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Feature Article
Goldfarb’s Pressing Matters:
It’s hard to Balance when you’re Hanging
Andy Beckstoffer and his cohorts confront the 'Hang Time' issue and bring balance back into focus.
by
Alan Goldfarb
November 14, 2005
On a day last December when the first snow of the season was falling in Yosemite Park, Andy Beckstoffer secreted me to a dark room that overlooks the Great Hall at the venerable Ahwanee Hotel to tell me of an idea he had.
I paraphrase here the grape grower owning the most acreage in the Napa Valley, who told me on that day, that if winemakers continue to insist that the fruit he grows for them hang on the vine as long as a Michael Jordan drive to the hoop -- he wants to get paid for it.
Meaning: While his grapes linger on the vine in order to achieve upwards of 27- or 28-Brix (sugar) levels, they dehydrate and therefore lose mass. Thus, when they’re weighed on the crush-pad, Beckstoffer and his fellow growers are actually losing money.
Beckstoffer, as shrewd a businessman as he is a farmer, is not opposed to “Hang Time.” Winemakers can make any style wine they wish -- including the high-alcohol, jelly-jar wines they’ve been producing in the Post-Phylloxera-era.
But if you’re gonna do that, man, I’m losin’ money, and I think ya’ll should compensate me and my fella growers, he told me in his syrupy Virginia drawl.
Beckstoffer also told me on that wonderful snow-white post card of a day in Yosemite that his intent is not to go to war with his colleagues on the other side of the aisle. He just wants to start a dialogue with them, so that everyone wins.
Beckstoffer then proceeded to call for a trio of high-level confabs in St. Helena -- the last of which took place recently -- in which growers and vintners, once as schismatic a group imaginable, came together to deal with the ever-increasing issue of “Hang Time.”
They talked, they power-pointed, they discussed, and they even got a bit testy with each other. But in the end, I think Beckstoffer and his brethren will be remunerated for their extra efforts.
Tangentially, however, Beckstoffer will have spawned the beginning of a new style of wine that’s really just like the old style but with a modern twist that can only be achieved in California.
Out of Beckstoffer’s pow-wows I predict we’ll now begin to see wines from California, and especially from the Napa Valley, that are more Bordeaux-like. That is, wines of less sexiness and of more substance; wines of less sweetness and more acidity.
In other words, wines with balance. Wines that are meant to be consumed with food.
And I say, it can't come soon enough. While those Parker-ized, Laube-ized fruit-bowl-loaded, high-proofed wines at first blush are sexy as hell. But when you’re done with them, what is there left to talk about?
About now, I know that some of you are screaming at your screens, yelling at me to get lost in cyberspace without a tether.
“You-don’t-know-what-the-hell-you’re-talkin'-about, you Philistine you. We like our fruiti-tutti wines and we like ‘em high octane.”
Blah-da-dee, blah, blah.
I’ve heard it all before -- and before my life-support snaps and sends me into outer-space, I say to you: I’ll go down with the ship bunky believing that wines are meant for food and that sweet, low-acid wines only pair with pears. And baby food. That’s not the kind of food I consume and they’re not the type of wines I want to drink.
I’m sorry. I go to a movie to learn something, to set my mind to thinking and wondering. I don’t want an escape. Same thing with my lover and with my wine. I want to be able to talk about it and other matters of the universe when I’m through.
So, I say thank you to Andy Beckstoffer and his fellow grape growers for taking a stand against the Hang Timeists, even if Dandy Andy only serendipitously moved the matter into another realm.
What we’re going to see now -- and I’ve already begun to taste a slew of Napa wines come-into-balance (see the 2005 vintage a couple of years from now) -- are wines that will be better-made.
I’m not saying that I don’t like fresh, bright fruit. With California’s climate and terroir, it’s near impossible to make the hi-acid wines that we sometimes see in colder growing regions such as New Zealand and in many years, France. But the Californians -- and most especially the Napans (Napkins?) with less hang time, have a wonderful opportunity to bring their wines back into balance.
They have the technology, the ingenuity, and most importantly, the climatic elements to do it without losing market share. Just tone down the sugars, ratchet the acid up just a wee bit -- and voila! It’ll produce great, long-lived wines which will also be okay for early consumption so as to satisfy our instant-grat culture. And me.
