french wine a day: Oak soup...

Oak soup in process...

Dear wine lovers,

In a “bonus” section of Mondovino's DVD, "God RP"(1) says :

"I think the French can defend their oak better than their terroirs*".

What nonsense, especially from a person who is supposed to know wine !

If France has always produced oak barrels, it was not originally to put 90% of their wines in new ones but mostly to move and sell them before the glass bottle was the norm.
Oak also has the characteristic of allowing the wine to age and to smooth down the tannins. But new oak has to be used sparingly and it is quite wrong to say that Bordeaux always had a tradition of using new oak. It is now the "rule" because our lawyer is much better at tasting oak soup wines with lots of fruit than tasting delicate flavors brought forth by aging, like a kid will prefer strawberries with sugar rather than a spicy vegetable dish.

And without new oak, the French have managed to make wines that still stand, after 60 years. Already, the famous Bordeaux of 1982, which started this oaky trend that "GRP" liked so much, are in a declining phase, the 1989 have to be drunk now whereas the 1961or even the 1945 hold up. The truth is that, then, the wines were not made to be drunk or bought after two years and that these vineyards did not de-stem.

So, yes, the French have good oak trees but, in my opinion, not as good as the old American tree stands can offer. But NO, it is wrong to say that "French can defend their oak better than their terroirs". Terroir for vines is the outcome of thousands of years of research that has allowed farmers to determine which vines are more adapted to which soil, exposure, climate and tradition. And this will always be an asset in comparison with other vine producing areas that, for example, now acknowledge that Chardonnay was not the right place in which to be grown… Too bad but that’s the long process of understanding terroir and it takes time.

Also, aging the wines in new oak wipes out all its very own personality and as a result, producing the same kind of wine is now possible in a lot of other regions. Why do you think more and more vineyards put wood chips** in tanks ? To age the wine and smooth down the tannins ? No, it is to upgrade an initially poor wine and travesty it just because wood flavors are currently (but not for that long a time) linked to quality. Bordeaux, which faces a major identity crisis, might meditate on this and realize that its cherished "God RP" might also be its devil...

Thanks to all its mountains, rivers, oceans and farming traditions, France has managed to find out, monitor and enliven all its terroirs. And surely if Burgundy is one of the best examples for understanding terroir, it is also interesting to know that this region is very resistant to systematic new oak.

You should come more often to Burgundy "GRP", not only to find out what terroir means but also to understand what a real wine tastes like after 20 years. But the fact is that you are not very welcome there and if you ever wish to be, you had better review your now famous puerile sentence.