The Wine Knows

An ounce of sanity is emerging from a sea of overripe California wine - and there are lessons here for the Pacific Northwest.

An article in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times has famed Santa Barbara cult winemaker Adam Tolmach of The Ojai Vineyard saying he's served two masters long enough.

And since he can no longer enjoy drinking his own high-scoring wines, Robert Parker has to go.

"We got the scores we wanted, but we went away from what I personally like," Tolmach told writer Corie Brown. "We lost our rudder when we went for ever bolder, riper flavors."

So Tolmach finished harvest about two weeks earlier than usual last fall. He plans to push it back even more in coming vintages until his wines return to the balance he prefers.

Big Parker scores can be as intoxicating as the 15% alcohol wines many California producers are making. And those scores are causing many Northwest producers to leave grapes out on the vines longer, pushing sugars well past 24 brix to achieve bigger, riper, jammier monstrous wines that have all the oomph Parker loves - leaving little balance and few varietal tendencies.

Do not blame Robert Parker for this. He did not create the tyranny of The Wine Advocate, a bi-monthly newsletter that has perhaps one-tenth of the glossy Wine Spectator's circulation. In fact, I have deep admiration for Parker and what he has achieved. He happens to have a remarkable ability to taste, rate, review and write about wine that goes well beyond his original chosen vocation as a barrister. Parker, in fact, is simply doing the same thing he's always done: He tastes thousands of wines, writes what he thinks and sends out his newsletter.

It just so happens that he likes bigger wines from California. So that is what California has given him. Along the way, so has France (the problem there being that France cannot annually achieve the ripeness the warm California sun provides).

And that attitude has crept into the Pacific Northwest. In our database of wines we've reviewed over the past several years, we've kept track of alcohols - and they are rising. During harvest, we hear winemakers talking about 26, 27 and 28 brix (a measurement of sugar levels in the grapes). We regularly see Syrahs, Merlots and Cabs in the 14.5%-and-higher range. We see Rieslings reach into the 13%-14% range, where they become heavy and lacking in distinction.

The cry in the wilderness for the past decade has come from Dan Berger, a Sonoma County wine writer (and Wine Press Northwest columnist and tasting panelist) who has decried the rise in alcohol at every turn and rewarded those winemakers who still understand balance is all important.

Last year, Corti Brothers, a deeply respected grocery and wine merchant in Sacramento, essentially banned all wines higher than 14.5% alcohol. That was the first shot across the bow.

Now, Adam Tolmach is trying to find his way back home, eschewing big scores and big wines.

Thank goodness for a smidgeon of sanity in the world of wine.