Where did the Red Zeppelin name come from?
My first Red Zeppelin wine was released in 1991, when I was the winemaker at Jory Winery. The name is indeed a pun on the rock band, but it only arrived in my brain after a jetstream of consciousness derailed my train of thought (ha!) about another wine label. Many people seem to think that Bonny Doon was the first California winery to have silly labels. (In fact, Thomas Kruse in neighboring Gilroy was first.) The now-famous Le Cigare Volant label, seen at
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/1892/lecigare2003300dpiwk1.jpg
and first used on a 1984 California Rhone blend, wittily if a bit preciously relates as explanation for its image the tale of the village of Chateauneuf du Pape's 1953 ordinance banning the landing of UFOs in local vineyards, the purported result of a cigar-shaped "flying saucer" scare. As something of a skeptic in these matters I duly considered the tale, and it seemed to me that those stereotypically excitable Frenchmen were suffering from postwar stress syndrome; indeed, unconsciously recalling an incident from the Great War. The Germans used rigid airships extensively in WW1, though the technology wasn't up to the mission. One large Zeppelin raid on London was hit by unexpected high winds (perhaps the then-undiscovered jetstream) that blew the dirigibles astray; some crashed in France, one was never found. The crash of a huge airship, filled with hydrogen gas and made of toxic metals, into a valuable vineyard just before harvest would be terrible indeed: explosions, mangled vines and twisted wreckage, the Germans stuffing their faces with Grenache . . . . I saw it all clearly, as through an overfined Marsanne. And then the name came to me: Red Zeppelin. As I was already interested in adding Rhone varietals to our lineup at Jory Winery, I knew I had the name for my new wine. As for the label design, the genius Rick Tharp and I thought we would have a little fun; but that's a tale for later.
Why do wineries and vineyards brag about low grape yields? Do low yields necessarily make better wines?
No, not necessarily. Measuring by tons per acre, hectoliters per hectare, or as I prefer to put it, "bottles per vine" (because the first two commonly used measurements don't account for vine density, and because it's simpler and better) doesn't provide an easy assessment of fruit concentration or wine quality, though it is an important factor in most cases. Assuming that the vine is in balance, with the right number of leaves per cluster, optimum canopy and vine orientation for the varietal and area, there are still other complexities. Lower yields from smaller berries that have a higher skin to juice ratio (because of the cube/square law) will be more highly flavored since it is the layer just under the skin that provides almost all of the biochemicals from which aromas and flavors come.
Let's take two examples to show how complex this can be; on a very cool coastal hillside with poor soils, a vine won't be able to ripen more than one or two bottles worth of grapes per vine, so the yields must be kept very low; by thinning, for example. If the vine is an excellent clone of Pinot Noir or Syrah, you may achieve spectacular results. If it's Sauvignon Blanc or Cabernet Sauvignon, the resulting wine may be concentrated but overly weedy and herbal. Now let's consider a much warmer area, perhaps with richer soil. At very low yields, the vine's much larger photosynthetic resources will enable it to ripen the grapes too rapidly, resulting in high sugars but incomplete, simple flavors; though Pinot Noir doesn't belong in the area at all, the other three varietals would benefit from having extra weeks of 'hang time' for the fruit to mature, as the vine has to divide its energies among a score of grape clusters instead of a few. All of this assumes that the winemaking process has been adapted to the fruit's chemistry and flavors . . . do you see how complex this can be? I have grafted over or planted some fairly extreme vineyard sites over the years, and I always seek to control yields, but it's only part of the artistic and scientific process that goes into making outstanding wine. And here I haven't said anything about wine personality; perhaps my next post . . .
Stillman
Why don't you use "natural" corks in your wines?
First of all, because mold is smelly. More properly, TCA (2,4,6 trichloroanisole) and its friends are, and they have no business around wine. For over twenty years we've heard excuses from the cork industry, and we got tired of them. While some artificial or hybrid corks have proved trouble-free, the best modern screwcaps (such as the Alvis) are the best insurance that our wine will be properly preserved and aged in the bottle. And as far as wine 'breathing' and aging through the minute amount of oxygen that supposedly gets through a 'natural' cork, allow the voice of authority:
Oxygen is not the agent of normal bottle maturation. When a wine ages in the bottle, the oxidation-reduction potential decreases regularly until it reaches a minimum value, depending on how well the bottle is sealed. Reactions that take place in bottled wine do not require oxygen.
-Professor Pascal Ribereau-Gayon, University of Bordeaux.
We're sure it sounds sexier in French, but there you are!
Actually, here it is in French!
L'oxygène n'est pas l'agent de la maturation normale de bouteille. Quand un vin vieillit dans la bouteille, le potentiel d'oxydation/réduction diminue régulièrement jusqu'à ce qu'il atteigne une valeur minimum, selon à quel point la ayez lieu en vin mis en bouteille n'exigent pas l'oxygène.
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