![\"ripeness](\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/P9114110.jpg\")
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I had a remarkable tasting a few weeks ago with Marcelo Papa of Concha y Toro. He did an experiment: picking some of the grapes for Marques de Casa Concha a month earlier than they are currently picked. He says that he had to close his eyes when he looked at the seeds: they were still green. The wine was brilliant. So much so that he’s now picking everything a month earlier than normal. I tried the results: normally I find Marques de Casa Concha to be a bit boring and Chilean. The early picked version? I’m going to buy some when it’s released. It’s proper wine. He says he has to use far fewer oenological products in the winery, because the yeasts are much happier. I’ll be writing this interview up in full, but I wanted to mention it here, because I am going to make a plea to winemakers around the world:<\/p>\n
Please, just pick earlier.<\/strong><\/p>\n This fad for picking by taste, waiting for ‘phenolic ripeness’, and waiting for brown seeds is just nuts. Look at the fabulous wines coming from the In Pursuit of Balance wineries in California. Some of these are at 12% alcohol. From California. And they are brilliant.<\/p>\n I recently went to a US Cabernet tasting put on by the Institute of Masters of Wine. It was an incredible line-up of 88 wines, including most of the big names. But it was quite depressing in that so few of these wines showed freshness and definition. Most were picked too late. Alcohol levels were frequently far too high. And these wines are almost all REALLY expensive.<\/p>\n It is so depressing to see red wines routinely at 14.5% or 15% alcohol – or even higher – because they are rarely any good. Pick too late, and you end up with a wine that doesn’t express its site very well. You end up with struggling ferments, and an increased risk of Brettanomyces<\/em>. Your wine becomes a more powerful solvent for extracting flavour from the oak. You lose structure and acidity, and you end up having to add acid and use oak to provide structure.<\/p>\n Why not just pick earlier?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had a remarkable tasting a few weeks ago with Marcelo Papa of Concha y Toro. He did an experiment: picking some of the grapes for Marques de Casa Concha…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10665,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10663\/revisions\/10665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}