1989 Chateau Palmer and 1994 Ridge Montebello

We had our friends over for dinner. This dinner was our thanks to Barry for all the work that he is contributing to the land preparation. Barry is a meat and potatoes kind of guy, so in his honor, we thought that we would prepare steak and baked potatoes and serve it with two wines, a 1989 Chateau Palmer and a 1994 Ridge Montebello.

My husband usually brings the wine up from his cellar a day prior to when we will be serving it so that the chill can come off of the wine. This evening, we decided to decant both wines about an hour before the arrival of our guests. My husband had difficulty pulling out the cork. When he did, I had a taste of the Chateau Palmer and to me, it had some notes of volatile acidity (VA) and I was a bit worried. By the time we served the wines, however, whatever I had initially discerned from the aroma had blown off and the wine tasted wonderful. I found information regarding the blend on Chris Kissack's blogpost about Chateau Palmer. The 1989 is comprised of Cabernet Sauvignon 52%, Merlot 41%, Petit Verdot 6% and Cabernet Franc just 1%.

The other wine that we had with dinner was a 1994 Ridge Montebello. The label on the Montebello is very informative. This wine is Cabernet Sauvignon 73%, Merlot 15%, Petit Verdot 9%, and Cabernet Franc 3%. Also on the label is a description of the vintage. Since we did a side-by-side tasting, we could discern the differences in the flavor of the Chateau Palmer and the Montebello. Both wines were still drinking very well and could still stand to be cellared.
To learn more about Chateau Palmer, visit this comprehensive and informative blogpost written by Chris Kissack: Chateau Palmer.

A Name Confusion: Our Introduction to Auxerrois

Nowadays, we've taken it for granted that we will be growing Auxerrois, but there was a time when we knew nothing about the variety and in fact confused it with a grape from the town in Burgundy called Auxerre. At the time this confusion occurred, I was reading a guide to Burgundy and Auxerre is one of the communes located in the northern region of Burgundy. I was with a friend at a wine bar when I saw a tasting of Auxerrois on the menu and decided that I must try it, though I normally default to Sauvignon Blanc. Unbeknownst to me, the person who gave me a taste was James Morrison, who I had met recently, but my mind had not processed the connection. I liked the taste that James gave me and decided to have a glass. I mentally remarked that it was a nice healthy pour and enjoyed the drink and the company of my friend. I then went home to tell my husband of my new found great white wine called Auxerrois and he asked me what it was I drank. Well, I didn't really know except that it was Auxerrois. My husband was curious enough that he went to our nearby package store (this is the New England term for liquor store) and met James Morrison who told my husband how he served me a glass of Auxerrois last night. Mystery solved. The maker was Clos des Rochers and we have since enjoyed many bottles of Clos des Rochers, enough so that we will be planting Auxerrois in the spring.
In the newly released book, Wine Grapes (to be reviewed in a separate blogpost) compiled by Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding and José Vouillamoz, there is an entry on Auxerrois. Auxerrois is a natural offspring of Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc which makes it a sibling of Chardonnay, Gamay Noir, as well as Aligoté.

A Trio of Liquid Libations with Lasagne

Our son and daughter-in-law were passing through on Saturday on their way to spend Christmas in New Hampshire. We thought it was a good time to gather up our friends from afar and spend the evening by eating, drinking and making merry.

We had the drinking part covered with a Ravines 2010 Dry Riesling from the Finger Lakes with the appetizers and three different red wines all vintage 2010 with the lasagne.
The first in the lineup was a Pleiades made by Sean Thackrey of Bolinas, California. This Pleiades bottled in June, 2010 is a blend of Sangiovese, Viognier, Mourvèdre, Syrah, and Petite Sirah and as claimed on the label was fragrant and voluptuous. The next in the lineup was a Nebbiolo from Elio Sandri from the Langhe in Piedmont, Italy. The last in the trio was a Valpolicella from Brigaldara. I learned that this Valpolicella is made from the following grapes: Corvina 40% Corvinone 20% Rondinella, and Molinara e Sangiovese 40%. We've had the 2008 Elio Sandri Nebbiolo and the Valpolicello and we knew what to expect, but it was very interesting to be able to get our hands on a Pleiades and do the comparative tasting. All the wines paired well with the lasagne, it just depended on how much fruit/acidity ratio appealed to the individual's palette. I would say in order of most fruit to least it would be Pleiades>Valpolicella>Nebbiolo.

