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Sunday, April 14, 2024

Robert Mondavi: Introduction of his Fumé Blanc

Based on Clark Smith's interpretation of wine history, the "tools of 20th century winemaking" were stainless steel, inert gas, refrigeration, and sterile filtration (a product of nuclear energy) and this "modern winemaking revolution exploded out of Germany" in the form of Rieslings that were fresh, sterile-filtered, and completely without oxidative characters. According to Smith: "the idea of a light, sweet, fresh, fruity wine like Blue Nun was as world changing as color television." 

These tools and techniques were adopted by Peynaud and other scientists in France and, from there, migrated to the US. According to Smith, prior to the 1960s, 95% of California wines were either port or sherry styles. With the introduction of Blue Nunn, and the adoption of the associated technologies in Bordeaux, US winemakers followed suit such that, by 1970, the majority of California wine contained less than 14% alcohol.

It was in this environment that Robert Mondavi introduced the groundbreaking Fumé Blanc in 1966-67. I explore the lead-up to, and construct of, this rockstar-of-its-time US dry Sauvignon Blanc.

Sauvignon Blanc
Sauvignon Blanc has its origins in France (Nancy Sweet, Sauvignon Blanc: past and present, FPS Grape Program Newsletter, October 2010) but had made its way to the US by the second half of the 19th Century:
  • It was imported to the Santa Clara Valley in the 1870s by J-B. J. Portal
  • It was present in Napa (H. W. Crabb, Gustav Niebaum) and Sonoma (J. H. Drummond) collections in the 1870s and 1880s.
Sauternes was held in very high regard in California  and Charles Wetmore -- CEO to the Board of State Viticulture Commissioners -- felt that it was important that the constituent varieties -- Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc -- be available for distribution to winemakers. Towards that end, he travelled to Chateau d'Yquem in the early 1880s with a letter of introduction. On the basis of the letter, he was able to obtain cuttings -- old vines on their own rootstock --  of Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, and Muscadelle du Bordelais from the d'Yquem vineyard. 

The US consumer preference for Sauvignon Blanc prior to the 1960s was as a part of a sweet-wine blend. It was not well-regarded as a varietal wine because, according to wine.com, the resulting wines were too sweet, too grassy, too acidic, and poorly made. This was the reputational minefield that Robert Mondavi had to navigate if he was to successfully launch a Sauvignon Blanc varietal in the domestic market.

White Winemaking in California in this Period
The dry white wine of choice in California at this time was Chardonnay. Vines had been procured from Burgundy but there was very little contact with the Burgundian vignerons so the US winemakers had to figure it out on their own.

A major point of departure for California Chardonnay was signaled by the work of Hanzell. Hanzell began planting Chardonnay vines near Sonoma in 1953 and is credited with creating the world's first temperature-controlled stainless steel tank. As regards winemaking, Hanzell (Elaine Chukan Brown, The Story of Chardonnay, jancisrobinson.com):
  • Picked for acid retention
  • Passed the grapes through the crusher with sulfur and then went straight to the press
  • Fermented the wine in stainless steel tanks.
Mondavi's Fumé Blanc
Mondavi loved French wines and knew that Sauvignon Blanc made glorious dry wines in the Loire Valley. He intended to make "a more distinctive, complex wine, using primarily the Sauvignon Blanc grape" but, in order for this wine to be accepted by the drinking public, drastic changes would have to be made. Mondavi implemented a number of initiatives on the technological and marketing fronts in order to advance his goal.


Technology Initiatives
Robert Mondavi launched his new winery in 1966 and, as such, was in a position where he could implement some of the technological initiatives that were seeing success in the Valley. 

By the 1960s, Hanzell had perfected the use of the stainless steel tank but the winery was still small. Mondavi took the technology and applied it on a larger commercial scale to the wines in his portfolio. The use of temperature controlled tanks allowed the winemaker to favor fruitier aromas and flavors (colder temperatures) or earthy and herbal notes (higher fermentation temperatures). The Sauvignon Blanc was one of the early beneficiaries of this technology transfer. 

In addition to fermenting in stainless steel, Mondavi aged the wines on the lees in new French oak barrels. The lees-aged wine is enriched by the compounds released during the constituent-degradation process.

The initial fermentation and aging strategies allowed Mondavi to mask the herbal notes of the variety while displaying rounder, more melon-like flavors. 

In subsequent iterations of the wine, Mondavi began fermenting and aging the fruit in used French oak barrels. In a study on barrel-fermentation of white wines (S. Herjavec, et al., The quality of white wines fermented in Croatian Oak, Food Chemistry, 100, 2007), the authors stated thusly:
Wines produced by fermentation and maturation in oak barrels have different flavor characteristics to those which have undergone barrel maturation only after fermentation in stainless steel. One reason for this is that actively growing yeasts are capable of transforming volatile flavor components, extracted from oak wood, into other volatile metabolites.
This metabolite transformation results in what Zac Brown, Winemaker at Alderlea Vineyards, describes as "better integration of the oak and softer mouthfeel when compared to a white that is finished and then transferred into oak barrels to age."

Marketing Initiatives
Mondavi felt that Sauvignon Blanc would not be a good name for his wine due to it (i) being difficult to pronounce and (ii) the negative historical associations. He called his wine Fumé Blanc instead. This was, first of all, a play on the name blanc Fumé in use in the Loire Valley and, secondly, an acknowledgment of some of the notes that accompanied barrel aging.

Mondavi did not trademark the name Fumé blanc, opting, instead, to leave it open for other winemakers to use and, thus, create a new class of wine based on the Sauvignon Blanc grape. Further, he petitioned the ATF to register Fumé Blanc as a synonym for Sauvignon Blanc.

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Where Sauvignon Blanc wines had not been well regarded by the drinking public, by 1968 there was "tremendous demand for this wine."


©Wine -- Mise en abyme

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