Vintage 2021: New Year's Eve

I can't believe that it is the last day of 2021. For this last blogpost of the year, I held back a gift from our friend and artist, Ginger Baker. It is a water color of our vineyard in the fall.

Ginger does water colors of our seaside village, Stonington, CT in which she captures the unique charms of where we live. You can find more of her artwork here: Coastal Art Studio
We wish everyone a safe and happy New Year!

Time Capsule Find in Our Home

I don't know why but at the end of the year I feel a great need to clean our home. (Japanese tradition) My husband calls my cleaning shuffling. For the past week, I've been reorganizing the many books that we have in our home by category and my efforts resulted in the discovery of this rare find:

I took a closer look at the cover of The Underground Wine Journal (Incorporating Rarities), Volume XIX, No. 3, 2000, and recognized the people in the picture! It was our friend, Charles Massoud and his two sons wearing orange t-shirts in their vineyard!
I emailed Charles the picture of the cover and he said he had no recollection of this journal. We had no recollection of where and when we bought this journal but inside the journal was a treasure trove of articles from 21 years ago!
I took a pause in my cleaning so that I could read the journal. Now to put this journal in a safe place to keep for another two decades or so.
References:
1.The Underground Wine Journal (Incorporating Rarities), Volume XIX, No. 3, 2000.

Oysters and 2017 Chardonnay Pétillant Naturel

Last night, my husband prepared oysters that our hunter had given us in two different ways. We had the oysters with a 2017 Chardonnay Pétillant Naturel that we made!

We were surprised at the bubbles coming from our pét nat! It went very well with the oysters!

Vintage 2021: Annual Cycle of Growth

Each year, we fill out a spread sheet with information regarding the Annual Cycle of Growth. We have been doing this since 2015 when the only thing that we had in the vineyard were a few hundred Chenin Blanc which was giving us fruit. Here is the complication since 2015:

I think that it is good to look at the cumulative annual cycle of growth to see what kind of trends can be observed. This helps in the planning of work in the vineyard. I might consider adding another column called "berry set".

Blind Wine Tasting

We planned this wine tasting way back in November. There were going to be 6 of us and we were going to taste a few red wines, blinded. No, we don't close our eyes, but we do disguise the wines that we will be tasting.
When the day came, one of the couples couldn't make it but we still had the blind tasting. Our friends brought the first wine we blind tasted along with some finnochio, which is fennel sausage and a local cheese from Mystic Cheese Company called Melinda Mae.
The style was easy to guess because the bottle shape gave it away. It was a Champagne. Our friends showed us the top of the cork cage and it read "Gruet". We've had our share of Gruet over the years, check out these blogposts: Gruet A Méthode Champenoise from New Mexico and Gruet and Billiot Champagne Tastings, but those tasting were in 2017 and 2014, respectively.
When the "sparkling wine" was poured, it was blush in color so we knew that we were tasting a rosé. I liked the "sparkling wine" very much, it had just the right amount of dryness for my palate. My husband didn't think that it tasted like a Gruet. We all enjoyed it. When the last of the bottle was emptied into our glasses. Our friends asked us how much would we pay for that Gruet. I thought it was a very high end Gruet so I guessed that it was $45.00. My husband concurred. The reveal:

Oh we were so wrong! But is it right to mislead your friends with a fake Gruet top? We are fortunate that our friends are on the Cruse mailing list and have allotments of Ultramarine to taste!
We moved on to the main course which was brisket, baked beans and salad. To pair with the beef, we had had in mind two other red wines but at the last minute substituted another wine. Our friends brought another red wine so we had 2 blind red wines to savor and guess what the wines were made from and where they came from. I knew one of the wines so my focus was on the other. It tasted young to my palate and the aroma and flavor reminded me of Cabernet Sauvignon. My husband guessed that it was a New World wine. In any case, we enjoyed both the wines with the food. When the reveal came we were drinking:

The 2014 Pask was from our friends. Only 375 cases of this 2014 Gimblett Gravels Trilliant was made! It is a Merlot-based blend, with smaller amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec, matured for 20 months in French and American oak casks (55 per cent new).¹ The Dunn was my husband's contribution. There was nothing to fault in either of the wines and we enjoyed them both.
All in all, we had a grand time and look forward to another evening of blind wine tasting!
Reference:
1. Michael Cooper's Buyer's Guide, Pask Small Batch Gimblett Gravels Trilliant (2014), New Zealand Wines.

