A Visit to Coastal Vineyards in South Dartmouth, MA

We recently took a drive to South Dartmouth, MA to visit David Nielson, owner of Coastal Vineyards. We met David in the H&W Booth at the Eastern Winery Exposition when we were visiting with Hans and inquiring about the Lipco tunnel sprayer. David mentioned that he had one and that we were welcome to come and see it. The day we chose began with flurries of snow so we bundled up and began our drive. It takes about 2 hours to reach South Darthmouth.
When we arrived, we found David pruning his vines and the sun had broken through the clouds. Trust me though, it was still cold. David was pruning his vines with a few helpers, his neighbors who come over to lend a hand and who were obviously enjoying the outdoor activity, chatting as they worked their way own a row!
David makes about 500 cases of wine a year and this is about how we will begin so it was interesting to see what kinds of winery equipment he needed and used. He had several 160 gallon stainless steel tanks. This is the amount of juice that comes out of 1 ton of grapes. We went to look at his Lipco sprayer is a one tunnel, three point hitch style sprayer. His tank held 100 gallons.

Next, we went to see his tractor barn to look at his Lipco sprayer. David's Lipco is a one tunnel, three point hitch style sprayer. His tank holds 100 gallons. David has 8 acres of land currently under vines. He is also adding more vines this spring and has already cleared the land in preparation for planting. We ended our visit with David by looking at his case storage area. We've tried to do this calculation before by estimating the three dimensions that a case will take and how many cases can be piled on top of each other, etc, but it is good to see the area that the case goods will take.
Thank you David for your time. We really appreciated the fact that you interrupted your pruning to give us a tour!

2011 Norman Hardie Chardonnay

In October 2012, we went to Prince Edward County (not Prince Edward Island) located in Lake Ontario. If you imagine Lake Ontario as a gaping mouth, Prince Edward County (PEC) is like the thing that hangs down in the back of your throat (the uvula), tethered to mainland Ontario by an extension of land. One of the places that we visted was Norman Hardie. It was October and we ran into Norman himself with his little son. This was the last weekend that they were serving their outdoor pizza and people had gathered to taste Norman Hardie's wines and enjoy perhaps one more weekend of outdoor life. We went to Norman's tasting room and tried his Pinot noir and his Chardonnay. We purchased 2 bottles each of the Pinot noir and Chardonnay. Tonight, we had the 2011 County Chardonnay. On his website, Norman Hardie says that the 2011 growing season was cool and the county Chardonnay began fermentation in stainless steel and then transferred to barrel for 9 months of aging. When we poured the wine, it was a bit lemony yellow and we thought, "Oh, oh, a bit of oxidation" but that was not the case. Our second reaction was that it tasted rather sweet, but then upon swirling and having it with our meal, we remarked that it was a delicious, aspirational wine, that is "We need to make wine like this!" We really have a soft spot for wines from PEC. They really must love what they are doing because they bury their vines in the winter! Why do they go through all this troube? I think it is because they have discovered that their land comprised of limestone, infuses their Chardonnay with great minerality and flavor.

Dormant Bud

On March 11, we went to the vineyard to check on the status of our vines. The vineyard was no longer snow covered, but there were some patches of snow in the northwest corner of the vineyard where it was obviously much colder than other areas of the field. Surprisingly, it was a warm day but the field was still saturated with the melted snow and made walking the field a mucky business.

We were able to get a few photos of the dormant vines including this little dormant bud. We did not bring our clippers with us on that day but on Saturday, March 22, we took our clippers to see if we could discern the status of our vines. We began with clipping some of the sacrificial canes and we could see that although some of the canes were brown throughout, many of the canes had green interiors! We still have to do a bud count to test for winter injury but we have decided to cut our canes back down to two buds for this year's growth. I'll be taking closeups of the buds and will post them on this blog. Can't wait for early bud swell!

The Wine Brothers at the Wine Store

This week we attended the monthly tasting hosted by James Morrison at The Wine Store in Westerly, RI. This evening, James had invited Sally Donahue from The Wine Brothers, to showcase some of the wines in their portfolio. The Wine Brothers specialize in "honest wines made by honest people".
The first wine that we tasted was from Westport Rivers, a winery specializing in sparkling wine. We've visited Westport Rivers before so we were familiar with their offerings. Sally gave a short history of the family and how and when they got into the business. We next tasted a 2011 Rioja from Dominio de Heredia. With each tasting Sally explained the location of the small winery and any viticultural practices they were practicing. These smaller wineries were involved in using sustainable, organic or even biodynamic farming practices in their vineyards. Among the wines we tasted was one from the Langhe which had juice from the nebbiolo, dolcetto and barbera grapes. The wine was very approachable. We also tried one from the Rhone valley made with mainly mouvedre with grenache, and syrah. It is nice to be able to taste the wines of these smaller producers in a friendly setting! Thanks James and Sally!

