none solid solid; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.5pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">ET<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.5pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">100mm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.55pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">120mm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.55pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">100mm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext; border-style: none solid solid; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.5pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">Precipitation(mean)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.5pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">60mm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.55pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">54mm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.55pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">55mm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext; border-style: none solid solid; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.5pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">Precipitation
as % of ET<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.5pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">60%<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.55pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">45%<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="background-color: transparent; border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) windowtext windowtext rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none solid solid none; border-width: 0px 1pt 1pt 0px; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 115.55pt;" valign="top" width="154"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">55%<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">Plant
water status is the difference between a vine’s water need (ET rate) and the water
that is available through its root system. Soils with a high water storage capacity
can buffer the vine from stress, as will a water table that is within easy
reach of the roots. Both possibilities are met with on the Côte de Nuits, and when
they occur, the wines they produce are most likely sold under the generic
Bourgogne label. Where the vine roots have more limited access to water – the
shallower soils of the Premiers and Grands Crus vineyards – stress occurs
earlier in the season, and recurs more quickly after rains. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">The
effect of hydric stress upon the vine depends both on its intensity and the
point at which it is exerted along the ripening curve. Experiments conducted
with irrigation have found that the consequences of excessive stress before
fruit set are best avoided: flowering may be compromised, and the vine might only
develop a limited canopy that is insufficient for crop ripening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Between fruit set and harvest, however, if
precipitation only replenishes at a rate equivalent to 30%-50% of ET, then the
quality of black grapes is generally improved. The benefits are physiological, inasmuch
as berry size is reduced and bunch exposure improved, but there is also a
hormonal impetus towards more rapid colour change and the preferential partitioning
of carbohydrate into the fruit. For those interested, the unequivocally titled “Water
deficits accelerate ripening and induce changes in gene expression regulating
flavonoid biosynthesis in grape berries” (Castellarin et al, Planta 2007) provides
further reading. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Importantly, hydric
stress induces no benefits if precipitation is greater than 60% of the ET
value, or if drought occurs and values for precipitation fall below 20% of ET. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">How
these scenarios play out on the Côte de Nuits is illustrated by table 1. When set
out next to each other, we can see that through the critical pre and
post-veraison months of July and August values for precipitation and ET lie
just at the humid threshold of inducting beneficial stress. The table also
highlights what Cornelius Van Leeuwen has called “the vintage effect”: if
rainfall in July and August was +15mm above the mean, which is well within the
standard deviation for the region, then the level of hydric stress (</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">≥60%)</span><span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";"> would be insufficient to bring
about the crop benefits outlined above. In addition to “the vintage effect”, we
can also identify “a terroir effect”: vines grown on soils with low bulk
storage capacities will be subjected to stress more frequently than vines grown
on deeper and more humid soils, whilst the close proximity of porous limestone,
either as bedrock or fragments, will limit the incidence of severe water
deficit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">An
understanding of hydric stress also helps to explain an apparent anomaly that
exists between two of the world’s coolest climates: Southern England and Otago.
Seasonal heat summation for the two regions is similar, 900-1000 growing degree
days, but where Otago attains 14% of alcohol in its Pinot Noir, England regularly
struggles to achieve the minimal level of concentration that is necessary for
the production of sparkling wine. The month that precedes veraison in the UK’s
maritime climate is not July (as in Burgundy), but August, when irradiance, if
not temperature is falling away from its high-summer maximum. As a consequence,
the ET rate is equivalent to about 70mm of water, or, if you prefer, equal to
the mean value of August precipitation. By contrast, Pinot reaches veraison
earlier in Otago, and through the months of January and February ET, under the
luminous alpine sun, can be as high as 200mm, with precipitation trailing in at
a meagre 30mm for both months. In most years, Otago needs irrigation to limit
stress, whilst the UK rarely benefits from the (much needed) changes in
carbohydrate partitioning and berry morphology that limited hydric stress might
confer. In comparison with Southern England, Champagne is significantly warmer
through the months May-August and drier across July-August-September. The
convergence between Champagne’s climate and its thin chalk soils is, in most
years (or else in reserve wine), sufficient to induce some stress into its
vines, adding an extra element of concentration, and, arguably, an elevation in
autolysis. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Kalinga","sans-serif";">There
is an argument, a very good argument, that science lacks the subtlety and
nuance to properly evaluate the quality descriptions we give to wine. I believe
we can be sympathetic to this point of view, without accepting that we need
three separate and exclusive disciplines called enology, viticulture and
sensory evaluation. How we might advantageously fit these three elements
together has been the real subject matter of my discussions of terroir.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-92096042466531898762013-05-19T04:50:00.000-07:002013-05-20T22:14:16.155-07:00The 1855 Classification is the Antithesis of the French Concept of Terroir<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNMfQlJOeZnJ5iSv72oeihPEeW4lym-UiY6rFg2JAVrN6KZUopvChGk5dGVepHY8S-q_cTCe7K3si5cQtGxWSOOUzruQWWofvb_zSdzxc3X1ChnQmvx7pVVsbEhXb7gDqkk9SlZcM5TXg/s1600/tall.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNMfQlJOeZnJ5iSv72oeihPEeW4lym-UiY6rFg2JAVrN6KZUopvChGk5dGVepHY8S-q_cTCe7K3si5cQtGxWSOOUzruQWWofvb_zSdzxc3X1ChnQmvx7pVVsbEhXb7gDqkk9SlZcM5TXg/s400/tall.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">1887 Eiffel began construction on
his Tower, completing it for the opening of the World Trade Fair in 1889. The
Tower was a conceived as a monument to the Revolution of 1789, an edifice to
the Republic’s virility in the hundred years that followed the regicide of
Louis XVI. The structure was meant to be temporary. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">From the top of the Tower a
tourist might think they are at the centre of the City. Le Louvre, l’Etoile, la
Défense are all visible, but they are diminished by the perspective. Roads and
boulevards connect one destination with another, but the people for whom Paris
is home, those that give the City its life, are lost. Elevation creates an
illusion of structure, hierarchy and centricity, when the Eiffel Tower is
actually located in the 7<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>th</sup> arrondissement. The representation of
Paris by the Eiffel Tower is, in effect, hyperbolic, because its dimensions
take it beyond ordinary city life. At 320m, the tower dominates and imposes an erroneous
order on a City that exists, for Parisians, at street level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The 1855 classement had similarly
vainglorious beginnings. It was contrived for the Universal Exhibition of the
same year, and categorized the wines of the Médoc according to price. The Médoc
