Wine Lover: An analysis of wine making

Making wine must be one of the most fundamentally simple processes there is. Essentially, all you need to do is pick grapes, crush them and allow the natural sugar in the juice to turn into alcohol. It’s as basic as yeast eat sugar and make alcoholic juice.
Of course, the difference between making a fine wine and making something barely drinkable is kind of like comparing Albert Einstein with your first-grade science teacher. The difference between making wine and making fine wine is literally that drastic. The three most important factors that go into a fine wine are the location, the winemaker and, well, a little luck.
Location means terroir, and terroir is essential to grow grapes capable of making excellent wine. Even the greatest winemaker cannot make fine wine out of mediocre grapes. There is an old saying that it’s a poor musician who blames the instrument. In winemaking, it happens to be a valid argument. That’s why there are certain vineyards that are coveted in the wine world. It’s why many old-world wines are classified by where they were grown, as opposed to what varietal was grown. It is also why you will often see a vineyard designated on some bottles. The soil truly does have a huge impact on the final product.
But the vineyard manager matters, too. The vineyard manager decides when to prune and when to water (if at all), and those factor into the final product as well. When some people think of a winemaker, they envision an image of some guy in a cellar thieving wine out of a barrel and looking at it inquisitively. The truth is the wine making begins in the vineyard, and what happens in the vineyard is just as important as what happens in the cellar.
The decision of when to harvest is also exceptionally important. The vineyard manager and or winemaker will test the grapes daily to see what the Brix and acidity levels are looking like. Grapes harvested even a few days early or late can doom a wine to mediocrity.
Once the grapes have been harvested, the fate of their potential lies in the hands of the winemaker. There is an old-world paradigm that the “vigneron” (French for winemaker or wine-grower) is there only to help guide the grapes in their journey to becoming wine. The idea is that the winemaker should interfere as little as humanly possible. Some winemakers follow this paradigm, and some get their hands dirtier.
The talent of a winemaker certainly has an effect on how a wine will turn out. The winemaker needs to make decisions on what yeast to use, what equipment to use, which barrels to use and possibly which wines to blend. Those decisions all have the potential to improve or decrease the quality and longevity of a wine.
Finally, there is the simple aspect of luck. Winemakers and viticulturists would like to take as much luck out of the equation as possible, but there is just no way to tell how the weather conditions will play out in any given year. Luck, in terms of weather, is what gives a wine’s vintage great importance. It’s the reason that single-vintage champagne is only produced in certain years, and it’s why legendary vintages get big bucks.
At least we have it easy in California. The weather gets only so bad here. In some places, such as Germany, the weather can be such an obstacle that very little wine will even get produced in poor years. 
It is good to remember that winemaking is a simple yet painstaking process. There are many things that need to go right to produce an excellent, balanced wine. When you realize the intricacies a bottle of wine goes through before it gets to your table, you’ll appreciate it that much more. 
– Austin Twohig is a certified sommelier and partner in The Santa Cruz Experience, which conducts winery tours in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Email him at [email protected].