For years the North Bay wine country has been struggling with being snubbed by New York restaurant buyers in favor of those pesky Europeans for a simple reason, High Alcohol. The growing season in Sonoma and especially Napa, is typically very long. In the quest for bigger flavors vintners will let the grapes hang for as long as possible soaking up that beautiful California sunshine.
One little, hot problem though, as the flavors develop the sugar builds and all of that sweetness will turn into alcohol. An excessively high alcohol wine is called 'hot' because it dries out the palate and heats up the body. Those richly flavored wines often have alcohol levels of fourteen and fifteen plus percent.
It's amazing how much of a difference a couple of percentage points can make. A table wine is 12% and below that and they don't even need to list the alcohol level on the bottle, saying calling it wine is enough information. That additional two or three percent is the difference between being able to split a bottle easily between two people and ordering from the 'by the glass' section of the menu.
You might be thinking, why are those New Yorkers complaining, the markup on a glass is probably better than a bottle? That's true and it explains why the big east coast chain restaurants sell a lot of Sonoma and Napa wine. But when it comes to New York City we are a dealing with a different situation. In NYC people rarely invite people over to their home to eat, instead they meet at restaurants.
Dining out is a very important part of the social life, so spreading a good wine over a longer time at the table works best when the wine doesn't knock you on your butt. Great conversation, something NYC life is famous for, works best when the wine doesn't make you slur your words. That's why the lower alcohol, very food friendly wines of Europe are so popular in the city .
In Napa and Sonoma the vintage in 2011 was so cool that there plenty of wines will end up with low alcohol. The women winemakers especially brought their grapes in early before the first of October rains that so disrupted the harvest season. The fruit they brought in was gorgeous and the flavors wonderful, and the alcohol low enough to sit happily at any restaurant in Manhattan.
The 2010 vintage was also quite cool, one of the coolest since 1950, but the rains didn't come until the middle of October so the grapes were able to build up more sugar, but even 2010 wines have lower than average sugar. The downside of this is that 2010 was a small harvest and 2011 was smaller still. So there will be wonderful wines from Napa and Sonoma in 2011, but not very much, so come visit, because they keep the best here and buy early.
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