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.

Spotted Wing Drosophila, Crop Insurance and Alice Wise

On November 29th, we took a short road trip to Cumberland, Rhode Island to attend a seminar hosted by the University of Rhode Island Cooperative Extension's Peggy Siligato. The owner of Phantom Farms generously provided the venue. The topics under discussion were the spotted wing drosophila (SWD), crop insurance and a talk given by Alice Wise from the Cornell Extension. Richard Coles spoke about the spotted wing drosophila. The female SWD has an ovipositor that is saw-like and can damage pristine fruit in the process of laying eggs. This penetration into the fruit allows other organisms such as fungi and bacteria to have an entry portal. The occurrence of SWD in our area coupled with the wet weather conditions during harvest may have lead to the high incidence of sour rot that was observed. SWD can tolerate extremely cold temperatures but succumbs to high temperatures. Richard Coles and his team are looking into ways of managing SWD.

We were mostly interested in meeting Alice Wise because our intention was to go to Long Island to meet her and talk with her, but we were surprised that the spotted wing drosophila talk and the crop insurance talk were also relevant to grape growing in our area. Alice's talk was on "Practical Considerations For Ecological Vineyard Management". Her newest experiments on Long Island compared conventional spraying protocols, low impact spraying and organic 1 (some conventional intervention) and organic 2 (totally organic) spraying programs. She also made references to the work done by Barbara Shinn who farms Shinn Estates using organic and biodynamic methods.
There were a lot of people at the talks and we saw Paul Nunes from Newport Vineyards and Steve Sawyer from Preston Ridge Vineyard.

Roots Run Deep

This morning, my husband and I were sitting down and doing more research for our as yet pie-in-the-sky vineyard and he came across a wine label that at first blush is really clever. The label called Educated Guess is from the Roots Run Deep Winery in Yountville, California. I have to confess that I know nothing about the winery. When I went over to my husband's computer to see the label, I said, "Oh, that's the flavylium cation of anthocyanin", and he concurred. I asked him to send the link to me and when I did a little more browsing of the site, there was more information on the label, including the following: For those of you who aren’t chemists and want to know more about what the 5 formula strings on the label mean, please download this PDF. So, I downloaded the PDF and found an error. For starters, sulfur dioxide, the explanatory PDF superscripted the 2, like this SO² instead of the correct chemical shorthand, SO₂. There are numerous other errors that appear on the label. How many do you see?

Here is the link to the explanatory PDF.

Partial Rootzone Drying

In the Viticulture course that I took, there was a very short discussion thread regarding partial rootzone drying (PRD). One of the things that was difficult to do was to go off topic because assignments were due on a weekly basis, so consequently the discussion on PRD languished and I was left in the dark.
Fast forward one year. In Jamie Goode's book, Science of Wine, I came across a chapter called "PRD and regulated deficit irrigation". In Goode's book, he credits the theory regarding PRD to research done in the late 1980s at the University of Lancaster, UK. Researchers there identified abscisic acid (ABA) as the plant hormone responsible for communicating the soil-water status from the roots to the shoots.
The way that ABA works is that it affects the status of the stomata, the small pores on the leaves that regulate photosynthesis as well as transpiration. During drought conditions, ABA synthesized in the roots send a signal to the shoots that causes the closing of the stomata to conserve water. They showed this by devising an experiment called the "split-pot system" where the root system of the plant was split into two pots and one side was watered and the other side experienced drought-like conditions.
Extensive practical research using the split-pot experiment was performed in Australia where water stress in the form of drought on part of the root system was found to cause the plants to switch from growing foliage to ripening fruit to ensure survival. Too much water stress leading to excessive drought-like conditions was also detrimental to the plant but just the right amount was shown to lead to the production of high quality fruit.
The split-pot experiment:

The above diagram was extracted from page 22 of 38 pages from Chapters 1-3 found on line and located here:Chapters 1-3.
The thesis project of Manfred Stoll published in October, 2000 can be found on line:Effects of partial rootzone drying on grapevine physiology and fruit quality.
This research was conducted by Brian Lovey, Jim Grant, and Manfred Stoll of CSIRO Division of Plant Industry, Peter Dry of the Department of Horticulture, Viticulture & Oenology, University of Adelaide, and Michael McCarthy of the South Australian Research and Development Institute, SA Viticulture Technical Conference, 1997.

