Dr. David Muhleman

The-Wine-Educator    WINE & SPIRITS EDUCATION AND CONSULTING SERVICES FOR THE CONSUMER AND THE PROFESSIONAL

Making Good Wine in a Bad Year

Many will disagree with me, but I believe a good winemaker can make good wine in a bad year. In fact, a good winemaker can sometimes make good wine from bad grapes.

Let me first define what I mean by a “bad year.” A bad year was a year that the grapes did not ripen properly. It might be a year that was too wet, or too dry; too cold or too hot. It might have been a year where the sugars and the acids never reached their best, or a year where the phenolics never developed. A bad year was a year where the grapes were not what the winemaker wanted them to be. And a “good wine” is defined as a wine that the winemaker could sell at a profit without damage to the brand reputation.  A wine the consumers like, purchase, and enjoy.

Today, in many parts of the world, the winemaker has so many options that he can compensate for a poor vintage (aka, a bad year). Simple winemaking techniques (where legal) such as acidification and chapitalization, dilution, de-alcoholizing, raisonating, and other ways of manipulating the must are all tools available to the skilled winemaker.

Whole cluster fermentation, cool soak, fermentation in wood or stainless steel (or concrete, etc), punch downs, pumping over, oxidation, reduction, wood chips, multiple racking, aging on the lees, new oak/used oak, American oak/French oak/Hungarian oak, aging longer/shorter, malolactic fermentation, and a hundred other decisions the winemaker can do to produce a good wine.

Especially blending with other wines. Other varietals, other vintages, other regions, and even with unfermented grape juice are all options open to the winemaker (where legal).

Even before fermentation, the winemaker can go through a process of meticulously sorting the grapes to select only those good enough to make into wine (as Ornallaia did with their Masseto in 2002). Although this process produces good wine, it makes very little wine. And finally, the winemaker has to listen to the grapes and make the kind of wine it is willing to make.

Although a winery may be known for their varietals cabernet sauvignon, if the vintage doesn’t give you grapes to produce a stellar cabernet sauvignon, the winemaker may have to produce a blend that year. The point being that either before fermentation, or during fermentation, or after fermentation, a good winemaker has countless ways of manipulating the grapes to produce a good wine. Maybe not as much, or the wine they wanted to make, but a good, profitable, respectable, quality wine.

So why should you care?  Well, the opposite is also true. In a good year (when the grapes are exactly as you wanted them), even the most average winemaker can make good wine (and in a great year, even an average winemaker might make a great wine). So in Bordeaux in 2000, and 2005, even the newest winemaker skilled enough to be a Bordeaux winemaker most likely made good (if not great wine). So as a consumer, just about any 2000 or 2005 Bordeaux is going to be good. And in fact, a 2000, or 2005 Bordeaux from a petite chateau may be better than a 2002 Bordeaux from a First Cru chateau (and significantly cheaper).

I’m not comparing a petite chateau and a Grand Cru from Bordeaux from the same vintage, but given a wine list and a limited number of dollars to spend, it might be wise to pick a petite chateau from a great year. And if you want to enjoy a 1st Growth without breaking the bank, you might pick a lesser vintage, knowing that good winemakers can make good wine even in bad years.

The cost of owning a winery is so high that almost no one can afford to discard a vintage and sell off their grapes or wine in the bulk market. They have got to make good wine even if Mother Nature was not kind that year. But the real gem is when Mother Nature is good and everyone gets good fruit. In those years the great wines are greater and the lesser wines are also great.

So there will always be good wine in every vintage, no matter how bad the weather and the resultant grapes. They are just harder to find and often low in production. But in good years, fill your cellars, because there are more values to be had at every turn.

Until next time, drink good wine.