EnoViti

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Vintage 2019: Winter

It's time to begin the first of the Vintage Notes for 2019. This is a good thing to do to keep track of what is happening even before the growing season begins. This will be the fourth winter that I have notes for:

Last January, we had a weather event called a bomb cyclone. This year, the midwest will be experiencing a polar vortex which will bring record low temperatures on Thursday morning reaching -20 to -30 degrees! The first time that we encountered a polar vortex was the winter (2014) of the year that we planted our 6800 vines. Needless to say, young vines did not do very well when confronted with a polar vortex.

The colder temperatures are supposed to come in later this afternoon, turning much colder on Thursday. We will escape the polar vortex but there will be wind chills making temperatures dip into the negative numbers. It's time to bundle up and hunker down.
Reference:
1. WBZ CBS Boston.

Friday, January 25, 2019

Progress of Our Cabernet Sauvignon

We harvested our red varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc on October 20, 2018 with the help of our friends and their children. When we took the harvesting parameters for the Cabernet Sauvignon the Brix was at 17, the pH at 3.42 and the titratable acids was at 8.2 g/L so we decided to turn the juice into a rosé.
We cold settled the juice, as we would in a white wine fermentation and inoculated the approximately 6 gallons of juice with VIN13, on October 27, 2018. The fermentation was over on December 9, 2018. We racked this finished wine into a 7 gallon stainless steel keg and topped it off with nitrogen and sealed it.
On January 18, 2019, we broke into the keg to check for sulfur dioxide levels, check the color and taste the wine. When my husband went to open the seal on the keg, there was a vacuum holding the seal which he pried off. There was a noticeable pop upon release and we surmised that the wine had undergone still more fermentation and we wondered if it went through malolactic fermentation.

The wine seemed to have lost a bit of fruitiness in our opinion compared to the tasting that we did on November 24, 2018 when we thought that the rosé tasted a little yeasty and had an acid punch. On this day, I thought the aroma had a bit of matchstick to it. The flavor of the wine to me was like a Luden's black cherry cough drop, my husband vehemently disagreed. It could be that the wine is in a mute stage. For this, only time will tell what the rosé will finally end up revealing.

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Chenin Blanc Pétillant Naturel

This year, we made two types of Chenin Blanc Pétillant Naturel. Although the grape is Chenin Blanc, the fermenting yeast differed and this can make a difference. We used QA23 and VIN13 to ferment our Chenin Blanc. Once the sugar content in the wine reached 2-3% (20-30 grams/liter) sugar, we put the wine into champagne style bottles and capped it with a crown cap, like those used for beer. The live yeast and the remaining sugar will hopefully transform into 3-5 atmospheres of entrained carbon dioxide, creating the desired bubbly, fizzy effect.
Recently, we tasted our Pétillant Naturel fermented with VIN13. According to Scott Laboratories, VIN 13 is a very good thiol releaser (guava, passion fruit and grapefruit) and an outstanding ester producer.

The bubbles are still on the large side, but the aroma and the flavor was definitely that of passionfruit!

Thursday, January 17, 2019

States that Drink the Most Wine

The article in VINEPAIR States that Drink the Most Wine:, caught my eye this morning. It is kind of cool because it is a map that is color coded that lists the states: The States That Drink the Most Wine Per Gallon

If you live in California, Florida, New York, Texas, or Illinois you drink the most wine per gallon. The States That Drink the Most Wine Per Capita

If you live in Idaho, Washington, D.C., New Hampshire, New Mexico or Vermont, you're buying a lot of wine. My husband raised many questions about this article I was siting, so I went to the original source, put out by the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse SURVEILLANCE REPORT #110. Here is what I learned.
The report contain the following consumption trends from 1977-2016.

Per capita consumption of ethanol from all alcoholic beverages combined in 2016 was 2.35 gallons, representing a 0.9 percent increase from 2.33 gallons in 2015.
Between 2015 and 2016, changes in overall per capita consumption of ethanol included increases in 33 States, decreases in 12 States, and no changes in 5 States and the District of Columbia.
Analysis of overall per capita alcohol consumption by U.S. Census region between 2015 and 2016 indicated an increase of 1.3 percent in the Northeast, 0.4 percent in the Midwest, 1.3 percent in the South, and 1.7 percent in the West.
Healthy People 2020 set the national objective for per capita annual alcohol consumption at no more than 2.1 gallons.

Did you know that there is an initiative called Healthy People 2020? Healthy People, is a program initiated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, that establishes benchmarks to promote longer and higher-quality lives for Americans. Here is the goal of the program: The program's objective for alcohol consumption is to reduce the national per capita annual alcohol consumption level by 10 percent from the 2007 baseline value of 2.3 gallons per year to no more than 2.1 gallons per year by 2020.
If you assume that the "standard drink" in the United States contains 0.6 fluid ounces of ethanol, the target per capita consumption level of 2.1 gallons of ethanol equates to approximately an average of 448 standard drinks. That's a lot of drinking IMHO, more than a glass of wine a day, every day of the year.
I think I can meet the goal of Healthy People 2020.
If you are interested in learning more details about this study, please check out to the following reference.
Reference:
1. Sarah P. Haughwout, M.P.H., Megan E. Slater, Ph.D., National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse SURVEILLANCE REPORT #110, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, April 2018.