Jon Bonné: The New California Wine

We resisted buying and reading this book. For a while, it was the rage on all the blogs and wine related sites that we tap into so we finally decided that a read was in order.
Jon Bonné begins his book with a short history of himself and his palate which he admits is more geared toward the European wine styles and follows up with a very short history of wine in California. In the first few pages, I got the feeling that the new can also be the "old", people like Josh Jensen and Paul Draper who have followed their own ideas of what their wines should be and have stayed their course. Indeed, Bonné is in search of these pioneers, pioneers who early on recognized or sought out the land that their chosen variety would embrace. Bonné sought out pioneers who cling to the idea that the wine is made in the vineyard and that good viticultural practices are key to making a great wine. The New California speaks of people who investigate the soils, water and sun in order to determine the appropriate variety to plant in that location as exemplified by Ted Lemon and his biodynamically farmed vineyard called Pivot near the town of Sebastopol. Bonné goes on a search for California's terroir in places such as Contra Costa County, Sonoma Coast, Sierra Foothills, Lodi, Paso Robles, and other places and gives a summary of the variety best suited for growing in those locations. The last third of the book is focused on the grape variety itself and the winemaker creating the best expression of that varietal. Its a great book to have. I intend to give it another thorough read soon.

2014 Eastern Winery Exposition: Highlight for Me

One of the highlights of the Eastern Winery Exposition for me was meeting Lucie Morton. I've read the books that Lucie has written, one called Winegrowing in Eastern America as well as the 1979, English translation and adaptation of Pierre Galet's book, A Practical Ampelography, Grapevine Identification. I didn't go to hear her talk about Grape-Based Challenges to a Healthy Wine Industry in the Mid-Atlantic because I was in the other session, but my husband went and he thought it was one of the talks with the most substantive information.
The next best thing to listening to Lucie talk is probably looking at the slide-deck that is available on line called "Bordeaux Blends" Blending Starts in the Vineyard. Some of the bullets that are in this slide as well as in Lucie's talk were:

• Plant vines with 39-48 inches between vines
• Vines should be cane pruned and vertical shoot position (VSP) trained
• Stress is not a good thing for young vines
• Clones matter

The online slide-deck includes many pictures as well as information on the performance of various clones of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. You can be sure that we will consult this link when it comes time to order our red varieties.

Fun With Wine Capsules

What does all our wine drinking lead to? If you are a hoarder like me and have something in excess of 800 wine capsules, here is what you can do:

I'm totally into this now and am taking closeup photos of each capsule. My husband is a tolerant man and he has a really good camera with a macro option that he is letting me use. I'm trying to arrange the capsules according to similarities. Some of the capsules are very intricate.

Gruet and Billiot Champagne Tastings

This past weekend, sans Barry, we had another evening of champagne and oysters. The idea here is also to pair the champagne with something other than oysters to come up with the perfect bite. There are several suggestions at Epicurious for Champagnes and Sparkling Wines Perfect for Any Celebration. This evening, we were tasting a brut Réserve from H. Billiot Champagne along with New Mexico's méthode champenoise sparkling wine.
We thought that the H. Billiot Champagne was very tart and had a huge acidic component. It did pair with the oysters but may be not as well as with other champagnes that we tasted previously like the Champagnes Aubry and Pierre Péters. It is also a member of the Terry Theise Estate Selections imported by Michael Skurnik Wines.
The second sparkling wine that we tasted was from New Mexico. Our friend is from Albuquerque, New Mexico so we had this in his honor. According to a June 15, 2010 article called In Albuquerque, French-Style Wines That Sparkle,

published in The New York Times, siblings Nathalie and Laurent Gruet moved from the Champagne region to New Mexico, 27 years ago. The article tells a very interesting story about Nathalie, Laurent and their father's search for land, in the U.S. Eschewing the established wine growing region of California, their father settled on New Mexico, because he "...had a pioneer spirit, a spirit to start something totally oddball in the middle of nowhere." Our friend, Mary made the Epicurious recommended rabbit ragu to pair with the Gruet. The ragu was sitting on a bed of polenta and it was a delicious paring with the Gruet. The ragu is definitely on our list of "keeper recipes".

