Winetastings in 2011

Here is a summary of the wines tasted in 2011.
Loire Sauvignon blanc
Red Tail Ridge 2008 Dry Riesling
1994 Dehlinger Russian River Valley Syrah
Paradigm and Merus: A Celebration
2007 Paumanok Assemblage
2009 Petit Chenin
Alma Rosa 2007 Pinot Noir
2009 Laurent Kraft Vouvray
2007 Vietti Nebbiolo
Thermovinification and 1995 Chateau de Beaucastel
2009 Domaine Cheveau Macon Chaintre Le Clos
2010 Domaine Huet Clos du Bourg
Lopez de Heredia
Etienne Terlinden's Wines
Chateau Ksara 2008 Reserve Du Couvent
Kistler 2002 McCrea Vineyards
Desperately Seeking a Good Barbera
2001 Lopez de Heredia Gravonia --- A Taste of Viura
1995 Philip Togni Cabernet Sauvignon
Dunn Howell Mountain 1997
2009 Bernard Baudry Chinon

Celebrating Hajji Firuz Tepe---Evidence of Neolithic Wine!

Contemporary man can use a number of tools at his disposal to investigate where wine might have originated. The best indication currently points to Hajji Firuz Tepe (dating to 5400-5000 B.C.) located in the northern Zagros Mountains of Iran.¹
In Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture, published in 2003, Patrick McGovern credits the 1991 wine conference at the Robert Mondavi Winery as the impetus that lead to the discovery of evidence of Neolithic winemaking. McGovern decided to look in "his own backyard", the well-documented artifacts collected and housed at the University of Pennylsvania Museum for chemical evidence indicative of wine or winemaking.

Grapes contain tartaric acid. In fact, grapes, the baobab tree and the tamarind fruit are the only plants that contain tartaric acid, so tartaric acid can be used as a fingerprint or marker for the presence of grapes and it's products such as wine.³ Analyses of a yellow residue that came from sherds located in the University of Pennsylvania collection revealed the presence of tartaric acid as well as calcium tartrate. McGovern says that the presence of tartaric acid can be taken as a good indication that wine or a product of winemaking such as vinegar was stored in the jar.
As we enter another year in the 21^st Century, salute and cheers to our Neolithic Winemaking Heritage!
1. Ronald S. Jackson, Wine Science: Principles and Applications Third Edition 2008.
2. The chemical structure of tartaric acid was drawn by the freely available drawing program from ACD Labs called ACD/ChemSketch Freeware.
3. Patrick McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture.

2009 Bernard Baudry Chinon

I so wanted to like this wine because when I looked at the back label, it was imported by Louis Dressner. The color was a clear ruby, but the aromas were of funky barnyard bordering on...bandaids? Once past the nose, the wine was tasty, but getting past the nose was difficult to do. I couldn't finish the wine but left it in my glass and the smell emanating from my wine glass hung around the kitchen for a long time. Could this be the dreaded Brettanomyces, a yeast commonly called Brett for short? This was another one of the discussion topics in our UC Davis online forum and people had very strong opinions about Brett infection. Most agreed that Brett infection in the winery or winery equipment was not a good thing, but there wasn't the same kind of consensus when it came to Brett infection in the wine. Brett is a Janus faced yeast because it produces both 4-ethylphenol (4-EP) and 4-ethylguiacol (4-EG). ¹

The unsavory aromas come from 4-ethylphenol whereas, the more acceptable aromas of leather and spice come from 4-ethylguiacol. Nevertheless, where there is 4-EG, there will be 4-EP.³
This morning, I looked in the appendix of Alice Feiring's book Naked Wine and found that she had recommended it.
References:
1. Principles and Practices of Winemaking, pg. 365.
2. All structures were drawn by the freely available drawing program from ACD Labs called ACD/ChemSketch Freeware.
3. Jamie Goode's Blog, Wineanorak: Brettanomyces is an interesting read.

