We all know the American market prefers a different taste profile of wine than the European market -- people often mention the U.S. preference for bigger bodied, more fruit-forward wines.What's not talked about as much is that Americans seemingly don't like acidity.
I got to thinking about this a couple days ago as I enjoyed one of Bronco's wines, a 2007 Harlow Ridge Lodi Sauvignon Blanc. With its suggested retail price of $10, this is one of the most expensive wines in the portfolio of the 4th largest wine company in the U.S.
Bronco didn't get to be as big and successful as it is by misunderstanding the American palate. Its wines are competently manipulated to produce the taste profile it wants. (This wine is only 12.5 % alcohol, which is great, but obviously reduced -- show me a non-manipulated Lodi Sauvignon Blanc at that level of brix and I'll show you some unpleasantly underripe grapes.)
I come to praise this wine, not bury it. You can find it in stores for under $9 and it's good value at that price. It's simple, but easy drinking -- straightforward grapefruit flavor, very clean finish. The one thing that's noticeable to a wine aficionado is the low acidity.
Personally I found that a little offputting; I like Sauvignon Blanc to be mouth-puckeringly crisp. But I'm not the average American drinker. A wine that Bronco obviously fussed with -- at the very least to adjust the alcohol -- was carefully crafted to taste this way.
Some of my friends were horrified by the idea, but I'll take Bronco's side here. They need to sell wine, not take philosophical stands. Plus, this treatment of Sauvignon Blanc is far less oppressive than tarting it up with oak, as was the fashion a mere 15 years ago, to become a poor man's Chardonnay substitute. This wine still tastes like Sauvignon Blanc, sort of. It's food-friendly. It's certainly pleasant.
This wine's low acidity says more about us as a wine-drinking nation than it does about Bronco, or about the wine itself. We've come a long way, but if "acidic" is still pejorative, there's still a ways to go.
7 comments:
I agree with the low-acid preference!
That preference is in large part responsible for many California pinot noirs that taste like a glass of cola that had been left out on the counter overnight.
Let me clarify my previous comment.
I don't like low acid wines and consider them to be poor quality.
However, you are dead-on about the American consumer's general aversion to appropriately high acidity in wine.
Arthur, winesooth.com
One characteristic of overcropped fruit grown on deep fertile soils, like you find in Lodi, is low acidity. It is exactly what one should expect from a SB from Bronco. The idea that such low alcohol is evidence of "unpleasantly underripe" fruit strikes me as simply wrong.
Consider that for centuries, and until rather recently, almost all wines from Graves, or Bordeaux for that matter, were under 12.5% alcohol. Were they all underripe? None of them tasted like cat pee either.
What is really silly is the use of alcohol to cover up high acidity. A year or so ago I listened to a young winemaker, who advocates "bigger bodied fruit-forward winemaking", talk about a vineyard he was waiting on to ripen. His point was intended to reflect on a new way of looking at physiological ripeness, but instead revealed a complete lack of understanding about grape maturity. He said, "The grapes are 28 Brix and the acids still have not dropped." I wanted to ask, "Uh, do you have the slightest notion what happens to acid levels in grapes as they dehydrate and turn to raisins. My friend, the acids go up as well. You just don't taste them because you dilute them with the water you add back, and you cover them up with 16% alcohol."
Americans like their wines like they like their cars, houses and their rear-ends. BIG AND FAT with little to no acid. It's the American way... Bigger is better mentality rules this young country. I find wines that are higher in acid tend to be lower in alcohol and give off a juiciness that's quite tasty. Higher acidic wines taste fresher. It's a farse of a phenomenon over in the California Pinot world. Liquid brown sugar meets flat cherry cola. Pinot producers should be ashamed of themselves for putting as much FAKE acid in the wines as they do... while the whole time screwing growers out of 15-20% weight. These producers are either greedy or stupid. What a joke.
Morton: Thanks for your comment.
I'm afraid you may have misunderstood me. I'm saying that if Sauv Blanc grapes from Lodi produce only 12.5% alcohol, they are either manipulated or underripe.
As you well know, one cannot compare the ripeness of grapes in Graves to Lodi.
Overcropping to reduce acidity is an interesting point -- especially as every large winery would like to have a larger crop of grapes with the taste profile they want. Of course, the very term "overcropping" doesn't really apply to a volume producer like Bronco. If they drop too much crop, they might need to raise prices.
Americans do not enjoy acidity in a dry wine. It is not the acidity issue it is the dry issue. With residual sugar and acidity you have a best seller. You cannot compare the American palate to say Europe. It is irrelevant, no palate is inferior to another it is what a drinker enjoys and buys at a certain price point. Winemaker.
As an American who likes crisp acidity in wine (especially SB), I will stand up for the minority!
If we can elect Obama president, surely you can grant that some Americans also have some diversity of palate.
I am curious whether the differences suggested (Europe vs US) are a product of what is available or the consumer's true preferences. Markets are not completely open, and on a recent trip to Europe, I rarely saw any variety of american wines available at all. It would be interesting to see how this Bronco wine would sell on the shelves of a Supermarket in Amsterdam. Last month I saw nothing like it at its price point available.
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