A reminder of the power of wine to inspire

I just received in the mail Campbell Mattinson's new book, Why The French Hate Us, which is available for sale here.

Campbell has always been one of my most favorite wine journalists because he is not afraid to wear his beliefs proudly and has always been an unabashed supporter of Australian wine and the rightful positions of our "icon wines" alongside the best of Hermitage, Montrachet et al.

I will return to comment on this book because it focuses on issues with the Australian wine industry that has had me concerned, and as an aspiring wine maker, more inclined to pursue my dream in California.

But for now I wanted to share a anecdote from the opening chapter where Campbell recounts the moment that wine became more than just "booze" :-

...something changed in me forever, at the sip and the taste and the sensation of a particular wine. I was bitten by Dracula or a werewolf or, more appropriately, by a malaria-carrying mosquito. Something went funny in me. My heart got an erection. From that moment, I may have looked the same, but I was changed. I had become a mad wine hunter. I suddenly wanted to be on intimate, personal, intense terms with all of the most beautiful wines that I could afford - or could wangle to drink.

While being a "wine geek" for many years, it was that fateful 2003 Kosta Browne Sonoma Coast that I ordered off a wine list in Scottsdale, Arizona that changed me forever. The exquisite beauty, the artistry, its ephemeral chameleon-ish morphing from one sensation to another broke me. In that moment I knew that I had found my life's calling - I had to craft a wine as outstanding as this and I would travel to the ends of the earth to apprentice with the greatest wine artisans to acquire the tools and inspiration to make it happen.

How does an aspiring winemaker earn money in the "off-season"?

Well this one is loading and unloading trucks (or lorries as Brits call them) full of fruit bound for UK supermarkets!

A day after registering at all the local temp agencies I have got a job from 3pm to 11pm driving a forklift for one of the largest importers of fresh fruit in the UK. Yesterday I shuttled pallets of Pineapples from Costa Rica, Peppers from Israel and Tomatoes from Egypt from the cold room to the packing area, where they were labeled with the barcodes and tags of the supermarket chain they were bound for, and then onto waiting lorries.

Not much money, it will take a bit over a month to earn what I used to in a week in advertising sales, but the squid should help keep me out of mischief. Unfortunately the pay also means that it takes me 8 hours to earn enough to afford a bottle of Saxum, Dehlinger or Copain!

In the UK, the Americans have conceded the Shiraz/Syrah war

Why fight it?

Fetzer, one of the biggest US brands on UK shelves (not that there are many here outside of Gallo, surprising since the dollar is so low is against the pound) has given in to the Australian juggernaut that is SHIRAZ!

I had a bit of a giggle myself so I had to buy the bottle. I suppose with people having to remember Côtes du Rhone and Shiraz, the marketing department at Fetzer must believe that there is not enough space for Syrah in the public consciousness and went "Bugger It! We lose to the Aussies enough in sport, might as well throw in the towel on varietal spelling as well!"

And Americans have the gall to call the French "cheese eating surrender monkeys"!

Central Otago: Otago, maybe. Central, hardly.

Readers of the blog may already know that in April I am off to Felton Road in New Zealand for the 2008 harvest. So I thought I might write a couple of posts about who Felton Road is and why I am so excited to be heading there to learn how to craft Pinot Noir.

Felton Road is located in Central Otago on the South Island of New Zealand, which at latitude 45° is the most southerly wine growing region in the world.

Unlike the rest of New Zealand's viticultural regions, Central Otago has a continental climate, rather than a maritime one. Most of the New World's most promising Pinot Noir regions so far have been maritime ones -- Russian River Valley in California, Mornington Peninsula in Victoria for example, in which the delicate Pinot Noir grapes are cooled by morning fog and cool ocean breezes. Central Otago, on the other hand, is dry (less than 500mm of rain a year, often much lower), with very low humidity, and has a climate most similar to Burgundy of any of the New World's Pinot Noir regions. Central Otago is also 300m above sea level (again, similar to Côte de Beaune) with the same hot Summers and frigid Winters. The dry continental climate also means that the Summer nights (with no cloud cover) are cool with temperatures getting as low as 1° C at harvest time. This big variation in diurnal temperatures is perfect for Pinot Noir which excels in such conditions - the reason being that the hot days (and greater UV penetration at 300m above sea level) ensures proper sugar and flavor development while the sudden drop in temperature overnight keeps acid levels high - a key quality of top Pinot. As an aside, this is one of the reasons why I think the Macedon Ranges in Victoria will end up being Australia's great Pinot Noir region but that is another subject for another time.

Another reason why Central Otago holds great promise is the poor quality of the soils. All the great vineyards in the world have poor soils. Vines are essentially weeds and grow in pretty much any conditions. However when nutrients and water are too readily available, vines tend to put too much energy into vegetal growth as well as producing too many clusters of fruit. This leads to plump, flavorless grapes unsuitable for premium wine. Under "stressful" conditions (low nutrients, little water) the vine thinks to itself that it is in danger of dying and will instead put all of its available energy into passing its genes into the next generation - just what a vigneron wants! Low water also ensures that berries stay small which is especially important for Pinot Noir which needs a high skin to juice ratio to produce world-class wine. Central Otago is mainly sand on top of a gravel base, which allows water and nutrients to drain quickly and thus become unavailable to the vines.

Thus Central Otago has all of the necessary ingredients to be the "Southern Burgundy". In fact in the mid 1890's the New Zealand government paid for Romeo Bragato, a Yugoslavian viticulturist to travel around the country and recommend the areas with the most potential for the development of a wine industry. In his "Report on the Prospects of Viticulture in New Zealand" he wrote:-

"There is no better country on the face of the earth for the production of Burgundy grapes than Central Otago."

Sadly, his report was ignored and instead it became sheep country and it wasn't until Felton Road was founded in 1991 that this began to change. Felton Road's 14.4 hectares of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Riesling that were planted in 1992 represented over 20% of the vines in the whole of Central Otago at the time! Felton Road's incredible success since their inaugural vintage in 1997 has made the wine world take notice and now there are over 1,00 hectares under vine with the region well on the way to being considered alongside the Willamette Valley, the Russian River Valley, amongst others, as the future of New World Pinot Noir.

Central Otago is obviously still an incredibly young wine growing area - Felton Road's oldest vines are only fifteen years old and they were the regions pioneer's but it seems like Romeo vision of Pinot Noir heaven has finally arrived -- even if it is 110 years late!