Tiling the Field

Work commenced on tiling the field this week. I went to the land yesterday to bring some lunch to the hardworking crew.

                               From the left: Barry, Bill, Gary and Jeff

Tiling the field is a tedious job. First, Jeff digs the trench and puts the topsoil on one side of the trench, the subsoil on another side of the trench and the excess is given to Bill to transport to another location. Then, the bottom of the trench is tamped and smoothed with the excavator bucket. Next, Bill and Gary transports gravel to the trench and Jeff "heels" (translation for me: using the bottom of the bucket) the gravel to make it flat in preparation for putting in the tile. Barry puts the tile pipe into the trench bit by bit and then about a foot more of the gravel is put on to the pipe and then this gravel is evened out. Barry lays the filter fabric on the gravel. My husband who was there had did to say about Barry's work: "Barry was the guy in charge of the most physically draining(pun intended) work of the day. He was shoveling stone, rolling and placing pipe(250 ft rolls), measuring depth of pipe & stone placement, and laying fabric."
Wait, we're not done yet. Then Jeff comes back to put on the subsoil, tamps this down and then puts on the topsoil and then tamps this down so that the field looks undisturbed once more.

Way back in June I located a video of How to Put Drain Tile in the Field created by Hans Walter-Peterson of the Cornell University Cooperative Extension, we now have our own videos for posterity.

Film: A Year in Burgundy

We bought the pre-release DVD called A Year In Burgundy as a Christmas gift to ourselves and watched it last week on a rainy day. For me, it was a transportive film with Martine Saunier, the French wine importer as guide taking us into the hidden Burgundy. Along the way, the film showed us an indepth look at three generations of winemakers, the Morey-Coffinets. In another segment, Christophe Perrot-Mino, owner of a high tech looking winery wears a wet suit to go into his fermentation, whole-body pigeage noting that he can tell by the resistance of the grapes how the wine will evolve. And then there is the vignette with Lalou Bize-Leroy. Lalou Bize-Leroy is an inspiration, as she fastidiously picks out every flawed grape berry from the sorting table before it goes into fermentation. She also climbs a ladder to see her fermentation, and she is in her eighties!
If you are so inclined, here is where you can learn more about the movie:
A Year in Burgundy.

Liming Our Field

Mother Nature gave us a gift last week of warmer than usual December temperatures, just in time for us to get the crew, Bill, from Fieldworks to come and spread lime on our land.

Because our soils are on the acidic side at around pH 5.5, we need dolomitic lime to bring our pH up to a more neutral level. My husband said that Bill was able to spread about 8 tons of lime in approximately 20 minutes on 4.5 acres.
The next thing we needed was to amend our soils with the micronutrients that were lacking in the field that include potassium, zinc, sulfur and boron. Dave and Brian from Crop Protection Services arrived to do that task.

Last, but not least, Bill drove his disc harrower on Colonel Ledyard Highway to get to our land to disc in the soil amendments.

We owe a debt and gratitude to all the hardworking people who are helping us with preparing our land. Thanks guys!

2000 Malartic-Lagravière Red

We chose this bottle of wine to drink with a dinner of steak tenderloin that we recently received from our good friend as a Christmas gift. It was divine. It is currently 12 years old. We knew that the 2000 vintage, the millennial was a good one. I found some documentation on the Malartic-Lagravière Website that provided me with more information about this specific wine. I found the 2000 Malartic-Lagravière Red 2000 to be everything that this wine's profile promised: Dark, deep ruby red with hints of coppery brown. The nose is intense and complex with mellow aromas of blackcurrants and plums followed by tobacco, and undergrowth. Fine minerality.
It is a blend of 50% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Cabernet Franc. What's more, it is still available for purchase. I saw prices between $30-$40 on the Internet so in my book, this is one of the best buys.

