Less is More

Respecting regionality

For those with brains and guts, the real wine journey offers the planet’s most exciting and affordable adventure. Wine offers the world’s cheapest travel agency. Tonight we dine in Australia with a distinctive Coonawarra Cabernet. Tomorrow New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc transports us to a cooler region across the Pacific. Maybe Thursday we’re sampling the Malbec of Argentina and the following night we’re considering South Africa’s spicy Pinotage.

If you’re a sensible tourist, you bring along an experienced companion to show you the ropes. The properly guided global trot snorkels through layers of reductive strength and distinctive expressions of terroir which are often a little alarming to the novice. Serious wines ripen like cheeses, the best more slowly than the ordinary. Sometimes we encounter a Cabernet Franc or minerally rosé which holds back its richness in youth.

Sometimes you just want to ask somebody, “Is it supposed to taste like that?” Access to local expertise in the form of a local retailer, sommelier or knowledgeable drinking buddy is a pearl of great price to be cultivated and treasured. It pays to know someone who will suggest a bit of breathing or cellaring, or perhaps just the right cheese to go with to help dial in a wine to show at its best. It’s my privilege to lunch weekly in the company of a wonderfully savvy and agreeable assembly that includes veteran wine journalist Dan Berger, a leading champion of “Less is more.”

I don’t make small wines. I was taught never to bottle a wine unless it has presence and focus. But so many of today’s offerings seek only to be musclebound and impactful, and that’s not the same thing. One couldn’t hope for a richer, more generous $50 Cabernet Sauvignon than my ’20 WineSmith from Bates Ranch, but the key to its integrity is its balance, not its power. And my Petit Verdot is quite a big wine, but enjoyable only after it’s completed a mandatory five years of cellaring—before that it’s quite austere, sort of zipped up. My Surly Chenin Blanc is the same way.

These early stages are worth seeing, too. As a winemaker it’s my pleasure and my burden to shepherd all the changes an adolescent wine of depth and potential must pass through. We also raised service dogs, magnificently bred golden labs who don’t seem quite as noble when they’re three months old and peeing on the Persian rug. But when they reach their final destination a couple years later in the homes of deserving owners, I know I’ve seen a side of these dogs in youth which they’ve missed out on. It’s a privilege to nurse my infant wines until ready for prime time.

Today’s winemakers are under a lot of pressure to push their wines to show well and to show big when they’re far too young. Among the available tricks are excessive hang time, high pH, heavy oak, residual sugar, Megapurple, and that aromatic kiss of muscat. Like heavy makeup on a child star, these cheap tricks can hide the quirks and blemishes which comprise real beauty. But hey, it pays the bills.

Still I live in hope. It’s the sameness of these raisiny, overripe alcohol bombs and buttery Chardonnays that will begin to bore wine lovers after they have been around a few years. As more consumers come to grasp Dan’s less-is-more philosophy, more winemakers will emerge to provision them. Wines that aren’t shouting for attention are the ones that will express their unique contribution to your global field trip.