Purple Happy - Notes from Winemaking’s Edge

“Oh the harvest of 1980……I was 18, filled mostly with singular thoughts of the best surf, ski or skateboarding move…or how much money I needed to earn to get to Mexico for the weekend to eat lobster burritos while surfing K-38, a popular surf-spot for ‘gringos’ 38 kilometers south of the US boarder. Those first harvest shifts were filled with the act of scrubbing the purple stains from my hands after handling red wine grapes….in fact 1,000’s of tons of grapes, and learning how to flush wine hoses from tank to tank by ‘slurping’ the dripping wine from transfer hoses to determine when it was time to close the valves…..and it was also the year I discovered a few ‘dirty little secrets’ about commercial winemaking.”

~ Nicholas Karavidas, Winemaker/Proprietor

The Psychology of Color

Not long into my juxtaposition of surfing & wine, I checked a book out of the San Bernardino public library called, “The Psychology of Color”. My interest was to understand the impact of colors and color combinations on the human mind, most importantly on the minds tendency to respond to colors in advertising. I was now 21 in 1982 and as a young winemaker, I had other passions…..mostly adrenaline focused sports such as Alpine Skiing. In an effort to create an effective flier for a ski trip that I was sponsoring, I stumbled upon this concept of how impactful color was on the human psyche.

Boom! I was awestruck at this idea. Why were the fast food giants of McDonalds and Burger King all arrayed in Red and Golden-Yellow? Because that was the most effective color combination known to capture the attention of a consumer and bring them in! No brainer……but wait. How do all the other colors affect the human mind and that of ‘human decisions’? Sweet success, I discovered a new love: the marketing impact of colors in advertising bit me like a surprise scorpion in my sleeping bag!

Hedging Your Bets…..Why Color?

Studying color has led to many other discoveries. Color isn’t just color…….color is so much more when attached to the topic of wine chemistry. In an article in “Chemistry of Wine Flavor” (photo above), “Phenolic Composition as Related to Red Wine Flavor”, the authors expound on the dependency of phenolic composition for overall wine quality. Particularly how color associated compounds such as ‘anthocyanins’ (think cyan [blue]) combine with other compounds to build greater, fuller or rounder mouthfeel. The science isn’t simple but we can simplify some of the jargon to simply say, “Color isn’t just Color”. Color is mouthfeel, color is tied to aroma compounds and anti-oxidant values to protect the wine in the aging process. Color is anti-bacterial and so many other things so it’s hard to ‘pigeonhole’ color into just being a visual thing that is pretty or deep or a ‘hue’.

This blog is beginning with this topic as it is timely in the commercialization of wine and the consumer’s attention to wines color, specifically red wines, whereas there is an automatic connotation regarding depth of color to associate it with overall quality of the wine as a whole….and this is not altogether wrong or inaccurate, it is simply correct……and not so correct. The fact is, deep colored red wines have become a driver of consumer acceptability and therefore attractive to the commercial buyer.

So Why “Purple Happy”?

So the consumer tastes a wine that is ‘really, really’ tasty….and the color is deep and laden with oak character and the Somm’s rate it high and the buyer places it on the shelf and then……the average consumer can’t afford……say, “Booker” or Dauo from Paso or Far Niente, Phelps or Cardinale or any number of $100+ wines, the descriptors invariably describe something “dark”. Black cherry, roasted leather, boysenberries, black raspberries, etc. There is an overwhelming majority of these highly sought after wines that are simply ‘big’ and big means deep color and tannins and rich and ripe and concentrated.

Deep red and purple are colors that we tend to see most notably. Without getting into the hue variances of different red grape varieties (Merlot has more of a blue hue, Zinfandel more red), producers of last 10 years have begun to utilize what I would call “toolbox tricks” of using wine grape concentrates to align less expensive wines with their very expensive counterparts….at least in the ‘darker color’ department. In this effort, many have overdone a “good” thing with using so much of these color concentrates, that the wines produced with them can literally stain your glass and your teeth dark purple……unnaturally so.

“…producers of last 10 years have begun to utilize what I would call “toolbox tricks” of using wine grape concentrates to align less expensive wines with their very expensive counterparts….at least in the ‘darker color’ department.”

Purple is happy…purple is ripe…Purple is good

But there’s more to this. Let’s go back to the “good” of what color really is in a wine. This would be the same for the topic of oak character in $10/bottle wines. It is literally impossible to produce wines from high quality grapes, age the wine in new oak barrels and sell the wine for $10 or less a bottle. So how do we get to “Good” in this outline? Deep color in wines is an attractive attribute in which sommelier's and critics recognize as ‘good’ so long as it is ‘real’ color. The problem lies in this analysis that the color concentrates are ‘real’ grape concentrates from wine grape varieties that have very deep red or purple pigments to them. Historically, the varieties we used before these ‘color concentrates’ (and still today when not using concentrates in more expensive wines) are varieties like Petit Sirah or Petit Verdot or Alicante Bouchet or going even further back in time, Salavadore.

Purple, or dark colors have an impact on the human psyche as much as the visual color depth has an impact on overall quality of wines. Simply put, purple makes us happy. Purple is a happy color. Purple is a color of royalty and gives us a senses of pride and accomplishment. Purple and dark red hues are signs of strength as well as physical-chemical contributors to overall quality and, depending on the price of the wine or the consumer’s pocketbook, there are many ways to acquire color, and I would argue, ‘legitimately’.

Although a consumer is not going to find a lot of ‘tool box tricks’ in wines of $30-$50 or more but for the wines that you might find ‘delicious, ripe, jammy, concentrated’ or even having the ‘umami’ effect in the $10-$15 range, natural and pure grape concentrates can and will certainly enhance the quality of lower priced wines without falling into the category of ‘natural and artificial flavors’…….that, my friends, is another “Purple Happy”.

Nicholas Karavidas is owner and winemaker of Élever Vineyards & OneMaker Wines, Principal Consultant for Consulting Wine, Intl. and the Designer of Wine & Food Pairing tool “Flavor Shapes”. 2020 marks 40 vintages of wine production as a winemaker with the majority of his time designing and managing winery designs as well as vineyard and wine family business strategies. If you can’t find Nick analyzing wine, you will certainly find him analyzing his market, reading more on technical topics of wine & wine marketing, the impact of international trade on his craft and last but certainly not least, how to be a better father and husband to his wife Heather, his 6 children and 8 grandchildren.