Cellaring wine

A few lots of last year’s wine still remain in the cellar room; some five tanks, and a little over 50 barrels. We took the barrels down from their stacks, with the fork lift, and gingerly set them outside while it was still cool outside. We are taking samples to measure sulfur level.

Sulfur occurs naturally in wine. During fermentation, yeast break down amino acids to make nitrogen available, and some of which contain sulfur atoms. When this sulfur is released, it bonds to oxygen, creating sulfites. It is serendipitous that these sulfites occur naturally, as they are beneficial, preventing oxidation and bacterial spoilage. But they often occur at very low levels, and dissipate over time, making the wine vulnerable, which is why we add sulfites to wine... anything other than a clean, fresh tasting wine would be unmarketable. So we measure the wine for sulfur levels, and then make additions as necessary.

The bungs are cleaned before prying them out of the barrels. A wine thief is inserted and lots are aggregated into beakers which are then sent to the lab. Meanwhile, reserve wine is brought out of the cellar, pumps and hoses attached. Once additions are made, we pump reserve wine into the barrel to top them off, then pound in clean rubber bungs with a mallet. Keeping the barrels full means less oxidation.

The tanks are adjusted too. Sampling from the tank is much easier, if messier. 3000 gallons are held back by valves. When opened slightly, wine sprays furiously, so we keep the beakers close and we stand to one side. Adjusting means climbing to the catwalk and opening a sealed hatch. Its mixing that's the problem. A propeller has to be inserted into a sealed tank to turn over 3000 gallons of wine, then removed. Order of operations becomes imperative; clamping, sealing, opening, locking, always double checking, and working though the set of actions. From there the tanks and barrels rest, waiting for bottling.

Sanitation

The landscape is slow and beautiful; the fog is there when you wake up. It reaches through Napa, up the valley, and hangs out in Los Carneros past 11:00 am. The afternoon is warm, but the winds blow through the vine-rows. The circuitry of the PV array hums, the bird canon sounds every few minutes, bats chirp from their roost.

The process of preparing for harvest begins with cleaning. The fermenters are covered in cobwebs and pigeon droppings, despite the bird netting. Last years wine is bottled, or mellowing in barrels. You drag hoses from place to place, filling buckets, and spraying the tanks. You mix solvents, cleaners, sanitizer. You climb in through port holes, stainless steel gymnastics, vinifying yoga. You scrub, spray, rinse, and exit in reverse. Repeat. Barrels are



cleaned. Dark berry and carmel wood aromas are being washed out and into a grate in the concrete. You seal the tanks with rubber gaskets, clean tarpaulin covers and plastic sheets. Dozens of different types of containers pile up. Macro bins, five gallon buckets, French oak barrels, steel kegs, glass bottles. Plumbing is everywhere; water, glycol, nitrogen, air. As grapes become wine, we will begin to juggle them from one container to another. Pumps pushing must into tanks, nitrogen pushing newly fermented wine into barrels.

Wine, as an agricultural produce takes time, preparation, planning, thought. It is not a product that can be delivered to market carelessly or immediately. You think about it, test it, sort it, process it, package it, market it, ask it to be considered, consumed thoughtfully. Producing wine is very involving. There is a considerable team of people working in concert, for the next few months trying to transform raw fruit into a value added product, a more complex expression, a preserved context. But for now, we wait for the grapes to ripen. They are on their own schedule, carefree of our desires. They ripen slowly, we sample them, de-stem them, crush them strain them, then test them, for sugars and acids. And we wait.

The Silverado Trail

Yesterday I went for a ride from Napa up the Silverado Trail to St. Helena. It was about 20 miles up there. The road was well paved with a wide shoulder, wineries located every half mile. The early afternoon was pleasant, but on the way back the wind picked up and tired me out as I headed back to Napa.

St. Helena was nice, full of art galleries and home-ware stores, not least of all the CIA Greystone campus store. I passed by the new LEED Gold dormitories for culinary students, stopped by a wine store for a tasting, and then headed back.

The valley is amazingly beautiful. The oak shrub hilltops, and the flat valley floor, rows of cabernet, the small towns and hotspot restaurants. The trucks hauling bins to wineries use the same roads as the tourist buses. Although its still seems buzzing with people, the number of people out here is definitely less than I expected, due I'm sure, to less disposable income. Still, the grapes will ripen and be vinified, just like any other year. I'm still waiting for the grapes to arrive at the winery; perhaps by the end of the week.

