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!