What constitues fine wine?

I've been following some discussion on what wine drinkers believe defines wine as objectively good. Rather predictably, chaos and arguments soon follows as wine preference is largely based upon an individuals' taste. One man's stinky, austere wine is another's complex, restrained wine, for example. Nonetheless, I believe there can and should be a framework for discussing 'fine' wine. I believe 'fine' wine has all of the following:

1. Layering of sensory impressions. Essentially a wine with distinct aromas, a beginning, a middle and an end on the palate.
2. Capacity to develop with time in bottle. This could be several years or decades as long as there is substantial change due to age.
3. Typicity of region, variety and/or house style, i.e. character. Probably this is broad enough to allow even the "International Style" into the discussion, but it's important that a wine has some context into which it fits.

I believe that the key here is to separate personal taste as much as possible from the guidelines. There is a certain school of thought that says, "I like it, ergo it is good." If you like it, buy it, but liking something does not make it high quality. I like Whoppers and Grilled Stuft Burritos for example, but these are simple, low quality foods based largely on greasy flavors. They are not examples of 'fine' dining though I do enjoy them on occasion.

I also believe that "great wine isn't cheap and cheap wine isn't great" applies here as well. Depending on style and region, 'fine' wine doesn't have to be incredibly expensive. But it will certainly cost more than standard mass-market wines (unless you get lucky). That's because more careful vineyard management and greater labor and time investment is almost always required for wines that meet the above guidelines.

By nature, this discussion is neither completely one of relativism nor one of absolutism. I view it as fundamentally a pluralistic subject. There are a variety of tastes and styles in wine, and many of these can pertain to 'fine wine' even if they are seemingly incompatible. Essentially it is a case of "different but equal." This is important because relativism allows consumers to settle for mediocrity simply because it has a flavor profile they like, while absolutism allows a few critics to impose their opinions upon all as fact. Adopting pluralism is the key to advancing discourse in the wine world, and setting broad guidelines for 'fine wine' is a start in this direction.

Tasting Tablas Creek at East Beach Wine

I've been a fan of Tablas Creek since visiting their tasting room almost two years ago. From both a business and stylistic perspective, I love their approach. They've had a long-term model when it comes to building the brand. I've heard their plan was to become profitable in 15 years. Meanwhile, their winery, portfolio and prices seem to have grown incrementally, but modestly over time. This is a refreshing approach when so many producers seem to expect instant gratification despite huge overheads. Tablas Creek has earned its price points over time, not just from a big score in one vintage or another.

The wines seem to display California sunshine and a relatively arid climate, but within a classically structured (i.e. French) style. They are not all fruit, and they are not all earth, either. For me their top wines represent the best of what California producers can do. They are rich, full bodied and flavorful, yet complex, structured and ageworthy. My only criticism is that the Cotes de Tablas wines seem very front-loaded for early consumption without much structure to frame the fruit. Perhaps this is more a demand of the domestic market, but at the $20-$25 price level the depth is not there. There is plenty of exuberance, though, so it may come down to taste.

The Esprit cuvées, both in Blanc and Rouge form, were revelatory. I believe I've tasted 3 or 4 Esprit Rouge bottlings and the remarkable quality is that each vintage shows so very differently. While one might think blending tends to blur difference, the differences in each variety seemingly are summed--think of the vintage difference = (a^2 + b^2 + c^2 + d^2)^(.5) summing in quadrature. Here the 2008 seemed quite feminine and approachable, which Sales Manager Tommy Oldre said was a result of Tablas Creek letting the vintage express itself instead of trying to re-create the rich, powerful 2007 version. The 2006 in contrast seemed a bit more burly and recalcitrant, though no less character-filled. The Esprit Blanc, meanwhile, was simply one of the best full-bodied whites I've tasted. It often seems to me that barrel toast overwhelms many rich, barrel-aged whites, but here aging in foudre (large wood containers) seems to have reduced the negative impact while achieving the positive effects of aging in wood. These are expensive wines, but wines I would not hesitate to buy when shopping in this price range.

• 2009 Tablas Creek Côtes de Tablas Blanc - USA, California, Central Coast, Paso Robles
  
  45% Viognier, 28% Roussanne, 20% Marsanne, 7% Grenache Blanc. White stone fruit, toast. Viscous, fat and a hot finish. All up-front flavor and very full bodied, but flabby on the back end.


• 2008 Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc - USA, California, Central Coast, Paso Robles
  
  65% Rousanne, 30% Grenache Blanc, 5% Picpoul Blanc. Aged in foudre. Major step up from the Cotes de Tablas Blanc. Savory nose with apple cider and seaweed (yes, as odd as it sounds). Tight structure, refreshing acidity, cleaner flavors than Cotes de Tablas. Long finish. Creamy texture. Has mouthfeel of a red wine with grace of a white wine. Best white I've yet tasted in a full bodied style, though I don't drink many of these to be fair. Worth the price IMO.


• 2008 Tablas Creek Côtes de Tablas - USA, California, Central Coast, Paso Robles
  
  42% Grenache, 21% Syrah, 20% Counoise, 17% Mourvedre. Good, noticeable acidity, mild tannins, herb, cherry, funk. Not much finish. Seems front loaded like the Blanc to be fruit-forward and early drinking.


• 2008 Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel - USA, California, Central Coast, Paso Robles
  
  38% Mourvedre, 30% Grenache, 26% Syrah, 6% Counoise. Again, a massive step up from the Cotes de Tablas Rouge. Perfumed aromas with kirsch and mild gaminess. Big bodied, creamy, yet seemingly weightless. Sweet fruit, ripe tannin, medium acidity. Very pleasurable to drink now, almost seems a feminine style, though it is a large scaled, full flavored wine.


