My philosophy regarding sorting really depends on the varietal. With a varietal like Zinfandel, where you get both raisins and green grapes on the same cluster, I actually think better balance is achieved by not doing berry-sorting. Obviously, clusters that are too green will be tossed before I pitch them into the destemmer.
I know it is very vogue right now for wineries to be doing some sort of sorting– often having one sorting table for clusters and then another for individual berries after destemming. Though I certainly see the value of this in a place like Bordeaux or Burgundy where rot is a common problem, I am less convinced of its usefulness in California.
First, in any number of experiments done wines with up to 10% mog (materials other than grapes) in the fermenter have shown no difference from wines that have been pristinely sorted.
Second, and to play devil’s advocate, if the fundamental desire in winemaking is to make wines that speak of place, why does sorting out anything other than perfect berries enforce that? Wouldn’t a true expression of a vineyard actually be ALL the berries from a vineyard in a given year? For uniformly ripening varietals such as C.S. it would seem even less necessary.
Now, I realize that is an extreme stance to take and sometimes the necessity of making good wine requires the removal of “bad” or “green” looking fruit. Yet, if you are really making excellent wines from excellent sites, most of the work should have been done in the vineyard, and a truly excellent site would not need it.
Just a thought.