Science VS Tradition

[joeswine]

people and responses

MAYBE it's because I have been around wine people all my life, yet have been a active wine maker and experimenter for 12 yours now ,that information in my circle especially our wine club is very fluid. We would have competition amongst are selves ,blind tastings and that proved interesting ,we also did meetings were we had wine descriptions and bottles of wine our own and commercial and in the blind try and match the descriptions wine the wine in the bottle, interesting to say the least in results. Most could not identified they own but everyone could target on which one was commercial.
EXAMPLE ,I WON a contest with my amarone and I was to say the last excited so I took a bottle to gino pinto's who oppion I respect a lot, remember I just won professional judges choice ,from extremely important event in Philadelphia, I dropped off the bottle and a week past so I wrote a email and asked if he had tried it? To my shock he stated that the label was excellent the color right on but (what was that god awful taste ?was that the raisins you put in?)well you could have floor me, I replied back to him ,yes, he asked why and I gave him my reasoning, then he rote back to me GIVE IT MORE TIME IN THE BOTTLE OR THE OAK BALANCE WILL NOT WORK.AND I DID ,input no matter were it comes from is important, even if I didn't think that he was correct I still took the time to research amarone, AGAIN and let time do it's thing, but hay I won the contest how much better could It get, IT got very much better, now one batch bottled in 2007 ,is ready for tasting .....

 

[dlriggins]

I am new to making home wine. So far so good as I have liked all that I have made as well as everyone else that has tried it. I will admit that I am inexperienced and am looking to get the opinions of others but I am pleased with my efforts. After reading this thread I have to say that everyone has a difference of taste and opinion input to me + or- is appreciated. As far as tradition if it were up to tradition we would all be riding horses to work and all carry cash to pay for everything and the online store at the top of your screen would not exist, as it is we can all appreciate different wines made from different fruit other than grapes even mix and match. I like to think of this as one part nature program, one part Mr. Wizard, and one part cooking show ending up at a tasty alcohol induced buzz.

 

[BernardSmith]

@DlRiggins: I think there is an enormous difference between deliberately and consciously making a wine that is meant to possess particular characteristics where the wine maker (Joeswine, for example) has some real understanding of and some very effective control over the processes that produce those characteristics and the people who makes wine but has no understanding of the processes involved and more to the point, absolutely no ability to control any of those processes even if they wished to do so. It's one thing to deliberately allow or even encourage your wine to oxidize knowing why you are doing this, even if no-one other than you finds that wine drinkable and quite another to produce a wine that is oxidized but you have no inkling that that is what you have done (the story behind the first post on this thread). I guess my point is that taste is ALWAYS subjective, but achieving specific tastes is not.

 

[JohnT]

Bernard,

I have tried to keep individual tastes out of this thread, knowing that they are different. My point here is that having a plan or a goal in winemaking is the best tool for success (success being that you achieve the taste you prefer) and having a benchmark the fits your tastes is a great way to go.

I agree with you, that this person (from the original post) simply did not get it. He was letting tradition get in the way of success (remember, he was tossing out 1/2 of his wine).

I guess for some winemakers, tradition is more improtant than results.

 

[TheWineGuy]

Some people are just set in their ways and will never want to explore out of their bubble