Dunn Howell Mountain 1997

Our generous friends invited us over for dinner on Christmas and the among the potent potable offerings that they served was a 1997 Dunn Howell Mountain. I had to taste this wine because of the recent buzz that I read about in the November issue of Wines and Vines called Wines Lunatic Heros written by Clark Smith about Randy Dunn using reverse osmosis. I was ready to cast aspersions on the wine but it proved to be very well balanced with leather and chocolate tones. It's not clear to me when Randy Dunn started using reverse osmosis for his wines, but I think that a wine should be tasted with the appropriate foods and then judged on those merits. I had their five year old daughter (whom I'm not so secretly training to be a sommelier, that is with parental approval) smell the aroma and she said definitively "peanuts". I got a whiff of reductive aromas but I think my nose is too keen on smelling any kind of sulfide notes. The wine opened up and the sulfide blew off, or my olfactory receptors tired as the evening progressed and the superbly crafted beef tenderloin was the appropriate foil for the Dunn Howell Mountain Cabernet sauvignon.

Holiday Stress Relief

If the holidays are stressing you, here is a great site for wine lovers:
Silly Tasting Notes Generator
Have a wonderful Holiday!

Wine into Words by James M. Gabler

Yesterday, having spent the entire morning in the pursuit of making homemade Christmas gifts for two five-year-old children who have everything, I decided to take a break to do some wine-related reading. Since all of our wine books are now collected on 3 book shelves spanning 13.5 linear feet of space, books 90% collected by my husband, I have no dearth of books that I could choose to read. My hand selected a book called Wine into Words written by James M. Gabler, the 1985 edition. My first thought was, a book on books of wine? As I got further into this book, I found it to be captivating and stopped at the books written by James L. Denman spanning the years 1862-1876. Denman was an Englishman who imported and loved Greek wines and wrote books on Wine and its adulterations and Wine and its counterfeits. Google books has another one of Denman's books on line:The Vine and its Fruit.
Further on in James Gabler's book is a synopsis of Thomas Jefferson's love of wine. Jefferson kept tasting notes as he traveled through France and Gabler writes: "His tasting notes from this trip are of value to contemporary wine drinkers for they constitute the first detailed modern account of wine in English and cover many of the wines still drunk today." As Jefferson travels through France, he categorizes Margaux, Latour, Lafite and Haut-Brion as "first quality", 68 years before the 1855 classification. Jefferson also chose Chateau d'Yquem as the best Sauterne.
James Gabler amassed information on 3200 books on wine in this 1985 edition of the book. The short synopsis of books makes for interesting reading. The book is arranged first with an alphabetical listing of authors, a chronological index of the books arranged in order of oldest publication, and lastly, the books arranged alphabetically by title. There is now a revised version published in 2004.

The Mysterious Life of Grape Buds

It wasn't until I took the UC Davis Introductory to Winemaking Course, that I learned that buds that develop into grapes are actually formed during the previous year. No matter how it was stated, I found this concept difficult to grasp. For example, the following description is given in Principles and Practices of Winemaking¹: Starting with a mature, leafless, dormant vine, the buds for this year's crop sprout in early spring already bearing cluster primordia generated the prevous summer.

Then I found an excellent diagram of the cycle in Ronald Jackson's² book: The concise statement that was the caption to this diagram is: Buds develop in the leaf axils in the spring and early summer.
This diagram and the short caption made all the difference in the world for me in understanding what it meant that the buds for this year's crop was formed last year. During the spring, at the same time when the buds are pushing and developing into shoots, the buds for next year's shoots (bud primordia) are being formed in the leaf axil, as shown in the diagram to the left. The weather conditions in the spring and summer are important not only for the developing shoot but also for next year's growth.

The diagram above of the bud primordia shows that contained in this bud are all of the parts needed for the shoot development in the following spring and summer. When the bud grows during the spring, it's almost as if it is telescoping all of the parts that have already preformed in the bud. The above diagram of the bud primordia and the diagram of the shoot is from the UC Davis Online Viticulture Course, VID257 given by Prof. Mike Anderson.
1. 12. Boulton, R.B., Singleton, V.L., Bisson, L. F., and Kunkee,R.E., “ Principles and Practices of Winemaking”, Chapman & Hall, New York, 1995.
Link to Amazon: Principles and Practices of Winemaking, Roger Boulton, et. al
2. Wine Science - Third Edition, Ronald Jackson

Sometimes a Stuck Fermentation....

