Global Warming, and Sophie Autran, Come to Gordon's, Waltham

365 Days

Global Warming, and Sophie Autran, Come to Gordon's, Waltham

Posted 03/22/2008 at 08:34 AM by Cathy

We’ve all heard the rumors of global warming's impact on the grape growing.

Champagne grapes to be planted in southern England!

Bordeaux’s climate now more similar to Australia’s Riverland district!

Alsatian harvest bumped up from October 1 to September!

Like all good rumors, there’s just enough truth in these to make them tenable. There’s also just enough generality to make them amorphous and, therefore, a little hard to get our heads around.

So it helps to focus. This afternoon at Gordon’s Fine Wine & Culinary Center in Waltham, Nick Cobb discussed global warming’s effects in the Rhône Valley, one of France’s most storied, exacting, and influential wine regions. And he offered tastes of nine wines to illustrate his points.

Cobb used a 2005 Patrick Lesec Côtes du Rhône Rubis to illustrate how some grapes are better suited to higher temperature variations than others. In his opinion the Syrah grape “has behaved better than Grenache as things have heated up.” The Rubis is 60% Syrah and 40% Grenache; Lesec’s decision to use a higher percentage of Syrah is unusual, Cobb said, but it makes the wine more friendly and fruity. The blend allows for the structure and tannins of Syrah but the Grenache balances those characteristics, so that the wine exhibits a lighter expression of Syrah’s normally very dark fruit.

The silver lining of global warming, Cobb said, is winemakers’ ability to make ready-to-drink wines. Global warming causes higher levels of sugar. In hot regions specifically, grapes reach a “sugar ripe” condition but they get there so quickly that they lack flavors that take time to develop. In a region like the Rhône where the climate is getting hotter and hotter, grapes ripen faster on the vine, which could mean the wines don’t need as much time in the bottle to reach full maturity.

Cobb used Patrick Lesec’s 2005 Châteauneuf du Pape Rubis to illustrate this point. In the Rhône Mourvedre is usually blended with Grenache and Syrah, and Lesec’s Rubis is composed of 73% Grenache, 20% Mourvedre and 7% Syrah. Mourvedre’s late bud break and late ripening means it does well in warmer climates, so adding more Mourvedre than usual – a full 20% -- makes it drinkable sooner.

These are all incredibly interesting decisions that winemakers face in response to the challenge of climate change. “Winemaking techniques are an indication of a person’s philosophy,” Cobb said, and I agree, especially since a winemaker’s philosophy, today, needs to include some response moving forward to the specific adjustments in their home environment. So when Cobb offered a wine that stood out for its hefty dose of tradition in the face of technology, it caught my attention.

Cobb introduced Sophie Autran’s 2005 Piaugier Côtes du Rhône “Grange” by saying that Sophie has much more faith in history than her husband and winemaking partner Jean-Marc. Sophie Autran has made the decision to move their winemaking business forward by moving backward in history and tradition. She makes wine, Cobb said, the way it was made a hundred years ago.

The Grange was fermented entirely in cement. Lees stick more to the sides of cement than they do to, say, the sides of stainless steel. And cement is more porous than stainless steel, which means there is a slow, controlled exposure to oxygen. More exposure to oxygen means that the wine ages faster and tends to taste older than it is.

The Grange is the Autrans’ least expensive wine but even in the glass, compared to the pours of four other Rhônes around it, it looked richest and possessed the deepest, fullest color. It was creamy without heavy tannins, yet it tasted complete and well-balanced, with a bit of tobacco on the finish.

What you get, along with your lesson on global warming and wine that ages faster, is a bottle of wine that’s both a great value and a great tribute to winemaking the way it used to be.

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About the Author

Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe writes about drinking wine every day in the Boston area. She finds the quirky characters, the after-hours events, and the surprising stories that make up Boston's vibrant local wine scene. But no matter where she is, what she's doing, or who she's with, she mostly just wants to drink the stuff.

Her first restaurant gig was at Chez Panisse, when she knocked on the kitchen's back door and asked if she could work there. She's also worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris and Thomas Keller in Las Vegas. She went to graduate school at Harvard (twice), and her writing has run in Boston magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Edible Boston, and on Nevada Public Radio and Grist.org.