Correcting Lukacs' Inventing Wine with Clark Smith's Postmodern Winemaking?

In a previous post, I reported on Isabelle Legereon's issues with modern-day winemaking (as presented in her book Natural Wine) and utilized information from Lukacs (Inventing Wine) to refute/contextualize some of her arguments. Information gleaned from a reading of Clark Smith's Postmodern Winemaking shows that some of the post-WWII winemaking innovations identified by Lukacs were (i) much more granular than indicated and (ii) originated in Germany, rather than in France (and Emile Peynaud).

As I described it in my earlier post,

The concept of human control of the winemaking process was not new, according to Lukacs. It began with Enlightenment scientists such as Antoine Lavoisier and Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal in the 1700s, continued through Pasteur (with his discoveries of the role of yeasts and bacteria in fermentation and spoilage) and the work of Emile Peynaud, both in his lab and working with the Bordeaux Chateaus to convert his research to actionable inputs into the winemaking process. Peynaud's contribution included refrigeration, understanding the role of malolactic fermentation, and the need for rigorous selection in the vineyard. His efforts changed the stylistic and qualitative character of the Bordeaux wines such that the "whites became less tart and vegetal and the reds more supple and sensuous, fuller in flavor but less astringent."

Based on Clark Smith's interpretation of the history of that period, 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.

Adoption of these new technologies was not trouble-free. According to Smith, fully 50% of the wine produced had one or more of the following afflictions:

• Volatile acidity
• Aldehyde
• Geranium tone
• Heat instability
• Cold instability.

Heroic work at UCDavis on issues such as pH, sulfur dioxide management, sanitation, oxidation prevention, temperature management, and control of malolactic fermentation led to "an era of clean, competent table wine production."

This base of quality production, plus their success in the 1976 Judgment of Paris, caused the US producers, according to Smith, "to shift from light European knockoffs to big Chardonnays and Cabernets that the French could not match."

In closing, while Lukacs identifies the post-WWII period as important, as it relates to quality winemaking, if Smith's history is accurate, then Lukacs missed both the origin and scope of the advancements.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Lukacs to the defense of science in winemaking

In her opening remarks describing the objectives of her book, Isabelle Legeron MW states "This book is not meant to be an expose of the wine world. Rather, it is a tribute to those wines that are not only farmed well, but also fly in the face of modern winemaking practices, remaining natural against all odds."

But these high-minded ideals dissipate quickly as, in the Introduction, beginning on the following page, Ms. Legeron initiates a takedown of modernity with the following statement: "The 20th century changed the face of modern agriculture. It streamlined, mechanized, and 'simplified' farming in an attempt to increase yields and maximize short-term profits." Ms. Legeron continues in this vein for the rest of the Introduction eventually covering the slate of issues summarized in the below graphic. Further, on page 14, "And what is extraordinary is that most of the of this change has happened over the last 50-odd years.

So taking Ms. Legeron at her word, things were fine prior to 50 years ago when science reared its ugly head and began to spoil things for every one.

But, looking through the lens of history, Lukacs (Inventing Wine) paints a different picture of the roles of human control and science in the construction of the wine industry that we know today. According to Lukacs,

At the end of the Second World War, a veteran grape grower in virtually any European country could look back over a lifetime of long, hard toil and remember little more than trouble, years marked by deceased vineyards, financial collapse, commerce filled with fraud and horribly violent conflict.

Further, consumers were not drinking  wine any more because municipal water was now safe and clean and refrigeration allowed milk and other perishable beverages to be distributed widely. The social drink of choice was a cocktail. The wine industry, such as it was, needed to revitalize itself. And that it did. Again Lukacs:

From expressing terroir in the vineyard, to employing new technology in order to attain consistency in the winery and stability in the bottle, the potential intimated during wine's initial modernization began to be achieved on an astonishingly broad scale ... Starting slowly in the 1950s and 1960s, but then quickly gaining momentum in the following decades, the quality of not just exclusive, expensive cuvees but also widely available and moderately priced wines rose to previously unimagined heights.

Just to step back a little into the history of wine, as the figures below show, it is not until the advent of the French AOC system in the early 1930s that the wine available to everyday individuals attained some modicum of quality. And then came the Second World War, and with it, a reversion to the past.

Lukacs points out that winemaking in the first half of the 20th century was a reprise of thousands of years past -- "a process of letting nature run its course." But beginning in the 1950s and 1960s grape growers and winemakers began to employ new tools to attain specific "stylistic and qualitative ends." On the technical side, the introduction of temperature control and regular chemical analysis allowed greater control over the fermentation and this gave greater impetus to the concept that humans "could and should assume control" of the winemaking process.

