Of moths and men…

A recent lecture on pheromones and their use in mating disruption in vineyards inspired the following personified explanation :

(A photo of a pheromone emission device that I took at Pinord Priorat last summer)

It’s the reason dating websites, with their elaborate algorithms, have been created and received with such great success.  It’s every single sexually mature adult’s nightmare, and such fear is further instilled in us every day by the myriad of messages received from the popular media.  It sounds like an episode of How I Met Your Mother.

“What if I don’t find the one?”

Imagine.  You walk into a bar in, say, New York City, or the booming metropolis of your choosing.  The number of eligible young singles astounds you.

You are attracted to one gorgeous specimen in particular so you decide to approach, despite your state of overstimulation that borders on overwhelming.  (S)he turns you down quickly.  No worries, there are plenty more fish in the sea, especially tonight, where the sea seems to be more of an overcrowded fishbowl.  You continue your quest…

Scene change.  2 years later.  You’re at another party, like the last, still single, still on the hunt.  It seems like your number missed opportunities has increased exponentially.  It’s beginning to paralyze you.  There are just too many out there, the chances of finding the right one are too slim.  Are all the random encounters even worth it, if nothing seems to last? And the clock is ticking, you hate to admit it, but you know it is.  Which each passing day the wrinkles are appearing, you are certain that your appeal is diminishing little by little.   Not to mention the biological clock… all your friends are on their second child by now… is it too late?

…

I’ll stop there so as not to depress anyone.  This is precisely the state that we induce in the technique known as mating disruption or sexual disruption, one of the primary, most environmentally friendly, and most effective forms of combat against the dreaded Grape Berry Moth.  These pests have both a direct impact on the berries, which they feed on producing little holes (primarily an aesthetic problem, not so much of a concern in wine production).  These holes provide an open channel into the sugary innards of the grape, a perfect pathway for fungi, especially Botrytis cinerea, which causes grey mold, a major grapevine disease.

So what to do?  Instead of attacking the moths once they are born, why not prevent them from successfully mating?

Enter the technique of mating disruption.  Small plastic devices loaded with female moth pheromones are distributed throughout the vineyard, with 2 primary modes of action.

First, a high concentration can be used to create a sort of “pheromone fog”, where the males are so overstimulated by the pheromones in the air that they can’t orient themselves to find females at all… a bit the initial case of panic felt at the first evening described above.

The second approach uses a higher number of emission sources (>1000/hectare vs ~500/hectare in the first case) with a lower dose of pheramones in each.  Here’s the really scary situation – the males waste so much time and energy trying to mate with the plastic pheromone emitting devices that by the time they find a real female, their fertility has vastly diminished and the success rate of matings is destroyed.

Sad?  Yes.  Frighteningly reminiscent of the typical dating scene?  Possibly.

But the technique is highly effective, especially when all of the producers of a given area combine their efforts to use it, and growing in popularity.  There are no residues, less energy used than with spraying (no tractor or sprayer necessary), and the only negative side effect for the grape growers is that he might attract a bunch of male moths after installing the devices.

Sorry Mr. Moth…

Monterosso Val d’Arda Festival 2013

To celebrate the Monterosso Val d’Arda DOC, the producers of this region held a festival last weekend in  Castell’Arquato, about 30 minutes from Piacenza.  The program, slightly altered because of the inclement weather, consisted of several formal tastings led by a sommelier and the producer, as well as a salon with a couple dozen local producers who presented around four wines each.  Coupled with the sociability of the winemakers in this region, even this small salon made for a busy afternoon of tasting.

We started with a guided tasting of wines from Tollara, including a Spumante (Méthode Champagnoise) and their “I l Giorgione”, which is made from surmature grapes of the Bonarda variety,  along with a generous plate of local charcuterie.

A sampling of some other wines we tasted and particularly enjoyed :

Nontiscordarimé (“forget-me-not”) – Il Rintocco (DOC Monterosso Val d’Arda)

Colli Piacentii – La Boca (DOC Monterosso Val d’Arda)

Ortugo – Azienta Vitivinicola Pusterla (DOC Colli Piacentini Ortugo)

Antiquum – Cantine Campana – (DOC Colli Piacentini Gutturnio Classico Riserva)

The pressure is on…

The Master Vintage has moved to Italy!  The class arrived 2 weeks ago to Piacenza, to start our viticulture unit at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.  During our first three weeks we only have Italian language courses, and have been utilizing our down time to explore the viticultural region around Piacenza.