has a long history of wine production, but it was the draining of the marshes
by Dutch engineers in the 17<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>th</sup> Century that established the pattern
of 19<sup>th</sup> Century land use. In comparison to Burgundy, where the
classification had filtered down through 2000 years of unbroken cultivation,
the Médoc was, and is, a fledgling region. Neither did the Médoc benefit from
the attentions of the Cistercians, who through their intertwining of
viticulture and religious devotion developed a deep receptivity and openness to
the impulses of flavour and texture that flowed from their wines: - the subtle
prompts that suggested walls and intricate methods of nurture. Terroir has its
origins in the submission of man and nature to one another.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">We can speculate that the
motivations of the Médocaine may have been more mercantile than those of the
Cistercians, but this is a moot point if the divisions between the Médoc’s estates
draw upon the same interactions of proximity and tenderness. Terroir is not a rigid
set of prescriptions; it is a synergy that develops from the very fluid relations
between man, vine and environment. The foundations of terroir lie in human
sensibility and partiality, and the boundaries between what is “objective” and what
is “subjective” become blurred. Inasmuch as terroir is the consequence of
experiment, its methodology follows an unusually tender empirical direction. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The opacity of terroir to
definition has led to the term’s extension. Nowadays everybody has terroir, or
at least that appears to be the claim. Twenty years ago, Chateau Palmer’s owner,
Peter Sichel, advised that only a fraction of Bordeaux’s vineyards showed the benefits of terroir,
and urged parsimony in the terms application. At around the same time, many New
World growers rejected the concept, though now they embrace it. The epigrammatic “sense
of place” means that at the start of the 21<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>st</sup> Century terroir reads like a
postcode. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Ubiquity may have weakened terroir,
but this doesn’t prevent us from invoking its spirit. As discussed, Burgundian’s
attribution of terroir was not dramatic; it took two millennia for “le Chambertin”
and “Clos de la Roche” to emerge out of the rubble of limestone fragments. Moreover,
even within Burgundy arguments as to Meursault-Perrières 1er Cru status, the homogeneity
of Clos Vougeot, or the underperformance of La Romanée persist. The essential fluidity
of the interactions that underpin terroir means the term can never be
definitive. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Terroir is a way of being;
it demands proximity, devotion and love, and the Côte d’Or is, arguably, the finest
exemplar of these traits in a vitcultural setting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Through the prism of the Côte d'Or
the 1855 classement looks expedient. Wine is inseparable from commerce, but in
positing a price-based classification the process of ordering the Médoc’s vineyards
according to their intrinsic wine values became skewed. The Eiffel Tower
re-configured Paris to outsiders; it became the signifier of Paris; a monument
to monuments, if you like. Similarly, the 1855 classement imposed its own organization
upon the vineyards of the Médoc that, overtime, proved hyperbolic; that is, it
gained an importance and significance over and above the vitcultural reality it
sought to represent. The structuring and division of the vineyards of the Côte
de Nuits into generic, village, premier and grand crus seems to adhere to the principle
of submission to nature in a way that the 1855 classement doesn’t. This is
not to say that the classement is the antithesis of terroir - some hedonic link
between wine quality and price was already established in 1855 - rather that the
qualitative relationships that existed between man, vine and the environment were, from that point on, subjected to other influences that sought to dominate. The New
Testament was wrong: once the merchants are in the temple you can never get
them out!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The Eiffel Tower encouraged the
building of other towers elsewhere, just as the 1855 classement has hatched facsimiles
of itself in other wine regions. The urge for ordering and classification can
be a useful trait, but I question its worth in regions like Montalcino (Tim
Atkin MW) and New Zealand (Matthew Jukes). The lesson of Burgundy is that terroir
is the discovery of engaged and devoted generations, not the opinions of
individuals who, no matter how well intentioned, are distanced from the experience
of production. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Cistercians' response
to nature was nurture. Only by looking attentively did they get to see things so clearly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"> <a href="http://t.co/88ZUXeIvBt">http://t.co/88ZUXeIvBt</a> @winekat's version</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">(Thanks to Elaine Brown, David Clark, and Monty Waldin for some of the ideas expressed above. I met them after the MW, and would have written a different essay if I'd been asked the same question back in 1999)</span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-79228108077853808092013-04-14T05:49:00.000-07:002013-05-27T13:35:39.717-07:00The Decline and Fall of the UK Wine Trade <br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">April 2013 (66750.4) DECLINE</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">When I joined the wine trade in
the early 90s, it was like entering the Garden of Eden; actually, it was
better, because there wasn’t an omniscient God punishing sinners, so we all
gave into drink, temptation and each other. In an early episode of Star Trek,
the crew of the USS Enterprise visited planet <em>Psi 2000</em> and became infected with
a virus that took everyone to the amorous edge of drunkenness. Kirk was always
a tart, but even Spock was getting it on behind the Styrofoam rocks, just like
I was getting it on between the wine crates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The company I worked for imported wine, we sold it to retailers and
restaurants, and youthful journalists recorded everything in words that could
have been written by fairies with cuckoo quills and lily pads. We were all achieving
our targets: I was selling, the customer was buying, and the journalists were
breaking stories – Australia, Chile, California, New Zealand. We were so happy.
And the wine trade grew. It grew boldly in places it hadn’t grown before, as it
did, perhaps, for Spock and Nurse Chapel before the bare-chested Sulu went
berserk on the bridge with a cutlass and the threat of castration. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The Australians have a line about
the English, that we’re smelly, which is wrong because we spend most of our
time trying to keep warm, and sweating isn’t as straightforward as stepping
outside into 90 degree heat. What the Australians were right about, though,
was our love of brands. Brands quickly take root in class-ridden Britain
because we obsess over status, and the best way of elevating oneself above life’s
flat trajectory - short of marrying a royal - is mislabelling. In 1985, when
Leslie<span style="color: red;"> </span>Muranyi was convicted of starting a riot
at a Cambridge United football match his mother defended him by saying “He’s
such a nice boy really…….and he wears those expensive <em>Pringle</em> jumpers!” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">At around the same time Muranyi
was buying his casuals from <em>Bodger Brothers</em> in Cambridge town centre, <em>Penfolds</em>
was perfecting its global brand strategy. I loved<em> Penfolds</em>; they had a range
of wines that, for a brief moment, attained the perfect symmetry between price
and quality: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Koonunga Hill, Bin 28, Bin
707, Grange</i>; each successive bottle cost £7.00 more and was £7.00 better
than the previous one. I got carried away, and so did the press; carried away
and flown away, because the clever people in Australia had also worked out how
nepotism and cronyism underpinned “our” way of doing things. This was the sort
of connectedness we responded to, not the other kind that tells you how things
fit together and work. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s not what you
know, but who you know</i> would become significant later, when the big
companies started sluicing through the cheap crap and repositioning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bin 707</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Grange</i> so that the relationship between price and quality went from
being linear to exponential. We were enamoured by our Aussie hosts, all those
sunny days drinking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tinnies</i> and wearing
their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Akubra</i> hats instilled memories
and loyalties that would prove as durable as the pair of stockman’s boots I bought.
