Second Leaf

I’m jumping back into the swing of things with Wine Blogging Wednesday this month. The theme for this edition, though, was more challenging than usual. Ryan and Gabriella  from Catavino were the hosts this month so you just knew the theme would center around Iberian wines. Sure enough, our charge was to taste a table wine from Portugal, steering clear of Madeira, Vinho Verde, ports, and wines from the more well-known Duoro region.

What makes this theme difficult is simply that it’s hard to find a wide selection of Portuguese tables wines in my area. My first thought was a trip to The Spanish Table, a purveyor of fine Iberian food and wine products located in Berkeley. However, since a trip to the Bay Area wasn’t in the cards this month, I was forced to hit a big box wine retailer for my selection.

The wine I tasted comes from one Portugal’s largest, if not the largest, producer. The 2001 Sogrape Duque de Viseu Tinto from the Dão DOC is a blend of Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz and set me back $10 USD.

The color of this wine was a beautiful blood orange at the edges with medium depth. The nose was quite earthy with scents of leather, tar, chocolate, and black cherries. On the palate there was stewed cherries, black olives, and dusty-fine tannins. The finish was dry and lingering.

All in all this wine really surprised me. For the price I was not expecting so many flavors and nuances. This is an old-world style wine that comes from the earth and a wine that begs to be shared with food.

A few weeks back I got the opportunity to help out the folks at m2 Wines again. Back in April I joined a small crew at m2 bottling their late harvest Zinfandel and had a great time.

The task on this day was to crush nearly 6 tons of fruit for the 2007 vintage. Three tons of Old Vine Zinfandel came from the local Soucie vineyard in Lodi, planted in 1916, and another 3 tons of Cabernet Sauvignon from Pratt Vineyards in Fair Play (up the hill in El Dorado County).

The following photo is a closeup of the Old Vine Zinfandel. These berries were loaded with flavor and were very ripe (as the raisining shows). In fact, these flavor bombs would later become something of a challenge in the winery.

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One of the rituals of the primary fermentation for red wines is punching down the “cap” 2 to 3 times each day. The “cap” is the mass of grape skins and other solids that rise to the top of the container, being pushed upward by the heat and gases released by the fermenting juice. By reincorporating the skins back into the juice you encourage more color and flavor extraction, get some air into the wine (which is actually a good thing at this stage), and help prevent bacteria from growing on the skins.

The cap is typically punched down using a stainless steel pole with a round disk welded to the end. The photograph below is what the Barbera looked like just after being punched down this morning. The aromas released during this process are absolutely intoxicating.

Another important daily task is to measure the Brix, or sugar content, and temperature of the wine. This is done by filling a tall narrow container with some of the wine and gently dropping in a hydrometer. Once the hydrometer is finished bobbing and comes to rest, a measurement can be read from its side. This morning’s reading was 15° Brix. Fermentation is moving along nicely but still has a ways to go before it’s done.

The temperature was 70° F.

Next up… harvesting Mourvedre this morning.

It’s been a long week. I don’t ask for much. Well, on second thought, let’s not get into that. This isn’t about me. Er, well, maybe it is. But that’s beside the point. The point is… when a man returns home on a Friday afternoon after a hard week’s work, the absolute last thing he wants to hear is, “Honey, you remember I have bunco tonight, right?”

While my face was saying, “yes, dear”, my thoughts resembled one of those emphatic “*%#&@!” Twisted Oak wine labels.  I headed straight for the wine cellar. The kids were clamoring for grilled cheese and Dora the Explorer soup. I had to think fast.

Determined to make the most of my predicament, I thought, “why not grilled cheese and soup?” The kids were happy with their selection so I rummaged around in the fridge and pantry and found some crusty sourdough bread, extra sharp cheddar cheese, and some spicy lentil bean soup. The wine I chose to accompany my throw- together bachelor meal was a Napa Valley 2004 Miner Stagecoach Vineyard Merlot ($35).

This wine was dark ruby in color with fantastic aromas of raspberries and cherries with a hint of cedar. The flavors were more of the same with a terrifically round and soft mouthfeel but just enough tannins to sustain a long and rewarding finish. The wine paired perfectly with the cheese and thickness of the soup, cutting right through both. An outstanding Merlot.

In the end, not a bad way to spend an evening. The kids are happy, I’m happy, and… oh yeah, I’ve got to get the kitchen cleaned up before the wife gets home. Later!

