For the love of wine

From time to time, I like to observe other people’s method of wine tasting.

Most practice the age old ritual of see, smell, taste, spit, or, the more American way:  see, smell, taste and swallow.  I started writing this post and then saw that The Wine Tasting Guy has a good post on the Ritual. I think this method works for many wines that are consumed young. Depending on the situation and the wine at hand, though, I may change the order.  I don’t mean spit first. Then what order, you ask? A very old bottle or a delicate varietal may not give you very long to smell the aromas, so I do that right away. For the most part, the color is not going to change very quickly during the tasting, especially for old bottles, so no need to waste precious time and inspect the wine immediately.  But, the bouquet of an old Pinot Noir can be fleeting and change from one moment to the next. One of the biggest pleasures I derive from wine smelling is observing the changing aromas throughout the course of the bottle. Changing taste and body, or mouth feel, comes next and color last. Try tracking these changes once and you will see what I mean.

One last smelling exercise. Kathryn makes fun of me when I do it, but then I caught her doing it herself once (she tells me it was only to make me laugh).  

A Vacuvin is (picture at right) a pump device used to create a vacuum in a partially field bottle of wine in order to eliminate oxygen contact.

When we end up with a partial bottle, I pump it until I feel the vacuum pressure build up, indicating all the air is out. At that point I quickly lift it to my nose and then push on the pump handle to release the trapped wine aroma straight into my nose. An Aroma Bomb! The small pleasures of life.

I read somewhere about ‘the chore of topping off’. I don’t know how often that writer has to top off the barrels, or how many barrels (s)he must top off, but in our small production world I consider it far from a chore. It’s an opportunity to taste your wine and check on the aging progress and have some fun with friends while you are at it.

If you are a wine maker and have barrels of wine, you are likely performing this task.  I hope that, like me, you enjoy this chore.  No point in doing what you love (like making wine) if it becomes a chore.

There is something romantic about a barrel of wine sitting there, doing it’s thing…concentrating the flavors…evaporating the water, or alcohol in some cases…imparting oak flavors and aromas from the barrel wood to the wine.  As the wine evaporates it creates head space, ullage as French call it, at the top of the barrel.  Topping off is basically adding wine to the barrel to fill this head space.  To keep it full in order to minimize oxygen contact. Un-topped barrels, in most cases, will spoil the wine; turn it into vinegar or sherry.  Not what we are looking for.

Topping off is also an opportunity to taste the wine in the barrel.  And an opportunity to taste the topping wine, which we draw off from the wine in our stainless steel tanks–just to make sure we are adding good wine.  

Yesterday, I topped off our 08 Las Brisas in barrels.  Our friend Paul came over to ‘help’ us evaluate the progress.  It is always fun to hear other’s opinions and to take the opportunity to open previous years’ samples and compare.  Things are looking good.

Maybe you’d rather just be pressing with your friends.  I just came across this fabulous photo of our great friend Ann embracing the wine she makes with us–literally.  She and several other friends are partnering with us on our 2008 Las Brisas Pinot Noir.  I hope she doesn’t mind if I put a photo of it here.  

Many of us feel very affectionate  toward  wine at some point or another. But imagine for a moment how you might feel about a wine you had handcrafted yourself AND you really enjoy drinking.  Ann epitomizes our feelings here:   

that's amore

No time to explain why the wine is in such a container, my point is that it is so rewarding to make wine and it is even more so to do it with friends.  

zap, paul and mark pressing; uzi tasting

‘Tis the season to appreciate great friends.

Too wet and rainy to drive up to Napa or Sonoma on the weekend? Don’t despair, you can still visit a winery and support your local community .There has been a proliferation of wineries right here in the Bay Area. In the East Bay alone we have 17 wineries that are members of the East Bay Vintners Alliance.

A good write-up about the newest East Bay wineries was done by Contra Costa times writer and blogger Jessica Yadergaran.

