Tue, 07 Jun 2005
Intelligent Life, a
new magazine from the publishers of The Economist, has a story about how much
of the wine
produced in California is "watered back", i.e. diluted with water.
Apparently, this is done to keep alcohol content down or to make sure that
fermentation occurs if there is too much sugar in the grapes. I'm no wine
connoisseur, but I'd be surprised if very many wine drinkers were aware of
this.
…French towns and villages are a great deal more picturesque than
anything that northern California can offer. Calistoga and Yountville are not
exactly Beaune and Châteauneuf-du-Pape. But for the winemaker the obvious
difference is the weather: California has longer and warmer
sunshine—which means that the fully ripened grapes may well produce a
wine with a bit too much alcohol for comfort (too much, also, for the bottom
line, since wine and liquor are taxed according to their alcohol level).
One obvious solution would be to pick the grapes earlier, except that that
would be at the cost of the "full-bodied" flavour and "big" character of the
typical Californian wine. Hence a preference for the other obvious solution:
adding water during the fermentation process. At which point, everyone gets a
little coy, even a trifle alarmed. Witness the concern of a spokeswoman for
California's Wine Institute. "How did you hear about this?" she demanded. "This
is a long, long story—it's kind of a stylistic thing."
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