On inconsistency…
Do we want our wines to be inconsistent? The answer to that might sound easy, but it needs a little further exploration to come to an answer. The key point is that quality is not a single dimensional thing.
If we are looking at two wines, thinking about which is ‘best’, the task often becomes meaningless. We can focus on a simpler question (as Daniel Kahneman observes we will normally do without ever realising it), such as ‘which wine do I prefer?’ then the answer is easier, but in a multi-dimensional experience, which aspects do you give the greatest weight to?
This came to mind when I was filing notes and came across this thought I had written over a decade ago: Making a wine that simply tastes nice, or one that is impressive, is of no interest to us; it is never our goal to get the most dollars or the most points for each bottle. Finding the special places that have the potential to make great wine is what makes us tick.
That remains true today; we are, first and foremost, looking at how the wine shows its unique place. But would that mean that we would be happiest if a wine from a single vineyard tasted the same every year? Just asking the question reminds us that we don’t want wines that consistently taste the same.
Vintage is the second major variable, but vintage is a two way act: you have the weather serving the challenge to you, but how you return that service is equally important. It is the one that most reflects the skill of the grower, and delivering the goods in a difficult year deserves respect. But should a wine taste of the vintage even when that taste is less than optimal?
The other significant variable is ‘house style’. That covers the adjustments in winemaking technique, or lack of intervention, that shapes the final character of the wine.
It’s the job of the winemaker to try to avoid showing the potential weakness of the year, but every individual will have their own vision of how far to go: what to change and what to leave alone. That is their right and it is an important aspect of house style.
Having had a fairly consistent run of vintages for the past 6 years, we’ve had a good chance to consider what a vertical tasting of a single vineyard should reveal. Taste all five of the single vineyard Pinots over that period and it becomes easy to understand when we are tasting place and when it is time (when it is winemaker is pretty easy for us as it takes a lot for Blair to ever interfere with any wine!). It is particularly revealing for us because we were here to experience that weather and the overall feel of the seasons. But what it makes really clear is how important transparency is in shaping winemaking style. Transparency is the quality that allows you to taste through one flavour, aroma, or texture and detect the one’s that lie beneath. Without good transparency, the nuance all gets buried beneath the dominant layers, and all that difference, the story of place and time, gets buried.
So, ultimately, we don’t want consistency of flavour, but we want consistency of the ability to express the narrative. We want transparency. Difference without a coherent narrative is just difference for the sake of it, and that is meaningless. But so is consistency of flavour. If Pinot Noir has a unique ability to convey place, then it also has a unique ability to convey time. Our job is to reveal both as honestly as possible.