Across the bay, last Thursday, the San Francisco Wine Association inaugural tasting event was held at Crushpad in San Francisco.  Sixteen member wineries participated. The driving force behind SFWA is John and Sharol Tarabini of Damien Rae. A crowd of a couple hundred people was definitely enjoying the event along with me.  The event was described in a Wine and Vine article and by a local SF blogger, a Wine Brat by her own account, in a post titled when the lights go down in the city.

Given that we live in Berkeley but make our wine in San Francisco,  maybe we should hedge our bets, enjoy both worlds and join both organizations. Any opinions?

Last Saturday, our friend grower/owner of Sonatera Vineyards, Debbie Friedenberg, told us about Siduri’s  annual holiday open house in Santa Rosa.  Siduri is a producer of multiple highly acclaimed, single vineyard designate Pinot Noirs. Adam and Dianna Lee, the owners of Siduri, are an inspiration to a lot of up- and-coming boutique wineries, such as ours.

The wines came from (in geographical order) Sonoma Mountain’s Van Der Kamp, Amber Ridge, Hirsh Vineyard, Sonatera, Sonoma Coast, all the way down to Santa Lucia Highland’s Pisoni. Impressively, many of the tables were staffed by the vineyard growers themselves, such as Sonatera and Van Der Kamp.  This gave us an opportunity to ask detailed questions about the vineyards and find out what makes them unique.

The wines were all outstanding with the vineyard and appellation differences clearly coming thru in the wines.  Unfortunately we had to rush through the tasting as we had only an hour to spare but it was a great opportunity to try Pinot from some of the best vineyards of California (and one from Oregon) side by side.

I was thrilled when Dianna Lee, dressed in black with a royal tiara on her head due to the theme of the open house, took me on a private tour of the barrel room for a barrel tasting of the 2008s.  First, we chatted a bit about our respective kids.  It is hard to believe Dianna and Adam are raising three young kids while running such a phenomenal winery.  Then we talked a bit about the wines we make and started tasting her 08s. First was the 08 Sonatera (Debbie Friedenberg and Marne Coggan’s  vineyard.) Although it is just three months old, a baby wine that just finished Malo, it is already off to a great start with great aroma, color and fantastic mouth feel and flavors. Not a surprise, given that the 07 single vineyard Sonatera we tasted on the floor was our favorite.

Since I also make Santa Lucia Highlands, Dianna was very kind to let me try a couple of the Santa Lucia Highland barrels from Garry’s and Pisoni’s vineyards. Now we have a reference point for greatness.

It was very gracious of Debbie to introduce me to Dianna and for them to spend some time with me during the hectic open house. Thank you to you both!

Next time you are near Santa Rosa, give Siduri a call to schedule a visit, you will not regret it, especially if you are a Pinot fan (or a Dallas Cowboys fan as you will appreciate the Wine Tank names.)

continued from Crawl Space, Part 2…

It was a holiday, Memorial Day.  No construction crews were due to work today on the nano-winery we were building below our house.  No alarm clocks were set for school or work.  But small children don’t usually need loud noises to wake up early and we are thanking our lucky stars (at least this once!) that this morning was no exception in our house. At 7:15 that morning our kids (then 7 and 5) came in our bedroom saying they heard noises in the wall.  There were ghosts in the wall, they said.  Like good parents we sent them away telling them it was a holiday; there’s no school, there are no ghosts, go back to sleep, we said.  They left us and let us go back to sleep, but they weren’t buying our parental half-hearted reassurances.  This time when they called to me from the living room I detected true fright in their voices.  We leapt to the living room and sure enough heard startlingly loud and frequent creaks.  Then we saw the cracks in the wall around the fireplace.  We ran outside around the side of the house near the chimney where construction was taking place and much to our horror saw our brick and mortar chimney pulling away from our house.  With each creak, the chimney separated a little farther.  One small piece of wood at the top was pretty much holding the chimney to our house.  

We really hated to bother our architect/contractor on a holiday but did.  He was at our house in no time, along with a fire truck, his work crew and evacuation orders for our next door neighbors.  After this, things get a little hazy.  I think I was in shock. We were told to quickly move any valuables away from the fireplace inside and pack some things in case our house became inhabitable.  

chimney bricks in the old basement, before

Chimney bricks, after

Thankfully, the crew managed to bring down the chimney in a controlled manner.  Nobody was hurt and nothing was damaged.  We did have to add a new fireplace, fireplace surround and chimney to our remodeling list.  And next time I may just speak up when something doesn’t look right.

