July 14, 2004

Wine Column

by Bob Senn
 
Viva la!

Today's Bastille Day! So here's a bit of a nod to France. Bastille Day is sort of France's equivalent to our Independence Day. It marks the overthrow of the French monarchy, July 14, 1789. The French and the United States became new "independent" nations about the same time in history, and there has always been quite a kindred spirit between the two countries until recently.

France's wine industry goes back to the days of the Roman Empire. When you look at bottles of Trimbach from the Alsace region where the labels say "depuis 1626," you know that label is older than the United States! If Scottish lore calls the Scots born distillers, the French are born fermenters, no question!

There was a time-back in the days when I was one of those hideous wine snobs-that I thought France and the French set the standard when it came to making world-class wine. At wine tastings, in recent years, I still get excited about tasting a wine from a great French producer. But I've found, though, these wines tend to be quite disappointing.

I think we could make a strong case that California now sets the standard for great wine. California wines, particularly pinot noirs, have made rampant strides in the past two or three decades.

Possibly too, perhaps the "changing of the guard" is more a function of my palate more than anything else. If you drink a preponderance of California wine (as I do), that's what you get used to, therefore affecting your palate and becoming the standard.

Perhaps it's flawed thinking to assume there has to be one-and-only-one standard. Cannot there be several, or many standards? There are great California wines, and there are great French wines, but they taste different from one another. Is it fair to pit one against the other in a so-called beauty contest? It's really not fair to says one's right and one's not!

The French call their wines by wine region-Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Chateauneuf-Du-Pape, etc. We call our wines by their varietal name-chardonnay, riesling, gewurztraminer, pinot noir, merlot, cabernet sauvignon, etc.

But so much of our wine tradition in America is derived from French antecedents. For example, an American wine label is based on a Bordeaux label, and notions as basic as bottle shapes come from France. Bordeaux bottles have high shoulders; Burgundy (and Rhone) bottles have sloping shoulders.

Bordeaux varieties in California usually come in high shoulder bottles-merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, malbec and petite verdot, and the white Bordeaux-sauvignon blanc and semillon.

Burgundy varieties in California-only two, really-chardonnay and pinot noir, come in the traditional sloping shoulder bottle. (But please bear in mind, in life, for every rule there is an exception). For example French sauvignon blanc from the Loire region comes in the traditional Burgundy shape bottle; likewise some California sauvignon blancs use the same glass shape.

As I have told wine class students over the years, "you can use something as basic as bottle shape to tell you about the wine." Not being able to read a word on a French wine label, you can usually surmise what variety a wine is (or is not) by looking at the bottle shape!

The idea of "standard" or "several standards" is important. It marks the mature development of a wine drinker. A snob usually hides behind the fact he or she really knows very little, or nothing, about wine. Name dropping may impress some, but not me! Perhaps the only justification for reverence to a standard is on historical terms. I, for one, love history and have a respect for the past. So in those basic terms, we can respect the historiography of French wine making, but still realizing that California, or maybe California AND France, set the standards.

You should always remember this: There is a difference between liking a wine and recognizing a flawed one. These are two different and distinct dimensions-"like vs. dislike" and "flawed vs. perfectly made." Judging a home winemaking competition once I recall saying about a particular bottle of riesling, "this wine is bizarre, but I really like it."
 


Bon appetit!
 

Sometimes Franco file, wine lover and Santa Maria Times Wine columnist, Bob Senn, lives in the bucolic Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
 

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