Thus, a sideways nod to Mr. Beckstoffer: May you grow with the gods.
~ Alan Goldfarb, Napa Editor
I paraphrase here the grape grower owning the most acreage in the Napa Valley, who told me on that day, that if winemakers continue to insist that the fruit he grows for them hang on the vine as long as a Michael Jordan drive to the hoop -- he wants to get paid for it.
Meaning: While his grapes linger on the vine in order to achieve upwards of 27- or 28-Brix (sugar) levels, they dehydrate and therefore lose mass. Thus, when they’re weighed on the crush-pad, Beckstoffer and his fellow growers are actually losing money.
Beckstoffer, as shrewd a businessman as he is a farmer, is not opposed to “Hang Time.” Winemakers can make any style wine they wish -- including the high-alcohol, jelly-jar wines they’ve been producing in the Post-Phylloxera-era.
But if you’re gonna do that, man, I’m losin’ money, and I think ya’ll should compensate me and my fella growers, he told me in his syrupy Virginia drawl.
Beckstoffer also told me on that wonderful snow-white post card of a day in Yosemite that his intent is not to go to war with his colleagues on the other side of the aisle. He just wants to start a dialogue with them, so that everyone wins.
Beckstoffer then proceeded to call for a trio of high-level confabs in St. Helena -- the last of which took place recently -- in which growers and vintners, once as schismatic a group imaginable, came together to deal with the ever-increasing issue of “Hang Time.”
They talked, they power-pointed, they discussed, and they even got a bit testy with each other. But in the end, I think Beckstoffer and his brethren will be remunerated for their extra efforts.
Tangentially, however, Beckstoffer will have spawned the beginning of a new style of wine that’s really just like the old style but with a modern twist that can only be achieved in California.
Out of Beckstoffer’s pow-wows I predict we’ll now begin to see wines from California, and especially from the Napa Valley, that are more Bordeaux-like. That is, wines of less sexiness and of more substance; wines of less sweetness and more acidity.
In other words, wines with balance. Wines that are meant to be consumed with food.
And I say, it can't come soon enough. While those Parker-ized, Laube-ized fruit-bowl-loaded, high-proofed wines at first blush are sexy as hell. But when you’re done with them, what is there left to talk about?
About now, I know that some of you are screaming at your screens, yelling at me to get lost in cyberspace without a tether.
“You-don’t-know-what-the-hell-you’re-talkin'-about, you Philistine you. We like our fruiti-tutti wines and we like ‘em high octane.”
Blah-da-dee, blah, blah.
I’ve heard it all before -- and before my life-support snaps and sends me into outer-space, I say to you: I’ll go down with the ship bunky believing that wines are meant for food and that sweet, low-acid wines only pair with pears. And baby food. That’s not the kind of food I consume and they’re not the type of wines I want to drink.
I’m sorry. I go to a movie to learn something, to set my mind to thinking and wondering. I don’t want an escape. Same thing with my lover and with my wine. I want to be able to talk about it and other matters of the universe when I’m through.
So, I say thank you to Andy Beckstoffer and his fellow grape growers for taking a stand against the Hang Timeists, even if Dandy Andy only serendipitously moved the matter into another realm.
What we’re going to see now -- and I’ve already begun to taste a slew of Napa wines come-into-balance (see the 2005 vintage a couple of years from now) -- are wines that will be better-made.
I’m not saying that I don’t like fresh, bright fruit. With California’s climate and terroir, it’s near impossible to make the hi-acid wines that we sometimes see in colder growing regions such as New Zealand and in many years, France. But the Californians -- and most especially the Napans (Napkins?) with less hang time, have a wonderful opportunity to bring their wines back into balance.
They have the technology, the ingenuity, and most importantly, the climatic elements to do it without losing market share. Just tone down the sugars, ratchet the acid up just a wee bit -- and voila! It’ll produce great, long-lived wines which will also be okay for early consumption so as to satisfy our instant-grat culture. And me.
Thus, a sideways nod to Mr. Beckstoffer: May you grow with the gods.
~ Alan Goldfarb, Napa Editor
