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Wine as Agriculture
It is easy for us to sit at our dinner tables and enjoy a glass of wine. We can appreciate
its bouquet, its color, how it works with the food, or just drink it. But rarely does the average
person think about who made it or the grapes that it comes from. If we think of the maker, we tend
to think of some modern-day baron living on a beautiful estate. Certainly this is the image put
forth by Napa Valley vintners.
But winemaking is really just a form of preserving a harvest, pickling if you will, and many winemakers are essentially
just farmers. They worry about market prices. They worry about the weather. They check their
crops for pests, hire pickers, and usually have just a handful of days to get all the grapes
harvested and crushed.
And an act of nature can devastate a season's (or more) worth of work, at best requiring a winemaker to live off
meager savings for the next year, at worst leaving them destitute.
As this year's harvest reports come in, there's been some bad news. My beloved Austrian wines look like they'll
have a meager crop this year. The floods which decimated Eastern Europe this summer have taken their toll on
Austria as well. Growers are worried about rot from the rain. Whole vineyards have been wiped out by floods.
Even those vintners with hillside vineyards might have had their winemaking facilities in the flats, giving them
a harvest but no means to do anything with it. This is a severe financial hit on the makers, and Melissa and I
will cherish our 2001s when we get them, and hope that all the makers made it through.
Full story here
Another sad story showed up on Wine Spectator today. A freak hailstorm wiped out most of the best Barolo sites.
Barolo is one of the Piedmont region's great wines, and many vintners are throwing up their hands in defeat
for salvaging the 2002 vintage.
The full story can be found here
So while 2001 was a great vintage practically everywhere, 2002 might be a bit tougher for much of the world. The next
time you drink some wine, don't just think about what it tastes like; think about how it got to you, and how many
minor miracles had to take place for it to end up in your glass. That is what wine appreciation is about.
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Serendipity: A Bit Of Esoteric Wine History
I was searching the Government Printing Office’s site while researching an article, and I stumbled across the record for this 1986 document titled “Imported wines : identifying and removing wines contaminated with diethylene glycol.”
Sadly,...
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Wtn: 2001 Zlati Grich Estate Laszki Rizling Ice Wine, Slovenia
Ice wine is something that shouldn't exist. The description alone—wine made from the juice of frozen grapes—suggests a topsy-turvy world.
Look at the pictures. Pickers tromp through snowy vineyards at dawn in late December. They are...
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Wtn: 2005 Heidi Schröck Muscat, Neusiedlersee-hugelland, Austria
If I ever say that I plan to stop drinking wine, test my resolve with a bottle of Heidi Schröck Muscat (despite the name, a blend of white grapes including some muscat varieties). This is a wine for those who have an unabashed love for the beverage.
Terry...
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Germany, Austria, Champagne, Oh My!
I know lots of people who say they simply don't like white wine. I used to be one of them. But I learned
the error of my ways once I realized that all white wines were not the wretched Chardonnays we produce
here in California. So now I do my rebellious...
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More Harvest News
More bad news for the 2002 harvest, this time from the Languedoc and Southern Rhone parts of France.
A freak storm wreaked tremendous havoc on the vineyards and the vintners.
Here's the full story
For more grim news on the harvest around...
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