Monday, January 14, 2019

Chardonnay Fermentation

We have had small crops of Chardonnay since 2016 and have tried our hand at fermenting Chardonnay grapes into wine. We have to admit that Chardonnay is a trickier grape to ferment than either Auxerrois or Chenin Blanc. The reason being is that Chardonnay's varietal character (typicity) can be expressed in many forms. It can be steely and acidic like Chablis, or fuller-bodied and buttery like those from southern Burgundy or it can be a base wine for making Champagne. And just when you think that that is all that Chardonnay can do, Katherine Cole wrote about Black Chardonnay.¹

Chardonnay is among the world's most planted grape due to it's viticultural adaptability and enological malleability.² The question that we need to answer is should Chardonnay be vinified to emulate a classic Burgundy or should the varietal character be expressed according to our own region. So far, since we haven't had enough of a harvest to fill an oak barrel, we haven't been able to ferment and age in oak. We have done one stainless steel vinification and this year we have made a Pétillant Naturel from the harvest.
In our process, we:

Harvest the grapes:
What we try to do is to take utmost care of the vintage in the vineyard. When we cannot, we try to get the best grapes that we can by hand cleaning the clusters so that we only use the best grapes.
Extract the juice from the whole cluster grapes via foot stomping:
We put the whole cluster grapes into mash bags and foot stomp them a la I Love Lucy. Everyone who participates wears food grade booties. What foot stomping accomplishes is a gentle extraction of the juice, leaving behind the pectins that can cloud a finished wine.
Cold setting the juice with 50 ppm potassium metabisulfite:
We try to stop the fermentation of the juice by yeasts that come in from the vineyard. Cold settling also sediments out the heavier protein and pulp that might be in the juice. By doing this, we do not have to add fining agents such as casein, bentonite and PVPP.
Kick off fermentation at 55-60 degrees F:
A low and slow fermentation tries to capture as much of the floral aromatics that are part of the Chardonnay grapes.
Monitor the progress of the fermentation
End fermentation
Age the finished wine
Bottle the finished wine

In the case of our Pétillant Naturel, we monitored the decrease in Brix in our fermentation using glucose testing strips until it reached 2% or 20 g/L and then bottled it in champagne style bottles to finish the fermentation under crown cap.
There is so much to learn about the vinification of Chardonnay!
References:
1. Katherine, Cole, Meet Black Chardonnay, SevenFiftyDaily, August 3, 2017.
2. Sweet, Nancy, L., Foundation Plant Services, UC Davis, Chardonnay History and Selections at FPS, Foundation Plant Services FPS Grape Program Newsletter November 2007.

Thursday, January 10, 2019

Tasting our 2018 Auxerrois

We made our first 100% Auxerrois this past year. We harvested the Auxerrois on September 17, 2018. The Auxerrois came in at 18^o Brix, pH 3.4 and titratable acids of 6.7 g/L. After cold settling the extracted juice, fermentation commenced on September 21, using QA23. We bottled the wine on October 11, 2018 and ended up with 1 case of 750 mL and 2 cases of 375 mL in hock bottles.
We have taken our Auxerrois to 2 tastings now, one at Paumanok and one last night at the home of our friends. The mention of Auxerrois leads to puzzled looks as this grape is not at all at the tip of anyone's tongue. As far as we know, there are only 2 growers of Auxerrois that we know of in the United States whose wines we have tasted:

So, what exactly is Auxerrois. Well, it is a grape grown in the Alsace-Lorraine region, sitting on the border between France and Germany. And, before we go any further, just how is it pronounced? Wine for Normal People says Auxerrois is prounced (oh-sehr-WAH).¹ It is an early ripening grape.
Studies reported in 1999 by Carole Meredith and John Bowers revealed that there is a Genetic Relationship Between Auxerrois and Chardonnay, both offspring of a cross between Pinot Noir and Gouais Blanc.²
One of the finest expressions of Auxerrois that we have tasted is the 2008 Josmeyer Pinot Auxerrois, from Alsace.
Our 2018 Auxerrois was pale yellow in color and tasted like stone fruit, white peach, pears, with a nice touch of acidity, if I don't say so myself.
Reference:
1. Wine for Normal People, A Confusing But Refreshing Wine: Auxerrois From ALsace, FRANCE, July 21, 2012.
2. Bowers, J., Boursiquot, J.M., This, P., Chu, K., Johansson, H., & Meredith, C, 1999, Historical Genetics: The Parentage of Chardonnay, Gamay, and Other Wine Grapes of Northeastern France, Science: 285, pp 1562 - 1565.

Monday, January 7, 2019

Slide Show on Soil and Water

I am trying something new this year. I'm playing with Google Presentation and came up with a slide deck that is essentially my blogposts on the following topicss:

This is a test so let me know in the comment section if you like it. Thanks!

(Note: If you go to full screen, press arrow keys to navigate between slides and then press ESC to get out of full screen mode.)

Thursday, January 3, 2019

Recap of Vintage 2018

The 2018 calendar year is behind us so it is a good time for reflection. It was interesting for me to read that on this very day last year we were preparing for a bomb cyclone. This year, the temperature is a balmy 47 degrees and sunny. What a difference a year makes.
Here are some of the posts that I wrote during the 2018 season:

There are a few lessons we learned from last year, mainly concerned with water. We had a relatively dry spring that lead to a cessation in vine growth and then a wetter than normal fall which lead to tremendous crop loss.
So here are our take home lessons:

Be prepared to irrigate early in the growing season to ensure good node separation
Irrigation after the first growth phase can also ensure the growth of larger leaves that have more photosynthetic capabilities
Early irrigation can also aide in reaching full canopy by mid-July
Be prepared for leaf pulling after fruitset around the fruit zone to give the developing fruit airflow and sun acclimation
If taking a chance and hanging fruit to increase sugar levels, be ready to harvest if the extended forecast includes rain.

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Happy New Year!

Just a little something light to begin 2019. At the end of 2018, my husband showed me this article in The Inquirer: Disney’s Cinderella Castle, I think it is a great way to begin the New Year, with renewed aspirations.

Walter Deuschle of Huntington Valley, PA used 73,000 corks to make this Cinderella Castle!

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