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David Falchek
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1 year ago
in Link Bait or Ignorance? A Reporter Gets Spanish Wine Wrong on Catavino
Jeez, Joe M,
My column was not in step with how people view Spanish wines? My column, in a nutshell, was Spanish wines are great , Spain is experiencing a revolution in quality, Spain will take over the wine world in the next decade, and I got five mediocre to crappy Spanish wines. So, what part of my column do you not agree with because I thought this was a blog for Spanish wine FANS. www.detestavino .net is a different site.
As for the five wines I didn’t like, no one, in all these verbose retorts, defended them. What of the specific charges of incompetence, poor research, sloth, and the other deadly sins levied against me in this pile on begun by Ryan? In one of his histrionics about my column he rails against me for calling Garnancha fruity. I wonder if he went into seizure when he read Jancis Robinson’s entry on the variety? Or the Wines from Spain literature? Both call Garnancha fruity.
Same with the comparisons of some Spanish wine to Bordeaux. From reading Ryan's shock-and-awe entry, one would think I compared Spanish wines to Arizona Green Tea. Guess what Catavino fans, Cab Sauv and Merlot are Bordeaux varieties. When you plant them, blend them, put them in oak, and bottle them in Bordeaux glass, it might look a bit like you picked some idea up from Bordeaux. Now, WE, WS, Decanter, everyone, has drawn the same comparison between some Spanish wines and Bordeaux. Where is Ryan’s outrage? Seems like he may have some uncompensated work to do. He faulted me for a word from a Spanish wine LABEL from chrissakes. I couldn’t even mention a wine without incurring his faux outrage.
Let’s get down to brass tacks, then. Other than my unchallenged opinion on those 5 wines that let me down nothing in that column was new or not said before by many, many others far greater than I. (No one believes me, but I clip the work of others and I research my humble columns). The question then remains, why do you think Ryan singled me out when all I did was repackage? I think I know. Ryan can’t credibly tilt at titans like Robinson and Parker. So he, still a beginner, finds a straw man from the Keystone State, puts him up to a circle jerk of self-congratulatory bloggers, makes an outrageous (and in the end, inaccurate) critique, and looks oh so smart to his dozens of readers for putting some hick in the sticks in his place.
Then the straw man gets pilloried for things he didn’t say about Spanish wines (poor, confused Joe M working out the vine thing in his head, still thinks I condemned, rather than praised, the Spanish wine industry). The straw guy gets blamed for every wrong in the world of wine, even Neo-Prohibitionist legislation and is told he can't write about wine unless he visits the countries they come from. And he gets slammed for not writing about some single vineyard, biodynamic, small lot, special cask, reserve wines no one outside of Manhattan can find. There’s outrage, give-and-take, lot of hits, and all is good in Opazland.
Friends, bloggers, countrymen. Why not call an end to your pajama revolution against some small time scribbler from Pennsylvania? Some of us have paying jobs we need to get back to.
My column was not in step with how people view Spanish wines? My column, in a nutshell, was Spanish wines are great , Spain is experiencing a revolution in quality, Spain will take over the wine world in the next decade, and I got five mediocre to crappy Spanish wines. So, what part of my column do you not agree with because I thought this was a blog for Spanish wine FANS. www.detestavino .net is a different site.
As for the five wines I didn’t like, no one, in all these verbose retorts, defended them. What of the specific charges of incompetence, poor research, sloth, and the other deadly sins levied against me in this pile on begun by Ryan? In one of his histrionics about my column he rails against me for calling Garnancha fruity. I wonder if he went into seizure when he read Jancis Robinson’s entry on the variety? Or the Wines from Spain literature? Both call Garnancha fruity.
Same with the comparisons of some Spanish wine to Bordeaux. From reading Ryan's shock-and-awe entry, one would think I compared Spanish wines to Arizona Green Tea. Guess what Catavino fans, Cab Sauv and Merlot are Bordeaux varieties. When you plant them, blend them, put them in oak, and bottle them in Bordeaux glass, it might look a bit like you picked some idea up from Bordeaux. Now, WE, WS, Decanter, everyone, has drawn the same comparison between some Spanish wines and Bordeaux. Where is Ryan’s outrage? Seems like he may have some uncompensated work to do. He faulted me for a word from a Spanish wine LABEL from chrissakes. I couldn’t even mention a wine without incurring his faux outrage.