1983 Château Margaux (Bordeaux, France)

Also enjoyed at Bennett and Linda's with a lovely rack of Australian Lamb.

Intense garnet in the glass - clarity has held up well with age. Cigar box, cedar, violets herby nose - this is Bordeaux. There was still enough fruit, predominately cassis, to pull all the other flavors together but this bottle was definitely in its prime. The vanilla from the oak highlighted the fruit and the silky smooth tannins were a delight with the lamb.

This was my first bottle of Château Margaux and I hope it will not be my last. An incredible food wine and a great match for the lamb.

Score: 93 Points
Price: $700 (Wine House)

2002 Sine Qua Non "Just For The Love Of It" Syrah (California, USA)

By golly, have I been on a roll. My FIFTH Sine Qua Non in a little over a month, this time courtesy of Bennett Traub and his wonderful wife Linda who hosted Emma and myself for a farewell dinner at their house before we jaunted off to our new home in England.

Now before I get into my tasting note, I wanted to get out in the open my thoughts on "100 Point" wines. This wine was my second Robert Parker 100 Pointer, the other being the 2003 Sine Qua Non "Poker Face". My opinion has always been that there is no such thing as a "100 Point" wine - I mean what happens if you come across a wine that is better? It's not like we live in Nigel Tufnel's world where we can go to eleven ("You're on ten on your guitar. Where do you go from there? Where? Nowhere. Exactly!"). As I pondered this conundrum for the umpteenth time Emma turned to me and said "Well if it's not 100 points, what is the fault [in the wine]?". Ummmmm...

The best thing about Sine Qua Non for me is that it has never (in my five bottles) not lived up to the hype. A dark, brilliant purple in the glass - a hint of what was to come. An exquisite, otherworldly nose that refused to be pinned down. Constantly evolving, first showing mouth-watering meatiness including bacon fat and beef blood, before pushing into more floral (violets) and peppery, coffee territory. In the mouth this was an extraordinarily well constructed wine - Manfred's talents as an artisan can not be exaggerated. The wine had linearity without being straight-forward, it was mouth coating without being unctuous, it hit on every spot on your palate and finished with a clear, ringing finish that I could still taste after the hour long car ride home. This wine had everything.

Still, I haven't got my head around the "100 Point" thing so let me do an artful dodge for now and give it a 99.999 which rounds up to 100. Ehh?!

Score: 99.999
Price: $630 (Saratoga Wine Exchange)

1998 Sine Qua Non "E-Raised" Syrah (California, USA)

Am I a lucky bugger recently or what? Getting to try my first four Sine Qua Nons in the period of a month.

Like the Sine Qua Non's before, this wine did not disappoint. For an aged wine, the color has stood up well. Dark and brooding, with no hint of brickishness even at the rim! Rich and ripe black fruits, bacon fat, and violets on the nose - a hedonistic delight of aromatics. Exquisitely well constructed wine on the palate - silky smooth, integrated tannins, with a long linear progression of flavor and an elegant finish that goes on and on like the Energizer bunny. Big and brooding yet still delicate and elegant - does wine get better than this?

I had this wine in a blind tasting of twenty Syrahs that scored 95 or more points from Robert Parker and I ranked it Number 1 overall. Damn shame that this wine is so expensive or I would be backing up the truck. I don't know how long I can wait to get on the mailing list... best guess - 2018, anyone?

Score: 98 points
Price: $395 (Blicker Pierce Wagner Wine Merchants)

Wrapped Up in Books

As I mentioned in the post before last I have been in the middle of exams. To make things more crazy and stressful, I am also packing for our impending move to London!

I know what you might be thinking - "there's no wine industry in England" (well there is some good sparkling being made in the South) however my wife and I will be using the UK as a "home base" as I will be traveling much of the year on my quest to work with the world's finest Pinot Noir artisans. In fact I will be traveling from April through July to New Zealand and Australia so if I end up doing a harvest in France or the US I will be gone for over half the year!

Because of all this craziness, instead of doing a wine post, I thought I might highlight some articles that have interested me lately:-

• Alder Yarrow's take on when wine tastes best
  
  
• Professor Warren Moran's research article on Pinot Noir and Terroir in New Zealand
  
  
• Clark Smith defends wine manipulation
  

I hope to be back to regular programming soon!

Harvest photos but in a cool web 2.0 kinda way

Photos from harvest

Sorry that posting has been so light! I have been furiously studying for my final exams for Microbiology and Scientific Statistics as part of my Wine Science studies. In the meantime check out some photos from harvest!

Promise to be back to regularly scheduled programming soon!

It's Over...

So my internship is finished at Kosta Browne and back to the reality of being a wine science student. What an amazing ride - three months of hard yakka, intense learning experiences and amazing friendships.

So what did I learn? I learnt that the skills that made me a good advertising sales person are not necessarily the skills that make you a good wine maker. In advertising sales, creativity is king. In winemaking, being able to carry out a task the same way, every time is the most important thing. In advertising sales, very few mistakes are uncorrectable - it is pretty easy to re-submit a proposal if you put an extra zero in the wrong place. In winemaking, an extra zero can ruin tens of thousands of dollars of wine that can not be replaced. In advertising sales, attention to detail helps. In winemaking it doesn't help -- it is EVERYTHING.

I also got to see a few myths exploded. For example, it has been said that being a good winemaker is like being a good chef. It couldn't be further from the truth. A chef has twenty or more times a night to get a dish right; a winemaker has only one chance a year to get it right. To top it off, he will often not know for sure if he got it right or not for a year or so as the wine evolves in the barrel.

What I really learnt was that I love this job and I definitely made the right decision to pursue this career. I am already chomping at the bit for my next harvest, starting in April, at Felton Road in New Zealand.

The best summation of the wine making process I have heard

From a post at the eRobertParker forums:-

As you now know Jim, wine making is 40% moving things around, 50% cleaning stuff and 10% drinking beer.

Damn straight!

And now the end is near....

The end of harvest is upon us, so there is less to do out on the crush-pad, and there is now time to check in on things that have escaped our attention for the past few months. Here I am on the top of the 2006 barrels, preparing to sample from all of them so we can run some tests on them in the lab.