Last Harvest of 2021

On November 24, I wrote a blogpost about The Story of Our Wedding Bag Grapes. We have been patiently waiting and checking on the wedding bags for the right moment to harvest the crop. We havested the approximately 500 wedding bags on December 15. The entire harvest fit into three lugs! After we came home, the grapes in the wedding bags were consolidated. From 500 bags, we ended up with 24 bags of botrytis infected grapes.

In order to approximate the weight of the harvest, we took the weight of 4 consolidated wedding bags and averaged the weight. We had approximately 20 pounds of grapes. Our next task was to set up the micro-basket press that my husband purchased specifically for this harvest. Yes, it is as tiny as it looks in the picture!

We put in a few wedding bags at a time and squeezed the juice. It is really like getting liquid from a rock! It didn't take more than hour to press the wedding bags. In the end, all 24 bags fit into the micro-press. We got aapproximately a gallon of juice out of the pressing.

The beginning parameters for this botrytized Chenin are:

Variety	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Botrytized Chenin Blanc	20 pounds	1 gallon	31.5	3.52	14.2 g/L

On December 18, we rehydrated our yeast of choice, QA23. We weighed out 1 gram of yeast, rehydrated it in 10 mL of spring water at 96 ^oF for 10 minutes. After the yeast was rehydrated, we tempered the yeast with 10 mL of the juice, added in 3 mL aliquots. We inoculated the juice at 11 a.m.

Now its a matter of waiting!

2021 Harvest Party

Recently, we held a luncheon for the people that came to help us with our harvest. We began this tradition in 2019 but were unable to have it in 2020. We were happy that we could hold it again this year!
In addition to the luncheon, we thought that we would make a gift basket that would go to the lucky person whose name was selected in a drawing.
We did have quite a number of people who came and we were delighted at the turn out. We made all of the dishes that were served and were happy to do so.
The harvest luncheon began at 11 a.m. and the drawing for the gift basket occurred at 12:30. My husband held the container of names and I pulled out the winner. My only regret was that we couldn't give everyone who came a gift. Maybe next year. Most people stayed until 2. Here is our menu that we had on that day:

In addition to the above small bites, we also provided cornbread to go with a cassoulet that my husband made as well as a vegetarian chili.
We would like to thank everyone who helped to make our harvest a success!

Vintage 2021: End of the Year

We've come almost to the close of 2021. It's time to review what this vintage was like. Work in the vineyard usually begins in March, unless February is "warm" enough for us to begin pruning. We began pruning duties on March 3, but that included cutting the wire holding down last year's canes, removing the tendrils and the Agfast. Those manipulations were necessary in order to free up last year's growth for pruning. Although we began pruning duties on March 3, we didn't actually finish pruning until May 1st! Our take home lesson from that experience was that we must remove the wire, cut the tendrils and remove the Agfast before pruning season begins.
When spring came, we had a typical budbreak which began at the end of April for the Chardonnay and continued with the rest of our varieties into the first week of May. After budbreak, bloom occurs around mid-June and then fruitset shortly after that. Although the activity in the vineyard is busy, I feel as if July is the busiest month. This year, Mother Nature "blessed" us with abundant rainfall, so that although we had rented a generator for the purposes of irrigation, we did not need to turn it on at all. July 2021 was the third wettest in Connecticut since they began keeping records, with 19 of the 31 days with some kind of rain event!
Our July and August was filled with shoot tucking, hedging and netting duties. The netting duties lasted until October 14, just ahead of the Chenin Blanc harvest which occurred on October 17 and 18.
Here are links to the Vintage 2021 blogposts:
Vintage 2021
Vintage 2021: January Update
Vintage 2021: Ground Hog Day
Vintage 2021: March Pruning Time
Vintage 2021: Pruning Update
Vintage 2021: April Update
Vintage 2021: Budbreak in the Vineyard
Vintage 2021: May Vineyard Tasks
Vintage 2021: June Heat Wave
Vintage 2021: June Work Fun Balance
Vintage 2021: Approaching the End of June
Vintage 2021: Vineyard is at Berry Formation
Vintage 2021: August Heat Wave
Vintage 2021: August Aftermath of Hurricane Henri
Vintage 2021: Summer Recap
Vintage 2021: Auxerrois Harvest
Vintage 2021: Chardonnay Harvest---Part 1
Vintage 2021: Chardonnay Harvest---Part 2
Vintage 2021: Chenin Blanc Harvest - Part 1
Vintage 2021: Chenin Blanc Harvest - Part 2
Vintage 2021: Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc Harvest
Vintage 2021: Barbera Harvest
Vintage 2021: Our 2021 Harvest at a Glance
Overall, I will remember Vintage 2021 as a rainy year which lead to a slightly lower than expected harvest. In spite of all of the rain, we were good farmers and our grapes didn't suffer from too much rot. Our harvesters diligently cut out all the rot from those bunches that did suffer and the wines are coming along fine.