My 2007 Barbera has been cold soaking since it was harvested and crushed this past Sunday. A cold soak for me means rotating gallon jugs of frozen water in the must (juice from crushed grapes, skins, pulp, and so on) on a daily basis. It’s important to keep the must cold so the juice doesn’t start fermenting on its own, or worse, the start of a bacteria problem.

The purpose of a cold soak is to give the juice more time with the skins and pulp to extract more color and flavor. Since my primary fermentations rarely take more than a week to complete due to the warm conditions in my garage, this “quality time” up front seems to be making a big difference. In just a few days the color of the Barbera juice has reached an absolutely beautiful inky dark ruby.

Another benefit of letting the juice, skins, and pulp soak like this before starting the primary fermentation is that the berries can become completely rehydrated. This is important since as the berries rehydrate, the sugar level, or Brix, in the juice will rise. By letting this happen before inoculating with yeast you have an opportunity to make adjustments as needed. Since some of the Barbera clusters were showing signs of raisining, I expected the Brix to climb. And boy did it climb!

Testing the Brix can be done with a hydrometer or, before the primary fermentation has started, a refractometer. A refractometer is a small hand held device that measures the refractive index of a sample (grape juice in this case) when viewed through a measuring prism. This indispensable tool is used in vineyards as a tool to determine ripeness in grape samples. As you can see below, my personal refractometer assistant was on the spot to lend a hand this afternoon.

Her reading today was a whopping 28.5° Brix! Why is this so important? Well, if all of the sugar was fermented at this level, we’d be talking about a wine in the 16% alcohol range!  Not exactly what I’m looking for. And this doesn’t take into account any problems being able to even complete the fermentation (i.e. take the juice all the way to dryness, or zero Brix). This is called a stuck fermentation and is something all winemakers generally try to avoid.

A common solution to this condition is to add acidulated water to the must to dilute the sugar only and bring the must back into balance. Acidulated water is simply distilled water with tartaric acid added. Tartaric acid is added to the water so we only dilute the sugar and not the acid level in the juice.

So that’s what we did this evening. The must is back down to just over 25° Brix. My plan is to start the primary fermentation in the morning.

UPDATE: If the thought of adding water to must to dilute the sugar content is abhorrent to you, you’re not alone. The fact is, though, grape juice has been routinely “adjusted” prior to fermentation for centuries. For example, on the opposite side of the high sugar spectrum is not having enough sugar. This occurs when either the fruit was picked too early or the fruit could not ripen on its own. The solution to this problem, as you might expect, is to add sugar–also called chaptilization. Winemakers in many of France’s cooler wine regions have no choice but to add sugar to their under-ripe juice. In fact, the option of adding sugar is even written into France’s wine regulations.

So what’s the difference here between adding water or adding sugar to juice at harvest? Or is there no difference at all? Is it acceptable to add sugar since it was Mother Nature and not the wine grower that created the imbalance in the juice? After all, by picking late to extend the fruit’s “hang time”, the wine grower is purposefully pushing the envelope of ripeness to maximize the body, fruit characteristics, and color of the resulting wine.

Or perhaps the demonization of adding water is getting swept up in the growing backlash against over-extracted and high alcohol wines? More discussion on this issue here and here. Also, if you want to listen to a lively discussion between old world and new world style Pinot producers, check out Grape Radio’s Pinot Showdown series.

Coming back to my tiny lot of Barbera, my motivation for adding water was simply to avoid the problems that often come with trying to ferment juice with such a high sugar content. And if I manage to create wine with a moderate alcohol level while not losing the character of the fruit, I will consider it a success.

I’ve started to use Twitter again lately but this time with more of an emphasis on my winemaking experiences. If you haven’t checked out the site yet, give it a look. With Twitter you can sound off with whatever’s on your mind using IM, your cell phone, your browser, or any other Twitter-enabled device out there. Once connected up with friends, it’s a fun way to communicate. Of course in this era of the widget, you can also display your “tweets” on other sites and that’s exactly what I’ve done here on Second Leaf.

On the right side of every page, my latest “tweets” will be displayed. It will be an easy way for me to keep Second Leaf updated with the little wine bits that don’t warrant a full blog post. I expect the number of “tweets” about winemaking to be more seasonal and since I’m currently right in the middle of the busiest time of year for winemaking,  there will be more than usual. Once things settle down, I’ll start tweeting tasting notes and other random (wine) thoughts.

