Low-alcohol Wines Under the Spotlight

Here's how times are changing in the California wine industry: at a technical panel Tuesday, 400 growers and winemakers asked only one question about why they should lower alcohol, and many questions about how.

The annual Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento kicked off with a number of panels designed to be helpful to California grapegrowers and winemakers. Possibly the best-attended was called "Alcohol in Balance: Approach for Achieving Quality in Lower-Brix and Lower-alcohol Grapes and Wine", and that in itself is news.

"There's a lot of movement toward lower alcohol in the industry, and it's not just from restaurants," said Corey Beck, president and director of winemaking at Francis Ford Coppola Winery.

"The evolution and launching of the Food Network. People are talking about wine with food. We also have more Master Sommeliers than we've ever had. A gentleman who came to our winery last week has 800 stores. He didn't want to taste our 15.5 percent alcohol Zinfandel. His stores are educating buyers about what the alcohol percentage is."

A recent Constellation Brands study of regular wine drinkers in the eight countries that buy the most wine showed that 38 percent have bought lower-alcohol wines and would buy them again, while another 16 percent would try them. Still, 47 percent of regular wine drinkers are not interested in lower-alcohol wines, said Olli Davidson, vice president of viticulture at Constellation New Zealand.

"Lower alcohol" means very different things in different countries. Constellation and Pernod Ricard are making wines in New Zealand with just 9 percent alcohol without, according to Davidson, using alcohol-reduction equipment. That's practically impossible in California because of the warmer, sunnier climate.

But even a return to California Cabernet Sauvignons with less than 14 percent alcohol is a major change from a decade ago. Steve Matthiasson, a vineyard manager also well known as a winemaker, recalled sitting on a technical panel in 2005 about "how to make high-impact wine at over 25 Brix" (which would translate to about 14.5 percent alcohol).

"I remember making a comment on that panel about, how do you keep freshness?" Matthiasson said. "The winemaker next to me just had a blank look. He said: 'What do you mean, freshness?' We don't emphasize that in our industry. It's richness, power, impact."

While the panel discussed equipment to reduce alcohol, and suggested that adding water (legal in California) is more effective and cheaper, it also doled out lots of viticultural advice for lowering sugar in grapes that was the antithesis of what has been taught in California for decades.

Crop sizes are too small. ("It's wasteful environmentally, it's wasteful for the business, and we get higher alcohol," Matthiasson said.)

Grapevines are too meticulously trellised. "Drip irrigation and VSP trellising have been the two worst things that happened to viticulture over the last 30 years," longtime grower Pete Opatz told the audience, some of whom took to the microphone to ask for alternatives.

"We have been building vineyards since 1990 to get ripe early, in everything we do," Opatz said. "As we push back the raindrop roulette clock every fall, that's an advantage to the grower. But getting flavors in low-alcohol wines in California is a huge challenge. We need to look at grape varieties that reach maturity using the entire season."

A single panel, even at an influential symposium like Unified, won't change the wine industry overnight. But it is a weathervane showing which way the wind is blowing.

"It's part of our job to pay attention to what's going on," said winemaker Alison Crowe, a member of the Unified program committee, who created and moderated the panel. "Worldwide, people are starting to talk about alcohol. I see it as a pendulum swing. But 'low alcohol' is so subjective, and there seem to be so many ideological camps. I'd caution people, let's not replace one ideology with another."