Postmodern Winemaking
by Clark SmithPostmodern Winemaking
September 2014Four Ways to Make White Wine
Most but not all contemporary white wines focus on freshness and purity rather than embracing aromatic integration through refined structure, soulfulness and graceful longevity.
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Postmodern Winemaking
July 2012UC Davis Shows Off New Developments
This year’s Recent Advances in Viticulture and Enology meeting addressed a wide spectrum of issues fundamental to the postmodern view.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
March 2012Sulfur Dioxide Basics Revisited
Thirty-two years ago my first published piece, printed in the inaugural issues of the University of California, Davis, Extension’s Enology Briefs,1,2 concerned the basics of conventional SO2 management. A table I worked out with pencil and paper in a Shields Library basement can still be found tacked up on winery lab walls throughout the United States. There are omissions I have since regretted, and it is high time for a rewrite.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
February 2012Showstoppers From SIMEI and Enovitis
Who loves you? During Thanksgiving week 2011, 48,000 winery personnel and growers from 90 countries gathered in Milano (that’s Milan, Italy, to you), as they do every two years. SIMEI is the world’s largest wine equipment show—four times the size of the annual Unified Wine & Grape Symposium. Occurring in the third week of November, SIMEI attracts hardly a single American. So I sacrificed my turkey dinner with family to tell you all about it. You’re welcome.
CLICK PHOTO TO PLAY VIDEO: See the VITECO Cane Pruner in action.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
January 2012Adjusting Acidity With Membranes
California has just survived its most challenging vintage in decades—almost as difficult as a typical vintage anywhere else. Until recently, acid adjustment in West Coast wines consisted of deciding whether to add to the must one gram per liter of tartaric or two. Even our high pH/high TA (titratable acidity) challenges were mostly high potassium problems that were overcome by the nerve-wracking but effective practice of lowering pH with even more massive tartaric bumps, followed by precipitation of a blizzard of cream of tartar.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
December 2011Some Like It Hot
Wine alcohol levels have certainly climbed. Elin McCoy’s survey of California wine labels indicated a rise from 12.5% in 1971 to 14.8% on average in 2001. Australian Wine Research Institute figures show the same trend for that country’s wines based on actual analysis: from 12.8% in 1975 to 14.5% in 2005.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
November 2011Wine's Lunatic Heroes
Much of the charm in a career making wine in America is the imperative for pioneering. European oenologues enter an industry hidebound in tradition, with winemaking procedures, styles and markets thoroughly entrenched for centuries. Their science, though certainly scholarly, possesses a self-congratulatory tone, as if to answer the question: “How can it be that our wines are so damn good?”READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
September 2011Thinking Like a Grape
After reaching the summit of his academic career as department chair of California State University-Fresno’s Department of Enology and Viticulture, Bob Wample shocked the industry by leaving his seat to jump into private practice. “I saw an entirely new level of thinking about vineyards and needed to dedicate myself to implementing it instead of just talking about it.”READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
July 2011Pressing Matters: A Postmodern Tale
Post-World War II winemaking has hosted more alterations in wine production practices than the previous six millennia combined. Surely, we imagine, this has got to be a good thing. But to declare that we have actually progressed requires that what was gained outweighs what was lost.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
June 2011Integrated Brett Management
It’s high time I post my views concerning this beast and its handling—as usual somewhat at odds with modern enological thinking. For winemakers interested in bypassing sterile filtration when possible (count me in), Brettanomyces management is the central problem facing the making of serious wine.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
May 2011Natural Wine Nonsense
The consumer has never had it so good. We have 20 times the choices we had two decades ago, and incidence of poor wines has nearly vanished. If what you are after is drinkable quaff, you will find it more consistently and cheaply than ever before.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
April 2011Phenolic Chemistry And Winemaking
This month we confront the greatest fear of modern winemakers. That would be chicken wire.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
March 2011Liquid Music: Resonance in Wine
Annual revenues for music worldwide exceed those of pharmaceuticals.1 Brain scans of listeners deeply moved by a musical piece show activity in the same cognitive areas stimulated by sex and addictive drugs.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
February 2011Latest Power Tool Nails Winemaking
Seldom appears a new winemaking technology with benefits so compelling that it promises to shift the entire industry.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
