Do you feel this is hypocrisy or not?

[Eric Ifune]

That said, "slate" ... er, I've never really considered the schistous and granite-laden soil and protrusions of the Douro as "slate" before to be honest

Slate is sedimentary rock. Schist and granite are volcanic in origin. Very different things. Slate is famous above the Mosel River.

[Roy Hersh]

I also look at slate as sedimentary rock, but horizontally inclined. In the Douro the schist is vertically inclined, which is why I never viewed it as slate. But thanks for that geological clarification, Eric.

[Peter W. Meek]

ON

Any rock can be folded or tilted into near vertical positions. It can even be tilted past vertical to end up upside down (so the layers look to be in reverse order). Sedimentary rocks are generally more plastic, so it is easier for them to be folded, but metamorphic and even igneous rocks can be folded and/or tilted, especially if they are horizontally compressed while they are hot enough to be slightly plastic.

Also, sedimentary layers can be folded before they lithify (turn to rock).

Shale and slate (at one time the terms were almost interchangeable) are very similar rocks. Shale is sedimentary and slate is metamorphic, although the spectrum is almost continuous and the intermediate forms are hard to classify.

Schist is a metamorphic rock, usually formed from slates, shales and other laminar or foliate rocks mixed with other kinds of rock (sedimentary, metamorphic and/or igneous). These original rocks are changed (metamorphic essentially means changed) by heat and mechanical pressure into something else. It generally retains the foliate nature (it's easily split into thin layers) of the original laminar rocks.

Because schists (and slates/shales) are easily split into thin, fragile layers, they often end up as the basis for soils, where rocks like granite (igneous - formed from cooling magma) are generally harder to break into tiny grains (although glaciers and rivers can do the job) such soils are less common.

The study of soils is really in two main parts: how they got that way; and what kind of landscape / what kind of growing medium they form once they have been created.

OFF

(Mostly paraphrased from a quick browse through Wikipedia.)

[Jeff G.]

So, someone tell me what Slate tastes like when I see it in tasting notes.

[Derek T.]

So, someone tell me what Slate tastes like when I see it in tasting notes.

Go find a slate roof and lick it to find out

[Derek T.]

Any rock can be folded or tilted

Peter,

You got in before I could reach for my geology book

If you find big expanses of un-cultivated schist in the Douro you often see layers of quartz. These were causes by high pressure magma forcing its way in between the layers of sedimentary rock prior to or as part of the same geological process that caused the whole mass to become metamorphic.

And, just to clarify for Roy's benefit, all sedimentary rock was, at one time, horizontal

Derek

[Jeff G.]

So, someone tell me what Slate tastes like when I see it in tasting notes.

Go find a slate roof and lick it to find out

is that the dust that accumulates ont he slate though or the actual slate itself? =)

[Eric Menchen]

So, someone tell me what Slate tastes like when I see it in tasting notes.

Go find a slate roof and lick it to find out

is that the dust that accumulates ont he slate though or the actual slate itself? =)

Depends on where the roof is. I don't think much dust accumulates on slate roofs in the UK.

[Jeff G.]

[quote="Derek T."
is that the dust that accumulates ont he slate though or the actual slate itself? =)

Depends on where the roof is. I don't think much dust accumulates on slate roofs in the UK.

but then you get industrial smog that washes down on the roof,

so would the taste then be of the smog deposits?

[Peter W. Meek]

So, someone tell me what Slate tastes like when I see it in tasting notes.

As others have pointed out, the taste is not what slate tastes like, but what wine made from grapes grown in slaty soil tastes like. You just have to taste enough wines that are known to derive from slaty soils, and that others have described as slaty, and compare to the taste of wines that are similar in type, but known to have derived from non-slaty soils. The taste that one group of wines has, but is lacking in the others, would be 'slate'. Like I say, you would have to taste a lot of wines while keeping that exploration in mind.

Frankly, I suspect that most people who describe wines as 'slaty' may be experiencing a mild form of synesthesia: where a sensation of one kind evokes a sensation of another kind, such as sounds appearing, to an individual, as having a color. (True synesthesia is involuntary, so I suspect that describing a taste as slaty - perhaps dry, gray, evenly textured - is probably not true synesthesia.) Sort of: "This taste reminds me of how slate looks or feels."

(Getting a bit off-topic here.)

[Roy Hersh]

Talk about thread drift.

[Peter W. Meek]

Talk about thread drift.

So, what was the original question? (Just kidding.)

Of course it's hypocrisy. Normal, business-driven, me-first hypocrisy. "I want the benefit of making my product look like some other well-known product, but I don't want other people to take advantage any name-recognition my own products have."

Why shouldn't producers want something like this? And if they can get their government to make it legal by "grandfathering", why not take advantage?

The answer, of course, is that writing protectionist laws, or doing things because "we've always done it that way" is not how ethical people do things. There's an old phrase that describes it perfectly: "It depends on whose ox is being gored." (I sometimes hate the internet. It is now several hours later; I have joined and made several posts on a couple of new forums. All because I wanted to see just how perfectly that phrase describes the situation.)

