Of wine and wine-making

While we were in San Francisco we decided, like millions of others every year, to make the pilgrimage out to wine country. It would have been plain silly of us not to do it while we were in the area, and we could not have picked a better day for it, really. The sky was cloudless, and despite the sun beating down upon us there was a balmy breeze that kept us cool. I had just left a city that was beginning to get into the throes of winter and this was more than welcome.


For over on the left coast the leaves were just starting to change colour, and it was rather nice to get out into the country. The air was certainly different - fresher and cleaner, and it was nice to see a little topographic relief after being in Kansas much of the previous few months. One of the vineyards we visited was located at the foot of an extinct volcano, which made for some impressive landscaping.


I had never previously visited a vineyard or winery and had at best only a hazy notion of how wine was made, so I found the tours very informative. What left the greatest impression on me was the tremendous pride and passion everyone had for their wine-making. They knew it and they knew it well, and when they waxed lyrical about each little step in the making of their wines and why they made the choices they did, you could not help but respect them. It made me a little sad; I could not hold forth on the intricacies of my profession for longer than several minutes - and even then it would be probably only to complain about it.


But it ultimately gave me a greater appreciation of wine. As one of our tour guides put it, it gave you insight into the "story" of a particular wine. The knowledge and appreciation of how even the most minor decisions could affect how the wine eventually drank - when to harvest the grapes, what oak to store it in, etc - made me pause to think. Despite the commercial nature of the wine-making industry today and its highly mechanised process, at its heart it was still a labour of love. The product that finds its way to your lips was - if done correctly - a product of someone else's care and dedication.

We had the good fortune of meeting Kathy Inman - of Inman Family Wines - a small producer of hand-crafted Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir in the Russian River Valley. We were interrupted twice during our conversation by her phone ringing - first her husband wanted to know about dinner and then her daughter called about getting a ride home from band practice. It was quite funny at the moment but it did underscore the human element of these winemakers - faces you never see, hidden behind the labels on the bottles.


It was late in the season when we went, and the grapes for most wines had already been harvested. We did, however, manage to sneak a taste of some grapes fresh off the vine at one vineyard. Because of the intense heat of these dog days of summer some of them had already dried up considerably, but the good ones that I bit into were tart and not overly sweet.


The wine tastings themselves were also great fun, but more than once I wished for some proper food to accompany the wine. The latest Opus One, for example, called desperately for a bistecca alla fiorentina. I wished for raw oysters while drinking the Miner Family Vineyards Chardonnay. I suppose, in the wise words of the philosopher Jagger - you can't always get what you want.

I came to wine late in my relatively young life: my parents were not drinkers, and neither popularity nor knowledge were widespread when I was growing up in Singapore. These days I am quite the snob myself, and wine culture has definitely taken a few large strides forward in my hometown. The past few years have seen many wine bars and local gourmet wine shops sprout up in the unlikeliest of neighbourhoods. I find, though, that there tends to be a lot of Australian wine (the proximity of our countries goes some way to explaining that), which is not my favourite. An Aussie mate of mine once told me that Australia does not export any of what the locals consider good wine, and so what the rest of the world gets is the swill that they themselves will not drink. The same thing applies with that other famous Australian alcoholic export - Fosters lager. No self-respecting Aussie will touch the stuff.

But even then, we don't get a lot of what I consider the good stuff in Singapore - the Bordeaux, the Burgundies, the Brunellos - the Old World stuff that I love so much. I attribute this to two reasons. One has to do with limited supply; and I think the EU and the US, which have been buying wine for ages, get first dibs on these wines - which in turn does not leave much for the rest of the world. This is something that can hopefully be remedied by the globalisation of demand - the increasing wine savvy of the Asian market and the potential for untapped markets may shift the balance of power this way across the globe. The second reason, though, is one of taste. I think the average Singaporean palate is partial to spicier wines, with more fruit, which make New World wines like Spanish Riojas, South Africa Syrahs, Chilean Cabs, and Argentinean Malbecs generally more popular here - and I'm just talking reds. In many respects these wines stand up better, and are more suited to the cuisine here anyway.


On the ride back into the city I gave a lot of thought to what little I now knew about the wine-making process. Like many other processes - for example a manufacturing process - it could be broken down, separated into mini-sections that could be further studied, understood and optimised. The growth, the harvest, the fermentation, the mixing, it goes on and on. There was so much that was scientific about it, so much that gave itself to the scientific method. Yet so much else was not. Clearly the quality of the harvest was at the mercy of the elements. Choosing grapes, or knowing when to take the wine out of the barrels, or deciding which grapes to blend for the wine - depended on the taste and palate of the winemaker.

In that respect it was not unlike cooking. To be successful, you needed to understand and adjust for many different elements - some scientific, some not, some under your control, and others not. And just like cooking, the fruits of your labour are gone in an instant, often all too soon.