New Winemaker

I was contacted by a person interested in making wine, and asking how do they start. Here's what I wrote back:

Making wine:

1. How are you at chemistry? If chemistry (and math) are really difficult and not fun, then you won't like winemaking.

2. Are you able to spend over half of your "winemaking" time cleaning and sterilizing things? 

3. Are you OK being alone for long periods?

4. To start, I'd suggest you get a good winemaking book (try several and pick the one that speaks best to you) and treat it as your bible. Mine is "Home Winemaking Step by Step," by Jon Iverson. Read everything you can about the process, online--blogs, articles. And volunteer at a working winery. When you start your own batch, do a small one. Maybe do a kit first, though I never did a kit.

Delicious apples; what a cluster!

This is why some of us farm. Check out this cluster! Not grapes--apples!

Delicious is a great apple, and can be forgiven for its child, Red Delicious, which is an absolute abomination and should be rendered extinct as soon as possible. This cluster is on an 80-year old Delicious apple tree.

First cider!

Here's a photo of my first batch of cider. I'm making three batches (each from a different set of apple varieties, based on ripening dates), and will blend them together later. This batch is Fameuse (Snow Apple, from Quebec--a "sharp-sweet"), Gravenstein (sweet), and Fiesta (sharp-sweet with wonderful aromatics).

It's dry now, so fermentation is finished. Just racked it. It's tart and tannic now, but lots of aging will even it out. And it has a really nice honey smell.

Epona Vineyard harvest report

Cayuga: My next-to-latest grape (Regent being the latest to ripen); a favorite; hanging at 19.0 Brix and 3.12pH. Flavor is apple-moving to citrus now; a string of warm sunny days coming; I could make a good Riesling style wine with it now, if weather was turning bad, but by waiting I'm hoping for citrus-moving to peaches in the final flavor, when it tastes more like a Viognier. This one has EXCELLENT vinifera flavor emulation. No bird damage yet at all (unnetted, but scarecrows).

Leon Millot (pictured) : Picked 14 lbs per vine this week; sample berries were 24 Brix but the must is 21.5. pH is 3.56; that's not so high that I'm worried--I added 11% white grapes to fix color (same as adding Viognier to Syrah for same reason; it works), and let the ferm reach 88F as you taught me George. In my location, I prefer the big red style (actually tastes a lot like a good Pinot here) to Paul's rose style that is so delicious up on Salt Spring Island. I get nice purple fruits with a hint of woodsiness (not herbaceousness) here. 

Delicatessen: Picked at 21 Brix; pretty high for this variety. Nice fruit. Young plants, so low yield.

Jupiter, NY Muscat, Venus, Monastery Muscat: I make a rose from a blend of these. Jupiter had scraggly clusters (rained during bloom) and I got only 4 lbs per vine. Worse, the clusters shattered (right term?) during picking, so about a quarter of the berries fell to the ground. It reached 23 Brix, though. But if you want a good seedless grape here, why not grow Monastery Muscat? 23Brix and many large pretty clusters of large yellow grapes (13 lbs/vine) with superb flavor, compared to Jupiter's "fairly weak" flavor and Venus' "almost not there at all" flavor. NY Muscat (about 21 Brix) has superb flavor but has one seed per berry here. I should ditch the Venus and Jupiter (sorry, Arkansas) and just use NY Muscat and Monastery Muscat.

Mindon- what I call MIN(nesota 1095) x DON(skoi, which I read is probably the grape called Norway Muscat) is a winner here. David Roy Johnson's grape. 20 lbs from one vine, at 24 Brix. Nice flavor. No bird damage. I blended it into my Leon.

Regent- Sure like its fruit, but it's late here and the birds hit it hard. Only 18 Brix now and I have 33% bird loss already. I should really just give up on it. Makes a nice, full-bodied, Syrah-style wine, though.

Diam corks: A great step forward

Most of us have experienced a "corked" wine, meaning a wine that smells and tastes like a wet dirty dog, or moldy newspaper. That flaw is caused by TCA: 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, which can be transferred from a flawed cork to the wine. TCA can be faint, or it can be so pronounced that it ruins the wine. Although corks are of course traditional for wine bottle closures, screwcaps have gained in popularity because the incidence of TCA in screw-capped bottles is near-zero. 

But along comes Mr. Diam, who invented a process for eradicating cork taint from natural corks. In the Diam process, "supercritical carbon dioxide is used to leach out all objectionable compounds within the cork, including TCA. Then, a polyurethane is introduced into the cork, which fills some of the pores and reduces the permeability of the cork. Because all these steps couldn't be done to a natural cork, the Diam corks (as are many others) are made from "agglomerated" cork--cork that is made from small pieces of cork that have been fused together via heavy pressure.

I have used Diam corks, and I'm a fan. Small producers cannot afford to purchase screwcap machines, which cost upwards of $25k (!). So I am happy that a "safe" cork alternative exists. I predict that many commercial users of cork closures will switch to Diam corks, once they learn of the benefits. The last thing a winemaker needs is for his or her wine to suffer from TCA taint.

Incidentally, the process of taking cork from special oak trees in Spain and Portugal looks ghastly, but it is renewable--it does not kill the tree. The tree regrows more cork bark, and can be sustainably harvested on a recurring basis. 

Photo is from Decanter magazine, whose excellent article can be found here.

Some great wines I've sold recently:

These are so great that many of my customers are clamoring for more, so we've done reorders on these:

1. 2014 Campoggiovani Rosso di Montalcino $17: This is a "baby Brunello"--same grapes as a Brunello, but it has a year or two less time in barrel and bottle. It is a fantastic wine: dark cherry smoothness with a hint of cedar. Made from Sangiovese Grosso grapes, which are a clone (a variety) of Sangio and I believe the best Sangio clone in the world. Moreover, Brunello grapes grow in the warmest section of Tuscany, which helps them attain more of a New World style (fresher, more forward fruit; smoother, less lean and more body). Hurrah!

2. 2012 Joseph Jewell Pinot Noir (Russian River CA): $26.50: 95 points from Wine & Spirits: "There’s not an ounce of undue fat on this wine, just a lively concentration of red fruit and firm berry-skin tannins. The wine’s complex, delicate aromas suggest the bay laurel and redwood bark scents you might encounter on a hike in the forests above the Russian River."

3. 2015 Barnard Griffin Rose of Sangiovese (WA): $9: A perennial favorite among my customers, this has more body and grip than most roses, yet is in great balance. Delightful! It wins Double Platinum just about every year from Wine Press Northwest, no small feat for such a lower-priced wine!

Apple Cider!

I ground up and pressed 55 lbs of Fameuse (Snow Apple), 3 lbs Gravenstein, and 10 lbs of Fiesta apples today. Took a long time to make just 3.5 gallons of juice, but it seems to be very nice juice (11.5 Brix; pH 3.33). It's settling now and fermentation starts tomorrow. One thing very different with cider, compared to wine, is the low alcohol level: With cider, it's usually less than 7% alcohol, versus 10-15% for unfortified wine. So hyper-attentiveness to sanitation is even more important with cider than with wine. We'll see how it turns out!