2014 Eastern Winery Exposition: Tartrate Stabilization Part 2

Tom Payette spoke about tartrate stabilization, one of the things that winemakers do before bottling their wine. This is the process of removing the potassium tartrate that exists in wine. Personally, I love seeing crystals of potassium tartrate on a red wine cork or even clear crystals of potassium tartrate in white wine, where they are called wine diamonds. Girls do love diamonds, after all! But, they can be confused with shattered glass, so it has become standard operating practice to remove the potassium tartrate.
There are several factors that affect the solubility of potassium tartrate (KHT), or it's ability to stay in solution:

• KHT is more soluble in water than in alcohol, so the higher the alcohol content, the less soluble is KHT
• KHT is more soluble in the presence of colloidal materials, such as mannoproteins, pectins, and other polysaccharides
• KHT solubility is affected by the wine pH, KHT will precipitate out at its lowest solubility level at a pH between 3.4-4.0
• KHT solubility is affected by changes in the wine such as blending or fining
• KHT solubility is affected by temperature, the colder the temperature, the more insoluble the KHT

A conductivity test should be conducted before the tartrate stabilization. The high concentration of potassium ions are primarily responsible for the conductivity in wine. As potassium ions are taken out of solution the conductivity is lowered. A change of less than 5% in electrical conductance over the testing period is considered stable.² There are various methods of achieving tartrate stabilization including:

• Stabilization by cooling
• Stabilization by contact seeding
• Stabilization by electrodialysis
• Stabilization by the addition of Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC)
• Stabilization by the formation of meta-tartaric acid

Tom Payette spoke extensively on tartrate stabilization by contact seeding. A detailed description on how to conduct contact seeding can be found here:
Cold Stabilization by Contact Process by Dr. Murli Dharmadhikari.
One of the best books that I have seen on laboratory methods for wine is authored by Iland, Bruer, Edwards, Caloghiris and Wilkes called Chemical Analysis of Grapes and Wine: Techniques and Concepts 2nd Edition.
References:
1. Virginia Smith, Assessment of Cold Stabilization for Tartaric Acid in Wine, Penn State Food Science, Penn State Extension, October 3, 2012.
2. B., K. Fugelsang, B. Gump, and F. Nury, Wine Analysis and Production, Chapman & Hall, New York, 1995.

2014 Eastern Winery Exposition: Tartrate Stabilization

We attended the 2014 Eastern Winery Exposition held at the Lancaster County Convention Center from March 3-6. My husband and I split the schedule so that we could cover the topics that were relevant and interested us. So, for the first session on Tuesday, I attended two talks given by Tom Payette on "Lab Testing Cost Analysis: In-House or Outsource" and "Cold Stabilization: Reducing Time & Energy Costs". Tom's talks reminded me of the U.C. Davis online course that I took taught by Grady Wann, called "Wine Stability". The second talk that Tom gave was about cold stabilizing tartaric acid. Tom mentioned something about "bifurcation" at a certain pH and his talk reminded me of how much I have already forgotten. So this morning, I dug into my pile of notes and located the lecture on tartaric acid. I think it is really important to know the chemical structure of tartaric acid:

Tartaric acid is a dicarboxylic acid as shown by the red circles in the diagram above. There are 2 titratable hydrogens on the carboxylic acid groups in tartaric acid which sets up the chemical equilibrium shown below:

What we really care about is what is happening to the tartaric acid in the pH range that we typically find in wine, that is between pH 3-4. The species of tartaric acid which exists in wine is pH dependent. The chemical equilibrium shows that between pH 3.1-3.5 both the free acid and its first conjugate base can occur. This equilibrium can also be visualized by the diagram shown below:²

From the diagram above, the maximum concentration of the bitartrate ion, HT^- exists at pH 3.6. If potassium is present, the hydrogen tartrate (HT^-) is present as the potassium salt, KHT. There is in wine, a high concentration of potassium (0.8 to 1.5 g/L), making wine a supersaturated solution of KHT. For tartaric acid, a diprotic acid, the crossover point is at pH 3.65, meaning that hydrogen tartrate, HT^- as it's potassium salt, KHT is at it's maximum concentration at this pH.³ The KHT (potassium tartrate) will precipitate out at its lowest solubility level at a pH between 3.4-4.0.
The pH of the wine prior to cold stabilization will have an impact on the final pH:

• If the pH is < 3.65 loss of too much hydrogen tartrate as the potassium salt will lower the pH, which is a good thing for wines.
• If the pH is at the pK of the KHT, there is no net effect
• If the pH is greater than 4, there will be a rise in the pH

The loss of 2.51 g/L of KHT through precipitation, will lower the TA by 1 g/L.
Enough chemistry! But important, don't you think. And I've figured out what Tom Payette meant by "bifuration point". Next blog will be about how to remove the KHT from the wine.

