Excerpt from Korea Times
My long time professional friend JC Lee of Jell Deli in Itaewon once commented to me that the California wines always lack finesse to his palate and he usually goes with Burgundy when this trait is on his priority list. By the way, the word finesse means, if I can describe it in simple terms, the elegance and harmony that you find in
certain wines and their settings.
I pick this difficult subject today because the State of California and the Wine Institute of California have jointly concluded an impressive wine tasting this week here in Seoul. The tasting, featuring about 20 California wineries was held at the JW Marriott Hotel located above the Express Bus Terminal on the southern end of Banpo bridge. Included in the list of participants were Kendall-Jackson, Beringer and Franciscan Estate.
Unfortunately I was not at this important wine event as I was ironically in California at the time to harvest my own grape crops on my mountain top vineyards. In order to add an additional point to the selection of this subject, my wine maturity literally parallels these California wineries and my personal attendance at this wine event wasn't all that critical.
In fact, I have a better perspective of these wines from this end of the globe as I shared the same geographical location with all of the participants. More accurately, I have lived here in in Northern California for the last 35 years and knowing the wines of these wineries is part of my second nature. More over, a good part of the names among these participants were unknown back in my old days.
The last few weeks, California had a very irregular weather pattern which included unscheduled rain fall and cooler temperatures, not to mention the earth quake which shook the Napa wine country. I said unscheduled rain because it normally does not rain at all this time of the year. Most California vintners are in fear that they may not be seeing the usual sugar level in their grape crops, thus the wine production will be less merry than the usual vintage. You know the pre-harvest heat is very important to bring the sugar level up so the vintners will have the freedom in making the style choice of their wines.
However, forecasters are predicting that this part of the golden state will have its usual Indian Summer the next few days and it sure is good news for those anxious and worrisome winemakers. No one knows where the word Indian Summer came from but it means a late summer heat spill. Without a doubt, it is truly a blessed natural occurrence in California's viticultural environment. Here in California, like the other new wine regions, we never have to deal with grape picking in rain gear, as rain fall during harvest can take away critical ingredients needed in making a good vintage.
No wonder that the vintage of wines from French Burgundy is so important. The weather in the region is very unpredictable during the harvest season. So you can take an amateur view that California wines are far different from its old world counterpart. Year after year, California wines are, in many minds of wine spectators around the world, the power wine of choice. …
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Topic: California Wines Always Lack Finesse (Read 1326 times)