Harvest in Los Carneros

It is August, and I have temporarily relocated to Napa. I am taking a break from my desk job, and I am working a harvest as a cellar intern. I am doing this because I want to see what goes into making wine. I want to follow the process and learn the production of wine. I want to be one of the sets of hands that touches the clusters of grapes that turns into wine, and reflect on what it took to make that barrel, that bottle of wine. I want to be close to what wine is. And so I have begun work at a medium sized winery in the Carneros district of Napa, south of the town, where the fog lingers, the wind blows in the afternoon and pinot noir rules. I’ll be documenting what I can of the harvest, sharing the day to day, as well as the revelations.

Weddings planning: the anti-wine

I have been so focused on wedding planning recently that, even with all the inspiring wine I've tasted and wine events I've attended, I have next to no free time to write about them. Sadly, weddings also seem to drain one's budget for buying wine...

At the start of May, I attended the Portland Indie Wine Festival. This was a fantastic event, organized by LAD Communications and others. The food booths were all terrific, making it easy not just to find a ballast to all the wine being poured, but to find interesting pairings and imagine many more possibilities. On the whole, the pinot noirs being poured were young, but still very interesting. No winemaker there seemed to shy away from acid, though some expressions were very tight, and reinforced by young tannins may the wines seem unrevealing. The most interesting group, for me, was the Chehalem Mountain wines, which tended to be exceptionally balanced, with lots to offer upfront and on the follow through. Beyond the pinot's, it was interesting to know the growing diversity of varietals being made, if not grown in Oregon. There were Cabernet Sauvignon, Franc, Rieslings, Syrahs and others. Also, as wine festivals go, this was manageable, personal and light-hearted. I will, if possible, return next year, hopefully with the intention to stock up on favorites.

Soon after this, our Wine Club met for a Spain and Portugal night. This was more a survey of Iberian wine, with both red and whites, and even a LBV Port. The wines tasted got me excited for more exploration in this area (after all, this is the purpose of the club). The following night, we had dinner at Vij's with friends, where low and behold, we sampled some more Spanish wine. I'm continually impressed with Vij's wine list, offering a broad selection that befits their eclectic menu. Indian restaurants are not typically known to have great wine lists. The ongoing trend of food fusion, spurred by globalization, was inevitably going to bring together the West's refined drinking tradition with the East's fascinating and complex foods. Plus, crisp pinot gris helps wash the chillies down.

This weekend I am taking the WSET Intermediate Course, and will be sitting the exam the following weekend. Having ready through the course book, I'm not expecting any revelations from the course material, though I hope to find some interesting examples for tasting and discussion. What I fear is that these tastings will focus too much on the international varietals, without hinting at the diverse world of lesser-knowns.

More on Peynaud

I came across this article, which talks about Emile Peynaud. Its interesting to note that a term (Peynaudization) was coined, reflecting his influence.

Read it... I did.

Joly on Biodynamics

I'm almost finished with Nicolas Joly's book "Demystifying Biodynamic Wine". His passion and personality shine through in his writing, but you still have to have an open mind about biodynamics to get into the content. One theme that is constant is how there is a tangible and intangible world made up of matter and energies, and when these are harmonious and balanced, and when we treat the process with respect, something greater is allowed to happen. It reminds me a bit of yoga, or religion, and for that matter, the experience of drinking wine. These are all things which are often hard to describe and explain, and work on faith or feeling. And it's hard to deny these things once you've experienced them.

Broad, but not Deep

After meditating on the subject for several weeks (okay, not meditating per se), I thought I would pass on these three jems I picked up from the 2009 Vancouver International Wine Festival:

• Avoid people who ask to “try the chardy”, they just want to drink.


• Pregnant women, even if you are a rep, and its your job to be there, should not be at wine festivals. We will still judge you.


• Bring your own spit cup. You will be so much better off.

"Broad, but not deep" pretty much sums up how I feel about the event. It's certainly a conflicting set of emotions I come away with. On the one hand, my personality and interest in wine desired the geeky discussions about specific subjects, asking the hard questions, and bringing forth worthy answers. But, I am still, in a big picture sense, a novice taster, and thus the opportunity this wine festival afforded me was invaluable.

By volunteering, I was able to get a free ticket to the International Tasting Room, and sit in on two seminars. Thursday (March 26th) I toured the tasting hall, with over 175 booths, pouring some 8800+ wines. I chose to limit my tour to French producers with a handful of Californian wines thrown in for good measure. Clearly, I have a slanted perspective, and I know I missed out on opening my horizons more to Italian and Spanish wines.

Even with the opportunity to try some fantastic 1er Cru and Grand Cru Burgundy and Alsace wines, I was frustrated by the distracting environment, which was noisy, poorly lit (yes, they dimmed the room) and crowded (which made getting to the spittoons difficult.)

