The Upward Trend in Alcohol Levels

Over the last few decades alcohol levels in wines have been going up. Yes, those red wines you see at 14.5%, 15%, or more, used to be 13.x%. There's a similar change with white wines. What happened? Two things.

Climate

Longer, warmer growing seasons means more sugar is produced by the grapes. That sugar gets fermented into alcohol. With veraison in mid-summer, the fruit begins making sugar and will keep making sugar until the grapes are picked or the warm weather runs out. So why not just pick earlier? A certain "hang time" is needed to reach a proper balance of acids, sugar, and flavors, something called phenolic ripeness. 

It's predicted that many grape varieties may be moving to cooler areas by the end of the century.

Robert Parker, et al

1997 was a pivotal year in California. It was a hot summer. Winemakers didn't yet know how to handle the fruit coming in and wound up with soft, fruity, maybe a little sweetness in their fancy Napa cabs. These are the big, full-bodied, blockbuster wines. Well, the critics loved them!

Robert Parker and his Wine Advocate gave them great scores. The buying public decided these must be the best wines, so almost everybody jumped in and purposely made wines in this style. Those 13.3% alcohol cabs were a thing of the past. Instead of fighting through tannins and acid to figure out what this wine will be like with a little (or maybe a lot of) aging, you had immediate reward with the big fruit flavors.

An aside: A trait picked up by our ancestors was sweet tasting fruits are good. Other flavors, like too much acid, are bad because the fruit isn't ripe yet. Think of an apple. Which one will you eat, the unripe one or the sweet, juicy one? So liking big, fruity wines is pretty much instinctual. 

So What's Best?

13.5% alc zin!

You can't fight sales numbers. Just look at Napa and their pricey cabernet. However, as I've learned, that first satisfying sip doesn't always translate well to the second glass. That is, those subtle wines can be a lot more interesting once you get to know them. The fruit-bombs are lacking other flavors and seem one-dimensional. But, hey, that's just me. Drink what you like.