One of the things I learned in the UC Davis online Wine Production course was about the dreaded stuck fermentation. It was one of the forum topics and generated a lot of discussion among my online colleagues. (This is one of the HUGE benefits of the online course, but then it depends on the participation level of your classmates.) The class notes summarized the most common causes of the stuck fermentation as arising from the following:
     Nutrient deficiency
     Temperature extreme
     Presence of a toxic substance
     Microbial incompatibility
     Deficient yeast strain
But, the reason why I'm blogging about this is because, sometimes, a stuck fermentation can actually lead to a good thing. In the June 30, 2004 issue of Wine Spectator (that I rescued from the trash bin), there is a short article on how to sell juice drawn off from a Zinfandel fermentation that ends up being "stuck". Since this drawn off juice has a slight pink tinge, you call it "White Zinfandel" and since it has a little residual sugar from the stuck fermentation, it is a little sweet. This sweetness appealed to wine drinkers in 1975 and you (Bob Trinchero) have created a new market for Sutter Home White Zinfandel. The photo shows Bob, Vera and Roger Trinchero. A book written by Kate Heyhoe and Stanley Hock about the Trinchero family came out in 2004 and it was called Harvesting the Dream; The Rags-to-Riches Tale of the Sutter Home Winery. I haven't read the book, but I'll admit to drinking a lot of White Zinfandel, in my days-of-wine-innocence.

1995 Philip Togni Cabernet Sauvignon

Recently, we had some friends over for dinner and opened the 1995 Philip Togni Cabernet sauvignon and had it with a slab of cowboy steak. My initial impression was that it was more leathery than fruity tasting and still full of tannins. It stood up to the steak and although it is now 16 years old, I felt that it could still be cellared.
Just before this dinner, I decided to organize all of the wine books that we have strewn around the house which makes it difficult to find anything when we need it. I have all the books in one location now and it is much better. During this cleaning, I happened upon some old Wine Spectators and decided that before throwing them away, I should read them. For example, the September 2003 issue had an article about Philip Togni and his wines. It's been an education and I think I need to make some room for these magazines, for it's value as a historical reference. My husband just shakes his head and calls me a pack rat.

Fermentation versus Respiration --- the Energy Generation Paradox

As an aspiring winemaker, I was surprised to learn that even in the presence of oxygen, the wine yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae prefers to use glucose to generate ATP via fermentation instead of respiration. This is a paradox because respiration leads to the generation of 680 kilocalories (kcal) of energy yielding between 36-38 molecules of ATP for each molecule of glucose whereas fermentation leads to only 56 kcal of energy and only a net 2 molecules of ATP.¹
If glucose levels are high, even if there is oxygen present, S. cerevisiae would rather ferment glucose than respire glucose. This is called the Crabtree effect or glucose inhibition. When glucose concentrations are high, it costs the yeasts more to synthesize the enzymes necessary for respiration than it does to just ferment glucose.² This is of benefit to the winemaker because the net result is the transformation of glucose to ethanol and carbon dioxide.

Approximately 94% of the glucose is converted into ethanol and carbon dioxide. The other byproduct of fermentation that we need to account for is the 56 kcal of energy that is produced by the fermentation of 1 mole of glucose (180 grams). Less than half of that energy (22 kcal) is stored as ATP for use by the yeast in other biochemical reactions, the rest (34 kcal) is lost as heat.³ The implication here is that for every reduction in Brix of 1^o there is a concommitant rise in temperature of 2.3 ^oF.