Bottling the 2006 wines will be upon us in January so we need to check in on them all and see where they all are in terms of pH, volatile acidity, titratable acidity and SO₂. All of these numbers are important in terms of "barrel health", so to speak, and also impact blending decisions. For example, you may have a target pH of somewhere between 3.5 and 3.7 for your finished wine in bottle. If you have a couple of lots with pH's around 3.8 you want to find a home for them with lots that have pH's that are much lower.

Checking SO₂ levels is a key test with bottling around the corner. SO₂ is an important preservative that ensures the wine remains stable during its time in the bottle - i.e. no "in bottle" re-fermentation by any bad yeasts or bacterial spoilage. Most winemakers want S0₂ levels to be in the early thirties parts per million before bottling so running a free SO₂ test in the lab will let us know how much more we need to add. Adding too much SO₂ at once can also "shock" the wine (the wine hides its flavor and aromas) for a while so it is much more preferable to slowly raise SO₂ levels reaching your target just before it goes into bottle.

Next week, I am going to be spending a lot of time in the lab helping out our oenologist so I will post more about the tests we run at Kosta Browne then!

2004 Sine Qua Non "Poker Face" Syrah (California, USA)

I had the luck to have this wine alongside the Sine Qua Non "Into The Dark" at the Jemrose Vineyards harvest party.

This wine, along with being my first experience of Sine Qua Non, was also my first Robert Parker "100 Point Wine".

Decadent is the perfect word. Rich, lush, black fruit, pepper, violets, coffee, meat and some toasty oak notes on the nose - what a heady mix! The darkest of dark purple in the glass. The palate was immensely lush, yet focused, building and building up to a crescendo of fruit - an explosion in your mouth, finally finishing with some focused acidity.

I could get used to this - unfortunately my position on the wait list probably won't come up for 10 years or more!

Score: 96+ points
Price: $400 or so (Winecommune.com)

2004 Sine Qua Non "Into The Dark" Grenache (California, USA)

Had at the Jemrose Vineyards Harvest Party (more on the party later) - a very generous gift from Russell Bevan!

O-M-G, this is my first ever "Sine Qua Non" - a cult winery that is impossible to find and has a wait list of over 5 years - and it lived up to the hype.

This is a full throttle wine, it comes at you with pure force of personality, yet it is still incredibly graceful and lithe. Imagine an athlete that is a dual gold medalist in gymnastics and weight lifting!?!

Black cherry, licorice and smoke with silky, fine grained tannins. Must be some big time alcohol in there by no heat on the palate. Color was a spectacular deep black-purple. Mouth feel was like sucking on velvet.

Boy, oh, boy, oh, boy...

Score: 98 points
Price: $250 or there abouts (WineCommune)

2005 Rosella's Vineyard Horizontal Tasting

To celebrate harvest, Emma (my wife) being back from China, and having Rosella's fruit in the door, I put together a horizontal tasting of (almost) all the producers who made a 2005 Pinot Noir from Rosella's, most of which came from my cellar (plus a few trades with winemakers - thank you to those who did, you know who you are). We also threw in a "ringer" to add a twist to the tasting. Gary and Rosella Franscioni own a pug so we thought it would be appropriate for our two little boys, Chester and Mister Darcy, to be the "hosts of the tasting.

Aside: A horizontal tasting is when you select a year (and often restrict it to one vineyard) and taste producers against each other to get a sense of the quality of the vineyard, the vintage and of course the different producers idea of the best way to make a killer wine from very similar grapes. A vertical tasting on the other hand is when you select one wine, say for example of Penfolds Grange, and taste different vintages against each other to get a sense for the wine as it evolves and the style/quality. All of the wines were served "single blind", which means we knew what wines were in the tasting but not which bottles were which since we emptied all the bottles into unmarked decanters.

Overall the tasting was very enjoyable. The unique Rosella's "citrus" component was evident in most of the wines but there were many different approaches taken to expressing Rosella's, some pulled off better than others. The bright red fruit was also in evidence across all the bottles and there was plenty of refreshing acidity to go around. A lot of the wines also had that "funk" (forest floor, mushroominess) one sees often in Rosella's. I am glad that I have stocked my cellar pretty full of most of these puppies!

So how did I rank them?

1. 2005 Kosta Browne Rosella's Vineyard
This wine was the stand out of the tasting for me. Mouth coatingly voluptuousness and superb palate weight - bright red fruit, orange zest, grapefruit, baking spices and cleansing, refreshing acidity. A damn sexy wine.

2. 2006 Kosta Browne Rosella's Vineyard (Barrel Sample)
Very young but this wine has some promise. A perfect yin-yang match of masculine power in the mid palate with the feminine high toned lift in the finish. I like this a lot! I hope I am not developing a house palate. ;-)

[this wine was the ringer to confuse everyone and was the #2 wine for the group - a hint at what a great year the 2006 vintage will be for Kosta Browne]

3. 2005 A.P. Vin Rosella's Vineyard
Excellent well crafted wine. Rosella's citrus (grapefruit on this one), red fruits (raspberry, strawberry) and a touch of the "funk". This wine gets your attention with its power and acid. Well done Andrew!

4. 2005 Loring Wine Company Rosella's Vineyard
Citrus, raspberry, strawberry and cranberry - wow! What tasty juice! Tannins give this one some backbone. Cleansing acidity balanced the fruit well. Neck and neck with #3 for me. Could have gone either way. Definitely one of the best crafted wines of the tasting. As always, Brian delivers.

5. 2005 August West Rosella's Vineyard
Ed Kurtzman brings it with this wine! Baking spices, grapefruit, raspberry, lemon zest, and cherries - and throw in a bit of funk for good measure. Lovely mouth weight. These #3, #4, #5 wines were so close - different but very good. I took the rest of the bottle home later to have with dinner and it continued to get more impressive. So glad I have eight more of these in my cellar, the most of any 2005 Pinot Noir.

6. 2005 Siduri Rosella's Vineyard
Plush, velvety and ripe. Very funky (which I like) but the fruit was hiding a bit for me. Still a delicious wine. This was Emma's #2 wine.

7. 2005 Vision Cellars Rosella's Vineyard
A little thin for me but well received by the group. Ripe fruit, a little bit of harshness from tannins which were less integrated than the higher scoring wines. Not a bad drop but outclassed for me by the others in the field.