The Art and Science of Wine by James Halliday and Hugh Johnson

I am currently reading this book called The Art and Science of Wine written by James Halliday and Hugh Johnson published in 2007. The book is divided into three sections:
          1. In the Vineyard
          2. In the Winery
          3. In the Bottle
I knew that one of the countries that was phylloxera-free was Chile, but this book also mentions that the entire island of Cyprus, part of Hungary, sandy seaside vineyard at Colares in Portugal and the Midi are also phylloxera-free.
The beauty of this book is that it provides generalized diagrams of the processes as well as equipment required in the making of either a white or red wine or champagne. This is followed by the choices that can be made at each step of the process, such as in the vineyard, crushing and pressing, fermenting and finishing. The varieties that are used for example in white wine making are also detailed and includes areas where that variety's expression has gained notoriety. Chardonnay is given it's own two page account of all the choices that can be made in it's vinification. The art of making wine can truly be a multi-factorial challenge.
For me, this will be a book to pour over during the upcoming winter months in order to understand how we will proceed when it comes time to making our wines.

December Update on the Work on our Land

We've been very fortunate that our fall has been relatively warm. Jeff and Ed have been working almost non-stop on clearing our field. I got a hold of my husband's camera and downloaded the photos that he took.

This is amazing! Way back when, my husband began digging around this boulder only to discover that it was like the proverbial iceberg, showing 1/10th above the ground and having 9/10th below the ground. In 2011, we had someone come to drill the rock to put in a few stress fractures and this is what Jeff used to break the boulder apart. The rock weighed approximately 40,000 pounds! We have a video of Jeff meticulously working on breaking the rock apart and burying it in the trench that he dug beside the rock.
What Jeff has been doing is turning the soil over with his bucket and sifting out boulders that are larger than 20 pounds. Then, my husband comes with his tractor and moves those rocks away. The entire field has been thus gently turned with the top soil put right back where it came from. That's what we have to do to prepare our soil because we do live in Stonington!

The end result of all this work has been a field that now looks like this, which is a view of the field looking north:

Ed has been working on clearing the underbrush and trees from the east side of the field in order to move back the tree line so that the morning sun won't cast too much of a shadow on the vineyard.

What we find that is just terrific is that both Jeff and Ed have made suggestions about how to enhance the vineyard. We had a rock wall on the east side of the field where Ed was working and Jeff said that he could bury the rocks so that we could have a smooth transition from the vineyard to the edge of the tree line.

Ed saw a beautiful maple on the east side where he was working and instead of taking it down, mentioned that that tree would be one to keep to provide shade in the summer. We love that Jeff and Ed are thinking about the aesthetics of the vineyard while they are concentrating on running their attention demanding equipment.
When we first walked the property in March of 2005, we were aware of bees coming in and out of a hickory tree located at the north end of the field. Our neighbor also mentioned to us that we had a bees. But in subsequent years, we never saw the bees come back. During his excavations, Ed came across the tree and found a vacant hive. Instead of just demolishing the tree, Ed showed my husband the insides of the tree, complete with the remnants of an old hive. Totally cool!

1998 Hospices de Beaune Corton Cuvée Docteur Peste

On the same evening that we drank the Mystery Bottle of Cormey XXXGEA we also drank a 1998 Hospices de Beaune Cuvée Docteur Peste Meo-Camuzet. My husband who is very knowledgeable, especially about the wines that he purchases, told me that Cuvée Docteur Peste is made from the vineyard located in Corton (it helps to know how to read a Bungundian label!). A little research on the Internet brought up this information: Jean-Louis Peste was a doctor at the Hospices de Beaune for 30 years in the mid-19th Century. His daughter, Baronne du Bay, bequeathed a vast estate to the Hôtel-Dieu in his memory, in 1924.
Vineyards located in Corton Chaumes & Voierose, which is south and south-west facing land beside the road leading from Pernand to Aloxe, constitute 37% of this Cuvée. These vines were planted in 1976, 1982 and 1985.¹
I also located a map showing the vineyards that comprise this Cuvée Docteur Peste:²

