What is Valdiguié?

Earlier this month, I wrote about Red Grapes of California and in that blog was a grape called Valdiguié which was mistakenly called Gamay in California. I wanted to know more about the Valdiguié grape and found a very good article from U.C. Davis.¹
Valdiguié is a grape grown in France where it is also known as Valdiguer, Cahors, Gros Auxerrois, Jean-Pierrou at Sauzet, Quercy, and Noir de Chartres. According Robinson, et. al² the Valdiguié is a fairly recent variety, the origins of which are hypothesized to be in Puylaroque in southern France.
The California Gamay was correctly identified as Valdiguié by Pierre Galet in 1980 and verified by DNA fingerprinting. It belongs to the Cot (Malbec) ampelographic group. The grape gained popularity during Prohibition due to it's high yield and tolerance to powdery mildew. Currently in California, there are approximately 1,000 acres planted in Valdiguié.

The variety is vigorous and late blooming allowing it to escape early spring frosts. It is high yielding producing between 5 to 8 tons an acre. Valdiguié is used for the production of fruity red or rosé table wines.
References:
1. Valdiguié.
2. J. Robinson, J. Harding and J. Vouillamoz, Wine Grapes - A complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavours, pg 1109-1110, Allen Lane 2012 ISBN 978-1-846-14446-2.

2022 Nervi-Conterno Il Rosato

The birds are chirping in the morning, the daffodil leaves are starting to pop out of the soil, is it spring? Warmer weather is headed our way and with that, the enjoyment of drinking a well crafted rose. In anticipation, we opened up this rose to pair with a chicken dinner. We were surprised that I had never blogged about this rose and I am addressing that deficiency today. This 2022 Nervi-Conterno Il Rosato is imported by Polaner Selections and is a blend of 90% nebbiolo and 10% Uva Rara. It is a dry wine with notes of red berries. It is our go-to rose during the summer months.
To pair with this rose, my husband enlisted our grandson to pound the sliced chicken breast into thin but even pieces in preparation for making chicken saltimbucca. The recipe that they followed was contributed by David Tanis and appeared in Times Cooking. The only time consuming part was marinating the chicken in chopped sage, garlic, red pepper flakes and olive oil for one hour. After that, it was crisp the fresh sage leaves in olive oil, brown the chicken breasts in the same pan and transfer the cooked chicken into a large baking dish. Top with 2 sage leaves, a slice of prosciutto and a slice of fontina and broil for 2-3 minutes until the cheese is bubbling.

References:
1. NERVI-CONTERNO.

Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

This morning, we watched an episode of Wine Masters on sparkling wines hosted by Sarah Heller and Fredrik Lindfors. They went through all of the methods of putting bubbles into wine and elaborated on the styles. It went a bit quickly, so I thought I would investigate a bit more and write a blog.

Method	Description
Traditional Method	Hand-pick whole clusters (mechanization causes split skins allowing for early oxidation, undesired color extraction) Gentle pressing (ie. Many Champagne houses have presses right in the vineyard) 1st fermentation to create still, dry base wine (around 10-11% alcohol) Blending (varietal base wines, vineyard sites, reserve wines, etc) Liqueur de tirage (yeast, nutrients, clarifying agent, sugar) 2nd fermentation in bottle (alcohol increases by 1.2-1.3%) Note: the bottle where second fermentation occurs is the same bottle that the customer purchases. Yeast autolysis (contact with dead yeast cells creates additional flavors, richer texture) Riddling (process of slowly turning and tilting bottles downward in a series of moves so yeast sediment glides to neck of bottle where it can be frozen and expelled) Disgorgement (term for the removal of the frozen yeast cap) Liqueur d’expedition (topping up with wine and any desired sugar level – called dosage – for the final style) Bottle aging (some regions have minimum aging requirements)
Transfer Method	Often hand-picking of grape clusters Gnetle pressing 1st fermentation to create still, dry base wine (around 10-11% alcohol) Blending (varietal base wines, vineyard sites, reserve wines, etc) Liqueur de tirage (yeast, nutrients, clarifying agent, sugar) 2nd fermentation in bottle (alcohol increases by 1.2-1.3%) Yeast autolysis (contact with dead yeast cells creates additional flavors, richer texture) Wine emptied into tanks Filtering to remove dead yeast sediment Liqueur d’expedition (topping up with wine and any desired sugar level – called dosage- for the final style) Re-bottled in a new bottle Bottle aging
Tank/Charmat Method	1st fermentation in stainless steel tanks to create base wine 2nd fermentation in sealed tanks (dry base wine is placed in tank together with sugar, yeast nutrients, and a clarifying agent) Wine is filtered Wine is bottled under pressure
Asti Method	Must is chilled so it does not start fermenting, and is stored until needed. (It is fermented to order to create a fresh, new batch.) When needed, must is warmed and fermentation (the one and only fermentation with this method) starts. Initially, CO2 is allowed to escape. Partway through, the tank is sealed to retain CO2 Fermentation is stopped early (by chilling the wine) at 7-7.5% abv, so the wine is left sweet (with unfermented sugar) and a minimum of 4 atmospheres of pressure. Wine is filtered and bottled
Carbonation Method	CO2 is injected into a wine and then the wine is bottled under pressure
Ancestral or Pétillant naturel Method	Pétillant naturel is the oldest method of making sparkling wine, also known as the méthode ancestrale or ancestral method The wine is moved from vat into individual bottles while it is still fermenting, and then sealed under a crown cap Bubbles are created when carbon dioxide gas, a byproduct of alcoholic fermentation, gets trapped in the wine The wine is not filtered and no dosage (sugar) is added, which is why pét-nat is considered more “natural” than other sparkling wine styles

