Why this “balance” business has always been a crock
From the chapter: Terroir in panel
For me it was easy, when word started getting around a few years ago, to dismiss the notion that wines over 14% alcohol or picked “overripe” are somehow inferior, or less “balanced,” than wines closer to 12% or 13% alcohol, which are leaner in fruitiness and higher in acidity.
Wine, after all, has always been an aesthetic choice, like any other we make in our lives. You might yearn for a man with a body like Arnold and a Denzel face, but no doubt the Laurels and Hardys of the world find their share of love, too. So you prefer curling up to a Harry Potter rather than James Joyce’s Ulysses (obviously, far more do), or would rather contemplate the panels of a graphic novel rather than a Monet or Manet? Stones or Beatles, preppy or streetwear, pick up or sports car?
In matters of taste, who really cares? And there is a reason why, by today's standards, "lighter" style wines are at least 14% ABV: Because that's the predominant consumer taste.
However, the entire point of systems such as France’s AOC is to recognize, and protect the integrity of, the best winegrowing regions, which is why it is no more valid to say Cornas is superior to Côte-Rôtie than it is to say Côte-Rôtie is better than a Mollydooker’s South Australia Shiraz, or that a Mollydooker out-dukes a Stolpman Santa Barbara Syrah. It’s a silly argument because these are all red wines made from the same grape but coming from different regions; and different regions produce wines of different terroir related distinctions, often at extraordinary levels of quality that transcend arbitrary conceptions such as alcohol, perceptions of “ripeness,” or even sense of “balance.” One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
Despite the absurdity, debates rising barely above matters of taste persist, like pesky harvest fruit flies. Charles Olken, who has been publishing Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine since the days when it was still news that French judges could not tell the difference between Chateau Montelena Chardonnay and Montrachet, recently put things in perspective for me by sharing this thought: “Every new generation of wine commentators suddenly discovers that California wines are a little bit riper than their European counterparts. A few of them genuinely like the pert, tighter, high acids they find in Europe, but others simply adopt Europe as a ‘classic’ and thus dismiss all that is different.”
At the height of the "balance" debates, it reached a point, says Olken, where “if someone pointed out that balanced wines do, in fact, exist at levels above 14%, that person is branded as a ‘high alcohol apologist’ by people who should know better, and who themselves often recommend wines as high as 15% based upon their own blind tastings.”
It isn’t so much what happens in blind tastings. It’s more a case of people walking around with blinders. Who can ever forget, as it were, the incident at the 2011 World of Pinot Noir; when former Siduri winemaker/owner Adam Lee switched a 15.2% alcohol Pinot with a 13.6% alcohol Pinot—resulting in the higher alcohol wine being described as the “better balanced” of the two by a well known proponent of low alcohol styles. Blind tastings can be grounding.
What is harder to understand is why even experienced wine professionals who should know better cannot reconcile with this simple, incontrovertible fact: That sensory perception is always altered by scale and context, no matter what your avowed preferences or intellectual persuasions. No one is immune because this is the material nature of wines, not what we think of them.
I, for instance, have always preferred a lighter, gentle, finesse style of Pinot Noir. Line up any two, and I’ll pick the restrained, sharper, balanced wine over a big, “opulent” or “hedonistic” one all the time. Why? Because I have wimpy taste, I suppose. But I’ll never forget a World of Pinot Noir festival when I tasted a stunning wine that I thought was one particular winemaker’s finest Pinot Noir ever. Afterwards I wrote to him, gushing about the wine and begging for more information.
His written response? “This was probably our most difficult Pinot Noir to make... we experienced a sudden late season heat spike, and grape sugars soared out of control... the alcohol ended up over 15%.” Needless to say, I hadn’t checked the alcohol content on the label, mostly because I don't usually read the fine print. Does this make me a lousy judge of Pinot Noir? No. It just means it was a damned good Pinot Noir—a product of its vintage, the predilections of Mother Nature and a resourceful winemaker.
Not long ago I sat at a table in a busy restaurant between two renowned winemakers, feeling like an ant between two bull elephants. One of them was extolling the freshness and elegance of the other's Zinfandel, a 12-year-old bottle from Lodi's Clements Hills AVA. He went further, saying how he wished most Zinfandels were made that way, with more emphasis on acidity and balance and less emphasis on super-ripeness and excess alcohol. The Zinfandel producer turned the bottle around so that we could see the alcohol level on the label: 16.8% ABV. Hey, we all occasionally stick our foot into the mouth.
It's times like these that make me think that, besides being occasionally embarrassing, all this geek-speak about correctness of balance or alcohol, while well meaning, adds up mostly to crock. No wonder so many normal folk still wince at the sight of a sommelier approaching a table. For many people, "sommelier' is a synonym for supercilious. I've felt those vibes countless times. I know what it's like to be despised for having expertise.
Especially since what really matters is how a wine fits on a table, not how well my pants fits, what kind a pin I wear or how prestigious the wine labels I carry. What is the real job of sommeliers? I would say, simply: Right wine, right person, right dish. There’s nothing like, for instance, classic Hermitage, Cornas or Côte-Rôtie with grilled meats—or, as Richard Olney once famously prescribed, braises of stuffed lamb shoulder—in which case, even a successful "pursuit of balance" has no meaning.
But take those same grills or braises and finish them with reductions of fruit or in a Port infused demi-glaze, plus beds of onion marmalade or caramelized root vegetables, and I’d wager that a humongous, fatly fruited Mollydooker might actually fare better than leaner, earthier wines of the Northern Rhône. Incorporate exotic ingredients like star anise, hoisin, black beans or chocolate mole, and then lavish, sweet toned, decidedly warmer climate California Syrahs by the likes of Stolpman, Jaffurs, Halter Ranch, Betz Family or Ken Wright’s Tyrus Evan might make even more sense. If some dishes prefer fruitier, higher alcohol, lower acid Syrahs than typical Northern Rhônes, we should, too!
As much as we may think, as wine professionals, that we have refined the sense of balance in our perception of wines, time and time again this ability proves to be neither here nor there. We end up prejudging or pigeonholing the wines that we taste, examine, and accept or reject for our wine lists, rather than letting the wines speak to us about what they really are all about. Not all wines, even made from the same grapes or coming from the same regions, exhibit the same type of "balance." You know damned well wines from vineyards right next to each other can be, and should be, different, and in a good way.
We can avoid this habit of tunnel vision, I think, by making greater efforts to appreciate differences and diversity of wines, the same way we are conscious of differences and diversity of tastes. You have to proactively seek it, particularly in respect to regions or terroirs, and actual food contexts in which all restaurant wines end up having to fit.
Ultimately, any wine is enjoyed most when it is perceived for what it is, not what we expect it to be; and most times, finding these wines starts with changes in ourselves, not the wines. The wines are just fine, thank you.
This is good thinking, Randy.