Peaches and wine

One of my great joys of late summer is biting into a juicy, succulent peach and experiencing that expression of sun and soil. It doesn't happen with each one. All too often, they have been picked before their prime. The flesh is too solid and barely enough juice to wet my palate, much less dribble down my chin.

This is often the case with peaches bought at grocery store chains. They are picked early with the hope the fruit will continue to ripen during transport. This usually doesn't happen. They are pretty, but lacking in any real "peach" character. The best peaches, in my opinion, are those found at roadside stands (one of the many benefits of living in the South). These stands often sell produce picked by hand at the point of perfect ripeness from local farms.

This got me thinking about the process of winemaking. Large, industrial-scale winemakers often make wines I find similar in quality to those store-bought peaches. They are pretty and readily available, but they don't give me real satisfaction or expression of the ripe grape character. A merlot may be indistinguishable from a syrah.

These "wine factories" have the same problem faced by other fruit growers. They typically harvest grapes by machine, mixing ripe with unripe, from vines grown many miles away from their production facilities. When they blend juice from grapes grown in a variety of soils and locales, the resulting wine loses its sense of place, that expression of soil and sun that sets those flavors, aromas and textures apart from any other.

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