When we opened the bottle and poured it into our glasses, there was an unmistakable aroma of barnyard that to me defines a wine from Burgundy. Barnyard is not necessarily bad when the wine is complex with soft tannins and earthy flavors with just enough fruit and you can imagine how well it paired with our mushroom and sausage stuffed turkey.
1. Corton Hospices De Beaune Docteur Peste
2. Corton Grand Cru Cuvée Du Docteur Peste Domaine des Hospices de Beaune

Glutathione is an Antioxidant

Here is the problem. We were always planning to do a "benign neglect oxidation" of the pressed must and then leave it to cold soak overnight to settle out the gross lees, but when I read in an older issue of Practical Winery & Vineyard (May/June 2010) an article called "Sauvignon Blanc: Impact of Fining Treatment on Juice Quality" I started to have second thoughts.
The article in Practical Winery & Vineyard presented experiments that showed the benefits of glutathione, a tripeptide consisting of glutamine-cysteine-glycine as being a better antioxidant than ascorbic acid or sulfur dioxide when the press fraction of the must is treated in a reductive environment.¹

In benign neglect hyperoxidation, the initial press fraction is left in an oxidative environment and the glutathione is free to react with the phenols in the must. The fate of the glutathione is enumerated in a previous blog called Hyperoxidation Revisited. There were five experiments carried out in South Africa and Bordeaux:

• Case Study 1: Reductive handling of all fractions
  (Durbanville, South Africa)
• Case Study 2: Reductive handling of all fraction
  (Stellenbosch, South Africa)
• Case Study 3: Oxidative handling of press fraction
  (Stellenbosch, South Africa)
• Case Study 4: Comparison between reductive and oxidative handling (Bordeaux, France)
• Case Study 5: Comparison between fining agents with reductive handling (Bordeaux, France)

In the above studies, it was shown that reductive handling in the absence of added SO₂ gave the best levels of glutathione. Oxidative handling of the press fractions resulted in the diminishing of glutathione levels. However, in the declining phases of fermentation when ethanol levels are increasing, the article written by Schneider, Must Hyperoxidation A Review, mentions that oxygen is key to enabling yeast survival.So, what to do. I'll have to read more about the benefits of glutathione (I'll report back), but we'll probably end up doing several "wine experiments" when we get our grapes!

1. Paul K. Bowyer (Technical Manager, Laffort Australia), Marie-Laure Murat (Lab Manager, Sarco, France), and Virginie Moine-Ledoux (Research Director, Laffort), "SAUVIGNON BLANC: Impact of fining treatments on juice quality", Practical Winery & Vineyard, May/June 2010, pg. 25-33.
2. Wikipedia image of Glutathione. All structures were drawn by the freely available drawing program from ACD Labs called ACD/ChemSketch Freeware.

More Progress on the Land---Our Way In

I haven't been up to the land for about 3 weeks and yesterday, I saw all the work that Jeff, Ed and my husband have been up to. Last year, we took photos of the way in to our property:

Now after Jeff's work, the way in looks like this:

It's amazing and we are getting excited about the reality of having a vineyard on our land.

Hyperoxidation Revisited

A few nights ago, I picked up an older issue of Practical Winery & Vineyard (May/June 2010) and read an article called "Sauvignon Blanc: Impact of Fining Treatment on Juice Quality". Reading the article brought to mind the lively discussion we had in the UC Davis Online Course, "Wine Stability" regarding the merit of hyperoxidation based on reading Must Hyperoxidation A Review, written by V. Schneider in 1998.¹
The discussion centered around the introduction of oxygen prior to fermentation of white musts in the absence of sulfur dioxide as a means of precipitating flavonoid and non-flavonoid phenols that are responsible for bitterness, astringency and browning during wine aging. The consensus reached by the class was that "benign neglect oxidation" is good for white wine making.
I've been rereading information regarding hyperoxidation because in making our white wines, we do want to expose our grape must to oxygen in order to precipitate out the phenols that will turn our wine brown, however, I'm learning it's much more complicated than that. According to Ribéreau-Gayon², unsulfited juices exposed to air consume a variable quantity of oxygen that is based on their caftaric acid and flavonoid concentration and is dependent on the grape variety.

