Mike Dunne, one of my favorite wine writers, has an interesting and insightful article in today's SacBee. He refers to a Frank Prial (another of my favorite writers) NYTimes column, ca. 1982, chiding the Calif winemakers for making alcoholic, overblown, soft, blowsey wines and that drinkers will turn to Europe for wines with verve and acidity. Afte tasting a tableau of KermitLynch wines in Sac, Mike is finding Prial's column still applicable to this day.
Not sure I wholely agree with his point of view, but I can certainly see part of it.
When Prial wrote that column (which I remember well because of all the fuss it stirred up on the many WineBoards then), Calif winemakers had been listening to all the whining about the alcohol levels, particularly in Zins (CharlieOlken: "brutish monsters with shabby table manners") and had cautiously stepped in the direction of so-called "food wines". In fact, many of those wines tasted thin/eviscerated/lean/lacking in flavor and, generally, not very interesting. Just about killed the Zin market in the early '80's. I sincerely hope we never return to the wines of that era in Calif.
We are, once again, seeing many of the same whines from writers (lending a historical perspective here) decrying wines with high alcohol levels and gobs of hedonistic fruit. I assert that the wines we are seeing now are far different from those in the late '70's that triggered those original whines back then.
Yup.....no denying the alcohol levels have risen over the last 10-15 yrs. But many of these big/extracted wines have a structure and a balance that you seldom saw in those excesses of the late '70's. Probably better farming for a large part.
Furthermore, the trend of the European wines has moved in the direction of gobs of hedonistic fruit and higher alcohols in many of the prestigious regions. These are the wines the critics seem to love. Still there are plenty of wines being produced over there that meet Prial's criteria. And, as well, in Calif. You just have to search them out a bit. And, certainly the wines Kermit selects mostly march to the beat of a different drummer...or he wouldn't select them.
Anyway...MikeDunne's a good read today.
TomHill
SacBee: MikeDunneColumn