Since yeasts die at temperatures above 100 ^oF, it is important to take into account the generation of heat during fermentation.
1. VID252 Wine Production UC Davis Online Course
2. The Crabtree Effect: A Regulatory System in Yeast
3. VID251 Introduction to Winemaking UC Davis Online Course

Lagier Meredith - A Small Mountain Vineyard

When I began taking the online UC Davis course in 2009, the Introductory Course came with a packet of DVDs which featured Prof. Carole Meredith. Prof. Meredith's field is grape plant genetics and she is reknown for DNA typing Zinfandel and relating it to the Croatian grape, Crljanek Kastelanski (pronounced tsurl-yenak kas-tel-yanskee).
Just before signing up for the course, my husband and I decided that we needed to take a cross country trip from Connecticut to California and all stops in between. The DVDs came a few days before our estimated departure date so we were able to listen to the DVDs in the car and saw the video portion on our stays at various inns, motels, hotels, adobe homes and with relatives.
At the end of the DVD, Prof. Meredith says: If you're ever in California, come and visit us. So, in May, 2010, when we were out at UC Davis to attend a Small Vineyard Management course, we contacted Prof. Meredith and set up a time to visit her. Did I mention that her vineyard is located on the slope of Mt. Veeder? We had a midsized rental Hyundai and the poor little car, huffed and puffed all the way up to the vineyard. Once we were there, we were warmly greeted by Carole Meredith and Stephen Lagier. We sat on their porch looking at a magnificent view of Napa Valley, tasting their Syrah and making small talk. As small talk goes, we eventually discovered that Stephen Lagier's best friend in high school was a friend of ours and that our children was babysitter to his best friend's children and that at one time, I commuted to Yale with his best friend's wife. How is that for a small world.
We bought some of their Rosé of Syrah and their Syrah and it was delicious. This blog was prompted because in cleaning our home the other day, I came across a Jan-Feb 2003 Wine Spectator that said the following of the 2000 Lagier Meredith Syrah Mount Veeder:
(93, $50) The second release from this husband-and-wife team; it reveals vibrant mineral and blackberry notes and tannins that are typical of mountain-grown fruit.
To learn more about the winery and vineyard, click here: Lagier Meredith.

2001 Lopez de Heredia Gravonia --- a Taste of Viura

In Ronald Jackson's Third Edition (2008) of Wine Science - Principles and Applications, he writes on page 43: 'Viura' is the main white variety in Rioja. It produces few clusters, but they are of great size. In cool regions, it produces a fresh wine possessing a subtle floral aroma with aspects of lemon. After prolonged aging in wood, it develops a golden color and rich butterscotch or banana fragrance that characterizes the traditionally aged white wines of Rioja.
We drank this 2001 Lopez de Heredia Gravonia and it is truly an expression of aged Viura. I think this is a white wine that can be enjoyed in winter.
We really enjoy the Lopez de Heredia wines and recently retasted our 2002 Bosconia and found that it had closed up. We'll let the Bosconia rest and then taste it again.

Judgement of Paris by George M. Taber

After watching Bottle Shock, I was doing a quick search on the Internet and came upon a book written by George M. Taber, the Time reporter who was the only one covering the Paris winetasting in 1976. If ever there was a fly-on-the-wall, Taber was the chosen one. He wrote and published a book in 2005 called Judgement of Paris that gives the most factual accounting of the event, but more than that, Taber gives biographies of the major players such as Jim Barrett, Steve Spurrier, as well as those who never appear in the movie like Mike Grgich who made the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay and Warren Winiarski who made the winning red wine from Stag's Leap.
Taber's book predates the movie which was released in 2008. In the book, Taber provides a comprehensive background for the rise of California wines by going back to the start of quality winemaking in Napa Valley. He invokes people such as Agoston Haraszthy, Gustave Niebaum, Martin Ray, Andre Tchelistcheff, and J. Leland Stewart. A chapter is dedicated to the Mondavi family who played a seminal role in the production of quality wines. He also includes the impact of the UC Davis research done by Maynard Amerine and Albert J. Winkler. The chapter on the Judgement is comprised of the backgrounds of the judges as well as the wines that were included in the tasting. The actual ranking of the wines by the judges is provided at the end of the book.
Taber doesn't stop at the Judgement of Paris but rounds out the book by providing a recent look at other regions around the world that are now producing quality wines such as Australia's Penfolds Grange and New Zealand's Cloudy Bay. All in all, I enjoyed reading the account through the eyes of George Taber, fly-on-the-wall.