I invite you to do the same, eanyway then we tested it a sensory analysis to detect chaptalized descriptors mainly caramel, bon bon, and 50% plus one determined it in the round table and further more compared to other roche aux moins the LSD statistic values were significant different from the aother samples…

I dont know, to much bla bla, he applies good vviticultural techs for sure but in the cellar he should be less interventionist, it is just not following his marketing philosophy, and publications…

Bisous!

In our tasting room we interact with all kinds of tasters: the super geeks to the birthday parties. We make it a policy to provide any information at any point. Before selling our first bottle we decided being transparent and being able to provide as much information as a taster may want is a priority: residual sugar levels, acid levels, pick dates, brix levels, vintage notes, oak regimes, filtration decisions, clones, rootstocks, soil profiles, percent ABV etc!

With that in mind, the percentage of alcohol by volume is only one of many parameters combined in a given wine that determines the overall perceived quality. We feel that providing certain information out of the context of tasting the wine is not a reason to purchase (or not) a bottle of our wine.

Also with that promise of providing pertinent information in mind, for those of you who are seeking more information, we will be adding technical notes to every wine (both current and older vintages) to our website.

When it comes to critics it’s out of our hands sadly! We provide more than what they ask for (including % ABV) but they use only the information you see. Personally, I don’t think alcohol needs to be included every time in critics’ reviews. If the alcohol component stands out then it’s worth mentioning, but if it’s a balanced wine then that single piece of data is not always necessary. Also as a producer, we find (within a certain crowd!) there is a negative stigma attached to wines over 14 or 15% ABV. We don’t want to be judged on a digit. If our wines are not to your taste then more power to you!

Is it policy? Perhaps that is not the right word. But I got kicked off WS boards a couple years ago for questioning James Laube’s putdown of Randy Dunn on the alcohol issue. And my last blog post went into detail about my views. (http://www.wineforall.com/blog/?p=404)

Long story short, my educated hunch is that WS and RP do not and will never include ABV % in reviews because doing so would expose the correlation between their highest ratings and high-octane wines. (Yes, of course, many under 14% wines get 90+, but the top tier is dominated by BIG reds.)

By contrast, it is interesting to see an increasing number of bloggers include ABV % in their reviews routinely, if not by stated policy. Why would bloggers do so? Because it makes sense! It is another piece of potentially useful information to give readers. It is useful in different ways to different people for different wines, but then again, so is vintage. And origin and even grapes, which are also just data about a wine.

Moving forward, it just seems to me that the wine world now is so complex and vast that including at least an awareness of extreme ABV % is the best appraoch for reviewers who can expect to remain broadly credible.

Is that really so? That some publications (WS and RP it seems) have a *policy* of *not* publishing %? Very odd indeed.

I certainly agree that there is nothing wrong with mentioning it (nothing wrong with giving more info rather than less).

What I do think is wrong is to require categorically that tasting notes should specify %. (Or dismiss a wine just because of its %)

For many reasons, e.g. as explained above, I think in many cases it is irrelevant. But also – I taste a lot of wine and it would be a waste of time and effort to always require the % being noted. It would deprive our readers of a lot of interesting tasting notes – those we made without really caring a iota about the ABV. Sometimes, when tasting, the character of the wine is such that you wonder what the % is. Then you check it (and mention it in the review). If not, you don’t.

As a bit of trivia: we have recently tasted quite a few Bordeaux from the 80s and 70s (well, not hundreds but a few) and they have almost invariably been around 11.5% to 12.5%. and almost invariably delicious. An ’81 on Saturday that weighed in at 11.8%. Very nice it was.

At the same time I’ve had many gorgeous grenaches (for example), both red and white, which have been very, very nice. And if you checked the ABV sometimes they were even above 15… I’m certainly glad I didn’t dismiss them off-hand.

The alcohol issue per se is, in my estimation, way too complex, loaded and personal to be resolved in any sort of universal way. I have enjoyed wines that are over 14% ABV; and I have not enjoyed wines that are under 13%. That said, I do not encourage anyone to dismiss a wine based on alcohol level alone. That just seems foolish.

On the other hand, I continue to believe that wine lovers on all sides can agree that KNOWING the alcohol is relevant when reading a review. And the villain here = wine media gorillas who purposely omit ABV from reviews. If WS and RP (and all the rest) truly position themselves as sources of consumer guidance, then given the current wine market, how can they NOT include this data?

As a wine writer who tastes wines then continues sampling them, and adding to the notes, over a meal, I can tell you that from my humble experience, most wines that hit 14.5% (even 14%) and above do not have “good balance, fresh fruit, refreshing minerality” and that makes a lot of difference to me.

And I think Per-BK Wine’s condescension to Lisa’s checking labels is quite “curious” indeed. I do so myself in restaurants.

Last night in Arlington, VA at dinner, I first called for a Rose from Napa, saw that it was barrel-fermented, did not mention the variety (or varieties) on the back label. I rejected that at first and then asked for a Pinot Blanc from Oregon that was $34 (on a suburban wine list). That came with a screw-cap, so I rejected that and went back to the rose (also $34), which when opened, I saw was sealed with a plastic stopper, but I didn’t want any more hassles for the person who was inviting me, so I stayed with the rose.

We drank it, but it did not have the charm and refreshing quality that I want from a rosado and it certainly was not worth $34 (one of the lowest priced wines on the list).

In my opinion the wine trade is in crisis and will remain in crisis as long as they kept pushing unbalanced, overoaked, high alcohol wines at unreasonable price-quality ratios, keep putting screw caps and plastic stoppers in the bottles and feel compelled to do such things as barrel ferment roses.

What I am saying is that the number on the bottle is not necessarily a good indication of the taste and quality of the wine in the bottle, so, in my opinion, putting too much emphasis on the % a mistake. Nevertheless, everyone is of course entitled to do it. It’s a bit like saying if it doesn’t say Cabernet Sauvignon on the label I won’t like it. It’s a way to choose a wine, but not necessarily a good one.

To come back to the original question: it seems to me more important if the taster in a review says if he thinks the wine is balanced, has freshness, fruit, minerality etc. If, in the tasters opinion it has, say, good balance, fresh fruit, refreshing minerality, then what difference does it make if the wine is 14.5%? Of course, it never hurts to say it, but it is really more meaningful to get a persons evaluation of the wine rather than a chemical analysis.

I feel much the way Lisa does. In my own experience, certain wines fit my palate best at certain alcohol levels. Old World Syrah/Grenache wines for me can be fine over 14% ABV, but New World ones too often have hit me like a brick to the palate. And when it comes to Zinfandel, while I do occasionally find a 15% one I kind of like, when it comes to drinking, I simply do better with 13.5% ones.

It seems entirely normal to me that certain people develop personal preferences regarding ABV levels in wine, and choose to keep those prefs in mind when choosing wines to drink.

Again, as Cassandra points out as well, this is more about information than about the alcohol itself. Wine media that as policy omit ABV data while including other facts (grapes, origin, price…) are not serving wine lovers as best they could.

“As soon as I pull a wine off a retail shelf, I look at the alcohol first. At wine tastings, I ask the pourer what the alcohol % is. I don’t buy anything over 13.9%. I hate it that it’s gotten to that point, but for me, it’s simply not an enjoyable experience”

That’s a curious way of tasting wine. You decide from what is written on the label if you are going to enjoy the wine or not.

You don’t give the wine a chance to show what it smells and tastes, but rather you look at the label and say “if it’s above 13.9% it is not enjoyable”, not even bothering to smell or taste it.

Curious indeed.

Personally, I would rather taste the wine and see if I think it has a dominant alcohol (which can happen at 12.5%) and therefore is unbalanced, or if I think it is balanced, refreshing and enjoyable (which can be the case even for 15% wines).

You should try blind tastings. It’s a humbling, and surprising experience.

Reviewers, restaurants and online retailers — those parties recommending or selling a wine without the bottle present — should include alcohol levels. There are a lot of consumers out there who don’t like to drink 15% alcohol wines with 93-point ratings, and it’s just basic customer service to provide us information we need to make a buying decision.

With all the negative publicity high-alc wines have begun to receive, I think more consumers will begin asking for this information.