Hmm . . . this is a good question and one that more people should ask when getting into a hobby. It also serves as a natural follow-up to my previous mistakes answer. It is good to look at the total picture of winemaking and focus in on the most important elements. These are the rules that come to mind:
- It all starts with the raw material: This is rule #1. Your wine will only be as good as your starting material. It’s possible to make good wine out of great fruit but you can’t make great wine out of mediocre fruit. An ancillary rule is that you’ve got to understand and accept your starting material, both its potential and its limitations. You can ferment with the latest yeast, stir the lees and use an expensive French oak barrel, but an insipid wine can’t grow beyond its roots, even with all the expensive and time-consuming treatments in the world.
- Acid is the foundation of wine: I learned this at my first-ever winemaking job as a cellar rat at Chalone Vineyards near Monterey, California. Even in the blasting 100-degree days the incredible limestone soils and the chilly nights kept the acid levels in the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay much higher than one would expect. This is one of the secrets to the long ageability of Chalone’s wines — they are rich in natural grape acids, modest in alcohol and rooted in what I would call one of California’s only true terroir vineyards. Sugar is only important in determining the final alcohol content. Fine wines should be picked and made with the true focus being on the pH, TA and flavor/tannin/texture balance of the acids.
- Learn the science behind the art: Don’t just blindly follow a recipe that says to add 30 ppm sulfur dioxide. Take classes, study on the web, learn from experienced winemakers, do whatever you can to learn why you add that 30 ppm sulfur dioxide. More importantly, you should know when to add 30 ppm, when to add 50 ppm and when to add none at all. Knowledge and experience will allow you to be guided by what the wine needs and not by what someone tells you it does.
- Listen to your wine: Let the wine tell you what it needs and where it wants to go. Your winemaking buddies, current style trends and, for the commercial winemaker, market pressure can all lead winemakers to use too many new barrels, leave a little residual sugar or bottle too soon. Once the grapes are picked, the path the wine needs to take is already laid out before you. A super-corpulent 30 ºBrix Syrah would have a hard time squeezing itself into the bottle as a crisp, light Syrah rosé. Such ripe, luscious fruit really wants to be the base for a stellar Port-style dessert wine. Don’t force it. Go where the wine leads you.
- Don’t take wine, or yourself, too seriously: Even those of us who make wine as our day job need to remember that wine is, at its core, supposed to be fun. Whether it’s touring wine country with your sweetheart, watching Lucy and Ethel stomping messily away or bringing out a bottle of your finest for the backyard bocce ball team, wine heightens our enjoyment of everyday life, links us to the past and connects us to the natural world in a very tangible way.