8. 2005 Roar Rosella's Vineyard
Could this wine be any more polarizing. My wifes #1 wine (and the #1 of many in the group), several in the tasting including myself ranked this at the back of the pack. Way too much oak for my taste with what I call a "halo" mouth feel (all sides and roof with no mid-palate weight). In the positives though, this one had a great floral nose that I didn't see in many others. Lacked the complexity that the top wines showed.

9. 2005 Morgan Rosella's Vineyard
For me this wine was last by a long way. Bitter, astringent, and green (unripe fruit). Tannin sticks out like a poke in the eye. Not enjoyable.

All in all, I think the tasting showed what an amazing vineyard Gary and Rosella have and how unique the flavor profile is from their little plot. Who would have thought that you could get grapefruit and mushroom funk in the same glass?

The wine paired well with my signature harvest dish -- Salmon smoked over dried Rosella's stems.

Does working in a winery get any better than this?

Day 16 - Rosella's

Time to get our tasty wine into barrel for its 16 months of aging before we blend and bottle in January 2009.

Yesterday we drained and pressed the must from our Rosella's fermentations. Basically this involves removing the wine that can be separated from the must by gravity or in our case a pump - this wine we call the "free run". The rest of the must, which without the free run, we now call the pomace is then placed into a piece of equipment which imaginatively is called a "press" and is placed under pressure. This releases even more wine that is inside the skins. This wine we call "press" wine.

In the "old days" a winemaker would slowly increase the pressure of the press as he/she tastes the wine coming out of the press at regular intervals until he/she makes a "press cut". This is the point where it is deemed that any more wine that could be extracted will have more negatives that will outweigh the positives of having more wine. As pressure is increased, and seeds are crushed, all sorts of unsavory flavors and tannins are extracted (next time you eat grapes, try chewing the seeds..yuck!). These days the computers that program the presses are sophisticated enough to never get to this point - extracting just the right amount of wine. Or most winemakers will stop the press (especially at the high end of Pinot Noir) well before one would ever need to make a "press cut". Press wine has a different flavor profile and it has a more viscous, mouth coating texture, which really works in the final blend.

Here I am barreling down the free run into a new Ermitage barrel. I really like Ermitage barrels, traditionally used for Rhône wines, especially on Rosellas 828. It gives the wine an exotic, spiciness which lifts the feminine, high toned flavor that we get from Rosella's 828. We also used a new Cadus barrel, which also delivers some spiciness and some creaminess which I love and also a new Remond Bertrange, which is just sex on a stick for Pinot Noir - voluptuous creaminess and a full velvetly mouth feel. Matched with these new barrels were two once filled Rousseau barrels (which deliver a bit of power, some iron fist to match our velvet glove if you will) and some neutral barrels (which impart no oak flavor since they have been used 3 or more times).

Some may think that once it is in barrel that wine kind of rests - in fact, it couldn't be further from the truth. Wine is an amazing living animal, always changing - sometimes asking for love, sometimes going through the wine equivalent of the "terrible twos". Our job as wine makers is to be open to "listening" to what the wine wants over the next 16 months and help each barrel to develop into the best damn delicious juice it can be!

Fark!

Have a look at the photo above. Notice anything unusual about the tank in the foreground?

Yes the arm is completely bent and broken. How did I do it and what did I learn about the laws of physics?

I was barreling down the free run wine from our Rosella 828 fermentations which we drained into this variable head tank that you see the top of in the foreground. A variable head tank works by having a lid that can lower down to various levels allowing you to have a 2-ton up to a 5 ton tank. The lid is held in place with a gasket that you blow up to a pressure that does not allow air into the tank.

I made the mistake of not releasing the air from this gasket (nor removing the bung that also seals the tank - consider me 0-2 here) before I barreled down. I had barreled down about 200 gallons of wine before I realized my mistake. Too late the damage was done!

It amazes me that the vacuum that I created could bend a steel bar - physics 101 lesson for today I guess.

Fark!

Day 14 - Rosella's

On Day 14 we determined that the Rosella's bins had finished their fermentations and it was time to prepare to drain and press.

Above I have graphed the fermentation so you can see basically how it ran. The left axis is temperature in °F and the right axis is ° Brix (the units we measure sugar content of the must in). You can see from both the temperature and Brix readings, the fermentation really took off around Day 6 and peaked on Day 10 which is how we want a fermentation to run at Kosta Browne. 86°F peak temperature is perfect - if the temperature goes into the mid 90's, you risk the yeast being killed off and being left with a "stuck" fermentation (where you have sugar left in the must but no viable yeast to digest it - basically a nasty bacteria's wet dream!) and if temperature is too cool, in the 70's say, you don't get full tannin and color extraction. Can't ask for anything more than one in the mid 80's which we hit.

Remember, we added the DAP and Superfood on Day 8, which was a great call - just what the yeast needed to get the fermentation in our sweet zone.

A pretty textbook fermentation really, if I do say so myself!

1975 Château Palmer (Bordeaux, France)

Since we were sorting the last of the merlot from Jemrose Vineyards for the new Jemrose Estate label, Shane Finley (the Associate Winemaker at Kosta Browne) opened this treat for us.

Château Palmer is a third growth Bordeaux estate in Margaux, whose grand vin is a blend of 45-ish percent Merlot, 45-ish percent Cabernet Sauvignon and between 5 and 8 percent Petit Verdot.

1975 was heralded at the time as "a vintage of the century" (funny how the French always have around ten or more of those a century) but not all of the wines have been up to the hype. Our bottle deteriorated very quickly in the glass. The first few whiffs were classic aged Bordeaux. Plums, earth, mushroom and dried herbs filled the nose. Very smooth, soft palate with a touch of grip left from the tannins. I was amazed they were still here after 32 years!

An enjoyable wine, but I wish it held together more. It was all over in about an hour - completely fell apart on us. Oh well, back to the sorting table

Day 8 - Rosella's

Well, fermentation is well and truly underway. The Brix reading this morning was 21.3 and the temperature of the must was 67.9° F - the yeast are well established and multiplying.

At this point in time it is important to help the yeast as much as possible. Yeast need both nitrogen based nutrients and O₂ to build strong cell membranes (which for yeast is where all cell metabolism takes place). Above you can see me introducing O₂ via a sparger at the end of my punch down device (the sparger is submersed in the photo, you can only see the shaft of the punchdown device). Introducing O₂ can be dangerous at the wrong times since most of the "baddies" are primarily aerobic organisms (remember the post about wine microbiology?) but when a fermentation is firmly established the yeast will out-compete any "baddies" for sugar and O₂, so no worries there!