Giving Thanks

Our friends had us over for a little pre-Thanksgiving celebration. They played hosts to a couple from California. We began with two champagnes provided by our hosts. Conversation flowed and issues such as brett and corked wines were discussed. One of the guests from California opined that he was in favor of screw caps even for red wines because there was more than one occasion where he opened a bottle of wine and it was corked.
As the evening progressed 9 of us consumed 11 bottles of "bottled poetry". Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Bottle Shock --- The Movie

Our friend was over last night just hanging out and relaxing and we decided to see the movie, "Bottle Shock", based on what is now referred to as "The Judgement of Paris", a wine competition that took place in 1976, during the U.S. Bicentennial. I recalled the discussion we had online in the Wine Quality UC Davis course that was initiated by Bob Hurlbett. The discussion centered around the scene where the Chateau Montelena chardonnay had turned brown in the bottle and Jim Barrett, disgusted with himself, was about to go back to the law firm he left.
In the movie, Jim's son Bo Barret and Sam, a winery intern, take a bottle of the brown chardonnay to UC Davis. An enology professor says that he's heard of but never seen an example of a white wine so painstakingly protected from O₂ exposure that it turned brown after bottling. He predicts, much to the delight of Bo and Sam, that the wine will lose the brown color and turn clear in a day or two.
Another classmate, Tom Nelson responded to Bob's discussion thread saying that Bo Barrett is an acquaintance of his and asked Bo what his take was on the '73 Chardonnay. The movie actually took liberties because in reality the wine had turned pink and not brown.
From Bo Barrett:
"Hi Tom
The 1973 Chard post bottling color change event was a phenol instability called pinking. It is very briefly described in Zoecklein et al "Wine Analysis and Production". I am certain I have seen better descriptions elsewhere, perhaps Peynaud. Mike Chelini has experienced several during his career at Stony Hill."
Bo Barrett
Master Winemaker
Chateau Montelena Winery
At the Top of the Napa Valley
"Always drink upstream from the herd"
Tom Nelson provided an excerpt from Zoecklein et al, "Wine Analysis and Production", 1995, page 141:
Development of a red blush in white wines, a reaction called pinking, is occasionally observed. Where there is an overall reduction in oxygen exposure, pinking is reported to be the result of rapid conversion of flavenes to the corresponding red flavylidium salts. With reference 7-10, one can see that flavenes are formed in an acidic medium by slow dehydration of corresponding leucoanthocyanins.
In the presence of oxygen, flavenes and leucoanthocyanins are converted to brown pigments. Under reducing conditions, however, accumulations of flavenes may occur. Subsequent rapid exposure of wine to air, such as may occur during transfer, filtration or bottling, converts flavenes to their red flavidium salts, which confer a pink blush to the wine".
Grady Wann, our instructor added:
Although the mechanism of the pinking reaction is not known, there is quite a bit of evidence that the reaction involves the oxidation of a phenolic compound(s). It is usually associated with white wines of certain susceptible varieties that are protected from oxygen during winemaking and then see some air at bottling. The color change can be transitory and is usually avoided when juices see oxidative treatment. (Apparently the phenolics with pinking potential are oxidized at the juice stage and drop harmlessly out of solution.) If the potential for pinking is identified, the wine can be treated with PVPP for stability. (PVPP can also be effective after the fact.) It is an uncommon problem, but does happen. See Andy Waterhouse' research note in AJEV 52: 156-158 (2001).

