Monday, September 3, 2007

low alcohol wines

Oh please........... all of a sudden there are myriad articles being written about 'low alcohol' wines - meaning anything under 14 per cent alcohol, where it should have been in the first place. These winemakers are saying they are doing something 'special' by making lower alcohol wines, by making them drinkable if you ask me. Wasn't/isn't that the goal all along? When did the public get the shaft by being told/convinced that huge alcohol wines were the ones that had flavor? The high alcohol wines became darlings of the media who traded balance, taste and elegance in for the big bullies of the wine world.
Let's go back and look at a history of GustavoThrace wines from the start in 1996. A simply graph would show that 98% of our wines have been at 14% or under, well balanced and designed specifically to compliment and, indeed, show off the foods you are pairing with them. The one 'huge' wine we made, a 15.8% petite sirah, was repeatedly tasted blind and the highest anyone ever guessed was that the alcohol was, perhaps, 15%. Which is to also say that one CAN achieve a balance with huge, overripe fruit but it isn't the goal to let the fruit get so ripe that you have to even deal with itin the first place. Now wineries are jumping on the bandwagon to shout that they are also making lower alcohol wines and we are just maintaining that we've been doing it all along, sorta nice to be imitated.............