Sulfur is among the most common chemical tools in American winemaking. Lately, it’s also the most controversial. Winemakers add sulfur dioxide to their wines as a preservative: It helps stabilize the wine, preventing things like bacterial spoilage and oxidation.
But a vocal minority of winemakers — natural winemakers, as they tend to identify — eschews the addition of sulfur (at least in high volumes), believing that it strips a wine of some of its inherent character. Some also believe it’s not healthy to consume the stuff.
We’re not going to settle any of those issues here today. But it’s interesting to consider the experience of Dan Fishman, who makes the small label Hatton Daniels and who has gradually tapered off his sulfur use over the last few years.
Fishman eased into natural winemaking slowly. In 2011, he introduced native fermentations to the Hatton Daniels lineup: He no longer inoculated grape juice with cultured yeast strains, instead letting it begin its own fermentation with ambient yeast. He added acid, to correct for the wine’s balance, for the last time in 2013. By 2014, he had cut out all additives except for sulfur; in 2015, he cut the sulfur down to a very small amount. As of 2016, he’s not adding anything, sulfur included, to any of his red wines.
When asked why he wanted to minimize his sulfur use, Fishman doesn’t bring up headaches or allergies. “To a degree, I think when you sulfur it’s like taking a photograph, freezing a wine in time,” he says. And that’s the opposite of what he’s looking for: He wants “vitality, energy, life,” what’s commonly referred to these days as a “living wine.” (It’s worth noting that a wine with added sulfur isn’t literally frozen. If you come back to it 10 years later, it will taste older!)
What does that sulfur decrescendo taste like? I recently sat down to taste a little vertical of the Hatton Daniels Cabernet Sauvignons, beginning with the 2014 vintage and ending with the 2017. Fishman (who makes the wines for the Donum Estate in his day job) gets his Cab from the Phillip French Vineyard, in Napa’s relatively cool Coombsville area.
What struck me was how differently styled the earlier wines seemed from the newer ones. The ’14 and ’15 taste like textbook Napa Cabernets — if quite lean, at 13.1% and 13.9% respectively — with black fruit, leather and mocha flavors. The ’15 is especially concentrated and dense, giving it a luscious, smooth, overt appeal.
Sure enough, as Fishman cuts back on his sulfur, his wines taste “nattier” — a vague term used to get at the funkiness found in some natural wines. The current release, the Hatton Daniels Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley Phillip French Vineyard 2016 (12.83%, $65) shows crunchy red cherry, coffee bean and an herbal character, while the ’17 (12.94%) goes boldly into the realm of moss, potpourri and wet earth. It has firm, formidable tannins, but somehow feels the least girded, the least burly, the most relaxed of the set.
To be certain, some of those differences have to do with the vintage — 2015, at the end of the drought, produced concentrated, fruity wines throughout California — but it’s hard not to see the Cabernets to some extent as a barometer of Fishman’s shifting philosophies. As he moves away from sulfur, his wines move away from a recognizable Napa Cabernet template. Correlation or causation?
And the more pressing question: What sort of wine tastes better? I still don’t know how to answer that. Fishman says he prefers the no-sulfur wines. But they also provoke a lot more anxiety in him as a winemaker, since they’re largely unprotected from the destructive whims of microbiology and could go south at any time. The ’17 Cabernet gave him a lot of grief, for example. He initially thought it tasted muted, almost as if it had oxidized. It hadn’t; it just took a while to show itself. “I don’t think you can ever be comfortable with it,” he says.
Is that part of the living-wine thing — to embrace the wine as it changes, for better or for worse?
Beer!
Enough about wine. San Francisco Beer Week takes place Feb. 7-16, and we’ve got lots of beer-oriented coverage to celebrate it.
• Many of us have grown exhausted by the trend of ever-hoppier, ever-boozier IPAs. In response, a growing number of craft breweries are turning out beautiful, balanced light lagers — an artisanal answer to the Budweiser-Coors set.
• Is Fort Point Beer Co. the new Anchor? The young brewery says that’s its goal. Can it become San Francisco’s new hometown brewery? Read my think piece, then check out Soleil Ho’s review of the food at the new Valencia St. taproom.
• Hundreds of beer-centric events take place throughout the Bay Area during Beer Week. Here’s our guide to some of the best.
• S.F. brewery and distillery Seven Stills will lose its license for 90 days after being accused of violating tied-house laws — a set of laws enacted after Prohibition that most beer and wine drinkers probably aren’t aware of.
• Finally, Fieldwork Brewing Co. has opened its seventh (!) taproom, this time in Marin County. The Berkeley company is growing fast — and recasting the mold for California breweries.
What I’m reading
• I loved this beautifully written piece by M.H. Miller about the Bull Moose Saloon, which was once the New York Observer staff’s hangout of choice.
• Tobin James Shumrick, winemaker at Tobin James Cellars in Paso Robles, faces a felony and two misdemeanor charges after allegedly shooting the wheels of a golf cart belonging to a neighbor, the New Times reports.
• My colleague Janelle Bitker reports on the opening of Viridian, Oakland’s first cocktail bar with an explicitly Asian-American bent. Owner William Tsui has assembled an all-star team, with Mister Jiu’s owners Brandon Jew and Anna Lee designing the space.
Drinking with Esther is a weekly newsletter from The Chronicle’s wine critic. Follow along on Twitter: @Esther_Mobley and Instagram: @esthermob
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Does a wine taste different when a winemaker doesn’t add sulfur to it? - San Francisco Chronicle
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