The Science of Wine by Jamie Goode

The Science of Wine, subtitled "From Vine to Glass" is written by Jamie Goode and published in 2005. The book is divided into 3 sections: "In the Vineyard", "In the Winery" and "Our Interaction with Wine". In each section, Jamie Goode presents relevant and current material of interest many of which are controversial, and provides scientific explanations. For example, in Section 1, Goode has a chapter on biodynamics with a handy chart of the preparations used in biodynamic farming:

Goode writes that the key to biodynamics is to consider the farm as a living system and the soil as an organism in its own right. Goode sites the work of Prof. John Reganold at Washington State University who compared conventional farms in New Zealand with biodynamic farms. It was published in Science in 1993 and was entitled Soil Quality and Financial Performance of Biodynamic and Conventional Farms in New Zealand. This study found that the biodynamic farms had significantly higher soil quality, with more organic matter and microbial activity.
This is just one of the topics that Jamie Goode covered in this book. I found others to be just as intriguing and in the coming days I hope to post other topics in this blog. Please stay tuned and come back!

Hand Held GC for Ethanol Testing

In the UC Davis Quality Control and Analysis for Winemaking class, I learned that there are several methods of measuring ethanol. There are combinations of distillation with hydrometry, pyncnometry, densitometry, or dichromate oxidation and titration, in addition to ebulliometry, near infrared, enzymatic, HPLC and GC methods. There was a table provided that listed the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods that I am reproducing here:

I was reading the newest edition (November-December 2011) of Vineyard and Winery Management and came across an ad for something called the Mini GC (gas chromatograph) for analyzing ethanol levels. The mini GC is about the size of a shoebox weighs about 3 pounds and comes with the Lab Navigator which can control, monitor and analyze the test results from the GC.
Has anyone tried this equipment?
More information can be found at this link:
Forston Lab's Mini GC/Lab Navigator

Please see the February 6, 2012 post for an Update on the Forston Mini GC.

Cold Tolerance and Grapevine Phenology

2011 has been a really challenging year for growing grapes in the Northeast. In June, Wines and Vines had the following article about Eastern Winegrowers Face Weird Weather. In October, after harvest, there was an unseasonably early snowfall that covered a good portion of Connecticut. I thought that I would review my notes to see how cold affects the different stages of a growing grape vine(grape vine phenology).
There are three times during the year when cold can have devastating and potentially irrecoverable damage to a growing grapevine and they are:
1) During spring deacclimation
The young grapevine growing in the spring is especially susceptible to conditions that are even a few degrees below freezing as they deacclimate from winter dormancy.

2) During fall cold hardy acclimation
During the late summer and fall, the grape vines are preparing to go into dormancy by producing a layer called the periderm. The periderm provides cold hardiness to the vine by filling the inner living cells with sugars, proteins and amino acids. These compounds are the vine's cryoprotectant which enables it to withstand the colder temperatures of winter. The cryoprotectants bind up the water making it less available to form ice which can result in bursting the living grape vine cells!
3) During winter freeze and thaw conditions
The occurrence of severe freeze events in the winter is another way grape vines can become prone to damage to the point that they may not be able to survive. Mid-winter fluctuations that occur when cold temperatures are interrupted by a period of unseasonably warm temperatures and then becomes cold again can also lead to grape vine damage.

A really informative online article on cold and the grape vine can be found here:
Understanding and Preventing Freeze Damage in Vineyards
~ Workshop Proceedings ~
December 5-6, 2007 University of Missouri-Columbia

Desperately Seeking a Good Barbera

When we went out to California to look at rootstocks and clones of grape varieties that we wanted to grow, we were advised that Barbera might be a good choice in our area. We don't know anyone growing Barbera in Connecticut, let alone the Southeastern New England AVA. I'm really not a fan of Barbera, possibly because of my limited experience with tasting it so we thought that we would do our homework and taste a range of Barberas.

We began with a 2006 Barbera D'Alba Scudetto (vineyard name) Mascarello (name of the family) Giuseppe e Figlio, a family owned winery that can trace back it's origin to 1881. This wine costs about $30.00 and was dark purple in color with a nose of cherries and a touch of leather. The flavor was a bit tannic and green so it could be that the wine needs to sit longer.