The other thing yeast needs is nitrogen based nutrients (remember we discussed YANC, or Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen Content here). If yeast do not have enough nitrogen they will start to break down amino acids such as cystine to acquire the nitrogen. This digestion releases sulfur which reacts with acid to form H₂S (hydrogen sulfide - rotten egg smell). So every morning before punch downs start we smell the fermentations to see if we can pick up any "fartiness" (no better term for it really) and decide to add any nutrients and/or O₂ to help our yeast out.

For nutrients we have two options which we often use in combo. One is called "superfood" which is like a "protein shake" for yeast, full of all sorts of amino acids, vitamins, minerals that a growing yeast needs. The other is "DAP" (diammonnium phosphate) which I like to call "yeast crack". Since yeast needs to convert any nitrogen-based nutrient into ammonia before metabolizing it, DAP just gives them a double dose straight into their system.

Happy yeast who are ready to work overtime!!

Tasting with a school-mate

Erin and I finally caught up for a drink last week - we are only 10 miles away from each other and with the craziness of harvest we haven't had the chance to see each other. Quite embarrassing really considering that we normally live 7952 miles away from each other.

Erin and I both study at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, Australia in their Wine Science program and while I am at Kosta Browne for harvest, she is at Alderbrook - a producer of Dry Creek and Russian River Valley wines (most well known for their Zinfandel).

What do two wine students do when they hang out? Well, they drink! We opened a bottle of 2001 Dehlinger Goldridge Pinot Noir and scarfed it down. Erin didn't want to post her notes on the wine so instead we have notes from "Taster X":-

A nose of savory meat, dirty and gutsy. Awesome, total mouth feel - a meal in a glass! Integrated and complex, almost salty, superb weight.

I agree, this wine was special. Good times, good times...

Felton Road! Woo Hoo!

I just found out that one of my dreams came true! I have got a job at Felton Road for their 2008 harvest. A 2001 Felton Road Block 5 was one of the wines that inspired me to take the plunge and become a wine intern and I am so excited to be able to work with Blair and Jane and the rest of the crew at Felton Road.

Felton Road is a boutique winery in Central Otago, the most southern wine making region in the world. While known for their amazing Pinot Noir (their latest release of Block 5 received the highest rating amongst 2006 NZ Pinot Noir from Steve Tanzer, one of the world's best wine critics) they also produce some Chardonnay, Riesling and Vin Gris. All of their fruit is bio-dynamically farmed which is very exciting to me.

I start in mid April for a few weeks in the vineyards, picking the harvest and then will move into the winery to make the wine. All the wine is in barrel by end of May so it will be another intense 6 weeks.

I am so excited!!

Merlot really "jacks" me off!

We got some fruit in from Jemrose Vineyard today - Merlot. One of the bummer things about Merlot (which I learnt today having never worked on it before) is that the rachis (a cluster of grapes minus the grapes) is very brittle and breaks up into little bits that we call "jacks" when the clusters pass through the de-stemmer.

Unfortunately our de-stemmer lets these "jacks" fall through into the newly de-stemmed fruit. So what is one to do? Well pick them out by hand! Here you can see Pete, one of my fellow interns, and Michael Browne, the head winemaker, sitting under the de-stemmer and picking out "jacks". Imagine sugar syrup and twigs dropping on your head for an hour and you can imagine how much fun we were having!

Thank god, Beer o'clock rolled around two hours earlier!

Day 6 - Rosella's

It is now 36 hours since we inoculated the Rosella's and we have done two punchdowns since then. At this stage punching the cap down is to mainly help the yeast colonies that might be forming in certain parts of the must (winemaker term for fermenting juice and skins) mix throughout the rest of the must. Punching down also integrates a bit of 0₂ which the yeast need to multiply.

Every day we take Brix and Temperature readings which help us understand how fast or slow the fermentation is going and whether it needs any help. Today's readings show that Brix (approx. measurement of sugar content in the must) was 25.4 and temperature was 59° F - basically where we were when we inoculated 36 hours ago. When you are punching down you kind of know how the fermentation is running (cap feels hot, CO₂ escapes when you break through the cap etc) but the numbers give us a more accurate guide and back up our sensorial judgement.

We should see some activity by Day 7 as the yeast colonies grow and start to get chomping!

2005 Amisfield Central Otago Pinot Noir (Central Otago, NZ)

Very dark, deep color in the glass - I love it!

Fresh red fruits on nose and palate: strawberries and bright red cherry. Some interesting spices and earthiness too.

Very "juicy" and mouth watering with a long cleansing finish. My flat mate loved it!

Well worth the $27 tariff!

Score: 90 Points
Price: $27 (Bottle Barn)

Day 4 - Rosella's

Time to make some wine! On Day 4, we brought our four fermenting bins of Rosella's out from the cold room into our fermentation room. The four days of cold soaking has really brought out some lovely citrus and feminine sweetness in the juice. Yummy!

In order to inoculate we culture up some yeast. At Kosta Browne, we predominately use a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae called RC212 to run our fermentations. RC212 is a Burgundy strain that works well on Pinot Noir and is known to give great color extraction - important in Pinot Noir where sometimes wines can be thin on the looks front. RC212 is also quite alcohol tolerant (can survive up to 14-16%) and heat tolerant as well (up to around 94° F) which helps in California where we have ripe fruit (and thus alcohols in the 14-15% range) and with the new wood tanks we use for some of our fermentations. The wood fermentation vats give an incredibly sexy mouth feel to the finished wine but the wood retains a lot of heat. Thus it helps to have a yeast strain that won't die on you and leave you with a "stuck" fermentation. RC212 is known to need a lot of nutrients (remember the YANC) or it will start using any sulfur compounds in the juice to create hydrogen sulfide.

To culture yeast we take dried powdered yeast from the fridge and slowly adding water we allow the yeast to wake up from their slumber. Once our yeast starts to froth we slowly add juice from the bin/tank we are inoculating until the temperature of the yeast is within 10° F of the juice temperature (since we just brought the bins out from cold soak the juice was 58° F when we inoculated) both to give the yeast some food to eat, live free and multiply, and also to make sure they don't get "shocked" by the cold temperature when we pour it into the juice.