The last sparkler that Heller and Lindfors showcased was a still wine into which they infused CO₂ using the Soda Stream for carbonation. The experiment went a little awry. We have a Soda Stream and my husband is thinking of trying their experiment.
References:
1. Napa Valley Wine Academy, The 5 Ways to Make Sparkling Wine.
2. Master Class, What Is Pétillant Naturel?, September 28, 2021.

Ponson Champagne

Recently, we had our friends over for oysters and Ponson Champagne. It is made from 100% Pinot Meunier. We loved the combination of oysters and Ponson. True to my MO, I went to the Ponson Website to learn more about the producers and the wine.
The six generations of Bonet-Ponson began with Grégoire Bonnet who was one of the first recoltant manipulants in the village of Chamery in 1862. Jules Bonnet extended the domain by purchasing more parcels in Chamery. Jules' son Raoul moved to another location in the village after the destruction of the family cellar during the bombing in the Second World War. Raoul then initiated the construction of the present day caves to store his small production of about 5000 bottles a year. Raoul was joined by his 14 year old son André, who was in charge of ploughing the family vines with his two horses. André Bonnet met and married Monique Ponson and started the domain Bonnet-Ponson, growing a few plots of Meunier and Pinot noir in Chamery, Vrigny and Coulommes la Montagne. When their son Thierry joined the domain in 1979, all the steps of champagne making were being processed by the family and their 3 workers. At that time, they were bottling and disgorging 70 000 bottles produced per year. In 2013, Cyril Bonnet joined the family domain and in that year they began the conversion of their vineyard to the organic method of cultivation.

The Bonet-Ponsons farm 10,5 hectares of vineyards planted with 3,80 hectares of Pinot noir, 3,30 hectares of Pinot Meunier, 3,20 hectares of Chardonnay and 0,20 hectares of Petit Meslier, first planted in 2016.
Most of their Pinot Meunier vines grows on the lower part of the hills of Chamery and Vrigny, on sandy or clay loamy soil. The fossil shells found in Chamery attest to the presence of the sea in this region thirty-five million years ago.
Most of their wines do not go through any filtration or finning process. Their clarification occurs naturally during the winter when the cellar temperature drops. The wines stay on their lies for a minimum of 7 months before bottling, building up their structure and refining their taste.
References:
1. Ponson Website

Red Grapes of California

One of my wine news feeds had a link to this article: 1929 book on black grapes sheds fascinating light on the history of California wine from Lodi Wine California which I followed up on. The book was written by Joseph Perelli-Minetti for USDA's State of California Department of Agriculture and published in 1929.¹
It is interesting to note that at the time that this book was written, the United States was in the midst of a nationwide Prohibition which lasted from 1920 to 1933.
Joseph Perelli-Minetti wrote that in 1929, there were 38 different black skinned varieties of grapes being cultivated in California.