The second Barbera we tasted was a Ferdinando Principiano Laura 2009. We thought that Barberas in general benefit from being tasted with some kind of tomato-based food so we made a spaghetti. The color of the Principiano was a dark burgundy and somewhat cloudy. The flavor was fruit driven sour cherries.

At the same time that we drank the Principiano, we also tasted a 2008 Oddero. The Oddero was lighter in color and clear. This wine was not fruit driven and had enough tannins making it seem a bit more complex than the Principiano.

Lastly, we sampled a Conterno Fantino Vignota 2009 which tasted like a combination of the Principiano and the Oddero, with a nice balance of fruit and tannins. Interestingly, the Mascarello was the most expensive at $30.00. The Oddero, which we liked was $14.00 and the Principiano and the Conterno Fantino were $20.00.
We're still on the fence about planting Barbera in Connecticut and still desperately seeking a good Barbera.
Any suggestions?

A Visit to Preston Ridge Vineyard

Yesterday, my husband and I called Steve Sawyer and asked if we could visit him to ask questions regarding his new winery. Steve made time to see us on the spur of the moment. We arrived at his location around 4 p.m. just as his partner Mark was leaving for New Jersey. Steve gave us a tour around his new facilities. This is his first crush! I can just imagine how exciting it must be after all the years of work to design and create a new winery and vineyard. That's my husband on the left and Steve on the right.
Steve let us taste the juices fermenting in his winery, a very nice blush wine made from Baco noir and a Cabernet franc. His 2400 square foot winery that we saw when it was just under construction in June, was now filled with stainless steel tanks, wooden barrels, crusher destemmer, press, lab, and a bottling room.
As we talked, a beautiful sunset illuminated the sky, a gorgeous view from the deck of the tasting room. More information about Preston Ridge Vineyard can be found here:
Preston Ridge Vineyard

NEWS FLASH: Article on Eddy Naim's Chateau Qanafar

Hi All!
I received an email from Eddy Naim. He is doing very well. In a previous blog I gave a link to Eddy's Facebook Site.
Eddy was recently interviewed for The Daily Star. Read the article here:
Businessman trades board rooms for vineyards

More on Biodynamics --- Article by Glenn McGourty

In Katherine Cole's book, Voodoo Vintners, she writes about a study done by Glenn McGourty of UC Davis. This study was published in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture by Glenn McGourty and Washington State scientists Jennifer Reeve, L. Carpenter-Boggs and John Reginold. Here is a link to more information about biodynamic farming written by Glenn McGourty:
UC Cooperative Extension advisor researches biodynamic grape production.

Kistler 2002 McCrea Vineyards

We had this 9 year old wine and our first thought was that it was a bit oxidized. The color was more than buttery yellow and the note of sulfur on the nose was off putting. Once past the nose, the taste of the wine had an oaky bite and all in all was not to our liking. Is Kistler supposed to be this way or perhaps it is our uneducated palates?
We store all of our wines either in a temperature controlled EuroCave or in our basement. Could temperature flucturations have affected it's flavor? We were disappointed.

Once Upon Quoketaug by Rudy J. Favretti

Soon after we purchased the 42-acre property on Quoketaug Hill, my husband came upon a book written by Prof. Rudy J. Favretti called "Once Upon Quoketaug". We were beside ourselves with excitement because this book documented the lives of a Connecticut farm family from 1712-1960 beginning with the family patriarch, Eleazer Williams.
Rudy Favretti grew up taking piano lessons from Dee (Delia Williams), a descendant of Eleazer Williams in the 1930's. He also helped on the farm by carrying wood and became intimately familiar with the land and it's use. During Favretti's childhood, Grandpa Prentice who was born in 1866 told Favretti stories of his father who was born in 1820, spanning 150 years of information and stories about the property and it's people. A paragraph in the book goes as follows:
"Prentice Allen was an emotional man. Many is the time I (Favretti) saw tears flow into his eyes as he exclaimed how beautiful the day was or as he pointed out the scenery from the top of Quoketaug Hill."
We also know from pictures in the book that the part of this originally 500 acre farm that we currently own was called the West Pasture. The land is still as beautiful as related by Prentice Allen and we are reminded that we are just transitory caretakers of this remarkable property.