Let’s get down to brass tacks, then. Other than my unchallenged opinion on those 5 wines that let me down nothing in that column was new or not said before by many, many others far greater than I. (No one believes me, but I clip the work of others and I research my humble columns). The question then remains, why do you think Ryan singled me out when all I did was repackage? I think I know. Ryan can’t credibly tilt at titans like Robinson and Parker. So he, still a beginner, finds a straw man from the Keystone State, puts him up to a circle jerk of self-congratulatory bloggers, makes an outrageous (and in the end, inaccurate) critique, and looks oh so smart to his dozens of readers for putting some hick in the sticks in his place.
Then the straw man gets pilloried for things he didn’t say about Spanish wines (poor, confused Joe M working out the vine thing in his head, still thinks I condemned, rather than praised, the Spanish wine industry). The straw guy gets blamed for every wrong in the world of wine, even Neo-Prohibitionist legislation and is told he can't write about wine unless he visits the countries they come from. And he gets slammed for not writing about some single vineyard, biodynamic, small lot, special cask, reserve wines no one outside of Manhattan can find. There’s outrage, give-and-take, lot of hits, and all is good in Opazland.
Friends, bloggers, countrymen. Why not call an end to your pajama revolution against some small time scribbler from Pennsylvania? Some of us have paying jobs we need to get back to.
1 year ago
in Link Bait or Ignorance? A Reporter Gets Spanish Wine Wrong on Catavino
Debating in this format really is the Special Olympics. I'm trying to resist this "bait."
But I think I have to clarify something for the Joe M up there who attempts to school me on the relationship between yeild and wine quality. For the record, I've contributed articles on viticulture regularly to Vineyard & Winery Magazine since the early 1990s and irregularly to Wine Business Monthly and Practical Winery and Vineyards. All, I'm sure you will all agree, terrible publications. Before I was into wine criticism, I was writing technical articles.
So Joe M, get your notebook out:
Spain's "low production" was a function of vine and row spacing -- not yeild. In the past (notice everyone I said "past") the majority of Spanish vineyards rows had incredibly wide spacing to accommodate out-dated vineyard equipment, even horse-drawn wagons!! Add to that very wide vine-spacing -- the distance between vines within the rows -- and you get very few vines per acre compared to rest of the world. (I'm being very general to pre-empt another lecture on this board.) So few vines per acre meant that Spain, which long has more ACRES of vineyard than any other country, didn't even make the top 5 when came to PRODUCTION (ton per acre/hectare.) The majority of Spain's vineyards were yeilding less than one-ton per acre and it sure as hell wasn't going into luxury wines.
So Joe, at this point you are probably scratching your head and asking "what happened out there in those Spanish vineyards?"
Well, you know that "new generation" everyone talks about? They replanted. They put rows much closer together since new tractors and mechanical harvestors are much narrower. Also, they planted vines more densly, you see, because now we know that closer vines actually increases below ground competition for water and nutrients, providing its own deterent for vigor and yeild. Add to that the cutting-edge application of VSP training, balanced pruning, a tight leaf pulling and hedging regime and more awareness and care of what's happening to the vineyard -- it's a revolution.
What do we have now? It seems counter-intuitive, to people like you Joe, but Spain's per acre yeild is way up but so is the fruit quality. It's because they added vines, they didn't diminish quality.
Joe, I didn't come on this board, like you, pretending that I knew enought to speak authoritatively about the Spanish industry or criticize other for their impressions. I wanted to explain my views to fellow wine drinkers out of respect for Ryan and his work on this board. You, whoever you are and whatever you do, and some others, turned this into a ad hominem attack.
That's sad, Joe. I hope wine brings you more joy in the future.
David.
But I think I have to clarify something for the Joe M up there who attempts to school me on the relationship between yeild and wine quality. For the record, I've contributed articles on viticulture regularly to Vineyard & Winery Magazine since the early 1990s and irregularly to Wine Business Monthly and Practical Winery and Vineyards. All, I'm sure you will all agree, terrible publications. Before I was into wine criticism, I was writing technical articles.
So Joe M, get your notebook out:
Spain's "low production" was a function of vine and row spacing -- not yeild. In the past (notice everyone I said "past") the majority of Spanish vineyards rows had incredibly wide spacing to accommodate out-dated vineyard equipment, even horse-drawn wagons!! Add to that very wide vine-spacing -- the distance between vines within the rows -- and you get very few vines per acre compared to rest of the world. (I'm being very general to pre-empt another lecture on this board.) So few vines per acre meant that Spain, which long has more ACRES of vineyard than any other country, didn't even make the top 5 when came to PRODUCTION (ton per acre/hectare.) The majority of Spain's vineyards were yeilding less than one-ton per acre and it sure as hell wasn't going into luxury wines.
So Joe, at this point you are probably scratching your head and asking "what happened out there in those Spanish vineyards?"
