The bottling finally took
place this weekend. To me this marks the closure of the school winemaking, and
the signal to concentrate fully on the pro thing. Complicating things is an
influx of software work that has failed to capture my interest. Which is too
bad since I could use the money.
Most of the class was
expected to show up, 13 out of the original 18 Of the 18 people that started the class back
in August 2007, 15 had stayed for part 2, and 13 would probably show up for our
final activity as a class. Everyone in the group gets along well, from my
perspective.
Of the 2 no-shows one was
Josh, my partner in the Sangiovese, and Robert S., who had to work but would be
along to the party later.
There had already been two
bottling sessions: Norm had wanted to do a Rose so we would have wine in the
first semester and thanks to the generous Merlot allotment from Buttonwood a Merlot
Rose it would be.
The class had a large amount
of merlot and in fact Buttonwood seemed to happy to allow us to take as much as
we wanted. They have a huge amount of Merlot planted and I'm not sure it's
right for the area. I remember back in the old (i.e. early 1990's) days
Buttonwood Merlot was well thought of and I personally enjoyed several bottles.
I've lost track of Buttonwood Merlot but I think they still make some. I'm sure
the Sidfeways movie hasn't helped sales.
The Buttonwood Merlot
vineyard is quite picturesque and expertly farmed. The class swarmed the
vineyard like locusts and within an hour we had over a ton of nice looking
grapes. It was a relaxing picking experience.
To make Rose you take red
grapes and press them off the skins (like a white). The skins provide the color
in red wine, so voila, you get rose. We fermented it dry, filtered it and
bottled it all within the span of 3 weeks. Someone printed some fairly nice
labels and there it was.
The Merlot Rose is not bad.
It has no flaws and tastes clean but in my opinion tastes somewhat diluted,
almost watery. Nevertheless, we'd made and bottled wine, no matter what
happened from here on in.
The second bottling
experience was the Chardonnay. We had received Chardonnay grapes from North
Canyon Vineyards, the benefactors of the beautiful pinot grapes. The Chardonnay
grapes were also beautiful but the Chardonnay tasted so bad I had lost
interest.
Shortly after the class
started Norm decided it was time to rack the wines, essentially transferring
the wine among barrels and leaving the sediments and lees (dead yeast behind).
This worked wonders with the
Chardonnay, which went from tasting like white wine flavored mud to tasting
like good Chardonnay. I missed the Chardonnay bottling session, where the wine
had been filtered before bottling. I was shocked at how good the wine had
become. It was a real eye opener in the evolution of a wine throughout the
process. The chardonnay was bottled in April and I've had a few since. All very
good.
We would bottle 5 barrels:
my Sangiovese a la Toscana, Cabernet Franc donated from Bien Nacido Vineyard,
the brown Pinot Noir and 2 Cabernet based wines from Steinbeck Vineyards in
Paso Robles: a field blend with Cab, Merlot and Petite Sirah and a straight Cab
that John B. intended to buttress with the Franc and ubiquitous Buttonwood
Merlot.
There was no separate
Buttonwood Merlot. Most of it had gone into the Sangiovese. The
Sangiovese-Merlot blend was about 50-50% and John and I had talked about
goosing it with some Steinbeck Vineyard cabernet.
John was the keeper of the
Cab. He had arranged the acquisition of the Steinbeck Vineyard grapes, which
happened very late in the firs semester: John and his wife picked the grapes
after all the red wine was in barrel; he had talked about it for so long I was
wondering if it would happen.
John is an affable man, who
also runs 2 grocery stores and plays in the local symphony orchestra. Like
everyone in the class he likes wine. He had recently converted his swimming
pool into a wine cellar (his stores feature an eclectic wine selection)
The Steinbeck vineyard is a
large operation in Paso Robles that supplies several hundred tons of grapes to
many different wineries. It's also machine harvested, which meant that the
grapes at the end of each row were there for the taking (the machine pick skips
the last few vines on each row). John knows Howie Steinbeck, proprietor, and
Howie offered John the unpicked fruit.
