Spare me the Winemaker’s “Intention”
And the 1000-yard stare of the winemaker
Do you really want to know your winemaker? Or just their intentions while doing the work of ONLY a winemaker?
Does he pay his taxes? Bathe regularly? Does he gamble? Perhaps other vices and perversions I wouldn’t describe here.
As long as he makes his wine with the utmost “intention,” (and take pictures like this) he can be an absolute stinky degenerate gambler and tax cheat. Besides, how would you verify any of his intentions or techniques anyway? Were you on the crush-pad the day he added nutrients to a fermentation or copper to a stink-bomb of a press-out? You’d have to spend money on lab results, which would far outweigh the cost of the bottle.
These are all free to do
Extend the intention argument out to something else. The protein on your plate.
Do you care about the intention of the owner of the ranch? Does he feed the pigs sawdust, keep the pen clean? What else? Organic oats? Silage corn? Where’s the line drawn for a rancher between a deep intention for his animals and simply raising pigs or cattle for the dinner plate?
What about the individual who put that pig or cow to death? What’s their intention? Efficiency, right? Quick and painless? What instrument of death did they use? Was it sharp? Was it a small, local slaughter house (which are quickly disappearing) or a large, commercial operation?
And finally, the store you buy it from, unless you have the luxury of buying directly from the butcher. Are you buying it from a big grocery store? What’s their intention? That’s easy, profits.
Within this chain of events and custody of a piece of protein, are you questioning and internalizing the “intention” of all these people who handle your steak and pork chops? Or are you just thinking about the intention of the individual or corporation who raised the animal for slaughter? Then after that, meh? Get it on my barbecue.
Back to Winemaking
Many winemakers, like me, are held to some mythical standard of “intention.” And within that intention, what are the standards that outside evaluators are putting on me to measure up?
Here’s a scenario in winemaking. I have the intention of making a 500 cases zero-zero natural wine from the finest biodynamic farm and farmers that I pay top dollar for. I will not inoculate with yeast, no nutrients, on and on, and certainly no sulphur. The wine gets bottled and someone buys it loving my intention of a zero-zero wine. But doesn’t love the wine because it’s flawed. They loved my intention, however the execution is defective. As a result, they don’t buy a repeat bottle and tell their friends my wine is trash. For all my “intention” I’m out of business.
Is the size of my operation part of my intention? Do I make 10,000 cases or less? Or does it have to be 5,000? Or 500? What if I have outside investors with the intention of building this brand up with the hopes of selling it and how would you ever know? If I don’t own my own land, where do I buy grapes? Do you now have to know the intention of the grape grower? Are they biodynamic, organic, or just “sustainable”? Which one soils my intention now?
Why isn’t the reverse true? Making 1 million gallons of Pinot Grigio takes plenty of intention and attention to process and logistics for a corporate winemaker. I’m good at what I do as a winemaker, but 1,000 gallons and 1,000,000 gallons require a different focus and both are important.
When you buy a steak or a bottle of wine, it’s likely in the moment, often for convenience, and most certainly within your budget. You have the little butcher tag on the rib-eye that says Super Special Small Ranch $49/lb or just “On Sale Grocery Select” at $8.99/lb and only so much time and resources to decide between the two.
Same goes for that bottle of wine, a $79 bottle of Mastro Scheidt Cabernet made with a whole bunch of intention and attention to detail from a guy you know and like or a $12.99 bottle from California processed in Fresno.
Tell me how far your intention goes when you’re also paying rent, buying tires, or restocking diapers. A $79 bottle of boutique wine is a luxury, not a necessity. So spare me the “intention.”
What matters:
Does the wine taste good?
Can you afford it?
Do you enjoy drinking it, even at the price?
Is it convenient to purchase?
As many of my customers know, I don’t write any stories or marketing language on any bottle I produce. You know how I feel about the 93 points I received on one of my wines, as I wrote about it. I only write a tech sheet if it’s requested by someone and I try to keep it to the weather report for that harvest season and basic information about what’s in the bottle.
I want you to buy a bottle, drink it and come back to me to purchase a mixed case when you’re out of wine. And if one of the wines isn’t your thing, tell me, I won’t be offended. If you really love something, tell me that too, I’ll do my best to keep it consistent in value, flavor, and profile but without the marketing language to go with it.
The only intention is to create something you’ll come back for.
My POV is opposite to yours. When I teach novices to taste wine, the first thing I tell them is that wine is like the movies. You have yummy, lick-smacking wines whose intention is to make you smile, similar to a Disney rom-com. Then there are the action/adventure wines whose intention is to blow you away, the "Wow!" style. Sometimes you're in the mood for something easy-going; other times you want something to knock your socks off, possibly with lots of alcohol, oak and tannin.
I don't make either of these styles. My intention is to make something you've never come across before, the equivalent of a film from Bergman, Fellini or David Lynch, that makes you scratch your head and go "Hmmm..." Accordingly, I experiment with unusual varieties like Norton, St. Laurent and such so the customer knows at the point of purchase that they're in for an education -- a message in a bottle.
Like those weird foreign films, my wines are not box office favorites, but for some people who are intrigued by my intention, they might be the ones that get five stars.
Great rant. I'd apply the same thinking to, say, the senate race in Maine.