Hurricane Irene and the Northeast Grape Growing Season

If this year hasn't already been a challenging year for grape growing, we are currently bracing for the impact of Hurricane Irene.
I've been mindful of the weather this year, superimposing the weather on the grape growing season. It was a cool spring that morphed into a foggy, cooler than normal summer. Our friends told us that veraison was at least two weeks later than last year, but rather normal for the Northeast. However, around the time of veraison, there was a tropical storm that came through Connecticut on August 15th bringing in it's wake 5-7 inches of rain. I could just see the grapes swelling and bloating with all that rain!
The newscasters are saying that the hurricane is losing some of it's integrity around the eye, but that it will still pack some serious winds and rain.

2009 Domaine Cheveau Macon Chaintre Le Clos

I never knew what "bracing acidity" was until I tasted this Domaine Cheveau Macon Chaintre. This chardonnay had a surprisingly aromatic nose of lemons, pears and peaches and had a lemon yellow color.

The aroma was inviting, the flavor was one of lemons and very high acidity. My juvenile palate was surprised, but tried not to rebel at this somewhat different (to me) approach to chardonnay. We drank it on our porch after a sweaty day of working on the land with no food. This wine will be a good complement to seafood.
My husband assures me that we have had Neal Rosenthal imported wines before but after reading "Reflections of a Wine Merchant", I am paying more attention to who imported the wine that I am drinking. Chaintre is one of four communes in Pouilly Fuisse and Le Clos is the vineyard that the grapes come from. This labeling is indicative of Neal Rosenthal's desire to have the wines that he imports be identified with the vineyard that produced the grapes.

To Inoculate or Not, that is the Question

My UC Davis Wine Production notes state that the first decision of the winemaker is to conduct the fermentation with vineyard flora (should it really be fauna?) or with commercial yeasts. This topic was one that we discussed at length in the Wine Production forum and I bring it up again because it seems that natural wine relies on "wild or indigenous yeast" to conduct the fermentation. The yeast strains that are resident on grapes in sufficient numbers to conduct fermentation are Pichia, Kloekera, Dekkara, Candida and Brettanomyces. These wild yeast are not very alcohol tolerant (4-6% ethanol) and are SO₂ sensitive, which is why winemakers use SO₂ very early on to kill the wild yeast.
When I was taking the course, I asked the question: typical levels of Saccharomyces found as berry microflora are on the order of 10^-2 (1 cell in 100mL) to 10^-3(1 cell in 1 L or 1 part per million). If the initial inoculum should contain 10⁵ to 10⁶ cells/mL, how does one attain that level of Saccharomyces in a newly constructed winery?
One of my classmates responded giving me an "Ahhhh...I got it moment" when he wrote: if the doubling time is 6 hours, then in 2 days there would be just 1280 cells, but in 5 days, or 20 doublings that number would increase to 5,242,880. Assuming there's enough nutrients and they are balanced.
There is a really good article written by Jordon P. Ross on Wild Yeast in Winemaking that discusses California wineries using wild or uninoculated fermenations.
We will be a small winery (< 1500 cases) so I'm thinking I'd like to try uninoculated fermentations. Things to consider: Saccharomyces usually undergo at most 40 doublings. If a winery has used commercial yeast, it takes at least 3 years to rid the winery (i.e. on the equipment, from the pomace, etc) of the commercial yeast.

Reflections of a Wine Merchant

In 2008, Neal Rosenthal wrote a book called "Reflections of a Wine Merchant", a wistful recollection of a firm believer of terroir and tradition about his entry into the wine business in 1977 through the 80's. Knowing wine in the 70's was a lesson in geography. Wines were not labeled by their varietal but by the piece of land that they grew on and it was up to the consumer to understand what that meant. Rosenthal was in search of wines that reflected not only the soil, climate and grape type but the undefinable, the magic that occurs to grapes during elevage, "the time between fermentation and bottling, that man's hand and mind can interfere."
There are fifteen chapters in this book and each chapter takes a look at a particular incident in Rosenthal's search for wines that would comprise his portfolio. His early chapters reveal a youthful Rosenthal learning how to discern a good wine by trusting in his palate. As the book progresses, Rosenthal's recollection becomes more complex, a bit more philosophical, much like how a good wine ages. By turns humorous, nostalgic, tragic and inspiring, Rosenthal's book transported me to the places he visited and I wished that it was me sitting at the table and having dinner with the winemaker's family and tasting the wines he drank.