This 80 page book provided highly detailed photographs and notes on leaf and cluster morphologies of those varieties. Some of which are the following varieties:

Description	1929 Photo	Current Photo
Mission Grape

The Mission grape was the only European grape cultivated in California prior to statehood in 1850. The grape was planted along El Camino Real by Franciscan missionaries between 1769 and 1833. It is now recognized as the European grape known as Criolla or Pais. The white pulp of the Mission grape was also used to make a wine called Angelica.

Alicante Bouschet

Alicante Bouschet, a teinturier (a red skinned variety with red pulp) was a cultivar highly favored during Prohibition for its sturdiness, so it became used for cross-country shipping.

Charbono

Charbono has now been correctly identified as Bonarda (Argentina), and is synonymous with Douce noir (from France's Savoy region). However, it is still grown and bottled in California as Charbono.

Valdiguié

Almost all of the grapes grown in California and identified as Gamay is now correctly identified as Valdiguié originating in France's Languedoc-Roussillon region. It was not until 1980 that UC Davis provided the correct identification of California Gamay. Up until that time, there was also a variety bottled as Gamay Beaujolais, which turned out to be neither a true Gamay nor Valdiguié, but rather a clonal variant of Pinot noir.

Mourvèdre

Cultivated in California as Mataró, in the 1980's during the rise of the Rhone Rangers, it was understood that Mataró, Mourvèdre and Monastrell all referred to the same grape.

Petite Sirah - identified as the French Durif

As recently as the mid-1990s, Petite Sirah was mistakenly believed to be a clonal variant of Syrah. In 1997 UC Davis established, once and for all, that almost all the Petite Sirah grown in California is identical to the variety known in France as Durif. It is a cross made in the 1860s of Peloursin and Syrah grapes and attributed to a Montpellier, France botanist named François Durif.

References:
1. Randy Caparoso, 1929 book on black grapes sheds fascinating light on the history of California wine, Lodi Wine California, Letters from Lodi, January 9, 2024.

2018 Stark-Condé Cabernet Sauvignon - Jonkershoek Valley

I blogged about this South African wine about a year ago and at that time, I wanted to do some research into the Jonkershoek Valley where the Stark-Condé Vineyard and Winery are located. I went to their website: Stark-Condé to learn more about them. While I was in the midst of doing this, I happened to ask my husband why he purchased this Cabernet Sauvignon from South Africa. His explanation was rather interesting. He mentioned that our friends asked us if there was a winery that they should be visiting when they went to the Stellenbosch region in South Africa. My husband did the research and came across Stark-Condé as one of the wineries our friends should visit. They went there and were very impressed. So, my husband went to our local package store and asked if they could get some of this wine and they were able to, so we now have a local supply.
The Stark-Condé story begins with Hans-Peter Schroeder who was raised in Stellenbosch but spent much of his life abroad. Schroeder's first occupation was as an officer in the merchant navy and he went to Japan many times in the early 1960s. In his desire to learn the Japanese language, Schroeder decided to live in Japan and attended the International Christian University in Tokyo where he completed a four-year business administration degree and met his future wife, Midori Maruyama. Schroeder and Midori got married in 1965, but due to the South African apartheid regime’s Prohibition of Mixed Marriages, they could not go back there to live.
In the 1980's with the end of apartheid looming, they decided to go back to South Africa, purchased the Oude Nektar farm in 1989 and focused on growing grapes. This explains the Stark part of their brand name, which comes from Schroeder's mother Franziska Stark who was the first of the family to settle in Stellenbosch. She is remembered for her fierce independence and insatiable curiosity.
The Condé contribution comes from Jose Condé's tribute to his Cuban father. Condé is from Independence, Missouri, the son of a Cuban father and an Irish-American mother. His interest in wine started when he went to New York after being awarded a scholarship to study art. One of the Japanese clients of the design studio Condé worked for, asked him to move to Tokyo for a year to help with international projects. There, Condé met Marie Schroeder on his first night in Tokyo. He married Marie Schroeder, the daughter of Hans-Peter Schroeder and Midori Maruyama. The Condés decided to move to South Africa to be closer to Marie’s parents. Condé’s intention was to open a design studio in Cape Town. However, once he was in South Africa, the wine bug bit and he pivoted to becoming a winemaker.

