Along came 'Pica' and Post Points wine

Year 16, No. 02

In the wine writing world, it seemed that January has always been the month to write about/bemoan natural wine.

It’s a rather reasonable choice when you think about it given that headlines post-holidays and pre-Burgundy tastings have always been slow or at best, bland listicles, and the ensuing natural rage bait has always fueled much-needed traffic. The beginning of September was also a keen moment for similar post-vacation reasons, but I digress.

Given that natural wine, much like Dry January and the Kardashians, doesn’t appear to be leaving any time soon, a new rage bait has been sorely needed. I state the obvious as it’s the only reason I can come up with as to why there’s been a group of articles bemoaning… tasting notes.

Are they stupid? Yup. Will we keep doing them? Yup.

As is the case with Bordeaux en Primeurs, there is an established order to the wine world that I assume will just continue on until something comes along to disrupt its meaningless existence. And by ‘something’, I mean an Extinction Level Event such as every beleaguered spouse collectively washing all red trousers in an ‘accidental’ bleach cycle.

Suffice to say, all the back and forth is why I’m readily fascinated by wines such as this one called, ‘Pica’ that I recently reviewed. It is for all purposes, an absolute aberration. Who in their right mind would take higher-alcohol grapes from Grenache in the Priorat region and infuse their juice with very, very spicy chili peppers?

I will firmly state that it most definitely works and it is part of a growing number of wines that I call, “Post Points”.

There will be claims otherwise, but for me, there’s just no way to score a wine like this. It falls outside all of the boxes as to what a wine is ‘supposed’ to be with our “medium plus everything”, and high boredom. It also blows up the extremely-outdated wine pairing concepts which state that with something spicy, you need sweet… unless of of course you’re a soul that does enjoy the spice which is the majority of the world.

But the thing is, these Post Points wines are iconoclastic and reinventing themselves and I doubt there will be ever be larger categories for them other than, “drinkable”. Often they’re interesting because they’re novell or it’s like in last year’s Priorat Report where there are wines which don’t necessarily blow up the points, but are exceedingly pleasing to drink all the time, like we’re seeing in the “chilled red” category that a lot of wine drinkers are enjoying as it’s sans la bullshite.

But let’s state that while tasting notes are numb and dumb, I would never say this applies to the giving of points. These do indeed serve purpose to act as a shorthand to the wine consumer for everyday wines while the tasting note (should) be doing the same for the wine professional—albeit usually coming up very, very short.

Points have also served as a manner in which to value wines for collectors. There are however two flaws in this. The first is that the collector class is aging and/or has bought all the wine that they need for the rest of their lives. And second, scoring of top wines is completely unneeded at at this point. Will there ever be a vintage of Screaming Eagle or Romanée Conti or the five First Growths of Bordeaux that won’t sell out at their insane prices? As long as people are drinking wine, I seriously doubt it.

So there are these, for lack of a better word, ‘subversive’ wines** coming out now that blend wine and non-wine, different fruits, take wines from disparate regions, use untraditional blends, or are just different from the classic norms and will escape all the reason and system of points-based scoring. Points will be with us for some time yet, but I’ll only give their longevity a score of ‘85’ as a class of younger wine drinkers (who are indeed drinking wine) comes of an age to appreciate this fine beverage, albeit in a form that deviates from what we’ve previously established.

I have seen the wines of the future and I don’t know how to rate them, but I like ‘em.

Drink well, be well.

-Miquel

(*) Free to read

** Note that I’m not globally lumping natural wines into this lot as there are scads of Trash Natural in there that’s just bad wine, no scores needed, only a sink with a good drain.

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Drink It or Sink It

A never-ending look at the lower end with a great many more ‘Drinks’ than ‘Sinks’ in this land of sub-5€ wines. Follow along on the main channels via Instagram or YouTube.

Clos d’Encís - IG | YT

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And now this

Have you not been drinking well? That’s understandable which is why you’ll need this latest installment of the series that looks at Kraków, Poland.

In case you missed it for pre-Christmas, it’s still a fine time of the year to enjoy a bit of Port, like these fine wines from classic producer, Kopke.

Here’s a look at the larger portfolio of Vins Petxina, a negociant that producers Catalan wines in several DOs.

And lastly, while the largest celebrations may have passed, you never need an excuse to open a sparkling wine, especially one this good from Celler Viader in Corpinnat.

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