Season 2 of Soil to Soul comprises eight fascinating interviews with accomplished and thoughtful wine writers. In Season 2's first episode, host Jess Baum interviews award-winning journalist and author Elin McCoy. This episode includes a fascinating walk down memory lane as Elin recalls visiting Fetzer Vineyards, now Bonterra Organic Estates, back in the 1970s, and talks about what California wine tasting was like then. Elin also breaks down the rise of the 100 point scoring system and the evolving way we talk about wine. Don't miss this great conversation!
Elin McCoy is the wine critic for Bloomberg News, the U.S. columnist for The Wine Conversation podcast, and frequent contributor to publications such as The World of Fine Wine, Decanter, and Elite Traveler. To learn more about Elin and read some of her exceptional writing, visit elinmccoy.com.
Episode 2.1 Transcript
Elin McCoy :
Wine isn't just a taste in a glass. It's also a whole world.
Elizabeth Archer:
You’re listening to the Soil to Soul podcast, brought to you by Bonterra Organic Estates. Soil to Soul is hosted by Jess Baum, Bonterra’s Senior Director of Regenerative Impact. This is the first episode of season 2, and we’re so excited to bring you eight new episodes featuring accomplished and fascinating wine writers across the spectrum of outlets and backgrounds.
Our first guest is award-winning journalist and author Elin McCoy. Elin is the wine critic for Bloomberg News, the U.S. columnist for The Wine Conversation podcast, and frequent contributor to publications such as The World of Fine Wine, Decanter, and Elite Traveler. Over the course of her storied career, she has written thousands of articles for dozens of publications, including The New York Times, and she also writes at elinmccoy.com. Elin is a frequent keynote speaker, moderator, and judge at wine industry events, and an overall powerhouse in the world of wine.
Listen in as Elin and Jess discuss Elin’s internationally acclaimed book, The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. and the Reign of American Taste; the impact of the 100-point scoring system and whether scores are still relevant; what it was like to visit Fetzer Vineyards, now Bonterra Organic Estates, in the 1970s; and why some Japanese farmers use tiny umbrellas to shield their grapes.
Jess Baum:
We're here today with Elin McCoy, and it's just such a pleasure to be with you.
Elin McCoy :
Jess, thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure for me, too.
Jess Baum:
You are and have been an absolutely prolific wine writer for decades. In a world where you can write about anything, why wine?
Elin McCoy :
It was sort of almost an accident that I got into writing about wine. I was working on my PhD dissertation. I was living in Oregon with my husband who was teaching at Oregon State University. We loved wine. We joined a tasting group. We tasted some wines that we bought, California wines that we bought at our local health food store, if you can believe it.
Elin McCoy :
That was also the wine store, and we thought, "Let's go down to California and visit this winery," which happened to be Mayacamas. And the people at Mayacamas... We were no one, but the people were just so unbelievably kind and generous and welcoming, and we started visiting a lot of wineries and we thought, "No one on the East Coast knows about these wines. We should write something."
Elin McCoy :
And in the end, my husband and I ended up writing a paperback book about American wine under a pen name because we thought, "We're never going to do this again." And that really jump-started my entire career in writing about wine. People didn't really recognize at the time how fantastic California wines could be. This is going back a long way, so let's not stay there. Let's move forward.
Jess Baum:
I was just going to ask you, can you give us a year or a range to anchor us in time?
Elin McCoy :
Yeah. It was in the late 1970s, so really a long time ago. When I think about it, the world of wine was extremely different back then, and I think at the time people were excited to be learning about wine. You couldn't always count on seeing wine in just about every restaurant in America as you can today. So it was a time of excitement and learning, and excitement on the part of all the producers, too.
Jess Baum:
My grandparents were hugely into California wines in the '80s and '90s, and it never occurred to me that California wines were an emerging thing. So it's interesting to hear that history right from the source.
Jess Baum:
You wrote, the Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker Jr. and the Reign of American Taste. It was published in 2006 and it's still being translated into new languages, a testament to its influence and its impact. Robert Parker created the 100-point system in the 1970s, which really changed the game. What were wine reviews like before that system?
Elin McCoy :
Well, in actual fact, someone had proposed a 100-point rating system before Robert Parker, but it was never really picked up until Parker used it. And of course, he started writing about wine, publishing his wine advocate, The Wine Advocate back in 1978. So it did change the game.