[Roy Hersh]

I'd say the answer to that,is Al.

[Andrew E]

Joining this one late.

I'd say it's partial hypocrisy. When a non-Portuguese maker puts "port" on their bottle they're not putting a "Made in Portugal" label on it as well.

Portugal might have their regional characteristics locked down because no one can steal the local soil and weather from them, but of course anyone can steal a method. It's obviously too late to change any trademark laws, but how can anyone tell me it's not port style, or champagne style, when it's obvious those characteristics are what the maker was aiming at by actually copying the methods.

Let's say there was a time everyone made wine without laws governing them, but everyone referred to the beverage as wine. You're telling me the second someone could trademark the name "wine" and then everyone afterward would just have to call their products "fermented grape juice" even though they were using the same methods to create similar beverages just from different locations?

A style is only as exclusive as much as the original maker can keep the method a secret. The one thing they can't steal, as I mentioned above, is what really makes the distinction.

Also, it's non-Portuguese wine that got me into real port as it is, so it's not a total loss.

This is all just talk by me, though, as the laws aren't going to be changing anytime soon.

[Glenn E.]

Let's say there was a time everyone made wine without laws governing them, but everyone referred to the beverage as wine. You're telling me the second someone could trademark the name "wine" and then everyone afterward would just have to call their products "fermented grape juice" even though they were using the same methods to create similar beverages just from different locations?

But that's not the same thing.

In this case, everyone made wine knowing full well that they were misusing a protected name. (As in all cases with law, ignorance of the law is not a legal excuse.) Now the owners of the registered name finally have the resources and momentum to enforce the issue but the people who have been misusing the name all along are whining that they don't know what else to call their product.

Well... tough.

Here's a solution - call it "fake Port." Or maybe "imitation Port." What, those won't have the desired marketing effect? Then clearly you are deliberately misleading your customers.

[Andrew E]

Let's say there was a time everyone made wine without laws governing them, but everyone referred to the beverage as wine. You're telling me the second someone could trademark the name "wine" and then everyone afterward would just have to call their products "fermented grape juice" even though they were using the same methods to create similar beverages just from different locations?

But that's not the same thing.

In this case, everyone made wine knowing full well that they were misusing a protected name. (As in all cases with law, ignorance of the law is not a legal excuse.) Now the owners of the registered name finally have the resources and momentum to enforce the issue but the people who have been misusing the name all along are whining that they don't know what else to call their product.

Well... tough.

Here's a solution - call it "fake Port." Or maybe "imitation Port." What, those won't have the desired marketing effect? Then clearly you are deliberately misleading your customers.

I get that the laws are in place, so I can't really argue against the law, and because of the laws, it is misrepresentation to simply put "port" in their titles and not somehting like "port style". I'm not really arguing that point because it's stealing based on the laws. I'm just saying that port wine is a method to me, granted the Portuguese make the best of it. Anyone that gets into ports is immediately going to see the selection from Portugal is outstanding, and the cheapest imitations aren't going to be stealing any relevant business from the real port trade.

The reason Portuguese Port wine is good is because of the elements that can't be copied; the land, the region, and the attention to quality. The same goes for any other wine type that gets copied, and people who are willing to go for the good stuff, will certainly reach for a port wine from Portugal.

[Derek T.]

But that's not the same thing.

+1 - about everything in Andrew's post.

The question is not: "is it hypocritical to make fake port?"

The question is: "if you make fake port in Napa, is it hypocritical to seek to prevent other regions from making fake Napa?"

The answer to the second question doesn't really take much thinking about.

[Andrew E]

But that's not the same thing.

+1 - about everything in Andrew's post.

The question is not: "is it hypocritical to make fake port?"

The question is: "if you make fake port in Napa, is it hypocritical to seek to prevent other regions from making fake Napa?"

The answer to the second question doesn't really take much thinking about.

And that's why I say partly hypocritical because they aren't preventing any similar methods to produce a style of wine, they're literally stealing just the region name with nothing relevant to the region itself.

[Glenn E.]

And that's why I say partly hypocritical because they aren't preventing any similar methods to produce a style of wine, they're literally stealing just the region name with nothing relevant to the region itself.

Well, that's where we differ.

To me, Port is no more a "style of wine" than Napa Cabernet. Port is a specific thing that comes from Portugal. Anything else that uses the word is simply trying to make you think it is something that it isn't. The only reason that people think Port is a style of wine is because the term has been abused for so long.

So to me, it's exactly the same as what Napa is now trying to prevent regarding the use of Napa on non-Napa labels.

To Derek's point - yes, to me it is hypocritcal for them to even make fake Port. Blurring the definition of Port is part of their hypocrisy.

[Derek T.]

they're literally stealing just the region name with nothing relevant to the region itself.

Form what I have read, that just isn't true. There are "port style wines" produced in other regions, I assume including Napa, that use Portuguese grape varieties and follow a similar production method in order to achieve as close to the real thing as is possible without growing the grapes in the correct region. The imitation of the style and stealing of the name is just plain wrong. The desire to prevent others doing the same to Napa wine is hypocritical. The two issues are mutually exclusive.