Together we sniggered at terroir; talked about ripeness; tucker; Botham;
Bradman; bushmen; sunshine in a glass; and dished-up tasting notes that sounded
like they were being read off the payline of a slot machine – “PINEAPPLE,
STRAWBERRY, MELON, CHERRY” – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Streuth!</i>
You didn’t even need a pair to win that test of skill. And, get this; all the
while somebody was stood by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pokie</i>,
slipping you dollars and pulling the handle. Life, jobs, wine, it all seemed so
very, very simple. “LEMONS!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Most stuff changes, even the laws
of physics aren’t immutable. Newton’s gravitational theory got Apollo 13 to the
moon and back, but it couldn’t get Chekov to <em>Psi 2000</em>; only warp drive could do
that. The last time I walked past St John’s College, Bodger Brothers had been
taken over by <em>Moss Bros</em>. Gone, too, were the outfitters best customers, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cambridge Casuals, </i>who after the
imprisonment of “General” Muranyi, just ended up looking like a load of shocking
golfers. I started buying French wine rather than New World, and followed Robert
Parker. I can pull Parker up on a few things – blind loyalty to Mourvèdre/underscoring
Monte Bello – but he did hold châteaux to account, and when he saw how big the
wine world was becoming, he looked around for help. One man can’t cover all the
territory, so Parker sensibly recruited other critics and got close to a few
enologists. You have to protect your reputation when you’re the best.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The force of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">its not what you know, but who you know</i> is lost in French because of
the difference between <em>savoir</em> (knowing a fact) and <em>connaître</em> (knowing a person).
It’s easy to fall into the trap that Parker’s relationship with Rolland was all
about influence and nothing to do with edification. After all, members of the
UK wine trade visited lots of wineries through the 90s, but most squandered the
opportunity to learn anything. We left Australia believing that the New World
order of varietal labelling only needed to recruit evangelists to achieve its aim
of global domination. We were suckered in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">There were wine factories
in South Australia that made grape growing sound like an inane bureaucratic directive
- technically superfluous, but legally enforced - but at least you could blend
what you damned well wanted to. A policy document – <strong>2025</strong> – was issued.
Australia was going to do for 21<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>st</sup> Century wine production what
Japan had done for 20<sup>th</sup> Century car manufacture. Cut the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Big Red Land</i> and it would bleed Shiraz. But
just as Australia got bigger, so it also became more detailed. The behemoths of
the Australian Industry could fight among themselves for market share, but
evolution results in diversity, not a single winner. That’s not to say there
weren’t extinctions along the way; some estates were lost. The death of
individuals and species is part of evolution, it occurs to those who can’t keep
up with change, or mitigate its effects. And that is exactly what happened to elements
of the UK wine trade as well. One day the guy with the bag of coins didn’t
show, and the reels stopped rolling. Business was better off talking to business
directly; it didn’t need agents or the press to articulate what it already
knew: that there are only so many possible combinations of melon, cherry,
pineapple and banana. The story had become so simple it didn’t need telling any
more. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The American philosopher Hilary
Putnam made the observation that atomic structure can’t tell us why round
pegs don’t fit into square holes; to do this we need a different way of
describing objects, one that covers 3-dimensional geometric shapes and their
compatibility at a macro level. Paring everything down to µ isn’t always as
edifying as we might think. There isn’t one big vocabulary of connectedness
that links creation to a sliced 2-iron, unless you cling on to the bible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Putnam’s remark seems to offer support
to critics who always opt for the glass of wine over the viticulture textbook.
Remembering back to their time in Australia they might say: “Of course there
are facts out there in the monotonous realm of electrons and atoms where all
stuff is ultimately the same stuff, but the consumer wants light, colour,
education, and the confidence to shout STRAWBERRY, BANANA, CHERRY, MELON when
they smell it<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. </i>They don’t need all the
balancing dark matter of enology as well. There is one language of consumption,
and another for production.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">If labelling by variety had
succeeded in relegating “<em>Gevrey</em>”, “<em>Grosset</em>”, and “<em>Napa</em>” into history then I’d
happily concede the argument, but it took 20 years for the trade to whittle its
knowledge down to the level of regular drinkers, only to find out they didn’t take
the bait. People sinking bottles of Pinot Grigio in pubs aren’t experimenting
with grape varieties; and neither are they planning on leaving <em>Psi 2000</em> for
Jerez anytime soon. Articles on decanting or hyping Riesling didn’t achieve
what we’d hoped they would, just as handing out golf clubs to Muranyi’s
Pringle-wearing thugs was never going to get them off the football terraces and
on to the driving range. Let’s be honest here: the Chinese aren’t buying
Bordeaux because of education; they’re buying it because they’re rich. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">There is crucial distinction to
be made between mystery and mystique. The <em>Côte de Nuits</em> is the most complicated
wine region in the world, and as an agricultural system, perhaps only Asia’s
paddy fields are more tortuous. Paddy fields and <em>Vosne Romanée</em> tell us
something important about humanity and the fluidity of our relationship with
Nature, because it would have been easy for the Cistercians and the Chinese to have
missed the faint impulses that flowed from their fields of rice and vines: the
coded messages of flavour and texture that suggested walls and channels. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cros Parantoux</i>”, “biodynamics”, “natural
wine” and “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monte Bello</i>” open us up to
the mystical possibilities of human devotion; dismissing them on the basis of a
superficial understanding of enology, or a “mission to make wine simple”, sounds
like ignorance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Putnam’s suggestion is
that we use different vocabularies to do different jobs, not that we
give-up on the benefits of alternative explanations by positing one simple way
of talking about things; like grape varieties, for example. Australia
misleadingly gave the impression that the wine world was getting easier, when
it was only getting bigger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The Cistercian legacy is visible
throughout Burgundy, but the raw passions of conversion and revelation are at their
most evident in the less posthumous setting of the New World where they have led
to magnificent new constructions like <em>Rippon</em> and <em>Ridge</em>. Just as man nurtures
the vine, so the vine can nurture a longing in those that tend to it: the
desire to know what can be spun from one’s own stretch of dirt. The intensity
and reaction of individuals to these impulses helps us explain why
