Jamie Goode: The ripeness delusion – pick earlier, make better wine

Recently, I was at a tasting of some very fancy wines from Napa. Someone round the table asked for the alcohol levels. All were 15% or thereabouts, and all were selling for multiple hundreds of dollars. This isn’t all that surprising these days, because we’ve got used to the rise in alcohol levels.

Have you tasted many wines from Napa or the Barossa, for example, from the 1980s or earlier? It was common then to find alcohol levels of 12% or 12.5%, and many of these wines aged really well. The 1971 Grange that I tasted in 2009 had an alcohol level of 11.5%. The 2019, the most recent vintage I tried, is 14.5% alcohol, which is pretty typical for this wine now.

And in the classic wine regions of Europe, there’s been a similar rise. 14.5% alcohol used to be unheard of in Bordeaux. Now, though, high end wines pop up at that level from time to time.

There are quite a few interesting questions concerning alcohol levels in wine. First, why have they risen? Second, is this a bad thing? And if so, why? Third, is there anything that can be done about it, or is this simply the price for delicious wine?

In answer to the first question, there are three reasons why alcohol levels have risen. Let’s back track to the no-so-distant past. In classic regions such as Bordeaux and Burgundy, everyone waited to pick as long as they could before the autumn rains. Over-ripeness was almost non-existent. Sugar levels in the grapes were measured and as soon as they were high enough, people picked, because by the time they got to 13% potential alcohol the grapes would be flavour ripe.

Often they’d have to pick earlier than they’d like. If the rains set in, the grapes would have to come off. It was not unusual to chaptalize the must, adding sugar to boost the potential alcohol. Bad years would make horrible wine, unripe and acidic, with some rot. And there were a lot of bad years.

Climates have changed, though, and viticulture has got better. So this has led to the potential for leaving the grapes on the vine for longer. And because ripeness was at a premium in the past, the more the merrier. So it got pushed. And in new wine countries where there was no threat of inclement weather deciding picking dates, the temptation was to leave grapes on the vine for longer.

This coincided with the emergence of critics who praised wines that were bigger, made from riper fruit. Reds with sweet, lush fruit and soft tannins seemed to be the way to go. Luxurious wines that tasted rich. For novice drinkers with big budgets, these wines were much easier to appreciate than young reds with challenging tannins, built to last.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, everyone seemed to go down the later-picking routs. It did make wines with impact and bold flavours, which tasted delicious. But these wines didn’t seem to age well. And they were tiring to drink with their high alcohol levels.

As I write this, I’ve just come from a lunch with JC Martin of Creation wines in South Africa’s Hemel-en-Aarde. He moved to South Africa from Switzerland, planting a vineyard in 2002. Initially he was thrilled not to be working with the same climatic constraints he faced in Switzerland. He could leave grapes on the vines as long as he wanted. So with his Chardonnay, he waited, and then picked when the grapes tasted ripe. But on a visit to Burgundy, he was told by Chardonnay producers there that once the grapes taste ripe and delicious, you’ve probably missed your pick. And he made the shift to picking earlier after noticing that his early pick, where he took some of the grapes off early to provide a high-acid blending component, made great wine on its own.

One of the problems with high alcohol levels is the sensory effect of the alcohol, which affects the aromatics of the wine. Putting it simply, as alcohols rise, they dampen down the aromatics, and the fruity aromatics are inhibited.

I think one of the insidious effects of later picking and higher alcohol is not necessarily the alcohol (although this does have a significant sensory effect); it’s that high alcohol correlates with picking later, which moves the flavours in the grapes in a direction where the fruit, in reds, gets jammier and sweeter. The tannins evolve and get softer. And the acid levels decrease. All these things together make for a wine with a superficial deliciousness, but which are tedious and rather silly when they are lined up against more serious wines picked at the right time.

So what can be done about higher alcohol levels? The obvious answer is pick earlier. I’ve heard very few winemakers say that they missed the pick by going in too early, but quite a few saying they missed it by going in too late. In many cases, picking early results in more interesting wines. But as I heard earlier this week, some winemakers have tried picking earlier and have found that their wines don’t taste as nice. So one of the factors here is style: some winemakers and some consumers like ripe wines, made in a richer style. They like softer tannins in red wines, and they like bolder, richer, more tropical flavours in white wines.

The holy grail is to get flavour ripeness (however you define this) in the grapes without too much potential alcohol. Good viticulture can help with this. Having slightly higher yields can slow ripening down, bringing it into cooler weather where the sugars don’t motor away. Careful fruit zone leaf removal can also help; not too much if it’s sunny. Viticulture can also aim to increase homogeneity in ripening. If ripening is heterogeneous in the same block, by the time all the grapes are ripe, some will be over-ripe. Sorting carefully can remove clusters or berries that are raisined and over-ripe. Kaolin (a type of clay) can be sprayed on canopies and fruit to reflect back some light, or shade netting can be used.

But my suspicion is that the easiest solution to high alcohol and over-ripeness is, in most cases, just to pick earlier. I’ve tasted enough wines now made in warm climates but which have relatively modest alcohol levels, and good acidities, and they are delicious. I think that some notions of what constitutes ripeness are simply delusional. Yes, it is possible to have balanced wines at 15% alcohol. It’s just very rare. And most 15% alcohol wines have flavours of overripeness

• Jamie Goode is a London-based wine writer, lecturer, wine judge and book author. With a PhD in plant biology, he worked as a science editor, before starting wineanorak.com, one of the world’s most popular wine websites.