Voodoo Vintners by Katherine Cole

If I had read this book while I was taking the UC Davis Online Viticulture and Enology courses, I would have been a more informed contributor to our forum discussions when it came to biodynamics. Too bad for me, this well researched and eminently readable book on biodynamics was just published in 2011. It is clear that Katherine Cole goes out of her way to provide a balanced view on this topic. She begins her introduction with a detailed description of all of the preparations that are the underpinnings of biodynamic farming that makes scientists roll their eyes. Then in her first chapter, she tells a harrowing escape from Iran story, no connection? But there is, and this is where I paused to reflect that using the term "biodynamics" was perhaps merely semantics.
Katherine Cole also gives us an in depth look into the life of Rudolph Steiner putting him in the historical context of the late 19th century to the early 20th century, during the Industrial Revolution. His contemporaries were notables such as Einstein and Nikola Tesla.
She provides vignettes of farmers in Oregon using biodynamic preparations and farming and the passion they exhibit for keeping their soils healthy, believing that this is the key to growing the best grapes possible, which in turn yields the best possible wine.
What Alex Sokol Blosser is quoted as saying resonants with how I feel: "At the end of the day, it's all about farming for quality. If you farm for quality---whether you're organic, biodynamic, sustainable, or conventional---you're going to make great wine." This reminds me of what Alice Feiring learned in Naked Wine when she visited Jacques Néuport, he told Alice that there is no such thing as "natural wine" and that one cannot be married to a dogma, you need to do what the grapes want you to do. (I'm taking HUGE paraphrasing liberties here.)
If you want to untangle myth, voodoo and reality from biodynamics, reading Katherine Cole's "Voodoo Vinters" is a must.

Chateau Ksara 2008 Reserve Du Couvent

When I was in the Wine Stability course, I had a chance to try a Lebanese wine called Chateau Ksara. I emailed Eddy Naim in Lebanon, one of the "students" that I became friends with during online course. Eddy told me that "...Ksara is one of the two big wineries in Lebanon (Ksara produces over 2 million bottles / year), very commercial (as opposed to a niche or boutique winery focusing on quality). But they make excellent whites and their reds have become fairly good in the last few years!"
We liked this Ksara red, we thought the aroma was of sourplums and the taste was a little green but over all it was well-balanced and slightly tannic. All of this for $11.39 made it a good buy in our books.
You can also check out Eddy Naim and his winery, Chateau Qanafer at his Facebook site. Eddy was also kind enough to send me a photo of one of the Ksara vineyards.

Clearing "the land" 2005

We began calling our property on Quoketaug Hill, "the land". Really, we should have called it "the jungle", but while we worked on the land, our backyard was becoming the jungle, so it was clear to our friends where the land was.
Since we were still working during the day (and night) we began working on the land during the summer of 2005 when my husband's carefully researched and selected John Deere tractor, a 5325 with 66 horsepower arrived on the land in June, 2005. He was anxiously anticipating the delivery (I suppose it must conjure up memories of Christmas day before the realization of,well, you know), anyway, I wasn't there for some reason (summoned by my mother, known to my children as "executive grandma"), but he went ahead anyway and started using his new toy.
I also pitched in, clearing "the path" on foot with loppers. I became familiar with Celastrus orbiculata, Japanese bittersweet, Rosa multiflora, the invasive rose, and most of all with Toxicodendron radicans, poison ivy in all it's incarnations. That summer, whenever we went on a drive or anywhere, really, I would point and say to my husband "See that verdant and lush green growth on that tree, that's poison ivy".
Here are photos of the land after a pass of clearing the invasive Elaeagnus umbellata, Autumn olive that can grow into some marvelous tree-like specimens but once it gets a foothold will reproduce like crazy!
The view on the left with the Adirondak chairs is looking north. The north field was once an animal pasture and not too overgrown. On the right is the view just south of the Adirondak chairs, on the portion of the land that was left to cedar stands, mountain laurel, wild raspberries, and succession trees like maple, ash, chokecherries, oak and some tupelo.

