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Postmodern Winemaking CL ARK SMITH M Wine's Lunatic Heroes Highlights uch of the charm in a career making wine in America is the imperative for pioneering. European oenologues enter an industry hide- bound in tradition, with winemaking pro- cedures, styles and markets thoroughly en- trenched for centuries. Their science, though certainly scholarly, possesses a self-congratulatory tone, as if to answer the question: "How can it be that our wines are so damn good?" Not so in the New World. Here we grasp at straws, hope- ful for any handhold, some vineyard/varietal/style combination that will find buyers, often toiling in obscure and uncelebrated hinterlands where consumer recognition resides entirely in our imaginations. New acquaintances in a restaurant will readily discuss the selection of European wines—whether a Muscadet or a Chablis would be better with the fish course—but an Iowa La Crescent or a Santa Cruz Mountains Chardonnay is unlikely to receive the same consideration. European winemakers both envy our freedom and pity our floundering. Winemaking in the New World today is a process of continual discovery. It's a team sport. The American winemaking scene is a fluid social organism in which diverse enterprises inter- relate to advance our understanding. Good winemaking ideas require a large number of independent, creative players unconstrained by common sense. Wine's ongoing saga illustrates the interplay between science and human values in a mythos that holds profound lessons for how cultures learn and develop. We all were taught the scientific method in school, but too little is said about the origins of the hypotheses it tests. Where do theories come from? I want to argue here for honor and affection for the screwballs who are getting the ball rolling in critical new R&D areas in our industry today. Science is no longer the engine of progress it was in American winemaking 40 years ago. The easily solvable problems that emerged in the late 1960s are yesterday's news. Clean and simple won't cut it anymore. The chief docket item in today's highly competent and competitive marketplace is the pursuit of greatness. Knockin' 'em dead. To delve into elusive goals like terroir, soulfulness and some- where-ness calls for out-of-the-box exploration work that sometimes benefits more from originality than solid grounding. 104 Wines & Vines nOVeMBeR 201 1 • Enology is no longer the engine of progress it was 40 years ago. • Courageous fools who perceive the need for deeper work are continually stepping into this void. • Breaking new ground in postmodern winemaking is risky be- havior that benefits everyone. What we do is divide the workload. Winemakers of every stripe work the discovery process together. Team America. Breaking and remaking the mold falls to men and women of iron constitution who lack better sense. On the flip side, the pick-and-shovel work of scientific verification goes to the care- ful, impeccable and credentialed. Wine industry factions are more broadly schooled than work- ers in most other fields. Every enologist is called upon to speak poetically, and even the most Luddite dream-weaver had better know how to titrate and run Brix levels. Enology's foundation is solid fundamentals, but at its core it is a creative element that's a little bit crazy—just as baseball is mostly solid fielding but de- pends on a pitcher who can't bat worth a darn but can dream up the most unexpected pitch. My fair lady California didn't start out as the pre-eminent producer of big, bold table wines you're looking at today. The Golden State came to dominate American wine production just after Prohibition, when cheap land, cheap Dust Bowl labor and WPA water projects perfectly aligned to enable our Central Valley to produce Port and Sherry for much lower prices than the established wine-producing areas in Missouri and Ohio. Constituting nearly all California wine production in 1960, these high-alcohol products were naturally sterile and required no microbiological expertise. These were wines that actually ben- efited from oxidation and even steam heating. Back then, enologi- cally speaking, we didn't know anything. The introduction of Blue Nun and other light, sweet table wines in the 1960s changed everything. The innovation of sterile filtra- tion, a product of atomic energy,1 caused a tsunami swing from