The Chemistry of Noble Rot Wines

This is another post on noble rot wines, focussing on the chemistry of the wine. In order to get a final product that can be considered to be a noble rot wine, it is important that the colonization of B. cinerea on the grapes is of high purity. The higher the purity of the noble rot, the higher the quality of the final product.
Botrytized wines are typically aged for a long time either in barrels (like Tokaji Aszú) or in bottles (Sauternes, TBA wines). The length, the oxygen ingress, the level of SO₂, and the material of the cooperage have a huge impact on the aroma composition of the new botrytized wines.¹
Lactones

• γ-nonalactone, γ-decalactone and δ-decalactone has distinct aromas of apricot and peach
• γ-3-methyloctalactone, known as whisky lactone, is a tertiary aroma compound with coconut flavor extracted from wood during barrel aging
• 2-furanone or γ-crotonolactone enhances the aroma profile with caramel and stone fruit notes
• 2-nonen-4-olide, is a 2-furanone type lactone, which has the second lowest perception threshold (10.8 μg/L) after γ-3-methyloctalactone (whisky lactone), and is mainly associated with fruity and minty aromas only found in this type of wines
• 2-nonen-4-olide along with γ-3-methyloctalactone (whisky lactone), eugenol and γ-nonalactone seem to be responsible for the creation of the synthetic aroma of candied orange

Sotolon

• One of the first compounds identified as a key odorant was sotolon (4,5-dimethyl-3-hydroxy-2(5H)-furanone), having a sweetish, caramel, or nut taste
• Sotolon, is a compound landmark for Port aged wines with sensory character of curry, fenugreek, nuts and dried fruits, with a threshold of 19 μg/L
• The impacts of botrytization on grapes, such as oxidation and sugar concentration, seem to create the perfect substrate for sotolon production after aging

Thiols

• 3-Mercaptohexan-1-ol (3MH) is the most important thiol in botrytized wines enhancing the aroma profile with notes of citrus peel, grapefruit and passion fruit
• 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one, 4-mercapto-4- methylpentan-2-ol, 3-mercaptopentan-1-ol and 3-mercaptoheptan-1-ol are responsible for aromas of citrus fruits

Phenylacetaldehyde

• Phenylacetaldehyde has an aroma of honey

The ratio between glycerol and gluconic acid is considered to be a noble rot quality index. The higher the ratio the higher the quality of the potential wine.
Some distinctive descriptive terms associated with botrytized wines are peach, apricot, quince, tropical fruit, honey, and caramel. The aging process may add more nuances, eg, chocolate, tobacco, dried fruits, raisins, etc.
References:
1. Kallitsounakis, Georgios, Catarino, Sofia, An Overview on Botrytized Wines REVISÃO: VINHOS BOTRITIZADOS, Ciência e Técnica Vitivinícola, 2020, 35, 76, 10.1051/ctv/20203502076.
2. Magyar I., Soós J., Botrytized wines – current perspectives, International Journal of Wine Research, 2016;8:29-39 https://doi.org/10.2147/IJWR.S100653.
3. Sipiczki, Matthias, Csoma, Hajnalka, Antunovics, Zsuzsa, Pfliegler, Walter, "Biodiversity in yeast populations associated with botrytised wine making", Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg, 2010, 60, pg 387-394.

