Greetings, We had a wonderful time at Warren and Ruth's. Great way to spend a blustery evening. Many many thanks. This week, it's dissertation time. Thesis: Compare and Contrast Cabs from around the world. Assignment: Pick an "open" country or two and bring a cab you think will speak of that source. Big, small, short, tall, bring one, bring all. Grading: A for attendance. A plus for transcendence. Open = less than two committed to that region/country. If we fill all (2 each) then we can add additionals. S. Africa Betsy, Bob closed France Warren and Washington Ruth and Australia California S. America I'm coming, can bring Aussie, S. America and even Cal. Since bob and I are keeping the list, we will fill in one or three spots on Thursday morning. Warren is our Master of Caber-monies, will flight them as he sees fit. My vote is for mixed flighting (e.g. Fr., Cal, S. Africa and S. America in a flight. WA, Cal, Fr and Aussie in a flight and so on. My thought is we do flights of XX every week. (e.g. last night, all Rhones) It's just one vote. Why not use yours. ----- Forwarded message from "Jim L. Ellingson" <jellings(a)me.umn.edu> ----- Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2006 13:07:32 -0600 Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 14:44:18 -0500 Good seats available. Whites, sparkling, stickies, ringers always welcome. Erte Restaurant. 329 13 Ave NE, Mpls 55413 612-623-4211 6:30 on Thursday. your_name_here?? Cheers, Jim Other events. Signature on 3/23. Zoo Tasting at Sir Dykes today and tomorrow. free. Surdyks Sale. on going. IS TERROIR DEAD? It's man vs. Mother Nature in shaping California wines Karen MacNeil, Special to The Chronicle Wednesday, September 18, 2002 In the Middle Ages, Burgundian monks began to delineate a... The Nitty-Gritty: If it's not terroir that shows through ... It is a small fact, but one that speaks volumes: There is no word for winemaker in French (or in Spanish, Italian or German). The word the French use is vigneron, meaning vine grower. It points out the deeply ingrained European belief that wine is made by nature, not by man. For most Europeans, the idea of man as winemaker is, at the very least, a bit egotistical (and many would say quintessentially American). Worse, it seems to sweep aside a truth held for centuries in the Old World -- namely, that wine, at least fine wine, is at its core the reflection of a place. It's 2002, and you're sitting at a wine bar drinking a Cabernet that costs $15 a glass. You like it -- a lot. Why, you might wonder, is the wine so good? Did it come from a great vineyard in a top appellation? Or did the especially talented winemaker use some razzle-dazzle technique? Place or person? It's a question that quietly nags at the California wine industry, arguably the most technologically sophisticated (and inclined) in the world, and yet an industry that romantically likes to think of itself as following in the wine steps of the Old World. Lately, the duality sometimes has seemed almost blatant. On the one hand, a phrase like "our wine is made in the vineyard" has become such standard winery PR-speak that it's close to becoming a cliche; on the other hand, peek inside most California wineries and what do you see? Every high-tech, computer-driven, shiny new gadget and piece of equipment that exists. So how much is a vineyard responsible for the way a California wine tastes? How much does the classic concept of terroir have meaning here? "It's the question of the moment -- the enological equivalent of, 'Is God dead?' " says Randall Grahm, proprietor and winemaker of Bonny Doon Vineyards in Santa Cruz. "Is terroir dead? All of a sudden that is the question. Maybe because we're experiencing the pain of its absence. We're sensing its loss. Without terroir, winemaking is a hollow game, a hall of mirrors," Grahm says. Some background: Terroir is the French word used to describe the combined effect of soil, slope, and every aspect of geology and topography (orientation to the sun and elevation, to name two examples), plus every nuance of climate (from rainfall and wind to frequency of fog and cumulative hours of sunshine) on a vineyard site and hence on the character and quality of the grapes grown there. While there is no single-word translation of terroir in English, the French will often use this one word to explain why a wine tastes the way it does. What makes terroir especially spellbinding is how purely and perfectly it can reveal itself. Taste two Pinot Noirs from the same small Burgundian domaine made from the same variety by the same person using the same process and the same minimal equipment, and yet they taste remarkably different. How else can one account for so intriguing a phenomenon except through the mysteries of place, of terroir? The idea that certain sites give rise to wines with distinctive flavors is not new. But it wasn't until the Middle Ages, when the monks of Burgundy began to delineate and codify the region's vineyards, that terroir became the critical core of viticulture. Plot by plot, they studiously compared vineyards and the wines made from them, recording their impressions over centuries. Burgundy's hierarchical classification of vineyards into Village Cru, Premier Cru and Grand Cru were the result of this massive viticultural experiment. "The reason you can taste terroir in red Burgundies today," says Paul Draper, CEO and winemaker of Ridge Vineyards in Cupertino, "is that you're tasting wines from expert winegrowers who have a high level of expertise and who follow a tradition that's deeply ingrained. In California, a winemaker has to be very focused on having the place provide the basic character of the wine, rather than on something he does. If