some bottles are labelled “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Grosset</i>” and
others “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yellow Tail</i>”, but their resonance within wine might
also tell us interesting things about our own sensibilities. Josh Jensen
and Bailey Carrodus both recall an initial experience with wine rather than
vines, which for them coincided with their having access to Oxford University’s
cellars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">My first ecstatic encounter with
wine was with <em>Lindeman’s St George Coonawarra Cabernet 1979</em>. The first glass primed
my senses; the second glass ushered in pathological thoughts about resigning my
job; and by the end of the bottle I was drunk. 14.5% ABV! I read, tasted, and took
wine exams. My mother always said get between people and their money, but I
never heeded a word she said, and within months I’d ditched law and run off to
join the wine trade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">A week into my new career, I
learnt the true value of all the study. My boss briefed me: Andrew
Lloyd Webber was visiting the shop; we had a parcel of undrinkable 1986 <em>Ponsot</em>
Burgundies; the <em>Ponsots</em> and Lloyd Webber had to leave the shop together. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Fifteen minutes after Lloyd
Webber arrived, I interrupted the meeting, as planned, and asked my boss “If
that rather good parcel of <em>Ponsot</em> wines was still available, because I had a
buyer on the phone.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I passed the audition. Lloyd Webber came in
with a counterbid, and the wines were sent to his house for a dinner that
weekend. The following Monday, the remains of the shocking <em>Ponsot</em> haul were
returned to us. Lloyd Webber never bought again, and my boss eventually left
the trade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">I changed jobs. On the first day
with my new employer the chairman bragged that he always re-invoiced customers
the moment they paid, and 70% of the time they paid twice. Mind you, it was
worth keeping in contact with him because if he’d heard nothing from you for 5
years he sold your private reserves for cash. The company went bust.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">April 2050 (73751.1) FALL</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Edward Gibbon documents the fall
of the Roman Empire in its "crimes, follies, and misfortunes." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Looking back from
2050, the decline of the UK wine trade now seems as inevitable as the rise of
China. No nation has the right to drink Bordeaux and Burgundy ahead of another,
or claim cultural propriety, and the redistribution of <em>Crus Classés</em> and <em>Grands
Crus</em> wines at the start of the 21<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>st</sup> Century was, along with the art
and yachts, just another way in which swashbuckling Asian entrepreneurs chose
to reward themselves. After all, hadn’t the row between the British and Greek governments
over the ownership of the Elgin Marbles set the precedent that whosoever
dominates economically also dominates culturally?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">For a while, the UK trade resisted,
wedged itself between rich men and their wine, cast off the impression that
it was led by pompous, self-important men who snored loudly and produced excessive
drool; but a world of sophisticated logistics and instant communication really had
no need of haughty middlemen. </span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">At weekends, Asia’s new class of connoisseurs
would open bottles of <em>Laffite</em> and <em>Coche Dury</em> and say how fine they were. These
were evenings to show-off, but some of the guests found the experience
transformative. Wine inspired them - nurtured something deep within - so they
spent their time reading books on wine, and visiting France, and even though language
was a barrier, they understood terroir and classifications, because nothing in agriculture
could ever be as complicated as paddy fields. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">By 2030, Zhao Hui An, was
established as the most important wine critic of his generation. He had a
background in statistics, but devoted 15 years of his life to wine self-education.
Like Parker before him, An was inseparable from Bordeaux’s reputation, though
he found the 1855 Classification too hyperbolic, and encouraged <em>Châteaux</em>
to re-engage with their primordial past. The Chinese market liked the complexity and
traditions that lay beneath such man-made impositions; there is an old saying in
Beijing that we go through life facing backwards, what is in front of us is our
history, and this played well in Bordeaux.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The UK trade carried on in a much
reduced form; it didn’t need an infrastructure of journalists, merchants and PR
people to oversee its decline, just the odd specialist removal company to
fulfil the sale and clearance of All Souls' and Parliament's cellars. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-86228503724090871692013-03-09T01:05:00.000-08:002013-03-11T03:41:46.340-07:00Mouton, Hangovers, Bad Manners and Post-Impressionism<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong>Rhône<o:p></o:p></strong></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyLEpyIPjmIa-fpjfYERWuZdu7h2PiB1MrYamwEX5OYXh5TdO3AHnjaQT6QbRhCtw3zTGA_R2kMF_1H73pxJsuGUs2w0yqMq9iPqw0QL4UdCZb0N5yw21rRjyGAkgvR66b-jq3tRNvZok/s1600/paulee+053.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyLEpyIPjmIa-fpjfYERWuZdu7h2PiB1MrYamwEX5OYXh5TdO3AHnjaQT6QbRhCtw3zTGA_R2kMF_1H73pxJsuGUs2w0yqMq9iPqw0QL4UdCZb0N5yw21rRjyGAkgvR66b-jq3tRNvZok/s200/paulee+053.JPG" width="150" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Jaboulet’s Hermitage “La Chapelle” 1983(14/20)</b> received 98pts from
Parker. I read “Wines of the Rhône Valley and Provence” and became an early
adopter when I followed Parker’s advice and bought some. Sadly, the case has given
very little pleasure, because back in the 80s the bottles were put under an
evil spell that turned all their contents into stone, scuppering mine and
Parker’s fin-de-millennium drinking strategies. The spell was very specific,
because<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Jaboulet’s Côte Rôtie “Les
Jumelles” 1985(17.5/20) </b>was juicy and sweet, and provided yet more evidence
that this appellation could fit as easily into Burgundy as it does the Northern
Rhône. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Interestingly, both wines had
been bought on release, and cellared together. Tasted as a pair they supported
my long held conviction that the difference between good and bad vintages is not
as great as we think, and the temptation for consumers to overvalue, and for producers
to over-macerate hot, dry vintages needs resisting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi78qoVBLV5tqB8g8A3VVu3HmdjJLQ20UvadQZSH7wsgcpGx5GI_qNELn86B66IyLz8jNLYw2cOVOTtsBVmYNc2xLmynvH2MN9BVlER4RrEJo1d5uX4eK43vMlhv9yB8iO38FrkA2StcqA/s1600/paulee+051.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi78qoVBLV5tqB8g8A3VVu3HmdjJLQ20UvadQZSH7wsgcpGx5GI_qNELn86B66IyLz8jNLYw2cOVOTtsBVmYNc2xLmynvH2MN9BVlER4RrEJo1d5uX4eK43vMlhv9yB8iO38FrkA2StcqA/s200/paulee+051.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Two white Rhônes were served, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Chapoutier Hermitage Blanc “Chante Alouette”
94 (15.5/20)</b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">St-Péray Domaine de
Tunnel 2010 (13/20). </b>Both wines were full, but if I was in the Rhône on one
of those hot, drawn-out summery days, I’m not sure if either of these wines could
wean me off Tavel Rosé. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Southern Rhône was
