martes, 2 de abril de 2019

La idea de recrear vinos en un laboratorio ofrece oportunidades y consecuencias no deseadas


© Robert Mondavi Private Selection | Mondavi's "quirky" offering still hinges on using a familiar grape.


Por Oliver Styles

En la década de 1940, el escritor argentino Jorge Luis Borges escribió una historia corta llamada "Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote". En él, Borges habla de Menard, que deseaba ir más allá de la traducción de Don Quijote y se había sumergido en el mundo de Cervantes y Cervantes, que pudo recrear la novela de Don Quijote, palabra por palabra. Esta "recreación" por una persona diferente, en un momento diferente, pone en tela de juicio todo tipo de cuestiones relacionadas con la autoría, el "significado" de una obra de literatura y la naturaleza de la escritura y la crítica.



The idea of recreating wines in a laboratory offers opportunities and unintended consequences.

By Oliver Styles

Back in the 1940s, Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short story called "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote". In it, Borges talks of Menard, who so wished to go beyond a translation of Don Quixote and so immersed himself in Cervantes and Cervantes' world, that he was able to recreate the Don Quixote novel, word-for-word. This "recreation" by a different person, in a different time, calls into question all sorts of issues around authorship, the "meaning" of a work of literature and the nature of writing and criticism.

And like with Borges' piece, if you want to understand a lot about the nature of wine, your best starting point is to immerse yourself in the world of fake wine. In this instance I'm taken with the possibility of "recreating" great wines from scratch, synthetically reproducing them, as it were.

The reception this story garners is interesting. Firstly, within Meiningers' original piece is the reference to one of the originators who used to work in a natural wine bar – a line reminiscent of the flip, reported to happen in some people, from the extreme Left of the political spectrum to the far Right. Many, from Orwell to Chomsky, have found this a curious phenomenon. I'll leave that there.

Secondly – and similarly – is the apparent acceptance of this as a potential reality. It is almost jaw-dropping that many beacons of the wine industry, those quick to castigate illicit forgery or to protect the names of "Champagne" or "Sauternes" and the sanctity of Burgundy Grand Crus, find themselves amused by the potential to whip up some knock-off vintage bubbly or a Pinot Grigio by 21st Century alchemy. No, this sort of thing is a geeky diversion, a curio. I wonder what those cheeky boys will get up to in that lab...?

But if wine professionals are okay with this development, you have to wonder where they draw the line? Cooked, ground-up cockroaches in jellified bricks like we see in the gut-churning scene of the film Snowpiercer may be a bit beyond the pale. Rudi Kurniawan with three different vintages of DRC (Domaine de la Romanée-Conti), an oven and the blood of a virgin – or whatever it was he used – also too much. But three geeks in a garage in San Fran? There could be something in this.

What's equally galling is that they've raised $12.7 million – enough to get them a half-decent vineyard in Burgundy, or something in Santa Barbara – and we're rooting for them to make a lookalike wine with a lab?

The real tragedy – as is the real tragedy behind all wine forgery – is that the lookalikes already exist. Yquem is not the only vineyard in Sauternes. In fact, Sauternes isn't the only sweet appellation in Bordeaux. Want a knock-off Yquem? Get yourself to Sainte-Croix-du-Mont. It's good and reasonably cheap and tastes enough like Yquem. Sure, it's not Yquem, but if you really, really want Yquem, go buy Yquem.


© Aquitaine Visite | A bottle of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont, a worthy alternative to Yquem.


That there might be a market for knock-off wines is an illustration of the tacit failure of both classic and social media to fight back against the developing luxury market and some of the marketing in wine. What has happened is that hype and concentrated wealth have combined to produce wines that are an apogee, wines that everyone talks about and then, through the envy/ostentation/narcissism/sycophancy vortex that is social media, and the headline-obsessed real media, we get a concentration of paradigms. Everything else doesn't register.

No one wants a Sainte-Croix-du-Mont because no one is interested in what these wines actually taste like. You can't "like" that. Personal experience can't be retweeted if it doesn't have a label. If you're not a critic, do the experiment yourself: publish an image on Instagram of a $20 bottle of wine and say it was your wine of the year; then publish an image of a bottle of Krug or an Ao Yun and compare the difference in "likes" or reposts. I did it myself last year – it's actually sad to witness first hand. Popularity creates its own momentum.

What's further tragic is that, if you look at the new trend of "gimmicky" wines (Penfolds blending wine with Beijiu or Mondavi ageing Chardonnay in Bourbon barrels), you have further illustration of the failure of our communicators (from marketeers to the nominally unbiased). For instance, imagine yourself in the Robert Mondavi boardroom when this came up:

A: Hey, Ted, sales of entry-level Chardonnay are slipping, maybe we could give the customer something different?

B: What about Viognier? Or, hey, I hear there are some pretty interesting – and cheap – Italian varietals coming online in enough quantity and quality to make some good stuff in good volumes – would be a good tie-in with our Italian heritage...

A: You mean we have to market Fiano and Arneis to the consumer?

C: What about putting Chardonnay in whiskey barrels?

A: That's more like it.

Which only goes to prove that, if you're on the board of directors, the only wine you're really concerned about is the wine you drink, not the wine you sell.

And sure, we can put this down to R&D – to innovation, if you will – and the inexorable march of progress. But the circumstances that lead to these decisions are interesting – and perhaps hopeful. Because for all the existential angst on Twitter that opposed those who saw gimmicky wines more a curio than a concern (and there has been a lot), their very presence indicates that there is a consumer segment that is tired of the current, workhorse offering – they are ready for something different. That the marketing departments of these companies consider it easier to take that poor old horse, superglue a cone on its nose, give it a spray paint and kick it back onstage than they do to say: "what about a zebra?" shows just how desperate it is to market anything that isn't outside the 12 main grape varieties. But the germ of hope is there.

We fetishise gimmickry and idolise wines that are already great, leading us to trickery and fakery in all sorts of shades without realising that it is unbelievably easy to find brilliant mimics without buying forgeries and without owning a fortune – you just have to decide whether you wish to aggressively smash your Instagram feed with it or go a bit Al-Quaeda and go off the grid for the experience.

Furthermore, if you're tired of workhorse offerings please, take yourself to a natural wine bar. Or buy a wine made from a grape you wouldn't find in France. And while, honestly, I'm ambivalent about Beijiu in wine – sure there's a cynicism to it but... whatever – if the wine/spirit blend is your thing, Sherry and Port are categories that could do with your support. Treasury Wine Estates (the owner of Penfolds) has a turnover of Aus$2.5billion – about four times the export value of the entire Port industry (around US$500m).

By all means call me a Luddite or a reactionary, but I remember going to Jerez as a journo, tasting phenomenal wines only to sit down to dinner one evening and have the owner of a Sherry house hand out cocktail recipes for his blended Sherries. Sure, it was just blended Sherries, but you didn't have to look into his eyes. I did.

Fuente: Wine- Searcher



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