The concept of human control of the winemaking process was not new, according to Lukacs. It began with Enlightenment scientists such as Antoine Lavoisier and Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal in the 1700s, continued through Pasteur (with his discoveries of the role of yeasts and bacteria in fermentation and spoilage) and the work of Emile Peynaud, both in his lab and working with the Bordeaux Chateaus to convert his research to actionable inputs into the winemaking process. Peynaud's contribution included refrigeration, understanding the role of malolactic fermentation, and the need for rigorous selection in the vineyard. His efforts changed the stylistic and qualitative character of the Bordeaux wines such that the "whites became less tart and vegetal and the reds more supple and sensuous, fuller in flavor but less astringent."

"By the second half of the century, the basic idea of directing and mastering winemaking had become so commonplace as to be unquestioned." According to the Director (Pascal Ribereau-Gayon) of the Institute where Peynaud worked, "... great gifts are not just gifts of nature but 'the fruit of a discipline imposed by man upon nature.' "

When Peynaud began his work in the early 1950s, growers were harvesting early and,as a result, the wines were "excessively green or vegetal." He observed that there was a further striking uniformity about the wines: they were all oxidized. Is this the future that Ms. Legeron would prefer that we have? While I can agree with her on the need for better treatment of our soils, and the reduced usage of pesticides, herbicides and nutrients therein (primarily because of their externalities), a wholesale indictment of science in winemaking, and man's attempt to understand and control the relevant processes, is both shortsighted and ungrateful based on the lessons of history.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme

What is a Natural Wine?

Isabelle Legeron MW has recently published a book titled Natural Wine: An Introduction to Organic and Biodynamic Wines Made Naturally. In the book she provides her thoughts on what constitutes a natural wine and I have attempted to capture the salient points in the below graphic.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Indigenous- versus inoculated-yeast fermentation: The pros and the cons

There is an ongoing battle between natural-wine proponents and pragmatists as to the types of yeast strains that provide the "best" results in the alcoholic fermentation of wine grapes, a battle, according to Isak Pretorius (The Power of Yeast, TONG #12) that is far from new.  According to Pretorius, once Louis Pasteur was able to show that some wild yeasts could spoil wine, the debate began as to whether pasteurization or the addition of sulphur dioxide should be utilized to kill off the spoilage agents or whether inoculated ferments should should be used in lieu of indigenous ferments.  This post looks at both sides of this continuing argument.

As described in a previous post, wine is the result of applying yeasts to grape berries/must/juice in an anerobic environment in order to convert the resident sugars into alcohol.  The yeast that receives most of the credit -- and does most of the work -- is a species called Saccharomyces cerevisiae (SC) which is "specialized in metabolizing media with high sugar content and small quantities of nitrogenous compounds" (Suárez-Lepe and A. Marota, New trends in yeast selection for winemaking, Trends in Food Science and Technology 23 (2012), 39-50.).  According to Fugelsang (Overview of yeast selection and malolactic fermentation on aroma, flavor and phenols), the yeasts (i) extract compounds from the solids in the must/juice in order to form the "characteristic metabolites of fermentation (alcohols, esters, fatty acids, carbonyls, etc.) and (ii) cleave cysteine-containing precursors such that volatile thiols (aroma component of several varieties) can be released.  SC is the yeast species which completes the alcoholic fermentation process in both inoculated and spontaneous ferments.

Grapes in a vineyard are hosts to what Gourrand (Using non-Saccharomyces yeasts during alcoholic fermentations: taking advantage of yeast biodiversity) calls native microflora -- molds, lactic bacteria, acetic bacteria, Saccharomyces spp, and non-Saccharomyces yeasts (Pichia, Metchnikowia, Kloeckera, Kluyveromyces, Candida, Zygosaccharomyces, Torulaspora, Cryptoccus, Brettanomyces, and Hanseniaspora) -- and it is the yeast element of this microflora that the feral-yeast winemaking adherents seek to exploit.  Wild yeasts accumulate on the grapes from flowering through harvest with the presence of SC being pegged at 1 in 1000 grapes (Robert Mortimer, Vineyard Theory of Wild Yeast, UC Berkeley).  At harvest, SC is the least prevalent of the grape-resident yeast strains.