Many of the wines in this region, both whites and reds, are “frizzante”, or lightly sparkling, but many “vini firmi” are also produced, typically bearing a slightly bigger price tag.  I’m still tasting my way through the local appellations, or Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC), but a few that I’ve discovered so far include Colli Piacentini, Gutturnio, Guttornio Superiore, Ortugo, and Monterosso Val d’Arda.  Some of the common varietals used in the region include Malvasia, Ortugo, Moscato Bianco, Trebbiano Ramagnola, Sauvignon, Bonarda, Barbera, and Cabernet Sauvignon, among others.

(Pressure gauge on an ‘autochiave’ tank)

We visited a producer just down the road from our house, Bongiorni Agostino, who explained to us (*full disclosure – the informal visit, which lasted around 2 hours, was conducted entirely in Italian on the fourth day of our Italian course… thus the information was pieced together from the understanding of us 5 students who speak 3 different languages between us) the process used in making his wines.  The the fermentation is begun as usual, and at a certain point in the fermentation process the wines are ‘racked’ (transferred), to a special type of tank called an “autochiave” which can be sealed to maintain the pressure inside as the carbon dioxide produced during fermentation collects in the sealed vessel.  He can control the pressure inside the tank, and therefore can maintain the carbon dioxide naturally produced by fermentation in the wines.  Some of the wines are “dolce”, or slightly sweet, and for these the fermentation is stopped when there is some sugar remaining, either naturally (the yeast are poisoned naturally by their own production of alcohol), or by centrifugation, where he is able to eliminate all solids from the fermenting wine, including the yeast.

Terroir : The Dirty Word of Wine

I recently blogged about wine and science, and mentioned the difficulty of terroir as a concept, given its vast array of nuances and effective unstranslatability out of the French language.

But its just dirt, right?  … If only it were that simple.

As part of my masters program we spent two months studying nothing but the subject, and even then we only scratched the surface.  To give an idea of the complexity of the concept, our courses throughout the unit included those in geology, sociology, administration/law, geography, landscape analysis, and sensory analysis.

We had lectures and field trips, all to grind into us that terroir is an all-encompassing concept that includes everything from the underlying geology, the soil, the climate (at multiple scales – macro-, meso-, and micro-), to the ‘savoir-faire’ or know-how of the producers, and the collective social network in a region.

But is it a concept that will ever really become fully embraced in the New World countries ?  Sure there are plenty of viticulturalists around the world who adhere to the concept, could even be considered die-hards who devote their work (and often, therefore, their lives) to expressing the terroir in their wines.  And then there are even more wineries who hype the concept of terroir as a marketing tool, hoping that this catch-phrase will help sell their wine, but not necessarily embracing the concept at its fullest.   I’ve found this to be a potential barrier between French and non-French wine pros, as the French are so indoctrinated with terroir that the idea that this concept just doesn’t exist in many winemaking cultures is simply incomprehensible.  The French (many of them, at least, and a select few outside of France as well, of course!) want to valorize their terroir, but in labeling any old wine as terroir-driven, many new world producers aren’t helping to define the concept amongst consumers.  How do we solve this dilemma?  Is it possible to have real terroir-driven wines in places where there isn’t a history of wine production?  Its certain that anywhere where the land hasn’t been too badly destroyed the geological/pedological components of terroir exist, but is that enough?  How do we judge the relative importance of the different components – the soil, the climate, the people?  Posing these questions begins to shed some light onto why scientific studies looking at the ‘terroir effect’ have such limited applicability – the concept is too complex to study with a traditional, reductive scientific approach.  So we need a new method.  Or… do we let it remain the seductive mystery that it is?

 

Why Translate [Wine] Geek? Drawing parallels between wine and science

A recent course in wine marketing (part of the International Vintage Master) got my wine-science connection sparking again.  After spending a year thinking about nothing else, and then 7 months of zoomed-in wine studies, I had a bit of a breakthrough moment.  When the prof started talking about how to communicate with consumers, and the fact that they’re just bogged down in jargon and the technical detail that us wine-geeks are so apt to adopt, I had a light-bulb moment.

This is the connection.

Frankly, this disconnect is exactly what has always driven me batty about science too.  Within the community, be it of wine or of science, the members are so incredibly impassioned about their subject and want nothing more than to spread this passion like wildfire.  But what happens?  They open their mouth spew their vernacular and immediately are seen as geeks without proper social skills, for the plain and simple reason that the language doesn’t translate across this community boundary.  To understand wine geek you have to be a wine geek, and to understand the scientific lexicon  you have to be a well-indoctrinated nerd.