Once the juice is inoculated we now call it the "must". We now sit back and wait and see how our little yeast babies adjust.

2005 Chasseur Durrell Chardonnay (Sonoma Valley, USA)

Lively golden straw color - this wine promises a lot just at first glance. Lush tropical notes on the nose, not overpowering passionfruit or banana though, think guava! Tasty Golden Delicious apple and apricot fruit notes and a bready, first rise of dough, smell and taste that is divine.

The wine has all of the mouth coating fattiess you want from a Chardonnay with none of the cloying butteriness that often comes with it. Smooth, long clean finish makes you want to go back for more.

Reminds me more of a Meursault than any Californian I have tasted recently. Just "sex on a stick"!

Score: 95 points
Price: Not Yet Released (Chasseur Wines)

Day 3 - Rosella's

So Day 3, its time to see what kind of "numbers" the Rosella's is giving us this year. While at the end of the day wine comes down to taste, there are certain numbers that help guide a winemaker to get the most out of the grapes as possible. From what I have learned so far, it is far more important to see the "numbers" as a guidepost, your sherpa if you will, on your expedition to craft the best wine possible from the grapes you have in front of you, rather than as a "be all, end all" recipe for wine.

With this is mind, Lydia (Kosta Browne's resident enologist) and I ran what you call a "juice panel". A "Juice Panel" gives the wine maker an idea of the amount and types of sugar, acids, and nutrients available for the yeasts to do their work. We ran several types of tests. The first was a simple Brix reading with a pocket refractometer.

As you can see here, we have a nice Brix reading of 27.1 which is right in the sweet spot of tasty wine. Brix is a pretty good approximation for the sugar content of the juice and thus the amount of "fuel" we have available for the yeasties. 1 Degree of Brix will produce somewhere around 0.55% alcohol so this Rosella's juice will give us a projected alcohol of 14.5%. Just about where you want it.

We then run some acid trials where we slowly titrate NaOH (Sodium Hydroxide) into a sample of the juice to see its buffering capacity. Sodium Hydoroxide reacts with the acid in the wine and the amount of NaOH that the juice sample can take for any given pH target (say pH 3.50) gives us an idea of how much the juice will be affected by any change in its acid levels.

We also run some tests to find out how much YANC the juice has. YANC is a nice acronym for Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen Content. In order to live free and multiply our yeasties need nutrients, mainly in the form of nitrogen compounds, in order to healthily digest the sugars in the grapes into alcohol. Too little YANC and the yeast struggle, often giving off odors of ethyl acetate, and hydrogen sulfide and worst case scenario you get a "stuck" fermentation where all the yeast die before all the sugar is converted to alcohol. Trust me, you don't want that to happen. As you can imagine knowing how much YANC is available is pretty helpful to a wine maker (and there are several things we can add to the juice to increase the levels -- a topic for another time).

All in all, the Rosella's juice looks in great shape and ready to make some killer Pinot. One more day of resting until we inoculate and get 2007 Rosella's underway.

Day 1 - Rosella's

So the Rosella's grapes have been sitting in the cold room for 24 hours and it is time to "bleed" some juice which we then take to make rosé -- the proper french term is saignée. Those damn frogs, they always know how to make a simple process sound sexy!

Above you can see me siphoning off some juice from one of our Rosella's Pisoni Clone fermenting bins. Some calculations based on the flavor, sugar content, pH level etc of the juice allows us to determine how much juice we need to "bleed" off. The main consideration being to increase the skin to juice ratio, which concentrates the flavors, structure and color of the finished wine (and also to make a tasty summer rosé).

The Rosella's juice that we bled off was sweet and flavorsome and had some lovely feminine qualities. This stuff has some promise alright to make some killer Pinot!

Day 0 - Rosella's

Today the last fruit for Kosta Browne arrived for harvest and we saved the best for last - my favorite vineyard, Rosella's Vineyard. We get both the Pisoni and 828 clones from Rosella's which we sorted today. The photo here is a "grapes eye view" as it falls onto the elevator that takes it to the crusher/destemmer.

As you may notice from the title of the post I am going to take you through the whole process of the Rosella's arriving in the winery until it goes into barrel in two weeks or so. The grapes arrived on a truck that left Rosella's at 6am. By the time they dropped some fruit off at A.P. Vin and headed up the highway to us it was 11am. Still the fruit was nice and cold - which is very important since we don't want to let any nasty bugs get a foothold before the must is inoculated with yeast in a few days.

Here is a cluster of Rosella's Pinot Noir Clone 828. The cluster is very tight with great shape - like a little hand grenade. The flavor just zinged -- zippy acidity with some of that characteristic Rosella's citrus. We destemmed the Rosella's into six fermenting bins - three for the 828 clone and three for the Pisoni clone.

These beautiful de-stemmed honeys will spend their next four days or so chilling out in the cold room (which is a nippy 55°). That little bit of time just lets the skins and juice get to know each other in a relaxed atmosphere before we sic the hungry yeasties on them and start making some damn tasty wine!

Sometimes the only thing that gets you through the day...

... is the thought of that ice cold lager at the end of work. Like they say "it takes a lot of beer to make a little wine" and with our 14+ hour days at the moment, boy you need it.

Tomorrow we have our last big day of grapes - Rosella's and Kanzler for Kosta Browne and the first Syrah of the season for Shane Wine, over 20 tons to process along with maintenance of all the fermentations we have running (40+ bins and 11 tanks of rotting grapes).

I bet the keg will be tapped by 3pm.

Crazy times!

Almost all of our fruit is in the winery now - with the cool weather the vines really slowed down and so instead of getting fruit evenly spaced out it came all at once. In the last week we processed over 50% of the whole harvest worth of fruit - 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week.

Here I am in a fermenting bin of Garys Vineyard Pinot Noir. This bin is made up of 100% whole cluster fruit. This means that we have not de-stemmed the berries and we are fermenting the "whole cluster" of berries. Retaining the stems for fermentation helps bring extra complexity and structure. However punching the cap down can be very hard, especially at the beginning of fermentation. Sometimes the only way is to get your feet sticky!

Von Simmern Riesling Hattenheimer Nussbrunnen Kabinett Trocken 2005 (Rheingau, Germany)

Like sucking on a peach stone that got dropped on slate.

Tasty minerality, green apple, guava, lime peel, and lemon custard. Great acid and grip, with a long clean finish with a "titch" of sugar.

