September 2025 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

The Heat Is On

We get to meet many people on the wine trade, including wine makers and vineyard representatives. In recent years, these people have all expressed a consistent worry: Climate change is changing the conditions in which wine is made and, in some cases, the wine itself.

Wine grapes love warm, sunny weather. They detest frosts once the vines begin to bud. Of course, they want to be watered by gentle rainfall, but only at certain times of the year, in spring and summer. But not at harvest time! Yes, changing climate changes are making for hotter days over longer periods. But it is also resulting in unexpected cold in the spring months and long-lasting deluges at, so it seems, all the wrong times.

Photo courtesy of AccuWeather.

Hotter summers lead to greater sugar content in the grapes, which in turn can be harvested sooner. These sugar-laden grapes produce wines with higher (and ever higher) alcohol levels, but without the acidity slower ripening would produce. When tasting wines in the year or two after scorching summers, visitors to wineries should be alert to power-hitting wines that seem to lack any liveliness on the tongue.

We are not yet seeing great wines coming from northern-most climes. There’s no reason to expect great Norwegian wine anytime soon. But the temperatures are changing the grapes used in some familiar wines. For example, Merlot is becoming more prevalent in Left Bank Bordeaux wines, where Cabernet Sauvignon has reigned for centuries. Moreover, the Bordelais are now allowing the use of new grapes such as Marselan and Touriga Nacional in addition to the traditional five (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec). So what winery visitors will get in the glasses in coming years may be significantly different than the Bordeaux wines as they have been, even in recent years.

And it’s not just heat. Earlier springs lead to bud break in months that can still experience cold snaps and frost. As recently as 2022, there have been damaging frosts in California’s most famed grape growing areas, to say nothing of those affecting Oregon, Washington and British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. Add to that the flooding that occurs when sudden spring warmth melts the mountains’ snow pack. Russian River suffers from these floods often; January of 2019 saw a record crest in that river as well as floods almost as high in 2023. Wine tasters should plan their travels accordingly.

All of this is to say that for those of us who love well-made wine and visiting wineries for tasting had better be aware of what changing weather patterns are doing to vineyards and wines. It is possible that there will be better wines in the future from places that are unanticipated at present. But there is more to great wine than great grapes. It took generations and fortunes to make Bordeaux, Tuscany, Rioja and Napa Valley wines and wineries what they are today. Speaking for ourselves at Power Tasting and, we’re sure, for our readers as well, we don’t have the time to wait for superb wines to come from Trondheim.

Trefethen Family Vineyards

Somehow, in ten-plus years of publishing Power Tasting, we’ve never gotten around to writing about Trefethen. Shame on us, because Trefethen is a great winery, a pioneer in Napa Valley and a winery that offers a memorable experience to visitors. We have tasted there numerous times over the years and are pleased to look back on our visits there.

The Trefethen winery. Photo courtesy of Trefethen.

Trefethen is located in Napa Valley on Oak Knoll Avenue, just off of Route 29, and is one of the first wineries encountered as you drive north. (Think of that, day trippers.) As you approach the winery, you see a very large farmhouse, which is a tale in itself. There has been a winery on this property in this building, off and on since 1886. The building you can see today has been used, abandoned and restored several times. When the Trefethen family took over the property in 1968, they had to restore a bat-infested, leaky old edifice. There they made wine and welcomed the public to taste it.

Then in 2014, the old winery was badly shaken in a 6.0 earthquake. Rather than tear it down, the Trefethens decided to make heroic efforts to restore the building once again, in a more seismic-protected manner. They significantly changed the tasting room as well. Prior to 2014, the Trefethen tasting room had a rustic look and several bars, dispensing generous pours to visitors. While the restoration work was going on, we once had a tasting under a plastic tent, which was not the ideal tasting ambience. The décor of the rebuilt tasting room has gone from rustic to what we would call elegant antique. And like almost all Napa Valley wineries, tastings are now sit down affairs.

A legacy tasting. Photo courtesy of Trefethen.

One of the reasons we are including Trefethen in this issue of Power Tasting is their commitment to sustainability. They have actually won awards in that regard. As an organization that has thrived under three generations of the family, they express a desire to keep it going for at least another three. They encourage biodiversity with resting places for native species of birds (including those old bats, even if they’re not birds). It works out well, because the flying friends capture rodents and insects who would like to make a meal out of grapes. They keep much of the area where they have vineyards wild and free. Trefethen is also invested in carbon capture to keep the air fresh and soil controls by composing everything but the grape juice.

Does any of this show up in the glass? We’re not viniculturists and Power Tasting doesn’t review wines, but we know that Trefethen’s wines have been award-winning for decades. They do make whites and a rosé, but Trefethen has built its reputation on wines made from Bordeaux grapes, especially Cabernet Sauvignon (it is in Napa Valley, after all).

As most wineries do, Trefethen offers some reserve tastings of older and limited distribution wines as well as a tasting of recent releases. With no disrespect to the quality of the reserve wines they serve, we have found that the overall experience of wine tasting at Trefethen is more pleasant in the big house with the newer wines.

Send in the Clones

We recently received a newsletter from Etude, a winery where we’re members, on the subject of Pinot Noir clones. The subject of clones seems to be getting more attention recently, and this item further piqued our curiosity.

