"High-Tech Wines

[Don Jones]

My uncle lives in Japan. He saw "high-tech" wine in a commercial on TV. He wants us to pick up a bottle. Can you tell me what high-tech wines are? And suggest a good bottle? Thank you Don

[Thomas]

I suppose he talks about California wine, but I really don't know. However, using the words "high-tech" to describe wine is oxymoronic to me. Wine is a living, breathing product with its own personal identity; high-teching it seems a recipe for creating a boring product.

[winoweenie]

Foodie, Do you think he may be referring to the new equipment (Stainlee Steel Fermentation tanks,New Crusher stemmers, etc) If that`s the case then almost all of our wines are now " High-Tech". Don, find out more details and come back. winoweenie

[Garbo]

Japanese advertising can sometimes go a little bit, well, overboard in its exuberance. My guess is that it's just a zippy "modern" ad for regular old wine. Or maybe it's wine from Santa Cruz and points near the tech corridor?

[Botafogo]

>>However, using the words "high-tech" to describe wine is oxymoronic to me. Wine is a living, breathing product with its own personal identity; high-teching it seems a recipe for creating a boring product.<<

This (the "recipe for creating a boring product" part) unfortunately perfectly describes the overwhelming majority of wines presented to us by our wholesalers. We have actually seen Cahors that had been "improved and made more marketable" by the use of rotary fermenters and the addition of 15% Merlot and Barrel Fermented Dolcettos. GET THEE BACK SATAN!

It often seems to us that large liquor companies (who dominate most of the wine in general distribution) want all wines to taste the same but want to keep all the quaint regional names and stories for marketing. It is disgusting but it gives us much inspiration to fight the forces of evil and champion old school producers like Emidio Pepe, Paolo Bea, Giuseppe Quintarelli, many small Portugues Quintos and people like Ed Pagor and the Cotturi brothers in California.

Roberto