Update on Test Vineyard

Sweat equity only goes so far. The progress on the test vineyard is slow but steady. The trenches have been filled and the weeds have taken over, but the gash where the tile was laid is still apparent. Check out what it looked like this winter.
We hired a rock splitter to make smaller boulders from several 40,000 pound boulders so that they too can be buried in the fall. From what we can tell, during the winter, these buried boulders erupt in the spring to give a bumper crop of baseball sized rocks.
We'll visit some nurseries this fall to get an idea of what they have in stock. This is not what is recommended by UC Davis, but we'll be sure to see if they have the rootstock and scion we are interested in growing.

Thermovinification and 1995 Chateau de Beaucastel

I'm rereading my Wine Production notes and came to the section on Thermovinification. In our class, we didn't discuss thermovinification so it was one of those topics that kind of fell by the wayside.
Linda Bisson defines thermovinication as: The holding of the must or intact berries at a high temperature for a short period of time, followed by rapid cooling. The process is not as rapid as thermoflash maceration, nor does it lead to the same amount of cell damage. Whole berries may be treated rather than must. In this case the surface of the berry reaches a high temperature, but the pulp does not. This provides the heat treatment exclusively to the skin cells rather than to the entire must.
The consequences of thermovinification sound beneficial:
Heat denaturation of enzymes (PPO)
Increases color extraction
Increases stability of "purple dimer"
Alters microbial flora
Easier to press leading to higher yield
Characteristic flavor changes
Fruit characters intense but less complex
Increase vegginess (may be too intense once fruit disappears)
Hydrolyze terpene glycosides to free terpenes
Aging/Chemical reactions occur
This lead me to Google wines made by thermovinification and I came across an article in Wines & Vines written by Tim Patterson in December 2010 called Thermovinification Heats Up. What surprised and kind of shocked me is that in this article, Tim Patterson writes that Chateau de Beaucastel uses thermovinification to control their brettanomyces problem. It was kind of a timely article for me to read because we had some friends over for dinner and had the 1995 Chateau de Beaucastel. I asked my friend who is a grape grower and a tasting judge if he could smell any brett on the wine and he said "no". I also did not smell brett and wondered if my memory of the Quality Control class was faulty. In Quality Control, one of the wines that was said to have brett was Chateau de Beaucastel. After reading the article on thermovinification, I'm wondering when Chateau de Beaucastel began their heat treatments.

Dr. Richard Smart and his view of Conventional, Organic and Biodynamic Viticulture

The June 2011 issue of "The Drinks Business" featured an article written by Lucy Shaw which had the title Dr. Richard Smart Slams Organics. Lucy Shaw's article is a very short summary of statements that Dr. Smart made at a Conference in Barcelona, the topic was Wineries for Climate Protection. I'm not sure if Lucy Shaw meant to have an eye catching title to lure the reader and the first line certainly did not stop me from plunging into the entire article head first.
The article quotes Dr. Smart as saying: “When people buy food they don’t mind choosing products that have been grown on land treated with chemicals, so why should they care about how a wine has been treated?” Smart spoke passionately about the need for winemakers to wake up to the fact that CO₂ is a pollutant. “Oenologists are environmental vandals of the worst type. CO₂ is the greatest pollutant and winemakers are releasing it back into the atmosphere, undoing all the good work in the vineyard."
I've been reading Dr. Smart's articles in Practical Winery & Vineyard and somehow, what he was quoted as saying just didn't add up. I wondered if he was trying to be intentionally provocative. The current (Summer 2011) PW&V has an article written by Dr. Smart entitled "In Defense of Conventional Viticulture". I wondered if conventional viticulture does need defending. As a wine drinker, I am first concerned with wine flavor, I understand that in order to grow grapes much care must be taken in the vineyard to get a crop, whether by conventional or alternative farming methods. But, as a grape grower, I will try my best to grow grapes without resorting to herbicides and pesticides because I know that they are harmful to the environment and the long term sustainability of the land.

2007 Vietti Nebbiolo

We had this Nebbiolo made by Vietti with Vietnamese bahn mi sandwich. The color was clear garnet and the aroma was of black cherries. The flavor was spicy and went well with the spicy sandwich. I thought that it had an aftertaste of black tea and I liked the lingering note. The mouthfeel was well balanced. We have been enjoying the wines made by Vietti. We have also had their 2009 Roero Arneis and their 2008 Barbera d'Asti. The Barbera d'Asti had a little barnyard aroma and the flavor was a little vegetal. The Nebbiolo is a good value at under $20.00
The Vietti Winery Website is located here: Vietti Winery