Thanks to Alex King for writing, and sharing, Twitter Tools.

This time of year is crazy for me and my winemaking endeavors. I cannot imagine what it’s like for people actually trying to make a living at it!

Here’s a quick update on where things stand with my humble efforts for 2007.

The season started off with our first pick out at Hidden Acres Vineyard. This is our adopted 1/2 acre 20+ year old vineyard. The wine from that pick is undergoing a “secondary fermentation” (Malolatic transformation) where the harsher malic acid is being transformed into softer lactic acid. We are planning at least one more pick out there this season. Since the weather has cooled, we’re in a holding pattern.

Meanwhile, I have also harvested Syrah from Acorn Hill Vineyard in El Dorado County (detailed blog post forthcoming). These grapes went through a cold soak for a few days, have completed primary fermentation, and are currently in the ML phase. I have high hopes for this wine.

This coming Sunday I will be picking Barbera and perhaps Grenache. These grapes will also come from Acorn Hill Vineyard. The last fruit that I will pick from Acorn Hill will be Mourvedre and that should be ready in the next couple weeks. My plan as of now is to create a blended wine of Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvedre and perhaps have enough Syrah left over for a Syrah-only bottling.

Earlier this week I got a call about some Cabernet Sauvignon fruit that became  available from the Harmon vineyard (also in El Dorado County). Since I have heard great things about the Cab from this location, I picked up some fruit from there too! The Cab is moving along nicely in its primary fermentation and is down to 8° Brix. I started the ML tonight.

So that makes 1 mystery wine from Hidden Acres and 5 other varieties for 2007! This has seriously ratcheted up my little operation and will hopefully result in some fantastic wines.

If that wasn’t enough, I’ve also joined a cooperative effort started by Tim at Winecast to create a barrel of User-Generated Roussanne at Crushpad. The idea is to have several folks join in on the decision-making process for taking a Roussanne from harvest to bottling. In the end, we’ll all get a case of the finished product. So far it’s been fun to bat around the topics of style, alcohol, and acidity with members chiming in on what they’d like to see in the finished product. I can’t wait to see where this project goes!

Since things wouldn’t be complete without looking back at 2006, I also topped up and tasted my 2006 wines. I have two lots of 2006 Zinfandel from the same vineyard, one aging in American oak and another in French oak. The French lot tastes awesome and the American tastes great too. Lots of great raspberry and spice with a soft mouthfeel. I’m very excited about this wine.

The 2006 Barbera also tasted very nice but still has a lot of natural acidity. I’m considering putting this wine through some cold stabilization to naturally drop out some of the acids. This wine really wants to be blended with just a bit of something else, like Petite Sirah, to take the edge off. A work in progress.

A lot has happened over the last couple weeks since my last report on Hidden Acres. First, we picked about 140 pounds of the ripest red fruit on August 28th. This amount is a fraction of what this vineyard would produce if it was in better health and wasn’t preyed upon by critters. We hope to solve both of those problems over time but for this year we’re going to take what we can get.

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Last week we tested the grapes at Hidden Acres. Although this vineyard is 20+ years old, it will be our first harvest here. We know there is some red and white vinifera planted in the vineyard as well as 1/2 row of table grapes. However, we didn’t know exactly where the red and white vines were planted. We would have to wait for varasion (when grapes from reds turn red and whites stay white) to know for sure. All part of the mystery that makes this vineyard fun.

The grapes went through varasion several days ago and the planting pattern that emerged is a bit more random than we were hoping: a few reds, then a white, a few more reds, several whites… you get the idea. We still think the whites are Chenin Blanc but the reds appear to be a mixed bag of Bordeaux varieties (probably Merlot & maybe Cabernet Sauvignon) and some Zinfandel.

As of last week the whites were ripe, the Bordeaux vines were very close (just over 24 brix), and the Zin wasn’t quite ready (22.6 brix). We’ll be harvesting the Bordeaux plants this afternoon. Since we’ll be going plant to plant, tasting grapes for ripeness as we go, we’re not sure how much fruit will get. Also, since we’re not setup to make white wine yet, the fruit from the whites will be dropped. The Zin will need more time before they’re ripe and will probably be picked next week.

I’ll post some photos from today’s pick.