All this information was difficult to digest until I found this diagram in the Third Edition of Ronald S. Jackson's book, Wine Science that diagrammed the fate of phenols in the presence of oxygen.⁴ (For a larger version, please click on the diagram below)

The fate of phenolics differs when it comes into contact with oxygen at the must stage and then at the wine stage:

• At the must stage, the phenolics (caftaric acid is by far the most abundant) are converted to quinones by enzymes called polyphenol oxidases (PPO) and in Botrytis infected grapes, by the enzyme laccase. The resultant caftaric acid quinone can go on to catalyze three further nonenzymatic reactions:
• 1) Combine with glutathione to yield the Grape Reaction Product (GRP) 2-S-glutathionyl caftaric acid
• 2) After glutathione depletion, any excess caftaric acid quinone can oxidize other must constituents including GRP and flavanols and regenerate caftaric acid
• 3) Polymerize with its own precursor caftaric acid, regnerating the original reduced phenol form¹
• At the wine stage, the slow oxygen infiltration into barrels and bottles stoppered with cork allows oxidation and polymerization reactions to occur.

The Schneider review goes on to explain the technical application of hyperoxidation of musts and gives specific information on it's results in Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc, two grape varieties that we will be growing.
In addition to exposure to oxygen prior to fermentation, the yeasts also require some oxygen for survival during the declining phases of fermentation when ethanol levels are increasing. The Schneider review says that during this phase, oxygen aids in the removal of toxic medium length (C8-C12) fatty acid chains and accelerates the synthesis of C16-C18 fatty acids and sterols, which contributes to better sugar uptake by the yeasts. Also, and I did not know this, molecular oxygen (how much?) during this time allows for the use of proline as a supplementary nitrogen source for the yeast. So much to think about!
1. V. Schneider, Must Hyperoxidation A Review, Am. J. Enol. Vitic., Vol. 49, No. 1, 1998.
2. P. Ribéreau-Gayon, D. Dubourdieu, B. Donèche, and A. Lonvaud, Handbook of Enology, Volume 1, The Microbiology of Wine and Vinifications, Second Edition, 2006, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, pg. 418-420.
3. Chemical Structure of Caftaric Acid. All structures were drawn by the freely available drawing program from ACD Labs called ACD/ChemSketch Freeware.
4. Jackson, Ronald S., Wine Science: Principles and Applications, Third Edition, Elsevier, Academic Press, 2008, pg. 298.

Mystery Bottle---1962 Cormey Figeac?

Last night, we had our friends over for dinner. This was the test: we had turkey for dinner. You know that they are your good friends if you offer turkey, only a week after Thanksgiving and they still come for dinner. Well, the turkey was driven by economics since I found it on sale for 59 cents a pound. Who could resist. What we did was to make a turkey roll with three-mushroom (shiitake, button, and baby Portobella) and sausage stuffing. The appetizer was different cheeses, the star which was a Maytag blue cheese which we paired with the Torrontes from Alta Vista and the Triomphe Chardonnay from Southbrook.

Each of our friends brought over a red wine for dinner and we anted up the Hospices de Beaune. The 2010 Cereja came from Hood River, Oregon and a mystery bottle.

What we can clearly see is the vintage: 1962. Blowing up the photo shows that the first word is definitely "Cormey" what we are guessing on is that it is "Figeac". Another thing that can be discerned is that the Proprietor is R. Moreaud. Upon uncorking, we found that the cork was flush with the top of the bottle, showing no signs of storage mistreatment, and although it was totally saturated, came out intact, a testament to the fact that it was a very good cork when it began it's life in the bottle. So, how did this 50 year old wine taste? The couple who brought the wine thought that it would die a quick and ignoble death once the bottle was opened. Well, the context is that it is 50 years old and for some of us, it still was hanging in there. For others, it was way past it's prime tasting more like vinegar, but personally, I had a sip at the end of the evening and I liked the wine which I thought still clung on to it's vinous origins.