Gang of Pour - Putnam At-Large

by Putnam Weekley

work in an independent wine shop in the worst state economy in the nation. At least four major local wine shops, each in business for decades, have closed in the last five years. The persistent threat of unemployment forces me to continuously step back, reevaluate and recommit to the sport of locating and telling stories about wine. At least for now, our business is growing.

The new wine documentary, Mondovino, is a startling account of what is at stake in the modern global wine trade. The status quo wine media would have us believe that the world of wine is less culturally divided than it really is. The 100 point scale certifies an illusion that there can be one standard of wine quality for everyone, and that the multiplicity of producers around the world may work to serve it.

The lack of reconciliation between wine professionals in their imagination of what wine is to be, often professionals within a single family, is a vein this film seeks out again and again. What is wine? Is it a consumer product or an art form? Is it an agricultural product or an archaeological artifact? Is it a drink or a religion? The film takes no final position, but its subjects do. Each answers this question uniquely.

As a consumer product, wine is in the midst of a golden age. Enabled by technology, the response time for getting precision-made wines to market is shorter than ever before in history. It is a revolution comparable to that of the microchip.

Ever since the Iron Age the consumer market has played a decisive role in the ongoing formulation of wine. Now, however, pressures resulting from instant communication within markets and technological innovation in the cellar have forced all wine producers to step back, evaluate and either change or recommit to their vision.

In one of the film's scenes, when pressed to explain why a client should follow his technical advice, Michel Rolland says that doing so will ensure the wine sells for a better price and that that is all the estate owner needs to know. I've consumed many wines of various ages improved by Mr. Rolland. They are wonderful. And as his critics are eager to point out, they do each bear a conspicuous stylistic signature, whether made from decades-old, ungrafted Carmeñere vines in Colchagua, Chile, 4 year-old Malbec vines in Mendoza, Argentina or Merlot vines planted on the elite St. Emilion and Pomerol properties of Atlantic France. In fact, identifying his numerous wines as Michel Rolland wines is typically easier than identifying them as wines of their respective regions or even continents.

Is this a credit to Mr. Rolland or an indictment? Improving a multiplicity of wine according to the dictates of a single standard is a benefit in the particular with clear costs in the aggregate. Innovation is impossible without genuine diversity, so even the most market-oriented posture must be concerned with it.

I see this as an ontological question. If all wines were Michel Rolland wines, would our senses adapt to discriminate new increments of difference between them? Would those differences be as exhilarating? I never knew the subject of wine could test philosophy so urgently.

Mondovino and the debate it inspires present a particularly blunt challenge to illusions about wine cultivated in the business of wine opinion management. I'm referring here particularly to advertising, lifestyle media coverage and product placement deals.

For example, "terroir" is idolized by the infectiously half-crazed character of Neal Rosenthal. At one point a wealthy client of Mr. Rolland compares advocates of terroir in wine, like Mr. Rosenthal, to terrorists, a vivid and delicious simile made convenient by the homonymic words themselves. So, more generally, why do corporate wine image makers feel the need to trade on the values of these terrorists - er - terroirists when these values are suppressed in their own wine? Why are web pages like this one so typical? The Orwellian logic of a document titled "Our Technique: Terroir" should be clear enough to anyone familiar with the words. Technique and terroir are opposing values. One cannot mean the other. Technique deals with terroir as a given fact, and in the case of Geyser Peak's mass market Chardonnay, technique is used decisively to curb terroir's influence. Geyser Peak corrects the implied flaws of terroir by blending it away.

As one enologist's global business success attests, family values and tradition would appear to be indecisive to the quality of wine. Celebration of these values can be a protectionist, reactionary canard intended to defend lousy performance, or it can be used to divert attention away from the science of wine.

Why are we tempted by appeals to individuality, tradition and culture? Are they real? Do they matter?

Two portraits in particular within Mondovino are animated by this question. Using stock cinematic narrative devices, Michael Mondavi is introduced as an evil corporate genius, while his antagonist, Aime Guibert of Daumas Gassac, is brought forward as a white hat, even if a pessimistic one (he says “wine is dead.”) Mr. Guibert would defend tradition, terroir and culture against Mondavi’s Borg-like branding machine. In this way Nossiter captures our attention with familiar storytelling figures.

But Nossiter is not content to leave it at that. In moments of unexpected candor each of them reverses these simplistic formulas. Guibert’s last shot among the vines shows him fumbling the distinction between Robert Mondavi and a group of French partners who plan a copycat venture. The camera holds on him while awkward silence clarifies his intense political motives.

In another moment of irony, Michael Mondavi defends the move to go corporate in the early nineties on emotional grounds: it meant he would get his dad back. The lump in his throat poignantly illustrates his sincerity. In contrast, his dad, Robert, claims that he got into the wine business because it is a family friendly one. Which is it? Are the wine business and family relationships good for each other or aren’t they? I’ll take Michael’s word for it.