Superb value!

Score: 89 points
Price: $14 (wine.com)

2005 Pisoni Estate Pinot Noir (Santa Lucia Highlands, USA)

Wow! This is one of the best Pinots I have tasted this year!

Deep, deep ruby red. Beautiful expressive nose of blueberry, raspberry, baking spices and subtle oak notes.

In the mouth this wine takes you off on the ride of a lifetime. Starting with the bright raspberry, red cherry and citrus that Santa Lucia Highlands is famous for, it then builds and builds, coating the sides of your mouth and the flavors just bleed through your tongue!

The wine has lusciously soft tannins but still has the structure of a wine that will age well. This is a fruit driven wine, no doubt, but Pinot doesn't get much better than this.

Score: 95 points
Price: $59.99 (Wine Pavillion)

I love punchies!

Once fermentation is underway, we punch down the cap twice a day. Our little friends, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, are chomping away on grape sugars and turning it into ethanol, CO₂ and heat. The CO₂ that is released pushes the grape skins to the surface and the heat "bakes" the skins into a soft cake that we call the cap. Above you can see that half the tank is punched (look at all that creamy goodness bubbling up - thats CO₂ coming up) and the other half is still caked.

The problem with a cap is that the skins are where all the flavor, color and tannins are so we need to push the skins back under the juice occasionally. It also has the effect of helping the fermentation lose some excess heat which it especially important in these wooden tanks since the staves hold their temperature well. At Kosta Browne we punch down twice a day during fermentation.

I love doing punch downs. The smells and the exercise remind you that wine is a living thing and keeps you close to the wild side of nature. Because at the end of the day, wine is just rotten grapes!

2005 Yering Station Reserve Pinot Noir (Yarra Valley, Australia)

I was very much looking forward to this bottle which I brought back from my recent visit to Australia. We had it at the winery yesterday with lunch (one of the great perks of working at a winery - wine for lunch!).

Unusually "brickish" and light in color - if I had to go on color alone I would have said a 2002 or so Pinot Noir. Refreshing acidity and with a "juicy" mouth feel, silky tannins with tart red cherry and baking spice.

Overall, I found it flat and one dimensional which was disappointing considering the huge wraps Winewise gave it.

Maybe we had an oxidized bottle?

Score: 87
Price: $34.99 (Fine Wine House)

Microbiology of wine

Smack bang in the middle of harvest I needed to fly back to Australia as part of my Wine Science degree to stare at microbes under a microscope for four days.

Microbes are a very important part of a winery. Of course, wine is made through the action of our favorite friend, Saccharomyces cerevisiae or wine yeast, which converts sugar in the berries into ethanol (alcohol) and CO₂. There are also other friendly microbes like Oenococcus oeni that help give red wines and many Chardonnays their soft mouth-feel.

However there are also many nasty bacteria and yeasts that if given a chance would love to screw up your wine. The most well known is a family of bacteria called Acetobacter that converts ethanol into acetic acid - more commonly known as vinegar! Not only is this a major wine fault but it is also very noticeable since acetic acid is what we call volatile - in other words it likes to leave the wine as a gas and thus is picked up by our nose very easily. Acetic acid is also often converted through some other chemical reactions into Ethyl acetate which smells of nail polish. Tasty! So next time you have a glass of wine that you think might not quite be "right", stick your nose in and see if it is because of a vinegar or nail polish taint. If it is you can say damn those nasty Acetobacters!

So what can a winemaker do? Luckily, for us Acetobacters need O₂ to survive and once fermentation by our wine yeast (you remember our friend Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is underway enough CO₂ is given off to kill any Acetobacters. But before and after fermentation we need to be very careful. This means after crushing the grapes, the must (winemaker term for the juice and skins) needs to be covered with a blanket of CO₂ at all times until fermentation is happily chugging along. After fermentation it means keeping all the barrels topped up with wine and during bottling it means that we need to flush the bottles with an inert gas like Nitrogen or Argon so there is no O₂ in the ullage (winemaker term for space between the wine and the cork/screwcap) that can let Acetobacters get a foothold when your wine is happily sleeping in the cellar.

All of these nasties mean that we spend a lot of time keeping things clean in the winery. In fact, for each hour of what you might term "romantic winemaking" there are three hours of washing up. Its all worthwhile though to ensure that your next glass of vino doesn't smell like yesterday's salad dressing or your overly made up Aunt Ethel!

A great pinot tasting at university

One of my fellow students at Charles Sturt University brought a couple of very interesting barrel samples to the bar last night. Like Kosta Browne, he likes to ferment small lots, treat them in different ways (always with love) and then use interesting oak barrels for maturation.

Last night we had two 2007 barrel samples - both came from the same upper block of their estate vineyard (his winery is in Tasmania), both were barreled from the same fermenter. Both had spent six months in a 2006 François Frères oak barrel - since it is 2006 barrel it has been once-filled with 2006 wine, this is the second fill (normally this tones the oak influence down as compared to a new barrel). The only difference? One barrel was made with oak from the Allier forest and one from the Tronçais forest (he had brought a third bottle whose oak came from the Vosges forest but he dropped that in the driveway?!).

Both bottles were raw and primary, typical of most barrel samples, with a bit of H₂S aroma (H₂S usually blows off the wine over time in barrel, maybe a subject of a post in the future perhaps). There were marked differences between the two. The Allier was much more feminine, with elegant and elevated oak notes while the Tronçais had a more powerful and primary oakiness. On this occasion I did enjoy Tronçais barrel the most - in the past, with Californian barrel samples primarily, I have had a preference for the Allier but it just worked with this particular block of fruit.

What I took away from this was the influence of where the wood in a wine barrel comes from. A lot of the time we spend so much time talking about the advantages and characteristics of one cooper over another, maybe we should look at the forest a bit more. Food for thought and maybe for tasting when I am back in the winery.

First Wine in Barrel

Our Amber Ridge went "dry" (the yeast have finished their job and converted all the sugar into alcohol) so it was time to get the wine out of the fermenters and into barrel. We had a few different fermenters going for the Amber Ridge fruit. We had two 8-ton Rousseau wooden fermenters full of Amber Ridge clone 667, one with fruit from the upper block, one from the lower block. We had a 8-ton steel fermenter full of Amber Ridge clone 777 and a few 1.5-ton plastic fermenters with some Amber Ridge clone 115 and clone 667 where we used some different strains of yeasts.