In the case of indigenous (indigenous, wild, feral, and spontaneous used interchangeably throughout this post) yeast fermentation, the process is kick-started and dominated initially by the "weakly fermentative" -- but numerically dominant -- non-Saccharomyces Kloeckera.  This initiation can take up to a week to begin due to the relatively small amount of wild yeasts present at startup (relative to the amount of yeast used to begin the process in the case of inoculated ferments).  For the first few days of fermentation, the weakly fermentative non-SC population dominates but is then replaced by more adaptive non-SC strains.  As the alcohol level continues to rise, the more alcohol-tolerant SC increases in number at a rapid rate such that at the end of the fermentation it is the only species left standing.

Natural wine adherents assert that the progression from non-SC to SC fermentation in the vessel is an integral part of non-interventionist winemaking and adds complexity to the finished wine (Mortimer; Pretorius).  Critics of the approach see it as akin to Russian roulette because of the inherent risks (Ross; Pretorius): (i) the irregularity of natural fermentation and the associated risk of a stuck fermentation; (ii) in the event of rains around harvest time, the wild yeasts could be washed off the grapes; (iii) spoilage yeasts are often present in grape-derived yeasts; (iv) spontaneous ferments take longer to begin and longer to complete; and (v) while the positive characteristics of natural yeasts are not detectable after 6 or so months of aging, the negative characteristics tend to persist much longer.

For inoculated ferments, a large dose of SC is added to the juice/must in order to initiate fermentation.  The yeast strains utilized have traditionally been selected on the basis of the ability to start the fermentation quickly, the toleration of increasing alcohol levels, low acetic acid production, and resistance to sulfur dioxide (Ross; Suárez-Lepe and A. Marota).

As both Ross and Pretorius point out, the needs of large- and small-production wineries may lead to different emphasis in yeast-strain selection.  For the large producer, effective, efficient production and maintenance of quality is key and a strain that meets that need will be selected.  The smaller producer, on the other hand, is more likely to take advantage of varying yeast strains and temperature regimes as a means of enhancing the wine's aromatic and flavor characteristics.

To gain the benefits associated with both spontaneous and inoculated ferments, some winemakers are employing cocktails of strains hoping to get the "complexity of flavors ... without running the risk of contamination of spoilage yeasts" that comes along with the spontaneity.

According to Fugelsang, the first commercial yeast strain was introduced in 1965 by Red Star Yeast and, since that time, over 100 cultures have been commercially produced.  And winemakers continue to take advantage of these commercial strains in order to improve the capabilities of their wines. According to Suárez-Lepe and A. Marota and Pretorius, winemakers are continually on the lookout for yeast strains that can improve the technological and sensorial properties of their wines.

The advantages that are perceived by "inoculants" are clear: (i) quick, effective, efficient fermentations: (ii) flexibility; (iii) lower risk production process; (iv) the ability to tailor the fermentation; and (v) the ability to take advantage of future advancements in commercially produced strains.  The disadvantage of the use of inoculation is, as perceived by the "naturalists," even more power placed into the hands of the winemaker to manipulate the dickens out of the wine; and the customer loses as a result.

In a future post I will treat the topic of trends in yeast selection.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Natural wine: The critics rage ... but the beat goes on

One of the most debated issues in the wine world today is the validity and viability of the natural wine movement.  The barbs hurled in the direction of its adherents have been both pointed and numerous but they seem to serve only to strengthen the resolve of the beseiged.  I will examine the arguments both for and against natural wines in this post.

According to naturalwinefair.com, "Natural wines are wines that are made without the use of synthetic chemicals in the vineyard and few, if any, additives in the cellar."  According to Jim Fine (Natural Wine: Weird or Wonderful, foodandwine.com), natural wine is basically wine as it was produced hundreds of years ago and includes techniques such as organic farming, hand-harvesting, indigenous yeasts, and no additives.

What are the driving forces behind this back-to-the-wine-future movement?  According to Mike Steinberger (Down with the natural wine movement, Slate, 9/24/10), the movement is a backlash against the perception that today's wines are highly manipulated.  By pursuing naturally made wines, adherents are "defending authenticity and artisanship" and rejecting industrial winemaking and its evil spawn "bland homogeneity."  The modern wines do you no harm physically (in moderation, that is); they are just not "holy" enough.  Natural wines are touted as "purer, earthier, and more eco-friendly," arguments that are, according to Steinberger, "philosophic and aesthetic."  The movement took root in France's Loire Valley in the 1970s and France remains the hotbed today with about 400 of its producers embracing this philosophy. 

