Winemakers of Change

When our editor chose the theme of this month’s issue, she suggested as our topic the changes that have taken place in the winemaking industry, especially how some New World techniques and philosophies have influenced Old World traditions.

By Dianne Boate and Robert Meyer
Published: March, 2006

When our editor chose the theme of this month’s issue, she suggested as our topic the changes that have taken place in the winemaking industry, especially how some New World techniques and philosophies have influenced Old World traditions.

California, Oregon, and Washington have led some of the winemaking changes. The most dramatic change was to the fermentation tanks. The variety of tanks is a never ending wonder to Dianne. While functioning as basically the same thing, they are all different.

Many wineries used concrete tanks (some still do) and wood uprights, made locally from easy-to-obtain Redwood. Redwood gave way to oak, with superior results. Some of these large wooden casks can be seen at the Sebastiani tasting room in Sonoma. They are used as backdrops now, highly decorated by a woodcarver. For the most part, stainless steel has replaced wood and concrete in the US. In France and Italy, some winemakers are using modern methods to ferment old vine fruit.

France still uses concrete; but they have lined the insides with fiberglass. This is seen often in the Riviera, in the hills behind the resort areas above St. Tropez, Cannes and Nice, a region where the most popular wine is Rosé.

Twenty years ago, on a trip to Barbaresco in the Piemonte region of Italy, and armed with some bottles of California wine, a borrowed camera and an invitation to the local cooperative that makes exceptional Barbarescos, we conducted a blind tasting of their wines versus California reds. Everyone present gained a new respect for the wines from both countries. While we were there, we were invited by local winemaker, Angelo Gaja to visit his winery. He showed us around and pointed out the revolutionary techniques he was trying—using stainless steel tanks with cooling jackets to control fermentation.

Since the region has always followed the old methods he was considered, at the time, to be out of the stream, to put it gently. In addition, he was barrel fermenting the Nebbiola grape, which had never been attempted successfully. Other winemakers in the region were predicting dire results. But, by sticking to his ideas and wine philosophy, his results were quite the opposite. Today, his wine commands some of the highest prices in Italy, as well as Europe. Gaja is now considered one of the top winemakers, if not the best, in Italy, and has expanded from Barbaresco to Barolo and Tuscany.

For a domestic perspective, we called on Jan Wells, marketing specialist with Cannon Wines, purveyors of premium California wine, and importers of high quality wines of Europe. He says that one of the more fascinating aspects of change has to do with the extraordinary wine families of California, like Mondavi, Mirassou, Sebastiani, Wente, Gallo and Fetzer. Everyone started small, grew, and grew more, establishing dynasties that cover five generations.

Wells told us that the biggest change in the US wine industry is due to marketing: Thirty-odd years ago, the marketing of wines was dominated by distilled spirit companies who were pouring profits into wine ventures. When they discovered the profit margins were not what they expected, they got out of the wine business.

Today the market is heavily influenced by large corporation owners, no doubt intent on the good-old bottom line. Although the bottom line should focus on quality, oftentimes it’s the stockholders who rule. We believe, all of this adds into the mix of the ongoing legal fights for small winemakers to ship out-of-state. To put it bluntly, the bottom line is control.