The Jonkerschoek Valley is an ideal location to grow Cabernet Sauvignon. The grapes are farmed organically and the winemaking is kept as simple and as natural as possible. The grapes that went into the 2018 Stark-Condé Cabernet Sauvignon were hand picked, meticulously sorted and small batch fermented with natural yeast. The wine was matured in small French oak barrels for 18 months before being bottled, with no fining or filtration, in December 2019.

References:
1. Stark-Condé Website
2. Peter Kenny, On his first visit to Japan as a mariner..., UPI Archives, March 20, 1993.
3. JOSE CONDE - WINEMAKER AT STARK-CONDE, Wines of South Africa.

Pruning Time is Approaching

We typically give ourselves a break in January and then get back into the vineyard in late February, but the warm weather coming up may be forcing our hand. We have been trying to apply the Simonit&Sirch method of pruning in our vineyard. It was time to refresh our memory on the technique and to take a further look into it's concepts. Toward that end, I found an excellent article online in Canopy Vineyard called The key to pruning: Respect.
Marco Simonit, a Friuli-based master pruner observed the gnarly old vines in the vineyards of Italy, France, Tunisia and Greece and wondered why some vines lasted for centuries while others died well before reaching their prime.

In 2003, Marco Simonit and his childhood friend Pieropaolo Sirch began training their vineyard crews in the eponymous Simonit&Sirch Method of branch-pruning. In their method, the key is to respect the sap flow. This method prioritises small cuts on young wood and the uninterrupted flow of plant sap. Large wounds cause dry wood to deepen at the expense of the living wood. The combination of these dry wood areas creates disturbances to the sap flow leading to the development of trunk diseases.
The four fundamental principals in Simonit&Sirch Method are:
1. BRANCHING - Shaping the structure

2. RESPECTING VASCULAR FLOW – through the structure of the plant and separating desiccated areas from the main vascular flow

3. CUTS AND CROWNS – reducing cutting surfaces and respecting the crowns

4. PROTECTIVE WOOD – leaving a portion of protective wood when cutting on two-year-old wood

I found this article to be very enlightening. Also, in that article was a reference to the Simonit&Sirch Academy where there are free courses on pruning methods. I will be checking out that site soon!
References:
1. Chris Boiling, The key to pruning: Respect, Canopy Vineyard, 12-14-2021.
2. Simonit&Sirch Academy.

Where Does Cork Come From?

Recently, there was an article with a very detailed description of where cork comes from. Cork in the wine business is synonymous with closures for wine bottles which have been around since glass bottles gained popularity in the 18th century. Although currently, there is a move away from cork to screwcap closures.
Cork comes from the oak tree, a slow-growing tree which takes decades to produce good quality cork, the bark of the tree. It is unique in its ability to regenerate its bark. Cork is durable, waterproof, light and pliable making it ideal for use in all kinds of products.
Portugal is the world's largest cork producer and the cork oak is its national tree. The cork trees are protected by law in Portugal, so it’s forbidden to cut them. Most of the cork produced in Portugal grows in the gently undulating hills and plains in the south of the country, in an ancient agroforestry system known as montado. A montado is a savannah-like ecosystem combining cork, holm oaks and olive trees with pastures, grazing livestock, crops and fallows. In addition to jobs, the forests where cork grows provide food and shelter for animals, all while sequestering carbon dioxide. Coruche, a rural area south of the Tagus River is known as Portugal’s “cork capital".
The process of harvesting cork takes precision and years of practice. During late May and August when the tree is in its active phase of growth, the bark is easier to strip without damaging the tree turnk. The stroke of the ax must be strong, but also delicate to avoid hitting the inner bark and damaging the tree to carefully peel away the bark from the tree trunks. Once the bark is removed, workers write the last number of that year with white paint on the exposed golden brown trunk. The bark will slowly grow back and be ready for another harvest after nine years.

The harvested planks of cork will then be stacked outdoors in storage areas exposed to air and sunlight. After six months of aging to remove moisture, they will be sorted according to their thickness and quality, then boiled to clean impurities and make the material softer and easier to handle.

Aged oak being boiled:

The cork planks are trimmed and punched to form natural cork stoppers and the leftovers are ground into granules and pressed together to form cork sheets or blocks.
Cork is experiencing a revival as more industries look for sustainable alternatives to plastic and other materials derived from fossil fuels. While most cork is still used for bottle stoppers, over the last decade different industries have been finding new uses for it. The bark is now used for flooring and furniture, to make shoes and clothes and as insulation in homes and electric cars. Portugal’s exports reached an all-time high of 670 million euro ($728 million) in the first half of 2023.
Recycled cork can also be crushed and composited to make other products. In Portugal, Green Cork, a recycling program started by the environmental organization Quercus, has collected and recycled more than 100 million cork stoppers since 2009. A similar initiative, ReCORK, exists in the United States. We use engineered cork as a bottle closure for our wine and I was glad to read that it is green and sustainable.
References:
1. Marta Vidal, This ancient material is displacing plastics and creating a billion-dollar industry, The Washington Post, February 3, 2024.

Sake and Takoyaki

We have been watching a lot of NHK TV and have been salivating over the Japanese street food called takoyaki. Takoyaki are little puff balls of batter stuffed with a piece of octopus (tako), green onions, and pickled ginger. The ideal takoyaki should have a crispy exterior and melt-in-your-mouth interior. We talked about the appropriate equipment to make the takoyaki, looked online and saw a bunch of griddles for making takoyaki, but the expense of getting a takoyaki griddle just didn't seem to justify indulging this food fetish of ours until eureka! we thought of using our granddaughter's babycakes cake pop maker. It would be a few weeks before we could get our hands on her cake pop maker, but once we did, it was takoyaki here we come!
It turns out that there are a number of Youtube videos detailing how to use a cake pop maker to make takoyaki. So, yesterday, we went on a hunt for ingredients and instead of octopus, we decided to use shrimp. My husband made the batter, fired up the babycakes and began making the ebi(shrimp)yaki.

This was how the finished product looked and trust me, it was as good as it looks!:

The appropriate beverage with ebiyaki is sake. We had a bottle of sake in our wine cave and needless to say, it was the perfect pairing. This sake is Dewazakura Omachi "Jewel Brocade". The label on the back said that the sake is made from the ancestral strain of rice called omachi, from which all sake making rice is descended. Dewazakura is located in Yamagata Prefecture in the Japanese Alps. The brewery has been making sake since 1893!
This sake is a Junmai Ginjo. (I had to refresh my memory on what "junmai" means - "Junmai means that the sake was made with rice, water and koji. If the label doesn't say 'Junmai' and has only something like 'Dai Ginjo', then the sake can have added alcohol.") With just three ingredients in the making of a junmai sake, all of the ingredients must be perfect. My winter research last year was all about how sake is made. It is truly a laborous process!
If you are interested in reading more about sake making, here are the blogpost, which is really a condensed version of the process:
Sake Making
How is Sake Made?---The Rice
How is Sake Made?---The Water
How is Sake Made?---The Koji
How is Sake Made?—-The Yeast
How is Sake Made?—-The Fermentation

References:
1. Dewazakura.

Vintage 2024: It's February

It is already February! In last month's Vintage Notes I wrote about the wet January that we were having and the records show that January in Connecticut was the third highest rainfall totals recorded.

The rainy weather gave us a chance to catch up on our business. To be honest, the most time consuming part of trying to get our business off the ground has been complying with the requirements for our label. My husband followed the instructions for getting label approval also called Certificate of Label Approvals (COLAs).
During the first submission of our label, the reviewer objected to the front of our label containing the words "Old Mystic, CT" because Old Mystic is not a viticultural area. We had our graphic designer remove that and resubmitted. The second reviewer objected to the back label containing the information "bottled at Jonathan Edwards Winery" so we changed it to "bottled by Jonathan Edwards Winery". Then it turned out that we could not put the word "estate" on our back label even though the grapes were grown at our vineyard. More iterations with our graphic artist. Finally, when we thought that we had everything in compliance, we were informed that we could not get our own COLA because the wine was bottle by Jonathan Edwards and the COLA for the label must be through Jonathan Edwards Winery.
Fortunately, Jon has a wonderful person, Susan working with him and Susan helped us to get all of the COLAs we needed for our wine labels!
Our journey continues!
Back to the weather: Around 10:30, the sun came out! It is such a strange feeling. For the next 10 days the temperatures will be in the high 30s and low 40s. I am just crossing my fingers that we will not see a temperature plunge such as we experienced last year.