Pommard 5 clone of Pinot Noir. Photo courtesy of Etude Winery.

First of all, what are clones in the world of wine? If we were vinicultural scientists, we could give a long, complicated answer but we are just humble wine tasters. Simply put, a clone is a variety of a particular grape that is chosen by a vineyard owner because of its characteristics of taste, aroma or color. It is propagated by grafting a cutting from a desired vine onto existing rootstock. (That’s how cuttings from American vines saved French wineries from phylloxera in the 19th century.)

Winemakers select specific clones to emphasize certain qualities that benefit from the terroir of their vineyards. Also, some clones are more prolific than others, so a particular clone may be chosen just for the volume of the harvest. So, for example, the qualities of the Pinot Noir Dijon 777 clone are very dependent on the individual vineyard, whereas the Dijon 115 clone is most likely to produce a complete wine, without blending, and is thus the most widely planted (at least in the US).

Note that Dijon is a city in the Côte d’Or in Burgundy as is Pommard, which also has numerous clones. This is important because the type of wine we drink today has been made in Burgundy longer than anywhere else. With all that time, more clones have been cultivated for Pinot Noir than for any other varietal. Yes, there are clones of just about every other grape, but the differences between two Cabernet Sauvignon clones is nowhere near as great as between, for example, a Dijon and a Pommard clone of Pinot Noir.

Part of the reason that clones are receiving more attention these days is undoubtedly the increasing sophistication of wine lovers willing to pay the cost differential for a single clone wine. But we think that what is driving the discussion even more is that climate change is creating stress for some clones more than others. As a general rule, Pinot Noir grapes do best with warm afternoons and cool nights. Evidently, Dijon clones are more susceptible to warming temperatures – really hot afternoons and warmer temperatures overnight – than are Pommard clones. For a vintner who has heavily planted, say, Dijon 115, the prospect of ripping out vines and replanting his vineyard can be very daunting.

Increasingly, vineyard managers are planting so-called “heritage” clones with names like Swan or Calera. They seem to be doing better in warmer climates than the more widely planted grape clones. Etude’s Heirloom Pinot Noir is made from these clones.

What does this mean to the average wine taster? On the one hand, not much; it’s only what’s in the glass that counts. On the other hand, recognizing that certain clones produce flavors and aromas that one prefers (or not) can help in selecting wines that meet his or her tastes.

Aigues-Mortes, France

Aigues-Mortes is an almost perfectly preserved medieval village where they drink a lot of rosé wine. It is small but it has a large history. The Romans were there; in fact they probably established Aigues-Mortes as a port a few thousand years ago. Charlemagne was there and erected a nearby tower which is still a part of the fortified walls of the village. Two of the Renaissance’s mightiest rulers, The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Francois I, King of France, met there to settle their differences in 1538.

The walls of Aigues-Mortes

They do love their rosé there. As you drive into town you’ll see a large flamingo of the style that used to grace suburban lawns in the 1950’s. (It’s pink, get it?) The next thing you’ll see is the walls that surround the town. They’re high (36 feet), thick (10 feet) and they surround Aigues-Mortes. Visitors don’t require too much imagination to see archers protecting the villagers from advancing armies. Once within the walls, however, everything is peaceful and serene. The streets are narrow, with neatly preserved stone houses on either side, most sporting flower boxes to beautify their hometown.

The Place St. Louis in Aigues-Mortes.

In the middle of the village is the Place St. Louis. Now this particular saint was also King Louis IX who actually had some knowledge of Aigues-Mortes. He’s the one who built the Tower of Constance which is still a part of the walls today. He sailed, twice, from Aigues-Mortes off to the Crusades. And of course a statue of this saintly king stands in the main square today. There is a small church just off the square, Notre-Dame-des-Sablons or Our Lady of the Sands. (There is no lack of sand in the area around Aigues-Mortes, with salt marshes today between the town and the Mediterranean.) The church also dates to Saint Louis’ time – he may have had it built – and the intervening 800 years have seen a lot of religious turmoil there.

Just behind the statue is a square surrounded by cafés and restaurants, all with huge umbrellas out front. Having some shade is a good thing, as it can get pretty warm in the south of France, especially at the time of a midday meal. As far as we could tell they all serve the same type of fare: southern French cuisine with an accent on seafood. And they all serve the same kind of wine: rosé. There’s something special about sitting under an umbrella in the south of France drinking local wine along with your freshly caught fish.

The region around Aigues-Mortes is called the Camargue. Rosé is the kind of wine they make there. (The most widely sold is Listel, which is also fairly available in North America.) And, located where it is, the Camargue is feeling the effects of climate change. As everywhere, higher temperatures are affecting sugar content and thus alcohol levels. Grape vines growing on sandy soils are more likely to feel the effects of droughts. And the rising sea levels are creating problems of salinity in the soils of the Camargue. As winemakers adapt to changing conditions, the rosés of Aigues-Mortes may not be the flamingo-pale pink wines of the future.

As to the name, Aigues is a derived form of the Latin word aqua, or water. Mortes is old French for dead. So Dead Water refers to the salt marshes that are between the town and the sea. Ignore that, and enjoy your time in Aigues-Mortes.