The biggest problem confronting the proponents of naturalness in wine is the lack of an objective set of standards as to what constitutes natural wine.  As Steinberger notes, there is no: (i) classification for natural wine; (ii) no sanctioning body to say when a wine qualifies; and (iii) no agreement, even among adherents, as to what constitutes natural wine.  For example, some proponents discourage the use of any sulphur dioxide while others say that 10 milligrams/liter should be allowed and still another constituency is lobbyimg for up to 20 milligrams/liter.  Similar disagreements are encountered when the discussions turn to chaptalization, acidification, and yeast-type with some producers seeking flexibility in these areas.  As a matter of fact, the proponents cannot even agree on the nomenclature for the movement; some have deserted the label "natural" for "authentic," "real," and "naked" (Beverly Blanning MW, Natural Wine, TONG #12).

The second significant issue confronting natural wine proponents is perception of wine quality.  According to Fine, natural wines can be "funky" at times with shocking visuals and significant bottle variation due to the embargo against sulphur dioxide and other additives.  Some adherents seek to present this side of natural wine as a virtue.  According to one adherent, "The appeal of natural wines lie not only in the discovery of a new vintage every year, but also in the promise of a beverage so mercurial that every bottle, or every glass, may be unique."

Critics do not quite see things that way.  As a matter of fact, they see the marketing of wines with this level of instability as a form of vinous malpractice.  According to Blanning, by refusing to add sulphur dioxide during production, natural wine producers are making wines that are unstable, faulty, or both. Conventional producers view sulphur dioxide as (i) essential and (ii) beneficial for stability and hygiene and consider it irresponsible to bypass its use.  Natural wine proponents bristle at this characterization.  In an interview with Blanting, Alice Fiering, one of the leading natural wine proponents, described sulphur dioxide as "controlling" and "sucking the life out of wines."  It should be pointed out that there is no scientific basis for such a claim.  It should also be pointed out that Fiering and Robert Parker have clashed repeatedly and publicly over the natural wine issue with Parker basically calling her a charlatan and a knave for "peddling" the natural wine concept.

Benjamin Lewin MW (The shape of things to come, TONG #12) piles on by characterizing wine as a human invention that lies along the path from grape juice to vinegar and, in that regard, as being inherently unnatural.  Based on Lewin's argument, drinking natural wine would require that the wine -- fermented with natural yeasts -- be drunk immediately after fermentation.  Beyond that, human decisions and actions (or lack thereof) aimed at stability constitute intervention.  Lewin points to steps such as encouraging/discouraging malolactic fermentation, chaptalization, acidification, Jesus units, and oak aging as examples of human intervention that can be found at some level in the production of so-called natural wines.

With the large number of powerful critics arrayed against it, why isn't the natural wine phenomena withering away (it is, in fact, growing)?  According to Matt Walls (What the wine trade could learn from natural wines, Matt Walls Wine Blog, mattwalls.co.uk), while many of these wines are "challenging, difficult, or downright weird" natural wine has found a market niche relatively easily because it is "cross-cultural, vibrant and funky" and "associated with young people."  Walls talks about the importance of authenticity -- as reflected in product inputs and the story of the human element -- as being very important in the marketing of a number of brands and sees the same principle being applied -- wittingly or unwittingly -- in the natural wine arena where a set of simple, clean ingredients are made into wine by a number of simple, hole-in-the-overall farmers.  Walls compares natural wine to craft beers: authentic, straightforward, inclusive, down to earth; and here to stay.

The concept of natural wines has caused swords to be unsheathed, arrows to be strung, and knives drawn, but is this a case of vinous intolerance.  Has the market spoken but it's call been ignored by the sages in the land?  From time immemorial, small, visionary producers (even if they happen to be backwards-looking visionaries) have gone off and done weird things and time and market forces have been the arbiter of whether the ideas were good or not.  All that I am saying is that we should allow the market to make a determination on natural wines.  I do not particularly like when I cannot see through a glass of wine and the opacity is not a result of the intensity of grape color.  Nor do I revel in funky tastes or bottle variation.  But that is my style in wine. Conventional.  We are always looking to increase the number of wine drinkers and if natural wine is an enabler of that goal, we should acknowledge it as such.  We do not have to embrace it; just don't try to kill it.  The role of the critic in this instance is to compare and contrast within the segment rather than attempting cross-segement comparisons.  If there is a market for natural wine, I say let that market be served.


©Wine -- Mise en abyme