A couple times a month, I play poker with some friends of mine – three civil litagators, two prosecutors and a management-consultant on stress leave. It’s a friendly game involving lots of verbal abuse, plenty of food and not a small amount of drink to wash it down.
Last week, I toasted a terrible run of luck with a fantastic bottle of wine: the 2006 “Expressiones Reserve” from Finca Flichman in Argentina ($15.95 [Ed. note: 2006 no longer available], Vintages #17111). What distinguishes it is that it’s an expert blend of two very different grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. The blend allows each grape to stand out on its strengths while nicely compensating for its deficiencies. The Cabernet provides juicy blackberries and structure. The Shiraz makes it peppery, herby and wild. The synergy between the two creates a plush mouth-feel with good complexity.
Drinking the Expressiones and looking at my short stack of poker chips, I thought of the similarities between cards and winemaking. For both, it it’s about the strength of what you’re dealt and also what you do with it. In poker, if you get a strong hand, you can take a relaxed approach and let the cards speak for themselves – they don’t really need any help from you. If you are dealt a weak hand, you might use your technique to bet aggressively and bluff the other players into folding.
All fine wine is made with the same sort of balance in mind. On one hand, some winemakers prize the pure taste of one grape variety or of one plot of land (the unique taste of land is often called “terroir”). On the other hand, there is technique. If your terroir is not that strong, you have to find ways of compensating. There are many different decisions that a winemaker makes when crafting the wine, but perhaps the most fundamental choice is whether to blend your different grapes. Blending allows the winemaker to assemble the wine by mixing flavours from different grape varieties or different vineyards. It adds complexity, but sacrifices purity.
Cabernet Sauvignon provides an example. Some of the world’s best Cab is made in Bordeaux and California. In Bordeaux, they prize terroir above all things. But to fill out their wines, they blend the Cab with other grape varieties like Merlot or Cabernet Franc. In California, there is a much higher premium on unadulterated Cabernet Sauvignons. Pure grape varieties sell well in North America. But the best wineries (like Beringer or Mondavi) often mix Cab grapes from a variety of different vineyards – some in the mountains, some by the coast.
Purity or technique? Thinking about this tension is one of the ways I understand the winemaker’s art. But if you’ve got crappy grapes, all the technique in the world isn’t going to help you. Just like there was no help for my bum luck at poker. At least I was compensated with a well-blended Cabernet Sauvignon.
Matthew Sullivan is a lawyer with the Department of Justice in Toronto. He writes a weekly blog entry here on lawandstyle.ca. The Short Cellar column appears in the print edition of Precedent. Matthew can be reached at matthew@lawandstyle.beta-site.ca