To wine wonks, Leo McCloskey is notorious. Clients who get advice from him and his Sonoma, CA. company Enologix no doubt appreciate his efforts to guide them toward making the types of wines that the critics love. But McCloskey’s detractors accuse him of being the devil incarnate and believe that he’s at the forefront of an alarming trend of contributing to big, homogenous California wine.

“No, they’re more distinct,” he says of the wines about which he consults. “… Who said I was making them homogenous? Who said they are homogenous? It’s a slam. It’s not the truth. The truth is products are more distinct and not overlapping when they’re bigger. …”

And so it went. During a recent two-hour conversation at his nondescript offices west of the Sonoma square, McCloskey proved to be adroit at deflecting the onus away from himself. In fact, he’s downright affable and as clever as one might expect, declaring that what he’s actually up to is contributing to producing quality wine. Additionally, he’s not the one to be vilified if so many wines today cannot be singled out in a Law & Order lineup.

He puts the blame squarely at the feet of those corporate wineries which seem to be encroaching on the wine industry more virulently than a Glassy Winged Sharpshooter, churning out gobs of wine that are indistinguishable from each other.

What then is Leo McCloskey up to when he pores through hundreds of thousands of computer readouts trying to determine how his 50 or 60 clients can shepherd their wines in a way that would cozy up to the arbiters of wine scores? And aren’t those same said wines – albeit at the very highest end of the market and as far away from mass produced wines as one can get – also without distinction, without place and bereft of a soul?

When I accuse him of helping to make wines that have no appellation or terroir characteristics, this is the way he responds:

“That’s very typical of wine media, which tends to come at anything new as, ‘Have you stopped beating your wife yet?’ In this case, ‘Have you stopped beating appellations yet? Now, if I said to you, ‘Yes, I’ve stopped beating appellations up,’ or no, ‘I haven’t stopped,’ I’d be legitimizing your question and it would be as if I said, ‘Yes, I’m against appellations.’ In fact, I have never, ever thought or worked in any way against appellations. I’ve never voiced an opinion about appellations other than to be employed by appellations themselves to do research on appellations. So, I would say I’m absolutely for appellations.”

Terroir Should be Like Religion

I read a quote attributable to him, “The consumer doesn’t need to know about terroir.” Then I point out that on Enologix’ Web site, its stated credo is, “Distinct regional wines are our first goal,” and tell him I find those statements dichotomous.

He responds: “I was asked (in the context of the quote regarding terroir), ‘Does the consumer need to know about terroir with respect to scores?’ He (the writer) was begging me to say something controversial and he said, ‘Will you say ratings or terroir is more important?’

“I said I believe the quality metric (which he has tracked) for a wine is more sought after by the consumer than terroir is … Terroir is something that is found in relationship to intensity. If you have to choose one thing first, you’d use an intensity rating to buy that product because then you can detect terroir. But to say the consumer needs terroir first; terroir is not the priority.

“I love terroir,” he insists, “but it’s about the fourth most important thing in the purchase. Terroir isn’t as important to the consumer as the price you’re charging for your product. The most important thing is the price, quality, the style, the aging potential, and then we come to terroir.

“… I think you make these products more easily identifiable (re: terroir) by making them bigger. When you make wines more concentrated, yes, you can ask a higher price. (But) it’ll (terroir) be easier to detect and be very successful. … I think intense wines are linked to bottle price and (that) is linked to impressing. These are almost celebration wines.

“Most of us drink mid-bodied wines not meant to impress our neighbors,” he acknowledges. "But in these areas, terroir becomes more important. And terroir you shouldn’t have to pay for. What I’m objecting to about terroir is when people try to charge for it.

“Terroir should be like religion, it should be almost for free. It should come with the wine like good punctuation. In that sense, I think terroir is valuable. It’s like having good grammar and speaking good English. Terroir is an attribute, it’s not a number.”

Will terroir ever become more important than it is?

“Terroir ultimately will become a brand for high quality, medium and low quality in the important regions,” he predicts. “It’s the complete package.”

How will this come about?

“They would legislate – let’s call it Napa Agra-Eco System (NAES),” he suggests. “It would have to be Bordeaux varieties. It would have to be red. It would have to be genetically controlled. Within that control it would become known that the best wines in Napa Valley came from certain regions. We would soon see Napa Valley divide Bordeaux varietal plantings where you would see Merlot north of Highway 121 down to Cuttings Wharf. You might see Rutherford be the pure Cabernet region. You might see Oakville get replanted between Cabernet and possibly Cab Franc or Petit Verdot. You might see Calistoga go more Petit Verdot and Malbec and less Merlot and no Cab Franc.