References:
1. The chemical structure of tartaric acid was drawn by the freely available drawing program from ACD Labs called ACD/ChemSketch Freeware.
2. Bruce Zoecklin, A REVIEW OF POTASSIUM BITARTRATE STABILIZATION OF WINES, Virginia Cooperative Extension, Publication 463-013, 1988.
3. Organic Acids in Wine.

Wine Tasting at Waltz Vineyards

We've been on a road trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania since Monday of this week to attend the Eastern Winery Exposition. More on this later. On our way home, we stopped in Manheim, Pennsylvania to go to Waltz Vineyards to taste Jan and Kim Waltz's wines. We've been tapping into Jan Waltz's extensive knowledge and experience of growing vinifera grapes in the northeast, but never tasted his wines, so this was a perfect opportunity. We were met in the tasting room by Lea. She explained to us how the wine tasting is conducted at Waltz. The offering was divided into "Light and Fruity" and "Dry and Serious" tasting flights or we could choose any wine to drink by the glass. I opted for the "Dry and Serious" and my husband went for the "Light and Fruity". Before coming to the winery, we met Jan at the H&W booth at the Eastern Winery Exposition and he mentioned that their tasting is a little different from the norm. Their flight would come in test tubes and we could sit and sample the wines at our leisure. That sounded very interesting.

We did indeed taste the wines leisurely asking Lea many questions which she fielded expertly! Although the flights are separated into "Light and Fruity" and "Dry and Serious" all the wines are made true to variety and are all serious wines! We left with a case of wine to share with our friends back home. If you live in Pennsylvania or any where close to Manheim and love wine, you must put this winery of your list of destinations, it is well worth the trip!

Champagnes Aubry and Pierre Péters

We welcomed back our friend who was in Sochi for a month with a degustation of Champagne and oysters. For this evening, we cued up two Champagnes both of which were récoltant-manipulant, that is a grower who makes champagne from his own grapes.
The first one we opened was this Aubry Brut Premier Cru, made from a blend consisting of 45% Pinot Meunier, 25% Pinot Noir, 25% Chardonnay, and 5% of the ancient varieties Arbanne, Petit Meslier, and Fromenteau. We could taste and appreciate the complexity of the Champagne which we were drinking with Long Island blue point oysters and Moonstones from Point Judith, Rhode Island.

The second Champagne that we opened was this Pierre Péters. This Champagne is a blanc de blanc, made if 100% Chardonnay and had a beautiful floral nose. The Pierre Péters and the Aubry are Terry Theise Estate Selections imported by Michael Skurnik Wines Syossett, New York. So, a side-by-side tasting was in order! So with two glasses each, we were able to taste how each Champagne paired with the oysters. Another thing that we are trying to do with the Champagne tastings is to find the perfect bite. Our friend Mary brought a contribution that stood up very well to the acidity of the Pierre Péters, it was a delicious bite of Soppressata Bundles with Radicchio and Goat Cheese.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in the Northeast

I discovered that a really good place to begin learning about Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in the Northeast can be found at the Cornell University New York State Integrated Pest Management Program. This is a site tailored to IPM for grapes. Topics covered include:

• Dormant IPM practices to be implemented
• Vineyard Mapping
• Pruning to Reduce Overwintering Disease Inoculum
• Grape Berry Moth Weed Assessment Protocol
• Weed Management
• Grape Facts: Managing Weeds in New York Vineyards

This site also contains a link to NYS IPM Fact Sheets for Grapes, that is a great resource for learning about grape pests as well as grapevine disease including downy, powdery, black rot, and more.
Another really good reference to have is A Pocket Guide for Grape IPM Scouting in the North Central and Eastern United States. Reading the literature and familiarizing ourselves with the IPM for the upcoming season is what is keeping us busy as the wind howls outside. Shouldn't it be spring already?