ADVERTISING: Advertorial — My 2021 wine wish list

Well, the new year is here! Like most of us I always look forward to the start of the year with hopes for things to be good this year and better than the previous. There are always things in the wine world that I hope will get better — things that will change and those that will improve.

My first wish for 2021 is a fire free season for the wine countries, of the west in general, and Northern California specifically. While 2017 and 2020 were by far the worst fire years for the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma Counties in Northern California, ever since 2017 there have been devastating fires that have affected the grape harvest all over the West. Each year smoke taint has eliminated crops from some of our favorite producers, and while we hope for the best for growers and winemakers alike, we selfishly would like to see uninterrupted production of some of our favorite wines.

We also wish for winemakers to return to producing varietal wines. We understand the theory behind this headlong rush to blended wines. You mitigate the parts you don’t like in a varietal or growing year to get a more consistent wine with a smoother presentation. This is not without risk. The big risk is a whole bunch of homogenous wine that lacks character of any kind and any sense of terroir in the flavor and aromatic profile of the wine. I would so much rather taste a pure Grenache from the Wahluke slope of Washington that shows the true varietal character of Rhone wines from this area than another GSM blend of which there are at least 50 from Washington that are indistinguishable. Similarly, give me a true Rutherford Bench Cabernet from the heart of Napa that shows that signature Rutherford dustiness than some blend with Petite Sirah and Petite Verdot that amps up the fruit and removes those lovely, dusty tannins.

I wish for this “dry farmed wine” silliness to go away now. For good. The Dry Farmed Wines and First Leaf are the biggest scams in the wine business today and neither represent real wine at all. Instead, they market a bunch of private label plonk that is not only not very good, but has nothing to do with what they are putting out there as their mission. The simple fact is that dry farming grapes versus using some irrigation does nothing to improve either the quality or the natural character of the wines. Water is completely benign and a necessary part of growing grapes. I will leave it up to the growers and winemakers to determine whether to deploy additional irrigation to get the best grapes they can grow.

Small production wineries, in fact most every winery, big or small, sets out to make the best wine they can. Most don’t use 50 additives to pull this off. I would bet that the lion’s share never get to five things they add in the production of their wine. Again, I will leave this to the professionals to determine what the best approach is to make the best wine they can. If it doesn’t measure up for any of us, then we simply should not buy it. But I would resist at all costs some marketing website that claims to know better than your own palate.

I also wish for a move to “decriminalize” sulfites! There are gadgets being hawked, none of which work by the way, to remove sulfites from your glass of wine. Sulfites are a naturally occurring by-product of fermenting grapes, so to make a wine sulfite free actually takes more manipulation and makes the wine less natural than just leaving the sulfites be. They provide a vital service to the wine as a natural preservative. The problem is they make for an easy target for those who suffer from wine allergies, but the truth is they are responsible for very few allergic reactions.

I also wish for price stability across domestically produced categories. I would suspect we will see this: as restaurants remain shuttered in many parts of the country, wineries are working increasingly hard to find markets for their wines. My hope is that, especially for Washington and Oregon, that slackening demand and steady pressure from California and European appellations will cause pricing to start to normalize. For the past several years the only thing going up in price more than a home in Coeur d’Alene is a Washington State Cabernet; neither seems very sustainable to me.

Finally, I wish that each of us find that one bottle to have that when we try it, we stop for a moment and say to ourselves “Wow! That is a really great bottle of wine.” To me, this is the real beauty of wine, that one epiphanic moment of truly enjoying everything about that one bottle.

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George Balling is co-owner with his wife, Mary Lancaster, of the dinner party, a wine and gift shop in Coeur d’Alene by Costco. The dinner party has won the award for best wine shop in North Idaho twice, including for 2018. George is also published in several other publications around the country. After working in wineries in California and judging many wine competitions, he moved to Coeur d’Alene with Mary more than 10 years ago to open the shop. You can also follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/#!/dinnerpartyshop.