John had shepherded his 2 batches of cabernet himself and was in charge of
those 2 barrels.
My situation was more
complicated. Although Josh and I had picked and paid for the grapes, inoculated
the wine, done some punchdowns and made the decisions about aging, which
essentially consisted of whether to add oak chips. (I decided yes and added a
heavy dose to the wine, since we had been give the crappiest barrel in the
school's small inventory, a barrel that I knew would impart zero oak flavor).
The additional problem is
that our Sangiovese allotment was so meager we ended up with under 400 pounds
and didn't have enough wine to fill a barrel (the birds! The birds!). It made
sense to Josh and myself to fill it out with merlot to fill out the barrel. The
idea of making a "Super Tuscan" style wine was romamtic. The Sangiovese was an
over the top fruit bomb with very little acidic structure (I had to blitz it
with a large dose of tartaric acid prior to fermentation) I felt that the low
alcohol and acidic merlot would be a nice match for the boisterous high alcohol
Sangio.
Chris had warned us that preliminary lab
results showed the Sangiovese grapes were "out of balance" and had an "acid
problem" (i.e. not enough of it). Later I ran into the Margerum guy who had
been at the Vandale Vineyard and we both laughed about how much acid we had to
dump into it. Poor Chris. What a trainwreck. In the final accounting Josh and I
were severely shorted on our grapes.
The class would have to vote
on whether to combine the Merlot and Sangiovese. If they voted no Josh and I
would be hosed, as the Sangio would have to be gassed regularly to prevent
oxidation, something he and I had no chance of keeping up with.
I had to be in
Thus the class owned half of
our potential Super Tuscan. Briefly the "Super Tuscan" category arose relative
recently in Itlay. Super Tuscans are wines from Chianti and thereabouts that
are primarily Sangiovese based, but also combined with "internatonal" (i.e.
The top "Super Tuscans" are
very prestigious and sell on the basis of their widely-recognized brand names
(Sassicaia, Onellaia Tignanello, etc).
After John revealed his
Steinbeck Vineyard project to me we both agreed that we would try to add some
cab to the blend, thus creating our own Tuscan, super or otherwise.
Bottling day really was
bottling weekend. Based on the previous rose and chardonnay experiences there
was universal thinking that it would take two days to do all five barrels, 1500
bottles total, all manual labor. What we didn't full appreciate was the new
bottling apparatus.
The class had spent the
first semester based in a defunct refrigeration plant near Vandenberg AFB. It's
way out in the sticks, on an obscure road that dead ends at Vandenburg, off an
obscure highway that runs between
The facility near Vandenburg
was great. There was an indoor area we used as a classroom and an enormous
warehouse type room with a 50 foot ceiling. We were making a few barrels of
wine in this room; there was easily enough space to make 1,000. Our petite
inventory of home winemaking equipment was dwarfed by the cavernous, cool
space. There were additional warehouses there of similar proportions that were
being used for barrel storage. The owner had (and may still have) plans to
create a custom crush facility (they're spreading like wildfire) but for now it
was a barrel storage facility. The only people we ever saw there unconnected to
the class were the occasional crew leisurely unloading old barrels and slowly
moving them inside.
Alfredo had big plans for
the school viticulture program. He had already started restoring the vineyard;
his ultimate goal was to have a bonded winery on campus and even perhaps a
small scale commercial wine program. There was plenty of space next to the
vineyard to build a winery. Whether or not the funding was there was unknown.
At one point late in the
first semester Alfredo had invited our Friday viticulture class to inspect the
future home of the campus winery (there was a large overlap between the
students in both classes). I was dismayed to be led into an abandoned office
style classroom at the end of campus that was filled with dusty blueprints. The
room had a high ceiling but the floorplan was barely larger than a standard
classroom. After the capacious winery in Vandenberg this looked a little
cramped.
I don't know if the school
was evicted from the Vandenberg facility or if Alfredo decided it was time to
bring things in-house. In any case by semester 2 of winemaking everything had
been moved into our new "winery": 6 barrels of wine, all the heavy winemaking
equipment (crushers, presses, pumps, etc), racks of supplies, bins, spare
barrels, storage containers. There had been room for everything, and fifty more
of it at Vandenberg; this room was severely cramped. I later found the campus
setting to be both an advantage and liability in terms of the winemaking.
The conclusion to the story
of Alfredo's Move to Campus is that right at the end of semester 2 we entered
the "winery" to find all kinds of new goodies planted inside: there were 2
large (at least 400 gallon) steel fermenting tanks and one very large (1000
gallons+?) steel fermenting tank. There was a brand spanking new Italian
crusher/destemmer, still in its carton (I believe I have neither seen a
crusher/destemmer not made in
Where the room had been
cramped before now it was almost impossible to navigate. In fact, doing any
work in the "winery" involved spending time moving all these gigantic dormant
fermenting tanks around, and then moving the wine barrels outside. It was
ridiculous. The theory was that Alfredo had received some funding and decided
to go for some acquisitions. Like any good bureaucracy, the administrators at
AHC knew if they didn't spend it they would lose it.
The presence of all this
useless equipment caused grumbling from the time it appeared. After the pinot
noir was ruined I initiated a campaign to move the bottling up from mid-August
to right now! On the last day of class we all signed up for topping duty. Wine
steadily evaporates in barrel and must be replenished regularly, usually every
week or 2 when the weather gets warm. This is very important, as allowing any
degree of oxygen to enter the barrel will result in an oxidized wine, very
undesirable, very bad tasting. Of course when class was going we would all go
over to the winery (next door to the classroom) and top the wines. We would
also frequently taste them and getting a little tipsy became a Saturday morning
custom.
It was my turn to top in
May. There was a searing heat wave right before and when I topped the pinot
noir it was over 2 bottles low, much more than the other barrels. I then poured
a taste for myself. Oh Oh. It was brown. And tasted, um, oxidized. I had
mentioned to a few others that the pinot was oxidized. I had even called Norm
on his cell phone to0 enlist his gravitas in trying to move up the bottling.
Norm was sympathetic but not seem as emotionally invested in the wines as my
classmates. This was his last class and
has very busy with his own wine stuff, i.e. his livelihood.
Laurie topped after me and
sent out this email:
Those of us who have tasted and smelled the pinot noir several times
over the last two weeks think it has taken a sharp turn for the worse.
We ran a free SO2 test on it (you got the results) and it showed 20 ppm, which
is still pretty good.
John Beck added more SO2 to ALL of the wines last Monday (the 5th), and several
of us in wine analysis are going to gather samples from every container of wine
in our winery after our (last!!!) class this Wednesday and I'll trot more
samples over to Vinquiry Thursday morning.
When I sniffed the pinot after class last wednesday (two days post SO2), it
seemed better, but still stinky.
Two days later (Friday), I pulled a sample of it and took it to dinner with me
in order for a winemaker friend to sample it. He did, and pronounced it full of
TCA (cork taint, or, in this case, barrel taint). I trust his opinion because
he's a chemist and has a great nose and palate.
We still need to run the tests this week, but, armed with those results, we may
need to decide, as a group, to 1) make some "fixes" to the pinot
(whatever that may be -- i haven't a clue, myself), or 2) go ahead and bottle
it 'early' to get it out of that barrel, if that barrel is indeed the culprit.
Sterile filtration may help this wine recover, or so I've been told. Or, 3) we
can do nothing and leave it be.
The winery itself has been much cooler since the heat spike of April 26th/27th,
but temperatures are forecast to be heading up again this week.
Does anyone recall if the pinot barrel is one of the older ones??
Here was my chance to revive
my plea for an accelerated bottling date:
IMHO the pinot noir is a write-off (it is in the 1 year old barrel and
I
still belive it is oxidized rather than TCAed).