represented by <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Pignan Châteauneuf-du-Pape
1997 (17.5)</b>. The pallid colour lowered expectations, but on the palate, the
wine swelled and deepened, impressing with a singular potency that suggested a
high balance of Grenache in the blend.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia40gF7NBqHVGUEj2qsPOcZk_t4QctVjjlUdck5PeRP2UpmhK0HGnHIncXjWwSwMiCR3pygs4XLjlaWdaEpj7RH9eaANfuaVtebOKnP3retysHY7ug2vqI-zlrUQfgD4QknOraxZvrogY/s1600/paulee+2+004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia40gF7NBqHVGUEj2qsPOcZk_t4QctVjjlUdck5PeRP2UpmhK0HGnHIncXjWwSwMiCR3pygs4XLjlaWdaEpj7RH9eaANfuaVtebOKnP3retysHY7ug2vqI-zlrUQfgD4QknOraxZvrogY/s320/paulee+2+004.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Burgundy<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">White Burgundy struggled this
year. Nature had gone about as far as it could agreeably go with Louis Michel’s
skinny <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Grand Cru Vaudésir<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1981 (12.5/20) </b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">1er
Cru Forchaume 1986 (12/20) </b>, and the wines need to be gently euthanized or
drunk before they attenuate any further. The two Ramonet wines, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Grand Cru Bâtard-Montrachet 2001(13/20)</b>
and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru
Morgeots 2009 (15/20) </b>were baffling. A tasting note that includes seaweed,
chamomile and pinewood might flag complexity for some, but there was an
underlying disharmony that some tasters were attributing to it being “a root
day”. More and more “root day” is sounding like a cosmic anthropomorphism contrived
to cover some very human failings. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
Ramonet wasn’t alone in disappointing, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Drouhin’s
Marquis de Laguiche Chassagne-Montrachet (Les Morgeots) 99 (15/20) a</b>lso
struggled to impose any sense of accord. It used to be left to Pinot to spin Burgundy’s
mysteries, but over the last two decades Côte de Beaune Chardonnay has been
vengefully miring itself in controversy too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ramonet’s red wine, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Clos de la
Boudriotte 83 (17.5/20)</b> was much more successful. Chassagne’s delivery so often
cracks at the top of Pinot’s treble range, but the wine was pitch-perfect, and provided
yet more evidence that we write-off difficult vintages at our peril. Two
Dujacs followed, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Grand Cru Echezeaux 99
(19/20)</b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Grand Cru Clos St Denis
96 (17/20</b>). Dujac bolster their wines’ tannins with stems, but there was
nothing obdurate about the Echezeaux, only the sustained release of flavour, like
a lozenge of something sweet and wild slowly liquefying.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Jean-Jacques Confuron’s 2002 Romanée St Vivant (16.5+)</b> was decanted
early. There was a certain dissonance between the fruit and the tannins, the
wine’s musculature remained cramped and stiff, but I suspect these are just
growing pains, and there is a nimble future ahead. The next decade will be
tougher for <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">D’Angerville’s 1er Cru
Volnay Fremiet 99 (13/20) </b>which seemed as hapless in the glass as a
jellyfish beached above the tide. The wine lacked structure and shape, so
despite the abundance of fruit, I wasn’t sure whether I should drink the liquid
or prod it with a piece of driftwood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Bordeaux<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZP_3k__ZaP7kDy-HyPdv304nq3Y4zDgtXc-1M4Vs0uPU9HGfXA__KeTQzWvYwZOll630DqE195G0cTz3wmAvQkuxkhUxIehbkowcdQ1oLQSkqi9Tu0zlyyVPKNKpnuCMxqtVcBieJytw/s1600/angrand.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZP_3k__ZaP7kDy-HyPdv304nq3Y4zDgtXc-1M4Vs0uPU9HGfXA__KeTQzWvYwZOll630DqE195G0cTz3wmAvQkuxkhUxIehbkowcdQ1oLQSkqi9Tu0zlyyVPKNKpnuCMxqtVcBieJytw/s1600/angrand.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Pointillism was a technique used
by Seurat, Van Gogh and Angrand. Despite the fundamental discontinuity of its
method, pointillism was capable of extraordinary subtlety. For me, pointillism provides
a good metaphor for the Médoc and Haut Médoc, which seem grittily composed of
opposites - fruit/tannin, glycerol/mineral, ripe/acid – just as Seurat believed
in the fundamental graininess of all matter. If these differences are out of
balance, or their constitution is too coarse, then the wine fails to attain
harmony. Perspective is hard-earned. The most appealing part of this analogy derives from the fact that
we, as drinkers, are actively engaged in the final constitution of elements;
the wine offered-up to our senses isn’t quite the finished object; the
intellect is needed to complete the picture. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIPuz0H1fl1yjvUJLKghJhDMhZNWbRrjbp4UA_3MrzAVHHuuR6qDYw09Kj4KrPTbGLFpkpJJdm5-4tei-D6CiBJ79SnOm-E9qmuTfHv7CJ3nN4NqdT00o2NAnlpz2bCb-CEpiCNniGpUA/s1600/paulee+2+008.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIPuz0H1fl1yjvUJLKghJhDMhZNWbRrjbp4UA_3MrzAVHHuuR6qDYw09Kj4KrPTbGLFpkpJJdm5-4tei-D6CiBJ79SnOm-E9qmuTfHv7CJ3nN4NqdT00o2NAnlpz2bCb-CEpiCNniGpUA/s320/paulee+2+008.JPG" width="240" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We drank some fine Bordeaux. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Château Cos d’Estournel 1995 (17.5)</b> was
loosening-up nicely, but on the day was outshone by a remarkable magnum of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Château Cantemerle 1998 (18.00</b>), which,
at the moment of ingestion, tweaked the blurred elements of fruit spice and
earth into sharp focus.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>Innevitably,
everyone was pleased to get <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Château
Mouton Rothschild 1986 (17.5)</b> set before them, but the fragrance was slow to
come, and we were all very impatient drinkers by this time. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Château Bahans Haut-Brions 2005 (14.5)</b>
and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Château Lynch-Bages 2000 (15.5+) </b>were
young, firm, and wanting. If the first three Haut Médoc’s served-up tender
fillet, then the last two were like chuck steak, chewy and unyielding; and this
mattered, because, if you hadn’t noticed, we were kings for the day, and after
this much wine we’d given-up on being gracious monarchs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We tasted one Pomerol, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Château Vieux Chateau Certan 2004(16.0+),</b>
which appeared rigid and isolated, despite the fact it had resisted adding all
the thick gym muscles of nearby estates. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Our final Bordeaux was white, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Château Margaux, Pavillon Blanc 2001 (15-/20)</b>
which I scored 15, though I can’t remember why, which probably means it deserved
less. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Italy and Spain<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvBlZv-haBx7i1mWw68KifJSfjuAFbFqfzA6dY2nbg93zyrIDDnBEVLszSUvJT_efrUfi-RbE0Tksm4TarzQSpVpiBpf2mOFmGTiwxOMLpALSig3YDaAi8mv-rj5e30TvaAIZsS4vaSS4/s1600/paulee+2+002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvBlZv-haBx7i1mWw68KifJSfjuAFbFqfzA6dY2nbg93zyrIDDnBEVLszSUvJT_efrUfi-RbE0Tksm4TarzQSpVpiBpf2mOFmGTiwxOMLpALSig3YDaAi8mv-rj5e30TvaAIZsS4vaSS4/s320/paulee+2+002.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If there was one Paulée wine I
would choose to rendezvous with again, it would be <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Giacomo Conterno’s Barolo 2005 (18.0+)</b>.