Noble Rot Fermentation

A prudent search of the Internet usually can result in the perfect reference that one is looking for. In this case, my husband asked me how a Noble Rot Fermentation is done. In 2020, I made, by chance, a very, very small amount of Noble Rot wine that I wrote about in a blogpost called The Most Expensive Wine.
This year, we don't really want to leave our fermentation to chance, so I found what I was looking for in a reference titled, An Overview on Botrytized Wines REVISÃO: VINHOS BOTRITIZADOS published in 2020!
Here is a summary of the main points of Noble Rot Fermentation from the reference:¹
Grape Varieties

• The main grape varieties used for noble rot fermentation include Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Furmint, Riesling, Picolit, Pinot Blanc and Gewürztraminer.
• These varieties have characteristics such as type of skin as well as oenological parameters, such as potential alcohol, sugar content and acidity that make them ideal for botrytization.

Harvest

• The harvest for noble rot wines cannot be done mechanically. Each grape that goes into the fermentation is harvested by hand and is based on botrytization process that promotes an intense enzymatic maceration of the grape skin.

Pressing

• After harvest, a sorting table is recommended for separating parts of the clusters that are less or not infected or co-infected by other fungus and bacteria.
• Whole cluster pressing in which stems facilitate pressing and their extracted tannins is also recommended to facilitate protein stabilization, with subsequent maceration for sugar and aromas extraction.
• Whole cluster pressing avoids the release of particles such as glucans in the must as these colloids will produce later clarification problems and will hamper the stabilization processes.
• The use of gravity versus pumps during berry juice transfer decreases the harshness of every operation.

Settling before fermentation

• Settling at temperatures lower than 10°C for 28 to 48 hours is beneficial but excessive clarification increases the possibility of stuck or sluggish fermentation as lees is a source of fatty acids, sterols, among others, which are important for yeast development.
• The optimum turbidity, without facing problems of bitter, reductive and herbaceous notes is between 500 and 600 NTU.
• Addition of lees, saved from settling of previously produced dry white wine, in tank or barrel filled with botrytized must, is a boosting factor for yeasts development during fermentation.

Alcoholic fermentation kinetics

• Following a spontaneous alcoholic fermentation of noble rot must with a sugar content of 320 g/L showed that after the yeasts’ growth phase, fermentation rate stayed stable and maximum during stationary phase, until the 11th day of fermentation when the death phase started.
• Fermentation stopped after 40 days, with a level of residual sugars at 100 g/L.
• The extremely high sugar content of these wines affected the yeasts’ growth phase due to the hyperosmotic environment that eventually led to ‘‘stuck’’ fermentation.

Vat types for fermentation

• Two types of containers can be used during fermentation, stainless-steel tank or wooden barrel.

The reference also provided a work flow for the fermentation of noble rot grapes:¹

References:
1. Kallitsounakis, Georgios, Catarino, Sofia, An Overview on Botrytized Wines REVISÃO: VINHOS BOTRITIZADOS, Ciência e Técnica Vitivinícola, 2020, 35, 76, 10.1051/ctv/20203502076.
2. Magyar I., Soós J., Botrytized wines – current perspectives, International Journal of Wine Research, 2016;8:29-39 https://doi.org/10.2147/IJWR.S100653.
3. Sipiczki, Matthias, Csoma, Hajnalka, Antunovics, Zsuzsa, Pfliegler, Walter, "Biodiversity in yeast populations associated with botrytised wine making", Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg, 2010, 60, pg 387-394.

Pinot Noir Tastings

Last week was the annual Beserkers Laura's House "Empty My Wallet" challenge started by Frank Murray III. My husband participated in it. The first night, we paired a 1999 Cristom Pinot Noir with leftover Beef Wellington. I loved the intensity of the Pinot Noir, it wasn't showing any age at all. The weight of the Cristom paired well with the beef.
Later in the week, we had some friends over and they brought a 2019 Flowers and we opened up a 1999 Rochioli. My husband made a slow braised beef short ribs, Asian style and our friends created a nice thin sliced cucumber, apples and butter leaf lettuce salad.
We look forward to this annual challenge. Anytime we can have an excuse to open an aged Pinot Noir and contribute to a good cause is a win-win!