terroir is going to be expressed, then he has to let the wine more or less make itself. There are very few California winemakers who are truly that hands-off." Grahm puts it more bluntly. "California wines are generally so tricked-up that if we had terroir, we wouldn't know it. It's almost as if we're the Department of Terroir Prevention." If it's not terroir that shows through in much of California wine, what does? "We're giving people what they want," says Grahm, "power, intensity, softness, a mouthful of fruit. Everything except soul. Everything except real personality. Our wines are like a person who's so agreeable you want to murder him." For Draper, California winemakers using a lot of what he calls "tricks of the trade" are not expressing terroir, but rather are following a philosophy and answering a need. "They are trying to give their customers the best wine possible and to do that they'll use every technique possible," he says. "That philosophy gives us good inexpensive drinking wine because the winemaker has stepped in and provided what the site has not." Does that mean that the Merlot you and I and 2 million other people buy each year for $12 categorically does not reflect terroir? "The larger the volume of wine, the more diverse the blend, and the more you blend place out of the picture," says Rosemary Cakebread, winemaker for Spottswoode in the Napa Valley. "It's like a committee -- the more people involved, the more generic the decision has to be. On the other hand, the smaller the vineyard, the more you see the stamp, the real character of a certain piece of ground." Seeing the character of a given piece of ground is not necessarily every winemaker's goal, however. Ed Sbragia, winemaster for Beringer, points to the winery's Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon -- $80, appellation Napa Valley -- a blend of Cabernet from seven different vineyards in the Napa Valley, which he admits does not show off an individual terroir. "We're trying to make the best wine possible," he says. "Blending helps you make the wine that's idealized in your mind. In this case, we think the sum of the parts is more than any individual part. And in any case, I've never heard a winemaker complain that a wine is too flavorful, too rich. Private Reserve has a personality that comes from what we winemakers do and from blending, but it's based on top terroirs." Historically, single-vineyard wines from distinctive terroirs cost more. Chateau Latour, which comes from a single vineyard, costs more than a wine labeled Bordeaux, which is made up of a blend of different wines from all over the region. But scan the shelves of any wine shop and you'll see all kinds of wines, including those with the appellation California, that cost $100 a bottle. "When a wine is made with a lot of technique and it costs a lot, it upsets me," says Draper. "Good as that wine may be, it's not deserving of its price because it doesn't represent wine at its essence." Let's take a wine that is the product of a single place or terroir. Are all terroirs equally compelling? Probably not. Most winemakers agree that the Earth has its own eno- erogenous zones -- places where the wine that emerges is just plain thrilling. And not just once or twice, but thrilling virtually year after year, maybe for centuries. There are also countless vineyards and wine regions that produce good, serviceable but rarely captivating wine -- even in the hands of the most extraordinary winemaker. "It's like the old adage, 'You can turn filet mignon into hamburger but not hamburger into filet mignon,' " says John Alban, proprietor/winemaker of Alban Vineyards in Arroyo Grande (San Luis Obispo County). "I don't think winemaking ever transforms grapes into a level of quality they inherently don't have." So how many great sites are there in the world? "It isn't even 1 percent," says Draper. But Alban wonders. "Maybe it's like a child prodigy. Maybe your son is an incredible opera singer, but if you decide the only thing of merit is athletics, your son may never achieve anything. So if Chardonnay is the only grape that matters, then you may never know you've got one of the great sites for Grenache. There are potentially an enormous number of great terroirs in the world. We've only just scratched the surface." Cakebread agrees that much is dependent on the variety. "All varieties are not equally good for all terroirs," she says. "Worldwide, Sauvignon Blanc is a gypsy. It makes great wine, from Calistoga to South Africa. Cabernet Sauvignon doesn't do that." One of the places Cabernet Sauvignon does seem to make great wine is the Stags Leap District in the Napa Valley. Recently, for example, Shafer Vineyards was honored by Wine & Spirits magazine (Fall 2002 Special Issue) as one of the world's top 25 vineyards based on the excellence of its Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon. So is it place or do proprietor Doug Shafer and winemaker Elias Fernandez do something special? Shafer pauses. "Terroir goes beyond soil, beyond climate, beyond location and exposure," he says. "It sounds corny, but I think the land itself has to have a kind of passion. And there has to be passion in the winemaking as well. "Terroir may be there on its own, but to have it show through in the wine, you have to have passion for and respect for its presence. If you don't respect that idea, don't think about it, don't care about it constantly, terroir is completely lost." Karen MacNeil is the author of "The Wine Bible" (Workman Publishing, 2001) and the Chair of Wine Programs at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/18/FD105… This article appeared on page FD - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle