Winelover Winery Visits Task Force Report: The Site Visit

Previous posts in this series have described the Formulation of the Winery Visits Task Force and the Winelover Preparation for the Winery Visit. Todays post deals with the mechanics of the visit and the types of data to be collected therein.

The objective of any site visit should be to come away with as clear an understanding as possible as to: (i) the wines that are being produced at the establishment; (ii) the quality of the wines produced therein; and (iii) why the specific quality levels. In order to arrive at this level of understanding it is my opinion that data need to be collected in a systematic manner so that the various elements can be placed in proper sequence and weighed both against each other and the data collector’s experiences. I will expound on these thoughts in the following sections but first some preliminary material.

Day of the Visit

The following are considerations for the visiting Winelover:

• It is possible that the visit will include both vineyard and winery tours in addition to tastings. The Winelover should dress accordingly, with special care taken to wear comfortable shoes.
• The Winelover should refrain from consuming products beforehand that could compromise his/her ability to properly taste and evaluate the wine.
• The Winelover should ensure that he/she is on time for the appointment.
• The Winelover should courteously, but confidently, introduce him/herself to the person conducting the tour and should have a business card to present to said person. It is appropriate to ask for a reciprocal business card at that time.
• Listen carefully to any instructions given and adhere to them during the course of the visit. You do not want to be the “smartass” in the group. A negative perception of an individual or the group by the tour leader could crimp the flow of relevant information.
• If you are planning on using voice or video recorders please inform the tour guide and ensure that he/she is ok with that.

Data Collection

The blocks of data that need to be collected in order to gain a full appreciation for what the winemaker is doing at the estate are shown in the figure below. 

These blocks of data are best collected in the order listed. The Winelover does not have to ask every question in order to guide this flow but should be prepared to intervene to put the conversation back onto this path if it begins to stray. In addition, the winelover needs to get a perspective on the estate’s overarching philosophy and that data collection will be threaded throughout the entire effort. 

Some of this data may have been collected and curated prior to the visit (as described in Winelover Preparation for the Winery Visit) and should be validated during the interaction with winery staff.

Philosophy

This area examines the principles which guide the winemaker’s actions. There is no right answer here but the answer provides a sense of the school of winemaking that he/she pursues and why. It gives a sense of what the terroir provides and how the winemaker seeks to exploit that. This will generally be a free-form discussion and the Winelover should attempt to capture as much of this dialogue as he/she can.

Viticulture

Quality grapes are a precursor of quality wine and the science of viticulture has developed and evolved with a single goal in mind: the delivery of high-quality wine grapes to the winery.  The quality of wine grapes produced in a specific harvest is not only a function of that year's harvest conditions; rather, it is the result of a combination of factors which, together, represent the full scope of viticultural science.  The data elements that need to be collected in this space are shown in the figure below.

                                                   

Viniculture

The figure below is a graphical depiction of the wine production process with some extensions that are specific to the Clark Smith Post-modernwinemaking schema. 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. The key extensions of postmodern winemaking are shown in the box in the top-right labeled Postmodern Toolkit. If a Winelover encounters a winemaker who practices postmodern winemaking, these extensions should be explored.

The subject of granularity of data collection needs to be considered by the Winelover. The leftmost column in the figure below shows the highest level of data that will be captured. Data at this level can be collected during a dialogue with the winery team. As you move to the right in the table, the data becomes more granular and will require some effort on the part of the winery to come up with answers. If data of this granularity is required, they should be collected via pre- or post-visit questionnaires.

Wine Tasting

After the tour of the vineyard and production facilities, the practice is for the winemaker to take the group into the tasting room to sample some of the output (Some of this tasting may have occurred in the cellar as a tasting of barrel samples). I have developed a mechanism for assessing a wine which takes into account a number of intrinsic and extrinsic factors of quality. For our purposes, the intrinsic factors (what is in the glass) would be an appropriate data set. The model is shown below with the intrinsic factors in the right column.

A crib sheet of wine descriptors is provided below.

