Abandoning Heavy Bottles for Wine, New Oak (de-forestation), High Alcohol and Other Pretenses; Plus Embracing the 500ml. Bottle For High-priced, High Alcohol Wines and Comments on Natural Cork Wine Stoppers with a Slide Show From Amorim, the Portuguese Cork Producer

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Tyler Colman on his Dr. Vino's Wine Blog has a very interesting post today, April 16, Tony Soter sheds some weight [carbon footprint] on Oregon winemaker (and long-time California winemaker-consultant), Tony Soter.  Soter recently decided, according to Dr. Vino, "The Oregon vintner shipped his 2007 Pinot Noirs in bottles weighing 900g, more than the 750g of wine in the bottle. But for his 2008s, which are being released soon, the bottles will weigh 600g (both bottles, pictured right). Needless to say, the reduced packaging mass greatly reduces the carbon footprint of the wine."



“The time has passed that you can try to impress people with the substance of the bottle as opposed to what is in the bottle,” he (Soter) said.

No shit, Tony (Back in the day, I used to sell Soter-made wines, which I quite liked.)!  What gave you the first clue that maybe you and the rest of the winemakers in Oregon--and in California, Spain, and elsewhere--should have been considering substance and content over form in the first place? 

Maybe more new wave (now old and very tired wave) Parkerista-bent winemakers from around the world should consider the words of star chef Thomas Keller (The French Laundry, Per Se, Bouchon and an original, charter member of The Chefs From Hell Acrobatic Unicylcists and Winetasters Club of New York) from the Wall Street Journal yesterday (April 15, 2010).  Keller was quoted as saying, "We do what we believe in, not what our guests want us to do."

Thomas Keller. 
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2010.

How unique!  Maybe some wineries, who always telling me that their overblown, overripe, high alcohol/new oak-trashed wines--many put up in hernia-inducing bottles--are "what the market is asking for!," should hire Keller as a consultant.

This was my comment in response to the Soter "heavy bottle" piece on the Dr. Vino Wine Blog:
Amazing how people who ought to have known better in the first place change their thinking when the wind starts to blow from a different direction. Now, in addition to getting rid of super-heavy bottles (duh, the shipping costs alone for such pretentiousness!), we will soon see a massive shift away from the “new French oak” religion, not because the inexpert use of oak screws up the wine, but because new oak designer barrels cost too bloody much. 
 
As long as we are on the subject of heavy bottles, my partial solution to the outrageously high alcohol levels in California--and in Priorat and other such wines–in addition to stopping harvesting irrigated, overripe fruit–is to put these charicature trophy wines in 500ml bottles. A half liter is about all two people can support these days, especially in restaurants (many have to drive), so that would stop leaving a fourth to a third of the bottle undrunk on the table. It would allow producers to simultaneously drop their price per bottle by about 25% and make more bottles available to the public for wineries who have tight allocations (the few left who do). Sure, they would still keep bottling in 750ml. for collectors and wine aficionados who want to cellar those wines.


And, while we are at the carbon footprint thing (Dr. Vino's Wine Blog), how about doing away with plastic stoppers, which are going to end up in those huge floating plastic trash dumps in the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean? And the carbon footprint on natural cork (News on Spanish wine and food- Qué se dice del vino y alimentos de España) is so far above that of the horrid screw-top closure that, now that TCA is under control (of the samples I am sent to taste for articles about Spanish wines, I can’t remember when the last cork-taint wine turned up), there is not real excuse for continuing the screw-top madness. (Yeh, I know they are easier to open, just don’t slice your finger on that aluminum that is going to end up in the landfill and create pollution.)

Slide show of cork harvest, production and quality control at Amorim in Portugal.

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About the Gerry Dawes

Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine.

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Culinary Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com; Alternate e-mail (use only if your e-mail to AOL is rejected): gerrydawes@hotmail.com

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