But this was always exactly my mission for science – how can we, as scientists, communicate effectively with those outside of our community, who would certainly also be interested in our musings, if only we could get the point across without becoming entangled in the jargon-laden argot of the trade.  The implications are critical given the ethical issues tied up in so many scientific questions these days (think stem cells, or this new drug in development made from resveratrol, the compound in red wine, thought to be able to help us live to up to 150 years… but who would have acces and what would determine this access? Not sure we’re ready to broach these questions yet, and not sure we’ll ever be ready to if the communication barrier between what’s really going on with the science and the public perception of it remains as formidable as it is now).

Perhaps the gravity of the situation is not quite the same, with wine sales on the line rather than lives, but the same issue presents itself in the wine world.  What other beverage has the exclusive power of wine, the power to embarrass for a poor choice, to bring great pride for choosing a wine that pleases your guests.  To make people avoid for fear of not knowing the correct terminology?  How can we expect to attract new consumers when we are in the process of scaring them off, just in the language that we use?  It is time for a new approach, just like for science.  We need to learn that communicating with those outside of the ‘inner circle’ is imperative to our success and that a different style of communication is called for.  We can’t use geek-speak to talk to real people.  And we know this.  Anyone who’s ever geeked-out on a friend, on any topic, knows that glazed-over look that befalls them within the first few seconds.  That will never work to sell a product to a non-believer.  We already have the geeks under our thumb, what we need to learn is how to talk to the rest of the world.
I don’t know which will come first, but perhaps those with an interest in communicating about their wine (for marketing purposes, primarily, but also to  convey its hugely important cultural affinities to the uninitiated) can learn from   the scientists who are learning how to communicate, and vice-versa.  We certainly live in a age where this seems like a feasible goal to shoot for – with our plethora of social and alternative media that allow seamless transmission of information between individuals of all different profiles.  Its time to talk, or chat, or tweet, but let’s let down the barriers.  Let’s talk to everyone.

(Terroir.  one of those wine buzz-words that’s so poorly explained and little understood.  How can we get the message across that its more than just dirt?)

When a river runs through it… it sparkles?

Saumur, located right on the Loire River, is a city in France known for its horses (the Cadre Noir is based at the National Riding School in Saumur, along the lines of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna) and its wine.  Saumur-Champigny is (amongst connaisseurs, at least), one of the better known appellations of the Loire Valley, but Saumur is also home to a large number of sparkling wine houses, most notably making wines in the appellations of Crémant de Loire and Saumur Brut.   

At Bouvet-Ladubay we were lucky enough to have a course on how to taste sparkling wines, with the well-known regional enology consultant Jean-Michel Monnier.  The specificity of sparkling wines require special treatment to fully appreciate them in a ‘professional’ style tasting (otherwise, please, I beg you, just keep enjoying your champagne like you always have! that’s the point, right?).

We discussed different types of glasses and their merits (those shown above, and these newer models are definitively the best), and the very real importance (for once) of specific glasses because champagne flutes are laser-treated to create little imperfections in the bottom on which the bubbles can form!

Swirl? Nope, for once there’s no need since the bubbles carry with them all the volatile aroma molecules as they rise in your glass and then release them at the surface.

(here we see the sometimes-disasterous effects of the enormous pressure build-up inside a bottle of bubbly.  the bottle in the center of this storage rack at Langlois-Chateau during the aging process)

(View from vineyards of Langlois-Chateau – with city of Saumur and its Chateau in the background)

In sparkling wine the most important aromas to watch out for are the primary aromas, coming from the fruit and the terroir – so fruityness, herbacity, floral, minerality (I really should make a vow not to employ this term until I find a satisfying working definition, but here it is).  The secondary aromas come from fermentation (that’s why they’re considered secondary – its an added layer to what the grapes supply on their own), and are expressed by yeasty, brioche-y, nutty, buttery, lactic aromas.  Finally, there is even a tertiary bouquet, which comes from the aging of these wines (either in barrel [initial fermentation], or in bottle on the lees and later in the final bottle – see the process for making champagne outlined here) – oaky, toasty or vanilla aromas from the wood, or more subdued, complex versions of the secondary fermentation aromas (coming here from the autolysis of the yeast cells after fermentation has finished).

(Langlois-Chateau)

 

(Langlois-Chateau)

Through the Grapevine: Your Thoughts on… Muscadet

Yesterday we visited the Muscadet wine growers syndicate and the producer Les Frères Couillaud, where we heard both ends of the spectrum in terms of outlook for this region that has faced hard times catalyzed by an untimely frost in 2008 coincided with a general market crash and a myriad of other factors.

After getting over the emotional roller coaster brought on by hearing such great discrepancy among these analyses, I started to wonder what, really, is the international image of Muscadet today.  So I’ve decided to start a new feature, which I’m calling “Through the Grapevine” where its up to you, my readers, to reply with your opinions!  So here we go.. can’t wait to hear what you think!