After 25 years of making wine in Pennsylvania, I sometimes reflect back on how little I know about what I am doing. It feels very Socratic. For those of you who didn't spend your years in school reading Plato, here's what that means.
In his Dialogues (written around 350 BCE), Plato's Socrates was known to make people question what they thought they knew by, you guessed it, asking them questions. People would walk away thinking that they didn't know anything anymore. In some ways, he was the original comedian (although his contemporary Aristophanes usually gets credit for that.) The crazy thing was that Socrates would claim that he himself didn't no stuff either, but what set him apart from most was that he knew he didn't know stuff. That's what set him apart.
I feel similarly to Socrates. I know there's a lot that I don't know. But 25 years ago--heck, even five year ago--I didn't know what I didn't know. At least now I know that what I didn't know then is something that I need to know sooner rather than later if I'm going to grow better grapes.
I've said it before, but I feel like I have our Chardonnay block (and wine) dialed in pretty well these days. I've discovered the style and the different methods that seem to really allow our site to be expressed in the glass of wine. I know most people couldn't care less about Chardonnay, but I don't care about that. When the Chardonnay is hitting on all cylinders, it's a remarkable wine for us.
Cabernet Sauvignon, on the other hand, has been the mystery that I have almost unlocked so many times and yet it often eludes me. Any winemaking strategy is about finding the synergy between the vineyard and the cellar. Sometimes the Cabernet fruit produces a wine with vigorous tannins and bracing acidity, sometimes we get gripping herbal tannins, and other times that wine is smooth and balanced. The 2021 vintage gave us the latter.
In 2021, we had a very cool spring followed by above average heat in the summer and early fall. This would seem to be a recipe for some stellar wines, but unfortunately Mother Nature subjected us to inordinate amounts of rainfall leading up to a whopping 11inches in September. (These are conditions that would probably induce heart attacks on our colleagues on the other coast.)
For us, the vintage yielded ripe flavors but without the concentration that usually accompanies those flavors. The Cabernet Sauvignon wine from 2021 is one of the more restrained and balanced wines we've ever grown here with a personality that makes me think it's ready to drink at a very early age. The good dose of Merlot also meant that it would be a little more rounded out and ready for consumption.
Stylistically, this is not the wine that I am shooting for. I prefer more robust and aggressive wines with distinctive personalities that rub people the wrong way a bit. This is not that wine. This is a measured wine that speaks of our vineyard through its flavors and of the vintage through its mouthfeel. It has a European sensibility to its balance, and sometimes that's just what I am looking for on a Wednesday night: a wine that won't hit me over the head, but just sits with me and let's me think in peace.
Don't get me wrong, though, it does have some strength to its character. Even though I don't think it's going to be a strong contender for wine of the decade in 2030, it has a charm that only this vineyard can produce.
But I've been wrong before. What do I know anyway....Socrates, care to chime in?
Comments
Post a Comment
By posting on here, you are guaranteeing that what you say here is worthwhile and worth saying. And something that you would say in the presence of your mother. If not, I will be forced to remove it.