Well, you know that "new generation" everyone talks about? They replanted. They put rows much closer together since new tractors and mechanical harvestors are much narrower. Also, they planted vines more densly, you see, because now we know that closer vines actually increases below ground competition for water and nutrients, providing its own deterent for vigor and yeild. Add to that the cutting-edge application of VSP training, balanced pruning, a tight leaf pulling and hedging regime and more awareness and care of what's happening to the vineyard -- it's a revolution.
What do we have now? It seems counter-intuitive, to people like you Joe, but Spain's per acre yeild is way up but so is the fruit quality. It's because they added vines, they didn't diminish quality.
Joe, I didn't come on this board, like you, pretending that I knew enought to speak authoritatively about the Spanish industry or criticize other for their impressions. I wanted to explain my views to fellow wine drinkers out of respect for Ryan and his work on this board. You, whoever you are and whatever you do, and some others, turned this into a ad hominem attack.
That's sad, Joe. I hope wine brings you more joy in the future.
David.
1 year ago
in Link Bait or Ignorance? A Reporter Gets Spanish Wine Wrong on Catavino
Hi Everyone.
I can certainly admire the passion Ryan and the posters have for Spanish wines.
Indeed, anyone who read my column in its entirety would see that the majority of the column, the top half, speaks about the revolution in Spanish wine quality and about Spain's emergence as the dominant wine producing nation the next decade.
My point I raised, eventually, was that the wines I tried were either mediocre or horrible. They were wines I randomly picked up, available in state-controlled stores in Pennsylvania. These are the wines my readers purchase, for good or for ill, as representative of what Spain has to offer.
Does Spain produce better? Of course. I know it and I said it. Those five wines were not scientifically selected or intended to be representative of the nation. They gave me the opportunity to write about Spain for an entry-level wine drinking audience – daily newspaper readers. Unlike bloggers, I have 13 short column inches in which to write.
Everyone seems to be criticizing me for not writing about wines I haven't tasted, wines probably not available to my readers in Pennsylvania, (a shortcoming of the state monopoly's Spanish selection I pointed out in the column.)
Some of the other charges were just unsound: use of crizanca was the producer's, not mine. Visiting a wine region is not a requirement to writing about wine, no more than it is a prerequisite to drinking a wine.
The comparison between Tempranillo and cab was to communicate the variety to someone who drinks wine once or twice a month. I had the horrible thought that perhaps a California cab drinker would consider a Tempranillio. And seeing Bordeaux in a Priorat? I am hardly the first, and I am in good company.
As for Spain, I plan to visit there in late 2008 or early 2009 and spin the trip into more in-depth articles for magazines rather than entry-level wine writing, the simplicities of which have so enraged all of you. I speak Castilian and Ryan's photographs are so stunning, they have only increased my anticipation for the visit.
Ryan, I will let you know when I am in town. Perhaps we can make peace over a few bottles.
Regards,
David
I can certainly admire the passion Ryan and the posters have for Spanish wines.
Indeed, anyone who read my column in its entirety would see that the majority of the column, the top half, speaks about the revolution in Spanish wine quality and about Spain's emergence as the dominant wine producing nation the next decade.
My point I raised, eventually, was that the wines I tried were either mediocre or horrible. They were wines I randomly picked up, available in state-controlled stores in Pennsylvania. These are the wines my readers purchase, for good or for ill, as representative of what Spain has to offer.
Does Spain produce better? Of course. I know it and I said it. Those five wines were not scientifically selected or intended to be representative of the nation. They gave me the opportunity to write about Spain for an entry-level wine drinking audience – daily newspaper readers. Unlike bloggers, I have 13 short column inches in which to write.
Everyone seems to be criticizing me for not writing about wines I haven't tasted, wines probably not available to my readers in Pennsylvania, (a shortcoming of the state monopoly's Spanish selection I pointed out in the column.)
Some of the other charges were just unsound: use of crizanca was the producer's, not mine. Visiting a wine region is not a requirement to writing about wine, no more than it is a prerequisite to drinking a wine.
The comparison between Tempranillo and cab was to communicate the variety to someone who drinks wine once or twice a month. I had the horrible thought that perhaps a California cab drinker would consider a Tempranillio. And seeing Bordeaux in a Priorat? I am hardly the first, and I am in good company.
As for Spain, I plan to visit there in late 2008 or early 2009 and spin the trip into more in-depth articles for magazines rather than entry-level wine writing, the simplicities of which have so enraged all of you. I speak Castilian and Ryan's photographs are so stunning, they have only increased my anticipation for the visit.
Ryan, I will let you know when I am in town. Perhaps we can make peace over a few bottles.
Regards,
David
