Salut/Hi Chuck,

le/on Sat, 13 Aug 2005 15:21:18 -0400, tu disais/you said:-


>>> I don't share the obsession of varietally anal retentives about what
>>>exact proportion of grapes go into any particular blend,

>I understand that this is a frantic time of year for you but, take a pill
>man...... Using disparaging terms such as "obsession" and "anal retentives"
>to counter what in the end is merely an opinion with which you disagree is
>far beneath the poster I have come somewhat to know on this forum.


Grin! I have been reading this NG for - goodness me - 6 or 7 years, and
believe me, the expressions are mild for some of the more extreme views I've
read here.
>When one can't muster a good argument to counter a proposition,

Read back over my post and you'll see that I've given several excellent
reasons why the over emphasis on grape variety can often mislead badly.

If you also read further, you'll see that I agree and accept that the
overall characteristic of a wine is more down to the cepage(s) used than
anything else. Can you cross your heart and promise me that by tasting alone
you can tell the difference between the proportions of Merlot, Cab Franc,
Cab Sauvignon in different vintages of any single Médoc Chx? So what
possible USE is it to give that information? As I said, it is as likely to
mislead the uninformed than inform them, and the informed know how to find
out the information and mostly don't care anyway.

I don't use ad hominem arguments and certainly not to try to prove a point.
That said, once in a while I might allow myself the pleasure - normally just
to provoke.

Chuck, if you REALLY care whether a wine from Ch Fortia has or hasn't got 5%
of Mourvèdre with amongst the 12 other authorised varieties in Chateauneuf
du Pape, then we are not really on the same oenological planet. I see no
useful purpose to putting these on the bottle except as a marketing tool.
The only circumstances when it MIGHT just be of interest, is if someone like
Ch de Beaucastel either uses an unusually high proportion of Mourvèdre for
the region, or else _doesn't_ for one particular year. Equally, if someone
is going to pay $50 or $60 for a bottle of decent Burgundy or Willamette
Valley wine then I think it reasonable to expect them to know already what
grape it's made from. So why bother to religiously trot out the "Pinot Noir"
information. Of course it's PN.

I'd also argue that middle order or lesser wines are so liable to be messed
around during winemaking, that the characteristics of the cepage are quite
likely to be more or less heavily masked - so yet again the _emphasis_ on
cepage as being all important (as is the case in many new world wines)
smacks more of catering to a kind of snobbish anal retentiveness than
anything else. I suffered for WEEKS here reading about pretensious films in
which the relative merits of different cepages seem to have been the only
point of importance.

In fact, the only REAL use IMO of generally labelling wines with their
cepage is to allow ignorant and/or lazy wine shop staff easily to group
their wines by cepage without looking it up. (Tongue in cheek time).

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
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