Where the soup of molecules within <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">la
Chapelle’s</i> tannic shell remained confused and disparate, those in
Conterno’s wine were gathering into palate pleasing configurations. You could
already sense this ample wine’s inexorable slide towards perfection, like the slow,
melting ride of a glacier towards the sea. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWrk7SoLLpFIb0HqdW8sKDUg-ghiZUTIFuo9DUf1Ai_P_lXncK7Vj2nu44doSvOVjXYCU5UkudDdS3qFNyi0qBDnu3ZFCbymmVRZlC6CkZpAagQDnR2Pkb3gENnWLj9GiD8TUA5XEhUgM/s1600/paulee+039.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWrk7SoLLpFIb0HqdW8sKDUg-ghiZUTIFuo9DUf1Ai_P_lXncK7Vj2nu44doSvOVjXYCU5UkudDdS3qFNyi0qBDnu3ZFCbymmVRZlC6CkZpAagQDnR2Pkb3gENnWLj9GiD8TUA5XEhUgM/s320/paulee+039.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Conterno’s wine may have been on its
way, but <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Vega-Sicilia Valbuena 96
(18.5)</b> was indubitably “there”. This was a powerful wine, but "full-bodied" in this instance refers to the overall magnitude of effects. One saw, with
Gibran, how the mountain looks to the mountain climber. I have never bought Vega-Sicilia;
more fool me! <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Riva al Fosso il Poggiolo 1998(17</b>) was from Brunello, but (and this
amused me) failed to make the classification because the stems of half of the
bunches were twisted before the harvest. Despite all this labour, the wine was only
medium-bodied, and my glass, with its whiff of tomato leaf, herbs and antipasti
was doing a great job of publicizing Italy’s broad-base of provisions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong>The Rest<o:p></o:p></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We were served two Champagnes. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Bollinger’s RD 99 Extra-Brut(17)</b> had a
hard brilliance, though, I have to admit, the extra-brut-thing kind of passes
me by, because I always thought Champagne’s sweetness was something of a secret
anyway; and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Salon 96 (16</b>), which seemed content just pushing
champagnisation (the process) to its lumbering limits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Willi Haag, Sonnenuhr
Auslese 1990 (18.5)</b> provided an unexpected peak to the day’s white wine
drinking. There are more expensive producers, but the whole structure, body and
balance of the wine was articulated through a succession of flavours.
Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Weinbach Grand Cru Schlossberg 1988(14) </b>or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Hugel’s Jubilee Pinot Gris 96 (12)</b> which jogged my memory back to a
lecture at which I’d learnt the end point of wine oxidation was CO2 and
water. By this point in the day, my body craved water, but not watery wine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-64089348270234580392013-02-08T02:23:00.003-08:002013-02-08T02:23:31.747-08:00European Irradiance Animation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAk9FeG4CW5VP0IoeOrxCtGkXX7fU_fH5cLt1ow_o9ZVmDkw9nwNce5ymfptZIJHD9VAeyedrfzjLg0Cr2OXyff3hy7Mfo9JvVt2L1gccQPQGmrqhkH-Qw8RirADOHc7A_oh34VrIxFQI/s1600/global_anim66.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAk9FeG4CW5VP0IoeOrxCtGkXX7fU_fH5cLt1ow_o9ZVmDkw9nwNce5ymfptZIJHD9VAeyedrfzjLg0Cr2OXyff3hy7Mfo9JvVt2L1gccQPQGmrqhkH-Qw8RirADOHc7A_oh34VrIxFQI/s320/global_anim66.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-39718082788167333192013-02-03T09:44:00.000-08:002013-05-23T13:45:52.708-07:00Hydra<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWDEUpI-yTWP0kTFKE3pNFmpvZXYnFfIBO-FkX1JTByHyMNGgAAiUbK8pdyhGZ4cXjAm83OPGX3PTDQYsJiKd40uKjiECZOmJV0aokIofGeTu3e9bifOMge1bERCE06pYPzFxhaQjRM-0/s1600/hydra_hev2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWDEUpI-yTWP0kTFKE3pNFmpvZXYnFfIBO-FkX1JTByHyMNGgAAiUbK8pdyhGZ4cXjAm83OPGX3PTDQYsJiKd40uKjiECZOmJV0aokIofGeTu3e9bifOMge1bERCE06pYPzFxhaQjRM-0/s400/hydra_hev2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Segoe UI Light","sans-serif";"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Animals
won’t leave me alone. Dogs slip their leads and collars and run to me. Sometimes
I ride wild ponies bareback over the moors. Whenever I walk through the fields at
home, a bovine train falls into line behind me. I quizzed the cows once, and asked
them why they were following me? But they just hung their heads and embarrassedly
inspected their hooves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anthropologists tell
us that humans took a momentous forward step when they started domesticating
herbivores, but the way I read it, farming was a ruminant initiative for which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">we</i> have ungraciously taken the credit.
