Point/Counterpoint: This Wine Is Flawed vs. This Wine Is Interesting

This Wine Is Flawed

By Margaret Aldrich, Winemaker, 34 years

I want to be generous here, so let me start by saying I understand what’s being attempted. I do. But there is a difference between a stylistic choice and a fault, and that difference is not a matter of taste. It’s a matter of chemistry.

That is Brettanomyces. It is not “farmhouse character.” It is a spoilage organism that got into the wine because somebody did not clean something, and it is going to get worse in bottle, and in eighteen months the fruit that’s currently hiding it will be gone and you will be left with a glass of bandage.

I am not against funk. I am against calling a mistake a decision after the fact.

This Wine Is Interesting

By Jesse Marchetti-Pruitt, Winemaker, 4 years

Totally hear that. And I think what’s exciting about this moment is that we’re finally interrogating who gets to define “flaw.”

Because a flaw is just a preference with an institution behind it. Somebody in the 1980s decided wine should taste like a specific thing, and everybody agreed, and now anything outside that is a defect. That’s not chemistry. That’s a consensus.

Is there Brett? Sure. Is there volatile acidity? Probably. Does the wine feel alive? Does it feel like a place and a person and a moment? Yeah. It does.

Also I should say we did have a tank issue in October.

But I’ve stopped thinking about it that way.