Grand Cru: An Inspiration

Last night, my husband and I watched a movie called Grand Cru, a story about Pascal Marchand's journey to become a vigneron. The name had a special resonance for us since we went to Ontario in 2012 and visited a few wineries and then became a part of Canadian Thanksgiving at Mary's home. It was there that we learned of Tawse Winery from Mary's nephew and first heard of Pascal Marchand. So, it was with interest that turned into inspiration that we watched this documentary.
The film follows one season in Burgundy, 2016, when the vineyard was hit with a hailstorm and the weather proved to be challenging for organic/biodynamic farming. But throughout the film are depicted, Marchand's respect for Nature and his adoption of some of the traditional modes of viticulture (horse drawn weeding) and winemaking (pigéage---a classic french wine-making method where the grapes are stomped down in open vats by foot).
When harvest time came, my husband and I perked up since the film showed the picking crew carefully harvesting the grapes and cleaning the clusters in the vineyard. After the clusters were brought into the winery, other people were there to separate only the best grapes from the clusters.

We can relate to how Mother Nature has the upper hand (our friend Charles Massoud would say "Mother Nature is the senior partner"), we can relate to the cleaning of grapes in the vineyard and the cleaning of grapes in the winery, but we also can relate to the satisfaction of working with nature and discovering the wonders each day brings.

Fun Factoid: Wine List on the Steamer Maine

It's getting to be that time of the year for a bit of holiday cheer. Nothing ponderous today, just a look back at some of the history of where we live, here in Stonington, Connecticut.
Right in front of our home are the tracks for the high speed Acela and Amtrak. Before the tracks came in the early 1800's, travel between Boston and New York meant a sea voyage around Cape Cod and Point Judith or the alternative, an uncomfortable and slow stagecoach ride.
The first railroads spread west and south from Boston, reaching Providence where the choice was once again, steamer or stagecoach. Once on the steamer in Providence, the ships went around dangerous Point Judith to Stonington, Connecticut, where travelers caught another steamer for the trip down the more tranquil waters of Long Island Sound.
The story of the construction of the railroad between Boston and New York is fascinating¹ with names such as J.P. Morgan and Rowland Gibson Hazard, one of the major landowners in New England, at one time possessing around 1,000 acres prominent in this endeavor.
But before I digress too much and for those interested in how the railway came to be, the first reference is a good one.
The second reference is from the New York Public Library digital collection and is this menu from the Steamer Maine, circa January 1, 1901, part of the fleet of the Providence and Stonington Steamship Company.²

Some of the familiar brands and their prices that can be seen on this menu is Moet & Chandon, Veuve Cliquot, and Mumm's. Definitely something that will add cheer to Christmas imbibing, especially at 1901 prices, of $3.00 for a quart and $2.00 for a pint.
What a different world of travel it was back in the 1800's!³

References:
1. Brian L. Wallin, Down to the Sea by Rail: The Narragansett Pier Railroad, On Line Review of Rhode Island History.
2. New York Public Library (NYPL) digital collection. Stonington Line Menu.
3. The Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States.

Synthetic Wine/Vinous Alchemy?

I am reading an article from Meininger's Wine Business International titled Laboratory wine: a breakthrough or a travesty?. It was published in July, 2016, so now this information is more than 2 years old.
Mardonn Chua and his colleague Alec Lee, founded Ava Winery, a San Francisco-based start-up whose aim was to replicate famous wines. They believde that creating synthetic wine was a chemistry problem, not a wine problem. Replicate the molecules, replicate the wine.
Here is the rationale of Dr. Simpson, the founder of Cara Technology, who developed stabilised flavour standards – capsules full of chemicals – used to educate tasters to recognise individual flavours and aromas:
Once it’s clear which chemicals are most significant, “you’ve got the recipe. When it comes to these experiments in wine, they’ll add in some acidity, some sugar, some alcohol, so it’s a base. You then add the odour chemicals on top, and you’ve now got a colourless glass of water that has exactly the same flavour compounds as you’d find in real wine.”
Fast forward to December 2018, Meininger's Wine Business International has an update on Chua and Lee's Excellent Adventure in an article called Synthetic Wine is On Its Way. The duo, now including Josh Decolongon identified and isolated the individual flavour compounds of a 1992 Dom Perignon using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry and other equipment. Their intent was to replicate the flavor profile of the 1992 Dom Perignon it without the use of a single grape.

