Infographic: Modern winemaking vs. Clark Smith's postmodern winemaking

According to Clark Smith (postmodern winemaking), "... a revolution is taking place within the winemaking industry. Precepts of the modern winemaking system we were taught in school simply don't support the making of the great wines the market demands, and as a result, some of our most successful winemakers have strayed quite far from conventional dogma." These winemakers are using what Smith calls postmodern winemaking to "... merge all of the wine's flavor into a coherent whole like a well-conducted orchestra producing a unified, soulful voice."

I have pushed back previously on Smith's assertion re wines and market and presented an architecture for his postmodern winemaking concept. In this mini-post I provide a graphic representation (shown below) of wine production under both the modern and Smith's postmodern schemas as a prelude to a full-throated discussion of the elements.

As stated in his book, postmodern winemaking does not seek to throw out all elements of modernity and replace them lock, stock, and barrel with a new canon. Rather, postmodern winemaking uses existing pieces where appropriate and substitutes as necessary. So, for example, the postmodern winemaker can operate in both the modern and organic viticultural spheres but would prefer organic viticultural practices with its focus on living soils and no synthetic pesticides. The key extensions of postmodern winemaking are provided in red in the above chart and in the box in the top-right labeled Postmodern Toolkit.

I will begin detailed discussion on wine structure under the postmodern schema in my next post.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme