2017 Domaine Samuel Billaud Chablis 1er Cru "Mont de Milieu"

Moving on to the penultimate Chardonnay in the lineup, wine E from The Great Chardonnay Tasting was unveiled to be the 2017 Domaine Samuel Billaud Chablis 1er Cru "Mont de Milieu".
The tasting notes for the wine is the following:

Of all of the wines in our line up, this one was the one that I thought had the most citrus, lemon flavor which lead me to suspect that this was the Chablis. One of our friends at the tasting remarked that having tasted California Chablis, the moniker "Chablis" ruined the flavor of an authentic Chablis for her. I expected a steely, flinty note from the 2017 Domaine Samuel Billaud Chablis 1er Cru "Mont de Milieu" but the citrus notes were balanced with just a hint of oak, actually not something that I was expecting from a Chablis.

2013 Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru "Les Combettes"

Wine D in our line up for The Great Chardonnay Tasting was the 2013 Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cur "Les Combettes". As per the other wines in our tasting, these were the notes provided before hand.

If the Littori aroma was one of white stone fruit, the 2013 Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru "Les Combettes" was even more intoxicating with spice and fruit. The color in the glass was golden yellow. When I first tasted the wine, the flavor seemed a little muted but over the course of the evening, I kept on going back to get another taste and it opened up beautifully with notes of honey, tropical fruits and a long finish with a well integrated backbone of soft oak and acidity. This wine was my favorite. But it was also in a company with other stellar wines so to say that I was splitting hairs would be hitting the nail on the head.
To complement the wine tasting, small plates of food included home made pumpkin ravioli and autumn apple salad:

2017 Littorai Winery "Charles Heintz Vineyard" Chardonnay

Wine C on our night of The Great Chardonnay Tasting was the 2017 Littorai Winery "Charles Heintz Vineyard" Chardonnay.

The tasting notes made mention of the special nature of the Charles Heintz Vineyard and coincidentally, the grapes that went into the 2017 Ultramarine Sonoma Coast sparkling wine that we had as part of the appetizer course was sourced from Charles Heintz Vineyard.
The Littorai was also the wine that launched the planning for the Great Chardonnay Tasting. My husband and I went to Visit Littorai way back in January 2012 and although Ted was not there to show us around his facility, we were in the capable hands of assistant winemaker, John Wilson. Our interest in Littorai at that time was that it was a winery that treated the grape juice with the use of gravity. At the end of the tour, we were treated to a wine tasting but oddly enough, we never bought any wine. That oversight was corrected when we got a chance to taste this 2017 Littori Chardonnay.
This wine was the first that really appealed to my sense of smell. The bouquet was one of white stone fruit, white peaches and the flavor was one of tropical fruits with an acid finish. All of the wines were quite impeccable, but if I must, this wine was one that I would put in my top two.

2017 VGW Chardonnay 00 Winery

The blinded wine "B" in our Great Chardonnay Tasting was revealed to be the 2017 VGW Chardonnay from 00 Winery. Here are the notes provided to our guests:

I was very interested in tasting this wine because I blogged about Katherine Cole on Black Chardonnay on November, 2017. It is worth looking at some photos provided by 00 Winery in the article written by Katerine Cole about black Chardonnay.¹

The initial juice that comes out from the pressing a la hyperoxidation is very black! However, if you look at the lineup of the wines that we tasted in the blogpost 2002 Meursault 1er Cru "La Piece sous le bois" Domaine Robert Ampeau, there would be no way to pick out the 00 based on color alone. The color of the 00 was now very clear, pale yellow!
My first swirl and sniff of this wine was a little underwhelming, providing no discernable aroma. Maybe I needed to wait for it to open up. The wine had the most oak flavors in this lineup. We were fortunate that there was a bit of the 00 left so we tasted it on the following day and I thought that although there were no flaws and it had a very nice spicy finish, I was left wondering about the mid-palate.
Food and the smells from the food can affect the flavors of the wines that are served. We brought out small dishes throughout the tasting. Two of the dishes were cod cakes and baked oysters.

Nothing bad here, these dishes made excellent pairings with the Chardonnay.
References:
1. Katerine Cole, Meet Black Chardonnay, SevenFiftyDaily, August 3, 2017.
2. Rare Wine Company, Double-Zero Chardonnay.

2002 Meursault 1er Cru "La Piece sous le bois" Domaine Robert Ampeau

In this blogpost, I will go into more details for the the Great Chardonnay Tasting. Each person was provided with the glassware for the six wines that were going to be poured. The glasses were designated A-F. Here is what the glassware for the tasting looked like:

Before the tasting, each participant was also given information regarding the wines that they were going to taste in order to provide some information regarding the place of origin and in some cases the vinification process. These notes were meant to be clues to help in the identification of the wine.
Therefore, for the 2002 Meursault 1er Cru "La Piece sous le bois" Domaine Robert Ampeau, these were the notes:

Wine "A" was revealed, it was a Domaine Robert Ampeau 2002 Meursault 1er Cru "La Piece sous le bois". You can see by the pour in glass A, although the Domaine Robert Ampeau is now 20 years old, none of the age was showing in the glass. It was light yellow in color. One of the things that I did notice on first sniff was that it gave off some sulfury, reductive notes which blew off upon swirling. The longer it sat in the glass, the better the wine became. It was honeyed lemon with a spicy finish.

The Great Chardonnay Tasting - Appetizers

I've started blogging about the Great Chardonnay Tasting (TGCT) that we had on Saturday, January 22, 2022 in my last blogpost, but in order that I give each wine it's proper time in the spotlight, the six wines that we tasted will have their own blogpost.
However, we did begin our Chardonnay Tasting with a Sparkling Wine, the nearly unobtainium called Ultramarine. We are fortunate enough to have friends that persist on the waiting list, finally become anointed with the honor of receiving this Sparkling Wine and then generous enough to share it with us.

We really enjoyed this Ultramarine which was made from Chardonnay sourced from Heintz Vineyard in Sonoma. The sparkling wine was lively, with fresh lemon aromas and a lemon, quince, and cream flavor. I really liked it.
The best pairing with sparkling wine is local oysters. We only thought of this on the Thursday before the Chardonnay tasting. I texted my go-to friend, Jill, of The Noank Aquaculture Cooperative and she said that her husband was out hauling in oysters as we texted. She said that she would try to reach him and see if we could get some. Well, we were fortunate! Initially, we ordered 4 dozen oysters but Jill said that the oysters were on the small side so they gave us 60 oysters!
With 60 oysters, my husband made it two ways. Fresh shucked with the Ultramarine and baked for a later course.

This pairing was the opening act for a night of Chardonnay tasting. The stellar nature of the wines we tasted deserves it own blogpost, so for the next few days, I will be recapitulating the wines in the order in which they were poured.

The Great Chardonnay Tasting

We have been planning this Chardonnay tasting for a year now, well, since Fall of 2021 and finally, the day of the event arrived this past Saturday. This Chardonnay tasting was going to be a blind tasting, but not so blind that we did not know what the wines were. The lineup included three wines from the Old World and three wines from the New World, provided by the people who attended the tasting. Initially the wines were disguised in bags so that we did not know what we were tasting. If the closure on the bottle could be considered a clue, the contents were decanted into a clean Burgundy bottle so that the top could not give away the identity of the wine. Tasting notes were provided ahead of time so that people could try to use those notes as well as their taste buds to discern which wine was which.
The Chardonnay lineup included the following wines: 2002 Meursault 1er Cru "La Piece sous le bois" Domaine Robert Ampeau, 2017 VGW Chardonnay 00 Winery, 2017 "Charles Heintz Vineyard" Littorai Winery, 2013 Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru "Les Combettes" Domaine Leflaive, 2017 Chablis 1er Cru "Mont de Milieu" Domaine Samuel Billaud, and 2020 "Mate's Vineyard" Kumeu River.

The participants decided to pair the wines with small bites of food that would come out throughout the wine tasting. Here is the menu written into our Jacques Pepin Menus book by one of our guests, Noah, who is a proficient calligrapher:

I could not imagine a better first entry to document our gustatory adventures. In the next blogposts, I will give more details about each of the wines that we tasted. Stay tuned!

Number of Days from Budbreak to Harvest for Our Varieties

I have been reading over my blogposts from the past and came upon one that I wrote in 2018 called Vine Cycle and Vineyard Activities. In that blogpost, I calculated the number of days from budbreak to harvest for our Auxerrois, Chenin Blanc and Chardonnay. Since that time, we have a few more data points that we can add so here is the updated chart.

Variety	Budbreak	Harvest	# of Days
Axerrois	April 30, 2017	September 21, 2017	144
	May 7, 2018	September 17, 2018	137
	April 27, 2019	September 23, 2019	149
	May 8, 2020	September 17, 2020	132
	May 1, 2021	September 28, 2021	150
Chenin Blanc	May 8, 2015	September 22, 2015	137
	April 26, 2016	September 26, 2016	156
	April 30, 2017	October 7, 2017	160
	May 4, 2018	October 14, 2018	163
	April 25, 2019	October 14, 2019	172
	May 4, 2020	October 11, 2020	160
	May 3, 2021	October 17, 2021	167
Chardonnay	April 30, 2017	September 23, 2017	146
	May 4, 2018	September 30, 2018	149
	April 25, 2019	September 28, 2019	156
	May 2, 2020	September 24, 2020	145
	April 28, 2021	October 3, 2021	158
Cabernet Sauvignon	May 9, 2018	October 20, 2018	164
	May 7, 2019	November 3, 2019	180
	May 7, 2020	October 22, 2020	168
	May 7, 2021	October 24, 2021	170
Cabernet Franc	May 7, 2018	October 20, 2018	166
	April 29, 2019	October 26, 2019	180
	May 8, 2020	October 22, 2020	167
	May 3, 2021	October 24, 2021	174
Barbera	May 2, 2020	October 28, 2020	172
	April 29, 2021	October 25, 2021	179

This chart shows at a glance how many days it was from budbreak to harvest for our varieties. It shows that the Auxerrois is the first to ripen and consequently gets harvested first, followed by the Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, the two Cabernet varieties and then the Barbera. It also shows the number of days from budbreak to harvest so that we can get an idea of when the various grapes will ripen in any given year, subject to Mother Nature (of course).

Update on Our 2021 Botrytized Chenin Blanc Fermentation

The last harvest in 2021 was our botrytized Chenin Blanc which we harvested on December 15. We inoculated the cold settled must on December 18 and have been monitoring the fermentation ever since.
As soon as we inoculated the must, the fermentation seemed to be going, although it was at an exceedingly slow pace. This slow pace of fermentation continued until it took off on December 23.

We have been monitoring the decline in the Brix.

Variety Date of Observation	Weight	Volume of Juice	Brix	pH	TA
Botrytized Chenin Blanc-12/16/2021	20 pounds	1 gallon	31.5	3.52	14.2 g/L
December 23, 2021			30
December 30, 2021			25
January 6, 2022			21
January 14, 2022			19

The fermentation appears to be slowing a little and the Brix has been going down slowly, but steadily. After taking the reading today, I sampled a mere drop of the precious liquid and it tasted to me like poached pears!

Update on Our 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon Wine

Just a little recap of our 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon and where it is now. We harvested our Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc on October 22, 2020 and the grapes were destemmed and put into a half ton bin to settle until inoculation with the yeast F83 occurred on October 25. Fermentation was over around November 4 and on November 20, the must was pressed and the wine was put into a 75 gallon stainless steel keg. We inoculated the wine with VP41 in order to allow for the malolactic fermentation (MLF) to occur. My husband took a small sample of this wine so that he could run a paper chromatography test and then compared the results on February 17, 2021 which showed that the MLF had indeed occurred and that the malic acid had been converted to lactic acid. On February 26, the wine was racked into an oak barrel and the excess wine was put into 5-gallon stainless steel tank. The excess wine in the stainless steel tank was used to top off the wine in the barrel.
We periodically tasted the wine and could taste the influence of the oak on the wine. We thought that the oak was adding some complexity to the wine and this was a good thing. We also sent the wine off to Lodi so that we could know what the alcohol content of the wine was and the test showed that we had 11.46% alcohol in our Cabernet Sauvignon. We topped off the Cabernet Sauvignon in the barrel on August 23 and December 13, 2021 using the excess wine in the stainless steel keg.
When we went to top off the barrel on December 13, I thought that I smelled a hint of prunes on the wine and Jonathan Edwards concurred. The aroma was not that of dried prunes, but rather of fresh prunes and there was no flavor of prunes when we tasted the wine.
I didn't think much of it until, (in my cleaning) I came across a January 2020 issue of the Wine Business Monthly that we subscribe to. In that issue, there was an article titled, "Impact of Oxygen on Red Wines Aged in Barrels". What the authors did in their research was to follow the wine aroma modification and oxidation by monitoring the content of MND (3-methyl-2, 4-nonanedione).

The flavor of MND is reminiscent of prune, is very specific to “oxidized” flavors. The content of this compound increases with the oxidation state of the wine, which makes it a very good marker of oxygen supply and oxygen sensitivity of the wine.
The authors found that there are so called resistant wines, where Cabernet Sauvignon first pressed wines treated either oxidatively or reductively behaved in the same manner but the same Cabernet Sauvignon so called "second wine" showed higher levels of MND whether it was treated oxidatively or reductively.

While the article provided an answer to the aroma of prunes attributable to the compound MND (3-methyl-2, 4-nonanedione), it really didn't clear up for me how the impact of oxygen on a wine can lead to the evolution of unwanted aromas and flavors such as acetaldehyde and sherry notes as well as creation of the hospitable environment to lactic acid bacteria which can lead to production of ethyl acetate, acetic acid and other vinegar notes.
Maybe if I keep on cleaning the house, I can find other articles to answer this question.
References:
1. Alexandre Pons, Andrei Prida, and Philippe Darriet, "Impact of Oxygen on Red Wines Aged in Barrels", Wine Business Monthly, January 2020, ppg.
2. Image from TCI.

Vintage 2022: Winter is Definitely Here

It's hard to believe that we have turned the calender on another New Year. Our temperatures on New Years day was quite balmy but rainy. The first week of January brought our first "real" snowfall which was about 3 inches. That is a bit less than what our forecasters called for with showfall between 3-6 inches. We did dodge the foot of snow that the middle of our state saw on Friday, January 7.
This coming week will bring some frigid days. Here is the forecast for the rest of the month.

In past years, the third week of January usually brought a warming trend. We'll see if that happens this year.

Projecting a 5 Year Harvest---2022

In February 2021, I wrote two blogposts called Projecting a 5 Year Harvest---Part 1 and Projecting a 5 Year Harvest---Part 2. In the Projecting a 5 Year Harvest---Part 2 blogpost I projected what our 2021 weight and volume would be based on the number of vines that were maturing and potentially producing fruit. Now I can put in actual values!

Variety	2019 Actual		2020 Actual		2021 Projected    Actual				2022 Projected
	Lbs	Gal	Lbs	Gal	Lbs	Gal	Lbs	Gal	Lbs	Gal
Auxerrois	636	50	1670	120	1818	-	1638	130	2535
Chenin Blanc	3930	280	8201	655	15,455	-	6200	496	15,455
Chardonnay	291	26	1136	75	2835	-	2625	210	2835
Cabernet Sauvignon	332	25	888	70	1418	-	561	45	1418
Cabernet Franc	377	30	872	70	1418	-	402	32	1418
Barbera			110	9	250	-	60	5	500

The above table clearly shows that our 2021 Vintage did not meet our projections and also was not as fruitful as our 2020 vintage with the exception of the Chardonnay. I've included the projections for 2022 and crossing our fingers we can achieve that goal this year!

Ringing in the New Year with 2018 Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay

There was no champagne in our household as we celebrated a laid back us-only New Year's dinner. My husband was prepared with two types of fish from our local fish monger, Sea Well. On New Year's Eve, he pan fried a Greek branzino and on New Year's he baked the black sea bass with roasted red peppers, artichoke and lemon for dinner. It is a delicious dish!

To pair with both the Greek branzino and black sea bass, my husband pulled out a 2018 Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay. We first opened the Chardonnay on New Year's Eve and had it with the Greek branzino. I got a jolt of oak upon swirling and sniffing. To be honest, the oak was a little overpowering to begin with but as we tasted the wine with the fish, I perceived notes of lemon and butterscotch which was quite nice. There was a nice acidic finish which made it a good pairing with the fish.
We left half of the bottle of wine to sit overnight to see how it will taste on the following evening with the black sea bass. We poured the wine, swirled and I noted on rapid succession that the first whiff of oak transformed into a minerality and then to a lemony butterscotch! The wine had all of the aromas of yesterday but I could discern a bit more complexity on the second day. When I tasted it, it was just as delicious as the previous day but the finish, while still long was less sharply acidic. All in all a very nice wine.
Over the holidays, we watched a movie called "Wine and War" which is all about making wine in Israel during times of war and largely told by Serge Hochar of Chateau Musar. In part of the movie, he advises Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of "Eat, Pray, Love" that you cannot describe a wine with the first sip. You must let the wine evolve and that evolution of the bottle of wine could take hours. So, we are following Serge's advice and enjoying every sip of wine and it's evolution!