The raggedy, squat forbears of cows, goats and sheep just latched onto the raggedy,
squat forbears of people like me. Animal magnetism was the giant evolutionary leap
that began man’s hasty ascent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Alvaro
Espinosa’s Maipo-located farm, “Antiyal”, is far from being Neolithic or even
neo-Neolithic - Alvaro drives a large V8 truck – but the small proportions and
self-containment are indicative of a more pristine system of agriculture. Last
time I stayed there were a few acres of vines and vegetables, and a menagerie
of animals - ducks, geese, chickens, an alpaca - and, most conspicuously of
all, an enormous mastiff that threatened to turn Antiyal’s other residents into
dinner should the dog bowl go empty for too long. The industrious and talented Alvaro
had built an adobe house at the centre of the property, together with a few
outbuildings, which doubled as the winery and guest accommodation. He was
better than me at all the things I really cared about, and could do all the
things I normally pay people to do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">When
I arrived, the mastiff charged the car. In Chile, big breeds double as crime
fighters, but the hospital A&Es must be bursting with friendly-fire maulings,
because dogs are about food and walks and other dogs; they can’t easily tell
the good guys from the bad guys. The Mastiff was huge. It made me think of Giant
Moas and Galapagos Tortoises, gargantuan Pacific Rim flops, except this beast
looked like it might make a much better fist of bigness than they ever did. I stepped
out of the car, sighed, and looked into the dog’s red-rimmed eyes. We were
going to be friends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">We
ate lunch in the shade with the dog at my feet. Beyond the vines, in a small
enclosure was the alpaca. Something was wrong. The alpaca was standing on
two legs; it was seven feet tall. The long neck gave a high vantage point for
the brilliantly lacquered eyes. Whatever eats alpacas on the pampas needs good
stamina, because their spines are engineered like periscopes, so they can see
the curvature of the earth and look round corners. Not that this alpaca was
behaving like anything’s lunch. I’d taken the solidity of Alvaro’s ranch work for
granted, but the alpaca was snagging its pen for weaknesses, lunging its chest aggressively
against the wooden rails. Maybe my host and I did share a few husbandly failings
after all, and some of his clever wood improvisations overlapped, at their
weakest points, with my bodging.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Over
lunch we drank a blend of viognier, chardonnay and sauvignon from St Emiliana.
I usually find Chilean whites brittle and green, but this tasted like a field
blend, or an assemblage that had been aged on mixed lees; there was a heady mellowness
that made me wish I was on a hammock rather than a chair. And there was a
hammock. Alvaro had made one and strung it beneath the shady eaves of <em>his</em>
house.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">At
dusk we began the tour. Each vine at Antiyal recieved very individual
attention. They were flood irrigated, which works well with cabernet, but most
importantly they were grown biodynamically. Biodynamic preparations can be
bought off-the-peg in Europe, but in Chile you had to make your own, and
lobotomy is not for the squeamish. No synthetic fungicides were used, and weeds
and insects were kept in check by the ducks, chickens and geese, which joined
us as we continued our round of the property. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">At
the back of the house were the compost piles, through which everything was
recycled. I learnt that alpacas always shit in the same place, which makes
collection easy. Vegetable waste, straw, prunings and the dung were amalgamated,
and then sprayed with dynamized teas. “Nothing wasted”. The mastiff was
sniffing interestedly at the base of the pile. “Great”, I replied. Alvaro had
presented such a nourishing account of recycling at Antiyal that it seemed the
wrong time to ask about any connection Chile’s biggest canine might also have to
the heap, but the question was there all the same.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Over
my shoulder, I heard the sound of DIY failure, but this time it wasn’t shelves
collapsing or a cheap table flat-packing itself; the alpaca was out, and
bounding towards us. In 70s Britain we had llama parks, inspired by the
push-me-pull-you in Dr Doolittle. I visited one, but nobody ever went back a
second time, so they all closed. Llamas are just so dull and maintenance
free. I suspect most of the beasts are still there; and when the herd gets too
large they’ll burst out of their enclosures and die on the roads, and then we
will all agree that they were just oversized, small-brained, timid sheep all
along. But as the alpaca approached, I had some misgivings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">“Does it have teeth, Alvaro? <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">“Sure,
they have teeth”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">“And
a diastema?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Alvaro
looked blank.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The
alpaca’s coat was springy, soft and irresistible. Alvaro’s wife, Marina, spun
the wool into scarves, and things like scarves but bigger. I brought one back
with me for my wife. I admired all the craft and resourcefulness, but I was
beginning to feel overwhelmed. Historians put the defeat of the Incas and
Aztecs by a small troop of conquistadors down to their exposure to measles and
smallpox, and amid all the Espinosa’s industry and ingenuity, I was starting to
feel like the next vector of European viruses come to devastate the continent, only
this time they fatally de-skilled the mind and body, and left you hopelessly reliant
upon others for food, warmth and shelter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The
sun was setting over the Pacific, and the stars were already beginning to swarm
in the eastern sky above the Andes: Alpha Centauri, Canopus, Sigius, Procyon, the
Southern Cross. You can join the dots of light to form a dome, but the geometry
is illusory. Space is cold, infinite and utterly detached. And in that deepening
moment, we all felt each other’s fear, so we drew close together for comfort,
the animals and me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">That
night, I watched the Hydra constellation slide lengthways across my window. At 3 a.m.,
I was joined by the mastiff, but I left a noisy duck outside, which punished my
display of favouritism by grumbling at the door until daylight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Alvaro
consulted for several estates, Perez Cruz, Casa Rivas, St Emiliana, and Haras
de Pirque, and we spent the next day visiting each in turn. I slept between
appointments, and would wake-up to see yet another vainglorious winery looming
into view. Whenever I asked Alvaro where the money came from, he replied their
owners had “interests”. Chile’s major industry is mining, and mining and
interests seemed to be the same thing, except the latter gave the impression
that the country did more than break bits off itself and ship them abroad. The
people who owned the mines owned everything else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">General
Pinochet was “our bastard”, and like the nasty dogs that guarded Chilean homes,
Pinochet confused the good people with the bad. During
his dictatorship, 3000 people were murdered, and 40,000 tortured. On the road
between Valparaiso and Santiago, Alvaro parked the truck at the apex of a rocky
hairpin and pointed to a village in the valley below. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">“All
the men from this village were gathered together and brought here”, he said. “Everyone
was murdered.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">At
the end of Kafka’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Trial</i>, Josef K
is taken to a quarry to be killed. He still doesn’t know what facts establish
his culpability, but in an act of well-mannered complicity he asks his
executioners if sledgehammering his skull would be made easier if he were to lay
his head against the slab this way, or that? I suspect that for many Chileans Pinochet’s
guilt feels like their shame, but it shouldn’t. The only people that benefited
were the cronies and Junta members who shared the spoils of privatisation when
the General de-centralised the Chilean economy, creating a class of people with
“interests”. When the wheel of fortune was spun, you had to be in the game.