In the end, our tiny, back-breaking crawl space was converted to this fabulous place to make wine with (full-size) friends and family…

brick chimney was where the window is now

at work in the new cellar bottling the 07 Merlot

During a recent conversation regarding our wine-making endeavors, I overheard a comment implying that Pinot Noir is purely a fad. My wife, taking offense to this comment, countered that we have been drinking, loving and making Pinot long before the Movie came out.  Obviously, many Pinot and Burgundy lovers have been drinking wine made from this grape for centuries; long before the Movie came out and long before the advent of modern marketing.  

However, I do agree that part of the current Pinot craze we are experiencing is a fad. There is no better evidence of this than the fact that many current Pinot releases are made to please the palate of a non-Pinot drinker.  I am referring to the heavily extracted, high alcohol, fruit bomb, over the top Pinots I have encountered recently. They resemble a Syrah or Merlot rather than the delicate, perfumed, silky, nuanced wine that we came to love.

Now, there is no black and white in my wine world.  There is no wine that is better or worse than others.  There is only time and place; as in, every wine has its time and place. But I am a sucker for a good Burgundy.  We live a stone’s throw from Kermit Lynch (god bless him) and that has spoiled us.  It also has exhausted our yearly wine budget at only mid-year.  Our palette grew accustomed to Burgundies and we did not drink any serious California Pinot until 1995 when we tried Acacia while wine tasting in Carneros. The wine was pure and elegant; we were pleasantly surprised and grateful to find we enjoyed some Pinots made closer to home.  And our palate grew richer for finding it. 

Over the years we’ve discovered other styles of winemaking that take place in other regions–Russian River, Santa Rita Hills, Sonoma Coast, Santa Lucia Highlands, Monterey, Anderson Valley, Chalone and Willamette Valley, to name a few.  Some of the most exquisite and intriguing we’ve had were made by Calera in the Gabilan mountains, on Mt. Harlan—far away from Napa and Sonoma and even farther from Burgundy (at least, geographically.) Each one of these regions is different and wonderful in its own way and each winemaker imparts his or her own style on the wine.  My advice is to be open minded, to try new wines and not get closed in.  I’ve learned to listen to my own palate since I am the one spending my precious running-out time with the bottle, not the reviewer or whoever else is providing opinions.

As we have been making our own Pinot for five years, I have developed a much greater appreciation for a superb one when I encounter it. In my experience, winemakers that allow wines to make themselves usually produce the wines I appreciate and enjoy the most.  It is difficult to restrain yourself, step back and let the wine make itself. After all, you might mess up the whole vintage and have to wait another year to try it again. The urge to do something and ‘fix’ whatever problem you think the wine is having is very strong. But we learn to live with what we are given, to try not to make a ‘perfect by-the-numbers’ wine, to appreciate the differences year to year.  Sometimes Mother Nature hands you a ‘non-typical’ year, such as the frost then heat of 2008 in California, or the unmatched heat wave of 2003 in Burgundy.  I’ve been in involved in agriculture and agriculture products for a long time myself, I know it is no use to fight it.  Instead you make the most of what you got, you work with it and if it gives you a highly extracted, high alcohol, juicy wine, so be it! It is better than manipulating it to the point where it is no longer itself in order to have it represent a ‘typical’ style or region for the sake of consistency.

So, is the swell in Pinots a fad?  Yes, it is a fad for some people, but it is a good thing. It is a good thing because we now have so many new wine consumers being exposed to this varietal.  Yes, some of them will look for their beloved Cabernet or Syrah attributes in there, but others will try wonderful and honest Pinot Noirs and will appreciate their nuanced elegance. Some of them will discover the great artisanal Pinots being made all over the world, not just Burgundy or Carneros or Russian River. And some of them may turn this ‘Fad’ into a permanent appreciation. And we will all be better for it.