There's a Mad Scientist loose in the cellar!
In my blog last month, I talked at length about the 100 point system used to rate wines and its impact on the wine industry. If you recall, the point system essentially puts a numerical score that is absolute and static on a product that is constantly changing from minute to minute. It's also representative on one person's sole subjective opinion. It's dumbing down the appreciation of wine for the attention deficit connoisseur. Most of all, the point system has indirectly created a monster: wines being created to attain a score, not to be the expression of the grape or the vineyard from which the grapes came.
Wines with a score of 90 points or greater can sell for hundreds of dollars a case more than wines with scores less than that. It is in the best interest of wineries trying to move product to have that magical score -- because it's instant credibility and creates a vortex of demand. But, how do you get a 90 point score?
Enter Enologix, a Sonoma-based firm whose client list includes a virtual who's who of the wine industry. Founder Leo McCloskey used his doctorate in chemical ecology from UC Santa Cruz to identify about 84 chemical compounds, 32 in reds and 52 in whites, that account for the majority of aromas and flavors in wine. Knowing how these compounds interact with each other, and knowing what kind of resulting wines come from those interactions, McCloskey started to feed a database with the recipes for different wines. Once this data was compared to the scores from Robert Parker, you could easily chart the type of wine that scored highly with Parker, and unlock the quantities of those chemical compounds that comprise high scoring wines. Voila! He's reverse-engineered winemaking!
Enologix runs a very secretive shop -- bordering on Dr. Evilish paranoia. Clients sign a NDA for the privilege and presumably very costly process of working with McCloskey's firm.
The process begins in the vineyard. While most wineries use hydrometers to measure brix (sugar levels) to time harvest, Enologix customers deliver grapes once a week to the lab where the grapes are pressed into a quick "laboratory wine" which is then analyzed with a liquid-liquid chromatograph connected to a spectrometer to measure those 84 chemical compounds. The lab reports back to the winery letting them know when to pick.
Once the juice is pressed and in the barrel, Enologix continually monitors the fermenting juice, measuring those key compounds, and recommending changes to the winemaker to get the wine to match those magical profiles.
McCloskey defends his work as being a 21st century solution to centuries old farming methodologies; however, he is cognizant some may wave a finger at him and call him a heretic.
The irony in all of this is that Robert Parker thinks great wines are made in the vineyard. They are expressions of the place where they grow. Expressions of the terroir. He believes in using natural yeasts for fermentation. He believes in not fining and not filtering the wines -- those processes rob the wine of its character -- its soul. Yet, winemakers the globe over are violating all of these centuries old tenets of winemaking in order to get a better score from Parker.
They are making wines in the lab because they have to.
Ignore the scores and discover the mystery of wine for yourself. You'll be amazed, delighted, disappointed, and horrified. But, what a wonderful journey it will be!
Wines with a score of 90 points or greater can sell for hundreds of dollars a case more than wines with scores less than that. It is in the best interest of wineries trying to move product to have that magical score -- because it's instant credibility and creates a vortex of demand. But, how do you get a 90 point score?
Enter Enologix, a Sonoma-based firm whose client list includes a virtual who's who of the wine industry. Founder Leo McCloskey used his doctorate in chemical ecology from UC Santa Cruz to identify about 84 chemical compounds, 32 in reds and 52 in whites, that account for the majority of aromas and flavors in wine. Knowing how these compounds interact with each other, and knowing what kind of resulting wines come from those interactions, McCloskey started to feed a database with the recipes for different wines. Once this data was compared to the scores from Robert Parker, you could easily chart the type of wine that scored highly with Parker, and unlock the quantities of those chemical compounds that comprise high scoring wines. Voila! He's reverse-engineered winemaking!
Enologix runs a very secretive shop -- bordering on Dr. Evilish paranoia. Clients sign a NDA for the privilege and presumably very costly process of working with McCloskey's firm.
The process begins in the vineyard. While most wineries use hydrometers to measure brix (sugar levels) to time harvest, Enologix customers deliver grapes once a week to the lab where the grapes are pressed into a quick "laboratory wine" which is then analyzed with a liquid-liquid chromatograph connected to a spectrometer to measure those 84 chemical compounds. The lab reports back to the winery letting them know when to pick.
Once the juice is pressed and in the barrel, Enologix continually monitors the fermenting juice, measuring those key compounds, and recommending changes to the winemaker to get the wine to match those magical profiles.
McCloskey defends his work as being a 21st century solution to centuries old farming methodologies; however, he is cognizant some may wave a finger at him and call him a heretic.
The irony in all of this is that Robert Parker thinks great wines are made in the vineyard. They are expressions of the place where they grow. Expressions of the terroir. He believes in using natural yeasts for fermentation. He believes in not fining and not filtering the wines -- those processes rob the wine of its character -- its soul. Yet, winemakers the globe over are violating all of these centuries old tenets of winemaking in order to get a better score from Parker.
They are making wines in the lab because they have to.
Ignore the scores and discover the mystery of wine for yourself. You'll be amazed, delighted, disappointed, and horrified. But, what a wonderful journey it will be!
posted by The Cask Room, Mike Kallay at
7:09 AM
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