What Makes A Great Wine

Sitting looking at the misty drizzle over the paddocks on Good Friday morning, my thoughts naturally turned to things vinous and how the elements affected the finished wine; but as Tim Shaw has been known to say “wait there’s more.” 

Site location is a primary factor; you can’t grow great Pinot in the Barossa and you can’t grow great Shiraz in Tasmania, although this does not stop people from trying. As well as the macro climate and grape selection, the micro climate also has to be considered because that impacts the grapes as well.

Then there is the set up and management of the vineyard. Are the rows going north south, east west or some other way? What sort of trellising system will be used, how much will the vines be pruned, will they be irrigated or dry grown and when will be the grapes be picked? Every one of these decisions affects the quality of the resulting wine because as it’s been so often said, you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, or in this case, great wine from crappy grapes. 

Stage one is over and the grapes are at the winery, and for the purposes of this exercise let us assume that first class grapes have been provided and let us see what happens next. How will they be crushed, how long will the juice be left on skins, what quantity of tartaric acid and sulphur dioxide is required, will the juice be pumped over or plunged, will the juice be barrel or tank fermented, how long will the wine stay in oak and will it be fined and filtered? Once again each and every one of these decisions will have an impact on the wine’s final result.

To illustrate the most important part in this 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, I want you to imagine a room with 1,000 barrels of wine in stacked up in it, and that’s not a big winery. The winery makes Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot only; no funny blends and only one label of each. Sound simple enough? Not too many decisions to be made here, all you have to do is blend all the Shiraz together and bottle it, same with the other two varieties, right? Wrong! It’s a hell of a lot more complicated than that in reality.

As you are aware, up to 14.9% of different grape varieties can go into a wine without it having to be disclosed on the label, so there may be say 10% Merlot added to the Cabernet Sauvignon in this example. Or there may be some characters in the Cabernet that will improve the Shiraz and 14% Cabernet will be added to the Shiraz when the wine is blended. Now this jigsaw puzzle is a simple one by comparison to many. Lets up the “steaks” (well they do go well with red wine) and imagine the barrel room now has 2,000 barrels and they produce a top quality range as outlined in the previous example as well as a less expensive Shiraz, a Cabernet Merlot and a Shiraz Grenache blend. As you already know it’s not just as simple as selecting the best 10 barrels of Shiraz to go into the icon Shiraz wine. And what about the Shiraz Grenache blend and the less expensive straight Shiraz, which barrels go into which wines?

This is a very complex issue and knowing what barrels to blend into each wine is a real art form. This blending question has been shown to illustrate how important the most critical factor is in answering “what makes a wine great” even assuming there are the best possible grapes to start the process. The answer is the one word that has not been used in this entire missive, the winemaker! It takes a great winemaker to make truly great wines; even with good grapes, the talent of the truly gifted shows in the finished bottle.

Till next week.

Cheers

Ric