Elin McCoy :
Wine reviews before that were very rarely, at least wine reviews that were written for consumers, very rarely had any kind of number attached to them. They might have stars attached to them, like a four-star wine, sort of like restaurant reviews, or they might be in categories. Highly recommended, outstanding, recommended, don't drink. Although I can't think of anybody who is saying, "Don't drink."
Elin McCoy :
So the categories of wines were broader. They weren't pinpointed to a specific number, so that's one thing. The second thing is that they tended to be not described in the way that Robert Parker started describing wines. A lot of them used words like, "Ah, the Noble Cabernet." They used a lot of words like, now outdated, "This is a very feminine wine." No one would say that today, or "It has great masculinity."
Elin McCoy :
That kind of language was still going on, but it was rapidly changing to the way Parker described wines, which was to talk about oodles of fruit and to talk about the taste of wine. Words like succulent. A lot of words about texture of wine. And so it wasn't just the scores, but it was also the vocabulary that he used for wines, and that excited people.
Elin McCoy :
It was a language that made people want to drink those wines. The 100-point rating system also changed the whole way of thinking about wine because, for one thing, everybody picked this up. It's ubiquitous in the US, really, in terms of every wine publication uses it. So that has changed the game in the fact that everybody uses it, but also in the fact that it changed the idea that you can be very specific about a particular wine. A wine could get a 90-point rating, and that is thought of as being not as good as a 91-point rating, even though those are really close together.
Jess Baum:
I've read your work and you speak a lot to the ways that the industry is changing. So my question is, in what ways does the 100-point system fall short of this evolution and transformation that we're seeing in the wine industry now, or is it still as relevant as ever?
Elin McCoy :
It's still relevant if people still use it to distinguish one wine from another, and if consumers and producers still find it useful. It's a shorthand for quality maybe. Where it falls short in terms of the way we think about wine now is that we have a much broader view, I think, than when Parker first started out. Remember, he was tasting a whole bunch of wines. His goal was to help people weed out what was good from what wasn't good, and really, it's true that many years ago there were a lot of wines that weren't actually all that good.
Elin McCoy :
We're very lucky today that everyone around the world had upped their game in terms of making wine. So what I think the whole idea misses is the complete surround of a wine. It has no room in that score for whether a wine is industrial quality or whether it is an artisanal wine that has been made with a lot of thoughtfulness in terms of the way the land is farmed, the idea of not intervening that much in terms of making the wine. It doesn't have any cultural aspect to it. It doesn't have any terroir concept attached to it. So those are just some of the ways that it's really quite a limited way of looking at a wine.
Elin McCoy :
I like to think that we've become, and that a lot of consumers have become much broader in what they're looking for in wine and how they're tasting it. They want to know who made it, they want to know "Are the people farming organically? Is this an experimental kind of wine that is kind of exciting, or is it a classic wine that belongs in that 100 Wines to Taste Before I Die group?" So I think that the whole scoring thing is disappearing from how people are thinking about a particular wine they're drinking, in general, especially among younger people.
Elin McCoy :
But at the same time, all these wine publications are still using these scores, and so those scores are still staying in people's minds, and they also are being used by retailers and they're actually being used by producers themselves, even producers that are making terroir driven wines and experimental wines and so on. Some of them are still using those scores. And so in that way, they still have a certain kind of relevance.
Jess Baum:
So interesting and pertinent as we look at the shifting consumer landscape of wine and as we look to Gen Z coming of age and younger millennials who perhaps care more about the values behind the wine than they do the score in a magazine.
Elin McCoy :
Well, I'll just add one thing to that. What I would say is that when Parker was starting out, a lot of people knew nothing about wine. I think that's a tribute to Gen Z, that they're asking, "Well, of course there's wine. There's wine on every table. I go to a restaurant, I have a glass of wine with friends, I go to wine bars." And so they're immersed in a world where wine is kind of ubiquitous. They've got that grounding, and so they're looking for much more than that because wine promises a lot more than that. Wine isn't just a taste in a glass. It's also a whole world.
Jess Baum:
Your 2022 article, The Drama, Heartbreak, and Hope of Wine Harvest details beautiful experiences you've had during harvest all over the world, from stomping grapes in Portugal to picking a quarter ton of Chardonnay grapes in Napa to make a barrel of your own wine. You've seen firsthand that in your own words, at harvest, everything can change overnight. How much of grape growing is universal and what changes region to region? Do you feel that growers speak a universal language so that a California grower can be at ease in an Italian vineyard or even a vineyard in an emerging wine region?