Pinochet may have gone but he left a legacy. Decapitate the monster and other
heads grow back in its place. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">We
drove into Santiago where I was leading a tasting. Most of the winemakers we
had met through the day were there. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
tasting was blind, and the wines were French. We started with Burgundy, a
monopole 1er Cru from Michel Gros, and Bonnes Mares from Christophe Roumier;
and we finished on five clarets, with Haut Brion 89 the last wine. In Central Chile,
the vines are irrigated and the weather is predictable. There are cool climates
and warm climates, but wherever you are in Chile, the ultra violet is
unrelenting and gives a thick accent to the country’s red wines. Only when we reached
the bottle of Haut Brion was there any acknowledgement of hue and tannin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone was sympathetic towards the plight
of the Burgundians; somebody had to make wines under impossible marginal
conditions, and the tasters in the room were just happy it wasn’t them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">In
the heat of the Chilean summer, I'd thought the lighter style of French wines
might get some plaudits, but we were starting from different places. Champagne
and Burgundy had given me a taste for limpidity and delicacy, whereas my hosts
seemed capable of ingesting any amount of tannin and anthocyanin. I had been labouring
the point about over-extraction all day, and I'd hoped the Grand Cru Burgundy and
First Growth Bordeaux would support my position, when they actually achieved
the opposite. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">We
re-corked the bottles and drove back to Antiyal. It was dark. Marina was
cooking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Alvaro
took me to the back of the house. A wood fire was burning underneath a
water-filled 500l inox tank. The dog was there. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">“It’s
for you”, said Alvaro. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The
mastiff watched. I took off my clothes, and felt myself being relegated
down his Armageddon ration picks as I did: women and children first, and save
the mottled one with the swatches of hair until there’s nothing left. I lowered
myself into the vat and a little water lipped over the edge and hissed against the
fire. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Alvaro
returned with two glasses of Antiyal, and we spoke some more about Pinochet and
the Junta. Chile was moving on; it was getting wealthier, but still there was desperate
poverty. When terrible things have occurred so recently in a country’s history,
people are scared to confront the past. Look back at the snake-haired
Medusa and you’re instantly turned to stone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">I
swirled the wine. Nothing would appear so dark again that night except sleep.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">We
talked of Alvaro’s time at Bordeaux University. He’d worked in Champagne, which
had given him an appreciation of the product, but no ambition to make it. “This
is Chile”, he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">I
understood the sentiment: day and night, this was the most iridescent place I’d
ever visited.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">It
was late, the night sky shone, and Alvaro’s black wine tasted of Chile, then
Maipo, then Antiyal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Marina
called us in for dinner. Alvaro chained the mastiff at the door.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">“He
won’t bother you tonight.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">“That
just leaves the duck”, I said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Alvaro
raised his eyebrows. We walked into the kitchen: potatoes, tomatoes, spinach
and, in the middle of the table, duck.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1139740460232469050.post-63325576598996681012013-01-15T12:35:00.002-08:002013-01-15T23:03:42.561-08:00Hydroponics vs Vosne <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Reading a recent article about
grape growing in Santa Rita, I was struck at the fine line between irrigation
and hydroponics. Without their weekly fix of water, vines grown on Santa Rita’s
sandy valley floor would die. Albert Hammond’s contralto has familiarised us to
the fact that it never rains in Southern California, and the limited capacity of
their soils to hold onto water only intensifies the problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Water enters the vine primarily
through the roots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Up until veraison,
the xylem conducts water around the vine unimpeded, to the leaves, stems and bunches.
Easy access to water at this vegetative stage of growth influences vine vigour
and berry size, and red wine grapes in particular are thought to benefit from a
measure of early season stress. Skins become thicker, and the berries are
better exposed to light; the two processes reinforce each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">After veraison, the picture
becomes more confused. The xylem flow into the berries becomes severely disrupted,
and the direct link between soil moisture and berry-size is broken. The
continued swelling of berries after veraison presented something of a conundrum
to researchers, but recent investigations in Germany have shown how water also
enters the grape clusters through the skins, rachis and pedicles. Rain falling on
the berries is absorbed through the skins (though this movement also declines
with maturity), yet even without rainfall, grapes will normally continue to
expand as they ripen. Just why they do this continues to be the cause of
speculation, but one plausible account suggests that bunch closure creates a
cylinder around the stem tissues of the bunch. Fluctuations in ambient
temperature will cause water to condense onto the interiorised rachis and
pedicles, which then wicks into the berries, causing them to swell. If this is
the case, then one can easily imagine a feedback mechanism in which large
berries pre-veraison result in tight clusters, leading to water condensation
and more rapid enlargement post veraison.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">One of the significant differences
between the vineyards of the Côte de Nuits is their underlying pedology and
geology; climatically they are near-identical. The best soils shed water
rapidly, but their depth and structure facilitates the vertical movement of water
from the underlying limestone during periods of drought. They are precisely irrigated,
if you like, though the pipes and pumps are in this instance of a geological
origin. The berries remain relatively small in humid years; while in drought
years, like 2005, the top vineyards can still access sufficient water to maintain
metabolic function. Of course, the best vineyards will still be subjected to the
climatic trends of a particular vintage, but they will be buffered in a way
that the lesser vineyards are not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">All this is fascinating because
it suggests that if irrigation can be precisely controlled, then grape quality
can be favourably manipulated. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a
hydroponic system, watering could be tailored precisely to the qualitative needs
of production, keeping berries small and clusters open, whilst the berries
could simultaneously be protected from the effects of deluge and damaging water
absorption through their skins. Of course, you would need climatic control, but
this is the same for hydroponically grown tomatoes and peppers as well. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">If this is all starting to sound
expensive, you are right. But at the end of a week in which mediocre Burgundies
were<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>offered at £thousands a case (and
knowing there are Grands Crus coming through that will make these prices look
like pocket money), how long can it be before somebody takes a punt on creating
their own minutely managed terroir?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
John Atkinson MWhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18094157281418567475noreply@blogger.com0