2009 Petit Chenin

We had this 2009 Petit Chenin at The Cheeky Monkey in Narragansett, Rhode Island and fell in love with the acidity balanced with the fruitiness and did a little research on Ken Forrester, the brand. The wine is from Stellenbosch, South Africa. That reminded me of the story that Prof. Carole Meredith recounted in the UC Davis Introduction to Winemaking, where in South Africa, they have to deal with herds of baboons instead of herds of deer. It also sounded like the baboons were more clever than deer because the older baboons would send the younger baboons to test the electrified fences and if there was no current, they would hop the fence, but if it was hot, only the younger, less savvy baboons would get zapped.
Anyway, I am digressing.
The Chenin blanc made us think about the possibility of growing Chenin blanc in our area. When we looked at the area vineyards, we learned that Charles Massoud of Paumanok Vineyards on the North Fork of Long Island was making high acclaimed Chenin blanc. We were excited about the possibility that we could also grow Chenin blanc in the Northeast.

2007 Paumanok Assemblage

The 2007 Paumanok Assemblage was a delicious expression of 69% Merlot, 22% Petit Verdot, and 9% Cabernet Franc. Only 575 cases were made of this vintage. The 2007 vintage on the North Fork of Long Island was one of their best years and wines from this year have been drinking very well.
Color: clear, dark purple
Aroma: cherries
Flavor: cherries
Mouthfeel: well-balanced with fruit and acids

Enotalk Online Forum

Eddy Naim has created Enotalk Forum
“Creating a community for enologists, winemakers, and wine professionals” a place where we can get together online and continue the great interaction that we developed while we were taking the UC Davis course.

Eddy and I are hoping this forum will fill the online gap and provide a place where we meet for problem solving, posting tips and sharing personal experiences, so that it can be a resource for people in the business.
Come and have a look and let’s keep in touch!
Cheers!
Eddy (Adib) Naim and Gayle Schulte

A Visit to Griswold Agricultural Experiment Station

On Thursday, June 16th, there was an open house at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station research farm in Griswold. My husband wanted to go and see it so we drove there for their 10-2 p.m. Open House. It did not disappoint. We met a lot of neat people (scientists) who do experiments on tomatoes, grape vines, American chestnut trees and peach trees. They were available to answer questions from the public. We were interested in the experiments that they were doing with grape vines.

We spoke with Francis Ferrandino, associate scientist in the experiment station's plant pathology and ecology department. Francis is trying to help the state's vintners target powdery mildew controls on wine grapevines by using up-to-the hour weather data. The Griswold experiment station has Chardonnay as well as hybrid grape vines. The severe weather in January, damaged the chardonnay grapes, but hybrids with genes of native American grapes survived and did well.

Visit to a Vineyard in Preston

Finished with the final so I needed to get out of the house! We took a drive to see a vineyard and winery in the making in Preston, CT. Steve was not around but he gave us his permission to poke around to look at how his vineyard and winery are coming along.
The vinifera were not quite in bloom.

Steve is also growing hybrids and we were surprised to see how different their growth habit is compared to the vinifera. Interestingly, the hybrids that are growing at the bottom of the hill are already in bloom while the vinifera located at the top of the hill are still buds.

Steve's winery is taking shape. It just reminds us of all of the things that need to be considered when building a winery, especially in light of the sanitation portion of the Quality Control and Analysis in Winemaking course I just finished.

Skunk---the Odor of Ethanethiol

This is the last week of Quality Control and Analysis in Winemaking, the UC Davis online course. For me, this is the last of the five courses so, just a few more days! Last night, Bryan Parker had a chat session and we asked questions regarding the final. One question that was brought up was about the smell of skunk in wine. Bryan said that skunky smell in wine can happen when a bottle is "light struck". He said that it can happen in beers quite often so the remedy for beer was use brown bottles to prevent the interaction of UV light with beer. Bryan also mentioned that during a sensory analysis of wine, if you want to create the skunky smell in wine, just take base wine and put a little of the skunky beer in green bottles into the wine. Skunky wine, no thank you.
However, just to underscore that I got the message, some time during the evening, when I was fast asleep, something penetrated my REM sleep. At first, I didn't understand what it was. Then it occurred to me that it was some kind of smell....ah yes, skunk! Ethanethiol.....CH₃CH₂---SH, just another smell of summer in the air.
January 17, 2012 Errata: In rereading my notes, it appears that the smell of skunk is due to ethanethiol and not methanethiol. I apologize for the confusion.

Paradigm and Merus: A Celebration

Five years really passes quickly, when they are not your own children, the twins. We've seen them grow from birth to now and have participated in some of their big milestones such as being baptized in Greece. So now they are five years old! It was a small celebration of the "big friends" since they already had a birthday celebration with their friends. Dad and Mom made smoked chicken and pork tenderloin, cold slaw, potato salad and to commemorate the occasion, they opened a bottle of 1999 Paradigm Cabernet Franc. The color was a clear deep garnet, the aroma, black cherries and the flavor was of cherries. The wine was well balanced. When we got to the 2002 Merus Cabernet sauvignon, we were already on dessert. One of us thought that it smelled of paint stripper and when the suggestion was made that perhaps it was fingernail polish remover, she concurred. We drank the slightly high alcohol rather extracted wine with cupcakes and can say, they did not pair well. Suffice it to say that the twin's fifth birthday was well commemorated by the adults in attendance.