Visit to Oesco in Conway, MA

On a rainy Friday, we visited Oesco, located in Conway, Massachusetts. My husband discovered that they are suppliers for orchard and vineyard equipment and we had to go and check it out.
I love driving in the Berkshires during the fall when the leaves are changing color, so it didn't take too long to convince me to go on a road trip. When we reached Oesco, it was a bit cloudy and a few rain drops were falling. We spoke with Russ, who was very knowledgeable about the type of equipment that my husband was interested in. Russ helped us with sizing a sprayer for a vineyard and a mower for trimming the ground cover in a vineyard. We also saw a Lancman juicer.
Here is a link to Oesco.

Naked Wine by Alice Feiring

I have to say, I read this book by Alice Feiring three times before I finally got it. On my first reading, I was focussed on the challenge issued by Jason Lett of Eyrie Vineyards in Oregon to Alice to make wine the "natural way"--the way that Alice was advocating regarding the wines that she would drink. The dare did not come to fruition with Jason Lett due to the death of his father, David in October, 2008, however, Kevin Hamel picks up the gauntlet thrown and entices Alice to make wine under his guidance. This is part of the story.
Another thread is Alice's search for Jules Chauvet and his disciple Jacques Néauport. In fact, the title of Alice's book comes from a statement made by Jules Chauvet that "Wine must be naked". I remember reading about Jules Chauvet in Kermit Lynch's book Adventures on the Wine Route and found a picture of him.

It's always helpful for me to see what the person looks like. Chauvet, his disciple Jacques Néauport and Marcel Lapierre are winemakers in Beaujolais and part of Alice's book is about her quest to understand the meaning of "natural" or "naked" wine. Alice travels to France and Spain in search for natural wines and their winemakers. In search for the answer to her quest, she also meets Néauport, the living link to Jules Chauvet who passed away in 1989.
Alice debates the use of lysozyme, reverse osmosis, sulfur, water and whether using them could be considered to yield a "natural wine". She also includes a discussion on the Old World/New World interpretation of "natural wine", put simplistically as "nothing added, nothing taken away."
I can't give away the end---you will need to read it yourself, but it left me a little disheartened.

Visit to Maugle Sierra

It was a cold and dreary day today with rain in the morning with a brief clearing in the early afternoon, so after doing our chores, we decided to take a short drive to Ledyard Center to visit Maugle Sierra. Maugle Sierra is known for the St. Croix grapes that they grow and according to their brochure, the vineyard was established in 2002.
The winery and vineyard is set in a buccolic location. The winery was very tastefully constructed and is an inviting place to spend an afternoon. When cooler weather arrives, drinking a glass of Maugle Sierra wine by the fireplace would be an enticing thing to do.

Geology of Quoketaug Hill

After purchasing our land, we did tests to determine if the land was suitable for grape growing. The soils in Connecticut tend to be acidic, with the exception of land located in the northwest corner of Connecticut, which is surprisingly alkaline.
This property is located on the southeast corner of Connecticut, very near the Rhode Island border. A soil test conducted in July, 2009 showed the pH of the field topsoil and subsoil to be 5.3 indicating that liming of the soil to raise the pH to a more neutral level is desirable. The soils on this property are designated as Paxton and Montauk derived from glacial till comprised of schist, gneiss, and granite and creates a sandy loam soil texture of 64.2% sand, 25.2% silt, and 10.6% clay. Although this composition allows for good drainage of rainwater, some tiling may be necessary due to a firm substratum that may restrict root growth.
We went to vineyard owners located near our property and asked if they had tiled their vineyards. Jonathan Edwards told us that he tiled his vineyard and that it was essential for water drainage so that the grape vine roots do not get "cold feet" in our climate which can often times be prone to periods of abundant rainfall.