“The AVAs within Napa would become more and more specialized.”

When I point out that we’re beginning to see that happen organically, and then ask if varietal plantings actually need to be by government decree, he concedes: “Do we need to legislate? Probably not. … We would see a J.D. Powers of wine emerge that is producer-based, and uses insider knowledge to rate the brands. And it becomes a culture of openness and trusted-ness.”

Of course, he’s not above having Enologix become the J.D. Powers of wine ratings. “I would propose that there is a need right now to add some value to the Napa brand. And the way you can do that is hire a company like Enologix to rate the value. That’s not going to hurt Napa, that’s going to strengthen it. That’s going to create a lot of buzz, a lot of controversy. That’s going to create energy.

“If Napa was rated using producer-based knowledge as possessed by Enologix, we’re not going to do a bad job. We’re going to do a great job. I have all the same knowledge as the winemakers have in Napa. I must know as much as they know. I know which varietals are best, a sense of place, a sense of Napa.

How would that work?

“It would be better to have a producer-based source because of the unreliability of the critics,” he says, surprisingly. “Critics’ ratings, of course, are subjective. About 30 percent of the products are misrated and this creates a risk to capital.

“What’s needed is something that predicts family wine farms. The way to protect that is to have a more reliable rating system. But you don’t work against ratings. You can’t be a good farmer and go to sleep at night and be against the consumer. … If you’re a consumer advocate, you want to have some kind of standard of excellence by which even the most neophyte consumer could go and get this rating and purchase the product. But if you force the consumer into the dark to use information that is meaningless, what’s the use?”

He then cites a couple of talks he gave in Temecula and Lake County, as examples of how he intends for this rating system to occur.

“I’m not just glad-handing the growers and having a cattle-crossing meeting where we moo and look at each and then go home,” he begins. “(I want) to have a high-performance culture. I am holding my peers to the standards of excellence by which they themselves judge products.

“ … I’m for winners,” he continues the rant. “Somebody in the U.S. wine industry is winning and somebody’s losing. I think we should announce who the losers are. I don’t think we need to grow these grapes. I don’t think we need to make these wines. If there are no repercussions (for) the poor producers … and no rewards – which is a repercussion – for the winners, what is the reward system? What’s the profit motive?

“If it’s all about being rich and having a monument built to yourself and never being held to the normal business (models) and punishments, then nobody can stop you from having this monument to yourself in the middle of the Napa Valley.”

The Logic and Logistics of Enologix

It’s Enologix, he believes, that will be the progenitor of this rating system, a statement which turns into a treatise on why winemakers that don’t get good scores shun scores.

“Here’s the advantage of Enologix’ producer-based system,” he continues. “You turn in your (sample of) Opus One, (we) would give you a score index based upon all the wines sold the previous year from Napa and put them on a scale of intensity. You’ll (now) know where you stand before you bottle (the wine), so that you can plan the price and the volume around those metrics.

“The current system does not tell the consumer what the quality is. … I’m saying, replace that with a better system, but don’t just sit back and slam the ratings. The system may have problems but you don’t have another (option) to give to the consumer. You have to offer the consumer some information.

“These very winemakers, who use ratings to buy all their luxury products, want to deny the consumer a luxury rating of their product. That’s a double standard. That’s unfair. It’s disingenuous and it’s not smart.”

When I offer that winemakers have a love/hate relationship with Robert Parker and Jim Laube – two of the most influential critics in the country – and by extension, McCloskey, he rejoinders:

“Our customers love us. … My customers see me as just a consumer-action oriented business tool. I’m behind the scenes. My picture isn’t published. Most people don’t know what Leo McCloskey looks like.”

And you want it that way?

“Absolutely. My company is here as a service. I’ve made a significant contribution to wine … But when you go to winemakers, they don’t want to credit me. They want to be in the story,” he answers.

He seems to have a certain distain for winemakers, although many of his clients are winemakers. When he brings me into a small computer room, which he describes as “secured,” he shows me two side-by-side flat-screen monitors and points out that here is where the winery owner can look to see if the winemaker made any mistakes.

“It takes the godliness away from the winemaker,” he says. “When you talk about scores, often winemakers will try and discredit the critics or say that business is the dark side of life. … Here, the winemaker has the sense of movie star and capturing the flag and getting some media credit.

“… What kind of industry is this where they don’t reward talent? Where they don’t reward innovation? It’s a business that’s quite conservative that has many features that aren’t about business. It’s about me, me, me, me. It’s about monuments to themselves.”