ITEM: Classified Ad – Wine Trade Publication Listing Date: 02/01/2007
America (Country Appellation)
Goldfarb’s Pressing Matters
Micro-Oxygenation and The New Wine for the 21st Century
by
Alan Goldfarb
February 22, 2007
Item: We have gone way beyond the issue of cost. …the real advantage to alternatives is accuracy because you can zero in on a particular blend of flavors and then consistently repeat it. We have now effectively mimicked the barrel by using a rainbow of products.
~Jeff Runquist, winemaker, McManis Family Vineyards, Ripon, CA
The operative phrase in this discussion of micro-oxygenation from Runquist is“…you can zero in on a particular blend of flavors and then consistently repeat it.”
But the questions that flow from this are many. Do winemakers really feel compelled – in the increasingly fierce competitive world wine market – to consistently repeat what they’ve made before? Do they really want to “zero in” on the kinds of wines which preceded the last? Are the stakes so high that it’s become commerce über alles?
Is this what the art and craft of winemaking has come to, after being seemingly besieged by an astounding implementation of a myriad of technology? And have the rest of us—labeled by some as Luddites and traditionalists—been thrown onto the odd-bins barrel and left to stew in our recollections of “I remember when …?
As evidence, one only has to navigate–for hours on end–the maze of contraptions, machines, computers and devices with their commensurate jumble of hoses, wires, and cords found at the recently concluded
Unified Wine & Grape Symposium trade show. You are left with the unavoidable conclusion that there’s something going on here. And many of you unassuming but faithful wine consumers don’t quite know what it is.
