Comments on: Natural wines, premox, chenin blanc, 07 Port and Rhone – John Gilman

By: Brigitte Armenier

Brigitte Armenier — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:18:52 +0000

“Zealotry/devotee/puritanical,” and Biodynamics. Hmmm… Doesn’t sound very French to me!
Madame Leroy in Burgundy, Madame Barre at St-Emilion, Jean-Paul Fleury in Champagne, and well, Armenier at Chateauneuf-du-Pape, I remember when, thanks to Francois Bouchet, we all started farming biodynamically in 1989. And yes, 3-4years later, we were still “fairly new” to it, i.e., not so much inhabited by some zealot’s mentality than by the pioneer’s passion who asks, tries, searches, but still lacks the experience which allows to hold the balance between fear and over-confidence.
I’m not sure either about the copper “hot button topic in the coming year or two,” at least for the Biodynamic vineyards in California, Oregon and Washington states. Out of let’s say 40 wineries, maybe 5 of them use copper at a rate of max. 4 pounds per acre and per year. The 35 wineries left do not spray any.
Besides these 2 points, I’d like to thank Mr. Gilman for this: “If one is a fan of wines of terroir, how could it not be a positive step to see a place like Burgundy, which a generation ago was largely decimated by chemical products being used on the soils, now an increasingly healthy, vibrant and bucolic garden of vineyards.” Or should we rather thank vignerons like Madame Leroy for it?

By: sippitysup

sippitysup — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:06:47 +0000

Hello and congratulations! I am nominated in the same category, but I wanted to say “Hello” and say good luck. It’s an honor to be nominated alongside you! GREG

By: Doug Goodwillie

Doug Goodwillie — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:22:11 +0000

This is terrific wine writing,the best I’ve read in a long while.Two points really ring true to me:

“But one tries to make as reasonably an informed decision in this regard as possible and waits to see what the future will bring- its no good to my mind to start drinking all dry white wines young simply out of fear.”

And:

It is the same in the world of wine- for some the word of a particular critic is like gospel for them, and nothing is more important than defending their particular prophet’s view and banishing all the pagans from the general vicinity- once of course they have been properly drawn and quartered on the wine boards. But at the end of the day what does all this hubris and occasional vindictiveness really accomplish? Absolutely nothing. Sure, some folks may get stoked up like a football team right before kickoff, but the reality is that, just like religion, when it comes to wine there is no singular path to some absolute truth- in the end it is just a series of opinions and impressions on the moving target of an ever-evolving bottle of wine.

By: Weston

Weston — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:19:05 +0000

Or a Video…I would enjoy laying on my couching listening ! Going to read later gotta go for now tho

By: Dylan

Dylan — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:14:44 +0000

“All of my pieces are long! Speaking of which, I did notice that you were judicious this time in only sending over six questions for consideration, and thereby ensuring cyber space would not be completely exhausted by my musings ☺” At least, he’s self-aware. Quite a read and my eyes could use an 8-hour break from page or screen at this point.

Though I might suggest breaking it up into 4 or 6 parts to make it more palatable should you do this again, I still enjoyed this post very much. Great answers regarding taking wine growing practices to extremes to the very fascinating information on native yeasts not having the “heavy lifting” capacity for some higher alcohol wines. I learned a lot.