Watching the intelligent, in so many ways perfectly capable culture of wine grow and evolve is an exercise in (im)patient frustration, akin to watching a fat, grinning baby try to pick up a Cheerio and successfully put it in their gabbering mouth for the first time.
It seems so simple. The steps seem so obvious. And yet.
While winemakers, members of the wine media, retailers and sommeliers hold conferences, conduct surveys and issue edicts designed to decipher the mystery of Gen Z – and, to a lesser degree, Millennials' studied lack of interest in wine – the answer seems as old as time.
To be fair, the consternation has merit. Wine culture has managed to grow sales for roughly 8000 years unencumbered by youth's disdain, and inevitably luring the youngsters down to the cellar. But that steady onward march has hit a wobble. And while the reams of research that instruct wineries and their adjacent industries and gatekeepers to embrace sustainability, diversity, alternative containers, rare grapes, and more make excellent points, there’s also, increasingly undeniable desire for something new.
Like the British Invasion of the 1960s, or the explosion of hiphop in the 1990s, something radically different – but ultimately recognizable – is finally emerging in the wine space.
Vintners who are making wine in truly unusual or new ways, without falling into the trendy tropes that have come to define progressive, young-gun winemaking, are finding new audiences among new and experienced wine lovers. But also without doing weird things just to be weird.
"We don't want to experiment just to be esoteric," says Matt Dees, of the experiments he and his colleagues do at The Hilt Estate and JONATA in California's Sta. Rita Hills, often for in-house consumption. "Our purpose is always to explore different ways of thinking about flavor and authenticity, and of thinking about the ways climate change is impacting how grapes grow, and what is possible and appropriate for our climate here now and 10 years from now."
Rethinking vintage
When considering the quality, ageability and potential collectibility of a wine, the first question a buyer likely asks: is it a good year, or a bad year? Wine collectors and casual geeks love to hold forth on vintage ratings across the globe, believing earnestly that vintage determines long-term quality, even in the best terroirs, with the most valuable grapes, crafted by the most skilled hands.
But winemakers, in recent years, have pushed back on that truism, and say their results mixing vintages are often more compelling, and ultimately enjoyable, than the established norm, in subtle and sometimes more overt ways.
Early Mountain winemaker Maya Hood has found that creating a "perpetual lees" system at her Madison, Virginia winery, in the spirit of solera systems in Sherry or reserve wines in NV Champagne, adds aromatic depth, autolytic flavor and new layers of complexity.
"I kept an ambient fermented barrel of Petit Manseng from the 2017 vintage, removed the 2017 wine off the lees, while keeping them in barrel, and put the 2018 juice directly on the 2017 lees," Hood explains, adding that the initial experiment demonstrated "very different kinetics and displayed such dynamic aromatic and textual attributes", they increased the program in size, including subsequent vintages in the blend.
Hood says not every grape would be suitable for this kind of treatment. Because Petit Manseng is high in acid and sugar, and has a low pH, it naturally exhibits greater microbial stability than other grapes.
At the organic and biodynamic producer Alois Lageder in Alto Adige, pushing limits is not new. Well before high-elevation farming was an accepted solution to climate change, they began planting vineyards ever higher (up to 3000 feet), and cultivating hot climate grape varieties unheard of previously in cool northern Italy, like Roussanne, Marsanne, Viognier and Assyrtiko. Determined to go beyond even considerations of farming feasibility and regional grape conventions, the team conceived of an entire line dedicated to innovation and experimentation. Dubbed Comets, the line is produced with a eye toward experimentation, hoping that by using novel blending and fermentation techniques, indigenous and lesser-known grapes, and reconsidering approaches to climate change mitigation in the cellar, the team will learn something and produce a wine that engages new and established wine enthusiasts.
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