Alcohol Schmalcohol
(or Wine Writers Will Beat a Dead Horse)
By Zeke Neeley, Winemaker
In the wine media, the term “high alcohol wine” has a very derogatory connotation. That phrase is often used to express disapproval regarding a certain style of wine characterized by over-extraction, huge tannins, overt oakiness, and a cloying body. But, as I’ll argue in this blog, any relation between those traits and alcohol is not causative. A wine may be both high in alcohol and over-extracted, but the two aren’t joined at the hip. A wine might taste slightly sweet but don’t immediately blame the alcohol, sometimes the sweetness is something much more obvious . . . like residual sugar.
Let’s take a step back and look at where the alcohol comes from. Wine is a product of natural yeast consuming simple sugars and converting them to both ethanol and carbon dioxide. A higher concentration of sugar in the juice will theoretically yield a higher concentration of alcohol in the resulting wine. Grapes naturally develop high concentrations of sugar which is one reason why grape wine was originally prized over other types of fruit wine. Because sugar production in fruit is a result of photosynthesis, the amount of sunlight a grapevine receives is directly related to the concentration of sugar in the grape. Centuries ago, the most prized wines were from warmer, sunnier climates, ergo the wines with the most alcohol. Wine drinkers liked their Malmsey hot!
Not only did people want more bang for their buck, they also wanted the wine to last until they got home. The standard ranges of alcohol we see today (13% to 15%) help protect wine from a myriad of spoilage yeast and bacteria. Occasionally, the antimicrobial properties of alcohol, combined with poor fermentation management on the part of a winemaker, work too well and the wine will “stick”, that is the yeast will die off before consuming all of the sugar leaving the wine slightly sweet.
Most California wine regions, like coveted wine regions of times past, have intense sunlight throughout the growing season. Although sugar accumulation is related to photosynthesis, many flavor and aroma compounds arrive in the grape independent of the amount of sunlight the vine receives. By the time our California grapes have the intense flavors and characteristics that we are looking for, they will usually have more sugar than grapes harvested in cooler climates like northern France or Germany. It is in the best interest of California winemakers to pick the grapes at the lowest possible sugar level to avoid “stuck” fermentations due to high alcohol, but it is also in our best interest to avoid picking unripe grapes full of “green” vegetal characteristics. Honestly, you don’t have to like California wine, just don’t blame the winemaker when it’s our Terrior!
People, I included, will refer to a wine as “hot” if it appears to have a higher than normal alcohol concentration. To me, this is characterized by a sharp, tickling sensation in the nose along with chemical fume aroma. Another related cue to high alcohol content is bitterness, which has been shown to be accentuated by increasing the alcohol content in a wine. I, and some other wine industry friends with whom I taste, have often arrogantly assumed that we could taste different levels of alcohol in wine. Some skeptics in the group started testing us and we found that we were right about 50% of the time, but unfortunately we were also wrong about 50% of the time. After much discussion we felt that we, like some wine writers, were falling prey to our own expertise. Our most common assumptions were that a lack of acidity, bitterness, and raisin or jammy flavors were signals that the grapes were overripe—had too much sugar—when picked and, ergo, the wine must be high alcohol. A recent study by Researchers at the University of British Columbia found that their subjects could only distinguish a spiked wine when the alcohol difference was greater than 1% (i.e. 13.5% to 14.5%) over the control wine.
I have also heard wine writers lament how they can no longer finish a bottle of wine without becoming completely smashed. Punching it into my calculator, a 750mL bottle of wine with 14.5% alcohol has the same amount of alcohol as 805mL of 13.5% wine. This means those 4 glasses of 14.5% alcohol wine equal 4 glasses and 3 tablespoons of 13.5% alcohol wine. I think the wine writers, like the rest of us, are just getting older.
Anyway, I have no problem with wine writers or aficionados having opinions. I, too, find many New World wines to be over-extracted and cloyingly sweet. The goal at Trefethen Vineyards is to achieve balance in our wines. If a wine has flavors, mouthfeel, tannins, and alcohol working in symmetry then we have reached our goal. My only request is to please avoid maligning poor alcohol whose only desire is to lighten your mood, keep your ticker ticking, and keep your Trefethen Cabernet sauvignon from going bad.
Cheers and sorry for the rant,
Zeke
