"Ian Hoare" > wrote in message
...
> All wine making is manipulation in one sense or another. One man's
> "manipulation" is another's "capture the widest possible range of these
> flavours" I don't have any KIND of problem with this, and I didn't read
> Tom's comments as being in any way pejorative.

Thank you Ian. I certainly didn't intend them to be. I _like_ Marlborough
SB. It's a refreshing change of pace from my usual fare, and not as
expen$ive. I rather cherish the fact that it seems to be _all_ fruit and
utterly devoid of oak and "terroir". Helps me reset my internal reference.
:^)

> Sancerre should remain Sancerre, Pouilly
> Fumé, Pouilly Fumé and Bordeaux should remain Bordeaux. I always rather
> regretted the shift in white Bordeaux wine making techniques to make their
> wines crisper and grassier, and therefore closer to Sancerre.

I can't claim much knowledge of white Bordeaux, but I know what you mean.

Here in California in the early to mid 1970s there was an orgiastic
_plethora_ of really stunning Chardonnays from Napa, Sonoma, Monterey and
Santa Cruz. Eventually however, our jaded wine writers - having tired of
all these big, fat, rich, opulent, buttery, oaky, toasty Chardonnays -
panned the entire lot as "overblown", and pined for the "food wines" of
Burgundy. The industry here reacted in an idiotic, knee-jerk fashion and
began harvesting earlier in an attempt to emulate the wines of Burgundy, as
well as please our critics. Some of this nonsense even carried over into
our red wines. The result was acidic, underripe, soulless, fruitless,
unpleasant, underoaked wines that were not only not particularly food
friendly, but also extremely _user_ unfriendly. I'll bet they aged well
however - as though anyone would care! >8^P~~|

It was but a few years until our winemakers came to their senses -
fortunately. They came to realize that those lusciously ripe grapes that
they took for granted here were something that a grower in Burgundy
_strives_ to attain, and would think he'd died and gone to heaven if he was
lucky enough to actually produce!

Don't get me wrong. I'm not disparaging white Burgundies. I've tasted some
I really liked. My preference happens to be California Chardonnay, but
that's not the point.

I may have overstated my case a little (I like hyperbole!), but I think you
get the idea. My point is, it simply isn't a good idea to try to try to
force a wine to express something that it isn't essentially representative
of. The winemaker should let it speak for itself.

I will now descend from my soapbox and have a glass of wine. I'm thirsty
after all this "talking". ;^)

Tom S