Another frustration was the lack of meaningful organization. The hall was divided into two man areas; BC wines and everybody else. These two groups were then organized alphabetically. This made the tasting hall very schizophrenic, with big reds next to elegant whites, and silky reds next to flabby whites. Although I had drafted out a rough plan for the evening, and highlighted several producers I wanted to see, I could have used another 2 hours to plan the attack. There were some excellent whites (Monrachets and Corton-Charlemange) which were dulled, if not lost to me due to tannin fatigue. The flip side of this is the joy of finding something unexpected that stands out. This happened to me with a Morgan from Domaine Piron. The wine was fragrant and compelling, and stood out because of its unassuming but well composed harmony.

The interesting thing is that the lack of organization made no difference to the BC section. The seminar on Saturday, Icons of B.C, demonstrated this well. Aside from the lack of cohession to the group the wines poured, it felt self congratulatory, especially with the winemakers present. And besides the moderators and winemakers, no one else choose to speak about these wines or even ask questions. The Okanagan Valley is one of the youngest wine producing areas in the world. It does produce a handful of quality and interesting wines (generally aromatic whites), but on the whole, the region is too untested, too small, too inconsistent and too overpriced to take itself as seriously as it does. On a positive note, by highlighting B.C. wines as one of the themes this year, the Wine Festival may have exposed the faults and strenghts of the this wine region. Hopefully this will encourage people in the region to focus on the strenghts, and it will encourage to demand better results from their local producers, especially when offered so much choice from the international market.

Recent Reading

I just finished Emile Peynaud's The Taste of Wine. Although it was professorial and very technical in parts, it did offer an extremely thorough look at the sensory aspects of wine and mechanics of how we taste. One of the most interesting discussions came towards the end of the book; a short discussion on the concept of cru. This is often translated into growth in English, as in première cru = first growth. What got my attention is how Peynaud's definition of the word compared to his definition of terroir. (Ah! terroir, that over used nebulous French concept-word.) Terroir, in Paynaud's description only accounts for site and soil (which implies degree days, sun aspect, drainage, etc.), whereas cru relates aspects of terroir to man and agricultural production. Terroir, in a sense, is a fixed set of parameters, but cru is how a producer uses those parameters for a qualitative expression, encompassing methods of production and tradition. Cru, therefore, is a much more useful word when talking about wine than terroir. After all, and Peynaud stresses this, wine is a human cultural product. Quality in wine is in large part determined by the choices that a given vingeron makes. Whereas terroir can only offer a potential, man must strive to fulfill that potential.

Double Feature

This past week brought two events: a wine tasting club field trip to Salt, and a dinner at Barbra-Jo's presented by Anthony Nicalo of Farmstead Wines.

The evening at Salt was put together on short notice for our tasting club, with little idea of how it would all work out. Fortunately, all thirteen of us were accommodated nicely at their large table in the main dinning room. On the fly we managed to decide on a format; select two bottles at a time to be poured, let the server take care of the rest. We were served platters of cheese, charcuterie and condiments. The wines were mostly good, with a few surprises. Notably, a 1er cru Chablis (elegant with developing complexity, though lost when paired with most of the food), and a primitivo (known in North America as zinfandel) from Italy. Up until Thursday, I had not found a zinfandel that I really cared for. This primitivo, on the other hand, was perfumed and bold, but still balanced (even at 14.5%). Its given me a reason to keep on looking for a good zinfandel. In all, the evening at Salt was light hearted and filled with good conversation. (For tasting notes please click here.)

In contrast, the dinner at Barbara-Jo's was much more focused. The wines were more challenging, and correspondingly a more challenging set of ideas were presented. Anthony Nicalo began by talking about the idea of a vigneron. In France, as in many other places in the Old World, the act of growing grapes, and making wine is encompassed in one title. The English bastardization for this term, in use in 17th century England, is vinaroon. This reminded me that, too often the act of thinking and doing are separate. Like any craftsperson, a vinaroons responsibility is to make thoughtfull choices through actions. The wines that Anthony presented to us were all produced by producers that were also growers, people who had complete control over the decisions and execution of their product (and often made choices to grow organically or biodynamically and vinify with minimal intervention).

My descriptive abilities are bound to fail when talking about these wines. However, I will offer that these wines provided me with a new sense of the complexity possible in wine. They all had personalities that stayed with me thoughtout the evining, and complimented the meal beautifully. Although all the wines were outstanding, the Pinot Gris Vendange Tardive was sublime, and probably the best desert wine I have ever tasted.

As a parting thought, Anthony evoked Wendell Berry, saying that we make chocies about how agriculture is practiced, by the food that we buy and consume. It follows, therefore, that if we care deeply about quality food, sustainably raised, we should pay the same attantion to the wine we drink.