This film is the work of a bemused skeptic, both of producers who blindly embrace technology and of dominant modern wine aesthetics. Several professional wine commentators have attempted to assassinate this work in the media only to appear jealous, incapable of tuning in the cultural diversity that wine serves to symbolize, or worse. It is an embarrassment to the professional wine writing class that Nossiter is harshly criticized for being too selective in editing his material, while James Suckling of Wine Spectator is given a pass for his imperious and trivial behavior in this film.

Recently I heard author Ruth Reichl on the radio comparing the odd cultural form known as the modern restaurant to a great battlefield. On either side there is the chef and the guest. Each has an agenda and they are often at odds. A waiter, a good waiter, is the peacemaker. So, too, are wine producers and wine buyers often times at odds. Wine producers want to pursue familial paradise among the quiet vines. They seek to maximize earnings, or at least sustain their creative vision with income. Consumers want to maximize their pleasure for the dollar and so they apply pressure on producers to deliver more. Critics like Robert Parker Jr., consultants like Michel Rolland and any good merchant or sommelier are mediators. Whose side should they be on?

As a consumer, what matters to me is what a producer imagines he or she is doing and how vividly successful they are rising to their self-defined standards. As Ms. Reichl points out, some restaurants take reservations, others don't. The question isn't which kind of restaurant is better; but rather how well each type fulfills its mission as laid out by such self-selected ground rules. One standard cannot apply to all restaurants, just as one standard cannot apply to all wine, nor to all people.

Bottom Line: Mondovino is a vital contribution to the contemporary discussion of wine, not to mention agriculture and other expressions of culture. Anyone who seeks to understand these subjects should see it more than once.

Any wine commentary must ultimately stand a common-sense test. How does the darn wine drink!? I place a high value on wine that not only tastes good immediately, on first encounter with it, but whose contours and complexity survive in my memory over time and with repeated exposure. For me, criticism of any particular wine is a long-term prospect. Rather than knowing thousands of different wines superficially, I choose to know a handful more deeply. Here is a sample list of specific wines appearing on my table recently which were evidently overlooked by the major critics. Each would easily rate 90-100 points in any fair use of such a scale:

Jean Foillard 2001 Morgon "Côte du Py": The fact that every case of this wine hasn't been gobbled up yet is a clear indication of a particularly risky buying attitude known as "vintage chart mentality." They say 2001 was a problematic harvest for many Beaujolais producers. For Jean Foillard it was another notch in his belt. I've consumed nine bottles of this wine in the last two months and every time it outclassed other credible wines on the same table. It is unfiltered and unsulfured. Consumers ambivalent about the merits of Beaujolais should avoid this nervy, uncompromising expression of it at its best. It should rest another year or two before earnest drinking of available stocks begins. (Editor's note: Bastardo really likes this one too.)

Chateau Suduiraut 1964 Sauternes: I'm guilty! I paid too little for this wine - $15. But I could find nothing positive to say for it in our library of wine punditry. I relied on nothing more than the solid reputation of the producer and the good condition of the bottles to determine that I might want to drink them, even if few of my customers would. There is a bare minimum of opulent glycerin texture in it anymore. Perhaps there never was any, but the flavors are meaningful to me. A convention of nuts, honey and dried, brandied fruits meet in one's mouth with every drink.

Au Bon Climat 1999 Chardonnay, le Bouge D' à Côté: Winemaker Jim Clendenen thinks he knows better than superficial market trends and fickle professional observers what Chardonnay should taste like. God bless him! Try tasting hundreds of soulless cookie-cutter California Chardonnays, at all price levels, day in and day out. Observe them age a year or two in the bottle only to wither away. Now, more than three years after its release, this wine is hitting its stride and promises to transform delightfully for years to come. Confronted with such idiosyncratic raw material, most critics split the difference and rate Jim's wines merely in the upper-good range. Are they checking their work? A cold Santa Barbara vintage endowed this golden liquid with insane amounts of concentrated flavors of lemon, flint and blanched nuts. It is best when stood open for 6-24 hours and served at room temperature. The perfect condition of the top-notch corks used in this bottling tells volumes about who crafted it.

Chateau Prieure-Lichine 1999 Margaux: This wine earned 85 points from Parker ("unsubstantial") and 82 points from Wine Spectator ("slightly diluted aftertaste.") Where does one begin to address such nonsense? This wine is actually quite dense, and though it is still in its unformed youth, it is showing clear signs of just what a magnificent, perfumed beauty it will ultimately become. Granted, to enjoy this wine currently one must suffer through expansive flavors of truffles, graphite, cocoa and sweet black berry fruits. It would be easy to name a dozen higher-scoring Bordeaux wines from the 2000 vintage that are outclassed by this gem. I blame such colossal misjudgments on the pressure to be first in the wine criticism business. Every year there is a rush to judgment and producers who bizarrely insist on "futures" commitments are equally to blame. Sometimes you don't know what a wine is going to be until you let it sit for a spell. I'm delighted to lay back and wait for the stampede to pass; it's not a bad strategy for all wine shoppers to pursue.

Previously in Putnam's Monthly:

Tackling Wine Atheism

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