Quoketaug Hill

The story of how we got our land is a good one. We started looking for a vineyard site in July, 2002. The first piece of property that we saw was on a hill in Old Mystic called Quoketaug Hill. We liked it immediately, but because it was the first place that we saw we needed to have some time to think about it. When we finally decided to buy the land, the Real Estate Agency that was selling it said that there was already a bid in for the land on that very day so just by a few moments, we missed our chance to buy what became in our minds, the perfect site.
Then, the odyssey began. Our real estate agent was a real trooper as we dragged him as far east to Little Compton, Rhode Island, north to Griswold, Connecticut and west to East Haddam, Connecticut almost every weekend for a span of 2 years. Then in November, 2004, my husband, who was trolling the real estate section every day came upon a piece of land for sale that sounded like the land on Quoketaug Hill. When our real estate agent looked into it, it was the same land! This time we were ready. We were able to put in a bid and closed on the land in March, 2005.

Our land is the cleared piece that is circled in the center of the photo.

Pétiller in Vouvray---My Unlearning

When I read Kermit Lynch's Adventures on the Wine Route, I came across the phenomenon common in Vouvrays called pétiller or the natural desire to sparkle.
In the chapter on the Loire, Lynch writes "A generous dose of sulfur dioxide will suppress this desire, but that is a bit like whipping a dog for wagging its tail."
Is it almost like brainwashing? We learned in yet another course, Wine Production, that fizzing in a still wine is an indication of post bottling fermentation and it is not a good thing. In order to avoid this post bottling fermentation, we need to ensure that any residual sugar would not be consumed by yeasts or bacteria present at bottling, by among other things, using sterile filtration with a filter with an absolute rating or by dosing with sulfur dioxide. Lynch writes, "For some reason, many tasters seem to be threatened by such a spirited display of energy, so most Vouvray producers resort to all sorts of technical shenanigans to keep their wine still."
This answered a question I had when we drank Laurent Kraft Vouvray and observed some fizzing.
There is so much to learn, even when (just) drinking wine!

Grape Pest in Connectict --- The Spotted Wing Drosophila

Since we are Master Gardeners and need to keep up our active member status, we went to the Hot Topics course in Vernon on Wednesday and the topic was about pests in Connecticut. Joan Allen gave the seminar and one of the pests that she mentioned that is creating a problem for Connecticut farmers is the Spotted Wing Drosophila. This is a new pest in Connecticut and Joan mentioned that we should be on the look out for it. I found a great picture of the male and female drosophila on this link from British Columbia:Spotted Wing Drosophila
The insect looks like this:

It wasn't until we went to help a friend pick their grapes that we realized that "farmers" also meant "grape growers". It seems that some of the vineyards in Connecticut are now infested with the Spotted Wing Drosophila. The problem is that the drosophila will burrow into the grape, eat the grape pulp and lay their eggs in the grape berry. The eggs then develop into maggots and the grape growers were seeing maggots in their harvested grapes.
Here is a link to more information about the Spotted Wing Drosophila in Connecticut.
Correction: My husband and I attended a seminar in Rhode Island where one of the topics was the Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD). The problem with the SWD is the sawlike ovipositor that the female uses to puncture intact grapes to lay the eggs. This puncture is the portal through which other organisms, bacteria and fungi enter to damage the fruit. Please see the following blog site for more updated information. Spotted Wing Drosophila, Crop Insurance and Alice Wise

Recapping the 2011 Growing Season in the Northeast

We haven't started growing our grapes yet, but we are becoming very conscious of the growing season in our area. Last year, 2010 was a terrific year for the Northeast with sun, sun, sun and it is reflected in the vintage.
The word for this year is not so good. In fact, David Paige of Shinn Estates on Long Island writes:
"Nature has been particularly angry this growing season. May and June were both very wet causing some interruption in the early growth and flowering of our vines. We were encouraged by a warm and dry month of July, but the rain returned with a vengence in August. Severe thunderstorms, lightning, a hurricane followed by a tropical storm and more rain throughout September have kept us on edge - yet somehow our grape harvest has not been decimated. The sugar content in the grapes is lower than average, but flavors are good. We won't be able to fully evaluate the quality of the harvest until after all the grapes are picked and fermented, but this will certainly not be a repeat of the great 2010 vintage of last year."
The situation for the Finger Lakes is similar, as reported in an article in the New York Cork Report.
This is how I will remember 2011, a year that was wet and challenging for winegrowers and winemakers. How will the challenges of the growing season be reflected in the wine? It will be interesting to taste the wines from 2011.