Lettie Teague, writing in the Wall Street Journal (http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-winery-tasting-room-guide-to-sipping-and-spitting-1401469556) stipulates that “… all wine professionals spit out their wine religiously – and everyone who is tasting wine should … “ and we recommend that #Winelovers adhere to this principle when visiting our winery partners. Depending on the breadth of the winery portfolio, a not-insubstantial amount of alcohol may be provided to the Winelover at the tasting. Swallowing that much wine may result in inebriation which could lead to shoddy assessment of the wines presented or (horror of horrors) visible signs of intoxication.

At the conclusion of the visit, the winery team should be thanked for their hospitality and the member responsible for dealing with follow-up questions identified.

Next Steps
The next steps in the process are assessment of the collected data, filling in any gaps, and preparing the report. That process will be covered in Sharon Parsons upcoming post.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Formulation of the #Winelover Winery Visits Task Force

Prior to its dissolution, the #Winelover Administrative Committee had created a number of Task Forces aimed at adding value to the community experience. One such body was the Winery Visits Reporting Task Force which had completed a draft document with recommendations targeted at both the institutional and individual winelover levels.

After surveying the landscape, the team felt that the benefits that would accrue to individual winelovers from access to our collective effort dictated that we share the output (despite our loss of mandate). Towards that end, we have scrubbed the document of all institutional end goals and will present the remainder in a series of posts over the course of five consecutive days beginning with today's post on the intent and formulation of the task force. Many of the findings and recommendations of the study effort will be second nature to many of you but if they provide direction and/or reassurance to even one individual, it would have been worth the effort.

A. Problem Statement

Members of the #winelover community are making trips to wineries — either as part of a community event or on their own — but a large subset of these members are neglecting to provide any reporting on these trips. This lack of reporting:

•  Deprives non-attending community members from sharing in the experience and learnings

•  Fails to repay the generosity of the estate by providing some level of exposure of its products and practices to the wider world.

A number of the winelovers who prepare trip reports are not communicating effectively while others are doing a quality job and their practices should be exploited.

B. Vision

The solution to the problem is envisioned to be:

•  Concise, informative, uniform winery reports -- utilizing a variety of media -- that seamlessly document the winery visit in a manner that is:

o   Informative to Community members

o   A statement of gratitude to the estate

o   A contribution to the construct of a long-term community asset.

A Winery Reporting Task Force was established to develop tools and techniques to improve the frequency and quality of member winery reports and, in so doing, address the shortcomings listed in the problem statement.

Summary of the Problem and Expectations of the Task Force

C. Task Force

The process for development of the actual task force is detailed in the diagram below.

Task-Force-Development Flowchart

The Task Force was headed up by the author with other members to include Luiz Alberto, Sharon Parsons, Magnus Reuterdahl, Olga Mosino, Fabien Lane, and Tomislav Ivanovic.

D. Study Approach and Team Member Responsibilities

It was decided that the data needed for analysis and report development would be collected via literature searches. It was further decided that the final document would be organized as follows with the indicated team members responsible for specific components:

1. Introduction (To include Objectives and describe the team and approach taken; Keith Edwards)

2. Winelover Preparation for the Winery Visit (Including all the steps that the Winelover should take ahead of the trip to ensure collection of quality data; Olga Mosina)

3. Winelover Site Visit (To include steps taken onsite to collect information necessary for a high-quality report. To include Conduct, Data Collection, Wine Tasting; Keith Edwards)

4. Follow Up and Reporting (ID of data gaps and mechanisms for getting that data, formatting, content, and timing of reporting; Sharon Parsons)

5 Reporting Mechanisms -- the population of mechanisms that the Winelover could use to report on the site visit. Tomislav Ivanovic

Luiz Alberto provided directional guidance while Fabien Lane provided technical support.

This post will be followed by a guest post on my blog from Olga Mosina. Olga's post will cover Preparation for the winery visit and will be followed by posts on successive days from the author, Sharon Parsons, and Tomislav Ivanovic covering their respective areas of responsibility.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme