Recently I came across a piece I wrote for Wines and Vines magazine a few years ago and caught a useful note for communicating the nature of the complex and challenging 2011 vintage.

Can we explain this interconnected complexity?

In the article I noted how I would like to see “thoughtful individuals engage the task of evolving a flexible set of premises and perspectives that would not … suppress the complexity and multiplicity of [cellar and vineyard] realities,” but which “could also serve to mediate, integrate, and clarify.”  That’s a mouthful but bear with me.

I was quoting Richard Tarnas’ book, Passion of the Western Mind, which recounts the developments of western philosophical thought. Many who drink, think, and write about wine are quite thoughtful; but it seems to me we are often more dogmatic than “flexible” in the “set of premises and perspectives” employed. As a result the “complexity and multiplicity of cellar and vineyard realities” go largely under-appreciated, misunderstood, and become difficult to clearly communicate. Our constant spin works fine when we have consistent vintages, but in educating this way we have set ourselves up for a PR nightmare in a challenging vintage.

Can we be honest about the nuances of a difficult vintage and avoid the spin that seems to emerge every year? How do we communicate the “complexity and multiplicity” of any vintage? Avoiding dogma is a good start. Recently, for example, many have focused on alcohol in wine as though it is the defining element of a wine’s glory. Both the literature and tasting experience suggest that this notion is largely misguided.

With wine’s complexity, matrix of compounds, and other numerous factors involved in delivering pleasure (including the drinker’s subjectivity and context) defining any one vintage or glass of wine based on one element like alcohol or pH is misguided. Is lower alcohol going to be a commonality across many 2011 wines? Yes. All of them? No. Is it what defines the vintage?  No, largely because it is not what defines a wine.

So what does define the vintage?  If it is misguided to single out one element to define a vintage, how can wineries promote while also communicating a complex reality? In a word: carefully.

First, we have to understand who is speaking. Too often, writers pursue their own agenda (recently, in beating the low alcohol drum), or get their information from winemakers who spin (“vintage of a generation…again!”).

Second, by understanding whose perspective we are hearing, we can see what benchmarks they might use to define the quality of a vintage. Growers may cite 2011 as one of the worst they have ever seen because they are farmers whose livelihood largely depends on selling all of their fruit, selling it for the highest price possible, and selling to a quality winery. Those are their benchmarks for defining a vintage. When your crop isn’t ripe (as in, 10-11% potential alcohol or green in character) and it rains, then rains again, and then it begins to rot, you have less to sell, get less for it, and may even get the fruit rejected by some wineries. When wineries reject your fruit for the second year in a row you are deep in the red and looking at a very painful vintage. But these economic realities do not necessarily define the quality of all the fruit in a vintage.

When a winery admits that great wine is made in the vineyard, they may have trouble calling a vintage great when their sources are saying it was a terrible year. But this hardly means that no great wine was made. The grower’s response acknowledges reality: this vintage was very difficult and saw many tons of rotting, under ripe grapes. This reality offers wineries an opportunity to define themselves.

Some wineries will be honest about their extreme selection and resulting low yield and others will spin.  In an effort to control the dialogue, some will point to this vintage as an example of how wonderful low alcohol wines are, but will just as quickly revert to their riper styles next year if the winds change once more. In vintages like 2011, either logistics trump quality and a winery accepts those rotting, under ripe grapes for volume or quality trumps logistics and a winery cuts its losses and only works with the best fruit, however little of it there may have been. Great wine was still made; you just had to be willing to be uncompromising to make it.  In great vintages logistics can be your driver and good quality will still emerge.

This vintage also reveals wine’s resiliency. We like neat categories – to say that a vintage is either great or not great; but this is silly. Despite the climatic factors that led to a difficult year and some poor quality, there will be plenty of great 2011 wines. The pleasure of wine is not necessarily robbed by rain or rot or similar challenges. While many grapes were lost, many perfectly suitable grapes remained, dying to be made into perfectly suitable wine.

The best approach is to cast a wide net for information on the vintage. By observing all the players – growers, wineries, wine writers, etc. – understanding their benchmarks for quality and how they may spin, we can begin to get a sense of the complexity and multiplicity of vintage realities.  Ultimately, the honesty of the claims will emerge in the glass, as will the character of the wine and the winery. 

At Donelan, we are very pleased with the wines we produced – but we left nearly 40% of the fruit either on the vine or on the ground. Through our selectivity, we believe we have made beautiful, elegant wines despite the challenges and the yield loss, both for us and our growers. The sobering reality is that this industry is agriculture, not math.