Adventures on the Wine Route

I've been hearing a lot about "natural wines" and have read some recent books about it but it was only when I read Kermit Lynch's book, "Adventures on the Wine Route" that I realized that "natural wine" is not a recent trend. Kermit Lynch began importing wine from France in the 1970's and this book is written about his interactions with certain winemakers in the various wine regions of France. I can tell when Mr. Lynch is enthused about a particular region because the chapters are long. It's interesting that Bordeaux is one of the shortest chapters and you guessed it, his Rhone chapter is divided into southern Rhone and northern Rhone. He is also a Loire aficionado. What popped out at me as I read his book (for a second time, as I usually do books I review) was that Mr. Lynch was already lamenting the fallout from wines that were being scored. One of the first things he comments on is that the proliferation of certain styles of wine in a region was because of the pairing of that wine with food, such as a Chablis with oysters. Scoring a wine or having a blind tasting was totally missing the point, in Mr. Lynch's opinion.
In the 1980's however, Mr. Lynch was dealing with the ramifications of wine scoring as he traveled the French countryside. He encountered the changing of the guard from the traditional winemakers to the new generation who brought in technology and changed the way the wine was made in many cases to chase after the high scores of the wine reviewers. The new generation using mechnical harvesters, stainless steel, and new oak treatments changed how wine was made and the proof was in the (lack of) flavor and aroma in these wines.
This is a good book to read if you have any interest in how Kermit Lynch selects his wines and who the major players were in the various French appellations that appealed to Mr. Lynch's palate.

Etienne Terlinden's Wines

We were able to do so many things when we were in California. After meeting Bob Hurlbett in Santa Barbara at the Boathouse, we went down the road a bit to a small town called Summerland where there was a tasting room featuring Etienne Terlinden's Wines. Bob is making wine with Etienne so he urged us to go there to do a tasting. The server was named Michelle and although she said that she had only been with Summerland Winery for a week, she was very knowledgeable about the wines. We liked the Pinot blanc and the Trio and bought those bottles to take home with us to Connecticut. I liked the Pinot blanc because it had some good acidity. The Trio was a well made blend of Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre.
Here is more info on Etienne .

Lopez de Heredia

Another thing that we scored when we were in California were Lopez de Heredia wines. I read about the wines in Alice Feiring's book The Battle for Wine and Love and wanted to try it because I knew from reading her book that this wouldn't be what Alice calls a "spoofolated" wine.
We found the current releases of the Lopez de Heredia wines, the 2002 Bosconia and the 2000 Tondonia. We came close to tasting a 2000 Tondonia at our friend's home, but the person who brought the wine, took it back with him. Now, we were face to face with the objects of our desire. We also bought the 1991 Tondonia Red Gran Reserva.
We had a chance to drink both the wines in California. We drank the 2002 Bosconia with vegan (my husband's sister is a vegan) eggplant parmesan in not quite wine glasses and the deliciousness of the wine refused to succumb to less than ideal glasses. There were fruit flavors balanced with acidity and because it was almost 9 years old, soft tannins. All this for around $30.00! We drank the 2000 Tondonia with Bob Hurlbett when we met him in Santa Barbara. We were at a seafood restaurant so perhaps the pairing wasn't as perfect as it could be with a Tempranillo. Overall, we preferred the Bosconia to the Tondonia (a bit more in price at $35.00, but it is 11 years old!).
If you can find this wine, try it, it will be worth it. If you need more convincing, please see the video of Gary Vaynerchuk interviewing Maria Jose, the current winemaker at Lopez de Heredia carrying on the tradition begun by her great grandfather in 1877!
Part 1 of interview with Maria Jose (about 30 minutes long)
Part 2 of interview with Maria Jose (about 15 minutes long)