Old White Guys

After millions of years waiting on tables I slowly weaned myself from restaurants by teaching hotel/restaurant management at a little college in San Francisco, and supplemented that meager income working in the teeniest wine shop on the planet. It was, literally, under the stairs at the St. Francis Hotel. We specialized in older vintage Napa and Sonoma wines. The majority of the reds were 1985 and 1986 Cabernet Sauvignons for under $20 a bottle – and this was in the early to mid 1990s. I kid you not. The whites, unfortunately, were mostly from 1985 and 1986 as well.

Have you ever had a (domestic) chardonnay older than, say, five years or so? They turn an amazing, glowing shade of rich gold and lose their fruit to become… undrinkable, in my opinion. My boss used to sniff at me and say that appreciating these older chards was an “acquired taste.” Methinks he just wanted to unload this old stuff on some poor suckers from out of town. Frankly I hope I never do acquire a taste for that stuff since it tasted like aspirin.

This was back in the when California chardonnays were expected to be buttery malo-lactic fermentation oak bombs. These days the pendulum has swung away from that (and thank goodness – YUCK!) to a cleaner, crisper style (neutral oak or stainless steel) that can handle more bottle time – and allow us to taste the fruit. You’ve heard me lecture on oak before – if you can taste the oak, you can’t taste the fruit, and that means there won’t be much left once the wine matures.

Oak is one of the many factors that influence the ability for a wine to age well, along with acid, alcohol level, tannins (present in reds as a result of fermentation contact with skins and stems) and the presence of residual sugar, to name but a few. Fundamentally, the wine has to be balanced and well structured in order to flourish with bottle aging. Much of this depends on the natural characteristics of the grape varietal.

Viognier, for example, is a robust white wine grape with a natural acidity and full, complex fruit flavors that make it a good candidate for aging. For the southern Oregon and northern California viogniers I have tried, vintages 2005 and 2006 are getting to their peak just now. We planted Viognier at Crater View Ranch Vineyard in Jacksonville in 2006 and brought in our first harvest this past fall 2008. After fermentation, we put it in neutral oak barrels where they now wait. We will bottle, most likely, at the end of summer and then… wait some more. Wait for the blow-you-away fruit to mellow, for the flavors to integrate. Patience is required. But even then, I am only talkin’ 4-5 years, not 10 or 20. I have yet to find a US white that can survive that long.

Does that mean the 2008 Pinot Gris showing up in the stores are inferior? Of course not – many white varietals peak in their youth, thanks to being naturally fruit forward. Sitting on a deck overlooking the ocean, do I care that my sauvignon blanc with the hint of residual sugar will be over the hill next winter? Uh, no, I don’t.

Compared to red wines, some of which hit their peak 20 plus years after harvest, it seems as though quibbling over a year or two with whites is absurd (and frankly, quibbling over something like wine is indeed silly). But given the shorter life span of whites, that year can make a big difference.

Originally published at: http://bendnights.com/blog/old-white-guys/