IMHO part II the next heat wave may effectively destroy the remainder of the
wines, so I think they shhould all be bottled ASAP. Young wines are more
sensitive to temperature fluctuations or high heat and that room is
enventilated and uncooled. The only realistic alternative is for the class
to pool some cash and buy a portable A/C unit to try to keep the temp below
75 - I am willing to contribute.
M "Your Humble Servant" S
I did not get much support
for the early bottling date. I did get some offers to chip in for an air
conditioner. I subsequently discussed it with John B, who was dead set against
early bottling and in fact he felt the pinot was not especially damaged. I
played my (only) hole card and remarked I might bottle the Sangio early simply
due to my heat paranoia. John didn't want to hear that; both he and I wanted to
try that Super Tuscan thing, if I pulled the plug it would just complicate everything.
He brought up the air conditioner idea again and I agreed to drop my early
bottling campaign if air conditioning was installed. Personally I wanted the
wines to age longer anyway, plus everyone had already made plans for the
mid-August date.
Sure enough there were 2 air
conditioners installed, in the last bit of available floor space. One was a
modern unit, more suited to a living room, that was set to run continuously. I
believe John may have bought this himself but I don't know. Some weeks later,
not long before bottling a gigantic, weathered "solar-powered" contraption
appeared that officially was an air conditioner. I'm sure this was salvaged
from some remote corner of the school by Alfredo, who of course had blown all his
funding on shiny new equipment for the near and far future. No one had any idea
how to use it (it looked like simply turning it on might cause an explosion),
and it had to be moved out first before anything else could be accessed. At one
point I suggested simply leaving it outside; although people will steal
anything, I couldn't see any downside in someone stealing this thing. As luck
would have it the rest of the summer has stayed fairly cool.
The bottling went smoothly
on Saturday, It went better than smoothly - it exceeded everyone's most
optimistic expectations. All due to the bottling machine. The previous 2
bottling runs had been bottlenecked by the previous bottler, a small trough
that fed 6 nozzles. Not just home winemaking but crappy home winemaking. The
trough reminded me of a miniature urinal and it had only a rough fill level
control, which led to much eyeballing and manual adjustments. Terrible.
The new bottler had a
precise level adjustment and a trough that held several cases of wine, so we
could run the pump smoothly into the trough, and then watch it cascade prettily
into the bottles, which were filled at the exact preset level. Home winemaking,
but now way up in class.
Early on we knew it was
going to be a luxury ride. The first barrel was done in an hour. By the end we
were running so smoothly the 2 barrels bottled after lunch took 1½ hours. We
took a leisurely lunch break. We drank wine at lunch, We drank wine after
lunch. We drank beer before lunch. It was all done by
I ended up with 5 cases of
my Sangio Tuscan-a-rama, 2 cases of the Cabernet Franc and a case each of
John's 2 Steinbeck wines. That's in addition to 2 cases of chardonnay, so it's
a nice haul. I left the Pinot Noir behind, which had been adulterated with
enough acid to turn the color from brown to maroon as well as improve the test
results. It now tastes like tartaric acid fortified with alcohol rather than oxidized
pinot noir.
I've had a Sangio and Cab Franc
since the weekend - how could I resist? The Sangio blend is already tasty and I
think will be a solid winner. I was by far the most involved with this wine so
it's gratifying. Am I the winemaker of record? Maybe slightly more than anyone
else but although I made many of the decisions regarding the process, it's hard
to say there was a "head winemaker" calling the shots. Over time I may fudge
that fact a bit.
The Cabernet Franc has good
depth of flavor and a nice mouthfeel. Those deep flavors don't taste that good
at the moment but there's some stuffing here. I'm optimistic.
The party at Terry's was a
typical class party. Lots of very good wine was consumed, as well as lots of
food. The winemaking class was, to a man and woman, a serious bunch of winos.
As a bonus we were cracking our own wines tool, which held up well versus the
"real" wines.
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