It’s become fashionable for winemakers to dismiss with false modesty their role in the production process. Usually they offer a platitude along the lines of, “I just turn the grapes into wine: the real work is done in the vineyards”, implying that there’s no special art to what they do.

You can’t make good wine from bad grapes — though you can make bad wine from good grapes. If the winemaker is largely irrelevant why don’t producers spend all their money on the viticultural team and then staff their wineries with recently graduated cellar hands?..

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