January 2011Biodynamics and the Limits of Rationalism
The same modern science that ushered in an era of sound winemaking has left us in the tall grass when it comes to producing soulful, transformative wine styles to excite today’s competitive market. Modern agriculture also has left many winegrowers dissatisfied about the dangers that chemicals may present to workers and the environment.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
December 2010Mountain Magic: Extreme Terroir
If anyone deserves the title of Terroir Extremist, surely it is Gideon Beinstock. After some 35 years of experience at the Sierra Foothills’ 2,500-case Renaissance Vineyards, one of California’s highest and most remote sites, he has now moved a mile down the road to a certified organic home vineyard that turns out one of California’s top Pinot Noirs in absurdly tiny quantities from an unlikely mountain glen. Ren¬aissance has been declared “California’s best-kept Cabernet secret” by the likes of wine critic Matt Kramer, and even petulant writer Alice Feiring reserves praise for his Clos Saron wines.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
November 2010Speculations About Minerality
Some of you are already wincing. No topic has wrought more confusion and ruffled more feathers among dedicated enophiles than the incessant bandying about of the lofty sounding “M” word. For some (myself included), asking whether minerality exists is like asking whether the sky is blue. Yet for many, the term isn’t nailed down.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
September 2010Astringency And Harmony In Tannins
Just as the heart of rock and roll is the beat, the foundation of the soul of wine is texture. In this column, we have often discussed the connection between fine colloidal structure and the aromatic integration that leads to soulfulness. Beyond this physical feature, great wines are tuned in to harmony, a human preference that we hold in common. For the postmodern winemaker to work in this medium requires both technical expertise and artistic sensibility.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
August 2010New World Identity: Terroir Reformation
We’ve all seen it coming. European wines are sold based on place, New World wines on varietal. As a result, Europe’s designations are more consumer-friendly, while those from the Americas remain a confusing science project. The time is approaching to convert our industry into a real business by identifying and promoting just what our regions offer.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
July 2010New Power Tools for Winemaking
“When the water of a place is bad, it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through the berry of a grape or the tub of a malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented.”
—Wendell Phillips, English novelist, 1835-1902READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
June 2010Vineyard Enology: The Power of Showing Up
While winemakers will typically mouth the platitude that wine quality happens in the vineyard, Kay Bogart has actually walked the walk. After 15 years on the winemaking side, she approached her boss, talented winemaker Mark Lyon of Sebastiani, with a request to focus herself in the field—but not as a viticulturalist. “Vineyard enology” (VE), as she termed it, focuses not on growing grapes but on making sure they contain the right ingredients to make the intended wine. What follows is largely what Kay and I worked out while she directed the vineyard enology program at Vinovation from 2000 to 2005.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
May 2010Grahm's Prophecies Come to Fruition
Søren Kierkegaard famously remarked that life must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
April 2010Oak Reconsidered: Its Seven Functions
My postmodern definition of winemaking is: “the practical art of touching the human soul with the soul of a place by rendering its grapes into liquid music.” If grape flavors of origin are primary, what is the role of oak?READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
March 2010Building Structure: The Tool Kit
So now we’re pregnant. In our first two columns about Postmodern Winemaking, we touched on its history, its general tenets and its usefulness in growing and making age-worthy wines. I explored the role of good colloidal structure in aromatic integration, soulfulness and longevity, and stated the principles necessary for obtaining the ideal building blocks for stable colloidal structure.READ MORE »
Postmodern Winemaking
February 2010Creating Conditions For Graceful Aging
Every wine has one of three purposes: to delight, to impress or to intrigue. Generous, pleasant wines make us smile (the “yummy” style). Big, impactful wines with aggressive tannins and high alcohol are designed to blow us away (the “wow!” style). The rise of these styles in recent years parallels the growth in popularity of comedy and action/adventure films over dramas.
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Postmodern Winemaking
January 2010The Solution Problem: Overcoming Enology
“Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there’s a man who sits behind a counter and says, ‘Alright, you can have a telephone, but you’ll lose privacy, and the charm of distance. Mister, you may conquer the air; but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline.’”READ MORE »