BRUNSWICK – After spending two years in the vineyards and wine barns of southwestern France, author Michael S. Sanders believes that Americans could learn a thing or two from the European approach to wine.
No wine snob – he rarely brings home a bottle that costs more than $15 – Sanders believes that wine should be one of life’s simple pleasures, a complement to food rather than a trendy and costly libation awash in complexity and pretense.
“There is this big wall that seems to have gone up here, and we treat wine as being something for the elite. It has all this baggage with it that unfortunately makes people afraid to drink it,” Sanders said.
In Europe, by contrast, wine is simply a beverage to be consumed with lunch or dinner, the author said, and much of it is sold in refillable plastic containers instead of bottles.
Perhaps, he said, if people knew more about the winemaking process and the passion of those involved in it, then the mystery and pomposity would disappear.
“What we’ve lost is that connection of the wine to the earth and to the people who make it. We don’t know anything about how wine is made,” Sanders said. “There’s such care and passion that goes into every aspect of it.”
That time-honored process is the focus of Sanders’ latest book, “Families of the Vine,” (HarperCollins, $24.95), which chronicles the seasonal cycles of three families with vineyards no more than 10 miles apart who have turned grapes into wine for at least four generations.
The setting is Cahors, a secondary winemaking region whose product is overshadowed by the exalted vintages from the chateaux of Bordeaux, a mere two-hour drive away. Winemaking in Cahors, one of France’s oldest winemaking regions, dates back 2000 years to Roman times.
Its signature wine is tannic and ruby red, in some cases so dark that it became known as “the black wine of Cahors.” The region, which finally secured its designation as an appellation controlee in 1971, is the only appellation in which the malbec grape is dominant.
Among the cast of characters are Yves and Martine Jouffreau, a tradition-bound couple wedded to the venerable methods of their forebears. They eschew the presence of oaky flavor and produce a thicker, more rustic wine that benefits from lengthy aging in the bottle.
Philippe Bernede, a winemaker prone to experimentation to produce a softer wine more attuned to the demands of the international market, takes a different tack.
The third producer, Jean-Luc Baldes, steers a middle course, even as he pursues his desire to make “un grand vin,” a “great wine” that can over time hold its own with the celebrated Bordeaux and Burgundies.
Shifting among the three vineyards, Sanders follows his subjects through the ups and downs of the winemaking year. In 2003, when his account begins, the hopes of spring gradually fall victim to a summer drought and heat wave that spelled disaster for the grape crop.
Irrigation was not an option because the fruit of most appellation controlee vines must rely solely on water that falls as rain.
The book goes back in time to describe the hectic harvest of 2002, followed by the fermentation and maceration of the grapes to produce the wine that is then left to age in oak barrels or stainless steel tanks. The cycle ends with the quiet period of winter when the vines’ dormancy provides a pause that is essential to produce good fruit the next fall.
A barrel maker in Bordeaux and the sommelier in an acclaimed restaurant in Cahors contribute their voices to paint a broader picture of the industry.
Sanders notes that old world traditional winemakers like those in Cahors remain under threat, subject to uncertainties as diverse as weather and the vagaries of the global market. Some are ripping out their vines due to a wine glut fueled by a worldwide increase in supply based on increased production in places as far-flung as South Africa, Chile and Australia.
Sanders brings to his examination of wine the same powers of observation that he used to painstakingly recreate the construction of a Navy destroyer in a book about Bath Iron Works and to describe the revival of a tiny French village after the opening of its chef-owned restaurant.
“Families of the Vine” is the second volume in Sanders’ trilogy about the texture of life in the villages along the Lot, a declining agricultural region defined by its river which feeds into the Garrone. The third book, on which he is now working, shifts the focus from wine to cheese.
In his exploration of wine culture, Sanders laments the effects of “Parkerization,” the numerical rating system instituted by influential critic Robert Parker, whose publication, the Wine Advocate, assigns scores of 80 to 100 to the wines it samples.
With most wine shop racks now festooned with stickers that read “W.A. 93” or “W.S. (for Wine Spectator) 95,” Sanders suggests that too many wine drinkers prefer to rely on someone else’s nose rather than their own.
“If all you ever do is buy Bordeaux over 90, which is how some people shop for wine, then you never learn anything, and you’ve lost the opportunity to learn anything,” he said.
Parker was traveling and could not be reached for comment. Joan Passman at his Maryland office said Parker has always maintained that claims such as those made by Sanders are baseless. She notes that his publication spells out on its cover: “There can never be any substitute for your own palate nor any better education than tasting the wine yourself.”
Sanders said a result of the ratings is that American consumers too often fail to get guidance from wine shop and restaurant employees about which wines might appeal to their particular tastes. He said the system has undercut the relationship between the shop owner and clientele, and that waiters are too often unversed about the items on their wine list.
Still, he says, there is cause for hope.
More and more supermarkets offer wine tastings to help educate consumers, he said, and during the past generation or two in California there has been a shift from an industrial toward an artisal winemaking tradition.
He said the increasingly popular winery tours, while drawing an elite, self-selected audience, also expand the range of knowledge.
Sanders said the hit movie “Sideways” was helpful by bringing the beauty of the vineyards and the experience of the tasting room to a mass audience, some members of whom might be persuaded to visit local wineries that are now part of the scenery in three dozen states.
“By the end of the movie you don’t necessarily think it’s a weird thing to walk into a bar that only has little glasses on it and try different kinds of wine,” he said.
AP-ES-06-25-05 1230EDT
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