Spoofy Wines - Overegged and Over Here
There are many wines that taste great, but do not drink well.” --- Michael Broadbent.
Spoofy wines are born in the vineyard with long hang time for the grapes and the achievement of phenolic (super)-ripeness all of which creates the template for a rich wine. In the winery it is natural to assess the quality of fruit and select an appropriate wardrobe. The richer the base wine, the more lavish the garnish – making the wine “foursquare” supposedly optimises its potential. (Potential to gain critical approval) E.B. White wrote pertinently: “I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority”.
The main problem with spoofed up wines is that the primary ingredients – fruit and terroir – end up subservient to the process of wine making. Consider that the flavour of the most beautifully reared meat or the wildest, freshest tasting fish is rarely enhanced by elaborate accompaniments; the less there is on the plate the more the sheer quality of the central ingredient is highlighted. A balanced wine expresses its fruit simply and is the more drinkable for that. However, there is a breed of winemakers with an indefatigable desire to impress, who wish to create a product to be admired rather than one for drinking - as if superimposing layer upon layer of artifice is the basis of great art.
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
Whether you are pooped up super-taster or an absolute beginner, critical responses are inevitably conditioned by the dimension of the wine. In a big line up of wines breadth of flavour is often confused with length. Quantity will be rewarded over quality when subtler wines keep their counsel; the latter may possess an individual arc of development, or require food to show them in their best light. If this were not the case a greater variety of wine styles would surely walk away with the plaudits, but, as it is, medals are invariably awarded to high octane numbers. Expect the typical spoofy wine to have a smooth veneer, oak-a-plenty and alcohol- and-residual sugar to burn. Since everything is ramped up proportionately the essential wine is submerged, spoofy wines are as solid noise is to melodic music. I am not saying that big is bombastic per se – the great Chateauneufs are not what one would call shrinking violets – even power can channel and express the purity of the terroir.
Over the years my palate has changed dramatically and I am a firm advocate of the “less is more” school. Whilst I try to judge each wine on its merits I wonder how people are taken in by the admittedly buxom, but undoubtedly shallow, charms of certain wines which, to put it mildly, are vamped-up plum puddings with an ancillary vanillary veneer.
I would question the motivation for making tricked-up monolithic wines. Once upon a time, having cauterised my tongue on a Malbec with almost incendiary levels of alcohol, I asked an Argentinean producer whether he would consider toning down the volume of his wines. The UK market, I ventured, preferred less heft in their wines. He snorted: “I am not making the wine for the UK market; America is far more important to me”. By America he meant Robert Parker – from the grape to the glass these wines were forged to please a critic’s palate, one that notionally values wine in terms of its impact, its booming bang for a lot of bucks.
Wine can make beautiful shapes in the mouth. I enjoy linear wines wherein soothing, natural acidity drives the liquid across the taste buds and leads it effortlessly into every palatal nook and cranny. I also like wines that fill the mouth with layers of flavour wherein the pleasure lies in unveiling various nuances; I love tasting the minerals – stones, metals, earth, grass, water – these elements for me delineate the shape of the wines giving them precise focus and edge.
Spoofy wines are pretentious because they try to be better than they are; they ignore their subtle inner potential in favour of flummery and overstatement. They are predicated on a hierarchy of richness. The way in which they are made obscures the typicity of the terroir and the flavour of the grape. They can be amazing, but so can vulgarity; they have the trappings of greatness, but none of the real class.