Somewhere along the timeline, the trio shifted their focus from wine to whiskey and renamed their Ava Winery to Endless West.
Their first effort, a beautifully packaged effort called Glyph, is already on sale in a small number of bars and specialist shops.
In a recent tasting, at the annual Bragato Conference in Wellington, New Zealand, Wither Hills winemaker Patricia Miranda told Stuff.co.nz:
“In terms of the taste and aromatics they need to keep developing but they are on the right path. I believe the whisky was very good in terms of aromatics and mouth feel, the after taste as well...”
References:
1. Meininger's Wine Business International, Laboratory wine: a breakthrough or a travesty?, July 18, 2016.
2. Meininger's Wine Business International, Synthetic Wine is On Its Way, December 2, 2018.

The Aroma Sensory Space of Chenin Blanc

My husband is continually reading about wines and how to make them. Our vineyard is mainly comprised of Chenin Blanc plantings ad recently, he sent me a link to this:
Modelling the sensory space of varietal wines: Mining of large, unstructured text data and visualisation of style patterns,¹ a freely available research publication from Scientific Reports.
What the authors of this research did was to mine the most comprehensive and data-rich sources of publicly available information on South African (SA) wines, notably John Platter's Wine Guide to South African Wines. Platter's wine guide began in 1978 and contains yearly entries from some 1,300 SA wine cellars and 15,000 individual wines.
This data mining study used a novel application of a data visualisation technique, known as formal concept lattices and mined Platter’s data from more than 2,500 Chenin Blanc wines that were produced over a 7-year period, 2008–2014. Their goal was to model the wine style patterns with a focus on the aroma sensory characteristics of the wine.
Chenin Blanc was entered into Platter’s in three style classes:

• unwooded dry (no noticeable wood sensory character and residual sugar content not exceeding 5 g/L)
• wooded dry (noticeable wood sensory character and residual sugar content not exceeding 5 g/L)
• wooded or unwooded semi-dry (RS content more than 5 g/L and not exceeding 12 g/L)

In this data mining experiment, the authors used Sauvignon Blanc as a control because the sensory characteristics of Sauvignon Blanc are well documented and based on established sensory and statistical methods. The dataset was mined for aroma attributes, all non-sensory words were removed, and duplicates were eliminated. The final dataset consisted of 266 different aroma sensory words for Chenin Blanc and 250 different aroma sensory words for Sauvignon Blanc wines.
The experiment revealed some sensory attributes located more towards the Sauvignon blanc side, and others more towards the Chenin blanc side of the lattice. The central region (labelled as Shared in Fig. 1) consisted of a large number of attributes that were common to both varietals. Attributes appearing further from the centerline or more to the sides of the diagram, are more unique to Sauvignon Blanc or Chenin Blanc.¹

One caveat about the research is that generated hypotheses are the result of algorithmic (and human) pattern-finding in the data, and non-existent patterns may be found.
To validate the results that the authors discovered through the use of formal concept lattices, the authors applied the standardized text data to traditional statistical methods. This standardized text data included terms that were mentioned 50 times or more. The following table shows a list of aroma sensory attributes associated with Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc.¹

The data showed that complexity was the key in Chenin Blanc aromas. The following descriptors were associated with unwooded dry, wooded dry, and wooded or unwooded semi-dry Chenin Blanc.

Descriptors	% Unwooded Dry	% Wooded Dry	% Wooded/ Unwooded Semi-Dry
Oak, rich, citrus, spice, vanilla, savory, creamy almond	18%	73%	9%
Tropical, fresh, apple, guava, apricot, lemon, honey, mineral, acid, juicy, melon, peach, floral, lime, pineapple, quince	56%	31%	13%

The above table shows the aromas associated with the different styles of Chenin Blanc wine. This can be a guide to the Chenin Blanc wine style that the winemaker is aiming to produce. For us, since we haven't used any oak in making our wines, we can attest to the lemon, quince, mineral, acid, honey, and I would also add passionfruit aromas that our wines exhibit. Another thing that this data mining research shows is the plethora of descriptors that have been used to describe the aroma of Chenin Blanc wines.
References:
1. Carlo C. Valente, Florian F. Bauer, Fritz Venter, Bruce Watson & Hélène H. Nieuwoudt, Modelling the sensory space of varietal wines: Mining of large, unstructured text data and visualisation of style patterns, Scientific Reports, Volume 8, Article number: 4987 (2018).