At Kosta Browne, we like to keep all of the lots separate to keep our blending options open. So we barrel down each fermenter separately, rather than blend it all into one large tank, and then into barrel. We also like to use a variety of barrels that give the wine different characteristics as it matures, again to increase our blending options and hopefully the complexity of the finished wine. Here you can see me "barreling down" one of the 1.5-ton plastic fermenters into a Saury (a French cooper) barrel that was first filled with wine in 2003 so it will impart very little or no wood to the wine as it matures. You need to keep a damn close watch or wine will come flying out the top pretty quick and at $50 a bottle it not only gets you drenched, it gets expensive fast too!

Vineyard Sampling

This morning we got up at 5am to drive up to the Yorkville Highlands to visit Weir Vineyard. Shane Finley, the Associate Winemaker at Kosta Browne, is getting some fruit for a new label he is starting - a great coup considering that Williams Selyem makes a Weir Vineyard Pinot Noir! The seven acres of Pinot sit on a south facing hill slope to get maximum sun, but is cooled by the marine layer that is funneled through the Anderson Valley straight from the Pacific. The great Pinot areas in California all have this marine influence so I was excited to get out there.

Our job this morning was to "walk the rows" and to bring some samples back to the winery for analysis. The vineyard is planted to clones of Domaine Romanee-Conti, 2A, Pommard and Rochioli and Shane is getting them all except for the Pommard. The Domaine Romanee-Conti and the Rochioli clones tasted like Pommard which gives an elegant red fruit profile. The 2A is richer and darker with blue/black fruit, so they should mingle well in the finished wine. The grapes were getting close but they were still a touch "green" in flavor. Hopefully this cool weather we have will hold and they can get another week or so to hang!

So how does the 2007 season look?

Harvest is in full gear here in Sonoma. At the winery we have about 15% of our fruit in already and our first fruit from Amber Ridge has finished its cold soak and fermentation is just kicking into gear. The berries have been very small this year, giving the juice an amazingly rich deep purple hue after cold soak (because of the high skin to juice ratio). These are going to be some dark pinots!

Above are some samples of Keefer Ranch. We get six different Pinot Noir clones from Keefer Ranch - 115, 2A, 23, 667, 777 and Pommard. Clone 23 is my favorite - up here in Sonoma it gives the wine a beautiful green apple tartness. Just spectacular. We sampled the Keefer juice this week and the flavor is just about to pop - we should see the fruit in the winery this week just as it hits its peak. What a great time of year!

Harvest in ON!

Today we got our first blocks of Amber Ridge Pinot Noir in the winery. The fruit from the 667 clone was especially tasty - voluptuously rich blue fruit and some sassy acidity. We put our new "crush-pad" (where we process the grapes) through its paces today - 37 half-ton bins of grapes were sorted, crushed and de-stemmed. "Crushing" is a misnomer, especially for Pinot Noir -- in the winery we want to treat the berries like the delicate children they are.

First, we sort through the harvested fruit (the crew at Amber Ridge started harvesting at midnight with the first 16 bins showing up at 8 am) by picking out leaves, looking for damaged fruit (e.g. bird damage or botrytis infection) and "second set" clusters (fruit that appears in the middle of summer and thus does not get ripe) and generally making sure that just the tastiest grapes end up in the fermenter. The grapes are then destemmed and the naked, whole berries are put into fermenters for their "cold soak" whereby the grapes are chilled to around 55 degrees for a few days before fermentation is allowed to begin. Cold soaking helps with color extraction, something that can sometimes be challenging for Pinot Noir, and also has the benefit of allowing the juice to slowly bleed out of the grapes, passing over and through the skins where the vast majority of a grapes flavor lies.

If the Amber Ridge fruit today is any sign then we will be in for a "cracker" of a 2007 vintage.

I am the ape-man, I am the walrus, koo-koo ka-choo!

Climbing barrels is tough work - but fun! In order to save space barrels full of wine are stacked four high - empty barrels are six high. So to do things like sulfur dioxide additions, topping wine (or taking barrel samples... hmmmm, barrel samples) you need to hop on up! It takes a bit to get used to but once you are going, you'll be a "barrel monkey" in no time.

Bins, Bins, Bins

I finally arrived to start my new career and I have been thrown in the "deep end". Hundreds of fermentation bins and barrels to sanitize before the first fruit arrives in a few weeks. It is often said that for every hour of what one would call "romantic winemaking" there is four hours of washing up. Well if that is true then I have a LOT of winemaking due my way!

That said this is a great time to be in the winery - getting to know your fellow interns, having time to scope out the facility and getting acquainted with all the barrels that will be loving filled with Pinot before too long.

So sorry there hasn't been a post in a while but the "Internets" are sketchy up here (something to do with all those series of tubes, I guess). Anyway, promise to post more soon!

2006 Château Guiot (Southern Rhône, France)

Grenache & Syrah Rosé

Darker than what I would normally associate with French Rosé - looks more Californian. Attractive bright strawberry and raspberry nose with some spicy, stemmy action.

In the mouth, a more full flavor of red berries than most French Rosé. Very "juicy" - reminds me of a watermelon purée. Snappy acidity makes this a great Summer quaffer. Great choice for a house rosé. Damn delicious tonight with some wilted Summer greens.

Year in, year out Château Guiot can be counted on for a great value Rosé.

Score: 87
Price: $7.99 (Winex)

Goon bags are "greener" than bottles

The pouch is the new goon bag. Says Chris O’Shea of Versus Wines:-

"Initial consumer feedback from around the world has been very positive to the wine pouch. The innovative design offers convenient handles for portability and on-the-go consumption, a leak proof tap, is light and easy to squeeze into a bag or picnic hamper and the packaging also allows contents to be cooled more rapidly than traditional glass."

He also goes on to say that pouches are more "green" than glass bottles since pouches have a lower carbon footprint than glass. Now I know that goon bags have other post-consumption uses such as for bedding but now they should be the packaging choice of green-conscious as well as the poor college student.

"Studies conducted on the pouch found that although glass is easier to recycle, even if 100% of the glass bottles produced were recycled and 0% of the pouches were recycled, they would still achieve a significantly lower environmental impact and less waste."

Selling goon bags as environmentally friendly. Thats a good one!