• 2006 Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel - USA, California, Central Coast, Paso Robles
  
  45% Mourvedre, 28% Grenache, 22% Syrah, 5% Counoise. Seaweed, olive, eucalyptus, kirsch and dark fruit. Grippy tannin. Seems a bit rustic, in the best possible sense, compared to the 2008.


• 2007 Tablas Creek Syrah - USA, California, Central Coast, Paso Robles
  
  With 10% Grenache. Gamy with cherry fruit. Big, full body, tons of ripe tannin. A very backward wine, though with lots of raw material and structure. I wouldn't touch this for some time.

Basically, this tasting confirmed my prior impressions. Tablas Creek is a benchmark producer for Paso Robles. And yet their prices are very fair for what they offer. Usually I'm left unimpressed by wines cracking the $40-$50 range because they seem to be chasing some fashionable style or are simple products of ego. Not so with Tablas. This producer is the real deal and even produces its top cuvées in moderate quantities such that they are not terribly hard to find.

The Price of Miniscule Production

I was recently looking at a small production Napa Cabernet Sauvignon from a single vineyard and was struck by how tiny the production was on a year to year basis. Looking at recent vintages, production has varied consistently from 100 to 160 cases. This means this producer is making about 4 to 6 barrels of wine per vintage. The cost per 750 mL bottle: $75 for new releases.

The point here is not to pick on the producer, thus I'm not naming names. Rather, the idea is to treat this producer as a quick, crude case study. This Cabernet is the only wine this producer makes; it's really all or nothing with this cuvée. While bigger Napa producers sell Cabs in this price range that may have 5k or 10k case production, this producer needs to stay afloat on just a small fraction of that quantity.

Unfortunately, 100-160 cases is really the opposite of an economy of scale. Undoubtedly farming of a small vineyard costs more per acre than a large one since simply getting workers and equipment there at the right time is half the battle. Meanwhile, a producer like this usually needs to hire a winemaker and pay to utilize resources at a custom winemaking facility.

For a boutique producer, even several thousands cases is considered a small production, though this quantity is often spread over multiple wines. If the above Napa producer is selling through and making a sustainable profit by selling a top notch wine at the $75 asking price, there's really no critique to be made of this business model. But from a consumer perspective, I see winemakers who have built from the ground up to run a winery making and selling significantly more wine at one half or one third the price per bottle. I can't help but think micro-production wineries like the above example are saddling consumers with both their large production costs and a rather high per bottle margin simply because they aren't doing as much work as others.

Who knows, perhaps 4-6 barrels of $75 Napa Cab is simply a hobby. It certainly sounds like a quantity of wine a hobbyist could store in a garage. But I really wonder what the producer is doing to earn that price when other boutiques are doing 10 or 20 or 50 times as much work to hit a significantly lower price point. I don't believe this is the only producer pursuing this approach, and I think it will be increasingly hard for micro-production wineries to capture a share of this small market segment with consumers being more careful in their spending.

TN: Havens 2006 Napa Valley Bourriquot (now with new context!)

Here's a testament to the importance of context in evaluating a wine. I really enjoyed the Havens 2006 Napa Valley Bourriquot the last time I tasted it. But when put up against a Thanksgiving dinner, it really did not fare well at all. The extraction and oak clashed with just about everything on my plate from mashed potatoes to turkey. I had thought perhaps Cab Franc from a cooler climate would be a flexible food pairing, but here style trumps variety and climate. Here's there's just too much in the wine, and it was like a battle between wine and food.

You live, you learn. Next time I'll go with a simpler Chinon or Bourgueil if I want Cab Franc with Thanksgiving.

• 2006 Havens Wine Cellars Bourriquot - USA, California, Napa Valley
  
  
  
  Much less impressed on this go round. Clashed with the food at the table with the vanilla and oak being the major culprit. Better on its own. After being open for 4 hours, though, the bitterness of the heavy extraction became more evident. Nice earthy aromatics, though. Just seemed rather awkward and clunky.
  
  

TN: Thankgiving Weekend Aromatic Whites

I'm a sucker for aromatic whites, what can I say. If it's dry, yet smells vaguely like a dessert wine, I'm sold! Viognier can be a good choice, but often times it ends up being incredibly heavy and fat in order to achieve the jasmine and apricot aromas that make it exciting.

Lately I've been looking into different varietal wines made from aromatic whites that have a bit more acidic lift and lighter body. The compelling quality of these wines is that they smell really nice, but are quite versatile when it comes to using as a cocktail or a food wine. The aromas make them seem sweeter than they really are, while the acidity makes them naturals for the dinner table. In other words, they not only have broad applications, but a broad appeal to both obsessive wine drinkers and the occasional wine drinker who might prefer sweeter wines.

Here are three that fared well over Thanksgiving:

• 2008 Yves Breussin Vouvray - France, Loire Valley, Touraine, Vouvray
  
  Just spot on Chenin Blanc. Lychees and floral aromas. Round, concentrated flavors up front followed by a dry, mouth-watering finish. Has a hint of RS, but acidity is very high so it is complementary. Simply delicious.
  

• 2009 Vino V Wines Albariño Confundida - USA, California, Central Coast, Santa Ynez Valley
  
  Aromatic! Jasmine, honey and white stone fruit. Dry on the palate, though med-low acid. Fruit and floral esters give it a sensation of sweetness despite dryness. Medium body. Listed at 12.5% ABV. A superb aromatic white that gets explosive aromas without extreme ripeness.
  

• 2009 Old Creek Ranch Winery Loureiro - USA, California, Central Coast, Santa Ynez Valley
  
  Very perfumey aromas, yet lemony, high acid flavors. Almost austere, very mineral driven. Aromatic food wine. No oak, light/medium body. Portuguese varietal.