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WINEMAKING fortified wine to table wine in one short decade. By 1970, the vast majority of California wine was less than 14% alcohol. This meant big trouble for winemakers, and perhaps half the wine be- ing bottled had some kind of classic defect: VA, aldehyde, gera- nium tone, heat or cold instability—you name it. Brilliant work at the University of California, Davis, saved the itation, oxidation prevention, temperature management, control of malolactic and other microbiological sophistication swept in an era of clean, competent table wine production that grew in scale a thousand-fold by 1990. California's 1976 success in Paris shifted the focus from light European knock-offs to big Chardon- nays and Cabernets that France couldn't match. As competent winemaking became commonplace, the goal of aesthetic excellence—steadfastly ignored by Davis as a matter of policy2 day. Advances in our understanding of pH, SO2 management, san- Richard Somer, who in 1961 built the first post-Prohibition win- ery in Oregon, planting Hillcrest Vineyard in the Umpqua Valley. Sean Thackery, a steadfast wine rebel since the early 1980s, is —became the new Holy Grail for commercial wineries. This is the way of things. Science conquers problems within its grasp, leaving behind the less tractable, hardcore problems to be naturally selected, Darwin-style. Enter the dragons This void has always drawn explorers who perceive the need for deeper work. It seems absurd that the classifications of Bordeaux should have been established in 1855 without the slightest inkling of how wine itself actually comes to be; yet it is true. Not un- til 1857 did Louis Pasteur, a 35-year-old chemist, elucidate the mechanism of fermentation. Not only was this information unnecessary to winemaking in its first 6,000 years, it was also steadfastly resisted by the estab- perhaps the New World's most enthusiastic student of ancient techniques, and his real contribution is to render what he reads into practice as if his winery were a test kitchen for alchemy. An- other militant Luddite, Christian Mouiex, famously dumped an entire tank of Dominus Estate Cabernet after learning that it had been acidulated with tartaric acid. Paul Frey, an unlikely visionary from Redwood Valley who presided over decades of wretched sulfite-free wines while he pa- tiently dialed in his now-successful methodology, approached me in 1997 with the peculiar notion that red wine phenolics had the capability to consume oxygen and incorporate aldehyde. I blew him off. Only much later did I realize that the 1987 Singleton paper he had been quoting actually embodied the essence of red wine evolution, structure and aromatic integration.3 The Benziger Family's transformation from proprietors of the world's largest Chardonnay mega-boutique into a diminutive brand based on Biodynamics seemed almost suicidal. The list of big-time, established, savvy players also drinking Rudolf Steiner's Kool-Aid includes Jim Fetzer and Paul Dolan, who managed, well before it was trendy, to cajole for a decade even that corporate beast Brown- Forman into green practices, proving that it could be done. Some winemakers become heroes just by telling the truth. I take my hat off to Michael Havens, who in 2001 let The New York Times crucify him for micro-oxygenating his Merlots, and Randy Dunn, who had the courage to admit in a 2004 Wine Spectator article that he used reverse osmosis for alcohol adjustment. Ahead of the curve Great minds in wine: Jim Fetzer and Paul Dolan (from left) embraced Biodynamic growing before it became trendy. Randy Dunn told Wine Spectator in 2004 that he used reverse osmosis to fine-tune alcohol levels. Paul Frey spent years perfecting his sulfite-free wine style. lished rank and file. Fifteen years after Pasteur's gooseneck flask experiments disproved spontaneous generation, Pierre Pachet, a professor of physiology at the University of Toulouse, still labeled his theory of germs "a ridiculous fiction." "My strength lies solely in my tenacity," reported Pasteur. Martin Ray's name appears early on anybody's list of American winemaking lunatics. Besides his odd penchant for varietal label- ing and his madcap attachment to Santa Cruz Mountain Pinot Noir, Ray was crazy enough to advocate sur-lies aging as well as bottling unfined and unfiltered. One might label him an early postmodernist, except that he was pre-modern. In 1965, another screwball named Robert Mondavi had the temerity to install the southernmost winery on the Napa Valley's Highway 29 in the frozen tundra of Oakville, despite the conven- tional wisdom that grapes might not grow there. Still crazier was Always so far out there as to stay barely in view, Randall Grahm could make this list several times. Freakishly experimental in all things, he revolutionized California's varietal focus to include Rhone and Italian varietals, led us out of the marketing stone age "urine sample" labels of the 1970s with innovative, playful and even intellectually challenging concepts that dared his customers to smarten up. He was the first California winemaker to experiment with micro-oxygenation and the first to move beyond it. Now he's growing grapes from seed, an obviously foolish notion… The fool on the hill I've named some celebrated successes, but the numerous lunatics who miss the mark are just as important. We benefit just as much from failed concepts as successes. These sacrifices, driven by pas- sion, strengthen the community intelligence. Wines & Vines nOVeMBeR 2011 105