Elin McCoy :
Absolutely, because what you're talking about is dirt, and you're talking about vines. That's universal. A person who is wanting to make wine or work in a vineyard, wherever they go, that's the same. Now, how people are farming that dirt, what kind of dirt it is, what the actual vine is, all of that can be very different, not to mention the climate. I remember vividly being in Japan and looking at Koshu grapes, which are essentially a cross grape, but pretty much native to Japan, where the grape vines grow very tall, and then they're created into a kind of pergola, sort of trellising, and over each little grape bunch is a little teeny sort of paper umbrella. The region that Koshu grapes grow in Japan is very rainy, and so these protect the grapes.
Elin McCoy :
Now, I have never, ever anywhere else in the world that I have visited seen grapes growing with little umbrellas above them. And you'll find those kinds of differences when you travel around and go to different places that are growing grapes, that there are different ways of allowing the grape vines to grow, and people might be very surprised to see them. A winemaker would have to learn a lot of things about that climate and the traditions that people are using there. And a lot to learn today because the climate is changing, and that is causing people to look at what they're doing in the vineyard in a totally different way.
Elin McCoy :
Just take Bordeaux, for example. For centuries, they've been growing the same grape varieties. Now they recognize that maybe they're going to have to allow other grape varieties that they weren't growing before. Everybody around the world is having to relearn some of what they learned was traditional.
Jess Baum:
Agriculture has always been a risky prospect. Can you speak to how our changing climate complicates the already fraught process of harvest?
Elin McCoy :
Well, one constant, whether we had a change in climate or not, is excitement. Everyone is always excited by harvest because this is going to dictate a lot of what you're able to make and what you're not. I think that the whole way the climate is changing is that it's made so much uncertain. People used to like to say in California that vintages were really very similar to one another, that California wines did not have the vintage variation that, for example, you would see in Bordeaux or Burgundy, especially, or Champagne, because people expected the sun. They knew what was going to happen, or thought they did.
Elin McCoy :
Now, that's completely upended. Look at the past few years in California in terms of what has happened during the growing season. Let's forget that harvest is the big deal. There's a lot that comes before, and all the weather during the growing season has to be pretty good so that at harvest time, yes, okay, it could rain, you could have hail, there are all sorts of things that could happen at harvest time, but if you've had terrible weather all the way up till harvest, it's not going to be a very good harvest.
Elin McCoy :
So just look at California. Wildfires. I mean, 2020 was looking gorgeous. Everybody was happy. They were anticipating a terrific harvest, and then whammo, a lot of people could not even make wine because the grapes had so much smoke taint that to spend the hours and energy to make that into wine made zero sense. Some people picked very early because of predictions, so they picked right before the fires. They were lucky or they changed what they were making into rosé. In fact, I received samples of rosés from several California producers that had never made rosé before. And let's be clear, those wildfires, it's true that in California there's a history of wildfires. However, the threat of wildfires was not every year. It was like once every 10 years. So it isn't just harvest that's fraught. It's the culmination of what's gone before.
Jess Baum:
You have long been interested in California wine history. As you know, Bonterra Organic Estates was founded as Fetzer Vineyards by the Fetzer family in the 1960s during the Back To The Land movement, and one of your first ever visits to California wine country was to the Fetzer Estate. Can you tell us what that was like?
Elin McCoy :
Yes, it was absolutely wonderful. First of all, I just want to say, before I say that, people need to realize that when I first went to California wine country, there were a small number of wineries, and you did not need a reservation for a tasting. You walked in. The person who made the wine was right there in the winery. They probably didn't even have a tasting room, or maybe they had a dedicated room where they would sort of take you, but it wasn't very fancy. Usually there was a barrel turned on its end, and that was how you tasted, and it cost nothing. You did, however, spit out, and you usually could spit on the floor because it was usually dirt. It was not anything like what you see today.
Elin McCoy :
So first, let me say that. I do remember meeting Barney Fetzer. I remember going in to the little area where we were tasting. I do remember there was an upturned barrel and tasting the wines. I know that they made Zinfandel, and I remember tasting... I think I remember tasting that. But they also made sort of a Cabernet and a lot of different wines in the way that people used to make many more wines. But the thing that really stuck with me was that it was a big deal that people would bring their bottles and talk about recycling. People came and they got their bottles filled up. They had these sort of jug bottles. You bought the jug with the wine in it, and then you could come back at another day and they would fill up this jug for you, which is certainly the ultimate way to make your carbon footprint very, very low when you're drinking wine, is to come back and get your bottle filled up.
Elin McCoy :
When I think about it, there were lots of Fetzers. It was a big family. They had really an interesting impact. First of all, they weren't in Napa or Sonoma. They were making a stand in an area that has come to be much, much more important than it was when they were starting out. Early along, they appreciated that the way you farmed was very important. Back then, people were not talking about organic farming. The Fetzer family, specifically Bonterra, were ahead of their time when they started organic grape growing and a lot of other things that they were doing, and bravo to them for doing it.
Elin McCoy :
I do remember once being at Bonterra with Robert Blue, who was then the winemaker. And as we were walking around and looking at the cover crops that were growing between the vines and we were looking at bat boxes and bluebird boxes and places designed to attract insects, I remember him saying, "I really had to learn a new way of looking at the vineyard."
Elin McCoy :
I remember him talking about how when he studied wine-making, a good vineyard looked bare. It looked as though someone had been out there sweeping and leaving nothing underneath the vines except for dirt, and how you had to learn to see a vineyard in a different way as something that was alive, and that it was only alive if all these beautiful plants were growing, that there were bees buzzing all around, that the dirt didn't look swept, but looked like it held the promise of huge amounts of life. And I often think about that and think about how that is one of the best changes that I have seen in terms of the evolution of vineyards and of farming. Certainly, the Fetzers were very much a part of that.
Jess Baum:
They were way ahead of their time as Fetzer Vineyards, and we are very proud to carry their legacy forward as Bonterra Organic Estates. What do you see as the future application of that ethos of not just farming the grape, but farming the land?
Elin McCoy :
It's hard to predict, so I'll talk about hope. We have to be much more thoughtful about how we're taking care of the land, whether it's your own backyard, because you can attract butterflies or not. You can have worms in the soil of your garden or not. Those are choices that you make. But in the wine world, my hope is that more and more and more people will turn towards things like regenerative farming, or as some people like Ted Lemon at Littorai like to talk about generative farming. However you look at it, it's looking at a vineyard in holistic terms. It's saying that a lot of other things have to be part of this, that just to grow grapes on bare ground is not going to restore the soil, and that's going to mean eventually you have dead soil. I don't see a great wine coming from dead soil.
Elin McCoy :
What I would hope is that people see this in a broader cultural context of inclusion, that in the same way that in regenerative farming, you're including all sorts of healthy other kinds of plants, animals, trees, grass, all sorts of things like that, chickens, but inclusive in the sense that you're also including people and that you're paying them well and that they can afford to live on that amount of money, and let's make it the kind of place that we all feel comfortable at, that we see smiles on the faces of people who are working there, even if they're working very hard, and that they all look like all of us.
Elin McCoy :
It needs to be a microcosm of the world, not just a very small, narrow group of people. Just the way I think that people should feel they're able to drink wine. I mean, no, not everybody can afford a $500 wine. But there should be wines that people can afford that are good wines, honest wines, and raised in that kind of environment.
Jess Baum:
Thank you so much, Elin, for taking the time to talk with us today. It was a pleasure.
Elin McCoy :
Well, thank you, Jess. It's been a pleasure to be on your show. Always happy to talk about climate and why people need to be paying attention to climate change. So, thank you.
Elizabeth Archer:
Thank you for listening to the Soil to Soul podcast, hosted by Jess Baum and produced by me, Elizabeth Archer, right here in Mendocino County on behalf of Bonterra Organic Estates, the largest regenerative organic winery in the United States. To learn more and to get 20% off your wine order, visit bonterra.com and use the promo code SOIL TO SOUL. We’re especially proud of our Estate Collection, comprising four affordable and exceptional Regenerative Organic Certified wines from our Hopland vineyards in Mendocino County.
Original music for the podcast was composed by Mendocino County musician Julian Sterling. Thanks again to today's guest, Elin McCoy. To learn more about Elin and read some of her exceptional writing, visit elinmccoy.com. If you liked this episode, please rate, review, and share our podcast to help others find it, too.
Next week on the podcast we’ll talk with Ray Isle, Executive Wine Editor of Food & Wine magazine and the Wine & Spirits Editor of Travel + Leisure. See you then!